Author: Dave Farquhar

12/11/2000

Dave Farquhar General

Hardware upgrades. CPU prices are pretty flat, while memory prices are still under $1/MB, even for Crucial ($92 with free shipping as of last night). The Mushkin 222 memory, recommended by some enthusiasts as faster and more stable still, is $114 for a 128-meg stick. They’ve just revised the design; this is the pricing on the older 2.0 revision. I’m guessing that’s a “while they last” price. The rev 3.0 is $133 for a 128-meg stick.

While I used Mushkin memory years ago and had no problems with it, I haven’t used this stuff. I’m just going by what people are telling me.

If you’re looking to get something immediately, this is a good time of course. Prices are pretty steady on CPUs, memory and motherboards. But if you can wait a couple of months, it’d be a good idea to do so. You’ll get better performance out of DDR and an Athlon with the 266 MHz FSB. The FSB and memory bandwidth are much, much more important to overall system performance than raw clock speed. Buying a 1.2 GHz system right now is comparable to what buying a 66 MHz 486 with only ISA slots would have been in 1993. The CPU just isn’t the bottleneck anymore. DDR will help some.

How to buy memory. Whatever you do, please don’t buy commodity memory. Don’t just go to PriceWatch, search on RAM, and buy the cheapest stuff. You have no idea who made the module, who made the chips, what grade the chips were (some chips that get put onto commodity modules were never certified for use in PCs and were only suitable for use in other devices like pagers), whether the module may have been repaired… A lifetime warranty is no insurance. Bottom-feeder dealers know the majority of users will never trace problems back to them and exchange the memory. Buy name-brand memory, please.

If you’re in the shop and you’re buying loose sticks, here’s what to look for. Look for a sticker or silkscreen on the board that states the manufacturer. Make sure it’s made by a company you’ve heard of. Make sure the RAM chips are all made by the same manufacturer, and that they actually have a manufacturer’s name on them. Chips that only have a country of origin on them should have never gone onto a PC memory module. Mismatched chips are a likely sign of after-the-fact modification. Don’t buy.

If you want to get really sneaky, check the dates of manufacture on the chips. It’s a 4-digit code. A chip manufactured today would read 0050 (read year 2000, week 50). If the chips don’t have the same date, don’t buy. It’s probably refurbished. If the date isn’t very recent, don’t buy. It’s probably used. Dealers generally don’t keep huge inventories of memory because it’s not profitable to do so–memory prices are just too volatile.

Yes, the Cubs’ fans deserved Mark Grace. I agree with Frank McPherson on that. Cubs fans deserve Joe DiMaggio, for that matter–not that there’ll be another Joltin’ Joe. I guess I understand the fans putting up with the crap Cubs management unleashes on them, because I put up with the Royals’ lunkhead moves, but at least the Royals value loyalty. Then again, my clan’s motto is “fide et fortitudine” (fidelity and fortitude in Gaelic) so maybe I value loyalty more than most people do these days.

12/10/2000

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

Linux for the rest of us. I find the bloatware in current Linux distributions somewhat annoying. It’s nice to have tons and tons of free software right off the bat, but how much of that software is actually useful to the majority of people? Windows users complain about lack of software for Linux, to which Linux zealots usually retort “I have 9 gigs worth of software installed on my PC and didn’t have to pay a dime for any of it, and it’s all legal!”

It’s not really the quantity of software that Windows users are complaining about; it’s type and quality. Give a Windows user a fast and stable Web browser, an instant messaging client, a mail client/PIM, a fully-featured graphical newsreader, a word processor and a spreadsheet that can cleanly handle Word and Excel files, and a fully functional personal finance program, and that’s all they need to be happy. Most of that exists for Linux, or is in development. Fine. Linux is neck-and-neck with the Mac in the race to be #2 on the desktop. Fine.

To anyone who’s read Optimizing Windows, my biggest gripe with Linux ought to be obvious. I spent a good deal of time editing Windows INF files by hand trying to figure out how to get Windows 95 to install in 17 megabytes’ worth of disk space. I presented this, that, and another tweak to minimize Windows’ RAM and CPU usage so that it could be tolerable on a low-end Pentium or 486. Linux fans rightly point to Linux’s modest requirements. They’re very proud of those 2-meg 386SXs running Linux 1.0. But they’re in an arms race to see who can create the GUI with the most eye candy (and highest CPU/memory requirements). Wanna bring a former 550-MHz powerhouse to its knees? Run the Enlightenment window manager on it.

That’s easy enough to fix. Just install IceWM and make it your default window manager, then your 120 MHz Pentium feels OK again. But what of the minimum disk space requirements? Most current distros are difficult to install in less than 500 megs. That sounds awfully Microsoftian to me. True, you can rip a lot of it out, which you can’t always do with MS. But do you know what you can safely get rid of?

That’s what makes the likes of VectorLinux and Peanut Linux attractive. I’ve got a stack of 170-meg drives. I’ve got a 1-gig drive sitting in my 486 because I couldn’t make Red Hat 6.2 small enough to fit on one of the small drives. Five hundred megs for something whose primary job is to route packets is ridiculous. Vector or Peanut will fit. These won’t take forever to download either, because Vector’s less than 70 megs and Peanut’s about 60. I know a company that thinks that’s a reasonable size for a Web browser.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be experimenting with these distros sooner rather than later. I’d love to liberate that gig drive, for instance.

US vs. UK English. I’m trying to write my new Shopper UK article in UK English because I feel bad about the number of edits my UK editors are having to make. Here’s what I can tell, so far, about the differences:

Extra letters. color=colour, favorite=favourite, program=programme, ton=tonne

Sparing use of the last letter of the alphabet. optimize=optimise

Pluralization, er, pluralisation: In US English, a group of people is refered to in the singular, unless that group is in disagreement. In explaining how old software can be better than new software, I drew a musical analogy: Just like Joy Division is better than ‘N Sync, old DOS games are better and certainly more original than many of the newer Windows games. That’s proper US English. Proper British English, from what I can tell, is “Just like Joy Division are better…” In the States, saying that implies that the members are in disagreement as to whether they’re better than ‘N Sync (the three surviving members would not disagree about that; they’d utter a number of profanities and then say, “Of course we were better than ‘N Sync!”).

But I can’t, and won’t try to, mimic the sentence structure of a British writer. I can’t pinpoint the differences, but when I read something written in English, I can almost always tell when the writer is from the British Isles. (Other English-speaking countries like South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, throw me–but I haven’t read much stuff from there. Canadian writers sound like U.S. writers but you’ll find hints of cultural differences.) You can’t escape what you are, and if I try to sound like anything but a Missourian, it’ll come across as insincere and fake. We definitely don’t want that.

12/09/2000

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

I can’t let this stupid move by the Cubs go. And I thought the Royals could do some stupid things. But the Royals never let George Brett walk away. The Greatest Ever flirted with following Whitey Herzog over to the Cardinals in the early 1980s, so the Royals locked him up with a long-term contract and the promise of a front-office position after he retired. The result: Brett had some great years and some not-so-great years, but no matter how he was hitting and how his team was playing, people flocked to Royals Stadium just to see him.

Mark Grace is the closest thing baseball has to a George Brett today. He hits left handed and has a sweet swing. And he’s been playing first base for the Cubs since the Harding administration. OK, since 1988. And he was near and dear to every true Cub fan’s heart.

I remember when I first saw him play. Leon Durham had pretty much played himself out of a job as the Cubs’ first baseman. My dad and I thought Rafael Palmeiro was the Cubs’ first baseman of the future. Then I saw Mark Grace play in a spring training game. Wow! He had gold glove written all over him. If the ball was in the same time zone as him, he grabbed it. And at the plate, he reminded me a little of Brett. Solid contact hitter, good for lots of doubles and the occasional homer.

