jp.jpg (13389 bytes)

THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 296 February 9 - 15, 2004

read book now

HOME

VIEW

MAIL

Columns

BOOK Reviews

SECURITY NOTICES PAGE

  For Current Mail click here.

FOR BOOKS OF THE MONTH 1994-Present Click HERE

Last Week's View                     Next Week's View

emailblimp.gif (23130 bytes)

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

Highlights this week:

 

This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 4,000 - 7,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this page is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you have never read the explanatory material on that page, please do so. If  you got here through a link that didn't take you to the front page of this site, click here for a better explanation of what we're trying to do here.

If you are not paying for this place, click here...

Day-by-day...
Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday -- Thursday -- Friday -- Saturday -- Sunday

For Previous Weeks of the View, SEE VIEW HOME PAGE

Search: type in string and press return.

read book now

 

If you have no idea what you are doing here, see  the What is this place?, which tries to make order of chaos. 

If you intend to send MAIL to me, see the INSTRUCTIONS.

 

Boiler Plate:

If you want to PAY FOR THIS there are problems, but I keep the latest HERE. I'm trying. MY THANKS to all of you who sent money.  Some of you went to a lot of trouble to send money from overseas. Thank you! There are also some new payment methods. I am preparing a special (electronic) mailing to all those who paid: there will be a couple of these. I am also toying with the notion of a subscriber section of the page. LET ME KNOW your thoughts.
.

If you subscribed:

atom.gif (1053 bytes) CLICK HERE for a Special Request.

If you didn't and haven't, why not?

If this seems a lot about paying think of it as the Subscription Drive Nag. You'll see more.

 

For the BYTE story, click here.

 

For Current Mail click here.

 

 The freefind search remains:

 

   Search this site or the web        powered by FreeFind
 
  Site search Web search

 

 

 

line6.gif (917 bytes)

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Monday February 9, 2004

Long weekend: the column ended up at 11,700 words! The new Intel Prescott system (3.2 GHz), sound cards and video, lots of thoughts on the future of 64-bitness, words about the Mac, and the usual: I am astonished that it got so long, but I find nothing I should leave out. This will start next Monday at www.byte.com.

I haven't yet been out with the dog, and we have to talk to the detectives: our ancient sort of retired housekeeper was mugged last week by two bravoes who knocked her down and stole her purse. LAPD assigned a detective to the case because this was worse than an ordinary purse snatching. Over the weekend a nice lady about 4 miles from here found the purse with papers intact in her trash and the detectives will want to look at it although I doubt they will find anything. Of course we changed all the locks she had keys to, and alerted the dog. Sable is unusual for a Husky, she barks at strangers. We like Huskies because they don't bark a lot, but I am grateful that this one does: she has done more barking in her one year than Sasha did in 16.

So there will be more here and in mail later, but I have these and other errands and it's Noon already, and I am dancing as fast as I can. And if we don't walk Sable she will drive us insane: that's her job. to see that these humans walk a couple of miles every day, and she's good at it.

 

 

 

Monday   TOP    Current Mail

 
This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Tuesday,  February 10, 2004  

  Mail last night and this morning, and a long screed on the upcoming election with some history, all over in mail.

More later. It's late and I am just getting going.

=====================

Good analysis of decision making under uncertainty: the Iraq War.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/021004A.html

And we have the Joint Chiefs on transformation and readiness.

 

And we can all feel safer:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27523-2004Feb10.html

The Reliable Source

By Richard Leiby
Tuesday, February 10, 2004; Page C03

Pressure Cookers: The Explosive Truth!

We all know the Middle East is a pressure cooker that produces terrorism.
But here's a new twist, courtesy of a Department of Homeland Security bulletin issued last week to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Its title: "Potential Terrorist Use of Pressure Cookers."


