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Week of 19 February 2001 Latest
Update: Friday, 05 July 2002 09:16 |
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Monday, 19 February 2001 [Last
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| The big news around here is the death of Dale Earnhardt in
a crash yesterday on the final turn of the final lap at the Daytona 500.
Barbara knew immediately what had happened. When she watched Earnhardt hit
the wall, she said "He's dead." Shortly after the wreck, they
interviewed Kenny Schrader, who'd also been involved in the crash. They
asked Schrader, who'd run over to look into Earnhardt's car after the
wreck, how Earnhardt was doing, and Schrader replied, "I'm not a
doctor." At that point, Barbara said she knew for sure that Earnhardt
had been killed. As it turned out, she was right. Mr. Earnhardt was killed
instantly when his car struck the wall.
I don't follow racing, and I never met Mr. Earnhardt, but I'm sorry for his family and friends. In particular, our friends Steve and Suzy Tucker have been friends of the Earnhardts for more than twenty years, from the time Suzy used to work at the Daytona race track before she and Steve married. Apparently, Mr. Earnhardt was a completely different person on the track than off. On the track, he was an SOB who'd literally wreck his own grandmother if she was between him and the finish line. But off the track, Earnhardt was a nice guy. I remember several years ago, when Steve was running the Winston Cup series for R. J. Reynolds, the Tuckers had some logistical problems. Steve was up in New York City managing the Awards Banquet, and Suzy was stuck down here in Winston-Salem with a sick child or some such. She'd planned to attend the awards ceremony, but it was beginning to look as if she wasn't going to be able to get up there in time. As I recall, she was on the phone with Steve and Earnhardt was standing next to Steve listening to Steve's side of the conversation. When it became apparent to Earnhardt what the problem was, he got on the phone with Suzy and offered to send his Learjet down to Winston-Salem to pick her up and bring her to the event. As it turned out, she was able to get up to New York by airline, but she had no doubt that Mr. Earnhardt meant his offer seriously. So Steve and Suzy have lost a good friend, and NASCAR racing has lost possibly its greatest driver ever.
There's an interesting article about SETI cheating over on Wired. What I found interesting about that article has nothing to do with those pathetic people who cheat SETI. The interesting part was a statement attributed to SETI@Home directory David Anderson. "He also said there were problems with over-clocked PCs, which tend to introduce errors into the calculations." As anyone who reads me regularly knows, I am not a fan of overclocking. So it's interesting to read such a statement by someone who is in a position to know. And I see that Ars Technica is dipping its toe into the water by soliciting voluntary contributions to offset declining ad revenues. The only quid pro quo they offer for contributing is to flag the contributor as such in his user name, so it'll be interesting to see what level of participation they get. My guess is that perhaps 1% of Ars readers will contribute, but I hope I'm proven wrong. Perhaps this is the first step on the road to Ars becoming a subscription web site. I hope so, but I fear not. Webmasters of ad-supported web sites have a mindset that eyeballs are valuable. In fact, they're not, or they are only to the extent that the site receives ad revenue for all those freeloading eyeballs. As passive per-impression ad payments decline and disappear in favor of click-throughs and other "active" metrics, all those freeloaders simply become a drain on throughput, CPU ticks, disk space, and other expensive resources while contributing little or no revenue. Ars would be much better off (and much more profitable) as a closed site with ten thousand subscription-paying members than as an open site with a million freeloaders. Of course, they wouldn't want to make the entire site subscription-only. They'd still need an open, free section to function as a billboard to draw in additional paying customers. Also, even while they continue to solicit voluntary contributions, they need to suggest an amount. They mention on the site that they've received donations ranging from $5 to $250. Rather than leaving the amount up to the contributor, they need to "suggest" an amount, as any fundraiser could tell them. Perhaps $15/year for a Student Membership, $30/year for a General Membership, $100/year for a Benefactor Membership, and $250/year for a Patron Membership. Or whatever. I also think they should alter their member titles to reflect what level of support that member is providing to the site. Those who continue to use the site without contributing might be called "Freeloader"; those who've contributed $250 "Patron", and so on. If they do those things, I think they'll find both the percentage of users who contribute and the