What You Need to Know about All Things PC
Volume 2 Number 21Click here to return to the back issues page.Click here to return to the main newsletter page.
The Naked PC - http://www.TheNakedPC.com What You Need to Know about All Things PC Publisher: Lee Hudspeth and T.J. Lee Editor in Chief: Dan Butler Contributing Editor: Al Gordon This issue is for Thursday, October 14, 1999 - Vol. 2 No. 21 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Table of Contents ** 01. Letter from the Publisher ** 02. Digital Subscriber Line - It Rocks! (by T.J. Lee) ** 03. Looking at Linux (by Dan Butler) ** 04. Millennium Windows Commentary (by Matthew Smith) ** 05. Musings on Frederick P. Brooks Jr.'s "The Mythical Man-Month" (by Lee Hudspeth) ** 06. Software Bargains and Free Stuff (by Dan Butler) ** 07. Featured Product Recommendation - FoneSync by Paragon Software ** 08. Featured Book - "Poor Richard's Guide to Internet Marketing and Promotions" by Peter Kent and Tara Calishain ** 09. Featured Web Site - AuctionWatch.com ** 10. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff ** 01. Letter from the Publisher Feedback on Jim's Virtual Office series continues to pour in with most of you wondering where they can get a job as a virtual employee. Seems not too many employers are effectively marketing to this need. Look for more on the Virtual Office in upcoming issues of TNPC. In keeping with our theme of "Practical Computing," Dan's Linux series returns with a brief look at how his drives are shared. The concepts he discusses are just as valid on a Windows network as a Linux network. Look for more details on the Linux journey in future issues of TNPC. Guest contributor Matthew Smith speaks his mind on the new Millennium beta for which he offers a more fitting moniker, "The Operating System Formerly Known as Unnecessary." Plus a bevy of product, book, and Web site recommendations along with Dan's bargains and free stuff. We'd like to ask all our TNPC minions to see if our book "The Unofficial Guide to PCs" is in their local libraries. If it's not, please drop a note in the library suggestion box requesting they get a few dozen copies;-). Ditto for any bookstores you happen to be passing through. Thanks. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tugpcs/index.html As always, reader support is what keeps TNPC free, so please pass a copy of TNPC on to co-workers and friends (no spam please!) and always say "I saw it in TNPC!" +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ Get Your Free commercial grade encryption software Folders Lite, is a freeware encryption program that uses the industry standard Blowfish algorithm and offers users the protection of 56-bit encryption. Folders Lite performs "on-the-fly" encryption, allowing the user to put confidential files in a single folder and encrypt them with a simple point-and-click. Folders Lite does all the work behind the scenes, encrypting and decrypting the files automatically and transparently as they are used. For your Free copy, from PC Guardian: http://www.pcguardian.com/pc/folders_free_npc.html +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 02. Digital Subscriber Line - It Rocks! (by T.J. Lee) One thing every Virtual Office worker needs is a fast Internet connection. When I moved to Central California and ordered new phone lines for my home office I was very excited to learn that I "might" be within the loop necessary to get a DSL (digital subscriber line) for Internet access. In non-technobabble terms, if you live in the wrong place you can't get DSL but if you live in the right place you can. And if you live right between the right spot and the wrong spot you might. I was in this twilight zone between the right and wrong spots. Why is DSL worth having? Well, in my new local area DSL (technically an Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line or ADSL) meant getting a Pacific Bell phone line that allowed me to connect to the Internet at 384+ Kbps downstream (me getting stuff from the Internet) and 128 Kbps upstream (me sending stuff to the Internet). Quite a jump from 28.8 on a dial-up modem, no? Not only that, I can use the DSL line to talk or send faxes on while I'm surfing the Net. This let me eliminate a phone line without crimping my virtual employee routine. Too cool. This cost me $200 for installation (a nice technician came out to the house and plugged in a router while I installed the NIC card he gave me) plus $49.95 a month. The $49.95 includes PacBell being my ISP and giving me a couple of email mailboxes and a free personal Web page -- the usual ISP stuff. Without ISP service the DSL connection would have cost me $39.95 a month. So $200 for a router and a NIC (rip-off? a bit but doable) and $49.95 for connection and ISP. I was already paying $21.95 a month with PRIMENet and I could drop a phone line that costs about $20 a month minimum. If you write off the installation as a sunk cost