Within two years, Grace was a clubhouse leader. In the 1990s, he led the majors in hits and doubles. Without a doubt, he was the Mr. Cub of the 90s. He had offers to go elsewhere. But he wanted to be one of The Rare Ones. He wanted to be like Brooks Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski and George Brett, who spent the entirety of their long careers with one team, and spend his whole career with the Cubs. He wanted that more than a World Series ring (good thing, because the Cubs won’t be headed there any time soon). A class act. Loyalty was more important than glory.

But now there’s another young left-handed-hitting first baseman coming up, and he’ll play for less money, and Grace had an injury-plagued season, so now he’s Leon Durham. Only instead of being banished to Cincy, he’s banished to Arizona.

Getting rid of Grace makes good business sense. He’s expensive. He doesn’t hit for as much power as you’d like from a corner infielder. He may never hit .330 again–if you can’t get 40 homers from your first baseman, it’s nice to get 200 hits. The fans will miss Grace, but they’ll come out to see the Cubs regardless of who’s on the field. They could replace Mark Grace with Leon Durham and Sammy Sosa with Keith Moreland and the fans would still come. Cubs fans are like that. And management knows it.

You can replace Grace’s bat, and you can live without his glove. But you can’t replace the man. That was true of a lot of the men the Cubs have let go over the years: Bill Buckner. Andre Dawson. Rick Sutcliffe. Greg Maddux. Joe Girardi. Rafael Palmeiro. And now, Mark Grace. These are the kind of men whose presence makes the other eight guys on the field play better. The Cubs never understood that. Never will.

And that, I submit, is the reason the Cubs are perennial losers. They manage to keep the occasional outstanding individual in a Cub uniform (Ernie Banks, Ryne Sandberg), but for the most part they treat players as commodities, and with a few rare exceptions, field a team of forgettable players day in and day out.

The Cubs didn’t deserve Mark Grace. The real tragedy is it took Mark Grace 13 years to figure that out. Good luck in Arizona, Mark. Go get that World Series ring you were willing to deny yourself. Then head back to Wrigley Field and ask your old boss Andy MacPhail if he wants to touch it.

Thanks for all of the birthday well-wishes. Lunch was good. Dinner was good. The homemade peanut brittle from my aunt was even better. She always sends me peanut brittle for my birthday, it’s always great, and it always lasts me about three days. At about 10 p.m. I was carrying on about how I had about 45 minutes of youth left. I was born around 10:45, you see, and a long time ago I set 26 as the age when you become old. So, speak up sonny, I can’t hear you. But don’t torque me off; I’m apt to hit you with me cane.

And thanks to Al… for the greeting, for the page, and for the hits. I had a spike yesterday. Eighth wonder of the Wintel world I seriously doubt (both because I’m not that good, and because neither half of Wintel would claim me: I do a lot of Microsoft-baiting and probably even more Intel-baiting, mostly because I just can’t stand Andy Grove), but I appreciate the sentiment.

12/08/2000

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , , ,

~Mail follows today’s post~

It’s my birthday today. Birthdays cease being a big deal at some point; maybe after age 21 (though the big deal about my 21st wasn’t my age; I had a program for my C class due at midnight–all I remember is it involved linked lists, I hate linked lists, and the only good thing you could say about my program was it did compile–and I had copy editing and Irish history finals the next day). I’m going out tonight; last night I ate out and went to a concert, so I guess I’m treating myself right in spite of this not being a big deal.

I realized at one point a few weeks ago that I’d accomplished everything I’d set out to do by age 25, though not always in the way or quantity I’d hoped. That’s a nice realization to come to. Hopefully I’ll have similarly nice things to say about my second quarter-century.

I spent yesterday continuing my dual-boot experiments. For some reason, all of my motherboards want to think my >8.4-gig drives are half-gig jobs. I don’t get it. They’re all reasonably new; but even my year-old Abit BP6 is doing it. Normally not a problem, but some utilities software yells “out of bounds!” when it sees it. Using a UDMA-66 controller solves the problem (the BP6 has an HP366 controller built in, and I have Promise Ultra-66 I keep around), but that alerts me to another problem: XOSL doesn’t want to work with either controller for some reason. I e-mailed the author about that; I know I’m not the only one who uses these things because a lot of people buy the line that they need a UDMA-66 or UDMA-100 controller if they buy such a hard drive. I’m hoping he’s got a workaround of some sort.

I’m hoping I can find a solution before deadline; otherwise the 98/Me dual-boot article will have problems. I can give my editor a different article–there’s certainly a lot about Windows optimization I’ve left unsaid in the seven pages I’ve written so far–but seeing as he specifically asked me to investigate this, I’ll feel bad if I don’t deliver something, or if I deliver something with significant strings attached. Strings are good for guitars, not computers.

And a good question. Someone asked me today about something that I interpreted to be about the build-to-order strategy of PCs, a strategy which Dell and Gateway have ridden to such great success. I held them up as examples that work, and Apple as an example that right now isn’t. They have 11 weeks’ worth of unsold inventory built up at the moment and expect to bleed cash again this quarter. I guess the lesson there is that having huge databases to analyze can help, and computerization of the ordering process can help you buy exactly what you need right when you need it, but computers are no better than humans at predicting the future. I.T. won’t solve all of a business’ problems.

I have no idea if that’s what she was looking for in an answer, but I think that bit about IT not solving all problems is something not everyone gets yet. Computers solve a lot of problems. They also raise expectations greatly, and they (and we) don’t always live up to them.

~~~~~~~~~~

From: “John W. Braue, III” <braue@nospam.ratsnest.win.net>
Subject: For the Greater Good
In your daynotes for 6 December 2000, you quote Chris Miller as saying:  “Lawbreaking is relative. Your greatest presidents, Lincoln and Roosevelt, bent the rules for the greater good[…]”.

Didn’t Hitler and Stalin bend (and, indeed smash all to pieces) rules for the greater good?  What they proclaimed to be the greater good, of course, but it’s difficult to hold a reasoned discussion when the tanks are bearing down on one…

If the U.S. is a democracy, then let us acknowledge , as Mark Bridgers wrote, that the law is the Will of the People (with, granted, a certain time lag), and that opposing it by demonstrations and civil disobedience, even for a “greater good”, is itself Undemocratic and, _ipso facto_, evil (how many people would be willing, in this day and age. to deny the truth of _vox populi, vox Dei_?).  If it is a republic, then let us acknowledge that the law is indeed the law, and then breaking it and getting away with it does not justify either that action or future repetitions of it.  And, if the U.S. neither, let us can all of this election foolishness, and get down to the serious business of coups, revolutions, and civil wars to determine which _caudillo_, machine pistol in hand, is going to enforce his vision of the “greater good”.

John W. Braue, III

~~~~~

Well, I didn’t want to think of it in exactly those terms, but yes, they did.

