jp.jpg (13389 bytes)

CHAOS MANOR MAIL

A SELECTION

MAIL90: February 28 - March 5, 2000

REFRESH/RELOAD EARLY AND OFTEN!

read book now

HOME

VIEW

MAIL

Columns

BOOK Reviews

emailblimp.gif (23130 bytes)mailto:jerryp@jerrypournelle.com

CLICK ON THE BLIMP TO SEND MAIL TO ME

The current page will always have the name currentmail.html and may be bookmarked. For previous weeks, go to the MAIL HOME PAGE.

FOR THE CURRENT VIEW PAGE CLICK HERE

If you are not paying for this place, click here...

IF YOU SEND MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is Chaos Manor. If you want a mail address other than the one from which you sent the mail to appear, PUT THAT AT THE END OF THE LETTER as a signature.

I try to answer mail, but mostly I can't get to all of it. I read it all, although not always the instant it comes in. I do have books to write too...  I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft who slowly starved to death while answering fan mail. 

Day-by-day...
Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday -- Thursday -- Friday -- Saturday -- Sunday

Search: type in string and press return.

 


Boiler Plate:

If you want to PAY FOR THIS there are problems, but I keep the latest HERE. I'm trying. MY THANKS to all of you who sent money.  Some of you went to a lot of trouble to send money from overseas. Thank you! There are also some new payment methods. I am preparing a special (electronic) mailing to all those who paid: there will be a couple of these. I am also toying with the notion of a subscriber section of the page. LET ME KNOW your thoughts.
.

If you subscribed:

atom.gif (1053 bytes) CLICK HERE for a Special Request.

If you didn't and haven't, why not?

If this seems a lot about paying think of it as the Subscription Drive Nag. You'll see more.

Highlights this week:

 

line6.gif (917 bytes)

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

TOP

Monday  February 27, 2000

It's bill paying time, then column time, and fiction writing time. So it's also short shrift time...

 

I should have put this up earlier: reader needs help.

Jerry,

A year or more back (I don't know how far back) you worked through some irritating mouse behavior in one of your columns (maybe an old Byte column. I can't remember.) The mouse was erratic, pausing for no apparent reason. I recall that you found some cause and resolution for this. I tried a search on your site and got 180 references to mouse but none were appropriate. Do you recall this incident and where I might find it?

Cordially, -- twf

Terry W. Frazier Atlanta, GA  mailto:terry@frazierinfo.com 

I recall the incident but not the remedy, nor where I wrote about it. Alas.


This is a clarification and update - still serious stuff. I don't know if this is the Troj-trinoo variant that Trend Micro reported running on Windows machines or not.

---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: FLASH: Update and Correction on Windows Trinoo Report Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 14:36:20 -0700 (MST) From: The SANS Institute <sans@sans.org>

To: SD420361 From: Alan at the SANS NewsBites Service

Gary Flynn of James Madison University has posted substantial additional information about the copies of trinoo-like code found on Windows PCs, described in the NewsBites that you received earlier today.

In a report entitled "Wintrinoo" provided at 3:01 PM EST, Gary noted the following:

1. The number of machines infected was not 160. He reported that he found 149 machines that were listening on port 34555, but that the number of machines actually infected may have been substantially less because of possibility of false positives.

2. He also reported that he discovered 16 of the computers (all running Windows, and at least 5 running Windows98) "sending out large numbers of UDP packets on random ports."

3. He noted that all 16 machines were infected with the BackOrifice remote control Trojan.

4. After removing BackOrifice from one of the machines, he discovered the computer again participating in a UDP flood. That led to the discovery of a program that was reported to CERT as a possible variant of the trinoo distributed denial of service tool. CERT is analyzing this.

Gary's technical expertise and rapid response is helping the entire community to be better informed. We're sorry that our initial report didn't have the precision that Gary's latest posting has provided. We'll keep you informed as we hear of new developments.

The bottom line: PCs running Windows at universities have been found participating in distributed denial of service attacks. The next step is to ask the virus detection vendors to find and eradicate the flooding programs -- Gary has forwarded the code to them.

Alan 

 

Jerry,

This is interesting in the context of recent Chaos Manor discussions where I think it was suggested Windows machines were not likely to be part of the Ddos problem. Roland is correct I'm sure to say they are less useful as Ddos proxies but from this clearly it can be and has been done.

Andrew ---------------------- Forwarded by Andrew G Duffin/IRV/WSO/SB_PLC on 25/02/2000 08:04 ---------------------------

The SANS Institute <sans@sans.org> on 24/02/2000 21:52:51

To: Andrew G Duffin/IRV/WSO/SB_PLC@SB cc:

Subject: FLASH: Update and Correction on Windows Trinoo Report

Size: 4189 bytes

To: Andrew Dufifn (SD070273) From: Alan at the SANS NewsBites Service

Gary Flynn of James Madison University has posted substantial additional information about the copies of trinoo-like code found on Windows PCs, described in the NewsBites that you received earlier today.

In a report entitled "Wintrinoo" provided at 3:01 PM EST, Gary noted the following:

1. The number of machines infected was not 160. He reported that he found 149 machines that were listening on port 34555, but that the number of machines actually infected may have been substantially less because of possibility of false positives.

2. He also reported that he discovered 16 of the computers (all running Windows, and at least 5 running Windows98) "sending out large numbers of UDP packets on random ports."

3. He noted that all 16 machines were infected with the BackOrifice remote control Trojan.

4. After removing BackOrifice from one of the machines, he discovered the computer again participating in a UDP flood. That led to the discovery of a program that was reported to CERT as a possible variant of the trinoo distributed denial of service tool. CERT is analyzing this.

Gary's technical expertise and rapid response is helping the entire community to be better informed. We're sorry that our initial report didn't have the precision that Gary's latest posting has provided. We'll keep you informed as we hear of new developments.

The bottom line: PCs running Windows at universities have been found participating in distributed denial of service attacks. The next step is to ask the virus detection vendors to find and eradicate the flooding programs -- Gary has forwarded the code to them.

Alan


Moshe Bar's Opinion - http://www.moelabs.com 

Dear Readers

My main web server broke down. It was a Linux machine, but the disk is dead and it will take me a while to configure a secure replacement for it. I do have another server out there, under Solaris 2.6, but for some strange reason I can't make Apache run correctly. On top of that there is a domain conflict on that machine that causes all mail to moshe@moelabs.com  to bounce back.

In short, I need a web server IP for a few days. Does anybody have a web server somewhere with an IP to spare so that I can point my website to that IP and upload the content there?

Any help is greatly appreciated as I have articles out that point to my web site. I thought I had a contingency plan with that Sun server, but, as so often, it turned out not to work.

Many thanks for any hint to webserver@moelabs.com 

Kindest regards

Moshe Bar

PS Next mailing is in the working and should follow next Sunday.

_To unsubscribe, write to mbar-unsubscribe@listbot.com 


If you don't know about it already, you really ought to have a look at

http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/ 

Drill down into the various applications, then select 'Downloads' for each one. You'll find all sorts of useful utilities, including an automatic .PST backup routine for Outlook, extensive help-file updates, and so forth.

Definitely on the list of things I must do in my copious free time...