my connection costs go up $8 a month. $25 a month if you amortize the install over the first 12 months. My connection speed increases by about 20 times. I ordered DSL in a New York minute. Then I ran into this good spot, bad spot stuff. Seems I was right on the border. The DSL sales people said that engineering would check it out and get back to me in a week or 10 days. I started getting nervous because I've run into this "a week or 10 days" phenomenon before. Whenever someone says to you "a week or 10 days" what they usually leave off is that it's a week or 10 days -- from whenever you ask. I dutifully call back in a week only to be told it'll be another "week or 10 days". The next time I'm told this I complain, get nowhere, call back and the next sales person actually reads my file through to the end and finds out that when the order was put in sales didn't tell engineering what phone number was being upgraded to DSL. Engineering asked for the phone number and there the file sat. So the phone number was passed along and I was told to check back... in a week or 10 days. Finally, I'm told engineering has gone out to my neighborhood, everything checks out, and I'm scheduled to get my DSL in two weeks. A week later a nice phone person shows up at my door and tells me he's going to check to see if DSL works on my line. Hmmm, sales told me this was a done deal but this guy begs to differ. He does his phone thing and tells me it looks very doubtful that DSL will work. I'm crestfallen. He shows up again the next day and says he realigned the dilithium crystals (well, it sounded something like that) and that DSL would be okie-dokie after all. I'm elated. The next day is my scheduled install date. I get a phone call from PacBell at 10:00 AM and the DSL office tells me that DSL won't work reliably in my area and they're checking into alternatives and I should hear from them, oh, in a week or 10 days. At this point I'm no longer worried about the Year 2000 bringing down the phone system. I figure the phone company is fully capable of self-destructing at any second all on their own. A half-hour later I get a call from the DSL field tech that tells me he's on his way over to install my DSL. Alice, having fallen through the looking-glass, could not have been more confused as I was. Anyway, the technician shows up and the actual install is anti-climatic. He fiddles with the wall plug so I have one phone line to the router and one to an actual phone, I add the NIC card, we plug it in and I'm on the net. No dialing, just an addictive "always on" connection. The NIC card that the phone company provided has the router plugged into it and my original NIC card is hooked to my hub and using ICS I can get out to the Internet from any computer on my small network. Very nice indeed. Next time some security issues involved with that "always on" connection. You can reach T.J. Lee at: mailto:tj_lee@TheNakedPC.com ** 03. Looking at Linux (by Dan Butler) Last time we looked at Linux I had decided to put off using Linux for my firewall/proxy server and instead set up Samba for sharing data between my Linux machine and my PC. This go round I'll give you some details on how I decided to set up my shares and how I referenced them from Windows. If you aren't interested in Linux but are interested in using a Windows-based network the rest of this article will still be relevant to you. My first thought was to put my My Documents folder on the Samba drive. While designing my Samba setup I had two purposes in mind. First to have data files on the network server but still easily accessible by the other members of my family. Another big consideration is duplication. How easy is my setup to duplicate when another machine is added to the network. At one point I considered moving all of my data to the Samba share then using the Windows Tweak UI utility to point the My Documents folder to the Linux machine. After some deliberation and experimentation I scrapped this approach. Instead I opted to leave My Documents where it started (on the d: drive in my case) and add shortcuts in the My Documents folder to specific shares on the Samba machine. The shares are now loaded on an as needed basis and the rest of the family doesn't have to mess with keeping track of drive letters. For any readers who are new to shortcuts or to the UNC (Universal Naming Convention) let's do a quick run through on how to create the shortcut. For this example assume the machine you want to access is named "malini" and the shared area on that machine is named "ice". The UNC for this would be "\\malini\ice". Follow these steps to create your new shortcut: - Open Windows Explorer to the folder you want your new shortcut in. - Right-click in this folder. - Choose New / Shortcut. - For the Command line type your UNC address. In our example this would be \\malini\ice. - Click Next then give your new shortcut a name. - Click Finish Simple isn't