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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 183 December 10 - 16, 2001

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Monday  December 10, 2001

Order Windows Version Reading TLC Now

Got the column filed, and I'm paying the bills. I have a new Microsoft XBOX and the flood gates of new games have been opened...

Everquest seems to have straightened out its Luclin installation problems although they do seem to require hardware that even I don't have. Wow.

I have sent off a mailing to subscribers. It has nothing substantive, but if you subscribe and didn't get it, please send me the information on when you subscribed and under what address, and if you have an address change please tell me. Be sure to include the OLD ADDRESS and NEW ADDRESS and LABEL WHICH IS WHICH. Pardon me for shouting but I have managed to do that wrong too. Thanks.

 

For the record: DirecPC Satellite is better than carrier pigeons and marginally better than dialup, but not much, and I guarantee you will curse it as it tells you that servers are not available when you know they are, and you find yourself refreshing time and again from "Cannot Find Page" errors. Grr!  Grrrrr!

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Tuesday, December 11, 2001

  I have revised the notes to Mrs. Pournelle's Reading Program. This program really works: it makes a great Christmas present. 

Order Windows Version Reading TLC Now

Today I will be working on fiction. There are stupid administrative matters to eat my time as well. And telephone trees which are going to be the end of Western Civilization as we know it. 

 

Alas for Everquest. I may have to cancel my accounts and stop mucking about with them. They have made it nearly impossible for me to log on to the game. Last night all the servers were locked. Today attempts to log in get me disconnected, rudely. It is pointless to try.

I'll give them a little more time, but apparently they took something that wasn't broke and really fixed it. Stupid of them. But they seem to have made it impossible for those without high speed connections to log on and play. Since I can only get on through a dialup, it looks as if they have walked away from me. Perhaps they'll fix it later. Meanwhile I guess it will save me a lot of time... (Which I may use trying some other on line game run by a different outfit...)

 

Then there is Britannica who do their very best to make shopping on line for a $25 buck DVD a miserable experience. Sigh. Then when you are done there pops up a survey window that wants all kinds of information and when you get sick of it and skip some it gets snippy and tries to make you go back and fill it all in. At least that one was easy to deal with.

I think on-line merchandising isn't well done. And yes, I know it's not all that easy here, but I'm not the Encyclopedia Britannica either.


Linux sucks for starting up fast. When I shut down the satellite and start up the Netwinder and Linux, it can take FIVE MINUTES before I can ping 192.168.1.1 which is to say attempts to do that time out, and I can't telnet to it, and nothing moves through it. Eventually it manages, but it takes forever.

I suppose I ought to set up a faster machine. Eventually it gets its act together and all works, but what in the world can take that long? It's probably the little Strongarm chip in the Netwinder.

 

The good news is that Everquest is working again.  It still takes going around Red Robin's barn to get on, but it can be done...

Later: Well it could be done. Not any longer, even at midnight in California. Bah.

But it is simplicity itself compared to trying to use the abysmal Microsoft Zone nonsense, which doesn't tell me why things aren't working. .NET passport sucks dead bunnies, and the screens half the time make no sense. The World Wide Wait continues. Has everyone in this business lost their minds? Do they think people have nothing else to do but keep trying to spend money with them?  Having made it nearly impossible I bet they are proud.

I suppose I will calm down shortly, but frankly this all seems to demonstrate massive incompetence. And to be told that either the .NET servers aren't working, OR I failed to sign in properly, has got to be as stupid a way to do business as I know. They don't know which it is? And I am supposed to figure it out?  Imbecilities cubed.

Microsoft is trying to get into the consumer business. And can't tell me whether I didn't log in right or the servers are down.

Eventually it all worked. See below.

 

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Wednesday, December 12, 2001

Microsoft .NET Passport may not be a killer app, but it looks good to kill internet commerce.

For a thoroughly frustrating and miserable experience, try logging on to Microsoft .NET Passport with a 28.8 dialup system. I have yet to manage it and I have wasted the better part of an hour in two half-hour attempts, one in the middle of the night, the other at about noon, PST.  

It takes many screens, and each screen is full of ads calling to another server; the result is interminable waits. If this is the future for Microsoft, that company is in REAL trouble.

Five attempts to log on to Asheron's Call have yet to get me past the .NET passport login attempt, and only one of them got me that far. The rest is a tangle of page errors.  My system is an XP Pentium IV so I doubt that it is my hardware that's at fault. Microsoft had better stick to something it understands, because as a consumer service company it really sucks.

