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Daynotes
Journal
Week of 23 August
1999
Sunday, 29 August 1999 09:58
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,
23 August 1999
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I spent some time yesterday, gasp, cleaning up my office. There's a lot
still to be done, but now at least I can see the surface of my desk. I
even found some stuff that I'd forgotten I had. I'll continue cleaning up
over the next couple of weeks, until I eventually get Organized. The
problem is, I'm not naturally a neat person. So I'm likely to have a
continuing cycle from neat to cluttered. My motto: A Place for Nothing,
and Nothing in its Place...
* * * * *
I stumbled across yet another computerish daily journal site the other
day, this one kept by Chris Ward-Johnson, aka Dr.
Keyboard, the computer columnist for The Times. His daily journal is
interesting, funny, and well worth reading. You can also read Chris's
current Times column here.
I started reading his daily journal with the first entry back in May, 1998
and have gotten through a couple of months so far.
* * * * *
This from Mitch Armistead [mhaathome@worldnet.att.net]:
I was playing with Wins the other day, and
configured a NT machine not to be a Wins client. It was my understanding
that a Microsoft Hybrid Node would ask Wins, then do a broadcast. No
machine on the same subnet (all H Nodes) could see the non Wins client.
Is there something obvious I'm missing?
Any help greatly appreciated.
Probably not. WINS is a hateful service, a kludge that Microsoft
implemented to graft its obsolete NetBIOS networking schema onto IP. When
a WINS client machine starts, it registers its NetBIOS computer name and
IP address with the WINS server, making that information available for
lookup by other WINS clients. Your non-WINS client depends exclusively on
broadcasts to resolve computer names elsewhere on the subnet (unless
you've created an LMHOSTS file that maps NetBIOS computer names to IP
addresses). Your WINS clients query the WINS server to locate other
machines unless you explicitly do something that causes them to broadcast.
For example, if you choose Start - Find - Computer on one of the WINS
clients and give the name of the non-WINS computer, it fails to find that
computer in the WINS database and so does a broadcast that basically says,
"if your computer name is such-and-such, will you please send your IP
address to me?" If you use Start - Find - Computer, I'll be you'll be
able to find your non-WINS client.
* * * * *
This from Joshua D. Boyd [jdboyd@cs.millersv.edu]:
About displaying computer video on a TV
screen. Have you considered replacing your TV set with a Gateway
Destination monitor? They are big screen (I think 37" is one of the
possible sizes), low res monitors (800x600 tops, I think). The other
possibility is to just use a video card that has a TV out jack. The
upside is keeping your old TV, the downside is that TVs aren't meant for
displaying anything but moving video, so when you are in windows (using
non full screen programs) it is going to look awful. And the technical
resolution of NTSC television is something like 768x512, although
frequently some of that gets clipped off the sides. Another option which
is pricey (but then, that 50gb drive is also, so I thought I present it)
is to switch from a TV to a projector. Someday that is what I plan to
do. I'm thinking that a projector that can do 1024x768 would be good,
shined against a full wall. That way I can have a really large video
window, but also keep other things open it I want to (like instant
messaging, or stock quotes, or what ever i'm into then).
As far as keyboards go, I have one that I
love. It is the size of a notebook keyboard, and it has a built in touch
pad. There is a wireless model available. This keyboard has no brand
name on it anywhere. Mine cost $39, and the wireless version cost $49. I
bought it mainly for the reduced key travel (approx. 2mm instead of the
more normal 4mm.), which reduces RSI related stress, and I'm finding it
is much quieter than full sized clicky keyboards (clicky being used here
to denote keyboards that don't use those bubble switch things).
What exactly do you plan to do with this
machine anyway, especially with all that HD space. If you were a
student, I'd guess that you were going to download tons of MP3s and
movies before they come out on tape. But even for that so much HD space
is over kill, since CD-ROMS are much cheaper (granted, you usually have
to switch disks halfway through the movie). If it were me, I'd being
doing something like acquiring the Visible Human Dataset (15 gigs for
the man, 39 for the woman), and/or using it to hold rendered frames of
video (currently to takes a lot of effort to hold the video before I can
compress it to mpeg).
--
Joshua Boyd
http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua
I'll probably stick with the existing TV and a use a video card
with a TV-out jack. This system isn't intended to be a general-purpose
computer, or I would go with one of the large monitors. All I really need
computer video-out for is managing the a/v server itself.
As far as what I plan to use it for, I'm not sure yet. In
general, storing audio and video files and making them available locally
(to the TV and audio rack) and across the network. I've downloaded a few
MP3s from the net, but I'm not really interested in that, not least
because they're typically compressed at 128 Kb/s or less. I plan to rip
our existing collection of CDs, probably at 256 Kb/s or more, and store
them on the server, where they'll be accessible from anywhere in the
house.
Another thing I'd like to do is use the server as a kind of
digital VCR. That is, if a movie is coming on AMC that I want to tape, I'd
set the AV server to record it to disk as MPEG-2. And that raises another
issue. I think I know that MPEG-2 recording is non-trivial. Even
decompressing MPEG-2 data takes a dedicated decoder card if you want it
done properly, with high quality and no dropped frames. I can't imagine
how much more horsepower is needed to compress MPEG-2 in real-time, but
I'd guess that it must be substantial. So how do I take that inbound
analog data stream from AMC or whatever and compress it in real-time as
MPEG-2?
Then there's recordable DVD. Right now, a DVD-RAM cartridge is
about $20 to $25, but I'd imagine that the price of cartridges will come
down fast if DVD-RAM wins the standards war. If that happens, I'll be able
to store movies on a DVD-RAM cartridge for not much more than a VHS tape
costs. The problem with DVD-RAM right now is that it's limited to about
2.6 GB per side, which translates to about 80 minutes of video, not enough
to tape a move. But Hitachi tells me that their next-generation DVD-RAM
drives, due out this fall, will store more than 4 GB.
We'll see what happens. Right now, this is a project system in
the "thinking-about" stages.
* * * * *
This from Bo Leuf [bo@leuf.com]:
Interesting figure in the news:
"The number of U.S. adults behind bars
or under police supervision last year reached a record 5.9 million
offenders, almost 3 percent of the adult population, the Justice
Department reported Sunday."
