Week of 24 April 2000

Daynotes Journal

Week of 24 April 2000

Friday, 05 July 2002 08:16

A (mostly) daily journal of the trials, tribulations, and random observations of Robert Bruce Thompson, a writer of computer books.

wpoison

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Monday, 24 April 2000

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Here's a revolting development. Forbes reports that New York state now claims the right to levy income taxes on 100% of the income of non-resident telecommuters, on the theory that they could have worked in New York if they'd wanted to. Thanks to J. H. Ricketson for the pointer to this story. Fortunately, his concerns about those of us who are freelance writers are probably unfounded, at least for now. I'm not an employee of O'Reilly & Associates, or of any other publisher whom I've written for. Still, how long can it be before the tax grabbers come after us?

Here's some mail that's been backing up over the weekend.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Alberto_Lopez@toyota.com [mailto:Alberto_Lopez@toyota.com]
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2000 11:18 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Setting up 2 IDENTICAL Network Adapters in a Windows NT Server PC...

Robert,

Good Morning!

Question: How do you go about adding a 2nd NIC identical to the one already in the PC?

I am attempting to add a 2nd NIC to my NT Server. (in hopes of setting up Wingate 3.05 to SHARE my DSL connection with some other PC's in my office) I installed the NIC in the PC and attempted to add the driver via the Network Applet in Control Panel. They are both identical cards (Linksys 10/100 FastEthernet v2.0).

NT Server complains that I already have a such an Adapter installed and do I want to continue? I say "Yes" and then it flashes a dialog box that seems to copy some files, but the NEW 2nd NIC does NOT appear in the Adapters list.

Am I doing something wrong? Is it NOT POSSIBLE to have more than 1 IDENTICAL NIC in an NT Server PC because NT will think that that same NIC is ALREADY PRESENT?

As always, your help is greatly appreciated...

Thanks,

Alberto S. Lopez Torrance, CA
alberto_lopez@toyota.com ~ work
albertol@pacbell.net ~ home

Hmm. It's been a while since I set up a multi-homed NT box, but I seem to recall that I simply installed the second identical Ethernet card and configured the bindings appropriately. It's definitely possible to install multiple identical Ethernet cards in a system. I've installed as many as four, and I believe that NT Server supports 16, or perhaps more. Perhaps one of my readers will have a solution and can mail you directly.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Bilbrey [mailto:bilbrey@pacbell.net]
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2000 12:42 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com; dfarq@swbell.net
Subject: IceWM

Dave writes on your site...

> (I wish I could remember the one Brian Bilbrey was using a couple of months back--I'm drawing a blank right now.)

IceWM - minimal, fast GUI ... start-style menu button where it belongs in the lower left corner (functionality replicated with a rightclick anywhere in open desktop), no ICONS (I am sure you could have them, I just don't bother and so don't know how at the moment).

At the gui login prompt, type your login name, then select the WM from the dropdown list at the bottom (should be on the list, if not, let me know and I will help install), then poke the cursor back into the password box and type the password and GO.

this sets the new WM to be your default. Additionally, look to themes within the start menu - this sets the various GUI widgets (including radio buttons) - you should be able to find one that suits.

.b

--

Brian P. Bilbrey "I have a cunning plan, my lord..."
bilbrey@orbdesigns.com "Shut up, Baldrick!"
www.orbdesigns.com E. Blackadder

Thanks.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Ward-Johnson [mailto:chriswj@mostxlnt.co.uk]
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2000 1:31 PM
To: 'thompson@ttgnet.com'
Subject: RE: Micro-payments

Interesting what Chuck Waggoner says about this. I think he's wrong for even more reasons. I've been playing with Napster, as you know, and there is indeed the possibility to build up a vast music collection without any payments other than my online charges. But I don't, and many won't - although I have heard of one person with a 2,400 album collection all from Napster (s/he works at MIT, so now you know what they do with their time up there). And crucially people didn't before Napster came along - pirating music was always possible and Napster makes it easier, but there will always be people willing to pay. On a fundamental level, if people won't pay for my content then I can't make them pay, but I'm sure that some will. You know that if you write a book, the majority of those in the world who COULD buy it, won't. But you'll still write it because you know that some WILL buy it. Chuck's right that there is a 'if it ain't free I don't want it' mentality growing on the web, but equally there are those who'll pay for what they want. Think of it this way; say you need a thousand people a day to read your stuff and pay you a cent for reading it. It actually doesn't matter if the Chinese put all your content on giant server farms and let anyone who wants it read it for free - if there's still a thousand people paying you a cent a day, you're still in business. That there's a million people a day reading it for free may grate, but there's nothing you can do about it and it doesn't matter. Others use the analogy of radio: it provides a constant stream of the sort of music, generally, that you like (assuming there's a station format within range you like, and again the Internet can help here), and that might be the only way you ever listen to some tunes; I've heard David Bowie a thousand times, for example, but don't own a single one of his records. He gets a very small payment from the radio station for the right to broadcast his stuff, the radio station gets either my attention for its ads or, if it's the BBC, a bit of the licence fee I have to pay in the UK for owning a television set (or some of your tax dollars if it's PBS in the US). But radio hasn't killed album sales - far from it, radio plays are actively solicited by recording artists. If they were sensible they'd use Napster the same way, releasing low-fi versions of their albums onto the Napster system. Similarly, they should use micropayments to distribute single-play (e.g. that RealAudio stuff you can't easily save to disc). Sure, I might still be able to go off to China or wherever and download the whole thing for nothing, but if the artistes (cutting out the record companies) are clever enough they can do it all for themselves at a sensible price that doesn't make it worth my while finding the Chinese servers. For content authors like you, me and Jerry the same principle applies; yes, you could hack on over to China and find some slightly out of date content, but why bother? Keep coming back to our site and we'll keep writing new content. I think enough people will go for that system to make it feasible. All micropayments lack, as you've been saying, is a feasible, working system. I know Gates talked to me years and years ago about wanting to own the plumbing system for Internet payments, and I find it hard to believe hey haven't done something about this yet; that's why I suggested they should buy Millicent and do what you've urged, integrate it into IE in the same way they've integrated Content Advisor, which is a good model for how it should work.

Regards

Chris Ward-Johnson
Chateau Keyboard - Computing at the Eating Edge
http://www.chateaukeyboard.com

I agree with all of that. Boy, you write long paragraphs.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: J.H. Ricketson [mailto:JHR@WarlockLtd.com]
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2000 10:58 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Linuxen Still Don't Get It

Dear Bob,

This from you (04.21 Daynotes)) sums up my skepticism re Linux better than I could:

"And so on. I'm not arguing that folks like us can adapt. Of course we can. But anyone who wants Linux to succeed as a mainstream desktop OS had better realize that they'd better go to the mountain, because the mountain ain't gonna come to them."

Now how do we get the Linuxen to listen?

Regards,

JHR

--
[JHR, for The Warlock]
jhr@warlockltd.com
Dawn is natures way of saying it's bedtime.