I enjoyed your print column, and am glad the e-zine version of it is now available. After this month's column I'm going to have to dig out a copy of "Mote" and re-read it. I certainly remember the Moties, but not the handheld computers. Maybe I'm too close to the forest to remember seeing the trees. I've done a few Palm apps, and someday will become another Sillycone Gulch multimillionaire when I perfect the glue for the back of the handheld that allows you to securely stick it to your shirt, jeans or bare (even hairy) skin and then pull it back off without stain or pain. There's just never enough pockets around these days.

Another handheld goody, which will be integrated into a future Palm model, is the Xenote iTag ( http://www.xenote.com  ). Take a look at it - interaction with FM radio! It only works in the San Francisco and Houston areas right now, but much more is to come. A future model will also come with a bar-code scanner (you can already get a Pilot with a scanner from Symbol). I can't imagine that integration with TV can be that far off.

I have a suggestion to your publishers that you may wish to pass along, or even champion. You mention several URLs in most columns and are kind enough to place the links in-line (most of the time). How about also gathering them all together and placing them, with a brief description, in the largely empty blue bar to the left of your column? Your column spreads over several screens, and jumping around looking for the links after I've read it all seems counterproductive. Having a single point of reference makes more sense. You could even sprinkle it with a few more related links that you didn't have column space to discuss. Make more use of the hypertext capability!

A long time fan, Roger Smith

Sounds like a good idea, but I don't control the layout of the publication. I'll pass it along to the editors. I write, they publish...


Jerry,

I think that this is a good article on the difficulty of measuring GDP in an economy with the Web and Moore's Law:

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TotW/encyclopedia.html 

--Erich

Excellent article, and I have the feeling I have already posted this. Oh well.

Dr. P

You might want to check out ZoneAlarm 2.0.xx from http://www.zonelabs.com/ 

This is the one Gibson is recommending at his site these days.

Totally free. The code strikes me as more than Beta, but not quite complete yet. However, given the amazing number of configurations for just Wintel computers hooked to the internet, I suspect any product like this, which attempts to offer a universal solution, should be considered a Gamma release. Version number has gone from something like 2.0.10 to 2.0.26 in a couple of weeks.

Tim tmorris@advnet.net tkmorris@hotmail.com 

Thanks. I'll try to get to it Real Soon Now...


Subject: One Way to Get A Trojan into a Windows Box

 http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,34544,00.html 

And a good checklist on security

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/iischk.asp 

Roland


Subject: the perfect pointing device

Hi Jerry, For some years I have been using the Logitech Trackman Portable as my main pointing device. It takes up hardly any real-estate on my messy desk and can be operated under a pile of papers. I have learned to use it with my left hand, so have my writing hand free for scribbling on my short term memory pad. It can also be used in the hand while roaming during a presentation. Recently, it started disintegrating from old age ( I know the feeling), and I found to my horror that it is no longer made, and is replaced by huge knobbly lumps much bigger than any free space on my desk. Has anyone seen anything like it on the market now? It is a roughly semi-circular device, 3 inches high, 3 inches wide and 11/2 inches thick. 

Yours in anticipation,

 Peter Smith [pasmith@wbmpl.com.au]

I tend to use the Microsoft trackballs now, although the Logitech is very good also. But I haven't seen the small ones for a long time now...


Subject: Barry from Canada and E-Commerce

Dear Jerry,

As someone who has purchased moderately over the Internet during the last year, I can understand to some extent Barry's frustration with ill-designed websites and conflicting information (I had similar problems with Barnes and Noble, which I why I shop with Amazon, with whom I've had few or no problems - so far). But why are we surprised when we don't get a uniform level of excellent service from _all_ of the thousands of e-commerce websites out there, when we don't get this from all of the millions of brick-and-mortar establishments? How many times have you received poor service at a restaurant? What do you do? Return time and again until the service improves? No, you complain and move on to another restaurant, and tell your friends to stay away. So, I'm sorry that Barry had problems, but I'm glad he's telling others about it. I just don't see how that condemns the entire e-commerce industry at this stage of development.

Thanks for the good work you share on your site. Also, I just received "The Burning City" (pre-ordered through your site and Amazon) and am looking forward to sitting down and having a good read.

Peter Martin (pmart5@worldnet.att.net)

True enough. Thanks.

 

TOP

 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

TOP

Tuesday, February 29, 2000

Bug Day. 

Dr. Pournelle,

As the designated instigator of your response to Tim O'Reilly's open letter to Amazon.com, I thought you might be interested in the e-mail that I sent to him questioning what he was going to do with it:

"After I signed your "open letter to Amazon", I wondered, "What is he going to do with this letter that might convince the management at Amazon to stop trying to use these patents offensively."

I hope that you don't believe the executives at Amazon will cease and desist simply because a whole bunch of people signed a letter expressing their moral outrage. If the morality of their actions was a concern they would have never decided upon this course of action in the first place.

Actions speak louder than words. Amazon's behavior says that they would rather have an immediate commercial weapon / profit generator instead of something that might be better for them and the rest of the e-commerce world in the long term. The only reaction that might possibly change their minds is to convince them that their current measure of personal success (the stock price in a company that is losing $300M/year) may be down-rated before they can cash in all of their stock options.

One way to inform the folks at Amazon that their patent policy was really hurting them in the short term might be to send them the e-mail addresses of all the people who signed your open letter, and ask them to compare them against their order data base for the past year.

Ken Jancaitis"

Eventually we are going to have to draw a line in the sand against this sort of patent nonsense. I think the sooner we do it, the better, which is why I am willing to spend time explaining to my friends the ins-and-outs of buying books, CD's and such on alternate web sites.

Ken Jancaitis

I am content to let Tim O'Reilly be my leader here: I have signed his letter, but until he decides a boycott is justified, I see no point in it. This is a very complex thing; I still have some hopes that Amazon will simply declare the patent public domain or some such. They are certainly building no good will, and for a company that has no profits OTHER than good will this seems a dangerous thing to do.

I recently asked about laptops:

Re: Zip Drive Blues, GalaxyQuest Great (from March 6, 2000 Byte Magazine)

Hi Jerry,

I've been very happy with my ThinkPad 770ED for over the last year. It's a Pentium II 266MHz system with a 14.1" TFT display, a hardware MPEG decoder that I added that also decodes Dolby Digital and includes a video capture port, a DVD-ROM drive, a very nice keyboard (for a notebook), a 5GB harddrive, and some other accessories and the requisite memory upgrade from a 3rd party (cheaper) source. I got it at a close-out price of $2200, plus a little more for an additional 64MB (for a total of 96MB), modem, and 3COM 10/100 NIC. I think the most impressive part is that it would still be a good deal today.

I've also been amazed that Crucial Technology (part of Micron) sells 128MB upgrades for my ThinkPad for $99. And they're very reasonable on shipping. For instance, overnight FedEx is $10, or UPS Ground is $5.

If you get a fully loaded ThinkPad, I think you'll be very happy with it. (Just don't get a super-light model.)

Bob Harman

I have many other good reports on all-up ThinkPads. Thanks.

 

TOP

 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

TOP

Wednesday, March 1, 2000

Check out table 5.4 in Musa, et al., Software Reliability, McGraw-Hill, 1987, page 118. The authors provide estimates of the mean fault density remaining at the beginning of various phases in professionally written code:

First clean compilation: 99.5/KSLOC Beginning of unit test: 19.7/KSLOC Beginning of system test: 6.01/KSLOC Beginning of operations: 1.48/KSLOC

Many companies use these figures as quality criteria, and if they're developing software that people's lives or incomes depend on, they try to do much better than that. So an internal rule of "4 bugs per KSLOC" is about three times what is considered acceptable in most companies.

