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Daynotes Journal

Week of 20 March 2000

Friday, 05 July 2002 08:11

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, 20 March 2000

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I got some work done yesterday morning on Chapter 2, Working on PCs, but I finally ran out of gas in the afternoon and ended up taking a nap for three hours or so. I'll be back working on that chapter today and perhaps tomorrow. After that, I get into updating the processors and motherboards chapters, which is going to require building and testing some new systems with the stack of processors and motherboards I have sitting around here.

Howls of outrage this morning from Barbara. Malcolm thieved one of her new bras and wouldn't give it back. I heard her shout for him to stop pulling on it. He's always proud when he captures something, and loathe to give it up. When she finally did get it away from him, more howls of outrage. He'd chewed holes in it. I'm convinced that puppies being cute is a survival mechanism. If they weren't, many would be murdered very young. At least Malcolm gets his stitches out today, which may improve his behavior. We're taking him to the vet this afternoon for that, and also taking the other two for their annual checkups.

Back to work.

 


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Tuesday, 21 March 2000

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One problem solved. I'd been having horrendous problems with my new IDE test-bed system, particularly under Windows NT 4. I'd never seen so many bluescreens in my life. I tried everything I could think of, and nothing worked. The system uses first-rate components--Intel CA810e motherboard, FC/PGA Coppermine Pentium III processor, 128 MB of Crucial memory, Maxtor hard disk, Antec case and power supply, etc. I finally decided I must have a defective motherboard, a bad power supply, bad memory, or something similar. So yesterday I determined to track down the problem. 

To make a long story short, it wasn't Crucial memory. It was commodity SDRAM, PC100 so-called, that was causing the problem. What happened was my own fault. At some point, I was installing memory in a system, and I must have pulled that commodity SDRAM and installed two Crucial PC100 64 MB DIMMs. I apparently ended up putting the two pulled 64 MB "PC100" commodity DIMMs in the Crucial anti-static bag, and when I built this system I installed those commodity DIMMs, thinking from the label on the bag that they were Crucial. They weren't.

I replaced the memory in that system with a 64 MB Crucial PC100 DIMM that I pulled from another system. Guess what? The problems disappeared entirely. I had that system benchmarking all day yesterday under both Windows 98 and Windows NT 4 with nary a hiccough. I periodically get messages taking me to task for recommending Crucial memory so strongly. Commodity memory is just as good, they claim. I know it isn't. This isn't the first time, either.

I need to be writing, but I need to be doing this stuff as well. I'll start re-write on the motherboards chapter soon, and I have to get a handle on current Intel motherboards. Both the 810e and 820 chipsets have come under a lot of criticism, and I need to find out whether it is justified. The 810e and 820, for better or worse, are Intel's mainstream desktop chipsets for the next year or more, so I need to find out how they compare to each other and to the 440BX. I've established a 440BX, 100 MHz FSB, SDRAM baseline, so now I have to do some serious benchmarking and other testing to see how the 810e and 820 measure up.

I have a VC820 and a CC820 motherboard, so I can test the 820 with both RDRAM and SDRAM. My guess is that the 820 with RDRAM will be marginally faster than the 440BX with PC100 SDRAM, which in turn will be marginally faster than the 810e, which in turn will be marginally faster than the 820 with SDRAM. If the differences are only a few percentage points, that's not worth worrying about. But I've seen various reports claiming that the 820 with SDRAM is anything up to 40% slower. We'll see.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: McDonell @ The Park [mailto:mcdonell35@earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2000 8:44 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: HP Printer & Camera

In my notes the other day, I mentioned that I had not heard back on the $100 rebate for buying two of that HP "PhotoSmart" group of products. My wife informed me yesterday that the check had come in "last week". It took 60 days but we received a rebate!

The HP P-1000 printer began giving off distress signals last weekend. Seems that the ink pens/ cartridges were "dangerously" low on ink. WHAT? Those pens used to last us a year. Maybe they had holes in them or HP Utility programs are exaggerating the levels to stimulate sales. They did achieve the latter. I found the black one at our new Target Store. $21.99 + tax and license. Hmm - there was another on display that was the same series (51645 "Series") but cost $24.99 or so. It took time to sink in but the word "Series" is significant. Something is new out there. When I got both in my hands, one was marked "G" and the other "A". Both listed P-1000 applications. The "G" box had a pretty little flag waving near the top of the package, message "...for occasional printing..."Whaaaaaaat? Oh, there it was, "G" contains 21 ML and "A", 42 ML. At the list price, one was $1.05 / ML, the other $0.56. I am going to buy some stock in HP. They really know how to merchandise. So does Target. Those pens are kept in different displays about 20 feet apart; the "G" types get to be closest to the Printer Display.

Target did not have the color pen HP C6578 in stock. Dern. On the way to Office Depot, I stopped at Wal-Mart to check prices. The HP 51645A was priced at $29.95 or $0.713 /ML. That is 20% higher than Target. Wal-Mart is a Dow Jones 30 company so I guess we are supposed to be grateful.

Onward to Office Depot, where the HP 51645A was also priced at $29.99. No "G" in stock. They did have the color pen - Mfr List $39.99 but I fainted before they could ask me how many I wanted! Indeed! Just like gasoline, get them while they last. Then at the cash register, they "marked it down" to $32.99. I revived in time to pay.

All three of those stores noted above are within a 2 mile stretch in Carson City; which is not a metropolis. Still, I think we need a Fry's. Although they are not noted for discounting, their showbiz stores make it a lot of fun while you spend. The Fry's down near Jerry Pournelle, in Burbank, is designed to look like a gigantic mother ship.

Target has a nice selection of lower end scanners and printers by HP, Canon & others. They also have a lot of software for sale there. Software prices are pretty much "equalized" as you should know. That is where I encountered the HP 3200. I like your analysis of cost for your HP 6200. I wanted that one badly but by the time I was in the market for it, only the HP 6250 (with paper feeder) was available. Thus, the HP 5200; which my wife has learned to use for E-mailing copies of articles to unsuspecting friends.

