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Week of 31 July 2000 Friday, 05 July 2002 08:23 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, 31 July 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Work on the galleys continues. I sometimes run across some real giggles while checking. Although I'm mostly checking for mistakes I made, figures that the graphics artist created that weren't what I intended, and so on, I also have to watch out for changes made by helpful editors. For example, I wrote, "Many system vendors save money by using OEM versions of popular components." In the galley, that ended up as, "Many system vendors save money by using OEM (Oracle Enterprise Manager) versions ..." I'm 100% certain that my main editor, Robert Denn, didn't make that change. I trust Robert so much that I've told him to make any change he thinks necessary without even mentioning it to me. Robert knows when to check with me and when to just do it. Unfortunately, many production editors, what I call "English Majors", aren't as good as Robert. I spent some time yesterday playing around with the MP3 plug-in for Nero. The good news is that when it works as advertised, it works very well indeed, and the Fraunhofer encoder generates better 320 Kb/s MP3's than I've ever heard. The bad news is that there seems to be a minor bug in the plug-in. The audio CD I used for testing was J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (Das Alte Werk, Nikolaus Harnoncourt). I selected all ten tracks for ripping, and let Nero do its thing using default settings. I did a CCDB lookup (worked fine through my proxy server, very impressive) and started ripping the tracks. However, when Nero finished ripping and encoding, it had only stored four MP3 files--one each for Concertos 1, 2, and 3, plus Track 5 shown below. The file it stored for Concerto 1, for example, corresponded to Track 4 below. Apparently, it had stored Track 1, overwritten that with Track 2, overwritten that with Track 3, and finally overwritten that with Track 4. It did the same thing on Concertos 2 and 3, leaving only the final track from each.
My guess is that this is some limitation in Joliet or whatever, and it's kind of my own fault. I entered this CD in CCDB years ago, and I'm the one who gave those tracks their names. I should have used shorter names, I guess, that would have been unique within the 31 character limit. But even so, Nero should rename the files uniquely rather than just overwriting one with the next. Incidentally, the screen above is after I turned off the two check boxes at the bottom, which were marked by default. With that first check box off, Nero ripped and stored all ten tracks, although they were now named Track01.mp3 and so on. I've reported the problem to Nero tech support, so we'll see what happens. I've decided to stop setting off reader mail using indent and Courier. Instead, I'm just going to print reader mail using the default font, and set off my own responses (as usual) using bold/italic. I've never particularly liked the indent/Courier method (I think fixed-width fonts are ugly), but I started using it a couple years ago in response to reader feedback that said it was sometimes difficult to separate the original message from my response. So I'm just going to use Bold/Italic to differentiate my response and see what happens. While I'm at it, I think I'll start using the horizontal rule to separate messages from each other, and perhaps to separate topics in my blatherings. So we'll see how it goes using this method. -----Original Message----- Robert, I saw this on your site: As far as the equipment replacement warranties that all power protection companies offer, they're more a marketing gimmick than anything else. I have no doubt that they occasionally pay up, but it happens seldom, and I've never known anyone who actually collected on one of these guarantees. In the first place, the guarantee is invariably subrogated to your existing insurance coverage, and most people who have a claim find that their business or homeowner's insurance pays for most or all of the damage (although it's worth checking about depreciated versus replacement cost coverage and finding out just how much computer equipment is covered--it's often $2,500 or less unless you add a rider). Second, most people don't fully comply with the requirements for coverage under one of these warranties. They usually require a full "bubble of protection" whereby every connection to the equipment is protected. So they connect your TV to a surge suppressor, and when lightning toasts TV they find that the company won't pay because they didn't buy a second protector for the cable TV connector. Or whatever. I recently had an external modem smoked by lightning at work that was protected by an APC surge strip. As best as we can tell lightning came through the phone lines and blew the phone company protection and proceeded to wreak havoc on our Air Traffic Radar system. Both the phone line and power plug for the modem were connected to the surge strip. I am going to submit a claim for it just to see what they do. The modem was used for remote notification (it pages our standby technician if the UPS is on for more than 1 minute) for the Exide UPS system (50KVA) we have providing back-up power for the radar system. The modem was replaced by Exide under our service contract so if APC replaces it we will keep it as a spare but I had to buy another surge strip. The Exide UPS was not affected by the lightning at all. The radar however is still on one knee. It is amazing what a little lightning can do to electronic equipment, some circuit cards were fried but the one next to it is fine. I will let you know what happens and how many hoops I have to jump through. After this event we have had a specialist in lightning problems come and evaluate the radar site to see what can be done to protect it and if we implement all of his suggestions it will cost somewhere around $40,000 (phone, input power etc.). Which is less than we have spent repairing the radar already and will protect the system from future problems. Also I was looking at an O'Reilly book (I think it was Tom Syroid's Outlook Book) at the book store yesterday and in the back is a list of books available and your book is listed with an estimated publish date of 8/31 (a quick trip to the O'Reilly web site shows September). I had a question about the book since it is going to be a "Nutshell" book will it be the same size as the others in the series? How does it compare to the hardware books like those that Mueller and Minasi publish (all over 1200 pages)? How often will it be updated? If you can get all the information they contain into a smaller book you can sign me up now!! Erik Yes, lightning can be very capricious. I've had similar experiences on telecomm equipment, where only some cards from a full rack were apparently damaged. I insisted that the company replace all of them, though, because I suspected that the ones that were apparently undamaged had actually been damaged but not enough to fail. I figured the next minor spike might send them over the edge. As far as the warranty, they may replace the surge protector, but I'd be very surprised if they pay the $40,000 cost of having your radar repaired. Let me know. As far as the book, I'm not sure exactly when it will hit the