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Mail 155 May 28 - June 3, 2001 

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Monday May 28, 2001

Memorial Day 

This is worth repeating:

From Ed Hume:

The things they Carried....

They carried P-38 can openers and heat tabs, watches and dog tags, insect repellent, gum, cigarettes, Zippo lighters, salt tablets, compress bandages, ponchos, Kool-Aid, two or three canteens of water, iodine tablets, sterno, LRRP-rations, and C-rations stuffed in socks. They carried standard fatigues, jungle boots, bush hats, flak jackets and steel pots. They carried the M-16 assault rifle. They carried trip flares and Claymore mines, M-60 machine guns, the M-70 grenade launcher, M-14's, CAR-15's, Stoners, Swedish K's, 66mm Laws, shotguns, .45 caliber pistols, silencers, the sound of bullets, rockets, and choppers, and sometimes the sound of silence. They carried C-4 plastic explosives, an assortment of hand grenades, PRC-25 radios, knives and machetes.

Some carried napalm, CBU's and large bombs; some risked their lives to rescue others. Some escaped the fear, but dealt with the death and damage. Some made very hard decisions, and some just tried to survive. They carried malaria, dysentery, ringworms and leaches. They carried the land itself as it hardened on their boots.

They carried stationery, pencils, and pictures of their loved ones - real and imagined. They carried love for people in the real world and love for one another. And sometimes they disguised that love: "Don't mean nothin'!" They carried memories for the most part, they carried themselves with poise and a kind of dignity. Now and then, there were times when panic set in, and people squealed or wanted to, but couldn't; when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said "Dear God" and hugged the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and God and their parents, hoping not to die.

They carried the traditions of the United States military, and memories and images of those who served before them. They carried grief, terror, longing and their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear: the embarrassment of dishonor. They crawled into tunnels, walked point, and advanced under fire, so as not to die of embarrassment. They were afraid of dying, but too afraid to show it. They carried the emotional baggage of men and women who might die at any moment.

They carried the weight of the world.

THEY CARRIED EACH OTHER.

[The man who wrote "The things they carried" was Tim O'Brien, author of If I Die in a Combat Zone and Going After Cacciato, which won an American Book Award for fiction around 1972. The quote was from the latter. Ed Hume]

Thank you. Also from Ed Hume:

- ----THE DOLLAR BILL

Take out a one dollar bill and look at it. The one dollar bill you're looking at first came off the presses in 1957 in its present design. This so-called paper money is in fact a cotton and linen blend, with red and blue minute silk fibers running through it. It is actually material. We've all washed it without it falling apart. A special blend of ink is used, the contents we will never know. It is overprinted with symbols and then it is starched to make it water resistant and pressed to give it that nice crisp look.

If you look on the front of the bill, you will see the United States Treasury Seal. On the top you will see the scales for the balance, that is, a balanced budget. In the center you have a carpenter's T-square, a tool used for an even cut. Underneath is the Key to the United States Treasury. That's all pretty easy to figure out, but what is on the back of that dollar bill is something we should all know.

If you turn the bill over, you will see two circles. Both circles, together, comprise the Great Seal of the United States. The First Continental Congress requested that Benjamin Franklin and a group of men come up with a Seal. It took them four years to accomplish this task and another two years to get it approved.

If you look at the left hand circle, you will see a Pyramid. Notice the face is lighted and the western side is dark. This country was just beginning. We had not begun to explore the West or decided what we could do for Western Civilization. The Pyramid is uncapped, again signifying that we were not even close to being finished.

Inside the capstone you have the all-seeing eye, an ancient symbol for divinity. It was Franklin's belief that one man couldn't do it alone, but a group of men, with the help of God, could do anything. "IN GOD WE TRUST" is on this currency.

The Latin above the pyramid, ANNUIT COEPTIS, means "God has favored our undertaking." The Latin below the pyramid, NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM, means "a new order has begun."

