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CHAOS MANOR MAIL

A SELECTION

Mail September 27 - October 3, 1999

REFRESH/RELOAD EARLY AND OFTEN!

CLICK ON THE BLIMP TO SEND MAIL TO ME

The current page will always have the name currentmail.html and may be bookmarked. For previous weeks, go to the MAIL HOME PAGE.

Fair warning: some of those previous weeks can take a minute plus to download. After Mail 10, though, they're tamed down a bit.

IF YOU SEND MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is Chaos Manor. If you want a mail address other than the one from which you sent the mail to appear, PUT THAT AT THE END OF THE LETTER as a signature.

PLEASE DO NOT USE DEEP INDENTATION INCLUDING LAYERS OF BLOCK QUOTES IN MAIL. TABS in mail will also do deep indentations. Use with care or not at all.

I try to answer mail, but mostly I can't get to all of it. I read it all, although not always the instant it comes in. I do have books to write too... I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft who slowly starved to death while answering fan mail.

If you want to send mail that will be published, you don't have to use the formatting instructions you will find when you click here but it will make my life simpler, and your chances of being published better..

This week:
Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday -- Thursday -- Friday -- Saturday -- Sunday

Current Mail

Search Function

HIGHLIGHTS:

The empire strikes back
Delorme disk problems
Adobe and PDF: some readers hate it
More Acrobat grumbles
But some like pdf
The First World War
To integrate or not to integrate; and searching
PC Power and Cooling and rolling your own
Cable Modem
Aaargh
Marion Zimmer Bradley, RIP
Switching among open windows in Word
How to use the new search engine
For mothers only
Western Digital Recall
Cursor Blink Solved
Laptops on airlines: a safety issue?
On reporting bad links
Laptops part two
A letter from Ed Hume
A farewell to Fry's?

Monday September 27, 1999

See last week for a lot of mail. More later today by my weekend was devoured by locusts.

This came my way and I had to share... ;-> Aleta

There's going to be an extra scene included in the DVD release of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK coming up next year! Basically, it expands on the scene where Vader reveals his fatherhood to Luke, and ties up some loose ends created with the release of Episode 1...

The Empire Strikes Back: Extra-Special Edition

INT: BESPIN GANTRY - MOMENTS LATER:

A furious lightsaber duel is underway. DARTH VADER is backing LUKE SKYWALKER towards the end of the gantry. A quick move by Vader, chops off Luke's hand! It goes spinning off into the ventilation shaft. Luke backs away. He looks around, but realizes there's nowhere to go but straight down.

Darth Vader: Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father.

Luke: He told me enough! He told me you killed him!

Darth Vader: No... I am your father!

Luke: No, it's not true! It's impossible.

Darth Vader: Search your feelings... you know it to be true...

Luke: NO!

Darth Vader: Yes, it is true... and you know what else? You know that brass droid of yours?

Luke: Threepio?

Darth Vader: Yes... Threepio... I built him... when I was 7 years old...

Luke: No...

Darth Vader: Seven years old? And what have you done? Look at yourself, no hand, no job, and couldn't even levitate your own ship out of the swamp...

Luke: I destroyed your precious Death Star!

Darth Vader: When you were 20! When I was 10, I single-handedly destroyed a Trade Federation Droid Control ship!

Luke: Well, it's not my fault...

Darth Vader: Oh, here we go... "Poor me... my father never gave me what I wanted for my birthday... boo hoo, my daddy's the Dark Lord of the Sith...waahhh wahhh!"

Luke: Shut up...

Darth Vader: You're a slacker! By the time I was your age, I had exterminated the Jedi knights!

Luke: I used to race my T-16 through Beggar's Canyon

Darth Vader: Oh, for the love of the Emperor... 10 years old, winner of the Boonta Eve Open... Only human to ever fly a Pod Racer...right here baby!

Luke looks down the shaft. Takes a step towards it.

Darth Vader: I was wrong... You're not my kid... I don't know whose you are, but you sure ain't mine...

Luke takes a step off the platform, hesitates, then plunges down the shaft.

Darth Vader looks after him.

Darth Vader: Get a haircut!

No comment. None....

Jerry,

Regarding the ongoing discussion of the lack of qualified people in ISP technical support.

The basic problem is that with the explosion in the field, there just aren't enough qualified people to go around. Telephone support (in any field) takes a special kind of person that you just don't get coming out of a Tech School or College.

That person must be able to mentally put themselves in front of the customers system and determine what the problem is. This based on interpreting clues given by someone who (in most cases) doesn't know enough to adequately report exactly what he/she is actually seeing. Doesn't have any idea of what's important or not important to the troubleshooting process.

The tech support person has to be able to think logically through a problem that may require knowledge in a dozen different disciplines. They must be able to give direction to someone on the other end that's confused, upset, generally unhappy and often not at all inclined to be cooperative about helping to solve their problem and then convice them that 'yes I really do need you to do exactly this to help figure out what's wrong'.

It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Those with sufficient credentials to do it well, aren't necessarily inclined to take that kind of job when there are so many other positions available in industry that pay better and are MUCH less stressful. On the other hand, it's one of the most challenging (non-physical) jobs I know.

Consider the stress you're going through with the website. Multiply that by 10-40 (the number of equally stressed customers the average phone tech deals with in a day)and imagine the stress he/she's under. Is it a wonder that it's hard to find these people to fill the positions.

The burnout rate is high, the retention rate is even lower (many start but just can't cut it technically) and the call levels are increasing.

In an ISP, those that don't burn out usually get off the phones as soon as they can acquire sufficient experience and additional education, ending up in network support or admin positions where their direct customer contact is minimized. Those who don't stay with the ISP go to industry supporting Corporate customers where a 'good' phone support tech can make much more $$$ doing essentially the same job, being paid what it's really worth.

Ahhhh I ramble. Been in the customer support business for 30 years and tend to sympathize with both sides.