--- Harry Erwin, PhD,  http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin , Computational Neuroscientist (modeling bat behavior), Senior SW Analyst and Security Engineer, and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, GMU.


Mr Smith, I don't know where you're located, but you might want to check out Weird Stuff Warehouse (in Sunnyvale, California). Their Website is WWW.WEIRDSTUFF.COM. They have the most amazing collection of old computer-related stuff for sale there.

Dr. Pournelle, you might want to drop in there the next time you're in the SF Bay Area. Of course, with your space problems there at Chaos Manor, maybe that's not such a good idea....

Ward Gerlach

Pathlore Software Corporation (formerly Silton-Bookman Systems) Technical Support 1-800-932-6322

Given the amounts of stuff that accumulate here, the last thing I need is a new source of interesting gadgets...

 

I recently got a Kensington TurboBall, for home, and I like it a lot. It is about 5 inches long, 3.5 in. wide, and about 3 inches high, the trackball is about the size of a golf ball, and it was pretty easy to get used to. I like it much better than my mouse at work.

John Cunningham

I like the big Kensington trackball too, but it does take up a lot of space on the desk.

 


Selecting email launches web browser

rwhidden@hotmail.com

Hi Jerry,

I've been following your discussion about spam and today got two messages with a particularly annoying property. As soon as I selected them, not even OPENING them, with the single intention of deleting them, they LAUNCHED IE5!!! Now we can't even select/delete something without a popup window happening.

What insanity has overtaken the creaters of HTML coding?

On a Pentium machine, the result would be trivial but on my aging 486, the time used is not trivial.

Here is the offending code:

<body onload=3D"window.open('http://3461492528/link.asp?source=3D1','detai= l','width=3D775,height=3D475,resizable=3Dno,scrollbars=3Dyes,left=3D10,top= =3D10')"><table border=3D"0" width=3D"517" height=3D"478" cellspacing=3D"0">

Yet another way the users of the internet are turning off enthusiasts.

They also include the newly fashionable statement: "Further, this message cannot be considered spam as long as we include = sender contact information." (emphasis added) The contact info provided is: "mailto:discontinuesvc@bigfoot.com?Subject=3Dremove">" and "(305) 437-8188".

A search on www.555-1212.com shows the location is Florida but a reverse lookup returns "no matches".

I hesitate to use the email address due to your recent experience.

Both messages were online gambling offers and obviously stem from my recent sign up via MyPoints, to some such service. I am going to contact MyPoints and complain, as well as sending the source to abuse addresses at several other locations.

Thanks for a very helpful column in Byte and your web site.

Ray Whidden Oshawa, Ontario

I send that sort of stuff to SpamCop now. Try www.spamcop.net and you can sign up for free or subscription service. They do seem to get the word out.

I found an easy way to avoid Aol Instant Messanger cluttering my system that already has an Instant Messaging system.(Or will)

Immediately after you install Netscape Communicator, go into its directories and delete the whole AIM folder. Now, when you start netscape for the first time, AIM is not installed on your computer. This trick has served me well since v4.04

J. B. Alan Noel


Thumbelina(the mini trackball) is the world's smallest handheld trackball for PC compatibles and Apple Macintosh computers! Thumbelina is now available in The Professional Series only. (Connects to either the "Serial RS-232" or PS/2 port. The PC version with it's six foot cable is a fantastic tool for presentations. Thumbelina is the perfect companion for notebook and laptop computers Thumbelina is small but it's not short on features! It supports an illuminated drag lock and has a second assignable button. The ergonomic Thumbelina is great for "Surfing the Net", letting your thumb do all the work! It is Microsoft compatible and you can use either the inclusive DOS and WINDOWS enhanced driver software that comes with the unit or your existing installed Microsoft compatible mouse drivers. Thumbelina is available in IBM gray. · Size: 0.9 inches high, 1.7 inches wide, 1.7 inches long · Weight: 57 grams (without cable) · Buttons: two, debounced electronically · Cable: (PC): 6 foot 5 wire shielded with PS/2 or serial termination (Mac): 6 foot, wire shielded (Portable): 3 foot, wire shielded with PS/2 termination · Connectors: (PC and Portable Pro Series):Serial adapter for RS-232CD-subminiture to 9 pin female connector (PC Basic Series): Serial RS232 nine pin (Mac): ADB port Questec Part NumberPROFESSIONAL SERIES (serial and PS/2) · QT8569- Mini Trackball PC/6 ft. cable/gray. Our Low Price $39.00 Contact Questec customer service at (888-832-7923) or (916-660-9760) (M-F 8am to 5pm CT) for product information, pricing, or to place phone orders. End users or reseller orders can be placed direct with Questec (M-F 8am to 5pm PT) at 888-832-7923 or Fax 916-660-9760. I have one and find it very useful with my laptop.

Larry Bayern (Bavaria@bellatlantic.net)

 

 

 

 

TOP

 

 

 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Thursday, March 2, 2000

Dear Sir,

I just finnished reading some of your article on intsalling Linux for a family friend. I must be missing something with this Linux thing.

I have a four computer LAN in my house, we all share my one internet connection and all I did was get a router ($86) and a 4 port 10/100 switch (~$100), connect my modem to the router, the router to the switch with all the computers and bam! we're up and running. All without a fifth computer and how many extra 10/100 network cards at $40 each, etc.?

What am I doing wrong? I suspect that people are just dreaming up ways to use Linux because there really isn't any practical use for it. In fact, this 'Linux server' is the only use I've heard of for Linux. (I have a friend who is using a Linux box to connect his and his wife's computer and not even sharing an internet connection! I was doing this for awhile with a crossover cable! What am I missing?)

Is there becoming a new Mac-type mentality amongst Linux people that just can't let it go away or am I truely missing something?

With very best regards from a long time fan,

Aime Watts   aimew@sprintmail.com  

I'm going to let others answer that; I expect there will be a few. As it happens, my only real "user" activity with Linux is the Rebel box used as a communications server and firewall. If I were so inclined, I could use a Linux box and Word Perfect or Star Office to do just about anything anyone else does with Windows. Is it worth that to avoid Microsoft and to have the ability to get the source code for everything in my system? Certainly some people think so.

The discussion picks up below.


Jerry, I have found memories of Weird Stuff Warehouse. I used to go there and Fry's (Weird Stuff was just across the parking lot from Fry's) on my trips to the Blue Cube in Sunnyvale in the late 80's and early 90's. You could look through bins and bins of great stuff, that you might be able to get to do something useful if you were a hacker. I used to pack my bags so full of junk that my wife would get angry at me when I got home. SCSI hard drives, S100 bus PC boards, etc. Whole DEC PDP-11 computers for ridiculous prices, but I could never figure out how to get one of those on the plane with me. One of the great things I remember are bins of stuff that had the caveat "Guaranteed not to work, if it works, bring it back and we'll exchange it for one that doesn't." Browsing was fun. After which, a trip across the parking lot to Fry's to buy 1 meg SIMMS for $35, or down the street to buy 100 meg disk drives for $350.

The first drive I was trained to repair in the Navy was a 5 MB single platter removable Caelus Disk Drive for a communications system. It was way cool at the time. The high end drive for this system was a 100MB Century 10 platter removable drive. You don't even want to know how much these things cost. The single platter removable cartridges for the Caelus were $80.

