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CHAOS MANOR MAILA SELECTIONMay 17 - 23, 1999 Last updated May 24, 1999 CLICK ON THE BLIMP TO SEND MAIL TO ME The current page will always have the name currentmail.html and may be bookmarked. For previous weeks, go to the MAIL HOME PAGE.
Fair warning: some of those previous weeks can take a minute plus to download. After Mail 10, though, they're tamed down a bit. IF YOU SEND MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is Chaos Manor. If you want a mail address other than the one from which you sent the mail to appear, PUT THAT AT THE END OF THE LETTER as a signature. PLEASE DO NOT USE DEEP INDENTATION INCLUDING LAYERS OF BLOCK QUOTES IN MAIL. TABS in mail will also do deep indentations. Use with care or not at all. I try to answer mail, but mostly I can't get to all of it. I read it all, although not always the instant it comes in. I do have books to write too... I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft who slowly starved to death while answering fan mail. If you want to send mail that will be published, you don't have to use the formatting instructions you will find when you click here but it will make my life simpler, and your chances of being published better.. This week: HIGHLIGHTS:
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Monday,System problems. Stand by
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Tuesday, May 18, 1999I still do not have control. Thought I did. Will keep trying.
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Wednesday May 19, 1999Still a placeholder. Still no control.
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Thursday May 20, 1999There is a LOT of mail to catch up with. Will see what I can do. Things are working, sort of, at last. === Jerry, Your May 17 Byte column points out the effect of memory leaks on NT. Indeed, a search of "leak" in the MS KnowledgeBase reveals several hundred mentions of known bugs (presumably fixed). Hundred more leaks are probably hidden in the NT code. It is just unbelievable that MS can SELL such an appallingly bad OS and get away with it. This is indeed the proof that MS lacks a healthy competition in the PC OS business, for bad products can only survive in the absence of normal, free-market competition. Suppose that your trusty Bronco (RIP) had been slowling down to a crawl after 100 miles and had needed a daily oil change. Wouldnt you have seriously wondered about the car market? Now why do you accept this kind of revolting shoddiness in an OS while it would have driven you berserk in a car? The example of Unix shows that it is possible to create a good, stable OS. Repected columnists such as you should clamor for stability and graceful recovery in OSes. I cant believe you are actually writing "get this utility and that program to fix NT" instead of "stay away from NT for serious work if you value your data".
/ / Internet : Fmora@*NOSPAMPLEASE*us.ibm.com Perhaps. But NT is working, and I never did get anything to work properly with linux/UNIX, although that may not be that systems' fault. As most of you know, I supported OS/2 a lot longer than IBM did, but IBM never got behind its own OS, having first declared war on Microsoft in a public and humiliating way. And the good news for NT users is that Windows 2000 aka NT 5 seems to be working very well indeed. More on that another time. === Subject: NT 4.0 service pack 5 and Cyrix Hi, Jerry, I was reminded about the service packs when reading this weeks portion of your column at Byte. A couple of days ago I installed the NT 4.0 service pack 5 from the Microsoft site. According to the description on that page, the new SP is mostly a compilation of previous patches and Y2K fixes. So, rather than get the whole bundle and duplicate some files and take hours to download, I elected to use the "install now" feature, rather than use the "download and install later". It went slicker than a whistle, and took only about 15 minutes! It was quite a contrast compared to SP 4 and its attendant problems. Of course, one still has to reboot and defrag, but that didnt take long. An another topic, I noticed a little blurb in USA Today a week or two ago about Cyrix announcing their cessation of manufactor of computer chips. The competition is too steep and so theyre only going to make appliance chips. I havent noticed any computer industry pundits making much of this, which seems sad. What will happen to the low end of the market with this perfectly good chip no longer around? Cheap people like me will have to pay more, I guess.... Thanks! Ted Borreson Ted [bookwrm1@pacbell.net] Thanks. We installed the Y2K and SP5 packs here on the Workstation, and that seems to be taking care of many of the problems. See also the memturbo stuff; that works too. I was a bit saddened by Cyrix, but two things: Celeron chips are still very much good enough for most systems, and their price is lower and lower all the time; and AMD is still round. I think Intel will compete for the low price market too. Competition is still good, and there is still plenty at the low end too. As with Winchip. ===
Subject: How to FrontPage /FTP/Publish from NT through LINUX to the Net Jerry I had the same problem as you did. Print this one out! Solution: Youve got to load the ftp_masquerade module on your linux box. --------- This works on RedHat 6.0. Try:
You should now be able to use the ftp stuff in front page to get to your website. Worked well for me! (Since this is kernel stuff, Im guessing it works on most distributions.) Some other stuff: ----------------- To see the modules youve currently loaded:
To find the ftp module:
To find other modules handling masquraded throughput:
To make sure the module gets loaded at ever boot: pico /etc/rc.d/rc.local # the autoexec.bat of RH linux # go to the end of the file and type on its own line:
And thats all there is to it!
