netbooks

Previously on alt.cellular.verizon, BillW50 said:

In ,
Jeffrey Kaplan typed:
Previously on alt.cellular.verizon, BillW50 said:

I use both Linux and Windows. And Linux got to be the worst! The
majority of the Linux programmers are rejects that couldn't get a
real job programming. Most of your smart devices use Linux like
Microwaves, smart phones, routers, broadband modems, etc. And they
work for a day or two and then you have to reboot them. I have never
seen such an unstable OS since IBM had taken over OS/2. I have no
idea how IBM programmers got their jobs, as they got to be the worst
of the lot. About on par with open source programmers. :-(

Android is Open Source...

I didn't know for sure, but it doesn't change anything for me. As my
Android hardly sees any use at all. As it really doesn't do very much
for me. And what is available is pretty bare bones applications anyway.

The point is that Open Source does not equal crap. Firefox and
Thunderbird are open source, as is Open Office, Libre Office, anything
found on Sourceforge.net, among lots of other stuff.

Also, you are saying "linux" like it's a single product, when it isn't.
First, there's the almost-identical BSD system, then just within Linux
itself, there are a plethora of packages from freeware to
commercialware, all of varying quality and user-friendliness. (There's
an old joke that says Linux is user-friendly, it's just picky about who
its friends are.)

--
Jeffrey Kaplan www.gordol.org
Double ROT13 encoded for your protection

"Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin." - Dwight D.
Eisenhower

On 2/21/2013 12:55 PM, Justin wrote:
BillW50 wrote on [Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:35:03 -0600]:
In ,
Gene E. Bloch typed:
On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:24:10 -0500, tlvp wrote:

On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:27:23 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

I am a perfectionists ...

Do tell :-) .

... and I can find bugs that nobody else can find.

And conversely, it would appear :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp

OK, guys, it can happen. I can find bugs that no one else can find
too.

More than once, I have bought or installed something and had it crash,
and it ended up being a bug that tech support had never seen before.

But perhaps that comes under the rubric of "conversely" :-)

Let me put it in another way. Over the years I have written hundreds of
programs and nobody to date has ever found a bug in one of my programs.

That would require users...

Lots of them actually. I have a few emails from people who actually used
the software for many years and then viewed who the author was and then
discovered it was me and then thanked me for writing such a fine program.

It seems easy to me to logically think of every single variable and what
could happen to the running program. It is a lot like playing chess
logically.

You must be writing extremely small applets

No not really. I went to school back in the mid-70's to become an
electronic engineer. I remember the instructor early on saying that many
would drop out. At first, that scared me because I thought maybe I was
wasting my time there. Later, it turned out differently. Not only did I
find it super easy, but I had the highest tests scores they had in the
last 5 years.

Later I needed programs that didn't exist at the time. Programming was a
lot like electronic engineering as it is all 1's and 0's at the lowest
level. The big difference was that programming lived in RAM and not in
the hardware (aka like ROM or hardware matrix, etc.).

I lived and breath this stuff back then. Thought about 24/7 and even
dreamt about it. I didn't really like programming too much, as bug free
code meant lots of caffeine and many nights with little or no sleep. But
it was something I was capable of doing.

There was one program I did write that I knew that had a bug. It was
actually a phone answering program. The bug was that it knew the day
that the phone call came in. But it didn't know if the day changed after
the call was completed (at automatically assumed it was the same day). I
planned to fix that one later and I never did. I don't think many calls
come in seconds before midnight anyway and it wasn't a big priority at
the time. But that is the only thing I can think of that I should have
fixed. Oh well, too late now and nobody else caught that one either. ;-)

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM - Windows 7 Pro SP1 (x86)

........... Lots of snippage.............

No not really. I went to school back in the mid-70's to become an
electronic engineer. I remember the instructor early on saying that many
would drop out. At first, that scared me because I thought maybe I was
wasting my time there. Later, it turned out differently. Not only did I
find it super easy, but I had the highest tests scores they had in the
last 5 years.

Later I needed programs that didn't exist at the time. Programming was a
lot like electronic engineering as it is all 1's and 0's at the lowest
level. The big difference was that programming lived in RAM and not in the
hardware (aka like ROM or hardware matrix, etc.).

