Daynotes 1999 week 13

Daynotes: Week of 29 March - 4 April, 1999

Daily notes and commentary -- Week 13

* Link to: last modified 22:20 GMT+2 on 04.04.1999

Hi, welcome to this thirteenth week's daybook page.

himself See the update-link (above) that points where I last added some text, which should simplify your keeping up to speed. Of course, you may still have to scroll back a bit and see if I've updated more than once since you last visited, but that is easily done.

Webpages live -- i.e. content editing may at times be performed retroactively, so that some "established" content may change (updated links, new comments, etc.) or material be moved. Any such "retro-updates" (or if I write something but for some reason upload it to the site a day or two later) will be noted in the current daynote. For any thematic articles added "on the side", see separate pages off the contents page at the previous location at www.leuf.org/articles/disisay.htm .

Mail inclusions are as a rule on a separate weekly mail page -- see Mailnotes link in sidebar. The Mailnotes link beside each weekday, below, points to the corresponding weekday in the mail page for the same week.

Monday 29.03

A day of hot sunshine (UV-enriched) and cool air. Spring is around the corner. So to be sure is a lot more nasty weather, too, but so it goes. Despite a nagging inflamation that gives periodic toothache-like pains, it was a good day, including an unexpected visit by mother-in-law for dinner.

I am done shifting doctorbank pages to the new server, and am currently doing the same with my leuf.org pages. During the week, the org-domain DNS updates will take place, and Geocities will be history for my part. I started off with a site there in mid-1996, and overall I am not displeased, having managed several sites there, and also a number at other sites at public and "private" hosts. I would rate Geocities as one of the best "free" webhosts around (currently 11 Mbyte webspace, user friendly), and service has kept up remarkably well with the dramatic load increase -- millions of homepages are hosted now. It's a good way to begin before starting to commit to spending money on a site. My main reasons for moving are:

the "virtual domain hosting" is a bit too virtual, and I don't feel the recent "url-grabbing" option is all that great.
banner ads and popup windows, no thanks -- ok, I have the last while paid for "Geoplus" ($4.95/month) which allows ad-free pages and more than double the webspace, among other features.
the server load increase is a problem sometimes, and site updates at Geocities can be frustrating if done at the wrong time of day.
control -- I want full site control, now possible with own hosting under my net-domain.

Anyway, if you have any links or bookmarks to "DisBLeuf" pages using the Geocities URL, then please update these to the leuf.org version. I am not in this move making any significant structural changes, so existing leuf.org links should continue to work without problems. The Geocities pages will remain active for a time, but without the Geoplus features, and obviously without the domain connection. Key pages there will successively be replaced with referral ones pointing to the appropriate domained page. Note that none of this information would have been necessary at all had Geocities implemented true DNS domain mapping to each site -- one of the main reasons for having a top level domain is to make hosting changes URL-transparent.

Tuesday 30.03

Murphy... No sooner have I written that Geocities has generally good service when I get reminded that they play labyrinth games with the help pages, as I believe most megahosts do (e.g. AOL) with the intent to avoid a lot of (they feel unnecessary) email. By running users around the same help pages, they are in effect saying RTFM. Unfortunately, users with legitimate complaints or non-standard requests then just get the runaround, unless they mostly by chance run across the help submission form buried somewhere among all the help FAQs.

It started today with me trying to contact geoplusbilling about domain changes already now in the DNS pipeline, upon which it seems that the help link (so thoughtfully provided at the bottom of account statements) is broken. Or actually, I get an error page, one I recall seeing before:

Access Denied
You don't have permission to access:
/cgi-bin/homestead/auth_member

Ok, so then I try to log in to the members area through the front door. Same error. Going round this and delving into the help pages for an email address, I am of course referred to the help section specific to Geoplus members. Yep, you guessed it:

Access Denied You don't have permission to access: /cgi-bin/geoplus/gp_mail_to

I am several times offered to "join" the geoplus program. Gee thanks, that's not the problem.

Anyway, the bottom line for now is that the leuf.org change is now updating through the DNS chain. That's no problem; the problem may be to avoid having my card charged for terminated services in the next billing cycle(s).

Something completely different. Some weeks ago, I noted that I had seen interesting information about the way long filename support is (mis)managed in 32-bit Windows. Last night a thought started surfacing in the back of my mind related to this.

On the one hand, we all know that the root directory of a logical disk is limited in how many entries it can have. The consequence of long filenames is to drastically reduce this number, and I have myself experienced this limit at about 30 entries on a small partition, with just a few long names (lower-case adjustment may of course mean all names have alias entries, no matter the actual length -- info is not clear about this). Interestingly, the system (NT) does not give any error message or anything in such a situation, it just becomes impossible to save or create anything more in the root directory. Annoying, and a waste of time in case the file being "saved" is a long Internet download (no error message for the saving program to react to).

