Speaking as one who has published a 400 page Master's thesis with Word (as well as a great many 100+ page short papers), I have to say that you either have serious system problems or are full of it. Word handles hundreds of pages without issue on a properly setup NT4, Win2k or WinXP system. Admittedly, if you are too dumb to use style-sheets, it slows down a bit.
I looked through the site, and could see no sign of native MAPI support - rather, you have the usual collection of IMAP, POP3, SMTP, etc. protocols. Many sites I look after would love to switch to a free Exchange replacement when they phase out their current 5.5 deployments - but if it doesn't support MAPI and seamlessly integrate with Outlook, they won't be interested.
It also seems to be missing a few of Exchange's better features: single instance message storage, (relatively) easy multi-site replication, deleted item retention, just to name a few.
Finally, who on Earth wants to put their Exchange server on their PDC? If this product doesn't integrate well with existing domains, I don't think that I have a single client who could actually use it!
As someone who maintains around 100 Dell workstations for a couple of my clients, I have to say that you are full of it. One client - a non-profit that doesn't have money to throw away on a regular upgrade cycle - has the old white-box Dell Optiplexes from 1997. The failure rate among them is very, very low. I don't have the exact figure handy, but we've had to replace a 5-10 drives in the last 2 years. There have also been a couple of 'normal attrition' incidents: boxes getting dropped by users, coffee damage, the usual sort of wastage that happens over time. (AFAIK, Macs aren't drop resistant either!)Also, their current firewall (FreeBSD) used to be a whitebox (no brand name) "server" they purchased in 1994. It still hasn't suffered a hardware failure. Neither has the Dell server they replaced it with in 1998.
Conversely, I've worked at two schools whose iMacs are disaster areas (so bad that they are migrating away from Apple). Several have developed heat problems (reliable air conditioning in rural schools is a problem), there have been multiple drive failures, video failures, some CD-ROM drives with busted eject systems. In every case, repair is tricky because the iMac isn't really designed to flip open and replace the innards with readily available commodity parts; Apple dealers charge more, Apple service/repair people charge more, and the iMacs' reliability is a joke. (That contrasts with the favourable experience I've had with Apple's workstation range, which is quite reliable if overpriced for what you get).
You do realise that you just described MS Exchange (albeit in a chronically simplified form), right?:-)
Exchange is actually a pretty decent mail server, although only using it for mail is pretty dumb - its groupware features are the killer app. It exposes both benefits (in particular, single storage of messages with multiple recipients) and flaws (if your db goes boom, it affects all your users - or at least all your users in a given mail partition) of database-based mail storage.
I remember seeing a project to combine mail storage with PostgreSQL a while ago. Anyone know what happened to it?
It comes with.NET Messenger (MSN Messenger), we cannot work out any way to remove this, and every day, we find some shmuck trying to use it.
The solution to this is REALLY straightforward if you have XP Professional (not sure about Home - but Home is too crippled to be worth installing in a lab anyway), you just have to learn to use the tools you were given. Look at the group policy editor; under "user configuration"->"Administrative templates"->"Windows components"->"Windows messenger" you have a simple on-off switch to not permit users access to Windows messenger. You can change a whole boatload of Windows settings this way. If you have a domain setup, you can do it per-user for the whole network; if you don't have a domain, you will have to do it on each computer (although you won't have to leave your seat to do it!).
In case you are one of the 80% of Windows "administrators" I've bumped into who don't know how to find the Group Policy Editor, it is simple: run mmc, and add it as a snap-in. You can then save your MMC configuration for easy access.
I seem to remember some guides to keeping feline companions that talked about the feline habit of bringing dead animals into the house - and leaving them, uneaten where you will find them. Believe it or not, your cat is trying to help you. Do you really want to spurn your cat's noble efforts to not have you starve to death?
You might find this problem report helpful, then... it is nice and easy to make adduser become samba-friendly, although I do wish that this would make it into the default release.
First, the nuclear deterent was aimed at countries with nuclear weapons
Almost correct. The nuclear deterrent was initially intended to deter nuclear attack, but in recent years (read post mid-1980s), successive Administrations have expanded the implied threat; massive chemical or biological attacks (arguably worse than a small nuclear strike) would be included, as would direct attacks on the homeland. Deterrence as a concept benefits from clarity; however, if you can convince people that you are sufficiently serious, lesser deterence threats may also work. The risk of that strategy is that you appear to "cry wolf", and after the first time that you don't use a nuclear weapon in response to an apparent breach, you lose considerable credibility.
Second, the 9/11 attack was not large scale in any usual sense of the term.
Agreed; I wish more people would figure this out. On the other hand, I know for a fact (from discussions with government employees) that the nuclear option was considered in the aftermath of 9/11. I also know that many of my former colleagues desperately wish to move towards a policy that permits nuclear use in difficult conventional circumstances; Tora Bora would have qualified if conventional bombing had proved less effective.
Third, the Al Qaeda troops at Tora Bora was not the sort of concentration for which tactical nuclear weapons are effective.
That may be true, but I very much doubt it. The fact that FAEs and other large conventional munitions were used (repeatedly) argues against you here: the USAF wanted to bring as much explosive yield as they could to the region. It is likely that careful use of nuclear munitions could have made collapsing many of the tunnels much easier - and a sudden, sharp shock as opposed to gradual erosion might have made it considerably harder for the Tora Bora defenders to escape en masse.
Fourth, there are several villages in the area that would have been destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Fifth, Tora Bora [washingtonpost.com] is within 10 miles of the Pakistani border, which would certainly have received some of the fallout.