Thanks. I think I am going to try a different solution to the problem, but we need to get all the information together. ==
In one of my reports to the subscribers during the time when things were down, I said:
There were other reports. In response, one subscriber said:
Are you familiar with the folkways of the penguins? They gather at the edge of the iceflow after a long hunger-inducing winter. No one dives in. There might be sea leopards there. Those in back push one of those in front in. If he doesnt get eaten by a sea leopard, everyone goes fishing. Just wondering if this somehow seems familiar to you. Affectionately, Andy a.miller [a.miller@agora.stm.it] And the only answer, is, yep, it sure does seem familiar ===
Subject: memory overload crashes in NT for a "professional" operating system to lock and crash when a memory ceiling is reached is inexecusable today; M$ wants everyone to believe that NT is mission critical software just ask the crew of the dead in the water Aegis missile frigate how they felt. actually, the admirals who had the stupidity to accept the system without investigating the rampart crash reports should be criticized more than M$. your solution of a memory meter is cute, but it is something you should not be required to be concerned with -it interfers with your work. its one thing to have an operating system on the market which claims it is the one and mission critical; its another to not only make the claims, but to be an agressive monopoly of where dominance is not acceptable, only crushed opponents. Ive never run M$, and never will. I give up a lot of great programs, but that is a price to pay for principles. as little as my refusal costs M$, it irrelevantits the statement. 15 years ago I ran a vax-750 for 18 monthsit only went down because a drunk took out a major power pole and the diesel generator ran out fuel...running 4.2 BSD. today, I only reboot to upgrade the OS.
Well, yes and no: that is, nothing will work perfectly, especially if you try to make it do things it wasn't designed to do. I not that you by your own admission have no experience with Microsoft (I presume that is what you mean by M$) and "never will". I'm glad you can get everything done without it. I fear I would rather put up with Microsoft than spend the time to learn all the tricks of UNIX, but that's probably my mistake. Still, shooting the messenger is traditional. This afternoon I was ready to commit mayhem against Microsoft because of FrontPage problems, but Bob Thompson pointed out that isn't Microsoft's yet: they bought the package and the next version can be blamed more on them. And FrontPage does pretty well if the extensions are implemented in the server and the permissions are set properly. And in fact if the permissions had been set right.. == Jerry,If you decompress it (SP-5, complete install, 128-bit encryption) http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/downloads/recommended/sp5/128bitX86/ using the -d switch (eg. msnt128.exe -d), you will find a directory according to the TEMP variable set in autoexec.bat. Copy the whole thing elsewhere once its done expanding and use _that_ path to update NT when the bloody OS asks for your WinNT Update disk. This will prevent the time consuming process of expanding and updatingassuming you can even figure out how to do it. (I couldnt). The directory the service pack unzips to may be hidden and/or read-only, which is why I use Norton File Manageror you, Norton Commander, to find it. If you insert the following into your autoexec.bat, youll always know where the TEMP variable is:
Sorry to hear of your FrontPage woesI use it only for Layout and Design, then recomplile everything to DreamWeaver 2.0, then control my FTP updates manually; but I suspect DW 2.0 can do a good job at uploading as well. PS -- In case you didnt know, there is a patch for FP98 at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadDetails/fp98bupd.htm
Thanks. I have been thinking of working with Dreamweaver, but for the moment I was hoping to get things running the way they was, so to speak. Another time. Having cooled down, I can say the FrontPage problems are largely the administrative settings at the site, and with proper permissions I should not have had those difficulties. Live and learn. === As a Network Administrator, I have discovered the secret to getting Microsoft products to work, ( if you are willing to pay the price). When you get to the License Agreement; highlight the Yes button. Prick your finger and squeeze until you get a good sized drop of blood, then hit the enter button. Microsoft products will then work. The unfortunate side affect is that Bill Gates will now own your soul. Jonathan Lichtman [jslslt@pacbell.net] Gosh I hope it doesn't come to that! === Like you, I used InfoSelect a _LOT_ ... the first version after Tornado was wonderful on DOS. I then got the Windows version, and "tried" to use their new fancy version from the web site. They have suffer "suite talk", like everyone else. I used to have a very simple system, that would interface to lots of other things ... and they tried to jam those other things into their product. Its terrible ... and even at this late date, I have upgraded to the latest levels of Windows and Office and Browsers ... but I use the DOS InfoSelect to capture the information I really need to remember ... like when Im on a new project, and the terminology is overloading me ... I just slam it into InfoSelect, and have an easy prosthetic memory. Enjoy your articles .... Dick Dunbar [dick_dunbar@ibm.net] And I seem to have LOST Tornado Notes, which as you say was better than what they have "improved" it to. The old stack of paper model was better than their new paradigm, and I find I use this less and less. I still am glad to have it, but it's not the vital thing that Tornado Notes was. Alas. But then my works habits are getting worse. And I do use the Palm Pilot for a lot of notes that used to go into InfoSelect/Tornado Notes.
