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Thursday, July 28, 2005

Patent work Patent work

Finally finishing up on a patent specification revision. It has been brutal.

The way it typically works is that I draft a patent specification (and drawings) and give the inventor an electronic copy of the specification to mark up with his changes. I have revisions enabled (but not visible) so I can see what he did. Alternatively, he can write his changes longhand on a hard copy of the draft application, and I will then transcribe most of them into the next revision. Either works. The former is more efficient, and, thus, I prefer it. All I have typically do then is either accept or reject each of his changes.

But this inventor sent back a revision that didn't bear any resemblence to my original draft. Rather, it looked a lot more like his original documentation. When I talked to him on the phone, he proudly informed me that his girlfriend was a very fast typist, and that he had used her to retype the entire patent specification.

Needless to say, it bore no resemblence to what I had done before. Worse, the changes were so massive that the Word compare document feature essentially showed that my original document had been deleted and replace by his new one.

Add to this that he had readded pages of detail to the claims, contrary to the purpose of that portion of the specification (see my patent outline entry on patent claims).

The result of this is that I have spent a week doing what should have taken a half a day. I had to go through and thoroughly reread both my original draft of the specification and the inventor's rewrite, word by word, matching things up as I went. It was so bad because nothing was in the same place.

But, as I said, it was brutal, but I'm done.

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Wikipedia (#2) Wikipedia (#2)

Four days ago, I posted a blog entry on some of the problems with using Wikipedia as a reference for political subjects. Last night at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr started off a very similar discussion, in this case about the inacuracies in the Wikipedia entry for the USA Patriot Act, and the attempts that Prof. Kerr had made to correct them, only to find that they had invariably been reverted back to their previous, much more liberal, contents, with apparently comments suggesting that Prof. Kerr was a right wing tool of the Administration.

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Spam Spam

Yesterday I got a Nigerian Scam letter from Daniel Kabila (or someone claiming to be he). Haven't actually gotten one from him for quite awhile.

And then, this morning, I had ten new emails, all spam. Three of them though were pushing small cap stocks. This type of spam seems to becoming more prevalent.

The problem with them is the assumption that I am brain dead. Why would I buy a small cap stock that someone whom I don't know is touting? Esp., when he is touting it to millions at the same time?

Yes, the stocks are probably getting ready for runs. But the runs would be almost entirely caused by the spam stock tips. So, the natural scam is that someone is into the stock already and is trying to drive the price up now. Duh. At least with advice from stock brokers, I know where they are making their money, and it is typically not directly on the stock they are hyping. Rather, it is either indirect, or, more likely, they just want me to churn my (nonexistent) stock account.

It took awhile to figure out how all those spammers hawking the same offshore drug sites were making their money. Turns out that in many cases, the URL they give you shoots you through Google or the like on the way to the drug sites, getting them credit for a hit along the way, which, ultimately, they get paid for.

Finally, my favorite. All the alerts I keep getting from financial institutions, most notably eBay and PayPal, that they have detected some unauthorized activity on my (nonexistent) account, and so I should sign on and verify all my information. Somehow though the sign-on page never matches the official domain names of the supposed financial institutions. Typically, instead, I see an IP address instead. Sometimes, though, a domain somewhere in Europe or Asia. Even occasionally, something local, which invariably turns out to have been hacked.

The obvious scam here is to get all that information from you that you are so kindly verifying for them, and then to use it to, for example, clean out your checking accounts. Other than that, of course, relatively harmless. Actually, in the long run, that is not that different from the Nigerian Scam that started this whole entry off - your bank account number (and the money that unlocks) is the goal of the whole Nigerian scam too.

What is great about these financial institution scams is that often there is a link on the sign-on page on their fake site to the fraud prevention page for the actual financial institution that they are pretending to be. Indeed, most of the links on their bogus page are the real links.

