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The best papers I've ever read on this subject were Jerry Pournelle's Getting To Space and The SSX Concept. Basically he makes a simlar argument in the context of SSTO. The problem with the way we do space right now is it's just too expensive to do anything useful. Things we could do like space-based solar power and asteroid mining are now totally impractical because it costs, what, $20k to put a kilogram in orbit? As long as that's the case we're pretty much stuck with LEO vanity projects. We can't even afford to go back to the moon.

Getting the $/kg to LEO down should be the single-minded thrust of the US space program in the coming years.

A giant Jiffy Pop pan Ed Begley Jr's house

Beware of Begley cloth. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail392.html#Begley

A friend of mine with a PhD in PolySci tells me that BO ran for office as a Centerist Democrat, but is running the country as a far-left Socialist. This may explain quite a bit, including why his numbers have plummeted so quickly. What it doesn't explain is why the members of his party aren't objecting to the way he misled them.

Maybe it's the administrators, those destroyers of joy in life

But becoming an "administrator" is a goal of many, because it virtually guarantees job security (especially if administrators can get together as an organized group or mindset. If this can be accomplished within a government-type organization, even better!). Plus the ability of being able to tell more talented people what to do, with enforcement powers.

"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions."

I have a friend who's a computer columnist, among other things. He's mentioned several times that his Vista box will sometimes refuse to find one or another of the computers on his LAN until it gets rebooted, and he can't find out why. From what I can tell, his experience and yours are quite different. If you know how he can stop his Vista box from "forgetting" about other boxes, I'm sure he'd be glad to know.

I mentioned this to a friend of mine. His reply was, "I guess, then, that we didn't survive the Early Medieval Warm Period or the Roman Warm. Here's a hint for you: yes, the ocean's currrently climbing up the coast, but it's been doing that, as far as we can tell, for 12,000 years, possibly longer. AFAICT, we've survived so far, using less technology than we have now. I, at least, find it reasonable to expect us to continue to survive. YMMV and clearly does.

There's another two-dimensional representation that was devised by Jerry Pournelle. One axis goes from people who try to persuade by reason alone to those who depend on pure emotion. The other shows how much the party is interested in change for its own sake. Thus, Libertarians depend on logic ("Just listen to us and you'll see that we're right.") while the nazis moved the masses with appeals to emotion, but they both wanted considerable change.

http://jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail408.html#Iron is not just for governments. It applies to any organized group of people above a certain size.

All bureaucracies tend to become less efficient over time: see the Peter Principle, Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, Parkinson's Law, etc. They grow sclerotic with timeservers and brownnosers, work more for themselves and less for their supposed goals, and the highest-quality employees retire or leave for greener pastures. And if you are more or less a government-authorized monopoly you don't worry much about the competition.

Here's how I'd get back to the Moon: 1) Give Burt Rutan $10 billion. 2) Tell him to get us back to the Moon. 3) Stand back.

I know you're trying to be sarcastic, but you're exactly right. How do I know? Well, I happen to know the chairman of the citizen's advisory committee that worked out the idea, and the man who's house was used for the meetings.

Well you might go back to Lincoln or a bit later to the national fireamrs in the 1930's act or the 1968 gun control act or the 1986 out ban on new NFA registries or the go back to the era of the NFA and the tax on hemp which became a ban because you can't pay the tax.

Governments are made of two kinds of people, those that really serve the people and those that serve the system. Those that serve the system end up running it. That's Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view408.html#Iron

You can't change it, you can't steer it with any precision and you can't make it go away easily.

No, correcting people tells then they are wrong.

Not in this instance. There are way too many people using it in those ways outside of your control.

But as more people learn they may correct other, more, people. Nothing suddenly happens, most things require a lot of work. This happened when people started using "liberal" incorectly and it can happen when people correct others.

Yep, and no matter how many people you attempt to corect, when you call yourself a hacker, there will be people thinking your a script kiddie attempting to steal credit card numbers to make your super female love bot.

Only if they are not corrected, which I try to do whenever someone uses a word incorrectly. As for myself, I don't call or consider myself a hacker. I know I do not have the skills or knowledge to be one. Which is unfortunate, since the late '70s when I first learned about them I wanted to be a hacker in the mold of those at MIT and in California. I wanted to both program like the software hackers and build hardware like the hardware hackers. Back then one of my favorite magazines was "Byte magazine. I loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" columns. In part because of them I decided I wanted to major in Computer Engineering in college.

