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Week of 28 February 2000 Friday, 05 July 2002 08:17 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, 28 February 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] My wife, Barbara Fritchman Thompson, is now the proud owner of three new domain names--fritchman.com, fritchman.org, and fritchman.net. I almost registered them in my name, but she was looking over my shoulder as I completed the registration process. At one point, I thought to ask, "Do you want to have your name as the owner?" She said she did, which made me wonder why she didn't say so in the first place. I registered the new domains with Joker.com, which is an affiliate of CORE. They charge US$15.73 per domain per year, less than half the price of NSI. For the time being, the domains are inactive, only responding to DNS queries, although my friend John Mikol, who set up DNS for them, will also set up MX records for email forwarding soon. We'll have to figure out what to do with the new domains later, but I wanted to grab them now. I wished I'd grabbed thompson.* when it was still available. I've been on the Internet since 1988, originally with a routed connection, and could have grabbed the thompson.* domains before their current owners ever heard of the Internet. I don't know why I didn't. That's one of the curses of having a common name, I guess. Someone usually gets there first. Throughout my life, many of my friends have had very unusual surnames--Silvis, Kresh, Balik, and so on. Even my mother's first and maiden names, Lenore Fulkerson, are rare. That continues today. I now have friends with the surnames Beland, Bezems, Bilbrey, Leuf, Mikol, Pournelle, and Syroid, all rare, and some close to unique. All of them should grab whichever of "their" domain names are still available. So it only made sense for us to grab the Fritchman domain names. If I do eventually start writing fiction, I may do so under the pen name Robert Fritchman and use the .org or .net domain for a supporting web site.
Hey, Microsoft. How about putting a "Don't show me this warning again" checkbox on this dialog? I think it's truly obnoxious how Microsoft chooses to punish people who decide to browse the web with ActiveX disabled, as anyone who has any sense does. Retrieving any page with ActiveX content displays this dialog. Nothing else happens until you click OK. You can't even back out of a site without clicking OK on each and every page on the way back out. Geez. Better still, if I disable ActiveX entirely, I should never see this dialog. The browser should simply render the page as best it can, without any notification at all. Surely even Microsoft must realize that ActiveX is a dead technology. No one in his right mind would browse the web with ActiveX enabled, and only clueless webmasters use ActiveX controls on their sites. The same goes for Java and JavaScript. There's no real advantage to using any of these technologies--a properly designed web site doesn't need them--and the security downside is hideous. Today begins the crunch. I have from now until next Friday, 10 March, to finish the first draft of PC Hardware in a Nutshell. That should be do-able, but it means there won't be a whole lot posted here until I finish the book. I'll continue to post daily, unless things get really hectic, but the posts are likely to be short. I won't post or respond to much, if any, mail, although I will continue to read it. Enough for now. I need to get to work. But I've gotten some mail, so I'll go ahead and post it in short-shrift mode. This will be the last for a while, however. * * * * *
My personal experience with Amazon has not been bad. What I was objecting to was their "competing in the court room" and the fact that they charge more, often significantly more, than many of their competitors. * * * * *
My readers are not primarily "corporate IT types". I have those, certainly, but I also have many readers who are home users and home-office users. The people I make no attempt to appeal to are the gaming fanatics, who comprise nearly 100% of the readership of "enthusiast" web sites, but only a small fraction of 1% of computer users. I agree that the VIA chipset sucks, and I did not recommend the Tyan board to Mr. Van Note, simply told him that it was now available. I don't recommend products that I haven't used. The reason that multi-Alpha boxes can run NT is that there is a multiprocessor kernel for Alphas, as there is for Intels. There is no MP kernel for Athlons, nor is there likely to be any time soon. * * * * *
You may be right. I'm not a patent attorney either. * * * * *
Thanks. I should have noticed that. The problem is, I work mostly at 1280X1024 or 1600X1200, so stuff that scrolls at lower resolution doesn't scroll when I'm working (or checking later in IE). I just checked that page, and it doesn't scroll at 1024, although that URL was very near the edge of the frame at 1024. I assume you must be running 800X600. At any rate, I solved the problem by deleting the block that included the URL.
