In case you missed it, Robert S. McNamara died today. He was Secretary of Defense during the Viet Nam war for those of you younger than I. I watched a lotta bloviating about it on the Lehrer Newshour tonight. None of the talking heads had a clue as to what McNamara was, what he did, and how he should be evaluated.
As Secretary of Defense, McNamara's duty was to win the Viet Nam war. He failed to do this, in fact, he lost Viet Nam big time. No Newshour talking head mentioned this ugly fact. What's worse, many years later, McNamara published his memoires and said the Viet Nam war was a big mistake and he apologized for fighting it. The lefties loved this.
Those of us who served in Viet Nam were infuriated by this. If, back in 1964, McNamara thought the war was a bad idea, it was his duty to go on TV, say the war was a bad idea and then tender his resignation to Lyndon Johnson. He failed in this duty as well as failing in his duty to win the war.
Those of us who served back then came to know McNamara as an enemy as deadly as the Viet Cong. His whiz kids cut funding, canceled needed weapons programs, and foisted turkeys like the TFX, the C5, and the M16 on long suffering troops. He micromanaged the war from DC.
As far as this veteran is concerned, McNamara was a self important bean counter whose ignorance of warfare lost the Viet Nam war. Winning a war is different from running Ford Motor Company and McNamara didn't understand the difference.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Eugene Volokh on Flag Burning
Eugene Volokh is a University of Tennessee law professor whose blog, "The Volokh Conspiracy" is a good read. He usually makes a good deal of sense.
He had a piece in the Wall St Journal the other day on the legality of an anti flag burning law.
Some how I just wonder at the need for such a law, and the need to devote any thought to it. Now I don't hold with burning the American flag, but I hardly think we need burden the statute books with a law agin it. If you burn a flag in most places a large number of rough people will take great offense. In fact they will be offended sufficiently to take action right then and there.
Which is why very few flags are burned in public.
I am surprised that Eugene doesn't seem to understand this and wastes his time on a non issue.
He had a piece in the Wall St Journal the other day on the legality of an anti flag burning law.
Some how I just wonder at the need for such a law, and the need to devote any thought to it. Now I don't hold with burning the American flag, but I hardly think we need burden the statute books with a law agin it. If you burn a flag in most places a large number of rough people will take great offense. In fact they will be offended sufficiently to take action right then and there.
Which is why very few flags are burned in public.
I am surprised that Eugene doesn't seem to understand this and wastes his time on a non issue.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Whither Sarah Palin ?
Just to set the record straight, I like Sarah Palin. Anyone who can work up from PTA to state governor, raise an big family, and manage a husband who races snow mobiles has got to have something on the ball.
Her announcement of resignation on Friday was a total surprise, and I have no idea what it means. It might be that the relentless media assault on her and her family is just to much, either for Sarah or for the family. I'm sure if Sarah decided that her children were at risk due to her political career, she would retire from political life. Mark Stein sees it this way, and laments that a real citizen in politics has been driven out by a vindictive MSM. He says this leaves us with monomaniacal single minded Clintons and Obamas, old party hacks like Biden or McCain, or dynasties like the Bushes and the Kennedys. If this is the case it's a shame.
Or, she might have decided that there are better platforms for a presidential bid than governor of Alaska. She is enough of a celebrity now to get plenty of national coverage doing anything. I hope this is the case, but what do I know?
Well, I know more than George Will does. George was opining on ABC this morning that Sarah might do well in Iowa but won't stand a chance in New Hampshire. I got news for you George. Everyone up here loves Sarah Palin. She is our kind of people. Men like her, women like her, kids like her, and we like her family too. Everyone who stepped into our Littleton HQ during the election was a huge Sarah Palin fan.
Anyhow, I wish Sarah well and I hope she stays in national politics. We need her more than we need the MSM.
Her announcement of resignation on Friday was a total surprise, and I have no idea what it means. It might be that the relentless media assault on her and her family is just to much, either for Sarah or for the family. I'm sure if Sarah decided that her children were at risk due to her political career, she would retire from political life. Mark Stein sees it this way, and laments that a real citizen in politics has been driven out by a vindictive MSM. He says this leaves us with monomaniacal single minded Clintons and Obamas, old party hacks like Biden or McCain, or dynasties like the Bushes and the Kennedys. If this is the case it's a shame.
Or, she might have decided that there are better platforms for a presidential bid than governor of Alaska. She is enough of a celebrity now to get plenty of national coverage doing anything. I hope this is the case, but what do I know?