However, just as interesting was the
statistic (Newsweek) that despite the recent "surge" of
high-profile shootings, esp in schools, the total number of violent
"incidents" in US schools had continued its sharp decline from
about 92 and was again markedly lower this year.
/ Bo
--
"Bo Leuf" <bo@leuf.com>
Leuf fc3 Consultancy
http://www.leuf.com/
Yes, and the really interesting thing is that the majority of
those people are there because of this insane "war on drugs." We
have hundreds of thousands of people incarcerated who did nothing worse
than get caught with relatively small amounts of cocaine. We've built new
prisons to hold them all. If you factor out all those people who have been
jailed under our Draconian drug laws, you find that US incarceration rates
are similar to other developed countries.
* * * * *
This from Jan Swijsen [qjsw@oce.nl]:
Exactly. And for nearly any other information handling endeavor,
computers have been of equal benefit. And as for why you're getting more
work done and overall productivity isn't increasing, it's because those
who would otherwise be doing useful work are in fact doing
government-mandated busy-work instead, whether on or off the government
payroll.
Of course in America the government is the
cause off all problems :~)
My father writes school books for Geography.
He has been teacher (paid by the government;-) ) until his pension and
has been writing books for about 15 years now. Originally he did send
the text printed out in double spaced text. It came back on large test
print sheets which had to be cut and pasted (by hand) to insert photos
and graphics. All this was taped together and returned to the publisher.
It came back on test print sheets in the expected layout for commenting
and changing. The graphics were done by crayons and then a graphics
artist did them, again by hand, in colour separations.
Typically, during these editing stages several people from the
publishers were working full time on the book. These were typically the
same people that worked on the previous books or other similar
publications.
Today he is finishing a book again. For him
the whole process takes at least as much time. Only he has to do all the
layout himself, there is no proof reader anymore, there is no dedicated
graphics artist. The graphics scanning and converting is not done by
people from the publisher but the work is out-sourced. The people doing
it don't know Geography and are not long enough on the job to understand
the specific issues and thus maps and graphics have to be checked better
and have to be redone often. The same with layout often the wrong fonts
or point sizes are substituted causing the text to go over more than the
allowed page number.
The productivity gain of using computers
here is mainly swallowed by having people spend time on converting files
and fiddling with settings. And by putting inexperienced people on jobs
that require a certain level of experience.
No doubt the government also steals from the
possible productivity gain but it is by no means the sole or even
greatest black hole. (Here in Belgium government regulations are slowly
becoming more streamlined, laws are actually being replaced iso being
amended. Still a verrrrry long way to go though.) The greatest problem,
for productivity, is that as more things become possible more things
will be done wrong and will require correcting.
Quick question : how much of your time is eaten by computer related
trivia (not related to your job not directly to the government) ?
ps
Removing Rudzki's Rant-mailings from your daynotes clears the air
considerably. He keeps on ranting but on his own site as he should. He
rants about his neighbours causing him discomfort. Quite rightly so. But
then he complains because someone is discomforted by him and says so.
Not very consistent.
Kind regards,
Svenson
Well, I don't maintain that government is the *only* reason that
productivity is stagnant, just most of the reason. In economic theory,
productivity is determined by the ratio of output to input. By that
definition, the book your father produces today requires many fewer
resources than the book he produced years ago. That equals higher
productivity. The fact that the additional resources that used to be
available to him are no longer available doesn't change the fact that your
father's productivity is now higher due to his using a computer. He's
accomplishing more work with the same amount of effort. The question is,
why are those additional resources no longer available?
In a global sense, it's because useless government rules and
regulations have directly or indirectly claimed resources that would
formerly have been available.
Directly, in the sense that the publishing company may now have a
smaller "teeth to tail" ratio because a higher proportion of its
employees are now required to deal with government regulations instead of
doing the work of the business (e.g. twenty or thirty years ago, a given
company might have a "personnel" department with 5 employees;
today, that same company has a "human resources" department with
20 employees).
Indirectly, in the sense that ever increasing taxes reduce the
size of the pool that employers have available for hiring and paying
people to do the company's work. Those resources subsumed by the
government are used to pay an ever increasing number of government
employees to do useless work. Simply examine the total number of
government employees as a percentage of all employees, or figure the
number of government employees per thousand population. Do that for any
industrialized country and I think you'll find that the percentage of
government employees is much higher now that it was ten and twenty years
ago.
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Tuesday,
24 August 1999
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Trying to finish up a chapter today and tomorrow in preparation for
leaving Thursday for Asheville, NC, where Barbara will be attending a
one-day conference. There probably won't be much here later in the week.
Come to that, there's not much here today other than letters.
* * * * *
This from Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]:
It really baffles me that Intel is going to
such extremes to prevent overclocking--now an article
in THE REGISTER describes a new technique that has apparently got
Microsoft cooperating by modifying NT4 SP5 so that certain CPU ID's are
impossible to overclock. And the person who found this, was using
regular Pentium II's and III's--he wasn't trying to turn
a cheap Celeron into a Pentium III. Can the management
people at Intel who are apparently so overly dedicated to killing
overclocking really be playing with a full deck?
If somebody fries a chip by overclocking, so
much the better for Intel--they've sold another CPU to replace the burnt
one. And those who will buy the extra hardware to overclock, can't
be more percentage-wise, than those guys who used to 'soup-up' a car
with carburetor, muffler, timing, and gear enhancements that squeezed
extra torque and horsepower out of a factory drive train back when we
were kids.
Intel should be PROUD their CPU's are of
such high quality that overclocking is possible. The car companies
used to tout how well-suited their cars were to aftermarket
enhancements. Instead, Intel asserts a
public image that at the same time resembles a big-brother ogre
and a little kid who wants to make all the rules or takes his toys home.
My father once worked in sales for a company
that manufactured piston rings. The company had a great story
about how they used negative salesmanship to get one of their largest
orders ever.
This company manufactured their piston rings
in a manner which, when properly fitted and installed, had a natural
"spring" in it that made a tighter seal than any of their
competitors. Installation, however, required a different method
than filing the gaps by hand, which was the common method at the time.