it? Double-click your new shortcut to open the remote resource. As far as the shares go I created one folder on the Linux machine called -- /home/documents. I chose to place this in the /home area as that resides on a separate hard disk. Also the other members of my family are already familiar with the /home area of the Linux file tree. Under /home/documents there is one folder for each person to store their own documents. While I was at it I went ahead and created a symbolic link in each user's home to the /home/documents directory. This way the files appear in each user's home area as well. With all of my links in place I can easily open the shares from Windows, or each user's home directory. In addition my data backup is easy now; just copy /home/documents to a zip disk and be done with it. I still do full backups of everything but this gets the critical data on a removable disk that I carry with me when leaving the house. You can reach Dan Butler at: mailto:DanButler@TheNakedPC.com +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ >> Do breathing problems keep you up at night? My products have enabled people to get their first full night's sleep in years. It is completely natural. You will wonder why this has not been made available to you before now. For information send email to: mailto:myrabaldwin@netscape.net +++-----------------------------------------------------------+++ ** 04. Millennium Windows Commentary (by Matthew Smith) STREAKY WINDOWS... Amid reports that the upcoming release of Windows 2000 has been delayed yet again, our attention is being (conveniently?) diverted by news that Microsoft has released the first beta of a new short-term successor to Windows 98. We're not talking about Windows 98 "Second Edition"; that was the PREVIOUS short-term successor to Windows 98. And, no, we aren't referring to the dribbleware collection of patches, fixes, and device drivers we've been spoon fed for the last two years; those represent the update that predates the Second Edition. We're talking about the new version of Windows based on the Windows 9x kernel, code-named "Millennium" (actually, a more fitting - though less intriguing - moniker might be "The Operating System Formerly Known as Unnecessary"). Why unnecessary? Ask Microsoft. Because until recently, the Powers That Be in Redmond had planned to merge the Windows 9x and Windows NT 4x operating systems with the release of Windows 2000. In other words, we were promised a single, unifying upgrade path. Well, Windows 2000 isn't here. In fact, Microsoft will be lucky to ship it by year-end as promised. Interestingly, Microsoft is pointing toward a year-end release date for Millennium, too. On the one hand, Microsoft's comic timing couldn't be better. On the other hand, the software industry - and the increasingly surly consumer base that supports it - isn't laughing. Bottom line: concurrent release dates for Windows 2000 and Millennium constitute an evolutionary fork in the road. We will be forced to make an unpopular choice between two new operating systems at a time when our fondest wish is for consolidated standards and clear upgrade paths. Consider the various versions, editions, flavors, interim releases, and patched releases of Windows 3x, 9x, and NT currently in wide use today. Given this, wouldn't it make sense to give everyone a single upgrade path rather than burden them with more choices? Microsoft occasionally attempts to continue to justify its dual- O/S tendencies as a way of meeting the different needs of home users and workplace users. But this mindset seems to ignore, not exploit, the increasingly blurred distinctions between home, home/office, and office workplaces. A far more elegant solution would have been to concentrate Microsoft's considerable resources on the production of a single new version of Windows, and distribute it in a manner that allowed for a high degree of installation options. This would let the individual end-users decide which features to install for their particular needs and computing environments. Fat chance of that happening. So, if Microsoft makes good on the Windows 2000 release date, why should we get hyped up over Millennium - which may end up representing little more to mainstream users than a gussied-up, bug-fix version of yesterday's Win9x technology? Cynics among us - and we are legion - have an answer. We think that Millennium and all that it represents is doomed to be rendered moot as soon as the first shiny new copies of Win2k arrive, and our patchwork Win9x kernel is finally ditched. That said, is Millennium worth the fuss? Is it even worth a look...? Only if the price is very, very reasonable. And only then if you're locked into a Windows 95/98 environment and you're absolutely, positively convinced that neither Windows NT nor Windows 2000 is for you (and, yes, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft's marketing department handles that