This is usually the hardest post of the week to write. After all, it is Monday morning, an ungodly hour, and once again, I am not as rich as Bill G. Sigh. With a start like that, is it any wonder that I don't just roll right back into bed? Probably some of you read this whining BS, and wish I had, too. I do think, though, that hating Mondays is a cultural thing. After all, if you were a hunter-gatherer, with no TV, it was up every morning at the crack of dawn (and just who thought up that expression first, mister?), stalking some ruminant. Back then, every day was like Monday. Yikes.

My start page in the browser is My Yahoo, which has just changed its format once again, without permission. Maybe I will have to do my own portal page, with some newsfetch scripts (webfetch) and links to most of the places I go, at work and at home. Then I can just use that instead. In the news, I see that some rattus judicus are going to be filing a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft on behalf of "millions of Californians." Again, no one asked me. This morning, as we hear the news, millions of Californians will look at each other and say, "Did you ask for that?" Unfortunately, the stupid ones, of which there are probably more than a few, will say, "Show me the money!" Oh, so sorry, drove your software company out of business, no more support. That promised upgrade that you have been planning for - poof, gone. We guess it was Microsoft hurting the consumer one last time. Sigh. Meantime the lawyers get paid, and I, one of the millions, won't see a red penny.

Nothing worth raving about in the mail yet today, so I am going to head on out, have a good day, survive, look forward to the very short week if you have one; Look forward to a long week if you are Tom Syroid <SEG>. Anyway, I will see you later.

Dan Seto and I held a small discussion today on animated GIF files...

Good Monday Brian!

When I was converting my gif images to png I ran across a problem which I
have not been able to fix yet. Namely, what to do with animated gifs. There
is an analogous standard that creates .mng files. Unfortunately, I don't
know of any browser that actually can display them. I've tried IE 5.0
(5.00.2919.6307), Navigator 4.7 and 5.0 alpha build 11, and Opera 3.60
(3.60.0.286) but none of them will display a mng file.

Maybe you or your readers have come across something that is not a gif but
is still able to display animation?

Aloha,

Dan

Well - The general consensus is that the loss of animated gifs is not an altogether bad thing. I don't know of any replacement animation - It wouldn't bother me to visit your site and find it lacking animation, though.

I guess in the macro sense I agree with your view (does it matter to me
whether I see a picture of you at the top of your page or not? :)  But
you've taken the time to put the image there and I assume therefore you want
people to be able to view it...Now, they may not want to see it <g>, but at
least they have the  choice of turning off graphics or using Lynx. Right
now, I don't have that choice when it comes to animated gifs. That is, even
if you want to see Dr. Pournelle's spinning compass or floating email blimp,
you could not legally do so unless he paid $5,000USD to you know who. Does
that make the web a "better" place? I guess you would say yes?

To which I made some reply which is safely in my send folder... at work. I don't necessarily (as I noted above) approve of animated GIF's. Now, most of my objections to them go away, as bandwidth availability gets better. Yet there will always be a lowest common denominator - I try to look at it in this sense - Is there significant information or meaning carried in the image? Does it have a special purpose (as it were <g>)?

For instance, the picture at the top of this page. Why, you might ask. When I first began this journey, I had some good examples to follow in Pournelle, Thompson, Syroid and others. Each of these beings has a picture up on the page. Does it convey a sense, somehow, of the real individual behind the words, on the other end of the wires? Does it bring a sense of conversation, in a way? These were true for me as I read their pages, and so incorporated that feature in my own. Images can and often are used as visual separators - to highlight or enhance content. And they can be used to instruct, or illustrate, as I did last week with the images of Word running on Wine, under Linux (here). And lastly, they can entertain.

Now, I don't go to sites like mine for visual entertainment. I don't go places on the web for visual entertainment, actually. I am a content pig. I like text, I like to read, I like to learn. Pictures, animations that improve or extend those traits on the web are perfectly acceptable in my book. Actually, virtually all uses of the web are "OK" in my book - I just choose not to use many of them - there aren't enough hours in the day. The graphics that are on this site are usually hidden away - they are on the Visuals page, and I put photo's and some of the computer images I work on there. But not a lot (at least at present).

This just in from Joke of the Day... heh heh heh

A woman gets home, screeches her car into the driveway, runs into
the house, slams the door and shouts at the top of her lungs, "Honey,
pack your bags! I won the lottery!"