John

John Rice coredump@enteract.com http://www.enteract.com/~coredump The Internet - Somebodys LAB experiment gone horribly wrong.

Can't disagree with any of that. Thanks.

I just wanted to pass on another problem I had with DeLorme' TopoUs - lousy CDROM pressings. The copy of Topo I purchased last year for work was of such poor quality that any Win 9X machine (and any type of standard read-only drive) that saw it spun and hunted for readable tracks, hanging up the machine for at least 15-20 minutes. In order to use the program, I was forced to read the CD I wanted with my Richo CD-RW drive, create a CD Image and burn a new CDROM.

This one works just fine in any machine I run it in.

I assume this isn't the problem you are having...

Mark Statzer CE WICD TV Champaign, IL

That may in fact BE the problem I had; I will try your remedy, and thanks.

My column said some nice things about Adobe Acrobat and pdf; that got a lot of dissent. Here is some:

Hi, Jerry. I just wanted to make a quick comment on your advocacy of Adobe's PDF formant, and your intention to use it yourself.

I hate those things! I'm a webmaster, and it seems to me that PDF's are all too often used for purposes that would be much better suited to HTML. I think that people often use PDF when they don't want to bother to learn to do HTML. Certainly anyone who has exported HTML from an Office app is likely to be disappointed with the output and want an alternative, but I think PDF is being abused.

I believe it comes down to the old web conflict of form versus content. Yes, you can put out some finely formatted text; however, does it come across to me in a form I find readable? With HTML, I can resize a page in a way that is more comfortable to my eyes and reading habits; with PDF I'm stuck with whatever you liked at the time. Content is king, as far as I'm concerned, and the faster I can get to that content, the better.

PDF is not that good for reading text on a computer screen, IMHO. PDF text doesn't look very good w/o anti-aliasing, but anti-aliasing can make it fuzzy looking, forcing you to zoom in.

PDF files are bigger than HTML files, for the same amount of text and graphics. They take much longer to download and render. You can start reading HTML while the graphics are still downloading (if you write it correctly, of course); with PDF you must wait for the whole thing to be downloaded, then wait while Acrobat reader loads.

I'm a big Adobe fan. Where would we be without Postscript and Photoshop? But PDF's are one of my pet peeves.

Hugh

-- Hugh Caley, Unix Administrator Babcock &; Brown, San Francisco 510-524-1672 hughc@babcockbrown.com

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

Maybe it is just my machine and version of Acrobat 4.0 reader, but it seems that for the PC version the option of copying graphics from .pdf files has disappeared as they moved from 3.0 to 4.0. The help file outlines a non-existent icon for grabbing graphics. Text selection still works. I queried Adobe but no-one responds to e-mail there. So, if you really need to grab graphics from files, don't upgrade.

Neil Charness ----------------------------------------------------------------- Neil Charness |E-mail:charness@psy.fsu.edu Psychology Dept.

Jerry, Jerry,

What can you be thinking? Adobe Reader is huge, slow, and almost as fun as reading old manuals online without HTML linking. Yes, the image quality preserves the author's intent...mostly...but at what price. Since "pages" of output are presented, it can be almost impossible to find a setting that allows smaller fonts to be read and yet presents a full line of text on the screen at one time. Not all of us have 17", 19", or larger monitors, much as we might like. This, like much of what you write about computing is filtered through your environment. Since your environment is peopled with experts of arcane knowledge and experience with the resources and time to pursue your problems, you many times recommend systems and setups that no ordinary person could possibly survive.

Grab an ignorant neighbor, shove him/her in a locked room with an off the shelf, mid-market box, 56k modem access to the Internet, and, just so you won't think that I'm overdoing this, an extra phone line so that he/she can call for help while on the Internet at the same time. Occasionally hire in a local, non-wizard tech to install really difficult software or hardware. Limit sharply their budget for this type of help, just to keep things "real". Now take one of the items that required just a quick, "intelligent" fix by one of your gurus and let your neighbor have a go at it. Make sure that you have good insurance, and as many disclaimers as you can get on a release of liability form. In most states, negligence will penetrate most disclaimers. I will be looking forward to receiving your accounts of how bankruptcy courts work in your jurisdiction. Maybe an article or two from your hospital room on self-defense techniques would not be too much to ask.

Cheers,

Everett L.(Rett) Williams POB 1347 Canyon Lake, TX 78130-1347 rett@gvtc.com 830-907-3636

Jerry,

You mention Adobe Acrobat in your latest BYTE column, and comment that it "works just fine... in particular [on] Office documents" (if I can take that liberty with your text -- I _think_ that's within the range of your intended meaning). Here's a tale of my latest experience with it.

A few days ago I sent a technical proposal off to a new client of mine; I use Word 97 while they still use Word 95, so I had to save it using Word 97's export filters. Now I _thought_ I'd installed the real filter (maybe I did, under Win95 back when I was dual booting, but missed it with NT?), but the file grew in size by a factor of 4 when I saved it (first warning!). Then came my big mistake: I didn't proof the new "version" adequately before I emailed it (it was a BIG rush -- the timeline was too short for even FedEx, and my customer needed the e-version anyway, to put into their proposal for _their_ customer). So my customer emailed back to tell me that some of the graphs in the document now overlay the text, and the text-wrapping options were grayed out... I suspect it's the old Word 97/95 RTF problem again, unfortunately.

So I sent it to them in Adobe Acrobat format, using the copy of Acrobat Distiller Version 3.0 which comes bundled with PageMaker 6.5. I had to send along a note apologizing for the Acrobat version: while Distiller in general did a nice job, it took every instance of a superscript (this is a technical proposal, remember -- plenty of superscripts!) and turned it into an elevated em-dash. For some reason, it left all the subscripts alone.

