Manic Monday, wasn't that a Bangles song? It is 06:26, and I still
haven't had any coffee - this is gonna be fun, huh? 38 messages overnight - sort of
light, but then, it is Monday Bob
Robert Bruce Thompson
This, after accusing me of something like wanting to "learn neurosurgery today."
That isn't until next week. 23 messages from linux-admin, lots of DNS problems abound. . .
nothing I am addressing right now so ker-plop. Oh, except for those people interested in running
Windows native applications under Linux (on the off-chance that you need to open a word doc,
and unlike a Daynoter, don't have 3 or 4 spare computers just laying about with extra OS's on).
You will be wanting to check out Wine
(the open source solution, partially functional I hear) or VMware,
the commercial solution (I have heard raves about this). Lastly (for now), Bob recommends to me
Brain Surgery in a Nutshell. I suppose that's the do-it-yourself version, huh <grin>? Have
a great day, I'll see you later.
Good news is that Sendmail forwarding now works, so that people sending mail to
Marcia at DutchGirl.net will have that mail forwarded
back out of the domain, and on to her pacbell account. Now on to the wierd item of the day.
When I go to
Shawn's site, I cannot see
his Maximum Tech logo art, which is in a .png format, put out (I think) by Photoshop.
Now Shawn had noted that Netscape (but NOT Internet Exploder) had problems
with his png, and is/was going to convert the image to a .jpg. Now comes the kicker.
I was able to right click and download his logo. I read it into the Gimp, saving it right back
out again, at default compression of 6x and no interlace. I then put a reference to the new
on my test index page, here. This one,
I can see using Netscape. (The problem doesn't seem to be terribly version dependent,
Shawn's original .png can't be viewed by 4.5, 4.61 (both Win) or 4.7 (Linux)). I admit to puzzlement.
Anyone???
Two good things in one year... a body can only stand so much fun at one
time. First of all, a couple of weeks ago, my major Y2K problem alleviated itself when
J. Danforth removed himself from the race for the Republican nomination. Yeeeha! Now,
today, Kenneth Starr has resigned his post as Independent Counsel. Unfortunately, he has
been replaced. Robert Ray, a deputy of Starr's, gets to complete the duties of the office,
investigating a couple more tidbits, and spending a few months writing up a report on how
much it cost to spend a few months writing the report. And did you see his wife in the
background of his Independent Counsel swearing in ceremony, there on the front steps of
that Motel 6... She had this "We ARE going to get invited to all the GOOD parties this season,
or you will hear about it, Buster!" Yikes.
Latterly, I am, having mastered sendmail and
neurosurgery The publishing industry is about to get turned on it's head. When I first
heard about eMatter, I shot on over to fatbrain.com
to check it out. What a cool idea, thinks I. But wait, there's more. The
way this setup is supposed to work, the person/computer combination that buys
the book is the only one allowed to view and/or print the book. You can send it on
to another machine, but they will be prompted to pay for it. I haven't investigated how
this works, yet - one presumes that the security can be beat (more on that topic later).
Meantime, Red Herring just jumped on the bandwagon, chatting eMatter up, and
talking about the $20M investment that Vulcan Ventures (Paul Allen's gig) pitched
into the ring. This concept could certainly revitalize the vanity press industry.
(Disclaimer - I have no stake in any of the companies involved here, I just like the idea!)
Security and privacy. I have heard it said (or seen it written) that "Such
and So is secure. The algorithms used are open source, well documented and beaten
to death by crackers around the world. The cost of breaking this method would be prohibitive."
Oh. The problem with this premise is many-fold. Let us take the example of the encrypted
and wrapper'd publication discussed in the previous paragraph. When you compare the
cost of the book to the time and effort required to break the encryption, surely it isn't worth while...
until some 14 year old in Topeka breaks it, sheerly by accident, and posts his code online, just to
show that he can. Nothing is secure. Ever. Computing power increases. Distributed computing
makes for the largest massively parallel, non-synchronous compute power on the planet. Surely
the NSA can break a code in a brilliant and elegant manner. However, the brute force of 500, 5000,
50000 computers linked via the internet can break any code, given a little time. When the information
is time sensitive, some modes of encryption are probably good enough, since by the time a specific
message is broken, the data has lost value - it is no longer current. But if I can buy an eMatter book
from fatbrain.com, break the encryption and give it to all my friends, then what?
There's lots more to this topic, but I have a very busy day ahead, so I will see you later.
This link takes you to a page from the UK Sunday Times, where it can be seen that, like the
Bilbrey household, the Royals have made their selection, and Linux is the winner.
Marcia (my better half) sent me that info. Linux on Dell dual PII's
replaced Solaris on Sun hardware. The jury remains out as to whether or not Linux will be entitled
to use the By Royal Appointment tagline... we shall see.
You will have to drag me kicking and screaming into something else, now. Years after
the fall, I will still wonder how I let myself be conned into getting a cell phone. They just don't cost
like they used to - but I somehow cherished that commute time. Commuting is horrid (just ask any
Daynoter who writes for a living if he'd rather drive 45 minutes or more one way to work, instead of
walking from the kitchen into the office - can you tell I'm jealous?), but at least I am out of touch
during that time. But by late this week, I won't be. Too many things going on, too much of the time.