I've lumped these two together, because they are basically restatements of the same argument. Your argument assumes that air-burst tactical nuclear weapons are any worse than the fallout from an FAE. They aren't - in fact, you are much more likely to want to live downwind/downriver of a TNW airburst than an FAE airburst. Modern TNW minimize the size of their fireballs, while maximizing blast overpressure. This has the effect of placing immense pressure against the target while leaving almost no fallout. If you are in direct line of sight of the explosion, you may be irradiated by prompt radiation - but this generally doesn't stick around. Except when dealing with neutron bombs (and then only against armoured vehicles), prompt radiation is not the primary killer: blast overpressure is. Residual radiation is always a problem, which is why you try and ensure that the fireball doesn't touch the ground. I strongly recommend that you read The Effects of Nuclear Weapons(*), a publically available text explaining how nukes really work; most of the fallout scare comes from fearmongering by antinuclear lobbies. Even the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - very dirty designs by modern standards - didn't render those areas uninhabitable for long (rail service resumed in Hiroshima a few hours after the nuclear attack, for example).
The point about the Army/Marines having to pass through an area that recently received a nuclear weapon is well received, although the truth is that they would not have much to worry about.
Your other point - that world leaders would be further alienated from the United States in the event of a nuclear use - is somewhat valid. That said, the current Administration seems to derive pleasure from eroding international norms (in fact, many refuse to accept the existence of such concepts - the realism school gone mad, if you will). Yes, some world leaders would have been surprised by US nuclear use - but not as surprised as you might think. Speculation was rife in the international press that the US would go nuclear shortly after 9/11, and I think a lot of world leaders were resigned to the US doing "whatever it takes" in Afghanistan. In fact, a nuclear use might have sent an important message with regard to US policy in regard to the "war on terrorism". I personally wouldn't support using nukes to send a message, but it would not surprise me, either.
(*) - Citation: The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Ed. Samual Glasstone, US Department of Defense, published by the US Atomic Energy Commission, 1962. Additionally, I would recommend looking up the various translated (declassified) former Soviet papers on TNW doctrine. You find them in university libraries. The Soviets were quite advanced in their studies of TNW, mainly because they were less squeamish about them than the West, so its good reading - equivalant NATO documents are harder to find, but they do exist. If you are really interested, check out back-issues of Proceedings (Navy), and the works of the Institute for Strategic Studies. These will lead to many more texts, but I don't really have time to type in the entire bibliography from my Master's thesis.:-)
I studied with several people who have been involved (at differing levels) in this policy shift. In particular, Undersecretary of Defense J.D. Crouch and several of his former students from the Department of Defense & Strategic Studies at SMSU. Unsurprisingly, this is an extremely right wing department; its founder, Van Cleave, was basically rejected for SecDef by Reagan on the grounds that he was too much of a militant extremist!
From my time studying with them, it was evident that they were desperate for a nuclear policy shift. Some of their reasoning behind this was sound, other elements are not well conceived. Some key elements of their philosophy include:
Nuclear weapons are weapons/tools, just like any other. Just because nuclear weapons are "nuclear", does not mean that they are qualitatively different from other weapons. Fuel Air Explosives can lead to nasty metal poisoning incidents in their target areas - often more environmentally unfriendly than a low-yield nuclear airburst. A modern reduced-blast warhead (aka the neutron bomb, a wholly inaccurate name) produces an immense quantity of prompt radiation that tends not to stick around, and next to no residual/secondary radiation, and almost no fallout (assuming you use it carefully - fallout is a result of the fireball touching dirt sucked up from the ground, and can be avoided). There are some targets that are inaccessible to anything but nuclear weapons; during my time in SMSU, this included some structures in Libya and North Korea.
Deterrent theory relies upon the belief that you will use the weapons, and for that belief to be credibly instilled, you must be prepared to use them should whatever line-in-the-sand you create be crossed. I was personally surprised not to see a tac-nuke strike on Tora Bora for this reason; a tenet of deterrent policy had been that a large-scale assault on mainland America would result in maximum retribution. In the Gulf War, when Bush Snr. Administration officials spoke of "maximum retallation" to chemical use, everyone assumed that meant "nuclear" (as it happens, Bush Snr. had removed that option from the table - see below) - otherwise, the question remains "what are you going to bomb that you wouldn't have bombed anyway?" [hint: the answer is "nothing". Iraq actually thought that they were under nuclear assault at one point, and that didn't change anything from their perspective].
Arms Control Is Always Bad. A particularly strongly held viewpoint (ironic, given that Van Cleave negotiated parts of the ABM Treaty, and Dr. Crouch worked on Start) is that arms control will always fail. Prof. Colin Gray has written some texts explaining this idea (in particular, "why arms control must fail"), and these make informative (if scary) reading. The argument may be summarized as "arms control cannot work when you need it" - that is, in order to agree on meaningful (and enforced) arms control, both countries must be starting to like one another anyway - so it doesn't help; if they come up with something without making real progress, violations become major relationship sticking points (see Krasnoyarsk...)
American Hegemony. Most of the people with whom I worked at DSS are believers that moving towards a unipolar world-model is a good idea (I disagree strongly, but thats because I'm a whiny European...). They tend to frame this argument in two ways. The first is entirely domestic in nature: if the US doesn't rule the world, it will turn to isolationism. This argument is not strong, since it assumes a total lack of sophistication among US policymakers, most of whom were able to handle selective engagement without becoming overly confused. The second is much more terrifying, and can be seen as an extension of Manifest Destiny theory. Basically, they see the US as being a paragon of virtue and believe that the US should "help" the rest of the world live within a mutually prosperous (read: US exploited) Pax Americana. This is no different from the colonial eras of any other nation, but I don't recommend telling them that.:-|
Readiness. Americans, and the American military, are not prepared for the horrors that could accompany a nuclear war. Indeed, most brances of the US military tend to regard the idea of nuclear use as being so "out there" that they refuse to even plan for it. The Navy's nuclear policy used to consist of stating that "in the event of nuclear war, all bets are off". It is important to persuade planners that nuclear use is possible (even likely, as more and more groups gain access to basic fission weapons), and at least come up with some form of credible, planned response. 9/11 was bad, but it does not even approximate the devastation that a 220kT warhead would have inflicted if detonated above the WTC; likewise, the Navy needs to recognize that it doesn't take many nukes to stop an entire Carrier Battle Group.