Our HP 200 digital camera has had the equivalent of a dozen rolls of 35mm film "run through it" in the 8 weeks we have used it. Its Compact Flash card holds 40 images at average resolution. I think I am detecting some lens deficiencies but I need new glasses. I noticed that HP offers a selection of detachable lenses for it, about the size of contact lenses! Imagine juggling those things out on a lawn. We are going to throw that camera away when it pays for itself; that should be about the middle of July at the current rate. The camera lacks "JetSend", an infrared image transfer technique that the P-1000 does have. If it works, that would help get rid of cable transfers.

Regards,

Maurice McDonell

That's exactly why I don't own an inkjet printer. The cost of consumables is horrendous. Inkjet manufacturers follow the King Gillette model of giving away the razor and selling the blades. There's absolutely no reason why ink should not be sold in inexpensive quart squeeze bottles, and print heads sold as a separate item. In fact, that's how very expensive inkjet printers do it. And their cost-per-page is a tiny fraction of that of the "consumer" inkjet printers. I'd just as soon pay $400 rather than $200 an inkjet printer in return for a consumables cost of $.02 per page instead of $0.22 per page. The difference pays for itself in a thousand pages.

As far as image transfer, consider buying one of the USB card readers that accepts CompactFlash cards (some also accept the SmartMedia cards used by Olympus and others). You'll find that you can transfer your images in less than a tenth the time that serial requires.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2000 6:59 AM
To: Robert Bruce Thompson (E-mail)
Subject: W2k and O2k SP1

So, what have you decided to do? Are you going to register as apparently mandated by MS? or have you found a way around all that?

--Chuck

Probably not much. I understand that the registration simply requires providing your country and the init key, whereupon they return the remaining portion of the init key required to let the product run. I don't have a lot of problem with that, so long as they're not accumulating personal data about me. On the other hand, I can't see what good that process will do them.

The only Office 2000 applications I really use are FP2K and OL2K. I'm still using Word 97 and Excel 97, and I could revert to FP98 without much problem. I could also revert to OL98 if I could get it to install. I have all the install files on a local disk, from which I have installed OL98 many times, but that no longer works. The install process insists on going out to the Internet to download files it says it needs, which can't be found. I'm not entirely convinced that Microsoft didn't put some sort of time out in the OL98 distribution files. 

As far as Windows 2000, I'm not sure I'll deploy it in a production environment. I need it to write books with, but since it allows up to 50 boots without registration, I may just install it and use DriveImage to clone it to unused space on another partition. That way, I can simply start easily with a fresh install if and when I reach the 50 boot limit.

I'm not happy about the customer-control aspect of all of this. I may eventually switch to Linux.

 


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Wednesday, 22 March 2000

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WARNING

Do NOT install Office 2000 SR-1 until further notice. Read this tale of woe posted by Tom Syroid, co-author of Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell. The story starts on the Tuesday link. Scroll down to the paragraph that starts with "Warning" in red. This is not a pretty picture. It appears that SR-1 trashes the entire Office 2000 installation.

Now here's a sinking feeling. Yesterday afternoon I was working on Chapter 2, Working on PCs. I needed to verify the procedure for making a Windows 2000 Emergency Repair Disk, so I fired up the machine that has Windows 2000 installed on it. During the process, Windows 2000 prompted me to insert a diskette. I picked a diskette up from the recycled stack, expecting that Windows 2000 would format the diskette before copying the ERD data to it. It didn't. It just copied the data. Okay, good enough. 

I wanted to test the diskette to make sure that, like the Windows NT 4 ERD, it wasn't bootable, so I told Windows 2000 to restart, expecting to get an error message when it tried to boot to the diskette. Instead, the system booted and displayed a message saying that the BIOS had been updated. ARRRGHHH. That turned out to be the scratch diskette that I used to update the Intel CA810e motherboard the previous day.

The message said to turn off the system and restart it to complete the BIOS upgrade. I didn't have much hope, given that this system runs an EPoX motherboard with a 440LX chipset and a completely different BIOS, but I didn't see much alternative so I shut down the system. When it came back up, it rebooted normally, although it did say CMOS was corrupt. I told it to reset CMOS to defaults, restarted, and everything came up normally. I thought I'd trashed a motherboard, but I was lucky.

In the who-cares department, I see that Netscape plans to begin shipping betas of their new browser sometime in the next three weeks or so. I can't imagine many people are likely to bother with it, except perhaps those running an OS for which IE is not available. And most of them are probably waiting for Opera. Let's see. The last time Netscape shipped a new browser was what, three years ago? And that one is still in beta, or so it appears. Netscape has the nerve to call this allegedly forthcoming version Netscape 6, as though no one will notice that they never bothered to ship Netscape 5 (nor, some would argue, Netscape 4). They probably should have called this one Netscape 4.0, because from what I've heard it won't even match the capabilities of IE5. 

I'll probably download it once it reaches a so-called release version and load it on a machine I don't care about. Not that I expect much from it. Even if does what they promise, it's much too little and way too late to help Netscape. If Microsoft had any sense they'd have released IE for Linux long ago. If they get around to doing so now, it should kill any chance Netscape has for a revival.


If you haven't read the warning from this morning, please do so now.

10:45: Despite Tom Syroid's problems with Office 2000 SR-1, and despite the fact that it supposedly implements an install counter, I decided to get it. If nothing else, I could install it on a scratch system and see what happens. When I visited the web site, I noticed that there's apparently no option to download a static copy of the SR-1 update that would allow me to store it on a network drive and install it as needed. No, the only option is a dynamic download, which means I'd have to download 26 to 40 MB each time I wanted to update a system. No thanks.

