EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy, say so, I will respect that. If I don't know that you want your email address published, then I won't. Be aware, though, that I am (usually) human and make mistakes.

To recap, we now have a mirror of www.daynotes.com live on Grendel here. I did some logo design for Daynotes that didn't make anyone throw up (or if they did, they didn't tell me, which is extremely polite). Tom is going on sabbatical, in a big push to finish Outlook in a Beetlenutshell (what? SMACK!! Yessir Mr. Syroid sir right away sir) Outlook in a Nutshell. His departing shot is available here.

Good morning. Still updating 06:45 - hang loose... OK, not a lot else going on in my world right now, I was up latish working on a project, and I have to pop into work, since the rest of the management team is out of the office FOR THE WEEK, I certainly had better not get hit by a bus, huh. Gotta run. Updates as they happen. Have yourselves a great day.

That afternoon. I had forgotten, of course, before I left this AM that it is the formal holiday to commemorate the birthday of Martin Luther King. The traffic was less than it might have been, although holidays are observed here by working, more often than not, unless you are a bank, a postoffice or a government branch. Hmmm...

Along with rolling with the day's punches, I have been graced with some interplay with the Good Mr. Syroid on the subject of Outlook - since I am blessed with an IMO installation here at home, and a C/W - MSMail (no exchange server) installation at work, I can test lots of things with great rapidity. What takes the time is putting things back together so that they work again <G>.

Also I have been conversing with Steve Tucker on the topic of perching a Linux box between his ISDN modem/router and the rest of his home network. While not a patch on Bob's apparent cornucopia of hardware, 9 computers ain't bad. We have exchanged a couple of emails on the topics of routable vs. non-routable IP blocks, the joys of identical NIC's in a Linux box, and I think that we are going to run into difficulty with the stock RH6.1 install he did. While he did a custom "kitchen sink" install (everything, plus all the condoms... oh, sorry, condiments). There are bugs in the install routines, and we will probably have to download him some boot floppy stuff and other such. More as things progress. I also heard from Matt recently - he is apparently going to live, so I guess I don't have to put in that sell order on all my internet stocks (you did say that you ran the Internet, didn't you Matt? When Al asked if you would? <g>) Later.


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

You see that the OpenDVD clickable logo has moved down here. This is to help us pay heed to today's hearing in San Jose, where the DVD CCA, which failed in its quest for a preliminary injunction before the New Year, is now asking for a Temporary Injunction against the posting of the DeCSS code. They have been joined in their persecution of people who wanted to watch DVD movies on Linux computers by the movie studios and the MPAA, which have filed separate suits in Conneticut and New Jersey, under the Digital Copyright Act. The hearing is in Department 2 of the Santa Clara Superior Court at 1:30 PM, PST. I would go, and show support, except for being now the sole management team member at work for the next 4 days. Sigh. For more info, keep up with OpenDVD.org. Support the EFF, which is helping to defend free speech and Open Source solutions.

Old friends and new. Steve and I last night had less success than I would have liked. I have never had a problem with Linux coming up properly on first boot. I am suspicious that there is a hardware problem, possibly the kind of problem which happens when there is hardware that Linux cannot cope with. I know that for the version of Red Hat, 6.1, which is our current bane, the shipping X package is XFree 3.3.5 - the on-mobo video for the Intel 810 isn't supported in that release - so we will have to upgrade that. But we are getting Kernel Panic message on boot and that isn't supposed to happen. Keep up with Steve's adventures on his pages in greater detail than I am liable to post.

> Daynotes that didn't make anyone throw up (or if they did, 
> they didn't tell me, which is extremely polite)

Did you consider that some people need more time to recover from the
shock. For example, since you brought the mirror up Chris hasn't posted.

Svenson

Then I received a multi-page missive from another Brian, a friend from the world of Learn-C++-Or-Die work that we were doing last summer. He and his lovely frau have survived a cross country transplanting, and are settling in at the respective new jobs and still unpacking. Can't say as I envy him. One day soon Brian & I will re-attack C++ with renewed vigor (or was that chainsaws, I can't remember - I picked up one cheap-cheap-cheap the day after the non-event <G>).

Anyway, gotta run, much to do, little time for now - have a great day.