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Sunday, July 24, 2005

Wikipedia and political debate Wikipedia and political debate

Wikipedia is growing by leaps and bounds as a reference on the Web. There were recent discussions on the Larry Lessig blog by Cass Sunstein titled "Wikipedia, Prices, and Hayek" and at the Volokh Conspiracy by Todd Zywicki titled "Sunstein on Hayek". Both posts, along with numerous attached comments, discussed how Wikipedia compares with the pricing model championed by Hayek some 60 years ago.

I am seeing an ever increasing use of Wikipedia as a cited source in political discussions, esp. in political blog comment threads. However, the Wikipedia concept seems to break down here for several reasons, making it essentially worthless as a primary resource.

First, you really don't know what someone is citing. A cited entry may have been changed since he cited it. Sure, you can go into the revision history for the page and see when it was revised, and, and then guess, based on the time the entry was cited what it contained at that point. But that first presupposes that you know how to peruse the revision history, and second, you have to assume that the Wikipedia entry was loaded immediately before the entry citing it was made. This can be problematic, esp. when you see the same posters using the same Wikipedia cites time and time again. Odds are that they reviewed the Wikipedia article one time, and have been cutting and pasting the cite ever since. And, of course, you probably don't know when they first used the cite.

Secondly, the contents of Wikipedia are dynamic. Everyone can update a given Wikipedia page. One consequence of this is that when there are varying interpretation of facts, it can become a contest between different factions on which version of the facts is portrayed on a given page at any given time. They may vary minute by minute, one minute supporting one side, and the next, another.

The result of this is that Wikipedia lends itself to the potential for organized political campaigns in the case of pages that ostensibly define and explain political topics. The faction that has the most people updating the pages is the faction that is going to have its viewpoint represented on those pages. In short, Wikipedia here has a very similar failing to online polls - those participating are self-selected, and all you have to do to win such a poll is get your partisans to participate at a higher frequency than your opponents do. Wikipedia here is similar, the partisan group working the hardest to maintain a given viewpoint on a given Wikipedia page is likely to win.

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Thursday, July 21, 2005

Roberts (#2) Roberts (#2)

Chattering classes seem to believe that there won't be a fillibuster over Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court. I will have to see it to believe it. My guess is that that is purely spin, so that when they find something, anything, the Democrats can say, "well, we wouldn't have fillibustered, except for this damaging information".

Interesting to me, it seems like the big thing that they will try to hit him with is his joining in an opinion that essentially confirms that the Club Gitmo detainees are subject to military, and not civilian, justice. But as I pointed out in a previous post, this conclusion was foregone, esp. in time of war. The military has exclusive jurisdiction because it is a military base located on land, possession of which is disputed by Cuba, while our claim is enforced by a regiment or so of Marines.

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Club Gitmo (#2) Club Gitmo (#2)

A week or so ago, a three judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that military justice was, essentially, all that was required of the detainees being held at Club Gitmo.

To some extent, this result was a foregone conclusion. The administration, including, notably, AG Gonzales, had done their homework.

The beauty of Gitmo for this is that it one of the only places in the world where the U.S. military has sole jurisdiction over everyone there. It is a military base located on territory disputed by Cuba, and our claim to it is enforced through the last 46 years by force of arms - remember the scenes from "A Few Good Men"? We have a regiment or so of Marines stationed at the military base there, manning the wall between Gitmo and the rest of Cuba.

The only other places where the U.S. military has exclusive jurisdiction over the people there are our military ships at sea - though I doubt that we would cede jurisdiction to another country even if not in international waters.

So, if we had brought the detainees back to the U.S., proper, they arguably would have been subject to the full Bill of Rights, etc., and the possibility of non-military justice. And if we had left them at one of our bases elsewhere in the world, there would always have been the possibility of that other country trying to enforce jurisdiction.

So, Gitmo is unique for us in the world. Because it is a military base, it is subject to military jurisdiction, but because we hold it by force of arms, that jurisdiction is sole and unique. And, thus, the courts could not, in the long run, have ruled in any other way, because, to do so, would have undermined almost 240 years of military justice, potentially subjecting soldiers to civilian jurisdiction for crimes committed while engaged in military persuits. In short, civilian courts overseeing military justice, and, thus, ultimately, military operations.

