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Daynotes Journal

Week of 30 October 2000

Friday, 05 July 2002 08:06

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, 30 October 2000

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Thanks to everyone who's already bought a copy of our latest book, PC Hardware in a Nutshell. If you haven't ordered a copy yet, why not click the link and do so now? Thanks.


I pretty much took the weekend off, although I did do some stuff around the house and wrote a bit. Saturday afternoon, I happened to notice that AMC was running a horror movie marathon. So I watched The Deadly Mantis, The Black Scorpion, Tarantula, Them!, and Creature from the Black Lagoon

I generally don't much like movies, preferring to spend what leisure time I have available reading a book, but I do have a soft spot for those 1950's black-and-white mutant giant insect movies. I've forgotten what one uses to kill deadly mantises, but it's nice to know that for the rest if we're ever attacked by such creatures, they can be dispatched with an electric generator, napalm, a Thompson submachine gun, or rotenone, respectively--all stuff we keep around the house. Except for the napalm, of course, and that's easy enough to make with gasoline and soap powder.

The psychology behind those movies is interesting. Fear of nuclear weapons and their aftereffects, the helplessness of humanity against things that they've unintentionally unleashed, the inability of the military to cope with radical new dangers, and so on. Of course, there's a secondary agenda in all of them, too. They all have a romantic sub-theme. Obviously, most of these movies were intended to play at drive-in theatres, where the romantic sub-theme set the stage and the monster gave the girl a good excuse to jump into the guy's lap.

The science in these movies is generally laughable to non-existent--even ignoring the fact that mobile creatures of that size cannot exist in a gravitational force of 1 G--but some of them aren't bad nonetheless. From Tarantula, I learned that the population of earth by 2000 would be 3.6 billion. A bit of an underestimate, but then that didn't take into account the agricultural revolution that commenced around 1970. Without that, the population of earth probably would have been only 3.6 billion. And Them! was actually a pretty good movie in absolute terms. Superior writing, acting, and plot. One of the best rampaging-giant-mutant-insect movies ever made, I think.

Microsoft says that Windows 2000 has an AGP bug when running on VIA chipsets. Details here.

A couple of interesting computer-related articles in the morning paper. There was an article on the front page discussing how "computer forensics" technology, which was formerly used only by law enforcement personnel, is now commonly used by corporations to snoop for personal information about employees, including details of your finances and health. The answer seems to be that you shouldn't use your computer at work for anything personal, but then that should have been obvious. The other article talks about PayPal, which is no longer free. They now charge 25 cents per transaction and a couple percent of the amount being transferred. That's probably reasonable, given credit card transaction costs, but it does eliminate PayPal as a viable mechanism for micro-transactions. Pity.

 


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Tuesday, 31 October 2000

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We took an unexpected break yesterday to make a shopping trip. When Barbara left for the gym, she moved a load of clothes she'd just washed to the dryer, and put another load in the washer. When Barbara arrived home from the gym, she removed the load from the dryer only to find that it was still wet. Our clothes dryer is about 20 years old, and has been having a few other problems anyway. So I figured we might as well head for the library, check out Consumer Reports frequency of Repair ratings, and go buy a new dryer.

As it turned out, CR liked Sears Kenmore dryers, which had a good Frequency-of-Repair record as well. So we headed for Sears at the mall. When we got there, we found out that Sears also carried other brands, including Whirlpool, which is what our old one is. That one has done yeoman service, and had a good FOR record in CR, so we decided to go with the Whirlpool. They had four models, ranging from $300 to $400. We spent a good 30 seconds deciding, and went for the $400 one. They're delivering it Wednesday.

Barbara had two loads of wet laundry--the one that was in the dryer and the one that was in the washer. We were visiting our friends Sue and Robin for dinner last night, so I called yesterday at lunch time and left a message on their machine asking if they'd mind if we did our laundry at their house while we were there. It's not easy to keep up my string of bizarrities each time we visit Sue and Robin, but something like this usually comes up. 

The last time we went over, we got to discuss the bizarreness of what happened that day. We'd called our plumber and left a message asking him to come to our place to fix something that was leaking. He never showed up at our house. Instead, he showed up at Sue and Robin's house (and they hadn't called for a plumber). As far as we know, the plumber didn't even know that we knew each other, and it's still a puzzle how that happened. Understand, this is a metro area of about 1,000,000 population, with many plumbers, and our home is a good 15 minute drive from Sue and Robin's home. So how did the plumber we asked to come to our house end up instead at their house?

And, speaking of bizarre, the power cord for dryers is now apparently an optional item. We had our choice. Order the dryer with the $20 optional power cord, or remove the power cord from the old dryer ourselves and connect it to the new one. The installers can't do that for liability reasons. We'd just replaced the power cord on the old dryer a year or so ago, so I told the salesman that we'd connect our own power cord.

While we were at Sears, we picked up a couple other items, including a couple of filters for the new air cleaner that Barbara just bought for my mother and a sink snake to clear the drain in the master bath. As Barbara was paying for those, I was standing there admiring the display of boxed gift items in the tool department. They had a big screwdriver set for $20, as well as a four-piece pliers set, also for $20. Now, my attitude is that one can never have enough screwdrivers or pliers, so I find it very hard to pass such displays without buying something. 

The result, of course, is that we have something like five or ten times as many screwdrivers and pliers as the average household. I managed to restrain myself this time. Well, actually Barbara managed to restrain me. But those sure were nice screwdrivers and pliers. I considered pointing out to Barbara that if I'd had those screwdrivers and pliers I could have replaced her receptacle years ago, but I figured I'd better not push my luck.

So today I get to remove the power cord from the old dryer (using my old screwdrivers and pliers, alas) and get the old dryer ready to be hauled off.

