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http://www.paul-robinson.us/index.php/2008/10/25/the_robinson_method_a_really_simple_way_?blog=5

The question, of course, is not how much oil Canada has, but how easy it is to extract and process.

I said this here in an AC posting because I didn't check that I was logged on, but it fits:

I read this years ago from some website that talked about "peak oil" and they didn't need Wikileaks to mention it; in fact it was interesting in that it might even have said basically the same thing, that Saudi Arabia is overstating its reserves by 40%. I'm not even an expert on oil, and in my own blog from more than three years ago, I wrote:

the amount of predicted reserves for some of the OPEC countries might simply be total fiction, accounting hocus-pocus where they count proven reserves as well as the net amount of oil that supposedly could be removed if all possible oil were obtainable. And as anyone who has ever tried to get the last drops of a milkshake by a straw out of a glass would realize, even I know that 100% recovery of all reserves isn't possible.

Maybe the question instead is, how soon does the U.S. decide Canada's oil is too valuable to let the Canucks keep it and propose some sort of arrangement where Canada becomes the next state or five states or something similar? If Quebec ever gets what it wants - what South Sudan just got, independence - I wouldn't be surprised to see something like a U.S./Canada merger.

The original Articles of Confederation, the founding document that was defacto replaced by the Constitution of the United States, gave Canada the automatic right to become a state if it wanted to.

I read this years ago from some website that talked about "peak oil" and they didn't need Wikileaks to mention it; in fact it was interesting in that it might even have said basically the same thing, that Saudi Arabia is overstating its reserves by 40%. I'm not even an expert on oil, and in my own blog from three years ago, I wrote:

the amount of predicted reserves for some of the OPEC countries might simply be total fiction, accounting hocus-pocus where they count proven reserves as well as the net amount of oil that supposedly could be removed if all possible oil were obtainable. And as anyone who has ever tried to get the last drops of a milkshake by a straw out of a glass would realize, even I know that 100% recovery of all reserves isn't possible.

Obfuscated link in parent is to http://paul-robinson.us/index.php?blog=5&title=the_robinson_method_a_really_simple_way_&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I am guessing that the site was slashdotted because the video never ran. Yet another example of some imbecile who designs their own video player and either can't run the material correctly or can't handle the load. I see this over and over, someone - or some site - decides to run their own video player and it's either inoperative or runs badly. I wrote about this on my blog in October 2008 how so many places try - and fail - to properly run video.

You know, running video correctly isn't rocket science, YouTube does it fine under loads that would slashdot Slashdot. But do these stupidos use YouTube to serve their video? Noooo, they'd prefer to use some incompetent who can't provide it properly, probably because they're under the impression they'd lose ad revenue or something, I guess. But I see this all the time. The New York Times provides video for some of their stories, But their video doesn't work, and stalls, but has no way to cache the video so that if it fails you can either get it to run smoothly or go back and run it again without having to download the entire video all over again after it's already been served. I guess they never thought about people having problems,

If these were streamed video like a live event, that would be one thing. But they do the exact same thing YouTube does, they feed stored video to a player written using Adobe Flash. So there's no excuse for their failures except pure incompetence and/or stupidity.

I remember when someone gave a figure of something like an estimate of TCO (total cost of ownership) for PCs was something like $10,000 a year or $12,000 a year because it priced out everything at the maximum professional cost for software failures, installation of new software, etc. Ignoring PCs in non-commercial environments, I have a PC here at home; It's what I'm using to write this. My labor costs me nothing and the changes I make to my computer are for my benefit, and thus, while my own labor might have some value to me, it is not costing me anything other than opportunity cost, which again, has actual financial expenditure to me of zero.

If a team has to spend $10 million to develop an application because they had to do it twice and if they had done it right the first time would have cost $3 million, you can claim that it's a loss of $7 million, or you can - correctly - claim that it's a system that cost $10 million to develop including false starts. It all depends on how you want to cook the numbers.

If they are claiming that $6+ trillion represents complete failures I find that a bit unlikely. But if you count the amounts wasted because the customer didn't know what they wanted, should we then count as failures and expense costs all of the people who take perfectly working bathrooms and kitchens who gut them after a few years because they no longer like the way they look?

You can create any kind of number by how you count failure, if you include redesigns for performance, redesigns because of desire for increased features, or redesign for maintenance. You can also count failure as systems needing to be scrapped because they have absolutely no usability for any of the problems needed to be solved. If that was what was being claimed I would, again, find that number highly suspect. It all depends on where they get their numbers from.

Let's also not forget, again, this is an estimate, because most of these numbers are neither published nor available to outsiders to the company that developed the program or system. The number could be higher, or it could be lower. It reminds me of the supposed estimate of the losses for pirated software raised to huge numbers by claiming every copy made was a lost sale that would have been at full price without discounting. Some kid who made a copy of a program where he had to ask someone for a free disc is certainly not going to pay $200 for a copy, but the numbers presumed that the bootleg copy would have resulted in a full-price sale.

So if someone wants to claim that the total cost of software failures is US$6,200,000,000,000.00 I'd really like to know how they got this number. Are they pricing out costs in Africa as if the cost of labor is the same in New York City? Are they pricing labor in Los Angeles the same as in Baton Rouge, Louisiana? How are they determining costs?

Paul Robinson — Paul@paul-robinson.us — My Blog

I remember when someone gave a figure of something like an estimate of TCO (total cost of ownership) for PCs was something like $10,000 a year or $12,000 a year because it priced out everything at the maximum professional cost for software failures, installation of new software, etc. Ignoring PCs in non-commercial environments, I have a PC here at home; It's what I'm using to write this. My labor costs me nothing and the changes I make to my computer are for my benefit, and thus, while my own labor might have some value to me, it is not costing me anything other than opportunity cost, which again, has actual financial expenditure to me of zero.

If a team has to spend $10 million to develop an application because they had to do it twice and if they had done it right the first time would have cost $3 million, you can claim that it's a loss of $7 million, or you can - correctly - claim that it's a system that cost $10 million to develop including false starts. It all depends on how you want to cook the numbers.

If they are claiming that $6+ trillion represents complete failures I find that a bit unlikely. But if you count the amounts wasted because the customer didn't know what they wanted, should we then count as failures and expense costs all of the people who take perfectly working bathrooms and kitchens who gut them after a few years because they no longer like the way they look?

You can create any kind of number by how you count failure, if you include redesigns for performance, redesigns because of desire for increased features, or redesign for maintenance. You can also count failure as systems needing to be scrapped because they have absolutely no usability for any of the problems needed to be solved. If that was what was being claimed I would, again, find that number highly suspect. It all depends on where they get their numbers from.

Let's also not forget, again, this is an estimate, because most of these numbers are neither published nor available to outsiders to the company that developed the program or system. The number could be higher, or it could be lower. It reminds me of the supposed estimate of the losses for pirated software raised to huge numbers by claiming every copy made was a lost sale that would have been at full price without discounting. Some kid who made a copy of a program where he had to ask someone for a free disc is certainly not going to pay $200 for a copy, but the numbers presumed that the bootleg copy would have resulted in a full-price sale.