Maybe Version 4.0 corrects this (is Word 97 newer than Acrobat 3.0?); maybe it's something funny with the Postscript driver I used (I was on the road, so I had to use the HP Laserjet 4 PS driver on my notebook -- it was the only one I had); maybe it's one of a hundred other possible things. But in any case, the translation wasn't "good enough" with either electronic document I sent (although they could compare the two versions and make their own corrections), and the outcome was that they had to do extra work and I was embarrassed.

One more incident in a long string of time-consuming, sometimes painful experiences with modern, "improved" software. My client is still talking to me (and I think I have the job), but the whole thing was unnecessary. To say I'm disgusted is an understatement. I live in the Microsoft world because all my clients do; otherwise, I'd switch to something else. I don't know who's to blame for the Acrobat problem, but I'd find it easy to lay that one on Microsoft, too -- so much of their software fails to follow the accepted rules, even the ones they make themselves.

Sorry this is so long -- I'm venting, I know. Acrobat is pretty damned good (I used it for another project just weeks ago, and it was perfect then), and you're right about it being the common denominator. That's why it was my second choice, when the Word 97/95 translation failed.

Keep doing those "silly things" -- I can't tell you how many times you've provided the solution to my problems that way, and prevented me from making the same mistakes.

Regards, Troy Loney

P.S.: Your truncation problem is gone... but now the photos take a long time to load. Is the entire world checking to see for themselves, or did pair.com put you on a slower server?

-- +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Troy Loney tloney@eticomm.net | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Well, let me say again: one uses Acrobat and pdf files when you want exact control of the layout and appearance; something you won't have with html. I had not noticed anything missing in 4.0 that was in 3.0, but I confess I didn't look very hard; now I will have to.

I don't advocate Acrobat for ordinary stuff; but as a means of setting up something that the readers won't muck with and change about, and which won't be ruined by html substitutions and layout changes, you won't find anything better, and of the things I have tried most aren't as good. It can be improved and no doubt will be, but it does the job it is intended to do, or so I contend. But it certainly is not the right tool for every job.

Jerry,

I didn't mean to leave the impression that I didn't like Acrobat, nor that I held it against you for recommending it (as I said, I used it on another project just recently, and it was perfect for that job and it _did_ a perfect job). My point was that it doesn't always do that (but the ill-behaved instances might well be because of other software -- Word 97, for instance).

In the case I wrote about, I tried Acrobat because it was the next best thing to the native file format my customer used (which Word 97 apparently couldn't reproduce, although it was what its immediate predecessor used); they could still grab text and graphics from the PDF file almost as easily as from Word 95, _one_ of which they needed desperately to do. If they'd used Word Pro or Word Perfect, I think Acrobat would have been the preferred format (HTML certainly wouldn't have been!).

The unfortunate thing is that somewhere in the chain, something messed up the PDF file also (although in a different way). So everyone was royally screwed all 'round, and no one appreciated it.

Mostly, I was just venting. It annoys me that Microsoft can't follow their own rules, or even successfully write to their own legacy file formats. It annoys me that apps are "improved" in ways that ruin their usefullness to me. It annoys me even more that I have to rebuild most of my working system at least once a year, trying to make things functional again simply because I've reluctantly upgraded. If they'd only fix the broken parts, and leave the good ones alone!

But that's a very familiar tune, isn't it?

Regards, Troy Loney

I will agree that HTML cannot do equations very well, but PDF is not really as good as HTML for general content.

Far too many people seem to think that 'pretty print' is a substitute for content. Personally I rather have content.

PDF files are far larger than is necessary to display most content. There are exceptions, but personally, I'd rather download samples of your newest novel in text or html, than fight with it in pdf.

I find reading pdf files extremely irritating to do. You cannot easily scroll down and you can all too easily end up jumping to the next page.

Keep pdf for diagrams and equations... Works great for pin-outs at Adeptec and Seagate I agree.

My $0.02....

Geoff

Once again, I seem not to have been very clear: pdf is for files that you do not want altered: not in layout, not in text, not in anything. It's a lot harder for someone to corrupt a pdf file, and when they do, they have pretty well intended to do it. It depends on what you want files for. I still say it works, and works well, when you want to send page images and you care about layout. You cannot control layout in html.

Anyway, thanks.

An advantage of using Acrobat prompted a customer of ours to adopt that format for online access to internal production reports: namely, Acrobat documents can be digitally signed and made more or less tamper-proof. Our customer didn't want to mindlessly rely on NT security to guard the sanctity of accounting and other fiscal reports. Instead, they created Acrobat documents automagically from the original mainframe report output and let users use Acrobat Reader to view/print the reports.

HTML can be hacked by anyone with visual notepad.

(Mr.) Kerry M. Liles kerryliles@home.com

Hello Jerry, I noticed in 'current mail' that you are getting some flack for recommending PDF. I want to toss in my two cents in your support. I maintain a very large technical document database for my company. It is accessed worldwide via the company wide area network. Almost all of the general access documents are in PDF. We love it; PDF is the best thing since sliced bread. Control of layout and appearance are crucial for most of our technical manuals -- PDF delivers it, and HTML just doesn't cut it. Also, for distribute-and-print and print-on-demand purposes, PDF is perfect. Actually, many of the criticisms you received just show a lack of understanding of PDF. (For example Adobe provides all the tools needed to allow paged downloading and viewing.) I can, however, sympathize with Hugh Caley's complaint that "PDF's are all too often used for purposes that would be much better suited to HTML". This undoubtedly is true. You should use the best tool for the job -- not the tool you have at hand.

Clyde Wisham

Noli Permittere Illegitimi Carborundum

Pretty much my view. Thanks.

Tuesday, September 28, 1999

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

You mentioned John Keegan's book in your column. Slate magazine had a discussion in their Book Club section in June. Two historians discuss Keegan's "The First World War" and Niall Ferguson's "The Pity Of War".

These email discussions are usually interesting and always informative. Based on this one I ordered Keegan's first book, "The Face Of Battle".

