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CHAOS MANOR MAIL

A SELECTION

August 16 - 22, 1999

CLICK ON THE Bottle 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:
Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday -- Thursday -- Friday -- Saturday -- Sunday

Current Mail

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Praise for Office 2000; was I wrong?
  • And more
• Wingate and other such matters
• The Monopoly Virus: Alert
  • This one is real
  • Keep it up...
• Opera
  • More
• Batch rename tool
  • DOS COPY (Duh...)
• The Big Mail Problem
  • See View for details
• More on You and SETI
• More on Office 2000
• London Times
• Me, LeMonde, and NASA again.
• Windows 2000 problems and comments
•  
•  

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Monday August 16, 1999

Jerry,

I think you reacted too quickly. There are some subtle and very useful features in Word 2000.

The multiple clipboards paste is worth the price of admission. I have always wanted a stack of clipboards so I can go along cut out several things and then paste them in different places.

Check it out.

 When my eval version ran out I bought the released version. I was definitely missing something.

Limitations are the way menus are readjusted based on use. Problem is, the items you rarely use are exactly the ones you want listed because they are the ones you are most likely to forget.

So glad Byte is back and you are back and more often

Thanks,

 Ivan

isindell [isindell@gcsr.com]

Multiple clipboards are available from several third parties and work better than the ones built into Word 2000. I tend to agree, Word 2000 is the most polished of the Office 2000 group, and parts of it are improvements; but they aren't improved enough that I prefer it to Office 97/Word 97 warts and all, and my advice is still to wait for a Service Pack.

I am also having real problems with Outlook 2000, which seems to lock up far more often, and use far more resources, than Outlook 98 did. I have a dual processor Pentium Pro with 300 megabytes of memory. If that ain't enough machine, then 'blimey, what is? See also below.

===

Space, SDI, Norman Spinrad

Dr. Pournelle;

I recently re-connected with your web site after several months away from your observations (couldn’t find BYTE on the newsstands, now I know why) and read the discussion on the above topics.

Here’s a thought which is, I confess, somewhat partially inspired by Robert Heinlein’s views on government - let’s disassemble every bureaucracy we have every 40 years or so.  Completely do away with it, and see if it was needed.  If it was, replace the essential parts.  After 40 years, it’s likely that the new entity will be as fat and bloated as we want it to get - kill that fatted calf and see if a new one will grow in it’s place.  Some (such as the military) we wouldn’t dispose of - just shake up - like the Pentagon.  Others, such as NASA... 

NASA - The old brains, once innovative, are now too afraid to rock the boat and do strange, wonderful, and daring things.  My children LOVE to watch the Apollo documentaries, and Apollo 13 the movie, and don’t really believe that we went to the moon - if we did, why aren’t we still going?  Same with Skylab, and all the rest.  Remove the boils from the space program (NASA) and let’s get on with some important work, rather than farting around keeping bureaucratic bunglers happy... 

What would happen today if something horrible (not Challenger, but Apollo-13-like) happened to the Shuttle?  Perhaps a loss of 2/3rds of the re-entry tiles?  How would the agency handle it?  Would they wring their hands, say “I don’t know,” wet themselves, and retire to prepare a proposal for Congress calling for increased funding?  Or would they roll up the sleeves, get out the books, and refit one of the other Shuttles in record time, launch it and rescue the Astronauts?  I, for one, don’t expect that they’d do it.

End of sermon.

On a personal note : I’d like to thank you for those years you wrote in BYTE.  I first encountered your column while I was looking for something to read in the college library while killing time for between classes (as a day-student, I couldn’t really nap out like the rest of the drunks).  I hold you PERSONALLY responsible for destroying the potential businessman I was trying to become (and perhaps capping my income at $30,000 annually whilst I shuffled papers), and remaking me into an unrepentant alpha-geek computer nerd, who will pull down (with bonuses, etc.) nearly $70,000 this year alone, but would joyfully work with this technology stuff for free (well, that and food) if need be.  I started with a VIC-20 when they were new, moved to an original green-screen IBM PC (with cassette interface!), then headed down the dark path with Amiga before returning to the PC platform.  Of course, now I’m supporting 150 Macintosh users in a mixed network with 20 PCs (Thanks, Microsoft- if I ever need to add to my department headcount, I’ll beg for Microsoft to produce an Apple operating system.  That alone should add 5-8 people to our support ranks to deal with their BS).

Thanks; thanks for the sci-fi stuff that keeps me loopy (I still regularly re-read Lucifer’s Hammer - one of the few nightstand books that’s still there after all these years), and thanks for sometimes pointing out the obvious in your troubleshooting travails (of course, after doing all the stuff I thought of first and more).  It’s helped me formulate my basic help-desk troubleshooting script - “Is it plugged in (right)? - Is it turned on? - Is it spelled right? - ARE YOU SURE?”

Hope the new on-line gig works out - and you have time for fiction.  If it doesn’t, you could always auction off each item you wish to dispose of via e-bay (may their servers stay up), personally autographed by you, and you should make a real killing - “Official Chaos Manor Merchandise”

Take care, and thank you again...

- - - - - - - - - - -

John.Dominik@GreatClips.com

Information Technologies Project Manager

Thanks. That's the kind of letter writers like to get, of course. As to NASA, I fear your assessment is correct.

Subject:      XCOPY for backup

Hi Jerry,

I have been reading your column for many years, and remember a long time ago you looking for a easy way to backup files.  I figure you must have been suggested this, but just in case...

Almost nothing is easier than making a batch file using the old dos ‘xcopy’ command.  If you are backing up to a cd just use directcd and access the cdrom as a drive letter.  With the batch file you can easily create directories, copy networked folders, select extensions, modified files, subdirectories. It is even easier to restore files because they are just files on a burned cdrom, or on a networked drive.  No need to go open a program, have it do all its stuff to restore one file.

Hope this is short enough to make sense, and not waste your time.  If you have any other questions or comments reply to:

gordon.bower@home.com

Gordon Bower

Ach!  They call this a soccer riot?  Come on, boys, let’s take ‘em to school!

Groundskeeper Willie at the Mexico v. Portugal soccer game.  The Simpsons.

That is the method I tend to use for backups, but of course it does no compression (not that this is much needed in this era of enormous drives) and it has no real way to handle sharing violations. But yes, large xcopy batch files is a good way to go. Thanks for the reminder.

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Tuesday, August 17, 1999

Hi,   I want to know, W2K is supported peer to peer network, how i can do that, maybe you have suggestion step by step (or maybe you have reference with the PDF file).   thanks and regards   Tyas

Tyas [Tyaspx@centrin.net.id]

To the best of my knowledge, the peer to peer networking is pretty automatic once you choose a WORKGROUP NAME and give each computer a unique name and put it in the workgroup. It uses Microsoft Network Client and NET/BUEI and it just sort of works. For TCP/IP and a server it's a bit more complicated, but pure peer to peer is easy. I fear I haven't time to go into more details. Muck about and ye shall know...

Hi. I just read your webpage on the Dean Drive.

I’m an undergrad in college, so I don’t have much background in the physics and the math.

But I”m looking to read up on anything about drives, any kind of drive, theoretical or otherwise. I have no idea where to look, however. I’m sure there are websites and books and papers out there from which I can educate myself, but I have no clue what and where :)

Would you mind telling me some sources? Any general source will do, though I would like to make this somewhat systematic.

And would you have any information on such sources for other technologies proposed/involved in science fiction? Some directions on where to get at papers on current cybernetics and wetware research, genetics and human DNA research, newest physics and math, and such and such and such...

I realize this is a lot to ask. I’ve already put in considerable time in a project, and I want to fill my ideas with ideas for more than just ideas.

This project of mine is also going to take some time, as I’m in school and still can’t see when I’ll be out :) So mostly where to look will be more than enough.

Thank you.

Yuan Wang [yuwst9+@pitt.edu]

Can't help. There must be thousands of web sites out there, some with reference librarians. Not me. Sorry.

