| Wednesday,
April 12, 2000 Jerry,
Regarding Chris Pierik's need for the ability to back up
files to a partition on an NT hard drive. Perhaps I don't understand
completely his needs (highly likely from the short email message posted),
but it appears that what he needs to do is fairly simple. I received a
call from the local grocery store who was having problems backing up their
store database (pricing, item numbers, etc) and their video rental
software to the tape backup units. The backups couldn't be started until
the store closed, took a long time, and tied up the computers while they
were being done. Consequently, whoever was closing the store often just
wouldn't do it. Sure enough, they lost the whole video rental database one
day. The store owner was sufficiently panicked, and simultaneously
relieved that he didn't lose the store database, that he called me to
devise an alternative. I like to think it is because I am a good systems
consultant, but more likely in this case, it was because he and I
graduated from high school together, and have remained close :) .
At any rate, I wrote a simple TurboBasic routine
(the store computers inexplicably still run DOS, a common thing among
point-of-sale devices) to back up the databases to a partition a networked
computer. I have it store the files for five days in five separate
directories, then overwrite the first directory, rotating through them.
I also wrote an option to back up the files to a Zip
disk with 'one-click' technology (I wonder if Jeff Bezos will sue me? Of
course, I wrote this '96, so I have prior claim). This gets done every
week or so, and consequently, between the two methodologies, the store has
a fairly secure backup process. I've tried to get them to do offsite
storage of the Zip disks, but so far, that hurdle has just been too much
to overcome.
Anyhow, it's just directory manipulation, and
creating routines to do this is very simple. You could write something to
do this in C or Visual Basic, and schedule it with any sort of task
scheduling software you are running. The program lines of code I wrote
were less than 200, and I cranked it out in 3 hours or so, installed and
tested it in about 2 hours, then wrote a needed very explicit guide (about
20 pages) in about 4 hours. You ought to be able to get it done in a day,
and should be easily modifiable to meet the changing requirements of your
environment.
Tracy
Windows users can do much the same thing with any
form of BASIC, DELPHI, or for that matter a good batch file program: the
only problem being files that change as you are backing them up. If you
can make a file stand still long enough to be copied, you can of course
copy it anywhere with a good batchfile. QuickBASIC is more than good
enough for that... And as you say, Windows task scheduler will take care
of the rest.
Matt Volk asks:
I want to use a web cam to input photos into an
Access database. Any ideas on how I could get this to work?
I figure I have to use some kind of ActiveX control
to capture the image.
Thanks,
Matt Volk
and I am out of time...
To: Jerry Pournelle, Chaos Manor Subject:
Uninstalling Netscape 6 Preview Release 1
Dear Jerry,
I found the instructions for uninstalling Netscape 6
in the product's Release Notes document. There are more files to remove
than were mentioned in CurrentMail on Tuesday, although
that writer was certainly on the right track.
Release Notes -- Netscape 6 Preview Release: http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/ns6/relnotes/pv6-1.html
I made a summary of the Uninstall section, but
decided against including it. Those who are interested can get to the
Release Notes web page in a click or two of the mouse.
Respectfully,
Tom King teking1@altavista.com
P.S. Thanks for your Byte columns and, especially,
for this website.
I actually got this as a
press release as well as mail:
Jerry:
All below is a press release quoted from this URL.
Not knowing copyright status, if you find it worth printing, just refer
folks to the URL if you feel that would be proper.
--Jim
< http://www.webstandards.org/ie55.txt
>
For Immediate Release
Contact --
Jeffrey Zeldman Group Leader jeffrey@zeldman.com
+1.212.725.0847
Simon St. Laurent simonstl@simonstl.com
+1.607.277.0167
Dori Smith dori@chalcedony.com
+1.707.473.0398
WEB STANDARDS PROJECT BLASTS MICROSOFT'S
"ARROGANT" BREAK WITH STANDARDS
http://www.webstandards.org/
-- 10 April 2000 -- The Web Standards Project (WaSP) today denounced
Internet Explorer 5.5 Windows Edition for abandoning Web standards
Microsoft has publicly committed to supporting, and focusing on
proprietary technologies which are certain to fragment the
already-troubled Web space.
"We are incensed by Microsoft's arrogance, and
perplexed by its schizophrenic decision to support standards on one
platform while undercutting them on another," said Web Standards
Project group leader Jeffrey Zeldman.
The group is outraged by Microsoft's decision not to
support key W3C standards, notably the DOM Level 1 core and portions of
the CSS1 specification, in the market-leading Windows version of its
Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft's reversal will make it nearly
impossible for Web developers to create documents that adhere to Web
standards. At the same time, the proprietary technology that Microsoft is
providing may lure some developers deeper into functionality that is
supported on only one browser and one operating system - Microsoft's.
