• Re: Learned something new

    From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Mon Jul 22 14:38:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Subject: Learned something new to me


    Hi Ed!

    EV> The XP Taskbar has 28 to 32 programs open when I wanted to Open
    EV> another File, but nothing happened.
    EV> The XP box has 3GB RAM which I thought should allow me to do
    EV> anything that I wanted to do when I bought it in 2006.

    Lost track of the message, but anyway.... by itself, 32bit XP with
    default drivers uses 386mb RAM (I've seen this number over and over) or
    if it's dual-booted with ReactOS, for some reason only uses 80mb RAM.
    Either way, it's not the major problem.

    Browsers are the biggest hogs, I've seen Chrome suck up 40GB (yes,
    gigabytes) of RAM! Supermium, despite being based on the same code, is
    not as greedy, but still uses about 700mb when it's just admiring its
    navel, plus about 2GB per page open.

    How on earth did you have 28 to 32 programs running -- doing what? I
    have 4 or 5 apps that are open all the time, but otherwise... are you
    sure you're not counting multiple windows for a single program? You
    might want to set them to "group when taskbar is full".

    Best thing to check is Task Manager, it'll give you a lot of
    information. I leave it running in the system tray all the time, cuz it doesn't eat much (at least on older Windows; on 10/11 it uses way too
    much RAM).


    I'm pretty much only using (Virtual) XP for the BBS stuff and haven't
    fiddled around in ages. At the Command Promot tyoe 'mem' and see if any hints there.

    Mine comes out really strangely:

    655360 bytes total conventional memory
    655360 bytes available to MS-DOS
    634048 largest executable program size

    1048576 bytes total contiguous extended memory
    0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
    941056 bytes available XMS memory
    MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area

    I think it's seeing only the mini-VM (I forget what it's called) 32-bit
    XP uses to run DOS programs. It's certainly not seeing system RAM.

    I'm thinking maybe the reason you can't open your 40th window is there
    is not you're out of system memory but rather you're out of memory for whatever application governs the files.

    Might have run the heaps dry. However, then you normally get a wonky
    screen where if you drag a window around it looks like this:

    http://doomgold.com/images/linux/snapshot5-smplayer.png

    Incidentally that screenshot was from linux, not immune to this issue.



    .. If mediums can communicate with dead imagine what large can do!

    Bring back the mammoths, and smallpox, and dinosaurs....

    Hmm. Maybe try smalls.
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  • From Mike Powell@454:3/105 to KY MOFFET on Tue Jul 23 10:48:00 2024
    Browsers are the biggest hogs, I've seen Chrome suck up 40GB (yes,
    gigabytes) of RAM! Supermium, despite being based on the same code, is
    not as greedy, but still uses about 700mb when it's just admiring its
    navel, plus about 2GB per page open.

    I am convinced that the more memory a machine has available, the more the browser will suck up. Either they, the pages they are rendering, or both,
    are some of the least efficient coding that has ever been produced.

    Mike


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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Mike Powell on Tue Jul 23 12:17:00 2024
    MIKE POWELL wrote:
    Browsers are the biggest hogs, I've seen Chrome suck up 40GB (yes,
    gigabytes) of RAM! Supermium, despite being based on the same code, is
    not as greedy, but still uses about 700mb when it's just admiring its
    navel, plus about 2GB per page open.

    I am convinced that the more memory a machine has available, the more the browser will suck up. Either they, the pages they are rendering, or both, are some of the least efficient coding that has ever been produced.

    Yep, they do that. There hasn't been an efficient browser since Netscape
    3 (which rendered pages about 10x faster than anything today).

    Using available RAM isn't bad, that's what it's for, but assuming it's
    yours to waste is just crappy coding.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to August Abolins on Wed Jul 24 00:50:00 2024
    AUGUST ABOLINS wrote:
    @SUBJECT:Re: Learned something new to N Hello Ed.Vance!

    I can't find Ed's message on the topic, but anyway. Pretend you're Ed.
    I'm talkin' to Ed. :)

    The early searches for Bluetooth devices came up with a image
    of a BT device that had a jack for a CAT-5 plug.

    Surely.. that would be easily found, it it existed. Maybe you
    misremember what the device was for.

    There's no such thing. You're probably remembering a USB-to-Ethernet
    adapter. GatorCable sells a good one for very few bucks (I have four of
    'em) that includes an unpowered USB hub (suitable for a mouse or
    keyboard or a flash drive, not for an external HD). You can get them in
    the standard larger USB plug, or in newfangled USB-C. I use them with my netbooks that don't have an ethernet port.

    There are dongles that do both wifi and bluetooth, but wifi-only cost
    1/4 as much.

    Bluetooth is much less secure and a lot more likely to randomly fail to connect. Especially does not work well with XP. I have a BT adapter on
    my XP64 box for no good reason, because it won't connect with any modern devices, and only sees about half of them. Its only virtue is it's old
    enough that the driver is for XP.


    My (BIG) idea is to use the WAN port of the Linksys BEFSX41
    Router to that device.

    That's an old router (only does 10/100, gigabit has been standard a long
    time) but should be decent enough.

    https://downloads.linksys.com/downloads/userguide/1224638533883/BEFSX41_V21_UG_B-WEB.pdf

    Hmm. I have one of those here somewhere. Perfectly good router, except
    it's too slow for everyday use on my network.

    I don't have much hooked to my router, but I have three TP-Link 8-port switches daisy-chained and most of the ports are full. :) Nice switch
    because you can hook things up any which way with any cable you have,
    and it autosenses and everything works, and unlike most, the unit
    doesn't get hot. Plug 'em in and they Just Work.


    So.. your idea is to feed BT from your phone, to the Router,
    and then feed eth to your laptop?

    I think there have already been other (better/simpler)
    solutions mentioned here.

    Just link your XP pc with wifi. Give a try! A few minutes of
    testing isn't going to be the major security concern that you
    imagine.

    Wired ethernet is more reliable and WAAAAY faster (20x to 200x depending
    on your port capacity). But wifi does work reliably with XP.

    Wifi will never be as secure as wired, because it's broadcast to the
    world, and you need to make sure security is set (if not on by default).
    But so long as all the security is enabled and you have a router less
    than 20 years old, it should be sufficient.

    One of my small entertainments is watching wifi-enabled cars go by on
    the highway. It's about 200 feet away but they still show up on any
    device that's looking for wifi. Some are secure, but many are not.


    I only want to buy a device that meets MY specifications.
    Every search for the device at store websites have failed to
    come up with what I am looking for.

    .because probably such a device for your specs/idea doesn't
    really exist?

    It doesn't exist. And if it did, it wouldn't work with XP, and it
    wouldn't be particularly secure either.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Tue Jul 23 07:50:00 2024

    Hi Ky!

    You replied to my replied to Ed but I think he'll see it. <g>


    EV> The XP Taskbar has 28 to 32 programs open when I wanted to Open
    EV> another File, but nothing happened.
    EV> The XP box has 3GB RAM which I thought should allow me to do
    EV> anything that I wanted to do when I bought it in 2006.
    Lost track of the message, but anyway.... by itself, 32bit XP
    with default drivers uses 386mb RAM (I've seen this number over
    and over) or if it's dual-booted with ReactOS, for some reason
    only uses 80mb RAM. Either way, it's not the major problem.

    Yes, I've seen that 386 MB usage figure numerous times; don't know if
    someone measured once and everyone reused that data or what but seems to
    make sense: the work data is stored someplace and takes up space. Odd
    how the number is slashed with ReactOS -- I'd guess the 'missing' memory
    could be found in the dual-boot partition.


    Browsers are the biggest hogs, I've seen Chrome suck up 40GB
    (yes, gigabytes) of RAM! Supermium, despite being based on the
    same code, is not as greedy, but still uses about 700mb when it's
    just admiring its navel, plus about 2GB per page open.

    40 GB!! And for a while we were installing 8 or 16 GB of RAM and thought sufficient! (Horray for Swap!)


    How on earth did you have 28 to 32 programs running -- doing
    what? I have 4 or 5 apps that are open all the time, but
    otherwise... are you sure you're not counting multiple windows
    for a single program? You might want to set them to "group when
    taskbar is full".

    I was thinking Ed was counting all the open windows and some windows
    were multiple of the same utility. Right now I have 8 windows open for different LibreOffice documents. Obviously I'm not working on them all
    at the same time but open because of current projects. ...Add a few
    more or add a new one with a huge import and LibreOffice will start complaining. (From what I've read more of an issue with LibreOffice
    than memory, processsor, etc.)

    Otherwise here I can have concurrently open utilities for e-mail,
    temperature monitoring, viewing remote desktops, and the scripts
    'snooping' on the other computers to make sure they're operating
    correctly. All those little functions make the count go up quickly, so
    I could see Ed's getting to two and three dozen.


    Best thing to check is Task Manager, it'll give you a lot of
    information. I leave it running in the system tray all the time,
    cuz it doesn't eat much (at least on older Windows; on 10/11 it
    uses way too much RAM).

    Agree on using Task Manager -- and a reminder to open all the view
    options: with System Monitor on Linux there are options to view User,
    Active, All and Dependencies so assume something similar for Windows XP. ...Click for sorting so don't have to scroll though the list!


    I'm pretty much only using (Virtual) XP for the BBS stuff and haven't fiddled around in ages. At the Command Prompt tyoe 'mem' and see if any hints there.

    Mine comes out really strangely:

    655360 bytes total conventional memory
    655360 bytes available to MS-DOS
    634048 largest executable program size

    1048576 bytes total contiguous extended memory
    0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
    941056 bytes available XMS memory
    MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area

    I think it's seeing only the mini-VM (I forget what it's called)
    32-bit XP uses to run DOS programs. It's certainly not seeing
    system RAM.

    Probably so, else it's the computer version of the elusive perpetual
    motion machine!


    I'm thinking maybe the reason you can't open your 40th window is there
    is not you're out of system memory but rather you're out of memory for whatever application governs the files.
    Might have run the heaps dry. However, then you normally get a
    wonky screen where if you drag a window around it looks like
    this:
    http://doomgold.com/images/linux/snapshot5-smplayer.png
    Incidentally that screenshot was from linux, not immune to this
    issue.

    Yup: I've seen it on my system which isn't in the whimpy department. Extremely rarely seen, but as I recall when there's some heavy system
    loading going on.


    .. If mediums can communicate with dead imagine what large can do!
    Bring back the mammoths, and smallpox, and dinosaurs....

    And burning at the stake!

    Hmm. Maybe try smalls.

    They just talk quietly amongst themselves!


    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... What's worse then tendinitis?
    Elevendinitis!
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Wed Jul 24 08:42:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ed!

    That's good! :)

    (One of our quote-back devices is not quite right; I added the hyphen to
    your reply.)

    Mine works fine, what's wrong with you? :)

    Dawned on me I think Ky meant 'stacks' when he typed 'heaps' in his
    reply to me but not qute sure. Check both out. 'Stack' is an area of memory; 'heap' is one or more areas of memory from which storage is
    obtained on an as-needed basis and returned when no longer needed.

    So based on that it seems one should not run out of heaps as they are
    dynamic whereas stacks are limited and always the same size no matter
    the content. ...Seems like one could adjust the size of the stack, so
    if made smaller could have more. ...Limitation of 100% of the RAM
    still, but can make smaller partitions.

    No, I mean heaps. They are dynamically sized, but the NUMBER is limited.
    To my understanding they're used more for dynamically changing stuff
    like whatever you might do on your desktop, while stacks are more what
    the OS uses and once loaded the OS is fairly static. Both have limits
    but because you're more likely to use heaps as you open and use
    applications, they're more likely to run out.

    Win 3.x, Win9x, and WinME could run five programs before they ran dry.

    XP was supposed to fix that but all it really did was increase the heap
    limit, a lot. It's still possible to run out, if a program is enough of
    a hog, or buggy enough. The only one I've seen do it routinely is Nero,
    the CD/DVD burning utility. Have enough instances open and it'll clog up
    the works (the problem seems to be that each instance calls two
    instances of File Explorer). And it's bad coding; Infra CD Recorder has
    no such problem, far as I've seen.

    Some programs assume they have full use of ALL system resources, and if
    there are a LOT, like we've had since XP, they don't bother cleaning up
    after themselves.

    LibreOffice is an example of a Badly Coded Program. Instead of opening
    tabs in the same interface for additional documents, it opens a whole
    new instance of the entire program. Chrome does this too, each is
    displayed as a tab but it is actually an entire new instance of the
    whole program (or why it's such a memory hog). This was done supposedly because then if one page crashes it won't take down the entire
    application, but in reality it makes no difference other than it sucks
    up RAM like a drunken coder.

    For comparion, I have ten tabs open in RoughDraft, and it still peaks at
    about 26k of RAM used.

    I don't know how linux handles whatever it calls stacks and heaps
    (considering it's also written in C++ it can't be that different), but I
    do know it has crap garbage collection and tends to fill up RAM with
    junk. PCLOS is much better about this, and will run 5-6 months before it
    needs a restart, but Fedora used to need a restart once a week. Latest
    version is somewhat better-mannered. For comparison, XP can run at least
    3 years without needing a restart. and if something is really kaka, can
    be flushed by logging out and back in, without restarting the OS. (If
    the power never went out and the hardware never failed, it might run
    forever.)

    Silver (XP64) has been up 9 months this time, and is none the worse. I
    do need to take it outside and blow the dust out fairly soon, tho.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Wed Jul 24 09:00:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ed!


    Yours is displaying similar to my Virtual Machine XP -- Ky's the expert
    on those numbers so I'l defer to him.

    Could also have run out of swap space. With only 3GB RAM, of which you actually have use of about 2GB for programs, unless those are mighty
    small programs they're going to have long since overflowed to swap.

    Swap is slow especially with spinning rust. I used to always disable it entirely, but now I exile it to a NVMe dedicated to swap, browser cache,
    and the like, so it doesn't wear out the SSD, and is WAY faster. Tho
    with 64GB RAM it rarely touches swap. Image editing apps tend to whine
    if there's no cache.

    EV> The CMD prompt is Run As Administrator.
    EV> There are 21 items running on the Taskbar .

    Seems like a high number but LIS to Ky earlier I've got quite a few applications running, some with multiple parts. LibreOffice has around
    eight documents open currently, Remmina has two, so that's ten just
    between those two applications.

    I expect some are multiple instances, as LO does it.

    I have about 25 tabs open in Chrome over on the linux box, because
    Youtube doesn't queue them properly and forgets what you had queued all
    the time.

    I'm half-thinking the solution (besides closing some apps!) is maxxing
    out your RAM. though only 4 GB for a 32-bit OS, or maybe fiddle and
    shrink the stacks size. IIRC a stack is either full or empty: if set
    for 1024 then 1 through 1023 is a used stack so filled faster than if
    stacks set to 512: you have twice as many stacks and if partially filled
    you have more free. ...And if you're confused I don't blame you: I have
    a mental diagram which I'm 'seeing'.

    XP already sets them to maxed out, as much as the OS can handle. It
    isn't like DOS where you had to set upper limits or you got some really
    puny number. If you muck about with it you'll just mess up its
    efficiency, and XP is already very efficient.

    Given Ed's system has only 3GB RAM, I'm guessing it's a 3-slot board and
    those tend to be less efficient than 4-slot, and more prone to be buggy.
    He'd do better to find someone's office castoff for cheap or free, and
    upgrade the whole banana. There comes a point where old hardware simply
    can't do what we're asking of it.
    I'm running XP64 on an i7, which took a little fiddling to get XP64 to accept the motherboard, but XP runs without any drama on any Core2Duo or
    Quad, and nowadays they're a dime a dozen. And they max out at 8GB RAM.
    XP32 can actually do 8GB RAM, and there's a utility to enable that, but
    was artificially limited to 4GB because so many systems have an onboard
    Intel GPU, and the driver for Intel onboard GPUs is buggy, was
    won't-fixed, and the solution was to limit RAM instead.

    So if you don't have an Intel video chip, you can try that. I haven't bothered, tho I should do it on Cash since it has 8GB physical.

    XP64 RAM limit is 128GB, but the downside is the command prompt will not
    run DOS programs or 16bit Windows programs, so for that you need an XP32 VM.

    However, XP64 can do 16 TB of virtual memory, I can't imagine doing that....

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition

    All else being equal, 64bit performance is about 4x better than 32bit.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Wed Jul 24 09:08:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    You replied to my replied to Ed but I think he'll see it. <g>

    I can't find Ed's again.

    KM> Lost track of the message, but anyway.... by itself, 32bit XP
    KM> with default drivers uses 386mb RAM (I've seen this number over
    KM> and over) or if it's dual-booted with ReactOS, for some reason
    KM> only uses 80mb RAM. Either way, it's not the major problem.

    Yes, I've seen that 386 MB usage figure numerous times; don't know if
    someone measured once and everyone reused that data or what but seems to
    make sense: the work data is stored someplace and takes up space. Odd

    I'd swear they did it on purpose. Someone probably thought it was funny.

    Naked XP64 uses... are you ready for this? 486 MB RAM.

    how the number is slashed with ReactOS -- I'd guess the 'missing' memory could be found in the dual-boot partition.

    No, this is RAM, nothing to do with however you partition anything.

    I finally concluded that for some unknown reason, this is buck-naked XP, actually very efficient. When I installed 3rd party drivers on one of
    these, RAM use ballooned up to the 3-400MB range.


    KM> Browsers are the biggest hogs, I've seen Chrome suck up 40GB
    KM> (yes, gigabytes) of RAM! Supermium, despite being based on the
    KM> same code, is not as greedy, but still uses about 700mb when it's
    KM> just admiring its navel, plus about 2GB per page open.