Starting at 16:23 - here we go... I logged in this morning over the SSH connection. I set wget to fetch down a directory tree for the new release of Mandrake Linux - 7.0, aka AIR. I kept occasional tabs on the process, and got the whole shebang from ftp.sunsite.utk.edu in about a couple of hours - 639 Mbytes. Nope - not the ISO image - I am apparently the only person in the whole universe without a burner on any box in the house. That's OK. What we are documenting here is an ftp installation of Mandrake AIR to a Linux VMware Virtual Machine, running here on Grendel.

The first item of business is to read the install file, and figure out which boot image to write to a floppy. Ah. According to the file INSTALL, the correct image for a ftp/nfs/http install is network.img - we'll even go for the gusto and try the graphical install. A quick spin 'round the phone booth, then as SuperUser, I execute a quick

dd if=rescue.img of=/dev/fd0

While that is going on, I read on in the INSTALL file, and I do need to create a rescue.img disk, as well, just remember, first blue, then green. That is, I am not labeling these floppies, first pass through.

dd if=network.img of=/dev/fd0

Now we know that I am terrible at reading directions. So. I have made a boot floppy and a rescue image floppy. I know where in my directory tree the RPMS tree resides, and I am going to do an FTP installation from Grendel onto virtual Grendel - and here we go... and here we don't... something is funky here - let me try some other things in a while - possibly even making a third boot for Grinch in a while - but I have had to remount the partition that currently contains the data for AIR underneath /home/ftp in order to do some testing. Perhaps this will fix the problems I am experiencing.

I have had some success working with my local mirror, once I put the appropriate directory underneath /home/ftp/pub... More at a later date.


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Several tidbits this AM. Oh, hey, good morning. Nice to see you. Glad you could stop by. Drop me a line and let me know how things are going, what's happening, eh? Right, tidbits, coming right up. Yesterday's DVD CCA vs. The Internet hearing went well, apparently for both sides (according to both sides). There isn't yet a lot of published news, since the Judge has yet to put up a decision. There's this over on Slashdot. I think the principals in the case are keeping their mouths shut until the Judge opens his.

Also today, Transmeta is supposed to pull the wraps off of Crusoe. Hmmm. Live webcast this morning 0900 PST, 1700 GMT - locations near the bottom of the ZDNN page. The website goes hot three hours later. Near the top of the same page (currently) is that BeOS is taking up a new distribution strategy - free for download over the internet for personal and non-commercial use! Wonder where they came up with that idea? Heard from Don Armstrong (aka the HTML Police just kidding, Don) this AM -

Subject: Trouble with redirect
   Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 22:58:56 +1100 (EST)

Brian, I hesitate to mention this, but ...
Well - I did a bit more checking, so I won't mention
that after all - sort of. 
What was happening was that when I went to your site
via the "daynotes" page, I ended up at last week
rather than this week. At first I thought it might
have been one of those "beginning of week" things you
mentioned, but actually it was that my browser had
cached the previous week's redirect page. Wasn't there
some talk about being able, on those pages, to
instruct browsers not to cache them? 

Best wishes,
Don Armstrong
Nitpicker to the stars

That is the four ways that the "current.html" file attempts to keep your browser from caching the page, although perhaps it is just proxy servers that do so. I stole that code fair and square from Bob Thompson. If you are running Netscape, you might check Edit^Preferences->Advanced^Cache, and make sure that 'Compare document to version on network' isn't set to 'Never'. I leave mine set at 'Once per session'. OTOH, maybe I don't know what's going on. Someday we may find out.

Have an interesting day. I will. Later.

Lots going on. I held my tongue carefully and balanced properly, the earth was aligned just right with the other planets, and I was successful in getting an FTP install of Mandrake 7.0 up on Grinch last night. I have so far been unsuccessful in installing it in a VM here on Grendel, however. It appears that every path that I follow over on this box leads to a point where the installer "forgets" that we are doing an FTP install, and looks for the RPMS directory locally (with absolutely no success), then dies with reasonably cryptic messages. Yesterday's success on Grinch may have had to do with the fact that I chose the hardest way to install, expert custom everything, which may have kept the installer from messing with the bits I am having trouble with. Hmmm. Anyway, it is a nice install, that leave some significant bits broken, unfortunately. More on that another time. Gorgeous installer, though, and the best partitioning tool I have ever worked with. Some pictures along with an install report soonish (next few days).

