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Week of 19 July 1999 Sunday, 25 July 1999 08:07 A (mostly) daily journal of the trials, tribulations, and random observations of Robert Bruce Thompson, a writer of computer books. |
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Monday, 19 July 1999 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] If you haven't read this site since last week, check out last week. A lot of interesting stuff was posted Saturday and Sunday, most of it about the Olympus D-400 Zoom digital camera, including an Olympus D-400 Zoom Sample Images page, which I've added still more images to for today.. * * * * * We watched the rerun of Much Ado About Nothing on Masterpiece Theatre last night. It stars Kenneth Branagh as Benedick and Emma Thompson as Beatrice. I will watch anything Emma Thompson is in. I first saw her in Fortunes of War on Masterpiece Theatre in 1987, when she also played opposite Branagh. I knew then that she was destined for great things, and have followed her ever since. * * * * * I'd planned to build at least one new system last weekend, but it didn't get done. I wasn't feeling all that great, and ended up napping most of yesterday afternoon. We did at least get some of the stuff unpacked. We plan to build Barbara's new system first. That'll be built around a PC Power & Cooling Personal Mid-Tower case, an Intel SR440BX motherboard with a Pentium III/450 CPU, 128 MB of Crucial RAM, an Intel PRO/100+ Fast Ethernet adapter, an Adaptec 2930 SCSI host adapter, a Seagate Barracuda 18 GB SCSI disk drive, a Plextor 40X SCSI CD-ROM drive, and an Tecmar Travan NS20 tape drive. The motherboard has embedded nVIDIA RIVA TNT video and Creative SoundBlaster PCI audio, both of which are more than good enough for what Barbara does. Why SCSI on a personal system? Well, because Barbara's system is also the main data store for our network. When I'm hammering on a database or something, Barbara's system bogs down somewhat for local disk access. SCSI should cure that problem decisively. It's not that I don't have enough computers to dedicate a server to file and print duties. I have more than enough. But the thing is, I want the network data store to be on a stable system, and Barbara enforces that for me. More than once, I've gotten my knuckles slapped when I attempted to mess with her system. If I brought up a dedicated file/print server, I'd always be tempted to do something to it or to load an eval copy of some program, "just this once." So we'll be building her new system soon. She's decided to name it theodore. * * * * * This from Bo Leuf [bo@leuf.net]:
Thanks. I think I know that NiMH batteries are much less subject to the memory effect you mention than are NiCd batteries. I've never completely figured out that problem. I've read authoritative essays about what causes the NiCd memory effect, and then others that are just as authoritative that say that no such phenomenon exists. I'm pretty sure it exists from personal experience, but further than that I cannot say. * * * * * This from Frank McPherson [frank@fmcpherson.com]:
Yes, Kodak makes several nice digital cameras. They were one of the few manufacturers that made my final cut. As far as burning images into CDs, I haven't really gotten that far yet, but I'll probably do it. One image viewer you might want to look at is IrfanView, which you can download from any of hundreds of web sites. It's completely free, and it's what I use. It supports all common graphics file formats and makes it easy to view sequential files in a directory. You can even use it to perform some minor tweaking to image appearance. * * * * * This from Neil Sherin [nsherin@outblaze.com]:
Thanks for the kind words. My first thought is that your system is loaded up pretty heavily. Win98 and Win2K Professional both support full PnP, and are apparently arbitrating bus and resource issues successfully. WinNT4 does not support full PNP, and it may be that you have a resource conflict under NT4 that is causing the crashes. If I had this problem, I'd pull some stuff, re-install NT4, and then gradually add stuff back in. I'd start by pulling the ISA modem (which may solve the problem all by itself), the NIC, and the SCSI adapter. Once you install NT4 with all of those missing, check which resources are available and then try adding things back in. * * * * * This from Jan Swijsen [qjsw@oce.nl]:
Good point about the photo-printer. I run multiple high-end systems, mostly under Windows NT, and I sometimes forget that many people run older systems under Win9x. Thanks for the kind words about my digital camera review material. Yes, Kerry is smiling, which he usually is. His severe hip displasia is the dog equivalent of severe rheumatoid arthritis in humans, and he is constantly in at least some pain, although we have him on various medications to ameliorate that. I asked the vet some time ago if we should have him put down. I hate to see a dog suffer. She said that so long as he seemed happy and still interested in life we should just treat his pain and let him do the best he can. Actually, at 11.5 years old, he's doing pretty well. Most of our Border Collies have made it to 12 or 13 years old, so it's pretty impressive that he's nearing that. In addition to the hip displasia, he has severe allergies and epilepsy. But he is a happy dog even with all those problems. As far as using the D-400 Zoom for landscape shots, I think based on what I've seen that it would do as well or better than a typical point-and-shoot 35mm. In my experience, most people who are disappointed with their landscape shots have used a wide-angle setting in an attempt to capture the panoramic view. That's usually a mistake, as details recede into the distance. Better to use short to moderate telephoto and concentrate on one or a few interesting elements. The Olympus D-400 Zoom does have one interesting capability I haven't tested. You can shoot multiple images and stitch them together into a panorama. As far as Evil, I think the libertarian concept of "initiation of force" defines it. Good people may occasionally wrongly initiate force, as for example a wife who shoots her philandering husband. That does not make that person Evil necessarily, although she has done a Bad Thing. But the systematic, routine initiation of force as a policy defines evil. That holds true whether the Evil is an individual who mugs people for a living, or a government that uses force or the threat of force as a matter of normal policy. Because all governments do this, all governments are Evil by my lights. Some, of course, are more Evil than others. The flip side of this is that it is perfectly acceptable to return force for force. So a person who shoots in self-defense is not Evil, just at those who attempted to blow up Hitler or those who assassinated Abraham Lincoln--mass murderers both--were acting within their right to self-defense. Sic Semper Tyrannis indeed. * * * * * This from ROBERT RUDZKI [rasterho@pacbell.net]:
Sorry about your cat. I understand what you mean about wanting to move somewhere that doesn't offer work opportunities. That's one reason I became a full-time writer. I can live anywhere I want as long as I can get a decent Internet connection. As far as your MCSE TCP/IP exam, you might also want to read Windows NT TCP/IP Network Administration. We didn't set out to write an MCSE study guide, but many people have told us that they found it more valuable for that purpose than books written explicitly as exam guides. I haven't been following the crash stuff at all. I must say that I don't understand why anyone cares. The Kennedy family got its start as gangsters, and I can't see that they've much changed.
Thanks.
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Tuesday, 20 July 1999 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Great headline in the paper this morning, "Intel Executive Predicts Web Use Will Increase..." Duh. Kind of like predicting continuing sunrises or that tomorrow will be Wednesday. Speaking of Intel, it appears their blitz to counter the AMD K7/Athlon is going into high gear. Intel will ship the Pentium III/600 and Celeron/500 at the end of this month. They're available now under NDA to distributors, system makers, and so on. In other shocking news, Intel will continue to cut prices on their processors. Actually, I think that may be a mistake. Intel may be leaving money on the table if AMD runs true to form--good technology but pathetic production. With the K7, AMD finally has a CPU that by all accounts can compete on a more-or-less equal footing with Intel's best. Whether or not AMD can execute is the question. In the past, AMD has failed to execute with regrettable regularity. And, it appears that Intel has reconsidered its decision to support only Rambus memory at the expense of PC133. Seems that a lot of their major customers, like IBM and HP, told Intel that they'd really like to see PC133 support. So Intel reversed their position, and will apparently be modifying their new chipsets to add PC133 support. The share price of Rambus plummeted $14 on the news. My guess is that Rambus is a dead product, although I could be wrong. PC133 (and even PC100) is perfectly adequate for today's systems. Throughput is not the bottleneck now, and current implementations of Rambus have no better throughput than SDRAM anyway. The real problem is latency, and Rambus does nothing to help that. I think that PC133 will carry us for the next year or two, and will gradually be replaced by the non-proprietary Synchronous Link DRAM (SLDRAM). I'm sure that memory manufacturers hope so. They don't want to pay Intel and Rambus a royalty on every module they make. * * * * * This from Tom Syroid [tsyroid@home.com]:
Yes, I'm feeling better, thanks. I still haven't had time to build PCs, though. Perhaps next weekend. I still don't have a functioning system with a CD-R drive on it, and that needs to change. As far as thumbnailing, just click on the picture to select it. FP displays the picture toolbar at the bottom. Click the third icon over from the left and FP automatically generates a thumbnail image and inserts it in the page. As far as Mr. Kennedy, I bear him no ill will. I was simply commenting that I don't see why anyone (outside of his family and friends) cares. A whole lot of other people died that day without making the news, and the only thing I can see for all the news coverage for that incident was that he was a Kennedy. Again, so what? And you're right about the time issue. I barely have time to do what I need to do, let alone engage in extended discourses on Evil and politics. So I won't. * * * * * This from Jan Swijsen [qjsw@oce.nl]:
I'm not really all that fast. Your message happened to arrive just while I was doing my morning update, so I included it. This message, for example, arrived at at about 11:30 a.m. my time on Monday, and won't appear on the web site until Tuesday morning. As far as using digital camera images for book illustrations, a lot depends on many factors, including the resolution of the digital camera itself, the final reproduction size, the screen used for printing, and so on. For technical illustration, such as my books, the Olympus D-400 Zoom will do just fine. The illustration shots will probably appear about 3"X4" (75mm X 100 mm), which allows 300 dots/inch (12 dots/mm), more than enough for the purpose. On the other hand, if the book is using, for example 8X10 inch (200 mm X 250 mm) reproduction with a 2,540 dpi (100 dots/mm) screen, that translates roughly to minimal required resolution of 20,000 X 25,000, which is beyond the capability of even the $50,000 digital cameras. In fact, that's right at the edge of what Kodachrome can do under ideal conditions in a top-notch 35 mm camera. That's why National Geographic magazine held out against 35 mm for so long. They used to require 4X5" chromes. As Hasselblads became more commonly used, they eventually allowed that a 2.25" square (6 X 6 cm) chrome was acceptable. Nowadays, I believe much of what they publish is done on 35 mm or 6 X 4.5 cm. * * * * * This from McDonald, James [McDonaldJ@hsn.net]:
By far the easiest thing to do is install Windows NT Server in stand-alone server mode, without installing any of the supplemental servers, e.g. DCHP Server or WINS server. Then, display Network Properties, choose Services, highlight the Server service, click Properties, and mark the Minimize Memory Used option button. To all intents and purposes, that turns your Windows NT Server machine into a Windows NT Workstation machine. If you literally want the OS to identify itself as Windows NT Workstation (e.g. if you have a backup application that won't run on a machine that identifies itself as a server), the process is a bit more involved. Rather than going into it here, I'll point you to this link. * * * * * This from Paul Robichaux, MCSE [paul@robichaux.net]:
Thanks. I may do that. Incidentally, the "MCSE" is new, isn't it? Congratulations. * * * * * This from Shawn Wallbridge [swallbridge@home.com]:
Yes, my recollection is the same as yours. But I seem to recall that when they made that change, they also increased the counts. For example, what they used to call a "2-user" license was the server plus two users. When they brought out the new version, they started calling that same license a "3-user" license. From a marketing perspective, that makes sense because it had been a 3-user license all along. But you're right that it can get confusing for someone who used WinGate before they made the change. * * * * * This from Neil Sherin [nsherin@outblaze.com]:
Thanks for the kind words. As it happens, I have a system that is behaving exactly as yours is. I had Windows NT 4 running on the box with no problems. Then took the disk down to bare metal, repartitioned, and installed Windows 98 SE in the primary partition. It runs fine. I then re-installed Windows NT 4, and it bluescreened after network configuration. I've done everything I can think of, including taking the disk down to bare metal again and installing Windows NT 4 by itself, but it still bluescreens. Obviously, Win98 SE PnP has reconfigured some stuff that makes Windows NT 4 Setup shoot craps.