    40 GB!! And for a while we were installing 8 or 16 GB of RAM and thought sufficient! (Horray for Swap!)

    BOO for swap. Slows things down. In the olden days I always disabled it,
    or had it at the mnimum (25mb) because Photoshop and Photopaint both
    look for it and won't run if it's not there.


    KM> How on earth did you have 28 to 32 programs running -- doing
    KM> what? I have 4 or 5 apps that are open all the time, but
    KM> otherwise... are you sure you're not counting multiple windows
    KM> for a single program? You might want to set them to "group when
    KM> taskbar is full".

    I was thinking Ed was counting all the open windows and some windows
    were multiple of the same utility. Right now I have 8 windows open for

    Yeah, and may have taskbar stacking turned off.

    Otherwise here I can have concurrently open utilities for e-mail,
    temperature monitoring, viewing remote desktops, and the scripts
    'snooping' on the other computers to make sure they're operating
    correctly. All those little functions make the count go up quickly, so
    I could see Ed's getting to two and three dozen.

    I have RoughDraft (10 editing tabs), LibreOffice (one instance),
    Supermium (Chrome for XP) with nothing open but the homepage, and
    SeaMonkey with browser and email panes open. 4.9GB RAM used, most of
    which is browsers.


    KM> Best thing to check is Task Manager, it'll give you a lot of
    KM> information. I leave it running in the system tray all the time,
    KM> cuz it doesn't eat much (at least on older Windows; on 10/11 it
    KM> uses way too much RAM).

    Agree on using Task Manager -- and a reminder to open all the view
    options: with System Monitor on Linux there are options to view User,
    Active, All and Dependencies so assume something similar for Windows XP. ..Click for sorting so don't have to scroll though the list!

    Yeah, that sort of thing is really useful on any OS.

    > Mine comes out really strangely:
    >
    > 655360 bytes total conventional memory
    > 655360 bytes available to MS-DOS
    > 634048 largest executable program size
    >
    > 1048576 bytes total contiguous extended memory
    > 0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
    > 941056 bytes available XMS memory
    > MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area

    KM> I think it's seeing only the mini-VM (I forget what it's called)
    KM> 32-bit XP uses to run DOS programs. It's certainly not seeing
    KM> system RAM.

    Probably so, else it's the computer version of the elusive perpetual
    motion machine!

    LOL. If you run MEM on a DOS system you'll get the above.


    > I'm thinking maybe the reason you can't open your 40th window is there
    > is not you're out of system memory but rather you're out of memory for
    > whatever application governs the files.
    KM> Might have run the heaps dry. However, then you normally get a
    KM> wonky screen where if you drag a window around it looks like
    KM> this:
    KM> http://doomgold.com/images/linux/snapshot5-smplayer.png
    KM> Incidentally that screenshot was from linux, not immune to this
    KM> issue.

    Yup: I've seen it on my system which isn't in the whimpy department. Extremely rarely seen, but as I recall when there's some heavy system
    loading going on.

    Some programs are ill-behaved varmints and prone to do this.


    > .. If mediums can communicate with dead imagine what large can do!
    KM> Bring back the mammoths, and smallpox, and dinosaurs....

    And burning at the stake!

    I'm good with that; I can think of several worthy to "encourage the others".
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  • From August Abolins@Ogg to Ky Moffet on Wed Jul 24 22:47:00 2024
    Hello Ky.Moffet!

    ** On Tuesday 23.07.24 - 20:50, Ky.Moffet wrote to August Abolins:

    Hello Ed.Vance!

    I can't find Ed's message on the topic, but anyway. Pretend
    you're Ed. I'm talkin' to Ed. :)

    OK. I'll try. But I can't speak for Ed! LOL


    The early searches for Bluetooth devices came up with a
    image of a BT device that had a jack for a CAT-5 plug.

    Surely.. that would be easily found, it it existed. Maybe you
    misremember what the device was for.

    There's no such thing. You're probably remembering a USB-to-
    Ethernet adapter. ...

    I'm guessing the same thing. But maybe Ed thought it was
    something else.


    Bluetooth is much less secure and a lot more likely to
    randomly fail to connect. Especially does not work well with
    XP. I have a BT adapter on my XP64 box for no good reason,
    because it won't connect with any modern devices, and only
    sees about half of them. Its only virtue is it's old enough
    that the driver is for XP.

    There are about 5 generations of BT now. My XP laptop (a
    thinkpad TP40) worked well with an original generation Kobo's
    BT feature. It was really convenient to transfer ebook
    downloads via BT to the Kobo. Later Kobo models abandoned the
    BT feature. Meanwhile, even a later model Thinkpad T60 (also
    XP) simply does not work with newer BT devices.


    So.. your idea is to feed BT from your phone, to the Router,
    and then feed eth to your laptop?

    Wired ethernet is more reliable and WAAAAY faster (20x to
    200x depending on your port capacity). But wifi does work
    reliably with XP.

    The problem is that Ed's internet is supplied by the phone
    right now, and he refuses to use wifi. There is no "wired" way
    to feed the internet from the phone to his XP laptop. I really
    don't understand his reluctance to enable hotspot mode using
    wifi on the phone and feed the internet the XP laptop's wifi
    that way. His wife could even continue to use the phone while
    it's operating in hotspot mode. He'd be able to use his XP
    laptop and enjoy the larger screen and normal keyboard many
    months ago! Or.. maybe he truly does enjoy using the smaller
    screen and virtual keyboard on the phone afterall. <g>


    Wifi will never be as secure as wired, because it's broadcast
    to the world, and you need to make sure security is set (if
    not on by default).

    He has some kind Moto model of smartphone (I'm too lazy to
    check older messages for the specific one). It would have built
    in security for hotspot mode. As long as Ed configures a good
    password he should be fine and it wouldn't matter if the
    phone's SSID is "broadcast to the world".


    One of my small entertainments is watching wifi-enabled cars
    go by on the highway. It's about 200 feet away but they still
    show up on any device that's looking for wifi. Some are
    secure, but many are not.

    Hmmm.. I scan the environment for other wifi devices too from
    time to time. I use Fing on one of my smartphones for that. I
    work at a storefont that is right next to the main street in
    town. I'd see an SSID show up and then it would disappear a
    minute or two later. The one's I've seen have all been secure.
    I haven't noticed an open one.
    --
    ../|ug
  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Ed Vance on Wed Jul 24 22:15:00 2024
    ED VANCE wrote:

    Yes, I want both the XP desktop and Vista notebook that are connected to the router to be using the Bluetooth device to talk with the Bluetooth on the phone.

    I've had zero luck getting XP to talk to the phone via bluetooth.

    However, the phone and the linux box can share files via wifi.

    That's my idea.
    Even if it will increase the monthly payment on the phone.

    Won't make any difference to the phone.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Ed Vance on Wed Jul 24 22:17:00 2024
    ED VANCE wrote:
    If you add an ethernet card to your PC, would that device allow you to pick >> up the signal via BT?

    * SLMR 2.1a * DALETECH - for all your home security needs!


    Mike, Both of my Windows computers have Ethernet built-in.
    They are each plugged in to the router.
    I am just thinking if I had a Bluetooth device plugged into the router output as the DSL Modem was , I would be able to 'pair' them so I wouldn't be stuck totapping on this phone.

    Why not get a bluetooth keyboard for the phone? They start at about $16.

    You can't pair the phone with the PC and use the PC's keyboard for the
    phone.

    Your phone should be able to use Wifi, in fact that's all my old iPhone
    uses because it can't see the tower, so it uses wifi calling.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Ed Vance on Wed Jul 24 22:20:00 2024
    ED VANCE wrote:

    * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1)
    Barry, The monitor the desktop computer uses is 19" .
    The screen on this phone is tiny, which I have much difficulty with.
    (You do see that I 'm blaming the phone, not My Head)

    You can use this gadget to connect the phone to a PC monitor.

    https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/37043/is-it-possible-to-connect-a-android-phone-display-to-a-tv-or-pc-monitor

    I don't know what an iPhone would use.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Mike Powell on Wed Jul 24 07:25:00 2024

    Hi Mike!

    MIKE POWELL wrote to KY MOFFET <=-

    Browsers are the biggest hogs, I've seen Chrome suck up 40GB (yes, gigabytes) of RAM! Supermium, despite being based on the same code, is
    not as greedy, but still uses about 700mb when it's just admiring its
    navel, plus about 2GB per page open.
    I am convinced that the more memory a machine has available, the
    more the browser will suck up. Either they, the pages they are
    rendering, or both, are some of the least efficient coding that
    has ever been produced.

    Sort of a tangent but I've read MythTV (utility for recording and
    playing back television shows) will appear to use 100% of the memory --
    it just caches whatever it can, I guess for a 'more efficient'
    operation. In this instance appears to be for greater efficiency: don't
    want to watch a show with a buffering screen!


    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... Scientists have grown vocal cords in Petri dish. Results speak for self. --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to August Abolins on Thu Jul 25 10:30:00 2024
    AUGUST ABOLINS wrote:
    Hello Ky.Moffet!

    ** On Tuesday 23.07.24 - 20:50, Ky.Moffet wrote to August Abolins:

    Hello Ed.Vance!

    I can't find Ed's message on the topic, but anyway. Pretend
    you're Ed. I'm talkin' to Ed. :)

    OK. I'll try. But I can't speak for Ed! LOL

    Ed, you've changed!

    There's no such thing. You're probably remembering a USB-to-
    Ethernet adapter. ...

    I'm guessing the same thing. But maybe Ed thought it was
    something else.

    All these gadgets look much the same, plus or minus some length of cable.


    Bluetooth is much less secure and a lot more likely to
    randomly fail to connect. Especially does not work well with
    XP. I have a BT adapter on my XP64 box for no good reason,
    because it won't connect with any modern devices, and only
    sees about half of them. Its only virtue is it's old enough
    that the driver is for XP.

    There are about 5 generations of BT now. My XP laptop (a
    thinkpad TP40) worked well with an original generation Kobo's
    BT feature. It was really convenient to transfer ebook
    downloads via BT to the Kobo. Later Kobo models abandoned the
    BT feature. Meanwhile, even a later model Thinkpad T60 (also
    XP) simply does not work with newer BT devices.

    Yeah, it's all over the place. I have a brand new keyboard designed for
    BT to modern tablets, and which tablet can't see it? the relatively new
    Kindle Fire. Works with the aging and old phones, but not the newish PinePhone. Doesn't see the XP64 box's BT adapter (USB dongle).
    Meanwhile, the $10 BT keyboard I've had about ten years does better than anything else (it will usually connect, if you wait long enough). Yet
    another BT keyboard of the same vintage, I've never got to work at all.

    The problem is that Ed's internet is supplied by the phone
    right now, and he refuses to use wifi. There is no "wired" way
    to feed the internet from the phone to his XP laptop. I really

    These exist, https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/connect-phone-tablet-to-internet-ethernet-cable

    but I don't think they turn the phone into a network switch, which seems
    to be what he's after.


    don't understand his reluctance to enable hotspot mode using
    wifi on the phone and feed the internet the XP laptop's wifi
    that way. His wife could even continue to use the phone while
    it's operating in hotspot mode. He'd be able to use his XP

    Um, yeah, that would definitely be the way to go.

    laptop and enjoy the larger screen and normal keyboard many
    months ago! Or.. maybe he truly does enjoy using the smaller
    screen and virtual keyboard on the phone afterall. <g>

    LOL. I enjoy it so much I refuse to do it.


    Wifi will never be as secure as wired, because it's broadcast
    to the world, and you need to make sure security is set (if
    not on by default).

    He has some kind Moto model of smartphone (I'm too lazy to
    check older messages for the specific one). It would have built
    in security for hotspot mode. As long as Ed configures a good
    password he should be fine and it wouldn't matter if the
    phone's SSID is "broadcast to the world".

    The Motos are pretty good, from what I read. Should have very mature
    tech for all this.

    One of my small entertainments is watching wifi-enabled cars
    go by on the highway. It's about 200 feet away but they still
    show up on any device that's looking for wifi. Some are
    secure, but many are not.

    Hmmm.. I scan the environment for other wifi devices too from
    time to time. I use Fing on one of my smartphones for that. I
    work at a storefont that is right next to the main street in
    town. I'd see an SSID show up and then it would disappear a
    minute or two later. The one's I've seen have all been secure.
    I haven't noticed an open one.

    I see a lot of them in cars (mostly Hondas), and one day something went
    by calling itself a printer.

    But unless you're deliberately stupid, I don't see how you'd disable the default security on PC-and-phone wifi. Should be plenty good enough.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Thu Jul 25 10:32:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:

    Sort of a tangent but I've read MythTV (utility for recording and
    playing back television shows) will appear to use 100% of the memory --
    it just caches whatever it can, I guess for a 'more efficient'
    operation. In this instance appears to be for greater efficiency: don't
    want to watch a show with a buffering screen!

    Memory exists to be used. If you have a lot, programs that can take
    advantage should. But they also shouldn't be wasteful, cuz they're not
    the only fish in the pond.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Thu Jul 25 10:53:00 2024

    Hi Ky!

    BARRY MARTIN wrote: originally to Ef...
    Hi Ed!

    That's good! :)

    (One of our quote-back devices is not quite right; I added the hyphen to your reply.)

    Mine works fine, what's wrong with you? :)

    Um, I just needed a little dash of something?!

    Actually mine also worked properly: ended up Ed had quoted my entire
    message and the start of his reply was at the end but then got
    accidentally sent before he was done.



    Dawned on me I think Ky meant 'stacks' when he typed 'heaps' in his
    reply to me but not qute sure. Check both out. 'Stack' is an area of memory; 'heap' is one or more areas of memory from which storage is
    obtained on an as-needed basis and returned when no longer needed.

    So based on that it seems one should not run out of heaps as they are dynamic whereas stacks are limited and always the same size no matter
    the content. ...Seems like one could adjust the size of the stack, so
    if made smaller could have more. ...Limitation of 100% of the RAM
    still, but can make smaller partitions.

    No, I mean heaps. They are dynamically sized, but the NUMBER is
    limited. To my understanding they're used more for dynamically
    changing stuff like whatever you might do on your desktop, while
    stacks are more what the OS uses and once loaded the OS is fairly
    static. Both have limits but because you're more likely to use
    heaps as you open and use applications, they're more likely to
    run out.

    As there is a limited number of heaps and apparently only 'stretch' so
    far (referring to the size).


    Win 3.x, Win9x, and WinME could run five programs before they ran
    dry.

    ...I'm trying to remember back that far; pretty sure I didn't use
    Windows ME, "Windows 98SE" sounds right, probably several forms fo
    Windows 3.x. I'm not recalling a "I'm not gonna open" but do recall sluggishness.


    XP was supposed to fix that but all it really did was increase
    the heap limit, a lot. It's still possible to run out,

    There are multiple ways t get around a problem!

    if a
    program is enough of a hog, or buggy enough. The only one I've
    seen do it routinely is Nero, the CD/DVD burning utility. Have
    enough instances open and it'll clog up the works (the problem
    seems to be that each instance calls two instances of File
    Explorer). And it's bad coding; Infra CD Recorder has no such
    problem, far as I've seen.

    Now starting to realize a possible explanation as to why sometimes
    things worked and why at other times they didn't.


    Some programs assume they have full use of ALL system resources,
    and if there are a LOT, like we've had since XP, they don't
    bother cleaning up after themselves.

    Probably why rebooting fixes a lot of our problems: start with a clean
    slate.


    LibreOffice is an example of a Badly Coded Program. Instead of
    opening tabs in the same interface for additional documents, it
    opens a whole new instance of the entire program. Chrome does
    this too, each is displayed as a tab but it is actually an entire
    new instance of the whole program (or why it's such a memory
    hog). This was done supposedly because then if one page crashes
    it won't take down the entire application, but in reality it
    makes no difference other than it sucks up RAM like a drunken
    coder.

    So the sneaky way around those programming issues is follow the advice
    of installing as much RAM as possible. (A variation on the heap issue earlier.)

    As for LibreOffice supposed to be each tab an individual, I have had the
    issue of 'The House of Cards': one tab fails, they all close. Good news
    is they have a pretty good recovery so easy to get back to where one
    was.


    For comparion, I have ten tabs open in RoughDraft, and it still
    peaks at about 26k of RAM used.

    My solution was based on Microsoft's XP Heap Solution: throw in more
    RAM! <g>


    I don't know how linux handles whatever it calls stacks and heaps (considering it's also written in C++ it can't be that
    different), but I do know it has crap garbage collection and
    tends to fill up RAM with junk. PCLOS is much better about this,
    and will run 5-6 months before it needs a restart, but Fedora
    used to need a restart once a week. Latest version is somewhat better-mannered. For comparison,

    My computer dedicated to MythTV has run 8 or 9 months without a reboot.
    Would have been longer but needed to be rebooted to finish installing
    updates.



    XP can run at least 3 years
    without needing a restart. and if something is really kaka, can
    be flushed by logging out and back in, without restarting the OS.
    (If the power never went out and the hardware never failed, it
    might run forever.)

    Between 'system requires a reboot to finish istallation of updates',
    power outages (UPSs last only so long), etc., I'd never get to a year. ...Shortest was a few hours: critter zapped the pole transformer in the
    back yard before I went to work; power crews replced line fuse. Come
    back from work, they're still there -- ??. Found out later they had
    been called back because a different critter didn't learn the lesson
    from the morning critter and ZAP!


    Silver (XP64) has been up 9 months this time, and is none the
    worse. I do need to take it outside and blow the dust out fairly
    soon, tho.

    Maybe the dust is what's making it work!!


    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... Show me pharaoh who ate crackers in bed & I'll show you a crummy mummy.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Thu Jul 25 10:53:00 2024


    KY MOFFET wrote to BARRY MARTIN <=-

    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ed!