Shawn has a map of where the Daynoter's are - now I do too, linked to the left. As I noted when I first circulated my version, I kinda jumped on this bandwagon and squidged myself into this map, even though I am from somewhere else. Transmeta went live today with real information about their Crusoe processor thingy. Linuxcare has filed their S-1, in preparation for an IPO. Linuxcare is a pure service organization, to the best of my knowledge. They made $500K against expenses of $100M ... perfect IPO fodder in today's manic market.

Flash. This just in - Hedy Lamarr has just died. Story here over on Wired News. The article makes mention of her co-invention of spread-spectrum technology. More later - Tucker calls...

Viruses and Linux. Many people have questions about the vulnerability of Linux based systems to computer virii and other assorted beasties. The formidable Rick Moen has added a good, complete answer to the question "Should I get anti-virus software for my Linux box?". Shortly, the answer is no. For more than that, proceed to this location.

Then there's this correction - Linuxcare records a loss from operations over the last 9 months of approximately $10.5 million (apparently IPO.com slipped a digit when reporting the filing). I was kinda scratching my head wondering where they spent that kinda money - after all, you can only drink so much latte. Lastly, there's this resource for Samba - a diagnosis page linked off of samba.org, right here. If you are running samba, and having difficulty, check this one out. When I get there, I will. Good Night.


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

You've got mail! More mail. Even more mail. Hold yer horses there, Mathilde - why so much mail. Good Morning all. Had a hundred in the various inboxes from overnight, so instead of writing my usual complete moronic morning blather from the gate, I have been reading for the last half hour. My mail gets POP'd down from Pacbell into Netscape, then sorted according to various rules. Some stuff stays in the inbox, some goes into a scan folder, then the mailing lists get sorted into their own folders.

The mailing list stuff is obvious, but interesting these days. Linux-Admin is up in arms over the way the ORBS list is munging up mailing list access for a wide portion of the audience. Now from all the back and forth, without doing any real research on my own, it would appear that the ORBS list isn't being used properly by the MTA implementations at many sites. What's ORBS? Check out their site - they probe machines and determine whether the MTA is operating as an open relay, then blacklist it if it is. If the machine is not able to be probed, it is also blacklisted. The problem lies in a specific implementation right about now (I may get some details wrong, but you'll get the flavor of the dispute). Above.net, which owns the 10.x.x.x block, blocks probes, so that whole block is blacklisted. Now some areas within the 10.x.x.x are probe-able, and OK, say the VA Linux servers, at 10.200.?.x, and that is known, so VA's IP's are listed on the white list. The correct usage of the ORBS lists is like that of hosts.allow and hosts.deny - allow if on the whitelist, deny if on the blacklist. Many systems are apparently only configured to check the blacklist, which creates much bigger craters in the landscape than necessary.

Over in SVLUG, one topic of discussion is about speed of Mailing List transfer, the merits of variouse MTA's (sendmail, exim, qmail, postfix) and mailing list managers (majordomo, mailman) - I understand much more of this than I used to - lurking serves a purpose (and so does attending the meetings).

The Scan Folder contains the majority of the spam/scam/unsolicited mail, but I don't just trash it, when the message count pops up over 50 or when I feel like it, I visit that folder, and make delete/read decisions based soley on the header info.

That leaves Inbox, which had 29 new messages in it, as well as 13 left over for some sort of Brian processing, either response, more laughter, or whatever. I forward several messages each day into work to read there, the rest get a scan. Thanks for the feedback on map ][, Sjon!

Now I have to run, as it is late. Have a good day.

Over on Jerry's View for Thursday, he writes of an article about working at Microsoft which he spotted in the dead-tree version of the Atlantic Monthly. I wanted to have a look, to see what was different from the environment depicted in Showstopper. So over to The Atlantic I browse... where I find nothing about Microsoft, but instead an article entitled Living with Linux. Five months old, but quite interesting, well written - a good eddicated person's intro to the world of Open Source. Thought you'd like to have a gander.

It is still overcast right now, but the total eclipse of the moon is supposed to be tonight, starting about 20:00 PST, and lasting over 70 minutes. We will give it a look at the appropriate time. And yes, even if we can't see it, the eclipse will still theoretically happen. You just won't be able to prove it by me. This next arrived last week. It is from joke of the day - you can subscribe too - go to www.joker.org.

A few words from the visionary Steven Wright
  ------------------------------------------

  All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.