At the base of the pyramid is the Roman Numeral for 1776. If you look at the right-hand circle, and check it carefully, you will learn that it is on every National Cemetery in the United States. It's also on the Parade of Flags Walkway at the Bushnell, Florida National Cemetery and is the centerpiece of most hero's monuments. Slightly modified, it is the seal of the President of the United States and it is always visible whenever he speaks, yet almost no one knows what the symbols mean.

The Bald Eagle was selected as a symbol for victory for two reasons: first, he is not afraid of a storm; he is strong and he is smart enough to soar above it. Secondly, he wears no material crown. We had just broken from the King of England. Also, notice the shield is unsupported. This country can now stand on its own.

At the top of that shield you have a white bar signifying congress, a unifying factor. We were coming together as one nation. In the Eagle's beak you will read, "E PLURIBUS UNUM," meaning "one nation from many people."

Above the Eagle you have thirteen stars representing the thirteen original colonies, and any clouds of misunderstanding rolling away. Again, we were coming together as one. Notice what the Eagle holds in his talons. He holds an olive branch and arrows. This country wants peace, but we will never be afraid to fight to preserve peace. The Eagle always wants to face the olive branch, but in time of war, his gaze turns toward the arrows.

They say that the number 13 is an unlucky number. This is almost a worldwide belief. You will usually never see a room numbered 13, or any hotels or motels with a 13th floor. But, think about this: 13 original colonies, 13 stripes on our flag, 13 steps on the Pyramid, 13 letters in the Latin above, 13 letters in "E Pluribus Unum", 13 stars above the Eagle, 13 plumes of feathers on each span of the Eagle's wing, 13 bars on that shield, 13 leaves on the olive branch13 fruits, and if you look closely, 13 arrows. And for minorities: the 13th Amendment.

Pass this on. Your children don't know this and their history teachers don't know this. Too may veterans have given up too much to ever let the meaning fade. Many veterans remember coming home to an America that didn't care. Too many veterans never came home at all. Tell everyone what is on the back of the one dollar bill and what it stands for, because nobody else will.

 

 

 

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Tuesday,  May 29, 2001

We begin with some comments on the column posted yesterday.

Hi Jerry:

Having upgraded or installed well over 1000 W2Pro systems I can sympathize with your "thrashing" with the install on your wife's machine in attempting to attach to it your domain. In my experience, here's the simplest way:

1.) Create or use a user account on the server, with normal user privileges for the domain.

2) Install W2K on the local machine either leaving the built-in local admin account as is ("administrator") or do some creative naming. I have found it much easier NOT to add the machine to the domain during the install. Configure it to a local workgroup, which lasts as long as it takes to complete step 3, below. Install no other apps here.

3) Attach the machine to the domain when the install is complete. (My Comp>Network ID>Props).

4) After the obligatory reboot, log on to the domain as the user.

5) Go to control panel>users and passwords, select the domain user, properties, group membership, and select "other" with administrators coming up as default. It will require the local administrator password to assign these same local admin privs to the domain user. To repeat the obvious, this gives the domain user on the machine local administrative privileges (hence installing programs, or whatever). This may not be appropriate for users in large networks, but I have yet to find a small to medium network where local admin privs did anything but make things easier for both the user and the sysadmin.

6) Outlook/Office could be installed normally at this point of course, with old PST files imported. If Office *was* installed under the local admin profile, it sure isn't necessary to uninstall it. Just rerun the install under the new domain user profile. It doesn't add or move files, just resets some pointers and updates the local desktop. And as a final note, the *domain* administrator doesn't have to be given privs on the local machine unless management issues require it - again seldom in small nets.

This sounds more cumbersome than it is - just install locally, attach, and give the new domain user you just created local admin privs.

Regards,

Joe Munson

Thanks. As I said, things worked about the way I should have expected, and I should have given it more thought. Still:

You wrote: I shouldn't have been, of course. Windows 2000 did about what I wanted it to do, letting her (well, me acting in her login name) build the kind of desktop she was used to, and set things up properly, while being unable to do anything really drastic. Under Windows 98 it didn't make any difference what name you logged in under, you had the same privileges and powers. With 2000, you have to be more careful and think things out a bit in advance.

