CHAOS MANOR MAILMail 122 October 9 - 15, 2000 |
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CLICK ON THE BLIMP TO SEND MAIL TO ME The current page will always have the name currentmail.html and may be bookmarked. For previous weeks, go to the MAIL HOME PAGE. FOR THE CURRENT VIEW PAGE CLICK HERE If you are not paying for this place, click here... IF YOU SEND MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is Chaos Manor. If you want a mail address other than the one from which you sent the mail to appear, PUT THAT AT THE END OF THE LETTER as a signature. I try to answer mail, but mostly I can't get to all of it. I read it all, although not always the instant it comes in. I do have books to write too... I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft who slowly starved to death while answering fan mail.
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This week: | Monday
October 9, 2000
(I am posting these Sunday night.) With the geforce card in Everquest, there is not a whole lot to change. I would recommend running the Detonator 3 drivers which you can obtain from www.nvidia.com instead of the shipping drivers for the card. With the Detonator 3 drivers, you can control some performance options, but not very much in the way of quality elements. The fact is, Everquest's graphics are really quite primitive. The direct3d mode is not very good, and the Glide mode is antiquated technology as well. It's fun, but not nearly as impressive as Quake III. The disappointing thing is, that even though the graphics are primitive, they are not really all that fast. So you've got primitive graphics that suffer from performance issues. For everquest specifically (and I'm one of those who plays it an awful lot), I find the Voodoo5 or even a Voodoo3 is better than a geforce. But I think the Geforce 2 is the best card currently available otherwise. As for the DVD, I assume you're using a software based player. Generally, the player you use is shipped with your card software, and is tied to the drivers from that particular vendor. So, unfortunately, if you want to use the software dvd player that came with your card, you're stuck using those drivers. I suspect this is done because the video card vendor must pay for each copy of the dvd player that is included, and they don't want people using competing cards to simply download and go. If you don't mind a walk on the 'wild side' you might take a look at this web page: http://cine1.webjump.com/ Note that I'm not %100 certain that is the cause of your dvd player not working. You might try reinstalling the DVD player software, if it is available as a separate install on your driver CD. -Price Actually, in Windows 98 with the InterVideo WinDVD Player that came with my I/O Magic DVD drives, I had no problems at all; it's with 2000 and Widows ME that things seem to happen. With 2000 the solution is to uninstall the program and reinstall it; if there's enough poop in the processor it will do fine, and there are no glitches. With Windows ME it's more complicated. I explain what I know in the October column. Thanks. This was actually send to Cady, but a copy was sent to me. Well, I'm almost sold. Despite being a writer of military SF, and a former 82nd trooper, I was _not_ sold on Land Warrior (and I'm still not one hundred percent.) But the way you presented the system, the way you phrased it, made it sound a hell of a lot more doable than the Buck Roger POS that was apparently the Raytheon system. Batteries are a killer. 24 hours is, sorry, not even in the realm of reality; an infantry unit needs to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours. Which means triple the battery power which means a three-fold increase in battery efficiency to stay "on weight." That has been my number one concern of _all_ the "gee whiz" stuff that has been coming down the pike. And, frankly, Moore's Law does not hold for batteries or my damned laptop wouldn't weigh as much as it does. (Fuel cells might be the quantum leap, of course. Did one of you guys generate the image of the Land Warrior frantically patting his pockets for his "go juice"/"lighter fluid?" "Hey! Sarge! Toss me a can of go-juice!") The next book in the Posleen series is going to have at least one team that should be using Land Warrior. Question: Is there going to be any problem with using a slightly improved V0.6 Land Warrior and do you want input on the description? Fortunately I have an unobtainium power supply so no worries. Oh, you said that the team was from "across the division." Anybody from the 3/505 (or did they switch back to 1/508 again?) Last "Oh." Did you know that you have the same name as the former Sergeant Major of the 3/505 (1/508)? If it hadn't been for your disclaimer at the beginning I'd be saying "Smaj! Who in the hell let you in an Engineering School????" ;-)