  I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.

  OK, so what's the speed of dark?

  Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

  When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

  Hard work pays off in the future.  Laziness pays off now.

  Everyone has a photographic memory.  Some just don't have film.

  Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.

  Many people quit looking for work when they find a job.

  I intend to live forever - so far, so good.

  Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

  24 hours in a day ... 24 beers in a case.....coincidence?

  When I'm not in my right mind, my left mind gets pretty crowded.

  What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

  I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.

  I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.

  If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

  Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

  For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

  No one is listening until you make a mistake.

  Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.

  The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required to be
  on it.

  The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.

  The severity of the itch is proportional to the reach.

  To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism -- to steal from many
  is research.

  The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

  Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.

  The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

  A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

  If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never
  tried before.

  A fool and his money are soon partying.

  Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.

  If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.

  Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it's the scenic route.

  I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

  Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.

  Borrow money from pessimists-they don't expect it back.

  Half the people you know are below average.

  99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

  42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

The long awaited 1999 Darwin "NaturalSelection" Awards have been released!

These awards are given each year to bestow upon (the remains of)  that
individual, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, has done the most to 
remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool. Ladies And 
Gentlemen... (drumroll... and the envelope please)... We proudly present the 
1999 "Natural Selection"awards:

5th runner-up: Goes to a San Anselmo, California man who died when he
hit a lift tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the 
slope on a foam pad.  22-year old David Hubal was pronounced dead at Central 
Mammoth Hospital.

The accident occurred about 3 a.m.., the Mono County Sheriff's Department 
said. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump 
Alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from lift towers, said Lt. Mike 
Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police
Department. The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit towers.

The group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal 
crashed into a tower.  It has since been investigated and determined the 
tower he hit was the one with its pad removed.

4th Runner-up: Goes to Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in 
a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call the police, Puelo 
grabbed a hot dog, shoved it into his mouth and walked out without paying. 
Police found him unconscious in front of the store. Paramedics removed the 
six-inch wiener from his throat where it had choked him to death.

3rd Runner-up: Goes to poacher Marino Malerba of Spain, who shot a stag 
standing above him on an overhanging rock and was killed instantly when it 
fell on him.

2nd Runner-up: "Man loses face at party". A man at a West Virginia 
party(probably related to the man in Arkansas who used the 22 bullet to 
replace the fuse in his pickup truck) popped a blasting cap into his mouth 
and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth, and 
tongue.

Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during
the party late Tuesday night, said Cpl., MD. "Another man had it in an
aquarium hooked to a battery and was trying to explode it", said Payne. "It 
wouldn't go off and this guy said I'll show you how to set it off." "He put 
it into his mouth and bit down. It blew all his teeth out and his lips and 
tongue off", Payne said. Stromyer was listed in guarded condition Wednesday 
with extensive facial injuries, according to a spokesperson at Charleston 
Area Medical Division. "I just can't imagine anyone doing something like 
that," Payne said.

1st Rrunner-up: Doctors at Portland University Hospital said an Oregon
man shot through the skull by a hunting arrow is lucky to be alive and will 
be released soon from the hospital. Tony Robbers, 25, lost his right eye 
last weekend during an initiation into a men's rafting club, Mountain Men 
Anonymous (probably known now as Stupid Mountain Men Anonymous) in Grant's 
Pass, Oregon. A friend tried to shoot a beer can off his head, but the arrow 
entered Robert's right eye. Doctors said that had the arrow gone 1 
millimeter to the left, a major blood vessel would have been cut and Roberts 
would have died instantly. Neurosurgeon Doctor Johnny Delashaw at the 
University
Hospital in Portland said the arrow went through 8 to10 inches of brain with 
the tip protruding at the rear of his skull, yet somehow managed to miss all 
major blood vessels. Delashaw also said that had Roberts tried to pull the 
arrow out on his own he surely would have killed himself. Roberts admitted 
afterwards he and his friends had been drinking that afternoon. Said 
Roberts, "I feel so dumb about this". No charges have been filed, but the 
Josephine County district attorney's office said the initiation stunt is 
under investigation.

