THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 109 July 10 - 16, 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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The column is done. I have updated the Techweb page that tells how to find the Week in Review and other Techweb audio broadcasts, and tries to explain a little the difference between accessing my mp3 and RealAudio. The PCEXPO Show Awards are up at , as we;; as the show reports and a segment of a column I wrote last week. Parts of that are out of date already: the new column deals more fully and clearly with CD-R vs. CD-RW, and clears up a misunderstanding I seem to have had for years.

Briefly, if you write to a CD-RW blank with CD-R software you create a CD-R that looks to most CD readers (that can read gold discs at all) like a CD-R (there are a few readers that won't read this but can read a CD-R, but they are older). The difference is that this one can be erased. You can also format a CD-RW blank with Adaptec DirectCD (takes from 20 minutes to an hour to format). That creates a disc that systems equipped with DirectCD can read (and write to in a CD-RW drive) as if it were any other kind of drive. This doesn't work in Windows 2000 unless you have the newest Adaptec software, and even then you may have problems. There's considerably more on that subject in the upcoming column, and yes, my last one was a bit outdated by the time it got up. Things change in this business. In the old paper BYTE days it happened more often because I'd write it in, say, January for the April issue.

It has been suggested that I keep my Orchids and Onions page here and update it; I like the notion, if I can find the time. Also, BYTE.COM will shortly begin a special short shrift book review section. I'll continue to have the Book Of The Month in the column as ones I recommend, but I get far more review books than I can put there, so I'll try to deal with ones I like in a short shrift paragraph. We expect the book list column to become a permanent feature at BYTE.COM. 

With luck we'll get down to the beach house this week. I'll take Fergie along so I can deal with web pages fairly easily, but the purpose of running off is to get Mamelukes done or at least moving along, so there won't be a lot up.

I KNOW I OWE the subscribers. I have a bunch of pictures and some stories, and I really am dancing as fast as I can. This place would not stay open without subscribers, but I do try to get you something extra, and I really do intend to get to it.  What with PCEXPO and the Great Adventure coming home (well it wasn't all that great an adventure, but anyway it will be up on fairly soon) and some house maintenance and working with Niven on a new book, I feel like I'm spread thin like the butter in boarding house... 

(Boarding house: once a popular institution where you got a room and "board" meaning you ate meals at a common table. Popular particularly during the Depression as a means of saving money for the boarders and finding a source of income for householders who had rooms but no jobs. Gave birth to expressions like "boarding house reach" -- i.e. helping yourself without asking someone to pass the last helping because they might grab it first, and other such expressions. Once a popular form of student housing. Mostly eliminated by the litigious nature of our society and the permit Raj that now rules us...)

I HAVE AN ODD REQUEST. I have had for years a rather silly game called "Chaos Overlords." It has few redeeming virtues but for some reason I rather liked it. I managed to misplace the CD for it, and it's no longer for sale anywhere I can find. Does anyone have a copy?

I have a number of references to web sites with demos of this out of date game, but none leading to where I can buy it. I am trying one path now. But it doesn't really appear to be for sale anywhere I can find.  Thanks to people who sent the primary findings from searches like google, but those don't seem to lead anywhere useful. I don't need demos, or patches...

take you to places that act like they want to sell you something, but if so, they don't make it easy to do; they ask for product numbers if you want to buy something but there's no product number on the thing you want to buy.  I think web site stores have a death wish.

I suppose I have managed to order it. We will see. Thanks to all who helped. I still have no idea if anything comes of any of this, but I've learned something about e-commerce.

So now I have email: no, this product isn't in stock. We just said it was. Gollies, we didn't know that page was still up. Etc. Etc. This from

http://www.rrcd.com/products/chaosoverlord.html

So my ecommerce experiences continue to be disappointing; I have had few that were satisfactory. Is this stuff ready for prime time?  Given the confusing nature of the place you go to pay for this place, I suppose I have no business griping...)

Anyway, I don't seem to find the silly game for sale. I had it, and seem to have misplaced the CD, which is probably within about two feet of me right now.

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I have a lot of leads on Chaos Overlords but still no actual disc. There are pirate sites that have "abandoned ware", but those don't have the silly music and sound effects and movie clips. Somewhere I'll find one. I don't mind paying, and I actually own the silly game. I seem to have won an ebay auction for a CD that collects a whole bunch of out of date games, but again I suspect it will not have the music and sound effects and such like; I could be wrong there. None of this is a big deal, but it has got me interested in the whole subject of what happens to abandoned software?