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Friday May 21, 1999Subject: The Perfect Workstation? Dr. Pournelle, I was reviewing the June issue of "CADalyst" magazine and found mention of a workstation for the financially enhanced at $6000-$7000 without the computer setup. The URL for this workstation is www.poetictech.com. Though it is interesting, Im not sure just how many companies or individuals would take it seriously. Thanks for putting so much effort into your web site. It works just fine for me.Stan Fuhrhop smf@absconsultants.com Nor I. I tend to think that for under $3000 I can build one hell of a workstation... === Subject: Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Jerry, firstly a thank you for all the Byte columns over the years and this excellent site, also for the fiction (but I paid for those books so you have already been thanked in a more physical (fiscal) manner). Secondly I saw an e-mail to you a while back on why we dont see any aliens out there, supposedly they all sit around watching their version of Star Trek (wasnt Capt. J.L.Picard asked why he didnt do his exploring on the holodeck?) or playing doom or in some other VR. I think (like you) that, that is not a high probability (or at least not for a large % of species) my own pet theory is from information theory, apparently the more information dense a signal is the higher its entropy or in other words a "perfect" encoding looks just like noise, so the theory goes there are loads of signals reaching us put we ignore them all, because they are too sophisticated for our current decoding techniques!
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ they seem to have a very reasonable use for any spare compute cycles you have
rod [rod.burman@101010.com] Interesting. I used to be a great deal more interested in SETI than I am now; I am becoming convinced that Freeman Dyson was right, you get one intelligent species per galaxy; it takes over that that's that. And none happened here. Yet. But it sure makes better stories if there are many intelligent species Oh, I met my little ETI, down by the water hole, down by the water hole, down by === Jerry: When folks get tired of debating presence of intelligent life in WashingtonD.C. or Redmondyou might mention this site for folks with some spare computer time and an interest in such matters. No fees involved and no direct connection required. You download the application and it grabs a block of data over any internet connection. Can run as application or screen saver. Takes about 24 hours to process a block of Arecibo data on G3 Macs and Pentium II or better. Can be set to only dial when you allow it. Versions available for Windows, Mac and Unix including Linux. <http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/> Meanwhile good luck in battling the demons plaguing your server. --Jim -- Demons conquered, thanks. Dr. Pournelle:Re: SETI The problem I have with SETI is that there are no plans or controls in place for what we do should our search succeed. If there are Pak or Moties or Borg or Kzin whatever out there, should there not be some plans to study the nature of a First Contact, rather than shouting "Hey! Alien! Were here!" Maybe the old Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man" should be required viewing for SETI enthusiasts. Or they may be listening to us: to a radio telescope on some planet around any star say up to 50 or so light years out, earth must show up like a *beacon.* Or baby elephants with forked trunks. We need a Threat Team. Ive been dealing with cranky computer networks all week, so Im probably overly paranoid. But after reading Footfall, I hope Freeman Dyson is right. Regards! Mark Thompson [jomath@mctcnet.net] I quite agree. Indeed, in Footfall, we had the military bring in some science fiction writers, Heinlein (a naval reserve officer anyway), Niven, me, Joe Haldeman, Carolyn Cherryh, I forget who else, on the theory that here at least are people who can talk to scientists and who think about aliens. Agree though: we have no better plan than the Carl Sagan character had in Mars Attacks! And that may lead to similar results except that I doubt that Puberty Love or country western will save us so conveniently === Congrats Jerry! Youve now joined the ranks of the rest of the Press that, rather than demand NT be fixed, offer work-arounds, as if this type of bug is something you _should_ expect from software. Crap begets Crap. You should talk to Leo on ZDs "ScreenSavers"... he tells people to use a defragger every day on NT. Oh yeah, thats quality software. -bob- -- F. Robert Falbo | TheRef Drive &; Controller Guide BeOS &; OS/2 | http://theref.aquascape.com I am not at all sure what you are saying here. First, what difference does it make if I "demand" that NT be fixed? I can report what it does. I can report what I have found to let you get by that problem. I can say, as I often have, that it sure would be nice if some big company like IBM were to support a more carefully written operating system like OS/2; indeed, I think I rode that plane right down to about 400 feet before I ejected. Eventually there were things I had to get done and OS/2 while wonderful I am sure would not DO them; nor did they ever fix that input queue problem that allows one bad application to hang the entire OS including all jobs. Not quite what I wanted. Wish IBM had fixed it. They didn't. They abandoned it. So: other than showing bile, tell me what you intend with this note? What is it you want me to DO, other than confess that I am not as smart as you? I take it your advice to people is do NOT use Diskeeper, let things crash, then scream? Or use OS/2 and thus do NOT use productivity software or have a supported operating system? What? Sorry, sir: my task is to tell the truth and shame the devil. If I can also find a way