The husband says, "Ohmigod! What should I pack -- beach stuff or
mountain stuff?"

The wife yells back, "It doesn't matter... just get out!"

Computers, Freedom & Privacy 2000 is online and putting out the call for papers and participation for this 10th annual conference, in Toronto next April. This is usually a very interesting event (so I hear), which I have never been able to attend in the past. Registration isn't going to be up until January. The focus of this year's conference is going to be an examination of the assumptions and behaviours that govern the internet today, in order to learn if they will lead us in the direction we want to be headed in tomorrow. More later on this topic, you may be sure.

On the subject of top-of-page pictures...

I agree. I didn't use a picture for the first six months or so. Then one day
I got an email that asked why I didn't post a picture so that people could
see what I looked like. That seemed a reasonable request, so I searched
around for a picture that was already digitized and used that. Now that I
have a digital camera and a working scanner, I suppose I could replace the
picture, but it seems good enough.

Perhaps I should fire up the microphone, capture some voice and compress it
to MP3. No one has asked me what I sound like, though.

Robert Bruce Thompson
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com

And we all get a weekly dose of Jerry on TechWeb, though I already had personal experience there from having been fortunate enough to join him for lunch one day at a West Coast Computer Faire a few moons ago. You know, I haven't tried voice capture yet with this system and Linux... Hmmm.

Well, how about that. A little research turned up a program called yarec (here), which required a quick compile. Then a little noodling with the input and output sound mixer levels, and... voila. Eeeck, link removed from that one. 11 seconds of audio, 245k file - let's play with the sample rate a little, shall we? OK, with a sample rate of 4000 Hz, 8 bits per mono sample, we should get about 48k every 12 seconds. Voila - initial.wav. An added note, several minutes later... the sound that the low sample rate yields sort of sucks on this box, and really sucks on the Windows 98 box. YMMV.

Now back out onto the web for BladeEnc (here), a wav to mp3 console application. At the request of the mp3 encoder, a second sample has been recorded at 32kHz, 16 bit Mono. 6 plus seconds of sound yields a second.wav file that is 439k. Not tiny. Running bladeenc yields second.mp3 - a 55k file. Clearly a vast improvement. Please note that the high sample rate was required as a minimum by the mp3 encoder. Here is the mp3 sample, second.mp3. If you are feeling particularly lucky, you can also get the nearly 500k wav version, second.wav (NOT recommended for slow connections). The reason you would do so is to compare the sound quality of the mp3 versus that of the wav. Personally, I can't tell the difference. I still sound the same as when I did radio, while I was in high school and college, and I didn't think my voice came across as "rich enough" then, either.

Yet another breakthrough in electronic physics may have been achieved. The news here on Yahoo points to a transistor that can lead to 400x density over existing transistors on a chip (if it pans out). But really folks, an 18 nanometer gate???

And you will remember, on a previous topic, the article by Rick Moen entitled: Fear of Forking, or why the GPL, by guaranteeing the ability to fork the kernel, actually helps in keeping it on track. The original article, with a persistent link to the page on the author's site, rather than to the soon to change link at LinuxCare, is here. If you missed this last week, give it a shot - a well written piece, which helps to place the GPL and Linux in a perspective. [Changed link to reflect location of annotated document -bpb]


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Mornin'. Tom Syroid pointed me at an interview with the lead developer for Opera for Linux, which almost promises a release before Christmas. Very cool. Then, a follow-on to yesterday's startpage foorah (I dunno what happened, but now My Yahoo looks like it always did???). But Gary Berg dropped me this line -

At the same time MSN redesigned theirs, which now (for me) seems to
be several times longer.

Take a look at a copy of my startpage at xxx.yyyyyyyyyyy.zzz - I use a
local on-disk copy of that as my startpage.  It's nice to see the
weather info at the top.  And, of course, you can see that in a way
I've reproduced Tom's Daynotes.com site (although I did have this
long before he started that site ).

You're welcome to steal as much or little as you want.

Cool. Actually, I have visited your site once before, as I was checking out visitors who came "from" places, rather than direct, via a bookmark link, for instance. I am actually usually pretty happy with my bookmarks + My Yahoo setup for breaking news. But I may yet break down and do my own. The only difference for me would be that I would track into Infoseek [as a search tool], rather than Yahoo, as I seem to get better overall results, and have lots of success in drilling down into previous search results. [And I dropped Gary a second line, letting him know that I posted this, but left out the website reference unless he wants it further out in the world.]