one). Windows 98 loyalists will pay a (modest) fee for the convenience of receiving a CD-ROM with the latest release of Win9x, regardless of what it's called. But, despite all of Microsoft's marketing muscle, a costly "Millennium" will probably not be embraced by a mass market conditioned for two years to be holding their collective breath for Windows 2000 and nothing else. Matt publishes "ambin.com: the newsletter" where this article first appeared (reprinted here with permission). You can reach Matt through his Web site: http://www.ambin.com ** 05. Musings on Frederick P. Brooks Jr.'s "The Mythical Man-Month" (by Lee Hudspeth) This was our Featured Book in TNPC #2.20. For those of you who expressed interest in the topic, here is a more in-depth analysis. We left off in the last issue with the remark that Brooks' observations and techniques about software project management are scalable. In fact, his techniques provide tremendous benefits regardless of the size of your coding shop. I can cite from direct personal experience. Our firm PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. began work as a contractor on a large-scale software development project with a team comprised of eight core developers, three adjunct product specialists, and from three to six customer specialists, for a total of up to 17 people. Let's just consider the eight core developers, and apply Brooks' pairwise intercommunication effort formula: n(n-1)/2 where n is the number of team members. So with eight people, the pairwise intercommunication effort is 28 times greater than with two. Things get worse when you factor in team meetings with their many intercommunication pathways. This is important to understand because it helps shatter the long-standing and counter-productive myth that you can solve a project's resource constraints by throwing more person-power at it. Brooks writes, "Since software construction is inherently a systems effort -- an exercise in complex interrelationships -- communication effort is great, and it quickly dominates the decrease in individual task time brought about by partitioning. Adding more men then lengthens, not shortens, the schedule." Project managers often forget that team communication effort involves person-to-person communication AND the training of each worker. The training effort varies linearly with the number of team members since everyone on the team has to be trained to the project's technology, goals, strategy, and tactics. (Brooks offers a very detailed and riveting deconstruction and expose about the myth of the man-month as a unit for a project's scale, see Chapter 2 for the details.) For the next few paragraphs I will pinpoint the pragmatic highlights of the book. Keep in mind, however, that every single page contains one or more gems; this is a book that should be savored not once, but repeatedly. * TEAM ORGANIZATION -- The organization favored by Brooks for large-scale projects is one he refers to as the surgical team (cited source: Harlan Mills). "Mills proposes that each segment of a large job be tackled by a team, but that the team be organized like a surgical team rather than a hog-butchering team. That is, instead of each member cutting away on the problem, one does the cutting and the others give him every support that will enhance his effectiveness and productivity." I leave it to you to study the excellent discussion on pp. 32-37. * SOFTWARE TASK SCHEDULING -- Contrary to the notion -- common to programmers and their managers alike -- that the majority of a software task is allocated to coding, Brooks reveals the following empirical breakdown: 1/3 planning 1/6 coding 1/4 component test and early system test 1/4 system test, all components in hand That's 33% spent on planning (before a single line of code is written), 50% on testing, and only 17% on code writing. Space constraints prevent me delving into the numerous observations, studies, and conclusions Brooks makes on this subject. If you're a programmer, the overall quality of your work can and will improve if you place a greater emphasis on planning (in large part, written documentation, more on this in a moment), let the code take care of itself as a function of the well-laid-out documentation, and then test, test, and test some more. * DOCUMENTATION -- Brooks suggests implementing an entire methodology for documenting a software task. That methodology must: (1) use a consistent format and style; (2) itself be documented; (3) readily support routine -- daily if needed -- documentation updates available to all team members that use revision marks to highlight changes; (4) provide team-wide access to all meeting notes very shortly after a meeting adjourns. In Chapter 10 he lists the ideal document stages (Objectives, Specifications, Budget, and so on). Click here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ TNPC Hot Tips:
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