to work around problems, I will continue to report them, and I will continue to receive bad mannered bilious mail. Ah well. incidentally, since using memturbo I have not had the system lockups I used to have despite keeping a bunch of windows open. One warning: Memturbo does itself use some memory; I only recommend it for systems where you start with plenty of memory but lose some over hours to days to leaks. === >>On another front I installed Macromedia Freehand with the hopes of using it to draw maps for BURNING CITY but I haven't had a chance to do a lot with it. I really need better MAP DRAWING software and I have not found any. I may be able to develop some techniques with Freehand. I want to do some rally spiffy maps, because big heroic fantasies that sell like Robert Jordan does always have good and detailed maps, and I intend to have those for this book, as well as for THE BURNING TOWER which will follow it.<< I greatly enjoy your writing (both novels and columns). Your Chaos Manor columns in Byte really helped me get up to speed on PCs when I got out of college in 1989. I can remember finding my older brother's stack of Byte (about three years worth) and reading three years of your column in a month. I would like to return the favor by helping you with your map problem. I love playing role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. One of the reasons I learned about PCs was to help me prepare maps and materials for the various games I run. I tried many things over the years and have finally figured out how to make maps on the computer the way I want them. There are two methods I recommend. The first involves a software package called campaign cartographer. You can find it at http://www.profantasy.com . This software is based on a AutoCAD like CAD program from England. You know AutoCAD you will feel right at home. It has a extensive symbols library and it very accessible. The basic package comes with all the symbols you need to draw overland maps. Their add-ons include a dungeon designer and a city designer. Their software is available for DOS or Windows 95. It has a learning curve and it definitely comes from the CAD world as opposed to the graphic world of Freehand and CorelDRAW. It will take some getting used too but once mastered it is a powerful and quick tool to make maps. The second is CorelDRAW 7, or 8. The reason I choose CorelDRAW because it has several important tools I use for maps. First it can layer this allows me to put land, water, vegetation, hills, and cities all on separate layers and choose which gets printed. Second, it has the Bezier line tool. This allows you to draw freeform curves and straight lines quickly and easily. You use this to draw islands and continents. Third, it has what they call powerlines. This feature allows you draw a vector based calligraphy line. You can also set the line to a fixed width. The result is a elongated thin blob that can be filled. I use this to draw rivers. I draw the landforms and then I draw the rivers using powerline feature. In I use the trim feature to subtract the river from the landform. The result is very attractive. Fourth and last, it has two color bitmap fills. I have a pattern for various types of vegetation. I draw the forest or the swamp has a freeform curved shape and then fill it with the pattern. Then I blank out the outline. I use CorelDRAW I am sure that Freehand has equivalents although I don't what they are called in that package. Regardless of which software you use I do have a recommendation for a methodology. First you take a piece of paper and draw your map. It doesn't have to be precise just close to what you want. I bet you have a hand sketch already done to use while you wrote the novel. The reason for the paper that for me it is easier to get my thoughts together on paper than drawing it from scratch on the computer. Second, you scan the map in. Then you take your drawing package and import the map. Stretch the map to the size you want. Put it on the bottomost layer and lock that layer so you can't move it. Also disable any auto trace feature your package has. Third, using the bezier line tool trace out the coastline lines. Draw the rivers. Make your hill and mountain symbols. Copy those symbols many times and start placing them. Then create your swamp and forest patterns. Draw the outline of your forest and swamps and fill them with the different patterns. Make your city and town symbols and place them. While you are doing this keep all the different entity types on different layers. This will allow you more contol over what is printed as well as making the front to back order of your symbols much easier to control. While you are placing and drawing refer to the underlying bitmap to gauge where to do things. If a mountain range or a forest obsurce the bitmap and you need to see it turn off the layer the obscuring symbol is on. I am enclosing a jpeg of one of my small maps. It was exported from CorelDRAW 7 Robert Conley [estar@toolcity.net] Several readers told me of the Fantasy package and after looking at their site I have sent for it. Paid good money, or credit card anyway, too. Then got a note from the President of the company offering to swap me a copy for a signed copy of one of my books. Alas, too late, but I'll see that he gets a copy of a book anyway -- may get me upgrades As to Corel 8, YES, I should have installed it, I have it, David Em likes it, and the only reason I can say that I put up Micrografix Freehand was that it was handy. I really do need professional quality maps for BURNING CITY. I should not have neglected Corel 8, and the only excuse I have is that I have been distracted the past few days. I will dig it out and instal lit today. Thanks. Thanks for the suggestions and the example. ==