average amount contributed will both increase. Hmm. Speaking of which ... February is the month when everything comes due for my sites. Domain name renewals, the annual payment to pair Networks for web hosting, etc. etc. All in all, it costs several hundred dollars a year in actual cash money to keep these sites up and running. Perhaps I should solicit voluntary contributions as well. Based on my web access reports, I'd estimate that I have something around 1,500 regular readers, and a couple thousand more sporadic readers. So, just as a straw poll, I'm going to solicit feedback to see how many people would make a voluntary contribution to keep this site up and running. I'll use the numbers I set out above. If you'd be willing to contribute to offset our costs, please click on the appropriate link below to send me email: Clicking on one of those links will generate a new email with the appropriate "To:" and "Subject:" lines. Just send an empty email, as I won't be reading the mails I receive, just counting them. If you want to comment on this subject, click this link instead (or in addition to) one of the links above. Incidentally, I'll again emphasize that this is a straw poll. I'm not going to bill you if you send an email. I'm just interested in finding out what percentage of my readers would or wouldn't be willing to pay voluntarily for access to my sites. So please don't click one of the above links unless you really mean it. If you aren't willing to pay at all, click the following link. I'll report the results in a couple of weeks. Click here to read or post responses to this week's journal entries Click here to read or post responses to the Linux Chronicles Forum [Top] |
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Tuesday, 20 February 2001 [Last
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Interesting results so far on the
poll I posted yesterday. The first 50 responses break down as follows:
Which means that only about 3% or 4% of my regular readers and perhaps 1.5% of all my readers have responded so far, but of those about 90% would be willing to subsidize the operation of my sites. As I said, this is straw poll, so if you haven't responded yet, please do.
I haven't seen much comment on "XP", Microsoft's name for their new line of products, but it strikes me that the way to pronounce that name is "ChiRho" (rhymes with eye-show). Just think of it. "Windows ChiRho" and "Office ChiRho". It even kind of makes sense as a follow-on to their use of "Cairo" as the early codename for Windows NT 5. Of course, the Chi-Rho juxtaposition was also used by early Christians, representing as it did the first two letters of Christ's name. Kind of makes you wonder what Microsoft is thinking, as they keep coming up with kye-roe names for their products.
Hmm. The order confirmation email I got from Orion back on 5 February said they were going to ship our new telescope to us on February 16th, and that they'd send a confirming email when it shipped. I hadn't gotten an email, so I called yesterday to find out what was going on. As it turns out, they didn't get their February shipment of the scopes, and the next shipment they're expecting is 16 March. So it'll be another month before they ship it. They were very apologetic, and I didn't get angry with them. They can't ship what they don't have, and these scopes are in very short supply. I'd considered downgrading to an 8" equatorially mounted scope they sell for the same price, but the more I thought about it the more I concluded that I wanted the 10" dob. The equatorial scope is tempting because it raises the possibility of doing some astrophotography, but that's a very expensive word. Most people who are seriously into astrophotography consider $5,000 the entry level, and many spend ten times that much on equipment. And no matter how much you spend, your results are always going to be extremely modest compared to those produced by NASA. So what's the point? The fascination of amateur astronomy lies in actually seeing the objects yourself rather than viewing photographs of them. And for that the 10" dob beats the 8" EQ every time. So we'll just wait. Click here to read or post responses to this week's journal entries Click here to read or post responses to the Linux Chronicles Forum [Top] |
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Wednesday, 21 February 2001 [Last
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| Malcolm was in a thieving mood yesterday. I spent most of
the day taking stuff away from him. I'd grab one thing from him and five
minutes later he'd have something else. The worst was a new roll of paper
towels, which he stole from the kitchen counter and shredded all over the
den. There wasn't a single undamaged towel left on the entire roll. The
sofa, loveseat and floor were covered in little bits of paper towel. I
also made the mistake of leaving the bedroom door open. Malcolm apparently
made several trips from the bedroom to the den, transferring a stash of
Barbara's and my underwear and socks from the laundry basket to the den.