Oh, I think a lot of Linux people are listening. I've never bought into the idea that many people seem to hold that all Linux advocates are a bunch of immature, loudmouthed idiots. There are some of those, certainly, as anyone who has visited /. knows. But to judge all Linux people by the actions of a few loudmouth punks is a mistake. The vast bulk of Linux advocates are folks just like us, quiet, responsible, and just trying to get something done. To regard folks who advocate Linux as members of some monolithic group of fanatics is to trivialize an important software movement. My own opinion is that Linux will eventually dominate Windows NT in server space. Whether or not that also occurs on the desktop is still uncertain, at least in my opinion. Linux running KDE is primitive compared to Windows, but they're making strides quickly. A year from now, the gap will be smaller. Two years from now, there may be no gap at all, and Linux may be a viable alternative to Windows for ordinary users. We'll just have to wait and see.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank McPherson [mailto:frank@fmcpherson.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2000 2:00 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Linux UI Comments

Robert, I read your comments regarding the KDE UI conventions vs. Windows. It's my personal observation that there is a difference between software designed and written by programmers to meet their own requirements vs. software designed by programmers to meet customer/consumer requirements.

And that is one of the problems I see with the whole open source movement. For whom is the software written?

As a person who uses a computer for hobby and living, and who comes from a Microsoft Windows world, your comments make perfect sense. All you are saying is that Linux software needs to be designed for the user in mind. Not necessarily what is cool to do in the programmer's mind.

But I also suspect that many Linux and open source programmers think we are totally off our rocker.

Frank McPherson, MCSE
frank@fmcpherson.com, www.fmcpherson.com
Microsoft MVP - Windows CE
Windows CE Knowledge Center, http://start.at/know_ce

Yes, but again I'll emphasize that what I was saying applied to Linux on the desktop, for use by ordinary users. Linux in server-space is a very different thing.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Moshe Bar [mailto:moshe@moelabs.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2000 8:31 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: The "hdparm -U 1 " Trick

Dear Robert

I refer to Dave Farquhar's advise on routinely booting Linux machines and telling them

/sbin/hdparm -u 1 -d 1 /dev/hda

There is a warning that has to go with this. As one of the original developers of this feature, I have to warn that on some machines (it used to be on a lot of machines, once) this will cause a system crash.

What this parameter does is enable interrupts during the IDE controller's processing of an I/O interrupt. In the past, most IDE controller's could not be interrupted during an interrupt. This is why SCSI were preferred in true, pre-emptive multi-tasking environments such as OS/2 and WinNT3.51.

Nowadays, most (but not all) IDE controller's can handle being interrupted without messing up.

As of RedHat6.1 and SuSE6.4 there are still just enough of these cheap and/or old IDE controllers not able to handle being interrupted that the distros still boot without enabling them.

Also, this "trick" (it really isn't) will not speed up you machine whatsoever. Why not? Because all it does is decrease interrupt latency. In other words, if during an I/O (usually between 25 and 70 msecs) you move your mouse in X a lot, you MIGHT see a smoother movement of your mouse. That's all. If your machine is slow it is because it is short of RAM, CPU, I/O channels or any combination thereof. Interrupt handling latency is not connected to the system's performance in any meaningful way, unless you run Real Time Linux for a nuclear reactor. In that case you would run QNX or Windriver's OS anyway. :-)

I could go on here for a while, explaining how interupts work, but I don't want to waste your screen real estate. For those interested in the subject, wait for my book "Linux Kernel Internals" to come out in May2000. You might also want to visit my article on this issue in Byte (Keeping the Time; it also discusses the hdparm directive)

Be well

Moshe
comments@moelabs.com
www.moelabs.com

Thanks.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Hough [mailto:phil4@compsoc.man.ac.uk]
Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2000 9:30 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject:

"getting recommendations for CD-R blanks is meaningless unless you restrict it to those using exactly the same burner (and ROM rev) that you are using."

Strange... I've got a cheapo Misumi CD (Re)Writer... so far I've not come across a single CDR that it hasn't written to correctly... ones I've tried include:

Cheap noname unbranded.
BASF
FujiFilm
Samsung
Memorex
Pioneer
Addonics
TDK
Traxdata
Sony
Mitsumi

Quite a varied list I'd say.

That's why I find your problem a little strange.

ATB.

Phil

There's no doubt that newer CD-R(W) drives and newer media have fewer compatibility problems than earlier products, but the problems still exist. I've used at least half a dozen types of blanks with both drives I mentioned, and both drives worked fine with all blanks. But there's no guarantee that any particular blank will work with any particular drive, so it's still wise to do some testing before you buy a large number of blanks.

wpoison

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Tuesday, 25 April 2000

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Malcolm reached another milestone yesterday. He was bugging me to go out, so I put on his snout protector, attached the leash, and took him out in the front yard. He and Duncan sniffed around the bushes for a while, and then Malcolm casually lifted his leg and expertly peed on the bush. Malcolm is now 6 months and three weeks old. I wasn't expecting him to do that for another month or two anyway. Barbara was out running errands, so she missed it. I'm sorry he didn't wait for her to be home, because she was looking forward to seeing him lift his leg for the first time. Kind of like watching a baby's first steps, I guess. Since she returned home, he's returned to squatting, so she hasn't seen him lift his leg yet.

Dave Farquhar observes that Reichführer-SS und Oberstgrüppenführer der Rechtsanwälte Janet "Heinrich" Reno originally planned to go in and grab Elian Gonzalez herself, but she didn't want to scare him too badly so she instead sent in the Gestapo guy with the mask and the machine pistol.

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-----Original Message-----
From: John Dominik [mailto:John.Dominik@GreatClips.com]
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2000 10:32 AM
To: 'webmaster@ttgnet.com'
Subject: Adding a second NIC

Mr. Thompson;

I might be the 478th person to write regarding this, but I thought I'd attempt to help.

Several months back I went through two days of hell figuring that I knew better and there had to be some easy way to force the system to find two identical network cards and use them as an inbound and outbound for a proxy server.

Sounds stupid, but the simple solution (at least under NT 4.0) was to remove second card from the machine, boot, remove the existing card drivers from the OS, shut down, install second card, boot, install the drivers (which will detect two cards rather than one), and then you're fine (after yet another reboot).

Detection of which card is which was impossible from inside the box (in our environment), so I had to do trial and error (set an IP address, plug in only one cable to network, and ping the box. No response means "it's the other card"). Perhaps another of your readers has a better method for detection. Hope this helps...
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
John.Dominik@GreatClips.com
Information Technologies Manager

No, the first, actually. Thanks.

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-----Original Message-----
From: H [mailto:hstuck@excite.com]
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2000 11:08 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: And the photographer?

What I find most anomalous about the picture is the picture itself. Where was the photographer? Was the picture posed (which seems a stupid conjecture)? What was cropped out, if anything, of the picture? The picture makes it look like the photographer preceeded the armed US Border Patrol officer into the room. Really?

Cheers.

That was my first thought as well. I haven't followed this situation much, and at first I thought the picture must have been taken by a family member, which made me wonder why the Gestapo guy hadn't confiscated the film or deleted the image. Then later I read that representatives of the press were in the house, and it's much more dangerous for the government to mess with the press than with a private citizen. Apparently, that picture was taken by a member of the press. However, I understand that the event was also filmed and that that footage was suppressed, so I'm not sure why the still picture was allowed to be seen. Perhaps the government regarded the still picture as relatively innocuous, which makes me wonder what the film footage would have shown.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waggoner [waggoner (at) gis (dot) net]
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2000 1:07 PM
To: chriswj@mostxlnt.co.uk
Cc: Robert Bruce Thompson (E-mail)
Subject: Micro-money

I'd like to be wrong on this subject, but I don't think I will be.

Here's an example that's even closer to home. In Boston, telephone subscribers have a plan available, called "Metropolitan Service" which, in exchange for a monthly fee of about $16, allows unlimited calls within Boston proper and the first-tier suburbs. Without the plan, calls are billed at $0.01 per call plus $0.01 per minute. I think this approaches micro-money.