As a result of this, Club Gitmo was an inspired choice for a place for detaining illegal combatants.

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Club Gitmo Club Gitmo

Many have now heard of "Club Gitmo". The first I heard of it was on Rush. He pushes it, and you can see it showing up in blogs now. His justification is that the conditions down there are really fairly nice, considering the circumstances. Good food, respect for their religion, good chance for exercise for the minimum security detainees, etc. Indeed, it appears to be somewhat better conditions than we provide at most of our prisons. And, most notably, because of the good diet and healthcare, the detainees who have been released have been on average 14 lbs. heavier than when they arrived, and in much better health.

So, to some extent, I would suggest that the reason for the Club Gitmo meme is to highlight that conditions there are really significantly better than the detainees were facing before joining. In short, their time there can potentially be seen as vacations at Club Gitmo.

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Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Roberts and Plame Roberts and Plame

We now have something else to talk about than the Wilson / Plame / Novak / Rove, etc. "scandal". Judge John Roberts has been nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Bush. Should keep the chattering class busy for the rest of the summer.

Interesting, to me, I was talking to my brother yesterday on the phone when the announcement was made. He has almost the same first and middle name as the nominee has first and last. Coincidence. Of course, since I don't have a TV, I picked it up on Drudge while we talked.

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Computers (#5) Computers (#5)

All four systems are up and operational now. I finally found out how to install NetBEUI on Win XP. MSFT makes it hard because they are trying to move away from it to running NetBIOS over TCP/IP for Windows networks. It does help just a little bit, but the XP machine (#E) still acts like a poor stepchild of the three Win 2K computers. The way I am configured, each of them can access the other two as an Administrator. I have password protection on all of this, but in the 2K to 2K environment, apparently the passwords gets shipped along with the userids whenever you are signing onto another (2K) computer, and, thus, is transparent.

Under Win 2K, you can specify which users and groups have which access to which shares. The default is to allow all users unlimited access to each shared resource. I went through all of the shared storage devices (including directories) on the three 2K computers and changed them from allowing all users to allowing just Administrators to access them. I did allow read access to my Install shares (i.e. install files), but that was it.

I also created a server userid on the server (#G). The idea here is that it will only be allowed to read from a small area of its disk, and write to even less. Hopefully, this will help keep my systems safe.

In any case, so far it all seems to be working.

Finally a note on the ZDS server (#G). Zenith Data Systems (ZDS) made its name maybe fifteen or so years ago winning DoD contracts for PCs. Bull, my old employer, purchased the company at the top. Needless to say, what the government can give, it can take away, and ZDS started downhill soon after that. The glories of French ownership of a high tech company.

In any case, Bull bought ZDS computers because it, well, owned ZDS. But Bull was milking its U.S. assets, most notably its GCOS systems group in Phoenix where I worked as a patent attorney. So, it has been downsizing for better than two decades in Phoenix, from somewhere near 10,000 employees down to less than 500.

So, during one of these downsizes, a lot of computers were surplused. We had a drawing for being allowed to buy them, and I "won" the right to buy a 125 mhz P5 system with Win 98, Office 97, etc. for $50. I did, and gave it to my daughter. But she wasn't ever allowed to bring it to her mother's house, as the later wants to maintain control of our daughter's computer usage. So, I had this spare machine. I used it for awhile three years ago in Dillon, but then the HD failed. I replaced it with a 40 gb drive (but the BIOS can't access that much - maybe 32 gb). In any case, upon reinstalling Win 98, I found that I didn't have the video and ethernet drivers for it. And at that, I quit trying to use it until a couple of days ago. I tried to get Win 98 drivers from Bull a couple of months ago, but they had just had another downsizing, and had dumped all such unused software at that time. In any case, I have gotten better than three years of usage out of the video monitor that came with it, so the $50 wasn't wasted (and, indeed, am viewing what I am writing here right now on that monitor). And, now the computer is operational running Win 2K.

