HOME Friday 28 July 2000

Again, my ISP, the ISP formly known as EsatcClear, has disconnected me twice in the middle of a session on the internet. On the latter disconnection, at the same time, Internet Explorer kicked in by freezing itself, and, on pressing the most used combination of keys on my keyboard (Control, Alt, Delete), Windows '98 threw up it's usual message window that the programme was failing to respond, so, not having about three days to spare, I clicked the "End Task" button, lost my program, and found that Windows had also inactivated my "Active Desktop".  I realise that I have memory problems. My RAM is a mere 32 megabytes, and on top of that, my three-year-old processor is the original Pentium, nearly a collectors item at this stage, with merely another three years to go before it becomes an antique. I can almost imagine what goes on inside my computer.  The Processor, with calculations whirling about inside its silicon brain, tries to shift some data to its stack and finds there is no more room. Oh bother! And now virtual memory is full! Oh, crossed circuits! Oh cracked chips!  It sends a message to Big Boss Control Program, Windows '98: "Tell that Idiot User I can't work in these conditions." An irritated Windows '98, curtly orderes you to make more memory available, to "close down programmes you're not using" and to "empty your recycle bin. Why do I have to be telling you this all the time?"  Sometimes you wonder who's really in charge. It isn't as if these programs were great brains. Take for example, The EsatClear (or IOL, who knows, any more) Connection Mananger. After being disconnected for no good reason, I naturally try to connect again. After playing its connection tune once, it stops and informs me that the modem could not detect a dial tone. (What was it playing then, The Fields Of Athenry?) Then it tries again. This time, after playing its signature tune three times, it stops and informs me that the number I am trying to dial is busy. Now (sigh!) it will try again ... After listening to its whistling and hearing no sound of any signal being sent, I cancel it, and then reclick "Connect". This time it connects in double quick time, without any problem. You know what I think? The stupid thing was listening to itself, as a kind of echo-shadow, and thought someone else was using the line.  I'd better not go on, in case I start to think this machine has a life of it's own. Does silicon life still go on inside the case, when it's shut down. Who knows? Who really wants to know? Does anyone out there care? I thought not.

Sunday 30 July 2000

I am reading The Diary Of Tomas Turner, a village shopkeeper, in the period 1754 to 1765. This particular edition, by The Folio Society, comments unfavourably on an earlier edition, which concentrated on the more risqué elements of the diary. Unfortunately, I haven't seen that particular edition, and the present one seems to have gone to the other extreme, to the point where Turner appears to be obsessed mainly with counting money, eating, and religious melacholia. While visitors seem to drop in regularly to share the enormous meals, still, the eating habits seem a little strange. The family dines so often on the previous days dinners, that after a while, I began to wonder who were the original providers of these dinners, since they seemed to cook no original dinners of their own. For example, on Friday, December 2nd, 1757, "We dined on the remains of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday's dinners, with the addition of some mutton broth and cold rice pie." And, some months previously, on Sunday, July 10th, "We dined on a lamb's heart pudding, a piece of bacon, a lamb's head, and the remains (which the cat left us) of a lamb's lights, and the lamb's tongue and brains, carrots, green salad, gooseberry pie and custard ... "  I suppose it was a case of "waste not, want not", even if you caught some sort of horrible cat disease.

Monday 31 July 2000

"What is shareware?" asked the blub on the Softkey Games Compendium CD. It wasn't asking me, of course. It was telling me what it thought Shareware represented. When I saw it was Shareware, I dropped it like a hot potato, so I can't recall exactly what its definition of Shareware was. It is safe to assume that it was the usual ..."try before you buy ... we only charge for the packing and distribution, an additional fee is required to be sent to the creators if you contioue to use any software." Now, if anyone else, besides a CD, asks me what shareware is, I reply, "Paying twice over for one product." It isn't just the paying twice, either. It's the sheer inconvienence of having to go to the bank to take out a cheque or bank draft, and then get an envelope, address it and post it to the developer. And the so-called "registration fee" keeps increasing. It is now much cheaper to buy discount software than shareware, and the product is usually more professional. I cannot see any adbvantage whatsoever in Shareware. I either pay the full price for commercial software, or else I buy Freeware. For that, you only pay once!