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SaturdaySubject: Linux, bad news Dear Dr. Pournelle, First, Linux. After my fun with IE5, described in my previous message, I decided that linux belonged on a different machine. This way doing something bad to one OS won't kill the other. Since I have spare hardware that is Good Enough left over from previous upgrades (old SoundBlaster16, spare 9GB Hd, spare mouse, spare 2X CD-ROM) I decided to just buy the cheapest other components (Processor, motherboard, case and power supply, memory, floppy) to get a Linux box built. The best price I have seen is for a Cyrix 333, 32Mb SDRAM, low end SVGA card and 3.5" floppy for $290. $290!!! Bad news (for some of us, anyway) follows. At the following address, you can find an article about my late employer, Jurgen Staudte, who suffered an engine failure in his airplane during takeoff and crashed, Jurgen apparently invented the quartz movement used in watches. http://www.southern-utah.com/Friday/5_21_99local2.htmThere is also a front page article about the penalty imposed on the person who committed the first murder this town has seen in ten years. Nice small town. Just wish there were good enough job prospects in programming that I could stay. Kit Case Kit Case [kitcase@netutah.com]
Unfortunately I have lost track of your previous on IE5 so I can't link to it just now (I am sure it will turn up, things are still a bit hectic here). Today's Fry's has ads for $169 for motherboard, AMD k6-2 3Dnow!,cse, and power supply: $169. PC-100 memory is about a dollar a megabyte, and drives are about twelve dollars a gigabyte. Video board, 56K modem, and Ensonic sound collectively under $50, and a 17" monitor for $179. Ethernet 10 megabit $10, 10/100 about $24. You sure can put together a heck of a system for a few hundred bucks now. I love it. == Just a note regarding a technology you mentioned in one of your Chaos Manor columns back before Byte Mk1 died. Ive kept watch on the Datawave site (an alternate method of disk encoding which was supposed to allow up to about 10MB on a standard diskette) off and on since you took note of it, as it seemed to be a very promising option. As time passed however, with no sign of any progress (the site was seldom updated, and dates mentioned had all passed), I eventually picked up an external parallel Zip 250 drive with which I am quite pleased. I went back to the Datawave site today, and its no longer there. A shame really, because it would have been a nice intermediate step between 1.44 MB floppies and Zip 100 or LS120 formats. Brian Cheesman [cheesman@istar.ca] Thanks. I guess as storage dropped into commodity pricing, this didn't turn out to be the revolutionary technology I thought it would be (and would have been if it had come out quickly after I wrote about it). Thank you for following it up for me. === Following the recommendation by Jerry Pournelle to try MemTurbo, I downloaded and installed the programme on an NT4 Server SP4 box and a Win98 box. Both of these machines run on 128MB memory and have large paging or swap files. After a while, not having run anything for a time, as I was working on another machine, I wanted to run Access on the Win98 box. It gave me the not enough memory to run, please close another etc etc that implies inadequate Win98 swap file. Never occurred before. I ran the MemTurbo programme after my forced reboot to check things, and it seemed fine. Except that, some time later the same memory failure occurred. What seems to be part of the problem is that programmes on the menu, such as Sygate, McAfee, RealPlayer will work, but the Start button fails. No programme having an icon on the desk top will run. Uninstalling MemTurbo did not cure the problem. Thus, something that MemTurbo did when installed has resulted in a bug which produces a non-operable computer over a period of a couple of hours or more. To reiterate, had no such problems prior to this install.
Computer technology and Association Football http://www3.sympatico.ca/pdickins
I sent that off to Memturbo, and received this answer: Actually, this comment: > Thus, something that MemTurbo did when > installed has resulted in a bug which produces a non-operable computer > over a period of a couple of hours or more. complicates things somewhat, since MemTurbo makes _no_ changes to the system that persist while its process is not actually running. The only exception to this is the VCache settings adjusted on the Cache Tuning page, but it sounds as though you (Paul) were working with the evaluation copy where this would not apply. Thus, if the problem persisted when MemTurbo wasnt running, and in particular, after you uninstalled it, by definition the problem has to be unrelated to MemTurbo. I suppose Heisenberg could argue otherwise, but for all intents and purposes I think its a safe claim... - Dave Dave Plummer [plummer@memturbo.com] MemTurbo does itself use some memory, and might push a marginal system over the edge: I recommend it for systems where you have extra memory that tends to vanish over time due to leaks. I have had it fix problems for me, and I find that most systems benefit from MemTurbo. Exception: Windows 2000 has no need of it, so far as I can see: I haven't been able to make it thrash despite many operations that will cause NT 4 SP 4 to lose memory to leaks. I am reminded that my column says MemTurbo works on NT and Windows 98; it works on Windows 95a according to MemTurbo, and it certainly runs on the Windows 95b system I have. Dear Jerry, I tried MemTurbo after reading your comment at www.byte.com. Unfortunately, it doesnt deal with the leakage of User Resources, which is what forces me to restart Win 98 at least once every two days, sometimes two or three times in one day. I mainly use IE 5.0 for browsing, Netscape Messenger 4.6 for email, and Freecell Pro. Im happy to see you back in action at the new web-based Byte.