Back to the topic of security. There are measures which I can and have taken to
reasonably secure this site and this machine. Not that there is anything valuable on or in Lcow, as
such. But the amount of time I would have to invest to rebuild would warrent taking precautions
against the most common forms of attack. Utimate security lies with your phone connection meeting
Bert the Fireaxe (10 point to anyone else who knows Bert!). But then what's the point of what I am
doing, anyway. Take the HackPCWeek challenge,
which recently claimed Linux as a victim. I have read that there were errors made in the configuration
and setup of the box, and it should not have been able to be cracked. The point is that given
enough effort (or unconcern for physical welfare), there is no security. Security is a myth granted
unto "Modern" man.
Security leads to lotus eaters. If you feel secure, your head is in the sand. You
simply do the best you can, and get under cover when the storm comes. Individual people are
(as a general rule) fairly pleasant, and can take a lot of provocation before becoming rude,
belligerent or threatening. Put a batch of "nice" people in a large crowd and the
psychology changes dramatically. This is the thing that I worry about (to the extent I worry
at all) regarding Y2K problems. If there are some disruptions, and most everybody stays home,
everything may be cool. But put a crowd together, in Atherton, or in National City, tell'm there won't
be any fresh water or power for a couple of weeks - here, have some corn flakes - and the
fecal matter is definitely going to hit the rotating blades. Maybe a little ruckus will wake up
a few of the overly content and secure.
Following all of Life's other lessons, I count on nothing
but this moment. I (generally) do the right thing, love my wife,
break for confused dogs playing dodge-truck, etc, etc. But I have given
up sweating the small stuff. When I lean the wrong
direction into the fire, I learn. But I don't blame the fire for being hot.
Did that seem disorganized? OK - most of this comes off the top off my head, except
the computing bits. Some of that certainly doesn't hang together. But chunks of morals and
ethics are rumbling around inside my head as a result of watching the fun over at Thompson's
place. I like that a lot - Bob and his correspondents make
me think - certainly more than most news or television does. I probably could have lived and
done alright on "Earth without a 'J'", but I think that I would still prefer Boondock.
I have the responsibility to enjoy life, harm not others (where possible) and do unto others first
(when necessary). That's it. But then again, it's possible I would have seriously enjoyed chasing
a Chesterfield sofa, floating across a pleistocene meadow.
All that said and done, I have been commiserating and attempting to
help Shawn in his efforts to debug the .png format at his site. I don't think that I have been
much help, but I did wonder this... Apparently, the browser support for PNG format
files is OK, but not when you add in the transparency Alpha channel. I asked Shawn if
there was a way to flatten the image, or disable the Alpha channel, prior to saving a PNG
out of Photoshop. Haven't heard back yet, so we don't know the answer. All of the
PNG files you see on this site have been created using The Gimp, and I have pre-flattened
the images prior to saving them. Basically, all I know about graphics can be summed up
at the end of this sentence. There, did you see all the knowledge encompassed in that
one little dot? I knew you could. However, I will attempt to create a PNG with an alpha
channel transparency with the Gimp, and see if I too cannot break Netscape. Later.
I shall keep the rest of this short, since I am typing away over a
secure shell connection from Marcia's machine. Lcow is now running
headless, since the monitor has chosen now to go on to computer peripheral
heaven. We believe that the extended warranty is still in effect, which is
the only thing which prevented me from running out to buy a Viewsonic
tonight. I downloaded the ssh client from
Datafellows on 30 day trial
- certainly (better) be enough time to resolve this. Actually, I think that
I have a spare tube at the office, so the downtime should be minimal. The
actual critical factor here is that when the tube gave up the ghost, I had
an instance of Netscape running. I needed to be able to log into the
machine to kill it, otherwise it would have been picking up my mail
continuously for me until Lcow gains a new head. sigh. I
hate Spin City. Take care, y'all. I'll catch you tomorrow.
Fifty-odd messages greet me this morning. First out of the gate is
Matt...
There's a new curse going around the Daynotes, Gang, one far more insidious
But at least mine's covered by warranty. Matt
Ha. I am not alone. But that is a bummer. The good news from this
end of the world is that the Gateway CrystalScan 17 is still covered - though we do
not yet know what contortions we'll be going through to get it repaired and/or replaced...
More on that topic later - Gateway was pretty good about replacing the two Commuting is horrid (just ask any Daynoter who writes for
a living if he'd rather drive 45 minutes or more one way to work, instead of walking from the kitchen
into the office - can you tell I'm jealous?), but at lea.......
Commuting for 15 to 30 minutes is a good way to break up you day.
When you arrive home you just have had enough time to digest the 'day in the office' and
you are ready to tackle the wife, oeps, the work at home :-)
I have got 110 Km, half of which is highway, which takes me 1h30
on a reasonable day (records are 1h10 on a public holiday and 3h40 yekes). I would swap
immediately for 45 minutes ( Me? Jealous? Never! :)
What is even more cause for jealousy is that, when you hit a brick wall in your work
you can drop it for an hour or so and still do something
interesting/productive. When you are more than 5 minutes from home that is
no option, you are bound to look at the bricks till the wall collapses.
Also, if at home we feel an irrepressible urge to work ( heu ) it will have passed
by the time we reach the office
One advantage we have over the home working Daynotes Gang-sters have is
that we are not called into the office for a short quickly solvable problem. Another is
that we are unlikely to be called out of the office to help with household chores
when we are right in the middle of a lengthy debug.