One particular mechanic, who had been
trained in the new installation method by his auto parts supplier,
nevertheless continued to file the newer "springed"
rings. This destroyed the ring's ability to make the tighter seal,
and left it no better than all the competitors' product.
Finally, a District Manager for the
manufacturing company went to the mechanic and tried to explain to him
why filing was a bad procedure for his customers. The mechanic
replied that he had been installing rings for years the same way and he
intended to keep on doing it.
So the District Manager said to him,
"Look, if you're going to keep on doing that, will you please use
some other brand of piston rings. We do not want our rings
installed in that manner." He then he left the mechanic.
Next day, the mechanic went to the parts
supplier with a big box and reported what the District Manager had told
him. Then he said, "I'll use what piston rings I damn well
please, and that guy can go to hell!" He then bought the
largest supply of those piston rings that had ever been placed by an
individual mechanic.
And the home office was well satisfied with
the outcome.
--Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]
I saw that article yesterday as well. I thought about mentioning
it, but I hadn't verified it and The Register didn't seem any too sure
that it was true, so I didn't. As far as Intel and overclocking, I'm not
sure what's going on. Historically, they haven't much cared about
individuals overclocking their CPUs. What they do care about is dishonest
companies remarking their CPUs, which was the real reason they implemented
the multiplier lock. Now that the only way to overclock is to run a 66 MHz
FSB CPU at 100 MHz, there's not that much opportunity for remarking, so
I'm not sure what this SP5 thing means, if indeed it's true.
* * * * *
This from Joshua D. Boyd [jdboyd@cs.millersv.edu]:
I'll probably stick with the existing TV and a use a video card
with a TV-out jack. This system isn't intended to be a general-purpose
computer, or I would go with one of the large monitors. All I really
need computer video-out for is managing the a/v server itself.
As far as what I plan to use it for, I'm not sure yet. In general,
storing audio and video files and making them available locally (to the
TV and audio rack) and across the network. I've downloaded a few MP3s
from the net, but I'm not really interested in that, not least because
they're typically compressed at 128 Kb/s or less. I plan to rip our
existing collection of CDs, probably at 256 Kb/s or more, and store them
on the server, where they'll be accessible from anywhere in the house.
As I have time I'm working on encoding my CD
collection as 256k files. I'm starting
to run low on disk space though, so I probably won't get to much farther
until I scrape together the funds for a larger hard drive.
Another thing I'd like to do is use the server as a kind of
digital VCR. That is, if a movie is coming on AMC that I want to tape,
I'd set the AV server to record it to disk as MPEG-2. And that raises
another issue. I think I know that MPEG-2 recording is non-trivial. Even
decompressing MPEG-2 data takes a dedicated decoder card if you want it
done properly, with high quality and no dropped frames. I can't imagine
how much more horsepower is needed to compress MPEG-2 in real-time, but
I'd guess that it must be substantial. So how do I take that inbound
analog data stream from AMC or whatever and compress it in real-time as
MPEG-2?
Normal CPUs can't compress mpeg2 in real
time. You will need an encoder card for that. But most video capture
cards (except a few really high end ones) will have acceptable
compression systems, even if they aren't mpeg 2. I can't really make any
recommendations though. Are there even Windows programs to do what you
want? I've heard that doing such task under windows 9x is highly
unstable (so don't get rid of your VCR), and you could do that stuff
under NT, but NT doesn't support DVD yet.
Then there's recordable DVD. Right now, a DVD-RAM cartridge is
about $20 to $25, but I'd imagine that the price of cartridges will come
down fast if DVD-RAM wins the standards war. If that happens, I'll be
able to store movies on a DVD-RAM cartridge for not much more than a VHS
tape costs. The problem with DVD-RAM right now is that it's limited to
about 2.6 GB per side, which translates to about 80 minutes of video,
not enough to tape a move. But Hitachi tells me that their
next-generation DVD-RAM drives, due out this fall, will store more than
4 GB.
That will be interesting to see what happens
there. I'm looking forward to when I will be able to build my own media
server. In my case it will most likely be a linux machine, although I
might go with BeOS as well. It depends on where BeOS is by then (then
definitely not being anytime in the next year).
We'll see what happens. Right now, this is a project system in the
"thinking-about" stages.
I understand how that goes. I have the parts
to build myself a dedicated MP3 server, (if I actually use it much it's
going to need some upgrades, but I can at least build a concept machine)
and I've been planning it for a long time, but I've never gotten around
to actually doing it. I'm not really looking forward to making linux
work with the no-name sound card I have for that computer, and worse, it
just isn't a pressing need.
--
Joshua Boyd
http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua
This is definitely a blue-sky project at the moment. As you say,
the software may not even be available. Not only do I not know all the
answers at the moment, I don't even know all the questions. I'd like to
stick with MPEG-2 rather than a proprietary compression system simply
because I want those video files to be readable and playable by other
systems on the network. But we'll see what happens.
* * * * *
This from Jan Swijsen [qjsw@oce.nl]:
"(e.g. twenty or thirty years ago, a given company might have
a "personnel" department with 5 employees; today, that same
company has a "human resources" department with 20
employees)."
What I wanted to point out, and your example
comes in handy here, is slightly different from your view.
The publisher was one big company, it had
perhaps 10 people in "personnel" department.
Now it is much smaller and has only 5
"human resource" "managers".
But it subcontracts out work that it used to do itself. Now there are
about three or four small external companies involved in the process of
producing the book. Each of these adds one of two additional "human
resource" people making up the loss in the old company.
The result is no change in productivity,
just a shift.
There is also an added overhead of
communication between the companies that eats productivity improvements
in some other part of the process.
And there is the government that takes its
"fair share" of the productivity gains.
"...productivity is
determined by the ratio of output to input. By that definition, the book
your father produces today requires many fewer resources than the book
he produced years ago."
If you cut out the government (nice thought)
you still don't reap anywhere near the possible gains. For my father it
means that he has to work much harder, doing the job that others were
doing before. Most of the gains he gets from using computers are eaten
by extra companies involved. He invests more of his time, doing more of
the work (more input) while more companies are making a small profit. He
doesn't get more money for it (no increase in output). So there is no
productivity increase for him.