 


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Wednesday, 1 November 2000

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The Register reports that, with an absolutely shocking lack of decency, one British retailer was selling Mad Cow toys. Install the batteries, turn them on, and they moo and shake uncontrollably. I am not making this up. What's next? AIDS dolls that waste away as you watch them? A Fun with Cancer board game? Depending on whose figures one believes, anything from tens of thousands to millions of Brits may be infected with BSE, a disease which resembles AIDS in its extended latency (10 to 20 years) and its horrific effects once symptoms begin to manifest. That anyone could consider manufacturing a toy that mocks such a catastrophe is beyond belief. That a respected retailer like Sainsburys would even consider putting it on their shelves leaves me speechless. At least they have now withdrawn the toy. But that's clearly not enough. Everyone who had any part in the decision to stock that toy should be fired and their names made public. Or perhaps they should be forced to dine on known-infected beef.

Yesterday, I removed the power cord from the old dryer (using an old screwdriver). When we disconnected the vent hose, there was considerable build-up of lint at the dryer end, so we decided we'd better clean that out. We first tried leaving the external vent end connected and using the shop vac to get the stuff out. That didn't work too well, so we eventually disconnected the vent end as well and started beating and shaking the hose to loosen the accumulated lint. Just about the time we got it clean--most of the lint had migrated from the hose to us--Barbara noticed a small crack in the hose. Oh-oh. Time for a new vent hose. Barbara had to run some errands anyway, so she picked up a 20 footer at Lowe's. The new dryer is to be delivered today sometime, but we have no idea when.


-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Hanstock [mailto:j.n.hanstock@blueyonder.co.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 9:37 AM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: October 1999

I stated reading your website this year and have been reading consecutively from the beginning also. A few points:

I am in awe of your committment to this site and deeply grateful for it.

Im interested that Y2K issues intrude so little as of Nov 1 1999

My interest is piqued by your deep reservations about the viability of AMD and the Athlon at that stage. I'd be fascinated to see an update of your take on this. Always assuming its not hiding in as yet the unread bits!

Thanks for the kind words. 

As far as Y2K, my attitude was that we should prepare for possible localized problems, but I didn't expect the widespread severe problems that some predicted. We actually did very little in the way of special preparations. We already had a generator--ice storms around here periodically kill the power for periods ranging from hours to days--gas logs in one of our fireplaces, candles and hurricane lamps, and so on. We laid in some extra canned goods and several hundred litres of water in old 3-litre Coke bottles. Other than that, we did nothing special. It didn't cost us anything extra to make such minor preparations, and so the cost/benefit ratio of doing so was high. But when I woke up on 1 January to find that the world hadn't changed much, I can't say I was particularly surprised. I'd expected a lot more minor problems than actually occurred, but I was less surprised by what actually happened than I would have been had there been rioting in the streets.

As far as the Athlon/Duron, I now consider it to be a worthy competitor to the Intel processors. My objections to the original K7-core Athlons were two-fold. First, the Athlon versus Pentium III issue brought to mind Soviet-bloc tanks versus American tanks. Like the Soviet tanks, the Athlon was inexpensive, powerful, and crude. They consumed two or three times as much power as an equivalent Intel processor and otherwise lacked elegance. The second issue was the chipsets. The original AMD Irongate chipset was originally intended to be a technology demonstrator rather than a production chipset. VIA was very late with its Athlon chipsets, and a lot of motherboards were built around the Irongate. I didn't think that buying an Irongate motherboard made any sense when there were alternatives like the Intel 440BX available. Also, I've never been a big fan of VIA chipsets. Relative to Intel chipsets, they've typically been slow, buggy, and had a lot of driver compatibility issues. When the KX133 finally did arrive, I wasn't particularly impressed with it. So, based on the crudity of both processor and chipsets, I recommended sticking with Intel chipsets and processors.

Since that time, AMD has made a lot of progress, first with the K75 core, and later with the Thunderbird core upon which the current Athlon and Duron processors are based. AMD processors are still power-hungry compared to Intel models with similar performance, but I regard the Thunderbird-core AMD processors as fully competitive with current Intel products. The VIA KT133 (formerly KZ133) chipset is probably the best chipset that VIA has ever produced. In my opinion, it's still a half-step behind the best Intel chipsets, but despite that it remains a viable chipset around which to build a stable, reliable platform.

And there actually was a third issue, that being the ability of AMD to execute, which had historically been a problem for them. When I wrote those words, there was considerable doubt that AMD would in fact be able to supply the Athlon in volume. As it turns out, they've done just about everything just about perfectly, while Intel has stumbled repeatedly during the same period with their inability to deliver Coppermine Pentium III processors in volume, the i440BX shortages, the i820 fiasco, their support of Rambus memory, and so on. Intel's very size has been its salvation during this period. If AMD had as many fabs as Intel does, AMD might very well be selling more processors than Intel today. AMD is selling every processor they can make, but they just don't have the fabs to make all that many, at least compared to Intel.

If AMD is to take on Intel on even terms, however, a lot of work remains to be done. They need to ship the 770/760MP chipset because having an SMP Athlon solution is important. They need to make much deeper inroads in the corporate market, which remains an Intel stronghold. They need to encourage VIA to get the KM133 chipset out the door, because in the absence of an integrated chipset the Duron is getting destroyed by the Celeron at the low-end--not on processor cost or performance, but on overall system cost. They need to do something about the MHz race, because most people buy on the MHz rating of a processor rather than the actual performance it provides. A 1.0 GHz Athlon may blow the doors off a 1.5 GHz Pentium 4, but that won't matter because the Pentium 4 has a clock speed that's 50% faster, and people buy on clock speed.