On the other hand, I have in some cases accumulated long series of "long" (e.g. extension "html"), nearly identically named files. Examining the 8+3 alias yields names like "ABxyzu~n.HTM", where "xyzu" is an apparently random hexadecimal number, and ~n the usual numeric key. Apart from the performance hit that a large number of aliased names may cause, my question is what the limit is here? How many such aliases can the system support?

Murphy is often quoted here and elsewhere. Tom and "Murphy" seem on particularly good speaking terms <g>. However, what exactly did Murphy say? Not many know, so I thought I would mention it here.

What Captain Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr. said in 1949 was that "if there is any way to perform a task incorrectly, someone, some day, will perform it incorrectly in just that way." The almost immediate reformulation of Murphy's so-called law into "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" is otherwise a perfect example of its application.

Captain Murphy was a development engineer at Edwards AFB who personally experienced several examples of his law. His formulation is attributed to the connection of a wiring harness for a rocket sled, which in its original design could be inserted both correctly and 180 degrees twisted, i.e. quite incorrectly. He quite correctly concluded that the mere possibility of incorrect insertion guaranteed that sooner or later it would be so inserted, no matter how clear any instructions and indications to the contrary were. Generalized, this is a very useful and relevant observation in the real world and how people function in it.

Wednesday 31.03

Snippet taken from Yahoo (Reuters) news today about the hunt for the perpetrator of the Melissa macro virus:

... The online ''suspect'' was further identified by a Global User Identification Number, which is embedded in Microsoft Corp. software. But a Microsoft spokeswoman said, "We do not currently use that technology, and there is no way to know if that was the person's serial ID or not.''

I note the sidestep implicit there in the use of "currently".

On the other hand, as Bob Thompson implies in his comments on the issue, forging a GUID identity in a document (or simply "hijacking" somebody else's document) is probably the minimum kind of misdirection to be expected from a virus hacker. This morning's news reports also indicated that the suspected identity was "stolen" from another (AOL) user.

Here is an interesting article comparing relative code/resource sizes between Win98, NT4 and Win2000. Worth considering in relation to your current system's available resources...

On a related issue, I more and more often see that a "comfortable" Linux installation assumes about 1 Gb disk space. It was not that long ago the oft-quoted size was in the range 200-500 Mb. I am not clear what has changed, unless this reflects the addition of WordPerfect, Netscape and other applications to the "essential" system. (I really must upgrade to a larger harddisk soon.)

This afternoon Tom Syroid phoned me with the good news that O'Reilly has accepted our book proposal for Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell and that we are now in the contract negotiation phase.

It has been a remarkable experience to reach this point, all the while developing a new and exciting collaboration, and many thanks are due to those who have encouraged and supported us along the way. Now comes the fun of actually writing the book.

Thursday 01.04

Looking at the progressive "randomization" of the 8+3 aliases on long filenames under NT ("2T0DFD~2.HTM", I am starting to have misgivings about using anything but 8+3 DOS style (all CAPS) filenames at all under MS Windows. On a Unix server, there is no problem of this nature.

First of April (fool's day). Sunny. And a bit frantic at home, as I try to apply myself to translation work.

Thursday before Easter (Maundy Thursday -- supposed to be a day to help poor people) is, like most such days, rife with church quasi-religious and pagan overtones.

This is otherwise the day of Easter witches; the eve on which they all mount their broomsticks and ride to Blue Mountain, before all being banished tomorrow (or perhaps just all in hiding with the mother of all hangovers after the all-night partying). Traditionally, girls all dress up as witches (scarves over head, long dresses and rosy-painted cheeks) and pester neighbours for goodies. Sort of our version of Halloween, except it's only witches, not monsters.

Actually, I got a bit of reading done despite nagging work issues; or rather browsing through some magazines. Here for example is a little item that might be of interest:

"Micro Solution has what it reckons is the fastest parallel port CD-RW yet. It has a new controller chip which enables its Backpack CD-Rewriter to cut a CD in 20 minutes. Previous versions required a fast host PC -- a Pentium II 300 or more -- to achieve this speed. The new version can maintain x4 speed on any system. ... www.micro-solution.com."

The implied message is that it is pretty much free of underflow problems, no matter what speed system you have, or how it's loaded at the time.

Friday 02.04

(filled in some notes for yesterday, too)

Good Friday is pretty much an everything closed day, as is the coming Monday. Most people who can, especially those with kids, in fact take the whole week off, i.e. 10 day weekend (Welcome to Sweden). Not for nothing is today called "long Friday" in Swedish.

The leuf.org change seems to have propagated through the DNS now; at least I get the correct pages for the domain now. Again, update any old "geocities.com" links/bookmarks you may have to these family-domain pages.