I lived and breath this stuff back then. Thought about 24/7 and even
dreamt about it. I didn't really like programming too much, as bug free
code meant lots of caffeine and many nights with little or no sleep. But
it was something I was capable of doing.

There was one program I did write that I knew that had a bug. It was
actually a phone answering program. The bug was that it knew the day that
the phone call came in. But it didn't know if the day changed after the
call was completed (at automatically assumed it was the same day). I
planned to fix that one later and I never did. I don't think many calls
come in seconds before midnight anyway and it wasn't a big priority at the
time. But that is the only thing I can think of that I should have fixed.
Oh well, too late now and nobody else caught that one either. ;-)

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM - Windows 7 Pro SP1 (x86)

Bill, we talked about this in the past. My BS degree from Purdue (1962)
says "Electrical Engineer". That old... What University College of
Engineering
did you obtain your degree? Just curious.

Chris

On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 19:31:00 +0000, Jeffrey Kaplan
wrote:

Fortunately, this machine's Sleep/Hibernate problems are that bad. If
I use Sleep, it merely borks Aero Glass effects until I do a restart.
Hibernation actually causes more serious issues, in that for some
reason it causes system slowdowns that I first really notice with my
mouse - the cursor no longer moves as fast across the screen as it's
set to.

I had the problem with Aero Glass. Found that this solution worked.

1. Start, type cmd, right click, Run as Administrator.
2. Type bcdedit /set useplatformclock true and press enter.
3. Type bcdedit /enum and press enter.
4. Verify that useplatformclock is on/true.
5. Restart the computer then test aero issue.

--
Claim nothing: Enjoy
David: NorthWest England

BillW50 wrote on [Thu, 21 Feb 2013 13:45:42 -0600]:
That would require users...

Lots of them actually. I have a few emails from people who actually used
the software for many years and then viewed who the author was and then
discovered it was me and then thanked me for writing such a fine program.

Oh yeah, name some programs.

dreamt about it. I didn't really like programming too much, as bug free
code meant lots of caffeine and many nights with little or no sleep. But

Yes, too much caffeine and no sleep just screams bug free to me.

On 2/21/2013 1:24 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
On Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:05:08 +0000 (UTC), "Justin"
wrote in ...

BillW50 wrote on [Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:27:23 -0600]:
On 2/19/2013 6:15 PM, Justin wrote:
BillW50 wrote on [Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:02:42 -0600]:
On 2/19/2013 5:34 PM, Justin wrote:
BillW50 wrote on [Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:55:13 -0600]:
On 2/16/2013 10:21 PM, Justin wrote:
BillW50 wrote on [Sat, 16 Feb 2013 16:10:47 -0600]:

Anything regarding IM for Linux is really stripped down and isn't worth
much. The only thing for IM for Linux is somewhat respectable is Skype,
which I never used for Linux, but what I have heard. Everything else for
Linux is pretty much plain text and that is it.

That's what IM is, plain text.

Naw... it is much more than that. Fonts, italics, bold, underline,
emoticons, mic, webcam, file transfers, etc.

Webcam is not a requirement of IM. Nor is microphone.
I've never had a problem with any of these though

Lots of problems with Linux. As Linux has the most limited support for

Yep, must be some PEBCAK issues

You wish Justin. I am a perfectionists and I can find bugs that nobody
else can find.

hahahahahahahah

We should list out his self-professed qualifications and see just what
a superior being we are dealing with here. I mean, seriously, I doubt
any of us could measure up to his delusions of grandeur!

Oh no! I don't feel superior at all. There are lots of things I very am
bad at. But this is no different than anybody else really. Some people
are good at some things and bad at others. I am no different at all.

One thing that is so hard for me to grasp is English grammar. I also
stuttered a lot when I was just a kid and that probably didn't help
either. That disappeared when I grow up, but grammar is still hard for
me. I mean remembering rules is one thing, but then having exceptions to
rules is totally illogical to me. I often wonder how Spock could explain
the logical reasons for exceptions. So far, I don't get it. Why are they
there?

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM - Windows 7 Pro SP1 (x86)

Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote on [Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:24:19 -0500]:
On Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:05:08 +0000 (UTC), "Justin"
wrote in article ...

You wish Justin. I am a perfectionists and I can find bugs that nobody
else can find.

hahahahahahahah

We should list out his self-professed qualifications and see just what
a superior being we are dealing with here. I mean, seriously, I doubt
any of us could measure up to his delusions of grandeur!

