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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 113 August 7 - 13, 2000

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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 place is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE.

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See also the New Order page, which tries to make order of chaos. These will be useful.
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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.
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Monday  August 7, 2000

Happy Birthday To Me...

Column time. Short shrift. Lots to post but no time. New machines in operation.

Got a mailing out to subscribers. If you subscribe and did not get it, wait a day and see if your name is in badmail (not yet updated from last time, so do wait). Then let me know.

Dan Bush, Earthlink rejects you (and thus the whole list); please send me a different address.

And now to work.

DOES ANYONE KNOW how to migrate "favorites" from one instance of Internet Explorer to a new instance on ANOTHER MACHINE?  It wants to Export to Netscape. I suppose I could do that: export to Netscape and then Import to the other machine but this seems tedious.

Also, is there any way to migrate the passwords save on one machine to another? Cookies? I am moving major operations from Princess to Regina, and I keep finding little problems!

And I LOVE this place. I got this in minutes. It works, too.

Hi Doctor Pournelle,

Migrating favorites is easy.  They're simply small link files stored in Documents and Settings/user_name/Favorites.  Same with Cookies.

Thanks for all the good work.

Mark Bridgers

Thanks!!

So I am halfway there: Regina is now doing most of the work, and Front Page is over here, but the Chaos Manor site files are still on Princess. I'll move them when I have time to allow a complete upload to Pair, since moving the files will change their dates, and Front Page Publish will want to Do Something about THAT.  Aargh. Maybe it won't be so bad if I PUBLISH to the right place. We will see, we will see.

But WOW is Regina ever fast...

We had a minor glitch in which ONE (and only one) BYTE.com  subscriber got an unwanted email from another division of CMP. Turns out it had to do with the mail bouncing, and when it was retried the wrong message was sent. The good news is that not only was the problem fixed, but it got attention at the highest levels in CMP, who viewed the matter very seriously (as they should have). When we get BYTE.COM registration in place they will, I am assured, be just as careful. We are not part of the Spam Brigade.

AND THEN I GOT:

>Column deadline shortly. When I am late, I get increasingly polite letters >from Tokyo (they have to translate the column and get it printed and if I >am late that creates a real problem for them). So I had better get to work.

Ah. So that's where your paycheck comes from. That explains your refusal to take seriously my earlier statements about the Japanese Imperial family's war looting.

By the way, your earlier writer misinformed you, or else his Windows setup is highly unusual. Mine (Win 98-1 with all updates) runs thus:

IE5 History is in \WINDOWS\History\History.IE5 Cookies are in \WINDOWS\Cookies Favorites are in \WINDOWS\Favorites

Simple, no? Been hit with any chemtrails lately?

Praeger

Of course Praeger --he or she or it -- is talking about earlier versions of Windows; since I use Windows 2000 for communications, the folders are precisely where Bridges said they would be, at least on Princess. On Regina that ain't true even though she's running Windows 2000 Professional as well -- there is no Documents and Settings Folder, a story goes with that, and it's in the column -- but there's no WINDOWS folder, nor are those folders directly under the WINNT folder. As to the rest of that note, I don't recall the conversation he or she refers to (Damon Knight likes yeye as the gender neutral pronoun; it's ugly enough that I am seldom tempted to use it), but I rather resent the implication. I sell translation rights to a number of countries in a number of languages, I was in Japan in 1950 and again more recently, and while yes, I make part of my revenue from Japanese rights, how is that relevant to the truth or lack of truth of historical statements?  I am no expert on pre-WW II Japanese history and see no reason to become one. I'm old enough to remember WW II, but just barely;  but I assure you that my views of US/Japanese relations are not colored by my contribution to the balance of payments by collecting money for electrons I export to Japan...  But that is for another discussion when I don't have deadlines.

SWORD OF ARAGON!  I used to have this game; it was my game of the month and possibly of the year, about 9 years ago. I would have sworn I kept it, because I liked it a lot; but when I went looking for it yesterday I could not find it. It came with an odd copy protection scheme in which you had to use the "poster" that came with it to identify the symbolic pictures of fortresses, after which you answered a question about the fortress. I use the Xerox to copy those pictures and pasted them into the Rules book, so all I needed was the user's guide in order to run the program. I expect the game is useless without that poster although I think I recall there was some kind of release on a collection disk accompanied by some other form of copy protection.  Anyway, if anyone has a copy of Sword of Aragon, or knows how I can find one, I would appreciate that. I did manage to get Chaos Overlords, thanks to all.

And that was quick: I have made arrangements to get a copy.  Thanks to all.