The state commission which regulates this stuff, has recently released a study that shows the vast majority of those who subscribe to Metropolitan Service, would be charged less than $8, if they opted to have calls individually billed.

To me, this shows how determined the mindset is, to get things 'free'. It will even pay extra money for the privilege of not being charged 'per-use'.

Typical of government, the rate commission is now determining how it can save the people from themselves.

Don't think so. It's interesting how two people can see the same data and come to opposite conclusions. We have much the same telephone billing option here. The percentage of people who, having chosen the flat rate option, make out on this deal is immaterial. My question to you is: what percentage of the people to whom this option is available choose to use it? If it's anything like what it is here, the answer is that only a tiny percentage of people elect to pay extra for the flat-rate extended calling area option. I think it's something like 1% here. That means that 99% of the people to whom the option is available choose instead to pay as they go. And of the 1% who elect that option, most have good reason to--they have close family who live in the extended calling area, frequently do business with companies in Greensboro, and so on.

The key is how often someone uses or plans to use a resource. If they plan to use it frequently, they want an unmetered option. If they plan to use it only sporadically, they're willing to pay per incident. That's why metered local telephone service has been a complete failure here in the states, whereas everyone pays per call for long distance. Most people make many more local calls than long-distance calls.

And cost is an issue, too. As I've observed in the past, a long-distance company could kill its competitors simply by offering flat-rate long-distance calls--unlimited, unmetered calls to anywhere in the US for, say, $15 per month. There would, of course, be an initial flurry of heavy usage until the novelty died off, but once it did people would go back to pretty much their original calling patterns. People don't watch more TV, for example, simply because their cable is flat rate. Nor would they make more long-distance telephone calls simply because they were now flat rate. I mean, if you call your mother long-distance once a week, you're not suddenly going to start calling her every day just because it's flat rate, right? Actually, the only reason we haven't seen flat-rate long-distance is because of the nasty mesh of federal and state taxes, kickbacks, and subsidy payments that are all based on per-minute billing. If those didn't exist, all long-distance companies would be offering flat-rate right now.

Nor does micro-money rule out a flat-rate approach. With a proper implementation of micro-money I could, for example, price each page read at ten cents, but also provide various flat rate alternatives such as unlimited page reads for $5/month, $10/quarter, $35/year, or whatever. There's not necessarily any connection between the concepts of paying for content and the method or billing cycle used to make those payments. In fact, I'd guess that regular readers would sign up for the all-you-can-eat plan by the quarter or by the year.

wpoison

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Wednesday, 26 April 2000

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We went to a going-away party in Greensboro last night for a couple of CBCR folks who are moving to Florida. Very nice party, and we didn't get home until well after midnight, which is unusual for us these days. I had a bunch of email waiting when I got home, which I took time to process. I didn't get to sleep until about 0130 and woke up about 0630, so I'm running short on sleep, as has become usual lately.

Speaking of mail, there was some interesting stuff waiting in my inbox, which I'll post, but it's short-shrift time. I have to leave for a dentist appointment in a few minutes. Ugh. They haff vays of making us talk.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Barrett [mailto:jonzann@altavista.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 9:53 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Reno Allowed Photos During Elian Siege (washingtonpost.com)

An explanation of the photographer's presence from the Washington Post. As to where the TV crews were, I leave you to draw your own conclusions. Note - the print edition showed the full series of photos. I couldn't locate them on their web site.

Thanks.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: McDonell @ The Park [mailto:mcdonell35@earthlink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 11:14 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Printer/Software compatibility?

In PC Mag, 5/9/2000, pg.34, an article on a service called Epinions.com caught my eye and my fancy. I loaded the URL

http://www.epinions.com/

and soon found some reviews of my latest hardware acquisition - the HP 1000 DeskJet Printer. One reviewer (pianofixer?) complained about not being able to print his WordPerfect files on the HP 1000. Because of this, I think he tossed his specimen out of a high window. Incidental to posting my own review, an easy task, I decided to go further and see if our copy of WP 5.2 would work, now that we have discarded our HP 820 InkJet (fatal part failure). "Pianofixer" was told by HP to upload the drivers for HP 870; something he did not want to do. His wisdom is without measure. He was also told that "....HP was having a problem with Corel..." (For what it is worth, I also have had problems with WordPerfect but my wife loves it.)

I did what HP suggested. I had to endure a 4.4 MB download. I expected a printer driver, got an elephant. Nevertheless, I installed it and spent the next 7 hours in a death struggle for supremacy over my PC. Not only would WP not allow selection of HP 870 nor HP 1000, Windows 95 would freeze if I tried to do it. Try running anything without a Control Panel, Win Explorer, DOS, etc. If anyone is reading this or those reviews in Epinion, DO NOT TRY THAT SUGGESTION! I have empirical evidence that it will not work.

QUESTION: Who would normally be responsible to the user public for a situation like this? Should HP post a prominent disclosure? Should Corel post a patch for older versions of their software? I suspect that "pianofixer" has a more recent version. Should someone be able to get ahold of the leaders of these two companies and bang their heads together until the public is satisfied?

Well, I don't think you can blame HP. All they can reasonably be expected to do is provide a functioning Windows 95 driver, which it appears they have done. If WordPerfect cannot use that driver, it seems to me that the problem is with WordPerfect. But neither is it entirely fair to blame Corel for not continuing to update a product as old as WP 5.2. I mean, I seem to remember installing WP 6.0 at least five years ago.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Ward-Johnson [mailto:chriswj@mostxlnt.co.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 11:35 AM
To: 'webmaster@ttgnet.com'
Subject: Re: And the photographer

The BBC have been saying that there were NBC video cameras inside the house, but that at the time of the raid they were turned off, which seems strange. The (broadcast) videocams I'm familiar with - and this goes back 5 years - took a couple of minutes to warm up and get going and, if you were expecting something interesting to happen like stormtroopers to come through the door, you'd leave them turned on, especially in a situation where you could leave them plugged into the mains and therefore not running down the battery pack. I can't imagine that this situation has changed for anything but the better since I last sat in the dark with a camera crew waiting for the cops to arrive (to evict a bunch of squatters from a building in London), so either the camera operators were negligent or they'd been ordered to turn them off by someone.

The photo concerned is being credited 'AP Photo' here, but then I'd assume the photographer did a deal with AP to syndicate it for him, unless it really was an AP guy.

Ah, found it. The photographer in the house was from Associated Press after all - Alan Diaz. There's more of his pictures on the AP website, which add interestingly to the 'At whom was the gun pointed' debate. And more details of the raid too - like the fact that 151 armed federal agents took part. Good Grief.

CNN has an interview with Diaz in QuickTime/RealAudio/Windows Media formats [here], which adds an interesting insight into how the raid went down.

Regards

Chris Ward-Johnson
Chateau Keyboard - Computing at the Eating Edge
http://www.chateaukeyboard.com

Thanks.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waggoner [waggoner (at) gis (dot) net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 4:57 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Cc: chriswj@mostxlnt.co.uk
Subject: RE: Micro-money

What percentage of telephone subscribers are signed up for 'unlimited' telephone service in Boston is a figure I'm not able to find at present, but I can tell you that when the price study came out, we dropped the $16 Metropolitan Service, and--with no change to our calling habits--found our local calls were always less than $4/mo. At the time we made that change, I checked with between 6 to 10 others on this subject: ALL had Metropolitan Service with no plans to drop it.

My guess is that in the largest 5 to 10 US cities, over half of telephone subscribers use such a plan. We also had that service in Chicago, and so did all of our neighbors and all my co-workers.