So if someone wants to claim that the total cost of software failures is US$6,200,000,000,000.00 I'd really like to know how they got this number. Are they pricing out costs in Africa as if the cost of labor is the same in New York City? Are they pricing labor in Los Angeles the same as in Baton Rouge, Louisiana? How are they determining costs?

Paul Robinson — Paul@paul-robinson.us — My Blog

The purpose of the GPL was to ensure that a distributor of software release source and if they made any changes, that they release the source to those changes. The GPL was meant to ensure that the person have the freedom to know what the software contains and to modify and re-release if they choose to do so. The GPL in no way prevents or discourages anyone from selling a GPL licensed product. In fact, the GPL specifically states one may charge any fee they want for the application as long as they make access to the source available either with the sale or at a nominal charge from some other point if it's necessary to copy it. If you make the source available as part of the application, your responsibility under the GPL has been completely complied with, and you are entitled to charge whatever the traffic will bear.

If they don't like it, they should have written their own license that requires source release and prohibits charging. As it is, under the GPL you can charge anything you want and the people who originally released it have no right to object. You've got expenses, and for that matter, if you want to make a small profit - or even a large one - you're perfectly entitled to do so.

Nobody says a goddamn word when Redhat or Suse makes millions reselling a large collection of open source applications without paying the developers anything at all. Of course, Redhat does spend several million a year contributing code to the Linux distribution that everyone also gets to use, but that's beside the point; no one objects to Redhat making a huge profit, and if you can make something off a released GPL application and comply with the license, more power to you, and tell those whiners that the purpose of the GPL was to ensure protection of the user's freedom, not protection of obtaining something for nothing,
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Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> - My Blog

The purpose of the GPL was to ensure that a distributor of software release source and if they made any changes, that they release the source to those changes. The GPL was meant to ensure that the person have the freedom to know what the software contains and to modify and re-release if they choose to do so. The GPL in no way prevents or discourages anyone from selling a GPL licensed product. In fact, the GPL specifically states one may charge any fee they want for the application as long as they make access to the source available either with the sale or at a nominal charge from some other point if it's necessary to copy it. If you make the source available as part of the application, your responsibility under the GPL has been completely complied with, and you are entitled to charge whatever the traffic will bear.

If they don't like it, they should have written their own license that requires source release and prohibits charging. As it is, under the GPL you can charge anything you want and the people who originally released it have no right to object. You've got expenses, and for that matter, if you want to make a small profit - or even a large one - you're perfectly entitled to do so.

Nobody says a goddamn word when Redhat or Suse makes millions reselling a large collection of open source applications without paying the developers anything at all. Of course, Redhat does spend several million a year contributing code to the Linux distribution that everyone also gets to use, but that's beside the point; no one objects to Redhat making a huge profit, and if you can make something off a released GPL application and comply with the license, more power to you, and tell those whiners that the purpose of the GPL was to ensure protection of the user's freedom, not protection of obtaining something for nothing,
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Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> - My Blog

The U.S. Supreme Court decided around 1992 in the case of Feist v. Rural Telephone that the mere aggregation of customer information of a telephone company is inadequate to obtain copyright protection, basically tossing out the entire premise that "sweat of the brow" alone was adequate, and overturning a more than 80 year precedent in Pacific Telephone v. Leon from 1911, I think.

Since there is no creativity in the computer generating an automated result, I suspect the results are not copyrightable.

Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> - My Blog

The U.S. Supreme Court decided around 1992 in the case of Feist v. Rural Telephone that the mere aggregation of customer information of a telephone company is inadequate to obtain copyright protection, basically tossing out the entire premise that "sweat of the brow" alone was adequate, and overturning a more than 80 year precedent in Pacific Telephone v. Leon from 1911, I think.

Since there is no creativity in the computer generating an automated result, I suspect the results are not copyrightable.

Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> - My Blog

In this case, the information about this reporter was suppressed to protect his life, not to prevent, say, someone else's embarrassment or to cover-up misconduct or otherwise prevent the publication of information the public should know to protect the democratic process.

Back during the Iranian Hostage crisis, the news media cooperatively agreed not to publicize the information that there were Americans hiding in the Canadian embassy until after they were able to get out of Iran. One reporter likened the potential for publishing such information to be on the level of "giving the Nazis' Anne Frank's home address."

This is the sort of limited exception to the free publication of relevant information to the public where the news media can and does suppress a story on a temporary basis in order to prevent death or injury to others or where it is important to the issues involved that the story not be exposed for a short time. When people talk about "responsible journalism," it is this sort of behavior they are referring to.

Paul Robinson - <paul@paul-robinson.us> - My Blog

In this case, the information about this reporter was suppressed to protect his life, not to prevent, say, someone else's embarrassment or to cover-up misconduct or otherwise prevent the publication of information the public should know to protect the democratic process.

Back during the Iranian Hostage crisis, the news media cooperatively agreed not to publicize the information that there were Americans hiding in the Canadian embassy until after they were able to get out of Iran. One reporter likened the potential for publishing such information to be on the level of "giving the Nazis' Anne Frank's home address."

This is the sort of limited exception to the free publication of relevant information to the public where the news media can and does suppress a story on a temporary basis in order to prevent death or injury to others or where it is important to the issues involved that the story not be exposed for a short time. When people talk about "responsible journalism," it is this sort of behavior they are referring to.

Paul Robinson - <paul@paul-robinson.us> - My Blog

How exactly is this a story? Microsoft Windows is so fragile that it's very easy to break it. Oh wait, you mean they broke glass windows! With Slashdot being primarily a tech-related site I was thinking of that "windows". (Using voice of Emily Latella) "Never mind."

But anyway, an entertainment program was doing a segment involving explosives where, as a result of an accident or miscalculation, the explosive force was too much and it caused unintended damage to outlying structures. As is the standard legal requirement when an organization uses or transports explosives, the company using them is considered automatically liable, that is, they are liable for any damage caused by their actions without regard to fault, even if they were prudent and took every precaution. This is the same standard that an employer has with respect to on-the-job injuries to its employees; that's why companies have to carry Worker's Compensation insurance (or be self-insured).

In these sort of situations (employers with respect to their employees, users and transporters of explosives) we presume these are or can be dangerous operations and those doing these things are required to include the potential cost of injuries as part of their overhead.

There was a movie, Blown Away with Tommy Lee Jones and Jeff Bridges, where they blew up a ship in Boston Harbor as part of the ending. The company announced this and stated that if anyone had damage to their house or building as a result they would pay for it.

So a company required to protect third-parties against damage went out and fixed the damage which they caused immediately. This is not newsworthy. They immediately fixed the damage they caused and acted responsibly. For that, we can say thank you for doing the right thing. Oh, wait, I suppose the fact that they had a bigger than expected explosion is newsworthy because it doesn't happen all that often.

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Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> — My Blog

How exactly is this a story? Microsoft Windows is so fragile that it's very easy to break it. Oh wait, you mean they broke glass windows! With Slashdot being primarily a tech-related site I was thinking of that "windows". (Using voice of Emily Latella) "Never mind."