Now this year's winners: (The late) John Pernicky and his friend, (the
late) Sal Hawkins, of the great state of Washington, decided to attend a 
local Metallica concert at the George Washington amphitheater. Having no 
tickets (but having had 18 beers between them), they thought it would be 
easy to "hop" over the nine foot fence and sneak into the show. They pulled 
their pickup truck over to the fence and the plan was for (the late) Mr. 
Pernicky, who was 100-pounds heavier than Mr. Hawkins) to hop the fence and 
then assist his friend over. Unfortunately for (the late) Mr. Pernicky, 
there was a
30-foot drop on the other side of the fence.  Having heaved himself over, he 
found himself crashing through a tree.  His fall was abruptly halted(and 
broken, along with his arm, as it were) by a large branch that snagged him 
by his shorts. Dangling from the tree with broken arm, he looked down and 
saw some bushes below him. (Possibly) figuring the bushes would break his 
fall, he removed his pocket knife and proceeded to cut away his shorts to 
free
himself from the tree. Finally free, (did I mention that he is THE LATE) Mr. 
Pernicky crashed into Holly bushes. The sharp leaves scratched his ENTIRE 
body and now, without the protection of his shorts, a holly branch 
penetrated his rectum. To make matters worse(?!), on landing, his pocket 
knife penetrated his thigh 3 inches. (The late) Mr. Hawkins, on seeing his 
friend in considerable pain and agony, decided to throw him a rope and pull 
him to safety (now he thinks of the "S" word) by tying the rope to the 
pickup truck and slowly driving away. However, in his drunken haste/state, 
he put the
truck into reverse and crashed through the fence landing on his friend
and killing him. Police arrived to find the crashed pickup with its driver 
thrown 100 feet from the truck and dead at the scene from massive internal 
injuries.  Upon moving the truck, they found John under it, half-naked, 
scratches on his body, a holly stick in his rectum, a knife in his thigh, 
and his shorts dangling from a tree branch 25-feet in the air.

Subject: Undeliverable Mail Error
   Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 15:34:04 -0700
   From: [email protected]
     To: [email protected]

The following message to [email protected] could not be delivered.
The hostname, home.com, could not be found.

Some interesting mail in the box this AM. First things first though. Good morning. Howareya? I did see bits of the eclipse last night, faintly through the clouds and fog. Good that we've been getting the rain, because we do so need it. But after months of clear nights, why pick now to play "Obscure the sky". Oh, well. Bob and Matt have been talking about Windows 2000 Professional. After reading, I chime in with my two cents...

From: Matt Beland [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2000 9:15 AM
Subject: Win2k Gold Release

Bob,
 
>>>
I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but W2KP seems 
noticeably slower than NT4. That's not supposed to be. W2KP definitely 
seems slower on kiwi, but that doesn't surprise me. Beta releases are 
filled with debugging code that makes them slow. I did expect the 
release version to be faster than NT4, though.
<<<
 
The numbers I've gotten the last few days are the opposite; Win2k 
is FASTER than NT4, on a given piece of hardware. I think that 
will flip-flop on low-end systems, particularly those with the 
bare-minimum Win2k requirement of 64 MB of RAM. Now granted, that's 
only true with 2195 - RC2 and RC3 are both slower than NT, but as 
you say, that's most likely because of the debugging code. I wonder 
where the difference is that's making your system slower?
 
BTW, my "benchmarks" are simple timed operations; open a document 
in Word from a "cold start", open a document with Word already open, 
render a "standard" image in Photoshop, print a document, and copy 
a file that is exactly 100 MB from CD to Disk. 
 
Matt Beland
Systems Administrator
http://www.itool.com
 
In the words of the immortal Socrates: "I drank what?"

Subject: RE: Win2k Gold Release
   Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 09:29:06 -0500
   From: Robert Bruce Thompson 

Well, I haven't run any benchmarks. What I reported was simply my 
impressions of speed. But I think they're valid nonetheless. I work in 
Word, Outlook, and FrontPage all day long, and W2KPseems slower on 
the three systems I've run it on (not counting kiwi, which is still 
running RC2). Those systems are (a) a Pentium III/550 with 128 MB and 
a Seagate Barracuda U2W SCSI, (b) a Pentium II/300 with 128 MB and an 
old 4.3 GB IDE, and (c) a Pentium III/450 with 128 MB and a Maxtor 
91000D8 10 GB UDMA. All are running NT4W with SP5 or SP6a installed 
and W2KP 2195. 
 