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John Roberts as Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts as Supreme Court Nominee

Well, everyone was a bit surprised. John Roberts is President Bush's first nominee for the Supreme Court. One surprising thing is how well the White House was able to keep this secret. Up until shortly before his name was disclosed, Judge Roberts was considered a dark horse on TRADESPOTS. Apparently, his name didn't really start to move up until an hour or so before it was announced formally. Pretty good security at the White House.

In any case, a lot of people were surprised at the nomination. But, maybe they shouldn't have been. I am pulling together some of the things I have said elsewhere this morning.

First note that Roberts is very bright and decently young. The first a given, and the second strongly preferred by this Administration. But as importantly, he isn't an academic, and has not been a judge that long. Rather, he spent most of his career as a litigatior - reportedly a very good litigator.

This has a lot of ramifications. First, and most obviously, he lacks a long paper trail. He does have some briefs where he was listed as an attorney, but can honestly claim that he was just doing what attorneys do there - represent their clients. The views expressed therein may or may not be his views, but rather were the views of his client. At that point, the opposition is left with arguing guilt by association.

Next, academics like to hear themselves talk. Judges, to some extent do too. Both have captive audiences. One of these backgrounds may lead to a nominee saying too much. Ann Althouse pointed out the obvious example - Robert Bork.

A litigator knows that a good witness is one who keeps his mouth shut when appropriate, for example, by sticking to "yes", "no", and "I don't remember", on cross. But as a litigator he also knows that he has to watch what he says there too.

For example, one of the adages that you are taught in Evidence Class is that of asking one question too many. You pretty much don't ask any question in court of a hostile witness that you don't know the answer to. If you do, you can sometimes open the door for them to sandbag you. But also, litigators have to watch what they say throughout the case. Too much detail, for example, in the opening or closing, or sometimes even in the trial itself, can confuse a jury.

So, I expect Judge Roberts to be extremely well prepared and to watch what he says very carefully during his confirmation hearings. And because he is a better litigator than most, if not all, of the Democrats he will be facing, I don't expect him to say anything that will adversely affect his nomination.

So, here is my prediction. Roberts will not make any mistakes during the confirmation hearing. He is too good of a litigator, and those on the Democratic side questioning him, by and large, are not. So, his nomination will be sent to the floor on a party line vote. No surprise.

In the Senate, the Democrats will grandstand, but do even worse with him. The Republicans will let this go on for awhile, until they vote for cloture, which will lose on another party line vote. Then, they pull the pin on the "nuclear option". Maybe one or two Republicans may stray, but that is unlikely. McCain knows that if he helps in keeping Roberts off of the Supreme Court, the Republicans won't vote for him for dog catcher, never mind president. And VP Cheney is in the wings if things get tight. So, with the new majority vote rule in place for judicial nominations, debate will be shut off, and Roberts will be confirmed by the Senate, with maybe a couple of adventursome Democrats voting aye.

So, in the end, the Republicans will have both a controversial nominee appointed to the Supreme Court as precedent for later nominations, AND, the majority rule for cutting off debate on judicial nominees. The next one will be a lot easier.

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Monday, July 18, 2005

Keller On Miller's Life Behind Bars: Bad Food But Good Spirits Keller On Miller's Life Behind Bars: Bad Food But Good Spirits

Let's see if I get this. Reporter is told by the U.S. Supreme Court to respond to questions by a grand jury. She refuses. Judge finds her in contempt. She goes to jail until she speaks, as required by the grand jury.

The NYT is now moaning that the food isn't as nice as in their own cafeteria in the jail in which she is housed. Taranto would probably include a small violin with this post for all the sympathy this invokes outside the confines of the NYT.

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Computers (#4) Computers (#4)

Well, the server (#G) is operational and is connected to the internal network. I can get to the other three machines from it. Unfortunately, the installed SMC adaptor only runs at 10 mbs, as compared to 100 mbs for the other three computers and the router. But, the external DSL link is even slower, so I should only see this slowness when moving stuff between computers. Also it is a fairly slow machine already (125 mhz P5), so shouldn't be much of a problem.