We're hoping Malcolm will outgrow his puppy behavior soon. He's coming up on 18 months old, but Border Collies are slow maturing. Most of them, particularly males, are two or three years old before they begin to act like dogs instead of puppies. There'll probably be more of the same today, because Barbara is off to play golf with her father this morning. That means the puppy will be bored, and when the puppy is bored he finds ways to entertain himself. I'd crate him for his own safety and my sanity, but then he howls. Just like a wolf. Head back and everything. Threats are useless. He knows that Barbara counts the dogs every time she returns home and would notice if one were missing.
I'm writing today through late afternoon. We'll then do our usual library visit, go out for dinner, and then attend the monthly meeting of the Forsyth Astronomical Society. Speaking of astronomy, Barbara pulled down this image from NASA. It illustrates pretty graphically what amateur astronomers are up against when trying to avoid light pollution. (Warning: The full size image is about 395,000 bytes).
The last time I did any backyard astronomy was between 30 and 35 years ago, when I was in my teens. We lived in a town of about 35,000 then, and there was very little light pollution. On a typical clear night after midnight, I was easily able to see stars two or even three magnitudes dimmer than I can see from my back yard today. Oh well. The environment may be worse, but the equipment is better. Click here to read or post responses to this week's journal entries Click here to read or post responses to the Linux Chronicles Forum [Top] |
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Thursday, 22 February 2001 [Last
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| Typical weather for around here. Yesterday it was 65F (18C)
and sunny. This morning, we awoke to freezing temperatures, thunder, and
whiteness as far as the eye can see. It's still snowing as I write this,
and snow is expected to continue through about noon. It's not supposed to
get much above freezing, so the snow cover will probably stick around
through tomorrow. Here's our front yard. I was actually snowing pretty
heavily when I took this photo, but the falling flakes don't show up very
well except against dark background items.
The dogs love the snow. They're out there frolicking around now. Except Kerry, the old guy. The dogs make what we call "snow paws" when they're walking on frozen stuff. They spread their toes out for more traction. It's instinctive, I think. But Kerry gets very offended when ice gets wedged between his toes. He lies there afterwards, chewing and spitting on his toes until he gets all the ice out.
We attended our first meeting of the Forsyth Astronomical Society last night. It was held at SciWorks, formerly known as the Nature Science Center. Before the meeting, we stood out in the parking lot to watch the transits of the International Space Station and of Mir. The latter is in a decaying orbit, and will soon burn up in the earth's atmosphere. All except some heavy titanium fittings, that is. Two club members brought instruments. Talk about David and Goliath. One of them was a 10X20mm monocular and the other was a 16" (400+ mm) Newtonian. That's a difference of about 400 times in light gathering ability. Everyone was very nice and very helpful, and Barbara and I are now officially members. It costs $25 per year for either an individual or a family, but the family gets only one vote. I asked if that meant only the husbands get to vote, and one guy told me I was a braver man than he was. After the business session, we adjourned to the planetarium for a presentation on NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) produced by NASA. After a brief following session, we all went out to the parking lot where the owner of the 16" scope set it up and we were able to view some sights. Barbara is really fascinated by all this. She's already able to locate and identify several constellations and specific stars, clusters, and so on. We're looking forward to the arrival of our own scope. In the mean time, we've checked out a bunch of books from the library to see which ones we want to buy. This is going to be fun.