The difference is noticeable on all of them, but particularly so on the 
Pentium II/300. Applications take longer to load, and aren't as "snappy" 
under W2KP. Large data files seem to take longer to load over the network. 
Web pages take longer to load, and IE itself lags briefly when I click 
on a link. I don't think this is anything attributable to my hardware 
or configuration. I think W2KP is simply slower.
 
But I may be wrong. All of this is purely subjective. It might be 
interesting to run some real benchmarks.

Then this dropped in my lap from Don Armstrong, regarding troubles caching a redirector page that changes weekly (say, like MINE, and those of other daynoters... hmmm).

Subject: It's not paranoia if the world IS out to get you
   Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 22:37:07 +1100 (EST)
   From: Don Armstrong 

Brian, I am not necessarily writing this for
publication: you use it or not, edit it, forward it to
others as you see fit. However, the point, when I get
to it, may be important to many Daynoters.

I still know NOTHING about what HTML, if any, might
achieve the desirable in absolutely instructing IE to
NOT CACHE, D...IT, LISTEN TO ME!!!!

However, I venture a personal explanation as to why I
got confused by what a computer did to me. Surprised,
yes, constantly: but I should be sufficiently used to
that not to get confused by it.

It turns out that Microsoft either thought you weren't
exciting enough; or that I shouldn't be visiting your
site as often as I was; or like that. Moreover, it
probably COULD apply to any Daynoter using the
"redirect" device, just enough to confuse people
visiting their sites.

I am using my brother's PC at the moment - I did not
set it up. I did some digging into Internet settings,
and I found this little gem buried at the bottom of a
hole:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.00.xx

Internet Options
General | Temporary Internet files | Settings
Check for newer versions of stored pages:
Automatically
Their explanation of this is that:
".... Internet Explorer will check for new content
only when you return to a page that was viewed in an
earlier session of Internet Explorer or on an earlier
day.  Over time, if Internet Explorer determines
that images on the page are changing infrequently, it
will check for newer images even less frequently
 ...." 

In other words, if you allow IE to automatically
decide when it will update stored pages, IT WILL NOT
ACT CONSISTENTLY. It's behaviour apparently will not
be predictable, but rather at unexpected intervals it
will stop checking something that might change,
because it hasn't changed. Apparently, last week, I'd
looked at your site often enough for IE to decide your
redirect page wasn't going to change. I've fixed that
for myself, but not for the millions who don't know
it's been set that way for them, or don't appreciate
what the setting might mean (ye Gods, that there
should even BE such a setting ....).

This would make a magic HTML setting that would
override IE caching more important than ever, if it
existed. It shouldn't be the site designer's worry to
overcome IE's idiosyncracies, but pragmatically and
professionally one has to take it into account.

Joy!
Don.

There's lots more on W2K and other related topics on the other daynote's pages, I am sure, but there is light in the sky, which means I am running late. Sigh. Sorry, gotta run. TGIF.

Dan Bowman asked me a question or two, and was looking for some more resources regarding this multi-pronged attack by the DVD CCA, the MPAA and the movie studios on free speech and fair use rights. Here is my letter to Dan - you may want to see his site shortly - I think there will be some frothing going on...

Here are some excellent resources - especially the papers linked off of the DVDCCA_case link into the EFF.

Basically, the answer is - they did not provide a "player" for linux boxen, only MS and Mac, so some Norwegians (were reverse engineering is very, very legal, apparently) hacked a weak implementation of CSS by Xing, then opened the code to the world.

My best understanding is that the DVD CCA, the MPAA and the studios are taking a stand based upon DeCSS being a copyright infringing, content pirating tool. Whereas the development and use of DeCSS and related projects is a "view under unsupported OS, or with a 'free' player" premise. I have read arguments that DeCSS is irrelevant to copying, since copies can be executed already. I have read arguments that by breaking the encryption, DVD data can be sent over the net, or copied to other DVD's (let's forget that DVD burners are horrendously expensive, and the blank media are more expensive than pre-recorded movies).