    Yours is displaying similar to my Virtual Machine XP -- Ky's the expert
    on those numbers so I'l defer to him.
    Could also have run out of swap space. With only 3GB RAM, of
    which you actually have use of about 2GB for programs, unless
    those are mighty small programs they're going to have long since overflowed to swap.

    And running in Swap will also slow an already slow machine -- look at
    that HDD LED flicker!



    Swap is slow especially with spinning rust. I used to always
    disable it entirely, but now I exile it to a NVMe dedicated to
    swap, browser cache, and the like, so it doesn't wear out the
    SSD, and is WAY faster. Tho with 64GB RAM it rarely touches swap.
    Image editing apps tend to whine if there's no cache.

    I rmemeber reading a while back (few years) the suggestion for
    disabling Swap. To me didn't make sense as I interpret Swap as the
    overflow for RAM, so if no overflow area something is going to fail, and
    that will usually be at an inconvenient time.

    I've also noticed Swap is sometimes used by Ubuntu/Linux -- not sure for
    what but occasionally see a few megabytes is in there. Doesn't seem to
    be a reaason as tons of room in memory. Guessing something stored in
    there for the next reboot -- preloaded update?? I'll reboot and it's
    gone. ...Should also mention in the session the Swap started off empty
    and some time later (hours, days) was there.



    EV> The CMD prompt is Run As Administrator.
    EV> There are 21 items running on the Taskbar .
    Seems like a high number but LIS to Ky earlier I've got quite a few applications running, some with multiple parts. LibreOffice has around eight documents open currently, Remmina has two, so that's ten just
    between those two applications.
    I expect some are multiple instances, as LO does it.

    Ubuntu 22.04 (and other vesions) will put dots alongside the Favourites
    icons to indicate that app is running. Sort of like tabs.


    I have about 25 tabs open in Chrome over on the linux box,
    because Youtube doesn't queue them properly and forgets what you
    had queued all the time.

    Probably figures when you 'heap' that much on it.... <gg>


    I'm half-thinking the solution (besides closing some apps!) is maxxing
    out your RAM. though only 4 GB for a 32-bit OS, or maybe fiddle and
    shrink the stacks size. IIRC a stack is either full or empty: if set
    for 1024 then 1 through 1023 is a used stack so filled faster than if
    stacks set to 512: you have twice as many stacks and if partially filled
    you have more free. ...And if you're confused I don't blame you: I have
    a mental diagram which I'm 'seeing'.
    XP already sets them to maxed out, as much as the OS can handle.
    It isn't like DOS where you had to set upper limits or you got
    some really puny number. If you muck about with it you'll just
    mess up its efficiency, and XP is already very efficient.

    Yes, I remember spending lots of time sequencing my DOS boot (on my XT),
    maybe some for early Windows, but don't recall doing so as getting close
    to the XP era. ...Some of that could have been due to the speed and
    multitude of memory available as compared to the MS-DOS era.


    Given Ed's system has only 3GB RAM, I'm guessing it's a 3-slot
    board and those tend to be less efficient than 4-slot, and more
    prone to be buggy. He'd do better to find someone's office
    castoff for cheap or free, and upgrade the whole banana. There
    comes a point where old hardware simply can't do what we're
    asking of it.

    And never throw out the old memory until everything's working! I had a
    4-slot motherboard which the instructions said could take 8 GB
    (2+2+2+2). It could use only 6 (2+2+1+1) no matter how I moved the
    sticks around.


    I'm running XP64 on an i7, which took a little fiddling to get
    XP64 to accept the motherboard, but XP runs without any drama on
    any Core2Duo or Quad, and nowadays they're a dime a dozen. And
    they max out at 8GB RAM. XP32 can actually do 8GB RAM, and
    there's a utility to enable that, but was artificially limited to
    4GB because so many systems have an onboard Intel GPU, and the
    driver for Intel onboard GPUs is buggy, was won't-fixed, and the
    solution was to limit RAM instead.

    So if you don't have an Intel video chip, you can try that. I
    haven't bothered, tho I should do it on Cash since it has 8GB
    physical.

    Yes: sometimed it's "it works for what I need it for" and so no reason
    to keep going.



    XP64 RAM limit is 128GB, but the downside is the command prompt
    will not run DOS programs or 16bit Windows programs, so for that
    you need an XP32 VM.

    However, XP64 can do 16 TB of virtual memory, I can't imagine
    doing that....

    YOU can't?!?!?! <gg>


    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Thu Jul 25 10:53:00 2024

    KY MOFFET wrote to BARRY MARTIN <=-
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!
    You replied to my replied to Ed but I think he'll see it. <g>
    I can't find Ed's again.

    Why does that remind me of "Where's Waldo"?!


    KM> Lost track of the message, but anyway.... by itself, 32bit XP
    KM> with default drivers uses 386mb RAM (I've seen this number over
    KM> and over) or if it's dual-booted with ReactOS, for some reason
    KM> only uses 80mb RAM. Either way, it's not the major problem.
    Yes, I've seen that 386 MB usage figure numerous times; don't know if someone measured once and everyone reused that data or what but seems to make sense: the work data is stored someplace and takes up space. Odd
    I'd swear they did it on purpose. Someone probably thought it was
    funny.

    Never use the April 1st edition of The Onion to fact check!



    Naked XP64 uses... are you ready for this? 486 MB RAM.
    how the number is slashed with ReactOS -- I'd guess the 'missing' memory could be found in the dual-boot partition.
    No, this is RAM, nothing to do with however you partition
    anything.

    Guess mixing up with the Boot Partition -- I have run out of room in it
    (years ago).


    I finally concluded that for some unknown reason, this is
    buck-naked XP, actually very efficient. When I installed 3rd
    party drivers on one of these, RAM use ballooned up to the
    3-400MB range.

    Might be the 'why re-invent the wheel': went from 32-bit to 64-bit. Got
    hat part figured out, so now just tweak those parts for efficiency.


    KM> Browsers are the biggest hogs, I've seen Chrome suck up 40GB
    KM> (yes, gigabytes) of RAM! Supermium, despite being based on the
    KM> same code, is not as greedy, but still uses about 700mb when it's
    KM> just admiring its navel, plus about 2GB per page open.
    40 GB!! And for a while we were installing 8 or 16 GB of RAM and thought sufficient! (Horray for Swap!)
    BOO for swap. Slows things down. In the olden days I always
    disabled it, or had it at the mnimum (25mb) because Photoshop and Photopaint both look for it and won't run if it's not there.

    Well yes, Swap is (was) on a hard drive so slower because mnechanical,
    but I sort of understood it (vaguely!) as a back-yp to RAM. No space available in RAM but everything being used, oldest moved to Swap and can
    be now found there.


    KM> How on earth did you have 28 to 32 programs running -- doing
    KM> what? I have 4 or 5 apps that are open all the time, but
    KM> otherwise... are you sure you're not counting multiple windows
    KM> for a single program? You might want to set them to "group when
    KM> taskbar is full".
    I was thinking Ed was counting all the open windows and some windows
    were multiple of the same utility. Right now I have 8 windows open for
    Yeah, and may have taskbar stacking turned off.

    Actually I've not heard of 'taskbar stacking'. ...I probably
    automatically used it just for better viewing and organization.


    Otherwise here I can have concurrently open utilities for e-mail, temperature monitoring, viewing remote desktops, and the scripts
    'snooping' on the other computers to make sure they're operating
    correctly. All those little functions make the count go up quickly, so
    I could see Ed's getting to two and three dozen.

    I have RoughDraft (10 editing tabs), LibreOffice (one instance),
    Supermium (Chrome for XP) with nothing open but the homepage, and SeaMonkey with browser and email panes open. 4.9GB RAM used, most
    of which is browsers.


    KM> Best thing to check is Task Manager, it'll give you a lot of
    KM> information. I leave it running in the system tray all the time,
    KM> cuz it doesn't eat much (at least on older Windows; on 10/11 it
    KM> uses way too much RAM).

    Agree on using Task Manager -- and a reminder to open all the view
    options: with System Monitor on Linux there are options to view User, Active, All and Dependencies so assume something similar for Windows XP. ..Click for sorting so don't have to scroll though the list!

    Yeah, that sort of thing is really useful on any OS.

    > Mine comes out really strangely:
    >
    > 655360 bytes total conventional memory
    > 655360 bytes available to MS-DOS
    > 634048 largest executable program size
    >
    > 1048576 bytes total contiguous extended memory
    > 0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
    > 941056 bytes available XMS memory
    > MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area

    KM> I think it's seeing only the mini-VM (I forget what it's called)
    KM> 32-bit XP uses to run DOS programs. It's certainly not seeing
    KM> system RAM.

    Probably so, else it's the computer version of the elusive perpetual
    motion machine!

    LOL. If you run MEM on a DOS system you'll get the above.


    > I'm thinking maybe the reason you can't open your 40th window is there
    > is not you're out of system memory but rather you're out of memory for
    > whatever application governs the files.
    KM> Might have run the heaps dry. However, then you normally get a
    KM> wonky screen where if you drag a window around it looks like
    KM> this:
    KM> http://doomgold.com/images/linux/snapshot5-smplayer.png
    KM> Incidentally that screenshot was from linux, not immune to this
    KM> issue.

    Yup: I've seen it on my system which isn't in the whimpy department. Extremely rarely seen, but as I recall when there's some heavy system loading going on.

    Some programs are ill-behaved varmints and prone to do this.


    > .. If mediums can communicate with dead imagine what large can do!
    KM> Bring back the mammoths, and smallpox, and dinosaurs....

    And burning at the stake!

    I'm good with that; I can think of several worthy to "encourage
    the others".

    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... On trucks of plumbing co. "Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber."
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  • From Ed Vance@454:3/105 to Ky Moffet on Fri Jul 26 21:31:44 2024

    BARRY MARTIN wrote:

    Lost track of the message, but anyway.... by itself, 32bit XP with
    default drivers uses 386mb RAM (I've seen this number over and over) or
    if it's dual-booted with ReactOS, for some reason only uses 80mb RAM.
    Either way, it's not the major problem.

    Browsers are the biggest hogs, I've seen Chrome suck up 40GB (yes,
    gigabytes) of RAM! Supermium, despite being based on the same code, is
    not as greedy, but still uses about 700mb when it's just admiring its
    navel, plus about 2GB per page open.

    How on earth did you have 28 to 32 programs running -- doing what? I
    have 4 or 5 apps that are open all the time, but otherwise... are you
    sure you're not counting multiple windows for a single program? You
    might want to set them to "group when taskbar is full".

    Best thing to check is Task Manager, it'll give you a lot of
    information. I leave it running in the system tray all the time, cuz it doesn't eat much (at least on older Windows; on 10/11 it uses way too
    much RAM).y

    I think it's seeing only the mini-VM (I forget what it's called) 32-bit
    XP uses to run DOS programs. It's certainly not seeing system RAM.

    Might have run the heaps dry. However, then you normally get a wonky
    screen where if you drag a window around it looks like this:

    http://doomgold.com/images/linux/snapshot5-smplayer.png

    Incidentally that screenshot was from linux, not immune to this issue.

    Bring back the mammoths, and smallpox, and dinosaurs....

    Hmm. Maybe try smalls.
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    Task Manager is usually the first program I run after signing in on the XP box. TM was already one of the icons cof that 28 bunch, and probably would be near to the last that would be Closed while I was experiencing problems.
    Ed
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: ILink: CCO - capitolcityonline.net (454:3/105)
  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Ed Vance on Fri Jul 26 23:13:00 2024
    ED VANCE wrote:

    Task Manager is usually the first program I run after signing in on the XP box.TM was already one of the icons cof that 28 bunch, and probably would be nearto the last that would be Closed while I was experiencing problems.
    Ed


    I have Task Manager set to run on startup, and to "hide when minimized"
    so it's just in the system tray and never a taskbar button.

    And that's another question -- are you counting system tray stuff?

    Cuz I'm having a hard time imagining how you could have 28 programs open.

    However I have 12 icons in the system tray, and that's not unusual.

    I also have WinAmp set to live in the tray, not on the taskbar. It also
    runs all the time.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Fri Jul 26 06:49:00 2024

    Hi Ky!

    Sort of a tangent but I've read MythTV (utility for recording and
    playing back television shows) will appear to use 100% of the memory --
    it just caches whatever it can, I guess for a 'more efficient'
    operation. In this instance appears to be for greater efficiency: don't want to watch a show with a buffering screen!
    Memory exists to be used. If you have a lot, programs that can
    take advantage should. But they also shouldn't be wasteful, cuz
    they're not the only fish in the pond.

    So are you saying memory has to be shared by all the programmes, just
    not a bully programme?!


    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... Fine line between numerator & denomintor. Only a fraction understand.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Sat Jul 27 10:19:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    !
    KM> Memory exists to be used. If you have a lot, programs that can
    KM> take advantage should. But they also shouldn't be wasteful, cuz
    KM> they're not the only fish in the pond.

    So are you saying memory has to be shared by all the programmes, just
    not a bully programme?!

    One would hope.... the OS usually does a fair job of juggling, tho.
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  • From Ed Vance@454:3/105 to Ky Moffet on Sat Jul 27 20:42:11 2024

    AUGUST ABOLINS wrote:

    I can't find Ed's message on the topic, but anyway. Pretend you're Ed.
    I'm talkin' to Ed. :)

    There's no such thing. You're probably remembering a USB-to-Ethernet
    adapter. GatorCable sells a good one for very few bucks (I have four of
    'em) that includes an unpowered USB hub (suitable for a mouse or
    keyboard or a flash drive, not for an external HD). You can get them in
    the standard larger USB plug, or in newfangled USB-C. I use them with my netbooks that don't have an ethernet port.

    There are dongles that do both wifi and bluetooth, but wifi-only cost
    1/4 as much.

    Bluetooth is much less secure and a lot more likely to randomly fail to connect. Especially does not work well with XP. I have a BT adapter on
    my XP64 box for no good reason, because it won't connect with any modern devices, and only sees about half of them. Its only virtue is it's old enough that the driver is for XP.

    That's an old router (only does 10/100, gigabit has been standard a long time) but should be decent enough.

    https://downloads.linksys.com/downloads/userguide/1224638533883/BEFSX41_V21_U G_B-WEB.pdf

    Hmm. I have one of those here somewhere. Perfectly good router, except
    it's too slow for everyday use on my network.

    I don't have much hooked to my router, but I have three TP-Link 8-port switches daisy-chained and most of the ports are full. :) Nice switch because you can hook things up any which way with any cable you have,
    and it autosenses and everything works, and unlike most, the unit
    doesn't get hot. Plug 'em in and they Just Work.

    Wired ethernet is more reliable and WAAAAY faster (20x to 200x depending
    on your port capacity). But wifi does work reliably with XP.

    Wifi will never be as secure as wired, because it's broadcast to the
    world, and you need to make sure security is set (if not on by default).
    But so long as all the security is enabled and you have a router less
    than 20 years old, it should be sufficient.

    One of my small entertainments is watching wifi-enabled cars go by on
    the highway. It's about 200 feet away but they still show up on any
    device that's looking for wifi. Some are secure, but many are not.

    It doesn't exist. And if it did, it wouldn't work with XP, and it
    wouldn't be particularly secure either.
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  • From Ed Vance@454:3/105 to Ky Moffet on Sat Jul 27 21:07:39 2024

    AUGUST ABOLINS wrote:

    I can't find Ed's message on the topic, but anyway. Pretend you're Ed.
    I'm talkin' to Ed. :)

    There's no such thing. You're probably remembering a USB-to-Ethernet
    adapter. GatorCable sells a good one for very few bucks (I have four of
    'em) that includes an unpowered USB hub (suitable for a mouse or
    keyboard or a flash drive, not for an external HD). You can get them in
    the standard larger USB plug, or in newfangled USB-C. I use them with my netbooks that don't have an ethernet port.

    There are dongles that do both wifi and bluetooth, but wifi-only cost
    1/4 as much.

    Bluetooth is much less secure and a lot more likely to randomly fail to connect. Especially does not work well with XP. I have a BT adapter on
    my XP64 box for no good reason, because it won't connect with any modern devices, and only sees about half of them. Its only virtue is it's old enough that the driver is for XP.

    That's an old router (only does 10/100, gigabit has been standard a long time) but should be decent enough.

    https://downloads.linksys.com/downloads/userguide/1224638533883/BEFSX41_V21_U G_B-WEB.pdf

    Hmm. I have one of those here somewhere. Perfectly good router, except
    it's too slow for everyday use on my network.

    I don't have much hooked to my router, but I have three TP-Link 8-port switches daisy-chained and most of the ports are full. :) Nice switch because you can hook things up any which way with any cable you have,
    and it autosenses and everything works, and unlike most, the unit
    doesn't get hot. Plug 'em in and they Just Work.

    Wired ethernet is more reliable and WAAAAY faster (20x to 200x depending
    on your port capacity). But wifi does work reliably with XP.

    Wifi will never be as secure as wired, because it's broadcast to the
    world, and you need to make sure security is set (if not on by default).
    But so long as all the security is enabled and you have a router less
    than 20 years old, it should be sufficient.

    One of my small entertainments is watching wifi-enabled cars go by on
    the highway. It's about 200 feet away but they still show up on any
    device that's looking for wifi. Some are secure, but many are not.

    It doesn't exist. And if it did, it wouldn't work with XP, and it
    wouldn't be particularly secure either.
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    The BT device I saw has a CAT-5 Jack on one end and a stubby antenna on the other end. No USB connector was visible. I think it was BT v4.0 .