Well, there is a static option, but it's the administrative update version of SR-1, which can be applied to an administrative installation of Office 2000 on a server, but doesn't work with a standard installation. Then I noticed that Microsoft offers the SR-1 upgrades, both normal and administrative versions, on a free CD, available here. I went over to that URL and signed up to get the free CD, which in fact is completely free. They don't even charge for shipping. But when I clicked on the final button to submit my order, the server returned the following:

Server object error 'ASP 0177 : 800a004c'

Server.CreateObject Failed

/office2k_sr1/main_office2k_sr1.asp, line 617

The operation completed successfully.

So apparently, the operation both failed and completed successfully. Hmmm. I used my Back button to return to the preceding page and resubmit the order. The same thing happened. So it appears that six to eight weeks from now I'll either get zero or two copies of the SR-1 CD.

I just got a call from Tim Laszly, our mechanic. Barbara leaves on a business trip to Atlanta next month, and wanted to get the oil changed and all the other stuff checked before she left. I followed her out to the mechanic's place this morning. She dropped me at home and headed for her parent's house in my Trooper. A little while ago, she called to tell me that she'd noticed a nasty looking cut in one of the tires, which are due for replacement anyway. I told her to talk to Tim about whether to get four or five tires and what brand to put on. We'd tried to get some Dunlop models the last time we bought tires, but they weren't available in the size we needed.

A few minutes later, Tim called me to say he needed both trucks, because he's going to trade the relatively new tires from Barbara's truck to my truck and put the new ones on Barbara's truck. I asked him about four versus five, and he suggested just getting four. I then asked him what make he was planning to put on. He asked if I had a preference and I mentioned the Dunlops. As it turns out, he runs Michelin ATXs on both of his 4X4s, and recommended them for us. Good enough for me. I don't know tires, and if he uses them himself that's a strong recommendation.

The only downside is that the Dunlop BabyKillers™ get pretty good reviews for price and performance, and I'd promised myself not to install Michelin tires. First, I hate their ads. (Those ads are why I refer to all non-Michelin brands of tires as "BabyKillers"). Second, they're French, and the French are not known for making anything well, except perhaps wine. Well, Tim's advice is good enough for me, so I guess we'll end up with Michelin tires on Barbara's truck. 

 


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Thursday, 23 March 2000

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More on the Office 2000 SR-1 mess over on Tom Syroid's site. Apparently, the problem he reported yesterday isn't widespread, although it has been reproduced by another user. Pournelle called me yesterday to say that the bug seems to occur only on unregistered O2K installations. If true, that's a strong inducement to register, and is perhaps not coincidental.

I regard forced registration in the same light as copy protection. It's simply unacceptable. I've railed in the past against Intuit, which is one of the worst proponents of forced registration and similar customer-control measures that I know of, and I'm sorry to see Microsoft headed down this road. Tom Syroid mentioned on his site today that O'Reilly has an author's template for StarOffice, which is intriguing. I have StarOffice installed on this computer. I didn't particularly like its consolidated desktop paradigm, but that's a relatively minor issue.

StarOffice replaces Word and Excel. That means the only Microsoft applications I use that I need good replacements for are FrontPage and Outlook. Magellan may well be an Outlook replacement, but that leaves FrontPage. Unfortunately, that's problematic, because Barbara uses FrontPage to maintain her web pages, which are on the same web site as mine. Before I commit to StarOffice, I'll probably check out Corel Office, which I understand is due imminently. But my goal is eventually to be able to do my work without depending on any Microsoft applications.

Barbara is off to play golf with her father and run errands. Her truck wasn't finished yesterday, so we'll need to pick it up this afternoon. I'm working on the processors chapter, so I'd best get back to it.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Kitterman [mailto:scott@kitterman.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 3:06 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Anti-Cookie Privacy Tool

I'd be curious to read your thoughts on this:

Scott Kitterman
scott@kitterman.com

It looks like just another cookie blocking tool to me, albeit with less functionality than many. From what I read, it appears to use a mechanism similar to that used by Netscape with its Accept cookies only from originating site option. That method is less than reliable, I've found, on sites that use invisible frames to redirect your browser to Imgis, Doubleclick, and so on. If I were going to use a cookie blocking tool, I'd use one of the ones that intercepts a call to write a cookie and examines the source of that cookie before doing so.

As it happens, I don't feel the need to use a cookie blocking utility. I simply use the zone feature of IE to set my Internet zone for no persistent cookies, etc. and my trusted zone to allow them. That way, sites I visit casually cannot write cookies, but those I use regularly and have reason to trust are added to the Trusted zone. There, they can write cookies, so I don't lose functionality.

 


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Friday, 24 March 2000

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I have been informed by a reader that Office 2000 SR-1 is now available for download as a discrete file here. You can download this 52 MB file, store it on a network drive, and use it to update any number of Office 2000 machines. I downloaded it yesterday, but I haven't gotten around to installing it yet. I won't install it on any of my production systems, and I don't have a testbed system with Office 2000 installed on it.

Intel ships the first Celeron III processors next week, although I doubt they'll call them that. These new Celerons will initially ship in 566 and 600 MHz versions, and are really just modified FC-PGA Coppermine Pentium IIIs with L2 cache halved to 128 KB and rated for use on a 66 MHz FSB. Despite speculation by Anand and Tom, these first units will likely not be good overclockers. In effect, they're simply down-rated Pentium III/850 and Pentium III/900 chips, respectively. My guess is that they're really Pentium III units that failed testing at 100 MHz FSB. So overclocking them by boosting the FSB from 66 MHz to 100 MHz would simply give you the same processor that Intel tested as unreliable at 100 MHz.

That'll change as Intel's yields on Coppermines improve, but only on the low-end. The only thing that matters to a processor is how fast it runs. It doesn't care what the FSB or clock multiplier is, just what the product of those two is. If a processor is stable at, say, 900 MHz, it doesn't care whether you achieve that 900 MHz by using a 100 MHz FSB and a 9.0 multiplier or a 66 MHz FSB and a 13.5 multiplier.