And some more good news. Win 2K recognized the video adaptor (S3 Trio32/64) 1and apparently installed the correct drivers. Win 98 didn't recognize either the video or the ethernet adaptors last year when I installed the hard drive.

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Windows (i.e. computers #3) Windows (i.e. computers #3)

Reading my previous posts, you might wonder why I have four different versions of Windows lying around, and have multibooted two of my machines (#D, #F) to allow booting between them.

So, here is what I have (and may ultimately have) on each of the four computers:
#D(old desktop) - Win NT (4.0), 98, and 2K
#E(laptop) - Win XP
#F(new desktop) - Win XP(temp), 98, 2K (+Linux?)
#G(new server) - Win 2K (+98 and/or Linux?)

So, why use all these different operating systems:

Win NT - stable as a rock, and has a working PDF writer. Unfortunately, does not have plug and play or FAT32 support. Also, NTFS support does not support the size of disks that 2K and XP does.

Win 98 - installs from DOS, has plug and play. Can share a partition with any NT varient (at least NT (FAT) and 2K (FAT, FAT32)). Supports FAT32, but not NTFS. Also, older library of drivers than 2K. Finally, it is built on 3.x, instead of NT, and, thus, has DOS bolted underneath. This means stability problems. It is much easier to crash the OS.

Win 2K - Supports FAT32, big disk NTFS, and plug and play. Also, since this is the Professional version, has a lot of security enhancements. More stable than XP and 98, less than NT 4.

Win XP - Piece of junk, but came with the laptop (#E). Because of this, it is the OS that continually gets reinstalled whenever I have hardware problems. Some nice features, but, overall, inferior to 2K. Also, doesn't have NetBEUI or NetBIOS support directly, but only over TCP/IP.

Linux - possibly better for running as a server.

My OS of choice is Win 2K, Professional Edition. One reason is that when you access a 2K machine from another such, you don't need a userid or password. You do with both 98 and XP. Also, it runs NetBEUI, so computer to computer is much faster and easier. Indeed, I typically have to search for the XP machine whenever I want to access it from another, and, visa versa.

Because it is the Professional Edition, I also have much finer control over security. Almost infinately fine. You can give one user access to some files, and another gets access to other files. Figure this will be handy when bringing up my server on the Internet.

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Computers (#2) Computers (#2)

Well, things finally looked up. First, though, I did have a couple of wrong turns. The first one was probably sleep-deprived. I figured I needed a bootable CD for Win 2K. So, I created one, using a Win 98 bootable floppy as the boot stuff. About the time I was finishing, I realized that that was plain brain dead. First, the subject machine (#G) can't boot from CDs in the first place. And, second, Win 2K needs to install under Windows, and the Win 98 floppy loads DOS.

But that got me thinking about diskette imaging, so I went back to my laptop (#E) and looked at what I had there, including some software to create diskette images and write them to floppy. Slick software. But then I needed a Win 2K or XP image to start from, so I looked in the 2K install files and found a directory titled "BOOTDISK" that had four diskette images, that were incompatible with the software I had just been playing with. But it also contains two programs, makeboot.exe, and makebt32.exe. Tried clicking on them, and both copy those four diskette images to diskette.

All of a sudden, the light went on. Being short of diskettes, I reused the XP recovery diskettes. On #4, the process choked. Turns out that the reason I had problems earlier was that diskette was bad. So, I restarted the process, but realized that I really didn't need to rewrite the first three. So, just left the new 4th one in while it got written four times. Meanwhile, I was booting from the four disketttes. Surprisingly, the laptop (#E) was making floppies about twice as fast as the server (#G) was booting from the ones I had just made. Then, the boot process failed, again on the 4th floppy. Giving it one more shot, rewrote the whole series onto a fresh(er) fourth diskette, while I was rebooting the server. And, voila, got to the Win 2K installation menu. Went into recovery mode, and fixed up the first partition, ultimately formatting it as FAT32. Then, rebooted, using all four diskettes again, and when I got to the installation menu, installed Win 2K this time. Worked like a dream. Currently, as I write this (on my old computer, #D), intallation is wrapping up.