The best time to make a decision is usually not when we’re caught up in the moment, as that leads to haste. I find myself agreeing with what you say and not really having anything to add.

~~~~~~~~~~

From: Gary Mugford
Subject: My script and Bless the Sound Card

Dave,

“The guys over at Junkbusters have a different solution. Make ’em sweat. They’ve even got a script with questions to ask. Visit them if you’re sick of the bother.
“Print it out, then keep it by the phone. And when you pick up the phone and get that tell-tale delay, followed by an unfamiliar voice who mispronounces your name, pounce. “Is this a telemarketing call?” (That question weeds out the other annoying phone calls, like Chrysler and MCI Worldcom calling up because of billing problems–sorry, you’ve gotta deal with those on your own.) If the answer is yes, then keep going. “Could you tell me your full name please? And a phone number, area code first?” And they’ve got 12 other questions, where those came from.”

For years, I’ve had the dickens to try and talk family members OUT of talking with telemarketers. My mom used to get involved in the talk, apologize profusely for declining and then be mad upon hanging up. I gave her a copy of my script to use:

“I’m sorry, I must interrupt you. We do not accept over-the-phone solicitation. Please feel free to mail us literature. Thank you very kindly for calling, good-bye.” THEN HANG UP. She wouldn’t use it.

This works pretty well, except for the ones that DID manage to get mom to send them something. Long after the parental units were retired and moved down to the Lake, I would still get phone calls at their number. I finally went to the trouble to record the little speechlet and put the file on the toolbar to press whenever I got ONE of THOSE phone calls. Now, it’s answer the phone, realize what’s happening, double-click and hold the phone DIRECTLY over my speaker and then hang-up.

GM

~~~~~

That approach works too. The Junkbusters solution is legally binding in the States, though I’m sure Canadian laws are different so up north your approach is probably at least as good.

Of course, if I were to take your approach and I happened to be listening to some doom-and-gloom Sisters of Mercy or Joy Division when the call happened, that’d make some nice background–serenade them with some music that’s definitely an acquired taste while they get my schpiel.

Another suggestion I’ve heard was to put them on hold for five minutes, then come back on and sing showtunes very badly until they hang up.
~~~~~~~~~~

From: “Michal Kaznowski” <michalkaznowski@nospam.yahoo.com>

Subject: Re[2]: DPMI error while zipping windows

Hello Dave,

Monday, December 04, 2000, 3:06:44 PM, you wrote:

DF> Try downloading this. Put the executable files from this archive into the same directory as your Info-Zip executables. Let me know ASAP if that doesn’t fix it. (This is as painful as some Linux programs’ installations!)

Done.  It will probably work when I have mastered the syntax.  At the moment after running the csdpmi executables I get

ZIP I/O error no such file or directory

with your command line. I have also tried making a windows.zip file for zip to write to.

(MSDOS mode cd to C:zip run cwsdpmi etc then your command line)

DF> Thanks for your encouraging words on Optimizing Windows.

You have a nice line in understatement.  My brother, who is computer tech support for the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, tells me it is the best reference book he has ever used!

DF>  Unfortunately, O’Reilly cancelled the Linux book, so for now I’m just writing Windows optimization articles for Computer Shopper UK and taking a few months off from book writing while I decide what to do next.

There is an air of Linux taking off here in the UK and just recently {I have been looking for some time) two magazines have appeared catering for Linux use.

Linux Format (Future Publishing) www.linuxformat.co.uk

and Linux Magazine www.linux-magazine.co.uk

as well as the coverage in PCPlus also Future Publishing.

Maybe a series of articles in one or other could be the backbone of your Linux book on the back of the terrific reviews your Optimizing Windows had.

All the best,

Michal Kaznowski

(PS My kids thought the arch was terrific this summer – but I felt awful queasy up there).

~~~~~

What command line are you using? I seem to recall there was a typesetting error on one of the Zip commands in the book, though I can’t remember which one at this point.

I’m very much enjoying working with Computer Shopper UK, which I’ve hopefully expressed to the right people. I think they’ve done an outstanding job on my “Optimise Your PC” series, and I still sound American, even after translating my spellings to the British form. I’m trying to remember it so they’ll have to make fewer changes with the next one.

I’m not sure when I was last up in the Arch–it must have been 10 years ago. The slight sway in the wind always made me think the thing was about to topple over, though it’s survived minor earthquakes without damage so that’s ridiculous. I also remember it being pretty cramped.

12/07/2000

Dave Farquhar General

~Mail follows today’s post~

And I got to see a copy of Shopper UK. Wow! The only British computer magazine I’d ever read regularly was Amiga Computing, years ago, and I remember sitting down with it along with my former art director and stealing ideas from it. Computer Shopper is every bit as well-designed. American computer magazines are just… sterile and boring.

A yearly subscription from the States costs as much as a new Athlon motherboard upgrade, but they’re tempting me.

Speaking of which, I’d best get back to that article.

Browser Wars, Episodes III and IV. In a surprise move, Opera Software released a free version of their lightweight Opera browser yesterday. Much like recent versions of Eudora, it will be advertising-supported, with a paid version without the ads.

Also, Neoplanet, the maker of browser overlays, announced a Mozilla-based browser to be released in late February. Neoplanet was one of the strongest thrid-party contributors to the Mozilla project and released a technology preview browser early on. (Neoplanet’s main product has always used the IE engine.)

This is good news, with IE showing signs of MS laziness and complacency and Netscape seemingly having lost its will to live. Neoplanet and Opera may be small and scrappy enough to give MS a run for its money, much as a smaller, nimbler, hungrier Netscape did six years ago.

When I checked, the Java-less version of Opera v5 had received more than 900,000 downloads. This looks promising.

My biggest objection to Opera 5, besides its lack of the great ctrl-Enter shortcut (and I don’t care what anyone else says, I happen to like keeping my hands on the keyboard when I’m using the Web–I’ve been doing it that way for six years and I’m as fast as anyone) , is that it doesn’t start rendering the page as quickly as Netscape, let alone IE. IE renders what it has, then adds the images. Netscape does this to a lesser degree. Opera waits until it has the majority of the site downloaded, unfortunately. Why can’t it take IE’s approach?

But there’s a lot to like too. A button to toggle image loading–there are three settings. One ignores images and uses ALT tags, one renders empty boxes the size of the images in their place, and the other loads all images. Want the best-possible speed online? Turn the images off, then toggle them on as-needed. The zoom feature is also very nice–and it scales the whole site, not just the text. The speed, once it’s downloaded all the images, is outstanding. The accuracy seems good–I tried it out by visiting each site on my portal and looking around, and it rendered all of them sensibly. And at 2 MB, any computer can afford to have a Web browser.

I’m reasonably pleased with it. I’m thinking a high B+, you know, 89 percent.

My time off has let me catch up on some reading. I read way too much Calvin and Hobbes (“You got mud all over the house! Look at you! AIEE–THE COUCH! WHAT’D YOU DO?! DID YOU WALK ACROSS THE COUCH?!”), but besides that, I read Rubert Lutz’s Guts, which reads like a manifesto but is loaded with great ideas and insights, and One More Time, a compilation of Mike Royko’s best columns that’s far, far too short. Even if all 7,000+ columns he published, plus the contents of his file cabinets when he died, and every news story he wrote for The Chicago Daily News before he became a full-time columnist, were made available, it still wouldn’t be enough for me.

I neglected to mention him in my Amazon.com interview, but the late, great Mike Royko probably influenced me as much as any other writer, with the possible exception of the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. I mentioned Dave Barry in that interview, and Dave Barry is one of the best newspaper columnists there ever was, but Royko was darn near as funny and generally had much more important things to say. There’s a stash of his stuff here  for those of you who’ve never had the privelige. (And some of it’s not in the book! Score! Another fix!)

When taking an editorial writing class as a senior in college, we each had to bring in the work of two columnists we felt was outstanding. We fought over who got to bring in Mike Royko columns. A few months later, he was dead. We’ve been looking for another ever since, but replacing him is like replacing Joe DiMaggio. You don’t.