You can read the article at: http://www.slate.com/code/BookClub/BookClub.asp?

Show=6/7/99&;idMessage=2947&;idBio=84#2939

Bill Cavanaugh billcav@pobox.com

Hi Jerry,

I like the search engine. It seems to work very well and the searches I tried all returned good results. I looked at the atom-z site also, as this might very well be something I can use on a site I'm working on, for product support, to roll out early next year. I'm particularly interested in the PDF support.

If you decide to keep it, you might wish to specifically exclude the new_order, maildex and viewdex pages, as they just return extra results that don't add anything except an extra 'layer' to things. In fact, the search engine would probably remove the need for these pages.

Do keep it if you can, it looks pretty 'painless' to manage, with them doing all the work once you have it set up. Don't know how they can make money at it, with their price structure, but take advantage of it while you can :-).

John

John Rice coredump@enteract.com http://www.enteract.com/~coredump The Internet - Somebodys LAB experiment gone horribly wrong.

Just learning how to use it. Excluding the older index pages seems like a good idea all right. Of course you generated them and without them this place would make even less sense than it does; but perhaps the search engine will make the superfluous. On the other hand, they do a heck of a good job of summarizing, so we'll see. Thanks for doing them.

Hi Jerry,

The new View page is fine but the old one seems mellower. If it aint broke.......

jer

I like the search function. Effective.

Also, my vote goes towards separate mail and view pages for you. IMO, your work multi-tracks better than most people I know, and keeping your conversations (email) separate from your soapbox (view) works better with your style. That is (to be partially redundant) that separate pages work for you, while somehow, combined works better for Bob's pages.

Regards, Brian bilbrey@pacbell.net http://216.102.91.55/

Raves over the new page. The search works. And the combined Mail and View is convenient.

One note: I was concerned that the new page would be loooong. So I measured last week's files. View67 came to 57K of HTML (plus graphics); Mail67 was 104K. The combined size should be less than the total of the two. Assuming the new page is about 40 percent longer than the old mail page, that won't be a problem for me. It's certainly smaller than a lot of commercial pages out there.

--Milton--

Bob Thompson did the ccurrentview "integrated" page as well as found the search engine for me. I tend to like two different pages myself, and with the search function, which I know little about -- I literally copied it from what Thompson sent me -- it's easier to find things. I think I am likely to keep the search engine but not the integrated pages. We'll have more on the atomz search engine another time. It sure seems to work.

We'll keep adding comments. Thanks to all.

I've been an avid reader of Byte for several years now and I enjoy your column.

I notice you like PC Power and Cooling's products, and you mention them frequently in your articles. However, you seem to imply that PC P&;C manufactures the products they sell. In fact, all of their chassis are designed and manufactured by California PC Products, and their power supplies are either made by Zippy/Emacs or Sparkle, depending on the model.

You can get nearly all of the chassis, power supplies, and accessories PC P&;C sells for about 10-20% less at California PC Products.

I also enjoy high quality chassis and power supplies, and I'm a proud and happy owner of a Cal PC full tower chassis (same as the Solid Steel Tower) and a 300W ATX power supply (same as the Turbo Cool 300) complete with fenders and casters, and two bay coolers. Cal PC's product names aren't as snappy, as PC P&;C has a better marketing department, but the hardware is identical.

Check out their website http://www.calpc.com/

Koray Sahin, Fulcrum Computer

The difference is not merely marketing: PC Power and Cooling does quality assurance, and tests equipment from many sources. One can of course go to the supplier for nearly anything including toothpaste and soap, usually with the expected results, but for me life isn't long enough for that. Thanks for the information, but I was using PC Cool power supplies back when they furnished the components for Cheetah Computers, and had different suppliers, and I for one think their markup is low for the assurances I get. Of course your mileage may differ. Thanks.

Jerry, I was listening to your comments on the Webcast yesterday and just have to put my two cents in about cable modems. I've been using a cable modem here in Livermore since the service became available, and love it. While I don't try to download 60+Meg files during peak useage times, I have found that for general web use it is much faster then my 56.6 modem. Very much faster no matter what time it is. The average download speed can slow to less then 56 KBs at times, true. However the PEAK speeds at the same time are generaly 136 - 156 KBs, so loading the most graphic intense Web page seldom takes longer then 2 or 3 seconds. The TV ads showing the comparsion between pages loading via cable modem and a 56.6 modem are what I've experanced, and I never thought I would reference a TV ad in my life. Also the upload speed is capped at 128 kbs (@Home), so a cable modem still outpreforms any copper modem. Also no "Last 100 feet" worries.

And during off peak, I just love downloading a 62 Meg game demo in 6 minutes or less.

You also mentioned that the installer or service rep you spoke to had no idea how the cable net was set up. I'm not really surprised. Unless they were working in the central office they wouldn't. It's a sad fact, but company's won't spend the money on teaching anyone things that don't apply to that specific job. Like the left windshield washer who wasn't qualified to wash the Right winshield.

And no matter which modem you use, if your system is using Win9x, locate one of the modem tune programs. For cable and DSL modems, SPEEDGUIDE.NET is a good source. I tried it, and it made a noticeable decrease in download times.

Jeff Pelton Livermore, CA

Actually it was a company executive I was talking with, who ought to have known about segmentation and partitioning, but hadn't ever realized there was a finite limit to the bandwidth in unpartitioned networks. In any case it is all irrelevant. The execrable monopoly cable company it its wisdom isn't offering cable modem to my area of Los Angeles, although it's available in Pasadena and some other parts. And I'm 1500 feet too far from the office to have DSL. I am sure it will all change. Matter of patience, which I don't have enough of anyway.

Here's the kind of message I truly hate, particularly when flagged as important:

Not Found

The requested URL /alexpage.htm was not found on this server.