> Bob Thompson likes WinGate too, and I intend to get it going on my system

> as soon as I am sure it works properly with Windows 2000. And thanks.

And other comments re wingate above the one quoted here... 

I have used wingate.  It works.  It does cost money.  I don’t know about running under W2K.  I do know that unless things have changed in the last few months, every machine accessing through the wingate server (software running on the machine that has a live [continuous or dialup] internet connection] must be running a wingate client.  This may limit you (in that if you run a Win box as a wingate server, and have a linux box on your network, I currently do not know if there is a wingate client for linux). 

I do know that I have got linux up and running for my home working machine (Gateway 2K, 200Mhz PII).  It provides IP forwarding and IP Masquerade (IP sharing) for my better half’s W98 box.  I have been running fairly continuously for a few months now, and my downtime is related to the DSL connection, not the Linux box (although, to be honest, I have done a couple of silly things which damaged the setup, requiring some repair).

Regarding Linux...  My first setup was with Redhat 5.2.  It went fairly smoothly, but I was glad to be a bit geekier than the average joe, because some things didn’t work following the setup, and I had to enable them manually.  I have since upgraded to RH 6.0.  I did this by backing up files I cared about, wiping the disk and doing a clean install.  Everything worked following the install.  I had to complete the entry of data for internal and external networking (about equivalent to setting tcp/ip properties in the networking dialog of WinNT).  That was it.

==

Linux Functionality (for me).

I have Wordperfect 8.0 for Linux.  This reads MS Word 97 documents - haven’t tested writing yet, but I know that the RTF format support is good.

I have Acrobat Reader 4.0.  (used constantly)

I have GOOD compilers.  EGCS C++ is far closer to C++ Standard compliant than Visual C++ 6.0 (I also own the latter)

I have an ICQ client.  (used sparingly)

I have Netscape Communicator (my main tool for mail and browsing in both Linux and Win environments). 

I have a tool called the GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program).  This is lots of Photoshop, and very little Illustrator, with lots of third party plugins, all rolled into one free program.  I *really* like this tool.

I have a desktop environment called KDE (not perfect, but more than good enough, some bells and whistles, Drag-n-Drop functionality mostly implemented) that has Icons, a status bar, etc.  I have 4 virtual desktops to choose from currently, so I can have Netscape open on one desktop, be reading a programming text in pdf format, editing exercises and running test compiles on another desktop, etc.

KDE Tools include a couple of text editors, an organizer, etc.  Also available are applications written for the Gnome environment, one of them being Gnumeric, a spreadsheet that will import (lacking some functionality) Excel 97 data files.

I run SetiatHome client  (sidelight, virtually identical configuration at home and at work, difference being the home box is Linux, the work box is WinNT WS4.0 - yet a SaH work unit which takes 14+ hours at home in the background, takes 60+ hours on the NT box - dunno why)

==

All that aside, it can be (and often is) more work to run in the Linux environment.  Not lots more, anymore, but at first A LOT MORE.  Enough to have paid for a copy of Windows NT.  Maybe even enough to have paid for NT and Office 2K.  But I couldn’t have bought Photoshop.  (besides, I couldn’t afford all those things right now - a little time I have, extra cash, no)  I couldn’t have made as many mistakes, nor learned as much as I have.  And in the last few days (perhaps related to the same behavior ruling SetiatHome), I learned that Illustrator by itself in 128 Meg of ram is enough to bring NT4.0 to it’s knees.  I sent the document home and did in 1 hour using the GIMP what I could not do ALL DAY using Illustrator on NT.  I know, they have different functionality.  But Illustrator would NOT do what I needed under NT.

Certainly a run-on email, since this started as a minor validation of what you have already heard about Wingate.  But don’t give up on Linux (I know, you haven’t, you are just time challenged).  Ask.  I’ll help.

--

regards,

Brian Bilbrey

bilbrey@pacbell.net

Thanks. I intend to get back to Linux as soon as I get back from NASFIC and then Japan.

The North American Science Fiction Convention is held when the World Convention is out of the country. In 1999 the NASFIC will be in Anaheim California 26-29 August, 1999. I am guest of honor. If you have never been to a science fiction convention and wonder what those things are like, this is as good a one to come to as you will find...

Go visit the site, and tell them I sent you...

Jerry-

Initially I wasn’t going to comment on this subject, but see the responses you posted I feel that I need to comment.

I read the article in Byte about using a Linux box for ICS.  I built a 486-33 installed Linux and after several weeks of frustration my tenacity paid off and I got it working. But the box was under powered and useless for anything else. So I upgraded to a PII-233 - Much better! But this left me with a nice ICS system but still the box was rather useless to me otherwise.

Then I found WinProxy. I installed Win98 on the box (Linny) and WinProxy, Bam! It was working in just an evening’s tweaking. Great. Then I saw the price - ouch! Well, I had 30 days to evaluate so I continued to use it.

After about a week of WinProxy I discovered that Win98SE had ICS built in. It was only a few dollars more than the WinProxy registration so I ordered it. It arrived just a few days before WinProxy’s trial would have terminated. I tried to install it but all the proxy settings left over from WinProxy were getting in the way. I called MS and they were amazed that I had a retail copy two days before it was suppose to be available. OOPS! If course no one there knew anything about ICS, but one of their techs was will to work with me so we had at it. About 6 hours later we had wrestled the beast into a working condition. Sweeet. And MS support had some very nice info for their support DB.

It works great. No hard coded IP numbers or proxies. In fact all that stuff just gets in the way. Linny is happily supporting four PCs and itself. No problems. Linny also boots Win2000 with it’s ICS and that works just fine too.  Super sweet!!!

The only secret is don’t get fancy. Install clean, turn it on, set everything to a plain LAN connection and voila! IE, Netscape, Eudora, Outlook, Outlook Express - all are having NO problems.

I ain’t no expert on it, but it had been working here and I have set it up for a few friends. And there is peace in the house. No more fighting for the phone line and the internet connection. Very often all four PCs are surfing at the same time with little apparent slowdown.

‘Nuff said. Recommended (to borrow a phrase from a friend).

-Brooks Clark

brooks@4clarks.com

Thanks!

==

Subject: Internet Connection Sharing

From: Jim Griebel (jgri@earthlink.net)

A little bit of misinformation seems to be leaking through on this – no, you don’t have to set up the other machines on the network to point to a proxy and in fact you don’t want to. (You do want to set them up to use the LAN connection rather than Dial-Up networking.) I just did this on a new client running NT 4.0 Workstation and IE 4, and all you have to do is plug through the Internet Connection Wizard picking “LAN connection” at every opportunity, and saying “No” when it asks you if you use a proxy. Bingo. As Eric said, everything you need to know to set this up is in the W98SE help, and if I wanted to use ICS I’d go get the W98SE upgrade to make sure I got that.

A couple of other points, having actually used this myself: ICS insists on a fixed subnet of 192.168.0.x, so if you already have a TCP/IP network you’re going to have to readdress it unless you picked that subnet. Since ICS provides some limited DHCP functionality – it will assign IP addresses to the client machines for you – this isn’t as bad as it sounds. The ICS wizard, if I remember right, will even make a diskette that you can use to configure the client machines, although I didn’t do that myself. To configure a client, all you need to do is add the TCP/IP protocol and make sure “obtain an IP address automatically” is checked for your network adapter.

Machines configured to use DNS or WINS are going to cause the server machine to dial the Internet at odd intervals looking for name servers. Hence if you bring the laptop home from work, you may have to change the network configuration on that machine to keep it from kicking off Internet dialups when you don’t want them.

And (looking over both shoulders and lowering voice) you can even make ICS work as the gateway to the Internet for your Linux box. It takes some doing, but so far it seems to be easier than getting Linux to do the same thing in reverse.

Wingate is probably better; OTOH if you already have W98SE, ICS is free.