But anyway, an entertainment program was doing a segment involving explosives where, as a result of an accident or miscalculation, the explosive force was too much and it caused unintended damage to outlying structures. As is the standard legal requirement when an organization uses or transports explosives, the company using them is considered automatically liable, that is, they are liable for any damage caused by their actions without regard to fault, even if they were prudent and took every precaution. This is the same standard that an employer has with respect to on-the-job injuries to its employees; that's why companies have to carry Worker's Compensation insurance (or be self-insured).

In these sort of situations (employers with respect to their employees, users and transporters of explosives) we presume these are or can be dangerous operations and those doing these things are required to include the potential cost of injuries as part of their overhead.

There was a movie, Blown Away with Tommy Lee Jones and Jeff Bridges, where they blew up a ship in Boston Harbor as part of the ending. The company announced this and stated that if anyone had damage to their house or building as a result they would pay for it.

So a company required to protect third-parties against damage went out and fixed the damage which they caused immediately. This is not newsworthy. They immediately fixed the damage they caused and acted responsibly. For that, we can say thank you for doing the right thing. Oh, wait, I suppose the fact that they had a bigger than expected explosion is newsworthy because it doesn't happen all that often.

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Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> — My Blog

The meter gauges look identical to the ones in the U.S., so if it's read the same way, all you need is a program to analyze a piece of a photograph for presence or absence of an image.

In the U.S., the rule is 'read down', if a needle is between two numbers you count it as being as the lower of the two. If it's on the number line then you count it as that.

The example picture shown is read as 375,064.4; I originally wasn't sure whether the segment I read as 5 (because the needle was very close to but I wasn't sure if it was on the line) was on or just before the 5, except the number 'below' it was between the 9 and the 0; since it was past 9 and back to zero, that means it was no longer 4 so it had to be 5; at that close if it was still 4 the number below it should have been at least an 8 or more likely a 9.

In fact, (at least in this area) the tariff schedules for most utilities require meters be replaced (at no cost to the customer), about every 30 years or so, because as they get older they tend to favor the customer more by reading 'slow'. Especially gas meters, they're more mechanical than electric ones, but the use of a photograph works the same for both types of meters too.

You need something to take a 'snapshot' of the meter. By positioning the camera, you can fix it so that it takes the same image. Since you know where the dials are, you fix it so that you isolate the portion of the dial which is normally blank except for the needle indicating the reading for that segment (100,000 hours, 1,000 hours, etc.) Where the area is other than blank, that's the number, so that the area between 3 and 4 is the '3' value for that digit. Each segment only has one of the 10 possible values as something other than blank because it only has one needle. If you get something else you've got a contamination problem, e.g. something got in the way or the camera moved.

So once you have the particular segments, and the slices of each segment representing each digit, then you can check each slice to see which is other than a blank image. Set that value, then you can go on to the next digit. It ain't hard to have something analyze an image to determine if it's empty or not, you just have to select what part of each image is a digit segment and which is a slice of that segment representing the number from 0 to 9. It's basically one or more bounding boxes representing a curve-shaped rectangle for each slice. Then once you know what each segment is, you multiply the segment's value by its multiplier, e.g. 100,000 for the 100,000 hour segment, etc.

Then you just check what the value is, and take a snapshot, say, 4 times every day or however often you want to check usage. More often than probably every 6 hours won't tell you much as you're unlikely to use more than about 8 KW in a 6-hour period based on the average home, at least in the U.S. at an average of 960KWH per month, and U.K. usage probably isn't much different or might be less.

If you're interested in average hourly usage, you take a snapshot each hour; if you want peaks, try every 15 minutes. Otherwise once every six hours or once a day or however often you want an idea of how much you use and how fast. Processing time for the image shouldn't be more than 10 seconds at most.

---- Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> My Blog

The meter gauges look identical to the ones in the U.S., so if it's read the same way, all you need is a program to analyze a piece of a photograph for presence or absence of an image.

In the U.S., the rule is 'read down', if a needle is between two numbers you count it as being as the lower of the two. If it's on the number line then you count it as that.

The example picture shown is read as 375,064.4; I originally wasn't sure whether the segment I read as 5 (because the needle was very close to but I wasn't sure if it was on the line) was on or just before the 5, except the number 'below' it was between the 9 and the 0; since it was past 9 and back to zero, that means it was no longer 4 so it had to be 5; at that close if it was still 4 the number below it should have been at least an 8 or more likely a 9.

In fact, (at least in this area) the tariff schedules for most utilities require meters be replaced (at no cost to the customer), about every 30 years or so, because as they get older they tend to favor the customer more by reading 'slow'. Especially gas meters, they're more mechanical than electric ones, but the use of a photograph works the same for both types of meters too.

You need something to take a 'snapshot' of the meter. By positioning the camera, you can fix it so that it takes the same image. Since you know where the dials are, you fix it so that you isolate the portion of the dial which is normally blank except for the needle indicating the reading for that segment (100,000 hours, 1,000 hours, etc.) Where the area is other than blank, that's the number, so that the area between 3 and 4 is the '3' value for that digit. Each segment only has one of the 10 possible values as something other than blank because it only has one needle. If you get something else you've got a contamination problem, e.g. something got in the way or the camera moved.

So once you have the particular segments, and the slices of each segment representing each digit, then you can check each slice to see which is other than a blank image. Set that value, then you can go on to the next digit. It ain't hard to have something analyze an image to determine if it's empty or not, you just have to select what part of each image is a digit segment and which is a slice of that segment representing the number from 0 to 9. It's basically one or more bounding boxes representing a curve-shaped rectangle for each slice. Then once you know what each segment is, you multiply the segment's value by its multiplier, e.g. 100,000 for the 100,000 hour segment, etc.

Then you just check what the value is, and take a snapshot, say, 4 times every day or however often you want to check usage. More often than probably every 6 hours won't tell you much as you're unlikely to use more than about 8 KW in a 6-hour period based on the average home, at least in the U.S. at an average of 960KWH per month, and U.K. usage probably isn't much different or might be less.

If you're interested in average hourly usage, you take a snapshot each hour; if you want peaks, try every 15 minutes. Otherwise once every six hours or once a day or however often you want an idea of how much you use and how fast. Processing time for the image shouldn't be more than 10 seconds at most.

---- Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> My Blog

As I write on my blog, there's a big group of - for lack of a better name - crackpots who go around claiming the Bush (Jr.) Administration had something to do with the 9/11 events or in the destruction of the two towers. Which is ridiculous for the simple reason I point out: "the (current) Bush Administration doesn't have people smart enough to pull a stunt like that. The current administration's staffing policies have been directed toward political cronyism and connections, even at the expense of even bare competence. From what I've seen, anyone working there that has any self respect or common sense has quit." It's pointless to argue that they have the kind of people smart enough to pull off this sort of thing and keep it secret. If they were that good, they'd have been able to cover up the whole fake "weapons of mass destruction" issue in order to make it look like they really were present in Iraq.