I readily admit you both have good points, and I'm already sold on them. I would sign up to "all-you-can-eat" for each of your sites.

But even in view of your advocacy, we'll have to disagree on how this one will play out, as my guess is that both human nature and meddling governments will generally see access fees as discriminatory, and the latter will no doubt prolong, if not prohibit, per-use transactions from becoming a universal reality--especially if they are micro size (subscription sites charging big bucks will have less trouble, in my opinion). For a long time to come, I suspect that the money flow will be to the initial access provider of the Internet service.

Actually, I can envision price 'tiers' of access at the ISP level (à la cable TV) before I could see per-use site access charging becoming a reality (which I don't think it ever will). I believe the tier method would be easier for you website creators to see instituted, than a per-use micro method--although clearly a tier system would leave a lot to be desired.

I'm a cynic on this, because I've yet to see either human nature, or our Republic, gravitate towards more civil liberties when it comes to personal choice. So many things that involve self-determination ultimately succumb to the interference of someone else or some government group, instead of residing with the individual--free to make his own decision. This micro-money issue won't be any different, no matter how many rational and good reasons there are for its implementation.

But more importantly, I think we are heading for a revolution in the area of copyrights. I just don't see how current copyright statutes can possibly be enforced vis à vis the Internet. The RIAA now is going after universities over student access to Napster on university networks, but what the universities who are agreeing to ban it are doing, is accepting responsibility for Internet and network content and access. This is only going to open the universities to further massive litigation from other sources, who will now want the universities to ride herd on, and be responsible for, the use of other Internet content. And ultimately, that will set precedence and spread--possibly to the ISP level.

This is going to be a big mess that will make lawyers big money! Meanwhile, the lawyers are doing what they always do: head for the place where they smell money, which will serve only to make my two kids' college education cost more--while the bottom line will be that the university kids will find some way around the ban in the end.

Nevertheless, I see those as mere speed bumps of a more glacial change: that information, knowledge, and communication of it are becoming free. Information on subjects that formerly, no amount of money would buy, are today easily obtainable as a result of the Internet.

Many years ago, Pournelle predicted that any question one could ask would find an answer through the Internet. He left out the part that--discounting the access charge--it would be free. It very well may turn out that all information and content may become public domain instantly. Personally, I don't think that would be the end of the world, but it's going to put a lot of us (including musicians and entertainers) in the same boat that US commercial TV broadcasters have ridden during the past two decades: learning to live on grocery store profit-margins or else doing a lot more creative thinking to rise above that.

Well, you may be right. But the nice thing is that we'll know for sure in a few years.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Swijsen [mailto:qjsw@oce.nl]
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 5:12 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Re: You moro.. ???

Remark. I started this reply on friday, but after 3 spontaneous reboots (that is Win95 on a Compaq) between 1600 and 1800h I dropped the ball. And I didn't pick the saved stuff up yesterday because I had more than enough ball in the air already. So the Linux reply is a bit delayed. Sorry > Well, of course, existing Unix interface standards are meaningless for Linux.

Wrong in the sense that Linux is UNIX so the standards are not 'meaningless'. A lot of , if not most, traditional UNIX programs are (being) ported to Linux and they work best under a traditional UNIX look and feel. And most of the libraries are either ported from UNIX or made by UNIX minded programmers in a time when Linux was not seen as competing for the Win-desktop. So naturally they look, feel and act like the Real Stuff. The same reasoning was used against the move from Win3.x to Win9.x (a bigger UI change than the move from Win to KDE I think). It didn't apply then because there were lots of new users without prior experience. If you want Linux on every desktop and only on the desktop then, maybe, the UNIX standards are meaningless.

> If Linux is to become a successful mainstream desktop operating system, the Linux GUI needs to look and work as much as possible like the Windows GUI.

( :-) just leave out the "and work" cause we wouldn't want all the crashes now would we? :-) ) I wouldn't say "as much as possible" but there is indeed a lot of ground still to be covered if Linux is to become a Winxx replacement/drop-in. Much more important than renaming some items and hiding some names (hey on my Win PCs the C: is always preceded by a name (Candy, Carin, etc) ) is making actions and layouts consistent. For example having the menu 'File' (whatever it is named) in the same position in all applications would help more than hiding /dev/hd0 . Lots of people today are going to come from Windows so it may apply here but I am not sure. Most of the converts will convert because they have had enough of the Windows problems and providing them with something that looks exactly like windows isn't going to inspire confidence.

> But anyone who wants Linux to succeed as a mainstream desktop OS had better realize that they'd better go to the mountain, because the mountain ain't gonna come to them.

Unluckily a lot (majority?) of the Linux advocates (notice that I don't write developers here) actively want to be different from MS. Their guiding is rather : "If the mountain doesn't come to us we will get it flattened". Lots of them want MS down more than that they want Linux up. The big unlucky thing is that they have in impact because they scream the hardest.

If you look at Linux developers, people actually writing and tweaking code, you get a different picture. Those that get paid for doing it are at work, they are actively climbing the mountain. Others more often than not see no incentive to do so, if they are writing code for a network driver or a communications protocol they use the standard libraries for the user interface. (side remark : When I write code (not for Linux :-( ) I don't care much for the user interface because I know that whatever I do the users are not going to like it, they always want to change it. )

Then there is another point. Linux can succeed as a (not the but a) mainstream desktop OS even without copying the Windows interface. It will not replace Windows (unless MS keeps shooting its own feet) but that is not necessary or even wanted. For progress we need competition and you don't get that if you replace Windows.

New topic: Micro Payment (now why does that make me think about Micro(soft) Money ??? :-) Chuck likens the telephone pay-per-call system to micro payment. Both are however totally different. Billing the phone is much easier than billing websites. All calls get billed to one account and paid to one (other) account. Only two things must be taken into account, the target of the call and the rate to be billed. With web pages you get the issue of caches and proxies thrown in. Micro-money doesn't rule out a flat rate system but combining them for one site could be a problem. Consider me. I am a regular reader so I would like to pay once and read unlimited. But I read from home some times and sometimes from the office. In the office I am, with about 3000 other people, behind a big caching proxy server. Does the whole company reads your site on my single payment or do I pay per visit from the office? When I visit from two (or more) location, even forgetting about proxy and cache stuff, should I pay two flat rate accounts or only one? These are (technically) difficult to solve questions.

One problem in comparing flat rate with metered rates, from a customer perspective, is that it is difficult to know what you would actually pay if you switch from flat to metered. Unless the flat rate invoice actually shows timed detail of your usage. Here in Belgium we have had metered rates since, well for ever or there about. The invoices always showed how long you called and recently they have been breaking up the detail more an more so you can check better when you called and where you called. The rate system is however getting muddled here by using different rates and billing methods for various services and, with the breakdown of the monopolies, companies. Especially GSM (mobile phones) have combined flat metered packages fouling up simple comparisons. The result of the confusion is that people tend to choose for the method they understand best, either flat or with a fixed metering, rather than calculating what comes out cheapest. The great advantage of flat rate over metered rates is that there is less margin for disputes and less chance for surprises. Forgetting to log off on a metered rate can be very expensive

(Oeps, this has become waaaayy too long for posting. )

You raise many interesting points, and unfortunately I have to leave in about ten minutes to go to the dentist. All of these issues are somewhat academic for the moment, since all the pieces aren't yet in place. But it's going to be an interesting next few years.

wpoison

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Thursday, 27 April 2000

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I got back from the dentist around lunch time yesterday, with my head still resonating. I took a couple of aspirin and spent the rest of the day lying around reading, with an occasional nap. They used the dreaded ultrasound cleaner, which is based, I think, on the same technology used by the machines that cut the Channel Tunnel from England to France. As a matter of fact, I think the machine the dentist used was one of the Chunnel machines that they picked up war surplus. I screamed when I saw them haul out that machine. "I'll talk," I cried, "I'll tell you anything you want to know." But they just laughed fiendishly, and I was already strapped into the chair, alas.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Donders [mailto:alan_donders@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 12:31 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: CD-ROM Drive

First, long time reader of your site - thanks for all the great advice and commentary.

