Jerry,

"and I really do wish Microsoft had provisions for saving twice with one SAVE command"

Jerry,

You’ve probably had this mentioned to you a hundred times by now but here goes anyway!

I’ve had just as many problems with IDE CD-ROMS with Win95B and know many others as well.

What I ALWAYS do with Windows installations is get the CD-ROM directory that contains the *.CAB files onto the HD one way or another (as early as possible) into c:\windows\options\cabs. This way with any re-install or update you can point straight there.

This hasn’t failed me and is very useful when Windows doesn’t see your CD-ROM - like when you install it!

Subject: Cooper review

By making a statement such as: "actually more simply, install an IDE CD-ROM drive into the machine, one that I’ll remove later," you are demonstrating that you are in the tiny minority of computer users (less than 1%) that probably are not who Cooper was talking about (a definite left-turn in the Jetway if I ‘ve ever heard of one). This disqualifies you from making reasonable comments about the book unless you at least attempt to put yourself in the more average computer user’s shoes which you haven’t dones at all in your review.

Another good example of the chasm between computer-savvy thinking and non-computer-savvy thinking is the ocmment "I certainly want to know when a file is open and can be modified, and when it is closed and safe, and I would presume anyone else working with computers wants to know that." A non-computer person will ask the obvious question "why is the file ever NOT safe?" Fo some reason, this has never occurred to a programmer.

And I am concerned that you feel the Windows find file is acceptable. It is horrible. #1, I still have no idea how to bring up find file with a keyboard-equivalent and so will assume that none exists (unlike opn the Mac). #2, searches are excruciatingly long which necessitates all the idiotic options so that you can scale down your search to, say, a particular directory (unlike on the Mac which has a file database which makes searches lightining fast in comparison). And #3, the result list makes it difficult to see where the file is located (again, unlike the mac where it is simple).

Granted, you write for Byte, that still doesn’t entitle you to disregard an author’s subject matter.

If it’s so easy, you may be thinking, they why doesn’t Steve just do it for me? Well, okay.

This macro is for Word 97 and newer (requires VBA).

• cut here—cut here—cut here—cut here—cut here—cut here—

Sub DoubleSave()

‘ Save the current file, and also save it in a backup location. ‘ If a file with the same name already exists in the backup location, ‘ it will be silently clobbered.

‘

‘ If you don’t have a filename already assigned, this will save ‘ as Document1.Doc (or Document2, etc.). That’s different from ‘ the normal Save, which does a SaveAs if you don’t have a filename ‘ assigned yet.

‘ Be sure to create the directory; this code will not do it for you.

BackupDirectory = "C:\Bak"

CurrentFile = ActiveDocument.FullName

BackupFile = BackupDirectory &; "\" &; ActiveDocument.Name

‘ SaveAs changes the default directory, so do BackupFile *first*.

‘ Then, doing CurrentFile changes the default directory back.

ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:ºckupFile, AddToRecentFiles:úlse

ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:=CurrentFile

End Sub

• cut here—cut here—cut here—cut here—cut here—cut here—

I’m sure you know enough about Word to know how to bind this to Ctrl+S by yourself. If you don’t, send me email.

I suggest you make a server running Windows NT (Workstation is fine; you don’t need NT Server). Then, install Norton Utilities with Norton Protected Recycle Bin, and make a BackupDirectory on the server. Even the clobbered files will be saved in the protected recycle bin, so you can get older versions of things back.

If you want me to make changes to this macro, I’ll do so; let me know.

--

Jerry,

More on that Windows Key

Win Key + C => Control Panel

Win Key + I => Mouse Controls (only with Intellimouse SW??)

Win Key + A => Accessibility Properties

Win Key + + => Keyboard Properties

A question what is the point of Win Key + TAB??

It only selects the button on the Start Bar.

It does not go to the application as with Ctrl + TAB or Alt + TAB.

Subject: If this is Microsoft's idea of quality feedback...

--Erich Schwarz

Thompson: I view Linux as something that’s not Microsoft—a backlash against Microsoft, no more and no less. I don’t think it will be very successful in the long run. I’ve looked at the source and there are pieces that are good and pieces that are not. A whole bunch of random people have contributed to this source, and the quality varies drastically. My experience and some of my friends’ experience is that Linux is quite unreliable.

Dr. Pournelle,

In reference to the message about the about the Linux/ NT benchmarking article you posted in mail .