It has been a standard practice for years that while memory manufacturers measure in 1024^2 megabytes and 1024^3 gigabytes, disk drive manufacturers have been measuring in 1000^2 megabytes and 1000^3 gigabytes. I have an article on my blog about this, how my new computer has a certain amount claimed on the box, but Windows shows a lower amount, which when you use the two different figures it does match, while the box on my new computer says it's a 400gb drive, it is correct if you use 1000^3 gigabytes, but it is only 373gb if you use 1024^3 gigabytes.

For decades, TV (and computer monitor) manufacturers have announced the size of the picture tube diagonally, which gets you a larger number than either horizontal or vertical measurement. And they have generally openly admitted that their measurements are diagonal; every ad for TV specifically says that.

I suspect that the drive manufacturers are getting in trouble and losing lawsuits because they do not explicitly state that they are using 1000^3 sized gigabytes rather than the 1024^3 sized that people normally expect.

It's an attempt to cheat people when you're not honest about what you're doing. I mean, I may not particularly like them using the slightly sleazy method of the 6% shortage by using 1000^3 size but as long as they're straightforward about it, I have no problem with them using that method.

It has been a standard practice for years that while memory manufacturers measure in 1024^2 megabytes and 1024^3 gigabytes, disk drive manufacturers have been measuring in 1000^2 megabytes and 1000^3 gigabytes. I have an article on my blog about this, how my new computer has a certain amount claimed on the box, but Windows shows a lower amount, which when you use the two different figures it does match, while the box on my new computer says it's a 400gb drive, it is correct if you use 1000^3 gigabytes, but it is only 373gb if you use 1024^3 gigabytes.

For decades, TV (and computer monitor) manufacturers have announced the size of the picture tube diagonally, which gets you a larger number than either horizontal or vertical measurement. And they have generally openly admitted that their measurements are diagonal; every ad for TV specifically says that.

I suspect that the drive manufacturers are getting in trouble and losing lawsuits because they do not explicitly state that they are using 1000^3 sized gigabytes rather than the 1024^3 sized that people normally expect.

It's an attempt to cheat people when you're not honest about what you're doing. I mean, I may not particularly like them using the slightly sleazy method of the 6% shortage by using 1000^3 size but as long as they're straightforward about it, I have no problem with them using that method.

I think we had an article here a few months ago when the last manufacturer of reel-to-reel audio tape closed. I can remember when I purchased a slide rule in the stationery section of Woolworths. Both no longer exist; I can't even remember the last time I saw a slide rule. Yet, I'm sure there will be places and applications where a slide rule might be more appropriate than either a hand-held computer or a calculator. Perhaps they'll be around again in the future. They still make buggy whips and equipment for horses, but a lot less than they did back around 1908 even though there are a lot more people now than there were then.

There are actually some musical groups that still release recordings on vinyl. And a number of people who still have large record collections; in fact my brother wants a new needle for his phonograph as a birthday present.

Technology changes things, and sometimes some things become less interesting than others. Chess is still popular on physical chessboards even though we have chess servers and chess playing programs, for a number of reasons including no need for electricity.
--
Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> -- My Blog

New York can very constitutionally tax goods that are used in New York. And it can reach Amazon to enforce it because Amazon has "purposefully availed" itself of the New York market by advertising there and shipping orders there. See the case Asahi Metal.

While I've not read the report and I suspect it's based on a number of either inadequately grounded or misapplied conclusions, I think that the whole idea is incorrect because it "places the cart before the horse," in that it looks at men who come from the Middle East, see that many of them have tended to go into technological occupations, and presume from that a terrorist mindset.

It's like a discussion I got into once by some nutjob who thought the answer to the problem of terrorists from that region attacking the U.S. was to nuke the whole Middle East, even countries that had nothing to do with what happened in New York, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon. I pointed out that if you make an unprovoked attack against millions of people for something that 99.9995% of them had nothing to do with and no control over, the survivors will respond with a viciousness and anger that will make the events of 9/11 look like a love tap. And not all of the people who are supportive of their causes are in the Middle East, unless you plan to nuke parts of Europe too. As those attacks changed a few thousand military and relatives of those killed in minor events prior to this (like the U.S.S. Cole or military barracks bombings), to millions of Americans outraged over these events, doing something stupid like that will create, instead of perhaps 10,000 or 50,000 committted terrorists willing to die for their cause, 1,000,000 or 5,000,000 really angry people willing to commit murder of people in the U.S. or die in response attacks to avenge the unprovoked and unwarranted killing of millions of innocent people. And we will have deserved it.

I'd like to simply point out that Middle East societies had - possibly before they got too badly infected by their military campaign known as the Islamic religion - a long history of scientific and engineering progress, much going back to before the existence of the Roman Empire. We are constantly digging up relics showing really advanced technological development of devices and artifacts that ran with either water or wind power or used complicated counterweight and various simple machines to do very complicated tasks.

Let's not forget that they built huge pyramids using nothing more than engineering knowhow (in addition to lots of grunt labor) in ways that today, we would find extremely difficult to duplicate without powered tools. And very hard to do even with them.

Basically, you keep copies of files in order to be able to restore them if something happens to your originals. But, outside of disposing of redundant or useless information (like, say, a copy of a receipt for payment after the time they can sue you for non-payment and it's no longer needed for tax purposes), disposal of information in large organizations has a strong implication that it's done for nefarious purposes.

What I mean by that is that typically large organizations keep voluminous records in case they're going to get sued (or are questioned about their actions before congress in the case of a government agency, which can amount to the same thing for your career), which means destroying records often indicates you fear the information will be detrimental to your side if it gets subpoenaed.

I kind of learned this accidentally because of my own practices. When I was going on-line and talking to women, I kept everything; e-mails, transcripts of IM chats, anything dealing with anyone I spoke to. The simple reason was that if I ever met the lady, and it turned out she was underage, I would have regular, documented proof that I was under the impression she was at least 18. I found out later some guys got busted because they talked on-line to some girl, and went to meet her to go to a motel, and got busted when they showed up, and evidence from on-line communication showed they clearly believed the girl was jail bait, in some cases, under 14.

Which goes right along with the whole point: If you're doing something wrong, your paperwork is what's going to hang you; if you're not into wrongdoing, your paperwork is what's going to save you.
Paul Robinson - My Blog

Sometimes the problem is figuring out where the problem is, or exactly what code paths are being used. Here is a suggestion I got from a magazine which presented a way to provide for tracing of either procedures or code segments. Now, this was done for Visual Basic, but it can be done from any language that provides for dynamic variables that have an initializer and a destroyer.

In VB, you have a variable tied to a class, which is declared in the procedure (a sub or function in VB) you want to mark. You create (or instantiate) that variable at the start of the procedure, assigning its name to the procedure. And that's it. When you call the variable's init code it writes out the name of the procedure beginning and the time, and saves both.

When the procedure ends, the variable's lifespan is up, and the destroy method is automatically invoked to clean up the class for that variable. So it can now give the name of the procedure that is exiting, and how long it ran for. Or how much CPU time. Or anything else you want to report. The practice works automatically as long as a local variable of a class which is declared in a procedure is automatically destroyed when the procedure that instantiated it ends.

If you need to get indicators for less than a full procedure, you do an explicit call on the variable's destroy method at the point you want to indicate a piece of code you're monitoring ends.

