[12077] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
"Ask Dr. Internet" for March, 1998
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael S. Hart)
Wed Mar 18 20:08:13 1998
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 10:53:23 -0600
From: "Michael S. Hart" <hart@prairienet.org>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
This is "Ask Dr. Internet" for March, 1998
This Newsletter goes out around the middle Wednesday
of each month to a variety of locations.
*This issue is mostly about how to speed up web surfing*
0. Apple G3
1. Browsers
2. Jumpers for Hard Drives
3. More on Year 2000 Leap Year
and
Notes From Edupage.
***
0. Apple G3
Apple is reportedly releasing a new computer, shrouded in secrecy
until this very moment, other than in some implications made in a
new advertising campaign that just says twice as fast as Intel.
A new cpu technology based on copper rather than aluminum will be
the rumored new chip, but this is not verified. If this is it, a
coup will have been scored by IBM, who provided it, by beating up
on all the other chip makers by getting it out half a year before
anyone else. If this IS the new G3, it should run at 400Mhz, and
could quite possibly be significantly faster than the 300Mhz cpus
provided by Intel.
1. Browsers
More About Browser Bloatware. . .Seriously Slow Browsing
Many of our questions this past month have been about an
awful performance when surfing the web, so here are many
tips on surfing.
Here are the quick ones first:
*
Back up your "bookmark" files regularly. . .any time you
add a good site. They vanish more than you should think
possible. Back up your entire browser, as well. . . .
**
Set your cache level to a few megabytes. . .if you would
want ultimate speed. . .you would be surprise at how the
browsers waste a LOT of time thrashing through all 1,000
files that might make up the last few pages you surfed.
Only keep it larger or smaller than a few meg if you see
lots of large files you know you will want to go back to
see again. . .if you rarely go backwards, keep it small.
Many surfers prefer to keep the cache set to ZERO!
***
Turn images OFF when you are hunting. . .only turn on in
case you find what you are looking for and it requires a
look at images. . .then RELOAD with IMAGES ON. Practice
this. . .it will be worthwhile. In many cases 99% of an
unwieldy web site will be banners you have no need for.
****
Save the pages and pictures you want to see again. . . .
Save them separately from your cache files. . .use those
cache files, by sorting through them with something like
LVIEW, to locate the ones you want to save. Be sure you
set LVIEW to show filenames so you don't have to go back
to find them later. You can open them from disk with an
OPEN FILE command. . .much faster than via modem, unless
you MUST see a new version of the page[s].
*****
Buy lots of RAM when it is cheap. . .most computers will
do their own caching, outside all the disk caching; this
will result in speeds up to 100 times faster. You could
use up to 128M of RAM, and performance should improve.
******
Don't bother with web sites that make you go through all
sorts of pages to get where you are going, they usually,
nearly always, are trying to get you to invest so much a
person will then feel they are wasting too much time for
not buying anything, and then will buy something.
*******
When you MUST use web sites that require you to see page
after page. . .try to bookmark the page[s] you want. . .
some will let you. . .some won't. . .worth the try. The
best way to be able to get back to where you went before
is to bookmark the page. . .some sites intentionally had
"kill back" features placed in them, so you can't get on
back to the last page[s] you saw. . .keep bookmarking to
save time, then just delete all the ones you give up on.
Just make LOTS of bookmarks, as they are infinitely fast
when compared to backbackback. Also, when paging. . .if
you can, try the PgUp PgDn and up and down arrow keys if
you can use them on your browser. . .often much faster a
way to move than pointing and clicking. . .if yours does
not work when you try it, try clicking the mouse when it
is in the frame, page or pic you want to move in, first.
This can be particularly handy when you keep arriving at
pages in which you have to scroll down to get to what it
is you went there for. . .for example. . .Yahoo! now has
so much advertising and stuff at the top that you cannot
see ANY of your search until you scroll down.
********
I have revived my surfing machine, and I can tell you it
is a serious displeasure, even though several of my best
friends have persuaded me to start surfing again. It is
like surfing of waves of molasses or even peanut butter,
at least when you use the latest version 4.xx browsers!!
I watch them thrash my hard drives for what is sometimes
literally minutes, so many that I have sometimes just in
frustration rebooted the computer and surfed back to the
site in question faster than the time already wasted....
I have, believe it or not, reinstalled Netscape 1.1, and
am using that for much of my surfing. . .though I should
add that I will also be using 2.x adn 3.x because of the
way I can put their caches in a RAMdisk, which makes the
caching literally over 100 times faster. . .60ns vs 60ms
is a THOUSAND times faster, but obviously my drives were
upgraded from when I made those 60ms benchmarks, but you
probably won't be getting drives any faster than 6ms for
quite some time yet, and that is 100 times slower than a
60ns RAMdisk. If you do not NEED frames and Java I will
strongly suggest you go back to older, less bloatwaring,
versions of your browsers. Netscape 3.05 or 3.06 are in
high esteem among the Geek Lunch crowd.
Even the professionals at our Geek Lunch warn me that it
is impossible to use many browsers without strong chance
of crashing. . .find one you like! However, I recommend
that you back that one up in at least two locations, and
then also try versions of other browsers. . .yesterday I
was downloading a book and it kept slowing downdowndown,
until I finally just abandoned ship and tried again, but
it was stuck on using the files from it's cache, even if
I ran "reload" which is SUPPOSED to get a NEW copy of an
already seen page, as opposed to "refresh" which was for
just refreshing your read of data you already had. Then
I finally resorted to using a totally different browser,
one that used a different caching system, and finally it
was able to get me the whole file.
