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Week of 9 October 2006


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Monday, 9 October 2006
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09:40 - It appears that North Korea has detonated a fission device with a yield between 0.5 kilotons and 15 kilotons, depending on which report you believe. As I write this, the UN Security Council has just begun discussing what steps to take. Perhaps because I'm not a diplomat, it seems obvious to me what needs to be done. The only alternative is regime change, by whatever means are necessary. It's simply unacceptable, even to China and Russia, for the nutcase North Korean regime to possess nukes.

North Korea has put itself in the unenviable position of being dangerous but defenseless. It has no deliverable nuclear weapons, but has made the mistake of threatening powerful countries that do have such weapons. North Korea has alienated China and Russia, its last defenders. I expect to see a lot of useless talk over the coming months, and many will no doubt decide that ultimately nothing will be done. My own view is that this useless talk is merely a necessary preliminary phase, but that ultimately China, Russia, and the US will eliminate North Korea as a threat. It's in no one's interest to allow the raving lunatics in North Korea to develop deliverable nuclear weapons.



I downloaded Windows Vista RC2 Friday, intending to install it and play with it a bit. Fortunately, I came to my senses before I installed it. I realized that the likelihood that I would ever install Vista on a production machine was 0.0000, so there didn't seem to be any point in installing it even for a quick look. I suppose that eventually I'll have to install Vista on test-bed systems to do screen shots for books, but until then there's no point to messing with it.


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Tuesday, 10 October 2006
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11:03 - It occurred to me yesterday as I was working on the new astronomy book that I have nothing under contract to start on once I finish it. That's always an uncomfortable feeling, so I'd better devote some time to getting a new book or books lined up. I have a couple of tentative feelers out to O'Reilly for new projects, but nothing definite as yet. I suppose I'd better get something nailed down so that I don't have any downtime between finishing this book and starting the next.



The more I read about Vista RC2, the more I'm glad I didn't bother to install it. The latest feature to have gone missing appears to be FireWire support. I can't find anything official about it from Microsoft, but I've been bouncing around several sites that complain that FireWire is unsupported. And it's apparently not just one particular FireWire chipset or adapter, but all of them, including embedded adapters. I understand that Microsoft has to depend on third-party vendors for drivers for many devices, but it seems odd that Vista doesn't natively support at least Intel embedded FireWire.



And I see that the North Koreans are now threatening to launch a missile with a nuclear warhead unless the United States agrees to hold one-on-one negotiations with them. I don't see any point to sitting down to talk with the North Koreans. As they've shown repeatedly, they can't be trusted to honor any agreement they make, so it's pointless even to discuss anything with them.

Pournelle suggests we just walk away from the problem, and allow China, Japan, and South Korea to deal with it. Perhaps it is best to treat it as a regional problem, but I fear that if we do that North Korea may eventually transfer nuclear weapons technology to Iran and Syria. Ultimately, the only answer will be a regime change in North Korea, however that's accomplished.


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Wednesday, 11 October 2006
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09:15 - Why I like Linux, Part XXXVIII.

Barbara drove down to the beach Sunday to pick up her parents and bring them back to Winston-Salem. She shot a few images while she was there. This morning, I was preparing the ones she picked to be printed at Walgreens and those she wants to post on her web page. The ones for her web page, I shrunk from 3008x2000 resolution to 800x532. I did that in a working directory, and then copied back the lower resolution images to the original directory.

As I did that, it struck me that a lot of my readers aren't familiar with many of the nice features in Linux that I've come to take for granted. Here's one of them. Compare this Linux (KDE) overwrite warning dialog with the one you get in Windows. No comparison, right?


People sometimes look at me strangely when I tell them that, after using Linux, Windows seems primitive. But I mean that literally. Linux is usually elegant where Windows is often crude. Even with the many so-called improvements in Vista, Windows can't touch Linux for elegance or ease of use.


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Thursday, 12 October 2006
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08:21 - It's nice to have my blatherings confirmed by someone who actually knows something. I awoke this morning to Barbara's clock radio playing an interview with George Lucas. Lucas was making a point that I've made several times in the past. It's nuts, says Lucas, to commit $200 million to one blockbuster movie when for that same money he can produce 50 or 60 small-budget 2-hour movies. So Lucas says he's getting out of feature films, which he believes are doomed, and into producing lower budget video for television and other venues. I expect Spielberg to come to the same conclusion.



I'm going to convert my den computer from Xandros 4 to Kubuntu. We had a power failure yesterday. The den box isn't on a UPS. When I restarted it, everything was apparently normal except that my cursor had changed to a tiny red arrow that's almost impossible to find against the background. I tried everything I could think of to get a normal cursor back, but nothing worked. I was about to insert the Xandros 4 CD and do a repair installation when I realized that there's really no reason I should be running Xandros 4 on that box at all. So, when get a free moment, I'll install Kubuntu 6.06, or perhaps Edgy Eft.

I'm also reconsidering my decision to install Xandros 4 on Barbara's new computer, assuming I ever get around to installing it for her. I'll probably install Kubuntu 6.06 for her as well.

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Friday, 13 October 2006
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08:42 - Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month.

Heads-down work on the new astronomy book continues. I'm in deadline mode, which means I work seven days a week until the book is complete. Of course, seven days a week is my usual work schedule, with occasional days off when I need a break.

In addition to the preliminary narrative chapters, there are about 50 constellation chapters in the book. (There are actually 88 constellations, but some are visible only from the southern hemisphere, and a few that are visible from mid-northern latitudes have no objects that are covered in the new book.)

I'm templating chapters now, which means I determine which objects in each constellation are going to be covered in the book, develop a list of those objects with accurate coordinates and characteristics for each, generate and scan finder charts for each object, and so on. When I finish templating a chapter, I have the bare bones of that chapter in place. All that remains is to write the introduction and the text that describes each object and how to find it. That part is actually fairly minor in terms of time required. It's the templating that takes most of the time. I should have the templating completed in the next couple of weeks, at which point I'll start popping out the finished chapters pretty quickly.

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Saturday, 14 October 2006
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Sunday, 15 October 2006
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