But indications are that 1 GHz is about the limit of the Coppermine core. The 1 GHz Coppermine, for example, requires higher than nominal voltage, and does not support SMP. Those two things tell me that 1 GHz is at or beyond the design capability of Coppermine. Intel's original intention was to parcel out faster Coppermines gradually, hitting 1 GHz in H2/2000, just in time for Willamette to come on stream near the end of this year. Obviously, AMD forced Intel's hand, and so they ended up introducing all of their Coppermines in Q1/2000. That means that the rest of this year is likely to see only minor, if any, increases in Pentium III clock speeds. What will see is falling prices and increased availability as Coppermine production ramps up.

But the implication for the Celeron III is that later variants will not be overclockable in any real sense because of their locked multipliers. For example, Intel will probably ship a Celeron/700 later this year. That processor will use a 66 MHz FSB and a 10.5 multiplier. Attempting to overclock that processor at 100 MHz FSB would run it at 1,050 MHz, which is probably beyond the ability of the Coppermine core. 

However, as Coppermine production ramps up, Intel will find itself in its usual position. All of its Coppermine cores will be reliable at, say, 900 MHz. That means that, later this year, a Celeron/566 or /600 will be an excellent overclocking candidate, since it will really be a Pentium III/900 in disguise.

It will also be interesting to see if the Celeron III uses the PPGA Socket 370 pinouts or the FC-PGA Socket 370 pinouts. If the former, a Celeron III could be run in an older Socket 370 Celeron motherboard. If the latter, it could be run only in one of the later Socket 370 motherboards like the Intel CA810e. My guess is that it will be the latter.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: john biel [mailto:johnny51@home.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 7:13 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: netscape beta, or more accurately mozilla milestone release

I would dispute your opinion on this one. I have used Mozilla releases on both Win95/98 and Linux(Caldera2.3/Corel1.0) While they are definately beta, they are already in my opinion far superior to opera. I generally use and like ie5, but I would bet that by summertime I will probably start using the "release" version of mozilla, it is faster in rendering, smaller in size, and interestingly enough can handle some intentional "browser-busting" sites that blow ie5 up. At present mozilla does not have any java capability (although it can do javascript) so I would think you might actually like to try it on that basis alone as you have made the point that you keep these things turned off anyway. On Linux I have already dumped the versions of netscape I had and use the current daily build of mozilla exclusively. On win95 I often have both up at the same time and find mozilla much more responsive than ie5, but not yet as stable. Updates to mozilla especially over the past month have increased it's usefulness phenominally, assuming that continues, I'll certainly switch. It's about 5 or 6 meg, but I'll bet that get's reduced as debugging code gets removed.

And you may be right. That's why I said I'd download it and take a look at it. But I'm not expecting much.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 9:20 PM
To: Robert Bruce Thompson (E-mail)
Subject: Cookies, etc.

After reading of your IE security set-up early in the year, I adopted it, and after more than two months of operating with it, I can report finding no real problems at all with using it that way. Everything is disabled from cookies to Java, scripting, and Active X on the standard "Internet" zone, and all those are enabled in the "Trusted" zone.

During that period, I've been very active on the Web, doing quite a bit of research for a project, and have found only a very few 'bleeding edge' sites which don't work--and those weren't likely to offer anything I needed anyway. Even Travelocity works fine without them (although I already had their cookie before I made the changes).

In fact, I've only needed 3 entries in the Trusted zone: our financial institution, NYTimes, and Microsoft (hardly anything works on the Microsoft sites without all those whiz-bangs activated).

I've not seen it admitted on the Microsoft site, but have read in many other places, that running with Java and Active X enabled is just asking for trouble. Experts appear to agree that it is quite possible for a combination of calls using Java and Active X to penetrate a computer, and this can be happen by just visiting a hacked site with those controls enabled. A recent CERT advisory noted that hackers are embedding code in return fields of forms appearing on some sites, and in some cases, that code is then passed on to other innocents who view the site, intruding into their computer in undesirable ways.

It's hard to imagine that there will be less hacking attempts out there, as time flies by, so safety seems more and more important these days.

--Chuck

I agree, which is why I haven't felt the need to install one of those third-party cookie managers. Unfortunately, quite a few of the sites I visit were designed by clueless webmasters who use ActiveX controls, and IE has no way to turn off that damned ActiveX warning. Some sites go to ridiculous extremes, for example by using JavaScript in place of simple HTML links. Those sites I just don't visit again.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Watson [mailto:rwatson@autolinq.com]
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 8:16 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Broken Links

Hello Robert,

I was just reading your daynotes page and found some broken links on it (the current page). The links for :

Robert Home
Daynotes Home
Links
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are broken. I think they are missing the / part of the path.

Have you noticed on win2k that IE5 (5.00.2920.000) no longer has the option to launch in separate process. The install automatically sets this ( separate process if >32megs, otherwise same process if <32megs). I like the separate process bit but don't appreciate the hit on resources. I don't know if you or any other readers have a hack to change this but I would appreciate it if someone did. I have 128 megs of ram but am almost always using 200 megs according to task manager, so I would benefit by not having separate processes running for 2 or 3 three IE instances.

By the way, I really enjoy your writing and am looking forward to reading your new book.

________________
Ray Watson
AutolinQ Internet Services

Thanks for the kind words. I was about to blame FrontPage 2000 for the broken links, but they may in fact be my own fault. Or maybe not. I'm really not sure. They should be fixed now. 

What happened is this: a couple of weeks ago, I decided to change my left column menu to use the same method I've been using on Barbara's and other pages here, which is to use FrontPage's "Include Page" function. That is, the left column menu is actually a separate HTML file, and my daily journal page includes a pointer to it. That way, if I ever want to change the left column menu, I can simply change that one included file, and it automatically updates all the individual daily journal pages.