Well, not. It isn't about freedom of the body as you mention.

Yes, it is, Liberty is about controlling one's own body. There are some libertarians though who do not support abortion but for most it is about controlling your body.

Abortion effects the child's body too.

Embryos and fetuses are not children, if not aborted they may become children but before birth they are not.

That goes against the entire 'as long as you don't harm another'.

Since they are not humans no human is harmed.

Of course the pro-choice crowd use tricks and change terms much like we are talking about to turn an unborn child into just a cysts or something other then another human life.

So do fake pro lifers. One example is with Intact dilation and extraction. Ask pro lifers if they would allow IDE if the mother's life is in danger and most will say no, so they are not for pro life.

I personally believe it starts at conception and will only concede ground only up to a point where a baby can be reasonably expected to survive outside the human body with or without medical assistance.

Would you allow abortion if the mother's life is in danger? If not you're not a pro lifer.

At whatever stage-age that can happen, there is no way to claim the child isn't a human.

To you but not to others, yet you would dictate to others your beliefs.

Drug use is often results in people who can't control their addiction and end up stealing from others

Only because drugs are illegal. Legalize drugs again and the prices will drop. However alcohol can do the same thing but it's legal.

they end up getting depressed or escaping reality and jumping off buildings

So what? Who are you to tell others they can't "escape reality" or jump off a building? As long as a person does not harm another they should be able to do whatever they want with their own body. This is something I have to deal with on a daily basis. Because of an accident I had more than 10 years ago while I was attending college I now have a disability and can't do most of the things I used to do. While I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. I live but my life as been a living hell. If I could I'd rather commit hari kari or seppuku

Well, to be fair, why should a teacher pay much much more attention to one child over any other child?

Maybe because that extra attention will prevent that child from being left behind? Sometimes, that's the difference between a child who ends up functionally illiterate and one who reads slowly, but effectively.

"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail408.html#Iron

A friend of mine is a computer columnist. He's tried Linux a few times, but not for years. He thinks it's great for geeks, but for the average user it's a "Unix guru employment program." And yet, he talks about backing up files from one drive to another by using xcopy with four command line switches that the average DOS/Windows user has never heard of, assuming they even know about xcopy. I've told him several times that he's a DOS/Windows expert, and that he'd find Linux easy, but so far, I haven't gotten him to try a recent distro, possibly because he's too busy experimenting with Mac and trying to beat Vista into submission.

It's interesting that every single person in the article is against it except for a dnc congressman. The end of the article says he bemoans the lack of union growth. Why would he be concerned about union growth? Why would he be so concerned about union growth that he would try and take steps to lower the bar on organizing groups of people who probably don't even want it? Oh yeah - money. This is why I hate politics. This has nothing to do with serving people it is all about finding revenue streams to fund their next election. Maybe they can get the rest of the country to be like the state of Washington and force people into unions, fire the ones that wont join and rack up plenty of contributions that way.
 
I was a union member for a number of years. (UFCW) Fortunately it was in a right to work state and it was my choice. And fortunately it was possible to relatively private about joining or not joining. None of this harassment that can come in other environments. Unions are just like employers - they are good to keep in check against one another but I think it is a mistake to think they are purely for the employee. They quickly fall to Pournelle's Iron Law. This whole affair is a marked reminder of that fact.
 
I don't think the Republicans are any better for what it is worth - but I think at least the discussion on what this is all about out to be frank rather than draped in a bunch of spin. Being cautious about unions is not being anti employee.

Don't worry, though, there's hope for us all yet. Just a few days ago, my mother (88) told me how she'd met General Patton while she was taking a walk in April '45, a story I'd never heard before.

The prizes would be graduated, with a goal of creating a sustainable infrastructure [but it is possible that a given prize could entice a 'one shot' effort like Lindbergh's ocean crossing. The prize list [and discussion] was posted at Getting to Space:Prizes

I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences.

Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:

The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:

1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.

2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.

3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.

4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megaWatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.

5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.

That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.

I had Newt Gingrich persuaded to do this before he found he couldn't keep the office of Speaker. I haven't had any audiences with his successors.

Henry Vanderbilt points out that having a prize, say $1 billion, for the second firm to achieve point (1) above will get more into the competition, and produce better results. I agree.

Also relevant is another paper from 1995 called Why Have NASA

The prizes would be graduated, with a goal of creating a sustainable infrastructure [but it is possible that a given prize could entice a 'one shot' effort like Lindbergh's ocean crossing. The prize list [and discussion] was posted at Getting to Space:Prizes

I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences.

Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:

The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:

1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.

2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.

3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.

4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megaWatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.

5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.

That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.

I had Newt Gingrich persuaded to do this before he found he couldn't keep the office of Speaker. I haven't had any audiences with his successors.

Henry Vanderbilt points out that having a prize, say $1 billion, for the second firm to achieve point (1) above will get more into the competition, and produce better results. I agree.

Also relevant is another paper from 1995 called Why Have NASA

Jerry Pournelle summarized the issue well.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q3/view532.html#Wednesday

I came to a number of conclusions, the most important of which was that $1 billion spent right would in fact develop the technology -- all engineering, no new science needed -- to build an orbital ship that would operate as airlines do. Fly, inspect, refuel, fly again. Once that ship is built, additional orbiters will cost about what big commercial airplanes cost, and operate about the way airlines do. Airlines operate at about 3 to 5 times fuel costs, with about 110 employees per airplane (half of those sell tickets). With orbital access at about the cost of a first class ticket from America to Australia, free enterprise and commerce will take care of the rest

So you seem to be moving into a general point about organizational behavior.
Are you familiar with Pournelle's Iron Law?

Thank you for that link to the Compiz screenshots. I just sent it off to a friend who's a computer columnist, and likes to write about the neat wallpaper effects in Vista. I'll be interested in seeing what he thinks about Compiz. Me, I'd never go back, either to Windows or Metacity!

While you're at it, don't forget Jerry's coauthor, Larry Niven!

I said we just need to bump down the high school boys' performance a couple notches and we'll be good: no child left behind!

Shouldn't it be "No child out ahead?"

Or no child gets ahead

No Child Left Behind: The Football Version may also be relevant.

Exactly. give them what Jerry Pournelle calls "weapons of cultural mass destruction" and let those weapons do their job. Within a few years, either the Cuban government will lighten up, or the people will throw them out when they realize how much better their lives could be. People are only willing to put up with repressive regimes if they don't know there's anything better out there, which is why countries like Cuba, Iran and North Korea limit the amount of information about the rest of the world that their people can get their hands on.

There has been a lot of discussion of this type of stuff over at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/

What is the big deal? Can allowing local schools and local teachers to set their own policies be worse than centralized control? Say a handful of schools (or even a handful of states) taught intelligent design over evolution (or FSM over evolution). Would that really be the end of the world?

I think that people who get all worked up over this are 1) too optimistic about the ability of schools to shape children, and 2) too fond of the same centralized control that has destroyed the education system in this country.

The mullahs want to kill people for using the Internet because they understand that Jerry Pournelle is right: the Internet, western style entertainment and fashions are all weapons of cultural mass destruction and they don't want their people westernized. They know that if that ever happens, the mullahs will be out on their ears.

No matter how often "ethical hackers" claim the word for themselves or try to give it a meaning contrary to what the general populace believes the word to mean, it still carries that meaning.

The meaning has been maligned because that's how the mass media uses it and no one corrects them on it.

Look at the etymology of "hack".

I have, have you? The Online Etymology Dictionary is pretty good, read the second (2) entry particularly. As used with writers "hack" dates back to 1749, whereas with criminals using computers it first appears in 1984. It's ethical meaning was used years before then. I first came across the ethical meaning in the mid to late 1970s in magazines like "Byte: The small and micro systems journal" magazine. My fav writers in "Byte" was Steve Ciarcia who wrote the column "Circuit Cellar" which became it's own magazine and Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor".

Falcon

I don't fully disagree with your point, though I would phrase it more along capitalistic lines: competition is a natural requirement for systems not to suck. Competition is to economics as winter is to agriculture. Stuff needs to die off and recycle for nature to function.
Homo Bureaucratus succumbs to the Iron Law of Bureaucracy
However, don't toss the baby with the bathwater. The government has driven significant societal change, e.g. integration of the armed forces, and significant technological change, e.g. the intertubes.
Like most things in life, it's hard to cleanly argue an extreme viewpoint, though I'm generally committed to the "less is more" school of thought.