The combined profit of the companies should
be higher but it is here that the government cuts in again.
Right, but there are two separate issues here. There is no doubt
that your father's productivity has increased, i.e. that by using a
computer he is able to produce more output than he did before he used a
computer. That obviously frees up the resources that used to be required
to do the additional work that he is now doing, allowing those resources
to be used to produce additional output. In the natural course of things,
your father's additional productivity would mean that he could also
consume more, i.e. that he would be paid more for that additional output.
The fact that he is not means in a macro sense that that additional
productivity potential is being sunk somewhere. My point is that it is
being sunk into wasted, government-mandated busy work that results in no
additional goods or services. That is, if everyone is twice as productive
now as formerly, that means that there should be twice as many goods and
services available to consumers, and everyone should be able to purchase
twice as many goods and services with the earnings from their own output.
The fact that they cannot means that that surplus is being sunk somewhere.
Guess where.
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Wednesday,
25 August 1999
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Something that's beginning to concern me a great deal is the
unpredictability of Microsoft software. And I don't mean simple bugs. All
software has bugs. In the past, though, those bugs have been predictable.
If you do A, then B, then C, a Bad Thing happens. If you again do A, then
B, then C, exactly the same Bad Thing happens. That still happens with
current Microsoft software, of course, but that's not the kind of bug that
really worries me.
It seems that recent Microsoft software increasingly behaves
unpredictably in response to the same series of inputs. For example, I've
mentioned before that the font size used by Internet Explorer changes at
random. I've set IE to use the Larger font size. But when I fire up IE, it
comes up half the time in Larger and half the time in Medium. This with no
other programs running. If I'm viewing a page using Larger and open a new
instance of IE, it may come up in Larger or it may come up in Medium. I
can, with nothing else running, fire up IE, watch it come up in Larger,
close it, fire up IE again, and have it come up in Medium.
Same thing with FrontPage 2000. Every morning I do basically the same
thing. Update my current page (right now, /daynotes/0823RTDN.html), save
it, copy it to the /rbt folder, and rename it to /thisweek.html before
publishing. Sometimes, FP2K prompts me whether or not to overwrite the
older version of one or the other (or both) pages on the server. Other
times, it simply publishes the new pages without prompting. This morning,
it prompted whether or not to overwrite the old version, which it said had
last been modified yesterday by "Unknown". That's pretty
strange, given that I'm the only one who edits these pages, and it usually
asks if I want to overwrite the page modified on such-and-such a date by
"thompson".
Another example. I was downloading several driver updates the other
day, using IE's built-in FTP function. The first time I told it to
download a file, it brought up my profiles directory on C: as the default
download location. I changed that to point to f:\install\intel and started
the download. Then, in the same instance of IE, I hit another web site and
started another download. This time, IE defaulted to storing the
downloaded file in f:\install\intel, which makes sense. I changed that
target folder to f:\install\matrox and proceeded to download the Matrox.
Then, again in the same instance of IE, I hit yet another web site and
started another download. IE again defaulted to the last-used download
directory, f:\install\matrox. Fine. I changed that to f:\install\adaptec.
I started yet another download from yet another web site. This time,
instead of defaulting to f:\install\adaptec, IE suddenly decided to
default to storing the file in my profiles directory on C: This ain't
good.
This trend is very disturbing to me. If I provide a given sequence of
inputs and the Microsoft software outputs "apples", it should do
the same every time. Not "apples" one time and
"oranges" the next. Reproducible bugs I can live with. But these
weird bugs are starting to get to me.
* * * * *
This from Wallbridge, Shawn [shawnw@elections.mb.ca]:
Here is a little blurb I found at http://www.hardocp.com/.
This was posted a few days ago. The update is the funny part.
Although you included the text of the article, I decided not to
print it, because it is copyrighted. Instead, I went to the hardocp page
itself, hoping there'd be a link for it. There's not, but the article was
time-stamped August 23, 1999 -12:45pm for anyone who wants to read it. I
agree that it's worth reading.
* * * * *
This from Jan Swijsen [qjsw@oce.nl]:
That is, if everyone is twice as productive now as formerly, that
means
...
This sentence is the clincher.
If everybody is twice as productive, but our
total output is the same as it was, then Government must be twice as big
as it was.
Government (in Belgium) has not doubled
since the start of the PC age. Grown certainly (well I don't have any
figures but I assume it did) but not doubled. My conclusion, not
everyone has become twice as productive.
As I mentioned in my original mail a lot of
the work my father does now was done by experienced people at the
publisher. Now he does them himself because the quality from the
publisher (subcontracted to...) is unacceptable. The service is still
available but using it resulted in so many returns that it became faster
do do them himself.
For example we had a blind map of Poland
scanned in mirrored. No problem everybody can make a mistake. Only it
was supplied with overlay sheets for colour separation and those we
scanned in correctly. Resulting in colours that absolutely don't match
with borders. Another example, he (and the co-authors) use WordPerfect
v6.1 on recommendation from the publisher because they can read that
file format on their Macs. They also recommended using Helvetica as type
font. Now half the time print samples come back with the wrong fonts or
font sizes. When asked they claim it is because they had problems with
converting the files. Very convincing. These are just two examples but I
could give you more. (I could pass you my father but then, before you
get him to stop ranting, you impression of Belgians would probably sink
too low.)
I don't think that things like this can be
attributed to the government.
This type of sloppy work is becoming
increasingly common because people are more looking to economic
'opportunities' than to stability and quality. Building a quality
reputation is a long time job, it is hard work and it doesn't produce a
high return on investment. At least not in the short term that investors
are interested in.
And of course specialization adds in as
well. Answers like 'I am a graphics specialist, what do I (have to) know
about geography' are seen as acceptable these days. And not much can be
done because the service is outsourced and going to another bureau
hardly ever improves the situation. Often the founder of a bureau is the
only one that can do the job right but cannot do it because he has to
spend his time on customer relations (to get orders and to get a higher
financial turn over) with too little time supervising and teaching his
newly hired staff. (You would argue that also spends more time doing
government mandated bureaucracy than anything else. That however is
outsourced and has been for years so the service quality is reasonable.)