When I got your message, I went back and checked the include page. Sure enough, some of the links were screwed up. Oddly enough, some were not. One thing I will give FrontPage credit for: it is very good at maintaining links. When you move, delete, or rename a page, it automatically updates all linked pages with the new information. And I think it did so in this case, which is what makes me think that the error was probably mine.

The problem is that the include page resides in the folder /rbt, whereas the daily journal pages reside in /daynotes/2000. When I edit the include page, all links on it are relative to the folder /rbt. But when FrontPage incorporates it into the daily journal page, it fixes all the links to be relative to /daynotes/2000. Or it should. It apparently fixed some, but left some pointing to positions relative to the actual location of the include page rather than relative to the location of the page in which the include page was included.

Since FrontPage has never mangled links like this, I suspect I might have done something to cause the problem. At any rate, I went back and fixed all the links in the include page, and they should be fixed on the real site once I publish the changes.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Watson [mailto:rwatson@autolinq.com]
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 9:37 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Re: Broken Links

Aren't include pages wonderful? I could not exist without them on the web sites that I build and maintain. I started out using Frontpage but it mangled websites too often for me. ( At the time I was publishing to a unix server and the case insensitive frontpage98 kept capitalizing my links for some reason. Not good to say the least!) I took the plunge and learned HTML and started to use notepad. I quickly jumped to Homesite and have never looked back. I realize that for someone not in the web page biz that hand coding can be tedious but, you probably waste enough time waiting for FP to publish etc that it could be interesting to compare. One thing with hand coding, the only thing that will get changed is what you change. ( and actually the global search and replace in Homesite is very good - you can change links or whatever across the whole site)

Have a good day,

Ray

The sites I maintain all are at www.auto123.com ( you will find links here to the 250 - 300 sites that I maintain).

I fear that I don't have the time to maintain my sites manually, even with such aids as global search and replace. And FrontPage 2000 really is much better about not mangling things than FP98 was. The only problem I've had with FP2000 (which was also a problem with FP98) is that it periodically decides to delete my bottom shared margin, thereby killing my copyright notice. Microsoft is aware of the problem, but has not been able to explain it. Other than that, I haven't really been bitten by any FP2K bugs. There are still a lot of things I would change about it, but it's the best thing I've found for casual webmasters like me.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Watson [mailto:rwatson@autolinq.com]
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 10:04 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Re: Broken Links

When the tool fits... it's the right one for the job! ;-) I have not tried FP2000, so no comments from me, but from an ease of use point of view, FP definitely makes web sites easier for the casual or part time webmaster.

Have a good day

Ray

Which I definitely am. You should probably give FP2000 a try. I'm no HTML expert by a long shot, but I've talked to people who are, and they tell me that FP2000 is greatly improved from their point of view. Apparently, it doesn't stick all the excess code in that FP98 did, and it doesn't mangle hand-coded stuff. A couple of HTML coders tell me that they use FP2000 to rough out a site quickly and then hand-code to tweak it.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara F. Thompson [mailto:barbara@ttgnet.com]
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 9:22 AM
To: Bob (E-mail)
Subject: Dog Dictionary

You probably won't think this is funny, but I think Malcolm and Duncan could have been the lexicographer.

LEASH: A strap which attaches to your collar, enabling you to lead your person where you want him/her to go.

DOG BED: any soft, clean surface, such as the white bedspread in the guest room or the newly upholstered couch in the living room.

DROOL: Is what you do when your persons have food and you don't. To do this properly you must sit as close as you can and look sad and let the drool fall to the floor, or better yet, on their laps.

SNIFF: A social custom to use when you greet other dogs. Place your nose as close as you can to the other dog s rear end and inhale deeply, repeat several times, or until your person makes you stop.

GARBAGE CAN: A container which your neighbors put out once a week to test your ingenuity. You must stand on your hind legs and try to push the lid off with your nose. If you do it right you are rewarded with margarine wrappers to shred, beef bones to consume and moldy crusts of bread.

BICYCLES: Two-wheeled exercise machines, invented for dogs to control body fat. To get maximum aerobic benefit, you must hide behind a bush and dash out, bark loudly and run alongside for a few yards; the person then swerves and falls into the bushes, and you prance away.

DEAFNESS: This is a malady which affects dogs when their person want them in and they want to stay out. Symptoms include staring blankly at the person, then running in the opposite direction, or lying down.

THUNDER: This is a signal that the world is coming to an end. Humans remain amazingly calm during thunderstorms, so it is necessary to warn them of the danger by trembling uncontrollably, panting, rolling your eyes wildly, and following at their heels.

WASTEBASKET: This is a dog toy filled with paper, envelopes, and old candy wrappers. When you get bored, turn over the basket and strew the papers all over the house until your person comes home

SOFAS: Are to dogs like napkins are to people. After eating it is polite to run up and down the front of the sofa and wipe your whiskers clean.

BATH: This is a process by which the humans drench the floor, walls and themselves. You can help by shaking vigorously and frequently.

LEAN: Every good dog's response to the command "sit !", especially if your person is dressed for an evening out. Incredibly effective before black-tie events.

BUMP: The best way to get your human's attention when they are drinking a fresh cup of coffee or tea.

GOOSE BUMP: A maneuver to use as a last resort when the Regular Bump doesn't get the attention you require.....especially effective when combined with The Sniff. See above.

LOVE: Is a feeling of intense affection, given freely and without restriction. The best way you can show your love is to wag your tail. If you're lucky, a human will love you in return.

 


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Saturday, 25 March 2000

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I just processed the web stats for Pournelle's site and my own, as I usually do on Saturday mornings. Interestingly, my own stats are beginning to creep back up. Last week, I ran 1,100 to 1,200 page reads per day for Monday and Tuesday, 700 to 900 pages/day for the other weekdays, and 500 to 700 pages/day on Saturday and Sunday. That's still off a bit from its peak, but it's much better than the last few weeks have been. I have no idea why the increase occurred, but I hope it keeps up.