I’ve created a “Best Of” page. It’s a little dubious. First, it lists the Top 50 entries. I have about 80 entries total. It’s a little like a band creating a Greatest Hits record after three regular records. Second, it’s based on page reads and not quality. Living, against insurmountable odds is marooned at #34, but it’s much better than “Thanks to a Glitch, We’re Now At Day Two,” the current #1. Third, it’s only stuff from this site and none of the previous content is included (kind of like a greatest hits collection that only includes stuff recorded on that particular label). Fourth, my hits count, and that’s the reason why the current #1 is there–I probably viewed that thing 120 times myself because I was making subtle changes to the design and then looking at them again.

But it’s surprising how the best stuff does have a tendency to rise to the top in spite of all this. I had to go back and re-title everything, since it mostly had the same title. Now I understand the value of titles in Manila. And hey, ‘Til Tuesday released two “Best Of” compilations, in spite of only recording three albums!

I’m hoping this’ll make the site a bit more useful.

~~~~~~~~~~

From: Rodrigo Zamora
Subject: Re: Sound Blaster Value

I think I mistakenly called the OEM version the Value!.  I think you are right that the real Value! is no longer produced (although many of the online retailers call the OEM version the Value!) . There are a few minor differences, but as you say it is the same core.  I would bet the majority of people would not miss the few differences like digital cd input. Whether there is a significant difference in quality is probably more subjective than anything, but I have not actually compared them so I do not know for sure. Anyway, my point is that for the vast majority of computer users, the differences are not significant, unless of course they really do want the software.

I could have sworn that I saw a clone of the first Live!Drive earlier this year on the Hoon Tech site, but either my memory serves me wrong, or they do not make them anymore.  Perhaps they were forced to stop making them because I don’t see any other reason why a company could not make a clone of it, but I can’t seem to find any.  Sorry about that.

later, rz
~~~~~

I think you’re right about the Value vs. the OEM version.