bookstores, but I expect it to be the end of August or the beginning of September. It'll be something over 500 pages, but that's 500 pages of solid information. The problem with the books you mention is that they're what the computer book publishing business calls "Frankenbooks". By that, I mean that they're an assemblage of material, some written by the lead author and other by various "work for hire" authors. The problem with using WFH authors is that you pay them a fixed amount for a certain number of words (or pages). They're motivated to do as little work as possible for that fixed amount of money, and so you end up with padded material. That's just one of the many reasons why I won't hire WFH authors, as tempting as it is to help meet deadlines. The stuff you get back from them is usually garbage, although there are some exceptions. As just one example of the kind of padding I'm talking about, Mueller's book includes a table that goes on for pages and lists the name of every single one of the connectors on the SC242 (Slot 1) connector. That information is literally of no use to anyone except a motherboard designer, and he's going to go straight to the source, Intel, for such information. The only reasons that table is in Mueller's book are that (a) it looks impressive and helps make the book appear more comprehensive, and (b) it allowed the person who wrote that material to get credit for writing five pages (or whatever) without having to actually do much work. So, no, I don't literally have "all" of the information in those books, but I do have the information that's actually useful. That was the touchstone that I agreed upon with O'Reilly. If the information is "useful" it goes in the book. If it's merely "interesting", it's a candidate for deletion. -----Original Message----- Robert, In my continued battle with computers, I've found another enemy. I'm the not-so-proud owner of a dual CPU Asus motherboard. It is rumored to be one of the most BX stable motherboards extant. In any event, system based on said motherboard locks up. I was hoping that you could offer suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this. Doesn't seem to matter which OS I'm running, BEos, linux and Windows 2000 all do it. I'd look at memory (kingston value...stable in another system) then temp inside the system then what?? How the devil should I track this down? (By the way, this is the system I'd trouble finding a good cooling fan for one cpu). Hmm. If overheating is not the problem and you're overclocking, the first thing to do is stop overclocking. Also, I have had occasional reports of problems resulting from MPS version settings in BIOS. If your BIOS allows you to toggle between MPS 1.1 and MPS 1.4, it may be worth changing the default setting to see if that clears up the problem. If that doesn't work, the next thing I'd do is run each processor one at a time to verify that there's not a problem with one or the other of the processors. When you run only one CPU in the motherboard, make sure to install the terminator in the second CPU slot. If the processors run fine individually, the next thing I'd check is that the processors are identical, or at least compatible for SMP operation. You can do that by locating the S-spec on the processor packages. That generally takes the form of letter(s) - numbers - letter (like SL32A). If they're the same, fine. If not, check the latest Processor Update Specification document (usually a PDF) on the Intel web site. Most of those have a section with a matrix which lists which processor S-specs are compatible with each other for SMP operation. If not, use the S-specs to determine which core stepping each of your processors uses. If the core stepping is the same, they're almost certainly compatible for SMP operation. If not, they may not be. Assuming that all of this is as it should be, the next thing I'd suspect is a marginal power supply. Depending on which processors you're using, each may consume as much as nearly 40 watts, and it's quite possible that your power supply can't provide enough current for both processors, or that when attempting to do so it is unable to maintain voltages within specifications. My own dual processor system uses a PC Power & Cooling 400W unit, and I'd not be comfortable using anything much smaller for a DP system using Slot-1 0.25µ processors. If you're using FC-PGA 0.18µ processors, most good power supplies in the 300W+ range should be adequate. Perhaps my readers will have some other ideas. -----Original Message----- Robert, Please disguise my address. Great reading, BTW. Regarding the use of Flash on web pages, Jeffrey T. Bruss wrote: "To compare: imagine yourself a deaf person. You won't be able to get much from a Beethoven sonata, because the artist chose a medium you simply aren't able to perceive." OK, let us use a very real world example based on Bruss's example. How about if I am blind and 'look' at a Flash only web page? What gets communicated to me? Almost surely, absolutely nothing. Almost no one builds pages in a manner usable to the blind. Why? Because most sites rely on the use of images and plugins without the backup html code for disabled accessibility. Why? Because website designers can see, hear and navigate without difficulty. Screw the audience. The designers either don't know how to make sites disabled accessible, or weren't instructed to by the client (this is what they will claim), or just didn't think about it. And not thinking about it is about the same as not caring. And that is only one reason why Flash-only (or any plugin-only) sites are stupid. I would love to see the legal and website redesign bills when someone starts filing ADA lawsuits for website accessibility, especially for corporate, government and e-commerce sites. No, I am not blind. I can see and hear and navigate websites as well as most, maybe better. But that doesn't mean I am stupid. Scott PS-Yes, that does mean I think designers of plugin-only sites are stupid. Thanks for the kind words. I've not paid any special attention to the needs of blind people, except to the extent that I've kept this page almost purely text, which I assume goes a long way toward making the page accessible to blind people. My attitude is that, all other things being equal, no one should intentionally do anything to make life more difficult for blind people, but neither do I think that anyone should be compelled to take special measures for their benefit. The government is an exception. They should indeed do what it takes to make their sites as accessible as possible to blind people. But if any private webmaster chooses not to care whether or not his site is accessible to blind people, that's his business. Attempting to force people to redesign their web sites under ADA is clearly unconstitutional. The government has no right to control my speech, either in terms of what I say or how I choose to say it. Still less do they have the right to compel me to speak in a form understandable by any particular person, any more than they have a right to insist that I also publish my books in Braille. Web access is not a right, and I'd shut my sites down before I allowed the government to tell me what I could say or how I had to say it. But all of that said, I agree that it's incredibly stupid to create a web site that uses only graphics for content and/or navigation.