The memo warns those who search homes, cars and cargo to be suspicious of the culinary appliance, which it defines (per Merriam-Webster) as an "airtight utensil for quick cooking or preserving of foods by means of high-temperature steam under pressure." Pressure cookers, it notes, can be turned into "improvised explosive devices" with the addition of one ingredient -- explosives. Terrorists taught this technique in Afghanistan, according to the bulletin, which cites four international incidents, including one last year when Indian security forces found more than 80 pounds of explosives in two pressure cookers.

"So let me get this straight," one homeland security operative mused. "The pressure cooker is the dangerous part, not the 40 kilograms of explosives that the terrorists placed inside the pressure cookers? Maybe we should regulate them to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands."

Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said yesterday that the bulletin was among several recently circulated to warn agencies that terrorists can turn "innocuous items" into bombs. Presumably, these might include the Cuisinart, the George Foreman Grill and the microwave oven, but the bulletin provides one comfort: "Based on this notification, no change to the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) level is anticipated; the current HSAS level is YELLOW."


 

 

 

Tuesday   TOP  Current Mail

 
 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Wednesday,  February 11, 2004

Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month.

I got this from Roland last night, but things intervened. Note well:

http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/AD20040210.html 

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-007.asp   

THESE ARE CRITICAL ITEMS.

Microsoft yesterday announced what may be the worst security flaw ever discovered in Windows. This flaw affects all NT-based Windows versions from Windows NT 4.0 through Windows Server 2003 64-bit Edition. The problem was reported to Microsoft in July 2003, but it has taken Microsoft more than 200 days to issue a patch for the affected DLL!

Microsoft rates this problem as "critical", and says:

"An attacker who successfully exploited this buffer overflow vulnerability could execute code with system privileges on an affected system. The attacker could then take any action on the system, including installing programs, viewing data, changing data, deleting data, or creating new accounts with full privileges."

This flaw is particularly critical because ASN.1 is so deeply embedded in Windows. The ubiquity of ASN.1 allows this flaw to be exploited via numerous attack vectors, rather than the single vector typically exposed by buffer overrun flaws. This flaw potentially exposes Windows to an attack at least as serious as MS-Blaster. Microsoft recommends, and we agree, that all system administrators should immediately download and apply the patch.

For more information, see:

< http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-007.asp >

Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com/thisweek.html  http://forums.ttgnet.com/ikonboard.cgi

I sent a warning mailing on this to Chaos Manor subscribers and I have this reply:

Just FYI: I applied the fix and looked at the date on the replaced file (msasn1.dll). The new file is dated 9/19/2003 12:05 PM replacing one from a different update dated 7/22/2002 2:05 PM.

Microsoft obviously MADE the fix months ago but didn't include it in any of their bundles so far. They didn't think it important until prodded. Interesting? (but hardly surprising)

Which is astonishing.

================================

2:10 PM Adelphia Cable modem just died. Going over to satellite.

You don't know how much you depend on high speed Internet connections until you lose them. Falling back to satellite is painful. The throughput is just as fast, but the latency is horrible, and far too many web sites use designs that require downloading dozens of little files. Each of those files requires a request that goes to orbit and comes back, and the delays can drive you nuts.

Looking up something can take forever. I'll sure be glad when the cable modem works again.

=====================

Does anyone know how to get the ORIGINAL (DOS) Railroad Tycoon running on a modern machine?  Preferably on a Windows XP system, but even on a Windows 98 system would do. I have the game, but I sure can't manage to get it to open. Even with no sound.

I am hardly an expert on getting DOS games to run on XP systems, but I thought it wouldn't be a problem on a Windows 98; but it was.

Help? I would be willing to buy a Windows version of the old game. The new ones, Tycoon II and III, are horrible; but the old game was neat, and I would like to have it back.

You might want to try http://dosbox.sf.net/

DosBox is "a PC emulator with builtin DOS for running DOS Games primarily". I've recently used it to replay Gateway, Gateway II, and Alone in the Dark on Linux, and a friend of mine has run the Windows XP port successfully. It sucks CPU cycles, but odds are if you've got a DOS-only game it didn't need many CPU cycles anyway. --- Roy Stogner

And in fact that works. It is harder to set up than you might expect in that the instructions aren't entirely clear, but RR Tycoon is now running on a Pentium 4 machine at reasonable speed, complete with sound!