Barbara is off to Raleigh with her friend Laura to deliver the rescue Border Collie, Tess, to her new owner. They'll stop on the way back to do a home visit or two, which they insist on doing before allowing anyone to adopt a BC.

I'm struggling right now with re-write for the processors chapter. Let me tell you, now is not a good time to be writing about processors and trying to make recommendations. The problem, of course, is Intel versus AMD. Six months or so back, I said that I thought AMD might be forced out of the processor business, and that the Athlon was too little, too late. And they might have been, too, except for the incredible series of fumbles that Intel made. Those errors may result in Intel snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Six months ago, AMD was moribund. Nobody other than enthusiasts and hobbyists had much interest in the Athlon. All that Intel had to do was execute. They fumbled the ball at every opportunity. First, they ramped down 440BX production in the expectation that everyone would want Camino (the i820 chipset). Well, Camino was late, and it turned out that everyone wanted 440BX chipsets that Intel couldn't supply. 

Then, when Camino finally did arrive, it was a fiasco. Literally two days before Camino-based boards were to ship, it was discovered that there was a fatal flaw in its support for 3 RIMM implementations, making all those 3-RIMM motherboards scrap. Then, of course, there was the slight problem that Camino was designed to accept only RDRAM, which cost literally five to ten times what SDRAM cost. Even if you were willing to pay the price, RDRAM availability was very tight.

Then Intel felt compelled to introduce the new Coppermine-core Pentium IIIs before their manufacturing process had ramped up sufficiently to enable them to deliver them in quantity. Intel's inability to deliver Coppermines in quantity resulted in nine of the top ten system makers (all but Dell) introducing AMD-based systems, which was an incredible loss of prestige for Intel. 

And even if you could get your hands on a Coppermine, there was the problem of what motherboard to use it in. The 100 MHz FSB Coppermines weren't a problem, but the only chipsets that supported the 133 MHz Coppermines were the 810e, which is perceived by most as a low-end solution, and the i820, which has obvious problems of its own.

Intel had originally planned to release the Coppermine in gradually faster versions, topping out at 1 GHz or so in late 2000. AMD just kept plunking along, introducing ever-faster Athlons in 50 MHz increments from 500 MHz to, earlier this month, their 1 GHz monster. That forced Intel to ship a 1 GHz Coppermine in Q1, rather than in Q3 or Q4 as they'd planned. The problem, of course, is that 1 GHz is about the limit for the Coppermine core, and Intel is having problems delivering slower Coppermines in quantity, let alone the bleeding edge 1 GHz version.

That means that Intel is stuck with the Coppermine for the rest of 2000, and they're not likely to be shipping anything much faster than 1 GHz for all that time. Obviously, as their production ramps up, they'll be delivering faster Coppermines in larger numbers, and cutting the prices of them, but the fact remains that Intel is pushed to match AMD speeds right now, while AMD seems ready to continue rolling out faster Athlons throughout 2000. 

What may result is an incredible swap in positions, with AMD owning the high-end, and Intel struggling to make profits in the lower margin low-end and mid-range. And, just as in the past Intel used the Celeron as a club to drive down margins in the low-end for competing AMD chips, AMD now seems prepared to do the same to Intel. It's interesting to see that AMD just chopped prices dramatically on the 700 MHz Athlon, which, probably not coincidentally, is about the fastest Coppermine that Intel can deliver in any quantity.

So right now, Intel is under the gun, and the remainder of 2000 is beginning to look grim for them. Their new Coppermine-based Celeron/566 and /600, due to ship next week, will help, but it's not the answer. Neither is Tinma, basically a System on A Chip (SOC) processor due to ship later this year. The real answer is the processor code-named Willamette, which will probably be called the Pentium IV. The problem is, that processor won't ship until Q4, and probably won't ship in volume until at least Q1/01. That's a long time for Intel to wait for something that can counter Athlon.

In the mean time, AMD is getting ready to ship new generation Athlons based on the 0.18µ K75 Thunderbird core. First out the door will be the Spitfire, otherwise known as the Athlon Select, which will provide even stronger competition to the Coppermine than the existing Athlon does in the mainstream segment. Following that is Thunderbird, otherwise known as Athlon Professional, which is a serious threat to Intel at the high end. Beyond that is Mustang, otherwise known as the Athlon Ultra, which uses copper interconnects. Then, of course, lurking on the horizon is the K8 Sledgehammer. All in all, Intel has a pretty frightening array of AMD processors to compete with over the next year or two. And not much to compete with.

The unfortunately-named 64-bit Itanium (formerly known as Merced) isn't the answer. Many have already begun calling the Itanium the Itanic, with the expectation that it's likely to sink from sight about as fast as its namesake. The Itanium will initially ship in at best an 800 MHz version, and it's likely that the first processors available will be even slower than that. As the first IA-64 processor, Itanium can run current software only by emulation, and it's nearly certain that Itanium performance with existing software will be quite slow. So Itanium isn't the answer.

I have no doubt that Intel is trying desperately to get the Willamette out the door sooner than Q4, but from what I know right now, it doesn't seem likely that they'll be able to do so, at least in any quantity. And even the Willamette/Pentium IV isn't a guaranteed solution. Although it may ship with initial clock speeds in the 1.4 to 1.5 GHz range, indications are that it will be less efficient than the Athlon and the Pentium III. That means that a Pentium IV may have to run at a considerably higher clock speed just to match Athlon and Pentium III Coppermine performance.

So it appears that AMD has won, right? Not really, and that's the problem. All of this stuff is speculative. Right now, today, the best solution is the Celeron and the Pentium III Coppermine. Until very recently, Athlon has been hampered by poor chipsets and motherboards. Via has begun delivering their Athlon chipset in quantity only in the last month, and decent Athlon motherboards are only now starting to arrive. AMD itself is striving to replace their first-generation AMD750 chipset with the forthcoming AMD760 chipset, which should be a barn burner. 