Then there was the following, from Matt Belend. Make what you will of it. I am out of time, so will simply post the whole thread. Have a great day. Catch up with you later.

Subject:  Re: hell
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 06:50:03 -0800
From: Brian Bilbrey 
Organization: Orb Designs
To: Matt Beland 
References:  1

Add the following...

Remember what I said last week about schizophrenics never being alone...

.b

Matt Beland wrote:
> 
> Here's what I posted; let me know if you object to anything. Just because
> I'm a smartass doesn't give me the right to label you as one... <seg>
> 
> 7:15 AM I almost posted an update yesterday afternoon just so I could say "I
> feel like it", but then I realized I didn't feel like it, and wouldn't that
> be a fine kettle of fish? So, of course, I get this email from some smartass
> (nothing wrong with smartasses, BTW - I'm one):
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 11:16 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: hell
> 
> >Stay tuned for more updates whenever the hell I feel like it.
> <g> We watched Star Trek 4 over the weekend, and I just heard an echo of
> Spock saying "The hell I won't, Admiral." or something to that effect.
> --
> regards,
> Brian Bilbrey [email protected]
> http://www.OrbDesigns.com/ [email protected]
> 
> Do you often hear Leonard Nimoy speaking to you? Should we be concerned?
> <seg>

-- 
regards,
Brian Bilbrey                  [email protected]
http://www.OrbDesigns.com/     [email protected]

Mornin' Brian,

Just wanted to clarify two things. First, in posting my email of yesterday
re: the above subject, a parenthetical grin "<g>" was left out that was in
my original. This deletion may have left the wrong impression on your
readers and so I am resending the sentence in question; "Now, they may not
want to see it <g>, but at least they have the  choice of turning off graphics 
or using Lynx. " Could you please make this correction.

And second, my main point is that the web is about choice, and it is a big
enough place for everyone and everything. And while I do not frequent sites
that are full of graphics, or frames, or colored backgrounds, or sound
files, or anything else that detracts from the message myself (in fact, I
use a free program called Web Washer, 
http://www.webwasher.de/, 
that filters animated gifs and/or banners), I think there is a place and time for
everything.

So what I want is the choice to be able to view animations such as Dr.
Pournelle's email blimp, which does not delay downloading one whit (OK,
maybe one whit. But no more than that!). Now, on the other hand, as you
said, if you don't want to view them you don't have to visit his site (or
mine, though I don't have any animations anymore and actually, had only two
small ones on my index page - one being the Unites States of America flag
<kidding>you left-coast Linux radical, oops, I guess Dr. Jim's medications
are wearing off </just kidding>).

Aloha,

Dan [email protected]

Oh, and on most western maps, you're farther to the 'left' than I am <g>...

And then there's the following, from Gary Berg...

Interesting - your signed digital certificate disables the preview
pane in Outlook 98. Not a big deal, but it is a little bit of a PITA
when you are used to using it as I am.  I wonder if Outlook 2000 can
handle it (uh, oh, here comes Tom with a club to beat on me about
thinking about Outlook 2K!).

I don't mind if you post a site, but why don't you put it up as a
non-link as "bunkeberg dot com" or something like that so no
"spider" can find it?  That's the only thing that's there, so I
don't mind if people bounce on it a little.

>> I was checking out visitors who came "from" places <<

My gosh, you mean that IE tells you where I found the link to you?!?
So you can tell what site I came from?  Gosh, I think I understand
why people are interested in "anonymous" browsing.  I can understand
why a web site owner might want to know that, but I'm not sure if I
really want to provide that information.  I guess there's no choice,
and there's no real harm done.  It just bugs me a bit.

dial-03-13.community.co.uk - - [01/Nov/1999:07:41:59 -0800] "GET /bpages/current.html HTTP/1.1" 200 55642 "http://www.daynotes.com/daynotes/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 98)"

A few words from our sponsor, and then on with the news... Being of service is what it's all about, really. Put that way it sounds rather British, stiff and all that, but I mean it. Being able to help your friends. To make a bowl of soup for someone who's feeling ill, then happily take it away when they say they don't want soup, they never wanted soup, they never want to see soup again, for at least the next several lives! Running across the way to help someone I don't know move furniture. Coming home to find someone's car in my parking space and not chopping them to little bits. I have spent some time in my life being needy, I have spent some time being 'needed' - I much prefer the middle thing - being self-sufficient, with the ability to provide a hand to someone on no notice, and without (much) thought. This is what some people call the Christmas or Holiday season spirit - I try to be that way most of the time (when I am not being a cynical a**). That also gives me permission to be a total grinch about the holidays.