We learn much every day. Spent part of the time fiddling with CD-RW and DirectCD and the new PlexWriter. It's pretty well all in the column.

Found a pirate version of Chaos Overlords (it's all I can find). It comes as a zip file. That one has some other files, and requires a thing called ARJ. I never heard of ARJ. I have found a place that says you can get ARJ there, but in fact when you try to do a download, nothing happens. They apparently have one 1200 baud line to their web site or something. So I am still stymied.  I am beginning to think this is all a great joke. What the daylight is ARJ and why do we need it to unzip files? (PLEASE READ REST OF THIS BEFORE YOU SEND ME A REPLY!!!!!)

One good thing about GetRight. It doesn't give up. We'll have an ARJ soon enough (the site that sends it must really be slow and small).

Well I ever got so much mail so quickly in all my life.  But once I managed to download this ARJ thing I was able to figure out how to use it.  It sort of plugs in to WinZIp (you tell WinZip where to find it) and Bob's your uncle.  Odd I never encountered it before. Thanks to everyone who sent mail. Far too much for individual answers, I fear. So I have the silly game, sans music and video clips. 

And now I have the new Harry Potter book, and...

And we're headed to the beach house to write for a few days. I'll be here off and on, but not as regularly as when I am home.

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We are off to the beach house. I'll take Fergie and see if I can update this place. Lots of interesting mail. I'll try to get some of it up tonight.

I will be doing a short bit for BYTE on CARNIVORE, the FBI's latest attempt to get at everything and everyone.

We are safely at the beach.  Work now...

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It's no great secret that NASA isn't doing very well lately. Part of the problem is a lack of adult supervision. Much of it is simple ossification.

The one organization that has been consistently right about the salutation is the Space Access Society. They now have an important report. If you are at all interested in mankind's future in space, go read that. Now. And tell your friends.

While you're there you might poke about the web site and see what else is there. 

I'll be down at the beach house through the weekend. Updates here as I take breaks from other work...

The Chaos Overlords Adventure is over. I managed to find a copy and install it, and the adventure itself was interesting enough that it will be in the August column. Thanks to all who helped.

I installed GetRight on Fergie, which is the system I brought down here to the beach. I had version 334, and it installed all right, but then in a fit of madness I downloaded and upgraded to 4.2c. After that when I would click on a URL in mail, Internet Explorer would open, but so would a window demanding that I give it a "Link Browser".  I have no idea what a Link Browser is, but I sure never needed on until I installed GetRight.

Apparently they have improved the program to make it unusable. Pity. I have expunged it, and lo! when I click on a URL in mail, I get to the URL instead of getting a demand for a link browser.  I think I am going to have to live without GetRight.  Perhaps 334 didn't do that? It doesn't seem to have done it on my other machines.  But I am now worried enough that I think I'll just stick with the regular download mechanisms built in.

This got me looking into web bugs and the like. If you want to know more,

http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/privacy/wbfaq.htm

is a good place to go. See also

http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/privacy/banads.htm

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Vive La France! Allons...

For more on Web security, see

http://www.ntsecurity.net/ and follow the articles on web bugs and also AOL's latest tricks... Recalling that AOL and Netscape are the same company. Thanks to Joe Zeff and Mike Morris for pointing me to this URL.

To repeat:

It's no great secret that NASA isn't doing very well lately. Part of the problem is a lack of adult supervision. Much of it is simple ossification.

The one organization that has been consistently right about the salutation is the Space Access Society. They now have an important report. If you are at all interested in mankind's future in space, go read that. Now. And tell your friends.

We do note that Earthlink has refused to install Carnivore.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2257522.html?tag=st.ne.ron.lthd.ni 

There will be a short article by me on Carnivore in BYTE.COM real soon now. (I've written it, and it shouldn't be long; odd, in paper magazine days I was happy if they managed something in 6 weeks, now 12 hours seems an eternity...)

For something different and important on futures, see Greg Cochran in mail. 

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HELP!

Never mind. Problem solved. See below.

I have left the problems as a log; but the problem is solved.

I have managed to mung my portable. Through a chain of accidents I managed to run startup from the Windows/options/cabs directory. Now I can't start up the system. If I start in Safe Mode it knows all my programs, so that's not a big problem, but somehow the user data has been lost so that it wants me to tell it who I am. When I do, it says it can't display the non-disclosure agreement and shuts down.  Every time.  

