After getting the kid's old laptop to play, I needed a real mouse. The usual laptop built in thumb pad is a pain to use, and this one way getting flaky, it occasionally left clicked all by itself with unfortunate consequences, like accidental file deletion. So I grabbed the mouse off the dying desktop. No go, lap top doesn't have a mouse port to plug it into. All it has are USB ports.
USB was supposed to replace the keyboard port, the mouse port, the speaker& mike ports, and the printer port thus saving five electrical connectors on the back of the laptop. One trouble with this plan. USB doesn't work until Windows boots all the way up. If for some reason Windows croaks, your keyboard is dead, making it impossible to boot from a recovery disk, program the BIOS, run diagonostics, and in general try to fix the problem. Lesson learned. Don't buy a desktop that lacks a real keyboard port.
Anyhow, the old standard mouse won't plug into USB, I needed a USB mouse. So ho off to Staples (the only vaguely electronicky place up here) to buy a mouse. Staples had a regular house house with a dozen different mice. I settled for the cheapest $15 mouse from Logitech. I passed on the fancier wireless mice costing as much as $99. Plugged in the new rodent and lo and behold, it works. Windows carries the code to work USB mice as well as standard mice, and Logitech had followed the standards closely enough for it's mouse to work with Microsoft's software.
Next step, read the instructions, printed in English French Spanish and Lower Slobbovian. The instructions promised a mouse powered orgy if only I would download Logitech's mouse driver package. Being somewhat stupid, I Firefoxed out to the Logitech website and looked for the driver. Logitech has been making mice for many years, and the download page offered pictures of about 100 different mice. Just pictures, no part numbers. On the internet all mice look alike. I began to doubt the wisdom of proceeding when I found out the driver (Setpoint 4.72) was a 52 megabyte file. That's bloatware supreme for a mouse driver.
Doubt rose higher as the install took a good 15 minutes. After the install finished the laptop slowed down. A lot. Bad sign. Plus, all that Setpoint 4.72 offered was to switch the left and right mouse buttons, not something anyone in their right mind wants to do. So, bring up "install and remove programs" and try to remove the mouse driver. All that did was cause failure messages saying the driver could not be removed until Windows had been rebooted. Arrgh.
At least, the reboot worked, I was able to blow Setpoint 4.72 into the big bit bucket in the sky.
That's the last mouse driver I'm ever gonna download.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Promoting the bean counter
Today's Wall St Journal has a piece entitled "Move over, CEO: The Time is Right for the Chief Financial Officer to be a Co-Leader". Written by Philip Tulimera and Moshe Banai, both professors of management.
Real companies manufacture and sell products. Success of the company depends upon economical and high quality manufacturing, effective advertising and sales, and brilliant engineering that produces new products. The head of a real company ought to have experience in all four key activities.
Chief Financial Officers are staff, who keep the books and borrow money. They may know Excel spreadsheets backward and forward, and may be buddy-buddy with the banker, but they are totally ignorant of the key operations, manufacturing, advertising, sales, and engineering. No way should a bean counter (aka CFO) be in a position to call the shots or veto the decisions of the CEO. He just doesn't know enough about the real operations of the company.
Successful companies are run by CEO's who have a clear vision of the company's business and its customers. They make the key decisions about where company resources are invested. They make the projections of return on investment and weight the risks involved in each move. The bean counter only knows the costs, he has no idea of the potential return from the move, or the risk of the move failing.
GM and Chrysler had internally promoted bean counters as CEO's. Ford had a real executive from Boeing. Look who went bankrupt and who didn't.
Leave corporate management in the hands of the CEO.
Real companies manufacture and sell products. Success of the company depends upon economical and high quality manufacturing, effective advertising and sales, and brilliant engineering that produces new products. The head of a real company ought to have experience in all four key activities.
Chief Financial Officers are staff, who keep the books and borrow money. They may know Excel spreadsheets backward and forward, and may be buddy-buddy with the banker, but they are totally ignorant of the key operations, manufacturing, advertising, sales, and engineering. No way should a bean counter (aka CFO) be in a position to call the shots or veto the decisions of the CEO. He just doesn't know enough about the real operations of the company.