So I disagree strongly with people who say that Intel is doomed. Sure, Intel is trying to compete with the Coppermine, which has already reached its limits while the Athlon has lots of room left to scale up. Sure, Intel's love affair with Rambus is hurting them badly. But the fact remains that Intel still produces the best chipsets available, such as the i815E Solano II, and Intel can make a ton of processors. AMD is doing everything right right now, but that by itself is not enough to overcome Intel's advantages. If AMD continues to execute perfectly, they may one day be Avis to Intel's Hertz. But the simple fact is that Intel can afford to make mistakes. They can afford to make a lot of big mistakes and still retain their lead. AMD can't afford even little mistakes at this point. So it'll be interesting to watch what happens over the next year or two.


-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waggoner [waggoner at gis dot net]
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 3:14 PM
To: Robert Bruce Thompson (E-mail)
Subject: Kenmore

Unless things have changed recently, you would have gotten a Whirlpool even if you bought the Kenmore.

I'm acquainted with the fellow who was the head of RCA Whirlpool when that deal was struck, many decades ago. He told me it was an unusual deal--like Hershey not advertising for so very long--in that it was done--and still ran, to the best of his knowledge when I last spoke with him,--not through a paper contract, but on a handshake.

The other interesting aspect--to me at least,--is that he said Whirlpool produced far more of the Sears branded product than their own.

We bought the largest capacity washer and dryer Kenmore made 23 years ago, and they are still running like champs! only one service call for each in the intervening years.

I think I did know in the back of my mind that Whirlpool made Kenmore washers and dryers, but thanks for confirming it. Barbara bought her original Whirlpool washer and dryer back before we were married, so that's been probably 20 years. I hope this new Whirlpool lasts that long.


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Timm [mailto:gcjtimm@earthlink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 7:27 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Is the Daypage gang a vector for techno disease?

Robert,

Strange weirdness. Our dryer died Sunday...a Whirlpool...

My wife dragged me out and we bought a set of Maytags also about $400 each. We went to Sears, but my wife didn't like the feature set on the Whirlpools and Kenmores, she's allergic to lint filters on top, likes it in front by the door.

It was a serious "YES DEAR" situation. I sat home Monday waiting for the installers.

Fairview Park Maytag lived up to it's good reputation. Came "in the afternoon" 12:32, finished at 13:22 and even wiped the floor under the appliances before installing the new ones. (Our cord was $10, flat rate. They even managed to dislodge the old hose I had given up on and used when we moved in 5 years ago.)

Now she's got a check and wants a CD-RW...it's the Plextor from Page 222 of PCHIAN..

Jeff Timm
Who thinks things are seriously weird...
Who also wonders why these things go blewey just before the Holidays..

Yep, but as Sigmund Freud said, "sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence," or something like that. I'd never have thought about the location of the lint trap, but Barbara commented on it. The Whirlpool we got has the lint trap inside the machine at the bottom front. You won't regret buying the Plextor 12/10/32A. It's the best CD-RW drive I've ever seen.


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Strock [mailto:MikeS@webforia.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 11:50 PM
To: 'thompson@ttgnet.com'
Subject: Web Stats - What do you use?

I thought I would ask you, since you run stats on both your site and Pournelle's. We are currently using WebTrends, but I find it unsatisfactory, from a usability standpoint. What are you using to run stats on your site, if I may ask? We run IIS on a few servers.

Thanks. I enjoy the page, got to it originally when Mr. Pournelle was in Paris.

Mike Strock
IS Manager
mikes@webforia.com
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
-Edgard Varese, composer (1885-1965)

Thanks for the kind words. I use Analog to analyze the web logs. It works fine and provides the information we need, although the graphics are limited to simple bar charts. If you turn on DNS resolution with Analog it takes forever to run reports. But DNS resolution has to be on if you want meaningful reports that include hostnames and domain names rather than just IP addresses. Some time ago, one of my readers suggested a product called QDNS from AnalogX. I run that product first to do DNS resolution in batch mode. It runs 100 DNS threads, and so takes only a few minutes to resolve all the entries. Here is the batch file I run to produce the weekly, monthly, and yearly reports for Pournelle:

qdns /G year.cfg /t 100
qdns /D dnsfile.txt /t 100
analog -G +gyear.cfg
ren report.html year.html
analog -G +gmonth.cfg
ren report.html month.html
analog -G +gweek.cfg
ren report.html week.html
xcopy dnsfile.txt g:\data\webstats\pournelle

Incidentally, case is significant on at least some of the switches. I'm pretty sure that Analog and AnalogX support all of the log file formats supported by IIS, but I've never tried them. Our web host runs Apache and provides log files in the extended common log file format. Analog and AnalogX are worth a try anyway. Both are free for the download.

 


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Thursday, 2 November 2000

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The Sears guys showed up yesterday morning with the new dryer. They unboxed it while it was still on the back of the truck and then lifted it down. As the one guy was busy attaching a new power cord to it, I pointed out that we hadn't paid for the new power cord. He said he was giving us one anyway, so now we have a spare power cord.

Then I noticed that the front of the dryer said Kenmore rather than Whirlpool, so I told the guy I thought he'd brought us the wrong dryer. I ran in the house to get the paperwork and, sure enough, we'd bought the Kenmore. Oh, well. As someone said yesterday, Whirlpool makes Kenmores anyway, and Kenmores were well-rated in Consumer Reports. So they rolled it down the driveway and started installing it.

Barbara had bought a new vent hose, one of the ribbed, expandable plastic ones. But the installers had brought along their own ribbed, expandable metal vent hose. That was fortunate, because there was a label on top of the dryer warning not to use plastic hose. So I guess the next time Barbara goes to Lowe's she'll return the hose we bought for a refund.

