THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 103 May 29 - June 4, 2000

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This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 4,000 - 7,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this place is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE.

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If you want to PAY FOR THIS there are problems, but I keep the latest HERE. I'm trying. MY THANKS to all of you who sent money.  Some of you went to a lot of trouble to send money from overseas. Thank you! There are also some new payment methods. I am preparing a special (electronic) mailing to all those who paid: there will be a couple of these. I am also toying with the notion of a subscriber section of the page. LET ME KNOW your thoughts.
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If this seems a lot about paying think of it as the Subscription Drive Nag. You'll see more.

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Highlights this week:

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• An interview with Niven and Pournelle
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MEMORIAL DAY

ALERT

If you use or contemplate using the search function on this program, go read what's happening in MAIL right NOW, before you do it. If you used it, go read it. I don't myself think there is cause for alarm, but I need information.

We had a Great Hardware and Software Purge yesterday and today, and it will continue. It started when Roberta wanted me to look in the attic for an old crib in anticipation of a visit by our granddaughter. When I went out on the back balcony to get into the attic I found the back deck awash: drippings from the air conditioner in the cable room, and very bad drainage. It took a shop vacuum to get the water up. Fortunately I had caulked that area so the water didn't get through into the house, but to get the shop vac out there was nearly impossible because the passageways were blocked by piles of  unreviewed stuff.

It had to go, and quickly, and if it had to be done then better it were done quickly.  I have heavy guilt feelings about tossing stuff that might be useful. I grew up in the Great Depression and then World War II, and in addition to the farm we were in the radio broadcast business: one of my earlier memories is "Use it up! Wear it out! Make it do! Or do without!"  Actually it can't be all that early since that's a WW II slogan, but it seems to have slipped backward into memory of the Depression as well. So I hate throwing out useful stuff, but It Had To Go, and Go It Has.  Some was utterly useless. Some will end up at the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society where they have a bunch of old stuff for members to play with. The best will go to Notre Dame High School. But most Just Goes.  It's not what it is, it's that it is: matter is the enemy...

It's astonishing how quickly and how much STUFF accumulates, and how quickly it becomes so obsolete that it would be pointless to write about it.  I have no solution to this. I have one of the biggest columns in the business, I cover more stuff than almost anyone else, and I'm fairly conscientious about trying things I think readers will like -- or won't like. You never hear about a LOT of stuff, because I tend to write only about things I think you will like.

Anyway, if you are a publisher or vendor and you read this, if I got it before last Fall IT IS GONE, and if you think it's still useful and should be reviewed by me, you will have to SEND IT AGAIN. I depend on constant streams of STUFF or I won' t have anything to write about; the fact that I get too much of it is just one of those facts of life.  I'm still clearing out junk. And yes, I understand that a 1 Gig wide-form hard drive would be useful to someone; but I have no way to get it to that someone. That drive got about 5 seconds attention before it went into the junk bag. I don't have time to scrub proprietary software and personal data off it, and it's in the dumpster. There's a lot of stuff like that. Old floppy disks. Old floppy disk drives. Ancient LAN cards. Old editions of new software. And on, and on.  But at least I can find my way to the balcony and clean up the water. Now I need a good handyman to put in a drip line, and fix the balcony drainage....

Well, I tried to post all this and the mail. The Net is impossible. Nothing works. Zum Teufel mit

I don't know if it's Pair's servers or the Net itself, but it's useless today.

Two hours later: still useless. Files don't transfer. It's got to be the Pair.com server they have me on. Useless. BIX works. Other stuff works. Just my ftp to my site. That doesn't work.

I give up. This is a useless way to spend time. The Internet does not work on holidays. I should have guessed. I suppose everyone is sending live video pictures. Congestion comes in waves, fast enough to prevent pages from uploading and getting the registration information. Ungood. About 75% of a file will go, fast, as things clear, and then whammo, nothing works for about 5 minutes; as if something it lurking out there to grab any bandwidth it can find and eat it. Ah well. It can take 3 seconds to to 75% and four iminutes to do the rest, only Pair times out before the rest gets there.  Ain't no way to spend time.

At least we now know that the tracker scare was only that: it doesn't do any harm, but it is a strange way to operate, and they are a bit less than candid about what they are doing... I will arrange for paying for the Atomz search system later this week.

Midnight: the Net is crispy again. Just too many people trying to use it during the day I guess.  Backbone saturation? POP loads? Dunno...