Thanks

I just got back to the DC area after three weeks on the west coast visiting family, national parks, and universities (investigating job leads).  The air on the east coast has been very bad this summer—mostly due to the excessive ozone levels—and the difference was noticeable going both ways.  Perhaps some of our elected representatives will wake up and do something intelligent about the problem; perhaps not.

It was interesting to spend some time in Oregon and Washington.  Most of the National Parks, Monuments, and Forests in the area are participating in something called the “Recreation Demonstration Fee Program”, and there’s a good deal of grass-roots opposition.  This program doubled the fees for entry into the National Parks, and imposed fees in other areas that used to be free, with the intention that 80% of the money collected be used for local improvements.  The problem is that most of the money seems to be going for ‘roadside disneylands’ to build tourism rather than improvements that the people being nickled and dimed see.  A particularly bad example are the half dozen expensive visitors centers that have been built by the Government in conjunction with the logging industry on the road up to Saint Helens.  Another is the zoo-like tour the Forest Service has built on the south side of Lake Quinault.  It covers the same material that a Forest Ranger named Lucia presented up at Hoh Rain Forest, but much less effectively and with much more impact on the old-growth forest.  (After listening to Lucia, I was able to explore the forest on my own, with some understanding of what I was seeing.  A blessing on her name for opening my eyes.)

I guess it’s “We’re from the Government, and we’re here to help you.”

Harry Erwin [herwin@gmu.edu]

Windows 2000 Professional Beta 3 11f

 From: Richard Carleton [rcarlet@ibm.net]

 Hi Jerry,

I couldn’t agree more with your evaluation of Windows 2000 Professional. As I work with it, I am more and more impressed. The latest wonder was that it automatically recognized my Iomega Zip 100 USB drive as a removable drive. Before connecting it I had checked Iomega’s web site and no mention was made of compatible drivers for Windows NT. With some trepidation I connected it anyway and it automatically recognized the drive. Wow, USB that works! No questions, no dialogs, no warnings; it just works.

I have been reading your column for years in Byte and am happy to see that you have continued in that fine tradition with your web site. Best of all there is more content and it’s updated regularly.

Glad to hear Starswarm is out in paperback since I missed it in hardcover. I find your books are the ones I keep coming back to over the years to re-read, especially the Mote.

Thanks,

Richard Carleton

Y2K, IntellectualCapital 11f

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

 The funniest y2k compliance statement I have seen is at www.hartscientific.com/y2k.htm . A real side-splitter.

A comment on your Intellectual Capital column.  Given the increasing improvements in imaging technology, soon, I think, it will be possible to fake a videotape, on home equipment, that a professional will not be able to differentiate from the real thing.  Think of the fun a dishonest attorney could have with that!

 Kit Case

kitcase@netutah.com

Dear Mr. Pournelle,

In one of your last articles I was happy to read something you said about having trouble with Netscape, and not being able to boot up your computer right because of one of Netscape’s components. Well, I was having exactly the same problem and followed your advice. I got that software that lets you see which programs run at boot time (can’t remember the name now), disabled AOL Instant Messenger that Netscape installed without asking me so, and haven’t had a boot problem since then.

I like Netscape, specially its e-mail program, and although some friends told me that IE5 is much faster, I think I’ll wait a little more to see the next versions.

Thanks.

Mauro.

Mauro Nacif Rocha, M.Sc. - Cięncia da Computaçăo

Universidade Federal de Viçosa - MG - Brasil

e-mail: nacif@dcc.ufmg.br

tel.: +55 (031) 467-2013

Mauro Nacif Rocha, M.Sc. - Computer Science

Federal University of Vicosa - BRAZIL

e-mail: nacif@dcc.ufmg.br

phone: +55 (031) 467-2013

“Em verdade, em verdade, eu vos digo, aquele que ouve a minha palavra ecrę nAquele que me enviou tem a vida eterna; ele năo vem a juízo, mas passou da morte para a vida.” Joăo 5:24

Thanks. I will ask in future that you don't put long lines in your text. It is harder to remove those borders than you think with this execrable Office 2000  stuff. It was much easier with Office 97 and FrontPage 98 which didn't pay so much attention to borders and shadings. 

Thanks again.

I’ve just been reading your netscape install woes.  I certainly don’t have any answers; both Netscape and Internet Explorer are big and bloated, but my last Internet Explorer experience was more stable than my last Netscape experience, for what that’s worth.

But I’m not using either at the moment.  I’m using Opera 3.6, a much more light-weight browser (and, in my experience, seemingly more stable) than Netscape or IE.  No, it doesn’t come with plugins to every wannabe multimedia provider on Earth.  Yes, there are some pages that display differently (but many times that is due to problems in the HTML of the page).  In this era of free browsers, for me to actually pay Opera Software the $35 registration fee says something.  The total footprint of Opera on my disk is about 2 megabytes (not including the cache, which is more customizable than either Netscape or Internet Explorer.)

I have no connection to Opera other than having downloaded it and tried it.  I know you’re a busy person, but if the next Netscape or Internet Explorer install annoys you enough, you might want to check out Opera, from http://www.operasoft.com.

William Harris                  williamharri@earthlink.net

This is not the first time I have heard good things about Opera. I haven't QUITE got angry enough with Outlook and Internet Explorer to throw them out, although sometimes it's close. I may get there, though. Thanks for the recommendation. For MORE ON OPERA

Every time I put up a virus alert, it turns out to be a hoax, but better safe than sorry:

Sir,

This message just appeared on my confuser screen at work.  FYI.

Rod McFadden

Centreville, Va

The Network Operations Center has received notification that a new virus, called VBS/Monopoly, is spreading that could potentially infect your system.  VBS/Monopoly is sent as an email attachment.  Much like the Melissa virus, it sends a copy of itself to all recipients in the infected user’s MS Outlook Address Books (global, personal, and contacts). 

To recognize the virus, look for the subject line “Bill Gates Joke.” and blank TO: and CC: fields.  The message will have an attachment named MONOPOLY.VBS. 

If you receive the virus, do not open the attachment.  Instead, delete the message from your Inbox and your Deleted Items folders.  If the attachment is opened, you will also need to delete the following files:

c:\temp\Monopoly.vbs (the complete virus)

c:\temp\Monopoly.vbe

c:\temp\Monopoly.wsh

c:\temp\Monopoly.jpg

In response to a mail about the SETI project you said:

>A lot of people have got in on this. It can’t hurt.

Well, actually, it did.   Apparently the people organizing the project failed to estimate high enough for the number of people wanting to get involved and their servers got overwhelmed.   They seem to have fixed that by now though I have heard reports that they’re keeping the, um, efficiency of the client down as they’re afraid they’ll run out of data far too soon. 

Ah. thanks.

Jerry Pournelle Writes:

>“Clearly requiring some valid return address would have a dramatic effect, but the question becomes, do people have the right to anonymity?

>Certainly King George III would have been happy to have all the pamphlets and papers of the Committees of Correspondence have valid return addresses...”

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

You raise some worthwhile points, albeit points which don’t, I believe, negate my argument in favor of requiring either a “UCE” or “SPAM” tag, or the use of a valid email address.

First, Payne, Adams, and co. were not operating a Ponzi scheme or selling porn.  Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem at all with porn involving consenting adults.  On the other hand, I don’t want my email box filled with it, with no recourse for stopping it.  At the same time, I _never_ enjoy attempted fraud.  There is a fundamental difference between _publishing_ controversial documents, under an alias, which are _available_ to all, and putting on a disguise and tackling someone and reading that material to the unwilling listener, whilst holding him in a headlock.

Second, requiring UCE to identify itself as such is well within existing legal precedent.  Commercial speech is somewhat more circumscribed than political and artistic speech. There are laws against misuse of fax machines for instance. 

There are others.  You have the right to pitch legal products to me, even on city streets.  However, you cannot follow me home and attempt to force your way into my dwelling in the name of making a sale, especially by pretending to be the meterman or the police.  Allowing spammers to hide behind aliases, or merely to camouflage their spam is the equivalent of allowing encyclopedia salesmen to call you at work and falsely tell you that your wife’s in the emergency room of the local hostpital in the hope of pitching you in the ER when you get there.