PS., I noticed your "subscription" price went up. I’ll remind myself to post an additional payment, perhaps on Mrs. Pournelle’s Electronic billing. I’ll send a note when it is done. Your work is at least that valuable to me.

George A. Laiacona III

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Like yourself, I also store the Windows setup files on the Hard Drive. However, instead of storing them in Windows/Options/Cabs, I place them in a directory called C:\Win95. I do this before installing Windows for the first time, and install from that directory. That stops Windows from looking to the CD for .CAB files.

If you've already installed from a CD, you can still stop Windows from looking to the CD for .CAB files by using Regedit. Search for D:\Win95 (assuming D: is the drive letter of your CD) and replace it with Windows/Options/Cabs.

I'm sure you were aware of all this, but some others may not be.

Jerry;

Well, it was a really wild hair this time!!!

I don’t know if it was boredom, frustration, stupidity, or what, but I decided to build a Linux box.

My family and I moved to Corvallis (OR) from Littleton (yes, that Littleton) last August. We’d been feeling, more and more, that it wasn’t a good place to raise the kids for the last couple of years, so after I was laid off we decided to just up and go. Took awhile to get settled. We had some good breaks and some bad. Anyway, I started seriously job hunting about the first of the year. Had some really great opportunities and interviews, but never made the final selection. I’ve kept at it, but it’s been 4 months now and I’m felling a little frustrated and depressed. This is all normal and I can handle it- at least I though I could.

Last Friday..., well to be honest, last weekend I started thinking about building a Linux box. I looked at the hardware I had laying around and figuring what it would take to build another box. Kinda’ random thoughts at first. Found myself drawn to Linux articles on the net. Even started reading Linux tutorials! That was Friday evening and I decided, what the heck- I’ll do it! It’ll give me something to do, sharpen my skills, keep the old brain working, and distract me from the job hunting disappointments.

Let’s see, what did I have on hand? An old AT case, a Diamond Speedstar, a keyboard, a mouse, a UPS, an I/O &; IDE card, a 520MB hard drive, a 3.5 floppy, and an IDE CD-ROM. That meant I needed a motherboard (the only working one I had was an old 286/10, nah too slow), a CPU ( I have several burnt CPUs - PII, 486DX66, AMD 100, due to over-clocking experiments. The only working ones were old 386s and 8086s. As if I could find them!), some memory (Zilch in house.), and, if course, a copy of Linux.

Saturday morning, bright and early, with the zeal of a fresh decision and course of action to spur me on, I started downloading Linux. At 26400 that can take awhile. Three hours later I killed it. Oh well, I’ll need the hardware first, I thought. So, I was off to the local PC stores. We have several very good PC stores in Corvallis and each has it’s own particular flavor. I hit them all. Ended up coming home with an old Samsung Mono VGA monitor ($18), a baby AT board with a 486/33 ($10), and 2X4MB of good old parity RAM (72 pin, $18).

Luckily for me the family was going to take off shopping for the rest of the day and that meant that I could have the house, and more importantly, the dinning room table all to myself. So, I gathered all the parts together and started constructing. Now, I started building computers at home from schematics when I was 12. Dad worked for IBM where the engineers would swap designs and schematics all the time for home projects and hobbies - you can imagine. We lived in Sunnyvale, CA, rosin core was cheap and surplus electronics parts were plentiful. I started coding in binary, then octal, then hex, assembler, Fortran, COBOL, Basic, etc. I’ve been tearing apart and building PCs since the first one, but it took me 4 hours to get this one up and running, in DOS no less! Granted it has been awhile since I’d worked on an ‘86, but I was amazed at how much I had forgotten! But it all came back, albeit, a little slower than I would have liked, but it came back none-the-less. Have you ever noticed how it’s all those little got-ya’s that you forget first?

Anyway, the family had returned and the table was required for dinner, so I loaded it up on a cart and pushed it to the side. Tomorrow I would go and get Linux.

I knew that I could get a copy of Red Hat Linux at the local Walden bookstore (none of the PC shops had it!), because I had seen it there before. I showed up at 10 AM, unfortunately the owner didn’t show until noon. Oh well. By the time he got there I had had too much coffee while waiting. I found the Red Hat Linux book okay, but I noticed the Linux for Dummies book, too. Humm... the Red Hat comes with Linux Unleashed which is over a thousand pages. Daunting to say the least. While the dummies book is only about 350 and has much larger type. Humm... You know, I will need a good reference eventually, but the dummies is rated the best user-level guide, in plain English even! Humm... Which one? Finally, after reading and re-reading the covers of both, and reading samples from various chapters I decided - I’ll get them both! Hey, I’ll start with the dummies book and then, after I’ve rung it dry, I’ll move up to the Unleashed book. Good plan, made better by the old preferred reader discount card.