This tells me little to nothing. I have no idea where the message came from. There are about 40 links to that page. Some of them work. The page exists at /reports/alex/alexpage.htm. Clearly some link to it has been broken. If I had the foggiest notion of what page the broken link was on I might have a chance of finding it.

And being compulsive I waste time looking.

AAAARRRGGGGHHHH!!!

Dear Mr. Pournelle, It is with great regret that I must inform you that Mrs. Marion Zimmer Bradley passed away in her sleep on Saturday, Sept. 25, 1999, at 6:37 PM local time, at Alta Bates Hospital, here in Berkeley, Ca. It was a quiet passing. Friends and staff were present, until the end. She had a cardiac seizure Tuesday, and never truly recovered, and was in a coma for the last few days. She died peacefully in her sleep with friends and family present. She often spoke of you. Although your writing was not on her wavelength, she was fond of you personally, and often referred to you as a "fine Southern gentleman," and enjoyed recounting her various encounters with you at various conventions. She will be greatly missed by all who knew he, as well as her myriad fans.

Sincerely,

Raul Reyes

Thank you. I will miss her. I first met Marion in 1962 at the Chicago World SF Convention. I didn't know anyone, but it made no difference to her. We were good friends ever since. May light perpetual shine upon her.

Wednesday September 29, 1999

I raised this question in VIEW, and I put all this over there, and now I am getting mail asking where it is, so I have duplicated it here.

Jerry,

You asked about the key to switch documents in Word97. If you look in the Help of Word under Functionkeys, you will see that you can use Ctrl-F6 and Ctrl-Shift-F6 to switch.

Regards

Wim

Wim ten Bosch tel +31 30 2526340 fax +31 30 2527045 email wim.ten.bosch@capgemini.nl

Which sure does work, and I was sure I remembered there was a way to do it, but even knowing to look for the function key actions it took a while to find it. Since that works quite well in Word 2000 as well as Word 97, I am not sure why it's an issue about Word 2000? I am, I confess, becoming less unhappy about the way Word 2000 does document windows, and in fact I suspect it does it the proper way, with a different icon in the tray for each open document. Ah well.

Thanks to everyone who sent information on the keyboard commands for switching among documents. In fact I got that in minutes after posting it, and put up the solution (see last night's view) but for reasons not known to me, that part seems to have disappeared from view, so to speak. And yet I look through ftp at the site and the files are identical, there and here. So I don't understand it. Probably pilot error. I probably uploaded the wrong file. Sigh.

But this does show up a problem:

Jerry:

Word Help Index Keys Shortcut keys --> Shortcut Keys help page

>> Use keys to work in windows and dialog boxes

Ctrl-F6 - switch to next document window Ctrl-Shift-F6 - switch to previous document window

Regards, Bill Ghrist

But what isn't documented under is Word Help Index Switch Windows, or Select Window, or Change Window. That is, if you know that you are looking for a function key command, then you can go search the function key commands, but if you didn't know that, you will never find this. I am glad they have documented the function key commands in a single place -- I had forgotten that -- but I see no reason why they can't put in some indexing on what it does.

The little Clippy (or other animated characters) help question boxes are sometimes more useful than the index (I leave out the religious war on whether Clippy is helpful or an abombination) but in this case Clippy had no help at all on "How do I change documents in Windows" and "How do I choose among open documents" and a couple of other variants on that theme. Had I been a bit more clever I would probably have cottoned on to the notion that this would be a function key function, but I didn't. Anyway, thanks to all of you who answered the question.

Thursday

Friday October 1, 1999

Jerry, I'm looking for either a CD-RW drive or a DVD-RAM drive to use primarily for backup but also potentially for making CD-ROMS's for customers (in small quantities). Watching DVD movies is not important for us at this point.

Ziff Davis mags were somewhat positive about the Soundblaster DVD-RAM but found it rather slow in writing, and thought the technology was about a year or 2 away from being ready.

Having 5-8 GB of capacity would be nice compared to 650meg, but it may be better to spend $200 or so on a CD-RW and use it for a couple of years while waiting for DVD to standardize and improve.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have any recommendations regarding the current generation of CD-RW drives?

Thanks for any guidance you can supply. Ted Pass

tpass@ltca.com

I'll have something about this in the column. For my own part, Maxtor makes a good SCSI CD-RW that I know is reliable, and we have but haven't tested (getting to that this weekend) a Que! USB CD/RW. Be advised there are still a lot of older (three years or so) CDROM drives that have trouble reading CD's created by any of the new media, although those are slowly vanishing. Alas, every now and then someone finds a warehouse full of old CDROM drives and sells them dirt cheap, propagating that incompatibility.

I've been watching the searches that your users have been doing. A lot of them are assuming an implicit "and" when they search, e.g. entering the search string:

larry niven

larry and niven

assuming that it will find all pages that contain "larry niven" when in fact atomz does an implicit "or", which makes that string look for any pages that contain larry *or* niven in the first case, and ones that contain larry *or* and *or* niven in the second.

You should probably tell your readers that it's an implicit "or" and that to find a string they should enclose that string in double quotes. They can also use standard AltaVista syntax to require or forbid search terms, e.g.:

+larry +niven

finds all pages that contain both larry *and* niven (including those that contain the terms together or separated), or

+larry -niven

finds all pages that contain larry but *not* niven.

Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com

Thanks.

Date: 28 Sep 99 23:59:00 -0400

From: "Terrance Kibiloski"<terrance@computertimes.com

Subject: EDITOR MURDERED AT COMPUTER : Computer Times Press Release - Prominent Computer Industry Editor Murdered

PROMINENT COMPUTER INDUSTRY EDITOR REDGLASSES MURDERED AT COMPUTER BARDSTOWN, KY, Sept. 28, 1999 - Computer Times' Editor Terrance Kibiloski and Executive Editor Charlene Jones, both long time friends of Sher "REDGLASSES" Bolter, have issued this joint statement concerning the horrible murder of REDGLASSES: Sher Bolter, better known throughout the computer industry as REDGLASSES, a name derived from his red-framed eye glasses and who was famous for his REDGLASSES Party List at industry trade shows like COMDEX and PC EXPO, was brutally murdered on Friday, September 24, 1999 while he worked at his computer in his home office in Louisville, KY. According to reports, Bolter was shot in the head by an unknown assassin shooting from outside. The bullet pierced the aluminum screen door of Bolter's home office.