Meepmeep, my Roadrunner gateway machine, is starting to make strange noises. I'm not sure if it's the hard disk or the power supply, but sporadically it begins clattering. Ordinarily, I'd suspect the hard drive, but meepmeep is built in a no-name Pacific Rim case, so there's no telling. I never have gotten around to ordering one of those LinkSys baby routers, so I think the first thing I'll do after I post this is backup the registry to a file and then xcopy the entire contents of meepmeep C: to another system. Once that's done, I'll build a new system to become meepmeep. I have an old Dell XPS M200s Pentium/200 system sitting here, so I think I'll use it as the platform, salvaging the case and power supply, the Teac floppy drive, the Toshiba 32X CD-ROM drive, and the IBM 6 GB hard drive. I'm pretty sure I can dig up an Intel Socket 370 motherboard with integrated sound/video/LAN, a Celeron processor, and a 128 MB stick of Crucial SDRAM somewhere in this mess I call an office. Which reminds me that I need to clean up again. It just doesn't seem fair. I clean my office up at least once every year or two, and it just keeps getting messy again. Actually, I think I'll document the whole process for the next edition of PC Hardware in a Nutshell as an upgrade project system. The Dell is fairly representative of a lot of systems out there that are badly in need of an upgrade, and as an ATX system it makes a pretty good candidate. So we'll photograph it as we work on it, and take notes as we go along. Click here to read or post responses to this week's journal entries Click here to read or post responses to the Linux Chronicles Forum [Top] |
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Friday, 23 February 2001 [Last
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| Last night's low temperature was in the low 20s (-5C), so
the snow is still around. The high is to be in the 50s today (~12C), so
the snow won't be around much longer. Yesterday was a zoo. The school
busses start their routes about 5:30 a.m. and at that point the weather
forecasters were still saying there wouldn't be any significant snow or
ice. The busses left on their routes and the snow started just before
6:00. Many of them ended up stuck or in ditches, and there were scores of
minor accidents. Some kids (and teachers) made it to school yesterday and
some not.
There was one tragedy. A 17-year-old girl driving to school skidded and was killed when she ran head-on into a minivan. The driver of the minivan was uninjured, and performed CPR until the ambulance arrived. Unfortunately, the girl died at the scene. Some will no doubt blame school officials for not canceling classes, but there really wasn't much else they could do. Last year, they canceled classes several times when bad conditions were forecasted but did not arrive. Parents get upset when that happens, because they suddenly need to make provisions for their kids not being in school. So the school officials are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Barbara spent some time outside with the dogs yesterday, watching them play in the snow. I tried to shoot some pictures, but the shutter latency on a digital camera makes it tough. Even holding the shutter partially down to allow the camera to set focus, exposure, and white balance ahead of time doesn't entirely solve the problem. There's still a noticeable lag between pressing the shutter and actually capturing the picture, and the dogs can move quite a bit during that lag. Barbara has some of those photos posted over on her page. You'll notice that Malcolm is on leash in these photos. Barbara doesn't trust him not to make a break for it. I think that's unfair, given that he's only really done that once, if you define "making a break for it" as meaning that we have to get out one of the Troopers and drive around looking for him. When Duncan was this age and got loose, he'd disappear over the horizon every time. We try not to hold Malcolm to a higher standard than we expected of Duncan, but Barbara worries. She's always concerned that one of the dogs will be hit by a car, and now she has a new worry. There are dognappers in the area. They snatch dogs and hold them for ransom, apparently.
Barbara is off to the gym and the grocery store, and I'm working on a chapter for the book. Click here to read or post responses to this week's journal entries Click here to read or post responses to the Linux Chronicles Forum [Top] |
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Saturday, 24 February 2001 [Last
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| I hate Microsoft. I really do. I really, really, HATE
Microsoft.