They turned on the dryer to test it, and it worked fine. We haven't done a load of laundry yet to give it a real test, but that won't be long in coming. I was going to suggest that they install the new dryer in the hall bathroom and connect it to Barbara's new receptacle, but I figured I'd better not push my luck. (And yes, I know that dryers run on 220V rather than 110V, but I could have slipped that past Barbara). Barbara was upset with me anyway, because she thought I'd lost the business card for the company that comes and hauls the old one away. I ended up calling Sears, getting the phone number for that company, and calling them to arrange pickup. That took all of two minutes to do. And we did finally find the business card in the drum of the new dryer.

So the dryer episode is over and done with.

Linux Today recently ran an article entitled Jerry Pournelle finally admits he's a Microsoft shill, and I wanted to comment briefly on that article. Clearly, the headline itself and many of the comments are libelous. Pournelle has admitted no such thing. How could he? It isn't true. But one theme runs through many of the posts, and that is that Pournelle gets free stuff from vendors. According to many of the people who posted comments, that must mean that Pournelle is in some way beholden to the folks who supply that stuff.

I can understand how these people can believe this, but the fact is that it simply isn't true. I've written about this issue at length before, but to restate it briefly, a bribe is only a bribe if what is being offered has value to the person receiving it. I know that this sounds strange, but the stuff that Pournelle and I get from manufacturers has no real value to us. The only two people at Chaos Manor are Jerry and his wife. Jerry has something over 30 computers right now, and parts to build probably a dozen more. The only two users here are Barbara and me, and we are literally covered up in computers. We're running out of places to plug them in and horizontal surfaces to hold them. If someone really needs or wants a new computer, a new computer might be a pretty good bribe. But if one already has 30 computers, the 31st computer isn't a bribe at all. It's a burden.

When Jerry or I want to look at some new piece of hardware, we send email to the company or pick up the phone and call them. They generally FedEx us whatever we ask for. So, if Jerry can call up Intel and have them ship him a motherboard and Pentium III or call up Seagate and get them to send him a new hard drive, does that mean that Jerry is unfairly biased in favor of Intel or Seagate? No, because Jerry can just as easily pick up the phone and have AMD ship him a motherboard and Athlon or call up Maxtor and have them ship him a new hard drive. Same thing for me. It's a wash.

The best analogy I can come up with is the standard policy at candy stores. New employees are always told that they're free to eat as much of the stock as they want. The first day, it's a matter of "Wow! All the free candy I can eat." So they pig out. But all it takes is once before they realize that munching on the inventory is not such a great fringe benefit after all. It's the same for Jerry and me. In effect, we work in that candy store. So, as it turns out, offering us yet another free bag of candy isn't much of a bribe after all.


-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Chase [mailto:alan_chase@hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 1:09 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Dryer Vents

Bob,

Just wanted to make sure you had gotten the appropriate type of venting for your new dryer.

There are basically four types available, only two of which are preferable as far as avoiding spontaneous combustion fires from trapped lint build-up. The four types are ribbed flexible plastic hose, ribbed flexible metal hose, non-ribbed flexible metal hose and non-flexible metal ducts. The first two types (with the ribs) are prone to trap lint and should be avoided. The other two types do not have ribs and are preferable.

Thanks. As it turned out, the Sears installers connected the dryer with vent hose that they'd brought themselves. It's the ribbed, expandable metal kind, which I'm sure is not as good as the kind with no ribs, but will serve. We plan to move elsewhere before too very long, so what they installed should work fine. At least it's metal, so a fire isn't an issue.


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Boyle [mailto:mboyle@toltbbs.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 1:13 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: screwdrivers

Robert

You should have had a male child. From about the age of 12 until departure you would need a new screwdriver every time you needed one.

Mike Boyle
mboyle@buckeye-express.com

Hmm. Good point, although I was a virtuous child who never stole my father's screwdrivers. Well, I did covet a nesting brass-handled screwdriver set that had belonged to my grandfather, and my dad did eventually give that to me. Either that, or I stole it. I can't remember which.


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Garvey [mailto:mgarvey@pcmac.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 2:44 PM
To: thompson@ttgnet.com
Subject: Dryer maintenance

Robert,

A blocked exhaust vent is the first suspect when a dryer leaves a load of laundry wet. You might have found your old dryer still works after the vent was cleaned but now that you've gone down your chosen path (new dryer, transplanted power-cord, new exhaust vent) it's best to see it through. Of course if you've already confirmed that the heating element has failed, then the choice is academic.

Lint is the most common obstruction, but I find I have to be vigilant about birds' nests at the point where the vent exits the house. The dryer being on the second floor, means this chore is usually done at the same time as gutter cleaning. First chance I get, I plan to install one of those vent caps with a better door mechanism that claims to limit bird incursion here -- we shall see.

Yeah, but with a blocked vent, you normally end up with warm, wet clothes. We had cold, wet clothes, so it's almost certain the element failed, although I didn't verify that. The main bearing that supports the tub on the old dryer had been failing for years, and I'd never gotten around to replacing it, so we didn't think it was worthwhile spending much time, effort or money on the old dryer. At 20 years old, something else (like the mechanical timing rotor) was likely to fail soon anyway. Frankly, I'd much rather spend the $400 and have done with it. Now we have a dryer that presumably won't do anything aggravating or time-consuming for years to come, and that's worth the $400 to me.


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Walsh [mailto:billwalsh@erols.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 12:40 AM
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
Subject: Dryer vent miscellany

NO NEED TO REPLY, JUST FYI ................

Of all the wordly things I could comment on, I'm compelled to write about the dryer vent experience I went through earlier this year. (I fear I may be too late sending this; your Nov.1 notes indicate dryer delivery and installation has probably already occured.)