It was about 1:30 when I got home and fate was once again on my side. The family decided that they had to go out shopping again because some of the clothes didn’t fit and some fit so well that they wanted more. OK! Go! Have fun! Take you time, I’ll be here when you return.

It took six hours, 4 floppies, 105 pages of Linux for Dummies, 7 diet Pepsi, one heatsink, and one small prayer and it booted the first time! YES!!!! Granted it took some guesses, lots of re-reading until it finally sank-in, and a little grace, but - IT BOOTED THE FIRST TIME!!!!!! Xwindows and everything, well... except the mouse. I guessed COM1 when it was COM2, but that just took a few minutes to fix. Anyone could have made the same mistake. I thought it had hung several times, but that old 486/33 is awfully slow and formatting and expanding files was just working the little devil to death. To make matters worst the mono screen wasn’t showing any progress on the progress bars, but I could see the CD-ROM and the hard drive working so I knew something was happening. Druid required the prayer. ‘Nuf said.

I slept well Sunday night, ‘cause it... well, you know - the first time and all.

Since then I’ve been working through the Linux for Dummies book. More on that later, though. Gota’ go to bed now ‘cause I’ve got to be able to get up and get the kids off to school in the morning. Then it’s more Dummies.

Regards;

I agree with your argument: choice isn’t necessarily a problem, and trying to remove too much choice is still premature (outside some important fields where hardware is controlled---games consoles work fine with their OS burned on ROM, and PDAs similarly seem to work fine).

Subject: More on that Winkey

From: Todd Campbell [tdc@optimalvector.com]

Hello,

Brent Jones brtjones@ix.netcom.com wrote:

>A question what is the point of Win Key + TAB??

I think it’s to manipulate a program by keyboard without having to restore or maximize it. Click WinKey+Tab repeatedly to select the Start Menu button for a particular application. Then use the other key that was introduced with Win95, the "Properties" or right-mouse button key to open the properties menu for that application. On my keyboard it's to the left of the right-side control key.

Then select Close, Restore, or other menu selections (Eudora has a "Check Mail" added to this menu).

Three other keyboard time-savers I’m fond of:

Alt+SpaceBar to get the system menu for the in-focus program. This leads to Alt+SpaceBar n to minimize, Alt+SpaceBar m to move, etc. Useful when you’ve reduced the screen resolution too much, or the mouse isn’t working.

When installing for myself, I move the Command Prompt shortcut to the "Start Menu" directory (in NT it’s usually c:\Winnt\Profiles\username\Start Menu, in 95 you have to rename "MS-DOS Prompt" to "Command Prompt" and I think it’s c:\Windows\Start Menu). Then you can just do WinKey c to open a console.

When I install MS Office for myself, I rename the menu branch from "Microsoft Office" to "Office". I make sure there’s nothing else at that level of the menu tree starting with the letter O. Then I remove the word "Microsoft" from the shortcuts to each Office application. To start Excel quickly, do WinKey p o e (think Windows-Program-Office-Excel). For Word, do Winkey p o w. This change causes a glitch at uninstall; the shortcuts won’t be removed because the registry doesn’t track where they went. You have to remove them manually (try WinKey s t Shift+Tab Right-Arrow Alt+d).

Hi Jerry -

I observed recently that you have a paraphrase of a quote relative to dancing bears:

"...Cooper says the whole industry is building dancing bears: the wonder isn’t that the bear doesn’t dance well, but that it can dance at all..."

I have read a similar dancing bear quote in one of John Irving’s books, and have heard it used offhandedly on other occasions. I have been asking everyone I could for a citation on the origin of this quote, as I assume it is probably PT Barnum or someone of that ilk... This may not seem important to most people, but it has driven me nuts for over a year now.

Well, since you used it, I figure that you have as much chance as anyone else of knowing where it came from. Have you any idea at all?

From: Scott Advani [mailto:sadvani@home.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 1999 6:03 PM
To: jerryp@jerrypournelle.com
Subject: Cleaning up Windows registries...

