by Keith Fenske
August 2007 to December 2008
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by Keith Fenske August 2007 to December 2008 |
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This archive file contains the following stories that first appeared in "Bloggo - The Non Blog" between August 2007 and December 2008:
The presentation here differs from the original because this file makes less use of cascading style sheets: font sizes and spacing are relative to the defaults chosen by your browser. The contents are copyright © 2007, 2008 by Keith Fenske with all rights reserved.
(* To my mind, a practical joke is only funny if everyone laughs, including the unwitting victim. Most practical jokes fail this test, and can only be described as mean or cruel.)
Tuesday, August 14th. I was asked for an opinion about the Chinese economy based on my limited experience in China. I could only make the comparison to a high-stakes gambler: if you win, you win big, but if you lose, you're finished. Expect a sudden shift in political tone after the Beijing Olympics are over in 2008.
Friday, August 17th. A sharp comment on Windows Vista, forwarded by Doug F.
Passing the Torch(This page may have a pop-up survey, which you can just close.) After touting Vista for months, the editor of PC Magazine chooses to say otherwise before moving to a new job.
by: Jim Louderback (PC Magazine, 2007/8/15)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2171472,00.asp
Monday, August 20th. My upstream e-mail provider now estimates that 90% of all e-mail is outright spam: unsolicited bulk e-mail that nobody wants and never asked for. That means your ISP is using *ten* times more network and/or storage capacity than customers are actually paying for! Handling "free" e-mail is becoming an expensive proposition. If you have the Adobe Flash player installed on your computer, you can watch Postini's active display of spam and virus statistics.
Tuesday, August 21st. Summer is referred to as the "silly season" in traditional newspapers, because there is little real news and papers must fill their pages with stories of dubious content. Sometimes that content co-operates by truly being absurd. My city has a large international airport to the south. The exclusive contract for airport taxis was put up for bid, and awarded to a company licensed to operate in one of the smaller, nearby cities -- but not in the big city itself. These airport cabs can drop off passengers in the big city, but they can't pick up new passengers. Cabs from the big city can deliver passengers to the airport, but can't pick up. All taxis to and from the airport are wasting half of their travel. As Peter J. has pointed out, guess who pays for this? The customers, always the consuming public. A condition of bidding for the airport contract should have been that taxi companies were licensed to operate throughout the greater metropolitan area.
Wednesday, August 22nd. I am releasing some basic notes on handling files for digital photos. You are welcome to read them and say, "Yeah, I already know that." To which I will reply, "Well, why don't you do it then?"
"Designed by engineers; built by monkeys." (Keith Fenske, August 2007, expressing a common frustration about the final product not living up to early expectations)
Monday, September 3rd (Labor Day). Squirrel Follies. Our spruce tree has large clusters of immature pine cones for unknown reasons this year. Every day in the later afternoon, the squirrel goes up the tree and quickly releases several dozen cones, which fall heavily to the ground, pinging and thumping on their way down. Then the squirrel finds that these cones are not mature and hence not edible -- until the next day, when he's back again. Thud, scrabble, plonk.
Update (Monday, September 10th). I set aside some good pine cones, ready to eat, by the base of the tree. Those disappeared. In their place were a couple immature cones. I don't know if this is a cosmic joke, a coincidence, or if the squirrel is trying to buy more good cones!
You tell them what to do. You show them what to do. Then they say, "But I don't know what to do! You have to help me." (Keith Fenske, September 2007, on the futility of giving advice)
Friday, September 21st. I went to the local convenience store today. Corn chips and potato chips were on sale: two big bags for $5.99. So I took one bag with a new flavor of corn chips and a second bag with barbecue potato chips. Can't do that, said the cashier. They have to be both corn chips or both potato chips for the sale price. I said, why, it's the same brand and the same price? Because the computer won't do it. I laughed, put the bags back on the shelf, put my money into my wallet, and left the store. I was the only customer. The clerks, three of them, thought I'd change my mind and buy something else or buy more. Too bad, so sad. Another store was happy to sell me one bag of each -- and a third bag of a snack that I wanted to try.
People are so used to thinking that everything is "free" on the internet that they forget real people have to write the software first. So they don't pay and they don't say thank you. We've become a world of greedy electronic bastards. (Keith Fenske, September 2007)
Important things you can't remember until it's too late. Useless things you can remember immediately. (Keith Fenske, September 2007)
A while later, they "lent" the computer to a friend, who didn't return it and didn't return it. Finally, they admitted that they "broke" it. Exactly how they wouldn't say. That was two months ago. Where is the computer now? Gone. The $400 worth of parts could have been reused on another computer! Since they didn't pay for the computer, to them it had no value.
Anyway, that's the story. Was the computer really lost, broken, or stolen? I'll never know. Maybe it was given to someone else or resold to pay a debt. Something less pleasant could be involved; insert your own suspicions here. From a practical point of view, it doesn't matter. My time and my money were wasted: the intended users no longer have what I gave them. I was unhappy with other donations in the past, so this will probably be the last one. It costs me too much and the recipients' air of ignorant stupidity is infuriating. From now on, pay me for everything I do, or you will get nothing.
Reminds me of why I don't take pictures for charity and community groups anymore.
Monday, October 1st. The going price for Corel WordPerfect seems to be about 99 cents. That's what I paid on eBay for a BNIB copy of WordPerfect Office 2002 (version 10). The acronym "BNIB" is eBay-speak for "brand new in box". Plus shipping, of course. It's not that WordPerfect is bad; it's that nobody wants it. The suggested retail price is $200 to $300. Nobody has paid that much in years -- over ten years, in fact, since WordPerfect went from being the dominant word processor on MS-DOS to a has-been on Windows 3.1. We're all using Microsoft Word now, whatever we may think of Microsoft and its products, or the free OpenOffice.org. I also have a copy of WordPerfect Office 12.0 (2004) that someone included with one of my purchases just to get rid of it, and at no additional cost to me. I don't actually run WordPerfect; both copies have something else that I'm far more interested in: licenses for over 700 TrueType fonts from Bitstream and some pretty decent Corel clipart.