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wpoison
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Tuesday, 1 August 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] The first of a new month, and work on the galleys continues. I got through about 125 pages word-by-word yesterday, so a few more days should do it. I'm coming across a lot of very strange errors, almost none of which were in the original manuscript. Most were apparently created during the copy edit process. I talked to my editor, Robert Denn, yesterday, and he apologized for the problems. As it turns out, O'Reilly is so covered up that they've had to start farming out copy editing to independent contractors, and that apparently is the root of the problem. Robert is going to go back and do a compare of my manuscript against the copy-edited version to view each change and fix the stuff the copy editor screwed up. I downloaded Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 at lunchtime yesterday. Being smarter than the average bear, I decided to wait and see if howls of outrage echo across the Internet from others who've installed it before I risk it. Pournelle mentioned on the phone the other day that he wanted it and wished he didn't have to order the CD and wait for it to arrive, so I burned a CD and sent it to him. The 83 MB file took me about 8 minutes to download with my cable modem. It'd have taken him more like 8 hours on his dialup. I see in Jerry's Mail for yesterday that Chaos Manor now boasts 34 PCs. That's quite a few more than even I have, so he can afford to risk one. Better him than me. Speaking of Microsoft running Hotmail on Apache/FreeBSD, The Register posted this article describing Microsoft's plans to migrate Hotmail to Windows 2000. My guess is that they'll find that Windows 2000 won't scale, but we'll see. Back to work on the galleys...
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wpoison
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Wednesday, 2 August 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Still working on the galleys, which have lots of problems. Apparently, the copy edit was all done by one person, who was not the source of the problems. Those were caused by the multiple freelance data entry people who (mis)entered the changes made by the copy editor, and apparently made quite a few of their own changes as well. I emailed my editor at O'Reilly yesterday to ask him if we could dispense entirely with the copy editing phase for the book Pournelle and I are working on. Neither Pournelle nor I really needs a copy editor, and given that we'll both be working on the same text, it's very unlikely that anything will slip by both of us. Particularly since we also have Barbara and Robert Denn going over the material, as well as our technical reviewers, many of whom are demons at finding copy-edit problems. And then there's always a final pass by a proofreader. So what do we need a copy editor for? Olympus keeps improving their digital cameras. I got a press release yesterday announcing the Olympus D-490Z. That means my D-400Z is now three generations out of date, having been superceded first by the D-450Z, then the D-460Z, and now finally the D-490Z. Like those other models, the D-490Z is based on the D-400Z. They've boosted resolution from 1280X960 to 1600X1200 and added some other nice features, but the core remains the same. One very nice feature is the price, $499. If this model sells at discounts similar to the earlier models, you should be able to pick one up for under $400. That's not bad for a product that's all the digital camera most people will ever need. If I were buying a digital camera now, this is one I'd give very serious consideration to. The one thing I wish they'd add is a hot shoe to allow using an external flash to replace the rather anemic built-in flash. But that's a minor issue. The Register has an interesting article up about Windows Millennium Edition (WinME, aka Windows 98 Third Edition). The article points out that the "promotional" $60 pricing on Windows ME, far from being a price cut, is actually a significant price increase. In fact, as far as I can see, WinME is in fact Windows 95 SP3. After the initial release of Windows 95, Microsoft released two OSR versions (aka Windows 95.01 and 95.02), followed by Windows 98 (aka Windows 95.1), Windows 98 SE (Windows 95.2), and now finally Windows ME (Windows 95.3). So they've sold what amounts to the same operating system four times now. Nice work if you can get it. At least people who bought Windows NT 4 Workstation only had to pay once. Here's something that pisses me off. There's an ongoing thread on another web site that accuses me of being irresponsible for using the Atomz search engine to index my site and provide search services to my readers. Why? Because they speculate that there might be some sort of security threat from using Atomz. No evidence that there is any threat, you understand, or even any suggestion of what that threat might be. Simply that there might be some kind of threat. Well, hell, there might be anything. The sun might not rise tomorrow. Atomz might be a front for Professor Moriarty, and the first step in his cunning plan for world domination. So now, Syroid is irresponsible because he uses Atomz to provide a search engine for his site. Pournelle is irresponsible too, as is Tucker. Oops. No, as it turns out, Tucker now uses FreeFind, so he may be a responsible guy after all. Or perhaps not. He used to use Atomz before his site got to be too large for the free Atomz service, so perhaps we can consider him as at least formerly irresponsible. Or perhaps FreeFind counts as irresponsible as well, but that's not clear. Oh, yeah, O'Reilly and Associates is irresponsible, too, because they use Atomz as the search engine on their site. I guess I'm most irresponsible of all because I'm the one that told all those guys about Atomz, encouraging them to bring up a search engine whose only benefit is that it helps our sites' readers. But at what a horrible cost--the suspicion that somehow Atomz might in some unspecified way be compromising their privacy. But why not go back further still? Paul Robichaux is really irresponsible, because he told me about Atomz. And I'd just love to get my hands on whoever told Paul. Now, if it ever turned out that Atomz was in fact doing something to compromise privacy and I found out about it, you can be sure that I'd be the first to trumpet that news to the world. But I'm searching here for a word to describe someone who would without grounds question the intentions of Atomz and call into question my judgment for using that service. Irresponsible, perhaps? If there's a demonstrable problem, folks, tell me about it. I'll investigate it to the best of my ability and take whatever measures seem reasonable. But don't question my intelligence or honesty or competence on the basis of pure speculation. It's stuff like this that makes me seriously consider just taking this site down. I spend money and, more important, too much time running this site. And I see in InfoWorld today that three senators are proposing new privacy legislation that may punish web site operators who do not comply with their privacy rules with fines up to $500,000. If that bill passes, I'll simply take down my web sites. I can't afford the time or legal fees to make sure I'm in compliance, and I certainly can't afford a $500,000 fine. Which is probably exactly what the intent of this bill is, anyway. The government hates the Internet. All governments hate the Internet, because all governments hate people being able to communicate freely. So perhaps I'll just relocate my sites off-shore. Just call me irresponsible. -----Original Message----- Mark Huth said:
If it's a P2B-based board, there's a newer revision of the board that may fix the problem. As you know, I have a P2B-D based box here that worked fine as a uniprocessor but wouldn't boot with two processors installed-- turned out that replacing the board with the latest rev did the trick. Mark might want to contact the vendor who sold him the board. -- Thanks. I'd forgotten about the problems you had with your dual-CPU Asus board. -----Original Message----- I was wondering if you could provide any advice on setting up a VPN. I have a client with 2 offices in Tulsa, OK and 1 office in Oxford, England in the UK. We are trying to determine the best way to link all 3 offices so they can operate from a single primary server located at one of the Tulsa, OK offices. This server has not been decided on yet, so it can be either Windows NT or Linux. At this time, neither of the Tulsa offices have DSL or cable modem access available. We do not know what type of high speed access is available at the Oxford office if any. The offices currently have the following users: Main Tulsa office - 15 PCs, 2 printers; Tulsa warehouse - 3 PCs and 4 printers; Oxford - 2 PCs and 1 printer. The printers in Tulsa at both offices have their own Jet Direct cards to connect them to the LANs. The Oxford office is not currently networked. We currently have the main Tulsa office connecting to the internet using a Netopia router combining 2 dialup analog modems. We need the connections between the offices to be reliable and stable, which I do not think the Netopia router is providing at present. Do you have any recommendations for establishing reliable connections and how to establish secure connections between offices. We also need to allow for about 4-5 home users to connect to the system, which was one of the reasons I was wanting to use the internet to avoid setting up a modem bank. Thank you for your time and advice. I am looking forward to getting your book when it is released. Matt Harting I'm not the right guy to ask. I haven't been paying attention to VPNs and so on for at least a couple of years now, and I'm sure that things have changed greatly in that time. Perhaps my readers will have some useful suggestions. I will make a couple of observations, though. First, the Internet itself is not a particularly stable and reliable method of connecting two networks, in particular if you use "consumer-grade" links like a standard DSL or a cable modem. Second, I think it's a mistake to depend on one server to support such widely separated sites. If it were me, I'd have a server at each of the three locations, and look into getting some sort of leased line (T1 or fractional T1) to link the two Tulsa sites. Each site should be self-supporting whether or not Internet access happens to be working at the moment. That's less important for the Tulsa warehouse, because a T1 or similar link is at least a full order of magnitude more reliable than a DSL or cable modem link. For your Oxford office, though, you definitely want everything needed for it to function to be local. All of that said, it's easy enough to bring up server-to-server PPTP links under Windows NT 4. I just wouldn't count on them if you really need a reliable link. -----Original Message----- I am experiencing ENORMOUS delays in accessing anything in North America - not limited merely to Daynotes. This does not apply locally in Australia, or to reaching DrK, where my access skirts the USA; and only applies in part to Bob Walder, whose site I can access, albeit slowly (more tracert addresses in the USA). Note that I am sending from someone else's PC and address, because my normal email address (darmst@www.yahoo.com.au) still resides in the USA. Regards, Don Armstrong Dunno. Much of the Internet has seemed slow for a couple of days here, but there are a fair number of exceptions. I was assuming that the problem was either my local cable modem link or the links into pair Networks up in Pittsburgh, where my server resides. I've been working so hard on galleys that I haven't been spending much time on the Internet over the last few days, but I haven't heard anything about a DoS attack. And I believe that Dr. Keyboard's personal site is actually on a server here in the US.
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Thursday, 3 August 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Still working on galleys. I'm up well past page 300, so I should finish up tomorrow. Barbara is up to page 450 or thereabouts, so she'll probably be able to finish up today. Until yesterday, I had been proofing by reading the paper copy, marking problems, noting a brief explanation on a legal pad, and then later transferring the comments to a consolidated Word document. Yesterday, I started working at my desk, reading the original document and making comments directly to the Word document. That seems to go a bit faster. One reason I hadn't been doing it that way before is that my workspace is very poorly lit (by choice). I have one lamp, which uses a 60-watt bulb. I used to use a 40-watt bulb, but that was a bit small even for me. I do almost everything on-screen, and prefer a very dimly-lit working area. That works fine for most of what I do, but yesterday I decided to try proofreading at my desk. A 60-watt incandescent bulb five feet away really isn't adequate for heads-down reading of the galleys, at least for my 47-year old eyes. I suppose I could just have installed a 100- or 150-watt bulb temporarily, but I decided I might as well get a better lamp. Barbara was on her way out to the grocery store and to run errands. I asked her if she'd mind picking me up one of those Ott-Lite Task Lamps. She'd gotten one for herself a couple of months ago and was very pleased with it. It uses a 13-watt fluorescent bulb which supposedly puts out light with a spectrum very close to that of natural light. When she returned, I put it together and set it on top of one of my monitors, which was about the only place it'd fit. It works fine, and provides more than enough light for proofreading. There's lots of mail, but I'm out of time. And anyway my SMTP server is down again, as it was yesterday morning for a couple hours. I'm receiving mail, but I can't send any. So I'll just let it keep backing up in my Webmaster folder for now. More tomorrow.
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Friday, 4 August 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Got through a fair amount yesterday. I started around 7:00 a.m., paused briefly to update this page, and then worked straight through until dinner time. Barbara finished yesterday, and I got through about page 450, so I'll be able to finish up today and get the comments back to O'Reilly. They'll then incorporate the changes, create the index, output camera-ready copy, run it past the final proofreader, and then send the book off to the printers. Then we get to wait and see what happens. Obviously, we're hoping that the book sells a lot of copies. Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing PCs now sells something like 200,000 copies a year, but then that book is an established brand and this one is just getting started. Realistically, I'll be disappointed if our book sells fewer than 20,000 copies the first year, and happy if it does 30,000 copies or more. And the potential is there for the book to do 50,000 copies or more the first year. Nutshell books often sell in high numbers, and PC Hardware in a Nutshell may be one of the fortunate ones. Or so we hope. The first indicator will be the "sell-in", which is the number of copies pre-ordered by bookstores and distributors. The number of sell-in copies of computer titles in general has been dropping over the last couple of years, as the number of titles proliferates. It used to be that 5,000 copies was a mediocre sell-in, and 10,000 was pretty decent. Nowadays, 5,000 copies is a pretty good sell-in. I'll be satisfied if our sell-in is 6,500 copies, happy with 8,000 copies, and delighted with 10,000. I won't get the sell-in numbers until the first royalty statement arrives. O'Reilly calculates and pays royalties quarterly on calendar quarters. This book will hit late in the July - September quarter, so the first royalty statement will only have sales through the end of September, or less than a month's worth. O'Reilly usually takes 30 to 45 days after the close of a quarter to tabulate sales, so I'll probably get that statement sometime in mid-November. Sell-in doesn't really count for much, though. It's sell-through that really matters. Sell-through is the number of copies actually being bought by people as opposed to bookstores and distributors, and is represented by the number of copies re-ordered. We won't have any data on sell-through numbers until the second royalty statement, which covers the October - December quarter, and won't arrive until mid-February. Hopefully, that statement will have some really big numbers on it. I'll be satisfied if those quarterly numbers show sell-through of 5,000 copies or more, happy if they show 7,500 copies or more, and delighted if they show 10,000 copies or more. But we'll see.