Even requiring spammers to use a consistent FAKE email address would address the problem, as the killfile function of my email reader (Forte Agent) doesn’t require that the address being filtered even EXIST, only that it adhere to the relevant RFC for email headers.  They would maintain their anonymity and I’d never see their messages.

Try as I may, I can’t think of an important societal benefit which is achieved by allowing people selling things, especially those _fraudulently_ selling things, to pretend that they’re not selling or that they’re somebody other than who they really are.

On the contrary, requiring spam and or spammers to be identified would allow spammers to spam, and you and me to ignore them.

Chris Morton

Rocky River, OH

The bottle was moved.

From: timc@vancouver.quik.com

Dear Jerry

           Monopoly is a genuine virus; seen http://vil.nai.com/vil/vbs10234.asp for details.

 Tim Cunningham

Thanks.

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Wednesday August 18, 1999

I have two reports of problems with Netscape:

Sir,

I use Netscape Navigator pretty much exclusively, and have found that your Current Mail page is causing a consistent crash.  This is only recently, in fact it just started today.  The only thing I see that is new is the “bobbing bottle” email icon. 

I had to resort to IE to see the page, which is why, of course, I keep both browsers on my machine.  What a sad state of affairs.

Hi Jerry, I have been a regular visitor to your site and have appreciated, and been amused by, your struggles with computer hardware and software.

I write to notify you of a problem I have not had before with your (or anyone else’s) site.  I am unable to open your currentmail page (dated Tuesday, August 17 1999 with time 02:53 pm) using Netscape Navigator version 4.08.  My computer is a P-133 (no MMX) running WIN95, with Microsoft Plus and the Win95 Y2K fix installed.  Attempts to do so generate an “application has performed an illegal...” with details showing a problem in KERNEL32.DLL.  I was able to open the page using Internet Explorer 4.0.

I understand you check the site using Navigator from time to time.  You may want to test your page.  It is possible the problem is my computer (install of WIN95 Y2K fix has caused roughly the same error with another application), but I thought I should mention this in case others are also having a problem.

Please keep on with “ I do these things so you don’t have to...” and do continue with all your other writing endevours, I am a fan.

Regards, Tom Vaivada.

My problem is that I cannot duplicate this. Netscape 4.6 sees currentmail and my silly bottle just fine. Can anyone help with what's wrong? I will remove the bottle to another page. Now: does that make it easier to read THIS page, and do YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THE SPECIAL PAGE with Netscape?

Here is some of the mail on Office 2000:

Hi Jerry,

I think your review of Office 2000 was a little heavy-handed. I am no Microsoft supporter (on the other hand, I don’t fall into the MS-basher camp either - call me nonpartisan) but I have been using O2K for some time now and have found some definite improvements, especially in Word.

I agree that the documentation leaves a bit to be desired. The help system is way too slow - it was barely useable on my old P166 but works great on my new PIII-450 w/256MB RAM. Actually, I think that says quite a bit about bloatware, but I won’t get started down that thread.

I have found that while the multiple instances of Word on the taskbar can be annoying, they can also be useful, esp. when working on multiple documents simultaneously and switching back and forth quickly. Alt+tab will allow you to switch from on to another easily enough. I could never wrap my brain too tightly around the old shift-F6 (is that it?) combination that could take you from one window to the next.

Word 2000’s table handling is infinitely improved over Word 97’s, although I don’t think it still matches good old WordPerfect 6.1 for that. But tables are MUCH easier to use.

The most useful improvement I’ve come accross is the “save as Web page” feature. In W97 it was almost a joke, but in W2K it works like a charm. As a consultant, I often find myself producing reports for my customers and struggling to find a way to present them electronically. For some clients, creating Adobe Acrobat files works fine, but for others simply posting the document to their intranet works best. That’s where the save as Web feature comes in very handy. You can save a richly formatted document (tables, graphics, etc.) as HTML and it will appear on any old IE 4.x or Netscape 4.x browser almost as a verbatim copy of the native Word file, without any special plug-ins or anything else. The beauty of this is that it requires no effort on the part of the author (unless clicking one button can be considered “effort”).

I can’t speak for FrontPage (don’t use it). Excel is good, but not (from my perspective anyhow) noticeably improved, save for the HTML rendering of spreadsheets (try saving a multi-sheet workbook as a Web page - you’ll be amazed!). And yes, Access is annoying in that the file format has changed, but I have found,  through using it in the field on many occasions, that most conversions are reversible. I have has no big problems with it.

That’s it!

By the way, I love your column, especially since it has now been running once a week on Byte.com. I have been following Chaos Manor since before you were doing PC’s (in the IBM-compatible way) and were always mucking around with S-80 (is that it?) systems, CP/M and other wonderful technologies that have all but been forgotten.

Keep up the good work.

Best regards,

 Eric

==

Upgrade Hell, Office 2000 Style

It started out innocent enough when one of my clients decided to upgrade all office computers to Microsoft Office 2000. A day later they’re on the phone complaining that the computers are running as slow as molasses, Internet connections no longer work and two mission critical software packages that were otherwise fine until the upgrade have ceased to function in whole or in part. After a full day of struggling , lost productivity and frustration, fear of never regaining normal computer operations had set in as deadlines were pushed further and further back.

At this point my job is threefold. Secure the data and reassure them that normal operations can and will be restored in a timely manner, then do it. The simplest way to do that is to restore their systems back to pre-upgrade condition which can be difficult as Office 2000 and Internet Explorer 5 dig into the operating system like a tick.

Upon arrival they had upgraded two of four computers, one desktop and one laptop. The laptop, a Pentium 133, was so slow as to be unusable.  The desktop, a Pentium 166 was faring a little better and was the more mission critical so I turned my attention to that one.

Uninstalling Office 2000 did not restore the previous Office 97 or performance levels nor did the software package in question return to functionality. Uninstalling IE5 did result in the return of pre-upgrade performance levels. Reloaded Office 97 and IE4 noting that the dialer was upgraded in the process and not uninstalled with the rest and had to be reconfigured as well as mail.

It is typical for uninstall’s to leave behind significant remnants which can and often do continue to cause problems as has been shown in this instance and it is noteworthy to ponder what else lay in the bowels of the machine to rise up and bite me. The plot thickens.

Reloading the software, a moderately complex, application specific and expensive databased program which the office relies on heavily, did not restore proper operation of the program. In fact the program, which would run and function partially, was not accepting the backup data set properly or printing database data at all. A clue.

The short answer is that Office 2000 loaded and left an updated OpenDataBaseConnectivity driver in the windows system directory, with the application in question mapped through it. In this instance ODBC if available would be utilized but was not necessary. Unmapping the data set from ODBC did not restore proper operation. ODBC had to be manually removed from the system. Once that was accomplished normal operation was restored.

Post analysis revealed that Microsoft has depreciated (their term not mine) unspecified functions in the API of the upgraded ODBC driver. No doubt the program in question was attempting to make function calls that were no longer supported or supported fully, rendering the (Win9x) application program useless.

It should be noted that between the cost of Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition and my tech time the impact to the customer will be nearly a thousand dollars not counting  two days of lost productivity only to wind up exactly where they started. They will need to upgrade every computer in the office to run Office 2000 efficiently in addition to resolving now known issues and perhaps other issues unknown with their respective program venders and I doubt they have the fiscal or emotional stomach for it at the moment. Down the road it will be inevitable.

Also noteworthy is that both the program vendor and Microsoft need to secure credit card information before even reporting let alone discussing this matter. I doubt either would have actually charged the account in this instance but it has gone officially unreported because of it. As it was, the problem was identified and resolved, at least for the time being, in less time than one would find themselves on hold with either vendor, the likely result of which being little more than third party finger pointing as has been historically the case.