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I was sent a short quiz to determine my status as a professional. As a courtesy I have included it here. See quiz.html and see if you qualify...

Digging about for information for a column on medical diagnostics I searched for Tiresias, a case history/diagnosis program I encountered 20 years ago. It seems to have vanished (alas) but I did find references to a screen font called Tiresias that looks extremely readable. I haven't had time to figure out where to get it, and what it is likely to cost me (and one supposes it would be silly to use it here unless it is freely distributable, which I suspect it is not).  But anyone knowing more about the font is invited to tell me more. Please.

Also, anyone who knows what happened to the Tiresias medical diagnostics program is invited to let me know. It wasn't crucial to my column, but I'd like to know.

Some time ago I heard that Iomega was going to make a version of the IDE internal ZIP drive ATAPI compatible so you could boot from it. If so I never heard back from them on it. Does anyone know if that is possible now?

For that matter, is there any good reason why you can't make USB boot devices?

OK, thanks to Clark Meyers it's clear you aren't likely to do USB boot at least not for a while. Certainly both Castlewood and Iomega say their internal IDE removables are ATAPI. What's not clear to me is can you boot from one, and if so, how would you make the boot record and bootable disk? And of course it didn't take long to get the answer to that. See mail. So you can boot from a ZIP internal ATAPI.

http://www.eyecue.co.uk/eyecue/tiresias/  The Google search engine comes through again! Recommended.

is typical of several emails I have; alas, I already had found that site. What I haven't found, probably due to inattention, is instructions on what to do about it. If it's that good (and it does look good) there has to be a way to use and distribute it.

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The mystery deepens.

http://www.bitstream.com/products/developer/fontfusion/tvfontpack.html

tells about the wonders of the Tiresias font, and why it's terrific, and everything, with one minor problem: there is no hint as to where to get it or what you might do about it or what it could cost. It is of course pointless to use a a font for web pages if the readers don't have it.  If this thing is so good, and it does look nice, then one would think Bitstream would do a better job of telling us WHAT TO DO ABOUT USING IT, but all they do is tell how great it is. I must be missing something.

I have a ton of mail for the Whitlocks, but it all boils down to: you can use Windows sharing with a router, but you're better off getting something more secure.

LinkSys has a neat DSL Router/Firewall that's probably the cheapest solution to the problem. A lot of my readers seem to have gone the Rebel Netwinder route that I use, and love it. More when I get a moment. I'm getting dressed to go to a book signing.

Roland Dobbins, who seems to spend his life on the web (with T3 lines he doesn't have to wait for much) suggests "they got it right." See

http://www.scifi.com/dune/

For the latest on DUNE. If you don't have Quicktime go to

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/index.html

and get it; it's worth the effort.

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Thank you for your interest in Tiresias font.

The Tiresias Screenfont was originally designed for subtitling on United

Kingdom digital television. It is specifically designed for screen display and has been adopted by the UK Digital Television Group as the resident font for interactive television.

The Tiresias Screenfont has been designed to have characters that are easy to distinguish from each other. The design was carried out with a specific reference to persons with visual impairments. The following key factors were considered: character shapes, relative weight or thickness of the character shapes, inter-character spacing and aspect ratios that affect the maximum size at which the type could be used.

The benefits of the Tiresias Screenfont are the greatest on lower resolution displays, such as television screens, train, airline and bus schedule display screens and low resolution displays on wireless communication and handheld devices. Not all of the benefits of the Tiresias Screenfont will be available on higher resolution displays, such as a computer monitor.

We carry the Tiresias font in the following formats: T1633-02 PC TrueType P1633-02 PC PostScript M1633-02 Mac TrueType

The purchase price for each format is $29.00usd plus shipping. (the font

can also be e-mailed if requested.) The typeface is licensed for use on five workstations.

Payment: Visa, MasterCard or Check in Advance

The following web site is setup by the RNIB which has designed the font and has information on the history and design considerations.

http://www.eyecue.co.uk

Bitstream Sales sales@bitstream.com 800/522-3668

So now we know, but it doesn't do us any good since using it on web page isn't going to help anyone out there.  Ah well.

http://home.earthlink.net/~geoffreylandis/NPinterview.html 

has an interview with Niven and me that's actually pretty good...

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Brought up a Pentium 933 mhz system in Windows 98 last night. Easiest installation I ever did. Intel CA 810E Board with integrated graphics is good enough for hottest games I have. System has internal IDE ORB and ZIP drives, and a DVD RAM drive: that's some serious removable storage. There were literally no problems at all. See column.