 

Man, this satellite system is misery. Adelphia, please come back...

 


 

 

 

 

 Wednesday  TOP  Current Mail

 

 
 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Thursday, February 12, 2004

Adelphia is back, and all is well in that department now. Hurrah!

Madam Butterfly opening tonight. I fear this production: minimalist, which means no sets and not much in the way of costumes: which makes you wonder, why perform it? Just do it in concert. Costs less.

But perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised. I doubt it.

==============

DOSBOX works, and I have RR Tycoon running, but I can't get the mouse to work. I even tried substituting a regular trackball mouse but that isn't doing it either. Without a mouse I can't select trains -- even on the train report I don't seem to be able to select a train, there must be some trick to the keyboard that I don't know -- so this has become an exercise in frustration without a lot of reward. Oh well. At some point perhaps I will figure it out.

DOSBOX does a lot of things very well. The mouse software seems to have it buffaloed, though.

On the other hand, running in W95 compatibility mode works, the mouse works fine, but there is no sound. Why can DOSBOX do sound but not mouse, while W95 compatibility does mouse but not sound? I suppose at some point I will figure this out.

 

Thursday   TOP  Current Mail

 

 
 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Friday, February 13, 2004

Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month

 

The Cherokees is escaped from Fort Mudge!
To Arms! To Arms!
Three Arms! Four Arms!
Besides, forearmed is forewarned.
Four worned what? Because it it's four worned out old guns I ain't gonna play.

Don't worry, I haven't gone mad. Some of you will recognize that. For the rest, well, I'm sorry you missed it.

On a sadder note,

Julius Schwartz, RIP

He was 88, and I have known him since about 1970. Of course he was a legend before I ever met him, having been Ray Bradbury's agent for Ray's first story. And editor of Superman. I have a Superman pin from Big Julie. You won't have any problems finding obituaries on line or in your newspaper, and they'll have the details right, so I won't try. I'll just say he was one great character, and I'll miss him. Goodbye, you old goat.

===========================

Microsoft Windows Source Code loose in the wilds. I need to think about that one for a while. Another story here.

Meanwhile, tell your kids to be careful out there: http://www.wnbc.com/education/2821097/detail.html

=======================

SO what I need, maybe, is better drivers for the mouse? I have been using mouse.com which works with all DOS programs I know of. The optical mouse works fine in DOS Commanders under DOSBOX, but when I go to RR Tycoon the mouse doesn't work. Doing control-F10 will make the mouse cursor appear, but when you click it in the game nothing happens, and the cursor vanishes as well.

So for now: Windows 98 run in DOS mode on the one Windows 98 machine I have left will play the game just fine, but no sound. DOSBOX on a Windows XP machine has sound but no mouse. Windows 95 compatibility on a Windows XP machine has mouse but no sound. Sigh.

So I go to look for one of the CD's that came with the Intellipoint Mouse -- I must have ten of the mice -- and of course I have thrown them all away thinking I had one in the systems folder.

Why not? So I go looking on line and I can't really find the darned thing, or perhaps I am just dense this morning.

What I need is to be sure I have the latest mouse.com for DOS I guess. One that works with a PS/2 mouse (not serial) on DOS, with luck in DOSBOX.

===

I am told that VDM Sound will do the job. Alas, I can't install vdm sound 2.04: when I try I am asked i I agree to a license, I say yes, and the program stops responding. What I am doing wrong here I don't know. Hah. Actually, it is working but you have to wait quite a while before anything happens.

Alas, I still don't have sound: I have a "run with VDM" option in the rails.bat menu when I right click on it, and that opens the game, but there still isn't any sound. Sigh.

I get the sound just fine if I run in dosbox but have no mouse. I fear VDM isn't doing it and I wonder what I have done wrong.