I've received a bunch of messages about the Atomz thing. This one is pretty representative, so I'll let it stand for all of them: -----Original Message----- Gentlemen - I'm sending this to you both, because I feel you both deserve it - those nitwits who are pointing the finger of "irresponsibility" at you are, I believe, using the techniques of our time to "boost circulation." If you haven't got enough interesting content on your own, then bloody well point and cry "shame!" It works for the tabloids... While not an expert in any sense of the word (unless we're talking "a has-been drip under pressure") I think I know whereof I speak - for the last 4 months I've been keeping my own "daynotes" page on our internal intranet - nothing fancy, more of an electronic logbook that's far tougher to lose. I find it very easy now to track back and discover oopses, stupids, and just where that problem started information, instead of relying on my (nearly full) internal (and biological) memory buffers. With that said, however, it's tough to make content that's interesting AND readable to "Joe Average". A tech-weenie like me, I *NEED* the stuff. The people I support tend to glaze and drift after I mention "intranet"... It's irresponsible for people to point and howl - however, it worked for McCarthy, it worked for the tabloids, and now those tactics are, I believe, creeping into what should be intelligent discourse on the net. You two (along with Dr. Pournelle, and more recently, Chris Ward-Johnson) are part of my daily reading routine. I learn more (and am entertained more) in a couple of paragraphs from you gentlemen than I do in hours searching Microsoft's site (or others) for specific information. I do regularly check out the other daynoter sites, but you fellows hold my attention. Is it just me, or is the web getting a little crowded? Maybe it's just the signal-to-noise ratio... Just sign me a committed elitist, I guess... Thanks for your hard work! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In the words of Bartles & James, "Thank you for your support." -----Original Message----- Bob, Regarding your comment "...So perhaps I'll just relocate my sites off-shore...", have you seen www.havenco.com? I'd heard about them a month or two ago, but I hadn't seen the web site. Thanks. -----Original Message----- Mr. Thompson, I have the following posted on my site in regards to your discussion of external search engines: 1. Irresponsible I have not, and did not, accuse anyone of being irresponsible. Read the email from JHR in Monday's mail call and you can clearly see that. In fact, I specifically say I do not necessarily agree with that and instead characterize it as being problematic. I say problematic because I could not understand why anyone would use an external search engine without at least letting their users know that their search would be logged at that external site (which is what Atomz says they do - see the FAQ, and probably all others for all I know). If you are angry about the irresponsible label, please directly contact the person who used it. 2. Possible Security Threats. First, let me say flat out, I am not accusing Atomz, or any other external search engine of any illegal activities. Second, my remarks are, and always were, intended to refer to all external search engines in general. And third, my concerns were based more on a "philosophical" differences than anything else (read my original discussion from last week). To wit, let me ask this question. How do you assess what level of security you are comfortable with? Was it possible/probable that RealAudio would track all of your downloads and report such back to them? Until recently, most people would say you must be paranoid to even think of such a thing. You must be a loon. You must be, yes, here's that word, irresponsible to even suggest that. Does that necessarily mean that any external search engine is doing anything like that? Obviously, not. However, neither does it mean one or more aren't in fact doing something that you may prefer they don't do now does it? So the question is, barring any specific information one way or the other, how comfortable do you feel using an external search engine. Obviously, most of the Daynoters feel quite comfortable. I do not. I prefer to use an engine that is released under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 2, June 1991. The source code for this engine is available from http://dev.htdig.org/">http://dev.htdig.org/. Anyone who wants to review the code is free to do so. Does this mean that it is free of what Steve Gibson calls "spyware" (or anything else fishy for that matter)? Perhaps not. But I feel comfortable, given the number of eyeballs looking at the source code, that this is not so. Well, as I said in the beginning of my original discussion; "To each his own." But I've also said, knowledge is power. And to make an informed choice, knowledge is essential. So what is wrong with a discussion of the pros and cons of using an internal vs. external search engine? I'm really at a loss here as to the virulent reactions to what was said. Having said that, I will say to you what I said to Tom yesterday; "If I was somehow misunderstood, I hereby publicly offer to you and everyone else my humble apologies for being a lousy writer and seriously misguided." And I followed that with a note to Tom, and now you, that says; "I also want to assure you that I have the utmost respect for you (and RBT, and all of the Daynoters) and did not intend to impugn your good name(s) in any way, shape, or form. I have lost "face" if it was taken that way by anyone and will do anything to try to correct it (except slice my belly open with a knife...). Best regards - Daniel Kaohuokalani Seto -----Original Message----- Robert, You told me to stop overclocking, check cpu revs, check memory, make sure the system is cool, and I think you mentioned sacrificing a live chicken to make the system stable. I checked the cpu's, same rev. I wasn't overclocking. I reformatted the hard drive, took the system apart and used Tweek on all connections, reinstalled everything and installed KRUD (a wonderful, super secure "subscripton based" version of linux (www.tummy.com)). I'd trouble locating a live chicken, so we barbecued chicken for dinner. (I'm sure it was the chicken!) Voila, stable for 48 hours. Again thanks for your help. I"m gonna hunt down some better fans for this machine. I'll give pc power and cooling a buzz in the am. As to New Hampshire. I spent summers in Vermont for many years and love New England. However, I live in rural southern oregon now...it is new england without the people. look at http://www.oregoncitylink.com/medford/ We'd love to have you move here, but don't tell anyone else! (Grin) -- Glad it worked out for you. Actually, Oregon was one of my first choices when I was thinking about places to move. I used to have friends in the Rogue River area. Barbara doesn't want to relocate that far from her family, though. New Hampshire is only 800 or 900 miles from here, so that's an easy two-day drive. -----Original Message----- >So perhaps I'll just relocate my sites off-shore. Off-shore may not be good enough, with the Imperial Coast Guard and such. Just follow Bill Gates : http://www.upside.com/Opinion/397e28e60.html -- Now there's a thought. Actually, I'd prefer Luna. If only we had a Luna colony open to emigration I'd move there in a heartbeat. -----Original Message----- Robert, Just an update. I finally tried your suggestion of moving the cd-rw drive to the master on IDE channel1, and put the zip as slave on channel 0. Those changes fixed the problem. the Adaptec CD now reads just fine. Thanks again for your help and insights. Glad it worked out for you. Back when IDE burners first shipped, the invariable rule was to put them on the secondary IDE interface as Master and only drive. Nowadays, machines are a lot faster, IDE burners are a lot better, and a lot of people get away with putting them on the same channel as the hard drive, or of putting the burner and a CD/DVD-ROM drive both on the secondary channel and then using the CD/DVD-ROM drive as a source for duping discs. But the truth is that the old rule of keeping the burner on a channel separate from the source device(s) is still a good one. Even Plextor's 12/10/32A, which is the most robust IDE burner available by far, still recommends that practice. As far as IDE ZIP drives, I've gotten enough reports of problems and weirdities with them that I just don't use them.
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wpoison
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Saturday, 5 August 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] It's done! PC Hardware in a Nutshell is now complete and off to O'Reilly. I may get a query or two from the person who's doing the indexing, but other than that the book is out of our hands and on its way to the bookstores. When Jerry called yesterday I told him that we'd put PC/Nut to bed. Jerry and I clasped hands virtually and danced around in a circle. Only a writer really knows what it feels like to finish a book, particularly one that's taken this long. I keep thinking of the woman in the delivery room screaming to her husband, "You did this to me, you bastard!" I know how she feels, but I did this to myself. Now to get started on the second edition... The Register ran an article entitled Competition Win a bullet riddled motherboard! How could I not enter that competition? In order to win, one must complete the sentence, "I deserve to win Kay Buena's motherboard because..." My response was as follows:
Robert Denn, my editor at O'Reilly, is more than just my editor. He's also a friend. Most of our communication is related to business, but we do sometimes start bantering back and forth about things we both enjoy, which range from Latin syntax and grammar (we had, for example, an interesting debate about whether the plural of "virus" should properly be "viruses" or "virii") to "English as it is Properly Spoke". And then there was the time I had Wireless send Robert a set of Gothic bookends. Wireless offered to include a cover note with the bookends. I told them to use, "Ad astra per aspera, Bob" When Robert opened the box, all he could see of the note was the last line, "aspera, Bob". He spent quite a while trying to figure out who Bob Aspera was, and why the hell he was sending him a set of Gothic bookends. I told Robert that if I ever wanted to write a book under a pen name, I thought I might use Bob Aspera. At any rate, here's the beginning of the current series: -----Original Message----- One of these days when I'm looking for something relaxing to write, I think I'll do an essay on why O'Reilly should convert to (a) the British style of quotes (punctuation outside the quotes, because the punctuation is not a part of the original material being quoted), and (b) the British style of using commas to delimit a list, whereby the penultimate item in the list is not followed by a comma (because the comma substitutes for an "and", and using a comma after the penultimate list item expands to the rather ridiculous "and and" form. It is my goal to slip by at least one example of either or both of these in one of my books for O'Reilly, although I've not yet succeeded at doing that. -----Original Message----- You know the clichéd example: I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God. -----Original Message----- How did you know who my parents were?
