= --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- ======= -L- -I- -B- -E- -R- -E- -T- -T- -O- August 1999 ========= ======= The iMatix Newsletter Volume IV Issue 8 --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- = Copyright (c) 1999 iMatix Corporation - distribute freely Back issues at http://www.imatix.com Comments to: editors@imatix.com Programming -- Technology -- Finite State Machines -- News -- Other Stuff == COMMENT ---...-.-...-.--...-.--...-.-...-.....---..-....--.--..-.-.---.-- Last month I complained that Windows NT was giving me pain. I got quite a few mails back from Liberetto readers. About half asked what I was doing on Windows - surely I'd moved to Linux by now. The other half pointed-out that the fix for my problem was simple. Just change this boot option, start using that parameter, etc. Well, I'm still with NT, and the problem was decidedly *not* easy to fix. Actually, it got worse this month. Bill's Law states that a PC will always die most horribly just when you'd expected to spend the weekend on the beach. Instead of the beach, I ended-up reinstalling NT from scratch, because it would not boot at all. Somehow, a number of vital system files had gotten corrupted. My full backup from the day before did not help... Okay, reinstalling from scratch is not so bad, except for the dozens of reboots, and the fact that my CD writer won't write any longer, and my network won't start*. But the IE4 web look is real purdy. What bothers me is that I persist in using NT on my big system, and 95 on my notebook. When making choices for other people, it's much easier to recommend or install Windows than one of the alternatives. Sure it sucks, but the pain is shared amongst millions. If I install Linux on a PC for a friend, I'll spend the next three months explaining why you need to 'unmount' the CD before swapping it. For my own use, it's true that my CD writer, photo scanner, and other gadgets are a lot easier to get working under any recent flavour of Windows than under Linux. But is this worth the ongoing trauma of not being sure that your principal PC will reboot successfully the next time? Njet. Something else is going on, and I think I know what it is. There is a theory that explains why some people like to eat hot spicy food. The pepper stimulates the pain receptors in your mouth. Your brain responds by pumping out endorphins, pain-killing opiates that give you a warm happy feeling. Noticed how Mexican food makes people go happy and giggly? Now you know why. So, the same applies for other kinds of long-lasting low-level pain. Tattoos, for instance, or body piercing. The body's response to being jabbed, pierced, and cut is to produce endorphins. Hurgh-hurgh, do the other arm now, it feels good... If this theory is correct, it may explain many other bizarre forms of obviously painful behaviour, such as watching TV news, driving to work, going to summer pop festivals, wearing neckties, and so on. You get the picture. We may also finally be able to explain why millions of people seem to be stuck in a love-hate relationship with their PCs and the software running on them. Basically, we're endorphin addicts, getting our daily dose by watching helplessly as the PC consumes our time, our work, and our money. I'll bet you that there is an inverse relationship between hours spent at a PC and hours spent in a tattoo parlour. So here's my programme for breaking that cycle of dependency on Windows: get left arm tattooed with dragon motief, buy a crate of Jamaican Hot! Pepper Sauce, get nipples pierced. With any luck that will produce enough endorphins to make Windows completely redundant, and I can then upgrade to Linux and get on with things. Pieter Hintjens Antwerpen 2 August 1999 * The 'Server' service says 'Error 1130: Not enough server storage is available to process this command'. I don't think I actually *want* to know what this means. Gaining access to such arcane knowledge probably involves a nasty ritual exchange of souls with the devil or one of his earthly representatives. == INBOX -..-..---.-.---..-.-.-.--...---.....----.-.-.----....--.--...----.- From: "Danny Morrow" Subject: Re: Where is Libero Version 2.32 (for Windows)? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, are you going to put out any schemas that will help with Finite State Machines (like Libero does), or are you going to let a fine application like Libero wither on the vine while you chase after a text-parser like GSLgen is so far. I see absolutely NO support for FSM's with GSLgen, because there are no schemas on the iMatix website for code generation, nor anywhere else. Not even a white paper on the subject. Seems like both products are at a standstill, because GSLgen is just getting started and Libero is being neglected. :-) and :-( >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> We wrote the portable command-line version of Libero in 1994 or so, and the Windows version in 1995, using Visual Basic (talk about long-lasting low-level pain!). While the portable version is still up and running, the Windows version was out of date a year after we finished it, not because our needs changed, but because VB changed. The Windows version was incredibly expensive to make. We learnt one big lesson from this: free software must be portable, or it can't be any good. The economics of gradual improvement only work when software can survive a decade of moving from one machine to another. Another thing we have learnt: when software works, don't mess with it. Libero does one thing, and does it well. You can extend its reach by writing new schemas for all kinds of languages and purposes, and people do this regularly. Lastly, we believe that if Libero is going to evolve, it's going to be as part of a larger strategy for code generation, in which state machines are just one of the many objects for which we can generate large chunks of code. GSLgen is the start of this strategy. Instead of working on several different code generators, we're putting our effort into a single code generation engine. Libero does one thing, well, and we don't neglect it at all - we use it every day. Don't mistake change for progress, or stability for neglect. From: BillByrd.com" Subject: Xitami ----------------------------------------------------------------------- My compliments on a wonderful product. I work for a small internet development company in Greenbelt Maryland and each person there runs a copy of their favorite server on their machine for testing things. My server of choice, both now, and in the past two years when I have been developing for the web freelance, is Xitami. Recently just as a joke, a co-worker ran a denial of service attack on my server at work, and I just want you to know that Xitami not only withstood almost 30,000 hits from his Java based attacking program, I did not even notice it attacking until I noticed that number of hits just ticking away. Quite a feat. The DOS program actually spawned seperate threads to hit the server through our LAN and while I did not notice it at all, the number of threads hitting Xitami brought his NT workstation to a slow crawl, and I had Xitami running under window 98! - Bill Byrd >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> :-) From: Ewen McNeill Subject: Re: Liberetto IV/7 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Pieter Hintjens writes: > [The "easy" way to fix the video card thing] > Total time: 55 minutes. Possible fatal mistakes: 10. > [The "hard" way to fix the video card thing] > counselling. Total time: 6 hours. Possible fatal mistakes: 3. Hmm. I thought that NT had a boot-with-standard-VGA mode that you could specify in boot.ini; which if it works anything like the OS/2 equivalent gets you out of this situation. (Boot in VGA mode, install new video drivers, reboot, done. Total time: about 15 minutes.) For more challenge, though, I suggest you install OS/2 and Windows NT on the same drive, using HPFS and NTFS, and allowing two drive letters per operating system (so that the "standard" drive letters are available for company wide shares). By process of eliminiation (I've done this three times now), the "best" way to do this is to install DOS, partition with OS/2 making all the partitions needed, with OS/2 first then NT, delete all but the DOS and NT ones, then install NT, which will be D:. In partition manager, fix the drive to be D:. Reboot, and make the partitions for OS/2 again, reboot, and install OS/2 (a few more reboots elided). Then when OS/2 is working, hack on boot.ini so that NT will boot again (the partitions have changed on it, so it hangs during boot). Finally refix the drive letters in disk manager under NT, hide the HPFS ones, and your away. Until something other than Windows updates the partition table, or even looks at it in the wrong way. - Ewen >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I'll bet you're not into tattoos. == TERMINATE THE PROGRAM -...---...-..----....-.---..---...-...---.-...---.- To unsubscribe, just send us an e-mail.