Oh, and what is slick is that Win 2K not only figured out what the Ethernet card was (SMC EtherEZ 8416), but appears to have found a driver for it. This is the good side of plug and play. Don't have as much hope for the video card, but, hey, its going to be a server.

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Sunday, July 17, 2005

Computers Computers

Last two days have been somewhat stressful as far as computers go.

Let's start off with some background. I typically build my own computers. Prior to this weekend, I was on #E (my laptop - the only machine I haven't built). I got a gift certificate from WallMart / Sam's Club for Christmas to buy a TV, but bought another computer (#F) instead. Well, a fairly bare bones computer, plus some parts to add, such as a big disk drive (250gb I think), memory, floppy drive. That all is pretty straight forward by now.

But I only have one monitor and one working keyboard (well, one ergonomic one - I have another one or two straight ones). So, I figured I needed a KVM switch before I could proceed. Finally scored not one, but two, such when I was in Phoenix at Fry's Electronics a week and a half ago. First, there was a 2 way switch for half price. Bought it. Then a 4 way for what the 2 way should have cost. Bought that too, and that is the one that I have installed now. Works pretty well - usually. Allows up to 4 computers to share the same monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Initially booted (#F) from a Windows XP CD, and in maintenance mode, partitioned and formatted the HD. Currently, can only get to about 150 gb of the 250 gb, but hey, that's a lot more than my 40 gb drives. Did three 8 gb partitions, and the rest in one big NTFS partition. Then, I loaded Linux into one partition, along with all the web tools I could find on that CD.

But then I was faced with the problem that the only bootable Windows CDs I had was for XP. Win 2K won't set up from DOS (i.e. when booted from a floppy), and 98 didn't have a bootable CD. So, I loaded an illegal copy of XP (it expires in 30 days) on the machine in one of the higher 8 gb partitions. From that, I connected to one of my other computers, and copied the install files for Win 98 and 2K, along with some tools, Office, Mozilla, etc. into the big NTFS partition.

Whoops, need to have Win 98 installed before 2K since 2K will only install from Windows. So, moved the install files down into the bottom (FAT32) partition. Then, I rebooted using the XP CD into maintenance mode (later note - could have done it from HD), where I could then install Windows 98 from the install files I had just copied to the HD. Once I got it up and running, I could then install Windows 2K.

At this point, I am running with standard Windows 98 and 2K video drivers and don't have any Ethernet drivers at all loaded. So, I try to install from the CD that came with the computer. Doesn't work automatically with 98 (but does with XP earlier, and later with 2K). So, I try doing it by hand. But, of course, I didn't know which exact drivers to install. So, I probably installed the wrong ones or something. This time, 98 won't load any more, except in Safe mode, which is worthless right now. So, after trying to delete everything new to no avail, I reinstalled 98, only this time to the standard location. Then, I got the drivers for 2K installed automatically.

Whoops, forgot something. Apparently either my processor or my motherboard is screwed up. The system won't reboot on its own. Rather, you have to turn it off, back on, and then boot. Normally, this wouldn't be a pain, but was these two days because I have had to do it dozens of times - three times per install, three times per XP or 2K driver install, whenever I switch back and forth between OSs, etc.

Back to 98. Even though I had the 2K (and XP) drivers installed, and could have identified the proper drivers from that, I tried guessing again with 98, and probably guessed wrong. Either that, or I added some networking stuff that doesn't have the underlying 98 modules. In any case, the 98 system would now not find four different modules every time it booted (each with an answerable message), plus, since I had deleted the Ethernet drivers, it would invariably try to reinstall something each time I booted (the joys of plug and play). Ultimately, I ended up reinstalling it a third time. We shall see if I can get the right drivers installed this time.

So much for that machine (#F), at least for now.

Meanwhile, since I have this nice 4 way KVM switch, and four Ethernet ports on my router, I figured I might as well bring up a ZDS desktop (#G) that I had acquired four years ago for my daughter (except that her mother wouldn't let her have it) as a network server. At some point, the HD failed on it, and I replaced it with a 40 gb drive - that I can only partially access. Unfortunately, I didn't have the video and Ethernet drivers, so it just sat around for a couple of years. But I figure it will make a nice email and web server if I can ever get it running.