And I am nearly done with the column. Praise be.

 

 

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Tuesday, August 8, 2000

Coming Up for Air

The column is in, my office is a mess, and I have to dig out. I also have to get some work done on Mamelukes, and I am supposed to go work with Niven. There never seems to be quite enough time.

Regina has now taken over most of the duties formerly done by Princess. There are a few oddities largely caused by having Outlook.pst on a server rather than on the same disk as Outlook; it seems that even with 100 base T connections it takes longer to search folder and apply rules than it would if the file were local. I may move it local again just for that.

It will mean doing the rules over.  Sigh.  This is mostly in the column.

Update on the two brothers with the stuck truck

http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0807g.htm 

..................................................

In modern mathematics, algebra has become so important that numbers will

soon only have symbolic meaning.

Mike Zawistowski 

 

 

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Wednesday, August 9, 2000

I need a good icon of me eating a crow. Anyone got one?

Seems that I pointed you to a spam promotion site. Sorry.

Someone mentioned 

http://www.friendsinbusiness.com/ 

in mail and when I went there it was set up to show a phoney letter promoting kidney harvesting: you could go to a clinic and sell a kidney, or send a deposit and get a do it yourself kidney harvesting kit. I thought it was pretty funny. And that is what I saw when I went to that site. It was the only thing I looked at. ALAS.  Now, I find from some of you who looked at it more thoroughly that the purpose of the site is not precisely something I would recommend. My apologies. I usually check out recommendations more carefully. They got me with this one.

Thanks to Mr. Rice!

And NOW I get THIS:

Jerry,

You wrote:

"BEWARE: [addendum August 9, 2000] When I went to that site I saw a joke letter promoting a kidney harvesting scheme that I thought was funny. This turns out NOT to be an anti-spamming site, but probably a spam promotion outfit. MY APOLOGIES!!! "

I too visited www.friendsinbusiness.com  which seems to be the home business of a little old lady down here in Oceanside. I looked at her scambusteer 101 material, and she has a good grasp on why most home biz oportunities are scams. I have not gone over the whole site yet, but I haven't seen any spam promotion stuff. I hate spammers, and for one in my neighborhood I would do something legal.

Can you provide more info either in View or Mail?

thanks

jim dodd

What I have not had time to do is spend any time looking there. Given the mail I thought I'd better get a notice up; Perhaps my other correspondents are not as careful as you. I will look at it when I can, and perhaps end up recommending it, but just now I am swamped, and just pulling all references will not be fair either.  So: my official position is I HAVE NOT THE FOGGIEST NOTION OF WHAT THAT SITE PROMOTES. I did think the harvest your own kidneys promotion was pretty funny.

 

 

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Thursday, August 10, 2000

I am off to Niven's for work and will stay there overnight, so I probably will not update this until Saturday. Meanwhile this:

It looks like our intrepid off-roading duo are starting to get out of their mess with some hard work and the some very helpful locals. Here's the story so far....

Aug 4: Stuck-truck Texas brothers: "Too bad we can't rewind" http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0804e.htm 

Aug 5: 'Champions of stuck' are trucking in notoriety http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0805e.htm 

Aug 6: Texans stranded on slope get help http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0806c.htm 

Aug 7: Humbled Texans keep on truckin': http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0807g.htm 

Kind Regards, Bruce.


Well, I have spent the day at Niven's and we have done a chapter, and all is well. It has been a GOOD day. 

With one exception: Intellectual Capital seems to be folding up. They have released ownership of my contributions back to me, but there seems to be no plan to continue the column; perhaps, though, the new owners will have a different story. I have only heard from Pete du Pont and Bob Kolasky so far, and they don't know. I think we will all miss Intellectual Capital, one of the best weekly magazines I knew of. I enjoyed working with them.

Bob Kolasky was one of the best editors for my work I have known. He was able to shorten my stuff without harming it. That's a rare ability.

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Friday, August 11, 2000

Still at Niven's. We have 8500 words of BURNING TOWER and an outline to the end of Part One of the book. Real progress.

And another thousand words this morning. Moving right along... Now to go hike.

Back from Niven's. There was a fire on the Chatsworth rocky hill we were on, and it was upwind, meaning we got off there fast. No problems except traffic was horrible all around there for hours, delaying our getting to dinner, but the company was pleasant and it was time for conversation anyway. Long swim, leisurely dinner, and now I am home. We have just about 10,000 words of Burning Tower and a good outline through the part we are working on. Now for Mamelukes. If I can write that well for that book, it will be done soon enough. 

A really good day.

 

 

 

 

 

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