But none of this has actually happened yet. Unlike Intel, whose series of missteps came as a surprise to everyone, AMD is known for poor execution. AMD has done a very good job of exploiting Intel's errors over the last six months, but that is no guarantee that they will not revert to their old-style inability to deliver. AMD has bitten off a lot for a relatively small company--the Thunderbird core, copper interconnects, developing the AMD760 chipset, and so on. I'm surprised they aren't manufacturing motherboards. AMD has an incredible opportunity during 2000 to beat Intel at its own game. Whether they can succeed in doing so is the question.

So what's a poor author to do? Whatever I write today will be read two or three months from now (not to mention six months or a year from now) by readers who unconsciously assume that I wrote the stuff about 30 seconds before they read it. Ridiculous, but true. I can't recommend Athlon at this moment based on what I know right now, but the situation may be very different in three months. So I guess I'll put some form of this essay in the book and point out that "as this is written" it is unclear as to how the war will turn out.

I guess I better talk to AMD about getting some eval processors. The last time I tried that, I couldn't find anyone at AMD who'd even return my calls, but I understand they've gotten a lot better in the last six months at taking care of the press. We'll see.

I think I'll work on the motherboards chapter instead for a while.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: J.H. Ricketson [mailto:culam@micron.net]
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 11:36 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Goodbye Microsoft

Dear Bob,

On Wednesday you wrote: "But my goal is eventually to be able to do my work without depending on any Microsoft applications."

I totally agree with your sentiments re forced registration and applaud them. It serves no legitimate purpose for me. It has long been my policy not to register anything. I get too much spam as it is. It certainly can't provide "support" that is nonexistent anyway. I will not under any circumstances move beyond Office 97 and NT4 until Microsoft no longer demands access to my computer to do Gods only know what damage.

Take heart: there is a very enthusiastic review of Corel's WordPerfect Office Suite for Linux [here]: 

Much as I abhor Word(im)Perfect, and the other apps in the suite, having been forced to use them in years past, I was intrigued. It appears to be a very viable alternative - at least for der Linuxen.

One thing that has aroused my curiosity: does your resolve include Internet Exploder, or will they "have to pry that from your cold, dead hands?" <BG>

Regards,

JHR 
--

[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]
culam@micron.net

Actually, I always much preferred WordPerfect to Word. I used WP from the DOS 4.0 release through the DOS 5.1 release and also the first couple of Windows versions. I think it was when I started writing books that I had to shift to Word because all the publishers' templates were based on it. I don't know about IE. I keep hoping that MS will see the light and release a Linux version. I should perhaps have made it more clear that I was talking about migrating away from MS applications in the (very) long term, not the short term.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Donders [alan_donders at hotmail period com]
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 7:10 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: O2K / FP2K

Bob, Just a note to let you know that I tried the Microsoft site to order the O2K SR-1 CD and the process completed without error. I got a page that says:

Thank you for your order!

Your order number is xxxxxxxxxxxx.

Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery of your order.

BTW, while you were trying to order the CD, did you mind that your phone number is a required field? I don't mind giving my e-mail address as I have one that I use just for these types of requests but I can't imangine the need for a phine number for a fulfillment area to mail out a CD. Actually, I think there are some sites that offer a phone number connected to a free voice-mail service that sends you the messages as e-mail attachments. I think I'll hunt one down and then have a "throw-away" phone number to use too.

Also, is Jerry aware of the FP2K bottom shared margin bug? He seems to sometimes get action when he brings these types of issues to Microsoft's attention.

Keep up the good work on your site. Very enjoyable and informative.

Alan Donders 
alan_donders at hotmail period com

P.S. I've heard that programs that scan web pages to harvest e-mail addresses now also look for the strings "at" for '@' and "dot" for '.' Have you heard anything along those lines?

Microsoft's web site blowing up on a script error is nothing new to me. I'm glad you succeeded in getting a confirmation, but I'm not going to worry about it. I downloaded the 52 MB SR-1 file yesterday. As far as phone number, I always just give them my fax number or the number of the line I use for dialing the Internet, which is nearly always off-hook and doesn't ring anywhere anyway. Jerry is aware of the FP2K shared margin bug, although he hadn't notice that it had deleted his copyright notice until I pointed it out to him. I'm currently in communication with a guy at Microsoft whose title is Product Lead for Support for Microsoft FrontPage, so I have some hopes of getting the problem resolved or, failing that, at least getting it recognized as a real bug that needs fixed. As far as address grabbers, I speculated a month or so ago that they could easily parse for the pattern "??? at ??? dot ???" and convert it to a properly-formatted address. I have no knowledge that any address grabber actually does this, but I'd do it that way if I were one of the sleazy, scum-sucking, bottom-feeder programmers who write such software. 

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: chuck goldie [mailto:agoldie@cin.net]
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2000 5:39 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: network help

Would you by chance know of a basic network how-to book? I am looking to install a network system for my wife in her real estate office. The system will only be including three PC's. This is a very low budget operation with the main objective in the network installation being internet service on more than one computer with only a single ISP account.

Any help at all would be great! 

Chuck Goldie
agoldie@cin.net

I don't know of any good title off the top of my head, but I suspect one of the Dummies/Morons/Idiots/Cretins books might be just the thing. Perhaps one of my readers will email you directly with other suggestions.

There's not really much involved to bringing up a small network Buy a 10/100 Ethernet card for each machine, a hub (I'd suggest an eight-port version), and some pre-made Category 5 cables in the correct lengths. I'd stick with Intel or another name brand for the cards and hub, which should run you $30 to $40 per card and perhaps $125 for the hub. The cables should be $3 to $15 each, depending on length (although very long ones will be more). You can find pre-made Cat 5 cables in anything up to 100 foot lengths. You might also consider buying one of the small networking kits offered by various vendors. If you have Windows 98 SE on your "server", it already has Internet Connection Sharing built-in, although I've never used it.