Yes, you should have been. Where is the utility which allows the admin person to say "make this user look like that user"? Where is the utility which allows you to copy a checked-off list of profile settings between two profiles (Desktop? no. Start menu? yes. Toolbars? yes. Background? no. sound scheme? no. et cetera et cetera...)

It doesn't exist.

Yet this is clearly a basic part of network administrative function.

Most (NOT ALL!!)of what you wanted is stored in a semi-centralized location, and you could have gotten a lot of it by simply copying files from one user profile to the next, but that is still fraught with headaches.

You should NOT have been put in that situation.

Microsoft software sucks, their "OS" is anything but, and the only consolation is knowing that when BG winds up in Hell, he's going to be using this borderline useless POS for all eternity.

:-S

BTW. Did I say I don't like Microsoft? (8-P

-- Nicholas Bretagna II Flad &; Associates of Florida, Inc. 352-377-6884

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within" - Mohandas K. Gandhi -

Which is perhaps a bit further than I would go, although there was a moment during the process when I shared that view.

Let the following stand for about a hundred letters:

 

Jerry,
 
Just read your Monday, the 28th, column.
All Web writers are generally applauding the virtues of the upcoming WIN-XP.
It appears the writers and masses will accept the MS Forced Activation Policy without a whimper.
I am appalled to say the least !
 
What can we do ?
Some news group friends don't even know old Dos !
Is the computer actually "dumbing us down" ?
What say you on this matter besides "the learning curve for Linux is steep" ?
 
 
Reader,
Richard A. Pazderski Sr.  PE
raphoenix@fayelectric.com
raphoenix@vallnet.com
 

Mr. Pournelle:

I always read you column wih interest and, for the most part, I think you offer valuable insight into what most home/home office/small business people go through trying to get their computers setup. (here it comes) However, the short shrift you give to Windows XP's licensing agreement (Mickey Mouse indeed!) irritates me. I can think of no worse place to start with "rentalware" than one's operating system. Office, perhaps but not the frigging operating system. It's just too crucial. I have 5 computers at home, all of which came with a valid Windows98 serial number. However, when I have to reinstall, I do so from the same single CD using the same serial number. It's a pain in the neck to have to dig through all of them and find the proper one for the proper PC. Cripes, I bought the thing and (presumably) Compaq hasn't bootlegged the software. It's horrific to think of what would happen to folks like me when a rentalware OS comes to town. Anyways, I can't figure out why MS cares too much about this. I'm not sure of the split but aren't most copies of operating system sold with computers? I don't recall a rush on copies of WindowsME at the local compusa (man, I wish we had a frye's).

Seems like the best place for this would be the office suite. It sure would solve a lot of problems. I do a lot of consulting and, in the course of my job, have to exchange many proposals and presentations. The first question is always, "What version of Office do you have?". In short, my view is applications - yes, OS - no.

Regards,

Andy Harrover The Matrix Group 

 

As I have said to many, I have made my protestations to Microsoft, and I have made it clear I find their new policy upsetting. On the other hand it warrants nothing to get all lathered up over something that has not happened and may not happen.

It is column time and I will have more to say in the next column. Meanwhile, I have to say I am finding XP easy to work with. Not so good that I would put up with stupid licensing policies to have it rather than Windows 2000, but improved enough that if they work out that nonsense I will probably adopt it. 

I do not recommend anyone upgrade to Windows ME. If you have it on your system pre-installed by a solid outfit it will be all right; but don't install it yourself.

Stay tuned.

Jerry,

Thanks for your entertaining and informative columns. I also have a small home network (with ADSL in my case), going out through an old P133 acting a gateway/firewall. I recently came across a software-based "network appliance" approach to gateways - it's called e-smith ( www.e-smith.org ) and installs in about 20 minutes (it's based on Red Hat 7). It has a browser admin tool and is a very neat piece of work, and certainly cheaper than the NetWinder you talked about, assuming one doesn't take out a support contract.

Best wishes,

Des Dougan Director, Information and Computing Services Vancouver Community College

ddougan@vcc.bc.ca

Thanks. I'll try to have a look. As I said in the column, the Netwinder does nothing you can't do yourself; the question is whether you want to take the trouble to learn how to do it.

