intuitive engineering

 

Robert Heinlein answered fan mail with a form letter (article by Kevin Kelly; he found an actual copy of the form letter in his own files), sometimes an index card, up until around the early 1980′s. Virginia Heinlein made a comment about the form letter she and Robert used to reply to fan mail in “Grumbles from the Grave”. There are references here and there to an index card form of it as well. The actual form letter itself I had never seen.

I hadn’t thought about it – that there would, of course, be hundreds, perhaps thousands of these letters scattered about in file cabinets. It’s a great find. Thousands of links across the internet to it today, perhaps gone tomorrow.

 

 

I think of a dusty Colorado road leading up to the Heinlein’s place in the 1960′s. A mailbox stuffed with a ragged collection of envelopes, out at the end of the drive, the house up over the hill. Barbed wire fences. Weeds and tall grass.

Reading the answers in the form letter, guessing the questions asked or requests made that would cause any of them to be checked off and sent as a response, is a lot of fun. There is a tremendous shortage of new work from the Master, since his death.

 

  

 

For Us the Living wasn’t great Heinlein, but it was worth reading if nothing else as the origin for Future History.

Variable Star had echos of Robert Heinlein in the plotting and the initial characterizations, but it’s Spider Robinson’s voice in the writing.

This form letter has all the original Heinlein voice, the warmth and eloquence and clear language. It’s a hell of a find, just for the pleasure of reading Heinlein again.

In one selection, Heinlein refers the letter writer to an essay:

“( )      Essay, Mental Telepathy, Mark Twain’s Works, Harper & Brother.”

There doesn’t seem to a be a copy of the actual essay – but I found a review of a book containing Mark Twain’s essays on Mental Telepathy:

 

“…Twain’s interest in travel by thoughts or between minds is not as famous. Considered in two similarly titled essays, Twain’s mental telegraphy, resembling telepathy, influences thoughts and actions of others. Not having heard from someone, Twain writes that person and, while writing, he concentrates on that person, then destroys the letter, and shortly receives one from the person. The concentration linking them prompted the other to write. In this manner, he believed minds could communicate over wide distances. A visual example is Twain’s seeing someone, not present, he later meets dressed as he saw her; her knowledge she would meet him linked their minds. Mental telegraphy explains similarities of Rasselas and Candide, written by contemporaries separated by the English Channel, just as Twain influenced William Wright to write about silver mines when he, in the East, conceived the idea and thought Wright, in the West, the man to do it. The internally-directed concept of a second-self in dreams and, later, other possible dream-selves and lives led Twain deeper into the subject…”

Review, Tales of Wonder by Mark Twain

 

That could be a response from Heinlein to anything from “You wrote exactly what I was thinking on <insert subject>.” to “Your character <insert character name here> reminds me of my aunt Sarah.”

In another selection, Heinlein makes reference to:

“( ) Renshaw: Saturday Evening Post, You’re Not as Smart as You Could Be, April 17th, 24th and May 1st, 1948″

That article from the Saturday Evening Post is available.

Heinlein made reference to Dr. Samuel Renshaw in “Gulf”, in “Citizen of the Galaxy”, and in “Stranger in a Strange Land”[1]. The Saturday Evening Post article is a detailed explanation of Dr. Renshaw’s work. So… This perhaps is Heinlein’s response to a question about Renshaw, and an “Is that the Dr. Renshaw you meant in your book <insert title of book>?”

Or it could be a reference to the writer of the letter’s personal failure to reach his or her potential…

With Robert Heinlein, it could be either, depending on the circumstances. You have to wonder if he placed it there to be read as an unchecked reply, rather than ever checked at all.

 

— dsm

 

Tags: Heinlein, scifi, writing.

 

I moved off of hostgator.com last week on Labor Day. I chose dreamhost.com as the next hosting facility. I’m really going to try and stay for at least a year in one facility, even though moving only takes a couple of hours now, plus time for DNS to point to the new nameservers.

Dreamhost has a single plan, to which you can add. So we start with the basic plan for one year ($9.95/month, plus a wordpress discount, roughly $110), add two single IPs (not guaranteed to stay the SAME ip, but configured as unique to the site, $3.95/month for a year, roughly $44 each per year), configure SSL (no charge). And I have exactly what I would hope to have. At a cost of $198/year. $16.50/month. That’s a bit more than I would have hoped, but workable.

hostgator would have charged either $28.95/month (one reseller hosting plan, plus two ip addresses at $2/month each, and that doesn’t count the two SSL certs at $10/each install fee…), or $23.90/month (two separate accounts, $9.95/each, plus IP for each, $2/month…), to achieve this.

hostgator technical support was much more formal, and with the Live Chat feature, very responsive. At least they were up until I refused to solve a problem by upgrading my plan. They were constrained by marketing and administrative limits, but technically not bad.

dreamhost’s support ticketing system really doesn’t ticket. It assigns a number to each individual communication to support rather than gathering them into a single issue. I don’t like it. For me as a user, it is too informal, too easy to fail to get a quick communication response back. It may do some grouping that users can’t see internally, not sure.

The first night in the facility the (new) server I was on ran out of root filesystem space and needed to be rebooted to reconfigure space and resolve. This caused issues with WordPress from the admin point of view, but except for downtime during the reboot was likely invisible to traffic to the site.

When dougmunsinger.com was moved to an individual IP address, the apache config was missed and I got the “It works!” default apache testing page – five minutes after sending in a support request it was corrected. But there was no communication back from support on this issue, they just fixed it.

My overall impression is the support guys are linux-oriented, they run Debian Etch as the current version, and if the site stays accessible, reasonably fast and accumulates uptime, I can live with this situation. I am currently having an argument with support over some settings in apache that I believe are non-optimum. Discussion might be more accurate. Not critical, I have at least a temporary workaround in place, but, the server is tuned incorrectly at a default setting… IMHO.

I am watching my domain registrar in France, though – they have been Beta-testing a xen hosting solution, which if it pans out and remains reasonable in cost, would give me full control over the (virtual)s server, and that, frankly, would be ideal.

In the support form for submission to dreamhost.com, there is a drop down to indicate your expertise level as a user:

• “Please explain everything to me very carefully”
• “I do know some stuff but please don’t assume too much”
• “Overall I know my stuff, but I’m a little shaky in this area”
• “I have a good understanding of this stuff”
• “Not to be rude, but I probably know more about this than you”

That last is most likely to be true at the first level and even second level support people reading the support message from me. I don’t necessarily think it would be true at third level support – there should be testing data, network data, tcpdump, etc., traffic monitoring, OS configuration data, behavior on the hardware they run on, knowledge of the network design – all of that argues that at third level I do not know more than they do about their OS and system behaviors.

Having root on the server, even a virtual server, and better control of the whole setup would be more comfortable for me than blind user land. We’ll see where the beta testing at Gandi goes…

 

— dsm

 

Tags: apache, linux, web hosting.

 

I revise writing, a lot. I’ll revise after I’ve posted something, if it doesn’t ring quite right to the ear, rereading and tweaking a word here or there. Usually simplifying and deleting. I highly recommend William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well”…

Having used Microsoft Word for DOS 6.2 in ancient times, and watched my work disappear in the flick of a monitor, I also save my work, by reflex. A lot. This created a problem in WordPress 2.6. WordPress 2.6 by default keeps revisions. As many revisions as you click “Save” to keep your edits.

I saved a couple of versions of up-sell: if you pay us more, we can fix that…. I went back to open and edit it again a bit later. I got a 30 second timeout error from “wp-includes/diff.php?etc”, and the edit window for that post would no longer load. I’m pretty sure that is the script that works through the revisionings for the post in the process of bringing up the editing window.

I tested further — no other post had an issue. Just this one. Which makes sense. It is longer than most posts, it went through extensive re-writing and adding to, and the revisions must have been, well, there must have been a lot of them. Apparently enough to hit a WordPress or server limit, and cause a timeout.

I could still bring up the post on the weblog site itself. I did, and went to “View Page Source”. I copied the html and text from the page source, deleted the existing post entry, recreated it, pasting the page source back in, thus keeping blockquote tags and paragraphs and all the stuff I would prefer not to do all over again. [1] It also changed all of my punctuation to ASCII/html code like &#8217; (apostrophe) and &#8220; (double-quote, open).

I re-published the post, edited the “Published” time to match when it originally was placed, made sure the permalink was identical to the original, and the problem was gone. For that post. The problem of revisions accumulating was still present.

There is (I love WordPress) already a Revision Control plugin. It allows you to limit the number of revisions WordPress 2.6.x will keep on hand. It was written by Dion Hulse, and it gives much more, well, revision control.

You can delete all of the previous versions – by individual post or page, so far, saving it with the revisions set to the disable – if you want revisions (I like to keep 4 back), save with the default revision setting (for me, 4) for the page. You cannot (yet) globally delete all revisions: “Disabling Post revisions on a post deletes all revisions for that post. However, Disabling globally does not delete current Revisions,” from Dion’s notes on the plugin. Too bad – that would have kept me from having to recreate that post I lost, possibly.

I would expect that WordPress will incorporate this into basic function. It’s too easy to end up with version after version after version, endlessly, without this kind of configuration being available at the admin panel.

 

— dsm

 

---

 

NOTE: visual editor in WordPress

I write in html tags. I don’t use the visual editor in WordPress. I found that it kept changing the internal structure of the html code and breaking things. It could not cope with placing a link in the title of a lightbox.js image, for example. I disable it for users, so it can’t mess with page or post structure, accidentally.

Embedding a link in the title for lightbox.js – granted, that’s not simple structure – you have to use &number; references to get the code to come through. The visual editor would completely break it by “interpeting” it better. The fckeditor plug-in was better – but it kept adding additional “fckeditor” tags trying to keep track of the nesting of the link in the title, so I deactivated it as a plugin and only use it in specific situations. But – that said – fckeditor did not break the nested html code required to embed a link in the title for a lightbox.js-displayed image.

Go back to article

 

Tags: plugins, WordPress.

 

I checked just for grins. If you are running Linux or some variant of UNIX, /etc/hosts is your (testing) friend.

I placed an entry for the hostgator IP address pointing to my primary domain. A UNIX host will check files first, DNS second [1]. If I point the browser to https://primarydomain.com, I get:

an information.com redirect from hostgator

The redirect is still there.

I ran my sites on https for quite awhile. Many of the search results I have in google point to that https:// URL. Think about that.

If https:// redirects properly to http://, there is no issue at all. If the https:// times out, many users will figure it out, again, not much of an issue. At the very least they’ll think maybe the site is down, and quite possibly try again.

Eventually the search results will reflect the current addressing.

If those users get to a site that appears as if it is supposed to be at that address — the result page for that hostgator redirect looks very similar to many of the pages parked on domain names no longer in use — that pretty much drops that user out completely. He got to the site, he got an apparently valid response. It no longer exists anymore, for him. That’s destructive, damaging.

And the thing is, it’s MY domain name. Not theirs. I thought it up, I registered it. It directs to my creativity, my writing. Not in any way, shape or form is this redirection an acceptable behavior. It is an action allied with the dark side, done because they can, not because it is right.

 

— dsm

 

---

 

[1] Note

You can change the order in which a host resolves network addressing, and many other pieces of network data in /etc/nsswitch.conf.

By default most distributions have the entry “hosts: files dns”. Some include “nis”. This file can change the default behavior.

Go back…

 

Tags: website.

 

from hostgator…

 

 

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 1:59 AM, wrote:

Hello Douglas,

Your account appears to be a recent addition to the HostGator family. If there was a problem with the service you were receiving, I’d like to see if I could help you.

We would like the opportunity to resolve any problems you may be having with our service. There maybe something that I or one of our administrators can do to resolve your issue.

I look forward to your reply.

 

 

So I’m back in the family. ;^) But not for long.

I replied…

 

 

You had numerous opportunities to resolve this.

None were availed of.

This was the final straw:

 

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

support@hostgator.com

Technical details of permanent failure:

Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 Connection denied after dictionary attack (state 14).

 

and this didn’t help:

 

“Doug,

I do see what you are trying to do, and the only way this will work properly now that i see that you have a shared account is that you upgrade to a reseller. Let me try and explain why.

On a shared account, you can only have the primary domain with an SSL. What you would need to do is get a reseller account, and then setup you non SSL subdomains as accounts of their own.

If you have any questions we’ll be glad to answer them.

Thank you,k”

 

That plus redirecting https://primarydomain.com to a bogus search page after uninstalling private SSL, pretty much put you guys on the side of evil.

Please cancel my account and refund my money. I spent much of the weekend trying to sort this out.

–doug

 

 

Several hours later…

 

 

I understand your frustration however I am showing that your domain name servers (DNS) are not pointed to HostGator and in face after conducting further research I see an administrator had picked up on this as well and notified you that you must allow the propagation period for a domain name when you change the DNS. Propagation period is any where in between 48, no more than 72.

I am showing the DNS is not pointed to HostGator any longer there fore we are unable to show if there is still an issue with your account however the DNS seems to be the last and final resolution since all other issues (such as clarifying the URL’s) were resolved.

I look forward to your reply and how you would like to proceed.

Regards,

 

Yeah – actually the DNS is completely correct – it points to that other hosting company…

Last reply – after this I’m just going to send the same polite request for a refund.

 

That was the resolution of the issue. A different hosting company. It is absolutely pointed correctly.

The DNS had been pointed correctly and propagated completely. The issue has never been technical – this is administrative design that forces a higher cost than is acceptable in the market. Two individual accounts with the features I want would run $20.00 per month at hostgator. The only expansion is into a higher level “plan” at 24.95/month. And the behavior and hard sell is outrageous.

You were as of yesterday still redirecting https:// traffic from my domain to some advertising search site, from which you probably derive revenue. I consider that wholly inappropriate – https should either redirect (your apache servers are quite capable of that) to http or time out without a connection.

Please complete cancelling my account and refunding the money.

–doug

 

By the way, almost none of these communications are consistently the same person – so far I’ve run through at least three different tech people and four to six sales guys, depending on whether or not you count the “Live Chat” last evening or so.

 

— dsm

 

Tags: support, website.

 

I’ll never get a response – the email to hostgator support was blocked. Somehow, that’s just perfect.

 

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

support@hostgator.com

Technical details of permanent failure:

Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 Connection denied after dictionary attack (state 14).

 

Well. That’s one solution.

hostgator has a live chat. I opened one at 11:30 PM to the sales section. They responded.

I indicated that the blocked email was an issue, outlined the rest of the issues, and asked that my account be canceled…

How likely am I to recommend hostgator? One of the questions on the webform I was directed to submit to cancel asked that… Not bloody likely. But there isn’t an option to select quite that…

 

— dsm

 

Tags: website.

 

I moved my websites off my home servers several weeks ago. I have Verizon FIOS and for some reason they finally got around to adding port 443 to their blocked ports, outgoing. They had always blocked port 80.

I chose hostgator.com to host the sites. I did some research, most of the reviews of the company were laudable. One reviewer indicated that after three months hostgator had insisted he needed to move to a dedicated server because of the “load he was generating”. He complained in the review that that was not the case, that hostgator was upselling. I didn’t understand the term…

I think I do now. But I’m still shocked at how fast the service went downhill. Three days ago I was still reasonably ok with hosting with hostgator. Now, late Tuesday evening, DNS for my domains points to a new hosting facility’s nameservers. And I’m writing this.

I did two things correctly. I kept current backups of everything hosted. And I did not transfer any domains to the hosting facility. My domain registrar is in Europe – I’ve been using them for almost 8 years, they’ve been outstanding to work with.

If your domain is registered outside of your hosting facility, redirecting traffic is just change the DNS nameserver delegation. You don’t even have to tell the old hosting company there is a change until after the DNS has propagated.

Here’s the thing – hostgator monitors the whois record. At one point in this whole saga I determined I might have part of a solution if I re-pointed DNS to everydns.net, and then used a web redirect to fix hostgator’s bogus https redirect – it didn’t work, but almost immediately this became a subject in the support tickets I had opened with hostgator. It would make sense – issues would definitely stem from nameserver re-pointing. But it also is a damn good warning of which customers are leaving the fold.

I purchased one year’s hosting at $9.95 per month. I added $2/month for a dedicated IP address, a requirement for private SSL. I checked the shared SSL – it only served directories from within ~/public_html. I wanted the websites isolated from each other, outside of each other’s document root, so that didn’t seem to be the right solution. Initially (this is important) addressing any query to a domain at https resulted in a timeout and that SSL connection being unavailable. Proper behavior – I wasn’t yet set up for that, so it should not be present.

Once nameservers had propagated and I could access the site, I asked that they enable private SSL using my existing SSL cert. They would – at a $10 charge to install the cert. OK, so be it. I authorized that. (Cha-ching…). They enabled the SSL. It worked… Sort of.

What it did was allow private SSL access to the primary domain. And no SSL access anywhere else on the hosted site – subdomains, add-on domains, nothing was accessible by either the private SSL or the shared SSL. Any SSL query would redirect to the primary domain home page at https:. I figured OK, they put in a blanket redirect, I’ll open a ticket in a bit and work that out.

Three days ago I opened the ticket. And over the Labor Day weekend, I pursued a solution. Sigh.

I described the situation. I had SSL access to the primary domain, but could no longer access subdomains or add-on domains via SSL – all I wanted was for the primary domain to be full securable, and to be able to access the WordPress administrative functions for two add-on domains via SSL, and to access password-protected subdomains with SSL. Neither of these is public, shared SSL would have been acceptable.

I was initially told that this could be done by moving the subdomain out from the dedicated IP address and back to the shared IP.

 

Good morning,

This issue is being caused because the certificate is setup to use primarydomain.com so when you access port 443(https) via that IP you are sent to that website. What you will need to do is have the other domain https://dougmunsinger.com taken off of the dedicated IP and then you can use the shared SSL. Would you like us to do this?

Thanks,

 

I asked if that would solve the subdomain access as well…

 

Would that also solve access to subdomains within primarydomain.com? Or would those subdomains need to go off the primary domain and onto dougmunsinger.com as the domain (which is possible, I think, but not a perfect solution)

– doug

 

And I got a reasonable response. I don’t think sales was on the line yet at this point.

 

Hi Doug,

All the domains you wish to use the shared ssl will need to be moved off of that dedicated ip. Let us know how you would like to proceed.

Thanks!

 

I was then told I couldn’t do that – hell, let me quote the reply:

 

Good afternoon,

This cannot be done as it would conflict with the VHost, as the shared IP is different than your dedicated IP and your IP is hard set in the zone file.

Thanks,

 

Interesting response. True, too. But it is a limitation of their setup and procedure, not impossible. They do a funky

add-on-domain.primarydomain.com

redirected in apache to

add-on-domain.com

or maybe that’s reversed. At hostgator you have to guess what the DNS records actually in place are. And you can’t see server-level redirects or address re-writes at all…
– so once the dedicated IP is assigned you are screwed. However – that’s process. Not a true limitation.

By this time the system had opened two tickets – not sure how. Both on the same issue, and until the very end of the thread they couldn’t seem to combine them… Eventually I got:

 

“Hi Doug,

The issue here is that you only have one account as a shared client. In order for these domains to be moved off of the dedicated IP they will have to have their own account. Were you thinking about moving up to a reseller package? You could then create separate accounts for each of these. Please let us know if you have any questions or if I a not understanding what you want to do correctly.”