If there is anyone from Microsoft paying attention to this, I'd sure like some advice. HOW do you manage to work with this? Sometimes I get "cannot find server" errors. Other times it looks to find things, but all it returns is a blank page. Once, one glorious time, it offered to log me in! But then when I did, I got a 'cannot find server' error as a return. Earth calling Microsoft: if this is your idea of ecommerce, you would do better to invest in sanitary landfills.

Now I have a login screen -- it says "done" at the bottom -- and the screen is entirely blank. It is clear that Asheron's Call is unplayable for me with my 28.8 dialup.  I can't even manage to get to the .NET Passport login. Ah well. Thank you Microsoft.

The problem here seems to be the Casino ads and another such things: they take so long to load that you never actually see the screen you are trying to load, and eventually it all times out.  This is as stupid a design as I have ever seen. Thank you, Microsoft, for as miserable an hour as I have spent with the Web. 

Meanwhile Everquest may be working again. At least they try. But I think the Microsoft thing is unusable until I have fast enough connections that I can live with those stupid animated advertisements that Microsoft makes you endure just to get to the log-in (which I have yet to manage).

But Everquest is fixed again: whatever the problem last night it's OK now. Microsoft's problems seem continuous. But see below.


And a billion dollar bomber was just ditched.  One billion dollars down the drain. Now the B1B was a pretty good strategic bomber, but we don't need that kind of airplane for this kind of war.  

But USAF hasn't thought about what we really need in a long time.


Still trying to get to Asheron's Call. When you click "PLAY" there is a 3 minute download, that often results in a page error. It is a very busy page but it wants you to connect to .NET Passport before you can start a ZONE.COM account. That never works. Each attempt takes several minutes, most of the time being spent waiting for animated ads to download from busy servers.

Microsoft is clearly interested only in those with LOTS of bandwidth. No others need apply.

Everquest, on the other hand, takes about 45 seconds to connect to the main server and about 3 minutes to get logged on, at 28.8, and plays quite well once there.

So much for .NET But see below.

And meanwhile look at this one:

http://newsbytes.com/news/01/172891.html 

Hurrah!

A BIG SECURITY PROBLEM!!

 Joe Zeff says look here:

Check out this page at Slashdot and see the latest security hole Micro$lop

is ignoring:

http://slashdot.org/articles/01/12/11/2125224.shtml 

Which is about a horrible hole in the system:

see http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172878.html for details.

YEEPS! Look at both of those. Quickly.

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Thursday, December 13, 2001

Life at the bottom of a 28.8 well is horrible, particularly after that brief experience with Ricochet. The DirectPC satellite is no substitute. Better than nothing, for some things, but it's pretty ghastly.  Sigh.

The simplest things take forever as people make their web sites more complicated and link to more and more advertisements. Microsoft game zone, by making itself part of the .NET Passport fiasco, has put itself beyond the reach of anyone without high speed connections. Perhaps they don't WANT us last class netizens..

Paypals transactions can be a real pain if you have to do several, because their attention to security is pretty good but that overloads their servers sometimes, other time it just takes forever for the information to get here. The World Wide Wait continues...

One supposes it will be better, eventually. And of course once everyone has fast bandwidth all the servers will be overloaded as people try out things that for now they don't want to do because of the long delays. How long will it take to get better? Of course we should count our blessings: we have more than even the most optimistic among us, myself included, would have predicted ten years ago. Eventually we got it going. See Below.


Long letter and longer essay/reply by me on air warfare over in mail.

And those interested in XP should read:

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23347.html 


Eric says Microsoft just went to the .NET Passport business for their ZONE games, and things are really fouled up, but it ought to be temporary  Fine.  But with the satellite or without, I cannot manage to SIGN IN TO THE .NET  so I cannot sign up for a zone passport so I cannot play Asheron's Call. I presume that applies to everyone else trying to get into the game. Those who previously were set up apparently can mange. The rest of us can wait for Microsoft to get its act together.

They had something working, so they decided to fix it. Brilliant of them. One day they will get it fixed, but my confidence in .NET has been reset to VERY LOW. If they can't manage games, why would I believe they can make things easy for software developers?  Can't find the login servers. Well, well, well. 


Much later.  First, I went upstairs to work. We got several calls from Microsoft offering to help get me into the game, and eventually when I came down I did. As is always the case with the people I deal with at Microsoft, everyone was helpful. I had before it was over four people including a product manager and a testing supervisor on the phone with me. You probably will not get this level of technical support, although they tell me they have some very good tech support people.