In the news, Bill Gates and foundation give money to ... help sick kids, link here. Now that's a real nice thing to do, coming on the heels of another huge donation a couple of weeks ago to... hmmm, just a moment here... yeah, UNICEF got $22M yesterday, $750M today to GMCV, an organization forming to vaccinate children around the world. The article says "once they are operational"... With $750M in the bank, I expect immunizations to start tomorrow. You don't suppose that public (or judicial) opinion would be swayed for something like that, do you?

An extremely funny take on the Lucasfilm search for a 19-ish Anakin Skywalker, and why the author of this article is the correct choice for the role can be found at salon.com. Then there's this feature from The Onion, entitled Russian Television Scores Hit With New Game Show Who Wants To Eat A Meal? Seriously warped.


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Howdy. Last night, we broke from our normal activities in the early evening, took out the tatter'd cardboard box, laid everything out and played Trivial Pursuit. One question in particular had me thinking of a recent bout of correspondence on a daynotes page or two.

What's the rathaus in Frankfurt?

Now some German can be fairly easy to deconstruct, since the language has the habit of using whole words where English only uses letters or syllables, so for instance I could have figured out that bustenhalterhaus meant Victoria's Secret, or that frankfurterhaus is a hotdog stand, but I just couldn't figure out why they had a house for rats in Frankfurt, so I guessed that maybe rat = red ... red house ... bordello. Nope. Rathaus is city hall, home to ... politicians. I should have known, although bordello could have been accepted as an alternate answer.

Meantime, email sucks rocks again, although the PBI System Status page doesn't show any problems. A quick recheck shows that it is impaired (well, duh), logins are prevented so you may not be able to retreive your email. 'MAY'??? I should hope not, if I can't login!

Also, there's frost on the shingles and on the grass of the sports field across the road from us - I guess that Fall is finally actually here. I am getting incredibly slow connections to various parts of the web. Bo's pages pop right up, yet Bob's took a couple of minutes. There's a logjam somewhere. I am off to work, have a nice day.

Creeping crud is what we have got. Two flu bugs came in to our respective workplaces. Mine was a mild, but extended bug - an energy drainer more than anything else. Marcia's is a comes-on-like-a-herd-o-wildebeasts-on-migration kind of bug, aches, pain and nasty. They have met and melded, just for us. I shan't go into details, but we will be skipping the family gathering this year. As I said to Jack, my boss, "Unless someone in the family has come into serious money in the last couple of weeks, I don't see any reason to go and be a biohazard." Do you?

The email returned to life in the late morning. 70+ messages in my box at work (which is a non-deleting retrieval, I get all messages again here in the evening). A couple of interesting bits - may turn up here after a little research (most assuredly not this evening). Tom's conscience is biting him, and that got me to thinking... What am I thankful for in this season?

I am alive (and there was an extended period of doubt on that item a few years ago) and terribly grateful to be so. I have a lovely, loving partner in crime life, Marcia. I have a reasonably fulfilling job, often challenging enough to satisfy me. I have a roof over my head and enough food on the table. More than that is bonus-land. I am reasonably selfish with my time, and would be (in compensation) more generous with my money, but the IRS, the only entity legally allowed to charge usurious rates and penalties, has a lock on that option for the time being. We do the food drives, and will do some toy donations, I think. I have done enough of service in my life and continue in small ways today, that my nag doesn't bother me much. But then, I try to lead a considered life these days. The past was unconsidered, and unconsiderate to me and those around me. Life is good at the moment, and more I cannot ask (except to feel a litte healthier, as soon as possible, please).

Concentration, or rather a lack thereof, is afflicting me. Therefore, though I have been attempting to absorb some Perls of wisdom, in hopes of distracting myself from sundry physical ailments, I hereby concede the battle this evening. I am going to park in front of the cable output box, and not attempt to keep my eyes open (which means, of course that I won't be able to sleep, but that's another story). Have a nicer evening than I am (not hard to do). Catch you tomorrow, or whenever you make it by here next. I'll still be here.