There will also be some interesting in-Pentagon dynamics associated with this. There are some very strong anti-nuclear movements within the Pentagon, and a policy review of this type represents early shots in what can be expected to be a protracted political conflict. During the Gulf War, Dr. Crouch was instrumental in persuading the Pentagon to perform a feasability study regarding the use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons against Iraqi forces; the report that came back was drafted by anti-nuclear elements, and claimed that more than 2,000 nuclear weapons would be needed to soften up the Republican Guard, with unspeakable consequences. The report itself was badly written, but it did the trick: Bush Snr. removed the nuclear option from the table.
Expect similar infighting on this issue. In particular, remember that the services don't like nuclear weapons. Navy ships with nukes on board are a fast-track to fewer cushy officer jobs (because one slip-up means end of career). Likewise, the Navy hate the fact that their big ships in blue water policy is very vulnerable to nuclear attack. The Air Force don't like nukes because a recognition of possible attack requires strip alerts for bombers (or extreme vulnerability - take your pick). Additionally, the Air Force dislike ballistic missiles because it means fewer pilots. The Army and Marines would be expected to run through the immediate results of nuclear strikes in some cases, so its easy to see why they don't like it very much!
I remember when this was being compiled, and when my school first received one. We had a number of BBC micros and masters around the place, and I was the person they always called upon to set things up - then, as now, computers terrified a lot of people.
The Domesday Book on laserdisk was pretty neat; you could look up pertinent details for your local area, and it formed the basis of a lot of good history projects. IIRC, it had some primitive hypertext facilities.
I'm absolutely positive that this could be resurrected if needs-be. Enough copies of this went out to schools that finding a readable laserdisk shouldn't be a problem, and there has to be a working reader somewhere. I seem to remember that the data wasn't in any particularly obscure format, so mounting it on a BBC Master and sending it to a different machine shouldn't be too difficult.
If needs be, one could probably export the whole thing and mount it via a hacked BeebEm.
As a former Soviet republic, doesn't the Ukraine have any nuclear weapons that they can use to argue away sanctions?
No, they don't. When the Ukraine seceded from the USSR, this was the #1 question from the rest of the world - and the US in particular. Initially, the Ukrainians thought that becoming a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty would mean that they agreed not to proliferate the sizeable nuclear arsenal situated on their soil; negotiation with the US (often quite heated - one of my professors at SMSU was involved in it and liked to talk about it at length!) and Russia left Russia the sole power in charge of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.
That's not to say that they might have kept one or two warheads lying around, but if they have any, it is a relatively trivial number - and probably of the tactical variety, primarily intended to maintain their independence from Russia.
Is it just me, or does anyone expect this thing to jump around the desk trying to find a ball? It really does look like a desk-lamp... I wonder how much light it produces?
Re:but what about the Internet Connection Firewall
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WinXP Security Flaw
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· Score: 5, Informative
At risk of losing all my karma, but here goes.... if you enable XP's built in firewall on a network interface, you'll discover that you can no longer connect to the universal plug and play service on that interface. So yes, it helps a lot actually!
As the subject line, software development time can be estimated throughout the lifecycle of a project. Estimates don't become realistic until you've mapped out the exact framework of which code will do what, and planned every single discrete module (as in extreme programming, every module should be distinct and testable). Once you have this - and have a map showing dependencies - its not that hard to figure out how long it will take to create. Add in some flexibility (because humans are fallible; even the best programmers in the world have bad days, get the flu, break up with a girlfriend, etc.), and you have a realistic estimate. Its worth adding to the "programming time" estimates for every module to ensure time for thorough testing (insist on testing at all levels), as well as a detailed beta stage and rollout phase. Depending upon the complexity of the project, these can be large phases.
On the other hand, a poorly-planned, creeping-feature project with little engineering and a lot of hacking/coding probably is impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy.
In the comments it's noted that the tests were done on Win2k Advanced Server.
I'm pretty sure that explains XP's poor showing; Advanced Server is a very different beast from Professional - I suspect that Win2k Professional would perform equally poorly. XP Advanced Server isn't even due out until next year - and will probably be Windows 2002 AS, although the naming hasn't been finalized!
That said, I'd like to see details specs for the machines involved... quantity of RAM, CPU, what else was installed, etc.
Arms Control in general is viewed as a Bad Thing (TM).
Interesting; can you recommend any papers or books that discuss this in more detail
Some of the more prominent texts that deal with this topic: House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail , Colin S. Gray (1992).
Explorations in Strattegy, Colin S. Gray (1996).
Both these works are viewed as seminal by several notable right-wind Republican theorists. For example, Dr. J.D. Crouch (whom I think is now an undersecretary for defense, although the Senate was close to blocking him at one point) at SMSU based a great many of his anti-arms control lectures on these works. Frank Gaffney, cited in the original article, also likes to refer to these texts.
For the record, Dr. Gray is a lot more complicated than his reputation would seem to make him appear; I have a lot more respect for him than I do for some of the views people express based upon his work. Dr. Gray is a wholistic strategist - that is, he favours taking into account all angles of an issue. Many modern-day Republicans (Gaffney, Kugler, et al.) only wish they could achieve insight such as this, in my (not so humble!) opinion.