I regard this as a fair use issue. I own a dvd player. It lives in a box which runs Linux. If those who sue (DVD CCA, MPAA, movie studios) have their way, I will be breaking the law because I am watching a legitimately purchased copy of the movie without the assistance of an approved player or player software. That is wrong. They also say that posting the code is stealing from the parties. Well, no, stealing from the parties involves (or doesn't involve) using various devices and/or software to make illegitimate copies of the product. The copy protection scheme was bunk, the DVD CCA sold the MPAA and the studios a bill of goods, and now everyone (except the lawyers) loses. Oh, and the EFF - support them. Dollars and time are good donations.

http://www.eff.org/ip/Video/DVDCCA_case/
http://www.eff.org/ip/Video/
http://www.eff.org/ip/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/20000120_eff_press_release.html
http://www.dibona.com/social/dvd/index.shtml


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Morning all. A busy day - possibly a busy weekend scheduled. On the list is final cleaning from the Christmas holidays (almost everything got put away, but the bits that didn't are *still* lingering). A Costco run is in order, as well as a visit to Fry's. We're looking for batteries for the wireless phone (fried), an CD-ROM burner, who knows what else. Steve Tucker has apparently had some luck with Linux and the KDE desktop - check him out. But we have more work to do together, so I will be getting with him on ICQ later today. Aside from final cleaning, there is the standard cleaning that needs to be done. We want to take my grandmother out to dinner one of these nights. I have some work I want to do in Perl, and there are some things about web design for the ETS site that I want to work on.

We have been drawing triple traffic over at ETS recently. The long process of educating installers and designers that you can run a variety of signals, baseband and broadband video, analog and digital audio, all over the same structured wiring that runs the phones and data network, appears to be paying off. We were at a show, BICSI, in Orlando this last week and have some hot interest in a few products, including an upgraded balun for use in running 10/100 Ethernet over ICS (IBM Type 1 cabling). There is a lot of installed plant for Token Ring out there, and the ability to reuse that wiring for Ethernet will result in major cost savings. We're looking for a lot of business from that line. Thanks for putting up with that - normally I try and keep the Orb site relatively separate from what's going on in my alternative existence as a wage-slave, but these are exciting times.

I have been reading a number of recent reviews on Linux Mandrake 7.0 (Air). Linux Newbie likes it. Dave Farquhar likes it. As a matter of fact, Dave's online scribing on the topic gained him mention on the Linux-Mandrake site.

As you can see above, I have been having a little fun with it myself. Above left is a shot of the Partitioning Manager, which is hands down (for me) the best part of the whole new installer. To be able to graphically see what you are doing with your space on the drive is incredibly useful. You can either set things up to your hearts content, with many separate partitions to be mounted in various places within the directory structure, or you can select auto allocate, which will set things up for you, with enough space in the correct partitions to load the type of system you selected early in the installation process. You will note that the PM screenshot was taken from an install within VMware.

Although others have had little success with ftp installs, I was able to wget the entire release from sunsite.utk.edu, then park it under my /home/ftp/pub, and install Air onto Grinch across the network, with just cutting a single floppy for network install. Very cool. I did a full gonzo, everything including the kitchen sink installation. Then when all was done, I set up a KDE theme, just for fun, and brought up Kdevelop. This looks an awful lot like someone who is used to working in Visual C will be very comfortable in Mandrake 7.0, developing for Linux. Hmmm. One gripe. Although I set up the whole networking schema early in the installation process, later on in the install, I choose to set up Networking again. This is because I know, from earlier passes through the installer, that things get changed, and user entered values (say, the IP for your gateway box) get changed back to default values. The secondary and tertiary DNS server information gets dropped altogether, and you need to edit the Network setup once you are installed, logged in and running. But, all in all, this looks like a lot of fun.

Gotta run now, so have a great day and I will see you later.

The burner worked, first pass through. I d/l'd an ISO of Mandrake7.0, to test installation in a VMware Virtual Machine on Grendel, just for fun (how hard can I push a P2). Also picked up Quake ]I[, and ended up downloading the development X-Server from nVidia to make the dang thing work - but work it does - apparently the nVidia work will be rolled into XFree86 4.0, coming soon to a Linux box near you (no release date yet). I will have Mandrake 7.0 Air screenshots galore tomorrow, and some interesting bits to look at for who knows what else. G'night.


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Happy Sunday, y'all. Two drawbacks, one endemic to all Sunday's, the other specific to this one. First, tomorrow's Monday. Aaaaergh. (I like the 'e' in the middle of that, sort of gives my frustration a Welsh lilt). The other, specific drawback is that it is raining out. No Sunday drive or adventure today - I guess we really will finish the cleaning. Hmmm.