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Meantime, I have some reading to do, and (maybe) breakfast. Certainly a nap. Have a great day... I will be in and out of here, so check back if you feel up to it, drop me a mail if you like.

Well, a morning of light work is completed. (29) visitors so far today (a relatively high number, given the holiday). I am just mucking about, doing a whole lot of nothing, spelunking the web for games, etc. One of the places to go for gaming on Linux is HappyPenguin (aka The Linux Game Tome), fun and cool.

On the subject of biohazards and teletubbies, Svenson rings in with the following two messages...

>...don't see any reason to go and be a biohazard." Do you?

Unless there are family members you don't like. Now is the time for a
visit to those.

Or you could do a fields trip to Redmond.

Svenson

Schizophrenics have a 'split personality'.
We could have known Brian was half Leonard Nimoy and half teletubby ;-).

Svenson

Howdy. My warped idea of coping with feeling ill is to stay as busy as possible. Sometimes my eyes don't point in the same direction at this time, and it takes 4 times as long as it should, but I am not moping and feeling miserable as long as I am busy. So the important work I did this morning, when my eyes had coordination (especially with the ol' fingertips). Then I made a turkey dinner for us'uns, and I had more than 5 bites, which may yet turn out to have been a mistake. Since that time, what with all the l-Tryptophan circulating in my system from the turkey, and the fact that I have been working on my perl scripting stuff - my brain is fried.

I know, and I sympathize. Some days I write crap, and you have to turn up and read it. Well, you don't have to, but you do anyway and I appreciate that. Meantime, I am looking forward, late in the four day weekend, to trying to help Steve Tucker get his linux box up, running and behaving like a firewall/router/IP Masquerade box for his home network... I have high hopes, regardless of Barbara Thompson's cynicism <G>


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Some vast quantities of mail have crossed my eyes in the last half hour or so - I know it's late, but 11.5 hours of (don't tell any EU member citizens) sleep later, I feel about 700% better than I did yesterday. Washed out, but far better. Just in time to help put up all the Christmas crud. As I said yesterday, "But it's a twelfth of a year early?!?!" Which argument did absolutely no good. Hasn't in the past, dunno why it would now... Regarding the Court Martial, well, here it is... along with Judge Hyphenated's opinion.

I tried to but I didn't get any sound out of my box (this is an office PC,
without soundcard). Later I listened at home. The text you read is not
really fit to get a good impression of a voice.

And to be true, I have never seen a teletubby on TV (although I have seen
some politicians ....) I know them only from photographs. And on top of all
this ignorance, I have to admit I don't know who Leonard Nimoy is. I am
definitively not a TV watcher.

I only got to the conclusion based on the observations of Matt.

So, if you feel offended, I am sorry, feel free to shoot back. If you are
not offended, I'll try harder next time .

Svenson

Those are the incontrovertible charges, admitted by his own fingers. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. The court has ruled. Corporal, take his stripes. On the ground, soldier. Gimme 200.

Brian has a point. As the mighty AltaVista says when asked to search
for "Leonard Nimoy": '9,896 pages found.' Surely, if a person hasn't
seen Nimoy on ST they'll have seen him on The Simpsons? Or Futurama?

Regards
Chris Ward-Johnson
[email protected]
Dr Keyboard - Computing Answers You Can Understand
http://www.drkeyboard.co.uk

Our friend Moshe Bar, him of Linux development, houses overlooking the Med, a home Cray, Byte columnist and more, has put out another mailing to his subscriber list. Top of Moshe's news is his new domain, www.moelabs.com, hosted from his home. Be careful of that link, though - apparently there is a little more development work to do, then it should be live. I guess that the old domain, cvs.sentience.org, is also on that IP now, as both of them yield the same error when you get there. I have dropped him a line, and changes hopefully will be happening shortly. Moshe is involved in a number of Linux software development efforts, gets to play with very cool toys, write about them and get paid to do so. I am envious.