If I start with a EBD I can look at some stuff, and in Safe Mode I can run SYSEDIT, but I don't have any reference works here and I don't know how to tell Windows to stop acting as if it doesn't know me. There is clearly some kind of value set to initialize, and I need to unset that.  Anyone know what to do here?

It's not an entire disaster since I have this machine, and when I get home I can use an actual Windows CD to reinstall if I have to, but this nonsense about not being able to display a disclosure or whatever is ridiculous.

Clearly if I edit some file or another I'll be all right. But what file? And edit with what?

I presume regedit works in safe mode.

Keep reading; the problem does get solved.

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Regedit works in save mode, but what do you edit? There were no keys for "RegisteredOwner". I added them. Now when it first comes up it has the right name in there, but still demands that I give it a name. Then when I do and go next I get

Message SU0350

Setup was unable to display the non-disclosure agreement. Setup will now close.

Error Code = 5001

OK

The OK being the fascist system of requiring you to agree to your own destruction. It then shuts down. Opening in Safe Mode shows that all my files are there, everything is right, but there's some key that opens this stupid setup screen.  I don't have a repair disk with me. At this point even I am beginning to think something drastic needs to be done: Microsoft needs to be made to pay for paranoia like this. Unable to display the non-disclosure agreement. What the daylight is THAT about?

I will when I get home install my own copy of Windows on this machine, and if those SOB's would like to sue me for having multiple copies of their precious software I'd like to make a counterclaim for hours wasted. I don't have a registry secrets book with me, and HELP is as usual useless. I'm at the end of a slow modem line, so if there's on-line help I am not likely to find it. None of this is critical other than that it annoys me enormously: what if I had no other machine with me?

I have the entire setup disk under Windows/Options/Cabs but running setup brings me to that message when Windows starts.  There must be a way out other than installing Windows from scratch but I don't know what it is. I do know that Microsoft is forfeiting any moral rights here. When their efforts to prevent piracy destroy the usefulness of the product ...

Unable to display the non-disclosure agreement. Setup will now shut down.

OK

Well, well, well: The solution.

A web search for SU050 produced this URL

http://www.installationsplus.com/ipiboard/messages/1702.html 

which says that the LICENSE.TXT file in the WINDOWS/HELP directory is wrong, and to copy that from the WINDOWS directory into the HELP directory. And LO! It works!

Now nothing in Microsoft tells you that. This is GOOFY, but it did work. I have the laptop back in order again.

Well, I think I do. There's no end of resetting and reinstalling and new device drivers and on and on, but I think when it is done it will work. Wow what a mess.

Now it endlessly wants to install a Cardbus Controller. Every reboot gets this new hardware detected. We will see how to end that nonsense... Except that it endlessly restarts, too. There is no end to resettings... Lord knows what will happen when I connect it to the net, or dock it. But first I need to be back in control of it again, and that is taking forever...

It wants to reset AGAIN. No. Not this time. Now to change the display settings, and of course it wants to reset one more time and this time I have to let it, I think...

Only now it hangs on "now restarting." To heck with it. Turn it off and back on again.

Wants to come up in Safe Mode. Hah. OK, let it...

Startup Manager is sure a LOT cleaner now. So that's good. Shut down again. To power off. And it is once again taking forever to come up... and in what screen mode? We will see.  Back up in VGA mode. Says it has to restart to change screen resolutions. We went through this twice before but we'll try again.

Windows is now restarting, it says. And it is hung there again. Ah. Maybe not. Here is a message. There is a problem with the display. The adapter settings are not right. Bah. It doesn't know what monitor I have either. OK, fix that. It still wants to reset to change settings.

Windows is pretty stupid, isn't it?

Eventually, deleting dead drivers and letting Windows try to reinstall, I have got my screen back the way I want it. Hurrah. Of course Freecell blows up, as it did when I started all this. Apparently the drivers for the ATI screen display won't work with Freecell...

But all is well after adventures. I do a lot of silly stuff. I can't feel too bad about not figuring out what was wrong. No one else did either. Who'd have thunk that a license agreement in a HELP folder would be the problem??

And for something more interesting, to wit IQ and the Flynn Effect, see mail.

And I STRONGLY advise Netscape users (and everyone else, actually) to go read:

http://grc.com/downloaders.htm from Gibson.

On that score: I have just installed GetRight version 3.34 and run Gibson's program. I have no spyware on this machine. I don't know about later versions of GetRight and indeed with the problems I had I don't want any later version. I paid for 3.34 and I like it.

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