Second, putting together a new PC and was looking for a recommendation for a IDE CD-ROM drive. Any particular brands you favor?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the kind words. As far as IDE CD-ROM drives, I never worry much about brand. I use mostly Toshiba models, but other name-brand models are probably just as good. I've also had good experiences with Teac, Panasonic, Hitachi, NEC, and Mitsumi, to name just a few. If Plextor made an IDE CD-ROM drive, I'd probably use it for any personal system I built, but they don't (unless you count their excellent PlexWriter 12/4/32 ATAPI CD burner). If budget permits, you might consider buying that Plextor model, which gives you both a CD burner and an excellent general-purpose CD-ROM drive.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Donders [mailto:alan_donders@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 8:16 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: F.Y.I. - Cos. Seek Total Web Access in N.C.

Just in case you haven't seen this yet:

Thursday April 27 2:21 AM ET

Cos. Seek Total Web Access in N.C.

Yes, thanks. I saw it in the paper this morning. Yet another stinking subsidy program putatively intended to bridge the non-existent "digital divide" but whose only real effect will be to increase costs for those of us who live in urban and suburban areas and who are therefore already paying more than our fair share of costs.

wpoison

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Friday, 28 April 2000

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Welcome to those of you who arrived from Jerry Pournelle's page. The accesses for this page were up yesterday by about 250 page reads compared to an average Thursday. I assume that most of those additional hits were from people visiting from Jerry's site. Please keep coming back.

Yesterday was a very good day. I finished pre-Tech Review re-write on the penultimate chapter of PC Hardware in a Nutshell and received the final advance check for that book from my agent. Just one chapter left to re-write, that on processors, and the book will be off to tech review. That means I'll be able to start devoting nearly all of my time to working on the hardware book that Pournelle and I are doing.

But before I do that, I'm going to take a day or two to rationalize things in my office. At the moment, for example, I'm using an old Pentium II/300 with 128 MB of RAM and an IDE hard disk as my main system. My real main workstation, a dual-Pentium III with 384 MB of RAM and SCSI drives out the wazoo, started overheating a couple of months ago, and I haven't had time to tear it down and find out what's causing the problem. I suppose it may be something as simple as air filters that need cleaned, but I suspect the fact that it has nearly 100 GB of high-end SCSI hard disks in it may have something to do with it overheating. I'll probably rebuild it with just one 18 GB Seagate Cheetah, and relocate the other drives to other boxes, perhaps including a main storage server.

But the real reason I want my real workstation back isn't because it's much faster than what I'm using right now. It's because this old box has an Intel 740 video card in it that doesn't support anything above 1024X768 with reasonable video settings. The best it'll do at 1280X1024 is 64K colors at 75 Hz refresh, which just doesn't cut it. The 1600X1200 numbers are even worse--256 colors at 75 Hz. Ugh. So I really look forward to getting my Matrox G400 back and being able to run my 19" Hitachi monitor at 1280 and 1600 again.

I also have to get some other systems finished up and in place. For example, my new Windows 98 box is still sitting on the workbench with the cover off. It's intended to replace the old Dell Pentium/200, which is now a Linux box. When I took down the Dell Win98 box, I also left the HP ScanJet scanner orphaned, and Barbara needs to scan some photographs. The new Windows 98 box should be noticeably faster than the old one, though. That always happens when you replace a Pentium/200 system with a Pentium III/650.

I also have my new full-tower test-bed system sitting here with wires hanging out of it, another box that will be my Linux workstation (as opposed to the Dell, which will be a Linux server), and yet another box that will become a Linux firewall. Then there are a couple of more boxes that are destined to become Windows 2000 Server systems, and one that will become a Windows 2000 Professional workstation. And I don't even want to think about the standard Athlon test-bed(s) I need to build.

Read Bob Walder's page today for a story about justice horribly miscarried. The laws in Britain ensure the safety of home-invading thugs by punishing homeowners who dare to defend themselves. Outrageous. Bob solicited comments, so I sent him this:

England is obviously not a civilized country if the situation is as represented in the documents you linked to. Any country that would try a man for defending himself and his home needs to re-examine its priorities.

If someone invades a man's home, it should not be up to the householder to assume any unnecessary risk whatsoever in defending himself, his family, and his property. He is entitled by any reasonable standard to use whatever force is necessary in his sole judgement to remove the threat. He should not be held responsible for determining whether or not the invaders are armed before he uses lethal force. The reasonable assumption should be that the invaders are armed and that the householder is entitled to fire without warning.

If, for example, it is possible for the householder to shoot the intruder in the back, he should do so to ensure his own safety, and the authorities should not question his decision. Nor should they question the level of force he uses. I've often told my wife, for example, that if she ever faces an intruder she should shoot him repeatedly until her gun runs dry. Then she should reload and shoot him some more. In real life, things aren't as they are shown on TV. An intruder who has been shot many times, even if mortally wounded, may still be able to return fire. In one famous case which proves the uselessness of the 9mm round, for example, the police had shot a bad guy 23 times (mostly central-body hits), and he was still returning fire.

If it had been me, I'd have shaken Mr. Martin's hand, organized a vote of thanks from the community, cut off the heads of the intruders, and posted them on pikes as a warning to others.

To which Bob replied:

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Walder [mailto:bob@bobwalder.com]
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 8:01 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: RE: Tony Martin

Robert,

I agree wholeheartedly - but I am not sure I am in the majority in this country. I am sick and tired of the police telling us that we should not take the law into our own hands, and then repeatedly failing to do the job for us.

The burglar who survived, by the way, gets 3 years in jail compared to Tony Martin's life sentence! What sort of world is this we live in?

I was once burgled while I was asleep upstairs. I mentioned to the police officer the next day that I wish I had heard them - he replied that I was better off with things as they were, since if I had come downstairs I would have either been in the morgue, the hospital or in court! There is no good outcome for the householder. He said that we are not even allowed to set a dog on them. The only thing we can do is have a vicious dog loose on the premises, in which case the burglar then has no legal recourse if he loses a limb - that's when I got my first Rottweiller.

As far as I am concerned, if someone attacks my person or invades my property he should lose all protection of the law and risk the consequences - he is no longer acting according to the rules of a civilised society. I should therefore be able to kill him and cut him up into little pieces for Benson with impunity.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: McDonell @ The Park [mailto:mcdonell35@earthlink.net]
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 4:57 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: RE: Printer/Software compatibility?

I follow and agree with your points. However, the next time one needs a 100 Watt light bulb or Gasoline for one's car or a Polio Vaccination; one would not expect to find out the products are "no longer supported" and that one will be required to buy a new lamp, car or body. I have thought that the "Upgrade" track is similar to having one's feet nailed to an escalator tread. Keep up or you will be strained through those metal fingers at the top and what is left of you will be riding back down. Only in the "New Economy", eh?