You will probably experience this from time to time. . .
and will just have to have an arsenal of browsers, but a
careful backup of each one is worth the effort. . .some,
intentional or not, go to war with others.
Most of the 4.xx browser versions are still very buggy--
if you NEED Java or frames, maybe worth the hassle. . .a
more careful look may say. . .maybe not.
For those of you willing to look further than a Netscape
or MSIE browser, try just searching for browsers. . .one
I liked a lot was called OPERA.
********
Many people think the problems lie with their modems and
are trying to get more speed out of their connection but
I warn them that most modems are already going as fast a
speed as their phone lines will allow. . .get modem with
lights you can watch. . .if the RD [Receive Data] lights
are not flashing. . .the problem is not in your systems,
it is a slowdown in the systems you are connecting to.
Keep an eye on your disk drive lights, as well, if these
are flashing a lot [thrashing, we call it] then you will
probably want to check the size of your disk cache file,
it is probably too big.
The speed you get is determined by the modems at both ends, and the line
quality. My GUESS is that you may not get high speeds because that is a
function of BOTH modems AND the lines. You might want to check by doing
calls to some other modems that you are sure work at higher speeds. The
drivers for the modems don't usually change the speed much, if any; they
are usually available from the place your modem is sold or manufactured.
Reminder. . .unless you have VERY quiet phone lines and VERY good modems
at the other end. . .you will not get the highest possible speeds. This
might ALSO be determined by how fast the computers at the other end are;
they might just be slow in getting the data ready for you to download.
In the case of 57.6K modems one end MUST BE TOTALLY DIGITAL as having to
have TWO A/D conversions going on slows things down about to half speed.
If your 57K modem is not getting full speed, check with your provider...
you probably need to have a special number to dial into, or else they do
not really understand what is required for a true high 57.6K connection.
*
Netscape Bug. . .any solutions are welcome:
Call to Undefined Dynalink bug in Netscape 4.
*
2. Jumpers for Hard Drives
When you buy hard drives, make sure you get a half dozen,
or more, jumpers that are the right size for your options
that can be set on the drive. . .you may need several for
the drive ID number, and more for spin up options, parity
and other options, termination, etc. It is important for
you to have these, and some of the new drives use "micro"
jumpers that are VERY small, and very hard to get. . .for
example, Fry's, my favorite Silicon Valley normal store--
wants to sell them in lots of about 15 for $8. Too much,
for something you should be able to buy by the bushel for
a few dollars.
3. More on Year 2000 Leap Year
So far I have not heard of any clock programs for the Mac
that do not handle Feb 29, 2000 properly in all ways. As
for UNIX clocks, they sometimes get so weird that I don't
know WHAT they are thinking, and they pick the strangest,
oddest, dates for files sometimes, even a bunch of files,
all made at the same time might all have been completely,
and apparently randomly, assigned different dates/times--
however the UNIX "calendar" program is very very good and
you could also try EMACS in Calendar Mode.
**
Something You Should Know About "Anonymous" aliases, etc.
It is often quite easy for someone to send a message to a
normal Internet service, even to the computers that run a
service, without even contacting the humans that run it--
and find out who you are. This has happend in at least a
case or two in which people may be fired for sending mail
from a private account that contradicts company policies,
about what can be said or done on company accounts. Your
service should be able to set things up to avoid this but
they night not be wise enough to know that embedded "IMG"
HTML tags which can automatically get "host computers" to
tell everything they know about you. I would like to see
this go down as "cracking into computers" and have bigboy
types hauled in for violations the same way the same type
of things get less powerful people hauled in for.
From Edupage:
MCI AND AOL RECEIVE SUBPOENAS IN MICROSOFT ANTITRUST CASE
The U.S. Department of Justice has served civil subpoenas on MCI, America
Online, and other Internet service providers in an attempt to determine
whether the companies agreed with Microsoft to favor that company's Web
browser (Internet Explorer) over the one offered by Netscape (Netscape
Navigator). The Justice Department is claiming that Microsoft is trying to
leverage its domination of the operating system market into domination of
the market for Internet software. (San Jose Mercury News 20 Feb 98)
"PUSH" FOUND TO BE TOO PUSHY
Industry analyst Ross Rubin at Jupiter Communications summarizes the
situation this way: "Push has gone from the most popular buzzword of 1997
and late 1996 to something verboten on business plans." Recent months have
seen the demise or reinvention of many of the many start-ups hoping to make
a success of push technology (software that "pushes" information out to Web
users rather than waits for them to "pull" it down after surfing to find it).
The reason? Many consumers have decided that the cure was worse than
the illness, and that instead of solving the problem of information overload,
push technology just makes it worse. (New York Times CyberTimes 16 Feb 98)
CREATE THE HYPE, THEN THE PRODUCT
High-tech venture capitalist Ann Winblad says the days of creating a
product, then getting funding to market it are over. "Now you must take
money quickly, or there will be many companies saying they do the same
thing. You need to take the money and declare victory immediately. Then
create a product." (Upside Mar 98)
JAVA -- WITH ONE TEASPOON OF MICROSOFT
In a move that will anger Sun, Microsoft has released new programming tools
to allow software developers to write Windows applications in Microsoft's
version of Java, the computer language developed by Sun. Java was
originally conceived as a language that could allow software to run on all
computer platforms. Sun is suing Microsoft for allegedly misappropriating
the language by creating a version that will run exclusively on computers
using Microsoft's Windows operating systems. (AP 11 Mar 98)
Edupage ... is what you've just finished reading excerpts of--
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***
This has been "Ask Dr. Internet" for March, 1998