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Tuesday, 29 February 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Tim O'Reilly has posted an article about Amazon.com and their ridiculous patent claims. At the bottom of the article, Tim has a link to an Open Letter to Amazon.com which you can add your signature to if you want to stand up and be counted. I've signed it, and I suspect you'll recognize quite a few of the other signers. I encourage you to read Tim's letter and sign it if you agree with his comments. Tim has not agreed to join the boycott of Amazon.com, but his open letter will aid the cause nonetheless. Critical Need Detector, Part I: Pournelle talks about computers having a "critical need detector", and it must be true. As I'm running on a short deadline, kiwi, my main system, decides to shoot craps. The first evidence of a problem was that IE seemed to be incredibly slow, not just retrieving web pages, but scrolling through them, even my local links page. I checked all the obvious stuff, and concluded that perhaps the messing around I'd done with IE (removing Loadwc.exe, disabling Pstores.exe, etc.) had caused the problem. I finally did a complete re-install of IE5.01. No joy. The system was still acting like it was filled with molasses. I then crossed my fingers and installed SP6a to replace SP5, hoping that that would somehow fix the problem. No joy. I did a repair install of NT4 and then re-installed SP5. No joy. SP6a again. No joy. I decided that fixing the problem would require a complete re-install of NT and all my applications. I bit the bullet, and actually had a Win98SE startup disk in the floppy drive, intending to use it to blow away everything on the hard drive. When I restarted the system, the BIOS boot screen displayed an "Abnormal CPU temperature" alert. I went to Chipset Setup where, sure enough, my CPUs were showing right at 50C, which is at least 10C higher than normal. The system temperature was also elevated, well into the 95+F range. We've been having some very warm weather here--Barbara tells me it was nearly 80F yesterday--and it's pretty warm in the house in general and my office in particular. But that's not enough to explain the elevated temperatures. My first thought was to tear down the system and find out what was causing the problem. Before I did that, I decided to download the USDM software from EPoX. When you install that, it puts an icon in Control Panel that you can click to view things like CPU temperature(s), system temperature, fan speeds, etc. As I started to download it, I realized that it only worked under Win9X. That makes sense, I guess, because WinNT wouldn't let the service access the underlying hardware. I decided that I simply don't have time to deal with the problem right now. Fortunately, kerby, my old main system, is sitting right next to kiwi, and still has all the software installed, so it's easy enough to make the switch. So how does a single-CPU Pentium II/300 system compare speed-wise with a dual-CPU Pentium III/550? Pretty well, actually. It's much faster than the dual 550 in its current degraded state, and it doesn't feel all that much slower than the dual-550 did when it was operating normally. Of course, the real advantage to the dual-550 was that it didn't bog. I could load literally 25 copies of IE, have several documents open, etc., etc., and it just kept humming along. The Pentium II/300 won't do that, but for now I don't care. I found the only real downside when I connected my current keyboard, mouse, and monitor to kerby. The video card in kerby, an old Intel i740 based card, won't support 1280X1024 at 85Hz. So I'm running it at the same settings I was using with the 17" Sony monitor--1024X768 at 85 Hz with 24-bit color. It's kind of interesting to see 1024 on a monitor this big. I certainly don't have any problem reading anything. Critical Need Detector, Part II: After I'd relocated everything to kerby, I began working again on the preface. I needed to look something up on the web, so I fired up IE5 and checked the site. When I finished doing that and typing a sentence or two in the Preface chapter, I decided to check another web site for something, so I clicked the Home button in IE5. That should display my default start page, which is the local copy of my links page, which is stored over on Barbara's machine on network drive F:. IE5 went catatonic for about 15 seconds and then displayed an error message: "Unable to find file:///f:/usr/thompson/..." That was really strange, particularly the three (rather than two) slashes after "file:" I thought something had hosed up the IE5 configuration, so I went into Internet Options and fixed the URL manually to use only two slashes. When I saved and attempted to call up the home page again, I got the same error, with the same three slashes. I went back into Internet Options, and this time I chose to Browse to the start page. I got a network error, "Unable to access F:, device not found" or words to that effect. Sure enough, when I fired up Explorer and attempted to list the contents of F:, Barbara's machine wasn't visible on the network any more. Thinking that perhaps her computer had died, I ran back and checked. It was still running fine, but it couldn't see any machines on the network, either. When I came back to my office, I checked the hub. All lights were out. Okay, I figured one of the dogs had unplugged the power cable. They spend a lot of time under our desks, and things like that happen. I checked, and the hub was plugged in properly. I