Yesterday, I read of yet another hideous security vulnerability in Outlook, this one having to do with a buffer overrun in the vCard function, which allows someone to create a malicious vCard which, if opened, allows code contained in the vCard to take control of one's machine and do anything up to and including formatting the hard drive. So I downloaded the patch for it. When I ran the patch on my main system, which runs Windows 2000 SP0 and IE 5.01 SP0, the setup routine told me the patch was not needed. That's an incorrect message, as the docs on the patch make clear. The patch is needed, but you must be running IE 5.01 SP1 or higher for it to work. So I went off in search of IE 5.01 SP1. I could have downloaded and installed it dynamically from the Windows Update site, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to download the actual files so that I could save them to a local source and install them on other machines from there rather than downloading them dynamically each time I wanted to update a machine. So that meant I had to visit the Microsoft Corporate Update site. That, of course, requires that you unlock IE5 completely, allowing the site to install ActiveX (hawk, spit) controls on your system. So, screw it. I did that, expecting to be able to download-only the SP1 patch. After going through all the rigmarole, I was expecting to find a download-only option. No dice. All I got was a half-meg exe stub that I could use to download the files. It downloads the files, all right, but not to the folder that it prompted me for. That folder was on a network drive. Instead, it stored those files in C:\Windows Update files (or some such directory). And, it installed those files on my main workstation. No option to download-only. So now I have IE 5.01 SP1 installed on my main system, which I didn't want it to do. And only god knows what else Microsoft put there. I don't trust them an inch. They've given me no reason to, and many reasons not to. In the good old days, we could download a program without all this garbage. If you wanted IE, you downloaded IE. If you wanted to install it, you installed it. If you needed to install it on many machines, you saved the download on a network volume and installed it on however many machines you wanted to. I've had it with all this automated crap, whose only real effect is to force people to do things the Microsoft way. I've had it with not knowing what they're installing without my knowledge. I've had it with bug fixes being bundled with "feature enhancements" which I not only don't care about but really don't want. Microsoft is despicable. I've had enough of these bastards. They're out to take over the world, and I'm opting out of their scheme. Unfortunately, like millions of others, I'm stuck using Microsoft products for now. I simply don't have time to drop everything and convert to Linux. Even if I did, Linux doesn't have all the applications I need to get my work done, and what applications exist are generally second- or third-rate. StarOffice doesn't compare favorably to Microsoft Office, for example, nor do Navigator or Opera compare favorably to IE. But the Linux applications get better with every release. So Linux is definitely in my future. And as Linux waxes, Windows wanes. Windows 2000 is part of Microsoft's plan for world domination, Windows XP and Office XP more so, and dot-net more so still. In fact, everything Microsoft now does is aimed at furthering their plan. Every new product, every bug fix, and every update focuses on locking people more and more into Microsoft products. And I'm just not going to put up with that any more.
I got email from Orion Telescopes late last night. I ordered our telescope 5 February, and they'd said it would ship 16 February. When I called Monday, they told me that their February shipment hadn't arrived and that they now weren't expecting any more units until mid-March. I'd resigned myself to waiting until late March to get the telescope when this email showed up, saying that the scope had shipped yesterday. So now it's due to arrive 5 March. There're three boxes, the largest of which weighs 70 pounds (32 kg), the middle 30 pounds (14 kg), and the smallest 2 pounds (1 kg). They must pack this stuff really well, because the entire telescope when assembled weighs only about 70 pounds. So now it's time to accessorize. I've been researching eyepieces, Barlows, and so on. Things have changed a lot since I played with telescopes back in my teens. Back then, four-element Abbe/Orthoscopic and Plössl eyepieces were the high end. They cost $50 to $75 each, and that was in 1960's dollars. Nowadays, Plössls are mainstream and still sell for $50 to $75, while most Orthoscopics cost even less. Most vendors have two lines of Plössls. The