"This approach mocks the dream of 'code once,
read anywhere' that has driven so much of the Web's success," said
WaSP Steering Committee member Simon St.Laurent. "By 'innovating'
ahead of the W3C (http://www.w3.org) in areas like Cascading Style Sheets
behaviors while leaving large chunks of standardized processing and
styling unsupported, Microsoft risks creating even more complicated
browser incompatibilities than already exist."
"The Web community has waited for more than
four years for Microsoft to fulfill their long-standing pledge to fully
adhere to W3C-issued Recommendations," said WaSP Steering Committee
member Sally Khudairi. "The collective patience of both users and
developers is running out: why should anyone settle for Web pages that
work on only one browser, on one platform and on a limited set of
devices?"
The group pointed out that Microsoft itself helped
create many of the standards it appears to be abandoning in IE5.5/Windows,
and noted with bitter irony that Microsoft's newly released IE5/Macintosh
Edition does a masterful job of supporting key Web standards. "Do
they want us to code for the standards-compliant Macintosh version, or the
incomplete - but dominant - Windows version?" Zeldman demanded.
"By casting aside standards, Microsoft is
making it more difficult, if not impossible, to create Web pages that
would be accessible on a variety of devices and platforms," said WaSP
steering committee member Dori Smith. "This hurts a wide variety of
Web users, from the executive using a Web-enabled cell phone to a visually
impaired senior citizen."
Added Zeldman: "Coming on the heels of
Netscape's preview release, it's hard not to view this as exactly the kind
of 'predatory' behavior the U.S. Justice Department laid at Microsoft's
door. If Microsoft, as the dominant player, undercuts Web standards on its
prevailing Windows platform, developers will be helplessly spun in
Microsoft's direction, killing the dream of a Web that is accessible to
everyone."
ABOUT THE WEB STANDARDS PROJECT [WaSP]
The Web Standards Project is an international
grassroots coalition of Web developers and users fighting for standards on
the Web, by calling attention to browser incompatibilities that fragment
the medium, prevent many people from using the Web, and add 25% to the
cost of developing all sites. The WaSP urges all browser manufacturers to
support existing standards before incorporating proprietary innovations,
and is working to educate Web authors and Web-related software developers
so that we may create a Web that works for everyone. For more information
on WaSP, please see http://www.webstandards.org/
### -- Jim_Carr@compuserve.com
I don't usually print press releases, but I'm
strapped for time, and this one may be worth commenting on.
Jerry,
A sober dissection of the conflict between
"fair use" and the DMCA:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,13533-0,00.html
--Erich Schwarz
Thanks.
From Trent Telenko:
Humm...
Mr. Dobson's technical description sounds like the
ultra wide band (UWB) technology the USMC has been playing with in their
recent urban combat experiments.
The FBI and NSA both showed up at those USMC
experiments to monitor those UWB communications. Their best detectors did
not pick up a thing. Both organizations *WERE NOT AMUSED*.
Now the punch line: The USMC's UWB communicators
were off-the-shelf commercial items they purchased from a small California
start-up.
There were a flurry of articles on ultra wide band
sensors and communications in the defense press, after the Cold War ended
and in the aftermath of the Gulf War. The claims being made about UWB
technology ran from being able to detect and track stealth planes to being
an undetectable and uninterceptable form of communications.
Since this technology had been living in the back
world, the USAF brass shut it down as a threat to stealth platforms. Or so
the story floating around in the procurement community goes.
A few articles came out in the usual places denying
that UWB sensors could detect stealth planes a couple of years later.
Whether they could or couldn't, the funding in these areas was cut.
Now it looks like those defense researchers got
disgusted and found jobs elsewhere.
On a completely different note, the April 17, 2000
BUSINESS WEEK has an article on the coming deregulation of electrical
utilities. Apparently some of the utilities are turning themselves into
telecommunication companies. One of the technologies being pursued by
these utilities is encoding digital information into your electrical power
lines. Which is called power-line communications, or “PLC.”
PLC has limited usefulness in the USA because we
have transformers for every 5-15 houses. Since digital packets in
electrical current are destroyed by power step down. And bridges to
circumvent that are expensive.
However it looks like a company in Dallas, TX may
have beaten this limit.
Rather than putting digital information in the
current, Media Fusion Inc. is encoding the digital packets in the magnetic
fields surrounding the current. The bandwidth figure of merit for Media
Fusion’s technology was 2.5 trillion bits per second.
The article did not say how this bandwidth was
allocated, AKA is it like a cable modem when you have large numbers of
users, but the company intends to demonstrate simultaneous powerline
transmission of HDTV and CD audio from Dallas to Wash. D.C.
And I have to write about Free Network and such
like shortly: it's all of a piece.
This is relevant to the
"Strong AI" theories. As well as interesting in it's own
right...