In any case, I booted it (#G) with a Win 98 recovery diskette. No problem. It even loaded CD drivers. Nice. Looked at the partitioning, and found that I had created a bunch of 2 gb FAT partitioned. But the only reason that you need FAT partitions is when you are going to run both NT (4) and 98 together. Win 98 supports FAT32, and NT supports NTFS (on a smaller scale than 2K or XP). Since I was planning on primarily running 2K instead, I deleted all those 2 gb FAT partitions, replacing them with one 8 gb FAT32 partition. Great. After rebooting though (required by FDISK), I found that the 98 format wouldn't work on a HD, just on floppies. What? That is bizarre. Format works fine on hard drives with NT and progeny (2K, XP).

No problem, I will just boot from the XP CD, and do what I did earlier on the new computer. Whoops, this computer is old enough that you can only boot from floppy or HD. So, back to floppies. Booted 98 recovery floppy again, and tried to install 98 from CD. Whoops. The recovery diskette loads RAMDISK, and for some reason, that became C drive. Couldn't install there. So, I laboriously rewrote the autoexec.bat and config.sys files from that floppy onto another one, which I had included format this time. So, booted again from floppy, disabling RAMDRIVE. This time 98 wouldn't install because the only formatted partition it found was that old NTFS partition, and 98 doesn't support NTFS (the NT in NTFS is, of course, for NT).

I have tried repeatedly to delete that partition using FDISK from the 98 recovery disk - the same way I deleted all those 2 gb FAT partitions. It says fine, then doesn't do it. So, I currently have an 8 gb unformatted partition first on that disk, and then the remaining 32 gb is in a formatted NTFS partition.

Well, I have three versions of NT lying around, 4.0, 2K, and XP, why not try one of them? Well, 4.0 doesn't support FAT32, which is what I need. 2K and XP do, but 2K will only install under Windows, and not DOS (which is what you have from the 98 recovery diskette). And XP refuses to install on such a slow processor.

I only needed the maintenance console anyway, and I happened to have a set of 6 XP recovery diskettes. So, I tried that - but choked on #4. And the only ways to create a new set is through either (re)installing XP somewhere, or, maybe, from maintenance mode. But the floppy drive on the laptop (which is the machine that is supposed to be running XP) is USB, and thus not available in maintenance mode.

So, my next step is to try booting from floppy, and then trying to get into XP maintenance mode from its install CD. Otherwise, will need to get into it probably from the new computer. Maybe.

I should note that part of these problems are caused because I was unable to create bootable CDs. The laptop (#E) has a writable CD drive, but XP has no option to make them bootable and my CD burning software I use elsewhere (#D) won't run under XP. But the old computer (#D) that I have been using the last couple of years could burn bootable CDs, if it worked. But currently, it isn't recognizing blank CDs. The new machine (#F) has a CD writer, and that software should work there - except this server system (#G) can't be booted from CD, just floppy and HD.

Confusing huh?

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Friday, July 15, 2005

Judith Miller's WMD reporting - New York Times war reporting - Hunt for WMD Judith Miller's WMD reporting - New York Times war reporting - Hunt for WMD

Judith Miller is now sitting in jail after refusing to disclose her source to the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame scandal. Karl Rove, and apparently most, if not all, others in the White House that might be involved, have waived any confidentiality as to testifying to the grand jury. So, the question is who is Ms. Miller protecting.

The most obvious suspect is Valerie Plame, or, possibly, her husband, Wilson. Why?

Valerie Plame is now known as a CIA employee specializing in WMD proliferation. She has extensive middle east experience, apparently some undercover for the CIA, in that area, where she apparently met her husband, Wilson.