When I was studying as SMSU, under the auspices of Van Cleave (and before that under Colin Gray), a few things were very clear. The primary one is that Arms Control in general is viewed as a Bad Thing (TM). The reasoning is basically that it only works to calm things down when you don't need it, because countries that are becoming hostile to one another aren't going to adhere to treaties anyway - so you end up binding your own hands when you don't need to. The second reason is that Arms Control generally affects Western nations differently to other countries. For example, the ABM Treaty has a strict interpretation enforced when the US looks at it (based on interpretation of negotiating record, etc.), whereas the former Soviet Union has been caught violating it with radar in Siberia.
One of the primary targets amongst my right-wing colleagues was the Outer Space Treaty. In particular, they are upset by the "no weapons in space" rule (itself subject to some interpretation as to what it actually means), the "celestial bodies aren't owned by nations" rule, and the "free passage in space over any nation" rule. Finding a way to quietly erode this treaty would make them very happy, because the best way to get rid of a treaty is to quietly let it slip into obsolescence. That way you avoid all of the shouting that accompanies the current missile defense row, for example. The ASAT prorgam, Space Based Laser program, Brilliant Pebbles, and similar have already walked this particular path
The Pentagon has long talked about a Space Plane project. As it is, this is a bad program. The X-33 has technical issues, but I'm sure they will be worked out. On the other hand, it's heavy, relatively fuel-inefficient (for example, the failure of honeycomb design fuel tanks - and replacement with conventional ones - has resulted in significant weight gain/total fuel loss). It also wastes a HUGE amount of infrastucture on carrying a human crew - the same problem exhibited in other Air Force projects. Make something like this unmanned and you can halve the weight, greatly reduce development costs, and make running costs significantly lower - not to mention you don't have to worry so much about pilot safety.
This program satisfies several of these objectives. It further militarises space, gives the Pentagon a shiny new weapon, and gives Frank Gaffney reason to send more faxes to anyone and everyone. In reality, it will be like the B2; expensive, capable of hitting a small number of targets per trip (with high turnaround times, to boot). It's unlikely that very many will be built, and the X33 program already has significant cost overruns. Just like the B2, it will be dubbed as "equivalent to X conventional planes" (with X being a large number) despite the fact that you still need the other X-1 planes for more general purpose missions. Rumsfield is proving to be like Weinberger; willing to spend big bucks on technology that the services want without trying to fit it into any sort of grand strategy. His obsession with China can't be helping, either. Expect several more "silver bullet" military solutions of this type - arsenal ships spring to mind.
This is perfectly alright and all, except what happens if we need to approach a star that has a higher strength solar wind than the one propelling the craft? It seems to me it wouldn't matter what color, etc., the reverse side was, you'd still get a pressure front pushing you away. Thus, wouldn't some stars be impossible to approach with this technology? Kinda like a one way ticket to the moon; you can get there rather elegantly, but you just can't come back using the solar sail. I realize that I'm not an expert, and perhaps someone can clarify.
My understanding is that you use the solar sail to accelerate. Since there isn't much friction in space, you don't have to worry about slowing down - so you accelerate (using force derived from the sail) until you hit the velocity you want - and then you unfurl/hide/rotate the sail. At this point, you'll keep going in a straight line at your established speed (subject to gravitational bodies, etc.). The great news about using a sail to approach a body with a star is that you have a ready source of energy when you want to come back! (Subject to rotation of planets, etc.)
The second will happen if the patches are good. But since WinCE lies in ROM, it's going to be hard (impossible?) to get this onto devices.
That's not entirely true. If you have an old WinCE device (like my HP320LX), it is true that you have to ship a physical ROM upgrade. (The WinCE 2 upgrade was worth every penny!). My Compaq iPaq has a flashable ROM - and has already been the beneficiary of an upgrade.
(This is probably waaay off-topic:)
Yup, but I'll bite.:-)
In case you didn't know, this is how all air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles work.
In most cases, you are correct. What I was referring to is the recent obsession with "hit-to-kill" technology. Specifically, Patriot (PAC-3) and THAAD missiles are kinetic-kill rather than explosive. This means that they actually have to slam into the target to make a kill. That is one of the reasons that making THAAD usable is so difficult! Amazing how technology goes backwards, sometimes...
But Russia do have some kick-ass long range air defence systems, but the problem such systems is target identification.
True - witness the difficulty their second-line equipment had in both Bosnia and the Gulf War. (Although they have made a LOT of progress since then).
What's the point in shooting down a target far away if you don't know if it's a friend or foe?
Depends upon the target, but I agree in general.:-)
I'm not sure if the double-digit russian SA-systems (NATO classification) uses active or semi-active radar in the missiles (semi-active requires an illumination radar to paint the target,
Depends upon whom you ask.:-p Seriously, a lot of former-Soviet technology was pretty seriously misreported (even overstated), so often figuring out exactly what it does can be difficult. I'd probably guess that there are some active missiles in the SA range - probably with all-aspect acquisition.
You are also right about the doctrine that states "shoot everything down" - the SA-X range even have nuclear options to make sure that you hit the target. (Small nukes, so really not as dramatic as it sounds - but still an impressive hit radius).
When I was studying in Springfield, MO (at the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies) many of the right-wing psychopaths there would like to rant and rail about this type of deal. You may remember the fuss that was made about Iraq (and by default, the US's then-favourite bugbear, Saddam Hussein) obtaining PS2s, and using them in weapons guidance systems. At the time, it was evident from talking to them that most of them hadn't the faintest idea what these "super computers" they had read about would be used for, but "because they were super computers" it was obviously bad. The sad thing is, this was the prevalent attitude amongst guest speakers (including several well-positioned Washington aides); they didn't understand it, but it was high technology, and therefore not to reach "bad guys". Many of the people with whom I graduated (the aforementioned Right Wing Psychopaths!) now work for the Bush administration, so won't be at all surprised to see this sort of thing become more prominent.