If Microsoft continues with the licensing policies they seem to be exploring, it is likely that a lot of people will take the trouble to learn Linux. But everyone should understand, they are embarking on a serious journey. It's not like a simple upgrade of Windows...

And for something different:

 

I will relay a bit of folly that we used to engage in as youths. We became quite adept, through trial and error, at throwing .22 rimfire cartridges down onto the pavement so that they would fire. I can attest that through the hearing of the sound of the slug ripping through the leaves of the overhead trees, an unchambered round is capable of firing the bullet at substantial velocities.

If you are feeling brave, lay a .22 round on a flat surface and use a BB gun to ignite the primer. Let me know what you discover. Don't point the bullet at your neighbor's house when you try this... ;^)

Ken Wooley

Let me emphasize that playing with live ammunition of any caliber is a foolish thing to do at best, and the downside could be very serious injury. Don't do it, but then I don't think I have any readers of any age so stupid as to need that advice.

 

Jerry,

Thanks for all the good cybex coverage. I'm so glad you've let people know about the difference between a good (belkin) and a great (cybex) kvm. You are the man.

So, you said your one complaint with the netwinder was the slow response to telnet sessions. Well, I've been playing with linux systems for a while, and I've noticed that if reverse-DNS lookup isn't available for the originating session of a login, the telnet sessions are verrrrrrry slow. This can be solved by pointing the linux system at a dns server that knows about your local hosts, or by configuring the local 'hosts' file (/etc/hosts) to describe your local network.

If you get into your netwinder and add a line to /etc/hosts like:

192.168.0.11 jerryistheman

(and your private network is a 192.168.0.x net and your administration system is .11), then you will see _much_ faster telnet sessions from .11.

There probably is some easier way to improve login speeds by turning off revers-dns lookup, but I haven't found it yet, and this solution works. The great thing about linux is that it is versatile. The bad thing is that it is 'harder and take longer than you think to learn it'. Ah well, rocket science isn't easy either. It's rather hard to figure out if you need to speed up or slow down :)

Thanks, Josh

I will have to try it.

 

 

 

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Wednesday, May 31, 2001

From an Everquest player:

I got an error 2 times while playing everquest. It doesnt make the game freeze or anything, but the error is there when i log out of the games (this only happened 2 times) it states:

Your system is low on vertial memory. Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file. During this process, memory requests for some applications may be denied.

Any idea what this may mean?

Now I know this machine -- I built it -- and it has Windows 2000 Pro, 128 megs memory, a big hard drive, and I tested it nine ways to Sunday on Everquest before I sent it to my young friend. My guess is that my friend does a lot of net surfing and gets a lot of temp files; and there may be a lot of windows opened. That's all I can think of. I never got any such errors when I was running it, nor have I ever seen any such message on ANY of my machines, at least two of which are identical to this one. Anyone know? (I don't need speculations; I have plenty of those already.)

On the subject of virus and DOS attacks:

Hi, Jerry.

You may have heard about Steve Gibson's GRC.com site being taken down by DDoS attacks earlier this month. He now has a lengthy and very scary article about it up on the website. Check out http://grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm 

Best Keith

-- Keith Soltys keith@soltys.ca Host of "Internet Resources for Technical Communicators" since 1994 Now at http://www.soltys.ca/techcomm.html

Of course Gibson deliberatly makes himself the target of such attacks which doesn't justify people making them. He's always worth reading, but one wants to think critically about some of his pronouncements. At least that is my view.

But if you haven't read the story here's the digest:

Hi Jerry...

Steve Gibson's site - http://www.grc.com  - has been the victim of increasingly powerful Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attacks from almost 500 compromised Windows PCs. They were able (finally) to get it completely filtered (his tale of woe is at http://grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm  ) but if the compromised systems had been Windows XP based, nothing could have been done. At least, not yet.

Steve is calling for a concerted effort to make MS aware of the problem, and put out a fix (perhaps in a service pack) or the Internet as we know it will be brought to its knees by a bunch of malicious 13 year-olds.