    A v4 adapter doesn't have the range as v5 or the V6 but I think it could be used from one side of the house to the other side (40 feet).
    I have been thinking of finding out Manufactures names and looking at their pages , You wrote Gator Cable, I will look at their website.
    I didn't know BT was less secure. I would had thought it out doing Wi-Fi .
    (But I don't know it all, just act like I do)

    Your BT on the XP64 box, is it v4 or later?
    TKS fer the router url, that page say the Output Port is called Internet port . I have a earlier pdf of the manual and WAN port is the name on that jack in there. Pdf Copyright date is 2003.
    Ed
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  • From Mike Powell@454:3/105 to ED VANCE on Sun Jul 28 09:11:00 2024
    Your BT on the XP64 box, is it v4 or later?
    TKS fer the router url, that page say the Output Port is called Internet port I have a earlier pdf of the manual and WAN port is the name on that jack in there. Pdf Copyright date is 2003.

    My guess would be that they changed the name from WAN to Internet as more non-technical people would understand that "this is the connector where the Internet comes in" and not "this is the WAN port".

    Mike


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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Ed Vance on Sun Jul 28 15:19:00 2024
    ED VANCE wrote:
    Barry, In a earlier post You mentioned having many Documents open on Your taskbar.
    Here, all of the things open are individual.
    Task Manager, a txt file I put notes for myself to do later on the PC. Several Directories that I refer to often when I can't recall what Directory I
    put a file in.

    Several instances of Explorer open can cause heap depletion (four
    instances is about the practical limit, in my experience -- Nero runs
    the heaps dry at 5 instances because each instance of Nero also calls an instance of Explorer). That may be your problem right there.

    You don't need to keep them all open all the time -- you can make a
    shortcut for each directory and put these on your desktop, appropriately named.

    Another trick is to put a folder on the desktop and drag a bunch of such
    junk into it. Then add the Desktop toolbar to the taskbar, and it will function exactly as the Start menu does, except it points at the
    shortcuts and folders on the desktop. I use this for network locations
    and other random stuff I don't want cluttering my already-cluttered
    desktop. Or you can create a custom toolbar for the purpose.

    This also goes for textfiles.

    I keep Firefox open for when I open a .html file that is saved in one of my Directories, etc.

    Firefox is the big RAM hog.

    Two txt files of all the file names that I create with dir/s/-p , the second txt file has /b added to the prompt.
    I use those to learn which Directory I put the file I'm looking for, in.

    LOL. I understand this problem. I have thousands and thousands of
    directories, and a whole lot of them are named TEMP or STUFF.

    Wehn I inventoried files about 20 years ago, I had 1.2 million files. I
    hate to think what it would be today; it'd take a week just for
    Properties to count them!

    Wierd?, Yes!, but works for me, and helps a lot.

    Right now their are 26 Taskbar Icons open.
    OH!, I Forgot to mention WordWeb dictionary and PDF-XChange Viewer I keep open
    to use whenever...

    That sort of thing doesn't usually eat much.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Ed Vance on Sun Jul 28 15:42:00 2024
    ED VANCE wrote:
    AUGUST ABOLINS wrote:
    The BT device I saw has a CAT-5 Jack on one end and a stubby antenna on the other end. No USB connector was visible. I think it was BT v4.0 .

    The only thing I can find like that is for controlling solar
    installations. The ones matched to the solar control equipment start at $30.

    But you can get a USB to Bluetooth dongle for about ten bucks.

    I still don't think it will do what you want.

    A v4 adapter doesn't have the range as v5 or the V6 but I think it could be used from one side of the house to the other side (40 feet).
    I have been thinking of finding out Manufactures names and looking at their pages , You wrote Gator Cable, I will look at their website.

    Gatorcable and Jacobsparts are two I've bough a bunch of small computer
    bits from. Jacobs is really good for USB and network cables in odd but
    useful lengths (like one foot, for ports that get used a lot, so the
    cable's port wears out instead of the port on the motherboard... they're
    only rated for a few hundred plug/unplug cycles). Gator has more weird adapters.

    I didn't know BT was less secure. I would had thought it out doing Wi-Fi . (But I don't know it all, just act like I do)

    LOL. Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to
    those of us who actually do. <g>

    Your BT on the XP64 box, is it v4 or later?

    <looks>
    Bluetooth HCI 2.0, LMP 2.0
    Tolda it was old.
    But it has a driver for XP.

    The nice thing about wifi-USB dongles, they usually don't need a
    separate driver. They just work. I have them scattered all over the
    place, for whenever the cabling isn't convenient. Tho at best they are
    very slow compared to wired network.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Sun Jul 28 07:11:00 2024

    Hi Ky!

    KM> Memory exists to be used. If you have a lot, programs that can
    KM> take advantage should. But they also shouldn't be wasteful, cuz
    KM> they're not the only fish in the pond.
    So are you saying memory has to be shared by all the programmes, just
    not a bully programme?!
    One would hope.... the OS usually does a fair job of juggling,
    tho.

    True. You go a lot more in-depth but from my view of the surface it
    does seem the operatng system does a pretty good job of "keeping the
    kids sharing and behaving", and even the "I'm going to stop this car
    right now!" if things get too bad. <g>

    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... My wife told me stop impersonating a flamingo; I had to put my foot down. --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47
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  • From Ed Vance@454:3/105 to Mike Powell on Mon Jul 29 11:34:43 2024


    My guess would be that they changed the name from WAN to Internet as more non-technical people would understand that "this is the connector where the Internet comes in" and not "this is the WAN port".

    Mike
    I would think You got it figured out why Linksys/Cisco changed the name.

    Me, I try learning this Tech Stuff, that is why I am here on the BBS.
    The people who know it all here have taught ght me very much.
    Of course, I didn't know how to quote a post using this cellphone until You told me .
    Ed

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  • From Ed Vance@454:3/105 to Ky Moffet on Mon Jul 29 11:37:27 2024

    ED VANCE wrote:

    Several instances of Explorer open can cause heap depletion (four
    instances is about the practical limit, in my experience -- Nero runs
    the heaps dry at 5 instances because each instance of Nero also calls an instance of Explorer). That may be your problem right there.

    You don't need to keep them all open all the time -- you can make a
    shortcut for each directory and put these on your desktop, appropriately named.

    Another trick is to put a folder on the desktop and drag a bunch of such
    junk into it. Then add the Desktop toolbar to the taskbar, and it will function exactly as the Start menu does, except it points at the
    shortcuts and folders on the desktop. I use this for network locations
    and other random stuff I don't want cluttering my already-cluttered
    desktop. Or you can create a custom toolbar for the purpose.

    This also goes for textfiles.

    Firefox is the big RAM hog.

    LOL. I understand this problem. I have thousands and thousands of directories, and a whole lot of them are named TEMP or STUFF.

    Wehn I inventoried files about 20 years ago, I had 1.2 million files. I
    hate to think what it would be today; it'd take a week just for
    Properties to count them!

    That sort of thing doesn't usually eat much.
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    Thanks for educating Ed
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Mon Jul 29 10:27:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    True. You go a lot more in-depth but from my view of the surface it
    does seem the operatng system does a pretty good job of "keeping the
    kids sharing and behaving", and even the "I'm going to stop this car
    right now!" if things get too bad. <g>

    That's pretty much it. The days when any program could misbehave however
    it liked are long gone.



    .. My wife told me stop impersonating a flamingo; I had to put my foot down.

    LOL Good one.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Mike Powell on Mon Jul 29 07:37:00 2024

    MIKE POWELL wrote to ED VANCE <=-

    Your BT on the XP64 box, is it v4 or later?
    TKS fer the router url, that page say the Output Port is called Internet
    port> I have a earlier pdf of the manual and WAN port is the name on that jack
    there. Pdf Copyright date is 2003.
    My guess would be that they changed the name from WAN to Internet
    as more non-technical people would understand that "this is the
    connector where the Internet comes in" and not "this is the WAN
    port".

    Or people would misread it as the 'WAH' port!


    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... KEEP STARING...

    I MAY DO A TRICK.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Tue Jul 30 10:28:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ed!
    BTDT!! Ubuntu's icon to open directories in GUI mode has a 'Recent'
    option. Not sure if XP has something similar; could possibly create a
    batch file to display the newest files per directory (and might want to specify which ones to include), date restriction (such as last 3 days),
    and better do a page option so the information doesn't scroll by!

    Easiest is just to add it to the Favorites menu, which you can organize
    into folders or however you like.

    Mine is under

    C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Favorites

    and I can have my way with it directly (which I prefer), or I could use "Organize Favorites" from the Explorer menu.

    I also keep a lot of want-it-now stuff in QuickLaunch, which one can
    organize manually here (including folders if desired):

    C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application
    Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

    or wherever your user-data is found; I'm Administrator.

    I so thoroughly miss QuickLaunch in Win10/11 that I'm going to have to
    make a new toolbar just for the purpose (or jury-rig it through the
    Desktop toolbar).


    EV> I keep Firefox open for when I open a .html file that is saved in
    EV> one of my Directories, etc.

    I'm wondering if that's causing more problems than worth. (Rhetorical.)

    Firefox does leak memory, sometimes significantly. But that just makes
    things slow, it doesn't prevent opening another program.

    If the HTML file file is being used frequently (several times an hour)
    might be worth keeping FX open so as to not waste too much of your time.
    Here with my Virtial XP I have to use Firefox ESR and it takes 5 to 10 seconds to open whereas the current Firefox in Ubuntu takes about a
    second. ...Thinking there might be a better/more efficient utility for viewing.

    Browsers are great whopping hogs on disk, take forever to load (I expect
    30 seconds or so on Ed's system), and having an SSD or NVMe does more
    for performance than anything else. I use a sacrificial NVMe for swap
    and cache, because it's SOOOOOO much faster.


    EV> Two txt files of all the file names that I create with dir/s/-p ,
    EV> the second txt file has /b added to the prompt.
    EV> I use those to learn which Directory I put the file I'm looking
    EV> for, in.

    I've done that. Textfile listing everything, until everything got too
    big to list in a textfile.

    I still put a zero-byte textfile in the root of every drive so if I'm
    looking at it on the network and that called it something stupid, I know
    that "MyBook" is "O on Silver".

    EV> Wierd?, Yes!, but works for me, and helps a lot.

    I'm a big fan of "if it works for you, great!". Over the years I've
    learned and incorporated a lot of 'alternative' ways of doing things.
    ..Well, might not be a great idea to 'alternately' drive on the left in
    the U.S., you knew what I meant!

    LOL. One could try it. It's a good way to prevent falling asleep on long
    night drives....


    As I indicated earlier, possibly incorporate a date restriction so only displays the last several days' worth, and/or specific directories.
    OTOH I can visualize how those would not be necessary: all depends how
    you sent up your storage.

    The only way to do a date restriction, far as I know, is to use Search
    and set a date range. And that's really annoying to have to do.

    I'm sort of pre-planning: batch file with CHOICE options so you can
    tell the utility the file you want was updated x-number of days ago
    (today, three days, this week, heck I don't know!), it's probably in
    [dir]. Could even restrict to .txt and other filetypes. :)

    There's enough disconnect between the command prompt and the rest of XP
    to make that not really practical.

    EV> Right now their are 26 Taskbar Icons open.
    EV> OH!, I Forgot to mention WordWeb dictionary and PDF-XChange
    EV> Viewer I keep open to use whenever...

    To me it seems like a lot of unneccesary open applications potentially slowing down your system. OTOH a slightly slower system might be a good trade for quicker access of frequently used applications. All depends.

    Yeah, there are other ways to achieve the same instant-access and NOT
    LOST without leaving everything open all the time.

    .. Do 8 Hobbits = 1 Hobbyte?

    And rabbits, rabbytes??

    This is a very good question.

    First, catch Hobbit.
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Tue Jul 30 06:56:00 2024

    Hi Ky!

    True. You go a lot more in-depth but from my view of the surface it
    does seem the operatng system does a pretty good job of "keeping the
    kids sharing and behaving", and even the "I'm going to stop this car
    right now!" if things get too bad. <g>
    That's pretty much it. The days when any program could misbehave
    however it liked are long gone.

    Which is good -- after all, who wants to deal with a rogue programme
    ...except the developer, the beta testers, the..... <g>



    .. My wife told me stop impersonating a flamingo; I had to put my foot down.
    LOL Good one.

    Everyone so often I find something to add to the tagline file. :)


    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... Do 8 Hobbits = 1 Hobbyte?
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Wed Jul 31 07:38:00 2024

    Hi Ky!

    BTDT!! Ubuntu's icon to open directories in GUI mode has a 'Recent'
    option. Not sure if XP has something similar; could possibly create a
    batch file to display the newest files per directory (and might want to specify which ones to include), date restriction (such as last 3 days),
    and better do a page option so the information doesn't scroll by!
    Easiest is just to add it to the Favorites menu, which you can
    organize into folders or however you like.
    Mine is under
    C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Favorites

    Ed should have a lot of options to play with!

    Sort of along the line of file organization, I created a directory
    called "File Cabinet" and its purpose is pretty much that: a place to
    store other directories. Here too much was getting stored under my user directory (Linux: /home/barry; Windows I think plain ol' C:\) so moved
    things around, created a few shortcuts, and cleaned things up.



    I also keep a lot of want-it-now stuff in QuickLaunch, which one
    can organize manually here (including folders if desired):

    Here "File Cabinet" is listed as a regular directory and I also created
    some shortcuts to go directly to a few directories inside the File
    Cabinet directly.



    or wherever your user-data is found; I'm Administrator.

    Hm: I'd figure 'CMMO': Chief Mucky Muck Officer! <g>


    I so thoroughly miss QuickLaunch in Win10/11 that I'm going to
    have to make a new toolbar just for the purpose (or jury-rig it
    through the Desktop toolbar).

    Either they took it away because too few people used it or they couldn't
    figure out how to make it work in the new version. :)


    EV> I keep Firefox open for when I open a .html file that is saved in
    EV> one of my Directories, etc.
    I'm wondering if that's causing more problems than worth. (Rhetorical.)
    Firefox does leak memory, sometimes significantly. But that just
    makes things slow, it doesn't prevent opening another program.

    I didn't phrase that wholly: more wondering if using Firefox, which is a relatively 'huge' programme and can do a lot, was taking up unnecessary
    memory in Ed's system with the not-called-upon functions. Sort of IOW
    would it be better to have a dedicated HTML utility taking up a small
    memory footprint, (I'm definitely in my Black Box territory.)


    If the HTML file file is being used frequently (several times an hour)
    might be worth keeping FX open so as to not waste too much of your time. Here with my Virtial XP I have to use Firefox ESR and it takes 5 to 10 seconds to open whereas the current Firefox in Ubuntu takes about a
    second. ...Thinking there might be a better/more efficient utility for viewing.
    Browsers are great whopping hogs on disk, take forever to load (I
    expect 30 seconds or so on Ed's system), and having an SSD or
    NVMe does more for performance than anything else. I use a
    sacrificial NVMe for swap and cache, because it's SOOOOOO much
    faster.

    Looks like when I build my new system I need to consider a few extra
    pieces of hardware! Currently have a SSD for the Operating System and I presume programmes. Know the Swap is also on it. The HDD is for data.
    Ues, slower but not as likely to suddenly fail as solid state stuff.
    The Virtual Machine items is mostly on a NVMe. 'Mostly' because it
    appears some residual on the hard drive from the original installation.

    Also using a ramdisk for temporary files: both 'note' type of documents
    where don't need to be kept 'forever' on the hard drive and 'scratchpad'
    items.



    EV> Two txt files of all the file names that I create with dir/s/-p ,
    EV> the second txt file has /b added to the prompt.
    EV> I use those to learn which Directory I put the file I'm looking
    EV> for, in.
    I've done that. Textfile listing everything, until everything got
    too big to list in a textfile.

    TextFile.txt, continued to TextFile_2.txt, continued to TextFile_3.txt.
    ...Then at TextFile_10 realize you should have called it TextFile_01!


    I still put a zero-byte textfile in the root of every drive so if
    I'm looking at it on the network and that called it something
    stupid, I know that "MyBook" is "O on Silver".

    I have done something similar: the NAS has a bunch of storage
    directories whose contents filenames look pretty much the same. I put a
    small text file for quick identification: for instance "Test_203.txt" is
    for the computer whose IP ends in 203. ...If I don't see that file something's not connecting properly.



    EV> Wierd?, Yes!, but works for me, and helps a lot.
    I'm a big fan of "if it works for you, great!". Over the years I've
    learned and incorporated a lot of 'alternative'ways of doing things.
    ..Well, might not be a great idea to 'alternately' drive on the left in
    the U.S., you knew what I meant!
    LOL. One could try it. It's a good way to prevent falling asleep
    on long night drives....

    Where's that cartoon about the wife calling the husband to warn about
    the wrong-way driver and he responds "there's hundreds of them!"!!


    As I indicated earlier, possibly incorporate a date restriction so only displays the last several days' worth, and/or specific directories.
    OTOH I can visualize how those would not be necessary: all depends how
    you sent up your storage.
    The only way to do a date restriction, far as I know, is to use
    Search and set a date range. And that's really annoying to have
    to do.

    Some of the seemingly simple operations are extremely complicated to do!


    I'm sort of pre-planning: batch file with CHOICE options so you can
    tell the utility the file you want was updated x-number of days ago
    (today, three days, this week, heck I don't know!), it's probably in
    [dir]. Could even restrict to .txt and other filetypes. :)
    There's enough disconnect between the command prompt and the rest
    of XP to make that not really practical.

    Some of the seemingly simple .... <g>


    EV> Right now their are 26 Taskbar Icons open.
    EV> OH!, I Forgot to mention WordWeb dictionary and PDF-XChange
    EV> Viewer I keep open to use whenever...
    To me it seems like a lot of unneccesary open applications potentially slowing down your system. OTOH a slightly slower system might be a good trade for quicker access of frequently used applications. All depends.
    Yeah, there are other ways to achieve the same instant-access and
    NOT LOST without leaving everything open all the time.