John Ringo As I let go of my feelings of guilt, I am in touch with my inner sociopath. "Life Affirmations that are Attainable" See sample chapters for my upcoming book "A Hymn Before Battle" at: http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200007/0671319418.htm?blurb Available in October from Baen Publishing wherever fine books are sold! www.johnringo.com Jerry, I read about your Slashdot printing travails just now, and I have a suggestion: create a Slashdot ID and then browse the comments at a higher rating. I know you probably don't visit Slashdot often, but they often have cutting edge stories on science and social issues in addition to the usual *nix, hardware, and OS stuff. To eliminate most of the chatter, I created a Slashdot ID and logged in. Then, I changed my comment threshold to browse comments at a "2." Slashdot works on a moderation system. Comments worth reading (informative, provacative, humorous) are moderated up; the garbage is moderated down. For example, a story currently on the front page has 350 comments; at a 2 setting, only 99 of those will appear if I visit the story. To really cull the material, browse at 3 or 4. At a 3 setting, only 26 comments on the above story appear. Only 15 comments rated a 4, and 7 were rated 5. You can browse at a higher threshold without the ID, but the settings aren't saved. You then must re-set your preference with each story. Hope this helps. JA -- John Alexander Faculty Resource Center The University of Alabama johnalex@bama.ua.edu http://bama.ua.edu/~johnalex/ The problem is that you have to download all the chatter even if you use the filter on what you read, and I don't have ten minutes to wait for 400 pages of less than intelligent commentary to download. Perhaps when I get a faster connection. Brute Force computation is now for sale. You recently mentioned seti@home as an example of how simple it is to gather large groups of home computers into an impressive supercomputer. This concept is now being offered commercially. My spare computing power is currently being donated via www.parabon.com to a cancer drug research program. Parabon is promising to start BUYING home computer computation time from us with real money "real soon now". Their page has discussions on how to buy computation FROM them. I remember that the article where I found Parabon had at least one other "we will buy your spare computation" company. I don't know whether the concept is truly commercially viable, but I find it interesting. I have previously donated my spare computing to prime number searching and seti. And we have created supercomputers... Jerry: I've used the 'Pournelle blue' with Word since it was first offered. But occasionally, I'm asked to edit material using Word's "track changes" method of redlining. The color combination it uses is just plain unreadable with the white on blue configuration. How do you handle this on your system? --Sincerely, Chuck Alas I use the simple method: I switch to black and white when I do comparisons. Takes almost no time... Favorite but obscure programs - BCD CD faker http://home.kamp.net/home/stefan.kirschdorf/cd_tools/bcd.htm BCD (Buldozer's CD Faker) pretends to be an MSCDEX drive. This allows programs that check for a CD to see their disc as a CD even if it is somewhere else on the net or loaded to a HD. When I started using my CD-less ultralight laptop on my home net to play games, I went looking for a CD faker. Several other programs did not do the job. I use this program with Win 98. I load the stub in my autoexec (BCD /w). Each game that I use from the laptop gets a batch file that uses SUBST or NET USE to give a letter to the appropriate location, then a BCD command to make it look like a CD drive before launching the game. The program is released as a final version #1 or a beta version #2. I have no complaints about the #2 beta in a couple of years of use. I have used this program in Win95.0 and Win 98.0. I haven't tested it in 95OSR2 or 98SE or 98ME. Presumably it will work the same. -Greg Goss (mailto: gossg@mindlink.com) Definitely one to have around. Thanks!