Basically, all I know about graphics can be summed up at the end of this sentence.
Svenson
heh heh heh. But really, I had no idea - I have friends who live out in the central valley,
and commute 4+ hours a day - the joys of being able to afford and own a home - since here in the
SF Bay Area the median house price capped US$350K, at least for a while this summer. I looked
at the listings and there were 5 houses under 300K listed in the SJ Mercury, one sunny Sunday.
From the sound of it, they were all smaller than our apartment, and located in a bad neighborhood.
In other news, I am so glad to hear that that woman who glues bits of sticks together
to create dining table centerpieces... what's her name ... oh, yeah, Martha Stewart, got to share her
IPO day with another fine American institution, the World Wrestling Federation. Both issues closed
higher on their opening day. What a world we live in.
Something else I dislike a lot. Here on the NT box, I use a commercial HTML editing tool
called CoolCat. It is of version 4.01-ness. By this point in it's evolution, you would think that they would
have been able to work out a bug where when you click on a button to provide for bold or italic
on a block of text, that it would not change default insert mode from insert to overwrite, eh? And the
program has an absolutely horrid habit of, when you insert anything, putting that insertion line
at the top of the window, as if you had hit the page down key. The worst of that is that there is a
significant delay, and if in the interim you have used your mouse to attempt to reposition the cursor,
the cursor is left in that absolute position in the window, while the text shifts up. I am going to have to
see if they have an upgrade for this.
More later as time and events allow.
Someone out there in Daynotes reader land has their browser set to spoof the name of the
browser in logs... to SpaceBison/0.01 running under Win67 (was that the summer of love edition of windows?). I love it!
Matt responds to the emails with this -
It's a cheap Samsung SyncMaster 1000p, 21" .25. We got ten of them dirt
cheap, but this is the third one to fail. Samsung fears me. <g> I'm not a
very nice person when I have to call a support line for something that I
regard as a waste of my time... such as a monitor failing less than six
weeks after it was purchased, for example.
and this ...
> One advantage we have over the home working Daynotes Gang-sters
have is that we are not called into the office for a short quickly solvable
problem. Another is that we are unlikely to be called out of the office to help with
household chores when we are right in the middle of a lengthy debug.
What dream world are you living in??? I get called in to the office for some "Critical Emergency" at least once a week. Critical Emergency means "something is wrong, I don't know what, come fix it,
that's what we pay you for" and almost invariably turns out to be some variation of "whoops, I didn't even SEE that power cord." As for being called for household chores in the middle of a lengthy
debug - that's one of the few excuses I could actually get away with. <seg>
Matt Beland
And now, news from the monitor front... Under the 3 year gold service plan (or whatever
it's called) Gateway is shipping out a new monitor, to arrive here via UPS ground in the next few days.
The old monitor is to be returned, shipping charged to Gateway. Another customer service winner, folks!
Good evening. The temporary loaner monitor from work is running OK.
Interlaced with a large dot pitch, it is playing hell with my eyes, but it is only for a few days. I just
ran across notice of a new system administration tool for Linux. Doom. That's right, Doom.
Let's put this in the context of an NT network for those unfamiliar with Linux. A doom
wad file is a layout of a dungeon, right? Or perhaps it is a hierarchy of subnetworks (levels) and
rooms (hosts or machines). So a network task manager can view (God's eye viewpoint) all of the
processes in each machine, and regulate their behaviour by wounding (oops, I mean re-nice)
each process. Actually, now the NT analogy falls down, because you can't actually set
scheduling priorities in an NT environment on a process level, AFAIK (I could be wrong).
But this link
points to a page where someone with a little too much free time has actually done
some mods to the released Doom source. This is clearly another design win for the
crew at ID Software Now why would a body want to shuffle the priorities of the running processes in my...
er, his system. Well, let's take... me, for example. I have found that as I load down my system
with applications, it slows. Not as much as my equivalent load on equivalent hardware under NT4.0,
but it does slow. Now one of the reasons is that I have the setiathome client
running continuously. Now I can execute something like this
prior to running the Gimp, when I am going to be working with large images that take lots of
horses and ram. Yes, oddly, the larger the number, the "nicer" the process is.
A highly negative priority will commandeer as many resources as possible. Lastly, I have been told that the best way to exercise most of your hardware, and
all of your ram, is to run a There's good news, and there's bad news. The good news is that I am going to
only be working a half day today. The bad news is why! I am off to the dentist for the
second half (two left quadrants) of a deep cleaning. That sonic tool they use sounds
like all four o-them chipmunk critters strapped on a rack and stretched real good.
From the grab bag this morning :
Brian,
Svenson commented on your posting...
> "Basically, all I know about graphics can be summed up at the end
of this sentence." Wow, what compression algorithm did you use on
that :-)
I strongly suspect you used the old byte-by-byte XOR algorithm, yes?
/ Bo
The dream world I live in is that when they call me for a problem
they know it will take about 90 minutes before I arrive
and it cost them the travel expense (almost 50$ for a round trip).
You bet they look around and check whatever they can before calling me.
And when they call I try to help by phone.
