THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR View 138 January 29 February 4, 2001 |
||
For
Current Mail click here.
Last Week's View Next Week's View This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 4,000 - 7,000 words, depending. (Older columns here.) For more on what this place is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you are not paying for this place, click here... For Previous Weeks of the View, SEE VIEW HOME PAGE Search: type in string and press return.
|
||
For an index
of previous pages of view, see VIEWDEX. See also the New Order page, which tries to make order of chaos. These will be useful. For the rest, see What is this place? for some details on where you have got to.
If you subscribed: If you didn't and haven't, why not? For the BYTE story, click here.
Highlights this week:
The atomz Search returns: Search: type in string and press return. The freefind search remains:
|
This week: | Monday
January 29, 2001
Well, that is interesting. Some of you probably saw a tirade against Adelphia, which was correct when I wrote it, but the problems seem to have fixed themselves. Adelphia at least works now, and the premium channels are there, and the INDEX works. None of that was true earlier and they never answer their phones, but at least something does work now.
I also had Microsoft visitors, showing new products to be released fairly soon. Like old times at Chaos Manor. More when the embargo is lifted. You'll like it. And Microsoft answers the "bundling" charge in the Penfield Jackson findings. Penfield, meanwhile, seems to have told everyone that Microsoft is evil and needed to be taught a lesson; whether or not that is true, judges have no business going about telling people that while trials are going on.
On satellites everyone is telling me Starband is the one to use, but in fact I am still trying to get a T1 line.
|
This week: | Tuesday, January
30, 2001
See http://cryptome.org/jg-wwwcp.htm For more on copy protection and its effects, And my thanks to Ricardo L. A. Bánffy for point in me to it. And see Bob Thompson in mail.
|
This week: |
Wednesday, January
31, 2001
Niven was over yesterday. good hike. We have some good work done with Burning Tower. I'll try to do more today since it's coming up on column time. And I have been sent a story about strip searches of 8 year olds because a classmate was missing, or said she was missing, $20. "Within school policy" said the administrators. It may have been, but I suspect I would find a better school for my kids. If that's necessary the school has an unhealthy population. It it's not necessary it has unhealthy administrators. Of course those are not mutually exclusive. MANY people recommend abe books http://www.abebooks.com/ as THE place to go looking for used books. I have found it very useful. From Jim Warren: A magazine in the US was looking for readers to submit quotes from their real life Dilbert-type managers. Here are the finalists: 1. "As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks." (This was the winning quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, WA.) 2. "What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter." (Lykes Lines Shipping) 3. "E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business." (Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company) 11. We recently received a memo from senior management saying: "This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the memo mentioned above." (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division) 12. One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said, "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!" (New business manager, Hallmark Greeting Cards.) 13. As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo, in one of the sentences, I praised the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR director's office, and told that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for perverts (pedophiles?) working in her company. Finally, he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired - and the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry; he would take care of it. Two days later, a memo to the entire staff came out directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation) AND it is clearly time to send another LETTER TO SUBSCRIBERS, but I am running low low low on time resources, and the column time is coming up. At least I am getting Burning Tower going. Futility Squared: try to talk to Pacific Bell Business. Just try. I would sure love to have the old arrogant AT&;T back. Attempts to even find someone to TALK to at Pacific Bell about a T1 line have cost me hours, and I GET NO ONE. I get transferred to a dead telephone. Every time. There are some lackwits who answer after you get the automatic tree, pay no attention when you point out that you've been put on hold forever before, transfer you again, then a long long time with a dead telephone and nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Does anyone know a way to do this (T1) with SPRINT? Or anything else? Pacific Bell seems to be managed by Dilbert managers, which, come to think of it... When I first wanted ISDN here I ended up talking to Scott Adams at Pacific Bell. He seemed to be the only person in the company that understood it. Now I am getting the same thing. What is WITH this company? Do they have ANYONE who can talk about a T1 line? If so I have been unable to find that person. Eventually I have tried to go to Pacific Bell Voice Mail. That TAKES THREE MINUTES and a salesman voice enthusiastically tells you that he is sure sorry to have missed you! My Lord, this is a monopoly that REALLY needs attention from the authorities. Dilbert's point haired manager is clearly in charge. Ye godS!!! An interesting editorial by Tony Blankley (whom I knew when I was a science advisor to Newt Gingrich back when Newt was Minority Whip): The correct URL for the Blankley piece in today's Washington Times is: http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-2001131164030.htm Jim Ransom First sent by Jim Ransom. And an interesting case of "balanced reporting": The idea of Sunday's live, "videobridge" was to promote dialogue
Ah well.