The old Genie was neat. When I get things fully established here we may be able to have something like it at Chaos Manor (many fewer topics, of course.) I have to say I haven't had the problem with resources withg Windows 98, and certainly not 98 Second Edition. With 95 I used to get it, but only when I did a lot of things involving older graphics software. Newer software doesn't seem to do that. For me. Your milage will probably vary And finally this: Memory leaks and windows nt Dr Pournelle, I read your article about memory leaks and Win NT. I too have a dual Pentium system that used to have severe leaks. FWIW, it was cured for me by moving up to SP 5. The system has not BSDd one time in over a month since installing SP5. I have so many services and device drivers on at startup that my initial memory is at 59meg (out of 288) and barely moves past a hours of heavy graphic work.
=== Subject: web colors. I have once written about this, and Ill once again write about it, cuz its really annoying. You have a light pink background. I have white as default character color. The two dont match. Please, if you have something other than default as the background color, have something else than default as the foreground character color too. -- dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org "If at first you dont succeed, skydiving is not for you." Alas, I use a parchment background which is not light pink; why your system sees it that way I do not know. Have you set things to a blue background with white letters? I like that when I write, but it raises merry hob with Internet page colors, and I haven't even tried to use it for 'Net work. I am not sure what you want me to do here, but I fear I am unlikely to be able to do it. === My name is James Snover, and I am a big fan of your books. I think Ive read all the sci-fi, and Im working on the non-fiction. I think "A Step farther Out" is as important today as when it was written. I think that when history looks back on the 1960-1980s era, "A Step Farther Out" will have to be credited as one of the major forces in getting the US population (if not all of western civilization) out of the whole "the future is doomed" mind set. One of the ideas you have written of is the "Alderson Drive," which you have stated is based at least in part on the work of Dan Alderson. does Dr Alderson have a web site? I looked in your links section on your web site and didnt see it. The last book of yours I read was "Starswarm," and I thought it was terrific. Keep on hitting those keys, sir! James Snover James and Donna Snover [jsnover@swbell.net] Every author I know loves getting mail like that. Thanks. We are hoping to get Step Farther Out back in print in the next year or so. Dan Alderson, alas, has been dead for about ten years now; he was always diabetic (see the Wizard character in Lucifer's Hammer for a pretty good description of him as he was and would have been had a comet hit the earth) and not in good health. We all miss him. == A report from the heart of the Valley... Marcia &; I live in Sunnyvale, near the heart of what many refer to as Silicon Valley. We both work for reasonably high tech companies, and pay unreasonably high rent. High speed access to the Internet at home? We very nearly couldnt get it. ISDN is available, but I hear its a bear to install and configure. Besides, the sign on the side of the VTA bus said "In 1994, we thought ISDN was a good idea. Of course we thought the Macarena was a good idea then, too!" This was an ad for Pacific Bell DSL service. We have two home computers, two phone lines, marcia writes plays and screenplays. I take online classes and run a couple of websites. We _*DESERVE*_ high speed access. There are two options "available" (in a range of speeds). @Home Network (through TCI) and Pacific Bell DSL. Now I have family members living on the Berkeley side of the SF Bay, with @Home access and they said it screams. I can live with "screams." Last August I called TCI, they said that we should have service in our area in late September ... well December... maybe in January... hopefully before the end of the summer, 99. At that last, I did a little research, and discovered that in Sunnyvale, which was the original test market for @Home, the equipment which they installed two or three years ago is outmoded, and doesnt work with their new system, so even though Sunnyvale was first, it will be near to last. Sigh. So, on to Pacific Bell we go. Not a bad choice by any means - after all, they own the copper, right? We have had our internet accounts and access through Pacific Bell for more than a year, with narry a hitch in service. DSL is problematic though, you have to be within a certain radius from one of the PB COs (Central Office, where the switch from copper to fiber happens). It took nearly 4 weeks for PB to decide our location qualified for DSL. That is the end of the sad part of this story. They sent out a tech, and together we hooked up the boxes. I set up the TCP/IP stuff, and we were live. I mean LIVE. I could download and view 5 Meg Tiff images from JPL in about 23 seconds. Big Grin. Now for the network... with very little pain, a Gateway Win95 box with WinGate was up and serving the internet to both my local machine, and across our home 10BaseT net to Marcias Win98 box. Then I transitioned the Gateway to Linux, set up something called IP Masquerading, and we were live again (in something less than 3 days - Linux is cool, but considerably more opaque for the uninitiated). I pass on this experience because you wrote about bringing your ISDN online. Also you mentioned online charges... The DSL service was a couple of hundred installed, $50 per month on 24/7, no additional connect time charges, and the monthly includes our PBI account, email boxes, home page, etc. So DSL is really only $30/month more than a standard ISP account. -- Brian P. Bilbrey "I am Red Dwarfs computer. I have an IQ of 6000, bilbrey@pacbell.net or the cumulative IQ of 6000 PE Teachers."Thanks for the war story. If I didn't live so far from the Phone Company switching box I would have DSL in here already. A couple of commercial outfits have offered it to me, and I am looking into them. Glad to hear it may not be as daunting as ISDN