basic line typically sells in the $50 to $80 range (e.g. the Orion Sirius Plössls) and the premium line of enhanced Plössls generally has one more element and sells in the $80 to $120 range (e.g. the Orion Ultrascopics, the Meade Super Plössls, the Celestron Ultimas, and so on). The less expensive Plössls are actually pretty darned good eyepieces. They're sharp, contrasty, well-corrected, and have reasonably flat fields. The enhanced Plössls are better still. The only downside to Plössls is that their apparent fields of view are in the 50 degree range. Super-premium eyepieces of new design, like the Tele Vue Panoptics and Naglers, the Pentax XLs, and similar "superwide" and "ultrawide" eyepieces provide AFOVs of 60, 70, or 80 degrees, sometimes more. But there are downsides to them, too. First is price. They cheapest are generally $200 or more each, and some are in the $500+ range. They also make a lot of tradeoffs for that wide view. There's a lot of glass in the way, which reduces brightness, contrast, and sharpness. The wide field itself introduces apparent distortion in much the same way that a very short wide angle lens on a 35 mm camera introduces apparent distortion. A lot of people say that once you use a superwide eyepiece like a Nagler you'll never want to go back to the narrower fields of Plössls and similar eyepieces. Maybe so. I suspect a lot of that has to do with the incredible popularity of the Dobsonian mount. That mount doesn't track objects automatically, so one is constantly moving the scope to keep the object in view from drifting out of the field. A very wide AFOV keeps the object in view longer, which I suspect accounts for much of the popularity of these very expensive eyepieces. I'm going to make haste slowly as far as buying eyepieces. The telescope comes with two basic Plössls, a 25 mm and a 9 mm. We'll see how those look, but my guess is that they'll be fine. At this point, I think I'll eventually add something in the 32 to 35 mm range for rich-field stuff. After that, we'll see. Barlows have also changed a lot. They come in various magnifications. Adding a 2X Barlow, for example, effectively doubles the focal length of the scope, turning it from an f/5 into an f/10 scope. Back then, Barlows had a terrible reputation. They were usually single element and introduced a lot of aberrations and light loss. Modern high-quality Barlows are fully multi-coated three element apochromats and can actually improve the optics. I looked at Barlows from Meade, Celestron, Tele Vue, and Orion. I don't trust Meade's quality control. Celestron was bought out by Tasco, which can't be a good thing. I'd have bought a 2.5X Tele Vue Powermate, but their damned MAP program means that everyone advertises it for $168.00. I have no idea what it really sells for, and no time to spend finding out. So Tele Vue is out of the running. That leaves Orion, which has a close association with Vixen, a respected Japanese manufacturer of telescopes and accessories. Orion has several Barlows on offer, but only one of those is apochromatic. They charge $80 for it, but they're out of stock until early March. I guess I can wait. We'll also need some incidentals--red LED flashlight, star atlas, etc. etc. One of the items the folks at the Forsyth Astronomy Society strongly recommended was a TelRad, which is a 1X reflex finder that superimposes a series of red rings on the sky, allowing you to star hop conveniently. That's important around here. Under dark skies, limiting stellar magnitude is about 6. With our light pollution, it's more like 3, which means we can't see all that many stars from our back yard. A TelRad will let us use the ones we can see as a starting point to jump to the objects we want to view. I'll also make an aperture mask from cardboard. That's basically just a 12" circle of cardboard which is a slip fit for the tube. I'll cut an off-center circular hole about 3 or 3.5" in diameter, placed so as to avoid the vanes of the diagonal holder. That gives us the near-equivalent of a mid-sized apochromatic refractor, which'll be useful for planetary and lunar work from our light-polluted back yard. Click here to read or post responses to this week's journal entries Click here to read or post responses to the Linux Chronicles Forum [Top] |
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| Short post today. I have to get to work on several
projects, including at least getting a start on cleaning up my office. I
also need to update some stuff over on the HardwareGuys.com
web site, do the laundry, and get a start on building another system,
so I'd better get a round tuit.
Click here to read or post responses to this week's journal entries Click here to read or post responses to the Linux Chronicles Forum [Top] |