Successful companies are run by CEO's who have a clear vision of the company's business and its customers. They make the key decisions about where company resources are invested. They make the projections of return on investment and weight the risks involved in each move. The bean counter only knows the costs, he has no idea of the potential return from the move, or the risk of the move failing.
GM and Chrysler had internally promoted bean counters as CEO's. Ford had a real executive from Boeing. Look who went bankrupt and who didn't.
Leave corporate management in the hands of the CEO.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Meet the Press dodges the health care issue
Just finished watching it. They had Senator Tom Coburn, Tom Daschle, Dick Armey and a new face to me, newsie Rachel Maddox (sp?). David Gregory, the moderator, started off talking about the horrible violence of the town hall meetings and blaming it on the vast right wing conspiracy. They showed a clip of Arlen Spector coping with a voter. And still pix of Obama posters with toothbrush mustaches. Everybody nodded and tut tutted.
Strange, the U tube videos of town halls show a lot of voters with an attitude, and video cameras, and tough questions, but no violence. The newsies are calling tough questions and harsh words violence. About what you'd expect from journalism majors. In the real world, violence means wounding, killing, and burning. As kids we used to say "Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me." The newsies probably never went out on the playground as kids.
At least the Republicans brought up tort reform, and interstate sale of health insurance. The democrats were against both ideas and after a statement from both sides the discussion moved on.
Strange, the U tube videos of town halls show a lot of voters with an attitude, and video cameras, and tough questions, but no violence. The newsies are calling tough questions and harsh words violence. About what you'd expect from journalism majors. In the real world, violence means wounding, killing, and burning. As kids we used to say "Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me." The newsies probably never went out on the playground as kids.
At least the Republicans brought up tort reform, and interstate sale of health insurance. The democrats were against both ideas and after a statement from both sides the discussion moved on.
How to charge an electric car
Been reading here and there on the net about the great blackout that will happen when a zillion electric cars are plugged in to recharge.
Not to worry. The electric grid sees a great fluctuation in power demand, with, as you might expect, a drop of 30% or so in the early AM. Between midnight and 6 AM there is plenty of reserve electricity that could charge a zillion electric car batteries. It would be trivial to have the car's microprocessor[s] start the charging at midnight and monitor it so the battery doesn't overcharge.
If the electric company would offer an incentive, like say twelve cents a kilowatt hour instead of the sixteen I usually pay, I'd hit the "economy charge" button in the car as I plugged it in. Even better, the car ought to default to "economy charge" and require you to press a "Hang the expense, Charge it NOW" button should you need the car sooner than tomorrow morning.
Power companies could install electric meters with built in clocks that would record "off peak" (midnight to 6 AM) electricity use separately from the "peak" (daytime) use. You get a discount on off peak use. In fact, doing so might be a good idea. If I got a discount on juice after midnight, I might take the trouble to run the clothes dryer after midnight. Right now I don't bother, 'cause there is nothing in it for me.
Not to worry. The electric grid sees a great fluctuation in power demand, with, as you might expect, a drop of 30% or so in the early AM. Between midnight and 6 AM there is plenty of reserve electricity that could charge a zillion electric car batteries. It would be trivial to have the car's microprocessor[s] start the charging at midnight and monitor it so the battery doesn't overcharge.
If the electric company would offer an incentive, like say twelve cents a kilowatt hour instead of the sixteen I usually pay, I'd hit the "economy charge" button in the car as I plugged it in. Even better, the car ought to default to "economy charge" and require you to press a "Hang the expense, Charge it NOW" button should you need the car sooner than tomorrow morning.
Power companies could install electric meters with built in clocks that would record "off peak" (midnight to 6 AM) electricity use separately from the "peak" (daytime) use. You get a discount on off peak use. In fact, doing so might be a good idea. If I got a discount on juice after midnight, I might take the trouble to run the clothes dryer after midnight. Right now I don't bother, 'cause there is nothing in it for me.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Who is smoking what?
From the Wall St Journal editorial page:
"As a political strategist, Big Pharma lobbyist Billy Tauzin is starting to look less like Dr. Faustus and more like Jack, trading away his industry for magic beans.