We've come a long way in a short time. A month ago I bought a 20 GB Maxtor, 7200 RPM 9.0ms access time, Ultra 66/ATA drive for $159 at Price Costco. Montana doesn't have sales tax either, so this puppy is dirt cheap and works great.

Tracy

 

Yep. I got a 21 gig IBM drive for about $149 the other day. Incredible. Now if Zip drives would come down from their $100 price point...


We have seen variants of this before. Now:

Subject: Software

  Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed that the new program began making unexpected changes to the accounting software; severely limiting access to wardrobe, flower and jewelry applications that operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

 No mention of this phenomenon was included in the product brochure. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalls many other valuable programs such as DinnerDancing 7.5, CruiseShip 2.3, and OperaNight 6.1 and installs new, undesirable programs such as PokerNight 1.3, SaturdayFootball 5.0, Golf 2.4 and ClutterEverywhere 4.5.

 Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and invariably crashes the system. Under no circumstances will it run DiaperChanging 14.1 or HouseCleaning 2.6. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix Husband 1.0, but this all purpose utility is of limited effectiveness.

  Can you help, please!!!!

  signed, Jane

  Dear Jane:

  This is a very common problem women complain about, but it is mostly due to a primary misconception. Many people upgrade from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 with no idea that Boyfriend 5.0 is merely an ENTERTAINMENT package. However, Husband 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and was designed by its creator to run as few applications as possible. Further, you cannot purge Husband 1.0 and return to Boyfriend 5.0, because Husband 1.0 is not designed to do this. Hidden operating files within your system would cause Boyfriend 5.0 to emulate Husband 1.0, so nothing is gained. It is impossible to uninstall, delete, or purge the program files from the system, once installed. Any new program files can only be installed once per year, as Husband 1.0 has severely limited memory. Error messages are common, and a normal part of Husband 1.0. In desperation to play some of their "old time" favorite applications, or to get new applications to work, some women have tried to install Boyfriend 6.0, or Husband 2.0.

  However, these women end up with more problems than encountered with Husband 1.0.:  look in your manual under "Warnings: Divorce/Child Support".

 You will notice that this program runs very poorly, and comes bundled with HeartBreak 1.3. I recommend you keep Husband 1.0, and just learn the quirks of this strange and illogical system.

 Having Husband 1.0 installed myself, I might also suggest you read the entire section regarding General Partnership Faults [GPFs]. This is a wonderful feature of Husband 1.0, secretly installed by the parent company as an integral part of the operating system. Husband 1.0 must assume ALL responsibility for ALL faults and problems, regardless of root cause. To activate this great feature enter the command "C:\ I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME". Sometimes Tears 6.2 must be run simultaneously while entering the command. Husband 1.0 should then run the applications Apologize 12.3 and Flowers/Chocolates 7.8.

 TECH TIP! Avoid excessive use of this feature. Overuse can create additional and more serious GPFs, and ultimately YOU may have to give a C:\ I APOLOGIZE command before the system will return to normal operations. Overuse can also cause Husband 1.0 to default to GrumpySilence 2.5, or worse yet, to Beer 6.0. Beer 6.0 is a very bad program that causes Husband 1.0 to create FatBelly files and Snoring Loudly wave files that are very hard to delete. Save yourself some trouble by following this tech tip! Just remember! The system will run smoothly, and take the blame for all GPFs, but because of this fine feature it can only intermittently run all the applications Boyfriend 5.0 ran.

  Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. Consider buying additional software to improve performance. I personally recommend HotFood 3.0, Lingerie 5.3 and Patience 10.1. Used in conjunction, these utilities can really help keep Husband 1.0 running smoothly. After several years of use, Husband 1.0 will become familiar and you will find many valuable embedded features such as FixBrokenThings 2.1, Snuggling 4.2 and BestFriend 7.6.

 A final word of caution!

  Do NOT, under any circumstances, install MotherInLaw 1.0. This is not a supported application, and will cause selective shutdown of the operating system. Husband 1.0 will run only Fishing 9.4 and Hunting 5.2 until MotherInLaw 1.0 is uninstalled.

 I hope these notes have helped. Thank you for choosing to install Husband 1.0 and we here at Tech Support wish you the best of luck in coming years.

 We trust you will learn to fully enjoy this product!

 -Brooks Clark brooks@4clarks.com

 My advice on having a long and happy marriage is simple and is for husbands only: learn to grovel. As soon as possible. Or as Mr. Heinlein put it, "if in an argument with your wife you find that you are in the right, apologize immediately."

 

TOP

 

 

 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

TOP

Friday, March 3, 2000

It probably comes as no surprise that I got a lot of mail on this. There is a long exchange between Roland and Aime Watts that I'll post shortly also.

RE: What is Linux good for?

Jerry,

Aime Watts asked in your mail column what is Linux good for. Linux has many uses, but I think I found one application that would be impossible without Linux and open source. At least it's different from the usual answers "it's good as a network server" and "why, it's good for everything!!"

http://slashdot.org/features/00/03/03/033231.shtml

is the story of one school (Beacon) that teaches high school kids about computers in a special way, and they don't have the resources to do it with commercial products.

A quote from the site:

"Using Linux and Open Source software as the infrastructure, Beacon is blazing a new trail in American education. By using free tools and expanding on their functions, Beacon does a lot for a little, and the real winners are the students."

Do bear in mind that slashdot.org is a site that advocates the use of Linux and open source.

-- Miguel Bazdresch

 Watts raises some very good points, which I shall attempt to address below:

1. Yes, there is something of a blatant, blindly anti-Microsoft tilt from a lot of people in the *NIX world, especially amongst Linux users. It's been my experience that this is generally the product of either a) ignorance, b) general contrariness, or c) a conflation of the two. There are some things which Microsoft do very well; for example, Outlook+Exchange is simply the best all-around messaging and workflow platform around. Office is pretty cool, too. And Windows in its various permutations is not a bad OS for people who just wish to -use- their computers, and are willing to sacrifice some flexibility in return for stability.

I'm not saying this disdainfully, bear in mind. It's a valid tradeoff.

2. *NIX in general is useful for a variety of things. If you're willing to learn how to tinker with and maintain your system, and you're something of an hobbyist, it's certainly a very flexible workstation platform. I run Red Hat Linux on my desktop using a gorgeous user interface - and there are many to choose from, this customization of the look-and-feel of the machine is one of the many nice points about *NIX in general - called WindowMaker, available from www.windowmaker.org . I can play streaming .mp3s using XMMS (www.xmms.org), kill some of my colleagues off with Quake 3, and *do all that whilst merrily downloading huge files in the background and running a packetsniffer on my machine*. Try doing that on a Windows box of any flavor imaginable - you just can't get all those things to work together due to the fact that the Microsoft OS takes up so much memory and processor utilization in order to achieve the aforementioned stability.

3. *NIXes are great as server platforms for Web sites, databases, and things of this nature. They're also very good network-management platforms. At my firm, we run both Oracle and MySQL (a free RDBMS available from www.mysql.org) in order to accomplish all sorts of complex tasks, and it's far superior for that sort of thing than any current or anticipated Microsoft OS. We run NT, as well, so that we can take advantage of stability for our administrative staff and 'casual' users, as well as get the benefits of Exchange. But our workhorses, our bread-and-butter, are *NIX boxes.

