Jerry,

I remember in one of your Chaos Manor columns in Byte you recommended some goop which enhances electrical conductivity between switch contacts and so forth. Do you remember its name and from whom it can be obtained?

Also, a Science Fiction question. About 40 years ago a sci-fi novel aimed at youngsters was written in which the heroes were able to teleport from one place to another through a process called "jaunting". I do not know the name of the book or the author. Can you help?

Regards and thank you. As a quid pro quo, if you have any questions about NT, please feel free!

What a relief to find that Chaos Manor is still out there somewhere. I was stunned by the sudden demise of BYTE, and really ticked at being given a subscription to Windows Magazine in place of my prepaid 5 years of Byte. A suitable metaphor for this piece of daylight robbery escapes me for the minute.

But now I find that all it not lost...just drive carefully will ya?

Regards, AH

Al Hart (Technical Sales) AE Electronics

Phone:(604) 279 8867 Fax:(604) 279 5510

Jerry,

Here at Rotary Rocket we have both Windows 98 and NT running. We also have late-model (‘98 &; ‘99) everything running the systems: I have an IBM 770 laptop; most of the engineers have IBM Intellistation M Pros. We have found that we have to shut down NT every once in a while, just for general purposes. Never know exactly why: someone was running SolidWorks for three days with twenty drawings in the background? Or had 10 windows open and the 11^th causes a hiccup? Incompatibility between AutoCAD and Netscape? and so on. >shrug< Maybe it’s a build-up of static on something. Maybe it’s a stray cosmic ray. But you are not alone in having a good, solid, Microsoft-recommended set of hardware and still have the occasional have-to-shut-it-down-and-start-over-for-no-apparent-reason trouble.

I figure once I get the firewall computer up and working, it will almost never need to be changed. Passing IP packets back and forth is a straightforward job; adding the security and IP masquerade doesn't make it that much worse; so once it is set up, I should be good to go. --

Steve R. Hastings "Vita est"

Jerry,

Since you rail about MacOS making you "drag-to-trash" when you want to eject a removable disk, you might be interested in the origin of that gesture:

My solution to the Fermi paradox: As intelligent races advance in their technological development, they inevitably develop entertainment forms so compelling that they lose all interest in objective reality. After all, why go through the bother of travelling to Alpha Centauri, when watching Star Trek or playing Baldur’s Gate is so much more convenient? I’m sure that eventually we can develop a virtual reality interstellar colonization that’s indistinguishable from the real thing, except that we’ll edit out all the boring parts like spending 100 years in suspended animation, or grubbing around on lifeless balls of dirt. Instead, we’ll cater to the most superficial and puerile interests of would-be explorers, presenting to them a universe filled with buxom alien seductresses, "quake-like" space combat, etc...with only a few commercial interruptions.

In your Tuesday, February 16 entry of View, you mention that your friend Larry Niven has a problem with the line not releasing when he disconnects from online. The problem does not happen when using a phone on the same line. You also mention that his home has some sort of telephone switching system that no one understands and that was in place when he moved in. I install and maintain a variety of telephone equipment and I have a suggestion. Try using a phone to call the same number the modem calls and see if the line releases properly. If not, the problem could be at the other end of the connection. If that doesn’t seem to be the case, try connecting directly to the Telephone Co. service outside with either a laptop or a long line cord to eliminate the inhouse switching system and the house telephone wiring. Maybe this will point to a culprit. Sorry if this mail isn’t properly formatted, but I couldn’t remember your prefernces and they aren’t on the current or main view pages, so I just used the mailto link and hope it is Ok.

Greetings Dr. Pournelle,

Over the last 8 years here in Tampa, the lightning capital of the world, I have had 6 modems damaged by lightning on the phone lines.

Most failed with the relays (hard/semiconductor) unable to seize the line to make a connection. One failed with the line seized such that I had to unplug the line from the modem for it to hang up. I keep that modem on a shelf and could still use to make calls, even though I would have to physically disconnect each time.

This could be your solution as you have had some heavy rains recently. By the way the phone company says that there are lightning protectors as the line comes into my apartment building and I have telephone surge protectors next to my computers!

Enjoy your writings always.

Thanks, Quentin T. Fox, Jr. [quentinf@gte.net]

Jon Udell's Mindshare does show Chaos Manor with about the same count I get. I suspect some of the very large numbers are self referential, especially ZD.

By my count there are about as many SF links as computer links. This may have implications for subscriptions.

Subject: Microsoft Software Return Day

Keith Duthie [psycho@albatross.co.nz]

Subject: Web site colours

From: Don Armstrong, Sydney, Australia

darmst@yahoo.com.au

Jerry,

You or your readers (is that the correct term in this case?) may be interested in this. The people at http://www.visibone.com have just published a very impressive "Web Palette Poster" showing the 216 (or even only 125) colours which are universally supported by web browsers. It has a layout which lets a web designer choose colours which won't clash, even if the designer's system doesn't show those distinctions itself.

You may not need one of these yourself - I don't see anything wrong with your design, including colours. However, you may want it. I do, and I'm ordering it.

US$15; plus $3 shipping and handling for USA and Canada, or US$7 for other countries.

Regards,

Subject: Out of print books 11f

I’ve been meaning for some time to go through your list of recommended books and make a list of my own. Today I finally had the time to do so.

They were the only web site I could find that both listed the book and would sell it to me immediately with a credit card. Some other sites listed the book but then redirected you to the actual bookseller who did not accept credit cards. (In this day and age???)

At any rate, I highly recommend Alibris for finding hard-to-find books.

Please note I stuck in your ordering code. I like to help out where I can.

Lastly, are you still mailing out your columns to subscribers? I subscribed with a check last year and received your December column but I haven’t seen anything since then.

Dr. Pournelle,

Some of it’s a bit silly but I enjoy "The week that was" feature. Nice to see a little common sense on environmental issues once in awhile.

Good evening,

Regarding ZIP dives: There’s one common problem all devices with flexible media suffers. If you screw it with all four screws in the case with "non-perfect geometry" it starts to make disks readable only by that device.

This can be simple checked: unscrew two screws from the one side of device: if problem eliminates, never re-screw them again - it’s because of case geometry. The unit is perfectly secured with only 2 screws.

Hi,

I just read your letter about using linux in Jerry Pournelle’s column. You’re probably getting a ton of replies about getting color on an epson, but just in case you aren’t.

I have an epson stylus color 600. To get color out of it you need a later version of ghostscript than is supplied by redhat. (Actually, maybe the very latest redhat’s have it.) The guy who writes ghostscript has a company, and the latest versions are not for commercial distribution, hence redhat can’t distribute them. But, you can go to the right website and download them and compile them yourself with epson color support and eventually they will be permitted to go into redhat’s distribution.

Actually, Peter Deutsh is a subscriber to my mailing list, and yes he offered several solutions on how to print on my Epson.

Thanks for telling, me, Carl.

One of the solutions he suggested - Peter Deutsh - was to make the driver to the Epson printer just a pipe of whatever comes from the Windows machines.

This is what I did and it works perfectly. I don’t need to print in color from the Linux server anyway, so it doesn’t matter that my Ghostscript there doesn’t know Epson color.

But, eventually, I will need to upgrade Ghostscript anyway. I use GS a lot for making graphs in Perl CGI scripts.

Jerry,

values as well, but I forgot to include the URL. This in reference to a letter in Mail about a poster that more

or less does the same thing, but that you have to order and hang on the wall. The URL is

Hope this is useful to someone.

If it’s NT Server, and providing mission-critical stuff, definitely a good thing. If your video card hardware is (or becomes) flaky - do you really want to lose the entire service a server machine is supposed to provide over the network?

One source of great angst in changes to the OS design from 3.51 to 4 was the decision to change the "Display Server" display driver component.

Terminology precision needed here: The NT OS was created to a "Client/Server" _architecture_ model. In this context, critical highest priority system stuff runs as "ring 0" Kernel Mode. In 3.51 the Display Server that communicates to the video hardware through the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) was defined and written as a "User Mode" service. Confuse or hang it with bad hardware: the kernel, and network services need not die.