So you end up getting a listing showing procedure 1 start, procedure 2 start, procedure 3 start (time), procedure 3 end (time), procedure 4 start (time), and nothing further, you know that procedure 4 is where it's hanging up. You also know how long it's running up to the point it hangs. This is very similar to the READY TRACE and RESET TRACE that's been available in Cobol for decades.

This is really helpful when you have a long-running program or one that handles a lot of different events and such, and you don't necessarily know what is happening or the execution path. The program can tell you what it's doing, or you can even write the information to a log file or the registry (for Windows-based programs). It's really great for applications because you can selectively enable or disable the practice at run time, and as such, you can track down an error causing a program to hang or be not responsive down to the precise line of code where the problem is, if you need to. Or you can simply use it to monitor which paths are being executed.
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Paul Robinson - My Blog

Actually there is a tool to make maps for portal and the SDK even includes a copy of one of the levels - the one where GlaDOS says the test is impossible - so you can see what it takes to construct a level. And to put it bluntly, it's a lot of [expletive deleted] work!

Long before I bought The Orange Box - in fact, about four months before I'd ever even heard of Portal (I only got it about a week ago) - I wrote in my blog, back in June, an article about the tools which are available for designing maps for these games. And the Hammer map editor for Half-Life 2 / Portal is either as complicated as the one for Half-Life I / Quake III or even more so. These tools are very difficult to work with and hard to use. Notwithstanding that the maps involved are extremely intricate to do all the things necessary to implement the game. Somehow I wonder why the full "3D immersion" feature so skillfully implemented in the editor for Duke Nukem 3 was never tried for any of the other games. And we've got more capability now; Duke Nukem did a 3-D immersion in a DOS-based application; we now have all of the graphics capability and mouse capacity and all the other features of graphical user interfaces, and yet, sometimes they don't take advantage of all the power that is available.

Paul Robinson - My Blog

I'm not sure what's wrong, but when I go to the site, I don't find anything. No article, no link to an article, no link to an external item (like a sound), no player to run an external sound, nothing. It certainly is funny that the article is completely missing. :(

But I use Netscape, maybe it has some wierd feature that doesn't work. So I then tried the site on Internet Explorer and the Flashplayer comes up. Which is damned funny, because Flash does work in Netscape. So I have no idea why this doesn't work.

Anyway, having listened to his article, he does have some funny points, but at times I thought I was listening to someone speak French or Spanish; it was nearly incomprehensible at times. Does the guy think he has to make a twenty minute speech in a minute and ten seconds? There was a movie - I think it was The American President where one of the characters tells the other he needs to cut down on caffeine. This guy is waaay beyond a cafeine buzz; to misquote Lloyd Bridges in Airplane!, this would be a good week for the guy to quit taking amphetamines.

My Blog

This has been a problem with ALL media that is not readable without technology. Or even if the people who know the language die off; we couldn't read hieroglyphics if we hadn't found the Rosetta Stone.

Anyone have a wire recorder handy? They were very popular back in the (19)20s and 30s. Oh yes, can someone loan me a Dictaphone or a dictaphone belt? How about a phonograph that plays 78rpm records? How about even having a phonograph? 8 Track tape? Now, as for computer formats, does anyone have any 80 Column punch cards? Teletype or a paper tape reader? 12" magnetic tape reels, or tape drive that reads 7 track coding (as opposed to newer 9 track), presuming that they even have tape any more? Or most of the stuff used with mainframe computers. How about 8 inch or 5 1/2 inch diskette? Got any Zip disks? Now, do you have any .LBR or .ARC archive files? What about EBCDIC, read any files coded using it lately?

When was the last time you handled a photograph that had a negative? I handle probably a dozen images or more a day when I'm going through digital pictures on my computer, but it's probably been ten years since I had a picture that had a photographic negative. But we might have pictures and plates as far back as the 1890s when the camera was first developed, it's highly unlikely you can get duplicates made, or if you can, it's going to require a specialty photographic processor and is probably expensive. Does anyone even use film anymore for "home movies" or are we using video tape and now video disc? The cost differential between video and film is about 50 to 1, e.g. for $3 you can buy a high-quality tape that will record 2 hours vs. 3 minutes for 8mm, if film is even that cheap; I haven't had to buy 8mm film for twenty years. What happens to those old movies? If we we can even view them, it's usually because they have been converted to tape or disc.

Oh, yes, video tape. Movies are going all disc now, and as a result most video stores are selling their tape collections at low prices ($1 per tape) because the space and cost of disc has become much more advantageous; in the space of three video tapes you can probably store ten or more discs. Which begs the question, if either the HD-DVD or BLU RAY format wars get settled, shouldn't we expect all videos to go to that format? (Or maybe they'll just release in both, in either case, you'll either need two machines os eventually they'll have to develop a dual-format machine to read both.) Oh yes, I forgot the earlier videodisc format that came out long before CDs.

The changing of storage formats has caused problems even with open format standards - let alone troubles over files using proprietary or non-standard formats - as we have changed technology. This has been noted for years and is a big problem with non-profits with limited resources - such as libraries - which might have to convert data from one device or file format to another as older systems become obsolete and data is trapped on those systems if not converted. Lots and lots of data produced at significant expense have either been lost or is inaccessible because the systems that coded it are failing as parts become unavailable and machines cannot be maintained, and where they can be, it's a huge expense to do so.

I routinely get bounce headers (for invalid destination addresses) from places where they are receiving mail which has been forged under one of the domain names I own (I happen to own over 20 domains and only about 2 or 3 of them would ever send any mail). All of the domains that I would send mail from have three IP addresses listed in the SPF records in the DNS: the fixed IP address that I get DSL supplied from Cavalier Telephone (for mail sent by my computer); the IP address of Cavalier Telephone's mail server (for mail my computer sends through them); the IP address of the webserver that holds my blog (when it sends out mail messages). No other IP address should be considered authentic and my SPF records indicate this. Yet I routinely get bounce messages from places sending bounces to me for spam which has been joe jobbed by someone else using one of my domain names. Maybe some places are rejecting forged mail from other places, but I still see places that apparently don't bother to check SPF records when they do exist.

Uh, not correct. If someone gives you money for no reason without obligation, it's a "gift" and if it's above a certain factor, they owe a gift tax but you do not owe tax on the gift, because it is not considered income. If someone gives you money in exchange for something done for them (either before or after you are paid), it's considered "income" and is subject to taxation depending on how much you made and what you're doing. If someone loans you money that you are required to pay back, it is a loan, you do not have ownership of that money, and thus, it is not income and is not taxable. It's only if you either don't pay it back or are forgiven part of it that it may be considered income. As long as you have to give it back, it's not taxable.

Umm, you do know that if you take the cheque you are given as payment to the issuing bank, they will generally cash it for you free of charge.*

Incorrect. Banks nowadays will charge a non-accountholder a $4 or $5 fee to cash a check drawn on that bank. I discovered this fee structure after being out of work for some time, and basically scrounging around doing small jobs for enough to keep me in eating money, so not really having a checking account. So I get a check for $25 for doing some work as a notary public. I hadn't had a bank account for quite a while as I had run out of money and (then) banks required a minimum $100 to open an account and to average $100 each day to have an account or they charged you anywhere from $4 to $7 a month. Well, as it turned out, the bank this check was drawn on would allow me to open a checking account for free with no minimum balance, so it was acceptable to do that instead.