The Christmas tree is up, and there are some wrapped presents underneath already. Marcia may have gotten me civilized enough to get everyone else's presents way too early, but she can't get herself something from me, so I still have something to do, the night before Christmas <G>... what - hey - OUCH. OK, ok. I was just kidding, really. <g>

Interesting traceroute results... What? Oh, traceroute is a program which is part of my Linux installation. It allows me to see the number and IP addresses of the intermediary machines between me and say, www.moelabs.com (21 hops) or www.syroidmanor.com (10 hops) or www.ttgnet.com (14 hops). Kinda cool.

Also I am moving forward with the Perl thing. The only thing that I could wish for, in almost any type of instruction, is to have real-world examples that demonstrate the utility of a particular feature, command, operation, etc. One of the key features of many programming languages is that there are several ways to accomplish any given task. So, show me why I should choose method C over methods A or B. There are circumstances where each mode is appropriate for use, just tell me. I always want a contextual framework in which I can hang a language's tools and features. Often the best way for me to learn is to do an actual project, of course. With Perl, I just need to learn a little more - a minimum required fluency before immersion, as it were.

Sorry about that. Once again I did updates without changing the most recent update time. I probably ought to automate that... I wonder - there ought to be a little script to grab the last mod time and date off of the file, and put it in the right place. I know - not tonight. All's definitely quiet on the western front, although there's a bunch of shouting going on over at Slashdot - It appears that Corel, in their wisdom, has seen fit to modify the GPL to meet their own purposes - which is against the license... Oops, yet again. Ah well. Good night, see ya tomorrow or thereabouts.


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Morning, all. Signature woes is the initial topic of the morning... An email which arrived for me late last night contained the following line. "...please not use that huge useless signature..." Sigh. I forgot to turn off the signature on a mailing list post, where someone uses a reader like pine or mutt to read. Many "modern" mail readers in today's GUI environment sequester the signature, merely showing a little valid or invalid signature graphic. These old line mail tools are console based and work very well (I use pine for the local machine mail here, what I receive if you send to [email protected]), but show everything, including large signature blocks. Bummer.

In other news,, this patent, granted to Greg Kisor, assigned to Intel, appears to be a patent on a specific form of distributed computing. Upon reading the claims, I am not entirely sure that this patent should have been granted. Over in Slashdot (where I found the original reference), they are ranting on as though this is what Seti@Home and distributed.net are doing already. That isn't the case, because both of those are remote computer initiated task work, where the "central" computer merely doles out and receives data at the remote computer's convenience. However, I see nothing that is non-obvious in this 'invention' which makes it worth protecting. The concept of distributed computing has been around for a long time, and this is merely one of several types of implementation. This appears to be specifically aimed at the ISP that might want to use its client's computers as part of a processor farm for generating active content. The problem with attempting to contest patents like this is that those with the best lawyers often win, and the deepest pockets usually can afford the best lawyers. The protecting of Intellectual Property by patent is debased by the granting of patents like this one.

Instead, here's my idea, published in it's under-developed entirety, and placed in the public domain.

*********

Using networked remote computers to execute computer processing tasks, such tasks either done without charge, or at negotiated fee, at times signaled by either the remote computer or the central computer.

A system executes computer processing tasks on a remote computer that communicates with a central computer. The remote computer sends a message of availability to the central computer, or the central computer may send out a signal requesting processing time. Following the initial contact message, the central computer may negotiate a fee with the remote computer for processing time. If negotiation is successful, the central computer sends a task and possibly the associated raw data to the remote computer. The remote computer generates processed data, and stores the processed data. Finally, the remote computer sends a complete message to the central computer, and the processed data is returned to the central computer if that is required.

**********

This differs from both the Intel patent and the current implementation of distributed.net and Seti@Home. The premise here is that the processor time of my system will have value to some other organization, let's say my ISP, but that value is variable based upon both the loading on my system, my preferences and the load on the ISP. Should my system be busy serving content directly when the ISP needs my processor's services, a higher micro-payment will be negotiated. When, on the other hand, my computer signals availability, and the ISP's load is relatively low, a lower micro-payment would be appropriate.

Clearly, this is not just a LAN implementation, although it could be. It would imply persistent connections (such as this DSL line), and could possibly be a method of funding part of the expense of a persistent connection. It does allow me to offer my computer's services for free to some effort like Seti@Home, while selling my processor time to an ISP or other content provider, as appropriate.