The funny part of this is that there are several military areas in which Russia - and friends (China, in particular) have always done better than the West. In particular, missile defence, SAM systems and similar. Admittedly, part of their success may be attributed to a willingness to detonate an explosive near the target - rather than just trying to hit it, but their systems are very advanced. The really funny part is that old Macs (68k and some early PowerPC), old PCs (386s, 486s) are readily available in so-called "rogue states" - in fact, the United States has led the way in giving old PCs to Russia! 3/486s may be a little slow, but they are still significantly more advanced than the chips that guided the original MX missile. They are also a well-established, well-understood technology - and therefore attractive to militaries. (What do you think they are using in Internet Cafes in Iran?)
Personally, I always thought that the "Iraq wants PS2s" argument was a subtle ad-campaign for Sony. While the Emotion Engine is powerful, it is focussed pretty heavily on 3D rendering. While I can think of some uses for it, I'd much rather develop systems on readily available PC parts!
Ximian may find themselves tilting at windmills by deciding to target.NET in this manner. Why? Because.NET is a marketing title for a host of related technologies, and not a single, readily definable, product.
So far,.NET seems to be a combination of the following:
Common runtime format, permitting the same code to run on any platform that fully supports the CRF, and also permitting interoperability between any CRF compatible language. CRF works by compiling into p-code, and then having the installer (or browser?) compile code as needed.
SOAP, XML, WDSL and UDDI services permitting servers to talk to one another.
Passport authentication/subscription
Hailstorm information distribution systems
That's an awful lot of targets for a company that has been reported as being low on cash, and has yet to provide a GUI/browser as compelling as it's competition.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking as one who has published a 400 page Master's thesis with Word (as well as a great many 100+ page short papers), I have to say that you either have serious system problems or are full of it. Word handles hundreds of pages without issue on a properly setup NT4, Win2k or WinXP system. Admittedly, if you are too dumb to use style-sheets, it slows down a bit.
I looked through the site, and could see no sign of native MAPI support - rather, you have the usual collection of IMAP, POP3, SMTP, etc. protocols. Many sites I look after would love to switch to a free Exchange replacement when they phase out their current 5.5 deployments - but if it doesn't support MAPI and seamlessly integrate with Outlook, they won't be interested.
It also seems to be missing a few of Exchange's better features: single instance message storage, (relatively) easy multi-site replication, deleted item retention, just to name a few.
Finally, who on Earth wants to put their Exchange server on their PDC? If this product doesn't integrate well with existing domains, I don't think that I have a single client who could actually use it!
As someone who maintains around 100 Dell workstations for a couple of my clients, I have to say that you are full of it. One client - a non-profit that doesn't have money to throw away on a regular upgrade cycle - has the old white-box Dell Optiplexes from 1997. The failure rate among them is very, very low. I don't have the exact figure handy, but we've had to replace a 5-10 drives in the last 2 years. There have also been a couple of 'normal attrition' incidents: boxes getting dropped by users, coffee damage, the usual sort of wastage that happens over time. (AFAIK, Macs aren't drop resistant either!)Also, their current firewall (FreeBSD) used to be a whitebox (no brand name) "server" they purchased in 1994. It still hasn't suffered a hardware failure. Neither has the Dell server they replaced it with in 1998.
Conversely, I've worked at two schools whose iMacs are disaster areas (so bad that they are migrating away from Apple). Several have developed heat problems (reliable air conditioning in rural schools is a problem), there have been multiple drive failures, video failures, some CD-ROM drives with busted eject systems. In every case, repair is tricky because the iMac isn't really designed to flip open and replace the innards with readily available commodity parts; Apple dealers charge more, Apple service/repair people charge more, and the iMacs' reliability is a joke. (That contrasts with the favourable experience I've had with Apple's workstation range, which is quite reliable if overpriced for what you get).
Exchange is actually a pretty decent mail server, although only using it for mail is pretty dumb - its groupware features are the killer app. It exposes both benefits (in particular, single storage of messages with multiple recipients) and flaws (if your db goes boom, it affects all your users - or at least all your users in a given mail partition) of database-based mail storage.
I remember seeing a project to combine mail storage with PostgreSQL a while ago. Anyone know what happened to it?
Please tell me that cray.com isn't slashdotted. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!
The solution to this is REALLY straightforward if you have XP Professional (not sure about Home - but Home is too crippled to be worth installing in a lab anyway), you just have to learn to use the tools you were given. Look at the group policy editor; under "user configuration"->"Administrative templates"->"Windows components"->"Windows messenger" you have a simple on-off switch to not permit users access to Windows messenger. You can change a whole boatload of Windows settings this way. If you have a domain setup, you can do it per-user for the whole network; if you don't have a domain, you will have to do it on each computer (although you won't have to leave your seat to do it!).
In case you are one of the 80% of Windows "administrators" I've bumped into who don't know how to find the Group Policy Editor, it is simple: run mmc, and add it as a snap-in. You can then save your MMC configuration for easy access.
Honestly, think of the kittens...
You might find this problem report helpful, then... it is nice and easy to make adduser become samba-friendly, although I do wish that this would make it into the default release.
