CHAOS MANOR MAIL

A SELECTION

Mail 10: September 28 - October 4, 1998

Eric Pobirs [nbrazil@ix.netcom.com]

The once ballyhooed Cairo file system has gone underground as a portion of an application. That’s no big secret. The same thing is happening all over the computing landscape. Oracle, for instance, is very loudly touting their latest database product as an Internet File System. It understands other file systems like that found in Windows and tries to overcome legacy issues by having everything happen on the server. They hope this will make thin clients more attractive, of course but they’ve acknowledge that morbidly obese clients are going away any year soon. Similar efforts are in motion from numerous other vendors. The idea is that the information should be the central organizing point rather than the file it is contained in.

Since Microsoft deals more heavily in the client end they have more of a legacy problem. This is probably a greater source of anxiety than the DOJ for Redmond. How do you make any big improvements without losing large chunks of user base along the way. I think the choice of Outlook is a big indicator of the strategy. The PIM and messaging client is the closest thing to a DB system the majority of people will deal with first hand. It contains a great deal of personal data Vs. corporate data for a full-on DB system. Outlook’s little sibling Express is now part of Win98 and also the eventual NT 5. Growing Outlook Express into the full Outlook as an OS component seems a straightforward progression toward an information-centric environment.

Jerry,

I have actually seen a Palm III upgrade at Staples in St. George Utah. I have a Palm II and if I could justify it, I’d get the upgrade.

Actually, I have heard that the recommended upgrade is the one with the built in paging feature. I love my Palm Pilot, take it everywhere, and don’t know how I got by without it.

Linux box: I was running Red Hat 5.0 when my Master Boot Record died. This was (fortunately) on a Saturday morning. The rest of the day felt like one of your columns that Dave Barry talked about, or, as a friend of mine said "life is a bitch, and she’s having puppies." My HD showed other signs of imminent death, so I’m taking my system into the local office store here in Cedar City for a new motherboard, memory, and an 8.3 GB HD. Then I will try linux again, as well as getting an MPEG encoder card and doing video CDs. I have some episodes of BtVS on tape and will probably start there. Getting linux running is fun, but can be time consuming.

Jerry,

I was just looking through the XFree86 FAQ, and I noticed that Riva 128 support was added in XFree86 version 3.3.2. The version on the RedHat CD that you have is one version earlier than that, so if you want to get your Riva 128 to work, you’ll need to download a more recent version of XFree86.

Installing a new X-Windows is not horrenously complex, but it’s not exactly user-friendly either. You’ll almost certainly have some trouble with it. Having done it myself, I’d be happy to help you through it, although I don’t want to spoil the purity of your "experiment" unless you really need the help. Your starting point is (http://www.xfree86.org).

Because hardware manufacturers are reluctant to release specifications to their hardware, Linux usually runs between 6 months to 1 year behind in driver support; On the other hand, older hardware tends to be supported much more comprehensively. Also, bug fixes are available on a much more timely basis. The exception to this rule is for brand-new experimental hardware, such as SMP CPU’s, which aren’t supported under Windows, these tend to get supported in Linux rather quickly as the manufacturer has a much greater incentive to support third-party drivers.

The other problem with lag time is that the Red Hat CD’s are only published every few months, and each CD contains a snapshot of the stable "release" version at the time of publication, not the more advanced "development" version. Red Hat now has a new product called "Raw Hide" which is a compilation of the development version of Linux, as well as alpha versions of various applications and utilities.

What this means for the user, generally, is that hardware that is less than one year old is often significantly more complex to install than older hardware.

Talin (Talin@ACM.org) -- Systems Engineer, PostLinear Entertainment.

[http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin]

Scott Kitterman [kitterma@erols.com]

The scary part is that the Microsoft release explaining why they pulled SR-2 says there is an installation problem, but if it installed OK you can continue to use it. For me, it installed fine. It was after I started using it that the trouble began. I get the impression they aren’t going to make SR-2 work any better, just improve the install.

roger@pswtech.com

WAV files are not compressed. This is going to cause some grief for Roberta, depending on a few things:

1^st, what resolution is she recording these WAV files in? 44.1 KHz, 16 bit? This is CD-quality audio and takes up a lotta space. It’s also overkill for spoken word, since the human voice falls into a pretty small audio spectrum and doesn’t need all that space.

You can save some space by using 22KHz and even more by dropping to 8-bit, and a lot more by dropping to 11.5 KHz. Alternatively you can record all the files at 44.1/16bit and then use a number of audio editing/conversion programs to drop them down to the desired rate. I assume she is recording in mono? Stereo tracks will take up twice the space and again are not really necessary for spoken word.

You could also muck about with different audio file formats, but since WAV is supported natively in Windows and nothing else is, you’d have to have some sort of audio playback engine within the program to play back something like an AIFF or MPEG audio file. These files can be compressed mightily small, but do need something to read them.

--

Eric Pobirs [nbrazil@ix.netcom.com]

I think much of the enthusiasm for leveling parts of Europe is economic opportunity. Even the most ignorant businessman recalls the great times that followed WWII and more recently how swell it’s been selling American brands into Viet Nam. It’s a vague theory at best but I think many people believe that a location levelled today will be a bonanza tomorrow.

To make a backup or a copy of your .pst file, just go to File, select Import and Export, then select Export to a File and finally select Personal Folder Files (pst). You will then be presented with a collapsible directory of all your Outlook 98 folders to back up or copy.

I use this feature and find it very useful for copying all my Outlook 98 data and transfering it to another PC. (Use the Import function)

Hope this helps.:) Btw I have always enjoyed reading your column in Byte Magazine. In fact, it is the only reason why I buy Byte.

Warrick M. Locke [warlocke@mail.wf.net]

While visiting your Mail, found the link to AfriCam. Interesting!

My machine is WAY too slow to spend much time with that sort of thing—old 486 hooked to an (agressively) rural phone system via a 28.8--but it makes me think of something.

H. Beam Piper’s characters were always tuning in on their "screen communicators" to various static views—there’s the fire scene Little Fuzzy looks at, and the tower cams everybody seems to use for decorative wallpaper, all through the books.

Isn’t it fascinating? Makes you wonder if Mr. Piper really was (p)reincarnated.

Philip Ternahan [ternahan@dock.net]

I woke up this morning and had a thought I’d like to share with you. Now that you’re running your own site, could you put up reading lists in a separate section? Although I realize that Byte’s heirs own the words you sold to them, a lot of what you’ve recommended over the years assumes "classic" proportions.

Jon Bass [jbass@wts.net]

I really liked it. It was full of "news I can use" as usual.

The only thing I have a specific comment on is this:

"PI is the oddest movie I have seen in several years, and I think all computer enthusiasts will like it."

and

"In other words, while some of those howlers might have been accidents or ignorance, there are just too many: the director had to know what he was doing."

Thanks for a wonderful column,

Jon Bass