What most people refer to as consciousness seems to
be a mechanism for implementing what Rosen (1985) calls an anticipatory
system, using an internal model to predict the future as a basis for
behavioral choices. The evidence seems to be that mammals are conscious
(only a few are self-conscious like apes or people) suggesting that
consciousness in some form is ancient, going back to at least the
Mesozoic. The bat data are particularly strange (see Griffin, 1958,
Listening in the Dark)--bats seem to memorize their environment and
thereafter live mostly in their internal model. You can remove objects
from their environment and they will continue to behave as though the
object is still there until forced by circumstances to pay attention.
During this, they continue to make echolocation cries; just ignoring the
returns. A study by Moehres and von Oettingen (1946) where they had a bat
living in a flight cage and accustomed to sleeping in a cage is
particularly interesting. They conducted a series of experiments ending
with the removal of the cage. The bat flew up to where the cage was,
executed an acrobatic somersault to enter the non-existent door, and then
tried to alight on the non-existent perch. Needless to say, it finally
paid attention at that point. One blind person who had learned to use
passive echolocation ('facial vision') to navigate indicated to me that he
was also likely to behave this way. Apparently echolocation is an
effortful task.
What sorts of brain mechanisms would support this
mechanism? It would probably involve _fast_ match/mismatch processes to
filter afference against reafference. The reafference would be generated
by a dynamic world model of some sort. Motor actions would be set up using
the model to actually take place in a second or so. Thinking about the
real-time coordinate transformations necessary to link the two makes my
head hurt. The world model can be simple as long as the mental states of
other players are not important, but adding mental states--self
consciousness--is nasty--think about bluffing games, which often have
chaotic best strategies. The emergence of complex social behavior in
advanced primates probably made self-consciousness adaptive.
Harry Erwin
And on that backup issue:
Dr. Pournelle;
Others might have suggested this but the backup
program NovaDisk will backup to any disk either local or network. There
are versions for OS/2, Win9x and WinNT. I have used both the OS/2 and
Win9x versions and they work very well. The programs create a large backup
file that appears to be an image of what would be written to tape. The
programs support both compression and encryption.
Backing up over a network is slow! Backing up to my
SCSI tape drive happens at better than 25Mbyte/sec, to a parallel port at
15Mbyte/sec. A 10Mbit/sec connection is closer to 1Mbyte/sec.
It takes almost as long to backup my OS/2 boot
partition over the network as to backup the whole system to tape. I then
write the image to a CD-RW which I can then restore from a set of recovery
disks. The restore from CD is much faster than restore from tape when
booting from floppies.
NovaStor's NovaBackup has both disk and tape backup
programs. They now have a Windows backup program that will write directly
to a CDR or CD-RW (I think.) They can be found at www.novastor.com. I can
personally recommend the OS/2 disk and tape programs and the Win9x Disk
program.
Rolf Grunsky
rgrunsk@ibm.net
Remember, what you see coming at you is coming from
you. "Jungle" Jack Flanders
Mr Dobbins reports this
under the subject "What's good for the goose..."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-1686876.html?tag=st.ne.1002.thed.1007-200-1686876
One of the rules in the magic universe of The
Burning City is "Poetic Justice"...
Jerry, I read Trent Telenko's
mail on UWB technology and NSA's consternation with it, and was
interested. I'm going to do a search for more information, but any related
sites or other sources of information users can point me to would be
appreciated. (As a side note, it's interesting that the FIRST place I
always think to look now is the internet, as opposed to libraries or
periodical resources).
For several years, the military has spread spectrum
and frequency hopping (still encrypted, of course) as a secure method of
communication. Spread spectrum is secure as it transmits at low power
across a wide frequency, which lets it's signal level be down in the
electronic background noise, but the effective radiated power across the
bandwidth can be quite high. Additionally, because it transmits across a
wide frequency, it is less susceptible to narrow band interference, and
even some wide band stuff, especially with frequency hopping.
I was Assistant Test Director years ago on a high
level command and control system that used spread spectrum satellite
communications. It was highly survivable, and was supposed to punch
through almost anything. Of course, we couldn't set off any special
weapons to test it, but the designers planned for minimum downtime in case
of that type of attack. The system used some pretty cool DSP stuff and
dynamically reconfigurable processors in the communications frames, too.
Neat tech at the time.
Another type of system that is advertised as a
"communication system" is the troposcatter system that Litton
has installed for Saudi Arabia. I think it is advertised as a
communication system to appeal to the delicate sensibilities of that
region, but my understanding is that in reality, it's purpose is as an
early warning detection system for airborne objects. It bounces RF energy
off the tropospheric atmosphere layers, and looks for changes. I've always
wondered how stealth technology would fare to that type system, as the
frequencies vary widely from normal radar systems.
Tracy Walters
TOP
|
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