4. Of all the *NIXes out there, Linux is the single friendlest one for PCs and PC-related hardware, with FreeBSD generally lagging about six months behind in driver availability, etc. I've yet to feel myself limited in the hardware I use (the machine upon which I'm typing this missive contains a SoundBlaster Live! Gamer Edition and a WinFast GeForce 256 DDR graphics adaptor running at 1600 x 1200 on a 19" monitor). FreeBSD makes a bit of a tradeoff for stability at the expense of flexibility in the *NIX world; Linux is more of a kernel surrounded by modules and libraries, while FreeBSD is truly an OS, with the time-delay in having new things available to it which comes with the greater control exhibited over it by its developers.

5. *NIX is also inherently networking-friendly and multi-user. My girlfriend uses my home machine to browse the Web, chat on IRC, use Licq (a great open-source ICQ client), etc. And you know what? Although I'm here at work, I ssh into my home machine and run my IRC client and -my- Licq off the same box, -while she's using it, too-, merely exporting my X-Windows displays to my box here. The entire session is 3DES-encrypted, and I don't have to worry about my application config files and all that - they're accessible from anyplace with decent bandwidth.

6. Decent productivity software is beginning to become available for Linux, too. I use WordPerfect to do nice-looking documents; of course, when I need access to Microsoft apps such as Word, Excel, and so on, I can either reboot into Win2K, or I can run them under VMWare (www.vmware.com) which gives me the ability to -boot Win2K underneath Linux_. When I'm doing Visio diagrams, I have to boot into Win2K by itself, but other than that, VMWare lets me do all the Windows things I need to do, except for playing Windows-only games. Though this is changing - witness Quake 3, and now Parsec (www.parsec.org).

7. *NIX really is a technical philosophy. It's for some people, and not for others. If people in the *NIX world keep trying to make it 'just as easy to use as Windows', I worry that they'll end up re-inventing Windows, with all its bloat. That isn't to say that efforts shouldn't be made to make *NIX easier for the average user, but that they should be made with care, lest the freedom and flexibility afforded by *NIX is swept away by feeping creaturism.

So, if you need to serve heavily-trafficked Web sites, host big databases, manage your network infrastructure, or build an inexpensive router or firewall, *NIX in general, and perhaps Linux in particular (I should point out that I run big databases and heavily-laden Web servers on Sun hardware &; OSes) may be right for you.

But, unless you're a tinkerer, there's no reason to feel pressured to go this route. I find it unfortunate that so many people in the *NIX world, and especially the Linux sector, are so virulently anti-Microsoft, and pressure -everyone- to run their particular choice of OS. Just like a new car or a suit of clothes, you should pick what makes sense for -you-, and if that happens to be a Microsoft OS, more power to you.

For myself, being an old *NIX user (20 years, now), Linux comes naturally to me and fits my needs. For the majority of the work I do, it suits admirably. When I need to run Microsoft-dependent applications, I use the tool best suited for those things - i.e., some flavor of Windows.

And I pray daily for a Linux version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer; it's simply the best Web browser around. I use it on Solaris, and it's fabulous, just as good as it is on Windows.

My personal computing philosophy is aptly, if tritely, summed up by the following epigram:

If one's only tool is a hammer, pretty soon, all one's problems tend to start looking like nails.

The corollary to that is that if all you need to do is drive nails, and drive them well, then by all means don't go for the chainsaw.

Heh.

 Roland Dobbins < mordant@gothik.org

AND A REPLY:

Sir,

Well said and well put; all except for the initial summation where you include using Linux to "build an inexpensive router or firewall." An entire PC with all that it entails (MB, MEM, HDD, FDD, KKYBD, Monitor, etc.) is not an inexpensive router/firewall these days. I have four PC's (all running windows 9x,) a 10/100 5 port switch (Linksys ~$100,) a dual bandwidth router (Hawking Technology PN8228 (`$96,)) and a US Robotics Modem (56K - v90); everybody's talking to everybody and the web. I'm only using one port of the router input, that's true but still, the hardware is so much cheaper and easier to maintain than any *nix system.

You certainly did answer my question about what Linux is good for but I still feel that those answers are not enough to keep it alive for the foreseeable future unless you can sell those strong points to businesses at large. Even though it is better for those purposes (and I concede it is) people still won't buy it over the known and popular; that which the IT infrastructure is in place for and growing to deal with; and much more diverse: Windows! (I'll also concede that Batamax was (is) better than VHS - but there you go, cheaper and easier and good enough for everybody!)

Shall we make a gentleman's bet? I predict that Linux will continue to be in the realm of hobbyist and for those who are willing to tinker and maintain their own machines; and, nowhere near the point where it is a commercially viable alternative to Microsoft. (The Ross Perot of the computer world.)

I'd like to add here that I have built, tinkered with and maintained all of my computers and still think that all the software available to run on the Microsoft platform, for games, kids, education, productivity, entertainment, etc. is the reason I'm not off in the wild blue 'wonder' raging against the machine. After all, without Microsoft where would we be and to whom would we rage?

It's been fun,

Aime Watts aimew@sprintmail.com (Hm) awatts@ersi.com (Wk) 603 598-8509 (Hm) 978 264-2812 (Wk) 603 674-3892 (Cell)

Protect privacy, boycott Pentium III: http://www.bigbrotherinside.org

PS: I just bought a high speed router/switch for my upcoming DSL connection. Linksys model #BEFSR41 - check it out.

I suppose it depends upon what you want in a router, whether or not you consider a low-end (circa $400) PC to be too expensive. My business is building network infrastructures and then securing them, and I find that lower-end "off-brand" purpose-build routers (i.e., non-Cisco or -Bay/Nortel) tend to have lots of shortcomings, not the least of which is security. Another is protocol support.

For example, I currently have T1-speed DSL at my home, provided by my local telco. I work for an ISP which has an aggregate connectivity of OC-12, and of course I've total control over the internal network infrastructure as well as DNS, etc. So, I want my home network to be an extension of my office network. How does one accomplish this?

In my case, I have a minimally-configured Linux box acting as a 'tunneling router' using GRE. I simply 'tunnel' my IP traffic through the telco's network into a Cisco router sitting on my network, and then the traffic emanates from my multihomed connection. All the IP addresses and DNS mappings at home are therefore under my complete control. Can you do something like that with your $96 router?

The answer, for the present, is a resounding "No." It will certainly become possible, as hardware prices continue to drop; same for firewalls/proxies.

Linux, and *NIX in general, are certainly not flashes in the pan. *NIX is really just now coming into its own, and will continue to be the OS of choice for high-end Web servers, database servers, and so on. It will also continue to be the desktop OS of choice for those of us who prefer its freedom and flexibility, and who also must administer the aforementioned *NIX servers.

Microsoft OSes will continue to be the general consumer choice, for good reason. Do I think that Linux will ever supplant Windows on the desktop? Of course not. Do I think that Linux will continue to grow in acceptance and 'general' use? Absolutely. If you're interested in learning how your computer really works, there's no substitute for a good *NIX, which lets you get under the hood and into the innards of how the machine does what it does, as opposed to the 'black-box' functionality offered by -any- proprietary OS.