For a long time our 13-year-old "Magic Chef" dryer was not drying clothes well, even when running extra drying cycles. Playing with the mechanical position of the dryer thermostat didn't help, and vacuuming the vent line didn't seem to help either. Somewhere, I got the idea that vent exhaust was critical for drying, and reluctantly tried to get at and check the last foot of vent line that went to the outside.

To my surprise, I found a bit of matted lint that outside moisture had turned into a vent plug. After removal of this obstruction, normal dryer operation was completely restored! ( I hope blocked venting wasn't the real cause for your original dryer's poor performance, but I figured you may need to know this if the new dryer seems to "under-perform.")

Also, I received PCHIAN on Monday. Boy, I wish I knew some of this stuff earlier when I was building machines; there's a lot of nuggets in that book. Good job!!

Thanks. Tweren't the vent this time, alas.

 


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Friday, 3 November 2000

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I got an email yesterday that signifies the end of an era. It was from Novell, and told me that I'd let my Certified Netware Engineer (CNE) certifications lapse. I can re-activate them by taking a NetWare 5 upgrade exam, but I won't bother to do that. I got my CNE years ago, and then continued with the series to become only the third Enterprise CNE (ECNE) in North Carolina, and then the first Master CNE (MCNE) in North Carolina. So it's been a long road, but I've reached the end of it.

At one point, I had several NetWare servers (3.x and 4.x) running here, but I shut down the last NetWare server that was still running here more than a year ago, and have no plans to ever run NetWare again. NetWare no longer matters. It's become a niche product. And before anyone bothers to send me email howling in outrage, I know that thousands of enterprises still depend on NetWare, and I know that NetWare is much superior to either Windows NT/2000 or Linux as a file/print sharing environment. 

But that doesn't change the fact that NetWare is no longer a factor. When I first began working with NetWare, it had something like 95% of all installed seats and a similar percentage of new seats sold. After NT4 shipped, the number of new NetWare seats sold started to plummet. It's now at the point where the vast majority of new NetWare seats are sold into existing NetWare shops, which are a rapidly declining fraction of the whole. As a server OS, NetWare is now in third place in new seats, behind Windows NT/2000 and Linux. If you break out NT/2000, NetWare is probably in fourth place, which is saying something considering how poorly Windows 2000 Server is selling.

It's a pity, really. NetWare is still better by far as a file/print sharing platform than anything else available. And yet Novell's market share is plummeting, all because of some very poor decisions, both marketing and technical, that Novell has made over the years. I think the biggest mistake, which I pointed out at the time, was how badly they handled UnixWare. Had Novell successfully packaged and promoted NetWare/UnixWare as a one-two punch--NetWare for file and print services and UnixWare as an application server platform--NT would have been very unlikely to make the inroads it did. Instead, Novell let UnixWare slip away, and with it any chance for them to maintain their dominance in PC-based networking.

Right now, Novell still has NDS, which is their jewel in the crown. What they should be doing is pushing hard to make NDS the standard directory service. NDS is superior to Microsoft's Active Directory in just about every respect, and could form the core of a resurgent Novell. They need to push NDS into Linux-space, and push it hard. NDS eDirectory for Linux is a start, but doesn't go far enough. Very few people except those already in NetWare shops even know about it. Novell needs to distribute a free 25- or 50-user version of NDS for Linux to get their foot in the door. Their goal should be to have every little test-bed Linux box out there running a copy of NDS for Linux. A directory service is something that people will pay good money for. Not, perhaps at the 25-user level, but it's a different story at the level of network complexity found in the networks of medium and large corporations, which have always been Novell's core market.

Once NDS for Linux becomes ubiquitous, Novell could price NDS/Linux at something approaching what Microsoft charges for Windows 2000 Server. With Linux free, the cost of the OS solution would be about the same regardless of whether people chose NDS/Linux or Windows 2000 Server. Not that that really matters, because the cost of the server OS is a trivial part of the cost of building and maintaining a serious network. And the choice between NDS/Linux and Windows 2000 is going to be pretty clear for anyone who understands what a directory service is really supposed to be.

But it probably won't happen. Novell is worse at marketing than any other software company I can think of. For example, I just went over to their main web site and clicked on the link that offers a feature-by-feature comparison of NDS versus AD. Guess what? That link returns a 404 error. Why am I not surprised?


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Micko [mailto:rmicko@clipperinc.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 10:14 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Washer/Dryer NSA Conspiracy

Mr. Thompson:

Last week you discussed the National Security Agency with some detail. Later in that week you mention that you've lived in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Washingtion D.C. Next you mention your dryer, a whirlpool, mysteriously failing to dry. Jeff Timm, of Fairview Park, a suburb of Cleveland, mentions that his dryer, a whirlpool, died on Sunday. Last week the washer in my home mysteriously stopped cleaning clothes. My washer was a kenmore. I work in Cleveland; I live in a suburb of Cleveland.

You may think the NSA employs tens of thousands of people and spend billions of dollars to essentially no effect, but I believe I've uncovered a Sears/Whirlpool/NSA conspircacy. Obviously the NSA is sending you, and anyone related to you a message. I'll follow up with you when I have more details, but somehow they're combining global positioning, a whirlpool/kenmore/sears database, and large primes to target anyone who questions too much.

We bought a new Sears front-loading high efficiency no-agitator washer. Consumer Reports seemed to like it, and claimed over the life of the unit, the tco is less than a conventional top-load agitator unit. I don't know, but my wife is happy, my clothes are clean, and my two year old likes watching the clothes wash. I also purchased the 5 year extended warranty, figuring I'm covered if the NSA continues to target me because of you.