--Jerry Wright -- jwright@gemsi.com

Indeed.

 

 

And for something else to think about:

Dr. Pournelle:

The following two items were taked from SkyOpen Digest 666, put out by Skywatch International, Inc. The first one reports a "nearly Hiroshima-sized" meteor explosion several hundred miles off LA. In cosmic terms, of course, "several hundred miles" is *very* close indeed. (Maxwell Smart: "Missed it by THAT much!") In the second one, "A Las Vegas hotel tycoon is seeking permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to build a private space station, something he contends can be done in the next three years."

Then again, back in the '60s, Hilton was taking about a space hotel, too.

Regards,

Steven

*************

Military Warning System Also Tracks Bomb-Size Meteors http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/29/science/29ROCK.html 

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

In the early darkness of April 23, as Washington was beginning to relax after the spy plane crisis in China, alarm bells began to go off on the military system that monitors the globe for nuclear blasts. <snip>

And people wonder why we need space based military defense systems.

You have probably already heard this by now, but just in case you haven't, the best solution is to add Roberta's domain account to the Local Administrators group in the user manager. That way she becomes an administrator on that machine only. That is now standard practice in the company where I work.

I spent a lot of time learning how this all fits together and it was a frustrating experience, albeit in the end I had to realise that it makes perfect sense. Basically, your local users and your network users are very separate, even if they have the same name and password (as you write in the article). If you created a "daffyduck" local administrator account, you wouldn't be able to get access to the network without specifying a network username and password as well. If the local username and the network username is the same and the passwords are the same (such as when you have an "Administrator" on the local machine with the same password as the network one), you won't be prompted, because Windows just tries your local logon credentials. But you are still not logged on to the network. That results in very subtle things, such as an inability to use certain network administration tools (performance monitor another machine for example) or accessing shares or services on machines that are not PDCs or BDCs; Since they are not allowed to service a logon request, and you are not logged onto the domain but only individual shares on the PDC/BDCs, they will just refuse you access.

One word of caution: In one company, they realised that they could make it a standard to add the "Domain Users" group to the "Local Administrators" group on all machines. This certainly does the trick in that every user is automatically an administrator on their local machine without being administrators on the network or the servers. Unfortunately it also means just that - so everyone on the network gets full access to the C$ share on all other machines on the network. The IT guys did get a bit flustered when I showed them the contents of their harddrives from another machine...

Regards, Frans Ploen

Thanks. I will have more on this in the column.

 

 

 

 

 

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Thursday,

Here is the info culled from email from Walton Ferrell, a public relations person at the Smithsonian National Air And Space Museum:

"On June 6, it is our privilege to welcome Ben Bova to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum for a very special evening that will conclude with a live chat with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Is there an effective way for either my office or your organization to get this information to your members in this area?

On June 6, from his home in Sri Lanka, Sir Arthur C. Clarke will chat live with writer Ben Bova, astronaut Gene Cernan, and space historian Fred Ordway at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. " A Conversation with Sir Arthur C. Clarke" is this year's offering for the annual Wernher von Braun Memorial Lecture.

I need your help in generating attendance.

The information is now on our web site at www.nasm.edu , we have a press release that could be added to a list serve, and we have a limited number of programs that could be mailed.

I welcome any guidance from you and your organization.

Sincerely,

Walton Ferrell

WFerrell@nasm.si.edu

Office of Public Affairs National Air and Space Museum Sixth Street at Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC 20560-0321 (202) 357-1552

-- Graham P. Collins, SFWA Webmaster webmaster@sfwa.org http://www.sfwa.org/

 

 

 

 

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Friday

Trying to write

 

 

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Saturday,

Column and fiction

 

 

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Sunday, June 4, 2001

Dr. Pournelle:

Here's some X-prize info, in typical British style, tongue set firmly in cheek...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1368000/1368674.stm 

Steven

Monday, 4 June, 2001, 12:59 GMT 13:59 UK The future of flight

An attempt by the US space agency Nasa to launch the world's fastest plane has ended in failure. But quicker, cheaper space planes could eventually become a reality, writes BBC News Online technology correspondent Mark Ward.