I continue to correct nit picky issues that remains of the Office 2000 uninstall such as missing fonts etc. and the laptop awaits my attention.  There is much less on that computer discounting preinstalled garbage which can and should go. As a result I may take that one to bare metal.  The laptop gets two programs, a new one which requires ODBC and the other that doesn’t like it. Hopefully, the older ODBC driver in Office 97 will allow the two to coexist.

Many of my customers are small businesses such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, trucking companies, recycling centers, junk yards, you name it. The one thing they have in common is that almost all of them use custom crafted databased software that is essential to the operation of the business. I would suspect that many of those programs also rely on ODBC. As MS Office 2000 propagates through these offices, some systems may be going down faster than the titanic. 

Due to the nature of their computing requirements, Win98SE and Office 2000 was going to be my recommended Y2K baseline configuration as both are reported by Microsoft to be fully compliant. That plan may be going out the window. Win9x and Office 97 can be made compliant or reasonably so and that may be the new recommendation or perhaps a hybrid of SE and 97.

I try to lookout for my customers as best I can. It’s not easy.

Bob

tek1@inwave.com

===

I thought I had more mail in defense of O 2000. I'll look around. This has to go up now.

Read your Intellectual Capital column on digital zombies and thought you’d find the following relevant.  A big problem in image databases is, suppose one has many images (still and moving) with no pre-existing corresponding text-based catalogue or index, how does one search for what one wants (e.g., images of the stinky plant).  The article describes some approaches being taken.

>From Financial Times Wednesday 8/18/99  (http://www.ft.com):

(alas, that's all the URL that was sent...)  Thanks.

===

Jerry,

 Thought you might find this article in WIRED magazine interesting...

 http://www.wired.com/news/news/news/technology/story/21310.html

 Here are the first few paragraphs to give you a taste...

--Preston DuBose

Plasma-Powered Trip to the Stars
by Leander Kahney

Thanks. Interesting..

Hi Jerry,

You wrote:

>AOL is returning most of my mail addressat unbekannt (well they say no

>such person) and this includes to Larry Niven, my Simon and Schuster

>editor, my literary agent, and nearly anyone else who sent me mail and

>has an AOL.com address.  You would do well to consider alternate ways of

>getting mail if email is important to you.

Unfortunately this seems to be a regular occurance with AOL.COM, and may be part of their defence against the spammers?

I run a couple of mailing lists (one with 450 subscribers, and the other only 50), but AOL addresses are usually the ones that have problems first, or they just have smaller mailboxes than other ISPs.

Have you checked out any of the automatic mailing list tools out there to manage your subscriber lists? I recommend LSoft at http://www.lsoft.com and their LISTSERV product, but it can get expensive for large lists. This way the mailing list manager would handle all the error reports and you could just send to one address.

Thanks for continuing an excellent site,

regards,

James

It's fixed again, but for a while all email from me to them was being sent back. That wasn't to lists. It was to my agent, my partner, and others unfortunate enough to have AOL mail accounts.

This is not the first time I have heard good things about Opera. I haven't QUITE got angry enough with Outlook and Internet Explorer to throw them out, although sometimes it's close. I may get there, though. Thanks for the recommendation.

Hi Jerry,

I have been using Opera as my main browser for over a year now. It was worth the price of admission to get it.  What I like about it is

- small footprint

- fast speed

- how customizable it is

- stability

Aside from that,  what I like most is the ability to Shift Control Click on any link and have it open in the background without disturbing my current train of though with what I am reading at the time.  It allows me to completely read a web page without jumping off somewhere else and then coming back.  When I have finished, I can close the window and then pick up on one of the other pages that I have loaded.

If you have to do a lot of research on the web, or read a lot of information, this feature is a precious time saver.

While you can do with the other 2 big browsers, they jump in the foreground and steal your attention away because you have to minimize the beasts.

It is worth a try, even if the other browsers work fine for you.  A 30 day evaluation copy can be obtained from http://www.opera.com/download.html 

There is also a support page with information on how to configure the various Netscape style plugins that are compatible with opera at http://www.opera.com/plug_in.html

- Paul

pdwalker@quagmyre.com

Thanks. And see above.

Thanks!! It looks good.

The changing of file extensions is trivial. copy *.* *.jpg. Couldn’t get ren to work properly with wildcards, so I’ll leave that one to someone else.

Jonathan Sturm (jonathan@uprun.com) “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Net and he won’t bother you for weeks.”

Aargh. I knew that. Thanks.

Jerry,

 I use a nifty shareware program called “Picture Information Extractor” to rename my camera pictures. See:

http://www.hoju.de/

What makes this app standout is it’s ability to extract info that’s embedded by Olympus (and other manufactures) in the actual JPG file. This info can then be used to build a mask for renaming the file. It can even change the file’s date and time to match the actual date and time that the picture was taken.

Mike Goff

Sounds great. I'll go look for it. THANKS! (GOt it, have not tried it yet. Looks good.)

And then:

Andy Bushnell

And of course I knew that and forgot it. Thanks.

 Re the problem with your web page using Netscape - I had this problem a few weeks back before you had the bottle and sent you a note (which you answered, thanks) about it. I could read your page OK if I switched off Netscape’s Javascript (under advanced preferences) The problem occurs when your page grows beyond a certain size; early in the week I can read your page with Netscape(4.07) running on NT4-SP4 but later in the week I have to turn off Javascript in Netscape to be able to load your page. The javascript used by Netscape has some differences from the javascript used by MSoft in IE. Anyway, it is not the OS as I have the same problem using either W95 or NT4-SP4 If you one of your readers finds the cause I would be curious to know the details. Keep up the good work

 Regards Sam Bass

BUT SEE THIS:

Subject: Solving two problems for you:

·        How to rename files 001, 002, etc. to .jpg?

C> ren *. *.jpg

To rename them to “picXXX.jpg” you can use the FOR statement:

C> for %i in (*) do ren %i pic%i.jpg

·        Why does Netscape crash on your mail page?

I cannot be certain, but it is very likely that this problem can be fixed by going to the Users directory for Netscape (e.g. C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\Steve in my case) and deleting the file NETSCAPE.HST.

This file keeps the information of which links you have clicked on.  When it grows over a megabyte, Netscape can begin to be very unreliable; also very slow.  I recommend your readers empty the Netscape disk cache, shut Netscape down completely, delete the NETSCAPE.HST file, and then run Netscape again.  I predict that Robert will be your parent’s sibling.

I nuke NETSCAPE.HST about every month or so, and I haven’t had any trouble with Netscape recently, but before I figured this out I often had mysterious crashes on certain web pages.

--

Steve R. Hastings                      “Vita est”

steve@hastings.org                   http://www.blarg.net/~steveha

Doing well by doing good...

Dr. Pournelle:

Regarding the virus warnings: I appreciate any and all. Better safe than sorry. Unfortunately, eternal vigilance is the price of e-mail. Sigh.

A computer science professor told me about a mainframe type of virus that infected a particular IBM OS. The virus was like Melissa, except that it would only operate when the CPU was idle. It would then transmit copies of itself to other machines with a sufficiently compatible OS.

In due course, a bean-counter would complain about all the un-accounted-for CPU time, and IBM would dispatch an expert to fix the OS. The expert usually sent was the author of the virus.

If the infected machine was in say, Nome, Alaska, the fix would take a day or so. If the machine was in Aruba or Acapulco . . . well, two weeks, maybe three.

The guy only got caught when he forgot to inoculate a machine against a repeat infection.

I’m sure this story is an urban legend, but it sounds like a great job for a born tourist.

Regarding Front Page 2000: I am now a webmaster, Front Page 2K and all.

I hope your experiences will help.

Starswarm is marvelous. It has a flavor quite similar to the best of Mr.

Heinlein’s work. I am going to use the paperback for Christmas presents.

I suspect the story is legend, but it would be nice work if you could get it...Thanks for the kind words.