In the meantime, I have some snaps of the Mandrake 7.0 installation for you. In case you weren't aware - I edit these pages live. When I save this page, you see the changes immediately. I don't write then publish, since I am working on the box that serves the pages to you. This means that when I am experimenting with layouts, and I am feeling lazy (like I am this morning), you are likely to see a work in progress. There will be broken links and changing structure for about the next 20 minutes or so as I sort it out (as of 0900 PST). Thanks for putting up with me.

Since you have seen bits and pieces of the installation at other places here, I am picking up in the middle, where the package installation is in progress. The green lights along the side of the installer screen indicate progress made towards installation. The yellow is 'you are here'. The red remains to be done. Note that there are some things missing from this screen, in terms of tasks to be done, like Networking. We will return to this topic later. PS - the pictures are PNG, all in the 15K to 25K size range - they open via the Quicktime plugin in both IE and Netscape for Windows.

Package Installer running	Timezone selection	Printer Setup	Root password	User Setup
Bootdisk creation	LILO installation	Video / X configuration	Done, be happy	First Login

You will note that there was no Networking setup. Hmmm. That shouldn't take but a moment to fix up. You see, I have to fix it up, so I can get out to the network, and over to VMware's pages, to pick up the VMware Tools, needed (among other things) to get video running at better than 640x480. But the name of the driver for the virtual eth0 isn't in the list when I go to setup. Funny thing is, I *know* that Mandrake 7.0 can detect a and make it work, because in expert and custom modes, it did just fine. This install was a test of the "Recommended" install, and I believe it defaults to dialup connectivity. I need to send the Mandrake people an email - if there is a detected NIC, they ought to at least ASK if they can help you set it up.

Given that this is first iteration of a very nice new installer, I give it two thumbs up. Installing on a real machine, Grinch, rather than on a VM, also did very well indeed. Well, I have some chores to do, and organizing and such - should return to Cyberia sometime later today. TTFN.

First, from the DVD wars, this message, culled from the mailing list (thanks, Rick & Jeff) ...

> It's simply _physically impossible_ to suppress a
> useful, small bit of source code that's achieved worldwide distribution

Yeah, who's going to go around and collect all the T shirts?

http://copyleft.net/cgi-bin/copyleft/t039.pl

Next, I beg humblest apologies, but the office police were here and made me clean up. This, this travesty is inexcusable. The only thing I can promise is that it sure won't stay this clean, you can bet your bottom . . . dollar on that!

Talk about your basic clue-challenged butthead. I got an email from someone, announcing his new email address to his 700 closest friends, acquaintances, people he might have, but never did quite meet, etc, etc. All these email addresses were on the to line. Not suppressed, not BCC'd. Just sent. This one jerk has just tripled my spam hits. Aaaaergh!

Next - the Orb Designs Hall of Shame. The following are IP addresses, with the resolved name where available, which have attempted to violate the inner sanctum. I will get nailed to the wall someday, I am sure - this is why there are backups. But in the meantime, as a public service, here's the morons of late...

194.235.214.12        monet.telebyte.nl
203.229.151.250       ns.kams.or.kr
216.32.140.200        ?
128.40.117.136        mci-pc2.rfc.ucl.ac.uk
210.104.236.196       ?
210.99.62.160         ?
205.166.45.51         ?
195.188.192.23        hoover.netcraft.com
24.94.82.104          a24b94n82client104.hawaii.rr.com
206.79.22.9           guppy.blacktop.com
12.9.162.4            ?

People try to get in via Telnet (Port 23, disabled) IMAP2, (Port 143, disabled), DNS (Port 53 - service not running, so trapped), POP2 (Port 109, disabled), Linuxconf (Port 98, web access to the system management tool, outside access disabled) and HTTPS (Port 433, Secure web access, service not running, so trapped). An enterprising bunch, all. Some probably innocent of any intent to harm or even to be curious. A mis-typed link could drive the https hit. And if you hit the wire, the minefield is activated. I don't think you can even see the site anymore, since that host is denied at the firewall in the future. So sorry, too bad - don't be in the wrong place when the searchlights go by.

Bonus info on the Copyleft stuff - when you buy, at the bottom, they have an opt-IN button, for mailings, that is accompanied by the following text - 'Want to get harrassed with an email when we get new products?' <G>


Orb Home  /  Top  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey