Mr. Pournelle:

Have recently read about the problems you were having with your web site, I thought that you might be interested in this piece of news, since it may save you and your readers some frustration.

I recently upgraded to Microsoft FrontPage 2000, mainly because of the fact that unlike FrontPage 98, it does not insist upon rearranging your neatly formatted HTML code every time you attempt to edit a page. There are also a number of other neat features, such as the elimination of the requirement of having a personal web server running on the system that you are working with FrontPage on. All in all, a much improved package, except for one major problem.

FrontPage 2000 comes with a set of file types that it "knows" about, and it will publish those file types quite successfully to a server that supports _any_ version of the FrontPage extensions. However, there are a number of non-Microsoft file types that are NOT on it’s list. Attempting to publish files, such as Adobe Acrobat files or certain Macromedia file types, to a web server will basically scramble the content, since FrontPage 2000 insists on transferring all such (unknown) file types as "text" files by default.

I have searched through the help files with FrontPage 2000, and also surfed over to Microsoft’s on-line support site to try and find additional information, all to no avail. Next stop, is to put in a call to Microsoft technical support, and pay my money to find out something that should be in the help files in the first place.

Incidentally, I know that I can manually FTP the file up in binary mode. Unfortunately for me, I host my web site with Hiway (a.k.a. Verio) -- and they _strongly_ discourage people who use the FrontPage extensions from using FTP to manually add files to their site. Their argument is that manually placing files on the server will damage the FrontPage extensions, and will cause your site to summarily stop working.

So—important safety tip . . . if you use non-Microsoft file types with FrontPage 2000, be prepared for some serious challenges in publishing your content.

You got me going on a net scavenger hunt for information on the subject of separation of church and state...

I wonder what got your motor going on this issue Dad... ??? A few years ago I read two books full of Jefferson’s Letters, I did not remember this one, (probably just scanned it) there were many interesting letters from Jefferson to Adams after both served terms as presidents. They both died on the same day, miles apart, 50 years to the day that they signed the Decoration of Independence on July 4^th 1826.

Why did you get involved in the Church State issue?

I found a few references you might find interesting

FBI Analyzes "Separation Of Church And State" Letter

WASHINGTON, D.C. (EP) -- The FBI’s crime lab has turned up new evidence in a 200-year-old mystery. Analysis of a letter from Thomas Jefferson has uncovered some corrections and changes, illustrating that Jefferson’s pledge to separate church and state was made for reasons of political expediency, according to the organizer of an exhibit on religion in America at the Library of Congress.

Contrary to popular belief, the famous phrase "separation of church and state" is not in the U.S. Constitution. It comes from a letter Jefferson wrote to some Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut. According to James H. Hutson, who heads the library’s manuscripts collections, Jefferson’s letter was an attempt to explain his unwillingness to issue Thanksgiving proclamations.

According to FBI laboratory analysis, Jefferson originally wrote that in his refusal to issue such a proclamation he was "confining myself to the duties of my station, which are merely temporal." That was crossed out. Hutson says Jefferson’s political advisors convinced him that the sentence would alienate New England churchgoers.

In calling for a wall of separation between church and state, Jefferson originally proposed an "eternal" wall, but deleted that word as well.

Jefferson wrote the famous letter in 1802, after winning a presidential election in which opponents attacked him as an atheist. His views on religion were out of step with his time. Of the 13 original colonies, nine had official churches.

Explaining the significance of the find, Hutson wrote, "It will be of considerable interest in assessing the credibility of the Danbury Baptist letter as a tool of constitutional interpretation to know, as we now do, that it was written as a partisan counterpunch, aimed by Jefferson below the belt of enemies who were tormenting him more than a decade after the First Amendment was composed."

The exhibit suggests that the letter was motivated by Jefferson’s political need to mollify critics and build political support, and was not intended as a straightforward interpretation of a constitutional principle. The exhibit notes that Jefferson began to attend worship services held at the House of Representatives two days after writing the letter, and that he permitted worship services to be held in federal buildings.

Jefferson’s letter and the FBI’s restoration work are among the items in an exhibit at the Library of Congress called, "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic."

(EP - Evangelical Press News Service)

Here is the site for NT SP5 as you requested

BTW, I have been comparing MEMTURBO to the utility CLEARMEM found on the NT 3.5 Resource Kit. So far, CLEARMEM is the clear winner in freeing up extra memory. It always seems to find about 2meg memory if run after MEMTURBO.

Your html needs the demoronizer.

I have enjoyed your recent columns on the Byte.com website. However I have found the screwed up HTML to be quite annoying. Everywhere I expect a ‘ I see a question mark when I use netscape running on linux.

I saved the HTML source to disk and I saw that you had ASCII 92 in all those locations. Apparently you use a Microsoft product to produce your html. There is a detailed description of this problem and a solution at http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/.

Michael Procario EMAIL: procario@cmu.edu Department of Physics PHONE:

Dear Jerry,

My 35 year-old-daughter and I have be agonizing with you over the last several days.

I know that you want to have your own server so you can write about it, but gosh, we are paying Ameritech $46 per month to serve us, with or without Front Page.

Your time is worth much more than that.

Do you, as I do, do your own carpentry?

I believe this is similiar.

I pay to have my car fixed, but fix anything electronic myself.

With all respect, I would much rather have your comments about programs ( What is the best MP3 ripper for example?)

Charles

Subject: Epson printers don't really run out of ink so quick

Jerry,

Enjoy your site as I always enjoyed your column in Byte. I go there when I need intellectual stimulation (more and more often it seems). I guess one day I will feel sufficiently guilty to pay you for your efforts. It will certainly be worth it. Can you keep going until my oldest daughter graduates from Virginia Tech in 01? Ha.

Anyway, I have something that you may know about, but if not, I think it is just the sort of thing you enjoy hearing. Last year, I got my daughter an Epson 440 for college. I then acquired Epson 640’s for myself here at work and at home. I think both give excellent quality for the price. Except for the cost of the ink cartridges. That is a problem with any ink jet I guess.

As you may know, Epson has a neat utility (the Epson Status Monitor) that shows what document it is printing, what page of how many, and most neatly, how much ink is left in both your black and white and color ink cartridges. Very handy! When my 640 at work ran out of ink, I pulled the cartridge to get the number (I didn’t see the number on the cover!). I then replaced the cartridge. It was by then printing very badly. It was under-inking words, and sentences. But I was desperate for a draft of a document and figured it would do at least that.

Lo and behold! It made a lot of noises, moved the cartridge holder a lot (going through its cleaning or new cartridge or both cycle), reset the printer utility to show a full black ink cartridge and began counting itself downward with each use as before. Now, however it printed perfectly well just as if I had put in a new ink cartridge! I have since done that on my 640 at home.

Recently I had occasion to try the same on my daughter’s 440. No luck. It was not able to print anything really readable. Then I remembered what the 640 did. I proceeded to push the button to tell the 440 to clean itself. It did so and the printer utility now shows a full ink cartridge and prints perfectly.

Go figure.

Since I have an Epson 850N, I have tracked some of the discussions on the Epson list. Here is what is happening:

1) The Epson printer counts pages since ink change and uses count to calculate when you are out of ink. Remove and re-install can indeed reset the counter but its then quite easy to really run out of ink before it tells you. As long as you are in position to see the output, you will spot this pretty quickly.

2) After a removal the clean cycle is needed because air can get into ink path and the clean will remove that and clogs but it does consume ink.

3) There are folks who have found ways of refilling the carts to save money but it sounds like more trouble than its worth to me when they start mentioning vacuum pumps, needles, etc.

<http://www.leben.com/lists/> is the address where folks can signup for Epson Inkjet list if desired. Quite a bit of traffic.

--Jim

How to have your own custom desktop Icon for Outlook 98 without it being a shortcut.

I didn't want to make a shortcut to Outlook's original icon because when I right click on the original Outlook Icon I get to see my Internet account properties information. If I eliminate my original icon and just use a shortcut icon with the picture of my choice, I lose that handy information access. I have a favorite icon I like to keep for Outlook 98 which happens to be the default icon used by Outlook Express Version 4.

In case it matters, I use Windows 95 Version 4B

1. Run REGEDIT and Search (F3) for the following data which will be found in a default icon folder:
   
   outlook.exe,0
2. Modify the data which consists of the file path to the location of the icon file, followed by the icon name, followed by a comma and followed by a zero:
   
   C:\folder_of_icon_file\Subfolder_of_icon_file\myicon.ico,0

My own specific example would be:

C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA\Icons\MyOutlook.ico

MY QUESTION FOR YOU:

How can I location your entire article from BugNet about:

How to Create and display Word 97 custom properties in Outlook 98. I only have the instructions up until step "s"

Jerry,

Hi, was reading thru your article "Jerry Goes Shopping" at byte.com (http://www.byte.com/columns/chaosmanor/1999/04/0426jpournelle. html) and noticed that the link you put in there for MicroForum points to "http://ww.microforum.com", missing out a "w".

Just thought you would like to know.

You may not have gotten complaints from Linux users about it, but it doesn’t mean that the problem isn’t there. With the proliferation of Windows development tools which stupidly use "Windows ANSI" quotes when plain ASCII will do, most of us have simply given up on getting authors to fix it. Few authors on the web these days understand what the problem is, and since they don’t see it on their machine, they really don’t care.

Specifically, the problem is two-fold. As Michael Procario mentioned, your software is putting character 0x92 in for single ‘ characters. That’s not in ASCII, and it’s not in ISO-Latin-1 (the default character encoding for HTTP). That’s problem 1.

Problem 2 is that the server isn’t specifying a character encoding, so even if the browser understood Windows ANSI as a non-default encoding, it wouldn’t use it.

The solution is easy. Running the Demoroniser on the HTML would fix this problem, as would some other tools. (Being offended by the title of a tool will not solve it, esp. when the recommender was just trying to help and didn’t name the tool in the first place.)

Incidentally, it’s only your byte column that’s affected... the www.jerrypournelle.com pages are fine.

--

Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - Looking for a job in Long Island!

Check http://rescomp.wustl.edu/~ats/ for a resume.

Jerry,

is highly thought of .

I use it here and haven’t found anything that suits me better.

John

just caught your column at byte.com about going through 98b install hell.

my procedure:

1) make sure have a 98 boot disk (with cd support) 98a is okay.

Actually, any bootdisk with cd support is fine, as long as it supports the file system, etc.

2) use boot disk to set up partition conventionally. Format as usual, making partition bootable.

3) create new folder on hard drive. call folder something like "setups" or something similar

4) reboot with boot disc (to get cd drivers) and copy win98 folder on CD into setups folder on hard drive. can be either in a further subfolder or not as aesthetics dictate.

5) reboot to hard drive normally. change directory to win98 folder on hard drive. Run setup from the hard drive folder.

This has several advantages:

a) speed (install from hard drive MUCH faster)

b) no need for the CD when making changes in setup.

c) avoids sequence problems such as you ran into.

Hope this helps ....

Jerry,

Thanks for the many good words both here and in Byte. It is fun to read from a learner’s journey with computers. And learning keeps you young, doesn’t it? Anyway that isn’t why I write.

A question. Why don’t you keep your work and experimental computers separate? I know you have spoken of a writing computer that you use to do serious work. You mentioned Roberta’s computer that went "sour" _as if_ it were an experimental platform. I always wince when I read of you having machines go down so that you have to reinstall the os. I have done that SO many, many times with Win 95 a, b 98. And I am getting fed up with it. Sometimes I mutter about my hate for MS, Billy Goat Gates and endless computer glitches. I am getting very gun-shy of using "lots of weird software" and new HW devices on computers where I need to be productive. [I have one at home and one at work, where I do computer &; network support.]

This week I installed Red Hat 6 on experimental computers at home and work. Better than their previous releases. And I just installed Win2000 OVER Win 95. Very, VERY smooth. Hats off to Microsoft for making the os shift and file system shift from FAT16 to NTFS so simple, and as far as I can see without problems. It took quite a while on a Pentium 200 with 32 MB RAM, but it works. I then installed Office 2000 and it was over Office 97. It is more sluggish, but I’m going to boost the RAM. 32 MB is minimum and MS recommends 64.

What did I learn? Linux still has install glitches—mouse and video are the major ones. And I can echo your comments on installing software. There is no on-screen simple info on installing the RH packages. But documentation? Too much!!! There are tera X giga X mega bytes on CD’s and on the Internet.

It looks like you install at the prompt.

What else did I learn? Microsoft makes installing such a nice experience now. Something for the unwashed masses. If Win2K is stable and secure it will become the os of choice for American. Probably homes and offices. I understand that Europe is likely to go the Linux way, especially the French. But they always want to be different; a committee to referee the language, yee gads!

Keep learning and telling about it,

Brent

Just a quick note on re-inking: I estimate that I’m saving about $200 a year by doing this. What’s more, the children almost fight to do it. The job can be, and is done, by an 11 year old.

That saving includes the cost of new carts every 7 or 8 refills and an assumed 25% shorter life for the print head. Interestingly however my print heads last about 18 months, when the expected average life is 1 year. This is probably due to frequent use - newsletters and homeworks. Also think of the environmental aspects - less non degradable waste.