Tuesday, October 2nd. Radio stations have finally realized that teenagers and young adults are no longer a "target" audience. It doesn't matter how "hip" or "cool" or off-beat their broadcasts are; a station with a playlist of a hundred songs can't compete with MP3 music players having thousands of songs ... personally selected and without talk or commercials.
Wednesday, October 3rd. I had trouble with a spindle of 50 blank DVD-R discs. I could record, but when I compared the data, the discs caused a lot of read errors. Other computers had the same problem, and each time after wasting two or three discs of the one brand, another brand worked perfectly. The media was bad. When this happens, first you get angry and blame the company. Then you swear to never buy products from them again. After you calm down, you realize that even good companies can have manufacturing defects, and as much as they would like to, they can't catch all mistakes before products are shipped to consumers. CD-R and DVD-R discs in particular can only be fully tested by using them, and once used, they can't be reused or resold. So obviously, you can't test all of them. You randomly test a sample from each batch, and if the sample is good, then you ship the product. The defects probably escaped testing in one way or another.
I sent one unused disc and the package wrapper to Maxell Canada and asked for a refund or a replacement. The wrapper shows that I am a good consumer and have proof that I purchased the product; the disc has a lot number on the inner edge to help trace the defect. I didn't expect to receive a reply. Ginette B. surprised me, sending a new spindle of a slightly newer and faster version (16x speed), along with a few AA batteries whose value was about equal to my postage. I'm glad she didn't send the same version that I was complaining about (8x), since I would have been quite upset if those didn't work too. The new discs are good. The batteries are good. The warranty service was excellent, especially considering that companies usually prefer that you return defective products to the retailer, instead of the company itself. Within one week, I've gone from being annoyed to once again being a happy customer of Maxell's media products.
After round #0, drain is 50%.(These numbers are courtesy of a silly little Java program that I wrote to produce silly little numbers.) Then to bring the mixture back up to 50/50, I have to drain the radiator three times, dispose of that fluid, and refill with pure coolant:
After round #1, drain is 36%.
After round #2, drain is 26%.
After round #3, drain is 18%.
After round #4, drain is 13%.
After round #5, drain is 9%.
After round #0, fill is 0%.Somehow, despite all this guessing, I managed to hit the magic mark of just over 50% coolant, which protects the engine down to minus forty degrees. The old fluid went to a recycling center in 4-liter jugs, except for some that spilled on the driveway and inconvenienced ants that were building nests under the concrete pad.
After round #1, fill is 29%.
After round #2, fill is 49%.
After round #3, fill is 64%.
After round #4, fill is 74%.
Friday, October 5th. Earlier this week, a copy of Microsoft's Windows Vista sold for $32 on eBay (plus shipping). This was a full retail version in an unopened box, worth over $200 if you believe the sticker price. The reason it sold so cheaply is that nobody wanted it. The "Home Basic" version is missing many of the features that are heavily promoted with Vista, such as the fancy "Aero" interface. It's just Windows XP Home Edition all over again, and only exists so that Microsoft can claim the base price of Windows hasn't changed, despite expectations for personal computers being more than in the days of Windows XP (2002).
Thursday, October 11th. Prices for Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 were set assuming a Canadian dollar worth about 80 cents US. Now with the Canadian dollar higher than the American dollar, there has been no reduction in price. Canadians are paying a 25% premium for exactly the same software! It is cheaper to buy at US retail prices, plus shipping and taxes, than to buy locally.
We often attribute danger to strangers, because it is easier to blame someone nameless and faceless than it is to recognize ourselves. (Keith Fenske, October 2007)
Wednesday, October 24th. In the "bordering
on useless" category of programming,
I made up icons for my major Java applications,
not surprisingly with my own Windows icon
editor. They have no effect on how applications are run, and
are never seen from a command-line interface, but I now have a really cute
pop-up menu on my Start button (see image at right).
In local news, we set a new record high temperature today of 24.8 degrees Celsius (76.6 Fahrenheit). The old record from 1966 was 21.7 degrees. A sudden jump of three degrees can only be attributed to chinook winds blowing down the mountains, before the wind changed direction and started bringing really dark ugly clouds and rain from the northwest. I still have hopes of a warm Halloween for the children next week.
Friday, October 26th. Record high temperatures on Wednesday, snow on Friday. Welcome to Alberta!
Friday, November 2nd. A new version of the FindDupFiles (find duplicate files) Java application has been released. Browse the PDF documentation or download the ZIP archive with the program and documentation. Someone needed a specialized duplicate file finder and I used this as an excuse to revise the graphical shell (GUI) for FindDupFiles. It was one of my oldest utilities, almost an original. I divide my Java downloads into three categories:
Also recently released are FileSearch, FontRedate, and FontRename. For those who haven't read it, there is a description of what makes a good project for small utility program. As for why my Java utilities have a similar "look and feel", there's an explanation for that too!
Tuesday, November 6th. Found a label saying "best before 08-06-05" on a container of food. What does that mean? In my cupboard, I hope it's year-month-day!
Micro managers interrupt people while they are working, interfere with what they are doing, and then complain when they don't like the result. Just let them do their jobs! They probably know it better than you do anyway. (Keith Fenske, November 2007)
Tuesday, December 19th. Now that they've had time to "mature" (get old and be stable), some of my Java games and utilities have been released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). They are now free and redistributable. I don't like releasing these things early; otherwise, you end up with several versions "in the wild" all claiming to be the original.