Government has an impact on this (of
course). By making it easier to start a new business it has, since a few
years, become profitable to outsource such specialized jobs. What is a
good measure from the government (for once) is causing problems now.
Probably quality will surface in the long run but the current financial
climate doesn't favour long term prospects. Not while 'next year' is
long term.
Regards,
Svenson
ps is it just an impression or am I really
ranting here?
Well, I don't know enough about the government and business
environment in Belgium to comment, but here in the U.S. we have many of
the same problems, and many of those are due to government interference.
For example, Microsoft has recently been taken to task for the large
numbers of contract employees they use and how they treat those employees.
But the reason that Microsoft is using contract employees in the first
place is government rules and regulations. If they could hire and fire at
will, they'd simply employee these people rather than going through the
convoluted contract employee process. Although the US has not yet gotten
to the state of some European countries, where it is nearly impossible to
get rid of an employee once you hire him, it is now simpler in many cases
here to simply contract out work to individuals or companies rather than
hiring the in-house expertise necessary to do the work. That way, if the
demand for that work drops, one can simply stop using the services of the
external person or company rather than having to deal with firing
employees whose services are no longer needed.
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Thursday,
26 August 1999
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I (finally) got off another chapter to O'Reilly yesterday, this one
about Optical Storage. Now to start another one. Fortunately, I only have
one more "hard" chapter to do, followed by a bunch of easy ones.
I'm starting to see the train at the end of the tunnel.
And here's an unusual problem with rechargeable batteries. The ones in
my Olympus D-400 Zoom are lasting too long. Barbara and I are heading out
this morning for a trip to Asheville, where she has a one-day conference.
Obviously, I want to take the digital camera, but it's *still* running on
its original charge, this after taking about 150 pictures. I walked around
the house yesterday shooting lots of flash pictures and using the LCD in
an attempt to deplete the charge. No joy.
I'm out of time for running down the battery before we leave, at least
if I want to be able to recharge for the 100 minutes or so this charger
requires. I think what I may do is just charge the damn things even though
they're not completely run down. These NiMH batteries (yes, I know they're
really "cells", but that sounds stupid) are supposedly less
subject to memory effect than are NiCd batteries, so perhaps I won't hurt
them. Of course, I also carry around a set of alkaline batteries for
emergencies, so perhaps now is the time to give them a try. I've heard
horror stories about the short life of alkalines in a digital camera, but
haven't had the chance to see for myself yet.
We'll be up in Asheville all day today, staying at a bed and breakfast
overnight, and coming back late tomorrow afternoon or evening. My brother
is coming over from Raleigh to mom-sit, and we have various other people
lined up in case there's any kind of emergency. Mom will have more people
around here while we're gone than she ever does while we're at home.
Hmm. The thought just struck me. I wonder if our B&B has a web
site. If not, I can offer to set one up for them (at my usual outrageous
billing rate, of course) and take some photographs of the place while I'm
there. Speaking of outrageous rates, this place charges about $100 a
night. When we used to stay at B&Bs ten and fifteen years ago, they
were about a third the price of a decent hotel. No longer, apparently.
* * * * *
This from H [hstuck@excite.com]:
IE 5.0 always used to ask me for the target
directory for FTP downloads. However for the last month or so it has
not. And since what it seems to be defaulting to is not close to the
download directory I always have used, one needs to run a search program
to find where it put the downloaded files. (Which are usually in a temp
directory, that as I understand it, would disappear if I closed IE.)
Ugh. Be nice to get it back to always
asking. I won't dispute that maybe I did something to trigger this
behaviour, but I don't know what it was and don't know how to unchange
this new behaviour.
Conclusion: I'm in agreement with your
comments.
Sorry to hear about your problems, but I'm glad I'm not alone. I
knew I wasn't, really, but from reading reviews of these products one
wonders what the reviewers are thinking about. I have encountered many
common bugs with IE, Navigator, FP2K, etc., but reviewers never mention
them. Surely they must have encountered them if they used the product at
all. Perhaps they're paid not to mention problems. I don't know.
* * * * *
This from Jan Swijsen [qjsw@oce.nl]:
Well, I don't know enough about the government and business
environment in Belgium to comment,....
I don't know the rules and situation very
good either but I know about some examples and cases. It is much more
difficult to fire an employee here in Belgium than it is over there. And
when you fire him/her you have to pay a lot. The reason behind these
laws is not bad, it prevents employers to dump and replace employees at
whim. Especially for low schooled employees it provides some protection.
The principle is sound but, as so often with
laws, the execution is FUBAR.
If they could hire and fire at will, ...
The problem is that the longer an employee
is in a company the more holidays he gets and the higher the pay
becomes. Typically we get a raise every year, the height of it is to be
negotiated. We get an extra holiday every 5 years (I work 9 years for my
company now so I have 22+1 holidays per year). If firing is easy and
cheap everybody would be fired and rehired after 4 years.
We need laws to protect employees just like
we need laws to protect customers from fraudulent sales practices. It is
however difficult to get effective protection without hindrance to
normal correct business.
If everybody would be nice and honest we
wouldn't need any laws.
Well, I'm not sure where to even begin rebutting your remarks.
Obviously, what we have here is the traditional European statist Keynesian
viewpoint versus the traditional American free-market Austrian School
viewpoint. First, I take strong exception to your statement that "the
principle is sound". It isn't. The principle is the problem. Your
argument reminds me of that old chestnut that says that the theory of
communism is good and admirable, but that it has been poorly executed in
practice. Crap. The very idea of communism is evil, and its defects when
implemented flow inevitably from its defects in theory.
All that the European model does is establish a protected
class--those who are already employed. It does nothing to "protect
workers" and in fact damages their interests. People in this country
who support the Minimum Wage laws use a similarly specious argument when
they say that Minimum Wage guarantees that people will be able to work for
a living wage. Crap again. All the Minimum Wage laws do is make it illegal
to employ anyone at less than the minimum wage. Someone who is not worth
that much to an employer simply can't find a job. That worker probably
doesn't feel very protected.