In v4, the decision was made to imbed the display component in the kernel, saving on internal process intercommunication, speeding up graphics. After all, it is really essential to be able to play the latest graphics intensive games on a mission critical server... It is, of course, even more vital to optimize profits by taking a "one size fits all" attitude in product release. Trouble is, they rather lost the plot in doing so! No such thing as "kernel panic" here - video problems (even on a server that no-one would log on to locally) will typically cause instant seizure - of everything.

I had a particularly mean client that tried to save a few hundred pounds over four NT4 Workstations by insisting that they provided the hardware instead of using our regular trusty Dell spec’d items. Flaky video RAM caused temperature dependant crashes during soak testing where I ran a legacy DOS network database that hogged CPU cycles while open. Shutdown of the air-conditioning &; heating at the end of the working day was rather like setting a cranky old mechanical egg-timer running... Only my attitude towards Microsoft became substantially more hard-boiled.

The difference between NT Server &; Workstation? A few (protected) registry keys. (But that is another topic).

<Network Server Services>

Weakening? Possibly. Degrade if you must, but please do so gracefully...

--- Other stuff follows. Cut,edit,use as you wish ---

Substantive reply not expected. Postal address needed if hard copy of Beowulf reference wanted. (_I’d_ prefer you had maximal time to write books too!)

PS. Met you briefly at a London Computer show in the days when Ciarcia had a circuit cellar. An unexpected and delightful diversion unmatched by all subsequent exhibitions that I’ve attended.

PPS Saved part of the Sunday Times in August last year for you (and co-writers) of the Beowulf inspired stories. Recent discoveries in Kent put another spin on the origins of the saga. I had hoped that it would inspire you all in writings to a follow-up of Beowulf’s Children. Now that you have recovered some floor space, if you provide a postal address (and I can find the paper in my own impending clear-out) - I’ll mail it to you. "Legacy" tempted me to test my physics and calculate a few flight endurance envelopes for a Hydrogen fusion generation starship, during the interminable journeys on the train back to the office to reset the afflicted NT Workstations. "Beowulfs Children" I read on the train back from an interview for a software team leader’s job to manage the Infra-Red telescope’s CCD data collection in La Palma. (Didn’t get it)

The book was the best part. Thanks to you all: I still have a lot of fun constructing scenarios based around a third starborn generation educating Old Grendel, and vice-versa. The next (Helium 3?) powered fusion craft outbound would be another challenge to outlining future drive technology.

BTW: Thanks for your contribution to the character of Cadmann - a good demonstration of what happens when sentiment is allowed to overcome instinct and training in a survival situation? Wrong footed me entirely in plot prediction. Keep up the good work!

Dear Jerry,

It warned me that there were updated drivers (and made it easy to get minimal or full set of files), that would speed up file transfers so tested using a 10.976 MB file from hard disk to Zip drive. Transfer time was 2 m 8 s before and 2 m 5 s after.

Then restarted and reran TIP; now testing a disk that was experiencing no problem but have 11 soft, 2 firm and 0 hard errors; the firm errors used 2% of side one spare sectors. The error was reported as "read with retries".

It’s taking 74 m running on a parallel port model of Zip drive attached to a computer operating with Intel 486/66DX2.

Two cartridges could not be tested because the TIP program reported that "non-exclusive access could not be made with the drive" even though no other program was running. It suggested that files were open or being viewed. Puzzled. They tested with the functions available in Zip properties.

A second cartridge tested with 4 soft 0 firm and 0 hard errors.

An explanation of soft, firm and hard errors suggests testing a second cartridge to establish whether they are due to the drive or the cartridges. It looks like I’m in good shape.

Another thing mentioned is that Iomega apparently will exchange Click of Death drives, even if outside the one year warranty period. See the GRC web site for details and .wav files. However, Iomega support is handled by a third party so contact Iomega if any problems.

Dr. Pournelle,

At 3:33 PM -0500 2/20/99, Warren Sarle wrote:

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