I enjoy your website and writing very much. I'm happy that you haven't been disciplined in your plan to devote less time to the site. Of course it hurts me as much as it hurts you... I spend too much time reading and responding.

Thank you for your courtesy,

Richard Micko
rmicko@clipperinc.com

Hmmm. You may have a point. Barbara returned yesterday from playing golf with her father and reported that his Kenmore freezer had failed without warning. 


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard G. Samuels [mailto:rick@samuels.com]
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 7:10 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Another word on dryers

Robert:

We have a dryer which I bought used when my oldest son was a newborn. He's 16 now and has two younger siblings. The dryer has done an incredible amount of laundry over the years. It has experienced symptoms similar to yours a couple of times. In both cases it was not the heating element, but rather a thermostat. It has two thermostats, one for minimum and one for maximum temperature in the exhaust which cost about $15/each. If either one fails, the element does not work. Took about 15 minutes to replace. I also had to replace the idler pulley recently because its bearing failed and it made a lot of noise. The new one was under $20 and it took about an hour to replace. I could have bought a new dryer, but that would require getting somebody to haul it up a flight of stairs and haul the old one away.

An electric dryer is probably the simplest major appliance we have. There's little in an electric dryer that a competent tinkerer can't fix without special tools. The new models don't dry clothes any better or more cheaply than my 20+ year old machine. Unless the motor or timer fails, we'll probably keep the one we have. I'd rather spend my money on my family and my toys than on a new dryer.

You're probably right that I could have made repairs and had the dryer last another year or five. But the life expectancy of an electric dryer is something like 14 years, and this one was already 20 years old, so it's likely I'd fix one thing only to have another thing break before long. And the motor and/or timer were the next likely candidates. It was worth the cost of a new dryer to us to avoid the time and hassles likely to result if we continued to depend on the old dryer. If my life were a bit less hectic, I might have considered repairing it. But I have so many balls in the air now that I don't need yet another thing demanding my attention.

 


wpoison

 

 

 

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Saturday, 4 November 2000

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Last night, I finally got around to reading A Civil Campaign, the latest from Lois McMaster Bujold. Bujold is one of those SF authors who doesn't get the respect she deserves. Well, in one sense she does. She's won, I believe, four Hugo and two Nebula awards, which puts her at the top of her field, and her books outsell by a wide margin those written by many SF authors with "bigger" names. But in another sense she doesn't. Many critics dismiss her books as "soft" science fiction, because she focuses more on plot and (particularly) characterization than on nuts-and-bolts hard science.

Just out of curiosity, I went over to Amazon.com to check the rank on A Civil Campaign. In hardback, it sat at 2,750 (with 145 reader reviews), which is simply amazing for a hardback novel released more than a year ago. Most fiction hardbacks have an active shelf-life of something like three or four months before they drop into the 25,000+ gulag over at Amazon. Compare, for example, Pournelle's The Burning City, which shipped in March and now sits at 36,563 with 34 reader reviews. That Bujold's book is still selling well enough after more than a year in print to be at 2,750 on Amazon defies belief. 

Of course, Amazon is at it again. They show the book as retailing at $24, but offer it for $19.60, which is 20% off. Big of them. What they don't mention is that the book has been remaindered, and is now selling at remainder houses and on sale book tables for $10 or less. I think the practice of continuing to price a book based on some fraction of its retail price once that book has been remaindered borders on dishonest. Now, it may be that Amazon is selling remaining stocks rather than returning them for credit, as publishers allow. If they aren't, if they are selling copies that the publisher has remaindered and sold to them for a few dollars, then I consider that practice questionable to say the least. And Amazon isn't the only one. I see that the Baen site itself is still selling the book at retail price. Incredible. But even after a book has been remaindered, at least the author gets paid for copies sold based on retail price rather than those that have been remaindered. Or so I'd hope.

At any rate, back to the book itself. If you like SF and haven't read Bujold, give her a try. Actually, even if you don't like SF, give her a try. There aren't any bug-eyed monsters in Bujold's books. Just well-plotted stories with characters that her superb writing skills make come alive. The current book is something like the tenth or twelfth title in her Vor Saga, whose central character is Miles Vorkosigan. If you read it, I suspect you'll want to go back and start at the beginning to read all the way through the saga.

I ran web stats this morning, as usual, for my own site and for Pournelle's site. Every Saturday, I process logs for the preceding week, month-to-date, and year-to-date. As the year draws near its close, the number of individual log entries contained in Pournelle's web log files has gotten huge--something over 13,000,000 as of this morning. And as the number of entries has grown, the processing time has slowed. Until today, I've been running Analog (the log file analyzer program) on meepmeep, my Roadrunner machine. That's because QDNS (the DNS lookup program I run to resolve IP addresses to hostnames and domain names) isn't proxy-aware, so it needs to run on a directly-connected box. But Analog, which actually produces the reports, is a separate program, which doesn't require Internet access of any sort to run.

But meepmeep is only a Celeron/366 with only 64 MB RAM. Producing Pournelle's year-to-date report (not the DNS lookups in QDNS--just running Analog to produce the report) has been taking more than two hours each time I run it lately. This morning, it took 131 minutes and 13 seconds to complete. For the last couple of months, Analog has also periodically been generating low memory messages while running Pournelle's YTD report. So I decided this morning to see how much difference having more memory would make.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to tear down meepmeep and install an extra 64 MB, because the only time the 64 MB is a problem is when I'm running Pournelle's YTD report. So I decided to copy the DNS file and so on over to kiwi, my main workstation. Kiwi has dual Pentium III/550 processors (although Analog uses only one of them) and 256 MB of RAM. Here are the times in HH:MM:SS required to run the identical report on the two machines:

meepmeep - 2:11:13 (7873 seconds)
kiwi - 0:08:06 (486 seconds)

Granted, the Pentium III/550 has a clock speed 50% faster than the Celeron/366, and also has a larger L2 cache. So overall meepmeep runs at a bit less than two-thirds the speed of kiwi. But producing the report on meepmeep took more than 16 times as long as producing it on kiwi. Factoring out the difference attributable to differing CPU speeds, that means that additional memory allowed the process to run faster by a full order of magnitude.