Well, I know more than George Will does. George was opining on ABC this morning that Sarah might do well in Iowa but won't stand a chance in New Hampshire. I got news for you George. Everyone up here loves Sarah Palin. She is our kind of people. Men like her, women like her, kids like her, and we like her family too. Everyone who stepped into our Littleton HQ during the election was a huge Sarah Palin fan.
Anyhow, I wish Sarah well and I hope she stays in national politics. We need her more than we need the MSM.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Fourth of July
Got up at 6 AM to go down to the church pancake breakfast. Mixed pancake batter until 10 AM. The luck of the republic is fleeting up here, it rained most of the day. Made five pounds of potato salad for a 5 PM cookout. Hopefully the rain will back off by five.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Windows Auto Insert Notification, How to Disable it
Auto insert notification is a Windows "feature" that makes music CD's play in your computer automatically, just insert CD and the music starts to play. Convenient if you use your computer as a CD player. I play my CD's on my stereo, it sounds better.
Convenience has a high price. Auto insert notification does more than just start your music player. It also automatically loads and runs programs from the CD, from any flash drives, floppy drives, and USB gadgets. Virus's (Virii?) spread themselves via auto insert notification. The virus merely copies itself to the CD or flash drive, and it gets loaded and executed every time the infected media is inserted into a victim computer. The notorious Sony rootkit spread itself this way. Unless you disable auto insert notification, your computer is vulnerable to virus every time you insert a CD, a flash drive/thumb drive, or a USB gizmo.
Plus, auto insert notification is a CPU hog. When active it can suck up 10-20% of your CPU time. Working on a video capture project some time ago, we found the video dropped frames until we tracked down and killed auto insert notification.
With auto insert notification turned off you do have to click on your CD player program to play a CD. With a CD-Rom you will have to use explorer to launch the "autorun" program in the CD root directory by hand on install CD-Roms. That's the only down side to killing auto insert notification.
To kill auto insert notification on XP you hand patch the registry, using regedit. Regedit.exe comes with Windows and is found in directory c:/windows/system32. If you can't remember that, you can search for it with Explorer. There usually is a regedit and a regedt32, they both work pretty much the same.
Click on regedit and it will open a pair of side by side windows. The left hand window has a tree structure that looks just like the one in Explorer. Open Hkey_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom Once you navigate to the CDrom registry "leaf" the right hand window will fill with assorted icons.
Look for one named "Autorun". If it does not exist, you will have to create it. Click on Edit, click on New, click on Key. Make the new key a Dword and name it AutoRun. Capitalize the R just in case Windows cares about case.
In the right hand window right click on the AutoRun key and set it's value to zero.
That's it, you are done, close regedit and you have a faster and more secure XP machine.
You do it this way for XP. It's a good guess that Vista and Win 7 work a little bit different, but they both have auto insert notification and you want to turn it off. A bit of googling should turn up kill instructions for Vista or 7.
Convenience has a high price. Auto insert notification does more than just start your music player. It also automatically loads and runs programs from the CD, from any flash drives, floppy drives, and USB gadgets. Virus's (Virii?) spread themselves via auto insert notification. The virus merely copies itself to the CD or flash drive, and it gets loaded and executed every time the infected media is inserted into a victim computer. The notorious Sony rootkit spread itself this way. Unless you disable auto insert notification, your computer is vulnerable to virus every time you insert a CD, a flash drive/thumb drive, or a USB gizmo.
Plus, auto insert notification is a CPU hog. When active it can suck up 10-20% of your CPU time. Working on a video capture project some time ago, we found the video dropped frames until we tracked down and killed auto insert notification.
With auto insert notification turned off you do have to click on your CD player program to play a CD. With a CD-Rom you will have to use explorer to launch the "autorun" program in the CD root directory by hand on install CD-Roms. That's the only down side to killing auto insert notification.
To kill auto insert notification on XP you hand patch the registry, using regedit. Regedit.exe comes with Windows and is found in directory c:/windows/system32. If you can't remember that, you can search for it with Explorer. There usually is a regedit and a regedt32, they both work pretty much the same.
Click on regedit and it will open a pair of side by side windows. The left hand window has a tree structure that looks just like the one in Explorer. Open Hkey_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom Once you navigate to the CDrom registry "leaf" the right hand window will fill with assorted icons.
Look for one named "Autorun". If it does not exist, you will have to create it. Click on Edit, click on New, click on Key. Make the new key a Dword and name it AutoRun. Capitalize the R just in case Windows cares about case.