Nowadays, I can buy a new keyboard for US$3.99 at a computer store. If dirtiness is that big an issue, might it make more sense to just buy another keyboard every month or two, then donate your (barely used) keyboard to some local computer club or non-profit? Keyboards are so cheap these days I routinely keep one or two in a box in the closet in case one becomes difficult to use or acts funny.
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Paul Robinson - My Blog

The money didn't come out of the bank's pocket, it came out of the merchant's pocket. Banks are in a pretty strong position when a merchant sends them a charge that the cardholder didn't authorize.

Incorrect. If a merchant accepts a transaction without signature, then the merchant is responsible for the charge if the charge is disputed and the merchant can't prove validity. On the other hand, when the merchant accepts a transaction with a signature, unless the bank can prove the signature on the slip did not match the signature on the card (which is pretty hard when it's someone using a stolen card), then the bank is liable for the transaction if disputed. In fact, I'm not sure, but it is possible if the transaction is signed at all that the merchant is not liable. Now, in the older days before 100% validation, a merchant had a "floor limit", say $25 or $50, and the merchant could approve a transaction for that amount without calling it in; over that limit, they had to call for verification. Now, on a transaction below floor limit, if the amount was below that and disputed, I believe the merchant would be liable. Since the floor limit is now essentially zero (all transactions obtain approval), the merchant is not liable as long as they get a signature. The customer can still dispute the charge which means the bank is liable for fraudulent signature (and probably pin-based) transactions as well. But the merchant is only liable for transactions without a signature. Now, if anyone reading this has specific evidence of a policy change to the contrary from Visa or Mastercard (or Amex, Discover or Carte Blanche), please inform me.

This woman was in a department store and was purchasing something. As she approached the counter, she handed the clerk her credit card. The clerk went to use the machine but it apparently wasn't working, so she had to use a phone to call in the card. A short time later, a security guard came over and grabbed the customer. The cashier had actually called in a code to have the guard come by. The clerk said that she realized the woman was committing identity theft.

The astonished customer couldn't believe it, and asked the cashier how on earth she knew. She said, "Because that's my name on the card, and that's my credit card that had been stolen."

I do not buy music from any site that uses DRM. As for the embedding of the user's personal information in a non-encrypted format, I don't see that as a problem. Here, there's been no attempt to hide what is going on. And as I see it, I don't see it as a problem; it's only going to matter if you're out distributing files. It is conceivably possible that if you lost your iPod or it was stolen someone might be uploading the songs you have on it to file sharing sites, but I see that as a very tiny issue and not very likely; if the files were traced it would allow the theft to be tracked back to the person who has a stolen or lost iPod.

I think the issue of the user identification not being encrypted is a red herring; many, many times people have been unhappy about surrepticious recording of people's information, especially in encrypted and hidden formats. Here, the information is openly being stored; seems like some people are talking out of both sides of their mouth. If it's open they don't like the idea, if it was encrypted they would be upset about hidden information being present.

It's been said that people want the ability to do what they want with music, and I remember reading in at least one other forum - and perhaps others - it was said that one of the things that should be done is not to impose DRM but to mark songs with the original purchaser. It wouldn't penalize people who made multiple copies for their own use (nobody else would see them), it really wouldn't be that significant for people who shared MP3s with small numbers of their friends, it would really only be a problem for people bulk-uploading files to file sharing sites, or either giving them out to lots of their friends, or giving them out to friends who are giving them out to lots of other people.

Navigator 9... includes several new components while giving some old ones the boot. This release will no longer ship with mail or composer...

This reviewer apparently has not used any recent releases of Netscape (as I have). I am currently using Netscape version 7.2, now, to write this article (I abandoned Internet Explorer a long time ago due to security issues; I only use it when I get a site that will only work with IE). I have Netscape 8.1 installed, but I don't use it a whole lot, because (1) they moved the menus from the left side to the right side (2) they removed the print button, and (most significant) (3) they removed mail and composer. Without mail as part of the program it has reduced functionality. With mail as part of the program I can just click on 'Window' and 'Mail' to send a message; otherwise I have to go to the start menu and find whatever the hell the program is that is the mail suite spun out of Mozilla, Evolution? (I looked it up in the start menu; it's called Thunderbird.) I used to use composer and sometimes I use it when I need to build a table, so while it's unfortunate I can live without it. Mail and composer has been gone since at least 8.1, was this guy unaware of this?

The premium paid for higher-end storage is decidedly nonlinear. For marginally more reliable or faster storage, you pay about a factor of ten. One example I'm familiar with is Hitachi. We had a 64TB HDS array a few years ago that was worth roughly $2M. We could have purchased an equivalent amount of commodity storage for probably $200k at the time, but didn't. Why would we spend the extra money? Speed, configurability, expandability, and reliability.

Well, let's see, on the other hand, you could have spent $800K, and bought 4 of the "commodity" systems for less than 1/2 of the cost of the proprietary system. Now, given this, you can either have 4 machines each to handle 1/4 of all the requests, and maybe get at least as fast a response time, or have such a system which unless you have 4 consecutive failures gives you quad reliability. You talk about every system being dual reliable, but here, it still looks like, for a lot less money you can install quad reliability and for less than 1/2 of the high priced equipment you get twice as much reliability.

Is the $2 million system 4 times as reliable as commodity hardware? Or should I ask, is it 8 times as reliable as commodity hardware since it costs 10 times as much? Or is the capabilities so far superior that they justify a 100% increase in price?

Now, maybe there are other figures and maybe there is a serious justification for such a huge price premium, but again, it still sounds like people are paying a lot more money because of FUD from disk drive manufacturers.

I have read the points he is making, and the example given that he wants some proof related to the issue of Universality, as well as the cell site given. And while I do think I do have quite a bit of intelligence, I do not understand any of this. I don't get what the change states are, and I don't understand what he is trying to solve. I believe there is an old rule - never ascribe to malice what can equally be explained by stupidity - which would apply here.

Maybe I've been spoiled by the cellular automata rules in the (Martin Conway) game of Life, and maybe because of that I don't get this. At least, that's what I am trying to understand, is he saying that eventually the set of rules for these two states have a particular sequence that repeats, so that no matter what state it is in, eventually it will cycle to that state again, or what?

Someone - it might be Kurt Vonnegut - once stated that anyone who can't explain what they are doing to a six-year-old is a fraud. Probably because the average six-year-old is brighter than most adults. So there is the possibility the whole thing is a scam, but if so, he's far to much of a cheapskate to be running it, since most really good scams depend on the greed of the mark. (Read my blog for an example.) But I'm willing to give Wolfram the benefit of the doubt and say that his real problem is that while the subject is extremely esoteric, he has failed to make the issue understandable by the people who would be expected to solve it. Programmers - like myself - are exceptionally good at puzzles, and some - again, like myself (no false modesty here) - are fairly bright and are willing to take on a challenge, the problem is that we as problem solvers have to be able to understand the problem in order to solve it.