Last week Mr. Tauzin ostentatiously blabbed to the media that his industry's deal to help fund ObamaCare with $80 billion in prescription drug discounts was really protection money. In particular he bragged that he had secured promises from the White House that President Obama would fend off Congressional Democrats who want to "negotiate" drug prices, which in practice means price controls. "
First off, Billy Tauzin is smoking something if he thinks ObamaCare won't insist on lower drug prices, like CanadaCare does in Canada. Once the US has one big healthcare bureaucracy doing all the contracting, the bureaucrats will demand lower prices, and since they will be the only game in town, the drug companies will have no choice. Why the suits running the drug companies haven't figured this out I'll never know. I guess the drug companies are all run by myopic bean counters.
Second off, Obama is smoking something if he thinks a drug company offer of price discounts means anything. "List" prices for drugs are about 20 times the "street" price. Walmart fills my prescriptions for $48 for a three months supply. Medicare Advantage tells me the same drugs have an average sales price of $1023. Translation, a "discount" off a sky high and wholly fictitious "list" price doesn't mean a thing.
Anyhow Big Pharma is still planning to spend $150 million in advertising supporting ObamaCare. Talk about a death wish.
"As a political strategist, Big Pharma lobbyist Billy Tauzin is starting to look less like Dr. Faustus and more like Jack, trading away his industry for magic beans.
Last week Mr. Tauzin ostentatiously blabbed to the media that his industry's deal to help fund ObamaCare with $80 billion in prescription drug discounts was really protection money. In particular he bragged that he had secured promises from the White House that President Obama would fend off Congressional Democrats who want to "negotiate" drug prices, which in practice means price controls. "
First off, Billy Tauzin is smoking something if he thinks ObamaCare won't insist on lower drug prices, like CanadaCare does in Canada. Once the US has one big healthcare bureaucracy doing all the contracting, the bureaucrats will demand lower prices, and since they will be the only game in town, the drug companies will have no choice. Why the suits running the drug companies haven't figured this out I'll never know. I guess the drug companies are all run by myopic bean counters.
Second off, Obama is smoking something if he thinks a drug company offer of price discounts means anything. "List" prices for drugs are about 20 times the "street" price. Walmart fills my prescriptions for $48 for a three months supply. Medicare Advantage tells me the same drugs have an average sales price of $1023. Translation, a "discount" off a sky high and wholly fictitious "list" price doesn't mean a thing.
Anyhow Big Pharma is still planning to spend $150 million in advertising supporting ObamaCare. Talk about a death wish.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Microsoft discourages Windows 7 upgrade
According to Walter Mossberg, computer columnist for the Wall St Journal, Microsoft is making an upgrade to Windows 7 from XP totally unattractive. Microsoft demands that XP hard drives be totally erased and reformatted, destroying all your email, photos, letters, spreadsheets, applications, and drivers before installing Windows 7. Nobody in their right mind wants to risk the losses that reformatting can produce, so figure the army of XP computers will stay with XP and not risk the upgrade to Windows 7.
You have to wonder why Microsoft is willing to take this revenue hit. Used to be people would line up out side computer stores for the opportunity to buy the latest Windows over the counter. Microsoft used to schedule a new Windows release whenever they needed some money. Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP all sold mucho copies to upgrade existing computers.
The reformatting step is totally unnecessary. A new Windows install will work just fine leaving the data on the disk intact. It worked that way for all previous versions of Windows. The reformat the hard disk requirement will be enforced by the Windows 7 install routine, something which a super hacker might be able to defeat, but is beyond the ken of ordinary mortals.
So why is Microsoft discouraging upgrades? It might be that they don't have Windows 7 drivers for the humungous numbers of older machines out there. Each computer is somewhat different, and little bits of hard to write and hard to debug software (drivers) take commands from Windows and make the computer's screen, network port, sound chip and other peripherals do the right thing. Microsoft changed the way drivers work between XP and Vista. XP drivers don't work in Vista. It was a terrible hassle for Microsoft to get the new Vista drivers written for the Vista release.
It may be that this level of hassle was just too much to bear and Microsoft decided to make things easier for themselves. Upgrading from a Vista machine means the machine already has Vista drivers which will work in Windows 7. Upgrading from XP means that Windows 7 must provide Windows 7 drivers for every computer manufactured over the last 12 years. That's a lot of drivers. And a lot of help calls when the machine fails to work after upgrading to Windows 7.
