THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 143 March 5 - 11, 2001

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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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Highlights this week:

• Franklin Covey
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Installed the latest Franklin Covey software with connection to Palm Pilot. I used to use Franklin Ascend a LOT, but PDA's and other stuff caused me to drift off.. Then there was a stretch when I tried to use Microsoft Outlook. No more. It feels like coming home. More in column.

I have been transferring programs to new machines, which will be the theme of this month's column. Wow. Moving programs from one computer to another is painful. There are ways to make it easier, but it's still a real pain.

Did the Nanotechnology report and got that off to www.byte.com last night. They will have it up sometime; meanwhile you can see my AAAS report there, and it's worth a look.

I will have something special for subscribers shortly but it will have to wait until the column is done. But I'll do it. Thanks for all the new subscriptions and renewals. And do check BADMAIL just in case.

I must also revise the recommended systems page and get it up more prominently. And the book reviews. And I am dancing as fast as I can...

A reader asks what "pre-breathing" is in space technology. I explain it and let loose a might yaulp! on the subject over in mail.

Everyone has gone crazy. I used to enjoy sending spam to spamcop. Now they have made it impossible. I paid them money, too, but they have made their site unusable. I suppose next they will start spamming. Why not? It took a certain amount of time to cut and paste spam to spamcop, but I always felt I had done a Good Thing when I spent ten minutes at it. Now I will never do it again because I can't figure out what I am supposed to do. Feh!

Later: Well, it does seem to work again, but it was very tedious getting past their new rules. Ordnung! But I still don't know much about their features. I do know that at one time I paid money, and they have responded by harassing me.

If I ever change the rules on my subscribers I will send them email telling them, not hit people with something unexpected here.

But spamcop is working for me again, after some roundabout adventures. On reflection I suppose their new rules might even make sense -- but they were pretty thorough in wasting my time looking for an explanation they never gave.  Never ascribe to malice...

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I'll open the column with some of the suggestions -- contradictory -- on where you get Microsoft  fix downloads you can keep. The world becomes confusing...

The AAAS Report is up at BYTE in case you missed it. This is what I used to call in my old Galaxy column my "Annual Report on the State of the Sciences..."

And it is column time and I have work to do.

My original instincts were sound. SpamCop has become unusable. Pity. I don't know if it actually did any good, but it might have. Now it doesn't matter since it takes FOREVER to analyze the spam and determine where the reports go. Pointless. No one will use this. If there's some other way to report spam in hopes of reducing the amounts, I would like to find it. I get a lot of the stuff, and I am willing to do my part in eliminating it although I believe Eric Pobirs is right when he says the only way to cut down on spam is to inflict permanent disfiguration and mutilation on some prominent spammers. 

Heaven knows this crippled Spamcop won't do the job. 

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Didn't quite get the column filed last night so have to work on it. You may be interested in reading a few words about intellectual property. If you missed it there is an older report and mail discussion by me; and I have a new report page largely by Harlan Ellison (which is available elsewhere; I have left the links intact).  And now I have work to do.

Incidentally, there is a great variety of material, some quite interesting in the reports section of this site. See the reports overview page, and particularly those filed by or through me.

I will have comments on Mr. Allchin's remarks in the column. I owe him an apology which I will make here. Had he said what it was reported that he had said, he would have deserved what I said; but he didn't, and thus he didn't, and I was plainly out of line. The interesting part is that it was difficult to find out precisely what he HAD said and in what context. (Try http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010220/tc/microsoft_clarifies_exec_s_open-source_concerns_1.html or )Once one does that, one may or may not agree with him, but it's not sheer insanity. However it was reported in a somewhat different way:

http://news.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-4825719-RHAT.html?tag=ltnc 

From there the slashdot effect took off and soon Allchin had become a monster comparable only to Vlad the Impaler. 

Note also that what goes in my column is more carefully researched than what goes here, and I remind you again, and again, and again, THIS IS A DAY BOOK, a journal of thoughts and ideas. Ah well.

Thanks to Eric Pobirs for digging into this for me. Finding the actual sources turned out to be very difficult, and apparently most of those ranting on the subject never bothered.

 Eric also found me this. 

http://news.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-4825719-RHAT.html?tag=ltnc 

I have known Richard Stallman since he was a graduate student. I can admire some of his aims, and I'm rather happy that gadflies like him exist. But he can sure get things mixed up.

And that ought to be enough to read for a while.

I didn't get any pictures of the session I was on at AAAS, so I'll write up the report on "Me and Dr. Frankenstein" and send it to subscribers. Alex and Eric were over last night, and it got late and I didn't get the column in, so that is first priority. Then the report.

 VIRUS ALERT

The latest one to be doing the rounds seems to be this one - the rather amusingly titled "My Naked Wife" Rather easy to spot as the attachment is a plain .exe file ( which purports to be a Flash Movie but is in fact a worm )

I can't imagine anyone being stupid enough to fall for this one ( who would run an unknown .exe ??? ) but the major AV vendors have deemed it serious enough to issue threat warnings - see http://service1.symantec.com/sarc/sarc.nsf/html/W32.Naked@mm.html for more details.

Regards

Chris Ward-Johnson Dr Keyboard - Computing Answers You Can Understand

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COLUMN OVERDUE!!

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The column is done and off. Coming up for air. 

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I am taking the weekend off. We have an opera reception tonight put on by Alicia Clarke, wife of Ed Clarke who was the Libertarian Party candidate for president a few years ago. I always enjoy talking to Ed, and there will be good performances by some of the LA resident singers.

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I'm taking today off too. Roberta is singing in the Wagner Chorale performance of Mozart's Requiem this afternoon. and I'll take her to dinner afterwards.

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