    I'll admit to doing it the "Microsoft Way": software is too slow so the hardware gets faster, with faster hardware the software can function
    faster so let's have it do more, which slows down because the hardware
    can't keep up, so faster hardware......

    Like I said up there somewhere I use a SSD for the OS. On some rather old-and-slow machines I've replaced the hard drive with a solid state
    one -- took a two- and three minute boot down to around 15-20 seconds.


    .. Do 8 Hobbits = 1 Hobbyte?
    And rabbits, rabbytes??

    This is a very good question.

    First, catch Hobbit.

    Course instruction: Wyle E. Coyote. Teacher Assistant: Roadrunner.

    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... I know why they call me a grown up: I groan every time I get up.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Sun Aug 4 23:46:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!
    KM> Easiest is just to add it to the Favorites menu, which you can
    KM> organize into folders or however you like.
    KM> Mine is under
    KM> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Favorites

    Ed should have a lot of options to play with!

    Yeah, there are several ways, no need to leave Explorer open all the
    time. More than likely that's his problem.

    Sort of along the line of file organization, I created a directory
    called "File Cabinet" and its purpose is pretty much that: a place to
    store other directories. Here too much was getting stored under my user directory (Linux: /home/barry; Windows I think plain ol' C:\) so moved
    things around, created a few shortcuts, and cleaned things up.

    I have so many storage places... my \Info hierarchy is best not discussed.

    KM> I also keep a lot of want-it-now stuff in QuickLaunch, which one
    KM> can organize manually here (including folders if desired):

    Here "File Cabinet" is listed as a regular directory and I also created
    some shortcuts to go directly to a few directories inside the File
    Cabinet directly.

    I do that with Save a Copy (elsewhere) in LibreOffice, since it's too
    dumb to remember the somewhere else. Shortcut to wherever I put the copy.

    KM> or wherever your user-data is found; I'm Administrator.

    Hm: I'd figure 'CMMO': Chief Mucky Muck Officer! <g>

    LOL. Should rename myself. <g>

    KM> I so thoroughly miss QuickLaunch in Win10/11 that I'm going to
    KM> have to make a new toolbar just for the purpose (or jury-rig it
    KM> through the Desktop toolbar).

    Either they took it away because too few people used it or they couldn't

    Nope. Were so many screams of dismay with Win7 removing it that they had
    to allow that there was a registry tweak to make it work again.

    figure out how to make it work in the new version. :)

    Bingo. That, and the ability to colorize Windows however you like --
    Aero crippled it and whatever they call the Win8-and-later screen
    manager can't do it at all. They seem to have copied what KDE did about
    the same time. KDE used to be totally customizable too. Now you have to
    muck about with a cranky theme editor.


    > EV> I keep Firefox open for when I open a .html file that is saved in
    > EV> one of my Directories, etc.
    > I'm wondering if that's causing more problems than worth. (Rhetorical.)
    KM> Firefox does leak memory, sometimes significantly. But that just
    KM> makes things slow, it doesn't prevent opening another program.

    I didn't phrase that wholly: more wondering if using Firefox, which is a relatively 'huge' programme and can do a lot, was taking up unnecessary memory in Ed's system with the not-called-upon functions. Sort of IOW
    would it be better to have a dedicated HTML utility taking up a small
    memory footprint, (I'm definitely in my Black Box territory.)

    No, that's the sort of thing that gets swapped out to the, uh, swapfile.

    Just slows things down for the disk read and write, doesn't clog things
    up entirely.

    KM> Browsers are great whopping hogs on disk, take forever to load (I
    KM> expect 30 seconds or so on Ed's system), and having an SSD or
    KM> NVMe does more for performance than anything else. I use a
    KM> sacrificial NVMe for swap and cache, because it's SOOOOOO much
    KM> faster.

    Looks like when I build my new system I need to consider a few extra
    pieces of hardware! Currently have a SSD for the Operating System and I

    Yeah, I have a PCIe-4x card (actually two of them) in Silver that hosts
    an NVMe. With PCIe-4x slot you get full NVMe speed. With a 1x slot you
    only get SSD speed or less. Those 4x slots are useless for vidcards and overkill for NICs, so might as well use them up.

    presume programmes. Know the Swap is also on it. The HDD is for data.
    Ues, slower but not as likely to suddenly fail as solid state stuff.
    The Virtual Machine items is mostly on a NVMe. 'Mostly' because it
    appears some residual on the hard drive from the original installation.

    Yeah, if you build the VM from an existing image on another drive, it
    does that. Really annoying, and stupid. The only fix, AFAIK, is to
    export the VM as an OVA and re-import it under a new name so it's all in
    one place again.

    Or make sure the source file is in the final destination directory, so
    it doesn't get lost.

    Also using a ramdisk for temporary files: both 'note' type of documents
    where don't need to be kept 'forever' on the hard drive and 'scratchpad' items.

    I did that for a long time, had a lot of permanent quick-access junk and
    the browser cache there. Haven't got around to doing it on Silver, tho I should for the browser cache. At least SeaMonkey lets me set the location!

    KM> I've done that. Textfile listing everything, until everything got
    KM> too big to list in a textfile.

    TextFile.txt, continued to TextFile_2.txt, continued to TextFile_3.txt. ..Then at TextFile_10 realize you should have called it TextFile_01!

    ...8GB of textfile.txt later...

    > EV> Wierd?, Yes!, but works for me, and helps a lot.
    > I'm a big fan of "if it works for you, great!". Over the years I've
    > learned and incorporated a lot of 'alternative'ways of doing things.
    > ..Well, might not be a great idea to 'alternately' drive on the left in
    > the U.S., you knew what I meant!
    KM> LOL. One could try it. It's a good way to prevent falling asleep
    KM> on long night drives....
    Where's that cartoon about the wife calling the husband to warn about
    the wrong-way driver and he responds "there's hundreds of them!"!!

    LOL, but I've seen that in L.A. .... one wrongway came flying off the
    ramp and landed below the overpass right in front of me. Landed skewered
    on a bollard. And I was like WTF, but couldn't stop to see (pretty sure
    it was no one you'd want to help).

    KM> Yeah, there are other ways to achieve the same instant-access and
    KM> NOT LOST without leaving everything open all the time.

    I'll admit to doing it the "Microsoft Way": software is too slow so the hardware gets faster, with faster hardware the software can function
    faster so let's have it do more, which slows down because the hardware
    can't keep up, so faster hardware......

    GRRRR!

    Like I said up there somewhere I use a SSD for the OS. On some rather old-and-slow machines I've replaced the hard drive with a solid state
    one -- took a two- and three minute boot down to around 15-20 seconds.

    Yeah, I do that too. Tho I have a board for Paladin that isn't any
    faster than Silver or the other "new" (10 year old) PCs, but it has a
    native bootable NVMe slot, so will use that. Paladin's current innards
    are 20 years old.

    Was shocked that a 1TB NVMe has ONE memory chip the size of a
    fingernail. Wherever does it keep all the data??


    > .. Do 8 Hobbits = 1 Hobbyte?
    KM> And rabbits, rabbytes??

    KM> This is a very good question.

    KM> First, catch Hobbit.

    Course instruction: Wyle E. Coyote. Teacher Assistant: Roadrunner.

    Final Exam: *SPLAT*
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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Mon Aug 5 08:54:00 2024

    Hi Ky!

    KM> Easiest is just to add it to the Favorites menu, which you can
    KM> organize into folders or however you like.
    KM> Mine is under
    KM> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Favorites
    Ed should have a lot of options to play with!
    Yeah, there are several ways, no need to leave Explorer open all
    the time. More than likely that's his problem.

    Some programmes just leak doing nothing. ...Not saying Explorer does,
    just a general statement. There are also some which have problems being
    left open overnight.


    Sort of along the line of file organization, I created a directory
    called "File Cabinet" and its purpose is pretty much that: a place to
    store other directories. Here too much was getting stored under my user directory (Linux: /home/barry; Windows I think plain ol' C:\) so moved things around, created a few shortcuts, and cleaned things up.
    I have so many storage places... my \Info hierarchy is best not
    discussed.

    I go for the "as long as it works for you". One thing if needs to be
    accessed by others, but if just you....


    KM> I also keep a lot of want-it-now stuff in QuickLaunch, which one
    KM> can organize manually here (including folders if desired):
    Here "File Cabinet" is listed as a regular directory and I also created
    some shortcuts to go directly to a few directories inside the File
    Cabinet directly.
    I do that with Save a Copy (elsewhere) in LibreOffice, since it's
    too dumb to remember the somewhere else. Shortcut to wherever I
    put the copy.

    I try to put the original document where it can be found again, so if is
    the specifications to a motherboard would be
    $HOME/File Cabinet/Motherboards/<brand>/<model>/Specfications.
    Sometimes break down into "Specifications - Memory" if working on that
    -- like notes to expand the current amount. LIS, as long as it works!
    ...I try not to leave too much in default like Documents.



    KM> or wherever your user-data is found; I'm Administrator.
    Hm: I'd figure 'CMMO': Chief Mucky Muck Officer! <g>
    LOL. Should rename myself. <g>

    Would be a hare harder to hack!


    KM> I so thoroughly miss QuickLaunch in Win10/11 that I'm going to
    KM> have to make a new toolbar just for the purpose (or jury-rig it
    KM> through the Desktop toolbar).
    Either they took it away because too few people used it or they couldn't
    Nope. Were so many screams of dismay with Win7 removing it that
    they had to allow that there was a registry tweak to make it work
    again.

    I must admit it makes one feel good when the people at corporate trained
    in this stuff can't figure it out either.


    figure out how to make it work in the new version. :)
    Bingo. That, and the ability to colorize Windows however you like
    -- Aero crippled it and whatever they call the Win8-and-later
    screen manager can't do it at all. They seem to have copied what
    KDE did about the same time. KDE used to be totally customizable
    too. Now you have to muck about with a cranky theme editor.

    The good news is I tend to leave the colours alone -- probably mostly
    because I'm "tint blind" (I can see colours but...) and so tend to leave
    alone because a revision tends to screw something else up later.

    As for the 'why broke', could probbaly list a bunch and all be guessing:
    wrong comment character, four space indent instead of three, faulty
    statement closure.... And those are just a few on the ones I've made! <g>


    > EV> I keep Firefox open for when I open a .html file that is saved in
    > EV> one of my Directories, etc.
    > I'm wondering if that's causing more problems than worth. (Rhetorical.)
    KM> Firefox does leak memory, sometimes significantly. But that just
    KM> makes things slow, it doesn't prevent opening another program.
    I didn't phrase that wholly: more wondering if using Firefox, which is a relatively 'huge' programme and can do a lot, was taking up unnecessary memory in Ed's system with the not-called-upon functions. Sort of IOW
    would it be better to have a dedicated HTML utility taking up a small
    memory footprint, (I'm definitely in my Black Box territory.)
    No, that's the sort of thing that gets swapped out to the, uh,
    swapfile.

    Just slows things down for the disk read and write, doesn't clog
    things up entirely.

    But what happens when the Swap file gets filled? Just drops off and the
    poor programme hangs because its looking for the missing part?


    KM> Browsers are great whopping hogs on disk, take forever to load (I
    KM> expect 30 seconds or so on Ed's system), and having an SSD or
    KM> NVMe does more for performance than anything else. I use a
    KM> sacrificial NVMe for swap and cache, because it's SOOOOOO much
    KM> faster.
    Looks like when I build my new system I need to consider a few extra
    pieces of hardware! Currently have a SSD for the Operating System and I
    Yeah, I have a PCIe-4x card (actually two of them) in Silver that
    hosts an NVMe. With PCIe-4x slot you get full NVMe speed. With a
    1x slot you only get SSD speed or less. Those 4x slots are
    useless for vidcards and overkill for NICs, so might as well use
    them up.

    Yes: may as well use the hardware to its full ability. minimizing the bottlenecks. ...I try to buy motherboards with a few extra slots,
    mainly for expansion and hardware updates (thinking of an old example
    back when USB3 was just coming out: I could add a USB3 daughtercard and
    so update my system).



    presume programmes. Know the Swap is also on it. The HDD is for data.
    Ues, slower but not as likely to suddenly fail as solid state stuff.
    The Virtual Machine items is mostly on a NVMe. 'Mostly' because it
    appears some residual on the hard drive from the original installation.
    Yeah, if you build the VM from an existing image on another
    drive, it does that. Really annoying, and stupid. The only fix,
    AFAIK, is to export the VM as an OVA and re-import it under a new
    name so it's all in one place again.
    Or make sure the source file is in the final destination
    directory, so it doesn't get lost.

    I'm going to have to check that out better -- right now a few other But
    First items in line. ...Does seem wrong it decides to put some of the installation on the hard drive when it has been told to use a faster
    media. Sure, hard drives are safer recovery-wise but that's what
    backups are for!


    Also using a ramdisk for temporary files: both 'note' type of documents where don't need to be kept 'forever' on the hard drive and 'scratchpad' items.
    I did that for a long time, had a lot of permanent quick-access
    junk and the browser cache there. Haven't got around to doing it
    on Silver, tho I should for the browser cache. At least SeaMonkey
    lets me set the location!

    I'd guess some of the problem is old programming: the utility was
    originally told to put it somewhere on the hard drive, the location
    based on some other installation parameters, and since hard-coded to
    update would require a major (read "PITB"!) rewrite. ...Modern hard
    drives are suitably fast, right?! <g>


    KM> I've done that. Textfile listing everything, until everything got
    KM> too big to list in a textfile.

    TextFile.txt, continued to TextFile_2.txt, continued to TextFile_3.txt. ..Then at TextFile_10 realize you should have called it TextFile_01!
    ...8GB of textfile.txt later...

    At least not written using EDLIN and have to go back to make a
    correction!


    > EV> Wierd?, Yes!, but works for me, and helps a lot.
    > I'm a big fan of "if it works for you, great!". Over the years I've
    > learned and incorporated a lot of 'alternative'ways of doing things.
    > ..Well, might not be a great idea to 'alternately' drive on the left in
    > the U.S., you knew what I meant!
    KM> LOL. One could try it. It's a good way to prevent falling asleep
    KM> on long night drives....
    Where's that cartoon about the wife calling the husband to warn about
    the wrong-way driver and he responds "there's hundreds of them!"!!
    LOL, but I've seen that in L.A. .... one wrongway came flying off
    the ramp and landed below the overpass right in front of me.
    Landed skewered on a bollard. And I was like WTF, but couldn't
    stop to see (pretty sure it was no one you'd want to help).

    More dramatic than my one-way experiences! First ones were shortly
    after I learned to drive and worked Downtown: the city decided to make
    some streets one-way to improve traffic flow. The shall we say
    'established' drived were semi-thinking these were still two-way streets
    and so every so often would travel the wrong direction. ...I quickly
    learned to always look both ways no matter what the sign says! Still
    do.


    KM> Yeah, there are other ways to achieve the same instant-access and
    KM> NOT LOST without leaving everything open all the time.
    I'll admit to doing it the "Microsoft Way": software is too slow so the hardware gets faster, with faster hardware the software can function
    faster so let's have it do more, which slows down because the hardware
    can't keep up, so faster hardware......
    GRRRR!

    Updates keep the economy flowing!


    Like I said up there somewhere I use a SSD for the OS. On some rather old-and-slow machines I've replaced the hard drive with a solid state
    one -- took a two- and three minute boot down to around 15-20 seconds.
    Yeah, I do that too. Tho I have a board for Paladin that isn't
    any faster than Silver or the other "new" (10 year old) PCs, but
    it has a native bootable NVMe slot, so will use that. Paladin's
    current innards are 20 years old.

    Yes, I think I have at least two computers in use currently which are
    around that old. They don't get used all the time and I'll admit to
    glancing at the BIOS boot stuff but don 't recall the date. ...Off
    currently so can't remote into them.


    Was shocked that a 1TB NVMe has ONE memory chip the size of a
    fingernail. Wherever does it keep all the data??

    Inside that fingernail thing! <g> ...Yes, it's kind of funny
    remembering back when my XT had rows of black Chicklets just to get up
    to 640K of memory!!


    > .. Do 8 Hobbits = 1 Hobbyte?
    KM> And rabbits, rabbytes??
    KM> This is a very good question.
    KM> First, catch Hobbit.
    Course instruction: Wyle E. Coyote. Teacher Assistant: Roadrunner.
    Final Exam: *SPLAT*

    But back then they had resiliance! <squeaky opening noise as rock/anvil/whatever shakes/quivers and finally opens to reveal our barely-scathed hero>


    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... The reclusive French inventor of the sandal: Philippe Philoppe.
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Wed Aug 7 09:21:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:
    Hi Ky!

    > KM> Easiest is just to add it to the Favorites menu, which you can
    > KM> organize into folders or however you like.
    > KM> Mine is under
    > KM> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Favorites
    > Ed should have a lot of options to play with!
    KM> Yeah, there are several ways, no need to leave Explorer open all
    KM> the time. More than likely that's his problem.

    Some programmes just leak doing nothing. ...Not saying Explorer does,
    just a general statement. There are also some which have problems being
    left open overnight.

    Firefox leaks RAM, and always has (sometimes spectacularly). Explorer
    usually doesn't, at least not in Win2k/XP or later. Using up the heaps
    is a different problem.

    Memory leaks and sloppy use slow you down, but it just goes out to the swapfile. Running out of fixed-size resources brings you to a halt,
    because there ain't no more.

    ..I try not to leave too much in default like Documents.

    I never use My Documents except for stupid programs like VLC's
    screenshot function that don't know no different and I can't be arsed to
    see if it can be changed in its excessively long and cranky options menu.