MoeLabs.com update - I tried to get there again following Bo's notification of his site. Again I got an error. So. I try with KFM, the KDE File Manager tool, which doubles as a basic browser... Up pops Moshe's new site. Hmmm. Back into Netscape, and disable Java stuff and voila - the new site is fine - I think there is simply a file missing that only turns up when Java is enabled. So if you go there and can't see anything but an error message of some kind, turn off Java, Javascript and try again. This could be a problem with the implementation of Java just in the Linux Netscape I am using - I am going to test in Marcia's box, for another point of reference... Nope, Windows Netscape 4.51 also fails if Java is enabled. But it comes in and looks just fine in IE5 under Win98. I have forwarded this behaviour report onward to Moshe. Meantime it's a nice looking site - bright guy with lots to say. Visit there when you can. Recommended.

I got so envious, thinking of Moshe, that I have decided to try out a couple of ideas. In order for these to work, I need some more drive space. Off to Fry's I go. I know, I know, but I haven't had the bad experiences that poor Jerry has been afflicted with. Back a short while later with a 13.6 gig HD for /dev/hdb. Also, I installed the RPM upgrades for XFree86, since I bought the amateur license of VMware, which requests the latest X-server. Why, you ask? Well, I want to run Windows as a task under Linux. I can't afford another machine right now, but a couple of hundred on some storage, and the right software for the job... now that I can get my teeth into. I fdisk'd the new spindle, creating an additional 127M swap, two 4G partitions, and one 6.6G partition. Since then I have successfully installed the VMware package, and have been slowly making the filesystems on each of the partitions. Slow because this is first use, and I used the bad block checking option in making the filesystems to ensure data integrity... Shortly, we are out to supper, but later I may have some screenshots and fun stuff to report. Hang loose.

I have been having some success, and a little frustration. But I have successfully installed Win95 in a virtual machine in a 2 gig virtual partition in a subdirectory of my linux home directory. It is really weird watching Win95 boot in a window on Linux. Why Win95, you ask? So did Tom. hehe... That's the only version of Windows I have in hand today (and yes, it's legal !!!). The advantage here is that I can also play with Linux, doing kernel work, etc, without mucking up the main machine until it is time to do so. Screen shots - yup, I have got a few, but I want to select a couple and clean them up, so tomorrow. Have a nice evening, folks.


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Happy Sunday. As you can see from the plethora of thumbnails, it is time to watch VMware in action. [The alternate text on each of the thumbnails gives the size]. I gave a little detail last night, and I will review the process I went through more thoroughly this morning. I am bound to make errors here, so if you have questions, feel free to ask. First, a disclaimer - I don't work for VMware - I just wanted to use it for a couple of reasons, and am reasonably enthusiastic at this moment. VMware is available from www.VMware.com, also reasonably good, clear instructions on the use of the package are on the site. VMware is not free - it costs about $100 US for a non-commercial license. It differs from WINE, the software I was looking at last week in that you actually run a virtual machine, and load a copy of a "Guest Operating System) on a real or virtual hard drive in a window in your host operating system. Windows users out there - pay heed - you can get VMware for NT4.0 or for W2K, and create virtual machines to play with Linux on, without dedicating hardware to it, nor having to reboot, etc. The upper left image, is of the VMware opening screen, with the setup configuration window open. This is the place prior to starting a Guest Operating System (GOS) install, you configure your virtual hardware.

Hardware details - I knew I was going to need more storage space - so I picked up a new Maxtor 13.6 7200rpm drive yesterday. I have added a new swap partition, two 3.75 gig partitions and one 6. 1 gig. The 4 gig partitions are going to be used for GOS installations. As superuser, I created mount points /mnt/vmware/win and /mnt/vmware/lin. I executed a chown bilbrey:users ... on these to give me normal user read/write access without simply making them world r/w. Lastly, I modified the /etc/fstab file to reflect the new partitions and their mount points. VMware I configured as the directions indicated.