"When you see something that you don't like, you assume that anything else will be better. You never consider the possibility that something else will be worse." (Keith Fenske, December 2007)
"You are so intent on telling other people what to do, that you are blind to what they have already done." (Keith Fenske, December 2007)
Wednesday, December 26th (Boxing Day). Let's end the year 2007 on a laugh. Spotted as item #300184573049 on eBay is a Microsoft Windows 95 Upgrade CD, with an asking price of US$5. The question is: upgrade from what? Windows 95 is twelve years old. The only system you could upgrade from would be Windows 3.1, which was released in 1992. Does anyone have a PC-compatible computer that's still working after 15 years? With at least 16 megabytes of memory (very expensive back then, about $100/MB)? A CD-ROM drive? A sound card? And a hard disk drive that still spins? In practical terms, anything older than Windows 2000 isn't worth repairing: no support, too slow, parts are obsolete and hence more expensive, etc. Going backwards into a box of days gone by should be Windows ME, Windows 98, Windows NT4, Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and the Apple Macintosh before the PowerPC chip and Mac OS 9.
Saturday, December 29th. Another joke for the new year: after receiving complaints about not being able to clearly distinguish some style elements of the standard Windows XP display scheme, in particular, the sliding box on scroll bars, we reverted the user's display to a Windows 98 scheme using web-safe colors:
| 3D Objects | RGB (204,204,204) + black | |
| Active Title Bar | (51,51,153) + same + white | |
| Active Window Border | (204,204,204) | |
| Application Background | (153,153,153) | |
| Desktop | (51,102,153) | |
| Inactive Title Bar | (102,102,102) + same + (204,204,204) | |
| Inactive Window Border | (204,204,204) | |
| Menu | (204,204,204) + black | |
| Message Box | black | |
| Selected Items | (51,51,153) + white | |
| Tool Tip | (255,255,204) + black | |
| Window | white + black | |
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The unfortunate part is that I recently uploaded several distribution files to my web site for release on other sites, and those files were to be picked up by automatic extraction sometime in the next week. With my site down, the extraction may fail, and the distribution will have to be restarted from the beginning (a 15-day process for places like Download.com). The whole idea was to get packages off my site and onto something more reliable; I guess I wasn't soon enough.
Update (Monday, January 14th). The files for my web page returned late last night. The most recent of those are from Thursday, January 10th, so Friday's and Saturday's uploads were lost. I'm not allowed to change anything yet; however, as a special bonus, anyone can go into anyone's folder and read their files! Fortunately, there is nothing in my folders that other people shouldn't see. The good news is that my distribution files from January 6th appear to be intact. The server seems to be responding better. Maybe the original failure, whatever its cause, will result in improvements. The HTTP server had a distressing habit of ignoring the first request for a file, but usually delivered on a second or later request. (The e-mail and webmail servers have their own story to tell.)
Now for a moment, think like a hacker ... with public access to a root directory, where each name is a subfolder for a particular customer, and with read access to all files. What can you do? Download the entire site! Start a web crawler, point it at the root, and wait. You don't need to follow hyperlinks: you have permission to read the file directories of around 1200 customers, mostly empty, averaging maybe a few megabytes each. All files combined would fit on a DVD-R disc and could be downloaded in several hours at ADSL speeds (150 kilobytes per second). Many of those files were never intended for public viewing. Some are even from former customers who are unaware that their files are still stored on this server. Hum. Seems like a real broken window of opportunity for mischief.* Almost anyone who has an active web page here will have noticed by now that something is wrong. Some of those will know how to access files and folders not belonging to themselves. A few will. (I have to type the FTP command "cd /http/fenske" to get to my files, so it's fairly obvious how to get to someone else's files or the root directory.) I demonstrated this to a friend by pulling a copy of his site, including files that he did for other people which weren't linked to his official home page and hence, should have been inaccessible. This is called "proof of concept" by white-hat hackers (the good guys), because it shows that something can be done, and it does so without breaking any legal or moral rules.
[* I'm so proud of that sentence: three clichés chained together!]
Downdate (Tuesday, January 15th). Still waiting for write access to my folder. Web browsers (HTTP) can't view the root directory, while authorized FTP users can look anywhere they want. Wednesday: waiting, attempting to contact someone we once knew at the ISP. My e-mail to the ISP was rejected after four hours with a "server too busy" message. That night, the web server stopped responding ... again. Thursday: no web server. Did I mention that my ISP is contractually obligated to provide hosting for web pages? They aren't legally liable if files occasionally get lost and have to be reloaded, but they are required to make a reasonable effort to provide a reliable service. (The words "reasonable" and "reliable" have no specific meaning unless set by legal precedent. While companies may reserve the right to change terms and conditions, they can't alter the basic nature of an agreement, and they can't make changes until a contract is renewed. If you were promised web hosting when you signed up, then they must continue to do so under terms that are equal to or better than what you originally agreed to. You may not be able to sue them if they fail to keep their half of an agreement -- that "not legally liable" phrase -- but their failure can be used as justification to terminate a contract. Consult a real lawyer for specific legal advice; don't get your advice from web pages like this! Web pages aren't lawyers, and they don't even play one on TV.)
Update (Friday, January 18th). The following "support bulletin" was found on my ISP's status page. Note the date: six days after the problem first occurred, and with no resolution in sight.
Edmonton web-hosting outagePeter J. has offered web space on his server for a temporary mirror. I think I'm going to accept.
Date: 2008-01-18There is currently a known outage affecting some of our Edmonton web-hosting customers (including personal web space). We would like to assure you that we are making every effort to quickly resolve this issue.
There is currently no estimated time for resolution. We will update the web site with any new information. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
old address: http://clubweb.interbaun.com/fenske/Please visit whichever site works for you. Thank you, Peter!
new mirror: http://www.psc-consulting.ca/fenske/
Downdate (Saturday, January 19th). One week since my ISP's web site stopped talking to me. It's obvious that this wasn't scheduled maintenance and equally obvious that they weren't prepared for it to happen. A typical household can replace a computer in a couple days; an ISP should be able to replace a server in a couple hours. That's what spare equipment is for and that's what business they are in. The comparison is appropriate because many small servers are just muscled PCs with extra memory and cooling fans. Maybe no thought was given to this server as long as it was running, and once it stopped, they didn't know what to do. This may be indicative of the general operation of the company. (You can tell that my expressed opinions are getting stronger, since there is less and less chance of these words appearing on my old web page.)
Sunday. Monday. Tuesday: redirecting to a server in another city with a modified URL, no folder, no files, and no login access. Wednesday. Thursday.
Update (Friday, January 25th). I'd like to thank loyal readers who asked about my web page: cousin Doug, FMcN, the other Keith, NoodleNet, Peter J., Randy R., RedEar, and Robert R. Was I voted off the internet like one of those Survivor TV shows? I wrote to my ISP's help desk, acting kind of dumb:
I am unable to browse my personal web page:Okay, maybe the long paragraph is anything but dumb. You know what I think of help desks. I sent this e-mail message before the start of business on Friday. There was no response that day or the next week, other than an automated reply acknowledging my original message.http://clubweb.interbaun.com/fenske/I get the error message:404 Not FoundWhen I try to go to my page, the address changes to:
The requested URL /~fenske/ was not found on this server.
Apache Server at clubweb.interbaun.com Port 80http://clubweb.interbaun.com/~fenske/There is a tilde (~) in front of the user name. Clubweb.interbaun.com is a legacy application for [name deleted], and the subdomain "clubweb" uniquely identifies pages as belonging to users and not the company Interbaun.com, so adding a tilde is not necessary on this server. It doesn't matter where the server is, but it is best to not make any visible changes to legacy web sites, even redirecting with an inserted tilde.I am unable to login to the FTP server. My user name and password are not accepted, either as user [deleted] or the previous [deleted].
These problems have persisted for almost two weeks now. Yes, I read your 2008-01-18 status bulletin on [URL deleted].
-- Keith F.
Downdate (Saturday, January 26th). Two weeks, as of this afternoon. Looks like my ISP's definition of "quickly" is "eventually". Most of us would have thought "same day" or "next day" or "following business day". There is no point in counting the days or posting anything more here unless something significant happens. Three weeks: the server has a minor home page saying "clubweb.interbaun.com" in big letters and identifying itself as "clubwebcanada.com" (which doesn't exist) with a toll-free telephone number. One month: ISP claims problem has been resolved, but I have no folder, no files, no FTP access. I suppose that's one way of making yourself look good: don't admit there's a problem, then say it's gone -- a common management style when I worked in the Far East.
I pay for internet access on a month-to-month basis. In exchange for my money, the internet company agrees (or agreed) to provide certain services. Hosting a personal web page was one of those services. My page has now been off-line for an entire billing period. No lawyer in their right mind would argue that this is a reasonable amount of time. I'm sure they'd argue about hours or days, but to fail to provide a service for the time period covered by an invoice is to ask to be paid for nothing. There has been no reply to my e-mail messages in this matter, other than automated receipts. That's okay: they switched webmail servers on the weekend, without carrying over customer preferences or account setup information. As someone said, it's like watching a train wreck happen.
Down and out date (Wednesday, March 12th). Two months. A bunch of other stupid things have happened, but saying more would be like flogging a dead horse ... while watching the train wreck above.
While it may take a big man to admit he's wrong, it takes an even bigger man to consider the possibility before he is proven wrong. (Keith Fenske, January 2008)
On the eternal question of whether toilet paper should unwind from the top of the roll or from the bottom of the roll, to quote my good friend Lorna T., "You obviously don't have cats." (Keith Fenske, January 2008)
Monday, January 28th. My big job for the day is to find the sidewalks. A blizzard has come and gone. Temperatures are below minus thirty degrees with wind chills near -45 degrees. Hard drifted snow is two feet thick on the steps, and as is usual with blizzards, bare ground shows in other places.
Reminds me of a visit to one house. The owner complained that the house was cold and drafty. The temperature was reduced on the thermostat and the hot air registers were partially or mostly closed. There was also condensation on the windows and frost on the baseboards. The owner explained that this was to save energy (and hence money). Yes, but not in rooms that you regularly use! And especially not on the main floor of a house where the thermostat is located! If the hot air from the furnace can't reach the thermostat, then the furnace runs longer and more often, using more energy, and costing more. Think about it: if you closed all the air registers in a house, then the furnace would run constantly and eventually die of a mechanical heart attack.
Wednesday, January 30th. Laugh of the
day:
Staples
is having a clearance sale and one of the items on the front page of the
flyer is Microsoft Windows
Vista Ultimate (upgrade), regularly CA$300, on sale for CA$200. Save
CA$100! Translation: nobody in their right mind will buy this thing
and it's been sitting on the shelves and in the warehouses for a year now.
A few high-end towers built in late 2006 could be upgraded to Vista, but
I can't imagine anyone with anything older being happy with it. Most
upgrades have been disasters. New hardware has only started catching
up with the demands of Vista. Too bad Vista won't catch up with the
demands of its users.
What should Microsoft be doing? See "Lack of Courage" (June 2007).
Friday, February 8th. Come On Down To Keith's Friday Software Extravaganza! We Have Free Software! We Have Software With 30-Day Free Trials! We Even Have Software That You Might Use!
Today's special is "Character Map" with a name cleverly chosen so that you realize it's a replacement for the Windows Character Map accessory, a replacement that actually works. You can resize the window. You can resize the characters. You can copy and paste. Find characters that you didn't know existed! Read their names and try to guess what they're for!
Download from my randomly site-hopping web page, or from Download.com in its many disguises.
It amazes me how some companies are utterly dependent on their computers for business, yet pay so little attention to the maintenance of those computers. (Keith Fenske, February 2008)
Another site called Softpedia.com probably poached my name from new releases on Download.com, but since then has done a decent job of indexing my software as it appears on my web site. They did a couple, sent me an e-mail message more or less asking for permission, and made good use of suggestions and edited descriptions that I gave them in reply. Most of my programs are free under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and I really have no say in their distribution. I can co-operate or I can ignore people, but I can't say no. I have to give Softpedia.com credit for understanding that the same Java programs will run on more than just Windows, although I am amused that the programs are indexed once by one editor for Apple Macintosh computers and again by another editor for Microsoft Windows computers. What seems like a duplication of effort has certified my programs as being 100% free of spyware and viruses, when run on a Mac, and I'm assuming that I can apply this certification to my programs when run on a PC, since they are one and the same!
In general, when a program's source code is available and can be recompiled by anyone who is interested, it is unlikely that the program's author has included malicious code. Incompetent code, perhaps, but not major nasties like adware, spyware, or viruses.
Update (Monday, March 17th). Descriptions of my programs are now appearing on sites unrelated to Download.com or Softpedia.com, the only two distribution networks that I co-operated with. If you do my name search above, all Download.com sites identify themselves as being part of CNET at the bottom of each page. Softpedia.com only operates as Softpedia. Any other site that claims to be a download for my programs is fake. The fakes have several characteristics in common. They operate under multiple confusing names, with the same content. Their descriptions are poorly edited text from my documentation, or stolen from other sites. The download links are missing, difficult to navigate, don't work, or offer to sell you programs that are actually free. Mistakes that have been corrected on the legitimate sites get repeated without correction on the fake sites. One site indexed two programs that only appear on Download.com and are not available on my own site -- but claims to download from my site!
The fake sites are nothing more than expanded versions of the keyword spammers from a couple years ago (see "Famous on a Web Page" from February 2004). At that time, they grabbed text from other web pages, packaged them as fake web searches on random phrases (some quite bizarre), and created thousands (millions?) of garbage web pages on hundreds (thousands?) of temporary sites. The creation of the pages and the sites was so mechanical that I concluded it was an organized effort to spam search engines like Google with useless pages whose only purpose was to serve advertising to unsuspecting web surfers. I even suspected that the registrations for those sites were fake, because almost identical sites were registered in completely different geographic regions. The registered "owners" may have been fictitious or names stolen from a telephone book. Real search engines eventually eliminated these sites from their databases.
The new sites are pretending to provide a service: an index of downloadable software. They use the same general format and style as the legitimate sites. All they really care about is pushing their advertisements in your face, so the supposed content is badly done. They can't expect many repeat visitors, and they probably don't expect to be in business very long. The irony is that if they actually indexed the software correctly, they could be viewed as almost legitimate. I don't believe in providing links to bad sites, but I will say that today there are two groups of fake download sites. One is registered to an address in Pakistan (using servers in Houston, Texas); the other is registered in the Philippines (with servers in Los Angeles, California). Both groups are registered through the same company in Houston.
Wednesday, March 5th. I was downloading software for an old HP scanner on an old computer. The original program ran on Windows 95/NT4/98/ME/2000/XP and was last revised in December 2001. When I asked for the Windows 98 download, I was told:
As of July 2007, HP will no longer be able to offer driver downloads or replacement driver CD ordering for Windows 98, 98 Second Edition (SE), or Windows Millennium (Me) for your HP printer, all-in-one, camera, or scanner. Microsoft has stopped providing and supporting certain files related specifically to Windows 98 SE, and this change affects all technology companies. HP, along with other technology companies, is no longer able to use selected components in support of Windows 98 SE, which has an impact on our software strategy for Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows Me. HP will continue to provide other selected HP software and applications that do not depend on Windows 98 SE components for the foreseeable future.The download I wanted was actually the same for all versions of Windows from 95 to XP. When I asked for Windows XP or 2000, there was no problem. So I mischievously asked for Windows NT4, then Windows 95. No problem. A couple years older, and still supported. The oversight is amusing and I'm sure there was a chuckle or two at HP about the logical inconsistency.
Monday, March 10th. I've noticed an unusual tendency for equipment to misbehave after the switch to daylight saving time (DST). This happens more often in spring (clocks advanced) than in fall. The cause seems to be poorly implemented internal clocks or timers. Power cycling (turn off, wait, turn on) will correct the problem nine times out of ten.
Update (Sunday, April 6th). A network router refused to renew its DHCP lease until it was powered off and powered on again. Sure enough, today is the day to switch to DST according to the old schedule.
Tuesday, March 11th. Ah, yes, the wonders of the federal tax department. I was trying to help someone whose income taxes had been re-adjusted for the past three years, with more money owing. The government was correct; the taxes hadn't been paid properly. What we couldn't figure out was how a normally conscientious person had failed to fill out the forms correctly, until I noticed that the section in dispute was missing from the "special" forms that the government had sent, and there was no mention in the instructions about needing a different form if certain conditions applied!
Wednesday, March 12th. Early reviews are in for my software posted on Download.com (hosted) and Softpedia.com (linked). There is no relationship between how useful I consider a program to be and how often it gets downloaded. User ratings seem based mostly on appearance. A plain utility that handles large amounts of data quickly and correctly gets less notice than a pretty little applet that does essentially nothing. Games are the big attraction. In other words, web downloads are a mirror image of our real life.
Thursday, March 13th. This story is a couple years old, so I guess it's now safe to tell. I was asked to provide a computer for a family that couldn't afford to buy one (or so they said; see similar story from September 2007). I didn't have any extra equipment at the time that was good, only an old Windows 98 tower that was to be recycled (scrapped). They said it didn't matter how old it was, so long as it could do e-mail, some light web surfing, and run Microsoft Word. I cleaned up the tower, a monitor, a keyboard, etc, for them. It was about five years old, but hey, it was free. I explained very carefully that if they loaded it down with anything more, then it probably wouldn't work. Several months later, they called and wanted to know why the video sound wasn't very good in their on-line chat program (Yahoo Messenger) with their new web camera. I went over, restored a system image that didn't have the massive video software installed, and explained in no uncertain terms that a web camera was not going to work on this computer. I even taped a piece of paper across the monitor that said, "This computer is too old for a web camera." A week later, the camera was back on. I didn't go back a second time.
Friday, March 14th. I forget where I was, but the new LCD computer monitor had control buttons underneath, with black-on-black lettering along the bottom front edge. The lettering was so "discreet" (hidden) that I had to shine a flashlight sideways across the lettering before I could see enough ridge detail to read the words! Definitely a case of style being preferred over usable function.
Extracting maximum performance from multiple processors is a big research topic (click that Google link for thousands of references in pseudo-random order). A very practical book called "Windows 2000 Performance Guide" was published in January 2002 by Mark Friedman and Odysseas Pentakalos (O'Reilly Media). In particular, see "Chapter 5: Multiprocessing" available on-line. Most of what is said applies equally well to Windows XP and to a certain extent, Windows Vista. The general concepts apply to all computers you are likely to see outside of a research lab.
The reason the mood has turned ugly so quickly is that many people were waiting for the "Service Pack 1" updates, which are traditionally major fixes for initial glitches in any new Microsoft product. The feeling is that SP1 has not solved the problems with Vista. Expect reviews and general commentary to get even nastier in the months to follow.
There is a hilarious advertisement on several big web sites today (New York Times, PC World) as part of the Mac Versus PC series. Call it "Emergency Banner Refresh". The Adobe Flash ad on the right is tied to a banner across the top that initially says, "Vista ... one of the biggest blunders in technology" (CNET.com).
Wednesday, April 2nd. One of the big grocery stores is installing self-serve checkouts. Other than the obvious imbalance between trusting customers to correctly scan their own merchandise and increased concerns about shoplifting, the lack of human contact doesn't make the purchase any easier. I had one item and the correct change (coins) to pay for it. I touched the checkout screen where it said to begin. I was asked how many plastic bags I wanted. I selected "no bags". I was asked to scan my first item, which I did. Then a voice told me to put the item in a bag. What bag? I don't have any bags, and there was no obvious sensor that I could wave the item in front of to make it think that I had put it in a bag. There was no "continue" option on the checkout screen, nor was there a "finished" option. After being told five or six times to put the item in a bag, I went to a different checkout with a real, live cashier -- who was friendly and processed my transaction faster than would have been done by the self-serve checkout. I don't know how many more times the self-serve repeated itself, asking the no-longer-present customer to put the item in a bag!
Update (Friday, April 4th). Several people have similar stories. The trick is to push down where a bag would be if there was a bag. Dislike of automated checkouts is very strong. One person commented that the only users of these checkouts are store employees on their breaks. I did notify the store of my concerns by e-mail, but do not expect to receive a reply.
Update (Monday, December 8th). The checkouts have been reprogrammed and are much better now.
A standard computer tower has a power supply of around 300 watts (W) maximum capacity. You don't use all that power, all the time, but even at 100 watts, the tower produces as much heat as a 100W light bulb. How long do you think you could put a 100W light bulb in an enclosed box before the sides became too hot to touch? Why then do people put computer towers in the cabinet of a desk, with a door closed in front, and a hole in back only large enough for the data and power cables?
A computer produces heat and it dissipates that heat with fans. Air must flow in, through, and around the computer. No air flow means no heat dissipation. No heat dissipation means a hot computer. A hot computer doesn't work well, and may stop working ... permanently.
To give you an example, I was called about a network problem. The complaint was slow internet access. Other than software issues (spyware, Windows Vista, etc), I found the main tower inside a cabinet with the front door closed, the back open, but the back so close to a wall that there was limited airflow. On top of the metal tower was an ADSL modem, which would normally run fairly hot because of high-frequency signals. On top of the modem was a wireless router. Either the modem or the router had the wrong AC/DC adapter block: too strong with something like 9 volts output instead of 7.5 volts. There was no space between the tower, the modem, and the router. We'd normally say they were "hot enough to fry eggs" but to be honest, they weren't quite that hot. Definitely too hot to handle. A router can't maintain a good wireless connection under these circumstances, hence the cause of the original complaint.
Sunday, April 13th. Hottest day of the year, so far: 24.9 degrees Celsius or 76.8 Fahrenheit. Last week, snow. This week, no snow. Next week ... more of the wild variation called springtime in Alberta. Monday, April 21st: a headline in today's newspaper proclaims, "Weekend blizzard is worst April storm to hit city in nearly 20 years." Roads are in poor winter driving condition, with about 30 cm or 12 inches of snow falling and blowing over several days. Temperatures are twenty degrees (Celsius) below normal. Tuesday, April 22nd: all-time low of -11.6 degrees (+11.1 Fahrenheit), breaking the previous record of -8.9 Celsius from 1918. Wednesday, April 23rd: sunny, warm, and half of the snow is already gone.
Friday, May 9th. Redefinition of "ISP": incompetent service provider. (Not original; 25 other web sites use this phrase, although most are not talking about internet service providers.)
Monday, May 12th. A new version of the CompareFolders Java application has been released, with better handling of checksum files, a duplicate file finder, and a cleaner user interface. Minor corrections will be made over the next two weeks, so let me know if there is anything that you want changed.
"To be honest I knew very little about the Royal Family until Autumn met Peter. It's not something we follow that closely in Canada.... We trust Autumn's judgment." (Brian Kelly, in an interview with the British Daily Telegraph, about the marriage of his daughter to Peter Phillips, 11th in line to the royal throne.)
Monday, May 19th (Victoria Day). You don't often find the best talent at the center of an empire. (Keith Fenske, May 2008, probably not original.)
Wednesday, May 21st. There is a new version of the CharMap ("character map") Java application that supports the extended Unicode range, and shows raw glyphs for the fontologically curious. Why do only 65,536 characters when you can do all 1,114,112? As with CompareFolders, I will leave changes open for about two weeks.
Monday, May 26th. Changes have closed for version 3 of the CompareFolders Java application. I would like to thank my semi-anonymous beta testers for their suggestions -- you know who you are, but I'm not sure I do!
To give you an idea how much technology has changed since 2002, Randy purchased the best of what was available at the time for a reasonable price: an Intel Pentium 4 processor at 1.6 GHz with 256 MB of 266 MHz DDR (PC-2100) memory and an 80 GB hard disk drive. Current computers are about ten times faster for large applications. Having 256 MB of memory was a lot in 2002 -- base systems had only 128 MB -- but today you can't get Windows XP SP3 running with anti-virus and something like iTunes without at least 512 MB. Older motherboards are/were limited to disk drives smaller than 128 GB; anything larger would be ignored (if you are lucky) or cause the system BIOS to lock up (if you aren't).
Refurbishing an old computer is a matter of some money and more patience. Randy donated an entire working computer: tower, monitor, keyboard, mouse, with no missing pieces. Realistically, if the motherboard or processor is bad, the tower is nothing but a collection of spare parts. More memory can be bought cheaply from local stores like Memory Express, because the maximum amount accepted by older computers is considered small today. Today's generic memory from companies like Kingston is usually more than adequate; memory specific to the brand of computer is rarely necessary, especially if you run a good memory tester overnight. Failing hard drives can be replaced, and replaced again when the new replacement fails too! (That's what DOA warranties are for.) Windows can be re-installed and activated, often with a phone call to Microsoft for authorization to use a product key attached to the side of a Dell computer. (Apparently Dell didn't register some OEM product keys with Microsoft. Maybe they purchased a large number of stickers in bulk and just slapped them on the side of towers as they were assembled.) Applications can be installed. System images can be made. Users can and will proceed to make a total mess of the delivered system. System images can be restored. Users will be more careful the second time. Perhaps.
The estimated cost for repairs was under $100. Randy had already installed a CD/DVD writer and a USB 2.0 card, which he needed for connecting external disk drives but which is the same for cameras and MP3 players. I knew that I would have to buy more memory (512 MB added to the 256 MB for 768 MB total), and that I would have to clean off my shelves for accessories like speakers and a mouse pad. I didn't know about the failing disk drive. To be fair, neither did Randy. Fortunately, the problem only showed up when running diagnostics, and I doubt that any of Randy's files had been affected. The technical explanation is that all disk drives have some bad spots, and they hide those spots by redirecting to reserved or hidden sectors. It's only when they run out of hidden space that the problem becomes visible to the user. A new disk drive was bad, and the diagnostics caught that before I tried to install Windows. A second drive was good. Windows XP recognized all the hardware except the sound card, and Dell had a download for that. My final test for computers of this age is playing a DVD movie such as Monsters Inc. You'll be glad to know that Mike and Sulley once again saved Boo.
The actual cost of repairs was just over $100. I kept to the $100 estimate when I delivered the computer. Following the advice of Peter, I no longer donate computers outright. The recipients pay for the cost of repairs, but not for my time. They take better care of something they "earn" than something they are given.
Their old Windows ME computer was a mess and it took several hours to transfer existing files, mostly music and photos. Did I ever tell you how much I hate internet security packages like Shaw Secure (based on F-Secure)? If you slow a computer to a crawl, then it's probably safe from outside attack, because it's too slow to do anything. Unplugging the power cord would be about equally useful. (Joke.) I had to uninstall Shaw Secure before the system was stable enough to copy files over the network or even type commands in an MS-DOS command prompt window. Burning gigabytes of data to CD-RW (650 MB capacity) would have taken too long.
"The more you do for other people, the less they do for themselves, and the more they think nothing needs to be done." (Keith Fenske, June 2008, revision of December 2006 comment.)
Saturday, June 14th. In the "aren't people funny" department, a few weeks ago, I did a quick redesign of a web page for someone. They didn't like it. Admittedly, I didn't spend much effort doing this because (1) they weren't paying for my time, and (2) they didn't know what they wanted. My design didn't spin your eyes with a crowded layout, and would resize properly for different fonts and browsers. They decided that they could do better themselves. Every so often I'm asked to look at their changes. More and more, it looks like what I did. Gee, maybe there is a reason why I made those suggestions....
Friday, June 20th. I can't tell
if this is honesty in advertising or a bad job of copy writing: "Energy
saver bug lights. They won't attract most bugs." Maybe from
the same store I can buy a cooler that won't cool most foods. (Joke.)