I think either he needs to explain what he wants to solve better, or he needs to hire someone bright who can translate what he is trying to determine to others so they can understand it. I think, were he to provide a better explanation of what he is interested in discovering, he'd have a better chance of getting people to try and solve it. This presumes he actually wants a solution and that this is not some advertising scheme to sell more of his books. (If that were the case, he'd really need to throw more money at it. He could always rig the rules such that you can't really win.) But since you could read them on-line I don't see where that's all that much of an issue.

So I'll grant the premise that he is seriously looking for a solution to a legitimate problem. (A "legitimate problem" is one where the person wants a solution, e.g. when I lose my car keys before I'm going to go somewhere I have a legitimate problem.) But he definitely needs to find a way to explain it better if he actually wants it solved, or throw more money at it in order to make people smell blood.

Personally, I have no capacity to do anything about the fighting in Darfur. I am neither a combatant nor does it have an effect on me. What bothers me, more than anything, is how the actions of white people being murdered in Bosnia-Herzegovina was deserving of moral outrage but when (what is probably) a hundred times more negroes are murdered in Africa the response from the world community is virtually nil. It happened back in Rwanda, and other situations there (Uganda, etc.), and nobody cares. I comment about this on my Blog, about why nobody cares about it. To quote Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles, "They darker than us!" The moral outrage among nations that occurred when white people were slaughtered in Bosnia is conspicuously absent.

That said, I still don't think what is happening, is right. It's labeled "genocide" mostly because the majority of deaths are on civilian tribes, in REALLY aweful ways. Unlike the "American" civil war, where people faught against slavery, unity and other issues.. these people are killing because they just don't like the other half. It's not just with guns, or one army against the other. We're talking militias going in with machetes, chopping people up, killing by blunt force trauma, killing children and women with NO sense of mercy whatsoever.

I also discuss the article on my Blog, about why nobody cares about it. To quote Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles, "They darker than us!" The moral outrage among nations that occurred when white people were slaughtered in Bosnia is conspicuously absent.

Note: An expanded version of this reply appears as an article on my blog and you can also read more there. Because Slashdot only allows shorter titles, the title of the article there is "The Rumors of Microsoft's death are clearly exaggerated."

First, on the issue of Linux vs Windows (for the title of this article): Windows sells more because Microsoft got there first, there is tremendous inertia, plus, until recently, there wasn't that much available that wasn't an application running on Microsoft software. And while using Open Source is almost as good as proprietary it ain't there yet; the usability of X Windows over Microsoft Windows still has some cracks that need to be filled. Also, Visicalc was the "killer app" for the Apple II; Lotus 1-2-3 was for the IBM-PC; where's the Linux "killer app"? (I'll give an example of one that could have happened on my blog.)

I think I agree with a comment someone (or more than one person) said in the various comments linked around this whole comment churn, in which I'll paraphrase, "Anyone who thinks Microsoft is dead or that Web Applications are better than desktop ones has been sucking down way too much of the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid."

My own opinions are that the tools for implementing Web-based applications are far too primitive. Like with pushing Linux over Windows: it (they) aren't there yet. As has been noted, prior to PHP you had to design a CGI application (usually in C++) in which you wrote a regular program and then stuck on "a bag on the side" to make it run as a web service.

Having done both, I am fully aware that a web-based application is harder to develop than a desktop one. A Linux desktop application is harder to develop than a Windows desktop application. A text-based application is about equal on either platform, but it's a hell of a lot easier to develop even a simple non-gui desktop application than anything running as a served application through a browser. The tools for web development are different, are not as powerful, and more expensive, both in terms of operational requirements and development requirements (e.g. it's a lot more work to secure a web app than a desktop app.)

There are more details, (hint, hint, you can read them on the expanded version of this comment on my blog) but I'll stop here, and just say that the claims of Microsoft's death are premature.

Note: An expanded version of this reply appears as an article on my blog and you can also read more there. Because Slashdot only allows shorter titles, the title of the article there is "The Rumors of Microsoft's death are clearly exaggerated."

First, on the issue of Linux vs Windows (for the title of this article): Windows sells more because Microsoft got there first, there is tremendous inertia, plus, until recently, there wasn't that much available that wasn't an application running on Microsoft software. And while using Open Source is almost as good as proprietary it ain't there yet; the usability of X Windows over Microsoft Windows still has some cracks that need to be filled. Also, Visicalc was the "killer app" for the Apple II; Lotus 1-2-3 was for the IBM-PC; where's the Linux "killer app"? (I'll give an example of one that could have happened on my blog.)

I think I agree with a comment someone (or more than one person) said in the various comments linked around this whole comment churn, in which I'll paraphrase, "Anyone who thinks Microsoft is dead or that Web Applications are better than desktop ones has been sucking down way too much of the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid."

My own opinions are that the tools for implementing Web-based applications are far too primitive. Like with pushing Linux over Windows: it (they) aren't there yet. As has been noted, prior to PHP you had to design a CGI application (usually in C++) in which you wrote a regular program and then stuck on "a bag on the side" to make it run as a web service.

Having done both, I am fully aware that a web-based application is harder to develop than a desktop one. A Linux desktop application is harder to develop than a Windows desktop application. A text-based application is about equal on either platform, but it's a hell of a lot easier to develop even a simple non-gui desktop application than anything running as a served application through a browser. The tools for web development are different, are not as powerful, and more expensive, both in terms of operational requirements and development requirements (e.g. it's a lot more work to secure a web app than a desktop app.)

There are more details, (hint, hint, you can read them on the expanded version of this comment on my blog) but I'll stop here, and just say that the claims of Microsoft's death are premature.

I have some problems with Open Office(.org) ("OOO") that appear to be the same problems that I have had with Microsoft Word. (Word 97 versus Word Perfect Version 7 and Word Perfect 8; I've never upgraded because WP8 works fine for everything I'm doing). I've gotten full (non-upgrade) copies of Word Perfect 8 - at retail, off the shelf - for as low as $15.00, and in one case I purchased a second copy for $39.00 because it was the Professional version and included the Paradox database, so it was worth trying. I think when I first bought Word Perfect 8 it was around $100; I forget what I paid for WP7. I've been a heavy user of Word Perfect for over 20 years, going back to DOS version 4.1, simply because I have yet to have a formatting feature in Word Perfect I wanted that I couldn't get it to do.

I have often had problems with both Microsoft Word and OOO to do formatting that I want to work the way I want to. I have sometimes exported files from Word Perfect using RTF (Rich Text Format) and found that Word will damage the formatting when trying to import the file. (I think I did that because it wouldn't import .WPD files correctly or something, so I think that's when I tried RTF.)

I'm not a word processing bigot, I'd use Microsoft Word - or possibly something else - if it worked as good or better than Word Perfect. In fact, one time when Word imported one of the books I'm writing, it mangled the format of the header, and I liked the way it changed it better. I could not figure out how it had done it or how to duplicate it, but I went into Word Perfect, clicked on help, and looked it up, and in about 30 seconds I duplicated the functionality that Microsoft Word gave me by accident, which if I hadn't liked it, would have been an error.