Incidentally, I decided to try that suggestion of HP and installed the "driver" for the HP 870. It did not work. Nor did my machine. Something caused it to stick. It took me several hours to get back to any printing at all.

Thanks and regards.

Well, perhaps, but with light bulbs and gasoline you're talking about relatively simple and completely mature technologies. One of the implications of maturity is standardization. Light bulbs and gasoline haven't changed much in the last 50 years or so. That's not the case with computers and software, nor do I think any of us really wants it to be. Improving an immature technology means change, and change means obsoleting older, more primitive versions of that technology and developing new standards. Unless you really think we'd all be better off running MS-DOS and not having the Internet, you have to put up with the annoyances of progress. I'll take progress, with all the aggravation that implies.

And as far as vaccinations, I don't know about polio, but I think you'll find that those for smallpox are "no longer supported." Why? Because smallpox was officially declared eradicated. So now in an emergency the entire US medical system could come up with something like 5,000 doses of smallpox vaccine--just enough to protect the high government poobahs in the event that some hostile nation launches a smallpox attack with stored military-grade virus. So things that were once ubiquitous and critically important are sometimes overtaken by events.

wpoison

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Saturday, 29 April 2000

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And speaking of justice horribly miscarried, it's now official. The government wants to split Microsoft into two independent companies, an operating system company and an applications company, which will also have IE. It's hard to see how doing this can benefit customers, which was after all the original rationale for the action against Microsoft. The only result I foresee if this madness succeeds is that both Windows and Office will end up costing more and being less integrated.

I suppose their thinking was that the independent applications company would port their applications to Linux and other alternative operating systems, thereby aiding those operating systems at the expense of Windows. That's not likely to happen, though, any more than most Windows applications from third-party vendors have been ported to Linux.

But I suppose now we'll all eventually end up having to pay for IE, thanks to the government. How does that help us?.

FedEx showed up yesterday afternoon with a nice care package from WaggEd, Microsoft's primary PR agency. They sent me NFR copies of Windows 2000 Professional, Server, and Advanced Server, along with a copy of the W2KP Resource Kit. Just in time, too. I'd put off requesting W2K until recently, but I really need to get some full-time W2K systems up. Not just for the hardware book that Pournelle and I are working on, but for the W2K books that I have under contract with O'Reilly.

Barbara has agreed to be the first guinea pig. Her main system currently runs Windows NT Server 4.0, and is the Primary Domain Controller for one of the NT domains on our local network. I plan to convert one of the other NT4S boxes to the PDC for that domain and install Windows 2000 Professional on her system. I don't know for sure, but I seem to remember that there's no way to upgrade from Server 4.0 to 2000 Professional. I think I tried that once on a scratch box.

The real problem may be drivers. Barbara's box uses an Intel SR440BX Sun River motherboard. It's actually quite a nice board, with integrated nVIDIA TNT video and SoundBlaster audio. Unlike most systems with TNT video, which have mediocre 2D display quality, particularly at higher resolutions, the Intel implementation has 2D display quality nearly as good as Matrox. They installed a bunch of extra filtering to make it that way.

I just checked the Intel web site, and they have no Windows 2000 drivers. So I went over to the nVIDIA site, and find that they don't even have a reference driver for Windows 2000. They do have a beta version 3.78, but I don't want to install a beta video driver on Barbara's system.

I ran web stats this morning for my own site and Pournelle's, as usual. For the first time ever, I had one day with more than 2,000 page reads. I remember that when I first started this site, I wondered if anyone would bother to read it. The first time I had 100 page reads in a day, I was very pleased and a little surprised. The first time I had 1,000 page reads in a day, I was delighted. At this point, I estimate that I have something over 1,000 more-or-less regular readers. Some visit every day, and others once or twice a week. My sincere thanks to all of you. There's nothing more depressing for an author than the thought that no one will bother to read the stuff he writes. Obviously, there are a lot of you reading this page, and I appreciate it.

Oh, well. I'd better get to work on finishing up this final chapter for tech review. And Barbara is doing a site design, so I guess we'll have to spend the morning re-doing all her pages.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Nance [mailto:tim@nancepub.com]
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 7:39 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Great Site

Robert, Great site! I came across it from the link you put on Jerry site.

One question, if you don't mind lending a hand on a off the wall question, when I drug your link to the link bar on Internet Explorer the icon for your page was your picture, not the perfunctory explorer icon. The only other outfit that I seen pull this off was MSNBC.

Can you point me towards an explanation of this procedure? Thanks for helping out a stranger,

Tim Nance
Nance Publishing
mailto:tim@nancepub.com
http://www.nancepub.com
Visit the all new icon webzine http://www.iconzine.com

Thanks for the kind words.

As to the icon, there's a story behind that. A year or so back, I was checking that portion of my web access statistics that lists files that had been requested but did not exist on the site. Some of them were obviously files that I'd done the links improperly for, but the most commonly requested non-existent file was favicon.ico. After some serious searching, I was able to determine that a new feature of IE5 is that it always requests favicon.ico. If the file exists in the same directory as the html file being requested, IE5 uses it as the icon for that page.

So the short answer is that all you have to do is use a graphics editor (I used IrfanView) to convert any graphics file you want to an icon file, rename that file favicon.ico, and stick it in the html directory. There's more information posted about how to do this on the Microsoft web site.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: McDonell @ The Park [mailto:mcdonell35@earthlink.net]
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 9:36 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: RE: Printer/Software compatibility?

At 09:54 AM 04/28/2000 -0400, you wrote:

Unless you really think we'd all be better off running MS-DOS and not having the Internet, you have to put up with the annoyances of progress. I'll take progress, with all the aggravation that implies.

OK. Me too. I just had to remember some pretty basic DOS commands (exit) and I do prefer the icons.

I checked my records and found out that we bought WP 5.1 right after WP 6.0 came out. It was too cheap to pass up. At that time, WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were ahead in the popularity contests but all that has come to pass. WP 6.2 needed more hard drive than I owned at the time. So, I was well out on the "Trailing Edge" even then. WP 5.2 came from that "Surplus Software" outfit in Oregon. I think they have matured as well - merged with or taken over by "Egghead" and maybe another company. They have become an on-line auction company. What we got in that WP 5.2 box was a Typewriter and 10 Key Calculator in a box. At work, meanwhile, the department was just beginning to discard 1950's IBM Selectrics and a lot of equally old calculators; displaced by WP 6 and Lotus 5. It was 1993. That old machinery had lasted 40 years. With irresistible upgrades every 2 years or so, it appears that change is the only thing we will be able to buy. Will anyone have time to do anything except learn to become adept at new and better editions? Are those new editions making life simpler? Pardon me for just wondering.

Sincerely

Maurice McDonell

Simpler? No. But there's no question in my mind that things are better now than they were 5, 10, or 15 years ago. I think that with any new technology, people continue upgrading until the Good Enough stage is reached, and we're nowhere near that point with computers and software.

wpoison

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Sunday, 30 April 2000

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I never did get to work on the chapter yesterday, so I will have to get it done today. I want to send it off to my editor so that I can be shut of this book, at least until the suggested changes from the tech reviewers start coming back. Instead of working on the chapter, Barbara and I worked on her web pages. She's decided, with my encouragement, to focus her work as an independent researcher on doing research for writers.

