INFO-VAX Mon, 19 Mar 2007 Volume 2007 : Issue 155 Contents: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: BA places corpse next to first-class passenger Re: cluster upgrade stratedy Help with a BA-356 Storageworks Re: Help with a BA-356 Storageworks Re: Help with a BA-356 Storageworks Re: Help with a BA-356 Storageworks Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Re: Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Re: Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Re: Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Re: Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Re: Please keep the religious drivel out of comp.os.vms Re: RMS indexed file structure questions Re: RMS indexed file structure questions Re: RMS indexed file structure questions Re: Suggestion for the VMS X-windows server WinSCP ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:54:37 +0100 From: "Dr. Dweeb" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <45fd7cdd$0$140$157c6196@dreader2.cybercity.dk> AEF wrote: > On Mar 17, 12:46 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: >> On Mar 16, 8:21 pm, "AEF" wrote: >> >>> On Mar 16, 10:43 am, dav...@montagar.com wrote: >> >>>> On Mar 15, 3:40 pm, JF Mezei wrote: >> >>>>> What is really needed is a per capita CO2 emission target >>>>> adjusted for latitude (to take into account heating costs for >>>>> survival in winter). And you also need a "fossil fuel added tax" >>>>> similar to a VAT to help for fair accounting. >> >>>> That's nuts. So, where does this "tax" go? It sure doesn't make >>>> the oil any more or less polluting. Maybe it will go in >>>> investments in >> >>> No, but by making use of oil more expensive it encourages people to >>> use less of it, which reduces the total pollution. I remember >>> learning about this in college: the method of taxing pollution. >> >> Pollution (toxic chemicals) is what the course was about, I'd bet, >> not CO2 as a pollutant. Otherwise, you've probably only recently >> graduated and haven't learned that academic theory and real life >> aren't always the same thing. > > I took this course in the late 1970's. Probably 1978 or 1979. > >> >> Very few energy sources we current use don't produce CO2, those that >> don't often have other hazards or problems. By "taxing" CO2 >> production, you basically raise the price of everything, and you have >> the status quo with a different pricing tier. > > Well, if global warming is as serious a problem as some make it out to > be, we need to find a way to greatly reduce CO2 emissions without > destroying the global economy. What I like about the tax idea is that > avoids wasting huge amounts of money to obtain a very small reduction > in pollutant. It automatically invokes the priniciple of diminishing > returns and stops spending when the marginal cost exceeds the marginal > benefit (or something like that). > > [...] >> >>> Do you have a suggestion that is immune to abuse? >> >> Supply and Demand. Sell something to someone that they want, that >> can be made marketable. For instance, insulation and such is a godo >> business around here in Texas (it get's a little hot). Why? Because >> is saves you money. Yeah, it has the nice side effect of "saving the >> planet", but that's not why most people do it - it's because it make >> economic sense. > > Not nearly enough to be of help with reducing CO2 emissions. > >> >> I tell you, when I can replace my shingles on my house with effective >> solar-cell's that let me house generate it's own power for the A/C >> during the day, I'm all for it. I'm all for alternative energies, >> but it has to work, or it's not that alternatice. > > You'll be all for it until you see the bill. Maybe it's cheaper now, > so go ahead! Don't let me stop you. > >> >> Like I've said before, I believe in getting rid of fossil fuels, >> because it's not replaceable. > > But there's a massive amount of it. We've had repeated cycles of "the > end of oil" followed by more and more of it. > Yeah, there was that guy in th 70s (was it Erlich?) who predicted we would be out of oil by '82. The latest revision of this idea is "peak oil", which still seems somewhat theoretical. There is of course no doubt that the supply is limited, the only question is it so limited that we will run out of the stuff before we find some viable alternative. Time will answer that one. I am all for using less of the stuff though, for political and toxic pollutant reasons alone. Dweeb > AEF ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 14:26:46 -0400 From: Bill Todd Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: Dr. Dweeb wrote: ... > You are an intellectually incapable fool (this is is a personal opinion > based on your postings) Whereas you are a pigheaded fool unwilling to accept the eminently-more-qualified opinions of others (I'm not talking about others here, you understand) when they don't fit your own preconceptions. ... > Climatology has essentially zero credibility at present. Fortunately, you are dead wrong about that. So the right thing is likely to happen regardless of whether people like you personally happen to believe in it or not. - bill ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 12:59:22 -0700 From: davidc@montagar.com Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174247962.061504.295330@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 1:25 pm, Bill Todd wrote: > dav...@montagar.com wrote: > > Supply and Demand. > > Horseshit: in cases like this, supply and demand *is* abuse. The free > market does a lousy job of anything but very-short-term optimization - > it leaves the long term (which means our children - and even ourselves > if we're not that old) to take care of itself. > > And in the current 'me-me-me!' cultural climate appealing to the > 'enlightened self-interest' of individuals to fix that problem is ludicrous. > > That leaves it up to governments - hardly an ideal candidate for saving > our asses, but better than none at all. So you want to leave it up to the government to artificially regulate/ legislate supply and demand? Do you have any evidence that such actions actually work? I can point to many instances where it has demonstrably not worked, take for example the War on Drugs? Maybe Prohibition is a better example? A tax will only create a new agency, which will not reduce usage of fossil fuels because now that validity of that agency depends upon using that fossil fuel. Government agencies often act in their own self interest, not always in the interests you think they do. Yes, I'm a cynic, but when was the last time you saw a government agency rendered obsolete? They only RECENTLY abolished the tax to support the Spanish-American War. And some of the "cures" I'm not sure are better than the "disease". Let's all switch to flouresent lights. Now will have lots of mercury and other toxic items from the ballasts filling out landfills rather than glass/alumimum/copper/tungsten. Not sure that's what I want leaching into my water supplies... We're all in a tizzy about global warming, and jumping on a "solution" that may not be as good as we think long term. Also what about the manufacturing costs of those CFL's? Is the CO2 we save lighting our house being consumed producing the bulbs? Who's done that analysis? > > be made marketable. For instance, insulation and such is a godo > > business around here in Texas (it get's a little hot). Why? Because > > is saves you money. Yeah, it has the nice side effect of "saving the > > planet", but that's not why most people do it - it's because it make > > economic sense. > > Which just highlights the nature of the problem: most people only buy > as much insulation in hot or cold climates as 'makes economic sense' *at > the moment* - rather than buying considerably more in order to reduce > energy use. But since prices are up, the "at them moment" is having a substantial impact. Double-paned windows, styro insulation, thicker attic insulation, higher SEER efficiency A/C units or heat pumps, on-demand water heaeters, and more. I hear ads about that stuff daily. Didn't used to. > And the sad part is that the economic optimum in this case has a *very* > broad minimum: for literally a few percent higher net outlay (even > after amortizing the up-front costs over time - and I'm talking about a > few percent of the net insulating-plus-heating/cooling costs over time, > not the entire house cost) you can at least halve your house's > heating/cooling load. And that's based on the figures I worked through > 15 years ago when building our own house and fossil fuel prices were > considerably lower than they are today. But it's not today, is it? And the market is seeing a distinct change in that respect and higher efficiency is being widely marketted as a "good thing". > > I tell you, when I can replace my shingles on my house with effective > > solar-cell's that let me house generate it's own power for the A/C > > during the day, I'm all for it. > > You live in Texas, so you might well be able to do that today - if your > house were properly insulated (design to take advantage of shade is also > a major win). You could also do it today if you were paying for the > actual long-term value of the energy you use rather than leaving it up > to the next generation to pay for the difference (plus their own needs). The only problems with that is solar cells aren't currently efficient enough, expensive, and fragile (we have hail, too). But creative shading (i.e. trees) and other things do help as well. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 13:18:13 -0700 From: davidc@montagar.com Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174249093.648418.243900@y66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 6:59 pm, "AEF" wrote: > Well, if global warming is as serious a problem as some make it out to > be, we need to find a way to greatly reduce CO2 emissions without > destroying the global economy. And if you want people to enact change, then it's required to not destroy the golbal enconomy. After all, you don't see Al Gore reducing his CO2 footprint, since it's not convenient for him, either. And his footprint is much bigger than mine! > What I like about the tax idea is that > avoids wasting huge amounts of money to obtain a very small reduction > in pollutant. It automatically invokes the priniciple of diminishing > returns and stops spending when the marginal cost exceeds the marginal > benefit (or something like that). How do you figure that? What happens to this tax money? What about it prevents it from being wasted? Why don't we just make Exxon raise their price by 10%? But that would be bad, since they're making too much profit. Let the government add a 10% tax, and for some reason this is all hunky-dory? Please explain. > > Supply and Demand. Sell something to someone that they want, that can > > be made marketable. For instance, insulation and such is a godo > > business around here in Texas (it get's a little hot). Why? Because > > is saves you money. Yeah, it has the nice side effect of "saving the > > planet", but that's not why most people do it - it's because it make > > economic sense. > > Not nearly enough to be of help with reducing CO2 emissions. Neither is a tax. All your doing is taking money out of Joe-Sixpack's wallet to pay this tax of yours, but that tax doesn't provide any alternative. Unless you subsidize Joe-Sixpack, in which case, if you're going to give it back, why take it away in the first place? > > I tell you, when I can replace my shingles on my house with effective > > solar-cell's that let me house generate it's own power for the A/C > > during the day, I'm all for it. I'm all for alternative energies, but > > it has to work, or it's not that alternatice. > > You'll be all for it until you see the bill. Maybe it's cheaper now, > so go ahead! Don't let me stop you. Well, your solution is to insure that I can't pay my current bill by adding taxes, right? So then both the status quo and the alternatives are too expensive. There are better solar cell technolgies out there. The solar-cell shingles are getting closer to reality. Some dairy farmers have converted to bio-mass (bullsh*t!) to generate power, enough to where they could sell some back to the grid - if the power companies didn't PROHIBIT THAT. Burning waste vegatable oil is good, but you know what? The Government wants to start taxing that, too, as a "fuel producer" - which negates the cost savings. Yeah vegatable oil produces CO2, but where do you think the plant got the CO2 it turned into oil in the first place.... > > Like I've said before, I believe in getting rid of fossil fuels, > > because it's not replaceable. > > But there's a massive amount of it. We've had repeated cycles of "the > end of oil" followed by more and more of it. True. And we've gotten better at squeezing more out of poor performing wells, as technology has improved. But the end is there somewhere. Probably not in our lifetimes, but since it's not something we make, it has to end eventually. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 21:31:52 +0100 From: "Dr. Dweeb" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <45fda1b7$0$142$157c6196@dreader2.cybercity.dk> davidc@montagar.com wrote: > On Mar 17, 1:25 pm, Bill Todd wrote: >> dav...@montagar.com wrote: >>> Supply and Demand. >> >> Horseshit: in cases like this, supply and demand *is* abuse. The >> free market does a lousy job of anything but very-short-term >> optimization - >> it leaves the long term (which means our children - and even >> ourselves >> if we're not that old) to take care of itself. >> >> And in the current 'me-me-me!' cultural climate appealing to the >> 'enlightened self-interest' of individuals to fix that problem is >> ludicrous. >> >> That leaves it up to governments - hardly an ideal candidate for >> saving >> our asses, but better than none at all. > > So you want to leave it up to the government to artificially regulate/ > legislate supply and demand? Do you have any evidence that such > actions actually work? I can point to many instances where it has > demonstrably not worked, take for example the War on Drugs? Maybe > Prohibition is a better example? > You forgot rent control. > A tax will only create a new agency, which will not reduce usage of > fossil fuels because now that validity of that agency depends upon > using that fossil fuel. Government agencies often act in their own > self interest, not always in the interests you think they do. Yes, > I'm a cynic, but when was the last time you saw a government agency > rendered obsolete? They only RECENTLY abolished the tax to support > the Spanish-American War. > > And some of the "cures" I'm not sure are better than the "disease". > Let's all switch to flouresent lights. Now will have lots of mercury > and other toxic items from the ballasts filling out landfills rather > than glass/alumimum/copper/tungsten. Not sure that's what I want > leaching into my water supplies... We're all in a tizzy about global > warming, and jumping on a "solution" that may not be as good as we > think long term. Also what about the manufacturing costs of those > CFL's? Is the CO2 we save lighting our house being consumed producing > the bulbs? Who's done that analysis? > I previously worked at a company that made power generation systems. Amongst those in the portfolio were wind, diesel-wind combos and bio-mass power/heat systems. I have not done recent research, but in the 90s, wind and bio-mass technologies were neither economic in an absolute or relative sense. In the case of wind, at that time it was not CO2 positive either (if indeed it was even energy positive). Only viia government subsidy could such technologies survive. The technologies have and are continually improving. With bio-mass, the process is almost economic because the producers of the recyclable bio mass (pig shit or whatever) will actually pay to have it removed. Additionally, certain additives are a waste product of other industrial proceesses, which can be provided "free" to the generation system. Either way, the bio-mass power/heat market is very local and locality specific, requiring large amounts of bio mass being locally available. Dr Dweeb. >>> be made marketable. For instance, insulation and such is a godo >>> business around here in Texas (it get's a little hot). Why? >>> Because is saves you money. Yeah, it has the nice side effect of >>> "saving the planet", but that's not why most people do it - it's >>> because it make economic sense. >> >> Which just highlights the nature of the problem: most people only >> buy >> as much insulation in hot or cold climates as 'makes economic sense' >> *at the moment* - rather than buying considerably more in order to >> reduce energy use. > > But since prices are up, the "at them moment" is having a substantial > impact. Double-paned windows, styro insulation, thicker attic > insulation, higher SEER efficiency A/C units or heat pumps, on-demand > water heaeters, and more. I hear ads about that stuff daily. Didn't > used to. > >> And the sad part is that the economic optimum in this case has a >> *very* broad minimum: for literally a few percent higher net outlay >> (even >> after amortizing the up-front costs over time - and I'm talking >> about a >> few percent of the net insulating-plus-heating/cooling costs over >> time, >> not the entire house cost) you can at least halve your house's >> heating/cooling load. And that's based on the figures I worked >> through 15 years ago when building our own house and fossil fuel >> prices were considerably lower than they are today. > > But it's not today, is it? And the market is seeing a distinct change > in that respect and higher efficiency is being widely marketted as a > "good thing". > >>> I tell you, when I can replace my shingles on my house with >>> effective solar-cell's that let me house generate it's own power >>> for the A/C during the day, I'm all for it. >> >> You live in Texas, so you might well be able to do that today - if >> your house were properly insulated (design to take advantage of >> shade is also >> a major win). You could also do it today if you were paying for the >> actual long-term value of the energy you use rather than leaving it >> up >> to the next generation to pay for the difference (plus their own >> needs). > > The only problems with that is solar cells aren't currently efficient > enough, expensive, and fragile (we have hail, too). But creative > shading (i.e. trees) and other things do help as well. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 14:10:05 -0700 From: davidc@montagar.com Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174252205.207095.260960@b75g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 6:37 pm, Bill Todd wrote: > dav...@montagar.com wrote: > > On Mar 17, 1:06 pm, Bill Todd wrote: > >> dav...@montagar.comwrote: > > > But that's not an answer. > > Yes, it is: you just don't happen to agree that your question was > effectively irrelevant. It's not irrelevant, as you later in your own post you state: "(though we should care about where *all* taxes go)" So, appearently I SHOULD care about where all the taxes go, except a tax which you have some sort of philophical attachment to. That doesn't make any sense, Bill. How can you write that with a straight keyboard? What if all that tax money ended up in the pockets of Exxon/ Mobile? Would that be okay with you? Or would that suddenly not be irrelevant? > Which (as noted above) is indeed an answer, whether you agree with it or > not. And what if the tax disbursement suddenly was disagreeable with you? You see, I just don't see imposing a tax as a "solution". I assure you that tax money is going to be spent somewhere, and if gets spent on things that encourage fossil fuel usage, then the tax is worse than not having it. > I guess you have comprehension problems, then. I'm just satisfied that the simplistic 10,000ft view is valid. And you seem reticent to look at deeper ramifications. > > Almost everything we get here are from China and other countries > > heavily into fossil fuels, or have parts producted from these same > > countries. Look at your local Wal-Mart and find a product MADE in the > > USA. Not assembled in the USA, but MADE in the USA. I'd wager this > > little tax would make pretty much everything in Wal-Mart go up in > > price. > > Which is precisely the desired behavior for items consuming fossil fuels > in their production process (the rise being proportional to the fossil > fuel consumed). How high does this tax need to be to actually ALTER behaviour, and not just cause inflation? And where does this tax go? > > And since we're paying more for all these goods, where does this tax > > end up going? > > We don't care, at least any more than we care where other taxes go > (though we should care about where *all* taxes go). No, YOU don't care. I do care, since there are many places that this tax could be spend to be actually counterproductive to any Co2 reduction or fossil fuel usage. > No one really wants to take this question on, despite > > > your assertions. > > No, you just don't like the fact that your question is irrelevant (at > least in this context: as I just noted, caring about where taxes go in > general is entirely appropriate - just not part of this specific issue). Why just this issue, Bill? You recognize the importance of knowing where taxes go, but why is this tax so "holy" that it's disbursement is somehow beyond question, or appearently even consideration? No, the question is not irrelevant. It's an unconfortable question, and you just don't have an answer for it. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:32:36 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: davidc@montagar.com wrote: > You are proposing a theory that > taxing fossil fuels will reduce CO2 emissions. Nop. The main thrust if such a tax is to provide a metric for per capita fossil fuel consumption in a fair basis. Such a metric is required to set enforcable goals for the world. Provide a per capital target for each country and that tax then provides a accounting metric to gauge the country's actual fossil fuel consumption versus its target. This philosphy allows for fairned on two aspects: You allow developping nations to raise their consumption to developped standards, so they cannot claim they are nfairly punished and prevented from developping. And you do not penalise exporting nations who generate pollution to create goods consumed elsewhere. For all of the above, a tax of 0% would work. You just need a way to account for fossil fuel consumption throughout the ecomomy, as well as exports and imports. But, but having a real tax, you also use this as a means to coax industry to switch to clean energy (and be more energy efficient) because this makes them more competitive both domestically and for export markets. And if the carbon content of products is clearly accounted for, you could even conceive china charging 1% tax on it, but when their product are imported in europe, europe would then levy an import duty to bring the carbon tax to their own levels. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 15:42:59 -0700 From: davidc@montagar.com Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174257779.329886.207990@l75g2000hse.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 7:23 pm, "AEF" wrote: > OK, then we're all addicted to air, food, and water. And as such, have some level of energy requirements to support our life, at some level of comfort. > > Reductio ad absurdum? You've done that before with the "Well, why not > > just get rid of gov't altogether?" comment. What you seem to fail to > > understand, and Ted seems to, is that taxes are not a good method to > > change behavior that the government thinks is "moral". Cigarette > > taxes are an example of that. It's quite different than taxes which > > are used to provide some public benefit, like schools, roads, > > libraries. Taxes like you are proposing are more likely to cause > > black market effects (much like France and Germanys underhanded deals > > with the "Oil for Food" sanctions against Iraq). > > Yes, there is the danger of black market effects. I'm still waiting > for you to propose a better solution. And the tax can be used to > reduce other taxes, and replace those being used to build schools and > such. Just taxing fossil fuels does nothing. It may provide some reduction of CO2 emissions, but with all the developing countries and just the sheer number of people, there is still a lot of CO2 getting pumped out. There still will be a lot of fossil few used. Foriegn countries are unlikely to tax it, and if it's an international tax, you'll shift some things to domestic fossil fuel usage. And of course the black market effects by creating an artifical price increase. End result, we're still going to be pumping out a lot of CO2. It's naive to think that adding one tax will reduce another, or removing a tax. The Spanish American War tax was repealed how long after the war was over and paid for? For a solution, you have to provide an economicly viable ALTERNATIVE to fossil fuels. Our energy needs are unlikely to go down substantially, and