 


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Sunday, 26 March 2000

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My friend David Silvis sent me this URL, outraged about yet another invasion of privacy. This time, drivers license photos on-line. Click here to try it for yourself.

I'd completed benchmark testing on the CA810EAL motherboard, so I tore down that testbed yesterday and rebuilt it around an Intel CC820 Cape Cod motherboard. That's the version that uses SDRAM via the Memory Translator Hub (MTH). I also have a VC820 motherboard, which is identical except that it uses Rambus RDRAM. I'm using configurations as similar as possible to get a comparison between the i810e, i820 with SDRAM, i820 with RDRAM, and the venerable 440BX. The 810e, of course, has embedded i752 video. For the other boards, I'm using an ATI All-In-Wonder 128 AGP card.

I have to say that my first impression of the CC820 was neutral. Performance seems to be on a par with the 810e. For example, here are some figures under Windows 98, the average of five runs each, with the CA810EAL using a Coppermine/600 and the CC820 using a Coppermine/600EB. Although the latter runs a 133 MHz FSB, remember that the 820 MTH runs memory at 100 MHz, so the figures are comparable:

ZD WinBench 99 1.1 810e 820
   CPUmark 99 52.76 52.26
   FPU WinMark 3208 3208
SiSoft Sandra 2000.3.6.4 810e 820
   Dhrystone 1616 1617
   Whetstone 802.8 803
   CPU Memory 211.4 203.6
   FPU Memory 223.6 234.8

I'd call that pretty much a draw. The 820 is about 0.9% slower on CPUmark 99, but there's enough variance between runs that the results could easily have been reversed. The 820 is about 3.7% slower than the 810e on the CPU Memory test, and about 5% faster on the FPU Memory test. Those tests show only minor variations between runs, so there may be a real difference there. How meaningful it is is another question.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Orvin [mailto:JeffOrvin@fni.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2000 9:18 PM
To: alan_donders@hotmail.com
Cc: Bob Thompson
Subject: Harvesting e-mail addresses

Haven't used it yet, but I ran across this page a while back:

In part, it says, "The HTML Encoder is a service of SiteUp Networks. The Encoder will format your E-mail address in a way that IS NOT readable by any E-mail extractor or search engine."

Thanks.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: J.H. Ricketson [mailto:culam@micron.net]
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2000 11:15 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Your Sat. 3.25 Analysis of Intel vs. AMD

Dear Bob,

A very insightful and fair-minded analysis of the situation, IMO. Thanks. Would you care to go into a similar analysis of the SMP situation, Intel vs. AMD, and their respective prospects? As I understand it, Intel has a lock on multiprocessor capability. IMO, this is at least as significant as bumping heads on CPU speed. End users are going to want SMP, and the Pros are going to need it. I think that may be Intel's big ace in the hole, if exploited.

Regards,

JHR 
--

[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]
culam@micron.net

Thanks. The Athlon processor itself has SMP support built-in, but what it doesn't have for the moment is either an SMP-capable chipset or SMP support in any operating system. The latter is the real problem, because even if AMD released an SMP-capable chipset today, Windows NT/2000, Linux, etc. have support for SMP on Intel only using MPS, which is proprietary Intel technology. AMD would need to depend on Microsoft, Torvalds, et al to build SMP support for AMD into their kernels.

* * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: maceda@pobox.com [mailto:maceda@pobox.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2000 12:33 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Intel's fumbles

"but the only chipsets that supported the 133 MHz Coppermines were the 810e, which is perceived by most as a low-end solution, and the i820, which has obvious problems of its own."

As a matter of fact the only chipsets able to support the 133 MHz Coppermines at the time of their launch were the 810 and VIA's chipset since the i820 was withheld by Intel. You should also consider the efforts taken by Intel and the subsequent lawsuit to keep VIA's chipset off the market. VIA did to Intel in the chipset sector what AMD did in the processor front. And what about the 840? Intel has made a lot of mistakes at a very critical point and almost all this mistakes can be attributed to their arrogance:

1.- i820: a chipset designed from the ground up NOT to support SDRAM. RAMBUS' choice was the choice of trying to collect revenue of competitors. They knew that if the i820 supported SDRAM Rambus would never take off. SDRAM at 100 MHz and 133 MHz is only slightly slower than Rambus and with DDR SDRAM around the corner that speed advantage was going to disappear. The price differential alone would push motherboard makers and system integrators to the SDRAM/DDR SDRAM camp. The only choice they had to push Rambus was to force it down everyone’s throat.

2.- 440 BX: in a parallel road was the 440 BX. By eliminating this product they hoped to force the adoption of the i820, which forced the adoption of Rambus. Technically speaking the i820 is not a superior product to the 440 BX, Anand, Tom and every single hardware site on the net has proved it. What does the 440 BX lacks to be the chipset of choice today: AGP 1/2 multiplier, official recognition to run at 133 MHz (not necessary since every overclocker is doing it) and AGP 4X (not very useful). Remember the HX/TX controversy?

I think I have taken enough of your time already and you already know this. Besides I will be labeled as an Intel basher (which I'm not) and the truth is that if the roles were reversed AMD would do the same things or even worse. The bottom line here is that AMD's products are good enough and I have started recommending them to my clients. They are not going to disappear overnight and competition is good. We live in interesting times!

Francisco Garcia Maceda 
maceda@pobox.com

You're right, of course, about the VIA chipset. What I was referring to was Intel chipsets, commenting that they'd basically shipped a processor without any good choice of chipset to support it. As far as RDRAM, I'm not sure I'm as charitable as you are. I don't think that SDRAM is "only slightly slower than Rambus" at all. In fact, I suspect it's probably slightly faster in normal applications. The great weakness of Rambus is latency. The other great weakness, which no one seems to mention, is that the more you use the slower it gets. That is, a configuration with three RIMMs is slower than one with two RIMMs, which is slower than one with one RIMM. Not good.

 


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