I knew a guy like that once, he claimed he worked down the hall from
Kernehan and Ritchie when they were developing C. Claimed to have worked
for the NSA, was the local bigwig ISP owner.

Turned out he was on the run from the law for theft and attempted murder
of a police office.

On 2/21/2013 1:16 PM, BillW50 wrote:
On 2/21/2013 11:31 AM, charlie wrote:
On 2/21/2013 11:12 AM, BillW50 wrote:
On 2/21/2013 10:04 AM, charlie wrote:
On 2/20/2013 5:30 PM, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
I've been looking for a gasoline powered generator
How large a generator? What's expensive?
Harbor Freight has an 800w gas gen for $89.95
Large generators? Google Genrac. There are other lower cost generators
as well, with sources usually on the west coast.

Generally, a "conventional" generator uses the mass of the rotating
components, along with regulator(s) to stabilize the output. More
expensive units have a solid state "inverter" for more tightly
controlled output.

One drawback of the conventional generator has to do with the output
voltage level in an "idle" situation. The inverter types usually don't
have the lower voltage output associated with the idle condition.
My conventional 15KW ~22KW surge generator drops output voltage to
~90-100vac at idle, and immediately goes to normal output 123-125 vac
under load. Frequency control seems to be within 1 hz or so of 60 hz.

A good UPS with a voltage stabilizer capability can help with
"sensitive" equipment. Most of the current crop of desktops (with a
decent power supply) aren't to picky, and the UPS helps eliminate any
brownout that might be caused by a generator going into idle mode.

Curiously, what is the gas usage typically under load per hour?

16 Gal tank
10 Hours at 50% load
15Kw continuous, 22.5KW Motor start(4 ton A/C, etc.) rated
Normal 87 Oct regular gas, conversions kits available for LP and Nat Gas

Oh that doesn't sound bad at all. I do use a big LP tank that gets
filled up I dunno, like 3 or 4 times a year that I use to heat the house
and the garage that would probably be cheaper to run a generator from
too when the need arises. Thanks again.


I bought the generator several years ago, due to a couple of extended
power outages. Other than the periodic "test" runs, I've only had to use
it for real two or three times. The real hassle was that I had to add a
whole house manual transfer switch. This involved a permit, an
electrician, half the county inspectors (They had never seen one) and
the power company to disconnect and re connect the power. In the
process, part of the job was to replace a bent pipe and weather head,
and connect an underground feed to an outbuilding. The transfer panel
has space available for additional branch breakers, so I used one of the
positions. The generator can carry normal loads, including the whole
house 4 ton A/C, but running the A/C and an electric dryer at the same
time might be pushing things. The stove, water heater, and furnace are
natural gas.

A side advantage of all of the work is that I can throw the transfer
switch, and cut off all power going to the main panel. This simplifies
some rewiring I've been meaning to do for years. The original house
wiring branch circuits have copper hot and neutral, with of all things
an aluminum safety ground return. The aluminum has gotten brittle with
age, and cracks at the wall sockets. A/V stuff, P/C's, and UPS units
really want to see a good safety ground.

There was a national code change concerning breakers a few years back,
and I was lucky enough to just get under the wire. The new code breakers
are more expensive, and can nuisance trip more easily.

On 2/21/2013 2:17 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:35:03 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

In ,
Gene E. Bloch typed:
On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:24:10 -0500, tlvp wrote:

On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:27:23 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

I am a perfectionists ...

Do tell :-) .

... and I can find bugs that nobody else can find.

And conversely, it would appear :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp

OK, guys, it can happen. I can find bugs that no one else can find
too.

More than once, I have bought or installed something and had it crash,
and it ended up being a bug that tech support had never seen before.

But perhaps that comes under the rubric of "conversely" :-)

Let me put it in another way. Over the years I have written hundreds of
programs and nobody to date has ever found a bug in one of my programs.
It seems easy to me to logically think of every single variable and what
could happen to the running program. It is a lot like playing chess
logically.

Different subject...


The real killer for me was ops system functions/routines that did not
behave as documented. Much of the hassle had to do with what the
function returned for status, and so forth.