tried plugging it in to another receptacle, and it was still dead. Astonishingly, it appeared that my hub had died in mid-session. I was starting to get annoyed, and Barbara convinced me to bag it for the night. This morning, I pulled out a spare 4-port hub, figuring I'd have to pick the most important four machines to connect. But before I did that, I checked the power brick on the new hub. Sure enough, it was identical to the power brick on the failed hub--same model number and everything. So I crossed my fingers and connected the new power brick to the failed hub. Sure enough, the failed hub came right back up. So I have a dead power brick rather than a dead hub. The goal for yesterday was to finish the Preface. I almost made it, even with the hardware problem. So I'd better get back to work. But first, a couple of emails. I know I said I wouldn't be posting mail, but one of these needed an answer, which might just as well be public, and the second, which I'll post without comments, is long but well worth reading. * * * * *
The IDT WinChip is, alas, no more. The abundance of cheap Celeron and K6-* processors pretty much killed their market, and IDT stopped selling WinChip processors some months ago. The good news is that, at last word, VIA had purchased the technology from IDT, so the WinChip may rise again. For now, the best bet for upgrading a Socket 7 motherboard is one of the AMD K6-* CPUs, if your motherboard will accept it. If not, the best alternative is to buy an inexpensive Socket 370 motherboard and install a Celeron. * * * * *
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Wednesday, 1 March 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] The start of yet another new month. I got the Preface done and shipped off to my editor yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, I started on Chapter 1, Fundamentals. Well, I say "started on" but there was already quite a bit there that I'd written earlier. My goal is to finish up that chapter by this Friday, which implies long days between now and then. That leaves me from Friday until the following Friday to complete the chapter on sound cards and audio components. It should be do-able, but I'm not going to have much breathing space. I'm dragging a bit this morning, though. Malcolm came down with diarrhea and vomiting last evening, and woke us a couple times during the night. Barbara is off playing golf with her father this morning. Malcolm seems to be recovered, too much so in fact. He's not being a good puppy this morning. There's a scathing article on The Register this morning, which takes Intel to task for their supposed arrogance. Apparently, what upsets the author the most is that Intel has the nerve to position their forthcoming Coppermine Celerons with SSE against the AMD Athlon. I'm not sure why that should upset the author so much. Those new Celerons, clock for clock, should provide 90% or more of the performance of an Athlon at a fraction of the price. I'm not sure why that'd upset anyone, except of course AMD. The fact is that Intel and AMD between them are poisoning the well for their high-end processors. Right now, there's little reason for most users to buy anything more than a Celeron. A $60 Celeron/433 provides more than adequate performance for most purposes. The fastest processors from Intel and AMD are faster than that Celeron/433, but they're nowhere near twice as fast, and not worth twice as much money, let alone the ten times as much that they actually sell for. Most users would be better off spending that extra money on doubling RAM, replacing IDE drives with SCSI drives, buying a bigger and better monitor, adding a tape drive or CD burner, and so on. Unless you just absolutely need the relatively small increment in performance that the high-end Intel and AMD processors provide, you're better advised to buy the Celeron, or at most a low-end Pentium III or low-end Athlon. Paying huge premiums for small performance increases is a sucker bet.
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Thursday, 2 March 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] Oops. I'd intended to put up a notice yesterday to let everyone know that Tom Syroid is back in action. In order to finish Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell sometime this year, he'd let his web page go without an update from 10 January through 29 February, but he's now posting daily updates again. Of course, he just signed with O'Reilly to write FrontPage 2000 in a Nutshell on a short deadline, so he's liable to disappear again soon. Get it while you can. Smoke if you got 'em. No deposit, no return. LSMFT. Yet another DDoS attack, this time a bit closer to home. The following is part of a notice posted on pair Network's System Notices yesterday:
This is starting to annoy me. Track 'em down, I say. Flog 'em, hang 'em slowly, cut 'em down while still alive, draw and quarter 'em, cut off their heads, and stick 'em on a pike. All this, to paraphrase the WWI French generals, pour le découragement des autres. There have been many calls for people to secure their systems to prevent such outrages. I can't disagree with the wisdom of that, but I note that if someone is mugged, we don't blame him for not paying closer attention to where he was walking. If someone's house is broken into, we don't blame him for not having installed Medeco locks. If someone's house is firebombed, we don't blame him for not having built his home with fireproof materials. We track down and punish the criminal. Or at least we used to.