Judith Miller, on the other hand, was for a long time the NYT expert on WMD proliferation AND one of their middle east experts. She has spent a lot of time in the area, building up a number of contacts. Indeed, she is apparently even on a first name basis with the King of Jordan. Interestingly though, the above article points out that while "Risen and Bergman are diggers, excavating documents and sources hidden deep in the bureaucracy. Miller, on the other hand, relies on her well-placed, carefully tended-to connections to nab her stories".

There were, I suspect, not all that many middle aged American women running around the middle east throughout the 1990s. Two of them however are involved in this scandal. And both have a deep interest in WMD proliferation, esp. in the middle east.

So, how unlikely is it that these two women did not know each other before the scandal broke?

The problem is that the company that Plame worked for, a CIA cover operation, had, essentially, been blown by the time of this scandal two years ago. So, even if Plame didn't initially admit to CIA employment to Miller, it is likely that someone as well connected and tuned in as she, would have figured it out fairly quickly.

My suspicion then is that the source that Miller is protecting is either Plame herself, or her husband, Wilson. It makes just too much logical sense.

We shall see.

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Monday, July 11, 2005

Moving surgery offshore Moving surgery offshore

Interesting new phenomena - moving surgery offshore.

I was talking to a good friend today, and he mentioned that one of our ski guides had flown to India for a hip replacement, and then was on skis six weeks later. Turns out, with Canada's socialized medical system, it would have been three years before he could have had it done locally. This was three years when he wouldn't have been able to work at his chosen profession.

Apparently, facing that three year wait, he had queried his well-to-do clients on the matter, and someone turned him on to Indian hip replacements.

Then, one of the guys who skiis with us did the same. Apparently, it is cheaper to fly to India and have it done, than to have it done here in the U.S. Interestingly, this guy is an MD, board certified in sports medicine.

This is interesting to me for a number of reasons. One is that apparently the Indian docs and their facilities are comparable to what we have here, yet they can move a lot faster and more cheaply. For example, the ski guide had a week wait, instead of the three years the Canadian socialized medical system offered.

Our medical system has gotten quite bloated over the last number of decades. Physicians make too much, and hospitals gouge - to support both inefficient practices and to cross-subsidize their indigent and some not so indigent patients.

Of course, they are skimming the cream. They aren't (yet) being funded by insurance or our governments. The whole discussion started when this friend pointed out that his girlfriend needed such an operation - but because she is not healty, she is not a candidate for this Indian surgery.

But still, I think that this is significant.

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Sunday, July 10, 2005

Blogging Blogging

First the good news - someone actually read this blog.

Now the bad news - it was my ex wife, who is apparently pushing for me to remove one or more posts.

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Matt Cooper's Source - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com Matt Cooper's Source - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com

Matt Cooper's Source - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com reinforces that it is highly unlikely that anyone committed a crime in the original "outing" of Plame as a CIA operative.

Here is what we know right now:
- Plame suggested that her husband, Wilson, be sent to Niger because of his experience - apparently not mentioning that he was prominent in Democratic party politics.
- Wilson goes to Niger, returns, and gives a ambiguous report to the CIA that could be taken to bolster the theory that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain nuclear materials from Africa.
- About 6 months later, Wilson, in an editorial to the NYT, “lies� about that, and states the opposite - that he found no evidence of such.
- Apparently Rove cautioned a couple of reporters that Wilson’s trip had not been authorized by the DCIA (Tenet) or VP (Cheney), but rather “it was, KR said, Wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.�
- Novak broke essentially that story, with the exception (if I remember right) that he did not point out that neither Tenet nor Cheney authorized the trip, just that it was Plame who suggested it.
- Wilson then brings up the fact that Plame was undercover, and pushes for prosecution.
- The AG recuses himself and appoints Fitzgerald to investigate this.

If you reread the original Novak story that started it all, no mention is made that Plame is or was ever undercover. That only came later - from Wilson. He only states that she works for the CIA, and most CIA employees are NOT legally “covert agents", as Plame may have been at some point in the previous 5 years (she wasn’t at that time, because she was working in the U.S.) Note also that Rove apparently did not state that she was undercover, just that she worked on WMD at the CIA.

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