Although neighbors heard a loud sound just before 9 p.m. Friday evening, no one saw or heard anyone leave the scene. Jefferson County Deputy Coroner Sam Weakley said REDGLASSES died at 3:22 a.m. Saturday at University of Louisville Hospital of a single gunshot wound in the head.

REDGLASSES was the founder and editor of The Corporate Journal and a contributing editor on a regular basis to Computer Times. He tested software and hardware for the computer industry and wrote reviews for various publications nationally. He founded a non-profit organization to assist children. Editor Terrance Kibiloski states, "I am still in shock at the news of Sher's death. I received an e-mail concerning an assignment he was working on for Computer Times less than 7 hours before he was shot."

Executive Editor Charlene Jones adds, "There will never be another REDGLASSES - he was one of the most colorful characters I have ever met but with a heart of gold. The computer industry will sorely miss him."

Graveside services are scheduled for Sept. 30 at 11:30 a.m. at the Temple Cemetery in Louisville, KY.

CONTACTS: Terrance Kibiloski Editor, Computer Times edcomtimes@aol.com

From Sue Hume:

A few months ago, when I was picking up the children at school, another mother I knew well rushed up to me. Emily was fuming with indignation.

"Do you know what you and I are?" she demanded.

Before I could answer and I didn't really have one handy - she blurted out the reason for her question. It seemed she had just returned from renewing her driver's license at the County Clerk's office.

Asked by the woman recorder to state her "occupation," Emily had hesitated, uncertain how to classify herself.

"What I mean is," explained the recorder, "Do you have a job, or are you just a ......?"

"Of course I have a job," snapped Emily. "I'm a mother."

"We don't list 'mother' as an occupation...'housewife' covers it," said the recorder emphatically.

I forgot all about her story until one day I found myself in the same situation, this time at our own Town Hall. The Clerk was obviously a career woman, poised, efficient, and possessed of a high-sounding title, like "Official Interrogator" or "Town Registrar "And what is your occupation?" she probed.

What made me say it, I do not know. The words simply popped out. "I'm....a Research Associate in the field of Child Development and Human Relations."

The clerk paused, ball-point pen frozen in mid-air, and looked up as though she had not heard right. I repeated the title slowly, emphasizing the most significant words. Then I stared with wonder as my pompous pronouncement was written in bold, black ink on the official questionnaire.

"Might I ask," said the clerk with new interest, "just what you do in your field?"

Coolly, without any trace of fluster in my voice, I heard myself reply, "I have a continuing program of research (what mother doesn't) in the laboratory and in the field (normally I would have said indoors and out). I'm working for my Masters (the whole darned family) and already have four credits (all daughters). Of course, the job is one of the most demanding in the humanities (any mother care to disagree?) and I often work 14 hours a day (24 is more like it). But the job is more challenging than most run-of-the-mill careers and the rewards are in satisfaction rather than just money."

There was an increasing note of respect in the clerk's voice as she completed the form, stood up, and personally ushered me to the door.

As I drove into our driveway buoyed up by my glamorous new career, I was greeted by my lab assistants---age 13, 7, and 3. And upstairs, I could hear our new experimental model (six months) in the child-development program, testing out a new vocal pattern.

I felt triumphant. I had scored a beat on bureaucracy. And I had gone down on the official records as someone more distinguished and indispensable to mankind than "just another......"

Home...what a glorious career. Especially when there's a title on the door.

Send this page to another Mother

I posted this yesterday on my web page, and thought you might want to post it as well..

Here's some important news if you've bought a Western Digital Caviar drive recently. Western Digital is recalling about 400,000 of their Caviar drives that use 6.8 GB platters, and range in size from 6.4 GB to 20.5 GB. These drives are part of a production run of 1,000,000 drives manufactured between August 27th and September 24th. A defective chip means that these drives will likely fail to power up after 6 to 12 months' use. Affected model numbers include: WD64AA, WD68AA, WD84AA, WD100AA, WD102AA, WD135AA, WD136AA, WD170AA, WD172AA, WD200AA, and WD205AA. Full details are available on the Western Digital web site <http://www.westerndigital.com/fitness/drive-alert.html>, along with a utility you can run to see if your drive is one of those affected.

Bob

Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com

Thanks.

Search Engine: Type in item(s) to search for. To qualify the search, type + in front of items you want, and - in front of items you do not want. Examples: larry niven - will find any page with LARRY or NIVEN. +larry +niven - will find only pages with LARRY and NIVEN. +larry -niven - will find pages with LARRY, but not LARRY and NIVEN.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Chris (ckeavy@yahoo.com)

Thanks. I'll rationalize the whole search system one of these days. Real Soon Now.

Saturday

I was at a book signing and then a late party all day.

Sunday October 3, 1999

From: Stephen M. St. Onge Minneapolis, MN

saintonge@hotmail.com

Subject: non-blinking cursor/insertion point

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

I now have the answer to the question I asked in Mail66 (Sun., Sept. 19th). To stop the insertion point from blinking:

1. Start Regedit (in My Computer/Windows folder) 2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop 3. Find the CursorBlinkRate (if it isn't already there, click edit, Add a String Value, name it CursorBlinkRate) 4. Change the value from the default (1200) to -1. 5. Reboot.

Aside from the anxiety attack I had thinking I was going to accidentally destroy something vital, no problems. And No More Nausea!

Now, I just have to find a new excuse for not working on my book manuscript ...