After starting up VMware, and configuring the first virtual machine, as shown in the upper left image, I booted into the VM with a Win95 installation floppy, exiting the setup process. I ran first fdisk, then format on the virtual HD, then installed the CDROM drivers on the vHD and rebooted the system, went to the Win95 CDROM, and started setup. The image to the upper right you can see is early in the Windows setup, where the VM is being analyzed. Windows didn't choke on any of the virtual hardware. The installation proceeded normally, and booted to the point where I could run programs within windows. As you look at any one of the images, you can see that the VM external controls are PowerOff (or on), Reset, FullScreen, Suspend, Grab and Help. I try not to do "Help" on a first pass, and I am not sure what "Grab" is, just yet, but FullScreen, a rather obvious one, gives you a full screen view of the GOS. CTRL-ALT-ESC gets you back to windowed view. The lower right image is of an installation of MS Works proceeding apace in the virtual machine. All the screen captures were done within the Host OS, in this case, RedHat Linux 6.0. That brings us up to this morning. I am going to be bringing up the ethernet connection within the virtual machine, so that I can access the DSL connection, and download some helper tools for the installation from the VMware site. Oh, the /mnt/vmware/lin partition? Yeah, well, this way I can play with other distributions of Linux without mucking up this machine in such a manner that it takes massive amounts of work to rebuild (reading in tapes, etc). While this isn't as good a solution to some of my problems as a couple more machines would be, clearly it is better than nothing, and for a fairly small investment. More updates on this later. <grin>

Adding networking. In initial configuration, the VM had no ethernet card. Following the intial success, I shut down the VM, modified the configuration settings to show a virtual ethernet card (AMD type), and restarted the VM. Windows autodetected the vEthernet card and installed itself nicely - I added the TCP/IP protocol, and all of the dribs and drabs necessary (theoretically) to make the connectivity work. VM is rebooting now.

Success again - This is cool. In the image you can see in the foreground that Internet Explorer is up and running, pointed at the VMware site. I am about to d/l the VMware tools for this GOS to "improve performance"... And it does - adds virtual SVGA performance. The VM starts off at 640x480, 16 colors. The VMtools is giving me 1024 x 768 at TrueColor <SEG>. I clearly think that VMware has done a real job here. This is just too cool. Practice out of the way, I have a better version of Win, along with Office tools to install in the same space, later this week. But I thought it best to practice with a rather simple Win version to begin with, to learn the ins and outs of VMware. Now what does that Grab button do, anyway?

Before I lose them again, let me post links to two different parts of the Real Audio site where you can get Linux versions of Real Player (free). The first you probably would select the OS as Linux - Elf, if you are running a distribution which uses libc5. Most recent distributions though, run libc6 (aka glibc2), this includes RH6.0 or better and it's derivatives, such as Mandrake. For that, use the second link, and get the G2 Player Alpha. These are not plugins - you will need to save the audio links as files, and open them within a separately running rvplayer or realplay program. But they work.

http://proforma.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html

http://proforma.real.com/real/player/linuxplayer.html

Oops, sorry. The Real Audio link at the top of this page was broken because I forgot to prepend the '#' to the "ral" string. Sigh. Having too much fun playing with my first GNU/Debian install in a virtual machine to have checked it properly. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

An interesting exercise in difficulty. I have spent a couple of hours building a GNU/Debian distribution on a VM. The installation script is cryptic, and broken in places. I followed the installation tips Rick Moen provides on his site (here), and was able to get the distribution up and running. If you do things this way, say with a CDROM installation of, say, Debian 2.1 (Slink), then I strongly recommend you read, understand (at least a little) and follow the directions Rick has posted. Especially I recommend taking what is referred to as PACKAGE-INSTALLATION OPTION #3. This one works. It did for me (because I have a persistent connection). There are ways to do this, and it is probably MUCH BETTER, as it is/will be distributed by the Debian/VA/O'Reilly consortium. Not for the faint hearted in the incarnation I have. But I got it to work, where before I was too stupid inexperienced to make it work correctly.

Well, there are drawbacks to the Debian 2.1 Slink installation. It is conservative, and way behind the curve, in terms of kernel, libs, compiler and everything. So the big experiment is to install Debian 2.2pre (Potato), which is bleeding edge release stuff, and should work OK in the VMware machine. Tricky without a CR-R drive... There are certain minimums that need to be local, so I can build the rest of the system from an internet connection. A rescue floppy, a root image floppy for the ram drive system that gets initially built, and three disks of drivers to make everything talk. Then there would have been about 40 disks in base system. So I installed a temp RH6.0, in order to download the base system, unpacked and hid the Potato base files in /home, and re-started the Debian load, and this should ask/allow me to load the base files from the filesystem which I have mounted... we shall see here in about two minutes or so!

It worked. Good Night.


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey