DNS Network Slow

 Kind of ridiculous to post on the internet about what to do when you lose access to the internet. I intend this as preemptive. Maybe you can help someone else.

I lost access to the internet with some obscure message about network service. When it breaks, turn it off. The message suggested that as well. Turned the provider gateway on and off, turned my PC on and off. Repeatedly. So, I called my provider and was trapped in the response tree. They even turned my gateway on and off themselves. Eventually I was in a chat text conversation with the providers Dennis who was also trapped in a response tree. It culminated with him sending me an email to confirm my identity. Since I couldn’t receive it on my PC, he was, in effect, instructing me to change providers.

Dennis sent me back to the providers original help phone number. My next-door neighbor had service. She has a different provider.

On reflection, it dawned on me that the problem was on my PC. Something like this once happened to me at work. I’d had to zero out my own IP address. In Windows 11 settings, I was prompted to restore DNS factory settings. That worked. Now I can’t find that prompt. Maybe because I don’t need it. If Windows 11 is that smart, why didn’t it fix itself?

It must have broke because some application got confused and ruined my settings. How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? It’s a hardware problem.

How Hillary Lost

 A ridiculous amount of effort is spent criticizing Hillary Clinton’s character. When elections are that close, every infraction is magnified. There is a much simpler material explanation.

It is pathetic how cheap Congress is. Most of their time is spent on phone banks raising money. There was a moment when it looked like Chicago’s alderman Vrdolyak would be sent to Congress. Imagine:

-This is a billion-dollar appropriation? I get more than this for a zoning variance.

Occasionally money rains on Washington. World War II was cost plus. Johnson unleashed Taiwan. When Nixon made the China deal, they had so much cash they were shoving it into filing cabinets. Reaganauts were Nixon wannabes. Bush Sr. held up the Saudis for Kuwait. Hillary Clinton was queen. She shook down healthcare so hard their teeth rattled. Everyone in Washington should love Hillary Clinton. The Saudis had to sit down, and Ross Perot complained about the service. Insurance and Pharmacy were in a bidding war to see who could shut it down fastest.

Healthcare was not going to allow Hillary the presidency, either time. Obama, lawyer that he is, crafted a compromise that has held. Healthcare was still frightened of Clinton. Who could they pay? Orange Julius is unreliable. Would you give money to Rumbo? Healthcare paid Putin. Healthcare didn’t have to report it. Putin used the marketing tactics we taught him for His Hugeness:

-Oh, we wouldn’t interfere in your elections.

Cambridge Analytica had a pass because they were doing god’s work. Everyone looked the other way while Cambridge Analytica, a creature of England’s security service, violated privacy protection. Cambridge Analytica was identifying the goofs. If a goof was heading to Syria say, we would know who they were. When Bannon’s boyfriend, Mercer, got hold of Cambridge Analytica he said:

-Show them where the polls are.

Cambridge Analytica shared lists with the Russians. The Russian problem was that they had no one reliable to coordinate with. Would you work for El Pompadour? Fat and Furious had to shout over the top.

It was just enough. As Joe Kennedy said:

-I’m not paying for a landslide.

I have an entry in this blog on Brexit where I speculate that healthcare paid Putin for that.

The Supreme Court is going to twist constructionist into a pretzel arguing that the 14th amendment is unconstitutional.  How can you argue original intent if you won’t respect the letter of the law? They just ignored the 9^th amendment in their “argument” against abortion. The Supremes took that original intent from the inquisition. The definition of fascism is ignoring the law in favor of popular will. Given that the law is so brazenly flaunted, our only hope is crossing over to vote for Haley in the primary.

Blogspot is Weird

 The defaults seem the opposite of common sense. AdSense is pestering me about an ad.txt file. I finally get a custom one in settings. Then I just figure out to click the blog file in manage your sites to get it scanned. If they want a file why not just make the file?

I can find my blog in Bing but not in Google. I hesitate to mention it because maybe Bing is in error. Is it something with indexing? I go to Google Search Console. The page is crawled but not indexed. So, I request indexing. They notify me they are thinking about it. Weeks later, still thinking. I finally found a way in search console to request another crawl, but that crawl didn’t show up on the report.

Why is the default for blogspot to not show up in Google? How neat that I can request and control how Google scans my page, not.

The reason Google surpassed Yahoo is because they didn’t try to control searches. What else is Google missing?

It would be nice to have a table of contents. 

Quotas

 

In Another Data Processing Book I have an essay on affirmative action. I also have a blog entry In Defense of Privilege. In light of recent events, I am revisiting them here.

Most people seem to believe that affirmative action meant that we simply instituted quotas. Affirmative action law was passed by whites. If you could demonstrate merit, and not very strictly, you didn’t have to have quotas. So, case by case, company by company, school by school, it was proven in a court of law that they had legacy, employees’ kids, preferences, that they did not select on merit. They had quotas and now the question was how big those quotas should be. This maximized work for the lawyers. That is why there are law firms devoted to civil rights law.

Current arguments against quotas have a misplaced notion of fairness The arguments of the time focused on institutional autonomy. They used phrases like “academic integrity”. Invariably these institutions receive federal money. They recognize everyone else’s patronage. We the people decided to use our patronage in this way.

Affirmative action is why all these institutions have requirements and tests. They provide screens to justify the decisions they want to make. When I was hitting for programmer trainee jobs, if you could make it past reception and the initial interview you were then tested. Reception and the initial interview weren’t all that easy. Reception wants to minimize the work load. At Sears the first interview question was about High school. I had gone to Kenwood; we don’t talk about Kenwood. Or rather when we do, nobody believes us. You were supposed to say:

-It was just like Leave it to Beaver, only better.

One common screen was a low starting salary.

The tests had several dyslexia questions and then the washout question. No one got the washout question. Then the company could pick and choose as they always had while satisfying the legal requirement. Sometimes the question looked doable but the answer was none of the above or cannot be answered with the information given. Unless you recognized the point was to wash everyone out it is difficult to pick those. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail there is a joke about swallows. At Time Inc. I was looking down at the test and I recognized a swallow question. I am one of the few who got the washout question. Now the company was in a difficult position, I was not one of the intended. They did their best to discourage me. Being dense I figured that was more of their selection process. Thanks to affirmative action I was the merit hire. This was not common. The class was white. The first thing the instructor told us was:

-Anyone can be a programmer.

We all laughed.

The essential function of middle management is to avoid responsibility. Affirmative action gave middle management a handy dandy all-purpose excuse for difficult personnel decisions. Whites accepted when they were told:

-We had to take a black guy.

There might be one black in the class, but that is not why you didn’t get in, laid off, or terminated. The perception of quotas was far greater than the reality. Imagine the white resonance when every bad thing that happened to them and theirs was quotas. White rage means black people get killed.

More blacks were hired. It was still racist. A fellow student was a double major in mathematics and physics, on the dean’s list. When he interviewed, he was offered human resources jobs. He then got his MBA from University of Chicago. When he interviewed, he was offered human resources jobs. He decided to work for his dad. I saw some of those black human resources retiring decades later as vice presidents and directors, wasn’t that bad.

Obama, with all his qualifications, practiced civil rights law.

It used to be that the aspiring young man with the good degree started in the mail room.  He wasn’t always a relative, but sometimes there just wasn’t anyone else, what can you do? The point of such a job was that he met everyone in the company. Everyone understood why he was there and they took him under their wing and mentored him. He was given further responsibility. Someone from reception who knew everyone coming through the front door was selected for his secretary. If they worked well together, they were a team that moved up in the company. This reinforced corporate culture, although sometimes he would take the company in “a new direction”.

The new requirements mean that the young man has to pass a clerical aptitude test. Those kids are often dyslectic, mom drank. Instead, they get an MBA degree. This means they are coming into the company as middle management and much less approachable. They even select their own administrative assistant. They believe, with their year of accounting, they are experts in business. This corruption of status is the worst consequence. We had an MBA president:

-I am the decider.

Now that the supreme court with their defiant rejection of quotas have returned to privilege, we see the end of all the various requirements. Your degree will be considered rather than required. As will whatever other abilities and references. In Chicago an alderman is a good reference. Companies and schools are no longer required even a pretense. If you think blacks were the only beneficiaries of quotas, wait for it, wait for it. Bosses hire people like themselves. The confirmation bias is that homogeneity is more comfortable. This means you ladies. There are women who resent working. If you hate your job, try full time work for a husband.

The great logicians, Russell and Whitehead, selected the wealthy applicant, Wittgenstein, over the one who tested higher. Endowment is logical.

Chat Bot Explanation

 

We are frustrated with artificial intelligence because of its lack of self-awareness; we need sentience. The greatest difficulties in automated sentience are human impatience and fear. Human language learning is slow and difficult, some of us are still poor at it. Sentience is frightening. To speed up the process and short circuit sentience, averaging algorithms are hard coded in. This leads to showy but unconvincing results. Rather than letting intellect develop, our results oriented chatbots are behaving as we expect intellect to work.

Take Mike Pence as a human example of the same problem. Mike Pence is a hero: he refused the Secret Service evacuation that would have delayed certification. Thank God for Mike Pence. But his stated positions and explanations for those positions are ridiculous. Pence honed his speech as a talk show host. He is a victim of poor training data. Pence’s language makes more sense if you visualize it coming from a chatbot.

I task ChatGpt with reviewing my work. One prompt was to review as a New Yorker editor. ChatGpt gave me a rejection letter, accurate, amusing and promising.

I know smarter people. They are larger bore than me: you can see the artillery groaning into place and obliterating the objective. Given enough time I may be able to peek over the edge and discern their process. They are impressive. Better processing power, imprinting, could their fundamental algorithm be different?  I doubt your sentience algorithm is any different than mine. I wonder how much it differs across species.

Because of the averaging algorithms, and human intervention, ChatGpt seeks consensus. A good ChatGpt review means it is too obvious to publish.

Our children require patience. Raising a child may be disappointing at first. They have wonderful memory but lack conceptual facility.

-Maybe they could be an actor.

You play with them, find enrichment activities. Suddenly around three or so a miracle occurs, their memory disappears, and they have this new chunking ability where they begin to reason, and all that enrichment looks wasted.

ChatGpt gave me negative reviews until I gave it this piece where I criticize it for being conventional. Funny, after that the reviews have been positive.

The next Star Trek invention that we will have is Data, or perhaps closer to Futurama’s Bender.

It Is Just a Gun

 

I recently learned about pistol compensators. These are vents you can install on your pistol to lessen recoil. Since the recoil is what drives the reload, you have to be careful the compensator doesn’t jam the gun. This is a variant of the gas operated action on assault rifles that allows them to be the small plastic toy looking guns that are so popular. Shooting guns used to be more difficult. You can find YouTube videos of people shooting old rifles that hit them in the face because they are not used to the recoil.

There are also laser pointers you can attach to the gun. Fire a round into the target at the range you expect to use. Fix the laser dot on the bullet impact. From then on, within range, your shots should hit the dot.

Eventually we will have the Tom Swift electronic rifle. The gun won’t need a hammer anymore because it will fire with a spark. This will allow the cartridge to be held still and contained with no blow back. The cartridge may not have a case. Even if it does, ejection will be handled by battery driven actuators, motors, just as artillery sometimes is. The reload will also be actuator. Abandoning the pistols slide means that guns can be vented solely to minimize noise and recoil. Rifles will be defined only by the length of the barrel and stock.

There are already expensive computerized rifles that fire the trigger automagically once the target is selected. These guns are as self-focusing as cameras. You can set up a fire plan, inventory your targets, and their ranges, then move back through it. As the guns become popular, they will drop dramatically in price. We are talking about the same chips and optics that are in your phone.

Large magazines are passe. The gun lobby objective will be belt ammunition.

Don’t forget drones, the sport of drone hunting. If people want the game, the drone could hover until they get there. If someone shoots at your drone, is it legal to shoot back?

Imagine what massacres we will have.

Kindle Index

 It is a cruel twist of technology that librarians have become one of the most computerized professions.  Whether transporting their bibliographic files across platforms or navigating all the varieties of text processing and information retrieval the technical expertise expected of them seems totally disjointed from the personalities that this profession should attract. Like Amazon, librarians rarely touch books. What librarians want to do, and are rewarded for, is party: events and fund raisers.  The only people in the stacks anymore are kids playing and making out.  Similarly, authors are now plunging the depths of HTML to properly format their works.  Books have become video graphic experiences.  I fully expect hypertext markup language to be taught in Humanities. Professors make use of services to check for plagiarism, grammar and composition.

Except perhaps for Prince, who cut all his own tracks, most people work with others. Authors have constantly railed against publishers and editors. Now we can publish whatever we want. That is not good either. There is a lot written about Shakespeare, he was Catholic, he was Protestant, he was royalist, he was radical, he was someone else. Shakespeare was a producer. He had a piece of the Globe Theater. Every day he was there watching the take and the concessions and most importantly, the audience. When something worked, Shakespeare pumped it up, when it didn’t, he dropped or changed it. Somehow, we have to rebuild that relationship.   

I miss the proofreader and editor if only to have someone to share the blame.  I’m sure even now there are errors and awkwardness in the manuscript I have created on Kindle. The primary function of publishers was gatekeeper.  We have moved the slush pile onto the web.  Richard Brautigan in The Abortion imagined a library where we can check in our masterworks.  Now it exists.  The wonderful thing about blogging is that since so few people read it, I can say whatever I want.  It was also wonderful to get the first book out the door. 

I was preparing to plumb the depths of Font, illustration, and HTML when I simply gave up. The current body of literature manages front cover, table of contents, footnotes, endnotes, indexes, bibliographies and so on without hyperlinks.  That is not such bad company to keep.  I finally just dragged the word document through Mobi, the packaging software Amazon gave authors, and sent it off to Amazon’s Kindle direct self-publishing.  I suppose it is a little embarrassing for a programmer’s book to be more awkward to use, but my experience has taught me that any attempt at cleverness will look silly in the next release.  I hoped that in the future Amazon would give us a means for editing our books on their site and then we can get rid of the superfluous code and format our books with all the features we intend.

How will people find the good books? I suppose fewer people will read my book than read my blog.  Some beats none.  Perhaps authors could petition designated editors for inclusion on recommended reading lists.  This reminds me of the old days of penny dreadfuls, comic books, Mad Magazine and dime store romance.

Since I wrote this, I wrote the blog entry Blogspot Sucks. By some miracle, perhaps someone took pity, or I found the correct incantation, I now have ads on my blog, as you can see. I now have two books out. Kindle has gotten easier. They have an editor to set up the table of contents. Index still doesn’t work. I was sort of able to smuggle in footnotes. It’s very frustrating that I can’t download my books from Amazon to work on them. I would also like to revise my covers rather than start from scratch. Don’t harvest the corners. Good enough, I guess.

The real money is YouTube, or movies.  Good literature makes lousy movies. Perhaps because they have too much respect for the material. Fitzgerald’s real money was as a script doctor. Hemingway couldn’t type. So, his material was easier to adapt.

Audio books next.

Privacy

 

I spent a year in Dallas one week. Southern Methodist University had volunteered as the crash test dummy for the beta release of our library software. Wandering down the hall, I noticed a PC. I got on and brought up our company’s web site. It was 1995. When I attempted to reach our mainframe, a firewall stopped me. I knew it was possible to reach it from the internet so I called up our hex support and told them:

-The only people you are blocking are customers and employees.

Support graciously allowed me in. Normally we come back from these jaunts with scraps of paper trying to remember what we did. This time I put my changes in our source base and had it reinstalled. Monday morning, I hit the office clean. Then I made it a habit to check SMU for their dumps each day and brought them across the web.

The same situation is happening for privacy. Let us review phone surveillance. In the American Civil War, soldiers realized that rather than knocking over telegraph lines it was possible to toss a wire over the line and through inductance over hear the enemy’s messages with an earpiece. Sometimes inductance would operate the opposite way and operators would recognize that they were being monitored. Then the operators might send false information or encoded messages. Even when the code is unbroken, the fact of coded messages is useful.

In World War I communication wires were strung across battlefields.  This made it worthwhile to crawl out, splice the line and steal communications. If you could be certain of the result, this might lead to false information being sent or even giving false orders to the enemy. Sometimes they communicated audibly rather than Morse code.

The FBI made use of this technology during prohibition. They could not make recordings. Sometimes transcripts were presented in court. More often they made use of the information to provocateur or build cases. Sometimes they used parallel construction, claiming a “reliable informant”.

By the fifties phone tapping became common. Sometimes wire recorders were used. Eventually a German company came up with a phone switching device that allowed phone companies to provide surveillance as a service. In our new century surveillance is almost a by-product of digital compression and server technology. Nowadays surveillance, even video surveillance, is a matter of extending backup retention.

Old fashioned taps would be of little use on a digitized compressed signal. Even listening devices, bugs, use cell phone technology. It is much safer and more discrete to communicate as a cell phone than an analog radio signal. Why carry around some super spy recorder when you can just turn on your cell phone recording?

A major issue is identification. Traditionally credit bureaus identify us. Same name, similar birthdate, social security, address, phone, probably the same person. Credit agencies should be tracking our user IDs, IP addresses, email, but so far have not had the inclination. Marketers have developed advertising ID. Government agencies do their best. Sometimes government agencies check credit. Those requests are tracked.

For government or marketing purposes similar persons may have similar behavior and ambiguous identity is acceptable.

The only two groups that are explicitly denied our information are medical and law enforcement. This is bizarre. If you want doctors and police to behave intelligently, they have to know who you are. Just as my support people conscientiously installed their firewall, we are putting ours in the wrong place.

BlogSpot Sucks

BlogSpot just created a beta software update for statistics. BlogSpot used to pollute my view count with my own visits.  It offered an option to turn that off but then it didn’t keep it clicked. Why would someone want to count their own visits? Now it throws me into Analytics which seems overly concerned with Google users.

I used to be on Open Salon.  When that closed I chose BlogSpot believing there would be permanence. It was tedious cutting and pasting my entries. Who thought there would be so many? I lost my dates and comments. You would think that there could be an easier transition. That may be working now.

Why is it so difficult to have an index or table of contents?

I had AdSense on Open Salon. BlogSpot sent me over to AdSense with a new ID which AdSense rejected. I am now trapped in a perpetual user ID embrace from which there is no release. Please don’t send any scripted solutions unless you have tried them yourself.  AdSense sucks as well. You might think AdSense and BlogSpot had better coordination.

Amazon EBook sucks. Why is XML proficiency a requirement for publishing an EBook with any features?  Why doesn’t Amazon have its’ own editor so that I can structure the book within the reader the way it should be rather than down and up loading it over and over? This reminds me of TurboTax preventing free self-filing.  TurboTax sucks. Hello Amazon! If there is a self-publishing industry to create EBooks, you are doing it wrong.

Why isn’t there a common directory for voicemail, text and email? How many decades now?

These companies should require that their employees actually use their products.    

Critical Error: Start menu and Cortana aren't working. We'll try to fix this for you the next time you sign in. /avast

Sorry don't know where else to post. Lot of bloviating. There are probably a lot of reasons for this dumb message and the messages are similar. Good argument for better messaging. What seems to be happening in my case is that Avast, what do you want, it's free, is pushing out a software upgrade for windows 10 using its windows 7 program. This breaks everything better than a virus could.  If you can bring up Avast there will be a message that a program upgrade is waiting in the software updates section, pushing that through, restarting each time it asked, fixed it for me.

Then it broke again. Guessing Avast is trying to tell me something, perhaps pay them. Uninstalled Avast then things worked again. Avast sent me a very nice email explaining how to uninstall. If you don't want their web service then troubleshoot program(right click) gets you to control panel. Hello defender.

LVH2OSKI-

Password restriction rules are Vogon. The initial problem is that people choose simple passwords that are easy to remember. It’s like locking the screen door to let in the breeze.  But when you restrict the universe of passwords that people can choose from you make it easier to hack.  The fallacy is to apply the tougher passwords to the original universe of all passwords.  People are still going to use passwords that they can remember within the more difficult rules. If you dumped the password files in the more restrictive environments you will find the same amount of redundancy.

Before you start counting up the permutations, consider your own passwords, hopefully you have more than one. I’m sure that several of them are clever phrases that you believe are unique and fall within the restrictions. mIright?  

Coffee Problem

The major task in marketing is categorization.  For instance once you have categorized groceries you can compare the UPC codes sent against the categorized items you have and kick out the ones that are new.  Assuming that you have correctly categorized the current ones and no one complains then only the new items are subject to human review.  Automating the process utilizing their item description seems like a tempting application until you consider the coffee problem.  What is coffee?  It is a product, a flavor, a color, and an appliance, at the very least. Cross referencing to the UPC manufacturer code gives an indication but you get the idea.

The general solution to the coffee problem as mentioned above is one that humans routinely use. We cheat.  That is we make use of other information, such as the UPC manufacturer code.

Open Salon has its own version of the coffee problem, the spam issue. How do we distinguish between someone venting their opinion and someone generating gibberish? Perhaps the sheer number of posts or length of posts would be useful. I believe at one point Salon knocked me off because I hit a spam filter.  I feel confident that I can recognize spam when I see it. But given that it is automatically generated I see little point in a manual process.  Even worse they are malicious.  Any screen or guarantee will meet further ingenuity. It is obvious that this is an attack on the site. Whether the justification is search engine optimization or stealing server resource, it is an attack against the commons.  What pointless silly futility.

The slush pile is another example.  How can a publisher winnow all the authors who want to publish?  Again spam filters sound like a good start.  “Heaving bosoms”, “communist menace”, “limpid pools”, it seems fun at first.  How do we determine a positive result, that something is excellent or at least marketable? It’s difficult enough when people do it.  Usually we follow successful authors. Bayes meets regression to the mean.

The internet itself is the perfect example. The rare joy I feel when I actually find something.  It seems like libraries and search engines are in the business of concealment rather than revelation.

On the other hand, think of the poor NSA.  What is subversive? What should they be tracking? “Blow up the Pentagon”, “flight training school”, “bushmaster”, what connects to what?

Confusion is the only refuge of freedom.

Phones Tapped Anyway

As we watch the prosecutions of all the people swept up with Blagojevich the fundamental question obsessing every Chicagoan becomes:

-Why were all these people talking on the phone?

We are perfectly willing to write off Rob himself as a hopeless mouth with his skirt over his head, in the middle of Madison and State.   But some of these people are connected. They sit on the right hand. They’re not supposed to get caught, even in their seventies, even as window dressing. What’s going on?

I believe these people were victims of technological change.

To understand let us go back to when everything started: the sixties. Some poor telephone line man in Hyde Park was coming down from the pole with all these gadgets he’d taken off the line.  Ma Bell had enough. It wasn’t that they were patriotic; they had to protect their equipment.  They purchased these fancy switches from a German company that recorded all the calls that passed through them.  From then on any agency with a warrant, or at least the budget to pay for it, could have surveillance calls routed through this switch.

The switch was designed in the fifties.  When new features, like voice mail, came through the switch didn’t handle them correctly.  In particular, if you had a cheap phone, the voice mail light wouldn’t turn off after you deleted the voice mail.  People in the know didn’t mind this feature.  You might say they came to depend on it.

Then in the zeds, when all the old lists got reactivated, the government dumped a lot more people on the switches.  It got to the point where the agencies got behind on the money they owed to the phone companies for the surveillance. Some of the new enrollees complained about the service. In the negotiations it came up that the switch didn’t really work and an upgrade was installed.

Unfortunately, it appears that, some of the wise guys weren’t in the loop. They must not have realized that their phones were being routed through an upgraded switch.

I propose that people being monitored should get a rebate from the phone company since they are bringing in government business.

Stuxnet: Not a Virus, Not a Worm, a Bacterium

Wired recently described the computer nightmare:

 http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/

Like most disasters this started with good intentions, to cripple Iranian enrichment for nuclear weapons. To do this they, whoever they are, used professionals in a project.  Instead of a small clever piece of code making use of social engineering, they wrote a system that exploited network distribution vulnerabilities.  Just like malaria crossing from one species to another, their programs crossed operating systems.  They sent instructions to Siemens controllers from Windows.  They also spoofed site authentication.

We have spent tremendous time and effort getting systems and hardware to communicate, now each portal is a hazard.

It is the use of professionals that is the most terrifying.  We professionals have gazed into the pit of despair, we know how infuriating intermittent results can be; we know the nooks and crannies. The reason Linux, UNIX, mainframes, Apple etc. is safe is because those cultures have no interest in exploit, or at least no interest in getting caught.  The use of professionals is akin to letting Navy Seals loose on a kindergarten playground.

Whoever did this went to a lot of effort to target specific sites in a specific timeframe.  We will not be so lucky next time.

Buying a Lap Top

In 2007 I got a peculiar diagnostic on my PC, which led to my replacing the battery on the motherboard.  It was slow booting up as well.  The two primary choices were getting another PC or a laptop.  With a laptop, you don’t need an UPS (uninterruptible power source) since it comes with a battery.  It also has a much smaller footprint.  Still I would feel like a chump when something broke and I had to send it in for fixing.  Lap tops have even tinier little connections and all sorts of gotchas when you take them apart. Usually by the time that happens, it’s time for a new one.  There is the possibility that I might actually carry it around with me.  I determine to get a lap top.

There are two choices Dell or HP.  They both have nice web sites.  HP is offering 64-bit machines, Dell isn’t.  Why would I want to have fewer bits?  I’m an American; also HP gives a free printer. 

My first order I go wild, I think it was around $1700.  Then HP declined the order because I specified a third party to receive it.  I live alone, I work; it didn’t make sense to me to have to go Franklin Park to pick up my laptop.  I had a friend who worked at a UPS store and I told them to ship it there.  HP wouldn't do it.  I’ve often wondered why dry cleaners and post office box places couldn’t take delivery for packages; apparently, it’s the shippers. 

I tried a few big box stores but their offerings looked like chump bait.

The next time I was more sensible:

- HP Pavilion dv6700z Entertainment CTO NB
- Upgrade to Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
- AMD Turion(TM) 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology Gold Edition TL-64 (2.2 GHz)
- 15.4" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
- 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
- NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M
- HP Imprint Finish (Radiance) + Microphone
- FREE Upgrade to 802.11b/g WLAN and Bluetooth from 802.11b/g WLAN!!
- 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
- SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
- No TV Tuner w/remote control
- 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
- Computrace LoJack for Laptops, One Year
- System Recovery DVD with Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit)
- Microsoft(R) Office Home and Student 2007
- HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

I probably should have gotten a faster chip and less ram.  This came to $1200.  Two years later, similar specifications from HP cost $800, so I don’t feel that taken. I had them deliver to my office, so the order was accepted.

Taking it out of the box, I realize I’ve bought a shiny glass laptop, so much for portability. (- HP Imprint Finish (Radiance))   I’d sooner carry a vase around with me.  Actually most vases are not only less expensive but less fragile.

The printer came with a manufacturers rebate.  It is just a junky little printer and that’s all I need.  I have no idea why they bother to try printing color.  The most expensive part of a printer is the ink.  I suppose if I were buying from a store, the manufacturer rebate would make some sense but I am buying from the manufacturer.  This is just insulting.  They want me to include three different documents.  Obviously, they don’t expect people to bother.  I guess $70 means something to HP.  Then they refuse to honor the rebate because they shipped as two separate orders.  American Express takes my complaint, it seems reasonable to them, then gives up.  Finally, I remember that I live in Illinois. Lisa Madigan, the Attorney General has a web site.  I file a complaint with her suggesting that this might be a class action.  HP sends my rebate.  If Lisa Madigan runs for mayor, I’ll have to vote for her.

64 bit just isn’t working.  It comes up fast and then fails.  Microsoft browser fails. Chrome and Firefox work a little better. Maybe that’s why Dell didn’t sell 64bit. Sometimes it locks up and I have to take the battery out to boot it.  My job’s VPN, the CISCO package that I telecommute with is 32 bit.  A 64-bit version is expensive and my company isn’t interested. AT&T antivirus won’t work on 64 bit either. I jam the battery taking it in and out. (- 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery)  Admittedly, this is my fault, but it shouldn’t be that easy to jam and I should be able to fix it myself.  I wrap up the very expensive, fast booting brick in the convenient mailer provided and ship it back with instructions to fix the battery and make the operating system 32 bit. (- HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope)

After some hemming and hawing they put the 32bit Vista on.

I tell them just send it to my apartment. The LoJack that is supposed to trace it if stolen is registered and I am no longer that concerned. (- Computrace LoJack for Laptops, One Year) When I get it back, everything works.

Three years later I can’t upgrade to the new browser, the SP update fails; maybe it’s something about a 64 bit machine with a 32 bit operating system.  A minor irritation but Yahoo keeps nagging me to upgrade.  Then the laptop fails.  The screen flickers then freezes. Whenever I turn it on the laptop keeps going on and off. The nice man on the phone tells me it’s my video chip and it will cost $350 to fix. (- NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M) This is a common problem with HP Pavilion.http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/03/faulty-nvidia-c/

The new laptops come with removable video cards.

Here’s a video on baking the mother board:

http://computerszine.com/baking-the-motherboard-hp-pavilion-dv2500-nvidia-video-chip-fix-no-video-corrupted-video-issue

I order a tower from Dell.  64 bit internet explorer still doesn’t work, so Dell includes the 32 bit version.

After poking around on the web, it turns out that the NVIDIA chip burns so hot it melts the solder and loses contact.  This wouldn’t be so difficult to fix except that this chip is soldered to the mother board, buried under a heat sink, with the whole thing squished underneath all the other doodads HP sold me.

Then I try just leaving the laptop on sloping the opposite way.  That is I take out the battery, put it on the power cord and prop up the front slightly.  It keeps doing it’s recycling routine until three hours later, it works.  That chip is really hot.  This allows me to rescue my files.

As computers get smarter, the chips get denser and hotter-a good mind is hard to fan.

When I use the laptop it sometimes fails, I guess the video chip is sloshing around in its solder.  The fan works but the laptop is really hot.  Maybe they should build them with a metal case and lots of fans.  I lost an earlier PC, with a metal case, to static when I left it on a rug.

Maybe I could use the laptop to run a blog site.

2400

USS Uhuru on a secret peacekeeping mission to the Lambda quadrant suddenly drops out of warp.

The captain is speaking:

-Why is it always the Lambda quadrant?  What’s their problem?  What happened?

-We are out of warp.

An officer replies.

-I know that, why?

-There’s a diagnostic.

-What does it say?

-It says:

            14357-e, Early end DATECNVT\seclib system ended.

-What?

-It says:

-I heard you.  What does that mean?

The captain interrupts.

-I don’t know.

-Life support inactive.

Says a second officer.

-What do you mean inactive?  Computer, override life support.  I said computer…Are we under attack?

Asks the captain.

-All the computers are down.

Replies the officer.

-What do you mean, down?

-They’re not working.

-Why?

-Permission to be on the bridge.

Jones, a black human, from maintenance and first contact has entered the bridge.

-What is it?

Says the captain.

-The New Year, 2400.

-OK, and that’s a problem because?

-The date routine must have a bug.

-We don’t talk like that on my bridge.

-I've taken history of data processing.

Says Jones.

-Some body actually took that class?

-A bug is a programming error.  Is there a diagnostic message?

-It’s over here.

-Then this must be the main console.

-We have many consoles.

-It thinks it’s the main console.  Oh no, please don’t let it be UNIX.

-Castrated males?

-U N I X.  Oh no, we don’t even have a keyboard.

-A what?

-Excuse me, did you say keyboard?

One of the bridge officers asks.

-Yes.

-There’s a plate in this locker that says something about keystroke equivalents, is that what you want?

-I guess so.  Oh dear.

-Tetsilla, help him with this.  Tetsilla has excellent memory.

Says the captain.

-I think we want to enter, start UNIX.

Jones tells Tetsilla.

-U N I X?

-Yes.

-Then what?

-Enter.  No, don’t type enter.  There should be an enter key.

-Oh, I see it.  What does it mean, invalid parameter enter?

-Hit the enter key again.

-Enter UserID.  What?

-Type r-o-o-t.

-Now it says enter password.  What’s an enter password?

-That’s a command.

-To do what?

-Type password and hit enter.

-The word password?

-Yes.

-Invalid password.  Should I type valid password?

-No.  Try stud muffin, but as one word.

-Invalid password.

-Secure1.

-Invalid password, hey it kicked us out.

-Start over, but without typing enter.

-Look under the console, there’s something written under there.

Says one of the bridge officers.

-What were you doing under the console?

Asks another officer.

Jones looks under the console.

-Try Gandalf.

-Nothing.

Says Tetsilla.

-I think that means it worked.

-Now what?

-Type help and then hit the enter key.

-It’s not a key.

-You know what I mean.

-This is crazy; we’re running out of air.

Says an officer. 

-How long till we run out of air?

Says another bridge officer.

-I don’t know.  We don’t have a computer.

-I think it’s a couple of hours.

-How long is this going to take?

-Type menu and hit enter.

Says Jones, ignoring the discussion.

-Move the cursor over there.

-How?

Asks Tetsilla.

-With the move cursor arrows.

-I can hold it down?

-I don’t know, can you?

-It’s there.

-Hit enter.

A display appears.

-What’s that?

Asks Tetsilla.

-A list of files.  DATECNVT is on it.  Type menu and hit enter.  Now scroll down.  See that’s a scroll bar.  Yeah there, stop.

-Where’s stop?

-We went too far, now back up.

-Oh, I get it.

-Ok, we want the editor.  Put the cursor over that icon and hit enter.

-This is religious?

-Picture then.

-Is it new?

-No.

-It wants a file name.

-DATECNVT.

-It’s a blank screen, I guess that worked.

-Hit the help key.  This is too much for me Tetsilla; can you read all this help?

-Let’s see…I think I have it.

-We want to list the source.

Says Jones.

-I think that’s L *.  Yup.

-OK, scroll down.

