| Friday,
April 6, 2001 Dry winter in Washington means another power
crisis, layoffs in the aluminum industry, etc. Exactly what the WPPS
people wanted to prevent with the nuclear power plants that the
"conserve your way out of your problems" group caused to be shut
down through legal interventions and misleading the public. So now
Washington will feel the pinch too.
It may be possible to inconvenience your way to prosperity but in a
democracy it's not likely. It takes a war to get people to "Use it
up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," which was the World War
II slogan I heard daily as a teenager. It also takes a people more steeped
in patriotism and self sacrifice than the products of our politically
correct schools are likely to be.
Windows XP continues to frustrate me. This morning on both the HOME and
PRO machines with XP the START task bar and tray were GONE, and nothing I
could do would restore them. The machines were USELESS except to run
programs whose icons were on the desktop; no others need apply. Eventually
I did control-alt-delete and logged off. When I logged back on the system
was usable again, in that I had a tray and taskbar. This is a
"feature"? It's the same on both the Pro and Home editions. See
the column for more, but so far my assessment of XP is UGH. Someone has
been too clever by half.
I am sure I will be told how to deactivate this "feature",
but what other surprises are there? Many user interface changes seem to
have been made just to make it look different. Then there is a pop-up
windows that keeps telling me that my DVD player software is out of date
and offers to take me to a web site that will fix it. Of course it doesn't
take me there. When I try to run my DVD player I get more dialog. Of
course the player works, having worked with Windows Me. I presume they
thing no one was idiot enough to install Me, and thus there was no need to
take heed of Me software?
Once again I am sure it will all work out but I do not have a good
feeling about this.
I have a reader who sent me email about XP and features, and I
attempted to tell him about this before posting, but alas, all email sent
to him is returned by postmaster. No explanation is given. I think I need
an XP guru. Which means that if I do, Aunt Minnie certainly will. Continued
next Monday.
Apparently everyone now assumes that all press people have T1 lines. To
do press registration for conferences you have to endure the darndest
collection of animated web pages I ever saw each one taking forever to
download, and all they really need is a form to take data. I think most
web designers are too clever by half. Remember this useful phrase. You
will find yourself needing it again and again.
A reminder: if you don't have Irfanview, get it. If you do have it, go
pay for it. Here's how.
Roberta was at a public school 5th grade class mostly Hispanic
children, who can't read English. She was introducing the new test version
of her reading program. It seems to be catching on. The kids like it. If
you know kids who can't read English you really should have a look at her
web site. Home schoolers in particular should look at this...
More fooling around with Windows XP. I have to say the more used to it
I get the better I like some of it. Interesting. It will all be in the
column. I will also put a WinHec report in the column, but since I have a
lot more than can go in it, I will do a WinHec photoessay like the
Internet World report and send that to subscribers.
Well one thing Windows XP won't do: you can't set the screen to 256
colors. There are some old programs that require it. Too bad. They won't
run. Period.
Note that I could do that in Me and 98 and in Windows 2000 Professional
(desktop). No more. I wonder why? But that's a serious limit.
Conquest of the New World Deluxe, again an old DOS program, ran in 98
and Me. It blows up in Windows XP, and by blows up I mean that the system
displays garbage and sits there a long time. Eventually I am told to close
the program and the system has recovered, but it will not run it. Same
machine ran CNW with same hardware in Windows Me just a couple of days
ago.
You may find this interesting.
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