-----Original Message-----
From: David Cefai [mailto:davcefai@keyworld.net]
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 5:18 PM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Voltages

Dear Robert,

I'm intrigued! You state that driers run at 220V not 110V. Does this mean that you need to step up your mains to 220V? And that American manufacturers make 220V equipment for the domestic market?

On this side of the Atlantic we sometimes have to step down to 110V, either for safety (working in wet areas) or control equipment of US origin but I never thought that the reverse could apply.

Incidentally, on the subject of driers and the "innocence" of children.

My sister once was running her drier away from the wall and with the vent hose disconnected (don't know why). So she told her 4 year old son "Don't put your hand in there, it will bite you."

From the look on his face it was obvious that the brat (now 20) was going to investigate further, so my sister hung around to prevent the next disaster. Sure enough, after a few minutes her son returns with his 2 year old brother in tow, points to the vent hole and says "Andrew, ball in there".

Actually, our mains run 220V from the transformer to the circuit breaker panel. At the breaker panel, the 220V feed is broken out to two 110 V legs. (Actually, nominal voltage in the US varies by location from 108VAC to 125VAC, but most people call it 110V, 115V, or 120V and the corresponding higher voltages 220V, 230V, or 240V.) Those two 110V legs are subsequently run into the two sides of the breaker panel, from which various 110V circuits exit. 

But the 220V is also supplied as is to various high-draw devices. In our home, for example, our central air conditioning, the stoves/ovens in our kitchens, and our clothes dryer are supplied with 220V. In US homes, everything that runs 220V (except the dryer and perhaps a water heater) is hard wired, so about the only 220V receptacle you'll find is the one behind the dryer. Our electrical codes, rightly I think, regard 220V as too dangerous for casual use. I don't have any fear of 110V, although I treat it with some respect. I wasn't kidding, for example, about installing Barbara's new receptacle without pulling the breaker. But 220V is something I won't mess with. Or if I do, I make sure Barbara is standing nearby with a 2X4 to knock me loose if I screw up.

Your nephew reminds me of myself at that age. Come to that, he reminds me of me now. My younger brother learned very early to beware of me bearing gifts.


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard G. Samuels [mailto:rick@samuels.com]
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2000 1:29 AM
To: webmaster@ttgnet.com
Subject: Re: Novell

I am also sorry to see the demise of Novell. It's a shame, because Novell servers have measured uptime in years at least since version 2. Novell has been on a downward spiral for many years, at least since they bought Wordperfect for about $750 million. They had a product which dominated the market and had one of the best customer service operations in the industry. A few years later they virtually gave the product away to Corel. They put incredible resources into Groupwise, which is an abomination. Just backing up Groupwise is a major undertaking and I know very few people (i.e. one - and it's not me) who can properly administer Groupwise, even those who are Novell certified. Microsoft needs competition to keep them honest. It's too bad that it hasn't and is not likely to come from Novell.

I agree, and that's partially what I meant when I said that NetWare is no longer a factor. But Microsoft has Linux to keep them honest in server space. And perhaps in another year or two they'll have Linux to keep them honest in desktop space. We'll see.


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Sherburne Jr [mailto:ryszards@bellsouth.net]
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2000 10:34 AM
To: 'webmaster@ttgnet.com'
Subject: SETI ver 3.00

Just a note, last night I downloaded SETI ver. 3.00. Looks like it is much more efficient than ver 2.4 It appears to have cut about 4%-6% off the unit processing time.

On another note, thought I would ask your advice about building a new every day computer. The main issues for me are 2; first whther to go duron/athlon or PIII and second whether to scavenge my current main computer's U2W SCSI drives or simply use the ATA66 drives I have laying around. I run the unit 24X7 and will probably set it up to dual boot w2k and NT4. I prefer NT4 every day but find w2k better for VPN access to my employer's network. I do some work at home on it, word processing, email & web access for legal research. I also spend a fair amount of time online otherwise (too much sayeth my wife) and also need it to run DVD movies out to my TV set. The DVD card I have available, a Hollywood Real Magic, works great under w2k, so that is another reason to dual boot. I am dabbling with the idea of also setting up to boot linux. Any thoughts as to which processor or the drive choice? I do not do anything really processor or video intensive, 3d whack-the-mole games are about as fun as killing mosquitos. If it matters to your choice, I have some quality PC 100 memory laying around that I would like to use, as well as a PC Power & Cooling case and power supply. I intend to turn my current main machine into a server for the house, its 2 Pentium Pro processors should run linux or NT4 server w/ no problems for quite a while.

On another note, poking around your site last night I ran across your mayhem pages. I am not terribly surprised to learn we have chemistry experiments and explosives in common, although I early discovered the great value available in buying shotgun shells and removing the powder. Much less chance of blowing up the house b/c of a mistaken process with things like acids!

As far as the new SETI client, the FAQ says that on average it requires something like 40% more time to process a unit than the old client. It is, however, returning much more information than the old client. The FAQ also says that processing time from unit to unit will vary much more with the 3.0 client than with the older client. So I suspect you've gotten some "fast" units. I think SETI made a blunder in not providing more credit for units processed with the new client, say 1.5 units credited per 1.0 units completed. Participating in SETI brings a lot of people's competitive instincts to the fore, and I suspect many of them won't upgrade to a slower client since it would slow the rate at which they accumulate completed units. I haven't upgraded yet, but that's mainly because I don't have time to deal with it at the moment.