    > KM> or wherever your user-data is found; I'm Administrator.
    > Hm: I'd figure 'CMMO': Chief Mucky Muck Officer! <g>
    KM> LOL. Should rename myself. <g>

    Would be a hare harder to hack!

    And might hack you back! Never mess with the Chief Pett-- er, Mucky Much Officer!

    An exchange between two of my characters...

    "How'd you get the three scars on the back of your leg?"
    "That was the green young lieutenant learning how not to go through
    razor wire. Always listen to your sergeant. He's smarter than you."


    > KM> I so thoroughly miss QuickLaunch in Win10/11 that I'm going to
    > KM> have to make a new toolbar just for the purpose (or jury-rig it
    > KM> through the Desktop toolbar).
    > Either they took it away because too few people used it or they couldn't
    KM> Nope. Were so many screams of dismay with Win7 removing it that
    KM> they had to allow that there was a registry tweak to make it work
    KM> again.

    I must admit it makes one feel good when the people at corporate trained
    in this stuff can't figure it out either.

    They don't listen to the enlisted either!


    > figure out how to make it work in the new version. :)
    KM> Bingo. That, and the ability to colorize Windows however you like
    KM> -- Aero crippled it and whatever they call the Win8-and-later
    KM> screen manager can't do it at all. They seem to have copied what
    KM> KDE did about the same time. KDE used to be totally customizable
    KM> too. Now you have to muck about with a cranky theme editor.

    The good news is I tend to leave the colours alone -- probably mostly
    because I'm "tint blind" (I can see colours but...) and so tend to leave alone because a revision tends to screw something else up later.

    I need it to be NOT GLAREY, and NOT HIGH CONTRAST either. This is not
    possible to achieve with Win8, and is only a little better with Win10/11
    and KDE. It's not that I care so much what the colors are (for some
    reason I think Trinity should be green and lavender, a combo I use
    nowhere else, while XP is all shades of grey with a little dark blue
    trim) but they have to be restful on the eyes. Grey workspace with black
    print is best, but in "modern" desktops is really difficult to achieve.

    http://doomgold.com/images/linux/trinity-snapshot3.jpg

    As for the 'why broke', could probbaly list a bunch and all be guessing: wrong comment character, four space indent instead of three, faulty
    statement closure.... And those are just a few on the ones I've made! <g>

    It broke because the video servers (what the OS uses to speak to the
    display) were rebuilt from scratch and the way the new ones do things is
    more HULKSPLAT on the screen and less drawing of individual elements, so
    now colors for window decorations, workspace, and the like can only be bulk-controlled and not set for each element like it used to be. And why colors are all screwed up for programs too old to know about the "new" interface (so they just get generic white everywhere). That's the
    nutshell, as I understand it.

    I do most of my work in an editing program that is "too old" but also
    has no equivalent replacement. All the modern editors make a disaster of
    the RTF (no it does not need all the print placement crap bloating up
    the file and confusing ebook formatters!) and none of them have a really functional bulk search that can do a whole directory at once AND open/go-to-spot in the relevant files as needed. (WPDOS could, but it
    was ugly.)

    There is no dedicated RTF editor for linux at all. "You can use
    LibreOffice." No I can't, even ignoring the lack of bulk search and the
    crap performance on big files, and the weird bugs it likes to insert,
    the RTF is so ugly it has to be converted to HTML3.2 and back to strip
    out all the junk before it can be used for anything else, such as an
    ebook (unless you really enjoy fighting with the layout). Now, find me something that only knows HTML3.2 and can do this. Hint: it's my
    everyday editor.



    KM> Just slows things down for the disk read and write, doesn't clog
    KM> things up entirely.

    But what happens when the Swap file gets filled? Just drops off and the
    poor programme hangs because its looking for the missing part?

    Unless you've set it differently, the swapfile on Windows is dynamic. It doesn't have a problem unless you run out of disk space.

    I normally set it to 4GB nowadays, what with all our big disks and large
    RAM, and exile it to the sacrificial NVMe. It's only there at all to
    make dumb programs happy, like most image editors. Otherwise I'd disable
    it entirely (and did, for many years).

    Dunno how Everything On One Big Disk linux does it, but in sane distros
    it's on its own partition that you never see, and typically 4GB.


    KM> Yeah, I have a PCIe-4x card (actually two of them) in Silver that
    KM> hosts an NVMe. With PCIe-4x slot you get full NVMe speed. With a
    KM> 1x slot you only get SSD speed or less. Those 4x slots are
    KM> useless for vidcards and overkill for NICs, so might as well use
    KM> them up.

    Yes: may as well use the hardware to its full ability. minimizing the bottlenecks. ...I try to buy motherboards with a few extra slots,
    mainly for expansion and hardware updates (thinking of an old example
    back when USB3 was just coming out: I could add a USB3 daughtercard and
    so update my system).

    That's the idea! and yeah, I have a whole collection of those USB3
    cards. And can't find where I put the new one intended for Paladin's
    upgrade. It has one, but old and 2 slots, the new one has 7 or 8.

    > presume programmes. Know the Swap is also on it. The HDD is for data.
    > Ues, slower but not as likely to suddenly fail as solid state stuff.
    > The Virtual Machine items is mostly on a NVMe. 'Mostly' because it
    > appears some residual on the hard drive from the original installation.
    KM> Yeah, if you build the VM from an existing image on another
    KM> drive, it does that. Really annoying, and stupid. The only fix,
    KM> AFAIK, is to export the VM as an OVA and re-import it under a new
    KM> name so it's all in one place again.
    KM> Or make sure the source file is in the final destination
    KM> directory, so it doesn't get lost.

    I'm going to have to check that out better -- right now a few other But
    First items in line. ...Does seem wrong it decides to put some of the installation on the hard drive when it has been told to use a faster
    media. Sure, hard drives are safer recovery-wise but that's what
    backups are for!

    It's just braindead. Who thought leaving body parts wherever it first
    found them was a good idea??

    I imagine it was meant for large networks so you only need one copy of whatever, but still, it should at least copy over everything it needs,
    in case you're not connected when you need it.


    > Also using a ramdisk for temporary files: both 'note' type of documents
    > where don't need to be kept 'forever' on the hard drive and 'scratchpad'
    > items.
    KM> I did that for a long time, had a lot of permanent quick-access
    KM> junk and the browser cache there. Haven't got around to doing it
    KM> on Silver, tho I should for the browser cache. At least SeaMonkey
    KM> lets me set the location!

    I'd guess some of the problem is old programming: the utility was
    originally told to put it somewhere on the hard drive, the location
    based on some other installation parameters, and since hard-coded to
    update would require a major (read "PITB"!) rewrite. ...Modern hard
    drives are suitably fast, right?! <g>

    No, it's done mostly to make it "transparent" (invisible) to the user.
    "You don't need to worry about this." Yes I do, because the way YOU did
    it MAKES me worry about it, because it puts tremendous wear and tear on
    my SSDs, which I have to pay to replace when your stupid browser wears
    them out.

    You can move the cache in Chrome but it requires dumpster diving in the registry. Dunno how you'd do it with linux. Finally managed to convince Supermium on that, tho I see it's got an extra letter tacked onto the
    function name. Oh well, so long as it works it can speak with a cheap
    Chinese accent.

    Shortcut properties:
    C:\Internet\Browsers\Supermium\chrome.exe --disk-cache-dir="S:\ChromeCachee"

    And it doesn't have the Chrome registry entry, far as I could find. But
    at least it's given up using the main OS SSD for its GIGO.

    > KM> I've done that. Textfile listing everything, until everything got
    > KM> too big to list in a textfile.
    >
    > TextFile.txt, continued to TextFile_2.txt, continued to TextFile_3.txt.
    > ..Then at TextFile_10 realize you should have called it TextFile_01!
    KM> ...8GB of textfile.txt later...

    At least not written using EDLIN and have to go back to make a
    correction!

    EEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!


    More dramatic than my one-way experiences! First ones were shortly
    after I learned to drive and worked Downtown: the city decided to make
    some streets one-way to improve traffic flow. The shall we say
    'established' drived were semi-thinking these were still two-way streets
    and so every so often would travel the wrong direction. ...I quickly
    learned to always look both ways no matter what the sign says! Still
    do.

    Really!

    Great Falls, where I grew up, has a two-way Central Avenue, then a pair
    of one-ways to either side (First N and S go one way, Second N or S go
    the other). It works great. You have good through traffic in both
    directions and you can avoid most of the downtown traffic, yet it
    doesn't cause problems for business because at worst you might have to
    go around the block. And it's been this way since the city was first
    laid out (it was a planned grid, so the one-ways only go ONE PLACE, not
    any damn where). Thre are a couple perpendicular pairs too, that
    function equally well.

    Billings, where I am now, grew randomly in all directions and has random one-ways in all directions to no apparent purpose, and they ARE much of
    the downtown traffic, and sometimes you can't get from one to the other
    (if the other even exists, which it may not) to go back the other
    direction, because there's some diagonal splat of streets between. I
    gave up trying to sort out the spaghetti and just avoid them. I suppose
    those who've had to put up with them for the past 30 years (when they
    were first instituted) are used to them, but for the newcomer... NO.
    Just AVOID.


    > KM> Yeah, there are other ways to achieve the same instant-access and
    > KM> NOT LOST without leaving everything open all the time.
    > I'll admit to doing it the "Microsoft Way": software is too slow so the
    > hardware gets faster, with faster hardware the software can function
    > faster so let's have it do more, which slows down because the hardware
    > can't keep up, so faster hardware......
    KM> GRRRR!

    Updates keep the economy flowing!

    Let's break all their stuff so they have to buy new!


    > Like I said up there somewhere I use a SSD for the OS. On some rather
    > old-and-slow machines I've replaced the hard drive with a solid state
    > one -- took a two- and three minute boot down to around 15-20 seconds.
    KM> Yeah, I do that too. Tho I have a board for Paladin that isn't
    KM> any faster than Silver or the other "new" (10 year old) PCs, but
    KM> it has a native bootable NVMe slot, so will use that. Paladin's
    KM> current innards are 20 years old.

    Yes, I think I have at least two computers in use currently which are
    around that old. They don't get used all the time and I'll admit to
    glancing at the BIOS boot stuff but don 't recall the date. ...Off
    currently so can't remote into them.

    If they do the job, why not? I used Paladin for everyday for a long
    time... there is nothing so permanent as a temporary camp.

    KM> Was shocked that a 1TB NVMe has ONE memory chip the size of a
    KM> fingernail. Wherever does it keep all the data??

    Inside that fingernail thing! <g> ...Yes, it's kind of funny
    remembering back when my XT had rows of black Chicklets just to get up
    to 640K of memory!!

    Magic. "Honey, I shrunk the data!"


    > > .. Do 8 Hobbits = 1 Hobbyte?
    > KM> And rabbits, rabbytes??
    > KM> This is a very good question.
    > KM> First, catch Hobbit.
    > Course instruction: Wyle E. Coyote. Teacher Assistant: Roadrunner.
    KM> Final Exam: *SPLAT*

    But back then they had resiliance! <squeaky opening noise as rock/anvil/whatever shakes/quivers and finally opens to reveal our barely-scathed hero>

    LOL. My guys think this sounds like their lives. Except with more scathing.

    .. The reclusive French inventor of the sandal: Philippe Philoppe.

    Oh, I gotta find you the Sandal video...
    þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com

    --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462
    * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1)
  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Thu Aug 8 17:00:00 2024

    Hi Ky!

    > KM> Easiest is just to add it to the Favorites menu, which you can
    > KM> organize into folders or however you like.
    > KM> Mine is under
    > KM> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Favorites
    > Ed should have a lot of options to play with!
    KM> Yeah, there are several ways, no need to leave Explorer open all
    KM> the time. More than likely that's his problem.
    Some programmes just leak doing nothing. ...Not saying Explorer does,
    just a general statement. There are also some which have problems being left open overnight.
    Firefox leaks RAM, and always has (sometimes spectacularly).
    Explorer usually doesn't, at least not in Win2k/XP or later.
    Using up the heaps is a different problem.
    Memory leaks and sloppy use slow you down, but it just goes out
    to the swapfile. Running out of fixed-size resources brings you
    to a halt, because there ain't no more.

    That's why I build a fast computer with lots of RAM: to compensate for
    those! <g>


    ..I try not to leave too much in default like Documents.
    I never use My Documents except for stupid programs like VLC's
    screenshot function that don't know no different and I can't be
    arsed to see if it can be changed in its excessively long and
    cranky options menu.

    Yes, I've used some programmes where the options aren't too optional,
    and have to dig down seven levels to get to the one I want. Suppose it
    made sense to the developer..... Also remember from my Windows days
    some utilities forced themselves to only use the C: drive. D:? No!
    But... I don't care!



    > KM> or wherever your user-data is found; I'm Administrator.
    > Hm: I'd figure 'CMMO': Chief Mucky Muck Officer! <g>
    KM> LOL. Should rename myself. <g>
    Would be a hare harder to hack!
    And might hack you back! Never mess with the Chief Pett-- er,
    Mucky Much Officer!

    That's "Muck" and not "Much". ...At least not 'Mush'!



    An exchange between two of my characters...
    "How'd you get the three scars on the back of your leg?"
    "That was the green young lieutenant learning how not to go
    through razor wire. Always listen to your sergeant. He's smarter
    than you."

    Only three? Quick learner!



    > KM> I so thoroughly miss QuickLaunch in Win10/11 that I'm going to
    > KM> have to make a new toolbar just for the purpose (or jury-rig it
    > KM> through the Desktop toolbar).
    > Either they took it away because too few people used it or they couldn't
    KM> Nope. Were so many screams of dismay with Win7 removing it that
    KM> they had to allow that there was a registry tweak to make it work
    KM> again.
    I must admit it makes one feel good when the people at corporate trained
    in this stuff can't figure it out either.
    They don't listen to the enlisted either!

    We're at the top of the ladder so we know better! (If you insist!)



    > figure out how to make it work in the new version. :)
    KM> Bingo. That, and the ability to colorize Windows however you like
    KM> -- Aero crippled it and whatever they call the Win8-and-later
    KM> screen manager can't do it at all. They seem to have copied what
    KM> KDE did about the same time. KDE used to be totally customizable
    KM> too. Now you have to muck about with a cranky theme editor.
    The good news is I tend to leave the colours alone -- probably mostly because I'm "tint blind" (I can see colours but...) and so tend to leave alone because a revision tends to screw something else up later.
    I need it to be NOT GLAREY, and NOT HIGH CONTRAST either.

    Yes: too much or too little and two sore eyes!


    This is
    not possible to achieve with Win8, and is only a little better
    with Win10/11 and KDE. It's not that I care so much what the
    colors are (for some reason I think Trinity should be green and
    lavender, a combo I use nowhere else, while XP is all shades of
    grey with a little dark blue trim) but they have to be restful on
    the eyes. Grey workspace with black print is best, but in
    "modern" desktops is really difficult to achieve. http://doomgold.com/images/linux/trinity-snapshot3.jpg

    Not bad! I tend to go with semi-plain backgrounds just so not
    distracting or accidentally think a desktop pattern is a live minimized window, Or an initially 'busy' pattern/picture: on the Raspberry Pi I
    use as an isolation router has a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge. The
    bridge is in the center and desktop icons at the top where not much
    going on in the picture.



    As for the 'why broke', could probably list a bunch and all be guessing: wrong comment character, four space indent instead of three, faulty statement closure.... And those are just a few on the ones I've made! <g>
    It broke because the video servers (what the OS uses to speak to
    the display) were rebuilt from scratch and the way the new ones
    do things is more HULKSPLAT on the screen and less drawing of
    individual elements, so now colors for window decorations,
    workspace, and the like can only be bulk-controlled and not set
    for each element like it used to be. And why colors are all
    screwed up for programs too old to know about the "new" interface
    (so they just get generic white everywhere). That's the nutshell,
    as I understand it.

    Makes sense, though sounds like they're going backwards instead of
    advancing colour rendition: this section is all <blue94> instead of this
    item is <blue93>, this section <blue94>,,,<blue95>, etc. (Probably
    sloppy in the details, but the general idea.)


    I do most of my work in an editing program that is "too old" but
    also has no equivalent replacement. All the modern editors make a
    disaster of the RTF (no it does not need all the print placement
    crap bloating up the file and confusing ebook formatters!) and
    none of them have a really functional bulk search that can do a
    whole directory at once AND open/go-to-spot in the relevant files
    as needed. (WPDOS could, but it was ugly.)

    I have also found some of the old/antique programmes did a much better
    job. Might have something to do with the old programmes had less
    details' to work with and so the results were more precise.
    Half-thinking as an exaample something simple like the single- and
    double quotes: I'll import and/or create notes in a word processor.
    Looks decent - not fancy. Copy and paste into a script utility, still
    looks right except for one little detail which screws up the works:
    those quote marks are wrong! The single quote is angled, the double
    quotes are open quote and close quote options (both angled). The script utility wants the straight up-and-down-plain-ASCII version!

    (LIS, probably barely tangentially an example but the only one I can
    think of right now.)



    There is no dedicated RTF editor for linux at all. "You can use LibreOffice." No I can't, even ignoring the lack of bulk search

    As I understand it from my limited usage it will work but not fully and
    with the nuances.

    and the crap performance on big files, and the weird bugs it
    likes to insert, the RTF is so ugly it has to be converted to
    HTML3.2 and back to strip out all the junk before it can be used
    for anything else, such as an ebook (unless you really enjoy
    fighting with the layout). Now, find me something that only knows
    HTML3.2 and can do this. Hint: it's my everyday editor.

    Hmmm: that sort of mimics some of the "it shouldn't be doing that"
    quirks in some of the LibreOffice documents I create. My primary
    occasional quirks are with picture wrapping: why is the text going
    through when I told it not to? - that sort of thing. (At this point not
    worth for me to find a differnt word processor. Quite something
    different fr your professional use.)


    KM> Just slows things down for the disk read and write, doesn't clog
    KM> things up entirely.
    But what happens when the Swap file gets filled? Just drops off and the poor programme hangs because its looking for the missing part?
    Unless you've set it differently, the swapfile on Windows is
    dynamic. It doesn't have a problem unless you run out of disk
    space.

    I haven't used Windows in years save for the Virtual Machine running the
    BBS stuff. I haven't noted any chnage in Linux's Swap file but also
    haven't been keeping a close eye on it.



    I normally set it to 4GB nowadays, what with all our big disks
    and large RAM, and exile it to the sacrificial NVMe. It's only
    there at all to make dumb programs happy, like most image
    editors. Otherwise I'd disable it entirely (and did, for many
    years).

    LIS in an earlier message (or at least I think I did!) I'ven kept the
    Swap area even when read didn't have to: I have the room, some old
    programmes probably use the Swap area. When run out of sapce in the RAM
    used to be went to Swap, so having a reasonable Swap area seems
    worthwhile. And I have seen Swap listed as being used -- by what I
    don't know.


    Dunno how Everything On One Big Disk linux does it, but in sane
    distros it's on its own partition that you never see, and
    typically 4GB.

    This Ubuntu system has a 2 GB Swap and all is free; been over a week
    since the last reboot (required by a system update). The MythTV Server
    has been up for over a month (again because of a system update) and its
    2GB Swap has 1 GB used. No idea why because of the 32 GB RAM only 2.1
    GB is used.



    KM> Yeah, I have a PCIe-4x card (actually two of them) in Silver that
    KM> hosts an NVMe. With PCIe-4x slot you get full NVMe speed. With a
    KM> 1x slot you only get SSD speed or less. Those 4x slots are
    KM> useless for vidcards and overkill for NICs, so might as well use
    KM> them up.
    Yes: may as well use the hardware to its full ability. minimizing the bottlenecks. ...I try to buy motherboards with a few extra slots,
    mainly for expansion and hardware updates (thinking of an old example
    back when USB3 was just coming out: I could add a USB3 daughtercard and
    so update my system).
    That's the idea! and yeah, I have a whole collection of those
    USB3 cards. And can't find where I put the new one intended for
    Paladin's upgrade. It has one, but old and 2 slots, the new one
    has 7 or 8.

    I've got a couple of daughtercards with four external USB3 slots. I'll usually have a motherboard with 1- 2- or 3 built-in USB3's and nice ot
    have more. AFAIK can always use a USB3 for a USB2 device.



    > presume programmes. Know the Swap is also on it. The HDD is for data.
    > Ues, slower but not as likely to suddenly fail as solid state stuff.
    > The Virtual Machine items is mostly on a NVMe. 'Mostly' because it
    > appears some residual on the hard drive from the original installation.
    KM> Yeah, if you build the VM from an existing image on another
    KM> drive, it does that. Really annoying, and stupid. The only fix,
    KM> AFAIK, is to export the VM as an OVA and re-import it under a new
    KM> name so it's all in one place again.
    KM> Or make sure the source file is in the final destination
    KM> directory, so it doesn't get lost.
    I'm going to have to check that out better -- right now a few other But First items in line. ...Does seem wrong it decides to put some of the installation on the hard drive when it has been told to use a faster
    media. Sure, hard drives are safer recovery-wise but that's what
    backups are for!
    It's just braindead. Who thought leaving body parts wherever it
    first found them was a good idea??

    Other than the forensic examiners probably no body! <g>


    I imagine it was meant for large networks so you only need one
    copy of whatever, but still, it should at least copy over
    everything it needs, in case you're not connected when you need
    it.

    Multiple copies are usually good, expecially for experimenting.


    > Also using a ramdisk for temporary files: both 'note' type of documents
    > where don't need to be kept 'forever' on the hard drive and 'scratchpad'
    > items.
    KM> I did that for a long time, had a lot of permanent quick-access
    KM> junk and the browser cache there. Haven't got around to doing it
    KM> on Silver, tho I should for the browser cache. At least SeaMonkey
    KM> lets me set the location!
    I'd guess some of the problem is old programming: the utility was
    originally told to put it somewhere on the hard drive, the location
    based on some other installation parameters, and since hard-coded to
    update would require a major (read "PITB"!) rewrite. ...Modern hard
    drives are suitably fast, right?! <g>
    No, it's done mostly to make it "transparent" (invisible) to the
    user. "You don't need to worry about this." Yes I do, because the
    way YOU did it MAKES me worry about it, because it puts
    tremendous wear and tear on my SSDs, which I have to pay to
    replace when your stupid browser wears them out.

    And my needs wantts and desires are not the same as theirs. I would
    prefer some sort of hand-holding option if I don't know what I'm doing
    (and I'll admit sometmes that's barely over the line!) but I may have a
    reason for wanting something like a 10 GB ramdisk even though 90% of the
    other users might be happy with 10 MB.


    You can move the cache in Chrome but it requires dumpster diving
    in the registry. Dunno how you'd do it with linux.

    I'm not sure where either but I simply turned mine off. With my fast connection it didn't seem to make any difference, in fact might be a
    hare faster as the system doesn't have to bother comparing the cache to
    the current stuff, or maybe more check the cache for <file> and when not
    find download it. Now skips the search cache step and goes to the
    downloading step.


    Finally
    managed to convince Supermium on that, tho I see it's got an
    extra letter tacked onto the function name. Oh well, so long as
    it works it can speak with a cheap Chinese accent.

    A lot of Linux's user configuration files seem to have 'rc' tacked to
    the end: ansiweather --> ansiweatherrc.


    Shortcut properties:
    C:\Internet\Browsers\Supermium\chrome.exe --disk-cache-dir="S:\ChromeCachee"

    That's not Chinese, that's French: "cah-shee"! <g>


    And it doesn't have the Chrome registry entry, far as I could
    find. But at least it's given up using the main OS SSD for its
    GIGO.

    Less wear and tear.



    > KM> I've done that. Textfile listing everything, until everything got
    > KM> too big to list in a textfile.
    > TextFile.txt, continued to TextFile_2.txt, continued to TextFile_3.txt.
    > ..Then at TextFile_10 realize you should have called it TextFile_01!
    KM> ...8GB of textfile.txt later...
    At least not written using EDLIN and have to go back to make a
    correction!
    EEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

    I remember typing letters to my parents on the computer; correcting
    spelling by adding or subtracting a letter or two usually wasn't too
    bad; add or subtract a word......


    More dramatic than my one-way experiences! First ones were shortly
    after I learned to drive and worked Downtown: the city decided to make
    some streets one-way to improve traffic flow. The shall we say 'established' drived were semi-thinking these were still two-way streets
    and so every so often would travel the wrong direction. ...I quickly learned to always look both ways no matter what the sign says! Still
    do.
    Really!

    When I was working and a few blocks from the store would go on a four-
    lane one way -- correct direction, of course! About once every two
    weeks I'd see someone going the wrong way, apparently "just because" was
    easier for them to potentially get in an accident than go around the
    block.

    Great Falls, where I grew up, has a two-way Central Avenue, then
    a pair of one-ways to either side (First N and S go one way,
    Second N or S go the other). It works great. You have good
    through traffic in both directions and you can avoid most of the
    downtown traffic, yet it doesn't cause problems for business
    because at worst you might have to go around the block. And it's
    been this way since the city was first laid out (it was a planned
    grid, so the one-ways only go ONE PLACE, not any damn where).
    Thre are a couple perpendicular pairs too, that function equally
    well.

    Nashua, NH, where I grew up, was established in the mid 1700's and had
    an usually wide Main Street: residential portion where we lived was at
    one time four lines (2 northbound, two southbound) but that got switched semi-quickly to one wider lane each direction with a center turn lane
    because people thought "4 lines - pedal to the metal!". The Downtown
    portion had at least two lanes each direction -- seems like three in
    some sections, plus diagonal parking on both sides. (Pedestrian got a
    workout just crossing the street! <g>)

    Some of the Downtown sidestreets were the 'tradional' East Coast skinny
    lane and a few were made into the one-ways to help move traffic.


    Billings, where I am now, grew randomly in all directions and has
    random one-ways in all directions to no apparent purpose, and
    they ARE much of the downtown traffic, and sometimes you can't
    get from one to the other (if the other even exists, which it may
    not) to go back the other direction, because there's some
    diagonal splat of streets between. I gave up trying to sort out
    the spaghetti and just avoid them. I suppose those who've had to
    put up with them for the past 30 years (when they were first
    instituted) are used to them, but for the newcomer... NO. Just
    AVOID.

    Haha: that sounds like some of the original sectinn of Davenport (IA).
    Main Street is more or less a side street located between the main
    streets: Brady northbound and Harrison southbound. ("Main Street" not
    being the main street isn't uncommon. I'm not even sure if Bettendorf
    has a "Main St.".) ...Back to Davenport, I've some across more than a
    few streets which don't line up at an intersection. Also a few streets
    which are somewhat of a main side street but they'll just stop and
    then continue a few blocks later.

    ...Bettendorf isn't immune to quirky streets: Robeson is something like
    the handle on a coffee cup: turn on to it, travel for about two blocks,
    and now you're back on the same street you turned off of!


    > KM> Yeah, there are other ways to achieve the same instant-access and
    > KM> NOT LOST without leaving everything open all the time.
    > I'll admit to doing it the "Microsoft Way": software is too slow so the
    > hardware gets faster, with faster hardware the software can function
    > faster so let's have it do more, which slows down because the hardware
    > can't keep up, so faster hardware......
    KM> GRRRR!
    Updates keep the economy flowing!
    Let's break all their stuff so they have to buy new!

    Wasn't that Windows' secret business phrase?! <g>


    > Like I said up there somewhere I use a SSD for the OS. On some rather
    > old-and-slow machines I've replaced the hard drive with a solid state
    > one -- took a two- and three minute boot down to around 15-20 seconds.
    KM> Yeah, I do that too. Tho I have a board for Paladin that isn't
    KM> any faster than Silver or the other "new" (10 year old) PCs, but
    KM> it has a native bootable NVMe slot, so will use that. Paladin's
    KM> current innards are 20 years old.
    Yes, I think I have at least two computers in use currently which are
    around that old. They don't get used all the time and I'll admit to glancing at the BIOS boot stuff but don 't recall the date. ...Off currently so can't remote into them.
    If they do the job, why not? I used Paladin for everyday for a
    long time... there is nothing so permanent as a temporary camp.

    <chuckle> Yup! One little 'quirk' I'm running in to is many of the
    computers around here need to also run MythTV (record and watch TV
    shows). Right now I'm on version 31, which requires a certain minimum
    version of Ubuntu (20.04? maybe 18.04). The various versions of Ubuntu require certain hardware minimums, so the computer can effectively only
    be so old. ...I did run into a problem with a specific computer having problems running (20.04?) but was fine running (18.04?).

    So I think when I eventually update to the current MythTV, MythTV will
    require a minimum level of Ubuntu and that little specification will
    probably kill off this old computer.



    KM> Was shocked that a 1TB NVMe has ONE memory chip the size of a
    KM> fingernail. Wherever does it keep all the data??
    Inside that fingernail thing! <g> ...Yes, it's kind of funny
    remembering back when my XT had rows of black Chicklets just to get up
    to 640K of memory!!
    Magic. "Honey, I shrunk the data!"

    It is interesting how the computing size has been made microscopic. I remember in the early 70's going into one of the computer rooms and they
    had rows and rows of stands with what looked like what my Mother put the finished cake in. Hard drives, maybe a megabyte each. (Maybe more, I
    know I never asked.) Now I've got a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB plus a 1TB
    NVMe, in a case in a box that's about the sixe of two or three decks of playing cards stached together!



    > > .. Do 8 Hobbits = 1 Hobbyte?
    > KM> And rabbits, rabbytes??
    > KM> This is a very good question.
    > KM> First, catch Hobbit.
    > Course instruction: Wyle E. Coyote. Teacher Assistant: Roadrunner.
    KM> Final Exam: *SPLAT*
    But back then they had resiliance! <squeaky opening noise as rock/anvil/whatever shakes/quivers and finally opens to reveal our barely-scathed hero>
    LOL. My guys think this sounds like their lives. Except with more scathing.

    Tell Bram 'hi!'.


    .. The reclusive French inventor of the sandal: Philippe Philoppe.
    Oh, I gotta find you the Sandal video...

    Jimmy Buffett?!



    ¯ ®
    ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ®
    ¯ ®


    ... Unlike the brain, stomach alerts you when its empty. - African proverb
    --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47
    þ wcECHO 4.2 ÷ ILink: The Safe BBS þ Bettendorf, IA

    --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462
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  • From Ky Moffet@454:1/1 to Barry Martin on Sat Aug 10 15:06:00 2024
    BARRY MARTIN wrote:

    KM> Firefox leaks RAM, and always has (sometimes spectacularly).
    KM> Explorer usually doesn't, at least not in Win2k/XP or later.
    KM> Using up the heaps is a different problem.
    KM> Memory leaks and sloppy use slow you down, but it just goes out
    KM> to the swapfile. Running out of fixed-size resources brings you
    KM> to a halt, because there ain't no more.

    That's why I build a fast computer with lots of RAM: to compensate for
    those! <g>

    YES! in fact before the holidays I was looking at a used setup with
    256GB RAM... need to get back to that guy, since right now I can be more flexible, get a faster CPU. Nice pre-configured combos from server-class parts.

    What CPU does yours have again? I keep forgetting.

    The next "new" one will probably have a Xeon, tho.

    > ..I try not to leave too much in default like Documents.
    KM> I never use My Documents except for stupid programs like VLC's
    KM> screenshot function that don't know no different and I can't be
    KM> arsed to see if it can be changed in its excessively long and
    KM> cranky options menu.

    Yes, I've used some programmes where the options aren't too optional,

    Yeah, or ... worst: Wordstar. The config program was actually a linear
    hex editor. Miss an option and you had to go back through all 30 pages
    again.

    and have to dig down seven levels to get to the one I want. Suppose it
    made sense to the developer..... Also remember from my Windows days
    some utilities forced themselves to only use the C: drive. D:? No!
    But... I don't care!

    Some of those could be assaulted with a hex editor and made to behave. I
    did that with some DOS utils that insisted on inserting an ad screen
    (like old BBS utils loved to do)... found what it was calling, blanked
    it out in the binary, no more nuisance, worked fine.

    > > KM> or wherever your user-data is found; I'm Administrator.
    > > Hm: I'd figure 'CMMO': Chief Mucky Muck Officer! <g>
    > KM> LOL. Should rename myself. <g>
    > Would be a hare harder to hack!
    KM> And might hack you back! Never mess with the Chief Pett-- er,
    KM> Mucky Much Officer!

    That's "Muck" and not "Much". ...At least not 'Mush'!

    Too Much Officer is better than Not Enough Officer. <g>



    KM> An exchange between two of my characters...
    KM> "How'd you get the three scars on the back of your leg?"
    KM> "That was the green young lieutenant learning how not to go
    KM> through razor wire. Always listen to your sergeant. He's smarter
    KM> than you."

    Only three? Quick learner!

    Far as Bran got before getting hung up entirely. And the experience
    saved his life, fifteen years later... right after the mission that won
    the war, he got hit by stray flak and damnear blown in half, and he
    thinks he's already dead:

    ===
    _Oh, that’s bad. Better wait for evac._ That was his sergeant. He’d screwed up, didn’t listen to his sergeant. Got hung up in the razor
    wire. They’d called him Razor-ass for months after. Still did, when he
    was being dense.

    Heard a cutter running, banging against his armor. Maybe they were going
    to cut off his head. Wasn’t attached to the rest of him anyway.
    _Captain! Stay with us. Evac’s coming. Listen to me, Razor. Stay with us._

    Always listen to your sergeant.
    ===

    He listened, and lived to tell of it.

    > I must admit it makes one feel good when the people at corporate trained
    > in this stuff can't figure it out either.
    KM> They don't listen to the enlisted either!

    We're at the top of the ladder so we know better! (If you insist!)

    Don't jump!!

    KM> I need it to be NOT GLAREY, and NOT HIGH CONTRAST either.

    Yes: too much or too little and two sore eyes!

    YES! GRRRR!


    KM> This is
    KM> not possible to achieve with Win8, and is only a little better
    KM> with Win10/11 and KDE. It's not that I care so much what the
    KM> colors are (for some reason I think Trinity should be green and
    KM> lavender, a combo I use nowhere else, while XP is all shades of
    KM> grey with a little dark blue trim) but they have to be restful on
    KM> the eyes. Grey workspace with black print is best, but in
    KM> "modern" desktops is really difficult to achieve.
    KM> http://doomgold.com/images/linux/trinity-snapshot3.jpg

    Not bad! I tend to go with semi-plain backgrounds just so not
    distracting or accidentally think a desktop pattern is a live minimized window, Or an initially 'busy' pattern/picture: on the Raspberry Pi I
    use as an isolation router has a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge. The
    bridge is in the center and desktop icons at the top where not much
    going on in the picture.

    I like landscapes for backgrounds. Sometimes I make the icons climb hills.

    http://twilightasylum.com/pc/gremlin.jpg

    Note that the DOS apps are draining from the poison cup, and the icons
    in the clouds are waving in the wind, while the browsers have circled
    the wagons. :D


    > As for the 'why broke', could probably list a bunch and all be guessing:
    > wrong comment character, four space indent instead of three, faulty
    > statement closure.... And those are just a few on the ones I've made! <g>
    KM> It broke because the video servers (what the OS uses to speak to
    KM> the display) were rebuilt from scratch and the way the new ones
    KM> do things is more HULKSPLAT on the screen and less drawing of
    KM> individual elements, so now colors for window decorations,
    KM> workspace, and the like can only be bulk-controlled and not set
    KM> for each element like it used to be. And why colors are all
    KM> screwed up for programs too old to know about the "new" interface
    KM> (so they just get generic white everywhere). That's the nutshell,
    KM> as I understand it.