And if you're a developer, there's simply no comparison between *NIX and Microsoft OSes. Yes, Microsoft have rich proprietary APIs, but since you can't see the underlying code, you are constantly having to guess and deduce how to get your work done. There are plenty of 'Windows Secrets'-type books out there, and there are none for the *NIX world. You know why? Because -there are no secrets- in the *NIX world, unless you're running some proprietary nonsense like InterShop. Even with proprietary tools, the openness and flexibility of the OS itself makes for a much more robust development environment.

Games are an area where *NIX in general certainly falls behind. This is slowly changing, but in the meantime, I'll certainly keep a Microsoft OS installed on one or more of my machines for gaming. I'll also want to be able to use specialized applications such as Visio, which simply aren't available - nor will be available in the foreseeable future - on *NIX.

Do I wish they were available for *NIX? Of course. Am I unduly inconvenienced by the fact that they're not? Not really. I have plenty of hardware at my disposal, so I can simply install whatever OS I need for the task at hand on a box I designate for that purpose.

If you want to talk about keeping Linux alive, all you have to think about is the market of IT professionals such as myself. We've kept *NIX going for 30 years; Linux brings in a whole new class of people to keep that momentum going, you see. All the trends for *NIX in general, and Linux in particular, are up, up, up - why else are IBM now actively marketing Linux solutions on their servers and mainframes (!) even at the expense of their own branded *NIX, called AIX?

So, as Dr. Pournelle points out, you don't want to put Linux on Aunt Minnie's desktop just yet. And maybe never. I really don't care about what OS Aunt Minnie runs, as long as she can accomplish her goals. She shouldn't care about what OS I run, as long as I can accomplish my goals. If she's interested in learning about Linux, I'll be happy to help her; if she isn't, I'm certainly not going to proselytize her.

Linux isn't a religion, with me. And I'm sorry to say that it is, with some others. By the same token, fanatics -do- tend to get things done; after all, they're well-motivated.

The VHS/Betamax analogy isn't really applicable, here. I'm thinking more in terms of SVHS &; DVDs. With Microsoft OSes tending to be the SVHS - solid, reliable, a stable performer, and Linux being the DVD-ROM - new, exotic, powerful, somewhat problematic, but ultimately offering greater choice of content, viewing modes, etc.

The terms of your proposed bet are framed incorrectly, in my opinion, as is pretty much the general Microsoft vs. *NIX debate at large. I help run an 8-figure-per-year business off, among other things, Linux. And NT. And Windows 98. And Windows 2000. Linux is a key player in my firm's technological infrastructure, and I see its role within my organization only growing.

And, as a final point for your consideration, businesses and governmental entities for whom I consult buy whatever I recommend that they buy. They do so because I've a proven track-record in my particular field of endeavor, and they pay top dollar ($180 - $275/hour, depending upon what I'm doing for them) for my expertise. In some cases Microsoft OSes and applications are the right choice; in others, *NIX-based solutions, including Linux.

I always recommend what is best for my clients, rather than by some private sense of technological theological orthodoxy.

I thank you for taking the time to discuss these matters with me. And, upon reflection, I certainly hope that you aren't left with the impression that all of us Linux-types are bent upon 'raging against the machine'! We are in complete agreement that Microsoft have been an important, in fact the single most important, force for making PC-type technology affordable and available, and that is certainly a Good Thing.

Roland Dobbins

Discussion continues.

 

 

 

TOP

 

 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

TOP

Saturday, March 4, 2000

Subject: DMA spamming?

Jerry (Dr. Pournelle?), after reading about the increased spam you started to receive after 'opting out' of the DMA's commercial email list, I set up a throwaway account and then went to the DMA and 'opted out' to see what my experience would be. The DMA is the ONLY place that has been given this email address. Your experience has been the reason I haven't previously decided to use this 'opt-out' service. I've had concerns that I might be just giving too many companies a valid email address.

After 3 weeks, I've only gotten 1 piece of spam (for mail-away diplomas) which mirrors the experience of another one of your readers that by 'opting in' you don't open the doors for spam. Considering I get 20+ spam messages at my 'real' hotmail address, I'm thinking of dumping that address into the DMA system to see if my current spam count goes down. Spam isn't a major annoyance for me, it's pretty obvious to spot from the headers the garbage mail and just delete those though I'd prefer not to get it in the first place (please, no one flame me pointing out the waste of bandwidth represented by spam. I realize this but I'm not prepared to spend the time to backtrack who is really sending out this stuff and complain to the various ISPs, I'd waste too much time.).

For snail mail, one way we cut out most of our junk mailings is to write the credit bureaus and request our names be permanently added to their list of those people whose information is not to be sold/leased/rented, etc, etc, etc to companies (you can do this by phone but for only 2 years, if you write them, you can do it permanently). That letter cut out virtually all of the credit card offers, home loans, etc that we were getting. One more thing we never do is enter our name in those 'free' drawings set up in the mall. Not only can the fine print sometimes hold some very nasty surprises such as signing up for a new long distance carrier but you give them a valid address to sell to other companies. For email spam, I've tried BrightMail but couldn't get their system apparently configured correctly.

J. Bruce Veale

I have had about 50 Spam in my "only DMA knows this address" box, but I agree, it's not a lot compared to the 50 a day I get in other boxes. My problem is that it's very hard to come up with a rule that allows press releases to get through but rejects Spam; that means I have to look in my "residual" box after Outlook is done sorting it.

The worst spam is stuff sent to a proper address. I can't sort that out at all. Alas I get maybe 10 a day of those. I always report those to SpamCop (see www.spamcop.net ) and they are often turned off quite soon. SpamCop DOES analyse where the stuff came from and notify the appropriate places like abuse@uunet.com and such like. Whatever you do, don't tell a spammer not to send more spam. He may not but he'll sell your name and address as "validated" to someone else.

Surely there is a way to make spamming as dangerous to one's health as driving a nitro truck?


Jerry, Just an update on the hard drive situation. Price Costco now has 40GB Maxtor drives for $279. Yes ...40GB, that is not a misprint.

Have you ever run across eBeam from Electronics For Imaging? It's a system for putting white board information on your PC, and sharing it across networks, WANs &; the Internet. It looks like a very good thing, if it works. The website is:

http://ebeam.efi.com/whatis/comp.html 

Tracy

Thanks. We gave a BYTE.COm award to a whiteboard system at Fall Comdex; I don't recall if it was that one, but it does work. Pretty good stuff.

Forty Gigs.  And the price is under $10 a gig for 15 gig drives now. Who'd 'a thunk it?


Continuing the What Use Is Linux discussion

As a partial answer to Mr Watts question about Linux, I think the real value in the Linux system is not that it doesn't have a line of microsoft's code in it, but that individuals and organizations have the opportunity to shape the development of the operating system in new directions. Maybe there is still a better mousetrap out there?

If you assume that there is more to information technology than exists within Windows and MS Office, then it is probably prudent to have a viable competitor to Windows. I personnally don't care which is better at the moment. What I think is important is that an open system can evolve in new directions that are unexpected whereas a closed proprietary system like windows can only go where MS deems its best interests to be. (This is not to say that MS shouldn't be free to take Windows where its vision leads). Of course only time will tell whether Linux does actually move forward or dissolve like Unix into warring factions.

Freely competing ideas constitute the essence of science. Mr Heinlein described one on his characters as dedicated to the search for truth so that he could immediately lock it up in manacles when he found it. Seems to me that Mr Watt's letter also reflects a certain Mac-type smugness.