In the right hand window right click on the AutoRun key and set it's value to zero.
That's it, you are done, close regedit and you have a faster and more secure XP machine.
You do it this way for XP. It's a good guess that Vista and Win 7 work a little bit different, but they both have auto insert notification and you want to turn it off. A bit of googling should turn up kill instructions for Vista or 7.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
787 Structural Problem
Boeing has postponed the long awaited first flight of the all new, all plastic, 787 Dreamliner. This is a tremendous disappointment to Boeing and Boeing customers.
Apparently something (no photos so it could be anything) showed up during static wing bending tests on the ground. According to Aviation Week the problem was "delamination and deformation on body (presumably wing-to-body) join points during a routine stress test". The wings are attached to the body with titanium bolts. There was discussion of a fix, stiffeners. "The parts needed are small, only an inch or two." Eighteen (one for each bolt?) will be applied to the top side of the join.
More discussion followed about the Computer Aided Design (CAD) procedures. The author clearly feels that this problem should have showed up in computer simulations long ago, and he faults Boeing's CAD work.
For Boeing's sake lets hope the one inch stiffeners are readily available and solve the problem.
Apparently something (no photos so it could be anything) showed up during static wing bending tests on the ground. According to Aviation Week the problem was "delamination and deformation on body (presumably wing-to-body) join points during a routine stress test". The wings are attached to the body with titanium bolts. There was discussion of a fix, stiffeners. "The parts needed are small, only an inch or two." Eighteen (one for each bolt?) will be applied to the top side of the join.
More discussion followed about the Computer Aided Design (CAD) procedures. The author clearly feels that this problem should have showed up in computer simulations long ago, and he faults Boeing's CAD work.
For Boeing's sake lets hope the one inch stiffeners are readily available and solve the problem.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Billions for paperwork, not one one cent for tribute
Japan wants to buy the F22 from us. F22 is the hottest fighter in the air with the best electronics. It's also very expensive, so expensive that even rich Uncle Sam has decided to stop buying them after the 187th aircraft. At least the Pentagon thinks 187 fighters is enough, the Air Force wants more.
Congress is wrapped around the axle on the F22. The Members from Lockheed don't want to shut the production line down, but they don't want to sell the F22 overseas lest the "secrets" of the aircraft leak out to US adversaries.
In actual fact we should sell the Japanese as many F22's as they want to pay for. Japan is a loyal US ally, with some bad neighbors close by, giving them a solid reason for wanting advanced fighter planes. Japan is the second largest economy in the world, fully capable of building their own fighter planes (and airliners) from the ground up if they care to. Right now they don't compete with us in the aerospace business, but they could if they wanted to. Refusing to sell essential military equipment might be enough to make them want to.
Plus, the US could use the money. These things go for $142.5 million EACH to USAF. Ten aircraft is $1.4 billion. A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money. Plus we can sell them spare parts. Spare parts over a 30 year service life can add up.
And then we can sell paperwork. The Japanese are prepared to pay $2.3 billion up front for "non recurring engineering and manufacturing costs". This sounds like pure gravy for Lockheed in that the F22 is in full production and should not need any more engineering. Presumably the $2.3 billion will buy a couple of truck loads of paperwork.
All we need is for Congress to OK overseas sales of the aircraft. The customers have their check books out.
Congress is wrapped around the axle on the F22. The Members from Lockheed don't want to shut the production line down, but they don't want to sell the F22 overseas lest the "secrets" of the aircraft leak out to US adversaries.
In actual fact we should sell the Japanese as many F22's as they want to pay for. Japan is a loyal US ally, with some bad neighbors close by, giving them a solid reason for wanting advanced fighter planes. Japan is the second largest economy in the world, fully capable of building their own fighter planes (and airliners) from the ground up if they care to. Right now they don't compete with us in the aerospace business, but they could if they wanted to. Refusing to sell essential military equipment might be enough to make them want to.
Plus, the US could use the money. These things go for $142.5 million EACH to USAF. Ten aircraft is $1.4 billion. A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money. Plus we can sell them spare parts. Spare parts over a 30 year service life can add up.
And then we can sell paperwork. The Japanese are prepared to pay $2.3 billion up front for "non recurring engineering and manufacturing costs". This sounds like pure gravy for Lockheed in that the F22 is in full production and should not need any more engineering. Presumably the $2.3 billion will buy a couple of truck loads of paperwork.
All we need is for Congress to OK overseas sales of the aircraft. The customers have their check books out.
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