-----Original Message----- They're at it again. See [here]. Cheers, Yep. That's the best summary of web bugs I've seen. Thanks. -----Original Message----- Robert, SO FAR, I have had no problems with the zip drive at all. I'm glad I finally got the cd-rw drive to work correctly. I'm a newbie to the hardware side of PC's. The instructions with the motherboard didn't make any suggestions as to where I put the various components, so I guessed. If it had failed totally, I might have been quicker to try a different configuration. Now I'm fighting a new battle: ********************** The tech support guys at Tiger point me at Silicon Integrated Stuff for an updated driver. It didn't fix anything, and the SiS tech support folks haven't gotten back to me. I'm beginning to think I'll have to buy another video card just to use this particular software. I've tried every setup change I could think of including turning of accelleration for the graphics, font sizes, screen size etc Sorry, but I'm not familiar with that video card. I does sound like a driver problem, though. Perhaps one of my readers will know something. -----Original Message----- In the words of Bartles & James, "Thank you for your support." I thought that was the almond growers? Standing hip deep in almonds in a warehouse... "Just a can a day is all we ask. Thank you for your support." That's "a can a week", Bilbrey. Not even I eat a can a day. Let's see. As you know, I don't watch many commercials, so I'm not the best authority on this. A web search, however, turns up this. Also, I took a flyer and pointed my browser to www.almond.org. Sure enough, it's the almond growers' web site. They've apparently given up on the can a week idea. Now we're all supposed to eat almonds every day for a month, which apparently will somehow reduce Phylicia Rashad's cholesterol level. And here's a very interesting message that Barbara received yesterday. She registered fritchman.com, fritchman.org, and fritchman.net some months ago. This guy apparently wanted to register a fritchman.* domain name and found out that Barbara already had the main three domain names locked up. What's truly strange is that this guy's company uses the initials TTG, just like ours. Here's his web site. From: Reeve Fritchman [mailto:reeve@ltl400.com] Reeve Fritchman is a principal in Transportation Technology Group, Inc. and without a chance of at least one “Fritchman” top-level domain… My wife forwarded your message to me. Fritchman is her maiden name, which she uses professionally. Sorry, but we have plans for all three of the domain names. You might consider registering fritchman.* with one of the foreign domain name registries like the .cc registry. Best regards. -----Original Message----- Hmm, I originally made a typo in the subject line: I typed "netbook". I wonder if I can trademark that. On Aug 2, you wrote: "And I see in InfoWorld today that three senators are proposing new privacy legislation that may punish web site operators who do not comply with their privacy rules with fines up to $500,000." Two days later, I can't find that article. The key point is the meaning of _their_ rules. If this refers to the site operator's rules, no sweat: just say that the users have no expectation of privacy, and you can't violate your policy. Somehow I doubt it's that easy, though. Regarding _PC Hardware in a Nutshell_, I certainly plan to buy a copy. I'm not that familiar with you(*) but Pournelle has enough reputation capital with me for me to buy it. Presumably I'm not the only one who thinks this way. 50,000 copies is probably optimistic, but not impossible. Good luck. (Or good advertising, or something.) * I first heard of your site when Dr Pournelle was away on trips and vacations a few months ago, and referred his readers to your site. I stop by occasionally. Ta, -- Actually, I think someone already did trademark "netbook" but I don't remember for sure. With regard to the proposed new web privacy law, you are correct that my statement was ambiguous, and for that I am deeply ashamed. I try very hard not to write ambiguous sentences, or at least to avoid doing so unintentionally. I was referring to "their" (the senators') rules rather than "their" (the web site operators') rules. As far as PC Hardware in a Nutshell, thanks. My agent suggested that I ask Pournelle if he'd be willing to write an introduction for the book. Despite his always-heavy workload, Jerry agreed readily. When I received his introduction, I was flabbergasted. He said, in part:
So O'Reilly, not being dummies, decided to do something they've never done before. This will be the first Nutshell book ever to have a banner across the front cover. That banner will read something like, "With an introduction by Jerry Pournelle of Chaos Manor".
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wpoison
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[Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] On the serial comma question, I found the following on the Internet as another example: A panda saunters into a Wild West saloon, walks up to the bar, and demands food. The bartender makes a ham and cheese sandwich and gives it to the panda. The panda eats the sandwich, and pulls out his revolver. The bartender dives for cover as the panda shoots up the place and then heads for the door. The bartender shouts, "Hey, what was that all about?" As the panda walks out the door, he shouts back over his shoulder, "I'm a *panda*. Look it up." So the bartender looks up panda in his dictionary. Sure enough, the dictionary says: "Panda. pan'-duh (n): A large bear-like mammal from China. Eats shoots and leaves." To which I responded: Presumably the panda had red herring on his sandwich. How do the two following phrases differ in meaning? Eats, shoots and leaves Eats, shoots, and leaves Both unambiguously describe an antisocial panda, and neither can be understood by any reasonable reader as meaning that a panda's diet comprises shoots and leaves. -----Original Message----- > The main danger to PC equipment comes not from the AC power line, but from > telephone lines. A dozen years or so ago, I had a computer literally smoked > by a lighting strike that came in on the phone line, wiped out my modem, and > proceeded through the serial cable to destroy the motherboard. It was quite > obvious what had happened from looking at the inside of the PC. Chips near > the serial connector were blackened and bubbled. Those farther away were > not. Having lost, over the years, in several houses, two answering machines, one TV, and one or two other minor devices to electrical and telephone surges, don't I know it! Regarding direct lightning strikes, someone asked me about them recently (particularly in the context of lightning rods), and my comment to them was that in our extremely electrified modern world, the path of least resistance for lightning will almost always be through a power pole or transmission line, rather than through a house. Am I correct in that comment? My equipment (computer and audio-visual) today is entirely on APC surge or Panamax suppressors - electrical, coax cable, and telephone.. one of the two telephone lines is going through a Panamax Telemax 2 and the other is going through an el cheapo suppressor instead of the APC equipment. (All of my APC equipment is older, and doesn't have RJ11/RJ45 jacks). (Actually, only the equipment in the office is protected on the telephone line; I guess the cordless phones elsewhere in the house could still get fried). I wonder if these telephone protectors would work on a DSL circuit (which I don't have yet) or if they would clip it and kill the DSL carrier? > There are whole-house AC surge protectors available. They're reasonably > cheap ($50 to $100), but must be installed by an electrician. I haven't > installed one, but instead simply use good quality surge protectors between > the wall receptacles and my electronic equipment. I do have whole-house > protection on my phones lines, though. The protectors that the phone company > installs are designed to protect people, not equipment. I installed modular > phone line protectors from Panamax between the phone company demarc and my > equipment. The carbon and/or gas discharge protectors that the phone company > installs divert most of the juice from a lightning surge. My Panamax stuff > shunts the remainder to ground. I live in a condo, so my options there are limited, but I'll be moving back to a house soon and will install a whole house protector for both electrical and telephone. > As far as the equipment replacement warranties that all power protection > companies offer, they're more a marketing gimmick than anything else. I have > no doubt that they occasionally pay up, but it happens seldom, and I've > never known anyone who actually collected on one of these guarantees. In the > first place, the guarantee is invariably subrogated to your existing > insurance coverage, and most people who have a claim find that their > business or homeowner's insurance pays for most or all of the damage > (although it's worth checking about depreciated versus replacement cost > coverage and finding out just how much computer equipment is covered--it's > often $2,500 or less unless you add a rider). Second, most people don't > fully comply with the requirements for coverage under one of these > warranties. They usually require a full "bubble of protection" whereby every > connection to the equipment is protected. So they connect your TV to a surge > suppressor, and when lightning toasts the TV they find that the company > won't pay because they didn't buy a second protector for the cable TV > connector. Or whatever. I've got a lot of that covered :) and actually Panamax did offer to replace a piece of equipment (US Robotics Courier V.everything external modem) that was damaged while fully protected by a Telemax, but I didn't need to follow through with the claim because US Robotics replaced it under the lifetime warranty, even though I told them up front that I was pretty sure that it was a lightning induced surge that got the modem. Gotta love US Robotics customer service... So, I guess you still don't know anyone who has actually fulfilled an electrical surge protector claim :) > My advice is to buy high-quality protectors, protect everything, and not > worry too much about the guarantee. I also protect "in depth" by using > multiple protectors between the wall receptacle and the equipment, on the > theory that the first protector will shunt most of the surge to ground, the > second will do the same for the portion that remains, and so on. Typically, > my connection might go: wall receptacle -> first surge protector -> second > surge protector -> UPS -> equipment. I've had most of my systems running > 24X7 for years, through some horrible lightning storms, and there's never a > problem. About the only time I turn them off is when the power goes out and > it looks like it's going to be a while before it comes back on. That's something I'm curious about. Withstanding the warning below about suppressors after UPS equipment, the APC warranty (and others that I've read) very specifically says to not use their equipment in combination with anything else at all, even other surge suppressors. Why would they say that, technically? Or is it just to get you to buy more of their equipment? Similarly, why don't they want you to use an octopus or extension cord after one of their devices? > Incidentally, never use a surge protector between the UPS and the equipment. > There have been reports of fires caused by doing this, and all major power > protection companies recommend against doing so. The problem occurs > apparently with inexpensive UPSs, which generate square-wave or modified > square-wave power. A surge protector may see this output waveform as a > constant series of surges/spikes, and attempt to smooth it. In doing so, it > dissipates a great deal of power, and may overheat and cause a fire. Or so > I've been told. Again, thanks for the enjoyable chat! -Jay As far as surge protectors, UPS makers don't want you to use them between the UPS and the equipment because of possible fire hazards, but I've never seen a UPS maker object to using a surge suppressor between the mains power and their devices. They don't want you to use an octopus or extension cord because doing so violates fire code in most areas. -----Original Message----- "we had, for example, an interesting debate about whether the plural of "virus" should properly be "viruses" or "virii" Which did you settle on? We settled on viruses, because that's what my editor wanted to use. His point was that "virus" was not a Latin word, whereas I maintain that it is and that it means "a small, vile and poisonous thing". Or, as he would put it, "a small, vile, and poisonous thing." -----Original Message----- You posted... > I think I'll do an essay on why O'Reilly should convert to (a) the > British style of quotes (punctuation outside the quotes, because > the punctuation is not a part of the original material being > quoted), and (b) the British style of using commas to delimit a > list, whereby the penultimate item in the list is not followed > by a comma (because the comma substitutes for an "and", and > using a comma after the penultimate list item expands to the > rather ridiculous "and and" form. I fully agree on the first. The "quote outside punctuation" rule is inappropriate when the punctuation is not part of the quoted material. As to the second, I adjust usage to context. In other words, three (short) items or so, no comma before and (but always before or). Longer lists and longer items, especially when items themselves can contain "and" or "or", I tend to insert the final comma. It depends a bit on what feeling I get when re-reading the list a few times and thinking of potential misinterpretations. > When I received his introduction, I was > flabbergasted. If anyone deserves the kind of praise Jerry gave, you do. / Bo Actually, I do pretty much the same thing. I think it was Emerson who said, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Not that I'm accusing my editor of having a small mind, by any means, you understand. Thanks for the kind words. -----Original Message----- Robert I am watching Die Hard 2 now, and our villian is planting little bombs all over the place. Have you ever noticed that those bombs always have blinking red lights on them. Those authors need a consulting service bad. Mike Boyle Yes, and the other thing is that the explosions are always bogus. I've blown a lot of stuff up, and the explosion has always been a short, sharp white flash. I've never seen a detonation look like one of those slow, yellow-orange flame-y things they use on TV and in the movies. Just a bright white flash like a camera flash. I must admit that the yellow-orange flame-y things are visually more impressive, though. -----Original Message----- Hi Rob, I've just stumbled across your site, great stuff! Anyways, i was wondering if you could help me with some advice? I've just bought a Ricoh MP7080A CD-R/RW 8x4x32 IDE burner bundled with Adaptec CD Creator 3.5c software, anyway every attempt to create a cd, either audio or data results in a coaster! I have tried writing at different Speeds, ranging from 1-8x, but halfway through the cd draw opens, and various errors are displayed. The following was saved to an error log after system test within Adaptec: [detailed error log data snipped. RBT] My burner is connected to IDE secondary master, being the only device connected to ide secondary. My system comprises of IBM Pentium 266 with 64mb RAM and 2.7gb spare disk space. I have removed all programs from the tray, ie screen savers and virus scans, I have tried Adaptec CD creator software versions 3.4 to 4.02, tried a Panasonic IDE 8x4x32 drive providing the same errors. What can i do? I am totally stumped! Rob, i would really appreciate some help from the guru! Cheers, If you have similar problems under Nero, the problem may be the blanks you're using. There are some real garbage blanks out there, and even the best blanks may not work on a particular model of burner. The best starting point is to use the blanks recommended by the burner manufacturer. However, I've had universally good experience on many different burners with blanks from Kodak Japan. If you can't find those, Taiyo Yuden also makes pretty good blanks that are usable on nearly any CD burner. Also, if you're writing an image to your hard disk rather than doing a direct disc-to-disc burn, it's worth taking the time to defrag your hard drive frequently. [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] |