We went through my getting on to Asheron's Call. It's fairly arcane just now, and if I had not had the satellite system (or some other means of high speed access) it would have taken all day: there were at least two multi-megabyte downloads required. During this configuration there was at least one advertisement inappropriate for teenagers, and one of the people on the phone who has a teenage daughter who plays Asheron's Call was a bit shocked: they say they will talk to the advertising people and pull that ad, and review the others.

Eventually it was configured and I was ready to log on: this went exactly as does Everquest: at that point the satellite system won't work, and I had to switch to 28.8 dialup -- at which point I had another discovery. Unlike Everquest, where the updates are all done at the "master server" level and thus can be brought in by satellite, Asheron's Call has updates that have to be downloaded at the individual server level (in my case Thistledown). I switched to 28.8 and I was able to log on all right, and the system is STILL UPDATING half an hour later. I expect eventually it will finish since it shows progress (25% in 40 minutes).  I also presume that once that enormous lump has been eaten I won't need to do that again. Unlike Everquest which shows each file as it downloads and thus gives you some notion of progress, this just gives a "progress report" overall.  It's going to be a while, and that is where I am just now.

Note: when I say 28.8 what I mean is that the modem is 56K but the FCC restricts it to 53, and the best effective I have seen is about 44; usually I get about 34K effective, sometimes I get less than 28.8. Local wiring isn't all that good I guess.

 

Later Still: I have got on. So far no one will talk to me, but that may be a function of my not knowing how. Also, the sound isn't working at all, which is odd; it's ok before I go into the game. But I can get there, finally, so it's possible to do some comparisons now.

Thanks to the Microsoft troops....

(And the sound eventually worked but took some downloading of drivers and reinstallations. But we got there. I now have Asheron's Call working properly. So far not many will talk to me, and I seem to have come in at a very lonely place where few come. I presume that will change.)

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Friday, December 14, 2001

Did 2000 words yesterday, will do more today. This is Burning Tower but I have read the notes for the latest Janissaries novel and I should start work on finishing that shortly. I hope.

With a lot of help from Microsoft I got on to Asheron's Call. It turned out I tried at absolutely the wrong time and MANY people had real problems with their .NET Passport server service. Which isn't any excuse for a big company like Microsoft: they of all people ought to have accurate estimates of what they need, and Advanced Server, according to the demonstrations we saw at COMDEX, is supposed to do automatic load balancing and such: the fact that their game service crashed and burned when they tried to connect it to .NET and Passport should be a wakeup warning.  And doesn't give us all warm feelings about .NET.

But it is working now.

And you can get on, but it takes work. Pointless to continue to worry about it. Anything this massively broken will be fixed.

 

ROLAND wants you to pay attention:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-058.asp 

New Security Hole.

This will tell you where to go to get a fix. It is NOT on Microsoft Update yet. Eric found this also. Thanks.

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Saturday, December 15, 2001

Had no problem using Outlook to send a security alert (see last entry for last night's view) to subscribers. Sometimes you kill the balrog, and sometimes the balrog kills you...

When asked what "the industry" would do for the war effort, Hilary Rosen, President of Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) said "You can't spit out a patriotic American message in the hopes that everyone will get it. It makes more sense to try to humanize the American people through good cross-cultural collaborations." (Quoted in current issue of The Weekly Standard)

Leave out that I don't know too many Americans who need humanizing, even if they do, is RIAA the right outfit to do it? This is the most rapacious group I know of. Their secret agent got the Copyright Law changed to rob performers of rights to their work.

The Congress swears it didn't KNOW that this provision changing the default copyright for performances to "all rights for the producer, none for the performer" was in the Act it passed, but last I hear RIAA lobbyists had kept the Congress from changing it to what it ought to be -- this despite the fact that no single Congresscritter purports to be in favor of this clearly awful law, and no single Congresscritter claims to have known this provision was in the Act when it passed, it having been snuck in by a staffer in the dead of night so to speak.  The staffer, incidentally, a few months later showed up as a High Executive of RIAA.

And this is the outfit that will humanize us.  Sure.

Not that we need RIAA to give us patriotic music and performances; we seem to be winning the war quite handily without those people. Cheers for Delta Force which has performed splendidly if secretly, and the slightly more visible Special Forces, Rangers, Seals, and Marines. And, I shouldn't leave out the Air Force pilots: it's not their fault the Force is structured improperly. Given the tools they had they did their part well indeed.

So that's Afghanistan. Next year in Baghdad.