As far as your new system, I'd be inclined to go with a Gigabyte motherboard and the Duron if you want to choose video, sound, and other stuff ala carte. Our testing of the Duron versus the Pentium III clock-for-clock shows the Duron to be only a few percent slower than the Pentium III on integer performance, and about the same on floating point. For example, for all intents and purposes, a Pentium III/733 and a Duron/750 provide nearly identical real-world performance, and the Duron costs a bit less. 

Actually, I'd probably go with a slower Duron, because you'll be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a Duron/600 or /650 and the faster versions anyway. My rule of thumb is always to choose the low-end processor unless you'll be using the system for something that's very CPU intensive, which it doesn't sound like you'll be doing. A year or 18 months from now, you'll probably be able to swap out that $85 Duron/600 for an $85 Duron/1200 and thereby double processor speed cheaply. Assuming that 100 MHz FSB Durons are available then, which I suspect they will be.

If you want to stick with an integrated motherboard, and there are some good arguments for doing that, I'd go with an Intel D815EEA motherboard and a Celeron/600. Since you'll be running a hardware DVD decoder, CPU performance isn't an issue at all and, once again, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the difference in performance between a Celeron/600 and one of the faster Duron, Athlon, or Pentium III processors.

As far as the U2W drives, I'd be inclined to leave them where they are. It's often a mistake to tear down a functioning system and start swapping components around. The ATA drives you mention, assuming they're 7,200 RPM, will provide decent performance, although they'll be slower than SCSI if you put the system under heavy load. But since you've got them, I'd go with them.

Check the system guides at HardwareGuys.com for more information.

 


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Sunday, 5 November 2000

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Our work with Malcolm appears to be having some effect. We were afraid that he was fear-aggressive, which is an extremely hard behavior pattern to break in a Border Collie. As it turns out, though, it's not fear-aggression. I finally realized what was going on a couple of months ago. I told Barbara what I thought, and she agreed that it made sense given Malcolm's behavior.

Basically, we made a mistake by not protecting Malcolm when he was a pup. Like any pup, Malcolm was constantly in the big dogs' faces. Like any adult male, Duncan and Kerry were at first very leery of defending themselves because Malcolm's mother (Barbara) was right there, and any male instinctively understands that a female is ferocious in protecting a juvenile. So Duncan and Kerry would let Malcolm get away with biting their ears, chomping on their tails, etc. They were clearly not happy about the situation, so Barbara and I decided to encourage them to discipline Malcolm when he got out of line.

When Malcolm got in Duncan's or Kerry's face, we'd encourage them to "get him." That improved life as far as Duncan and Kerry were concerned, but we've finally realized that Malcolm felt betrayed. Here he was, a helpless little pup, left alone in the world with no one to defend him, and surrounded by ferocious and monstrously large male dogs. He feared for his life, and rightly so. There were times when the big dogs really nailed Malcolm. On one notable occasion, Duncan bit Malcolm in the snout so badly that the fang penetrated all the way through the top of Malcolm's snout and into the roof of his mouth.

So Malcolm decided that it was up to him to protect himself. And when he needed to protect himself the most was when he was getting attention from Barbara or me. When Malcolm was playing chase the ball or tug the rope with Barbara or me, the big dogs (particularly Duncan) would intervene by lunging and snapping at Malcolm. So, naturally enough, Malcolm concluded that playing with us was a particularly dangerous time for him. But a puppy needs to play, so his only choice was to make sure that when he was near us he warned the big dogs off.

So when we petted or played with Malcolm, he started growling and baring his fangs as a threat display. That display wasn't aimed at us, but at the big dogs. It was confusing for us for a long time, because the threat appeared to be aimed at us, and me in particular. I'd scratch Malcolm behind the ears, and he'd growl ferociously and show his fangs. When I stopped scratching, he'd stop snarling and reach over with his paw to pull my hand back, just like a normal dog. When I started scratching again, he'd start snarling again.

Then I noticed that he was much less likely to snarl when being petted if we were alone. Once I realized what was going on, the evidence was pretty clear. Malcolm was pretty much a normal pup unless the big dogs were around. I'd be sitting on the sofa petting him and he'd be acting like a normal pup. Then Duncan would walk into the room, and Malcolm would immediately turn on the threat display. And it works, too. Duncan shies away when Malcolm starts snarling, and Malcolm periodically actually gets into it with Duncan. There's lots of snarling, fanging, and punching (really), but the only result is usually that they both have a lot of wet fur around their faces and throats. No actual biting. But Duncan realizes that Malcolm is capable of defending himself.

So now we've decided, belatedly, to protect Malcolm from the big dogs. Not all the time, but enough that Malcolm realizes that he's not going to be killed and eaten just because he's playing with us or up on the sofa being petted. The growly behavior is tapering off some, although it's almost an automatic defense mechanism. But Malcolm is gradually turning into a normal pup again. He still growls and shows his fangs sometimes when we're petting him. But we ignore that, and soon he's back to his happy pup face.

I wish we'd realized earlier what was going on. From Malcolm's point of view, we let him down. But he's a smart dog and I think he realizes things are getting better. In fact, he may end up being top dog.

While Barbara is cleaning house this morning, I'll be doing laundry. My first chance to get some serious work in with Barbara's new Ferrari® clothes dryer. And I'd better get my office cleaned up a bit today. Stuff is beginning to stack up. I have machines to build, web pages to create, the Roundtable over on PlanetIT to prepare for, and chapters to write. So I'd better get to work.

 


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