Then this message from Don Farquahar:

I finally noticed a forum link on the DOSBox site. I did a search there and two people reported having the same mouse problem you're having. Looks like Railroad Tycoon Deluxe (the version copyrighted 1996) works properly. The very earliest, buggiest version of Railroad Tycoon (ver. 455.0) works properly. The more common version 455.03 has the mouse problem. Looks like a problem with DOSBox, especially seeing as Norton Commander works right.
 

I used to have both the very earliest, and the Deluxe versions. But all I have now is the one I've got. Which of course is the one that doesn't work...

 

 

 

 

 

Friday   TOP  Current Mail

 

 
This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Saturday, February 14, 2004

Valentine's Day

If your wife or girl friend has told you it's all right to ignore Valentine's Day and you believed her, please make contact with me. I have a very good bridge deal for you.

=======================

 

Tony Blankley was one of the brains associated with Newt Gingrich when Newt was in the opposition, and remained with him for a while when Newt was Speaker. He has just done a book review that says a lot about how Blankley thinks.

It's well worth your attention. More comments when you have had a chance to read it.


http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040210-082912-8099r.htm

See Greg Cochran's comment
 

==============================

I must be doing something very wrong, and I can't figure out what it is. I have yet to have VDMS do anything right. Attempting to run it for Windows 95 Conquest of the New World: make a copy of the program.exe file; set properties so that it runs under Windows 95; right click; tell it to run with VDMS; I am told that there is no pif file for VDM. I say go open the VDM file manually. I get the message that it opened but failed to initialize.

Try to delete the copy of the program.exe file on my desktop. I am told that I can't delete it, it is in use by another program. There are no other programs running. Reset.

Try again. Try run with VDMS. This time no demand for pif file. Block opens up to say VDM sound loaded and initialized properly but

stub exec failed
dos4gw.exe
No such file or directory.

After which any key closes that down. And I can't delete the file. I close all processes that look expendable. Still can't delete that file.

Clearly I no longer understand DOS and windows 95 emulations. But it's worse than that. Now I have these undeletable icons on my desktop.

Clearly I am going to have to learn more about all this.

---

I have now deleted VDM Sound (which never did me any good anyway, and it's easy enough to reinstall) and I have also deleted the entire directory containing Conquest of the New World. At this point the thing on the desktop is a copy of something that doesn't exist. And it still will not delete.

Of this is a feature it's appalling. I suspect it's a bug in Windows XP.

When we had this kind of problem with older versions of Windows, I could open a DOS window and run NUKE.COM which always managed to delete a program; but nuke is a DOS program and doesn't run properly with Windows XP. I need to dig into this more. I am sure I once understood these things, but that was long ago.

At this point I will be glad just to get this silly icon off my desktop. I cannot imagine what is using it, or why anything thinks it can be used.

There is something else wrong on this system since there are other unremovable icons on the desktop. I have now removed POWER DESK 5.0 which may have something to do with the problems. Let's see what that does. I can always reinstall it.

Except that the removal program won't close and now I can't shut down. Hardware reset. System comes up with garbled video. Power off.

Restart from powered off. Comes up properly.

But I still can't remove that stupid program.

Log off as me. Log on as Administrator for the machine only. Now try to go into Jerryp's account and delete things off the desktop. Still can't do it. Still says this stuff is used by another program. If so, what other program?

Startup Manager doesn't show anything initializing that ought not. This is insane.

=============

OK I have closed off just about anything that could be doing this.

My computer squeeks when I press control sometimes. Clearly this thing is trying to use the sound card. I can't close it and I can't delete it and I can't prevent it from starting on startup.

I need help.

====

It's worse than I thought. I have now started in SAFE MODE, and I STILL cannot remove CNWMAIN.EXE from the desktop. It claims that it is being run by something else. What I can't tell, and worse, there is no way to see what might be calling it. Nothing in startup that I can figure, and I have closed all processes that will close down.