therefore neither will CO2 emissions unless something else that can totally replace a fossil fuel option can be identified. Taxes won't do this, since it's an artificial cost increase that will ultimately likely benefit someone else other than what's intended. Solar cells? Better technology is happening. Wind turbines? Environmentalists don't like it cause it kills birds, and you can't put them in some places like MA since liberals don't like their view from their mansions obscured with the windmills. Nuke plants? Tough sell, and Not-In-My-back-Yard types make it difficult to build one. Hydrogen? Need to free hydrogen from oxygen cheaper. Ethanol and Biodiesel? Still CO2 producing, but who cares, since where did the plant get the CO2 in the first place, right? > > Your tax will likely hit those that can't afford it the most, benefits > > those are the ones presumably to be "punished" via an artificial > > transfer of wealth, result in an increased government to manage all > > this mess, and at the end of the day will probably have little impact > > on CO2 emissions. > > When the price of gasoline doubled in 1973, and again in 1979, people > cut back on their use of gasoline. Economy cars started selling a lot. > People worked on improving efficiency. When the price came down (the > inflation-adjusted price), SUV's became the big sellers. Price works. But those were real prices. Notice when the prices went back up, people were lobbying Congress to do something about gas prices. I don't think suggesting adding a tax would have been too well received at the time. Even still, you don't provide an alternative fuel, so all you do is make the fuel you have artificially more expensive. And artificial costs introduce black markets. You don't see black market counterfeit Timex watches, do you? > And as I said in an earlier post, a tax break can be given "to those > who are hurt by it the most", but not in proportion to their fuel > usage, or it would defeat the purpose. But once you start the slippery slope of a tax break, you've already defeated the purpose. > I don't think that this by itself will do anything to reduce use of > fossil fuels. It's pretty hard to compete with the price of untaxed > fossil fuels. But the tax can also create a dependency on the fossil fuels, as well. Say that you decide to use the tax for building schools. Now education funding depends upon a certain level fossil fuel usage. The government now has a disincentive to reducing fossil fuels, since they need it to fund schools. Instead of creating a competition, you inadvertantly create a dependency on what you proposed to want to reduce. > > I think the CO2 argument is a red herring, since other "green house" > > gases are in abundance as well, yet aren't somehow "taxed" or of > > concern, like water vapor, and methane from cow waste. Well, let me > > take that back, California is thinking of taxing cow waste... > > I was under the impression that CO2 is the main problem due to > quantity, but I don't know for sure. I welcome anyone knowledgable on > this to chime in. That's because it's the new fad. Talking about Co2 emissions has almost become a religion to some. They used to talk about us heading into an Ice Age, well that didn't happen either. Water vapor is a more effective greenhouse gas than CO2. Which feels colder, a clear winter night, or a cloudy winter night? Look at the high/low trends in the winter depending on the cloud cover. Water vapor and clouds hold in the heat. Cow flatulance (methane) is becoming considered a green house gas, and some studies I've heard show it would account for about the same global warming effect as all our cars (we have a lot of cows in the US, too!). We're not going to start prohibiting beef anytime soon, though. And where did the carbon for all these fossil fuels come from in the first place? Plants and animals that were living where? All this carbon we're burning used to be in our environment and atomsphere long before we dug it out of the ground. And where was all this global warming controvery when the ice sheet over Canada disapeared and dumped into the Atlantic via the St. Laurence River for instance? And that was AFTER all this environmental carbon got trapped underground for future fossil fuels, wasn't it? Things like that make me wonder about the validity of the whole thing. Now, I still think we need alternative fuels, but there are many other reasons to be for it than the controversy about global warming. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 18:04:10 -0700 From: "AEF" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174266250.512065.137240@e1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 2:59 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > On Mar 17, 1:25 pm, Bill Todd wrote: > > > dav...@montagar.com wrote: > > > Supply and Demand. > > > Horseshit: in cases like this, supply and demand *is* abuse. The free > > market does a lousy job of anything but very-short-term optimization - > > it leaves the long term (which means our children - and even ourselves > > if we're not that old) to take care of itself. > > > And in the current 'me-me-me!' cultural climate appealing to the > > 'enlightened self-interest' of individuals to fix that problem is ludicrous. > > > That leaves it up to governments - hardly an ideal candidate for saving > > our asses, but better than none at all. > > So you want to leave it up to the government to artificially regulate/ > legislate supply and demand? Do you have any evidence that such > actions actually work? I can point to many instances where it has > demonstrably not worked, take for example the War on Drugs? Maybe > Prohibition is a better example? Neither involve a tax. Gov't provides tax breaks for solar cells and other alternative energy sources, and that increases the number of people who use them. CFC's have been banned. Is that a horror story? > > A tax will only create a new agency, which will not reduce usage of > fossil fuels because now that validity of that agency depends upon > using that fossil fuel. Government agencies often act in their own > self interest, not always in the interests you think they do. Yes, > I'm a cynic, but when was the last time you saw a government agency > rendered obsolete? They only RECENTLY abolished the tax to support > the Spanish-American War. I don't keep track of them. > > And some of the "cures" I'm not sure are better than the "disease". > Let's all switch to flouresent lights. Now will have lots of mercury > and other toxic items from the ballasts filling out landfills rather > than glass/alumimum/copper/tungsten. Not sure that's what I want > leaching into my water supplies... We're all in a tizzy about Good point about the poisons from CFL's. global > warming, and jumping on a "solution" that may not be as good as we > think long term. Also what about the manufacturing costs of those > CFL's? Is the CO2 we save lighting our house being consumed producing > the bulbs? Who's done that analysis? These CFL's supposedly last for 10 years or more. I doubt that 100 W, for example, accumulated over 10 years, is needed to manufacture one of these bulbs. They'd certainly cost a lot more if it took that much energy to make one! > > > > be made marketable. For instance, insulation and such is a godo > > > business around here in Texas (it get's a little hot). Why? Because > > > is saves you money. Yeah, it has the nice side effect of "saving the > > > planet", but that's not why most people do it - it's because it make > > > economic sense. > > > Which just highlights the nature of the problem: most people only buy > > as much insulation in hot or cold climates as 'makes economic sense' *at > > the moment* - rather than buying considerably more in order to reduce > > energy use. > > But since prices are up, the "at them moment" is having a substantial > impact. Double-paned windows, styro insulation, thicker attic > insulation, higher SEER efficiency A/C units or heat pumps, on-demand > water heaeters, and more. I hear ads about that stuff daily. Didn't > used to. So what's your point? What does this have to do with a carbon tax? What about ads for SUV's? You're only making the point that price matters. > > > And the sad part is that the economic optimum in this case has a *very* > > broad minimum: for literally a few percent higher net outlay (even > > after amortizing the up-front costs over time - and I'm talking about a > > few percent of the net insulating-plus-heating/cooling costs over time, > > not the entire house cost) you can at least halve your house's > > heating/cooling load. And that's based on the figures I worked through > > 15 years ago when building our own house and fossil fuel prices were > > considerably lower than they are today. > > But it's not today, is it? And the market is seeing a distinct change > in that respect and higher efficiency is being widely marketted as a > "good thing". Except for the selling of SUV's. > > > > I tell you, when I can replace my shingles on my house with effective > > > solar-cell's that let me house generate it's own power for the A/C > > > during the day, I'm all for it. > > > You live in Texas, so you might well be able to do that today - if your > > house were properly insulated (design to take advantage of shade is also > > a major win). You could also do it today if you were paying for the > > actual long-term value of the energy you use rather than leaving it up > > to the next generation to pay for the difference (plus their own needs). > > The only problems with that is solar cells aren't currently efficient > enough, expensive, and fragile (we have hail, too). But creative > shading (i.e. trees) and other things do help as well. Making fossil fuels more expensive will also help. If we really have to fight global warming, and we decide to use a carbon tax, it doesn't have to be a huge sudden increase. It could be slowly phased in. And it would help us reduce the danger of states like Iran by keeping more of our petro dollars at home. AEF ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 18:13:19 -0700 From: "AEF" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174266799.074319.271080@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 3:18 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > On Mar 17, 6:59 pm, "AEF" wrote: > > > Well, if global warming is as serious a problem as some make it out to > > be, we need to find a way to greatly reduce CO2 emissions without > > destroying the global economy. > > And if you want people to enact change, then it's required to not > destroy the golbal enconomy. After all, you don't see Al Gore > reducing his CO2 footprint, since it's not convenient for him, > either. And his footprint is much bigger than mine! Irrelevant. And if global warming really is the problem he says it is, and we do something about it becuase of him, then his total CO2 footprint will be neglible compared to the total problem. > > > What I like about the tax idea is that > > avoids wasting huge amounts of money to obtain a very small reduction > > in pollutant. It automatically invokes the priniciple of diminishing > > returns and stops spending when the marginal cost exceeds the marginal > > benefit (or something like that). > > How do you figure that? What happens to this tax money? What about > it prevents it from being wasted? Why don't we just make Exxon raise > their price by 10%? But that would be bad, since they're making too > much profit. Let the government add a 10% tax, and for some reason > this is all hunky-dory? Please explain. And what happens to the price of goods when companies are forced to spend 10000% more just to cause a 1% additional reduction? Like I'm telling you for the THIRD TIME, the money can be used to reduce other taxes. > > > > Supply and Demand. Sell something to someone that they want, that can > > > be made marketable. For instance, insulation and such is a godo > > > business around here in Texas (it get's a little hot). Why? Because > > > is saves you money. Yeah, it has the nice side effect of "saving the > > > planet", but that's not why most people do it - it's because it make > > > economic sense. > > > Not nearly enough to be of help with reducing CO2 emissions. > > Neither is a tax. All your doing is taking money out of Joe-Sixpack's > wallet to pay this tax of yours, but that tax doesn't provide any > alternative. Unless you subsidize Joe-Sixpack, in which case, if > you're going to give it back, why take it away in the first place? Because Joe-Sixpack still feels the effect of the carbon tax, but is