They probably call someone else, living closer by, first :-)
The worst case I ever encountered was a client in Antwerp
who was upgrading to OS/400 V3R2. This is no trivial task so
they don't (usually) put an idiot on it. Somewhere early in the
process you must restart the machine from an alternative
IPL source (boot drive for PC people). All went well until after
the installation when the machine would not IPL correctly.
He had forgotten to reset the IPL source. I drove two hours
going there to turn a key and then two hours back.
Considering nightmares, yes we live in a dream world.
And yesterday I commented on the dilbert-ian bug reporting and
fixing bonus offered by the pointy haired boss - resulting in swarms of created,
"found" and fixed bugs...
Only I don't get any $ per bug for finding/solving them, I am paid a 'flat
fee' (emphasis on Flat :( )
What I mean really is that I code what the client asks, full knowing that it
is not correct. Afterwards that client cries bug. So then I solve this
"bug".
That is OK for me but it does nothing for building a reputation. Especially
when you leave the project before the user actually starts using it. Then
the "bug" gets reported and someone else solves it. In that case I get the
reputation of creating bugs. Of course in the same way I have to solve "bug"
introduced by other colleagues.
The bug creation falls in the release-1 phase, the fixing in the release-2
phase (see
http://sjonsvenson.com/pc/releases.html )
Computing is real fun, if you can do it without clients :)
I look at this as "the pay is the same". That is, I make a reasonable effort to work
with the customer to design a solution to fit his problem, given his view of the
problem. If possible, we can wrangle over the details. Many customers, however,
know they are right. Then, as you, I do exactly as requested, having gotten
everything in writing. It turns out that the design, scream, redesign cycle is
approximately as long as the work it all out right the first pass method.
I got the following this morning from Bo...
Hmm, I find it hard to credit that you are still not in the WhoIs
database by now, and that orbdesigns.com still has not gone through
the DNS chain. Clearly, even though InterNic-dot.com service is
blasted from all directions, the competition newbies have not got
their ducks lined up yet. At least the domains I've registered have all
been up and running within a few days. The most hassle I ever had
was when I went indirectly with leuf.org via Geocities. That was not
fun.
/ Bo
Well, in all fairness, I was doing something a little tricky - I don't know who is
providing your name service, probably the company that hosts your website on their
servers, neh? Well, since I am self-hosting, all I needed was the registered domain
names, and a couple of DNS servers to park the zone files on... I went with a place
called Granite Canyon, which hasn't worked out, probably because I did something
wrong out of ignorance. I don't know yet what that was, but we shall see. To register
the names, I used Register.com, on the premise that anyone NOT NSI was a good thing
(not to mention that they sponser the free DNS hosting at Granite Canyon).
Now it turns out that you DO have to have alias's set up in your zone file for
www.xxx.yyy to resolve to xxx.yyy. This would have proved true, had
orbdesigns come up properly, because I did add a www.orbdesigns.com alias in
the zone file.
Anyway, it turns out that I can park my DNS records directly at Register.com,
and I have moved both DutchGirl.net and OrbDesigns.com over, and pending resolution
of a couple of issues and a call from tech support at Register, which they promise within
8 hours (I presume that's business hours), things should go live soon. Now the problem
is that Register insulates you from the zone file so well that I cannot set MX records to
have the mail come to Lcow... we shall see.
Sorry for the "brevity" of this message Now, during all of that, Register has sent back two replies to the CS ticket...
the first was a survey link - How was the service??? Huh? Second, only a minute or two
later, was explicit instructions on what to put in the CS ticket to get the MX record update
process started. While they could have put the information on the site someplace, I think
that MOST users are not running their own web- and mail-servers, neh? So I have just
created a second ticket, requesting that the proper MX records get placed in the zone files
for orbdesigns.com and dutchgirl.net. Give it a few days, I am sure - but we shall see.
Unexpectedly, my half day of work was spent at the Bridgeport, fabricating some
parts for a rush order. Since I was working (in a limited capacity, at first) in my father's machine
shop from about the age of 10, while I have no formal training in machining, I can generally find a
part hiding in a block of metal without hurting myself or breaking the machine. As it turned out,
this wasn't even metalwork, just some plastic panel modifications - narry a problem, just lots of
parts to turn out, in a limited time. Still, it is nice to practice skills that don't require a keyboard.
The potential new thing which might have resulted from last week's meetings is
a flop, unfortunately. That is, the other party has chosen not to get back in touch with me as
promised. I don't work with flakes. If they called today and said "Let's do the deal!"
, I would have to graciously decline, since they appear not to be people of their word. They
might be, or might not - but first impressions are powerful.
AWE stands for
Abacus World Expo
, a website devoted to the joys of computing using the old beads on sticks method,
following the meltdown of our computer-based business and economy. There follows a
Wonderful World of Linux 3.0, AWE Edition
here, which is
a fun little read.
To continue the thread of DNS and the domain names, the following mail emerges...
Robert Bruce Thompson
And Bob is right, you know. But then again, I have been known to jump in the deep
end first, and learn how to swim before I reach the bottom in a state of blue-ness. The making
of mistakes is how I learn. The advantage of all this having to blush in public over my inanities is
that I get lots of good advice. I appreciate it all. Thank you, folks. Then there was this from Bo...
It's a jungle out there...
/ Bo
Overwhelming agreement. We shall see what happens next.
Dinner this evening. I made stir fry - Chicken, 3 boneless breasts, cut into small
strips, 1 red bell pepper and one bunch of scallions, julienne'd. 1 bunch of broccoli (sorry,
George), just the flowerettes (split to bite size where necessary). Start rice during prep of
ingredients. Preheat wok over high heat, add two tbsp peanut or other cooking oil. Just when
oil starts to smoke, add chicken, turning rapidly to sear and coat all surfaces. While cooking,
add chervel and sesame seeds to taste. Stir constantly, cook until chicken looks just about done
(usually 5 minutes, with pieces no larger than 1/4" [.65cm] thick). Add a little more oil,
then the vegetables, stir to coat, pour in a dollop of dry white wine (I use chardonnay, or
occasionally sherry), cover and steam for about 2 minutes. Combine stir fry seasoning mix
and about 1/3 cup water ( I can make my own, but generally use Kikoman). Remove wok lid,
stir while adding seasoning mix - watch for the sause to thicken and remove from heat.
From tuning the knife edge to the table in about 30 minutes. I am very full. By the way -
that dish would generally be a main course for about 4 adults, but I am a pig,
with a fast metabolism.
That's all I have energy for this evening, folks. Of course, the purpose here is to get
even with the good Dr. Keyboard
and his Missus, since he is always writing about such heavenly foods,
you would think that he wrote for an entirely different section of The Times.
Have a nice evening, and we'll see you tomorrow.
While I live firmly in the Linux camp on this machine, clearly there
are things I accomplish on the Windows NT box at work that I couldn't (as easily)
under Linux. One of the major problems, of course is data interchange.
Right now, I can create a document in either WordPerfect 8 for Linux
or StarOffice 5.1, send it to someone, and have a reasonable chance
of them being able to read it, especially if I use one of the standard, less
complex formats, like RTF. I can use SO to create Excel readable spreadsheets,
and (tho I haven't tested this) since I know I can read PowerPoint97, I can probably
write that format too.
The tricky bit is the more specialized work that I do in design. I
do design work for catalogs, marcomm materials (mailers, etc) and other
such in Adobe Illustrator. Now I can save that in a format that I can open in
The Gimp, but I lose the ability to edit text, and the direct layout tools aren't
quite as sophisticated. When we get into the CAD arena, things are worse.
I use AutoCAD LT 98, and Protel. I presume that everyone knows what the
AutoCAD line is about, Protel is printed circuit board layout and routing
software. Both of those are difficult to replace in the Linux environment.
Yes, there are equivalents, but I can't afford to strand my previous art.
Three quarters of the design work I do is building on bits of previous work.
(Object oriented design - block reuse? <grin> ) I simply cannot afford
to lose that amount of work, at this time.
This is one of the keys to acceptance - how well can you move
legacy data? It can be done, but does the cost of moving data swamp the
ROI on making the shift to Linux. I do have to reboot frequently on my NT
box. I do have to put up with the system being overall slower at equivalent
tasks on equivalent hardware. But all my data is there.
Zo, when Tom starts wondering why in Zaphod's name I want to
have a look at Outlook and Win2K, it is because these are going to be part
of my professional working environment, for the time being. If I could start
from scratch at a job - especially in my own biz - I would definitely try to
go straight Linux - I would save vast amounts on software, and system
reliability. For established business, this transition is going to be all baby steps.
A little bit of reconstruction going on about here - the new index page is
launched here, and there are a couple of new features, some of
them old features hiding behind new facades, etc, etc. If you have the time, have a look
around, and tell me what you think.
On our expedition today, we found not only STNG: Insurrection, but also two boxed
sets of tapes holding all of the first season (13 episodes) of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Yeehaaaaaaaaaa.
Well, we caught STNG Insurrection on video last night,
along with a few episodes of Python. I do like these Star Trek movies with a
sense of humor - much more realistic to my way of thinking - you work with
a group of people long enough and humor - good, bad or black - will
help to defuse the tension within the situations (a little). Now, while you
don't necessarily want to defuse tension in a movie, willing suspension
of disbelief comes so much more easily when the human relationships
are something recognizable.
I lit a fuse when I started talking about data mobility and the
need to be able to migrate legacy data, especially as it relates
to adoption of LInux. I awake to find this from Bo...
You posted...
"...This is one of the keys to acceptance - how well can you move
legacy data?"
That is the big problem, and it affects everyone, not just those
contemplating moving to Linux. How many MS Access users will
upgrade to Office 2000 only to discover that the fileformat is
completely different -- yet again. How many times have not carefully
composed image and text documents "blown up" when users have
tried to edit the embedded drawings in another MS-Office version
than it was created in (-95/-97/-2000/-Mac/PC)?
I know of several large companies around here that had major
document exchange problems during the time when some departments
had upgraded to Office 97, while others were still using Office 95
and outsource people had Word 6.
For a while, I took to making the archive versions of my working
Word documents RTF -- until I discovered that MS-RTF (which I
now call MS-WTF format) does not always load in non-MS wp -- too
many proprietary wrinkles -- "does not appear to be a valid RTF
document". No way of predicting when or why. So much for the
application independency of RTF.
Even though Word 2000 "uses the same document format" as Word
97, it of course uses more of the potential feature set of this "rich"
format -- official MS-speak has it that "we did not have to change
the format because it was already so rich". Yeah, well, some 3rd
party programs that understand W97 doc, choke on W2000: "does
not appear to be a valid MS-Word document". So wtf...?
