Clay

David Drake Newsletter 45: June 6, 2008

I'll close with a bit of history which I wouldn't mention had PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY not resurrected it. The April 7 issue had an article on Military SF which struck me as amazingly knowledgeable until I noticed that it was by Scott Connors, whereupon I was no longer amazed. (Scott knows his stuff.)

The article quotes Bruce Sterling, a journalist who at one time was also a significant SF writer, as saying (I think in 1983) that writers of Military SF have an "ideological solidarity, which gives them the sort of shock-troop discipline that Lenin instilled in the Bolsheviks." If you believe that Jerry Pournelle, Janet Morris, and I (to pick three writers whom I recall Mr Sterling named specifically) have _any_ ideological similarity, then there's a bridge in Brooklyn that I'd like to offer you a good deal on.

Twenty-five years ago I was more naive than I've become since, however, so I thought Mr Sterling had just made a mistake. I called him to say that I'd never met Jerry and I certainly wasn't a disciple of his. I thought that similar things were true of most of the other people Mr Sterling mentioned.

Mr Sterling replied, "I don't care about facts. People can get facts anywhere. What I'm doing is molding public opinion."

Molding opinion like Play-Doh in his sweaty hands!

Fear, lack of

Because the internet is for sharing, and at least one guy found this funny.

After I moved the trampoline against the side of the house - to mow - Older Monkey was looking at the roof above the trampoline with a gleam in his eye.

[Not my house, but that's what my trampoline looks like.]

"No."

But Dad ..

"No."

Reece [1] did it last summer.

"Reece jumped from the roof to the trampoline?"

Yes. [2] He went up there to get the ball ...

"When you're a) 18 and b) paying your own medical, then you can do it."

Ok.

He won't jump. But he also has a pretty long memory and '18' is only 6 years away . . .


[1] Reece is his older brother. Reece is in the Army.
[2] Jesus - let a guy jump out of an airplane for a living and they get all cocky.

Self Fail

Did you know that it's possible to use find, grep and sed to search and replace contents in files across an entire directory tree?

Reaching for the stars ...

Did you also know that you can use the same amazing ability to edit not just configuration files but also shared library files? And that you really really don't want to do that because the entire web server will just .. stop?

I knew that. But I forgot that I knew that.

I'm sure glad I made a backup.

Carnival of Space # 57 - Chick Edition

Carnival of Space # 57 - this one is for the ladies: 'The Women of Our Space Future'.

Ken Murphy did a really good job - and he used a particular picture I really like.

The Ultimate Sandbox by Michael Whelan.

One shot death from above

Wretchard

The Sage Corporation has developed a way to mount and fire a .50 caliber sniper rifle from a UAV. By exploiting altitude and sophisticated sensors, the system claims it can deliver fire more accurately than a human sniper out to a 1,500 meters. That's about a mile. The question that occurs is why on earth an aircraft should be used to carry around a rifle.

He goes on about 'cloud power', reducing collateral damage, blah blah blah.

I suppose the answer 'because a drone aircraft lugging around a rifle that can shoot a chunk of lead a 1.5 kilometers away [1] is friggin' awesome' doesn't cut it in serious political analysis.

What I really like is that this doesn't do away with the traditional scout-sniper idea. It gives the Good Guys another tool in their kit.

If Mohamed won't come into the kill-zone, the kill-zone can go to Mohamed,[2] if you will.

[One shot, death from above]

[1] a .5 meter target 1.5 kilometers away, to be exact. [3] To be more exact, two shots at that distance, the second auto-fired after observing the hit of the first.

[2] At 130 km/h, Death shall come on swift aluminum wings.

[3] The weapon - being geeky here - has it all over Luke Skywalker. Womp Rats are up to two meters in length.

Water Feature

This represents about 3,522 man-hours of work by at least five adults. You can't see it but between the rocks in and around the pond and scattered all over the yard we've got about two tons of scrap rock.

Stuff is heavy. I think it was worth it.




What Pasty calls a Zen Garden.