P. S. Condolences on the deaths of your friends. They will be missed.

Thanks. Now that we have the search engine, anyone will be able to find this (if they think to look for it of course...)

It began with what I thought was a joke letter, and got increasingly shrill.

Jerry,

I chanced upon your article while looking for something else (the name of the girl who stars min the Scottish Widows Building Society advertisements here in the UK).

I was appalled to read that you were using your laptop during a flight! Didn't anyone ever tell you that thay can interfere with the aircraft navigation system?

David If you're on the Web you will want this.... http://www.skynary.com/trailblazer

I made a noncommittal reply. I figure that if there's a real danger of using laptops on aircraft in flight, the airlines will tell me. For that matter some of them furnish you with a power outlet in first and business class, and they do announce a few minutes before landing that you should turn off all electronic devices. The flight attendants are fully aware of the devices, of course -- you can't hide them if you wanted to. In the very early days of the clamshell laptops from Zenith I had flight crew go ask the Captain if it was all right for me to use the gizmo, but I have never had one of them tell me I should turn it off. I said less than that in my reply, but I did ask "Do you know something the pilots don't?"

Jerry,

Yes, it would appear I do, I will get an ATC (Ar Traffic Controller) to contact you with details.

At this point, I fear, I got a little impatient, although not seriously so. I sent some other kind of reply, a bit longer.

Listen Jerry, I don't care if you kill yourself, it's the hundreds of other innocent people you will take with you that I worry about.

Trust me, it is dangerous because it interferes with the aircraft navigation system.

Flight attendants are only trained to give you food - not to fly the so**ing aircraft!

Have a bit of consideration! (Don't try to use your mobile phone either - it's even worse)!

DAvid (I have deleted last name and mail address; I am not trying to embarrass anyone here.)

So: either I am a callous potential suicide murderer working in collaboration with the airline authorities, and I ought to be going up and down the aisles in panic screaming for the other passengers to turn off their laptops, or we are in the hands of one of those people who is certain he knows something but has managed to get one or two details wrong. But he knows an ATC who will tell me better. I haven't heard from the ATC. I am, of course, aware that one should not use cell phones on airplanes, and I don't, although I sometimes have the slippery suspicion that the prohibition has more to do with preventing competition with the expensive "official" in-flight phone system than actual aircraft safety; still, it's not an unreasonable rule even if it is intended for revenue; rather like the (nearly unenforceable) prohibition against bringing your own earphones so you can listen to the in-flight movie without paying. The lose nothing if you do it, but if everyone did it they wouldn't have the movies at all, and if everyone used their own telephone system the airlines wouldn't be providing in-flight phones at your seat.

But none of this is relevant here, where I am being accused of indifference to the safety of myself and others by using my laptop: something not prohibited by the airlines, and done by 10 to 20% (on some flights far more) of the other passengers. Of this are, I suspect, urban legends made...

Anyone having good reason to know better (I don't count it a good reason that you overheard something in a bar, or think you read something somewhere but can't remember where) is encouraged to write. I don't really want to crash an airplane I am on.

From: Duncan Watson <climer@io.com> Subject: Regarding your 'Not Found' problem

Jerry,

I read your not found rant regarding the link to /alexpage.htm. You might want to add one of the spidering tools out there to your arsenal. Most will scan your whole site and inform you of broken links and other trivia. A number of different tools exist, including semi-free *nix-based spiders. I am currently a Wintel person and so the one I use is linkbot, which can be found at http://tetranetsoftware.com/ . In particular it has the ability to find orphaned files, i.e. files that are on your site but are not linked to by any of the pages you had it scan. YMMV and there are other tools available for Wintel but there names slip my mind currently.

Sincerely, Duncan Watson climer@io.com

Actually, FrontPage has quite a good engine for finding orphaned files and such like, and broken links. It doesn't necessarily know about links it thinks "external" which include http://www.jerrypournelle.com/ etc., but those aren't usually a problem. In the case in point, there wasn't a bad link; there was an external link, and apparently he tried to get that page during a temporary link failure to the site. That happens often. But what I was mildly upset about -- I really hope it didn't come across as a rant -- was the incompleteness of the information. I appreciate being told about bad links, but please, tell me on what page was the bad link, what text or button it was linked to, what it was linked to, and if you know, what it ought to be linked to. Most of that information you will have at hand when you find the bad link, and all I ask is that it be included when you send me mail. Information that there is a bad link to a particular page, without being told from where, isn't really going to help much.

And I hope that doesn't come across as a rant. I really do appreciate being told about problems.

Subject: Laptops on Airliners

From: Jim Griebel (jgri@ earthlink.net)

Laptops are OK for most of the flight - from shortly after takeoff to shortly before landing. On the airline I fly most (because it's one of our customers) it's routine for the flight attendants to make a cabin PA announcing when it's OK to use your "approved elecronic devices - laptops, Gameboys, and portable disc players" (jeeze, I know that thing by heart) and another when it's time to put them away. Next trip take a look at the inflight magazine - odds are the devices you can and can't use in flight are listed in there.

I don't know where the other guy got this idea, but he's wrong.

Jerry,

I don't really want to get involved in a flame war about this, I"ve read too many by too many poorly informed people but...

I don't know about the regulations in the UK (the writer sounded British), but the use of Laptop Computers is allowed, by regulation, on American regulated commercial aircraft along with some other electronic equipment (tape players, cd players, and such, but not radio transmitting and receiving equipment). There are sound technical reasons behind this, having to do with risk of interference with aircraft navigation equipment. Much testing has taken place to ensure that there is little risk that portable computers will interfere with enroute navigation systems currently in use. Cellular Telephones are also prohibited at all times (for additional reasons having to do with propogation and frequency re-use in cell sites).

For those devices that are permitted, there is a general prohibition regarding use during takeoff and landing, due to a somewhat greater risk of interference with navigation systems, during those phases of flight. I don't have the relevant FAR (Federal Air Regulation) in front of me, but I can find it if you really need it.