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Wednesday, 21 July 1999 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Barbara told me yesterday that she was going to take Duncan and Riley out to visit Rebecca and Patrick Shouse yesterday evening. They're the folks who organized Carolina Border Collie Rescue, and they live in a rural area with some acreage. I decided to go along and take the Olympus D-400 Zoom with me just to play. We picked up Laura Kangas and one of her Border Collies on the way out there. We ended up with a whole flock of Border Collies (well, five anyway), a large field, and several Frisbees. Everything necessary for some serious running. And those dogs can move. You'd start with a Frisbee in hand and a pack of BCs surrounding you. You could whip that Frisbee fifty yards or so out into the field, but by the time it was ready to hit the ground, the pack would be surrounding it. Usually, one or another of the BCs would go airborne to retrieve it before it could hit the ground. The image below shows Patrick getting ready to throw the Frisbee, with three of the five BCs focusing on that. Riley is in the foreground (with the orange collar tab) making friends with another dog. Duncan is the middle BC, and he's focused on working the other animals instead of worrying about the Frisbee. You can also see from this picture why we call him our Border Godzilla. At 65 pounds (30 kilos), he's a good 20 to 30 pounds heavier and 4 to 6 inches taller than the others. And there's no fat on him. He's just a big BC male.
The dogs ran flat out for the better part of an hour, in very hot and humid conditions. Fortunately, there was a large water bowl handy. The dogs would run until they looked ready to drop, and then come back to plop in the water bowl, get a drink and go back to running some more. We had to force Duncan into the water bowl, but once he figured out that cold water felt good, he stayed in there quite a while. Duncan's not pictured here. When he was in the water bowl, there wasn't room for anyone else.
I came back from this hot and sweaty, and I didn't do anything but stand around. I hate nature. I can't imagine doing all that running in that kind of heat and humidity. But the dogs sure seemed to like it. * * * * * This from Neil Sherin [nsherin@outblaze.com]:
I think I have the PnP utility you mention somewhere, but thanks. As far as the VMware stuff, I'll be interested to hear your experiences. I knew that the Mac had an emulator that could run NT, but I wasn't aware of such a product for Intel. * * * * * This from Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]:
Thanks. That's a pretty decent price. Only $20 or so higher than the mail order places I deal with. I just did a search on killerapp.com, and found that some vendors advertised the Olympus D-400 Zoom for around $500 or a little less. No vendors I have ever dealt with, though. Most of the mainstream vendors are selling it in the $550 to $600 range. NECx wants $576. PC Connection wants $579. Insight (high as usual) wants $638.
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Thursday, 22 July 1999 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Well, once again I've been screwed by Office 2000. Or perhaps it was NT4 SP5. Microsoft, at any rate. With only Outlook 2000 and Word 2000 loaded, I was working on a document. I accidentally brushed Caps Lock and O2K/WinNT did its usual. Turning off Caps Lock did no good. I had part of a paragraph of text selected, and nothing I could do cleared the selection. Clicking in the selected area did nothing. Clicking elsewhere in the page selected random amounts of additional text. That document was acting seriously hinky. At least this time I was able to save the document and exit Word. The last time that happened, I had to reboot NT with Word and the document still loaded. At that point, with only OL2K showing on the task bar, I double-clicked the Internet Explorer icon. Windows NT loaded Internet Explorer, Word 2000, FrontPage 2000, Netscape Navigator, Windows NT Explorer, and several other programs, all from that one double-click. I finally got all those programs closed, when what should appear but the weirdly highlighted icons on my desktop. I described that problem a week or two ago. This time, I was too smart to do anything about them, so I just shut down NT. I say I just shut it down, but as usual, it took more than half an hour to shut down. So, once again, Microsoft has cost me time that I don't have to waste, all because they ship alpha- or beta-level software and represent it as a finished product. I am seriously annoyed with Microsoft right now. They can't get anything really right. They get it about 99% right, but that last 1% is the killer. 99% just isn't good enough. I think Microsoft is seriously misjudging the market. Relatively few people will upgrade to Office 2000, just as people were less likely to upgrade from Office 95 to Office 97 than they were from Office 4.2 to Office 95. Imagine if, instead of shipping their usual bug-ridden products, they shipped an upgrade that was bug-free. They could sell it as "fewer features, but NO BUGS". I'd upgrade to it. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't everyone? Someone needs to tell Microsoft that we don't need any more features. What we need is software that's debugged and bulletproof. I wonder if anyone there is listening. As things stand, I can't recommend upgrading to this release of Office 2000. It has some nice new features, true, but it's horribly bug-ridden. Wait for O2K SP1. Better still, wait longer than that, because O2K SP1 will probably have horrible bugs of its own. They'll probably end up releasing SP1 and then pulling it immediately, just as they've done so many times in the past. Don't these people do any testing at all? * * * * * This from Will [capnwill@thestate.infi.net]:
I updated that page with what I know about the Spotmatic battery issue, which isn't a lot. If you do a web search for the Mallory part number I mentioned there, you'll find several pages from companies that sell direct replacements for the Mallory battery. Apparently, the issue is that the EPA banned mercury batteries, and replacements that use silver oxide or another technology do not have identical characteristics. I also gathered from a quick web search that mercury batteries are still widely available on the net from just about any country other than the US. You can, for example, order them from a Canadian company and have them shipped here. * * * * * This from Neil Sherin [nsherin@outblaze.com]:
Right. I wasn't talking about running Mac applications on an Intel box, but about the converse. When I was writing the MCSE training courses for DigitalThink, I wanted to capture screens shots of Setup. That's not possible directly, because NT isn't running yet, and there's no way to load the screen capture application. When I posted a question on the Computer Book Publishing mailing list asking for suggestions, several people pointed out that one could use this emulator running on a Mac to install NT in a Mac window and shoot screen captures from there. The only problem was, I don't have a Mac. * * * * * This from Robert Rudzki [rasterho@pacbell.net]:
Shetland sheep dogs are a different breed, although they're used for the same work as Border Collies. The Shetlands look like a miniature version of Lassie, and are noticeably smaller than Border Collies. Your father's attitude about dogs, although regrettable, is by no means uncommon. Ask anyone who works at an animal shelter. People bring in dogs every day that they're simply tired of feeding or walking, or sometimes simply because they want a change. It's not at all uncommon for people who are moving to abandon a dog for no better reason than that it's easier just to get a new dog at their destination. I've never understood how anyone could do that. It seems to me to be on a par with abandoning a child. I feel only contempt for people like that. And anyone who would beat a dog as you describe should himself be beaten. People and dogs have had an unspoken pact since the first dog was brave enough to approach a campfire 20,000 or 30,000 years ago. They take care of us, and we take care of them. Dogs never let down their side of the agreement, but people do so all the time. I told Barbara last night that I feel terrible about Riley. That dog has been shunted from one place to another in his short life. Now, for the last week, he's been with us. He's fitted right in, and as far as he's concerned, he's now a member of our pack. And now, sometime later today, his new owner is going to come here, pick Riley up, and drive away with him. The poor dog is going to feel abandoned again. I just hope the guy who's taking him treats him right.
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Friday, 23 July 1999 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Here's one of those unfortunate occurrences. I was checking details on CD-R media, when I came across this little gem on the Verbatim page: "Verbatim is the perfrct storage media of choice when critical unalterable data storage is required ..." I wonder if they stored that text on a Verbatim CD-R disc. * * * * * Here's a utility that can completely eliminate those annoying Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) crashes under Win9X. That's the good news. The bad news is that it doesn't eliminate the crashes. It just turns them a different color. You can now choose to have a Green Screen of Death, Red Screen of Death, etc. Although this is by a third-party programmer, he's taken the same approach that Microsoft did when they announced that they'd eliminated those pesky UAEs under Windows 3.0. They had, by renaming them GPFs. * * * * * This from Neil Sherin [nsherin@outblaze.com]:
Okay, that confirms something that I'd begun to suspect. I had NT4 running successfully on my testbed box sulla. The only change I'd made was to swap the LinkSys 100BaseT card for the Intel PRO/100+ card. I was surprised when NT4 had a driver for it, and I had about decided that this old driver must be what was causing the problem. Thanks for confirming it. * * * * * This from Michael Baker [solo32@mindspring.com]:
Yes, those two are definitely Evil. What's significant is that a teenager who tortures animals is almost certain to commit even more horrendous crimes later in life. I seem to recall reading that the only correlation those who study serial killers have found is that nearly all of them tortured animals when they were in their early teens. Apparently, the usual progression is from insects to small animals to people. Those boys are irretrievably bent. Putting them down now would save a lot of trouble later. There's certainly something to be said for the Old Testament approach you advocate, but I think descending to their level is a mistake. Better just to shoot each of them in the head and get it over with. As far as shotguns, there have been many selective fire (full auto) weapons made for military and police use, but none are easily available or indeed appropriate for home defense use. For most people, I'd recommend a 12 gauge "lupara" or coach gun, which is a double-barrel shotgun with external hammers. It can be stored loaded with the hammers down for years and yet be available for use in seconds simply by cocking the hammers. They're also relatively inexpensive and fairly easy to find. Another good choice is a pump-action 12 gauge. The Remington 870 is the best, but suitable and less expensive models are available from Mossberg and others. Get one with the shortest barrel available (usually 18" or 20"). Although it would be useful to use a hacksaw to trim the barrel down to about 12" for improved handling in close quarters and wider shot spread, doing so is a major no-no. A shotgun with a barrel less than 18" long is in the same class as a fully automatic weapon as far as the feds are concerned. In general, I'd steer clear of semi-automatic shotguns for home defense, although the absolute best weapon available for that purpose is the semi-auto HS 10B. Unfortunately, that weapon hasn't been made for many years, and is now a collectors' item. Magazine capacities vary. Many states restrict hunting weapons to three rounds, so many shotguns have blocks (sometimes removable) to limit capacity to two in the magazine and one in the chamber. A typical pump may hold six to eight rounds if there is no block. And speaking of rounds, make sure you buy #4 Buck. If you tell the guy at the counter that you plan to use the gun for defense, he'll almost certainly try to sell you #00 Buck. Don't buy it. The #4 Buck has more pellets, a better pattern, and is much less likely to penetrate residential walls and wound or kill someone on the far side. * * * * * This from Robert Rudzki [rasterho@pacbell.net]:
No, he may well have been a Border Collie. BCs are bred for working ability and intelligence, not for appearance. Although most are predominantly black with some white, there are numerous colors. Many have some tannish brown on them. Reds, which are relatively uncommon, are a light reddish brown with no black on them. There are also blues and merles. The one constant is that a BC always has a white tip on its tail, which usually hangs in a "J" when the dog is relaxed. I agree with your feelings about puppy mills, pet stores, and neutering pets. I've had BCs for 40 years now, and Duncan is the first one I've had that hasn't been fixed. I'd like to breed him, which is the only reason I've been able to stand up against my wife and our vet, who both want him neutered.
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Saturday, 24 July 1999 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Here's an interesting web site I happened across the other day. ResellerRatings.com is just what it sounds like. It rates various mail-order and Internet sellers of computer hardware and software. The ratings are based on feedback from people who have bought from the sources that are being rated. In general, the ratings I saw corresponded pretty closely to my own experience. Although it appears that the web site does what it can to prevent ballot-box stuffing, it's obvious that the ratings for companies like NECx, which have received hundreds of votes, are more likely valid than those for companies that have received only a few votes. If you're thinking about buying some computer stuff by mail-order or over the Internet, it's probably worth checking this site first. I'm adding it to my bookmarks. * * * * * And speaking of interesting web sites, here's one that tells you more than you want to know about CD-R media. Media Sciences has numerous FAQs and other documents that explain a lot, including stuff I've not seen explained elsewhere, even in Andy McFadden's CD-R FAQ. * * * * * I don't really expect any severe Y2K dislocations around here, but one never knows. Accordingly, I decided the other day to start putting aside basic supplies, just in case. One thing that's both important and easy to store is water. I go through four 3 litre bottles of Coca Cola Classic per week, and they make ideal storage containers. One 3 litre bottle is a barely adequate one-day supply for an adult, counting drinking, cooking, and sanitation. Figuring ten per week is better. We'd like to have at least a two week supply on hand. With three adults, plus dogs, plus a few in reserve for friends and neighbors, that means it'd be a good idea to keep a hundred or so on hand. That's about how many I'll drink between now and year end, so I'll just start saving and filling them as I go. * * * * * This from Richard Booth [mcbifrb2@fs1.ma.umist.ac.uk]:
Actually, you've put your finger on the reason why we don't have bug-free software. Microsoft and others depend on that revenue stream that upgrades generate. In that respect, at least, the Y2K problem has been a real blessing for them. No one seems to expect vendors to ship Y2K-compliant fixes for older applications, so a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise have upgraded will be forced to do so. Of course, a lot of people that Microsoft left stranded with non-compliant products like Windows 95 and Office 95 feel justified in doing their own "midnight upgrades" to a compliant version. It would be interesting if someone brought to court on software piracy charges pled Y2K. I expect to see it happen. * * * * * This from Paul Robichaux [paul@robichaux.net]:
Yes, I knew they were being used at several airports. They're also very popular on golf courses, where Canada Geese have become pests, but can't be run off otherwise because they are protected by federal law. I didn't know that a BC could reach 30 MPH, but I'm not surprised. I've seen Greyhounds run, and Border Collies are just about as fast. You wouldn't find a BC dumb enough to chase a mechanical rabbit, though. * * * * * This from Robert Rudzki [rasterho@pacbell.net]:
Well, I guess I differentiate between killing an animal and killing a human. Animals are chattel, and a person has the right to do what he wants with his own property. Animals have no rights in common law, although the Politically Correct and the SPCA have been doing a good job of getting that changed in casebook law. So, although I'll defend the legal right of an animal owner to torture or kill his animal without facing civil or criminal penalties, I sure don't think much of such a person. What I said about the two boys who burned the kitten to death was predicated on what that indicated about those boys and their likely future actions, not upon the action itself. As far as the lupara, I stand by my advice, although a pump gun does have one thing to be said for it. Very high on the list of things that no intruder wants to hear is the sound of someone racking a pump gun. The real problem with a pump gun is that an inexperienced user under stress is very likely to short-stroke it. More than one cop has been killed because he didn't work the action fully and ended up with an empty chamber that he thought was loaded. A 12 gauge is a lot of gun, no doubt, but any adult of whatever size or sex can learn to use one effectively. Many years ago, I used to date a woman who weighed 98 pounds soaking wet, and she could use a 12 gauge 870 to clear a course with the best of them. Free recoil on a typical 12 gauge magnum is on the close order of 40 ft. lbs, about twice that of a 30-06, so it definitely has a serious kick. But any adult can handle 40 ft. lbs. of free recoil, particularly in a serious situation. You're correct that at typical in-home distances the shot size is immaterial. At fifteen feet, there's effectively no difference between hitting an attacker with buckshot or #9 birdshot. But that changes if the attacker is, for example, wearing a heavy coat, or has taken cover behind a piece of furniture. I prefer pellets with some mass. And you're also correct, of course, about the importance of training and practice. * * * * * This from [UAflyStwrd@aol.com]:
No.
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Sunday, 25 July 1999 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] I've had quite a few requests to update the page that lists the computers that I actually use. I did some work on that yesterday. The updated page is here. It's not complete by any means, but at least I made some progress. * * * * * I've changed my mind again about which capture mode to use with the Olympus D-400 Zoom. I'd started with the Standard Quality (SQ) 640X480 images, which are ideal for posting to the web site. About 120 to 140 of those will fit on one 8 MB SmartMedia card. Then I decided to switch to using High Quality (HQ) by default. That stores 1280X960 images with moderate compression, and can fit about 40 or 45 images on the 8 MB card. Then I got to thinking about it. Why store anything less than Super High Quality (SHQ) mode, which stores about 20 images on the 8 MB card? I seldom need to shoot more than 20 shots before I can download to my computer anyway. If I do, I have a second 8 MB card, and 40+ shots should do me very well. Come to that, another 8 MB SmartMedia card costs only about $20, a 16 MB version twice that, and a 32 MB version four times. Resampling a 1280X960 image down to 640X480 takes only seconds using IrfanView, so it makes sense to shoot everything at SHQ, archive those original images, and resample as needed for shots I want to post here. * * * * * Now it's time to clean house and do laundry. This afternoon we build Barbara's new PC, and then we meet her folks for dinner for her dad's birthday. * * * * * This from Scott Kitterman [kitterma@erols.com]:
Yes, I agree that the pump shotgun is an excellent home defense weapon. In fact, if I didn't have an HS 10B, an 870 would be my first choice. I don't hold with all this nonsense about keeping guns unloaded, though. That makes as much sense as storing your gasoline separately from your car. If you need a defensive weapon, you need it Right Now. But in North Carolina, our moronic legislators have actually made it effectively illegal to have loaded guns if you have children. If I had kids, they'd learn very young and very well what a firearm is and what it can do. Demonstrating the effect of a heavy caliber pistol or a shotgun by firing it into a pumpkin, watermelon, or a #10 can of tomato juice usually sobers a kid right up. I'd start a kid with a single-shot .22 at about age five or six and buy him his own rifle when he was about 12. (and I say "him" and "his" because I am concerned with proper English, not because I wouldn't do the same for a girl). If taught properly, kids know right from wrong, and are perfectly capable of understanding that a firearm is not a toy. If most children nowadays are irresponsible, it is because they are allowed to be that way rather than from any inherent irresponsibility of children. I can't say I'm shocked that you were expected to have an unloaded gun while on guard duty. The military used to teach (correctly) that the proper way to carry the 1911A1 was "condition one," or "cocked and locked." That is the way that John Moses Browning designed it to be carried. Apparently, things are now a far cry from those more rational days. It's fortunate that you never did encounter any Bad Guys, or we probably wouldn't be corresponding now. I agree with your first choice of weapon. Only an idiot would pick up a 1911A1 if he could pick up a riot gun instead. But I'm not so sure that the shotgun is quicker to load. I can drop an empty and recharge in a very small fraction of a second, barely breaking cadence during rapid fire. Or at least I could back when I was shooting regularly in combat pistol competitions. * * * * * This followup from Scott Kitterman [kitterma@erols.com
I'm sorry to hear about your wife. I can't imagine what the last 2 /12 years must have been like for you and your daughter. As far as children understanding permanence, I'm sure you're right. And perhaps I should have been more clear. I wasn't suggesting that a six year old should have his own rifle or be able to use it unsupervised, merely that I think it's a good idea to introduce children to firearms at about that age. I think that by the time they're 12, most children are capable of handling a firearm responsibly. The problem with keeping a gun unloaded is that it's seldom a matter of a few seconds to load one. If you're keeping the gun unloaded because of a child's presence, you're likely to store the gun and the ammunition separately, perhaps even under lock and key. I think a better solution is to depend on the differences in physical strength between a man and a child. For example, even many women have trouble racking the slide on a .45 auto, particularly one with heavy aftermarket springs. Simply keeping the pistol with a loaded magazine but an empty chamber makes the weapon safe around children without seriously affecting the time needed to make it operable. Same thing for many pump-action shotguns. And there are, of course, many things designed for just this purpose, e.g. gun safes with finger holes that only an adult's hand can span. * * * * * This from Bo Leuf [bo@leuf.net]:
Hmm. Since I got this message a couple of days ago, I've tried this method on several installs on a couple of different machines. It didn't work. Perhaps my BIOSs are different from yours, but as far as I know, the PrintScreen function saves only text mode screens. * * * * * This from Joshua D. Boyd [jdboyd@cs.millersv.edu]:
Probably not many. Most people will "pay the man the two dollars." Many will resent the necessity, no doubt, but most will upgrade to Y2K-compliant MS operating systems and applications. There's just no realistic alternative for most people. I agree that depending on bug fixes for a continuing revenue stream is despicable, but I don't think Microsoft is really guilty of that. They release service packs and patches pretty regularly, and don't charge for them. My problem with Microsoft has more to do with the emphasis they place on new features versus getting the existing features to work right. My only real problem with Microsoft from a "forced upgrade" point of view is file format incompatibility between older and newer versions. By using new file formats for the newer versions, they effectively force people to upgrade in lockstep. That said, it appears that with Office 2000 they've abandoned that practice. I understand that, with the exception of Access 2000, all Office 2000 file formats are backward and forward compatible between Office 97 and Office 2000. And they did have a good reason for upgrading the Access format. * * * * * This from Robert Rudzki [rasterho@pacbell.net]:
No doubt many Indians are as horrified seeing fast-food burger joints as Americans are at seeing puppies and kittens sold by the pound as meat on the hoof. But all that proves is that food preferences are cultural and that different practices are accepted in different cultures. Personally, I don't have any problem with someone eating a dog or a cat. I love my dogs, and consider them full family members. But that is my choice, and they are animals. What someone else does with his own property is his business, not mine.
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