On 2/21/2013 1:45 PM, Jeffrey Kaplan wrote:
Previously on alt.cellular.verizon, BillW50 said:

In ,
Jeffrey Kaplan typed:
Previously on alt.cellular.verizon, BillW50 said:

I use both Linux and Windows. And Linux got to be the worst! The
majority of the Linux programmers are rejects that couldn't get a
real job programming. Most of your smart devices use Linux like
Microwaves, smart phones, routers, broadband modems, etc. And they
work for a day or two and then you have to reboot them. I have never
seen such an unstable OS since IBM had taken over OS/2. I have no
idea how IBM programmers got their jobs, as they got to be the worst
of the lot. About on par with open source programmers. :-(

Android is Open Source...

I didn't know for sure, but it doesn't change anything for me. As my
Android hardly sees any use at all. As it really doesn't do very much
for me. And what is available is pretty bare bones applications anyway.

The point is that Open Source does not equal crap. Firefox and
Thunderbird are open source, as is Open Office, Libre Office, anything
found on Sourceforge.net, among lots of other stuff.

Whoa! First off you you like those products you mentioned, that is just
fine. I don't care for any of them too much myself. The only thing
dealing with open source that I am ok with is VLC. But that is only
because it is easy to install and if your hardware has enough power it
does ok. But I can do far better, but it is more work.

Yes I use Thunderbird a lot since v1.5. But I still don't like it much
though. The only thing that prevents me from tossing it out of the
window is it is also highly portable.

Also, you are saying "linux" like it's a single product, when it isn't.
First, there's the almost-identical BSD system, then just within Linux
itself, there are a plethora of packages from freeware to
commercialware, all of varying quality and user-friendliness. (There's
an old joke that says Linux is user-friendly, it's just picky about who
its friends are.)

Yes I think I understand this very well. And yes, I read Linus Torvalds
book (did you?) and all. And I don't think you can tell me more about
him that would shock me. But even Linus (the father of Linux) uses
Windows. I don't know for sure, but I believe I know where he is coming
from.

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM - Windows 7 Pro SP1 (x86)

On 2/21/2013 1:34 PM, Jeffrey Kaplan wrote:
Previously on alt.cellular.verizon, BillW50 said:

Since updates that require reboots comes out at least every two
months, either you are an irresponsible user or fibbing

Really? Asus sold netbooks with XP2 with 4GB SSD soldered on the
motherboard and it is impossible to update these machines. And Microsoft

What is "XP2"? And what does having an SSD soldered to the board have
to do with installing update patches for the OS?

Oh did I typed that? I know what I meant was XP SP2. 4GB SSD soldered to
the motherboard meant that unless you are really skilled at soldering
and have the equipment, 4GB is it. I don't think you could install XP
SP2 with an install disc, as 4GB is probably too small with temp files
and all.

Since I have a lot of spare machines, I had taken half of them and
stopped updating them four years ago. And then recorded the results. And
none of them ever got a virus or a rootkit either.

Do you use protection?

Oh yes! I still believe in a firewall (or a router) and an updated AV
software. Those both saved my butt so many times already. Another thing
I like is running new things in a sandbox. If it is bad, it almost
generally can't harm anything.

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM - Windows 7 Pro SP1 (x86)

BillW50 wrote on [Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:53:19 -0600]:
On 2/21/2013 1:34 PM, Jeffrey Kaplan wrote:
Previously on alt.cellular.verizon, BillW50 said:

Since updates that require reboots comes out at least every two
months, either you are an irresponsible user or fibbing

Really? Asus sold netbooks with XP2 with 4GB SSD soldered on the
motherboard and it is impossible to update these machines. And Microsoft

What is "XP2"? And what does having an SSD soldered to the board have
to do with installing update patches for the OS?

Oh did I typed that? I know what I meant was XP SP2. 4GB SSD soldered to
the motherboard meant that unless you are really skilled at soldering
and have the equipment, 4GB is it. I don't think you could install XP
SP2 with an install disc, as 4GB is probably too small with temp files
and all.

So, how does that preclude installing windows updates?

On 2/21/2013 1:31 PM, Jeffrey Kaplan wrote:
Previously on alt.cellular.verizon, BillW50 said:

The only reason I reboot my Win7 machine daily is because I shut it
down overnight or if I'm going to be gone for at least an hour as a
power saving measure. +THIS+ machine does not like Sleep or
Hibernation, as a defect in the hardware. My last laptop had no
problem, and would go weeks on end without an actual restart.
Typically, it would get an actual restart only when a system update
required one.