Thanks for looking into the clones. Too bad they don’t seem to be available anymore.
~~~~~~~~~~

 

12/06/2000

Dave Farquhar General , ,

More on the election. This seems to be the topic that just won’t die. As Natalie Merchant would say, “Hey, give ’em what they want.” I’ll talk politics if people want me to talk politics. I’m just not used to people wanting a 25-year-old’s opinion on anything but computers and maybe music. Hopefully this sequel is better than most sequels coming out of Hollywood. I gave them a head start with a dumb title.

So, the dialogue with my British editor continues. Chris first:

I take your point on a lot of the things that are going unreported, and I realise that a lot of my problems and fears are ideological and nothing to do with democratic irregularities. We’ll have to agree to disgree. However, I find a couple of things hard to deal with.

DF: But I think my greatest lament is there was a time when the two major presidential candidates and parties trusted one another enough to politely step aside and transfer power. They did not truly believe that the other party, or at least one politician, could destroy the country in 2, 4, or 6 years (whatever their term might be).

Surely the whole point of politics is that you are supposed to think that your opponents are wrong and not just “trust” them and concede power to them at the earliest opportunity. Not only is morally dubious, it is arguably undemocratic – surely you are letting down the people who voted for you (especially if they are in the majority!). If you concede when you think you have won, you might as well not have run in the first place.

DF: History has proven that. We have plenty of infamous presidents who were caught breaking the law or doing (or trying to do) things of questionable legality under the Constitution: Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton… None of them destroyed the country. Some of them changed it very dramatically. But Harding may have been the most corrupt of the bunch (at least his administration was), and no one’s ever heard of him today.

Lawbreaking is relative. Your greatest presidents, Lincoln and Roosevelt, bent the rules for the greater good, unlike the corrupt administration of Harding (an ineffectual, incompetent moron who should never have been President – sound familar?).
DF: Bush did win the larger number of states, and a much larger geographic area. Gore’s support is very much concentrated along each coast and mostly in metropolitan areas.

This is utterly irrelevant. Wow, Bush won the whole of the West from North Dakota to Arizona. Democracy is rule by the people, not by land mass.

DF: There’s enough question with the absentee ballots to make it really doubtful who truly won the popular vote.

But you have to accept the official figures surely. Although these gave Florida to Bush – hold on, I’m not undermining my own argument – surely the members of the electoral college ought to follow the democratic decision of the people and switch their votes, which I believe they have the right to do.

My main concern, though, is still the suitability of Bush, about whom I read ANOTHER damning article this weekend, which said that he was an utter failure in business (as well as a drunk) until 1994 – when he used tax money to make the Texas Rangers a success. (Admittedly I read the left-wing press, or what passes for it in Britain.) I understand people’s concerns about the ‘dynastic’ Gore in a sense, but it shouldn’t be an obstacle if you are competent and deserving. And Bush’s father had some success in politics too, I believe.

My interest might seem over-keen as I don’t even live in your country, but it’s undoubtedly a fascinating episode in US history, and in the end it will probably affect all of us. The election of Bush might actually mean we move closer to Europe, so something positive might come out of it…

Yes, the point of politics is to do what you believe is the right thing, and chances are your opponent’s opinion will differ. Gore conceding now is hardly “concession at the earliest possible moment.” It usually happens on election night.

I think where we differ is whether Gore has reason to believe he won. Bush won Florida. He won the recount. He won the hand recount. He’s winning the court cases. Gore speaks of “thousands of uncounted ballots,” but those thousands of ballots aren’t uncounted. They do not register a vote for president. I don’t know if Gore believes he won, or if he believes he can win on a technicality. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know the difference. What he is accomplishing is making the United States into more and more of a laughingstock, and in doing that, he’s not doing himself, his party, or his country any favors (favours).

The story nobody’s talking about with the popular vote is the absentee ballots in other states. Those results aren’t all certified. Nor have I seen a count yet with 100% of precincts reporting. If the popular vote mattered, Bush could do the same thing in other states that Gore has done in Florida. He has chosen not to do so. The figures now are not yet official, but I do concede that the official figures could look much like these do.

The electoral college can indeed change their votes if they want to. In 1988, one of Michael Dukakis’ electors voted for Lloyd Bentsen, his running mate. It’s not terribly uncommon for one of the Republican electors to vote for the Libertarian candidate. One year (I wish I could remember when it was), one of the Democratic electors cast his vote for Harry Truman. Truman was dead. The elector said, “Yeah, but even dead, Truman’s better than either of these clowns!” (Sounds like today.) But generally the closer the race, the less likely the electors are to vote differently.

This is rarely a problem. The electoral college was intended to give smaller states a little more power. The United States isn’t government by land mass, as you say, but it is government by a combination of population and land mass. There’ll be tremendous pressure for change. I’m torn on whether we should. I’m pretty sure that we won’t. The smaller states won’t want to give up the power, so there won’t be enough votes to ratify the necessary constitutional amendment.

As for comparisons to Harding, he sounds like two of the candidates we ran. And I’m not talking Nader and Buchanan. For all of Bush’s inadequacies, Gore fares no better. He may be worse. Gore couldn’t finish law school or divinity school (and the hard part of both of those is getting in in the first place–I know because I’ve looked into both myself).

I went out for a drink Monday night with a couple of Democrats, both very politically active. One has a brother who ran for a state office this year and aspires to run herself one day. The other worked on a couple of campaigns. Of course I asked what they thought of where the election stood. Both said that we’d be much better off if Gore conceded, and that we’d be better off with Bush as president-elect than with the current situation. When I see that Gore has lost the support of these two, I can’t help but conclude he’s doing the wrong thing.

I’ve updated my portal, and it seems to work consistently now. Sorry for the broken link. I put this up mostly for me, but you’re of course welcome to use it. You can get there by clicking Links over there on the left, if you’re interested in where and how I get information.

Communication. I see JHR doesn’t like Weblogs. I don’t like everything about them myself, but I moved here out of necessity. Keeping my site up the old way was just getting too difficult, and I was out of space. Here was a nice, elegant solution–someone offering me space and a no-strings-attached search engine, plus the ability to edit either HTML or WYSIWYG from a browser, no matter where I go. And offering ways to promote it, to boot. All without charging me a cent.

It was just too attractive. I don’t like that it requires login for discussion groups. Part of me doesn’t like the discussions taking place on their own pages. It makes it easier to avoid them if reader comments don’t interest you, but it makes it harder to read them–and chances are, if you’re reading, reader comments do interest you. I did notice that an active discussion is a great way to rack up page reads. But that may be a price too high to pay.

I could code a Daynoting/Weblogging solution myself, using PHP and MySQL on a Unixish box, that would do what I need, and only what I need. But there’s no way I could have done it in the time frame necessary. And I don’t know if my health would have held up. I prefer to spend my time and keystrokes doing content development, rather than software development, and Manila works pretty darn nicely.

I don’t mean to seem impersonal. The e-mail link is there, and I don’t mind if you use it. You don’t have to be logged in to read anything here, and you of course don’t have to be logged in to click the mail link. I don’t always respond as quickly as I would like, and it takes time for Di or me to post the mail–often longer than I would like. But this isn’t a commercial operation, so it doesn’t bother me so much. And questions regarding something I wrote that people paid money for–be it a book or a magazine article–generally do get answers within a day, even if they aren’t posted that day. I do try to maintain that level of service at least.

I’m sorry that I may have alienated one of my most loyal and longest-running readers. Seeing as the alternative was probably closing up shop and concentrating on just books and/or magazine articles (and sacrificing quality and promotion ability by becoming a hermit), I didn’t see that I had any choice. I was hoping that Dave-with-strings-attached would be better than no Dave at all. Judging from the increasing traffic, I may have been right.

12/05/2000

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , , ,

The Asus A7V motherboard and Unix. I’ve been seeing a lot of search engine hits with phrases containing “Asus A7V” and various Unix bretheren (NetBSD and Linux, most recently). I know exactly what posting is turning up under that query–the dream system of a few weeks back.

Is there something weird about the A7V and the BSDs and Linux that people should know about? Installation difficulties? Or are people just trying to confirm compatibility?

Any of you intrepid searchers care to comment? I have to admit, you’ve got me curious.

When replying to reader mail, remember that we spam-filter the addresses. I insert the word “nospam” into the address somewhere, in order to prevent this site from being a bonanza of e-mail addresses for spammers. You can reply by clicking their link, but remove the “nospam.” in their e-mail address before hitting your Send button.

I like reader mail because it builds community, but I hate spam and don’t want that penalty for readers who participate.

I used to keep a trap for spambots on the page, but this is more effective. Though maybe I should set a trap again. Depends on how vindictive I feel, I guess.

Disable your screen saver before playing DOS games inside Windows. I forgot to mention this little tidbit in Optimizing Windows, and I also forgot to mention it in my upcoming Computer Shopper UK article, which is about getting cantankerous DOS games running, even under the reputedly DOS-unfriendly Windows Me.

The games will run, but if you’re sitting there thinking for a long time and your screen saver kicks in at the wrong moment, your system may freeze. Doesn’t seem to happen all that often, but it happened to me yesterday when I was playing The Secret of Monkey Island (I’d forgotten how much I love that game).

That game also makes me feel old. I first played it on a CGA system. Needless to say, it looks a lot better in VGA.

My standard screen saver advice. Screen savers are generally a bad idea anyway, because most screen savers do more harm than good these days. In the days of low refresh rates, images could burn into the screen’s phosphers if the screen sat idle for too long. The high-refresh monitors made since 1994 or so are largely immune to this. But people continue to use screen savers out of the mistaken belief that they’re good for your computer, or because of tradition, or because they look cool.

The more colors a monitor has to display in rapid succession, the more likely it is to deterriorate quickly. The easiest color for your monitor to display is black, because all the guns are off. Keep a rapidly changing image up on the screen, and your monitor actually ends up working harder. As does your CPU–the 3D screen savers make your CPU work harder than Word and Excel and Outlook do. Combined. This increases heat and electrical usage, two things that businesses tend to worry about a lot. They buy green PCs, then keep their energy-saving features from ever truly kicking in (other than spinning down the disk, the savings of which is negligible) by not banning screen savers. Yet they think they’re being all eco-friendly.

Case point: one of the PCs I use at work was first used by a contractor we let go back in March after he’d been there about a year. He had every gimmicky blinky obnoxious screen saver out there, and he used them, leaving the monitor on all the time. The monitor still works, but the color is all messed up. The color quality on my ancient NEC MultiSync 3FGe at home is much, much, much better than on this two-year-old Micron-branded monitor.

If you want to treat your monitor right, use the Blank Screen screen saver or another blanker. And don’t fret if you have to disable it from time to time.

12/04/2000

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

~Mail follows today’s post~

I’d forgotten how many telemarketing phone calls you get during the day. Blimey or something! How are you supposed to get anything done?

I had a classmate who used to mess with them. “You want to sell me windows? My house doesn’t have any windows, you see, because it’s a cardboard box. Sure, you can get phone service to a cardboard box. You can get cable TV too. I thought about a mini-dish but I’m not so sure my walls could handle the weight.”

He really enjoyed the roofing people, because he could tell them, in all honesty, “I don’t have a roof.” Hey, when you live in an apartment building, if you’re not on the top floor, you don’t.

The guys over at Junkbusters have a different solution. Make ’em sweat. They’ve even got a script with questions to ask. Visit them at www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/telemarketing.html if you’re sick of the bother.

Print it out, then keep it by the phone. And when you pick up the phone and get that tell-tale delay, followed by an unfamiliar voice who mispronounces your name, pounce. “Is this a telemarketing call?” (That question weeds out the other annoying phone calls, like Chrysler and MCI Worldcom calling up because of billing problems–sorry, you’ve gotta deal with those on your own.) If the answer is yes, then keep going. ” Could you tell me your full name please? And a phone number, area code first?” And they’ve got 12 other questions, where those came from.

I’m vacationing in beautiful Mehlville, Mo. as I write. Before you get too excited, I live in Mehlville. (It’s a St. Louis suburb.) My boss’ boss e-mailed me a while back and said, “Go on vacation!” so I did. Gives me a chance to catch up around the place–there’s a lot I’ve been neglecting.

Plus it gives me a chance to work on that last article for Shopper UK.

I’ve been reading Guts, the business strategy book by former Chrysler #2 man Robert Lutz. Lutz was the driving force (or a major driving force) behind all of Chrysler’s bold experiments in the 1990s before Daimler-Benz swallowed them. Interesting reading for anyone interested in business or the auto industry, though I’d have liked to see more of a memoir from him. Lutz didn’t graduate high school until age 22. How do you go from graduating high school at 22 to No. 2 man at Forbes’ 1997 Company of the Year? No matter how successful you are, there are lessons to learn from this guy. Obviously there’s more to him than an MBA, a stint in the Marines, and an interest in cars, and I want to know what that is.

I’m guessing there’ll be more later. No idea when. I’ve got a really hairy question from an Optimizing Windows reader to figure out.

~~~~~~~~~~

From: “Rodrigo Zamora” <rzam@nospam.cox-internet.com>
Subject: Sound Blaster Value
From what I have read the SB Value is exactly the same thing as the more expensive models except that it does not include the daughter card which has extra connections.  And it obviously didn’t have the LiveDrive which only comes with the Platinum.  However, this is not an issue since you can purchase these devices as add-on upgrades either from Creative or clones from another company.

The newer Values came with a Digital output which the older versions did not have.  In fact, it appears that even the AC3 Dolby Digital feature supported in the newer 5.1 seems to be only a  software (driver) update.  In other words, it seems that ANY SB Live! can do AC3 support with the right driver.

By the way, where did you hear that the Values have been discontinued? Creative still sells them on their site.

Rodrigo Zamora

~~~~~

The Value is a slightly different card, see http://www.byte.com/feature/BYT19991020S0006, and also http://alive.singnet.com.sg/features/products/. The main difference seems to be the quality of jacks used; when doing voice recognition or recording, you’ll notice the difference. Chances are you’ll notice a difference in output quality as well, though I haven’t tried the two cards side-by-side myself to confirm. They do use the same chipset, and some of the Value cards seem to have digital output capability, while others don’t. (My Live! MP3+ makes even a cheap pair of desktop speakers sound really good; connected to a stereo it’s nothing short of awesome.)

I’m pretty sure that I read in the Dragon NaturallySpeaking forums that the Value was discontinued and replaced by the MP3+ and Gamer (the difference in those cards is the software bundle). And the Value, though listed on Creative’s site, is out of stock there. I did find the card over at www.mwave.com priced at $47.

So for some uses, there’s little difference and the Value may be a way to save $40. But I will say the software that comes with the MP3+ is definitely worth the extra money if it’s at all useful to you.

I found a third-party daughtercard, at www.hoontech.com; any idea who makes the LiveDrive clone? Creative’s is pretty pricey; if the clone is less expensive, I’m sure there’s a huge market for it.

Thanks.

~~~~~~~~~~

From: “Gary Mugford” <mugford@nospam.aztec-net.com>

Subject: This and that

Dave,

I actually saw, on the shelf for the first time, your book at Chapters, Friday. Still full price. Bought it anyway as a Christmas present. Worked wonders for my tech guy’s appreciation of his software guy, if you know what I mean. I’m sure it’ll be appreciated by its intended recipient, too.

Dirty333 crashed rather spectacularly last week. It’s been a week of getting Tookie up and running to take its place. (segue to explain the names: The machine was an Win95B AMD K6-333. There was a famous player in the Canadian Football League named Jim Young, nicknamed Dirty 33.  I’m a lapsed jock journalist. Tookie’s a Win2K machine born in 2000). I lost a day’s worth of work to the crash and four days re-installing everything and getting the settings just so. All in all, I’m happy about the move, save for the switch over to a modern Logitech keyboard from the old 84-key keyboards that I’ve used since forever. Just why the hell is that damned capslock key STILL being put there long after the alternative for emphasis became font and style changes, rather than capping? Not to start a holy war, however.

On the other hand, as a disinterested third party, I still have some reservations about the American election just past. I have no quarrel with the basic concept that a lot of people voted for an agenda they prefer. I do have a problem with some people who voted AGAINST one candidate or the other, as that’s an incredibly stupid way to cut your nose off. Better to waste the ballot, then to do that (I’ve probably wasted half the ballots I’ve ever cast, because nobody earned my vote. And to make it obvious, I would mark off EVERY box). But it seems a lot of people voted against Gore. And I think that had a part to play in the Bush victory.

We don’t directly vote for Prime Minister in Canada. So, I’m never put to the task of deciding I like my local guy and hate his leader, or vice-versa. I’ve got no choice. And so, apparently, did you [G]. One’s supposed to be a ding-dong (my one meeting was pleasant, brief and non-opinion-forming) and the other was so stupid, he blew an easy victory by wanting to be his own man. One’s supposed to be a leader, but has never been anything more than a figurehead, except when he was losing money looking for oil in Texas, while the other was a very active partner in running the country (and the back room). The nitwit Nader was right in one respect, both of them were the same guy with slightly different accents.

The difference was in the political apparatus behind them. That’s all. Bush will be a one-term president, as his father was. And the family failure to not keep promises will be his undoing. That it was the gridlock in Washington that will have forced him into recanting, will be forgotten in ’04. Gore will also go the way of the Quayle and nibble away at the fringes. Whether Gephardt or Kerry or whoever runs, they will beat Bush. They will be repeating the winning mantra of the ’90s, “It’s the economy, stupid!” And the American populace, longing for the good old ’90s will march to the polls and reverse the error of 2000.

As far as Florida is concerned, it’s hard to see how either side can pretend to the moral high ground. The Democrats actually put in WRITING how to deny overseas ballots. And Gore’s supposed to be the bright one, right? But that was balanced by the Republicans delaying legal recounts, going to court first, arranging for out-of-town ‘ordinary folk’ to show up repeatedly to exercise their fully-paid for First Amendment rights and they repeatedly made mistakes over-reaching whatever was in their grasp at the moment.  The election day-after cabinet posing was designed to fool the umpire, but there was no umpire. The citing of Nixon’s consession to Kennedy despite Daley’s dad’s malfeasance in Illinois overlooked the fact the state’s electoral votes didn’t affect the outcome one way or the other. Calling the hand count tabulators all kinds of names, including suggesting illegalities when monitors from both sides were there, was assinine. Arguing against standards for assessing a questionable vote that were no less forgiving than that of the Texas law signed by Bush was the equivalent of Gore’s absentee ballot crushing screwup. But the rallying cry in ’02 will be the Republican refusal to recount the whole state and after-the-fact attempt to squash the recounts that DID take place.

Even I could run that PR campaign. “Make it clear to the Republicans, your vote DOES count… this time!”

So, on behalf of all Canadians, we say to you Americans, “Thanks for the entertainment! [G]”

Regards, Gary
~~~~~

Thanks for the purchase! I’ve yet to see the book in a store myself. Of course it won’t sell if people can’t find it… O’Reilly needs to get it into stores before they have any right to complain about its lack of sales. Sandy McMurray’s review and the subsequent run on the book up north should have said something, I would think.

You just gave me an idea on machine names, and how to remember their IP addresses. This computer’s name is George Brett, and it’s 192.168.0.5; this one’s Mike Sweeney at 192.168.0.29. Problem is, I don’t know that there are five Royals whose uniform numbers I remember quickly, and do I really want to name my gateway after Buddy Biancalana or Rey Sanchez? But I’ll definitely name the Packard Bell I deny owning (I didn’t buy it new!) after Johnny Damon since he’s being the biggest putz since Jose Offerman. He deserves to have a piece-o’-junk computer named after him.

As for intelligence in U.S. politics, Gore’s supposedly the brighter one, but I remember seeing a video clip where he and the esteemed Mr. Clinton were touring Monticello, and Gore pointed to a picture on a wall and asked, “Who’s that?” The tour guide replied, “Well, that’s George Washington…”

I’ve never met a flunkie who didn’t recognize Washington (his face is all over the place, after all, including the one-dollar bill and the quarter, so you can’t spend money without seeing him occasionally), let alone any intelligent person who’s been in the United States more than a week.

General consensus is that Dan Quayle is smarter than both of them.

~~~~~~~~~~

From: “James Cooley” <c_closet@nospam.dnai.com>
Subject: Yer Mom’s Great!

Dave,

Ah, your mom is great! Has Jerry Pournelle seen this? Would make a splendid addition to his stumping against ADD in the classroom.

As a computer repair guy myself I have a motto to share: “Focus on the solution, not the problem.” Regards,

Jim
~~~~~

Thanks.

I’m sure there’s not much room on Jerry Pournelle’s reading list for my site. Of course, with psych being one of his PhDs, he’s certainly qualified to talk on the subject.

Hasn’t Jerry said before that he probably would have been diagnosed as ADD in his youth, and in reality his “problem” was that he was better-read than a lot of his teachers and was just plain bored and unchallenged? (I’m doubly fortunate in that regard; I’m not as bright as Jerry and my teachers always bent the rules and let me work above my grade level to make sure I was adequately challenged.)

Good motto, especially if you remember that the easiest solution often involves cable connections and system logs.

~~~~~~~~~~

From: “Michal Kaznowski” <michalkaznowski@nospam.yahoo.com> Subject: DPMI error while zipping windows

Hello David,

If you have the time, might you be able to point me to the easiest solution of a problem I have been having when using info-zip to zip a windows installation.

I get:

load Error no DPMI – Get csdpmi*b.zip

I am aware that Protected mode is required, but what is the easiest way of obtaining this.  I am mostly using 98SE (And Slackware 7.0 and SuSE) to install for friends, family and some that pay(!) and would prepare boot disc just to be able to run zip and unzip on the backup as described on page 201/2 of your guide to life and computers.

Your book is a raving success with my friends (what few I have as I like computers) and numerous copies have been purchased.  We are all looking forward to your definitive guide on a version of Linux so that we can all use it without the pain we have at present

-Best regards, Michal

~~~~~

Try downloading ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2misc/csdpmi5b.zip. Put the executable files from this archive into the same directory as your Info-Zip executables. Let me know ASAP if that doesn’t fix it. (This is as painful as some Linux programs’ installations!)

Thanks for your encouraging words on Optimizing Windows. Unfortunately, O’Reilly cancelled the Linux book, so for now I’m just writing Windows optimization articles for Computer Shopper UK and taking a few months off from book writing while I decide what to do next.

~~~~~~~~~~

 

12/03/2000

Dave Farquhar General

E-mail vs. That Discuss Button. Just in case you’re wondering, I don’t really care which people use. The discussion stuff certainly gets up there faster. E-mail is a bit easier for readers to navigate. I just reply to e-mail and copy Di, my sister, anyway, who then posts the mail later that day or the next. The other drawback to discussion is that you have to be a member of the site in order to post, which I presume is a minority of the readership here.

In case you’re not familiar with membership on a Manila site, you create an account and password, which gives the benefits of allowing you to receive site updates via e-mail and being able to post to the discussion groups. I don’t do anything with the membership database (I can’t say I’ve even looked at it–counting Di and myself, I know who four of the members are).

Late update today. I was up late, way too late last night reading old Mike Royko columns, then I had to be at church at 7:30 this morning. Now it’s noon, and I’m back with my cup of coffee next to my computer, and a burning desire to write something Royko-esque.

So I’m going to hand over the reins and lay down until that urge goes away. That’s the best thing a writer can do when faced with a desire to do something like be someone else, or use a $12 word when a ten-center will do.

Good discussions yesterday, by the way. I appreciate the feedback! That thread is here  (original plus responses) if you want to read it easily.

There’ll be mail later. There’s stuff in my inbox I haven’t replied to yet.

And now, time to hand the reins over to my mom. Mom sent me this, Friday I think, in response to focusing on what’s right rather than what’s wrong.

You can always find something that’s wrong–or difficult–or unpleasant–or uncomfortable.  But focusing on the negative will never get you anywhere in life.

You’ve probably heard this story before, but I’m gonna tell it again.

I once had a student who had been diagnosed with just about every learning disability that had ever been named.  He was in a regular classroom and did the regular assignments on the same time frame as everyone else.  And he regularly had just about the highest score in the class.  One year the school hired Ms SuperDuperLearningDisabilitiesExpert.  She immediately told us all the stuff we were doing wrong.  “Because he has this disability, you need to make this allowance.  Because he has that disability, you need to do this instead of what you’re doing now.  Because he has this AND that, you need to make this exception. . .”  We thought, “If he’s an A student now–and we’re doing everything wrong–just think what he could do if we start doing what Ms SDLDE tells us to do!”  So we did exactly what she told us to do.  Within weeks, his grades slide from As to Ds and Fs.  And, as his grades went down the tubes, so did his behavior.  Finally, we asked the parents’ permission to go back to what we used to do.  Almost immediately, his grades went back up and the behavioral problems went away. 

When we focused on what was wrong, we gave him permission to use his “disabilities” as an excuse.  Grades went down and he became a terror in the classroom.  By focusing on what he COULD do, we presented him with challenges to overcome.

Time to get off my soapbox and get back to work.

One last thing. I’ve been writing really long lately. I’m going to try to keep my stuff down under 700 words. I can’t control the volume of mail, so I’ll post whatever I get there. I don’t want it to take half an hour to get through my site every day. I think 700 words of me, plus a couple of letters and responses is plenty for anyone to endure on a daily basis.

12/02/2000

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , ,

~Mail follows today’s post~

Optimizing Windows is half price at Amazon.com. I questioned whether that might mean we’re nearing the end of the line, but that seems not to be the case. The paperback edition of Robert Lutz’s business book about the transformation of Chrysler in the late 1980s, Guts, is also half-price. I know that book’s not going out of print yet. So Amazon must be running some kind of holiday promotion on paperbacks.

What’s Optimizing Windows all about? My premise is that no PC built in the last three years or so is truly obsolete. You’ve got a pile of resources there, and Windows probably isn’t using them wisely. I argue that you need to make your computer work smarter, before you make it work harder, and I show you how. (Contrary to what one person asked me, it’s not a book about bird feeders.)

For $12.47, you can definitely squeeze another year out of that old clunker (or add some more zip to your new hot rod). This is the book I needed but couldn’t find when I was faced with the challenge of managing a fleet of three-year-old PCs, well past obsolesence, but with no funds to replace them. The three-year-old PCs of today are much better than they were in 1997.

So if you’ve been waiting to pick up Optimizing Windows, this is a good time to do it.

That’s enough attempt at marketing for one day. Well, wait, one more thing. Here’s a review by popular Canadian syndicated columnist Sandy McMurray.

Presidential questions. Chris Miller, the production editor at Computer Shopper UK, wrote in with some questions that really made me sit down and think about the election. I think this bears repeating and I have little else to say, so here goes.

Incidentally… isn’t it worth campaigning for electoral justice when (a) it’s looking like the candidate with more votes will lose, (b) there’s the distinct whiff of corruption in Jeb’s Florida, and (c) the man you say should win is a murderer of innocent men and the mentally disabled?

Just a thought, I’m sure they know what they’re doing
Regards
Chris

To which I responded:

I’m sure we’re giving you plenty of laughs across the Big Pond with our election. My reaction to your questions…
 
a. This isn’t the first time this has happened. It doesn’t happen often–the other time was in 1888, when Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison despite winning the popular vote. The United States is a republic, not a true democracy. George W. Bush did win the larger number of states, and a much larger geographic area. Al Gore’s support is very much concentrated along each coast and mostly in metropolitan areas. There’s no question that Bush could have won the popular vote. But politicians care about electoral votes, rather than the popular vote, and adjust their game plan accordingly. (Both candidates garnered far more votes than Bill Clinton ever did.)
 
b. There are questionable acts in Florida from both sides. Statisticians have questioned the likelihood of Gore gaining the number of votes he has. It’s very easy to steal a close election, and both parties have done it before in the past. This is the first time a presidential election has been this closely contested, however. There’ve been opportunities in the past–Gerald Ford in 1976 and Richard Nixon in 1960 are the most notable recent examples. For various reasons, they didn’t contest. Republicans filling out missing information on requests for absentee ballots (not, as widely reported, on the ballots themselves–that didn’t happen) is questionable, but even Gore himself said every vote should be counted. (I think he really means “every vote for me should be counted,” but that’s not what he said, and no one ever put Al Gore in charge of this election. We’re a republic, not a dictatorship.)
 