Does anyone know how to find out what motherboard is in a Windows 2000 system without shutting down? I think this is an Intel SR440BX in the machine formerly known as Starswarm, but I can't find my notes, and I hae references to a machine with that motherboard bult last October; I think this one is rather later. I know it is and Intel, and that is is not one of the latest CA810 boards. It has an integral video and sound. The machine has horrible power management problems, with the "Power Meter" doing things in background that slow it down something awful. I can probably disable all that in the BIOS (thought we had, but sometimes these things get reset when you install new OS in them). This machine was brought up as an NT 4 standalone server, became an NT 4 backup server, was upgraded from backup to PDC server, and then migrated to Windows 2000 Server, all done by Roland in a marathon session. In the process something seems to have turned on "Battery" power management features that shouldn't be on.

Roland speculates that it needs a BIOS update. I don't know if that's the case, but it would be well to find out: only I can't find the log notes on that machine's construction so I am not dead sure what motherboard is in it.  Since it is the primary server now I don't really want to shut down and remove the cover.

And once again:

Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools - System Information.

On the system summary page, look for System Manufacturer and System Model. On newer motherboards, W2K indentifies the board, albeit somewhat strangely. On my CA810E motherboard, it identifies system manufacturer as "CAYMAN" (which is the codename for that board), and system model as "CA81020A". I suspect that late model SE440BX motherboards will identify themselves also, although I don't know for sure.

-- Robert Bruce Thompson

In my case it says SR44010A BIOS 02/25/99  Thanks. I confess to a bit of laziness: it's fast and convenient to draw upon the collective mind here, and I make the excuse that while I ought to know stuff like this, it takes time to dig it up, while some of you have it in rapid access storage...

Incidentally, I now have 3 votes each for Trebuchet and Arial.  Arial is easier to use because it's at the top of the font list in FrontPage... Robert's letter above is in Trebuchet. Most of my quoted mail goes into Arial.

For finding out what your Motherboard is there's a program, too. See mail.

Roland calls attention to an item on Iridium. Maybe it will be saved?

Heh indeed. I always advised Bill to buy Liechtenstein, but going to BC would work too...

http://www.lordoftherings.net/ is 

great, but I would like to find and beat senseless the Quicktime people. After waiting about 20 minutes for the movie to download, it finally did -- and as it was playing, up pops a window. It tells me that there's a new version of Quicktime available. (I got mine installed last night. Wow.) And of course it LOCKS THE SCREEN AND STOPS THE MOVIE FROM RESPONDING so I had to dump the whole thing! So I didn't get to see the entire movie. Thanks a whole bunch, Apple. Really cool work. Imbeciles. It's really gone too: all that time wasted.  I'm still frosted. What rot. I got to see the first 90% of it, and I'm not going to go through that again. Someone with a faster connection let me know if there's anything interesting at the end of the clip. Or not. AArgh.

And here is a definitely weird one.

Check out http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/weird/unusual/e-wall.html 

Feel free to pass this around to whomever you think might be interested...

Mike Morris

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Column time. Also the last opera of the season, and the last of a new era: Peter Hemmings is leaving, and it's not quite clear what will happen to LA Opera without him. 

Billy Budd was excellent. I am not a Britten fan, but I liked this production. Good party afterwards, too.  Pictures when I get a chance. It's column time now...

New 933 MHz machine, with DVD-RAM drive. Interesting. See column...

And I just found this:

Which is Roland Dobbins and Sasha on a hike up the hill behind Chaos Manor. 

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While I was digging about I also found:

Which is Roberta with Dr. Yoji Kondo (Erik Kotani) and Ursala Kondo. Obviously at a formal party...

and me with Dr. Doug Beeson (Col. USAF), at the same party...

I found this stuff in a hunt for other pictures for a COMDEX panel.  Might as well put them where someone can see them...

I have a lot of mail about the faster than light traveling wave experiments. It's not yet clear that you can send information by that means, much less physical objects, but we'll see. Until then I haven't anything meaningful to say. For those who missed it,

http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/06/04/stifgnusa01007.html

gives a good account.

And the Great College Computer Quest ends. See what was bought.

Eric says he gets that Quicktime "Time to upgrade" message no matter how often he has upgraded. I suspect they do that to everyone who hasn't actually bought the "professional" model. It's simple greed. They want to annoy you into paying. 

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