Monday, September 27,
1999
[Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday]
[Saturday] [Sunday]
BIX is down for a refit, is expected to be up by Tuesday morning. If that
means nothing to you, don't worry about it.
The great file truncation flap is over. If that
doesn't mean anything to you, I'm glad, but if you want to know, see last week's view. As
for me, it all ate time I didn't have, leaving me further behind than ever, and the
pressure caused me to neglect my back stretching exercises and now I am bent like an
integral sign only sideways, so I'll have to spend more time I don't have on the floor
stretching things out.
There is no excuse for back pain (at least in my case, and I have found
that to be true for nearly everyone I know): that is, there is a known remedy, which
consumes time, but which takes less time than acute back pains take. It's called
stretching, and the book is by Bob and Jane Anderson. I used to be folded up like an
accordion, nearly unable to work, when Steve Barnes gave me a copy of STRETCHING by
the Andersons. It took a couple of weeks -- I was really in bad shape -- but that was 15
years ago, and I have not had serious back problems since; I get what would be serious if
I didn't have a remedy when I get over confident and neglect the stretches. I have given
perhaps 20 copies of this book to friends, and I don't know any it hasn't helped. But it
does take time.
Back from a long hike, and I must say that helped a lot. Now for some
stretches. I've got mail going again.
See last week for a lot of
mail. More later today by my weekend was devoured by locusts.
See last week for a lot of mail. More
later today by my weekend was devoured by locusts.
This came my way and I had to share... ;-> Aleta
There's going to be an extra scene included in the
DVD release of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK coming up next year! Basically, it
expands on the scene where Vader reveals his fatherhood to Luke, and ties
up some loose ends created with the release of Episode 1...
The Empire Strikes Back: Extra-Special Edition
INT: BESPIN GANTRY - MOMENTS LATER:
A furious lightsaber duel is underway. DARTH VADER
is backing LUKE SKYWALKER towards the end of the gantry. A quick move by
Vader, chops off Luke's hand! It goes spinning off into the ventilation
shaft. Luke backs away. He looks around, but realizes there's nowhere to
go but straight down.
Darth Vader: Obi Wan never told you what happened to
your father.
Luke: He told me enough! He told me you killed him!
Darth Vader: No... I am your father!
Luke: No, it's not true! It's impossible.
Darth Vader: Search your feelings... you know it to
be true...
Luke: NO!
Darth Vader: Yes, it is true... and you know what
else? You know that brass droid of yours?
Luke: Threepio?
Darth Vader: Yes... Threepio... I built him... when
I was 7 years old...
Luke: No...
Darth Vader: Seven years old? And what have you
done? Look at yourself, no hand, no job, and couldn't even levitate your
own ship out of the swamp...
Luke: I destroyed your precious Death Star!
Darth Vader: When you were 20! When I was 10, I
single-handedly destroyed a Trade Federation Droid Control ship!
Luke: Well, it's not my fault...
Darth Vader: Oh, here we go... "Poor me... my
father never gave me what I wanted for my birthday... boo hoo, my daddy's
the Dark Lord of the Sith...waahhh wahhh!"
Luke: Shut up...
Darth Vader: You're a slacker! By the time I was
your age, I had exterminated the Jedi knights!
Luke: I used to race my T-16 through Beggar's Canyon
Darth Vader: Oh, for the love of the Emperor... 10
years old, winner of the Boonta Eve Open... Only human to ever fly a Pod
Racer...right here baby!
Luke looks down the shaft. Takes a step towards it.
Darth Vader: I was wrong... You're not my kid... I
don't know whose you are, but you sure ain't mine...
Luke takes a step off the platform, hesitates, then
plunges down the shaft.
Darth Vader looks after him.
Darth Vader: Get a haircut!
No comment. None....
Jerry,
Regarding the ongoing discussion of the lack of
qualified people in ISP technical support.
The basic problem is that with the explosion in the
field, there just aren't enough qualified people to go around. Telephone
support (in any field) takes a special kind of person that you just don't
get coming out of a Tech School or College.
That person must be able to mentally put themselves
in front of the customers system and determine what the problem is. This
based on interpreting clues given by someone who (in most cases) doesn't
know enough to adequately report exactly what he/she is actually seeing.
Doesn't have any idea of what's important or not important to the
troubleshooting process.