Jerry,

I wonder if you might be willing to write a bit about how to effectively clean up the registry on a Windows NT system, while you're on the subject. It's one of those things that just gets to me... Windows NT will helpfully report to me that the registry is now 23 MB in size, but there's nothing I can do about getting it back down to a reasonable size that I'm aware of. MS's RegClean doesn't reduce the size by any perceptible amount. Certainly there must be some way to cull the size of this thing!

Reducing registry size is important not for the trivial saving in disk space--cutting the registry by 10 MB saves about a dime's worth of disk at current prices--but for the saving in memory. The registry loads into memory when the system boots, and saving 10 MB of RAM is worth some work. The size of a registry is influenced to some extent by the amount of "churning" that has occurred. As adds, changes, and deletions are made to the registry, fragmentation occurs. Windows NT is not particularly good at recovering the slack space that results from this fragmentation.

It's supposed to work with both NT and 98, although I've never used it with anything but NT.

For Windows 95 and Windows 98, you can completely re-build your registry:

I don’t think you can do this trick on NT.

--

A minor Y2K trick:

I got this tip from my own "mad friend", who happens to live in Ohio.

======================

> I thought you all might find this useful:
>
>
> >>If your VCR has a year setting on it, which most do, you will not be
> >>able to use the programmed recording feature after 12/31/99. Don't
throw
> >>it away. Instead set it for the year 1972 as the days are the same as
> >>the year 2000. The manufacturers won't tell you. They want you to buy a
> >>new Y2K VCR. Pass this along to all your friends.

======================

I tried setting my 3-year-old VCR to 11:45 pm, 12-31-99, and what d'you know, at midnight it lost it's date. Time was OK, but the date displayed was 00-00-00. I reset the date as above, and all is OK!

I'm keeping your saying in mind: "Never ascribe to malice....."

I called Micro$oft because i had a problem loading w95. it would hang on an reinstall. after 15 minutes of checking my ID number and all that i got a "oh gee your ID number hasd OEM in it and that shows that you bought the PC from somebody, now you read the license agreement and you accepted the agreement.... go ask them and here's thier toll free number".

if i try to install w95 again to clean it up (advisable) and it's a "new pc version" can't do it, have to strip it all down and start over...

they sounded just like Billl.... yes he has imbued the org with his personality

GO DOJ GO

GET 'EM AND BRING 'EM IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MAKE THEM PAY AND PAY AND PAY

anybody worth $100b and can't answer a dinky question without sounding like the inqusitor needs to be humbled with "extreme prejudice"

[Recirculate as appropriate.]

This shows the value of the net for circumventing "controlled" media. It is a unique human perspective. And it’s *well* WORTH READING!

It is a series of email letters from a 74-year-old retired journalist to her 30-year-old daughter in San Francisco. Her daughter is a personal friend of mine (who is running the web-site), whom I know well and whom *I* PERSONALLY trust—including trusting her when she says that her mother is giving an accurate portrayal of what is *really* happening at Ground 0.

Jim Warren, Contributing Editor &; columnist, MicroTimes Magazine

Also GovAccess list-owner/editor; 345 Swett Rd, Woodside CA 94062

voice/650-851-7075; fax-for-the-quaint/650-851-2814

[self-inflating puff: Hugh Hefner First-Amendment Award, Playboy Foundation;

Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award (in its first year);

Jerry-

After reading Mike’s re-install problems and identifying with them, I remembered a couple of sites that I have found that often provided me with the answers I needed when I’d have problems installing or re-installing Windows.

Microsoft has often hit me with the "OEM version cop-out".

It is maddening.

Subject: dean drive

While reading your piece on the dean drive you mention the fact that some so-called reactionless drives, which are tested in water, are similar to "bobbing a bobsled". This is because water has inertia. So is anyone doing theoretical work on bobbing a starsled? This is the basis for fictions warp drive, but what about slinging magnetic fields around in zero gee. Huge fields, yes; but huge distances need to be traveled.

I dont see why someone should not have tried to at least get over to Virginia in 1590.

(Though re-reading what you wrote his plantations would not have been so big had he even planted them).

Virgin(ia) Queen and towards the end of her reign...although I do seem to Remember that Virginia's first settlements were named Jamestown and Williamsburg so Ill get digging and search it out.

By the way the computer bits are great reading ..