As far as ATC (Air Traffic Control) is concerned, they aren't really involved in this area of regulation at all.

John

Pilot, Commercial Comm-Tech, Computer Support Engineer, etc, etc, etc

The risk of using laptops on airliners has been seriously overstated. Don't use cell phones, of course, and turn off your laptop (and other electronics) at takeoff and landing, but otherwise, they shouldn't be an issue.

Of course, I'm not speaking officially, but I am involved with the FAA's enroute communications and ATC systems, and I have no fear about using my laptop while flying. The on-board entertainment systems are much stronger emitters.

--- Harry Erwin, <mailto:herwin@gmu.edu>, <http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin>, Senior SW Analyst, PhD candidate (informatics and computational science) modeling how bats echolocate (defense in November?), and Adjunct Prof of CS (data structures and advanced C++).

The original problem was one of frequency management. Aircraft carry lots of radios (now called "sensors" by the transport aircraft manufacturers) and the selection of navigation aid and communications frequencies dated from the earliest use of radio on aircraft.

Most of the comm and nav frequencies are from just above the FM radio band starting at 108 MHz running up to around the bottom of the land mobile band assignments (so roughly about 108 to 118 MHz for nav and 118 to 136 MHz for comm, but can top out at 160 MHz in some cases). Military, of course, has additional special regions they operate in. I forget exactly where glideslope is situated.

The concern is that the computer will radiate some signal that will interfere with the navigation equipment. However, with the modern standards in place for emission from computers and the general shielding nature of the fuselage the risk is very low. There's a bigger "threat" from high-side injection FM radios in someone's walkman that could put an interfering signal on the desired frequency but that's also low.

Consider that the avionics on the aircraft are running the same or similar processors found in home equipment. There's lots of computer equipment in the modern aircraft and things get along just fine. Plus we don't make people on the ground turn off all their equipment when an aircraft is due to land - so the radio environment is pretty "noisy". The laptop won't even appear to stick out in all that.

Regards,

Bill Newkirk wnewkirk@iu.net

Well, that was certainly my impression. Thanks to all of you, and I think that closes the subject.

From Ed Hume:

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that the dog had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them. After a while they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch, that glowed in the sunlight.

When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother of pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer he saw a man at a desk to one side. When he was close enough he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?" "This is heaven, sir," the man answered. "Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked. "Of course, sir. Come right in and I'll have some ice water brought right up."

The man gestured, and the gate began to open. "Can my dog come in too?" the traveler asked. "I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road which led through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence. As he approached the gate he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

"Excuse me" he called to the reader, "Do you have any water?" "Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there." The man pointed to a place that couldn't be seen from outside the gate. "Come on in."

"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog. "There should be a bowl by the pump." They went through the gate and, sure enough, there was an old fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it. The traveler filled the bowl and took a long drink himself. Then he gave some to the dog. When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man, who was standing by then, waiting for them.

"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked. "This is heaven," was the answer.

"Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was heaven too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

"No. I can see how you might think so, but we're just happy that they screen out the folks who'll leave their dogs behind."

I am told this is a Twilight Zone episode. It's similar to a Steven Vincent Benet story from the Thirties, for that matter. Ed Hume is Washington Lawyer and Psychiatrist (once you start collecting professions it's hard to stop) who collects good stories and sends them around. It's hard to tell sometimes where they come from. Ed and Sue sent a series of newsletters about their six months in New Zealand that would make a wonderful book.

Sir,

I know the Fry's controversy has swirled around you before, but I just thought your recent experience, typical for many customers, should be highlighted more directly.

You bought a "previously opened" intel chip from Fry's. That chip lasted a suspiciously short time, yet Fry's won't replace it or give you a refund, not for lack of proof, but lack of a box. At it's heart, Fry's sold you a product they knew should be suspect, in that it was previously opened, yet they back their sale not at all. I am suprised that you then purchased from them another chip.

Fry's will never change if people do not yell about such shoddy practices. Your voice would carry much more weight than most. I know you have studiously avoided becoming embroiled in this in the past, but this is such a typical example.

Bryan Broyles

Across the pale parabola of joy...Ralston McTodd

Fry's has been convenient and their sales are still worth looking at, but yesterday was my last trip out there for routine stuff. In future I'll look elsewhere, on the Internet if I have time, and to other sources if I think of any. I was in a hurry: I had a machine that was part of my system and didn't work. I needed a new chip for it.

Also, on the "I do all these silly things so you won't have to..." theory, it will be interesting to see if Intel will honor a warranty on a chip that is far less than 3 years old when I do not have the box it came in or a "proof of purchase". If they don't, I am out a couple of hundred bucks, and I can live with that. If they do, it's a good point in Intel's favor.

Fry's was far less than helpful, and if I can find a way to send a message to their higher management I will tell them so. The personnel I dealt with spoke bad English, were not polite (they used the word "sir" as if it were an insult) and knew almost nothing about the subjects they dealt with. They took refuge behind "policy". For the same reason I bought another chip -- I was in a hurry -- I didn't work at getting to see higher management. One shouldn't have to do that anyway.

And I do have a column to get out the door. This makes a good story.

Query: for those in the San Fernando Valley/Burbank area, where does one go for electronics parts if you are trying to avoid Fry's? Not that I need much more stuff: for a while after BYTE folded up no one was sending me anything so I had to buy stuff if I wanted to make new systems, but that is changing dramatically. I bought a pair of chips, Celeron and Pentium II, last June (at sale prices) with the view that I would build two identical systems and just see what differences appeared, then drop in a Pentium III and see if that helped. In fact I don't see a heck of a lot of difference anyway.

For my new high end system, I have all the parts I need anyway, including an Intel 550. But I needed Squirrel working properly in a hurry, and it was simpler to pay the man the $230 for a Pentium III and have done with it.