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This week: | Tuesday,
On a trip |
This week: |
Wednesday,
October 11, 2000 This is from Rolf Sinclair about something Duncan Steel said, quoting Lord Byron... From: Rolf Sinclair <rolf@santafe.edu> Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 15:51:15 -0400 Subj: Hammer anticipated Hi Jerry -- Did I send this to you earlier? Had you and Larry been reading his Lordship's occasional writings? RS ********** >From CCNet 10/15/97: Duncan Steel writes that last week's issue of New Scientist carried a letter from him pointing out Lord Byron's suggestion in 1822 of the possibility (indeed, necessity) of diverting any comet found to be on a collision course with the Earth: "Who knows whether, when a comet shall approach this globe to destroy it, as it often has been and will be destroyed, men will not tear rocks from their foundations by means of steam, and hurl mountains, as the giants are said to have done, against the flaming mass? - And then we shall have traditions of Titans again, and of wars with Heaven." This is on page 185 in "Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: Noted during a Residence with his Lordship at Pisa, In the Years 1821 and 1822" by "Thomas Medwin, Esq., of the 24th Light Dragoons," printed for Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street, London, in 1824 (but with several later editions, usually labelled "Medwin's 'Conversations of Lord Byron'", in which the pagination would be different). Steel continues: As a matter of fact the idea of cometary impacts was a recurrent theme in Byron's published writing, reflecting his belief that there had been many impact catastrophes in which previous inhabitants of the Earth had been wiped out. Byron viewed homo sapiens as being perhaps only temporarily in the ascendent (unless we manage to develop a defense system such as that he suggests in the quote above). Indeed on the page cited above he is also quoted as asking: "We are presently in the infancy of science. Do you imagine that, in former stages of this planet, wiser creatures than ourselves did not exist?" ----- End of forwarded message ----- Jerry, I read on a Compaq support board that Windows 2000 does not allow DMA access to the DVD player. That makes the images jumpy and unsatisfying. Apparently this is a part of making Windows 2000 more stable, by not allowing devices to access memory without going through the operating system. I don't know if this is the same as the problem you've been having but it might be worth looking into. Regards, Mark Dobbs P.S. On a recent trip to Washington D.C. we paid a visit to Zeke at the Smithsonian. The information technology exhibit was one of my favorites! Interesting. That may well be my DVD player problem. Except that I don't HAVE such a problem with Windows 2000. It's Windows ME that gives systems fits... Website to check out..... Michael Fumento, a science journalist who seems pretty level-headed (he ticks off numerous people by insisting on looking at the evidence) has a collection of his articles on his website. He also has a collection of some really nifty animated .GIFs..... Especially check out his "hate mail" pages. ...........Karl Fumento is a good writer and is usually careful. I do not care for his treatment in certain matters, but then there's room for disagreement. He covers a number of important matters and is always worth reading.
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This week: |
Thursday,
October 12, 2000
I was an avid reader of your colum in Byte and I remember multiple times that you mentioned a SCSI cable manufactuer which made diagnostic cables (with lights). I can't find it in any of my past magazines and would love to purchase some for my current job. Do you happen to remember which company it was that made them? Do they have a web site? One minor suggestion for your web site would be to include links to place that you had given high reviews. I hope someday there will be another magazine as technical and good as Byte and your colum will again live in a paper form (it is hard to lounge around with a laptop online to read). Thanks in advance, Matt Dewey Department of Radiology University of Utah Thanks for the kinds words. Granite Digital, www.scsipro.com and they are still the right people to go to for SCSI cables and to solve SCSI problems. They know SCSI like NO ONE ELSE knows SCSI. I've just been reading you comments about napster et al. (http://www.byte.com/column/BYT20001002S0001) For some time now I've been pointing out to people that a CDROM can hold the entire text of about 4,000 average sized paperback books and a CDROM can be pressed in bulk for less than $1. (A DVD would hold 60,000 books.) Every major book publisher has a huge back catalog of works that are currently impossible to re-publish because of the costs involved. But if they could publish on CDROM then entire back catalog would become available. Re-keying in older works would be the major up-front cost but that's getting cheaper with better scanners and spelling checkers that are now available. One could imagine a scheme by which the first chapter and perhaps reviews of each book were available without restriction and the remainder of each work would be encrypted and only available by buying