Almost correct. The nuclear deterrent was initially intended to deter nuclear attack, but in recent years (read post mid-1980s), successive Administrations have expanded the implied threat; massive chemical or biological attacks (arguably worse than a small nuclear strike) would be included, as would direct attacks on the homeland. Deterrence as a concept benefits from clarity; however, if you can convince people that you are sufficiently serious, lesser deterence threats may also work. The risk of that strategy is that you appear to "cry wolf", and after the first time that you don't use a nuclear weapon in response to an apparent breach, you lose considerable credibility.
Second, the 9/11 attack was not large scale in any usual sense of the term.
Agreed; I wish more people would figure this out. On the other hand, I know for a fact (from discussions with government employees) that the nuclear option was considered in the aftermath of 9/11. I also know that many of my former colleagues desperately wish to move towards a policy that permits nuclear use in difficult conventional circumstances; Tora Bora would have qualified if conventional bombing had proved less effective.
Third, the Al Qaeda troops at Tora Bora was not the sort of concentration for which tactical nuclear weapons are effective.
That may be true, but I very much doubt it. The fact that FAEs and other large conventional munitions were used (repeatedly) argues against you here: the USAF wanted to bring as much explosive yield as they could to the region. It is likely that careful use of nuclear munitions could have made collapsing many of the tunnels much easier - and a sudden, sharp shock as opposed to gradual erosion might have made it considerably harder for the Tora Bora defenders to escape en masse.
Fourth, there are several villages in the area that would have been destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Fifth, Tora Bora [washingtonpost.com] is within 10 miles of the Pakistani border, which would certainly have received some of the fallout.
I've lumped these two together, because they are basically restatements of the same argument. Your argument assumes that air-burst tactical nuclear weapons are any worse than the fallout from an FAE. They aren't - in fact, you are much more likely to want to live downwind/downriver of a TNW airburst than an FAE airburst. Modern TNW minimize the size of their fireballs, while maximizing blast overpressure. This has the effect of placing immense pressure against the target while leaving almost no fallout. If you are in direct line of sight of the explosion, you may be irradiated by prompt radiation - but this generally doesn't stick around. Except when dealing with neutron bombs (and then only against armoured vehicles), prompt radiation is not the primary killer: blast overpressure is. Residual radiation is always a problem, which is why you try and ensure that the fireball doesn't touch the ground. I strongly recommend that you read The Effects of Nuclear Weapons(*), a publically available text explaining how nukes really work; most of the fallout scare comes from fearmongering by antinuclear lobbies. Even the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - very dirty designs by modern standards - didn't render those areas uninhabitable for long (rail service resumed in Hiroshima a few hours after the nuclear attack, for example).
The point about the Army/Marines having to pass through an area that recently received a nuclear weapon is well received, although the truth is that they would not have much to worry about.
Your other point - that world leaders would be further alienated from the United States in the event of a nuclear use - is somewhat valid. That said, the current Administration seems to derive pleasure from eroding international norms (in fact, many refuse to accept the existence of such concepts - the realism school gone mad, if you will). Yes, some world leaders would have been surprised by US nuclear use - but not as surprised as you might think. Speculation was rife in the international press that the US would go nuclear shortly after 9/11, and I think a lot of world leaders were resigned to the US doing "whatever it takes" in Afghanistan. In fact, a nuclear use might have sent an important message with regard to US policy in regard to the "war on terrorism". I personally wouldn't support using nukes to send a message, but it would not surprise me, either.
(*) - Citation: The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Ed. Samual Glasstone, US Department of Defense, published by the US Atomic Energy Commission, 1962. Additionally, I would recommend looking up the various translated (declassified) former Soviet papers on TNW doctrine. You find them in university libraries. The Soviets were quite advanced in their studies of TNW, mainly because they were less squeamish about them than the West, so its good reading - equivalant NATO documents are harder to find, but they do exist. If you are really interested, check out back-issues of Proceedings (Navy), and the works of the Institute for Strategic Studies. These will lead to many more texts, but I don't really have time to type in the entire bibliography from my Master's thesis. :-)
From my time studying with them, it was evident that they were desperate for a nuclear policy shift. Some of their reasoning behind this was sound, other elements are not well conceived. Some key elements of their philosophy include:
Nuclear weapons are weapons/tools, just like any other. Just because nuclear weapons are "nuclear", does not mean that they are qualitatively different from other weapons. Fuel Air Explosives can lead to nasty metal poisoning incidents in their target areas - often more environmentally unfriendly than a low-yield nuclear airburst. A modern reduced-blast warhead (aka the neutron bomb, a wholly inaccurate name) produces an immense quantity of prompt radiation that tends not to stick around, and next to no residual/secondary radiation, and almost no fallout (assuming you use it carefully - fallout is a result of the fireball touching dirt sucked up from the ground, and can be avoided). There are some targets that are inaccessible to anything but nuclear weapons; during my time in SMSU, this included some structures in Libya and North Korea.
Deterrent theory relies upon the belief that you will use the weapons, and for that belief to be credibly instilled, you must be prepared to use them should whatever line-in-the-sand you create be crossed. I was personally surprised not to see a tac-nuke strike on Tora Bora for this reason; a tenet of deterrent policy had been that a large-scale assault on mainland America would result in maximum retribution. In the Gulf War, when Bush Snr. Administration officials spoke of "maximum retallation" to chemical use, everyone assumed that meant "nuclear" (as it happens, Bush Snr. had removed that option from the table - see below) - otherwise, the question remains "what are you going to bomb that you wouldn't have bombed anyway?" [hint: the answer is "nothing". Iraq actually thought that they were under nuclear assault at one point, and that didn't change anything from their perspective].