I wish this had been developed in time for Dan Alderson to have gotten one. The last two years he was at JPL, I was his "seeing eye person" because diabetic retinopathy had ruined his vision. Jerry Pournelle once dedicated a book to him, calling him "the sane genius." Among other things, Dan wrote the navigation software that was used by Project Voyager, and he was still doing things that most programmers would have sworn were impossible when his health failed completely and he was forced to retire.

I'm sure he'd be very pleased to know that. Why don't you go over to and let him know?

I don't use it myself, but I have a friend who does. I mentioned once, shortly after SP1 came out that somebody had asked me if she should get Vista. "NO!" he cried. "Tell her not under any circumstances should she get Vista."

Alas, it was too late; by the time I got back to her, she'd bought a new computer with Vista. So it goes. The point of this is, I gather that if Vista were, in fact, half bad, it would be a vast improvement.

Lots of other small details were dead on. For those like me, with some interest in computers, a movie that actually got some things right was amazing. The movie *as a whole* is a different matter.

This brings up something I haven't figured out, it seems many on ./ didn't like the movie. But I did like it, and before it ever came out I had already decided to major in Computer Engineering. I had wanted to be like the hackers in the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club and the hackers on the west coast. My fav reading material back then was "Byte" magazine, I especially liked Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar". Unfortunately it went out of print years ago.

Falcon

That may well be so, but there have been specific requirements in the GPL/LGPL that restrict usage of GPL/LGPL'd software that in no way relate to copyright; these requirements so broadly degrade the scope of the "freedom" that is the main talking point for the GPL that the license is of no interest to me except as an example of how not to distribute software.

Yea that's why I think BSD style licenses are freer and I prefer them. For instance a person can take BSD code and close the source they add to it. If I'm right all that's required is proper attribution of those who contributed code. The original code is still available but you can close your own code.

After reading on and on in the GPL about what you have to do, what you can't do, what you have to accept, etc., I am left completely without any feeling that I've been given something "free", or, were I to adopt it for my own work, that I would be creating something "free."

The way I look at it is the GPL's freedom is for users not programmers, there are just too many restrictions on programmers in it.

I'm 100% guilty of carrying forward the attitude I started with back in the 1960's, where software was a fabulously interesting thing that we shared with each other without any thought whatsoever for moderating that behavior because the other party might actually make use of it.

Ah, it was in part because of the hackers and their culture in the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT as well as the hardware hackers on the West Coast in the 1970s that in high school I wanted go into computer research. I wanted to be a hardware and a software hacker.

On that basis, entire magazines existed that shared code, talked about various design issues, laid out hardware designs, etc.

I recall a few magazines from the '70s but not many. "Creative Computing", "Interface Age", and my fav "Byte" I recall but that's it. I especially loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" columns. The one computer magazine I wish were still in print is "Byte".

Yeah, I'm an old hippie. :-)

Same here except smoking marijuana.

...proposed offering prizes to get things done in space; as opposed to throwing more money at NASA and aerospace contractors.

I believe it was in its first edition when I read it (in '93?), so it's been a while.

Yea, I read it when it first came out in '84. Back then I loved reading the magazine "Byte". My fav columns were Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" who now has his own magazine "Circuit Cellar" and Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor".

I might not quite remember the details like the name of Tech Model Railroad Club.

Because of an injury my memory is weird, I recall some things easy while other things I can't recall. A few years ago this proved to be a difficulty I had when I was taking Java classes. I'd do alright in the first class but then I could only recall a little bit for the second class so I'd start behind. I reread the book last year though, from where I am now all I have to do to get it is stand up and grab it from my book shelf.

• Encourage true 'energy independence'. For baseload, replace coal and oil fired steam plants with nuclear power plants. For peaking loads, continue with best available combustion technology [Gas turbine]. For high energy density fuels [hydrocarbons] allow enhanced exploration [gulf and atlantic coasts], and waste to oil processes [thermal reformation, depolymerization]. High density fuels are needed for transportation [aircraft, ship, automobile] and for locations without sufficient infrastructure
• Institute Pournelle's series of prizes to award space travel and settlement milestones. This would encourage reusable orbital transport, power satellites, lunar settlement and other long term goals
• Eliminate the Departments of Education and Homeland Security. Many other departments and agencies should be reduced drastically. It would also be nice if the State department occasionally considered acting to the benefit of US Citizens.
• Invest in long term basic research, including providing tax incentives for long term research. Perhaps this will spawn 21st century 'Skonk Works' and Bell labs equivalents.
• Fix immigration. Streamline the process for legal immigration. Provide physical barriers where needed [the border fence]. Provide severe dis-incentives to discourage employment of illegal aliens.