not devastated by it. It's just modifying the income tax to make it a little more progressive. He'll still recude his use of the taxed fuels. You need to read the economics book. > > > > I tell you, when I can replace my shingles on my house with effective > > > solar-cell's that let me house generate it's own power for the A/C > > > during the day, I'm all for it. I'm all for alternative energies, but > > > it has to work, or it's not that alternatice. > > > You'll be all for it until you see the bill. Maybe it's cheaper now, > > so go ahead! Don't let me stop you. > > Well, your solution is to insure that I can't pay my current bill by > adding taxes, right? So then both the status quo and the alternatives > are too expensive. No, becuase it will enourage the development of alternative technologies. I think we should make a tax that only you pay! (Yes, I'm kidding.) > > There are better solar cell technolgies out there. The solar-cell > shingles are getting closer to reality. Then the carbon tax doesn't have to be that stiff! > > Some dairy farmers have converted to bio-mass (bullsh*t!) to generate > power, enough to where they could sell some back to the grid - if the > power companies didn't PROHIBIT THAT. Burning waste vegatable oil is > good, but you know what? The Government wants to start taxing Why is it good? that, > too, as a "fuel producer" - which negates the cost savings. Yeah > vegatable oil produces CO2, but where do you think the plant got the > CO2 it turned into oil in the first place.... I'm not sure, but I think it's a bit more involved than that. > > > > Like I've said before, I believe in getting rid of fossil fuels, > > > because it's not replaceable. > > > But there's a massive amount of it. We've had repeated cycles of "the > > end of oil" followed by more and more of it. > > True. And we've gotten better at squeezing more out of poor > performing wells, as technology has improved. But the end is there > somewhere. Probably not in our lifetimes, but since it's not > something we make, it has to end eventually. AEF ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 18:30:32 -0700 From: "AEF" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174267832.532960.305960@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 4:10 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > On Mar 17, 6:37 pm, Bill Todd wrote: > > > dav...@montagar.com wrote: > > > On Mar 17, 1:06 pm, Bill Todd wrote: > > >> dav...@montagar.comwrote: > > > > But that's not an answer. > > > Yes, it is: you just don't happen to agree that your question was > > effectively irrelevant. > > It's not irrelevant, as you later in your own post you state: "(though > we should care about where *all* taxes go)" > > So, appearently I SHOULD care about where all the taxes go, except a > tax which you have some sort of philophical attachment to. That > doesn't make any sense, Bill. How can you write that with a straight > keyboard? What if all that tax money ended up in the pockets of Exxon/ > Mobile? Would that be okay with you? Or would that suddenly not be > irrelevant? So we can't do anything because it might cause some problem. I guess a small risk of some money going to Exxon Mobil is worse than ruining the climate of the planet (assuming it really is a problem). As bad as the U.S. gov't is, it's produced the most amazing economy the world has ever seen. It must be doing something right! Yes, there are problems, but I don't see people trying to move to too many other countries in such huge numbers! > > > Which (as noted above) is indeed an answer, whether you agree with it or > > not. > > And what if the tax disbursement suddenly was disagreeable with you? > You see, I just don't see imposing a tax as a "solution". I assure > you that tax money is going to be spent somewhere, and if gets spent > on things that encourage fossil fuel usage, then the tax is worse than > not having it. If, if, if!!! What if the gov't puts the money in a stove and burns it up! How do you come up with these things? > > > I guess you have comprehension problems, then. > > I'm just satisfied that the simplistic 10,000ft view is valid. And > you seem reticent to look at deeper ramifications. > > > > Almost everything we get here are from China and other countries > > > heavily into fossil fuels, or have parts producted from these same > > > countries. Look at your local Wal-Mart and find a product MADE in the > > > USA. Not assembled in the USA, but MADE in the USA. I'd wager this > > > little tax would make pretty much everything in Wal-Mart go up in > > > price. > > > Which is precisely the desired behavior for items consuming fossil fuels > > in their production process (the rise being proportional to the fossil > > fuel consumed). > > How high does this tax need to be to actually ALTER behaviour, and not > just cause inflation? And where does this tax go? It goes to pay down the national debt. I think that might also cause inflation eventually if not paid down! > > > > And since we're paying more for all these goods, where does this tax > > > end up going? > > > We don't care, at least any more than we care where other taxes go > > (though we should care about where *all* taxes go). > > No, YOU don't care. I do care, since there are many places that this > tax could be spend to be actually counterproductive to any Co2 > reduction or fossil fuel usage. So make the law such that the money goes to some place that makes you happy. We'll give it to you. How about that? > > > No one really wants to take this question on, despite > > > > your assertions. > > > No, you just don't like the fact that your question is irrelevant (at > > least in this context: as I just noted, caring about where taxes go in > > general is entirely appropriate - just not part of this specific issue). > > Why just this issue, Bill? You recognize the importance of knowing > where taxes go, but why is this tax so "holy" that it's disbursement > is somehow beyond question, or appearently even consideration? > > No, the question is not irrelevant. It's an unconfortable question, > and you just don't have an answer for it. So where does gasoline tax go? Where does the cigarette tax go? If one just starts a carbon tax, it can go into the general fund which means it will help pay down the national debt. What's wrong with that? Can you give an example of some tax that sends money to some awful place? (Maybe you can -- I'm just asking for examples.) AEF ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 18:36:07 -0700 From: "AEF" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174268167.456786.197660@e1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 4:38 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > On Mar 17, 6:52 pm, "AEF" wrote: > > > On Mar 17, 12:34 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > > You have no imagination or ability to see the future as anything but > > the present. Making carbon-based fuels more expensive will encourage > > development of less harmful fuels or ways to trap the carbon. Even the > > auto makers are in favor of curing carbon dioxide emissions. > > Oh don't get me wrong, I have no problem with cars that use less gas > or have less emissions or ethanol or biodiesel. I'm not arguing > against that. What I'm against is a tax. I think it's naive to think > that a tax like this would be used to reduce other taxes. In fact, > since the cost of many goods would increase as a result of this tax, > other taxes (VAT, sales taxes, etc) would obviously also increase as > well. You're trying to ENCOURAGE an alternative, but your not > PROVIDING any. Therefore the tax will simply be an added burden, and > the additional tax money will be spend on what, precisly? The market will do its magic and provide an alternative. What if the price of oil went up all on its own without any tax? The tax money will help pay down the national debt, which if left unaddressed can cause inflation or even hyperinflation. > > > > You're idea sounds almost like the Monty Python sketch where Graham > > > Chapman's character said "I think we should tax all foreigners living > > > abroad", and makes about as much sense. > > > Relativity sounded pretty crazy, too, once. But GPS depends on it, > > including general relativity! > > It did. Many people worked the equations through and proposed > experiments to VALIDATE that theory. You are proposing a theory that > taxing fossil fuels will reduce CO2 emissions. I'm simply challenging > your theory by following the equations through, specifically the money > trail for starters. When the price of oil went up in 1973 and 1979, it reduced use of oil. I've already said this. > > And that's why I used the Monty Python reference, since it sounds good > at first, until you really realize what he said. Just taxing > something doesn't make it automatically a good idea, despite what > others may think. It doesn't automatically make it a bad idea, either. It cuts both ways. > > > Quantum mechanics is as crazy as nature gets, but is fully verified by > > experiment, and you wouldn't have modern computers without it. > > But you haven't proved taxing an item reduces it's usage. What about > Income Tax? Wouldn't that tend to reduce income, since higher income > levels are taxed at a higher rate (35%) than lower income levels? You don't buy income. And how do you know what the situation would be if the higher rate went away? You don't. You're comaring apples to nothing. So > based upon your taxation theory, the income tax is designed to reduce > everyones income to a essentially minimum wage (where you pay $0 > income tax). But that doesn't happen. Tax is not always a > disincentive. No, my theory doesn't say that. You're convoluting it and I'm not going to fall for it. AEF ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 18:48:52 -0700 From: "AEF" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174268932.364934.261160@l77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 5:42 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > On Mar 17, 7:23 pm, "AEF" wrote: > > > OK, then we're all addicted to air, food, and water. > > And as such, have some level of energy requirements to support our > life, at some level of comfort. > > > > Reductio ad absurdum? You've done that before with the "Well, why not > > > just get rid of gov't altogether?" comment. What you seem to fail to > > > understand, and Ted seems to, is that taxes are not a good method to > > > change behavior that the government thinks is "moral". Cigarette > > > taxes are an example of that. It's quite different than taxes which > > > are used to provide some public benefit, like schools, roads, > > > libraries. Taxes like you are proposing are more likely to cause > > > black market effects (much like France and Germanys underhanded deals > > > with the "Oil for Food" sanctions against Iraq). > > > Yes, there is the danger of black market effects. I'm still waiting > > for you to propose a better solution. And the tax can be used to > > reduce other taxes, and replace those being used to build schools and > > such. > > Just taxing fossil fuels does nothing. It may provide some reduction > of CO2 emissions, but with all the developing countries and just the > sheer number of people, there is still a lot of CO2 getting pumped > out. There still will be a lot of fossil few used. Foriegn countries > are unlikely to tax it, and if it's an international tax, you'll shift > some things to domestic fossil fuel usage. And of course the black > market effects by creating an artifical price increase. End result, > we're still going to be pumping out a lot of CO2. > > It's naive to think that adding one tax will reduce another, or > removing a tax. The Spanish American War tax was repealed how long > after the war was over and paid for? You misread what I said so I'll spell it out for you: YOU COULD WRITE THE CARBON TAX LAW TO INCLUDE REDUCTIONS IN OTHER TAXES. Capice? Or you could use the funds to pay down the national debt, which left unchecked, can cause inflation which will hurt Mr. Joe 6pack. > > For a solution, you have to provide an economicly viable ALTERNATIVE > to fossil fuels. Our energy needs are unlikely to go down > substantially, and therefore neither will CO2 emissions unless > something else that can totally replace a fossil fuel option can be > identified. Taxes won't do this, since it's an artificial cost > increase that will ultimately likely benefit someone else other than > what's intended. Yes, the tax will benefit those compaines that develop new technologies to replace or compete with