Arms Control Is Always Bad. A particularly strongly held viewpoint (ironic, given that Van Cleave negotiated parts of the ABM Treaty, and Dr. Crouch worked on Start) is that arms control will always fail. Prof. Colin Gray has written some texts explaining this idea (in particular, "why arms control must fail"), and these make informative (if scary) reading. The argument may be summarized as "arms control cannot work when you need it" - that is, in order to agree on meaningful (and enforced) arms control, both countries must be starting to like one another anyway - so it doesn't help; if they come up with something without making real progress, violations become major relationship sticking points (see Krasnoyarsk...)
American Hegemony. Most of the people with whom I worked at DSS are believers that moving towards a unipolar world-model is a good idea (I disagree strongly, but thats because I'm a whiny European...). They tend to frame this argument in two ways. The first is entirely domestic in nature: if the US doesn't rule the world, it will turn to isolationism. This argument is not strong, since it assumes a total lack of sophistication among US policymakers, most of whom were able to handle selective engagement without becoming overly confused. The second is much more terrifying, and can be seen as an extension of Manifest Destiny theory. Basically, they see the US as being a paragon of virtue and believe that the US should "help" the rest of the world live within a mutually prosperous (read: US exploited) Pax Americana. This is no different from the colonial eras of any other nation, but I don't recommend telling them that. :-|
Readiness. Americans, and the American military, are not prepared for the horrors that could accompany a nuclear war. Indeed, most brances of the US military tend to regard the idea of nuclear use as being so "out there" that they refuse to even plan for it. The Navy's nuclear policy used to consist of stating that "in the event of nuclear war, all bets are off". It is important to persuade planners that nuclear use is possible (even likely, as more and more groups gain access to basic fission weapons), and at least come up with some form of credible, planned response. 9/11 was bad, but it does not even approximate the devastation that a 220kT warhead would have inflicted if detonated above the WTC; likewise, the Navy needs to recognize that it doesn't take many nukes to stop an entire Carrier Battle Group.
There will also be some interesting in-Pentagon dynamics associated with this. There are some very strong anti-nuclear movements within the Pentagon, and a policy review of this type represents early shots in what can be expected to be a protracted political conflict. During the Gulf War, Dr. Crouch was instrumental in persuading the Pentagon to perform a feasability study regarding the use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons against Iraqi forces; the report that came back was drafted by anti-nuclear elements, and claimed that more than 2,000 nuclear weapons would be needed to soften up the Republican Guard, with unspeakable consequences. The report itself was badly written, but it did the trick: Bush Snr. removed the nuclear option from the table.
Expect similar infighting on this issue. In particular, remember that the services don't like nuclear weapons. Navy ships with nukes on board are a fast-track to fewer cushy officer jobs (because one slip-up means end of career). Likewise, the Navy hate the fact that their big ships in blue water policy is very vulnerable to nuclear attack. The Air Force don't like nukes because a recognition of possible attack requires strip alerts for bombers (or extreme vulnerability - take your pick). Additionally, the Air Force dislike ballistic missiles because it means fewer pilots. The Army and Marines would be expected to run through the immediate results of nuclear strikes in some cases, so its easy to see why they don't like it very much!
The Domesday Book on laserdisk was pretty neat; you could look up pertinent details for your local area, and it formed the basis of a lot of good history projects. IIRC, it had some primitive hypertext facilities.
I'm absolutely positive that this could be resurrected if needs-be. Enough copies of this went out to schools that finding a readable laserdisk shouldn't be a problem, and there has to be a working reader somewhere. I seem to remember that the data wasn't in any particularly obscure format, so mounting it on a BBC Master and sending it to a different machine shouldn't be too difficult.
If needs be, one could probably export the whole thing and mount it via a hacked BeebEm.
No, they don't. When the Ukraine seceded from the USSR, this was the #1 question from the rest of the world - and the US in particular. Initially, the Ukrainians thought that becoming a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty would mean that they agreed not to proliferate the sizeable nuclear arsenal situated on their soil; negotiation with the US (often quite heated - one of my professors at SMSU was involved in it and liked to talk about it at length!) and Russia left Russia the sole power in charge of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.
That's not to say that they might have kept one or two warheads lying around, but if they have any, it is a relatively trivial number - and probably of the tactical variety, primarily intended to maintain their independence from Russia.
Apple also announced other new products like a 14' display on some iBooks, and iPhoto
I think CmdrTaco might mean 14" (inchdes) not 14' (feet); while a laptop with a 14 foot display might be cool, it definitely wouldn't be practical!
Is it just me, or does anyone expect this thing to jump around the desk trying to find a ball? It really does look like a desk-lamp... I wonder how much light it produces?
At risk of losing all my karma, but here goes.... if you enable XP's built in firewall on a network interface, you'll discover that you can no longer connect to the universal plug and play service on that interface. So yes, it helps a lot actually!
On the other hand, a poorly-planned, creeping-feature project with little engineering and a lot of hacking/coding probably is impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy.
I'm pretty sure that explains XP's poor showing; Advanced Server is a very different beast from Professional - I suspect that Win2k Professional would perform equally poorly. XP Advanced Server isn't even due out until next year - and will probably be Windows 2002 AS, although the naming hasn't been finalized!
That said, I'd like to see details specs for the machines involved... quantity of RAM, CPU, what else was installed, etc.
Interesting; can you recommend any papers or books that discuss this in more detail
Some of the more prominent texts that deal with this topic:
House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail , Colin S. Gray (1992).
Explorations in Strattegy, Colin S. Gray (1996).
Both these works are viewed as seminal by several notable right-wind Republican theorists. For example, Dr. J.D. Crouch (whom I think is now an undersecretary for defense, although the Senate was close to blocking him at one point) at SMSU based a great many of his anti-arms control lectures on these works. Frank Gaffney, cited in the original article, also likes to refer to these texts.