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Sunday May 23, 1999I am for quite some time a regular reader of your columns and I was quite pleased when BYTE "came back from the dead" - I hope this time things will get better :) However, regarding your column regarding Mem Turbo I do have some observations:
Thank you for the kind words. I had not meant to imply that MemTurbo or anything else gets at NT memory at a kernel level, and in fact I am astonished that anything can: that's usually protected pretty thoroughly. What I said was: In both DOS and NT I had problems which seemed to be memory related. In NT I had the difficulty that after I had opened many windows and then closed them, some memory seemed to have vanished; in any event, the system slowed down as if glue were poured into it. Without much confidence I tried MemTurbo. In both DOS and NT most of my problems went away. MemTurbo itself uses some memory, and thus can make things worse in systems already close to the edge; if I have not made it clear before I should now: USE MEMTURBO only on systems with LOTS OF MEMORY on which you still get memory problems. I suspect strongly that its memory defrag capability is the important part; what it reclaims I do not know. Whatever it does, it has solved my NT problem and since I began using it I have not got the locks and extreme slowdowns I was getting. That may be because most of my use of this NT machine is site work, and the programs mostly used are Front Page, Outlook, and Word, but I often have many windows open, and closing them while in theory recovering the memory did not, before MemTurbo, prevent things from locking up. Now I don't get the lockups. In that sense it works. I am as certain as you that it doesn't really get inside the kernel. I have to confess that I must have mislaid xdesk. I should look at it. ===
I dont believe that was the gentlemans point at all, Jerry. The point I believe he was trying to make, with which I agree wholeheartedly, is that NTs engineering, from a function and reliability standpoint, isshall we sayless than optimum. That it can be done right has been proven for 30 years nowas much trouble as you are having migrating to Unix, the operating system (correctly installed) is as reliable as the hills. Ive had Unix machines run for over a calendar year without a crash. More importantly, I believe he was also trying to say: Microsoft needs no apologists. If they can sell such a broken operating system, of course, more power to them, but it doesnt improve the world any to say (approximately) "well, since theres no better alternative, heres a way around the breakage"... when there _is_ a better alternative. Several of them, in fact. _Any_ system requires a learning curve; and I think youre getting just a bit less objective about that these days than you used to be... but hes right: you swing a big blade, Jerry. Those of us who are tired of Microsoft being an 800-pound gorilla really need some (well-read, notable) help. You fit that category. Whether you like it or not. :-)
Perhaps, but there are better ways to go about enlisting help than to accuse me of joining some mythical group and by implication selling out. Microsoft is here, and it is a big ship. Actually it is a fleet of medium sized ships. Even medium ships turn slowly, with the best of intentions. The best way to influence Microsoft is not to bash them so they don't listen to you any longer; at least that's my opinion. I know a number of Microsoft people, programmers, product managers, working level people, and I do not know a single one who believes his product perfect, or who believes that his company is part of some conspiracy to harm users and sell inferior stuff. Apologists Microsoft may not need, but serious competition would help; and that it doesn't seem to have. OS/2 could have been. IBM was larger than Microsoft when that contest began. Larger, more credible, more reliable, and with better programmers. And IBM threw all that away, broke the hearts of some really good programmers and systems engineers and managers, and left a number of supporters including me hanging out to dry. I still get mail from people who adopted OS/2 because of me and who wish they had some kind of support now. I also get mail from OS/2 enthusiasts who say there are now drivers for all the new boards like ATI Rage Fury and top sound equipment, but I haven't seen those drivers, and I don't know who writes them or supports them; certainly ATI, Creative, Matrox, Diamond do not, nor does IBM. Without some support with legs it just doesn't look like a comeback is possible; OS/2 remains The Mummy. UNIX might have been that, but the UNIX wizards all seem