Ian McCreath iandmccreath@home.com 

and more


You've probably heard about this one already, but let me put in a plug for the recent book by Mitrokhin and Andrew about the KGB. It is based on the notes of KGB archives which Mitrokhin defected with, woven together by Andrew with other available information. The really surprising thing about the book, to me, is that it is written as a complete and rigorous history. Other books about the KGB that I have encountered have always been like flashlights shone briefly into a dark room; this one fully illuminates the room, leaving a few dark corners. Much of the information is old (only about a third of the ~40 pages of references in the back of the book are to Mitrokhin's notes), but it is very well put together. All those flashlight glimpses have been assembled, collated, and combined into a coherent whole.

To me, the most surprising new revelation in the book was that after the 1950s, the Russians did not have ANY illegal agents who operated successfully in the US. It appears that they simply could not find anyone who was a committed Stalinist, yet at the same time could function in Western society. The people they sent over (usually first to Canada) all ended up drinking too much, having affairs with neighbors' wives, confessing to the police, or something of the sort. Mitrokhin smuggled out not only detailed notes on those miserable spies, but also notes on assessments drawn up by the KGB of their own program, laying out the full extent of their failures (but always planning glorious success in the future).

A link to the book: 

-- Norman Yarvin, yarvin@cs.yale.edu

It is a very good book. However, the GRU did have some successful agents in the US, and there was a mole in the CIA up to the end. Most of the later agents were purely mercenaries, not ideological commitments.


In response to your reader's pausing mouse. I've seen two common causes:

- Dirty mouse ball (by far the most common)

- Not enough memory. The mouse drivers get swapped out and the mouse pauses for a moment until they get swapped back in.

Drake Christensen


 

 

 

TOP

 

 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Sunday, March 5, 2000

I recently got this:

Prior to 1895, it was grounds for appeal if a judge didn't tell juries that they had a right to disregard a judges instruction in the law and find a person not guilty because they believe that the law is unreasonable or shouldn't apply in this case. This concept of law goes back to William Penn.

In an 1895 Supreme Court decision, Sparf vs. US (156 US 51), the court ruled that although juries have the right to ignore a judge's instructions on the law, it is not grounds for appeal if the judge didn't tell them that had the right to nullify law that they believe to be unjust.

Recently, some Pennsylvania judges have been telling prospective jurors that they are "unfit" to serve as jurors if they are aware that they have the right to ignore a judges instruction on the law.

Read on to learn more.

-----Original Message----- From: 2nd-Amendment-News@frostbit.com  [mailto:2nd-Amendment-News@frostbit.com ]

There followed a long and very shrill message which you can find if you want from the addresses above.

The purport of the article was that the courts have lost the point of what juries are. It was correct on that point although it left out some details. The jury system was a compromise developed in England after the Norman Conquest to curb the power of the government and particularly the Norman barons while maintaining something like law and order. Under the original jury system jurors were not selected for their lack of knowledge, but the opposite. In the US apparently to be a juror on a major case like the Simpson trial, you must either lie, or be so stupid as never to have heard about something that has occupied the media for weeks to the exclusion of anything people might want to hear. I suppose you could have recently returned from Patagonia or something.

Jurors in the Napoleonic system render verdicts on specific matters of fact; jurors in the English system, which was adopted wholesale in the US and was part of what is meant by trial by jury, render a "General Verdict": one is either guilty or not guilty, and if the jury finds "not guilty" it is inappropriate to make official inquiry into their reasoning.

From this comes "jury nullification", and it was pretty common at one time: if the jury didn't think that whatever the defendant did was a crime at all, they would find him not guilty even if they were certain he had done it. The "unwritten law" under which it was no murder to kill the man who had deflowered your daughter with no intent of marriage was one common reason for not guilty verdicts in the US. In England there were acquittals of Irish by Irish juries in treason and murder trials. One of Jesse James's gang was acquitted of train robbery, probably on the grounds that the railroad had illegally (at least in the eyes of local jurors) seized the family farm for right of way. Utah juries regularly acquitted men of bigamy, and may still do so for all I know.

During the Depression, juries regularly acquitted farmers of crimes associated with defying court orders of eviction. Iowa made it illegal (inciting to riot) to lead a parade carrying a red flag, and although at least four people were tried for this crime, none were ever convicted; I don't know the details, but it's pretty clear what was going on. (Those were the days when if the sheriff held an auction on farm land for back taxes, the only bidder would be the owner; anyone else trying to bid was given to understand that he would not survive the trip home.)

Jury nullification may be abused, but it was certainly accepted by the Framers of the Constitution. But then the Second Amendment had nothing whatever to do with hunting and sporting: it was intended to insure that the populace would be as well armed as the government, and specifically applied to muskets and bayonets (useless for hunting) and even cannon: many of the cannon that now stand on courthouse lawns were owned by local private citizens and served by local militia. When the wording of the Amendment was debated it was made clear that "the great thing is that every man be armed", and there wasn't any question about what armed meant: it meant being able to turn out at a minute's notice.  As the British found out at Concord, Lexington, and more significantly, Bunker Hill. (As an aside, Bunker Hill may have been the decisive battle of the Revolution: Howe "won" but he lost so many men and particularly officers in taking that position that he never again dared close; which is why Washington escaped from Harlem to cross the Delaware and win his Christmas Surprise. Howe never dared pursue closely.)

Anyway, long enough: it was always considered the right of free Englishmen (which is what the Continental Congress was fighting for in the Revolution) to have a trial by a jury of one's peers, and that jury was entitled to render a general verdict.

We seem to be losing that, along with private ownership of military weapons. Perhaps it is as well: I am not at all sure I want the people down the street, the ones with the rowdy teenagers, to have a closet full of cluster bombs and Stinger missiles. But I do think the way to amend the Constitution is spelled out in the document, and allowing the courts to do it is a transfer of power I am not prepared to approve.

 

"Nullification" was never an announced doctrine, and "unwritten law" comes closer to defining the practice.


I post the following in hopes that one of my heart specialist readers will comment. The source is a local clergyman's wife:

Thought this might be good for us all to know -- just in case -- I got it from someone over the internet.

Tanya Wilcox

Hope you will read this and remember it well in case it is ever needed!

You're driving somewhere (alone of course). All of a sudden you start experiencing a severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home; unfortunately you don't know if you'll be able to make it that far. What can you do? You've been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself.

HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE

Many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack. What can they do? Without help, a person whose heart stops beating properly begins to feel faint and has about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously.

A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without letting up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.

Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a phone and, between breaths, call for help.

You'll be giving yourself CPR with this technique.

Tell as many other people as possible about this, it could save their life!

(The above was taken from Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240's newsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON...reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc. publication, Heart Response)

--- stmarys@earthlink.net --- EarthLink: It's your Internet.

NOTE: I have mail from readers who claim this is an old internet legend. It may well be.  I also have readers who are heart specialists, and I anticipate mail from them in the next day or so. Until then, you probably ought to think of this as a well meant legend; I'll have a definitive answer from someone who knows shortly.

 

 


More on Linux and Windows and reliability.

Mr. Dobbins,

I am a regular reader of Dr. Pournelle's web site, and I always find your contributions very interesting and informative. In your recent exchange with Amie Watts, I found myself wondering why you called Windows (both 98 and NT, I understand) solid and reliable. My experience is different, so I though I would ask you why you think they are.