There were horrendous problems with this and Pournelle's web site Friday and yesterday, along with many of the other web sites hosted by pair.com. It started with UUNet losing one of their main backbone routers, and then apparently screwing things up further in an attempt to resolve the problem. As if that wasn't bad enough, pair.com then started having problems with one of their own main routers. Details here. The upshot is that access to our domains was very slow for much of the time from Friday afternoon until late last night. Although pair.com claimed the problem was resolved by 20:45 -0400, I was completely unable to access my own site, Pournelle's, or many other sites hosted at pair.com (e.g. Tom's Hardware, Storage Review) until about 22:00 -0400 last night. I was finally able to get to my own and Pournelle's POP servers at about 22:00. I was expecting to get a flood of email reporting the problems, but I didn't get even one message about either of our sites.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waggoner [mailto:waggoner (at) gis (dot) net]
Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2000 11:55 AM
To: Robert Bruce Thompson (E-mail)
Subject: Re: NT4S to W2k upgrade

If you haven't seen [this] they claim most of the O2k-SR1 install problems were with systems that were upgraded from NT4 to W2k. Article says WinMag recommends clean installs of MS OS'es, rather than upgrading.

Thanks. I've never installed any flavor of W2K other than as a clean install, or at least I can't remember doing so. I would probably have installed W2KP on Barbara's system as a fresh install just as a matter of good practice. There's not much use in attempting an upgrade anyway, because some of the applications she uses won't function under W2KP. For example, she now has the server version of BackupExec installed for her Tecmar Travan NS20 tape drive. That doesn't work under NT4W, let alone W2KP. Unfortunately, although I have the Workstation version of BackupExec, it won't run on W2KP, so I'll need to use the built-in Backup applet in W2KP until I can get a version of BackupExec that works under W2KP. Same deal, I'm afraid, with some of her other applications, such as the synchronizing software she uses to sync Outlook 2000 with her Palm Pilot. But the upside is that W2K does support USB, and she really covets this HP ScanJet 6200C scanner. It also has a SCSI interface, but I've never gotten around to installing it as a SCSI scanner on her NT4 Server box. We'll see what happens.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Sherburne Jr [mailto:ryszards@bellsouth.net]
Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2000 1:15 PM
To: 'thompson@ttgnet.com'
Subject: win 2k and the borg notebook

Bob, been lurking for several months now, thanx to Mr. Pournelle. Got to say I really like your daynotes, not as maniac as Syroid or some others. I have run into an odd w2k "feature" that I thought might interest. Work gave me a new Dell Latitude with w2k, but as I am the first in a large org to have w2k I am the beta. For starters, on the network at work my goodness this thing is fast. The machine came w/ a dock w/ built in fast ethernet. Lesson #1, and a precurser: Do Not boot a Dell Latitude with w2k for the first time unless it is in the dock and plugged to the net. If you do, there will be hell to pay hitting the network later. I had seen Jerry have similar problems with enabling network access in January this year on a new w2k install. Ended up with having to do a complete reinstall, the machine simply would not create a user with access to a networked domain. Reinstall (BTW this was the advice of my tech folks and the Dell tech support folks) the OS and boot first time on the network. Comes up during intial boot and after setting time zones properly asks if we will be on a network, as it should since the ethernet was happily connected now. Gave it the domain name, gave it a user name (it really wanted a user that had permissions to add a machine to the network) and voila a networked w2k notebook. BUT, I cannot turn that user into an administrator, as that user does not have admin rights on the networked domain. Also, even tho configured as a power user, that user cannot add software (Office 97) to the notebook. Easy enough, log off as that user, back in as admin on the notebook, and voila install software. BUT an admin user on the notebook still cannot access the network unless that user is also an admin on the network. This is a little insane. It seems impossible to create a user for the notebook which has admin privileges on the notebook but only user privileges for the network. I think this would be a useful thing, I could download software from our net and install w/o logging out andf in. It also would mean that I would not be walking around with a notebook that has on it a user with admin privileges to our net, probably a good thing security wise. (See US Dept. of State and British MI 6 for recent examples of why notebook security is an issue) And no, I cannot create a user with the same name for net access and notebook access and just switch back and forth. It looks like I will end up with a user account on the notebook with admin privileges for the notebook and a user account on the notebook with user privileges for our network and spend my life switching back and forth depending on what I need to do and whetehr I am docked or not. This seems a bit very odd for an OS that MS proclaims as the business users notebook OS. I am not new to w2k, having used it since early betas. I love its stabilty and user friendliness generally. It boots faster thatn NT4 or any 9x version I have used and the installs, even on odd machinery (2 processors, mutilple SCSI devices on 2 cards, etc) easier than anything I have touched since DOS. I just cannot imagine why the networking mechanisms are buried so deep in the personality of the OS that I cannot acheive something as simple as being a user on a networked domain and an admin on the notebook at the same time. Any ideas?

On a second note, re BCs that thjink they are a wolf. If you are ever in La, give a holler in advance and I will introduce you to the Louisiaana state dog the catahoula cur. Blue eyes, webbed feet, descended from crosses between the native wolf and spanish war dogs, looks like a big, big dalmation with a lot more colors and a great natural herder. Have to be big and tough to handle pigs and cows ion the LA. swamps. Smartest dogs I have ever seen, extremely defensive of their home and people, very few people will mess with a catahoula.

Thanx and keep columning,

Richard Sherbuirne jr

Sorry, but I don't know what the problem might be with W2K. I've not yet gotten a lot of experience with it. I can't say I'm surprised, though. I've been saying since its release that I consider the shipping version of W2K to be a beta release, particularly Server, although Professional has problems of its own, most notably pathetic driver support. I get a lot of nastygrams about that position, but I've seen no reason to change it. Perhaps one of my readers will have a suggestion.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Beland [mailto:matt@rearviewmirror.org]
Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2000 2:52 PM
To: gang@daynotes.com
Subject: Intel & Nvidia under Win2k

Bob (and anybody else interested)

My workstation at a certain company I used to work for had a Diamond Viper, which is the nVIDIA TNT 2 chipset. Microsoft provides with W2KP a driver that works fine with both the TNT and TNT2 chipsets, although you won't get the OpenGL capability that you get under 98. There are even drivers for the "Diamond Viper 7xx Series" that work fairly well, including OpenGL, although I had a few crashes using that driver. Diamond and NVIDIA both claim, when you ask, to be working on drivers, but their release date was March 1 - and since March 1 they've simply said "as soon as possible."

As for the Intel, I can't give a definite answer; my workstation used a Tyan Tiger 100 dual-processor board, which is based on the 440BX chipset, and it didn't have any problems. I had a single-processor system using a straight Intel 440BX-2 board with the PII system and the built-in video; it worked fine under W2KS, but I never tried it with Professional. I would assume that if it worked under Server, it would work under Professional - save that I've been bitten by those assumptions before. Also, that wasn't the Sun River series, it was the Sierra 2, so there may be some other "gotchas" in the wings.

Oh, and no, you can't go from NT4 Server to W2KP. I tried. Actually, it's almost as bad to try and go from NT4S to W2KS. Particularly if the NT server is a BDC or PDC.

Thanks. I kind of figured that the default drivers supplied with W2KP would work, although with limited functionality (and probably low performance). If in fact all that's missing is OpenGL, I can live without that. What I may do is just build Barbara a new system and relocate her Pentium III box to my office, where it'll await being stripped down and turned into a Windows 2000 Server box or something. I haven't decided.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Huth [mailto:mhuth@internetcds.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 30, 2000 1:16 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: What hardware to purchase these days?

Robert,

Wonder if you'd care to comment on hardware these days.

'Tis time to upgrade systems. I'm running a Pentium Pro 200 as a primary machine, running windows professional (used for day to day stuff, internet, database programming (informix). Linux on an old 133 acts as a server. I've a 486 running as a firewall (Gnatbox) and my "modern" machine a 266 exists so my sons (and I) can do work and play games.