For the record, Dr. Gray is a lot more complicated than his reputation would seem to make him appear; I have a lot more respect for him than I do for some of the views people express based upon his work. Dr. Gray is a wholistic strategist - that is, he favours taking into account all angles of an issue. Many modern-day Republicans (Gaffney, Kugler, et al.) only wish they could achieve insight such as this, in my (not so humble!) opinion.
One of the primary targets amongst my right-wing colleagues was the Outer Space Treaty. In particular, they are upset by the "no weapons in space" rule (itself subject to some interpretation as to what it actually means), the "celestial bodies aren't owned by nations" rule, and the "free passage in space over any nation" rule. Finding a way to quietly erode this treaty would make them very happy, because the best way to get rid of a treaty is to quietly let it slip into obsolescence. That way you avoid all of the shouting that accompanies the current missile defense row, for example. The ASAT prorgam, Space Based Laser program, Brilliant Pebbles, and similar have already walked this particular path
The Pentagon has long talked about a Space Plane project. As it is, this is a bad program. The X-33 has technical issues, but I'm sure they will be worked out. On the other hand, it's heavy, relatively fuel-inefficient (for example, the failure of honeycomb design fuel tanks - and replacement with conventional ones - has resulted in significant weight gain/total fuel loss). It also wastes a HUGE amount of infrastucture on carrying a human crew - the same problem exhibited in other Air Force projects. Make something like this unmanned and you can halve the weight, greatly reduce development costs, and make running costs significantly lower - not to mention you don't have to worry so much about pilot safety.
This program satisfies several of these objectives. It further militarises space, gives the Pentagon a shiny new weapon, and gives Frank Gaffney reason to send more faxes to anyone and everyone. In reality, it will be like the B2; expensive, capable of hitting a small number of targets per trip (with high turnaround times, to boot). It's unlikely that very many will be built, and the X33 program already has significant cost overruns. Just like the B2, it will be dubbed as "equivalent to X conventional planes" (with X being a large number) despite the fact that you still need the other X-1 planes for more general purpose missions. Rumsfield is proving to be like Weinberger; willing to spend big bucks on technology that the services want without trying to fit it into any sort of grand strategy. His obsession with China can't be helping, either. Expect several more "silver bullet" military solutions of this type - arsenal ships spring to mind.
My understanding is that you use the solar sail to accelerate. Since there isn't much friction in space, you don't have to worry about slowing down - so you accelerate (using force derived from the sail) until you hit the velocity you want - and then you unfurl/hide/rotate the sail. At this point, you'll keep going in a straight line at your established speed (subject to gravitational bodies, etc.). The great news about using a sail to approach a body with a star is that you have a ready source of energy when you want to come back! (Subject to rotation of planets, etc.)
That's not entirely true. If you have an old WinCE device (like my HP320LX), it is true that you have to ship a physical ROM upgrade. (The WinCE 2 upgrade was worth every penny!). My Compaq iPaq has a flashable ROM - and has already been the beneficiary of an upgrade.
Microsoft's latest attempt at finding a benchmark that favors them?
In case you didn't know, this is how all air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles work.
In most cases, you are correct. What I was referring to is the recent obsession with "hit-to-kill" technology. Specifically, Patriot (PAC-3) and THAAD missiles are kinetic-kill rather than explosive. This means that they actually have to slam into the target to make a kill. That is one of the reasons that making THAAD usable is so difficult! Amazing how technology goes backwards, sometimes...
But Russia do have some kick-ass long range air defence systems, but the problem such systems is target identification.
True - witness the difficulty their second-line equipment had in both Bosnia and the Gulf War. (Although they have made a LOT of progress since then).
What's the point in shooting down a target far away if you don't know if it's a friend or foe?
Depends upon the target, but I agree in general. :-)
I'm not sure if the double-digit russian SA-systems (NATO classification) uses active or semi-active radar in the missiles (semi-active requires an illumination radar to paint the target,
Depends upon whom you ask. :-p Seriously, a lot of former-Soviet technology was pretty seriously misreported (even overstated), so often figuring out exactly what it does can be difficult. I'd probably guess that there are some active missiles in the SA range - probably with all-aspect acquisition.
You are also right about the doctrine that states "shoot everything down" - the SA-X range even have nuclear options to make sure that you hit the target. (Small nukes, so really not as dramatic as it sounds - but still an impressive hit radius).
The funny part of this is that there are several military areas in which Russia - and friends (China, in particular) have always done better than the West. In particular, missile defence, SAM systems and similar. Admittedly, part of their success may be attributed to a willingness to detonate an explosive near the target - rather than just trying to hit it, but their systems are very advanced. The really funny part is that old Macs (68k and some early PowerPC), old PCs (386s, 486s) are readily available in so-called "rogue states" - in fact, the United States has led the way in giving old PCs to Russia! 3/486s may be a little slow, but they are still significantly more advanced than the chips that guided the original MX missile. They are also a well-established, well-understood technology - and therefore attractive to militaries. (What do you think they are using in Internet Cafes in Iran?)
Personally, I always thought that the "Iraq wants PS2s" argument was a subtle ad-campaign for Sony. While the Emotion Engine is powerful, it is focussed pretty heavily on 3D rendering. While I can think of some uses for it, I'd much rather develop systems on readily available PC parts!
So far, .NET seems to be a combination of the following:
Common runtime format, permitting the same code to run on any platform that fully supports the CRF, and also permitting interoperability between any CRF compatible language. CRF works by compiling into p-code, and then having the installer (or browser?) compile code as needed.
SOAP, XML, WDSL and UDDI services permitting servers to talk to one another.
Passport authentication/subscription
Hailstorm information distribution systems
That's an awful lot of targets for a company that has been reported as being low on cash, and has yet to provide a GUI/browser as compelling as it's competition.