The tech support person has to be able to think
logically through a problem that may require knowledge in a dozen
different disciplines. They must be able to give direction to someone on
the other end that's confused, upset, generally unhappy and often not at
all inclined to be cooperative about helping to solve their problem and
then convice them that 'yes I really do need you to do exactly this to
help figure out what's wrong'.
It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.
Those with sufficient credentials to do it well, aren't necessarily
inclined to take that kind of job when there are so many other positions
available in industry that pay better and are MUCH less stressful. On the
other hand, it's one of the most challenging (non-physical) jobs I know.
Consider the stress you're going through with the
website. Multiply that by 10-40 (the number of equally stressed customers
the average phone tech deals with in a day)and imagine the stress he/she's
under. Is it a wonder that it's hard to find these people to fill the
positions.
The burnout rate is high, the retention rate is even
lower (many start but just can't cut it technically) and the call levels
are increasing.
In an ISP, those that don't burn out usually get off
the phones as soon as they can acquire sufficient experience and
additional education, ending up in network support or admin positions
where their direct customer contact is minimized. Those who don't stay
with the ISP go to industry supporting Corporate customers where a 'good'
phone support tech can make much more $$$ doing essentially the same job,
being paid what it's really worth.
Ahhhh I ramble. Been in the customer support
business for 30 years and tend to sympathize with both sides.
John
John Rice coredump@enteract.com http://www.enteract.com/~coredump
The Internet - Somebodys LAB experiment gone horribly wrong.
Can't disagree with any of that. Thanks.
I just wanted to pass on
another problem I had with DeLorme' TopoUs - lousy CDROM pressings. The
copy of Topo I purchased last year for work was of such poor quality that
any Win 9X machine (and any type of standard read-only drive) that saw it
spun and hunted for readable tracks, hanging up the machine for at least
15-20 minutes. In order to use the program, I was forced to read the CD I
wanted with my Richo CD-RW drive, create a CD Image and burn a new CDROM.
This one works just fine in any machine I run it in.
I assume this isn't the problem you are having...
Mark Statzer CE WICD TV Champaign, IL
That may in fact BE the problem I had; I will try
your remedy, and thanks.
My column said some nice things about Adobe
Acrobat and pdf; that got a lot of dissent. Here is some:
Hi, Jerry. I just wanted to make a quick comment on
your advocacy of Adobe's PDF formant, and your intention to use it
yourself.
I hate those things! I'm a webmaster, and it seems
to me that PDF's are all too often used for purposes that would be much
better suited to HTML. I think that people often use PDF when they don't
want to bother to learn to do HTML. Certainly anyone who has exported HTML
from an Office app is likely to be disappointed with the output and want
an alternative, but I think PDF is being abused.
I believe it comes down to the old web conflict of
form versus content. Yes, you can put out some finely formatted text;
however, does it come across to me in a form I find readable? With HTML, I
can resize a page in a way that is more comfortable to my eyes and reading
habits; with PDF I'm stuck with whatever you liked at the time. Content is
king, as far as I'm concerned, and the faster I can get to that content,
the better.
PDF is not that good for reading text on a computer
screen, IMHO. PDF text doesn't look very good w/o anti-aliasing, but anti-aliasing
can make it fuzzy looking, forcing you to zoom in.
PDF files are bigger than HTML files, for the same
amount of text and graphics. They take much longer to download and render.
You can start reading HTML while the graphics are still downloading (if
you write it correctly, of course); with PDF you must wait for the whole
thing to be downloaded, then wait while Acrobat reader loads.
I'm a big Adobe fan. Where would we be without
Postscript and Photoshop? But PDF's are one of my pet peeves.
Hugh
-- Hugh Caley, Unix Administrator Babcock &;
Brown, San Francisco 510-524-1672 hughc@babcockbrown.com
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
Maybe it is just my machine and version of Acrobat
4.0 reader, but it seems that for the PC version the option of copying
graphics from .pdf files has disappeared as they moved from 3.0 to 4.0.
The help file outlines a non-existent icon for grabbing graphics. Text
selection still works. I queried Adobe but no-one responds to e-mail
there. So, if you really need to grab graphics from files, don't upgrade.
Neil Charness
----------------------------------------------------------------- Neil
Charness |E-mail:charness@psy.fsu.edu Psychology Dept.