the decryption key. Of course, this doesn't actually work for the same reason that DVD CSS "encryption" doesn't work. Every CDROM would be using the same set of keys and once they became public you may as well not use encryption at all (but it would work with write-once CDs...) -- /\ Geoff. Lane. /\ Manchester Computing /\ Manchester /\ M13 9PL /\ England /\ Shoot your program and put it out of its memory! I think you have said most of what needs to be said right there. We have the technology. Received from a professor friend: On Immigration: If Rome had not engulfed so many men of alien blood in so brief a time, if she had passed all these newcomers through her schools instead of her slums, if she had treated them as men with a hundred potential excellences, if she had occasionally closed her gates to let assimilation catch up with infiltration, she might have gained new racial and literary vitality from the infusion, and might have remained a Roman Rome, the voice and citadel of the West. The victorious city was doomed by the vastness and diversity of her conquests, her native blood was diluted in the ocean of her subjects, her educated classes were drawn down by the power of numbers to the culture of those who had been her slaves. Much breeding overcame good breeding; the fertile conquered became masters in the sterile master's house [Durant Volume III, 366]
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This week: |
Friday, October
13, 2000
Here is the CNO's message regarding USS Cole. FFYI. v/r, RGMcF * * * * * * * * * * * * * * UNCLASSIFIED * * * * * * * * * * * * * * P 130215Z OCT 00 FM: CNO WASHINGTON DC//N00// Subject: EXPLOSION ABOARD USS COLE// UNCLAS //N05000// NAVOP 011/00 MSGID/GENADMIN/CNO N00// SUBJ/EXPLOSION
ABOARD USS COLE// RMKS/ They used to end those messages with "GODSPEED", but I expect that is now politically incorrect and Unconstitutional. How did the Republic survive so long without knowing that? * * * * * * * * * * * * * * UNCLASSIFIED * * * * * * * * * * * * * * O 130025Z OCT 00 FM: SECDEF WASHINGTON DC Subject: HALF-STAFFING OF THE NATIONAL FLAG UNCLAS ALDODACT 14/00 SUBJ: HALF-STAFFING OF THE NATIONAL FLAG On ICANN, Roland suggests: http://personal.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/icann1.pdf Roland Dobbins <mordant@gothik.org> And on Slashdot: re: Slashdot filtering. I am a SlashDot addict. Depending on where I'm visiting, I often read SlashDot via primitive hardware. (One is a Win 3.10 8MB system with a 56K modem. The other is a Win95 8MB system with a 14K modem). If you use "2" or higher for your filtering setting, it is readable (as readable as this dispute-happy crowd ever gets) even at low modem speeds. The filter determines what information gets sent to your web viewer, not what happens after it arrives. I'm not sure what you mean by "you have to download all the chatter even if you use the filter on what you read". Your connection SHOULD BE faster than my mother's 14K connection. Your machine/connection combination should be faster than either of these antiques. Perhaps you are confusing setting the default filter with setting the filter for a specific article. If you have a userid and have logged on using it, your name shows up as a link near the top of the slashdot home page. (eg This page was generated by a Swarm of Albino Elephants for GossG (108241). ) Click on your name and it gives you your user info page. From there, click a link at the top to "customize comments". You want to set "threshold" on this page. The rest of my settings are: Display Mode [nested] Sort Order [Highest scores first] Threshold [+2] (Highlight Threshold [+4] Hard Thresholds [not checked] Reparent Highly Rated Comments [checked] Do Not Display Scores [not checked] Limit [100 comments] Index Spill [50] Small Comment Penalty [0] Long Comment Bonus [0] Max Comment Size [4096] (you may want smaller) Disable Sigs [checked] Comment Post Mode [HTML] GossG@bcrail.com Apparently if you have signed on and use the filtering system you don't get the 500 pages of commentary if you are looking for an interview. I'll try to remember that in future. But if you naively go to their site looking for the interview you will get literally 500+ pages of chatter and it will ALL DOWNLOAD before you can see ANYTHING. Probably means it is worth signing up and engaging the filters before you do ANYTHING there... I got this from a liberal friend: Most of you will probably appreciate this site: http://slate.msn.com/features/PCW/default.htm (Name withheld on request.)
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This week: | Saturday,
October 14, 2000 Roland points to this on why things happened to the Cole, with the subject "They didn't want to militarize the port.": http://www.msnbc.com/news/476327.asp On ICANN <http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20001011S0020> Jerry: You might be amused by the description of the European rep elected. The page below is the main English one I have spotted on web site of organization he represents. <https://www.ccc.de/WarmWelcome.html> <https://www.ccc.de/ChaosPointer.html> is a list of links to their friends --Jim -- Jim_Carr@compuserve.com
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This week: | Sunday,
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