I am an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) designer. Until a few years ago, all ASIC design was done in Unix workstations, because the amounts of data produced in a design is massive, and the reliability needed was well beyond the capacity of the Windows 3.1 (and even W'95) PCs of the time.

Now things are changing, and in my current job we have Windows NT 4.0 workstations for all but the heavier tasks. We chose to use NT because they are good enough for the price, which is at least one order of magnitude lower than Unix boxes.

My experience is this:

- on the Unix (both Sun (SunOS and Solaris) and HP) machines, the up time was measured in months. The machines were heavily used, with hundreds of processes running and almost filling the virtual memory space, which was in the order of gigabytes. We could rely on them. Of course, we had a system administrator who understood all the nuts and bolts and kept the network running; the users experienced only minor downtimes every few months.

- on the NT machines we are using now, the uptime is measured in days. My machine used to freeze every ten days or so; it might have been hardware, but we reinstalled NT (took more than half a day) and it has not happened again; we'll see. The same with most machines we have. We also find it a major inconvenience not to have the ability of running processes remotely (telnet), and having to log out to let the administrator in to install software or check things out. However, from the price/performance perspective, they are still very good.

- in my W98 machine at home, uptime is measured in hours. As Dr. Pournelle once told me, it might be hardware, but I run pretty standard (not specially cheap) hardware, and my experience has been repeated in several different machines. For example, when one application crashes, the machine is left in a pretty unstable state: if I don't reboot, I know that a major crash is on the way. I also hate it when the system tells me an application crashed, but when I click on "close", the little window stays there and won't close. CTRL-ALT-DEL does not respond, and "shutdown" only freezes the machine. When I finally hard-reset the machine, scandisk tells me "you should turn off your machine using the shutdown button". All told, I have to reboot my W98 machine fairly often.

This is my experience, and this is why I wondered why you called Windows solid and reliable. Maybe I am doing something wrong, and I need to find out what; maybe I am expecting too much from Windows; I don't know.

By no means am I an anti-Microsoft fanatic. I agree completely with you that people should use whatever lets them accomplish their goals.

I appreciate very much your time, and your attention to this message. I am looking forward to your next contribution to Dr. Pournelle's great web site.

-- Miguel Bazdresch

Thanks very much for your kind words.

95/98 can be made to be pretty reliable by a) regularly checking windowsupdate.microsoft.com and b) officeupdate.microsoft.com, as well as regularly defragging RAM with a nifty little utility Dr. Pournelle uses called MemTurbo, if I recall correctly.

Good hardware is a must, of course.

NT Server can be made to be very reliable by paying just as much attention to it as you would any flavor or UNIX; the aforementioned update sites plus the microsoft.* USENET hierarchy (searchable through www.deja.com) are great resources in this regard. I have NT servers with uptimes of over a year.

NT Workstation also needs memory defragmentation, albeit not as badly as 95/98. MemTurbo works great for it, too. Hardware (with both Workstation and Server) is a real concern, as NT is far more picky about what it wants than 95/98. You must pay particular attention to which versions of .DLLs and so on are installed by particular applications, as sometimes these can conflict and thus cause you all sorts of problems.

Windows 2000 Professional is simply a dream. I've been running it, and running it hard, cince RC1 with nary a problem. I've known others who've had some flakiness with the pre-release versions, but a lot of this had to do with sub-par hardware, and the rest seemed to be issues which went away with the RTM version.

Having said all that, I prefer to run Linux on my desktop, unless I'm doing something Microsoft-specific. I've pretty heavy experience with AIX, Solaris, DG/UX, HP-UX, SCO, Digital UNIX, and Linux, as well as the Microsoft OSes; it's been my experience (and bear in mind that I'm a bleeding-edge sort of guy) that about 90% of the problems attributed to Microsoft products in general are actually operator error, and that an unacceptably high number of NT sysadmins are simply lazy, incompetent, or both.

Do some research, test your hardware, ensure you've the appropriate driver versions, etc. With a bit of tinkering - more that you ought to have to do, granted - I think you can markedly improve the reliability and usability of your Microsoft boxes to a degree guaranteed to make you smile.

Roland Dobbins

Comments seem needless here.

Hi Jerry-

This is a response to Roland Dobbins and Routers. Mr. Dobbins claims: "In my case, I have a minimally-configured Linux box acting as a 'tunneling router' using GRE. I simply 'tunnel' my IP traffic through the Telco's network into a Cisco router sitting on my network, and then the traffic emanates from my multihomed connection. All the IP addresses and DNS mappings at home are therefore under my complete control. Can you do something like that with your $96 router?

The answer, for the present, is a resounding "No." It will certainly become possible, as hardware prices continue to drop; same for firewalls/proxies."

Mr. Dobbins, you are clearly wrong on this point because my answer is a resounding "Yes." I too have a DSL connection but at 4 times your speed. You choose a box configured with Linux to tunnel Packets through. I choose a much simpler solution. I purchased a Linksys DSL Router. You had to first build your Linux box and then load Linux and lastly configure it.

I pulled my router out of it's box, plugged it in, went to one of my workstations. I pointed my browser to it's IP address and after typing in the password, was presented with a very simple setup screen with tabs for various features including advanced features such as "Packet Forwarding," "Dynamic or Static Routing," or even setting up a "DMZ Host." I filled in boxes with my LAN configuration addresses and my WAN configuration addresses. I clicked on "Apply" and I was done. Was yours that easy? A short story....

My daughter's school fired their computer teacher a few months ago. They had no idea how to figure out the mess they were in. Their Mac network consisted of 36 machines. Their Mail Server and Netopia DSL router were locked out with passwords. They did not have the passwords nor any record of them. I volunteered to help them out. Had to reset the router to it's default state. Now to configure it.... Via Telnet, I figured out the WAN and local addresses but did not have a clue on opening up ports. That required a call to Netopia tech support. At this point the fun began. The school had to purchase a Service Contract to gain phone Tech Support. The school's current support contract had expired the month before. We purchased a multi-year contract for a little over $300. I was then was put on hold for 45 minutes. There were interruptions every so often to tell waiting customers to go to the Netopia Web site and look for help. Without the Netopia properly configured....there was no Internet access and thus no Web help. A gal finial picked up and helped me through the rest of the Netopia Telnet setup. Screen after screen of configuration steps which were not clear nor logical in their approach. The school paid quite a bit for the Netopia solution....plus tech support. My cost was far less.

My task took less than 10 minutes to complete. How much time did you spend? You also have an expensive Cisco Router in addition to your Linux box. My Router cost $169. What did you spend for the Linux box and Cisco solution? I'm sure it was far more than I did. I didn't have to purchase a Service Contract to help me set it up. Did I mention that I did not require any outside support?

As you do, I have complete control over my all of my 16 static IP addresses. To test for security, I went to www.grc.com/ and also to www.secure-me.net/r3/dsl/. Told them both to test and probe away. As for GRC, my machines do not exist. As for www.secure-me.net/re/dsl/, my score was zero. Their tests could not even determine the OS of my router via "queso" and "nmap" also failed to get any data.

You have lots of experience with Linux and Cisco... I have lots of experience with the Linksys solution. You paid a lot for hardware and a lot for time... I paid a small amount by comparison for hardware and time. Both solutions achieved the same results. Which is better? I prefer the simple...

Will Bierman wbierman@pacbell.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

  TOP

 

 

birdline.gif (1428 bytes)