Ladies and gentlemen, the aerospace industry would like to apologise for the continued delays to all flights for orbital destinations.

Delays are due to an acute shortage of personnel and aircraft capable of reaching the high altitudes and speeds required. Passengers can transfer to government-run rocket flights to orbit, but they should be aware that a supplement of approximately $20 million will be added to the standard fare.

The industry would like to take this opportunity to thank passengers for their patience in waiting over 40 years for a commercial flight to the edge of the atmosphere, low orbit space stations or more distant destinations.

<snip>

Indeed.

Subject: I hope you voted against this:

http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/uranus_experiment_000516.html  -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Roland Dobbins 

In general I take little part in the Nebula contests. Few working writers have time to read all the stuff that gets nominated, sometimes by small cliques of people voting for each other, and the dramatic awards are unlike any others to begin with; I neither voted for nor against it; I think the rules require that the dramatic awards are given by a small committee with expertise rather than being voted on by the general membership of the Science Fiction Writers of America, the theory being that this is for a script, few will have seen the script -- it need not have ever been performed -- and few will know how to evaluate a script. If this seems designed to give the award to particular people, perhaps so. The general membership does vote on the other story awards, but as I said, few working writers will have had a chance to read everything nominated. I did vote for Greg Bear's novel, which did in fact win; but even there I was unfair in that I hadn't read all the others. It makes for a dilemma, but then awards often do.

I don't believe this particular effort won anything.

Subject: "If I were a rich man..."

http://www.cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/News/06/03/obit.quinn.02/index.html

 -- Roland Dobbins 

I have mixed emotions about Anthony Quinn, but we will miss him. RIP et LE...

Fair warning, that CNN site pops up another little window you'll have to close. I suppose there is a way to prevent those from popping out unwanted, but I don't know it, and their existence keeps me from wasting too much time on the web.


For about two or three years i was a regular byte buyer until for some reason or the other i stopped buying it. Recently i started checking up on Byte by means of the website. My impression is that Byte is still devoted to praising windows wich started to annoy me in the past.

What's up ? Isn't the OS scene interesting enough with Linux, Qnx, BSD or is that a misconception of mine towards Byte Magazine ?

> Regards, > > Joris Lambrecht > _____________________________________ > > Ebone Operations - NOC IP > - NOC-IP line +32 2 658 5251 > - Write us at noc@ebone.net > - Visit us at http://www.ebone.com >

I hadn't known that was what this was about. I can be a unhappy with Windows as anyone; but as I have written, there is a considerable investment in time and energy involved in converting to Linux or some other UNIX type or derivative. If you don't know that and try using one of them you will quit and quickly. 

I would have thought Moshe Bar's articles to be among the most readable ways to get into alternative OS systems; and I thought I had devoted a bit of time to them as well. And having said all that, it is still the case that most readers use Windows will they nill they, and must survive its joys and idiosyncrasies and downright horrors.

Given that my motto seems to be "I do these silly things so you don't have to" it's hard to construe what I do as paeans of praise, but I suppose you can believe anything if you try hard enough.

I was reading your May 28 column and your comments on the Netwinder vs. building your own Linux gateway. For something equivalent to the Netwinder but runs on any old box you have lying around, check out the E-Smith Server and Gateway. Http://www.e-smith.comhttp://www.esmith.org . This product is a piece of cake to set up. It serves as a Modem/DSL/Cable sharing gateway, filewall, webserver, mailserver, etc.

-- Gary Walsh Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada gwalsh@dsl.ca http://homepages.dsl.ca/~gwalsh/

I have found by and large that "any old box" turns out to be a bit of exaggeration, but perhaps not. Do understand: I write what used to be called "The User's Column" addressed to people who are trying to get some work done, perhaps have a bit of fun, see what the borderlands are like without getting too many arrows in their backs, and retain their sanity. I can't and don't try to do everything.

I will look into this, but I do caution people that "any old box" with an unfamiliar operating system may work splendidly, and may turn out to be a time sink that ends the experiment before it starts.

 

 

 

 

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