Mr. Pournelle,

Greetings and salutations.

Kipling’s poem, ‘Tarrant Moss’, is probably referring to an incident recorded in the Boarder Ballads, collected by Sir Walter Scott. Scott was a descendant of the Reiver families on the boarder of Scotland and England.

Where can we find Win 98 2^nd Edition?

I have gone to microsoft.com, cdw.com and compusa.com and find no reference to it.

I just ordered Windows 98 second edition last night (Thursday, June 3) at

Egghead (www.egghead.com) for $99.48. I checked about 5 other popular

websites and they weren't selling the Second Edition yet. The Egghead page

claimed that it was in stock, and the normal shipping is two business day

delivery. -I hope- -I hope- it will get delivered on Tuesday. I really

want it for internet sharing of my cable modem.

With reference to your article on Byte.com

"Primary, Secondary, Slave: It Does Make A Difference"

Firstly

The creative labs PC-DVD Dxr2 5x Kit comes with a drive that is 5x DVD speed, which is 5x the speed of original DVD drives. However, the speed for CDs is a totally different one, it is either 32 or 36 for that particular drive, I am not quite sure, but it is definitely not 5.

You also mention some colour issues when using the pass through board, lots of my friends have the same DVD kit as you and they all complain about the poor quality when the pass through is use. You will find it with any video card that you use.

I actually ordered one but the supplier was out of stock and they sent me another one instead - the videologic decoder board and the Panasonic DVD drive. This drive is exactly the one that you get with the dxr2 5x kit but it is badged as creative with the kit. The decoder had to be sent back as it would only work if I removed all of my other PCI cards. However, when it did work, the pass through was of perfect quality. Such a shame, it was a nice set-up if it would work properly.

Anyway, I digress, the supplier took it back and I waited patiently for the creative kit to come back in stock. Then I noticed that creative were shortly releasing their dxr3 kit with 6x DVD (and 24x CD for some reason I still haven’t worked out, possibly because creative have moved to Toshiba drives instead of the above mentioned Panasonic). I promptly changed my order to this new one in the hope that the pass through issues had been solved. When I received the card, installation was easy enough, and I was running soon enough. The application crashes the first time I run it, then when I kill the process, and restart it, the app works fine and I can watch DVDs to my hearts content. Unfortunately, after this crash I cannot use my network connection or my TV card until I reboot the system. (Grrrr) Also the card is region locked, there is no way of changing it, it is hard coded into the card. (Grrr) I hope someone comes out with a fix for this problem soon.

I hope this crashing problem is solved when I re-install windows when I get a chance. As far as the pass through quality is concerned, it is no better. All edges are blurred and it is just a pain. (sigh).

Keep up the good work

Dear Jerry,

1. Hooray for your Friday 6/4 rant re Greenie-Weenies. It’s their racket, though - and a very profitable one. Asking them to cease &; desist is about as effective as asking The Family to cease &; desist running gambling &; whores. Too much easy money (comparatively) involved in each case. The only alternative would be to get a job - and a life, also. Not an option, and unthinkable if it were.

ml&;cart_id=YM03QM&;no_trailer=1

The first lists 640’s for as little as US$12 each in five-packs. The second, Dirt Cheap Drives, sells Teijin brand 640s for US$15 each in ten-packs. I can vouch for Teijin media. Not one problem over years of use They are a large Taiwanese maker of unbranded media for the OEMs. Be careful with DCD. IMO they are honest, but have some clumsy clerical help in accounting. Watch your invoice &; billing like a hawk.

A plus in favor of Fujitsu over competing products is their "No Excuses" service backup. I had the misfortune to have two Fujitsu 2.5Gig HDDs die within days of each other. I called Fujitsu, was immediately &; routinely issued an RMA #. I shipped the drives to them, and received two new ones by return express. You can be sure Fujitsu is my first choice from here on out. You have to experience it to understand. It is backup the way it SHOULD be. Nor was my experience exceptional. I am an individual user with zero clout - no corporate PO, etc.

re: windows and power management

Read your rant against power management, and wanted to tell you that I have come up with what I feel is an excellent solution. Simply don’t let windows have anything to do with it. In the System Configuration Utility, on the Startup tab, there are two items dealing with power management that can be disabled.

These are both listed as "LoadPowerProfile" and all you have to do is un-check the boxes next to them and then reboot. From then on, as far as I know, windows should have no power saving features turned on. I have been running this way for months now and never had a problem.

Hope this helps.