Jerry:

Just in case the message sent by Opera didn’t reach you... (actually, it did. JEP)

I normally use Netscape 4.06 (not Netscape 4.6) to browse, and last night, currentmail caused the browser to crash.  I fired up IE4, no problem.  I fired up Opera 3.6, no problem.  Today, I ran 4 different computers from 2 different locations, and Netscape 4.06 crashed on each one.  Netscape 3.1 had no problems. 

The bottle isn’t the problem.  I haven’t looked at the html yet, but I’ll bet there’s something in there that Netscape 4.06 (and maybe others of the 4.0x ilk) can’t handle.

--Jerry  (jwright@iaml.net)

Well, perhaps someone will find it. I have no notion of what is crashing Netscape, and with 4.6 which I use it is no problem at all.

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Thursday August 19, 1999

It ain't the bottle, so what blows this up? Can't be sheer size, either. Isn't this fun? Apparently some readers just can't make this page work in some versions of Netscape.  

Dear Jerry,

Here is my info regarding Netscape crashing when trying to access your “Current Mail” page.

Both yesterday (Aug. 18) and today, my Netscape (Navigator v4.08) crashes when trying to open www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/currentmail.html. It has no problem with www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/special.html. And on the ‘special’ page I can see the animated bottle without a problem.

FWIW, Dr. Watson reports “Exception: access violation (0xc0000005), Address: 0x00000000”. I am running Win NT4 SP3 with 64MB RAM.

(N.B., I have had this same problem with the Current Mail page once in the past, about a month or two back.)

Perhaps I will download and try Opera - I resist IE because of how it ingrains itself into your system whether you want it to or not.

Hope this info is useful - I miss reading the mail.

Regards,

Alan Donders

alan_donders@hotmail.com

P.S. I like the bottle better than the blimp. Also, the compass is very well done, especially if you pay attention to the shadowing.

Since I can't duplicate the problem I don't know what to do next. I will keep working.

OK: We have fixed the problem. There were a bunch of div /div pairs in the html, many needless. There were also a couple of peculiar formats pasted in. I cleaned that stuff out, and that appears to have done it. Mr. Rice's hint about the div statements is what clued me in. Anyway that works now.

The great Mail Flap: see view for details. Here is mail on the subject.

I have had this problem frequently.  Unfortunately, the MS Knowledge Base indicates that it is a problem in your own computer due to one of many causes (see http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q180/4/84.asp

and http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q192/5/25.asp

Unfortunately, I checked and applied their fixes (including ‘registering’ the supposedly unregistered file) and none of them stopped that message.  What does seem to help is never to occupy CPU cycles with anything but mail transfer when Outlook is sending.  It’s a pain to stop everything you are doing while Outlook checks the mail, but I haven’t seen that error in many weeks, now.

I never hear anything but raves from the people who use Lotus Notes for email.  Can any of your readers compare it to Outlook?  I sure would like something less problematic than Outlook.

--Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]

I plead ignoramus on Lotus Notes. The two sites you show are informative although neither seems to address the particular problem I had, which leads me to believe that my conclusions on the matter are true.

==

Dr. Pournelle,

 I have the solution for your email problem.  

Please go to http://www.group-mail.com. 

If Outlook 2000 can export it’s address list to a text file then group-mail can import the address list.  It is very flexible.

Sincerely,

Lynn McGuire

winsim@winsim.com

www.winsim.com

It will be interesting to see what Outlook exports are possible. I tried exporting a contact list to a csv and the result was unreadable, but perhaps I did it wrong. I'll try again another time. Thanks. I understand Eudora, which is on its way here, has import tools that will probably work. On the other hand, I may not need Eudora now that I understand what is happening.

Never thought of that one; not sure I know enough about how to go about it or the advantages and disadvantages. I seem to recall it was explained to me once but I fear the explanation went out the same door it came in...

Hi All:  Today’s LA Times ran an article that told how to join in with the million people who have already volunteered to allow SETI to download a screensaver that will harness their computer in to the SETI computation pool.

Go To:

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu

-and read all about it.

It’s another way of using the internet that could never have been imagined !!

Bill Haynes

Colonel Haynes (USAF Ret'd) used to run the Manned Space Office, and is a long time member of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy. I concur: I would never as an SF writer have dreamed of a distributed net of people looking for alien signals...

And Now This:

> > setiathome-1.3.i386-winnt-cmdline.exe

> > This program is much faster than the Seti@home screensaver.

> >

> > Will B-

>

> Thanks, I will give it a try and let you know.

Following my latest Linux rant that you so graciously published, Will wrote to me to let me know about a command line client for Seti@Home on Windows NT - by gum, should be cranking out an additional couple of datasets a day now (at work, on my NT box), since the point wasn’t to be pretty, it was/is to go to Stockholm and/or find ET for real.  :)

 --

regards,

Brian Bilbrey

bilbrey@pacbell.net

I would like to remain anonymous please.

Jerry,

I am normally content to lurk on the Web and Usenet, but I wanted to comment upon the “O2k Problem”.  Our relatively large company has a nearly uniform environment of 133 MHz Pentiums, all of which have 32 Mbytes of RAM, 1 or 1.5 Gbyte hard drives, and Windows95.  Prior to the upgrade most had Office95, though some had been upgraded to Office97.  While not state-of-the-art, these computers worked fairly fast and amazingly dependable.  This was good since the powers-that-be had decreed that the computers would not be upgraded for a long time (possibly 5 years!)  Being a techie who can’t live without at least 5 applications open at once (all the better to cut and paste between), I wished regularly for more RAM and a larger monitor, but I have to admit things were working well. 

Unfortunately, the pace of “innovation” never stops.  It was decided to upgrade everyone to Office2000 unless it could be proven that you had a critical reason not to.  The “upgrade” happened about three weeks ago.  My complaints thus far:

1)   Installing O2k required us to do some radical file compression to open up enough disk space for the installation itself.  After the installation it became apparent that even more disk space is needed for virtual memory (probably due to just having 32 Mbytes of RAM).  After complaining about how crash-prone O2k was, I was given a much larger hard disk.  Application crashes and system lock-ups went down, but did not disappear (see item 6).  Ironically, only 3 months before a coworker was denied a larger hard disk for his critically needed data because “everyone would want one”. 

2)   My computer now pauses quite distinctly for virtual memory every time I tab between applications.  This used to be a relatively infrequent occurrence. 

3)   The applications are individually much slower, even with the Paperclip turned off!  I am often reminded of the many small agonies required for using Word 6 and Excel 5 on a PowerMac 6100.  The applications are powerful, but S L O W.

4)   The user interfaces have changed tremendously from Office95.  It is now so wonderfully “helpful.”  After two-weeks of living with the mess, I turned off toolbar squishing and menu item hiding.  Things are better, but there are still many things I have not figured out how to do yet that were once simple!  I have begun to fear that some things may not even be POSSIBLE anymore.  I am of course getting ZERO re-training to use O2k.

5)   What happened to Help?  Why is it now so strangely deficient?  Why is it so slow?  Why does it have to resize my window when it starts up?  Why are so many questions not answered?  I am getting ZERO re-training to use O2k.  Help should be bridging the gap.  (I suppose they planned on the Paperclip doing the job, but it slows things down so much I turned it off.)  Why have I gotten so disgusted with Help that I hardly ever refer to it anymore?

6)   Word2k crashes between 1 to 3 times a day!!!  It seldom brings down the system, but all edits are gone and the system must be rebooted to unlock the document.  (My log shows that every one of these Word2k crashes were associated with copy, cut, or paste, but a co-worker is getting regular crashes—even when he is not there—from other features.)  This is the single worst new “feature” of O2k.  I have become acquainted with WordPad, but miss all too many of the features of Word95.

There are some interesting new features in O2k:  pasting between Word and Excel is much better, Word no longer objects to two spaces after a period, and files are compatible with Office97.  However, I LOVED Word95.  It was wonderfully customizable.  I generally enjoyed the rest of the applications.  They had some bugs (or perhaps I should say “features”), but I knew every one that I came in contact with.  More importantly, I knew how to avoid or work around them all. 