By making it difficult or impossible for an employer to fire an
unneeded worker, all that you accomplish is to ensure that that employer
will hire as few workers as possible. The very fact that the force of law
is required to sustain this situation proves that it is unnatural. You
seem to assume that workers should automatically be given higher pay,
longer vacations, and other benefits that are costly to employers simply
because those employees have been with that employer for a certain time.
Why? Is an assembly-line worker with one year's experience more valuable
to the employer than one with one week's experience? Probably. Is a worker
with five or ten years' experience more valuable than one with one year's
experience? Probably not. Why, then, should the employer be forced to pay
more for the long-term employee?
All this kind of practice ensures is that a company (or a
country) becomes uncompetitive because it puts the cost of its labor at a
higher level than the market will bear.
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Saturday,
28 August 1999
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My wife says I'm weird, and that this goes to prove it. For several
months, I've been plagued by a persistent case of Athlete's Foot. Why, I
can't imagine, since I avoid exercise at all costs. I tried everything.
Tolnaftate, miconazole, and then other assorted gunk with various active
ingredients, including one that had been available only by prescription
until recently. I used them as directed. I used them longer than directed.
Nothing worked. I finally tried combining them, but that didn't work
either.
My wife said I should go to the doctor, but I haven't been to a doctor
for at least 25 years and didn't want to break my string of successfully
avoiding them. (She did convince me to get my blood pressure checked at a
booth set up by some EMTs in a shopping mall ten years ago or so. My pulse
was 61 and my blood pressure was 90 over 60--that's what playing tennis in
my youth did for me, I guess).
At any rate, none of this gunk was working and I sure didn't want to
visit a doctor. Nasty places, doctors' offices. There are sharp, pointy
things there. So I decided to roll out the tactical nukes. My reasoning
went (a) this is a topical problem, for which I've been applying topical
medicine, (b) there certainly must be a more effective topical anti-fungal
agent readily available, (c) potassium permanganate or sodium
hypochlorite, aka Clorox, are strong oxidizing agents that will kill
anything on contact. So, I announced to Barbara that I planned to soak my
feet in laundry bleach. She said I was nuts.
Thinking that perhaps she was right, I decided to do a little Internet
research. Sure enough, both sodium hypochlorite and potassium permanganate
showed up in various resources as treatments for various fungal
infections, including Athlete's Foot. But one intriguing thing that I
hadn't thought of also showed up. One source suggested using SoftScrub
with Clorox, a liquid abrasive cleanser that contains a mild abrasive and
laundry bleach. So I tried it. One application helped a lot. By the second
application, the problem had just about disappeared. I am not a doctor,
but I think I'll try this method first next time...
* * * * *
This from Jan Swijsen [qjsw@oce.nl],
with my comments embedded:
Well, I'm not sure where to even begin rebutting your remarks.
At the top usually is best.
statement that "the principle is sound". It isn't. The
principle is the problem.
The principle I meant has nothing to do with
communism. I meant that there is a need for protection from fraudulent
practices. Ex payment is at the end of the month (custom here) you get
fired on the 29th and don't get your pay for the month because it would
have been paid the 30th but you no longer work then. Presto your boss
got about one month free labour. You got no pay.
I think protection is needed, maybe you
don't.
I wasn't accusing you of being a communist, merely saying that
your assumption reminded me of that old thing about communism in theory
being good but communism in practice being bad. Communism is bad in both
theory and practice, and I wasn't conceding your assumption.
As far as the example you note, we were obviously talking at
cross purposes. If an employer makes use of an employee's services and
then refuses to pay for those services, that's fraud. An employer couldn't
get away with that in this country, nor would I want an employer to be
able to get away with that.
By making it difficult or impossible for an employer to fire an
unneeded worker, all that you accomplish is to ensure that that employer
will hire as few workers as possible. The very fact that the force of
law is required to sustain this situation proves that it is unnatural.
Every employer is hiring as few workers as
possible, by economic law, no government law required here. Unneeded
workers are few indeed. If a short term extra employee is needed one can
be contracted using a limited contract. What is made (overly) difficult
it to fire a worker with a normal contract. Firing at rem would be a
breach of contract and the safeguards built into most contracts are
(too) severe.
Most contracts were negotiated long ago and
it seems to be difficult to get rid of rules afterwards. Adding new
stipulations and restrictions is easy. In theory the contracts should
reflect a fair and economically correct method. In practice they lag
about 5 years behind the economic situation. And they apply on a sector
level. If most companies in a sector (ex textiles) are doing well and
one has a problem then that problem is made more severe.
Of course any employer attempts to avoid hiring unnecessary
employees, but that wasn't my point. What I was saying is that because it
is so hard to fire an employee, employers hire fewer employees than they
actually need, and make up the difference by contracting outside. In the
absence of government regulation, employers would hire the employees they
needed to do the work that needed to be done. With government regulation,
employers use contract workers and temps instead, even when it would
otherwise be more efficient and more effective to make direct hires.
You seem to assume that workers should automatically be given
higher pay, longer vacations, and other benefits that are costly to
employers simply because those employees have been with that employer
for a certain time.
I don't assume this, personally I don't take
up all the holidays that I an entitled to (but I am not typical in
this). A few years back, we even had laws that forbade pay rises!! (to
get the inflation down prior to being acceptable for entry in the Euro
system). Sounds incredible but true. The only way to get a raise was
getting another job or function (I changed from Programmer-analyst to
Analyst-programmer ;~) )
It is a common 'rule' for office employees
and the raise is not assured, it has to be negotiated individually. In
offices it is not uncommon to have two people doing the same job
(equally good) but getting different payment. I don't know if this is
also the practice for assembly line workers. On assembly lines typically
everybody doing the same job gets the same pay (after a few weeks
introduction).
These 'rules' are not laws mandated by the
government but rather negotiated between the workers unions and the
employers 'unions'. These negotiations occur on sector level, so, for
example all car manufacturers have to apply the same rules (mind you,
not the same wages). That they have to comply with the rules is
government law, the rules themselves are not 'government laws' in the
sense that they are not dictated by someone in Brussels (Washington for
you). They are the result of negotiations between employees (represented
by unions) and employers (also grouped).