I suppose we should be thankful that MS at least chose to stay
"reasonably" close to the WC3 HTML standard with IE. (Although
MS-application created HTML is horrid and filled with code
droppings, it is formally more-or-less syntax compliant.)
/ Bo
OK, enough car analogy, sorry. I don't want to pay Microsoft
prices in order to, in a couple of years, pay Microsoft prices again,
find that the documents I have slaved over in the ensuing time have
been formatted out of currency (usually just annoyingly slightly,
although there have been some astounding breakages with the
past in Microsoft products).
The good news in all of this is that it bodes well for the Linux camp.
If you, as a corporate entity, are faced with upgrades, both painful, both
stranding data, but you don't have to pay direct software costs on one -
the decision gets a little easier to look a Linux, neh? There are
companies which are getting off of the bandwagon, and getting on
Linux, looking hard at StarOffice, waiting (come on, hurry up, Corel)
for the entire WP Suite to be ported to Linux - Looking to find a
reason to make the move.
Wheeeeha. Who needs football? I can get riled up over this stuff easily.
Today, Marcia and I are off for a Sunday drive, we'll visit my dad's parents,
and lunch with my folks. But that remains hours in the future, since I have found
a way to manage to wake up at this ridiculous hour for a Sunday. Hope you are
all sleeping in (though I see that Bob
is up and about already, having been by this place about 20 minutes ago (though
that's 8:30 or so his local time, so much saner than this ungodly hour). I did enjoy
the pictures of the puppy on his site, Saturday 10/23 edition. The pup is a 4 week old Border
Collie, and when Marcia saw that little bundle of fur, she immediately wanted one.
I agree, but we are going to have to wait for a house -an apartment is unfair to a dog.
I grew up with a Border mix - and as I noted to Bob yesterday, I find them to be a most
agreeable breed, bright and pleasant to be with.
More later as time and events allow.
Later came soon, with this update
on the topic of Border Collies, from Bob...
I think that Border Collies are excellent pets, but only for the right
owner. You really have to be in about the 99.9th percentile in dominance to
have a BC as a pet. Otherwise, it'll take over your life. Most people
shouldn't consider having a BC. That's why so many BCs end up in rescue.
It's not the dogs' fault. Reputable breeders try very hard to make sure that
they sell puppies only to people who know what they're getting into and are
likely to be able to deal with it. Unfortunately, BCs are by far the
smartest and most trainable breed of dog. I say "unfortunately" because that
means they're used frequently on TV commercials and so on. People see them
on commercials and remember that they're the smartest dog, and so decide
that that's the dog for them. It's usually a disaster.
BCs are consummate working dogs. Although they're usually shown on
television working at the direction of a human, they're perfectly capable of
doing pretty amazing things all by themselves. For example, a trained BC can
take a large flock or herd of cattle or sheep out in the morning to pasture,
keep them from wandering away, and then bring them back in the evening, all
without any human intervention whatsoever. They're independent animals, and
bred to make their own decisions. And they don't necessarily assume that a
decision you make is better than their opinion, which can lead to conflicts.
They're also too smart for their own good. They have huge vocabularies,
sometimes as many as 3,500 words. They can, for example, on command retrieve
one particular sheep by name from a flock of 300 or 400. They also listen to
everything you say and watch everything you do. Ours can spell, as could all
of the ones we've had previously. By that, I mean that you can't spell words
to trick them. If we say "out", our dogs head for the front door, but they
also do that if we spell O-U-T. Same thing with D-E-C-K. They head for the
back door. C-A-R and they head down the stairs to the garage. B-A-T-H and
they disappear quickly.
They also make complex connections very easily. For example, when Duncan was
a pup, the only door he was allowed to roar out of was the back door to the
D-E-C-K. He knows that's where we keep the grill, so saying or spelling
"grill" results in a mad scramble to the back door. He knows that we usually
cook steaks on the grill, so saying or spelling "steak" results in the same
mad scramble. Here's something we noticed the other day. When Barbara grills
steaks, she often makes pasta salad from a box. The last time she cooked
steaks, neither of us had used any of the trigger words, but she went into
the kitchen and got out a box of pasta salad. Duncan recognized the box and
made a mad scramble for the back door. These are very smart dogs. Smarter
than some people I've known, and I mean that literally.
For anyone who wants a BC, I encourage them to contact a rescue organization
like the one Barbara volunteers for. Just do a search on the Internet for
"border collie rescue" and you'll find all kinds of hits. The advantage of
getting a rescue, other than the fact that you'll be saving a dog that might
otherwise be killed, is that you can pick anything from a puppy to an older
dog. When you buy a pup, you have no way of knowing how it will turn out.
With a rescue, you can pick a dog that's a few months or a couple of years
old, by which time its personality has become clear. All BCs are active, for
example, but some are much more active than others. If you're looking for a
laid-back family pet, getting a rescue allows you to find a BC that's more
likely to fit your lifestyle.
And, in case you're wondering, the reason we bought a puppy directly from
the breeder rather than adopting a rescue is that I have a strange
personality quirk. I refuse to allow any dog of mine to be castrated, which
all rescue organizations require by contract. But if you don't feel that
way, a rescue is definitely the way to go.
