Langoliers

I was watching Stephen King's "The Langoliers" (1995) (TV). I thought that there was an additional scene? Or am I thinking of another movie?

I thought when they return to the "future", men in blue outfits were rebuilding the world. Just before the present catches up, they zip into a rift to work on the next future.

UPDATE: I am mixing this up with a similar new twilight zone episode.

Microsoft Conspiracy or Bug?

Could this be another monopoly violation? According to a recent Bill Gates memo uncovered from http://antitrust.slated.org/

Most of the problems with installing Linux has to do with APCI in the BIOS. Windows always works, why does Linux not? Microsoft is at the heart of the problem. While I was trying to install Linux Mint on my new Compaq Presario F700, I traced some of my problems to the BIOS, nothing new here. But I finally found a concise, technical explanation of why! This web page: HOWTO Fix Common ACPI Problems says:

"The ACPI Specification defines the requirements for the DSDT (and everything else, for that matter) pretty explicitly. Intel's ASL compiler, iasl, used to compile the DSDT to AML from ASL, will throw errors and warnings if the underlying ASL is buggy. Unfortunately, Microsoft's ASL compiler allows many of these errors and warnings to sneak by. As a result, many OEMs write buggy DSDTs, and it turns out that Windows is very forgiving of bugs in the DSDT that get by Microsoft's compiler (not surprisingly). What this means is that a DSDT that does not conform to the ACPI specification will work under Windows, even though it shouldn't. However, when you try to use it in Linux, where the ACPI developers expect that the DSDT is written to comply with the standard (and the Intel ASL compiler), the buggy sections of the DSDT are unsupported. If you have a buggy DSDT, ACPI may not be aware that certain devices exist. Or, if it is aware, it may not support all of their capabilities. If you have either of these symptoms (missing or incompletely supported functionality in /proc/acpi), then the cause may be a buggy DSDT."

• ACPI — Advanced Configuration Power Interface
• DSDT — Differentiated System Description Table
• ASL — ACPI Source Language
• AML — ACPI Machine Language

I am wondering if this is not a symptom of a common computer problem that I have seen. With only one implementation in use, two bugs can cancel each other out. OEM's need to stop using M$ complier and start using Intel's, and make M$ fix windows."

Myth TV saga

Tried mythdora, with pinnacle card, works ok. Added new PVR-150, no joy, trying to debug. May try new version of knopicMyth

Do you know this Sci-FI Story?

Starts in space as a military (dictator) ship gets energy from a sun/nova? When they return to the moon base (a prison) years later. It is deserted. Everyone seems to have left in a planned, slow manner, as though it just was no longer needed. When they get to Earth, the cities are also deserted. Everyone seems to live a rural life. A prisoner had invented cheap energy from just a few coils of wire. It transformed the way of life. Son of the inventor? is given more time to adjust. His father created the library system.

Is Microsoft Obsolete?

Review and comment on my talk to Kiwanis (Bartlesville, OK). Given Jan 3, 2007 was a big success. Ran out of Kubuntu disks. Will bring more, plus OpenOffice! The presentation is in both ODP (Open Office) and PDF formats. Please leave comments here.

Starting Over with a New CMS

Learning a new CMS for my two web sites. They were wiped out, along with 450 on the same server. So, I'm taking this opportunity to start over. Xaraya is not only a CMS (Content mangement system) but a Web foundation. Update: Sept 2006, Now I am using Joomla.

Lack of Standards in Modbus

I am about to teach a class on Modbus to customers. Most of our customers see computers as a tool (This is a good thing TM), and are not programmers. So I have to explain how this very old standard does not cover current use and there are dozen's of different ways to use Modbus. The basic standard has not grown since the 70's. There are no standards for bytes, 32 bits, 64 bits, floating points, bitfields. Even byte order is not followed by some vendors.