I think that the sector wide nature is what
makes the most difference between the American view (not the actual
American situation) and the 'European' view (not the act...).
I like communism.
In other countries.
In this country, two major methods are used to determine pay
raises and level of benefits.
The first, "seniority", is used primarily in jobs where
people are interchangeable cogs--e.g. production lines, manual labor, etc.
That is, places where individual differences in employee performance are
either minor or too difficult to track. But it is here that pay raises
make no sense (excepting those that adjust for inflation). A guy who's
been bolting on fenders for five years is no more efficient or effective
at his job than one who has been bolting on fenders for a year. In jobs
like this, everyone should be making the same amount of money regardless
of how long they've been doing the job.
The second, "merit", is used for jobs where individual
performance both varies significantly and is relatively easier to evaluate
and reward directly. There are pitfalls with this method, too, not least
the variability of the people doing the evaluations, but when implemented
properly this method at least takes into account the value of the person
being evaluated to the organization.
The difficulty with merit raises is that, although they can
function well in small organizations, it is very difficult to implement
them properly (and fairly) in larger organizations. The result, in this
country at least, has been the introduction of something called "pay
ranges", where a given type of job is assigned to a pay range and
managers award merit raises within that range to individual employees. The
problem with that method, of course, is that the pay ranges assigned to
different types of work are often nearly arbitrary. For example, because
the personnel department usually sets those ranges, one often finds that
personnel clerks (who should be at a very low pay range based on the small
skills needed for the position) are often equated with skilled positions
like computer network analysts. The result is that you have payroll clerks
hanging onto their jobs for dear life, and computer analysts looking for
jobs elsewhere.
* * * * *
This from Daniel Seto [dkseto@email.com]:
I agree with most of what you've said
regarding hiring and firing of employees in the private sector (we can
leave to another day a discussion of the public sector). I absolutely
believe that a private business must be able to hire and fire, at will,
and not have to justify it to anyone. Least of all people who are not
even customers.
I further believe in merit pay and not
raises that are solely tied to longevity. However, I needed
clarification on the following:
"You seem to assume that workers should automatically be
given higher pay, longer vacations, and other benefits that are costly
to employers simply because those employees have been with that employer
for a certain time. Why? Is an assembly-line worker with one year's
experience more valuable to the employer than one with one week's
experience? Probably. Is a worker with five or ten years' experience
more valuable than one with one year's experience? Probably not. Why,
then, should the employer be forced to pay more for the long-term
employee?"
Bearing in mind that I don't think automatic
pay increases are a good thing overall, your example seems to equate
experience with longevity and that there shouldn't be any pay raises at
all, which some advocate, based on experience (versus longevity).
Is anyone with one year of experience more
valuable than one with one week? Probably. Is anyone with five or ten
years of experience more valuable than someone with one? I certainly
hope so! And if not, why is that person still employed there? And whose
"fault" is it if they are?
So, if we agree that there shouldn't be
automatic increases based longevity, does that mean longevity is the
same as experience (I don't think so)? And if it isn't the same, does
that mean experience should be excluded in toto as one criterion for a
raise?
Aloha,
I think we have to differentiate between different types of jobs.
I was going to use the words "skilled" and
"unskilled", but those have taken on meanings that no longer
reflect reality. For example, the guy who bolts on fenders all day every
day is considered a "skilled" laborer, but that's not really the
case. Anyone who does a job that is a candidate for replacement by a robot
is not doing a skilled job.
The guy who's been bolting on fenders for five years is worth no
more to the company than someone who's been doing it for three months.
After a certain (short) period of doing that job, one doesn't do it any
better or any faster, and one shouldn't be paid any more simply because
one has been doing it for longer than the guy in the next bay. As far as
experience, the guy with ten years on the job doesn't have ten years of
experience. He has three months of experience forty times.
Skilled jobs, on the other hand, should be rewarded according to
performance (not experience), and are in a free market.
* * * * *
This from Joshua D. Boyd [jdboyd@cs.millersv.edu]:
I've recently been hearing reports that the
ATI All-In_Wonder 128 comes with a digital VCR program, and that it uses
real mpeg compression. It also has TV out I believe. Thought you might
be interested.
Anyway, I had a question I wondered if you
could help me with. I know that you aren't really into AMD chips, but a
friend recently pointed out that some of the K6-2 chips are really cheap
(333mhz for $35). I was wondering how one would go about figuring out if
their mother board would support such a chip? Like you, I've never
really been into AMD, but if I can upgrade my Pentium 200 to a K6-2 with
3D Now for only thirty odd dollars, that would be a worth while upgrade.
Especially since the software I use that needs high performance is
mostly custom written, so I could potentially rewrite it to use 3D Now,
which is really far better than MMX (MMX is fairly close to useless for
3D graphics because it only works with integers and has that awful hit
when switch between FP and MMX modes).
The fastest CPU that my mother board
mentions supporting is a Pentium 200. The mother board is over 2 years
old. I know that it wouldn't be able to fully support an AMD chip meant
for a 100 mhz super 7 board, but how what I determine what other AMDs it
would support. It mentions support for AMD K6s up to 166, which were the
fastest available at the time the board was made. Is the only issue for
faster CPUs mother board voltage, or is there more?
I know that you don't really like AMDs, but
then, you seem to be comparing K6-2s and 3s to P6 core chips, whereas
I'm comparing them to P5 core chips, and as a cheap upgrade, not a whole
new system. If you don't have the answers to my question, do you have
any suggestions on where to find them?
--
Joshua Boyd
http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua
Your current motherboard may or may not support the AMD K6-2. The
K6-2/333 is probably not a good choice because it uses the rather odd 95
MHz bus speed, which your motherboard probably doesn't support. The best
thing to do is contact the motherboard manufacturer to determine whether
that board supports the K6-2, and if so at which speeds. There are several
issues:
1. Chipset. Determine which chipset the motherboard uses. Early
chipsets simply don't provide the essentials needed to run the AMD K6-2.
If you have an Intel 430TX or a late-model Via, ALi, or SiS chipset, you
should be okay.
2. Bus speed. Most of the K6-2 CPUs run at 100 MHz, so your
motherboard must be configurable to use that speed.