Me, I'm gonna take the hint from Microsoft, and not upgrade from XP. Especially as nobody has given any good reasons for running Windows 7. By all accounts it's fatter and slower and buggier than XP and doesn't work any better. Why bother?
Especially, if the upgrade to Windows 7 fails, you may not be able to get the computer to run XP again. If you can no longer find ALL the CD ROMS that came with the machine you may no longer have the needed drivers to make XP work again. In which case you are up the creek without a paddle.
You have to wonder why Microsoft is willing to take this revenue hit. Used to be people would line up out side computer stores for the opportunity to buy the latest Windows over the counter. Microsoft used to schedule a new Windows release whenever they needed some money. Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP all sold mucho copies to upgrade existing computers.
The reformatting step is totally unnecessary. A new Windows install will work just fine leaving the data on the disk intact. It worked that way for all previous versions of Windows. The reformat the hard disk requirement will be enforced by the Windows 7 install routine, something which a super hacker might be able to defeat, but is beyond the ken of ordinary mortals.
So why is Microsoft discouraging upgrades? It might be that they don't have Windows 7 drivers for the humungous numbers of older machines out there. Each computer is somewhat different, and little bits of hard to write and hard to debug software (drivers) take commands from Windows and make the computer's screen, network port, sound chip and other peripherals do the right thing. Microsoft changed the way drivers work between XP and Vista. XP drivers don't work in Vista. It was a terrible hassle for Microsoft to get the new Vista drivers written for the Vista release.
It may be that this level of hassle was just too much to bear and Microsoft decided to make things easier for themselves. Upgrading from a Vista machine means the machine already has Vista drivers which will work in Windows 7. Upgrading from XP means that Windows 7 must provide Windows 7 drivers for every computer manufactured over the last 12 years. That's a lot of drivers. And a lot of help calls when the machine fails to work after upgrading to Windows 7.
Me, I'm gonna take the hint from Microsoft, and not upgrade from XP. Especially as nobody has given any good reasons for running Windows 7. By all accounts it's fatter and slower and buggier than XP and doesn't work any better. Why bother?
Especially, if the upgrade to Windows 7 fails, you may not be able to get the computer to run XP again. If you can no longer find ALL the CD ROMS that came with the machine you may no longer have the needed drivers to make XP work again. In which case you are up the creek without a paddle.
The Second Civil War Ronald Brownsteen
"How Extreme Partisanship has paralyzed Washington and Polarized America" reads the subtitle on the cover. It has some interesting Washington stories from the old days but settles down to explaining how its all Bush's fault. The text slides from one opinion to another opinion with few examples. Stuggles over legislation are always explained in terms of conservative or liberal, with the expectation that the liberals ought to win most (or at least some) of the time. He talks about "poison pills" and "the olive pit in the jelly doughnut" (small but controversial amendments to bills) but never explains just what they are/were, and what they mean.
Ronald's theme is Bush destroyed a happy jolly bipartisan Washington DC because he didn't have Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi over for dinner often enough.
It could be, that Harry and Nancy were pushing for unacceptable policies that Bush felt honor bound to oppose. Since Ronald glosses over just what the policies under dispute were, this reader finds it hard to take sides, one way or the other. For that matter, Ronald avoids discussing the role of the press in all this. Aside from mentioning that Fox news started up in 1997, the press might as well not exist.
Recent political history might also be interpreted as the country is evenly split over policies such as Iraq, gay marriage, abortion, immigration, and the rest of the hot potatoes and neither side has the votes to impose it's solution.
It's too bad. The subject is interesting, but Ronald's lightweight coverage of the situation makes it an unsatisfying read.
Ronald's theme is Bush destroyed a happy jolly bipartisan Washington DC because he didn't have Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi over for dinner often enough.
It could be, that Harry and Nancy were pushing for unacceptable policies that Bush felt honor bound to oppose. Since Ronald glosses over just what the policies under dispute were, this reader finds it hard to take sides, one way or the other. For that matter, Ronald avoids discussing the role of the press in all this. Aside from mentioning that Fox news started up in 1997, the press might as well not exist.
Recent political history might also be interpreted as the country is evenly split over policies such as Iraq, gay marriage, abortion, immigration, and the rest of the hot potatoes and neither side has the votes to impose it's solution.
It's too bad. The subject is interesting, but Ronald's lightweight coverage of the situation makes it an unsatisfying read.
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