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Friday, 3 March 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] When is it not safe to install 2195 on a system already running 2195? Why, when 2195 is a Microsoft build number, of course. See this article in The Register for more details. Apparently, Microsoft has shipped at least three different versions of W2K, all bearing the same build number. And some later versions of 2195 don't include stuff that was included in the Gold Code version, also labeled 2195. So just because the Gold Code version recognized your video card, say, doesn't mean that the shipping version will. Ugh. I'm cranking away on Chapter 1, Fundamentals, of PC Hardware in a Nutshell. This was supposed to be a quick, easy chapter. Yeah, right. Right now, I'm trying to explain ISA IRQ's versus PCI INT#'s, IRQ steering, how all this relates PnP, etc. etc. I'd intended to finish this chapter by today, leaving me all weekend and next week to finish the final chapter and meet my 10 March deadline. Well, I can spend this weekend finishing this chapter and then spend next weekend finishing the final chapter, I guess. Monday morning 13 March is effectively the same to O'Reilly as Friday night 10 March anyway. In the midst of all this, I encountered a networking problem that turned out not to be a networking problem. I fired up one of my machines that had been turned off for quite a while. NT4 booted, I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the logon dialog, and typed my password. Logon failed. Tried typing my password again. Logon failed. Hmm. My first thought was that perhaps I didn't have a network cable connected. I went behind the machine and looked. There was a network cable. The port on the hub was lit up, indicating a normal connection. After thinking about it for a moment, I rebooted the system just on general principles. Couldn't log on. Checked all the networking parameters. Everything looked fine. To make a very long story short, my "networking problem" turned out to be a bad keyboard. The machine had an old Gateway keyboard on it. That keyboard occasionally generates two characters for one key press. When I was typing my password normally, the keyboard was mangling it. I very carefully typed my password character by character with only my index finger, watching the asterisks being displayed. Sure enough, one key press generated two asterisks at one point. I backspaced over the extra one and continued, and was able to log on successfully. The moral here is that using cheap keyboards can cost you a lot of time. I'll put a Microsoft Internet Keyboard on that system when I have a spare moment.
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Saturday, 4 March 2000 [Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] I keep a little LCD travel alarm on my end table in the den. Last night, I looked over and noticed that the time was 7:76 p.m. Not good. I continued watching it for a while, wondering if this was perhaps a Y2K/Leap-century issue or something. A little while later, it turned over properly to 7:77 p.m. I picked it up and banged it a couple times. It rebooted spontaneously and displayed 7:17 p.m. A quick, cheap, and easy Y2K fix, apparently. In retrospect, I regret not watching it a little while longer. I would have been interesting to see if it turned over to 7:80 p.m. Probably not, or it wouldn't have been keeping accurate time. It probably would have turned over to 7:20 p.m., followed by 7:27 p.m., then 7:22 p.m. and so on. I'm working away on Chapter 1, Fundamentals, another chapter that will not die. I'd hoped to have it complete by yesterday afternoon, but there's still a lot to do on it. At least it's largely taken form, and all that remains is a lot of writing. Once I get this chapter done, it's back to work on sound cards and audio components, which I have to finish by the end of next week.
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[Last Week] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] [Sunday] [Next Week] I managed to put in six or seven solid hours of work yesterday on the chapter, but then I just ran out of steam. Anyone who doesn't write for a living doesn't understand how exhausting it is, physically and mentally, to write for long periods. I can usually manage 8 to 10 hours/day of productive writing, and sometimes I can push that to 12. But after weeks and months of working six and seven days/week, one starts to wear down. I am determined to finish this chapter today, so I'd better get to work.
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