Since the mistake is embarrassing, not sad, the
store won't be named here.
Monday, June 23rd. A new version of the Font Rename (Java) application is available. Default assumptions were moved to an external file that the user can edit, similar to what was done for the Character Map (Java) application.
Dogs are loyal to whoever feeds them. (Keith Fenske, June 2008, a brilliant observation in honor of the other Keith's birthday.)
Friday, June 27th. Windows Vista appears to be entering the "lame duck" category of software. Some of this is just a reaction against Microsoft as a company.
Saturday, July 5th. The new version 9 of Adobe Acrobat Reader has gotten so far away from the original idea (the ability to print and view documents independent of any particular operating system) that I'm not sure what Adobe is thinking. Way to ruin a good idea, Adobe! Maybe we should all switch to Microsoft XPS format. Me? Recommending Microsoft? At least they haven't turned their specification into a multi-media toy ... yet.
In view of increasing complexity for information technology, and to invert the old saying about academics, we know less and less about more and more, until we know absolutely nothing about everything. (Keith Fenske, July 2008.)
No matter how much data one CPU can process, there will always be computing jobs that demand more power. Hence, the need for multiple processors and clusters. A good CPU and operating system should work separately or in configurations ranging from tightly coupled to geographically distributed. (Keith Fenske, July 2008.)
Friday, August 1st. Looks like my internet company failed to renew its contract with Giganews/Supernews for news group access (on-line discussion groups). Just one more North American ISP to drop Usenet because they think it has no value to them as a business. To heck with what was promised when customers subscribed. Quote:
Date: 2008-08-01. We have opted to discontinue our newsgroup service, as there has not been enough subscriber usage in recent months to warrant renewing our agreement with the service provider. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.This was done without advance warning or consultation, from a company whose promotional blurbs are largely self congratulatory and unrelated to actual performance. In fact, the above explanation was only posted the day *after* service was terminated. First they conveniently lose personal web pages; now, news groups. Fewer services for more money seems to be the latest business model. At least one of my neighbors will be switching to another company next week, because news groups are/were very important to them, and the reason why they originally chose this company over alternatives.
Tuesday, September 2nd. There is a patch of grass in the front yard that I've been trying to regrow. It's been slow and I found out why: the rabbit likes to sleep there.
Monday, September 22nd. Two more of my Java programs are now ready for the GNU General Public License (GPL) stage of their lives: Font Rename and Icon Editor. Read the source code and tell me what I did wrong. Or better yet, follow up on my suggested changes and release your own version.
Tuesday, September 30th. A record high temperature today: 27.2° Celsius (81.0° Fahrenheit), bettering the old record of 25.0°C (77°F from 1886). The low temperature was the statistical average of 2.3°C, showing how much daytime highs and nighttime lows can differ at this time of year (24.9 C° or 44.8 F°). Last week we had killing frost, that is, several degrees below freezing, where vegetables above ground in the garden die even if covered with blankets.
Wednesday, October 1st. Another all-time high temperature of 26.0°C, up only slightly from 25.6°C in 1888 (78°F). The grass is green, but doesn't grow much, perhaps because the evening temperatures are too cold.
Thursday, October 2nd. If you were expecting another record high temperature, you'd be off by 1.1 C°. The good weather doesn't last forever, so enjoy it while you can!
Tuesday, October 14th. Wow, the size of the Halloween candy is so much smaller than even last year! Way back then, the "Oh Henry" bars were about 1/3 the size of a regular bar; this year, they are about 1/5 the size. I bought a big box of 125 (so they say), but I bought by weight not by the number, and I'll have to hand out about three to each kid just so we don't look chintzy. It would be almost as good to buy a bulk box of full-sized chocolate bars and give away one of those to each child. The difference in cost would be small because we only get around 40 ghosts and goblins here on Halloween.
Monday, November 10th. The only time most computers seem to slow down lately is when they hit a web page with an excessive amount of JavaScript. Should we build faster computers just to compensate for poor web design?
Monday, November 24th. Microsoft has announced that the next version of Windows (called "Windows 7") will have several different packages depending upon which features are removed. The same marketing plan was severely criticized in Windows Vista (February 2007, January 2009, more), and was one of the reasons for the poor adoption of Vista ... and for recent releases of Microsoft Office. Some companies never learn, or at least, think they have nothing to learn.
PS: Are you having trouble with the fact that the internal version number will be 6.1 for Windows 7, that is, Vista's 6.0 plus 0.1? You'd think that if the number seven was an important part of the product's identity, they'd change the internal number to match.
PPS: I still find Vista and Windows 7 to be incredibly annoying to use, although Windows 7 does run better. Vista needs 700 MB of memory just to wake up (operating system only); the beta release of Windows 7 needs about 400 MB, and for comparison, the SP3 release of Windows XP needs about 200 MB.
Monday, December 1st. Windows XP's share of the market continues to drop slowly, now at 66.31% compared to Vista's 20.45%. Twenty percent after two years is a slow adoption rate for Vista, perhaps half of what would be expected if the product were popular. That's a lot of lost sales for Microsoft and for the hardware manufacturers. Overall, Windows is 89.62% of the market (all versions), Macintosh is 8.87%, and Linux is 0.83%. These numbers are from Net Applications based on web traffic, that is, computers used on the internet at selected sites. Vista will peak at around 30% in late 2009; Windows XP was over 85% by the end of 2006. [Net Applications changed their methodology in 2009 and now report the following numbers. November 2008 has Windows Vista at 14.28% and XP at 77.18%. Vista peaked in August 2009 at 18.80% with XP still at 71.79%.]
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