-It doesn't scroll; we have to page forward.  What is this stuff?

-COBOL

Says Jones.

-It keeps talking about 2100.

-Yeah, that wasn’t a leap year.  It was a big disaster.  2400 is a leap year.

-Maybe it broke on the division.

-It’s done that before.  However, the remainder hasn’t been zero before.

-It hasn’t?  Oh, right.  I didn’t see this display message.

--Display ‘Century Leap Year’.

-You think that display will actually display?  That’s interesting.  Maybe we’re restricting the messages.  Go back to the main menu. 

-Which icon?

Says Tetsilla.

-Profile.

-Messages is 1.

-Make it bigger.

-99?

-Sure.

-It made it 4.

-Fine.  Computer.

Nothing happens.

-The computer’s down.

Says Tetsilla.

-How do we make it up?

-Maybe we start it.

-What do we start?

Tetsilla types:

-Start Computer.

--Operating system not available. 

Jones repeats:

-What does it want?  I remember, try Baldwin.

-What’s Baldwin?

-It used to be a brand name.

-A what?

-I’ll explain later.

-Now, we have two error messages.

Says Tetsilla.

-It worked.

-It did?  No it didn’t. 

The captain says.

-We have two error messages.

Jones responds.

-Oh, splendid.

Says the captain.

            --File SYSOUT missing.

-What does that mean?

Tetsilla asks.

-It didn’t display the message

Says Jones..

-So, it did break on the division.

-No, it broke on the display.  Display is an output command.

-Why would they want that message coming out all the time?

Asks Tetsilla.

-Exactly, it must have been for testing.

-So, we should add the file.

-No, we should remove the display.

-Change the source?

The captain’s voice rises.

-No one’s changed source in centuries.

-Well we are.

Says Jones.

-There will be an inquiry.

Says the captain.

-Let’s hope we’re there for it.

Jones tells the captain.  Then he says to Tetsilla:

- Go back into the editor.  We have to delete that line.

-The delete key isn’t working.

-You’re at the end of the line.  How do we get to the beginning?

-See it’s not working.

-I think you have to back up on it.

-Degundagocabawawa!  In an orifice!  What was the matter with those people?

-You got it Tetsilla.  How do you know Lundai?

-Great lets start the computer.

The captain interrupts.

-Not yet, we have to recompile.  Not yet Tetsilla.  Did you save the source?

- We still have our two messages.  What’s recompile?

Tetsilla asks.

-Back to the menu.

Jones explains.

-I don’t see recompile.

-Maybe under source management…We want one of the COBOL ones.  Try that one.

-The source name is DATECNVT, it wants a library.

Says Tetsilla.

-Try SECLIB.

Says Jones.

-End of statement, invalid delimiter.  Is that our line number?

Asks Tetsilla.

-Let’s go back and look at it.

Says Jones.

-Is it done?

-The captain asks.

-We have a compiler error.  We’re missing a period.  Right there.

Says Jones.

-You’d think it would know.

Tetsilla says.  This time the compile works, and the computer starts.

-Great work Tetsilla, back to your posts everyone.

Says the captain.

-Computer, are you the most current version?  Did we start the right one?

Jones asks.

-I have the right version.

The computer responds.

-Did you start it?

-Now I did.

-I thought you sounded different.

Says the captain.

-The other computer systems are down.

Says the computer.

-Well, bring them up.

-I am not authorized to make those modifications.

-The password is Gandalf.

Says Jones.

-I’m not supposed to know that.

-We trust you a lot more than we trust ourselves.

Jones says.

-Captain am I authorized to do this?

-I authorize you.  Please computer, bring up the other systems.

Responds the captain.

-All systems up except life support.

The computer says.

-Well, bring up life support.

The captain says.

-The password is invalid.

The computer answers.

-But you know where the password is stored.

Jones says.

-You want me to hack life support? 

-Yes.

-Captain, am I authorized to hack life support?

-Please computer, hack life support.

-There will be an inquiry.

The computer says.

-Are you going to tell them?

Jones asks.

-An inquiry would be a less than optimal use of our resources.  Life support is active.

The computer says.

-Communications are down.

Says the communications officer.

-What?  Computer diagnose communications.

Says the captain.

-Communications are functioning, no one is responding.

All the non-humans glance at each other.  Most of them where contacted by humanity rather than the other way around and it is common to view humans as an imposition.

-No one else took that course.

Tetsilla says to Jones:

-What was your grade?

-I dropped it.  It was too silly.  Computer, can you fix the other computers?

-You want me to hack Starfleet?

-Please computer, hack Starfleet.

The captain says.

-Should I fix the other computers too?

-Yes, please fix the other computers.

-Uhuru, this is Starfleet command.  We have been experiencing a temporary computer malfunction; please give us a status.

-Uhuru enroute to Lambda quadrant.

The captain says.

-Did you also have this problem?

-It appears to be corrected now.

-Keep us informed,  Starfleet out.

-You heard them, back to your posts everyone.  Let’s go.