I will now run a defrag program on this. I doubt it will do any good, but I recall that once before I had an unremovable file that was "fixed" by defragging the disk. I must confess this is all baffling. I am using Golden Bow VOPT which works very nicely and is quite fast, and I am confident that it is safe. I had some 15,000 gaps and 9000 fragmented sectors, which isn't all that much on a big disk; this will get rid of all fragments and all but a very few gaps. Packing the programs so that they have no gaps in them will improve performance a little. Data files will get fragmented again fairly soon. Anyway, once that is done we'll see...

========

CNWMAIN.EXE cannot be deleted, and the registry editor says there is no such thing as CNWMAIN in the entire registry. Now what?

==============

OK, but after doing VOPT I was able to MOVE CNWMAIN.EXE into a folder; prior to VOPT it was unmovable. Then I was able to delete the folder, and that deleted the thing entirely. It is gone.

Can anyone explain any of this?

============

Now what? The DNS servers are down: I can connect to any internet address if I know the IP Address, but not by name. I presume that will be fixed by morning. This is getting ridiculous. But there is mail on this.

===================

Using DOSBOX I am attempting to install Conquest of the New World. It is installing, but the "building" phase of installation has taken half an hour and it is not finished yet. But it does look as if progress is being made. Still, a 3 GHz machine ought to be able to simulate and old DOS box?

Trying to run Conquest of the New World in DOSBOX. Ye gods! It takes minutes to initialize. It may get there, but few will care if it takes this long.  The sound and mouse did initialize and appear to work, but the game just isn't coming up: we're stuck at players init ... OK, which is something one doesn't actually see when running the game in W 95 or DOS. And it's stuck there: several minutes have gone by and nothing. Sigh.

Eventually it does come up, but it is impossibly slow. It's not just this machine: I have the same situation with another Pentium 4 system built on a D845 motherboard.

Conquest of the New World will not run in Windows 95 mode because there is a command that creates an exception. Running in DOSBOX doesn't work because it is impossibly slow.

On a Windows 98 machine I can reboot that in DOS mode and then RR Tycoon will run, but I can't figure out the sound card. Most of these things will run in that DOS mode, if you can figure out the sound cards properly. There isn't any such mode in Windows XP systems.

Conquest of the New World runs just fine, complete with sound, in a Windows 98 system, under Windows 98, without much fussing with the configurations. It just runs on the 98 machine, and unlike on a much faster system with DOSBOX it is not jerky or anything. It just works.

Railroad TYCOON runs with mouse but not sound in Windows 95 mode, and with sound but no mouse in DOSBOX. This is also the case on two different machines.

And that's the way it is. If there are tricks to this I haven't figured out, I'd like to know: I need a happy ending before any of this goes in the column.

I suppose I ought to look into a good DOS boot disk, but in most cases the sound card hardware is such that things don't work too well with new systems and old games. And there is the whole memory management situation: I long ago got rid of QEMM and some of the other third party memory management programs that worked so well.

The bottom line is that neither VDM Sound nor DOSBOX seem able to cope with a lot of modern hardware. I suppose I ought not be astonished. The wonder is that any of them work at all.

But see Mail for other items.

 

Saturday   TOP  Current Mail

 
This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Sunday, February 15, 2004

DNS servers are working again, and I can cruise the web. Amazing how one gets used to having that ability and how much one misses it when it's gone.

Considerable material on Iraq over in mail, starting with Greg Cochran's ascorbic views. Cochran must always be taken seriously if only to make one understand why one holds views contrary to his. Physicists have that characteristic. I didn't always agree with my old mentor Herman Kahn, but you had to work hard to understand: which was what he was trying to do, get you to understand why you thought as you did, and to know on what you based your conclusions.

There's a lot more mail which I will get to after I so a gardening stint.

 

 

 

 Sunday   TOP        Current View  

 Current Mail

Entire Site Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 by Jerry E. Pournelle. All rights reserved.

 

birdline.gif (1428 bytes)