oil. If you come up with the alternatives yourself, there is no need for the tax. The idea of the tax is to force people to pay for the true cost of using oil in the long run and allow the market to do its magic to come up with the alternatives. OK? > > Solar cells? Better technology is happening. Wind turbines? > Environmentalists don't like it cause it kills birds, and you can't > put them in some places like MA since liberals don't like their view > from their mansions obscured with the windmills. Nuke plants? Tough > sell, and Not-In-My-back-Yard types make it difficult to build one. > Hydrogen? Need to free hydrogen from oxygen cheaper. Ethanol and > Biodiesel? Still CO2 producing, but who cares, since where did the > plant get the CO2 in the first place, right? Again, what's your point with this? You're just making the case that were stuck with oil. > > > > Your tax will likely hit those that can't afford it the most, benefits > > > those are the ones presumably to be "punished" via an artificial > > > transfer of wealth, result in an increased government to manage all > > > this mess, and at the end of the day will probably have little impact > > > on CO2 emissions. > > > When the price of gasoline doubled in 1973, and again in 1979, people > > cut back on their use of gasoline. Economy cars started selling a lot. > > People worked on improving efficiency. When the price came down (the > > inflation-adjusted price), SUV's became the big sellers. Price works. > > But those were real prices. Notice when the prices went back up, > people were lobbying Congress to do something about gas prices. I > don't think suggesting adding a tax would have been too well received > at the time. Even still, you don't provide an alternative fuel, so > all you do is make the fuel you have artificially more expensive. You make it reflect its true long-term cost. And if you provide an alternative fuel, you don't need the tax. The point of the tax is to encourage the development of alternative fules to compete with oil. I keep repeating this because you keep repeating yourself. And > artificial costs introduce black markets. You don't see black market > counterfeit Timex watches, do you? It would be kind of hard to smuggle huge amounts of oil. > > > And as I said in an earlier post, a tax break can be given "to those > > who are hurt by it the most", but not in proportion to their fuel > > usage, or it would defeat the purpose. > > But once you start the slippery slope of a tax break, you've already > defeated the purpose. No, because the tax break is INDEPENDENT OF THE POOR PERSON'S OIL USAGE. It's there just to cushion the blow a little. And you phase it in slowly. You seem to be assuming it would immeidately be a huge tax that would be piped directly to ExxonMobil. No one is proposing that. > > > I don't think that this by itself will do anything to reduce use of > > fossil fuels. It's pretty hard to compete with the price of untaxed > > fossil fuels. > > But the tax can also create a dependency on the fossil fuels, as > well. Say that you decide to use the tax for building schools. Now > education funding depends upon a certain level fossil fuel usage. The > government now has a disincentive to reducing fossil fuels, since they > need it to fund schools. Instead of creating a competition, you > inadvertantly create a dependency on what you proposed to want to > reduce. Why do you assume the tax has to be targeted for something? You consistently assume the worst *imaginable* possible outcome is the only possible outcome, when it is likely actually worse than the possible worst outcome. > > > > I think the CO2 argument is a red herring, since other "green house" > > > gases are in abundance as well, yet aren't somehow "taxed" or of > > > concern, like water vapor, and methane from cow waste. Well, let me > > > take that back, California is thinking of taxing cow waste... > > > I was under the impression that CO2 is the main problem due to > > quantity, but I don't know for sure. I welcome anyone knowledgable on > > this to chime in. > > That's because it's the new fad. Talking about Co2 emissions has > almost become a religion to some. They used to talk about us heading > into an Ice Age, well that didn't happen either. Water vapor is a > more effective greenhouse gas than CO2. Which feels colder, a clear > winter night, or a cloudy winter night? Look at the high/low trends > in the winter depending on the cloud cover. Water vapor and clouds > hold in the heat. Cow flatulance (methane) is becoming considered a > green house gas, and some studies I've heard show it would account for > about the same global warming effect as all our cars (we have a lot of > cows in the US, too!). We're not going to start prohibiting beef > anytime soon, though. Don't be ridiculous. > > And where did the carbon for all these fossil fuels come from in the > first place? Plants and animals that were living where? All this > carbon we're burning used to be in our environment and atomsphere long > before we dug it out of the ground. And where was all this global > warming controvery when the ice sheet over Canada disapeared and > dumped into the Atlantic via the St. Laurence River for instance? And > that was AFTER all this environmental carbon got trapped underground > for future fossil fuels, wasn't it? Things like that make me wonder > about the validity of the whole thing. I'm not arguing for or against the validity of global warming. > > Now, I still think we need alternative fuels, but there are many other > reasons to be for it than the controversy about global warming. AEF ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 19:09:48 -0700 From: "AEF" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174270188.448813.278710@l75g2000hse.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 3:18 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > On Mar 17, 6:59 pm, "AEF" wrote: > [...] > What happens to this tax money? What Yeah, my fingers are sore, but just one more thing: I'm still waiting for your answer to this question: Would you rather see your petro dollars going to the gov't or places like Iran? [...] AEF ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:22:05 -0400 From: Bill Todd Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1s6dnaPVCL1zkmPYnZ2dnUVZ_o6gnZ2d@metrocastcablevision.com> Dr. Dweeb wrote: > Bill Todd wrote: >> Dr. Dweeb wrote: ... >>> Climatology has essentially zero credibility at present. >> Fortunately, you are dead wrong about that. So the right thing is >> likely to happen regardless of whether people like you personally >> happen to believe in it or not. >> > > Apparently I am neither dead wrong, nor am I alone. You are indeed dead wrong, because the world community is rapidly moving toward action to prevent the problem you dismiss as illusory - whether you like it or not. I didn't say you were alone: I'm sure there are some flat-earthers still around, for that matter - every kind of misconception can find companionship somewhere. ... > http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831&q=global+warming+swindle > > I rather enjoyed this film (thanks to whoever posted the link originally), Hardly surprising that it would appeal to someone of your caliber. Let's look at it in some detail: What's most interesting about this program is just how *few* nay-sayers (only a half-dozen or so principal ones, plus a similar number of extras) it manages to scrape up. It has to supplement them with vested interests (e.g., the African who feels that GW is a conspiracy - for reasons left unexplained - by the industrialized countries to prevent industrial growth in non-industrialized countries: I guess they felt that he would be a more persuasive spokesman than someone from the at-least-equally-vested oil companies...). It's not really difficult to scrounge up credentialed individuals who are willing (or even eager, for whatever reasons) to support virtually any thesis you want supported: just look at how successful the Bush administration has been in this regard, whether with respect to its imperialist foreign policy, its other gross environmental depravities, its voodoo economics, or whatever. The attempt to make credible hay out of the graphs indicating that a temporary slight cooling period starting in 1940 accompanied the continual rise in CO2 emissions was ludicrous. I suppose someone eager to disparage the idea of GW might dismiss this with the observation that the 'science' had to be simplified so that the average Joe could appreciate it - but the fact is that this decrease was merely a temporary blip in a steady rise in global temperature that has correlated quite well over the long term with the rise in human burning of fossil fuel since the industrial revolution began in the early 1800s (and even before that in the use of coal for heating fuel). That there are other factors as work as well (that can cause such temporary blips) is not in question. That there are other factors at work that could cause temperature rise independent of (and *in addition to*) that caused by human activity is also not in question. But neither does anything to dispute the assertion that human activity is also itself contributing to temperature rise. The important thing to remember is that the effects of increasing greenhouse gasses are *cumulative*: even if CO2 emissions did rise significantly right after WWII rather than more gradually (which might seem a bit more likely, given the production levels and fuel usage during the war itself) that was not of short-term significance - the effects of human-released CO2 on global temperature during that period were primarily due to the CO2 that had been released and accumulated during the previous 200+ years on a gradually-rising basis. So the fact that no *immediate* effect of increased production was reflected in the global temperature (a 'fact' which the program seems to place significant weight on) is not at all surprising. The program then goes on to try to debunk the GW thesis by observing that measurements suggest that the troposphere is not warming up as much as the surface temperatures are. Now, this could suggest that there are other factors at work *too* in the surface temperature rise, or that we don't understand exactly how greenhouse heating works in terms of its effects at the surface, but it certainly does not indicate that increased greenhouse heating is not at work as well: only long-term comparative troposphere temperature measurements (which of course we don't have) could do that. The attempt to reverse the cause-and-effect relationship of CO2 to temperature in the ice-core record is rather sly: what conclusion an inattentive observer would draw from its graph depends mostly upon what units of measurement and zero-points are used on its axes. In particular, at its very start it shows CO2 levels rising sharply while temperature rises much more slowly - but carefully arranges that the 'CO2' line falls *below* the 'temperature' line to make it appear that the temperature rise is leading. The only point where any such lag actually may seem to occur is around the *peaks*, and it would take far more detailed analysis to determine exactly what the reason for that was and whether it had any relevance whatsoever to the behavior during the *rising* period (which of course it the portion of greatest interest to us). Still, the program and its talking heads purport to have 'proven' an inverted cause-and-effect here - again, apologists would probably say that providing *actual* proof (assuming that it existed) would have been too tedious for a lay audience to follow. The fact that humans produce only a few percent of total CO2 production is also calculated to impress the ignorant. It really doesn't matter what percentage we produce - what matters is how much this imbalance changes total atmospheric content, which is a function of how effectively natural mechanisms (that would otherwise keep the atmospheric total relatively constant) can deal with such a man-made increase. If they can't recycle any more at all, then every molecule we release adds to the amount in the atmosphere, and if the recycling process is a relatively fast one (as it appears to be) our contributions will cause atmospheric concentrations to rise relatively quickly. [In fact, the natural recycling mechanisms appear to have been able to recycle some portion of our added contributions but nothing like all of them - and the rise in concentration demonstrates this (as exacerbated by our continuing efforts to deforest the planet).] The correlation between