The most ironic part of the whole “O2k Problem” is that our IS people had to hustle to get O2k installed before a moratorium on new software began on August 1.  Thanks to potential Y2K problems our company is not installing any new software, including O2k patches, until January 2000!  Thanks for all the help Bill!

Having a very dry sense of humor, I find that the more I use O2k, the more philosophical I get about it.  Perhaps, this “upgrade” is just someone’s way of breaking through the company’s moratorium on buying new computers.  Certainly, it helped me get a bigger hard drive (although I hadn’t previously needed it).  It may even be getting me more RAM (I do need that).  I wonder how I can use it to get a bigger monitor and a faster computer. . . Hmm.  On an other note I must say that WordPerfect doesn’t look as dead anymore, or, perhaps, I should say that Microsoft is looking more suicidal than it used to.

Thanks for the soapbox.

·        An Office95-Bereaved Engineer

P.S.  I hope that you and the rest of the computing press keep in touch with us “mere mortals” who are limited by budget and/or company policy to much-less-than-state-of-the-art computers.

Well, I can't say I have had THAT much trouble. But I do find that much of O 2000 is not ready for prime time. Or so I have concluded. Some don't agree.

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Friday August 20, 1999

I fear today is short shrift again, but the letters are good.

Lotus Notes - Stable and Solid

I've been a Notes user at work for the last two years.  I've found it to be a powerful, stable messaging and groupware system.  Unfortunately for me, we got bought out last year and Exchange/Outlook is the standard of our new parent.  As of today, I'm an Outlook user.  I managed to be the last person in the company to switch. I haven't used Outlook much yet, but have had to become familiar with it to keep my employees up and running   From the perspective of pure messaging, both systems have similar capabilities.  The only major capability difference is that the version of Notes I was using (4.6a) couldn't render HTML.  I think the current version does, but I'm not sure.    I may change my mind with more experience, but the user interface with Outlook seems much more complicated and less intuitive.  It seems to generally take more steps to get the same thing done.    The biggest advantage Notes had in my book was stability.  In two years I never lost a message due to data corruption.  Notes crashed ocassionally, but much less than the Office applications I've been using at the same time.  I have a rule that I NEVER use beta software.  I made an expection for Notes.  Their beta loads were consistently more stable than most production software I use.   The real power of Notes is in it's groupware functionality.  In groupware there is no comparison.  I'm still working through getting groupware stuff ported over.  I'm waiting for someone who is expert in Visual Basic (VB) to build applications to accomplish functions that come as either standard Notes templates or ones that I (not much of a programmer of any kind) set up in less than 10 minutes.  The Microsoft definition of groupware is shared folders.  Since more than one user can access them, it's groupware.  By that definition, Netware and NT Server are groupware.   I'll live, but I'm not thrilled to have switched.   Scott Kitterman kitterma@erols.com

Thanks for the clear exposition.

Subject: Swap File Bloat

Dr. Pournelle,

Early this year, we replaced our Pentium 200mhz computers with Pentium II 400mhz mini-towers having 128MB of RAM and running Windows NT4. Those in the office regularly running Autocad 14 were excited to know it would be running much faster.

It was somewhat odd to find engineers complaining of slowness with their new computers. I thought that people were running too many programs or opening too many documents. Not always true. Some computers were slow regardless of what was running. Occasionally when Autocad was started, it was not unusual to have many of the toolbar icons replaced with a “smiley face” version even though the commands attached to the icon worked just fine. The fallback position was to have them shutdown their computers during the day and nightly to flush the memory.

In June, we failed to load an architectural site plan drawing from a client. The Autocad program recommended increasing the virtual memory size in order to load the file. This seemed to be the last straw. Then, I remembered an article in a CAD magazine earlier this year discussing the “smiley face” icon problem and how it had something to do with the size of virtual memory on the hard drive. It recommended making the size of swap file four times the amount of RAM installed on the computer with either Win95/98 or WinNT. This is necessary to accommodate Autocad’s use of the swap file independent of the RAM installed on a machine. I raised the virtual memory size from 139Mb to 512Mb on the user’s computer and the site plan drawing loaded just fine. Slow reaction and drive light activity confirmed that Autocad does indeed use the swap file quite frequently. After cleaning out unnecessary portions of the drawing, the file size dropped to 9Mb from 23Mb.

I changed the virtual memory on my machine as well as a few machines where the icon problem occurred. There is a noticeable difference with fewer episodes of slow down. We’re switching the other CADstations over to 512Mb of virtual memory. The same magazine article further recommended that 1Gb might be needed for “large, complex files”.  I’m glad I don’t have those yet—20Mb+ is enough. We’re evaluating Autocad 2000 and I’m suspicious of it, too. Software bloat is one thing but swap file bloat? Autocad is but one case. I wonder how many other programs resort to extreme activity with virtual memory. After this experience, I want to setup a test machine with a separate hard drive for use by virtual memory only to see if there is a significant advantage. We may need to use a dual drive setup on our next cycle of computer replacement simply to reduce time lag taken by use of the virtual memory.

Lastly, one of my coworkers asked when we would switch to Windows 2000. I replied, “Late November 2001 when the existing computers are swapped out at the end of our lease. There’s too much brain damage in switching over 50+ computers to a new operating system when a few months later the lease runs out and you can simply get new machines.”

Stan Fuhrhop

smf@absconsultants.com

**************************************
Margaret Pollex 
Dept. of Languages, Brandon University

Iconically inept is a good concept but if the icons are not easily distinguished and recognizable, then the value of icons over a menu is minimal to negative. And there are many times I wish I didn't have adventures.

"I do all these silly things so you won't have to..."

Jerry,

 I just read your e-mail travails, and that you may consider using Pegasus Mail.

Please don’t.

We use it here on our Novell server, and P-mail works OK with Novell (besides, it’s free; that’s a major advantage for a university).  However, I don’t recommend it for dial-up connections. Others may have had more success than I, but I’ve found P-mail to be difficult to configure for dial-up. I’m hoping to move from P-mail to IMAP support later this year.

HTH

JA

--

John Alexander

Manager, Area Computing Services

The Capstone College of Nursing

Thanks for the tip. I may yet have to try it, though. But for now I am struggling along with Outlook. If I could easily get rid of Office 2000 and go back to 97/98 I would. And I may yet. But marching back isn't simple.  On the other hand, they will get out a fix pack. It's a question of when.

Right now what I really hate is Outlook's inconsistencies. It is driving me nutso.

===

Jerry

I write the Dr Keyboard readers’ computer help page for The Times (of London, although as we were just about the first newspaper let alone the first Times we think the others should distinguish themselves by appending their city names) and run a mailing list for readers - I send out details of the weekly column, updates on the website, much the sort of thing you do.  Anyway, once the column topped a couple of hundred I got fed up struggling with Outlook barfing for no reason and the amount of my life it took up, and so I started up with Listbot (http://www.listbot.com). I think I found out about it from Fred Langa who used to use it for his LangaList too, although now he pays for his service so he can sell his own ads in the mail. The paid-for, ad-free Listbot is only about $50 a year.  Anyway, it’s proven immensely simple to use; just write the mailing in Word or whatever, cut and paste it into a form on the site in your browser and away you go. There’s useful statistics to use too, you can have people subscribe automatically or have an approvals process and, best of all, it’s saved me half a day a week wrestling with Outlook. Recommended, as you say.  On the problems you have with FrontPage, I’ve given up trying to use FP2000 because it’s just too different to 98 and I don’t have the time to learn it.  The one thing that’s kept me  able to use 98 is splitting up the web site into lots of smaller sub-webs, which proved simple in the end. I have the main root web, www.drkeyboard.co.uk, and then there used to be folders off it called /answers, /diary/, /chat, what have you. To cut it up, just create a new site called www.drkeyboard.co.uk/diary and then import into it the contents of the old /diary folder, and that was it.  Good luck, and thanks for everything you do.