And Roland sends this link to an Underground Guide to Middle Earth:

http://www.ugo.com/channels/filmtv/features/middleearthguide/ 

And it is TIME for NOMINATIONS for the annual Chaos Manor Orchids and Onions Awards.

Send your nominations with a BRIEF statement on why this should be to me at jerryp@jerrypournelle.com with the word ORCHIDS or the word ONIONS (or both words but don't run them together, my rules want whole words) in the subject line).


On USAF and American Power:

Understand, much of USAF is run by officers who had Strategy of Technology as their textbook in the Academy. Much of that book has been applied. 

And I certainly can't complain about effectiveness. It works. 

And perhaps it is best that we have a force structured in ways that make it a bit awkward to apply. Even with that we got the job done; what more might we do if it looks too easy? See mail...

Incidentally, one letter asks why not use the B-1: what else would it be for? The point is well made and if that is what you have it is what you use, but the purpose of a force in being is still deterrence, and we have to be sure we still have that. I suppose I am being a bit like the commander who has forged such a good unit that he doesn't want to see it blunted by use; I hate to see the B1 force dissipated lest we need it again for its primary purpose. And yes, we can afford to lose some of those ships and still stay a hyperpower. 

What I want to see is missile delivery platforms as well as penetration bombers. It's the penetration aids that make B1 so expensive. It's the ability to gain air supremacy that makes it so valuable. Once that is gained, trucks can do the job, and should, because they are cheaper and we can use more of them and the smarts go in the cargo, not the truck...

 

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Sunday, December 16, 2001

Yesterday I "upgraded" Internet Explorer 5.0 on my Windows 2000 Pentium 3 750 Dual Processor system to IE 5.5 and installed the security patch. 

Today I cannot get Microsoft Photo Draw to run: all attempts to launch it get the message that the program did something wrong and is being shut down. I uninstalled PhotoDraw and reinstalled it with the same result. I can't be sure that my problem was caused by the upgrade to IE 5.5 (Why oh why did I Do that?) because I am sure I have done other things since the last time I needed PhotoDraw on this machine, but that's the most significant change I can think of.

Other components of Office 2000 seem to work all right.

Anyone know what's wrong here?

I can't wait for Golden Bow VOPT for Windows XP. The defrag that comes with XP is horrible: on a 15GB disk with 20% free space, after 3 hours it was 15% done with defragging. Yeeps!  But Now I know WHY. See mail.

I am told that there will be an XP VOPT Real Soon Now. Meanwhile, mine did manage, in SAFE MODE, in about an hour.

 

And a reader has a data recovery problem, see mail.


Well Everquest shot itself in the foot, enough so that I wasn't the only one disgusted enough to go try Asheron's Call. And of course Microsoft had just shot itself in the foot, ankle, shin, and knee, so that you couldn't even get ON to their system without considerable work.

Sigh

With Everquest I am finding that a 1 GHZ Pentium system with Voodoo 3 board isn't really good enough with the new Luclin stuff: it's jerky, particularly in combat. I almost got a level 24 bard killed by an Orc Pawn because I couldn't control anything, and couldn't run away either. The mouse wouldn't respond properly, I couldn't even turn except jerkily, and the orc was pounding away apparently very happy.  I escaped but it was embarrassing, and I don't want to go through all THAT again!

I will check with a geforce 2 board shortly, but apparently if you are in a crowded zone, you just won't be able to play without fast connections and a really fast system. That is not what they intended I think.

But the game is unplayable now.  Unless they fix it that is the end of Everquest for me.


And I have been reminded that my essay How to Get My Job is still on line.

 

Don Quixote de la Mancha

 

If there is anything more miserable than shopping for computer supplies on line, it is doing it with a satellite connection. No one designs web sites for the cust0mer. They are all designed as an endurance test: do you sincerely want this stuff? You had better REALLY want it, because you will have to drill through endless pages, get endless page errors, and keep trying. Smile.

Nearly every page needs to be requested, wait, get page error, go back, request again. Eventually you have the shopping cart. Check out. Page cannot be displayed. Back. Check out. But eventually it works, and in theory at least the stuff is on the way... And I have to say it probably beats getting in the car and driving out to a store which probably won't have everything I want anyway.


The Smallpox Dilemma

I hear they are concerned about smallpox vaccinations and reactions to the shots. It's not entirely clear that there won't be a fair amount of harm as well as good, and of course we have this litigious society...

As said over in mail, aegrescit medendo.

But there is a way out. Some of us have had two such vaccinations in our lifetimes already. Surely we're not much at risk from them? Do us. At least there will be some left to take care of victims if the pox does break out.

 

 

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