I'm considering moving the pentium pro to function as the linux server, selling the 133 (or filling it with cement and anchoring a boat), promoting the 266 to become my wifes machine.

That leaves me with the chance to purchase two machines.

I lust after a dual pentium box as a daily box (dual 600mhz, 700, ??), would run professonal, and perhaps boot to beos and linux. Practical? Insane? Would you?

For a second machine, an AMD? 850mhz?

I'm not up to date on chipsets, video, motherboards, cdrw, dvd.

I tend to keep systems a long time (the pentium pro is about 6 years old!) and would appreciate suggestions, comments, political statements, etc

Now is a truly rotten time to be buying a system, because everything is in a state of flux. Even more so than usual. Not just processors, but chipsets and motherboards. Right now, for example, Intel doesn't make a chipset that doesn't have one or another downside. The 810E is very nice for entry level and mainstream general purpose systems, but the integrated video turns off a lot of people. The 440BX is still the best chipset that Intel makes overall, but it doesn't support 133 MHz FSB, and lacks ATA/66 and AGP4X. The 820 chipset is a disaster. It's fine if you use Rambus RDRAM, but even with the recent price cuts Rambus memory costs something like five times what SDRAM does. 820 boards that support SDRAM are available, but the memory performance is pathetic.

Then there's VIA, whose chipsets I've always found to be slow, buggy, and plagued with incompatibilities. I haven't done any in-depth work with any of the new VIA Apollo Pro133A boards yet, but from what I've seen and been told by people whose opinions I respect, the 133A is no faster running at 133 than the 440BX is running at 100. VIA boards are popular with enthusiasts--the folks who read Tom's Hardware and AnandTech--but I can't recommend them for mainstream users.

As far as the Athlon, again it's popular with the Tom's Hardware crowd, but there are some real downsides to it, not least its hideous power consumption. There's a reason why AMD certifies specific power supply models for use in Athlon systems. All of this will probably change when AMD starts shipping their new K75-core Athlons in volume this summer, but for now I'd steer clear of the Athlon, and I'd particularly avoid an Athlon system built on the first-generation AMD-751 Irongate chipset. The VIA KX133 is a better chipset, but it has problems of its own. I think the Athlon will become a viable mainstream processor later this summer, after Socket A processors and motherboards built on the AMD-760 and VIA KZ133 chipsets arrive. Until then, I think Intel is your best bet.

As far as processor speed, I'd steer clear of the faster models. Plunking a $600 700+ MHz Pentium III into a system just doesn't buy you much performance relative to a $100 to $250 Celeron or Pentium III running at 500 MHz or thereabouts. In fact, you'd probably be much better off with a dual-CPU 440BX board with a couple of Coppermine Pentium III/550s or /600s. You may even be able to get by with dual Celerons, particularly if they're the older 0.25µ Mendocino-core models.

I don't know anything yet about running dual Coppermine128 Celerons, and I'm not sure that anyone else does either. If it is possible, it'd give you tremendous bang for the buck. The Coppermine128 Celerons are essentially Coppermine Pentium IIIs with only two differences--they have only 128 KB of L2 cache (rather than the 256 KB of the Pentium III) and that L2 cache is only 4-way set associative rather than 8-way set associative. Still, for most common applications, the Coppermine128 Celeron is going to be about as fast as a similarly-clocked Coppermine Pentium, and probably faster than a Katmai-core Pentium III.

As far as Slot 1 versus Socket 370, Intel is gradually doing away with Slot 1, but it will remain viable for a long time to come, particularly because Slocket adapters are and will remain readily available. You can purchase a Slocket, install a Socket 370 processor in it, and install the Slocket in a Slot 1 motherboard. Note, however, that two distinct versions of Socket 370 exist. The older version supports only Mendocine-based Celerons (through 533). The newer version supports those older Celerons, but also supports Socket 370 Coppermine Pentium III processors and Socket 370 Coppermine128-based Celerons (the 533A and higher). If you buy a Socket 370 board, you want one with the latter type of socket(s).

In your situation, I'd probably build a dual-CPU system around an EPoX KP6-BS motherboard (about $160). It supports dual Slot 1 Pentium IIIs, including Coppermines, up to 700 or 750 MHz (currently). I'd probably populate it with a couple of 550 or 600 MHz Coppermine Pentium IIIs. You can use the several hundred dollars you'll save by using 550s instead of 750s to buy a good SCSI host adapter and SCSI hard disk, a better video card, and perhaps double the memory. That system will likely "feel" faster than one with two 750s and cheaper peripherals. In terms of raw processor power, the dual 750 system would be about a third faster than the dual 550, which is just enough to be noticeable. Spending that extra money on stuff other than CPU speed will make the system a lot snappier.

You might also consider using dual Celerons with slockets. Tom Syroid runs the similar EPoX BXB-S, which is the same motherboard but with embedded U2W SCSI, with dual Celerons. Those are Mendocino-based, however, and I don't know how (or whether) you could use Coppermine128 Celerons in that board. My own main system uses an EPoX KP6-BS with two Katmai-based Pentium III/550s.

For your second machine, a lot depends on what you intend to use it for. If you really need a second new machine right now, I'd avoid overbuying. For general purpose use (not gaming), I might be inclined to use an Intel CA810E motherboard with a Celeron/500 or thereabouts. The only real downside to the CA810E is that it doesn't have an AGP slot, so you're either stuck with the embedded video (very good 2D performance, pathetic 3D performance) or have to upgrade with a PCI video card, which is really not much of a drawback. If you don't really need a second new machine right now, I'd hold off until the summer or early fall, by which time you'll have many better options, not least of which will be the Socket A Athlons.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Bo Leuf [mailto:bo@leuf.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 30, 2000 6:15 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: selfdefense

Apropos...

... If someone invades a man's home, it should not be up to the householder to assume any unnecessary risk whatsoever in defending himself, his family, and his property. He is entitled by any reasonable standard to use whatever force is necessary in his sole judgement to remove the threat. ...

The situation as described is pretty much the same in Western Europe as a whole. Self-defence an excuse doesn't cut much legal weight any more (unless you are a police or similar state-approved agent -- assumed "trained in appropriate response"), and never for protecting property. More legally important seems to be who files a complaint of bodily harm first, no matter what they were doing to provoke the harm.

This was true even when I was up for military service many years back, when paradoxically you were questioned on your willingness to defend yourself and your family in a number of hypothetical threat situations. Anyone who did not reply affirmatively there was subject to more in-depth psychological analysis...

It's gotten worse however, as legal tolerance for any force by the ordinary citizenship has dropped to near-zero. Coincidentally, police brutality claims have increased in this country, though I believe less than 1% have led even as far as an (internal) investigation.

Jerry is concerned about the US heading down the well-paved road to becoming an Empire. Methinks our civilization as a whole is in many of these respects on the same slippery slope. Democracy as we know it has been a major social experiment of the 20th C, and it appears that the experiment is coming to a close. Wonder what the overall social experiment of the 21st C will be...

/ Bo

--
"Bo Leuf" <bo@leuf.com>
Leuf fc3 Consultancy
http://www.leuf.com/

I'm glad I don't live in Europe. There is something fundamentally evil about a government that neither protects its citizens nor allows them to protect themselves. It may well be that empire is the natural form of government and that all other forms, including democracy, are at best meta-stable. I hope not, but I'm beginning to fear that that is the case.

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