Regards

Chris Ward-Johnson

Dr Keyboard - Computing Answers You Can Understand

http://www.drkeyboard.co.uk/

As I said above, if I could go back to 97/98 easily I would. And Outlook 2000 with it's settings and different views and surprise! Surprise! when I open mail makes me crazy.

The Times. An institution of some importance. I wonder if the old press lords ever imagined there would be a computer correspondent for The Times? "I shall write a letter to the Times," say the characters in many books. Now I have a letter from the Times...

Thanks for the information. Are you using the FP Extensions with 98 and your chopped up subwebs? And if I convert the first 50 pages of VIEW to a subweb, would it be hard to reference them from the main web? Thanks!

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Saturday August 21, 1999

Column time meaning we are still in Short Shrift mode..

I never quite know what to make of missives like this. Things that being "Did you know?" usually end by telling me something I don't want to know, or that is true only in a technical sense but in fact isn't true in any useful way, or both. But perhaps this time for sure?

FYI: from http://www.macosrumors.com/

Revenge of the “Swiss cheese” Microsoft code [12:58 8/19]

contributor: <Brad Dormanen>

Did you know that FrontPage is banned from SIPRNET, (Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) the government’s separate, secure network? The reason for the ban is that there may be huge security holes created by FrontPage code in HTML that makes it easier for hackers to break into and edit the existing HTML.

In fact, this is such an issue that one of the “features” of FrontPage 2000 (which is not expected to be released for the Mac, cutting out more than 60% of all Webmasters) is that you can use it to create pages free from any FrontPage extensions: “HTML pure.” If you currently use FrontPage 98 or earlier and you don’t manually go through it line by line and strip out the FrontPage specific code, you run the risk of getting hacked through the huge security holes caused by FrontPage extensions.

BBEdit and Dreamweaver, anyone?

 > Bart Biamonte

> LDS Engineering - Strategic Projects

> biamonte.bj@mellon.com

Now what does this mean? That pages created by Front Page aren't allowed? That people on a particular net can't access pages created by FrontPage? Or that a secure service doesn't allow the FrontPage extensions to run on that server? If the latter, nor yet do I, but not for security fears (that would be Pair.com's problem, not mine) but because with large web sites the FP Extensions don't work well if at all. As I say, I am often suspicious of "Did you know?" warnings.

I wish I had something to add to that. A few years ago I was asked what it would take to build a Lunar colony. My answer was: "Two billion if you give me the money and get out of the way. If you advertise a prize for the first Lunar Colony to last two years, that should probably be about ten billion dollars. Alternatively, if you go to the Air Force or Navy with specs you won't change and let them do it black (ie without having to comply with the Armed Service  Procurement Regulations, which was 25 linear feet of loose-leaf notebooks when I was in the business, and is now much larger, and includes handicapped access and much else) you would probably get bids at $10 billion; if you make them do the paperwork and follow the ASPRs then probably $25 billion. NASA has already said it will take $85 billion and 20 years if everything goes as planned. With NASA nothing has EVER been cheaper or taken less time than the estimate." I have no real reason to change that now.

Jerry:

I read your effusive review of W2k with great interest, then tried to install a copy of RC1 on two of my machines. One is a dual PII-400 with 196MB of memory; the other is an AMD K6-233 with 128MB.

The dual Pentium machine installed OK from the bootable CD, rummaged around for several minutes, then crashed, saying it couldn’t load “NTKRNLMP” which I’d bet is the kernel for multiple processors.

The other box wouldn’t boot from CD, so I used a 1GB partition with W95 as a jumping-off point, then asked W2K to do an upgrade. It searched the HDD’s on the box (but not the network drives or the drive containing Linux) and said it couldn’t install due to the presence of V.Communications’ System Commander. The complete non-install report is attached if you are interested.

I’m very UNimpressed with the fact they have made W2K incompatible with the entire Corel 2000 Office Suite, and other items found on the box. Seems to me they are none-too-subtly requiring me to use their office suite, thereby ‘proving’ they neither have nor seek a monopoly.

Regards,

Tom

Well it is beta, but thanks. If my remarks came out as effusive, then apologies: I find Windows 2000 a distinct improvement what with a device manager and plug and play, and for what I am doing with it, it works. Win 2K Professional uses both CPU Unites in my Compaq Pentium Pro without problems, and boots fine. 

However, I have NEVER recommended that you 'upgrade' to install a new operating system. The best I can say for that practice is "good luck" but the results are likely to be unpredictable. For months. When we did Win 2K here we scrubbed down and reformatted the hard disk, repartitioned it, etc. There wasn't a trace of the old stuff left.

Jerry:

Bob (tek1@inwave.com) tells the sordid story of a customer who made the ill-considered move to O2K, including the following statement:

“It should be noted that between the cost of Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition and my tech time the impact to the customer will be nearly a thousand dollars not counting  two days of lost productivity only to wind up exactly where they started. They will need to upgrade every computer in the office to run Office 2000 efficiently in addition to resolving now known issues and perhaps other issues unknown with their respective program venders and I doubt they have the fiscal or emotional stomach for it at the moment. Down the road it will be inevitable.”

What gets me here is that Microsoft takes the heat for the customer’s stupidity, and Bob is perpetuating this hateful reality.

What caused the customer to blithely move forward with a major system upgrade on a system that had imminent deadlines?  Ignorance and rose-colored glasses.  Yes, I concede that, in a perfect world, all upgrades would go smoothly, and we should address *all* software vendors to do better at making the upgrade path easier to navigate.  But we all have to deal with reality, and tossing a new OS on a mission-critical system two days before a deadline is nothing but raw, unmitigated idiocy.  I can only presume they did this without Bob’s input, because if they did it with Bob’s blessing, well...

Anyway: my point is that stupid users tricks still persist.  Software can only be as smart as the user driving it.  They got bit, but I fear they’re not learning the right kind of lesson.

...cheers...KCL...

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Sunday August 22, 1999

Still in short shrift mode.

Fascinating. Thanks!

Dear Jerry,

What the WashingtonPost did not mention is that the proposed legislation that would permit surreptious entry would also do by a so-called sealed warrant. A sealed warrant is such that it cannot legally be divulged until it is unsealed, if ever. A commentator on the article I read raised the interesting point that since the existence of a “sealed” warrant cannot be proven - then the converse is highly likely - that its NON-existence cannot be proven. This leaves an already shaky barn door wide open. The gestapo types (sadly, most “law enforcement”) would have open season, merely by conveniently forgetting that there is no warrant. And who can prove tthat there is, under the circumstances? I thought the idea of mandatory back-doors was scary, but sealed-warrant legitimization of breaking &; entering and vandalism is seriously scary.

Regards,

JHR

--

culam@dnai.com

[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]

Saw this and thought this was revolutionary. Thought you needed to know. As you have said, you can never have enough storage.

A reader since the beginning,

Robin Whitson rwhitson@fastlane.net

‘KEELE’ ULTRA HIGH DENSITY MEMORY SYSTEM

A Quantum Jump in Memory Storage and Access

Professor Ted Williams at Keele University, Staffordshire, England has developed a patented solid state memory system with the capacity of 86 Giga Bytes per square centimetre of surface area.  The system uses a magneto-optical system not dissimilar to that of CD-ROM, except that the system is fixed, solid state, and has a different operating approach.

http://www.cmruk.com/cmrkeele.html

Beyond the dreams of avarice! Thanks for telling me about it. "Silicon is cheaper than iron..."

Hi Jerry

Just tried the link to the Keele web site (re: A Quantum Jump in Memory...) and got a 404 error. Managed to find some info at the bottom of this page:

http://www.cmruk.com/cmrinventions.html

Cheers, Paul

--

Paul Kennett

paul@kennett.co.nz

http://www.kennett.co.nz 

http://www.mountainbike.co.nz

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Entire contents copyright 1999 by Jerry E. Pournelle. All rights reserved.
Comments and discussion welcome.