|
This week: |
Thursday,
February 1, 2001 Ed Yourdon sends me Boy Suspended for Pointing Chicken http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20010131/us/chicken_finger_gun_1.html with the note that zero tolerance equals zero thought. Precisely. "I was only following orders. It is policy. It is the law. I can do nothing about it. We have rules. Ordnung!" The nightingale caught by the hawk in Pindar's poem laments that it is silly to ask for justice when the weak are in tbe grip of the strong. And so it goes. At least for the moment this is merely some silly people in a backward area enjoying their local autonomy such as it is. Incidents like this make it a bit harder for people like me who defend local autonomy. Yet I would rather this stupid little man have the power to promote his stupid little rules (and enjoy his headstrong power) than nationalize the whole thing to get "justice" for this particular boy caught by this particular hawk.
And I have a message that we have lost Gordon R. Dickson. I have known Gordy for about 50 years. An old and valued friend. He had asthma all his life. He could also drink more and feel it less than anyone I have ever known. Gordy, Poul, and Ted Cogswell started at about the same time and roomed in the same building in the early days, with Scott Meredith as their agent. Gordy had a MFA degree and took literature more seriously than the rest of us. Rest in peace, old friend. I guess all us dinosaurs are headed west. GORDON R. Dickson, RIP
|
This week: |
Friday,
February 2, 2001 GROUND HOG DAY Incidents at Fry's but not really worth recording. Bought the wrong case for a new graphics machine. I guess I'll have to go get another in the morning. Fry's doesn't HAVE PC Power and Cooling. Antec is my second choice. But I ended up getting too large a case. Karla I think tried to warn me. She's the very competent young lady in the components department at the Burbank Fry's. No details on Gordy, although I expect I could find out if I looked. Going to miss him. About to make a new really good graphics system, which will be part of the column. Incidentally, I left my name and phone number with Pacific Bell's crack sales outfit two days ago. Naturally no one has called. The outfit is clearly run by people with pointy hair. There MUST be someone I can talk to about high speed connectivity in Studio City. I really prefer wires to satellites. I'll keep trying. And keep trying. And Keep Trying.
|
This week: | Saturday,
February 3, 2001 Hill climbing, gardening, and some work with the column. And a candidate for the oddest mail I ever got:
Return-Path: <zardelie@hotmail.com> i heard that ther is a html code which you must add to the e-mail you send to anyone, so that it spreads itself to all his recipients and, from his recipients to their recipients and so on. Is it true? If yes then please mail me with that code. If it wasn't true, than please mail me anyway. Please mail me to that address nfpz@cyberia.net.lb thank you in advance Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. I put it up verbatim as I received it. What in the world? Needless to say I did not answer it.
|
This week: | Sunday,
February 4, 2001 Column time. I have a lot of mail saying it is difficult to get Pac Bell to do a T1 to a house. Perhaps so, but how would they know? So far no one has bothered to TALK to me about it. Clearly they have outsourced sales to Elbonia. "Pac Bell Sales, how can we make life miserable for you?" We ought to have either regulated public utilities, with real regulations and some way to put some honest fear in these clowns, or real competition and an end to their silly franchises and monopolies. What we have now is neither so far as I can see, and the result is about what you expect it to be.
|