I don't think it is - Zen Garden's don't grow dandelions do they?



You can't see but the pond holds as much water as a backyard hot tub. Although it's not heated and the fish would object if you sat in their pond.

Unix Haters

I'd hate for someone to think I'm some sort of operating systems bigot.

This is still funny.

Thus, ladies and gentlemen, The UNIX Haters Handbook.

Some of the technical bits are dated, but the funny never goes out of style.

The "drag-and-drop" metaphor tires to cover up the Unix file system, but so little of Unix is designed for the desktop metaphor that it's just one kludge on top of another with little holes and sharp edges popping up everywhere. Maybe the "sag-and-drop" metaphor is more appropriate for such ineffective and unreliable performance.

A shining example is Sun's Open Windows File Manager, which goes out of its way to display ore dump files as cute little red bomb icons. When you double-click on the bomb, it runs a text editor on the core dump. Harmless, but not very useful. But if you intuitively drag and drop the bomb on the DBX Debugger Tool, it does exactly what you'd expect if you were a terrorist: it ties the entire system up, as the core dump (including a huge unmapped gap of zeros) is pumped through the server and into the debugger text window, which inflates to the maximum capacity of swap space, then violently explodes, dumping an even bigger core file in place of your original one, filling up the entire file system, overwhelming the file server, and taking out the File Manager with shrapnel. (This bug has since been fixed.)

The power is out - we'll be stuck on the escalater all day

You've heard the one about the fool who locked his keys in the car and couldn't get his family out? This is kind of like that.

West Virginia Jokes

Cheney told a West Virginia joke and got flak in return.

Talking about his family roots and how he's distantly related to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the vice president noted that he had Cheneys on both sides of his family.

"And we don't even live in West Virginia," Cheney quipped.

And it wasn't even a good West Virginia joke. If you're going to irk an entire state, at least do it with a funny joke.

Like these ..

Did you hear that the governor's mansion in West Virginia burned down?
Almost took out the whole trailer park.

Why do folks from West Virginia go to the movie theater in groups of 18 or more?
17 and under not admitted.

What do you call a West Virginia virgin?
A girl that can out run her brother.

Why aren't there drive by shootings in West Virginia?
Because the cars are on blocks and the houses are on wheels.

The Cleveland of Asia: A Journey Through China’s Rust Belt by P.J. O'Rourke

P.J. O'Rourke went to China for a month, two years ago.

“Here’s where one guy threw a wrench at me,” Tom said as we climbed the tower to the blast furnace.

“What’d you do?”

“I tossed him down the stairs,” Tom said. “Rule of law is the cornerstone of capitalism.”

It's not 'A Tramp Abroad' but it is pretty good.

Pretty boy

At dinner the other night I found myself seated a few feet away from a poster advertising a concert by Poison.

He looks like a girl, I joshed at Older Monkey.

No, he really doesn't. He looks like the stripper transvestite from 'Dude, Where's My Car?'



I think he's on to something.

I don't remember that from Inferno

Oh dear.



I'm going down for at least one of these.

I wish Father Daniels had mentioned the 'sports fans' thing before I moved to Wisconsin.

That ain't working

I took two days off last week - Memorial day and a vacation day on Friday.

I clocked in 35 hours of work that week. I feel reasonably rested and ready to fight the good fight.

I think this is probably because a lot of what I do for 'work' doesn't feel like work. Six of the 35 hours, for example, were spent at my kitchen table doing sysadmin stuff during a maintenance window on Saturday evening.

Sitting at home, gentle breezes wafting in from the window, bird song outside .. man that ain't working. I mean it is but it's not out there doing real work like picking up garbage, digging ditches or humping a pack.[1]

[1] I liked the old Infantry Training School insignia - same boots but 'Think better, fight smarter' for the logo.

Remote Desktop Protocol Bleg - Answered

Sort of, kind of.

I asked for help with the following scenario involving Terminal Services in Admin mode, the RDP client provided with XP by Microsoft and this scenario

Client A connects, starts doing his thing. Client B, hearing about a problem with the application, connects and knocks out Client A. No warning, it just happens.