In both the doctorbank and org moves, I have been able to drop a lot of legacy referral pages in the move, since they were specific to the old site and the old URLs, and in any case bookmarking the geocities version of a leuf.org page simply gave the geocities URL.

I have lately been considering upgrading from POST dial-up to ISDN, so I went out on Wednesday to research more detail about both the current ISDN package offered by the local telco and possible DSL futures. DSL is being "tested", but the telco has it so much under wraps that even the staff don't know a thing about what will be offered in due course. About the only thing known is that it will command a premium pricetag.

About the current package. ISDN is being offered to the Swedish home market, which I knew, but what is new is that they have made a "lite" version out of it. One immediate consequence is that Internet connectivity is limited to a single 64k (fully duplex of course) channel. Pricing comes out at about equiv. USD 300 for installation, perhaps 350 to 400 if workman hours are needed, and a monthly charge of USD 35. (Remember that 20% of all prices quoted are VAT/GST tax.) Today's prices for yesterday's technology... hmm...

This buys me:

2 digital telephone lines (must change phone number however),
an in-house analog network for existing phones, faxes and modems,
a digital modem on one line for computer use,
digital outlets on both lines for future digital telecom stuff,
calling-number presentation,
message service
and of course support :)

Should I choose the package that includes ISP free-dial account, then another monthly USD 30 is added. Prepaid yearly (special offer), this reduces to a monthly equivalent of USD 25. I think. Hmm... Something is not clear about this I realize now -- web info, shop info and handout info seems all just a tad out of sync. It's all part of a Feb-May campaign, so perhaps this is to be expected, the normal install plus component price being about the double, and business packages triple this.

Saturday 03.04

Easter-eve as it were. Sunny, warm and bright. God, it's bright on sunny days now, before the leaves are out...

Many people have made comments in various contexts about the behaviour of e.g. IE5 or Word when run as "multiple instances". I have looked into this and have some news: that's not how they are running. Microsoft has essentially shifted paradigms on us unsuspecting users, again, and visually confused us. We see another open "application window", with menus, toolbars and kit&kaboodle, and so we assume this is another instance of the program. That's how programs used to work. Multiple document windows on the other hand were always contained within the application's own window, possibly extending beyond its current size, so you had to full, resize or scroll to see their contents. This is known officially as MDI (Multiple Document Interface).

At some point, Microsoft decided that this was no good, and that a document window should in future always visually have all the attributes of a normal application window, extended the Windows APIs, and here we are, running MWI (Multiple Window Interface). Under MWI, it is the same code that runs, no matter how many seemingly independent windows you have open off the same (newer) application.

This explains several oddities and problems reported elsewhere, e.g. that a "single instance of IE5" (or Netscape, or Word) crashing takes down all the others open at the same time. Of course it would, and this behaviour would be nothing remarkable in the old MDI visual model, where multiple windows were fully contained within an overall application window. We are confused, however, because it looks like we were running separate instances, like we were used to. Instead, all we see are a number of child windows to the parent process in the main application.

Sunday 04.04

* Easter Sunday. Easter lilies and colored feathers. Decorated eggs, funny bunny bread and bunny cookies, salmon dinner, and wine. Topped off with a very sunny day, almost summer temperatures while the sun is coming the right way.

One bother is that the downstairs neighbour is home and smoking so much/often today we can't open the balcony door, much less use our south-facing balcony. She smokes really awful cigs. Cheap Russian or Yugoslavian ones, one is tempted to guess, of which there is a large offering here due to the smuggling activities of the "business-minded" east-Europeans who make up a large part of the immigrant/refugee population here.

Oh well… Some people have neighbours who always mow the lawn when they're home. Daily. Whether the lawn needs it or not.

Every so often I look at the news and the unfolding refugee crisis as Kosovo, a previously forgotten corner of Europe. Sadly, the reality is bound to be worse than the pessimistic enough, if spotty reports we see today. These events are profoundly disturbing for people like my mother-in-law, for they bring back memories never totally suppressed. She experienced the beginnings of the Spanish civil war, and fled from that to "safe" England, just in time for the Blitz, during which she eventually became a nurse. To in her late years once again see massive streams of refugees in Europe, naturally enough brings to mind those war years and an unease about the future for her children and grandchildren.

I suppose the real nagging question is whether we will in the end see NATO troops at ground level, either in action, or as a quasi-permanent "peace-keeping" presence. This looks increasingly likey. As disturbing as that question is for Americans, it is even more so for Europeans (for example the issue of armed German troops in that region again). The problem is that the ongoing displacement of the population has already irrevocably changed the status quo of the region, just as it did in Bosnia and adjacent areas years ago. It is becoming ever more doubtful that the Kosovo-Albanians can realistically return to anything remotely like their previous existance. As for what all this will mean for the other so-called republics of the region, including Yugoslavia (what's left of it), is an open question.

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