solar activity and temperature is more persuasive, but (again) fails to demonstrate that solar activity controls temperature to the exclusion of other factors (such as CO2 concentration). In particular, the variations in solar activity that correlate so well with temperature are on the order of a decade or three (often even just a few years) in length, whereas the effect of man-made CO2 emissions is cumulative on the order of more like centuries - creating an underlying trend rather than short-term variations. The program does make the laughable statement during that discussion that there is 'no obvious' correlation between CO2 levels and temperature, conveniently ignoring the fact that CO2 level is a smooth curve varying slowly while temperatures varied far more volatilely (though with an average that in fact *did* track the rise in CO2 level on overall average in the graph that they displayed). They then move on to suggesting that current GW attitudes came about because Margaret Thatcher wanted to crush a coal-minors' strike. Does anyone else find it rather laughable to think that Margaret Thatcher wielded sufficient clout to make any headway whatsoever in this regard, against the most wealthy and powerful economic interests (the energy industry) in the world? Perhaps that's why they felt it necessary to rope in ridiculous stereotypes of environmental Luddites as her unlikely co-conspirators (I've considered myself an environmentalist for many decades, but am about the farthest thing from a Luddite one could imagine - nor do I know any fellow environmentalists who would fit that description). Not content with that, they then added 'neo-Marxists' to the mix (progressives who supposedly had nowhere else to direct their energies after the collapse of Communism, and were still looking for 'anti-capitalist' outlets) - sheesh! This was the point at which the fact that the presentation was overt propaganda became starkly evident (until then, one could have considered it well-meaning pseudo-science; suddenly, you had several of their principal and supposedly objective talking heads repeating precisely the same right-wingnut phrases - 'anti-capitalism' being the favorite). Demonizing and attempting to marginalize your opponents as social defectives is the hallmark of the kind of amoral "I'm all right, Jack!" bastards with a vested interest in vigorously defending the status quo regardless of the cost to others whom I so whole-heartedly loathe in the current American administration (and other large portions of our national government). I guess it's not surprising that they managed to get their claws into the BBC - they certainly managed to subvert our own Public Broadcasting System significantly (though some clean-up has since started to occur). So there it is: their principal 'sources' sound not only like neocon shills ("You're either with us or you're with the terrorists!" comes to mind as a similar condemnation of their opponents) but a hell of a lot more like the 'sources' the tobacco industry used for decades to dispute the dangers of smoking than like anything resembling objective analysts. They emphasize the amount of money devoted to GW research (money that at least in theory did not *direct the outcome* of that research) while not saying a word about the vast amounts of money energy companies have devoted to presenting the opposing side of the story. They emphasize that without complete understanding of all aspects of the system no one can really know (which it of course simplistically true but also rather akin to questioning whether we can ever really know *anything* - and again very reminiscent of the tobacco industry's attempt to dismiss clear correlations between cause and effect that they found inconvenient). "It is now common in the media to lay the blame for every storm or hurricane on global warming." This pretty much captures the level of hyperbole that's common in this drivel: I admit that I don't pay that much attention to the media, but when it comes to major storms I do tend to follow their progress if it seems that it might affect me - and the only mentions I recall hearing of GW have been cautions that one should *not* draw conclusions about GW on the basis of any single event or even events over the course of a year or two. About the only aspect of this program which I found fairly credible was the observation that the IPCC report had been (in words recently used to describe Tony Blair's reports leading up to the Iraq war) sexed up by elimination of the kind of qualifying remarks that real scientists would rightly want associated with their findings. I don't condone such selective presentation any more when it's done on behalf of theses that I support than I do when it's done on behalf of those I oppose - even though such qualifications could be misinterpreted by non-scientists in precisely the manner this program would like them to be. The other observation that I agree with is that we have no right to ask people in developing countries to make sacrifices to prevent global warming that we aren't willing to make ourselves - in fact, we don't have the right to ask them to make any sacrifices at all unless we help provide support to offset them: we've already reaped the advantages of raping the environment, and if we don't want others to do the same we'd damn well better be willing to compensate them for that. But that has nothing to do with whether the threat of GW is real: that's just part of what we have to deal with if it is (or even just enough of a possibility to need addressing). The bottom line remains that the significant preponderance of published scientific opinion rests solidly on the side of the thesis that the danger that we're significantly influencing our climate is very real - with the usual qualification that one can never be completely sure. That's enough for me to believe that trying to mitigate the likely (or even just quite possible) effects on future generations is a moral imperative, and to support efforts to that end. - bill ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 22:54:00 -0600 (MDT) From: Borked Pseudo Mailed Subject: Re: BA places corpse next to first-class passenger Message-ID: John Doe [Canadian psycho JF Mezei] wrote: >Craig Welch wrote: >>> Nasty. He should get some sort of compensation. >> Nope. He should get over it, as the airline suggested. > > >Assuming this isn't a hoax, the passenger should have demanded he be moved if >they were unwilling to move the corpse. > >Normal airlines would put put the person in a body bag and stowe in in a >lavatory. In the case of Singapore, on its 340-500s, they have stowage for a >dead body so it doesn't close down one of the lavatories. > >It is absolutely unhygienic to keep a corpse in open spaces next to other >people, especially for a very long flight. > > >If BA really did what was written in that text, I suspect they are >about to get >a visit from health inspectors. My gut tells me this article is a hoax. YOU are a hoax, JF. You're trolling so fast and furiously you can't even keep your trolling IDs straight. Here's a refresher for you: "John Doe" is your sci.space.* trolling alias. "Nobody" is your rec.travel.air trolling alias. HTH. HAND. FOAD. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.vms/msg/5e814528bf75efa9 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:55:54 -0700 From: Ken Fairfield Subject: Re: cluster upgrade stratedy Message-ID: <5661okF274te4U1@mid.individual.net> Don.Zong@gmail.com wrote: > Hi, > > We are thinking upgrade our 3-nodes cluster openvms 8.2-1 itanium to > openvms 8.3. Right now every node boots off the the same system disk > which is on eva3000. > > The upgrade approach we are trying to do > > 1. clone a system disk say disk B Just one point here: I'd recommend an image backup to your new (system) disk since that will defragment the volume in the process. In addition, if you have the opportunity, you could do a second image backup/restore of the *upgraded* disk prior to moving the other nodes to it. (That might be the fanatic in me speaking...season to taste. :-) > 2. let node A,B boot from the original system disk > 3. let node C boot from disk B ( change logicals for some common files > ie uaf , so node C use the same file as node A, B does) > 4. upgrade node C > 5. testing on node C > 6. if everything is fine, let node A, B boot from disk B > 7. after a couple of months, if everything is ok remove the original > system from cluster. > 8. done > > Wondering if anything I've overlooked ? Any suggestions? comments? I'd echo Kerry's idea to use a separate disk for various cluster-common files. That would be a pre-upgrade activity. It will help keep the cluster consistent while the two different system disks are both in use, and it does simply upgrades. -Ken -- Ken & Ann Fairfield What: Ken dot And dot Ann Where: Gmail dot Com ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 17:16:47 -0700 From: "tomarsin2015@comcast.net" Subject: Help with a BA-356 Storageworks Message-ID: <1174263406.973114.162730@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com> Hello I have a VAX 4000-100 with 2 internal scsi and the 3 internal dssi drives. I have a spare BA356 with some 9 and 18gig drives in it.I would like to connect the BA356 to the VAX, so dka200 thru dka700 would be the external drives.Problem is when ever I start at the bottom next to the power supply of the cabinet dka100 goes off-line. If I start at the top of the cabinet dka100 shows up, but the drives in the BA356 dont. I shouldnot have to open or change the id on the drives, since this would void the HP warranty. What am I doing wrong?? I know this would be so much easier if I could just buy the 2nd scsi controller for the 4000, but at $1000.00+ management would just laugh. thanks for any help Oh yes dka100 is terminated or should it? phil ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:51:11 -0400 From: "Ray" Subject: Re: Help with a BA-356 Storageworks Message-ID: > I have a VAX 4000-100 with 2 internal scsi and the 3 internal dssi > drives. I have a spare BA356 with some 9 and 18gig drives in it.I > would like to connect the BA356 to the VAX, so dka200 thru dka700 > would be the external drives.Problem is when ever I start at the > bottom next to the power supply of the cabinet dka100 goes off-line. > If I start at the top of the cabinet dka100 shows up, but the drives > in the BA356 dont. I shouldnot have to open or change the id on the > drives, since this would void the HP warranty. What am I doing wrong?? > I know this would be so much easier if I could just buy the 2nd scsi > controller for the 4000, but at $1000.00+ management would just laugh. > thanks for any help > Oh yes dka100 is terminated or should it? > phil > Oh my! Please start by reading the BA356 User's Guide a few times. If you don't have one, it is on the web (google "BA356 manual"). It talks about addressing, bus length and termination. After you've read this, you'll be able to ask more meaningful questions. Firstly, the BA356 cavities most often get SCSI IDs 0 thru 6 (sometimes IDs 8 thru 14). If you duplicate SCSI ID's on the bus, funny things will happen, so don't do that. ID 7 is not possible if you let the BA356 assign ID's. As a first step, why don't you disconnect the cable from the controller to the internal drives and connect the BA356 with only one drive plugged into the third slot directly to the controller and see what happens? You could also verify what SCSI ID the controller is using (hopefully 7). ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 21:02:14 -0700 From: "johnhreinhardt@yahoo.com" Subject: Re: Help with a BA-356 Storageworks Message-ID: <1174276934.104050.304990@p15g2000hsd.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 8:16 pm, "tomarsin2...