Robert Bruce Thompson
There are a lot of people who do not understand that sharing your life with a dog
is a privilege and a responsibility, as well as a source of much joy. Thanks for the
extensive response - I know how thin you are spread for time, Bob. Thanks.
Meantime - There is no law which says that the advertised
functionality is required to be obvious. Best of luck, though.
Brian,
Nothing like a friendly rant, eh?
> understand the need for companies to survive, building broken
Well, that has been the MS marketing strategy since day one and
Windows 1. What they want to say is "We were *first* but this new
version is sooo much better."
> I don't want to pay Microsoft prices
But that's the whole point of the game, at least from the MS POV --
pay, pay and pay again. Now we're going to get to subscribe to the
damned code, renewable licensing.
> there have been some astounding breakages with the past in Microsoft
Tell me about it...
> The good news in all of this is that it bodes well for the Linux camp.
It would much more so if only so many companies weren't so
hopelessly sold on the "integrated" Office hype. Heck, there are
plenty of examples of mixed platform companies that with
declaration from top management go for "monoculture" NT and
Office environment, despite protests from rank and file using unix or
mac, despite agonized cries from system admins who know that
networking that number of PCs under NT is a losing proposition. It
gets rammed through nevertheless.
(One feels so old and cyncial sometimes...)
/ Bo
PS - What's the difference between a gerbil and a hamster.
And now, more on Border Collies, from Bob Thompson...
I should have given more examples of how smart they are. For example, a
month or so ago, Barbara was watching the Westminster Dog Show. Duncan was
lying on the sofa beside her, watching it as well. There was something else
coming on another channel that she wanted to watch, so she used her remote
to change to the new channel. She then put the remote down on the sofa
between her and Duncan. Duncan reached over with his paw and pressed the
"recall" button to change it back to the channel with the Westminster Dog
Show, and started watching that program again. I am not making this up.
Most would say that this was pure coincidence, but I've lived with BCs long
enough to say honestly that I'm not entirely sure.
Robert Bruce Thompson
We had a nice round of visits today. When we bailed out of Sunnyvale at
about 10:00 PDT, it was foggy, about 50F and feeling very like a blah Fall day. By
the time we were headed up the Nimitz freeway, dodging the Raider faithful as they
made their way to the pre-game tailgate party, it was clear, crisp and sunny -
now a perfect Fall day.
Marcia and I stopped in Oakland to see my paternal grandparents.
My grandfather is 101, having been born in 1898, somewhere in the depths of
Kentucky. Smart guy that he was, with 13 siblings, he left home for Detroitt
when he was just 14. My grandmother, now believed to be 97 (we are fairly
sure, having tracked her via census information from her years in Denver as
a child) came here to California with my granddad, and so I am second full
generation on that side. While they have both seen massive societal and
technical changes in their day, both have always seemed rather...
unaffected by the rate of change. This isn't just in recent years,
where memory no longer serves as well, but during my teens,
when my grandfather was still working full time (at age 85 or so).
We then lunched with my parents, and natter'd on about family
here, there and everywhere. Between both sides of the family, I am third
generation Californian, and thus, the strange is now genetic, I am told. Following
lunch, Marcia was a real trooper, and bore with me as we did a driving rour of the
chunk of the East side of the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up. We went
through little towns (there was the high school, that was the intersection where
I got in the car accident that left this scar on my chin... you know, riviting stuff like that).
Some good links for info on Linux are to be found on the site maintained by
Dave Farquhar.
Other resources for making a business case for Linux in the enterprise can be found
at The Unix vs. NT Organization. Then there
is The Business Case for Open Source,
to be found at OpenSource.Org, among others.
Have a nice evening, and I will catch up with you next week (or tomorrow,
your choice <grin>).
Ah. Well, if you have the O'Reilly sendmail book you're in good shape. I
remember the first time I tried to configure sendmail. It was on a BSD box,
as I recall, and I was completely clueless. Trying to get sendmail
configured by looking at example config files and man pages is not for the
faint of heart.
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com
Orb Home / Top
TUESDAY October 19, 1999
Orb Home / Top
WEDNESDAY October 20, 1999
that forgetting to eat - less than one hour after my 6 week old monitor
died, I read on Brian's site that his did, too. Guard your peripherals,
friends, for there appears to be a new curse going 'round.
monitors
keyboards that died trying to swim in coffee. Then from
Swenson, this -
Brian,
Wow, what compression algorithm did you use on that :-)
> hehehe... what make & model was your's?
Svenson wrote this on Brian's page:
Systems Administrator
http://www.itool.com
[...]$ renice +10 < pidof setiathome
make all on the kernel source a few times in a row.
If you have intermittent ram errors, they are sure to be exposed. Can't verify this, as it hasn't
happened to me - both times I compiled the kernel, the compile completed without problem.
By the way, if you hadn't noticed,
Tom Syroid
has made the switchover from his site to the space being hosted at iTool. The previous
site space (at Shaw, I think?) is now full of pages that redirect you appropriately to
the new content over at Syroid Manor. Even though Tom warns against it, I have changed
the link to his pages over on the MetaJournal/Index. Also, the
main circuit of Daynoter's are accessible at Daynotes.com.
Enjoy.
Orb Home / Top
THURSDAY October 21, 1999
<grin>, actually, a bitwise operation...
--
"Bo Leuf"
Leuf fc3 Consultancy
http://www.leuf.com/
Even counting being paid for the privilege of driving those sorts of horrid
commutes, I still think you win the golden wheel award for daynotes commuting.
Are there any other takers?
--
Bo Leuf
The Leuf Project
http://www.leuf.org/
Orb Home / Top
FRIDAY October 22, 1999
Robert Bruce Thompson wrote:
Hell, Bob, I dunno. You wearing a jack boot on the other foot too? The
left temple could use a whack of whatever that was too... sigh. Really,
I don't know. Let's let this try to work out this way before I change
it again... after all, I *KNOW* that orbdesigns and dutchgirl both
resolve properly on this machine...
>
> > Anyway, it turns out that I can park my DNS records directly at
> Register.com
>
> Um, perhaps this is a dumb question, but why don't you just set up primary
> DNS on your own local machine?
>
> Robert Bruce Thompson
> [email protected]
> http://www.ttgnet.com
.b (born out of my proper time - shoulda been a village idiot)
Right. You're resolving locally to the authoritative DNS server for both
domains. It ain't never going to go out on the net because it won't find a
better server there. All I'm suggesting is that you make your local DNS
server primary and the remote one secondary, assuming there aren't any
problems with zone files at where secondary would be.
Yup. Exactly - once things settle down and are working with primary and
secondary out there, I should easily be able to transfer primary
inhouse. After all, if the nameservice fails inhouse, it won't matter,
because the web- and mail-servers will be down, too. Thanks for the
advice.
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com
Mostly I guess I am surprised that not even dutchgirl.net is yet in whois,
despite the domain being active and accessible for all this time. I looked
back at my archived mail files and it was in fact register.com that was used for
LeufOrg when I had the site at geocities, although once registered, the whole
thing was administered by namesecure.com, URL-forwarding-somewhat
confusing. I recall that they kept the domain forwarding entry pointing at
geocities for weeks, long after I had the domain functional under my own
hosting. Luckily the public DNS updates did not originate with them, so
web accesses kind of ignored forwarding once the DNS entries no longer
pointed to namesecure's server.
--
Bo Leuf
The Leuf Project
http://www.leuf.org/
Orb Home / Top
SATURDAY October 23, 1999
Orb Home / Top
SUNDAY October 24, 1999
<mode RANT>
--
"Bo Leuf" <[email protected]>
Leuf fc3 Consultancy
http://www.leuf.com/
Actually, I am consciously trying not to be too thankful. While I
understand the need for companies to survive, building broken products,
in order to say "This new vesion is so much better...". Well, hell, why
didn't you make it better to begin with, or at least tell me it was a piece
of crap, or at least charge me piece of crap prices. If I buy a Yugo (oh,
can't buy those any more, huh?), if I buy a Yugo, I do so with the
expectation of replacing it in the reasonably near future. If I buy a
Mercedes, and pay those Mercedes prices, I expect (and can) keep
that vehicle in good condition for 10 to 20 years (the median age of
the Mercedes cars owned by members of my family is about 14 years,
starting with the 1978 240D, which my sister still drives daily, over
250K on it, I think).
</mode>
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com
Weird, sickly smile - I have just spent the last half hour trying to
read this message. Something in the return code caused NS to
segfault immediately (I think there was code in the html, wait let
me save this and do a test), OK I can safely open the message
I sent, but your reply sent this whole program to lala land. So I
figure it is something in the message attachment, and go into the
nsmail directory, and inbox is 24 Meg. WTF = there's just this one
new message - no wonder NS is shitting all over the place.
Anyway, I decide to open the file with PICO, to see who it's
from and if I can decipher what is happening. I use PICO, in
combination with this VERY large file to kill my X-Session - I
still do not know how. After restarting X (without rebooting, hehehe),
it turns out that nsmail/Inbox contains EVERY message I have ever
received, since I brought this box online. Even though they are deleted, then
deleted from trash, they are still there. I shudder. We are shortly going to
learn what right click on folder-name / Compact All Folders does, methinks.
Anyway, I finally get to the bottom of the file, in an ascii editor, and see that
the message is from you. Of Course! <Grin> I delete the stuff below your
text message to me, save the file (takes about 5 minutes to save the file),
open Netscape and here we are. Jeez.
Tom Syroid's keyboard was responsible for the following...
>
> Adobe GoLive - Built-in FTP ClientOK, I found the FTP site, but I don't see
> how to get what they show, i.e., my site at iTOOL in the upper (or lower)
> frame and my local files in another...??
>
> Don't get me wrong... This is a kick-ass editor. But I'm having a hard time
> figuring out how to harness all this power.
>
> /tom
All too true. If I am able to successfully evangelize Linux into my
current workplace, I need to address the issues of incoming and outgoing
documents, as well as internal compatiblity with documents of a previous
OS... sigh. Maybe Jerry's idea of a missile cruiser isn't such a bad
one after all, as all of us are gerbils running in the Microsoft wheel.
> products, in order to say "This new vesion is so much better...".
> products).
--
"Bo Leuf" <[email protected]>
Leuf fc3 Consultancy
http://www.leuf.com/
A: The gerbil has more white meat on'm.
You're right, and we've chosen to share our lives with BCs. But as much as I
like the breed, they're really not for most people.
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com
Orb Home / Top
"Daynotes"
was © Robert Bruce Thompson, now GPL - Thanks, Bob
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