3. Voltages. K6-2 CPUs are split-voltage processors. They require
3.3 V I/O and 2.2 V core. Your motherboard must be able to provide both of
those voltages.
4. Multipliers. If your current motherboard specifies a 200 MHz
Pentium as the fastest processor it supports, that may mean that it may be
jumperable to a maximum of 66 MHz with a 3X multiplier. But that may also
mean that the 200 MHz Pentium was the fastest CPU available at the time,
and you may in fact have faster multipliers sitting unused on the
motherboard.
5. BIOS. If you have an older BIOS, support for the K6-2 may be
non-existent or problematic. If you have a Flash BIOS, check to see if an
update is available.
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Sunday,
29 August 1999
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Slow day today. Barbara just left on a trip to meet another woman at a
Dairy Queen in Virginia, where she'll deliver Bonnie, the Border Collie
we've been keeping for the last couple of days.
* * * * *
I'm busy downloading WinAmp
2.50c, the popular MP3 player, which is now freeware. I seem to
remember downloading an eval copy of an earlier version some time ago,
when it was still a shareware product, and finding that it wouldn't play
MP3s recorded at 256 Kb/s. If that's the case, it'll be useless for me,
but I figured it was worth checking. The ripper that comes with Plextor
Manager 2000 is first-rate, and Tord Jansson's BladeEnc
MP3 encoder is fast, free, and produces very high quality MP3s at high bit
rates, which is what I'm interested in. I won't do any production ripping
until I have that gigantic Seagate 50 GB drive running in a server, but I
do plan to play around some with MP3s first.
* * * * *
And here are a couple of letters offering help on the matter of
upgrading an older Pentium system to use an AMD K6-2.
* * * * *
This from bdenman [bdenman@FTC-I.NET]:
Saw your comments in Bob's column today and
decided to pass along my experience as an AMD user (currently K6-2/400,
formerly 300).
- The K6/2 series runs either at 100MHz or
66MHz (assume the 95MHz version can run at 95 or 66). Some K6 were
actually made only for 66MHz but they are not common. By changing my
boards multiplier and FSB speed, I have run the 300 at 100 or 4.5 x 66.
This is legal too; no shenanigans. You can run chips slower so the 333
chip should run fine at 4.5 x 66 without losing much.
- Bob is right on the money on the dual
voltage thing. Don't try to use a K6 in a Classic Pentium board.
Repeat....Don't try to use a K6 in a Classic Pentium board. You will fry
the chip.
- Intel went to a dual voltage chip too in
the P-200 MMX and above. A two year old mother board sold with classic
Pentium chip probably will not support dual voltages. But, check your
motherboard manual and see if it will support a MMX chip. Also see if it
has a multiplier of 4.5 (doubtful). A current BIOS would be helpful but
is not necessarily mandatory (caveats apply; Murphy's law applies; you
might be risking $35). As long as the chips runs okay what the BIOS
reports as chip type is not important.
- Recommend you buy new motherboard that
will use the inexpensive K6-2 with your standard DIMM unless you want to
buy PC-100 DIMMS. My ATX board does that; cost me $69 plus shipping. The
AT version was $59. Shipping was reasonable (see recommendation below).
- Regardless of Bob's recent opinions and
Anand's recent silly statement regarding no stable SS7 motherboards till
now, IMHO TMC makes a decent stable board for the K6. And has since last
year. Proof is in using one for almost a year.
Note: I am on third one: I gave my first
m/b, AT version, to a son in Alaska along with my K6-2/300. (he needed
stable system; Alaska is long way for tech support from South Carolina).
He is using with 32MB EDO SIMMS at 66MHz. I replaced it with one just
like it but with a 400MHz chip. This motherboard I passed along to my
son-in-law for him to run with his K6-2/300 (technically a 66MHz variety
btw but it runs okay at 100MHz). I moved to an ATX case which prompted
the third board. I now run run a K6-2/400.
My source for these boards btw was
Microbarn; a mail order outfit out of North Carolina. I have had good
luck with them personally. The AT version of board called AI5VG+, for
ATX: the TI5VG+. I am sure there are other boards out there that will
work just as well.
Holler if you have further questions. Not
sure where you are; but is you would like to call that would be fine.
Will be home this evening.
Bruce Denman
bdenman@ftc-i.net
(803) 481-5174 (stay on line if machine picks up and say who you
are/why; we have to screen calls unfortunately)
bdenman@ftc-i.net
http://web.infoave.net/~bdenman
* * * * *
This from Dave Farquhar [farquhar@access2k1.net]:
By all means check out [this link
and this link
(URLs converted to links to prevent horizontal scrolling) ed.] before
doing anything with K6-2s. The latter link deals with K6-IIIs, but the
principles are pretty much the same. If a board will work with a III, it
should work with a 2.
Bus speeds aren't much of anything to worry
about--just take a bus speed you do have, then find a multiplier that
takes you close to the CPU's speed. You could clock a 333 at 66 MHz x 5
(330 MHz) or 75 MHz x 4.5 (337.5 MHz). Remember that if you stay within
a 2.5 percent margin of error, overclocking isn't a big deal--the chips
are designed to withstand those kinds of variances. But even if the best
you can manage is 300 MHz with your board, it's not the end of the world
when these things are selling for 35 bucks.
You might also take a look at IDT WinChip 2
(if you can find them) or Cyrix CPUs. It's a lot easier to get one of
those to work, but they both suffer from weak floating-point
performance. The WinChip 2 does have 3DNow! support, which helps. The
WinChip 2 uses similar voltage settings to a Pentium MMX (it is a
split-voltage chip, unlike the original WinChip), as do Cyrix chips.
Supposedly the K6-2 works fine at 2.5 volts
(it's rated for 2.2), but I haven't been gutsy enough to try my K6-2 at
that voltage. I may not have paid much for that chip but I'd really
rather not blow it up because I've come to like it. I have an old Abit
IT5H motherboard that I've been meaning to drop a Cyrix chip into in
order to extend its useful life a bit. (I don't do much floating-point
intensive stuff.)
I hope this helps.
Dave Farquhar
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