I'll give you an example of one thing I can do in Word Perfect that I can't do in Microsoft Word. Changing headers on new chapters. I have a book (actually it's the second one I'm writing), it's over 500 pages, and one of the features of the formatting is that the left (even page) header has my name and the name of the book, and the right (odd page) header has the name of the chapter. The left header stays the same, the right one changes at the beginning of the chapter.

Now, in some rare cases there is a chapter that is only one page long, and is on a left page, so that's not an issue. It's when a chapter is at least two pages, the chapter header should change to the name of the new chapter. When I view the file after it's been converted to Microsoft Word / RTF format, sometimes the chapter header doesn't change or it changes in strange ways. And this misbehavior seems to resurface in OOO, too.

Come to think of it, I have a resume I do in Word Perfect that also gets mangled because of header or footer problems in Word/OOO

Also, I don't see - or I'm not sure - how to 'view codes' in Microsoft Word (or OOO) which I can see the internal formatting of a document and know what the program is doing (and even delete some codes, such as if I have an area that is incorrectly italic or bold).

Maybe I'll try copying the file over again and see how it looks, or I could try examining OOO's XML output and see what I get. One thing I do like with OOO is the PDF output feature, I'd like to be able to use it. Plus OOO's scripting is in Basic rather than the relatively esoteric Perfect Script, which the only other program I've seen that uses it is Novell's Groupwise e-mail program.

Another poster here mentioned submitting a bug report, and I think I'll do that (I hadn't thought of it). Of course, it might be that the behavior is wrong in Word, in which case it might not be considered a bug!

I have noticed for a lot of games a problem which I refer to as "coin-op crapola," stunts that should have ended when the user paid for the game all at once, and should have been dropped when they no longer had to keep making the game too hard in order to get you to drop more quarters in the video game. These include, but are not limited to:

• Making it impossible to save except at limited points. It's inexcusable to not allow someone to save state at (almost) any time. I'll grant that it may be impossible due to too many temporary variables or state saving requirements) to allow save state in the middle of a mission or a scenario (such as with Grand Theft Auto III, but even then I'm still suspicious) but other than that, it's inexcusable misconduct amounting to negligence to say that I have to find a save icon or save location in order to save what I'm doing.
• Making the game so difficult it's unplayable. We are not all hard-core gamers, making the game so hard that it's unplayable or unwinnable is ridiculous. I have Quake III arena. I can't play more than one or two levels because the AI on the game, at the weakest and least difficult level, is impossible to beat. This also means the rest of the game is inaccessible because until I win the levels I can't win, I can't play anything further. Which brings me to...
• Having locked levels, or locked features. I'm paying for the damned game, let me decide if I want to play other levels or other features. If it's that significant, put it in as a "cheat mode" but let me decide; I'm the one paying for the game, not you.
• Making "cheat mode" contaminate the game. If I want to unlock something early I should be able to do so, without causing it to make the game reduce functionality or become unworkable. The so-called "cheat mode" simply either disables some policy of the game, or adds features early; there is no reason - other than pure spite - to have it cause other features to degrade or fail.
• Making overly complicated and basically unusable level editors. Level editors have increased in complexity with the increase in complexity of these games to the point that you can't use them. I have never been able to figure out how to use the editor for Half-Life, or Quake III Arena, or any of these. You look at the simplicity of the editor for Duke Nukem, which includes a 2D and 3D mode, and while it has a lot of options and key controls, you can still use it. These 3D wireframe editor tools are basically unusable. For most purposes, I simply want to carve out a space such as a room, a corridor or other such, and perhaps connect them. Later I may want to do some special features. Why is it so hard to make it possible to get the job done? Game editor tools are not important, nobody bothers to standardize so they're ad-hoc and recreated from scratch for every new game, and it shows in the results, with overly complicated and extremely user-hostile tools that are basically unusual for someone who simply wants to do what they have to do. Look at the object builder tools in the on-line game Second Life. They have to have easy to use tools, most people developing objects for such a game are not hard-core gamers willing to put up with crapola.

Having done programming professionally for over 25 years (including game programming), I am aware of what it takes to write programs or to develop them. And nothing I have said is excessively hard to implement, or in most cases, even necessary. But it still continues over and over and over and...

Oh the joys of Fortran. I remember it from so many years ago. I guess this problem (of a program being treated as a comment must have caught a lot of people like this, because I remember that the IBM Fortran Compiler had a special mention in the rules about comments that a comment cannot be continued.

I have my own Pascal story. I was in the computer lab of a west coast State University, and while I was not part of the support staff, I was just another user ther, I was well known as the "go-to" guy to see when you had a problem. So this one student was having a problem and asked for my help. Seems he had a program of several hundred lines that wouldn't compile, and we were using Turbo Pascal (version 3, I think, which tells you how far back it was, probably 1985 or so). He kept getting some error, basically I think it was saying his program wasn't finished, so I put in a spurious "begin end." statement, as if it was the end of his program. It compiles okay. So I move it down further, and get an error. I do this, basically by doing a "split the difference" search in which I take about 1/2 the distance between the last good point and the point that doesn't work, and repeat this until I get to the last point where it's only a two line difference, and I find it. About 2-3 minutes after I sat down, I discovered what had happened: he had an open brace "{" on one of his lines. That's a "start comment" mark, and he had no other comments later in the program, so the comment was never closed. This meant the compiler treated everything from the start of the comment to the end of the program as if it were a comment. I didn't see it either even though I did look at his program for a bit before trying to find the problem.

The guy was absolutely astonished, of what I did in less than five minutes. He said that he had been studying his program "for several hours" and couldn't find where the problem was. And that's probably why I had such a reputation for fixing things, I guess.

Paul Robinson paul@paul-robinson.us

If Sun wants to protect the use of the Java trademark so that others implementing Java runtime systems remain compatible with the standard, there already is a method available. It's called a "certification mark" or "membership mark" class of trademark or servicemark. If you live in the United States, you're almost certainly aware of one very famous certification mark, the "UL" label on electrical appliances. Companies supply samples of their equipment to Underwriters Laboratories, which basically tests the device to destruction, then if the fail point is higher than the minimum standard, UL grants them permission to affix the UL certification mark to their equipment.

A "membership mark" would be used where some organization is allowed to use a mark to show it's a member of a group or has qualified to show the particular mark. I think the "Energy Star" label from the Department of Energy would fit here.

The only requirement to do this is that someone else — that does not distribute the software — has to be the certification authority (you can't be both owner of a certification mark and a user of it, that would be a conflict of interest.) But they'd probably want to do that anyway, the way IBM turned over the Eclipse IDE to a separate foundation after they decided to release it open source.

So, there's already plenty of existing systems available for Sun to use a system to "protect" the Java trademark and the "write once, run anywhere" concept. And a small license fee for those who want to use the mark to cover testing costs for verifying compliance could make the whole thing self-funding.

Paul Robinson paul@paul-robinson.us