    Makes sense, though sounds like they're going backwards instead of
    advancing colour rendition: this section is all <blue94> instead of this
    item is <blue93>, this section <blue94>,,,<blue95>, etc. (Probably
    sloppy in the details, but the general idea.)

    Yeah, that's pretty much how it is, to my grok.

    Basically, there is no user-controlled color interface, only
    video-server controlled. KDE can at least make color themes, but it's
    not a default part of the desktop (unlike Trinity).


    KM> I do most of my work in an editing program that is "too old" but
    KM> also has no equivalent replacement. All the modern editors make a
    KM> disaster of the RTF (no it does not need all the print placement
    KM> crap bloating up the file and confusing ebook formatters!) and
    KM> none of them have a really functional bulk search that can do a
    KM> whole directory at once AND open/go-to-spot in the relevant files
    KM> as needed. (WPDOS could, but it was ugly.)

    I have also found some of the old/antique programmes did a much better
    job. Might have something to do with the old programmes had less
    details' to work with and so the results were more precise.

    Not only that, but they had the unforgiving environments of DOS and
    pre-NT Windows, where every error crashed the system. Plus constraints
    on available CPU cycles, system resources (heaps etc), and RAM. So they
    had to get things right, and be efficient. Now, what with the excessive resources of the average modern system, they just slop-ass memory and
    CPU use any which way. You've got plenty more, no need to conserve, and
    the OS catches and kills program faults, so no need for innate stability.

    Half-thinking as an exaample something simple like the single- and
    double quotes: I'll import and/or create notes in a word processor.
    Looks decent - not fancy. Copy and paste into a script utility, still
    looks right except for one little detail which screws up the works:
    those quote marks are wrong! The single quote is angled, the double
    quotes are open quote and close quote options (both angled). The script utility wants the straight up-and-down-plain-ASCII version!

    That's because ASCII (all script utils only know ASCII, or at best
    Unicode) doesn't have curly quotes at all, and the usual substitution is angled quotes. This will happen any time you go from formatted text to
    plain text. If you don't like it, you have to turn off curly quotes, or
    remove them from that document before copypasta into a text app.

    It could be worse; it used to be double apostrophes for quote marks!

    KM> There is no dedicated RTF editor for linux at all. "You can use
    KM> LibreOffice." No I can't, even ignoring the lack of bulk search

    As I understand it from my limited usage it will work but not fully and
    with the nuances.

    Oh, fully substitutes so far as the document goes, BUT the document is internally such a mess I wish it didn't.

    KM> and the crap performance on big files, and the weird bugs it
    KM> likes to insert, the RTF is so ugly it has to be converted to
    KM> HTML3.2 and back to strip out all the junk before it can be used
    KM> for anything else, such as an ebook (unless you really enjoy
    KM> fighting with the layout). Now, find me something that only knows
    KM> HTML3.2 and can do this. Hint: it's my everyday editor.

    Hmmm: that sort of mimics some of the "it shouldn't be doing that"
    quirks in some of the LibreOffice documents I create. My primary

    Likely so. There's also a bug that shows up with embedded images (which
    are base64 encoded) where control codes can get mis-nested, and then a
    chunk of the document (or everything after that point) becomes
    invisible. It's still there, just hidden by a misplaced bracket or the like.

    Never embed images until the final step, is my advice. Or for that step,
    use a proper layout editor, like Scribus. It's free and it works fine.

    occasional quirks are with picture wrapping: why is the text going
    through when I told it not to? - that sort of thing. (At this point not worth for me to find a differnt word processor. Quite something
    different fr your professional use.)

    That's because RTF and DOC and any of the XML formats (DOCX, ODT) don't actually have a way to put two different layout codes on the same line (WordPerfect does, but I have never seen it anywhere else). You can only
    do block layout, and the stylesheet has to agree to put it there. If you
    need that sort of thing, it may be easier to do the layout in Scribus or
    some WYSIWYG HTML editor, then import it. Usually it will stick in Word,
    dunno about LibreOffice.


    > KM> Just slows things down for the disk read and write, doesn't clog
    > KM> things up entirely.
    > But what happens when the Swap file gets filled? Just drops off and the
    > poor programme hangs because its looking for the missing part?
    KM> Unless you've set it differently, the swapfile on Windows is
    KM> dynamic. It doesn't have a problem unless you run out of disk
    KM> space.

    I haven't used Windows in years save for the Virtual Machine running the
    BBS stuff. I haven't noted any chnage in Linux's Swap file but also
    haven't been keeping a close eye on it.

    I have no idea how linux manages its swapfile. I put more RAM in the
    system instead. <g>


    KM> Dunno how Everything On One Big Disk linux does it, but in sane
    KM> distros it's on its own partition that you never see, and
    KM> typically 4GB.

    This Ubuntu system has a 2 GB Swap and all is free; been over a week
    since the last reboot (required by a system update). The MythTV Server
    has been up for over a month (again because of a system update) and its
    2GB Swap has 1 GB used. No idea why because of the 32 GB RAM only 2.1
    GB is used.

    2GB to 4GB linux swap partition seems to be about typical. Browsers will overflow into that and get real slow, but other prorgrams should be
    fine. (Linux caching STILL sucks, so you really want to do as little
    disk I/O as possible.)

    KM> That's the idea! and yeah, I have a whole collection of those
    KM> USB3 cards. And can't find where I put the new one intended for
    KM> Paladin's upgrade. It has one, but old and 2 slots, the new one
    KM> has 7 or 8.

    I put it on the shelf where all the USB-to-something cards are... *sigh*

    I've got a couple of daughtercards with four external USB3 slots. I'll usually have a motherboard with 1- 2- or 3 built-in USB3's and nice ot
    have more. AFAIK can always use a USB3 for a USB2 device.

    Yes. The more USB3 the better, backward compatible is never a problem
    from USB3 (tho it can be between USB2 and USB1... printers don't mind
    but other stuff may not work).

    A patent or some other restriction apparently lately ran out on the USB3
    chip, as it used to be THE major cost on motherboards at something like
    $40 for a pair of ports. That was why for a Long Time no one had more
    than 2 USB3 ports.

    KM> It's just braindead. Who thought leaving body parts wherever it
    KM> first found them was a good idea??

    Other than the forensic examiners probably no body! <g>

    If there's no body, no problem!

    > I'd guess some of the problem is old programming: the utility was
    > originally told to put it somewhere on the hard drive, the location
    > based on some other installation parameters, and since hard-coded to
    > update would require a major (read "PITB"!) rewrite. ...Modern hard
    > drives are suitably fast, right?! <g>
    KM> No, it's done mostly to make it "transparent" (invisible) to the
    KM> user. "You don't need to worry about this." Yes I do, because the
    KM> way YOU did it MAKES me worry about it, because it puts
    KM> tremendous wear and tear on my SSDs, which I have to pay to
    KM> replace when your stupid browser wears them out.

    And my needs wantts and desires are not the same as theirs. I would
    prefer some sort of hand-holding option if I don't know what I'm doing
    (and I'll admit sometmes that's barely over the line!) but I may have a reason for wanting something like a 10 GB ramdisk even though 90% of the other users might be happy with 10 MB.

    I have suggested, over and over, that config things need to be dual
    paned so we can see what happens in the raw file as we mutilate, er, manipulate the GUI config util.... it can be done in HTML editors, which
    are really not very different -- in both cases it's an interface to a plaintext config editor.

    KM> Finally
    KM> managed to convince Supermium on that, tho I see it's got an
    KM> extra letter tacked onto the function name. Oh well, so long as
    KM> it works it can speak with a cheap Chinese accent.

    A lot of Linux's user configuration files seem to have 'rc' tacked to
    the end: ansiweather --> ansiweatherrc

    Yeah, and they're supposed to be in... where, /etc ?? but are scattered
    all over hell.



    KM> Shortcut properties:
    KM> C:\Internet\Browsers\Supermium\chrome.exe
    KM> --disk-cache-dir="S:\ChromeCachee"

    That's not Chinese, that's French: "cah-shee"! <g>

    LOL. I think more like softly, softly, catchee monkey. :D


    KM> And it doesn't have the Chrome registry entry, far as I could
    KM> find. But at least it's given up using the main OS SSD for its
    KM> GIGO.

    Less wear and tear.

    EXACTLY!!

    > At least not written using EDLIN and have to go back to make a
    > correction!
    KM> EEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

    I remember typing letters to my parents on the computer; correcting
    spelling by adding or subtracting a letter or two usually wasn't too
    bad; add or subtract a word......

    Oy... yeah, used edlin like ONCE. EDIT, thank all gods real or
    imaginary, had actual editing capacity.

    When I was working and a few blocks from the store would go on a four-
    lane one way -- correct direction, of course! About once every two
    weeks I'd see someone going the wrong way, apparently "just because" was easier for them to potentially get in an accident than go around the
    block.

    Four lane one-way sounds hazardous. I'd guess more likely someone wound
    up in the wrong lane and had little choice about where to turn.

    KM> Great Falls, where I grew up, has a two-way Central Avenue, then
    KM> a pair of one-ways to either side (First N and S go one way,
    KM> Second N or S go the other). It works great. You have good
    KM> through traffic in both directions and you can avoid most of the
    KM> downtown traffic, yet it doesn't cause problems for business
    KM> because at worst you might have to go around the block. And it's
    KM> been this way since the city was first laid out (it was a planned
    KM> grid, so the one-ways only go ONE PLACE, not any damn where).
    KM> Thre are a couple perpendicular pairs too, that function equally
    KM> well.

    Nashua, NH, where I grew up, was established in the mid 1700's and had
    an usually wide Main Street: residential portion where we lived was at
    one time four lines (2 northbound, two southbound) but that got switched semi-quickly to one wider lane each direction with a center turn lane because people thought "4 lines - pedal to the metal!". The Downtown
    portion had at least two lanes each direction -- seems like three in
    some sections, plus diagonal parking on both sides. (Pedestrian got a workout just crossing the street! <g>)

    Yeah, there was that craze for "walking downtowns" (in part because
    there was federal grant money to "take cars off the road" way way back)
    and all it does most places is make downtown undriveable. I'm sure
    everyone wants to walk around downtown Lancaster CA when it's 120F out,
    and no shade because they also took out the old sidewalk trees to put in
    the new "walking median", and didn't have enough room for lanes and
    parking so they ate some of the sidewalk. I hated it, and never went
    downtown again.

    Here we have some parking spaces you have to BACK INTO. No way, not with
    a truck. NO. Don't care what's on that street, I ain't driving or
    parking there.


    Some of the Downtown sidestreets were the 'tradional' East Coast skinny
    lane and a few were made into the one-ways to help move traffic.

    Whether it helps or hurts depends on where the traffic really wants to go.


    KM> Billings, where I am now, grew randomly in all directions and has
    KM> random one-ways in all directions to no apparent purpose, and
    KM> they ARE much of the downtown traffic, and sometimes you can't
    KM> get from one to the other (if the other even exists, which it may
    KM> not) to go back the other direction, because there's some
    KM> diagonal splat of streets between. I gave up trying to sort out
    KM> the spaghetti and just avoid them. I suppose those who've had to
    KM> put up with them for the past 30 years (when they were first
    KM> instituted) are used to them, but for the newcomer... NO. Just
    KM> AVOID.

    Haha: that sounds like some of the original sectinn of Davenport (IA).
    Main Street is more or less a side street located between the main
    streets: Brady northbound and Harrison southbound. ("Main Street" not
    being the main street isn't uncommon. I'm not even sure if Bettendorf
    has a "Main St.".) ...Back to Davenport, I've some across more than a
    few streets which don't line up at an intersection. Also a few streets
    which are somewhat of a main side street but they'll just stop and
    then continue a few blocks later.

    Yeah, behind the hospital district (it's a huge complex, two hospitals
    plus the clinic) there's a lot of that. I got to explort (I like that
    word for it) some of it lately because they're destroying a couple of
    the cross-streets and the guy I bought the little truck from (YAY! Title
    came and it's FINALLY HOME!) lived four blocks away.


    ..Bettendorf isn't immune to quirky streets: Robeson is something like
    the handle on a coffee cup: turn on to it, travel for about two blocks,
    and now you're back on the same street you turned off of!

    Tellya, gridded streets are SOOOO nice. You could not get lost or make a
    wrong turn in old Great Falls. And any address location was instantly
    evident. New development over by the air force base were all pretzeled streets, and the fire department HATED it. (So did I, tho fortunately
    rarely needed to go there.)

    > > KM> Yeah, there are other ways to achieve the same instant-access and
    > > KM> NOT LOST without leaving everything open all the time.
    > > I'll admit to doing it the "Microsoft Way": software is too slow so the
    > > hardware gets faster, with faster hardware the software can function
    > > faster so let's have it do more, which slows down because the hardware
    > > can't keep up, so faster hardware......
    > KM> GRRRR!
    > Updates keep the economy flowing!
    KM> Let's break all their stuff so they have to buy new!

    Wasn't that Windows' secret business phrase?! <g>

    Actually, not really. Microsoft went WAAAAY above and beyond trying to
    stay compatible with old software (Raymond Chen's blog details a lot of
    it) and most of the time when there was a problem, the program was
    dependent on a bug or an undocumented feature. Some bugs were left in
    place, triggered on demand, to avoid breaking compatibility.

    And XP (32bit) actually supports 8GB of RAM, but is limited to 4GB
    because the vast majority of business PCs have an Intel graphics chip,
    and the Intel driver crashes if the system has more than 4GB. There's a
    switch to make it handle 8GB, but it's undocumented, see above.

    > Yes, I think I have at least two computers in use currently which are
    > around that old. They don't get used all the time and I'll admit to
    > glancing at the BIOS boot stuff but don 't recall the date. ...Off
    > currently so can't remote into them.
    KM> If they do the job, why not? I used Paladin for everyday for a
    KM> long time... there is nothing so permanent as a temporary camp.

    Turned it on, it still works so nice. I think I'm going to keep it
    intact but kick it into a different case, as it doesn't really need the
    nice one. But first, find more cases. Wait, I could kick out the P3-800
    that isn't doing anything... so it'll be a new machine instead of
    upgrading Paladin, per original plan... now it needs a name... How about Phoenix, since it was given to me as probably dead, but works fine (once
    one seats the HSF so it actually touches the CPU). Gamers.... geesh.

    I need a few more of these old-style RaidMax cases, with 10-11 internal
    drive bays. Just nice to work in, even tho it's a cheap case.

    <chuckle> Yup! One little 'quirk' I'm running in to is many of the
    computers around here need to also run MythTV (record and watch TV
    shows). Right now I'm on version 31, which requires a certain minimum version of Ubuntu (20.04? maybe 18.04). The various versions of Ubuntu require certain hardware minimums, so the computer can effectively only
    be so old. ...I did run into a problem with a specific computer having problems running (20.04?) but was fine running (18.04?).

    Yeah, at a certain point it gets into needing a newer CPU instruction set.

    So I think when I eventually update to the current MythTV, MythTV will require a minimum level of Ubuntu and that little specification will
    probably kill off this old computer.

    I have a hard time killing the ones that still work... <sheds tear>

    KM> Magic. "Honey, I shrunk the data!"

    It is interesting how the computing size has been made microscopic. I remember in the early 70's going into one of the computer rooms and they
    had rows and rows of stands with what looked like what my Mother put the finished cake in. Hard drives, maybe a megabyte each. (Maybe more, I
    know I never asked.) Now I've got a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB plus a 1TB NVMe, in a case in a box that's about the sixe of two or three decks of playing cards stached together!

    Yeah, it's like a tardis, it all goes off into the aether through that
    little tiny gateway!

    https://www.google.com/maps/@-29.3040524,131.9533215,3a,81.1y,294.04h,82.48t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipP0lzPUoOC5wbuK0QoGisC8S42EegUPYo8FV0iL!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipP0lzPUoOC5wbuK0QoGisC8S42EegUPYo8FV0iL%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya341.96277-ro-0-fo100!7i2508!8i1254?coh=205409&entry=ttu

    (the short Google URLs are going away in a couple months, so if you have
    any you need to save, redo them as long URLS.)


    > > > .. Do 8 Hobbits = 1 Hobbyte?
    > > KM> And rabbits, rabbytes??
    > > KM> This is a very good question.
    > > KM> First, catch Hobbit.
    > > Course instruction: Wyle E. Coyote. Teacher Assistant: Roadrunner.
    > KM> Final Exam: *SPLAT*
    > But back then they had resiliance! <squeaky opening noise as
    > rock/anvil/whatever shakes/quivers and finally opens to reveal our
    > barely-scathed hero>
    KM> LOL. My guys think this sounds like their lives. Except with more
    KM> scathing.
    Tell Bram 'hi!'.

    Bran is not at all amused with his present life. Writing Buddy says to
    me, you need more foundation for his yammering on in Book 3. And the
    upshot is, now there's a Book 0 working, wherein he gets to relive
    firsthand all the bad things, instead of just talking about them.


    > .. The reclusive French inventor of the sandal: Philippe Philoppe.
    KM> Oh, I gotta find you the Sandal video...

    Jimmy Buffett?!

    No, some Arab bloke made a funny video about how to stand up to your
    mother when she's about to beat you with her sandal.

    Hint: It did not go well for him. <g>
    þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com

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  • From Barry Martin@454:1/1 to Ky Moffet on Sun Aug 11 10:38:00 2024

    þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com

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