A fellow named 'Rob' - no email, but he appears to hail from a small computer company called Microsoft in Redmond replied

Try this group policy: Administrative Templates – Windows Components – Terminal Services – Terminal Server � Connections � Deny logoff of an administrator logged in to console session.

Close but no cigar.

It works as advertised. But, the reason we must use console mode is because the application requires it. Log the user out and the application just stops. Five minutes after that we have people calling in and asking why their work orders stopped flowing from ERP to the legacy shop floor applications.

K-L-U-D-G-E. No, not the policy edit, the application.

So. Authenticate with RDP client, with the above policy enabled, authenticate with the credentials of the currently logged in user and ... Client A is disconnected.

The policy edit does solve a problem we've never had - namely 'someone with admin credentials' logging in and knocking the service account off. So that's ok.

Don't even get me started on the idea of using a Windows server for a 24x7 critical enterprise application. Yes, it works but - in my humble opinion - if you have a choice between 'unix' and Windows for that operation the former is preferred.

OS X Leopard Install Woes

I'd like to have woes installing Leopard, but I can't even get the install DVD to mount on my MacBook Pro.

It takes the disc in, then 5-10 seconds later it spits it back out. It also does this for a Modest Mouse DVD I happened to have lying around.

Ah - it's a mechanical problem, then.

But noooo. It can mount

• the OS X 10.4 install DVD.
• the recovery DVD from my wife's Emachine.
• the Wii-Fit DVD. [1]
  

What the hey?

[1] Which, by the way, is about a slick bit of software and hardware.

My hometown

Neenah, Wisconsin - they ask - what do they do there?

Same as any town of around 20,000 in the middle of America - we raise kids, we elect our officials, we have our scandals, our friendly neighbors (and our ugly un-friendly ones as well). There is a city pool, down by the water plant.

The Fourth of July thing we put on in the park is so exactly what a Fourth of July celebration is supposed to be that it will make your eyes water.

You've probably walked right over one of our products without even realizing it . . .










Neenah Foundry - in business since 1872.

Who knew?

If Lee Had Not Won at Gettysburg.

by Winston Churchill. Statesman, historian .. spec-fic writer? Who knew?

Be Prepared

Reason #98883 why everyone should carry a multi-tool.

Posting style

Top-Posting

A: Because it destroys the flow of the conversation
Q: Why is it bad?
A: No, it's bad.
Q: Should I top post in replies to mails or on usenet?*


*via email from Frank Van Damme.

Phoenix - what's the point?

“What’s the point of sending that to Mars, it’s a waste of money. We should give that money to the poor.”




Krep. Nothing pushes my buttons like reading stuff like that. [1]

I've got nothing against charity. We all need a hand sometimes. But let's put this in perspective.

This article says there are 37 million poor in the United States. Go with that figure. [2]

Government figures are hard to nail down - Nasawatch claims $420 million for the Phoenix lander.


briandunbar_natasha_~:irb
>> 420000000/37000000
=> 11


If we smeared the cost of the Phoenix Lander into a thin paste and divided it up even-steven we could buy all the poor people in the US a nice lunch at Applebees.

In the meantime we’ve lost whatever science data the mission will yield. We don’t know the economic benefit of this but in the past such returns have been huge - the way of life that enables me to type and you to read comes from unexpected riches derived from scientific research.

If we buy every poor schmo in America a single meal at a cheap restaurant .. jobs have been lost because we’re not paying tens of thousands of people to build the rocket, the probe, to monitor and direct the mission. They’re not all rocket scientists - no small percentage of the people involved with the mission - NASA, JPL, contractors, sub-contractors - are just people. Some of them are officially poor persons who sweep floors and clean out toilets.

Now they’re really poor because they don’t have a job.

They have lunch, so that's something. If they're canny they'll save back part of their meal for take-home so they can eat it for dinner.

[1] Outlanders disrespecting the Green Machine, will do it as well.
[2] We can ignore the snide 'holier than thou' tone of the article.