@comcast.net" wrote: > Hello > I have a VAX 4000-100 with 2 internal scsi and the 3 internal dssi > drives. I have a spare BA356 with some 9 and 18gig drives in it.I > would like to connect the BA356 to the VAX, so dka200 thru dka700 > would be the external drives.Problem is when ever I start at the > bottom next to the power supply of the cabinet dka100 goes off-line. > If I start at the top of the cabinet dka100 shows up, but the drives > in the BA356 dont. I shouldnot have to open or change the id on the > drives, since this would void the HP warranty. What am I doing wrong?? > I know this would be so much easier if I could just buy the 2nd scsi > controller for the 4000, but at $1000.00+ management would just laugh. > thanks for any help > Oh yes dka100 is terminated or should it? > phil It is the storage shelf and the position in the shelf that sets the drive id. On the "personality module" for the shelf is a set of dip switches which determines if the drive id's use the low range (0-5/6) or the high range (9-14/15 or 8-13/14, I forget). If you have 1 P/S module you get 7 drives/ids and if you have 2P/S modules you get 6 drives/ids. You don't specify, but it sounds like the BA356 is plugged into the external connector of the same SCSI controller that the 2 internal drives use. Therefore DKA0 and DKA100 are the internal drives. If you plug drives into slots 0 and 1 on the BA365 they will also be DKA0 and DKA100 and then you get a id conflict which causes your original DKA100 to disappear. I'm not sure what is causing the drives not to show up if you start plugging them in on the high side. You should get DKA700/DKA600 depending on where you start. Unless you are doing this while VMS is running... in that case new drives won't appear until you issue a "MCR SYSMAN IO AUTOCONFIGURE" command which will have VMS search the SCSI buss for any available drives. The backplane on the BA356 provides all the proper termination. What is boils down to is that you can leave the first two slots open on the BA356 to avoid conflict on your SCSI bus or if you need as many drives as possible then you need to change the DIP switches on the personality module to make the BA356 use the high group of ids. I think the documentation for that is someplace on the web. I'll look for it or someone else may post it before I do. John H. Reinhardt ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 22:10:20 -0600 From: Jeff Campbell Subject: Re: Help with a BA-356 Storageworks Message-ID: <1174277504_13189@sp6iad.superfeed.net> tomarsin2015@comcast.net wrote: > Hello > I have a VAX 4000-100 with 2 internal scsi and the 3 internal dssi > drives. I have a spare BA356 with some 9 and 18gig drives in it.I > would like to connect the BA356 to the VAX, so dka200 thru dka700 > would be the external drives.Problem is when ever I start at the > bottom next to the power supply of the cabinet dka100 goes off-line. > If I start at the top of the cabinet dka100 shows up, but the drives > in the BA356 dont. I shouldnot have to open or change the id on the > drives, since this would void the HP warranty. What am I doing wrong?? > I know this would be so much easier if I could just buy the 2nd scsi > controller for the 4000, but at $1000.00+ management would just laugh. > thanks for any help > Oh yes dka100 is terminated or should it? > phil > The BA356 backplanes are WIDE (16-bit) and have a split SCSI bus. Depending on the configuration module plugged into the socket on the backplane's backside (behind the fan modules) the bus appears as a single bus or two busses. One bus is SCSI slots 0, 2, 4, and 6. The other is slots 1, 3, and 5. The personality module terminates the single bus. The two bus configuration has a terminator module that plugs into a socket behind slot 6. The single bus configuration has a jumper module that plugs into this socket. There is a dummy socket, to store the unused configuration module behind slot 1. If you are lucky you will have both modules. IIRC, the SCSI buses in a 4000-100 are narrow, 8-bit. You will need the narrow version of the BA356 personality module. The SCSI bus needs an external terminator on the DB50 external connector. The drives inside the VAX should not not configured to terminate. HTH, Jeff ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:36:34 -0800 From: foo@bar.com Subject: Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Message-ID: <6fprv210fr9tht7accadlsv7am4mi6u2ua@4ax.com> I just renewed my PAK and it came with the UCX client license, but the 7.2 software installed is TCPIP. Secondly clicking on the "Layered Products PAK" just gets me a repeat of the VMS Pak. Does anybody have any ideas? Will Montagar be changing the PAKs they send out? BTW, somebody left a note on the forum on the Hobbyist site with this same question, but it hasn't had any response ------------------------------------------ NO, use John Mee3 at comcast dot net (remove the spaces and do the obvious with the "dot" and the "at" ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 20:02:59 -0500 From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) Subject: Re: Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Message-ID: In article , foo@bar.com writes: > On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:45:14 -0400, JF Mezei > wrote: > >>foo@bar.com wrote: >>> I just renewed my PAK and it came with the UCX client license, >> >> >>The UCX licence will work fine to activate the TCPIP Services product. We just >>have to live with the strange PAK name. But it works well. > > Unfortunately, TCPIP$config pukes when I try that You should get in the habit of providing better problem reports such as: I issue the command: $ SHOW LICENSE UCX and get the following result %LMF-q-MOONBLUE, the moon is blue. Then when I run TCPIP$CONFIG, just after I answer the question What is your mother's maiden name ? with Lynerd Skinner TCPIP$CONFIG fails with the message: %SYSTEM-F-NOPRIV, insufficient privilege ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 21:12:14 -0400 From: "Ken Robinson" Subject: Re: Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Message-ID: <7dd80f60703181812u36773626sc187a3a67a6dbdba@mail.gmail.com> On 3/18/07, foo@bar.com wrote: > I just renewed my PAK and it came with the UCX client license, but > the 7.2 software installed is TCPIP. Secondly clicking on the "Layered > Products PAK" just gets me a repeat of the VMS Pak. > UCX is the old name for the TCPIP product and that's the license for the product. Just install the license. Ken ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 20:39:14 -0700 From: "johnhreinhardt@yahoo.com" Subject: Re: Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Message-ID: <1174275554.684090.133990@l77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 9:27 pm, BRAD wrote: > Ken Robinson wrote: > > [...] > > > > > UCX is the old name for the TCPIP product and that's the license for > > the product. Just install the license. > > And _load_ the license. I suspect that some newcomers to VMS get > tripped up by this requirement. And if you're running the file you get for the layered products as one big command procedure don't forget to issue a $ Set NoOn or else if you come across any previous loaded licenses you'll get an error message and the process will stop and you won't realize that not all of the licenses have been registered. Don't ask how I know... ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:42:51 -0800 From: foo@bar.com Subject: Re: Hobbyist UCX vs. TCPIP Pak issue Message-ID: On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:36:34 -0800, foo@bar.com wrote: > I just renewed my PAK and it came with the UCX client license, but >the 7.2 software installed is TCPIP. Secondly clicking on the "Layered >Products PAK" just gets me a repeat of the VMS Pak. > >Does anybody have any ideas? Will Montagar be changing the PAKs they >send out? BTW, somebody left a note on the forum on the Hobbyist site >with this same question, but it hasn't had any response >------------------------------------------ >NO, use John Mee3 at comcast dot net (remove the spaces and do the >obvious with the "dot" and the "at" The problem was your basic ID 10T problem- I didn't enter a bogus serial number at the VAX vms Pak generation screen (I thought I remembered that you just didn't enter one for 3100s and MVIIs). So when I received my first e-mail, I chopped off the headers and ran it. I thought that they had rolled the layered products into the base PAK for the hobbyist. To make a long story short, I got the base PAK and now all is well. Given that I have been using VMS since 4.4, I should have recognized the anomalous message as not being a "real" tcp/ucx message.... Oh, well.... thanks all for the help. ------------------------------------------ NO, use John Mee3 at comcast dot net (remove the spaces and do the obvious with the "dot" and the "at" ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 15:59:04 -0700 From: bob@instantwhip.com Subject: Re: Please keep the religious drivel out of comp.os.vms Message-ID: <1174258744.038118.42690@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 8:48 am, Paul Sture wrote: > In article <1174134436.835977.211...@d57g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>, > > b...@instantwhip.com wrote: > > but you being from Europe do not understand what a real > > Christian is ... your churches in EU land are dead, just > > like you are ... > > Bob, > > You have completely overstepped the line of common decency there. > > Now shut up. > > -- > Paul Sture what are you talking about????????????????????????? it is a FACT that only 10 percent of EUins attend church ... that is fact, not indecency! The church in europe is dead when only 1 out of 10 attend church anymore ... that is pathetic, and shows why when the Bible says the road to heaven is narrow and few will find it, and the road to hell is wide, it is right again ... it also says in the last days that men will be cold with no love, and children disrespectful of their parents, and how true that is ... and all you global warming fools should really be worrying about earthquakes, because it says they will increase and happen in diverse places ... earthquakes the past ten years have been doubling every year in number ... amazing how acurate the Bible is once again ... ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:15:02 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: RMS indexed file structure questions Message-ID: <4f8c9$45fdba01$cef8887a$17555@TEKSAVVY.COM> Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote: (for situation where the leftmost blocks of a bucket have been zapped, but rightmost contain valid records) > You have to reconstruct a bucket header. And then you have to fill the > space up to the start of teh good record with a deleted record (with > the right key in case of compression). Would it not be simpler for me to simply shift the valid right end of the bucket to the left and update the bucket's first free byte ? If the file is defined as having 2000 max rec length (variable), can I cheat and create a 5000 byte deleted record to fill a void ? > Yuck. It would be easier to patch up the data buckets in the broken > file. IMHO. I have come to the same conclusion. However, whatever way I choose, I still be to be able to parse the file. The bucket structure seems simple enough and the _bkt structure in bktdef seems to map well to reality inside the file. Question: is there a way to tell from the bucket header what type of bucket I am dealing with ? (index of various shapes/forms, data etc ?) I have learned about the check byte. First byte of the bucket must match the last byte of the bucket. And for my purposes, the value of that byte is meaningless. However, there is mention of "end of bucket overhead" in the include files. there are 3 constants defined, with values of 2 or 4. Apart from the last byte of a bucket, are there preceeding bytes that need to be set when creating a bucket ? (I will likely have to synthetize bona fide buckets). Is it legal to have a bucket without records in it ? (aka: first free byte is at offset 14, right after the end of the bucket header) ? Or would I need to create at least one dummy deleted record ? --- When using CONVERT it just find the first data bucket and then walk through the data buckets by using the "next bucket VBN" field in the bucket header ? Or will it be parsing the index ? The reason I ask: say bucket 27 points to bucket 28 as the next bucktet. But buckets 28 though 32 are corrupt. I could then just patch bucket 27 to point to bucket 33 as the next one. Walking the buckets would avoid bad buckets. But the index would still have entries pointing to bad buckets. Would convert complain ? (I realise buckets are numbered with VBNs). ================ I am having problems parsing the records within a bucket. IRCDEF defines 6 bytes of bitflags, 1 filler byte. For variable length files of prologue3, it defines an overhead of 11 bytes for the record header. And this matches what I am seeing in the file. And I know that the bytes 10-11 represent the record length. But that is still leaving 3 undefined bytes. How can I find out ? Also, if the 2 bytes containing the length say the record is 100 bytes, does this mean that the next record header begins at the 101th byte ? Or is there an "end of record" overhead with some control bytes etc ? Is there a way to find a clear and complete description of the record header that is garanteed to fit what I actually have in the file ? Now, I was thrown off by the compression business. Turns out that that the record key is not compressed but the rest of the record is. So the 2 bytes before the start of the record (key is at offset 0). ------------------- OK, I have looked at the data for an index bucket. (uncompressed index in my case) It appears to have a 14 byte bucket header. Followed immediatly by raw sequence of fixed length key values in ascending order with no separator between each key value. The bucket header's "first free byte" points to the first byte after the list of key values. At the end of the bucket, going backwards, there is the bucket's check byte, 3 unknown bytes, and then a sequence of 2 byte VBNs that correspond, in reverse order to the key values at the start of the index. So the first key value at the start of the header goes to the VBN that is the last in the list of VBNs. Is this correct ? Questions: Is there documentation for those last 3 bytes in the bucket ? Is there a count of keys in that bucket ? Or must I calculate it myself ? (first free byte - 14) / key size) It is pretty interesting to see the amount of redundancy and checks that were designed into the indexed files. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 18:30:00 -0700 From: "Hein RMS van den Heuvel" Subject: Re: RMS indexed file structure questions Message-ID: <1174267800.379018.128950@d57g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 6:15 pm, JF Mezei wrote: > Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote: This is turning into quit the lesson! > (for situation where the leftmost blocks of a bucket have been zapped, but > rightmost contain valid records) > > You have to reconstruct a bucket header. And then you have to fill the > > space up to the start of teh good record with a deleted record > Would it not be simpler for me to simply shift the valid right end of the bucket > to the left and update the bucket's first free byte ? Yes, with no compression and if you want to write a program. With my little ZAP tool and a couple of well aimed deposits faking a deleted record is not too hard. > If the file is defined as having 2000 max rec length (variable), can I cheat and > create a 5000 byte deleted record to fill a void ? Yes. > I still be to be able to parse the file. Several of my tools implenent parts of that. ANAL/RMS does it all. > Question: is there a way to tell from the bucket header what type of bucket I am > dealing with ? (index of various shapes/forms, data etc ?) Just close your eyes and let the bits speak to you. Seriously, you quickly derive a 'feel' for what one is looking at. Biggest helpers for you specific question are: BKT$B_INDEXNO, BKT $B_LEVEL > I have learned about the check byte. First byte of the bucket must match the > last byte of the bucket. And for my purposes, the value of that byte is meaningless. That's just ignorance. For you it _might_ mean whether the same bucket from a backup was changed since that backup. You do have some backup right? > However, there is mention of "end of bucket overhead" in the include files. > there are 3 constants defined, with values of 2 or 4. Apart from the last byte > of a bucket, are there preceeding bytes that need to be set when creating a > bucket ? (I will likely have to synthetize bona fide buckets). Nothing for data buckets, only for index bucket. Check ANAL/RMS/INT for a good file carefully. May favourites for this are SYSUAF and SYS$LIBRARY:VMS $PASSWORD_DICTIONARY.DATA Once you are in a (the one and only?) index bucket. Do you see: " VBN Free Space Offset" Now DUMP (in ANAL/RMS or better with plain $DUMP/BLOC=(COUN=1,STA=vbn +bks-1) See that offset? See how it is word aligned? That's your 4 bytes I suspect. > Is it legal to have a bucket without records in it ? No, just skip it. Remember, your goal is NOT to create a great new indexed file. You goal should be an indexed file which is just good enough to convert! > When using CONVERT it just find the first data bucket and then walk through the > data buckets by using the "next bucket VBN" field in the bucket header ? Or > will it be parsing the index ? It should. IMHO. But it actually walks the left edge of the index structure FOR THE FIRST BUCKET. After that is just follows bkt$l_nxtbkt > I am having problems parsing the records within a bucket. > IRCDEF defines 6 bytes of bitflags, 1 filler byte. No. That's a union. All different ways to look at the same byte. Check with the much simpler: $libr/extr=$ircdef/out=tt: sys$library:lib.mlb > For variable length files of prologue3, it defines an overhead of 11 bytes for > the record header. And this matches what I am seeing in the file. And I know > that the bytes 10-11 represent the record length. But that is still leaving 3 > undefined bytes. How can I find out ? Study ANAL/RMS/INT output. DUMP the bucket. But is really is simple: control-byte record-id-word RRV-6-byte = record-id-word + vbn-long for first location of this record, which may be current. record-length-word = 1 + 2 + 6 + 2 = 11 > Also, if the 2 bytes containing the length say the record is 100 bytes, does > this mean that the next record header begins at the 101th byte ? Yes. Surely that is trivial to verify in a good file with.. dare I say it again... ANAL/RMS/INT >Or is there an "end of record" overhead with some control bytes etc ? Do you see any? Do you see any defintion for any? > Is there a way to find a clear and complete description of the record header > that is garanteed to fit what I actually have in the file ? Send money this way. > Now, I was thrown off by the compression business. Turns out that that the > record key is not compressed but the rest of the record is. Sure. Could be. > At the end of the bucket, going backwards, there is the bucket's check byte, 3 > unknown bytes, Hey, there's your 4 byte overhead. But iti is not unknown. It is the counterpart of next-free-byte for the pointer storage array. and then a sequence of 2 byte VBNs that correspond, in reverse : Is this correct ? Yes but inaccurate. Whether it is 2 bytes depends on the size of the file and is encoded in: bkt$v_ptr_sz > Questions: - answered above > It is pretty interesting to see the amount of redundancy and checks that were > designed into the indexed files. Yeah, and if those fail you et RMS$_CHK, bucket format check failed for VBN = 'nnn' And that is a bit of a problem for RMS because in 99.9% of the time RMS did not cause a the correption but is just the messenger. Other systems might just croak or feed bad data to the application and never get the blame. But as RMS reports the problem is often gets the blame! Cheers, Hein. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:56:52 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: RMS indexed file structure questions Message-ID: <8adf6$45fe182d$cef8887a$358@TEKSAVVY.COM> Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote: > This is turning into quit the lesson! And it is very appreciated. And I am sure that someone bitten by a similar problem later on will appreciate your having taken the time to document this for me and Mr Google. > Yes, with no compression and if you want to write a program. > With my little ZAP tool and a couple of well aimed deposits faking a > deleted record is not too hard. The problem I have is to generate the list of bad blocks/buckets. This is a 50k block file with a few thousand bad blocks. All the standard tools such as ANA/RMS just choke at the first one. And I also want an idea of exactly how much have lost from the file and record which key ranges were lost. I have a 1 year old backup and may then see if any of the missing records can be sourced from the old file. > Several of my tools implenent parts of that. ANAL/RMS does it all. ANA/RMS per say chokes at the first bad block. Ana/rms/interactive is very useful to ensure my program gets the same values. But for a large file, manual scanning doesn't work. > Just close your eyes and let the bits speak to you. Sorry, I don't have a sound card on my workstation :-( :-( > Seriously, you quickly derive a 'feel' for what one is looking at. > Biggest helpers for you specific question are: BKT$B_INDEXNO, BKT > $B_LEVEL Thanks. Will get to work on that. > For you it _might_ mean whether the same bucket from a backup was > changed since that backup. > You do have some backup right? A year old backup. Depending on where the corruption occured, it may have affected old records (emails) and can thus can be recovered from the backup. For more recent records, partial reconstruction can be made from the email file as well as the private docdb records which have pointers to the corrupted file and a few copies of the fields. > > Is it legal to have a bucket without records in it ? > > No, just skip it. > It should. IMHO. But it actually walks the left edge of the index > structure FOR THE FIRST BUCKET. > After that is just follows bkt$l_nxtbkt Ok, thanks. So I can then safely modify the nxtbkt fields to skip over totally empty buckets then. > No. That's a union. All different ways to look at the same byte. Ahh, many thanks. > But is really is simple: > control-byte > record-id-word > RRV-6-byte = record-id-word + vbn-long for first location of this > record, which may be current. > record-length-word > = 1 + 2 + 6 + 2 = 11 Ok. Many many many many thanks. Out of curiosity, is this documented somewhere regular humans have access to ? IRCDEF doesn't say anything about that. > Yes. Surely that is trivial to verify in a good file with.. dare I say > it again... ANAL/RMS/INT I was going to create a test file with just textual data in it to see. My "bad" file has a mix of binary and textual data in it, so it is very hard for me to know where a record actually ends just by looking at the dump output. > Hey, there's your 4 byte overhead. > But iti is not unknown. It is the counterpart of next-free-byte for > the pointer storage array. I suspected as such. But the values seemed too high, but I was thinking in terms relative to the end of bucket (small values) versus relative to start of bucket (high value since this is a 30 block bucket). > And that is a bit of a problem for RMS because in 99.9% of the time > RMS did not cause a the correption but is just the messenger. Other > systems might just croak or feed bad data to the application and never > get the blame. But as RMS reports the problem is often gets the blame! The ability to ring an alarm bell to warn of bad file structure is extremely valuable. the ability to scan files to detect corruption is extremely valuable. And this is a HUGE asset for VMS. Had the LD driver problem happened on windows or Linux, I would have had no tools to even draw a list of files that were zapped/damaged by some driver doing rogue writes on the wrong physical disk drive. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:45:23 +0100 From: Marc Van Dyck Subject: Re: Suggestion for the VMS X-windows server Message-ID: JF Mezei explained : > - wrote: >> This raises an interesting question: since Mozilla 1.7.13 is at EOL, will >> HP release a VMS port of Firefox or SeaMonkey? > > This has been casually mentioned here in the past. But when asked, HP will > respond that it is not officially on the roadmap. > > > >> w/r/t/ your memory exhausted issues: run some sort of monitoring tool, or >> move your X server to a different box. Using VMS as an X server doesn't >> make a lot of sense these days. > > I have a VMS workstation. If I can't use it for the user interface, I might > as well move everything to a MAC which handles both server and user > interfaces nicely thank you. > > If I am the only left in the universe to want VMS to improve its X windows > system, then perhaps I should just ditch everything. No, JF, you are not alone. All my team of OpenVMS system engineers have an OpenVMS desktop system (alpha station XP900). I wonder what I will give them when I will need to replace those with Itanium-based sysems. Perhaps an Integrity blade, if the embedded video controller is powerful enough... -- Marc Van Dyck ------------------------------ Date: 18 Mar 2007 18:07:18 GMT From: Doc Subject: WinSCP Message-ID: I'm trying to get WinSCP (http://www.winscp.net) up and running with Deathrow (Multinet stack). Has anyone had any luck with this package on any VMS system? Or should we all be posting logs in this discussion? (http://winscp.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3853). Doc. ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2007.155 ************************