But the alleged “mob” Gore speaks of was about 30 well-dressed people whose lone demand was that the press be let in to observe recounting procedures. If everything going on behind those doors was free and clear, why were they afraid to let the press in? Why did they feel the need to try to paint this group of protesters as a mob?
 
Meanwhile, there was a case, not widely reported, in Washington of a Gore supporter punching a 13-year-old boy in the stomach for carrying an anti-Gore sign. No one in the group of Gore supporters pointed out the perpetrator to police.
 
c. The death penalty is one of the few protections citizens have against cruel and unusual crimes. Not all states have it. Bush is more of a death penalty hawk than some governors, but the citizens of Texas were the ones who put that law on the books. Bush is simply the final appeal for criminals who have been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He’s not the jury, he’s not the executioner, nor is he the judge who does the sentencing.
 
But I think my greatest lament is there was a time when the two major presidential candidates and parties trusted one another enough to politely step aside and transfer power. They did not truly believe that the other party, or at least one politician, could destroy the country in 2, 4, or 6 years (be they a representative, president, or senator). History has proven that. We have plenty of infamous presidents who were caught breaking the law or doing (or trying to do) things of questionable legality under the Constitution: Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton… None of them destroyed the country. Some of them changed it very dramatically. But Harding may have been the most corrupt of the bunch (at least his administration was), and no one’s ever heard of him today.
 
The president has more power than the Queen, certainly, but the president is a figurehead. Without Congressional support, they can’t do much of anything. The overwhelming majority of US citizens know that, and would rather see this election resolved quickly than to see the fight go on. Gore’s support is eroding by the day, if not by the hour.
 
I believe Gore is mostly interested in being president, and gives indications he seems to believe the presidency is his birthright. The best thing for him to do would have been to go home, then run again in four years. He got more votes this year than Bill Clinton did either time he ran (as did Bush). Usually, a losing presidential candidate’s career is over, but not always. Richard Nixon ran again in 1968 after losing a close (but not this close) race in 1960, and won. Grover Cleveland won the presidency in 1884, lost his 1888 re-election bid (but won the popular vote–a parallel Gore should have noticed), then won four years later when he ran again. Gore probably stood a better chance of defeating Bush in 2004 than any other Democrat would, with the possible exception of Dick Gephardt, who won’t run anyway until he gets his chance to be Speaker of the House. The US economy isn’t likely to sustain its current levels because our booming economy is largely due to people spending more than they make and racking up debt and that has to slow down, and it won’t be Bush’s fault, but he’ll take the fall, so the same thing that happened to his dad could very easily happen to him. Gore should have cut his losses and gone home, especially once this election reached the point where there was no legal precedent to overturn it.
 
These are my thoughts, based on the year and a half or so I spent as a part-time political reporter, in addition to what I’ve picked up from friends who are political activists (both conservative and liberal), and from my knowledge of US history (a subject on which most USers are woefully deficient). I’m certainly more conservative than Gore, and that colors my opinion, but eight years of Clinton have proven to me that my history teachers were right–even given eight years in office, no president is likely to destory this country. There is no historical precedence for it. Now, if we are now on a slippery slope after a century of mostly questionable presidents, maybe one will be able to in the near future. I know Bush won’t destroy us and I’m pretty sure Gore couldn’t either, at least not with a Republican-controlled or evenly divided Congress.
 
Discussions have been posted. Click the skull below, or click here.
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From: “Tom Brill” <tbrill@nospam.orofino-id.com>
Subject: good modems

Love your column. Ordered your book. Last Friday you mentioned that Zoom had a quality modem. Do you remember the model? Is it true that all external modems are non Win-modems?
Thanks, Tom
~~~~~

Thanks much!
The Zoom 2920 was the internal PCI controller-based modem I was referring to. I’ve had great luck with Lucent-based modems and Zoom is one of the few remaining reputable modem manufacturers out there.
Zoom has a nice configurator at http://www.zoom.com/modemsna.html where you can find a modem to meet your needs. To avoid getting a Winmodem, specify Unix or Linux compatibility, even if you intend to use it with Windows, and look for the words “controller based”–most modem makers will tout that as a feature these days and throw in buzzwords like “performance” and “enhanced” and “speed.”
US Robotics has a chart at http://www.usrobotics.com/products/home/compare-home.asp that serves a similar purpose. The consumer-oriented US Robotics Performance Pro modem (3CP5610A) also looks good. Not sure if USR is still developing and using their own chipsets or if they’ve gone to Lucent and Rockwell chipsets as a cost-saving measure.
I know of no external Winmodems, but they’re not a technical impossibility. I doubt we’ll ever see serial (RS-232) Winmodems, but USB Winmodems would be less of a surprise. I know of none, and it kind of defeats the purpose, but the words “no external modems are Winmodems” make me nervous. If you want to be really safe now and in the future, look for DOS and Linux compatibility even if you’re buying an external.
Thanks again.
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From: Al Hedstrom
Subject: The Optimizing Book

Dave –
 
Yes, Amazon has it on sale, but they make up for it on their shipping.  I did a comparison for final cost with shipping and tax and BookPool is still cheaper (by 30 cents).
 
Just thought you’d like to know.
 
BTW, I think your notes today were excellent.  I’ve followed your column for a few years now, but your comments on American politics were right on the money. 
 
Al Hedstrom
http://dadspcchronicles.editthispage.com
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Figures. I hate it when companies lower their prices but then jack their shipping rates up to compensate. Especially when it ruins my marketing schpiel. In my day, I’ll tell you, people were honest and didn’t do things like–oh. Wait a minute. I’m 25. This is my day. Were people ever honest?
 
I guess the workaround is to order $100 worth of stuff so you can get the free shipping. Or order from Bookpool.
 
And thanks for the compliments on my soapboxing, both here and on your site. In response to your comments there, back when I was writing for newspapers, you know what editors did when I tried to write like that? They’d sprinkle their agenda into it, so I looked like a left-wing nut by the time the thing was finished. Of course, it was my name on it, not theirs. So I had to turn into a right-wing nut in the hopes that they’d miss a couple of right-wing nuggets and we’d have a somewhat balanced perspective. So I started writing about technology, in hopes that it’d all sail over the editors’ heads and they’d leave it alone. They found ways to mess that up too. So I said screw it, I’ll get a job fixing computers instead because at least it pays better.
 
And that’s why I don’t stop talking about Shopper UK. An editor’s job is to make sure the reporter/writer did his/her job and that the story doesn’t break any laws. But there aren’t many of those out there.
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From: “Bruce Edwards” <Bruce@nospam.BruceEdwards.com>
Subject: The Election

Hi Dave:
 
Enjoyed reading your journal today and appreciate your political view point. Another item some folks seem to forget (and I have not read the Texas statutes to verify this, but this is what has been reported) is that the governor of Texas can not stay an execution permanently or pardon someone condemned to die.  What he can do is give them a 30 day reprieve.  That, of course, does not change the valid point that the execution of those guilty of terrible crimes should  be done in the most solemn manner.
 
On a slightly different but related subject – if you find the time, I’d really appreciate your critique of my online journal and your comments on any of the topics discussed if they interest you.  I’ve been mostly thinking about the election lately and that really shows in the last four weeks or so but there are other topics addressed.
 
Well, I hope you have a great weekend.  I look forward to your continued journal updates.
 
Sincerely,
Bruce
 
Bruce W. Edwards www.BruceEdwards.com/journal
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Thanks. I’ll try to head your direction. I’m not the most well-traveled Daynoter due to my infamous wrists, but I’ll see what I can do. Not sure when I’ll fire off something like Saturday’s or Friday’s again (I
thought Friday’s late update was the better piece, which shows what I know), but I try to make it worth everyone’s while to come around.
 
Thanks again.