I have over 30 machines here. And I have one like that. It's my Dell
Latitude Slate Tablet with an Atom Z670. Motion Computing also uses the
same CPU in their CL900 (and it is said that they designed the Dell
slate). And MC said that the Z670 is *only* compatible with Windows 7
SP1 and that is it.

I know of nobody who has got XP to run on the Atom Z670. But many have
got Windows 8 running on it. But it isn't perfect. One of the problems
with Windows 8 that I have seen is incomplete shutdowns and lockups
trying to use standby or hibernation.

Fortunately, this machine's Sleep/Hibernate problems are that bad. If
I use Sleep, it merely borks Aero Glass effects until I do a restart.
Hibernation actually causes more serious issues, in that for some
reason it causes system slowdowns that I first really notice with my
mouse - the cursor no longer moves as fast across the screen as it's
set to.

Is this a machine that you built, or one branded machines that came with
so and so OS?

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM - Windows 7 Pro SP1 (x86)

On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:10:29 +0000 (UTC), "Justin"
wrote in article ...

Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote on [Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:24:19 -0500]:
On Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:05:08 +0000 (UTC), "Justin"
wrote in article ...

You wish Justin. I am a perfectionists and I can find bugs that nobody
else can find.

hahahahahahahah

We should list out his self-professed qualifications and see just what
a superior being we are dealing with here. I mean, seriously, I doubt
any of us could measure up to his delusions of grandeur!

I knew a guy like that once, he claimed he worked down the hall from
Kernehan and Ritchie when they were developing C. Claimed to have worked
for the NSA, was the local bigwig ISP owner.

Turned out he was on the run from the law for theft and attempted murder
of a police office.

I know a guy who worked for both Loral Aerospace and NASA - as a
janitor. Credentials don't impress me. How long you've been doing
something doesn't impress me. Bragging about how good you are and what
you possess doesn't impress me. What I can see and evaluate that you
have done is all that has a chance of impressing me.

--
Zaphod

"Yeah. Listen, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox
the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third..."

"What?"

"There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now
concentrate!"

On 2/21/2013 1:53 PM, Chris S. wrote:
.......... Lots of snippage.............

No not really. I went to school back in the mid-70's to become an
electronic engineer. I remember the instructor early on saying that
many would drop out. At first, that scared me because I thought maybe
I was wasting my time there. Later, it turned out differently. Not
only did I find it super easy, but I had the highest tests scores they
had in the last 5 years.

Later I needed programs that didn't exist at the time. Programming was
a lot like electronic engineering as it is all 1's and 0's at the
lowest level. The big difference was that programming lived in RAM and
not in the hardware (aka like ROM or hardware matrix, etc.).

I lived and breath this stuff back then. Thought about 24/7 and even
dreamt about it. I didn't really like programming too much, as bug
free code meant lots of caffeine and many nights with little or no
sleep. But it was something I was capable of doing.

There was one program I did write that I knew that had a bug. It was
actually a phone answering program. The bug was that it knew the day
that the phone call came in. But it didn't know if the day changed
after the call was completed (at automatically assumed it was the same
day). I planned to fix that one later and I never did. I don't think
many calls come in seconds before midnight anyway and it wasn't a big
priority at the time. But that is the only thing I can think of that I
should have fixed. Oh well, too late now and nobody else caught that
one either. ;-)

Bill, we talked about this in the past. My BS degree from Purdue (1962)
says "Electrical Engineer". That old... What University College of
Engineering
did you obtain your degree? Just curious.

Chris

I was enlisted in the Marines in '74 and went to the Naval School in
Millington, TN. They had an advance course that about only the top 5%
could sign up for (although you had to extend for two extra years) and I
did.

Later I was curious and I tested against other civilian EE graduates and
I scored higher than anybody else too. Even though the schooling was
very good, I just had a knack for this stuff (other stuff not so much),
so I was dreaming of new designs constantly in my sleep.

I ended up in top secret stuff that was decades ahead of things most
people knew about. So that helped too.

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM - Windows 7 Pro SP1 (x86)