Jerry, Jerry,
What can you be thinking? Adobe Reader is huge,
slow, and almost as fun as reading old manuals online without HTML
linking. Yes, the image quality preserves the author's
intent...mostly...but at what price. Since "pages" of output are
presented, it can be almost impossible to find a setting that allows
smaller fonts to be read and yet presents a full line of text on the
screen at one time. Not all of us have 17", 19", or larger
monitors, much as we might like. This, like much of what you write about
computing is filtered through your environment. Since your environment is
peopled with experts of arcane knowledge and experience with the resources
and time to pursue your problems, you many times recommend systems and
setups that no ordinary person could possibly survive.
Grab an ignorant neighbor, shove him/her in a locked
room with an off the shelf, mid-market box, 56k modem access to the
Internet, and, just so you won't think that I'm overdoing this, an extra
phone line so that he/she can call for help while on the Internet at the
same time. Occasionally hire in a local, non-wizard tech to install really
difficult software or hardware. Limit sharply their budget for this type
of help, just to keep things "real". Now take one of the items
that required just a quick, "intelligent" fix by one of your
gurus and let your neighbor have a go at it. Make sure that you have good
insurance, and as many disclaimers as you can get on a release of
liability form. In most states, negligence will penetrate most
disclaimers. I will be looking forward to receiving your accounts of how
bankruptcy courts work in your jurisdiction. Maybe an article or two from
your hospital room on self-defense techniques would not be too much to
ask.
Cheers,
Everett L.(Rett) Williams POB 1347 Canyon Lake, TX
78130-1347 rett@gvtc.com 830-907-3636
Jerry,
You mention Adobe Acrobat in your latest BYTE
column, and comment that it "works just fine... in particular [on]
Office documents" (if I can take that liberty with your text -- I
_think_ that's within the range of your intended meaning). Here's a tale
of my latest experience with it.
A few days ago I sent a technical proposal off to a
new client of mine; I use Word 97 while they still use Word 95, so I had
to save it using Word 97's export filters. Now I _thought_ I'd installed
the real filter (maybe I did, under Win95 back when I was dual booting,
but missed it with NT?), but the file grew in size by a factor of 4 when I
saved it (first warning!). Then came my big mistake: I didn't proof the
new "version" adequately before I emailed it (it was a BIG rush
-- the timeline was too short for even FedEx, and my customer needed the
e-version anyway, to put into their proposal for _their_ customer). So my
customer emailed back to tell me that some of the graphs in the document
now overlay the text, and the text-wrapping options were grayed out... I
suspect it's the old Word 97/95 RTF problem again, unfortunately.
So I sent it to them in Adobe Acrobat format, using
the copy of Acrobat Distiller Version 3.0 which comes bundled with
PageMaker 6.5. I had to send along a note apologizing for the Acrobat
version: while Distiller in general did a nice job, it took every instance
of a superscript (this is a technical proposal, remember -- plenty of
superscripts!) and turned it into an elevated em-dash. For some reason, it
left all the subscripts alone.
Maybe Version 4.0 corrects this (is Word 97 newer
than Acrobat 3.0?); maybe it's something funny with the Postscript driver
I used (I was on the road, so I had to use the HP Laserjet 4 PS driver on
my notebook -- it was the only one I had); maybe it's one of a hundred
other possible things. But in any case, the translation wasn't "good
enough" with either electronic document I sent (although they could
compare the two versions and make their own corrections), and the outcome
was that they had to do extra work and I was embarrassed.
One more incident in a long string of
time-consuming, sometimes painful experiences with modern,
"improved" software. My client is still talking to me (and I
think I have the job), but the whole thing was unnecessary. To say I'm
disgusted is an understatement. I live in the Microsoft world because all
my clients do; otherwise, I'd switch to something else. I don't know who's
to blame for the Acrobat problem, but I'd find it easy to lay that one on
Microsoft, too -- so much of their software fails to follow the accepted
rules, even the ones they make themselves.
Sorry this is so long -- I'm venting, I know.
Acrobat is pretty damned good (I used it for another project just weeks
ago, and it was perfect then), and you're right about it being the common
denominator. That's why it was my second choice, when the Word 97/95
translation failed.
Keep doing those "silly things" -- I can't
tell you how many times you've provided the solution to my problems that
way, and prevented me from making the same mistakes.
Regards, Troy Loney
P.S.: Your truncation problem is gone... but now the
photos take a long time to load. Is the entire world checking to see for
themselves, or did pair.com put you on a slower server?
--
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Troy
Loney tloney@eticomm.net |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Well, let me say again: one uses Acrobat and pdf
files when you want exact control of the layout and appearance; something
you won't have with html. I had not noticed anything missing in 4.0 that
was in 3.0, but I confess I didn't look very hard; now I will have to.
I don't advocate Acrobat for ordinary stuff; but
as a means of setting up something that the readers won't muck with and
change about, and which won't be ruined by html substitutions and layout
changes, you won't find anything better, and of the things I have tried
most aren't as good. It can be improved and no doubt will be, but it does
the job it is intended to do, or so I contend. But it certainly is not the
right tool for every job.
Jerry,
I didn't mean to leave the impression that I
didn't like Acrobat, nor that I held it against you for recommending it
(as I said, I used it on another project just recently, and it was perfect
for that job and it _did_ a perfect job). My point was that it doesn't
always do that (but the ill-behaved instances might well be because of
other software -- Word 97, for instance).
In the case I wrote about, I tried Acrobat because
it was the next best thing to the native file format my customer used
(which Word 97 apparently couldn't reproduce, although it was what its
immediate predecessor used); they could still grab text and graphics from
the PDF file almost as easily as from Word 95, _one_ of which they needed
desperately to do. If they'd used Word Pro or Word Perfect, I think
Acrobat would have been the preferred format (HTML certainly wouldn't have
been!).
The unfortunate thing is that somewhere in the
chain, something messed up the PDF file also (although in a different
way). So everyone was royally screwed all 'round, and no one appreciated
it.
Mostly, I was just venting. It annoys me that
Microsoft can't follow their own rules, or even successfully write to
their own legacy file formats. It annoys me that apps are
"improved" in ways that ruin their usefullness to me. It annoys
me even more that I have to rebuild most of my working system at least
once a year, trying to make things functional again simply because I've
reluctantly upgraded. If they'd only fix the broken parts, and leave the
good ones alone!
But that's a very familiar tune, isn't it?
Regards, Troy Loney
I will agree that HTML cannot do equations very
well, but PDF is not really as good as HTML for general content.
Far too many people seem to think that 'pretty
print' is a substitute for content. Personally I rather have content.
PDF files are far larger than is necessary to
display most content. There are exceptions, but personally, I'd rather
download samples of your newest novel in text or html, than fight with it
in pdf.
I find reading pdf files extremely irritating to do.
You cannot easily scroll down and you can all too easily end up jumping to
the next page.
Keep pdf for diagrams and equations... Works great
for pin-outs at Adeptec and Seagate I agree.
My $0.02....
Geoff
Once again, I seem not to have been very clear:
pdf is for files that you do not want altered: not in layout, not in text,
not in anything. It's a lot harder for someone to corrupt a pdf file, and
when they do, they have pretty well intended to do it. It depends on what
you want files for. I still say it works, and works well, when you want to
send page images and you care about layout. You cannot control layout in
html.
Anyway, thanks.
An advantage of using Acrobat
prompted a customer of ours to adopt that format for online access to
internal production reports: namely, Acrobat documents can be digitally
signed and made more or less tamper-proof. Our customer didn't want to
mindlessly rely on NT security to guard the sanctity of accounting and
other fiscal reports. Instead, they created Acrobat documents
automagically from the original mainframe report output and let users use
Acrobat Reader to view/print the reports.
HTML can be hacked by anyone with visual notepad.
(Mr.) Kerry M. Liles kerryliles@home.com
Hello Jerry, I noticed in 'current mail' that you
are getting some flack for recommending PDF. I want to toss in my two
cents in your support. I maintain a very large technical document database
for my company. It is accessed worldwide via the company wide area
network. Almost all of the general access documents are in PDF. We love
it; PDF is the best thing since sliced bread. Control of layout and
appearance are crucial for most of our technical manuals -- PDF delivers
it, and HTML just doesn't cut it. Also, for distribute-and-print and
print-on-demand purposes, PDF is perfect. Actually, many of the criticisms
you received just show a lack of understanding of PDF. (For example Adobe
provides all the tools needed to allow paged downloading and viewing.) I
can, however, sympathize with Hugh Caley's complaint that "PDF's are
all too often used for purposes that would be much better suited to
HTML". This undoubtedly is true. You should use the best tool for the
job -- not the tool you have at hand.
Clyde Wisham
Noli Permittere Illegitimi Carborundum
Pretty much my view. Thanks.
There is a search engine on a page that looks a lot like
this one. This is an experiment. Try ccurrentview.html
and see.
Bix is operating.
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