determined to keep UNIX grepping, which is to say, obscure and usable only to those determined to study it: to make a hard study of computer science, rather than be satisfied with getting some things done. UNIX is great if you get everything right. I have never been able to get everything right. Apple might have done the trick, and may yet, but Apple blew much of its credibility when Jobs said that the 128K Mac, a toy attached to a great concept for an operating system, was all there would be, get used to it; there would never be a hard disk, or more memory, or a separate data separator chip and disk controller chip and graphics chip, this wonderful toy is ALL, and it will stay high priced too. Then Apple was taken over by a Pepsi salesman who spread effort in all directions, brought out a "portable" that had no on/off switch, and ended up with almost no market share. Apple/Mac looks to be making a comeback, and Office 98 on the Mac turns it into a real productivity tool as good as any PC for most work; I'll get to a lot more on Mac another time, but they have a long road before they are going to get big market share. I wish them well enough that I am buying some Apple equipment so I will have things to report to you. LINUX we follow, and I wish them well also: once again the problem is there is no large and reliable source for drivers, and the various hardware people don't yet see a necessity for putting their people on it. That could change. I wish it would. There are applications for LINUX and getting to be more, and with applications comes market share and user enthusiasm. It could snowball, and Microsoft believes so. A good sign. Meanwhile, if we are to get our work done, many of us have little choice but to work with Microsoft: and in my case, I am as hard on them as anyone, but I do it from the view of one who wishes them well, not ill; who wants them to get it right, and I am more than willing to say so when they do, as with their wheel mice, integrating local networking into the OS, (would that OS/2 had done that quickly after Windows for Work Groups came out; I cheered when OS/2 got networking, but it was late, late) And with Windows 2000 I think Microsoft has taken a big step forward. I hope so. Still working with it, but I like what I see. Slowly, too slowly for many, Microsoft improves; and meanwhile, they do put out affordable stuff that sort of does the job, and gets more and more people into the computer revolution, and that's all to the good. So yes, I can be hard on Microsoft; but I don't start by hating the company, and I don't want it destroyed. I just wish there were at least one other company out there that would take one of Microsoft's mistakes and use it as a means to build real competition. == Subject: AOL and MIME with multiple files This is a long standing problem with America On-Line. Ive learned to send only one binary attachment at a time to my friends on AOL, as its E-Mail program gets confused if there are more than one and simply sends the raw MIME code instead. There are three solutions:
Actually, there is a fourth solution: Get Larry off of AOL and onto a real ISP... Jaime A. Cruz, Jr. [jaimec@optonline.net] Thanks. I suppose I should have known that. I have found that AOL does indeed do weird things with multiple
attachments (and sometimes with single ones). To do something with these after AOL has
decided to scramble them, you have to go back to the old days of the news groups when 7
bit was the norm and 8 bit things like pictures need to be decoded. That is essentially
what is going on here. The best program that I have found to deal with these encoded
documents is Wincode. I found it after a quick look at Wincode link on Stroud's
After installing, usually the default settings will work fine for any AOL file that has been encoded. Mike Lucas [mikelu@skylink.net] === I have found that repeatedly running MemTurbo will seem to make more and more RAM available. Is this a correct surmise, or am I fooling myself. I havent seen anything that addresses this question on your site or help screens. JHUniverse@msn.con
PS I thought that Id send a CC to Jerry Pournelle as his column led me to you. Actually it depends: in NT no, in Windows 98, sometimes, depending on what was eating the RAM in the first place. Let me emphasize again, MemTurbo is no substitute for more memory, but if you have plenty of memory and it's still not enough, MemTurbo does miracles.
Jerry, Anyway, this is to thank you for recommending MemTurbo. It does all you say. It has not only kept me from locking up, a frequent occurance due to multiple open windows, etc., but it also helped identify a major trouble maker on my system. I noticed that MemTurbo, kept kicking itself off (I had it set to run at low mem warning). I pulled it up and could see memory disappear, it would run, memory would restore to 40MB free, then fall to 5MB, restore, fall, etc. I used the emperical method to determine the culprit, by closing applications one after another until I found the perpetrator. A pull from an outside database via a somewhat jury-rigged spreadsheet interface I got from a friend. I still will need to run it on occasion, but now I know to go to barebones application-wise when I do. Anyway, thanks for the tip. Neil Massie [nmassie@ibm.net] It is certainly useful to know if memory is vanishing... |
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contents copyright 1999 by Jerry E. Pournelle. All rights reserved. |