What about all the people with old ovens, refrigerators, microwaves, etc that require incandescent bulbs?

I'm amused by your definition of "freedom", but in fact appliance bulbs, and a number of other incandescents, are exempted. The much ballyhooed ban on incandescents only affects general use bulbs, such as youd put in a standard light fixture. There are quite a number of exemptions. Appliance bulbs are one. Marine and mine lamps, rough service lamps, vibration resistant lamps, reflector base lamps and sign service lamps are among the common sense exemptions. If you have a candelabra type fixture, its exempt. The same with showcase lamps and something called a silver bowl lamp.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail497.html#Wednesday

At one time it was a great secret [...] that we could use cosmic ray backscattering to locate deeply submerged submarines; sensors in both aircraft and satellites are employed for this.

Creating a fail-safe design is simple. The satellite should be powered by a return beam from the earth station. Thus if the main power beam wanders off-target, the satellite powers down and the main beam shuts off. This isn't a new idea. Jerry Pournelle has been talking about this for many years.

If anything kills this it'll be that the generated electricity would be too cheap to meter, and thus nobody would make vast fortunes off of it.

The San Antonio, TX area has 19 Independent School Districts. Needless to say, the quality varies. Greatly.

I like how Dr. Jerry Pournelle puts it: "We all know that the way to be sure that no child is left behind is to see that no child gets ahead."

That's annoying. Pournelle's column is here.

when it is used so egregiously incorrectly

Oh sure. Go ahead. Criticize. But please try to remember that many writers are doing the best that they can. Jerry Pournelle has been complaining to Scribd for some time, but they just ignore his email messages. Not every writer has chosen Cory's path. There's a real danger, though, if Cory's love of anarchy kills the copyright system. I like paying for big Hollywood movies, the morning paper, and the latest song from iTunes. I want some of my money to go back to the creator to encourage them. Oh sure, the conglomerates steal some of it, but at least some gets through. If anarchy wins, well, the writers and artists will get nothing. And there's a real chance that it will win if the systems like Scripd are able to hide behind the complexity of the DMCA and drive bookstores out of business, well, I would have to rely upon free bloggers. I love them, but I love the professions too.

Perhaps Dr. Pournelle doesn't understand how the DMCA takedown process works. Yes, the process requires identifying the specific works, and providing excess information. That's the way the law is set up by the US Congress. Once the notice is sent, Scribd does have an obligation to take down everything - even the stuff they have permission for. Again, that's the law.

It sounds like Dr. Pournelle is unhappy that Scribd is taking advantage of the DMCA's safe harbor provision to make money. While I understand why he's upset that people are copying his works, it sounds like Scribd is following the law, which makes it the responsibility of the author to send takedown notices for infringing works (and only infringing works). The fact that the SFWA notice included works that weren't infringing was an abuse of the DMCA process, and that's why people are upset.

Here you go, scroll down a little bit to see it (Corey Doctorow):

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view481.html#Fr iday

Read the whole thing

Jerry still writes articles which are available online.
http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/

And he keeps a daily journal.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/currentview.htm l

Jerry still writes articles which are available online.
http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/

And he keeps a daily journal.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/currentview.htm l

The way that they are developing rockets is the direct antithesis of the way that NASA does it and unlike NASA they get things done. Remember the X-33 Project? NASA spent $912 million dollars and never did a single flight test. It was basically nothing more than a jobs program for NASA bureaucrats and Lockheed-Martin. For that price they could have built 14 test replacements for the DC-X that they crashed. Of course that wouldn't have employed as many bureaucrats, so it couldn't be done. Jerry Pournelle has a great article on how to get back into space and one of the things he talks about is X projects, projects that are designed to test a specific technology, with limited goals, in a short time frame. Of course programs like this don't make Lockheed or Boeing or General Dynamics lots of money and they don't employ lots of NASA bureaucrats, so they really aren't that popular. Pournelle's article can be read here.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/#blog

I wish I had mod points to day I'd MOD you up. He and others really go back before this on BBS's too.

He claims he had the first one though.

I've been reading Jerry Pournelle since around 1995.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/