 

So actually, I could have the solution if I paid more money. After several clarifying emails, where I insisted that a reseller account was out of the question, and that this functionality was simple and should just be fixed to work, back and forth, we have this response:

 

“Doug,

I do see what you are trying to do, and the only way this will work properly now that i see that you have a shared account is that you upgrade to a reseller. Let me try and explain why.

On a shared account, you can only have the primary domain with an SSL. What you would need to do is get a reseller account, and then setup you non SSL subdomains as accounts of their own.

If you have any questions we’ll be glad to answer them.

Thank you,k”

 

So – I’m paying more at this point, for a dedicated IP address and private SSL to the primary domain – for less functionality?

I asked that they revert the dedicated IP back to a shared IP and re-enable shared SSL. They did, as of Sunday evening late.

They also redirected https traffic obnoxiously. As soon as this was reverted, instead of https:// URL’s either redirected to http:// (appropriate) or simply unreachable (appropriate) – they were redirected to some search site.

As soon as I refused the upsell to a reseller account (Cha-ching – that literally is double – $25/month ($24.95, but who’s actually counting 5 cents at this point?)), responsiveness dropped to pretty much zero. Instead of a one hour response, which had been usual, I got overnight. Maybe. And the responses stopped actually addressing the issues.

I complained bitterly about this redirect on Monday, and got no response. I did get:

 

Hello,

It appears that the domain has just had its nameservers changed. The WHOIS information shows that it was changed today and was pointing previously to dns.gandi.net. It is now pointed to

NS1065.HOSTGATOR.COM

NS1066.HOSTGATOR.COM

It normally takes 48 – 72 hour for the nameservers to completely propagate, allowing you to view your site using the domain name around the world. You might not be able to use the domain name to view your site until after that time.

If there is anything else we can help you with do not hesitate to ask.

Thank you,

 

Hmmm. I wasn’t aware that whois actually gave a history of nameservers. Actually, checking the command, it does not. That suggests they monitor the command at hostgator for changes. And since he had the history, they save the data for at least their tech support guys, if not their salespeople. At the point in time I changed the DNS nameservers, it was with an eye to finding a workaround for the hostgator https redirect, while trying to get tech support to address it.

A reasonably courteous response, actually. But it completely avoided addressing the https redirect (that redirect really pissed me off – can you tell?). Which has nothing at all to do with nameservice at this point – I verified this behavior on remote access servers where the DNS change (brief – like 20 minutes) was never even seen. I just now edited /etc/hosts and re-pointed to the hostgator address for the server instead of the current one and as soon as I do, https brings back the same page. Just intentionally coercive.

Because Verizon used to allow port 443 (SSL) a lot of the search results for the sites I administer are https. A bogus redirect was unquestionably not acceptable. I sent sales queries to bluehost.com and to dreamhost.com, both are listed by WordPress as acceptable hosting companies.

I made up a list of questions which outlined exact requirements, hopefully to avoid this same situation. Both companies gave good answers. This was starting Sunday evening through Labor day, Monday. I chose dreamhost.com, moved the site, re-pointed the nameservers. In a day or so (well within the 45 day trial period at hostgator) I’ll ask hostgator for my account to be closed and the money refunded, after I delete everything off of the server. Once that’s done I’ll click “publish” on this article.

un-Cha-ching.

You know, just out of curiosity (and since I’m already off the hosting anyway), I’m going to submit another ticket to see how much it takes to remove the redirect… It may not be a true test, but let’s see how flexible they are in the face of adversity. Here’s the email to open the ticket:

 

I recently asked that private SSL be dismantled for this account. It was. Once it was dismantled a redirect went into effect for https://myprimarydomain.com to http://searchportal.information.com/index.mas?epl=00680014UV_a_verylongstring.

Please remove this redirect. Acceptable behavior for this kind of thing is for https:// urls to redirect back to http:// OR for https:// to time out since the connection is not available.

To redirect to a bogus URL for https is unacceptable. I have re-pointed the domain away from hostgator to resolve this issue to a host I use for other domains. I can re-point back on my local DNS for testing purposes – please let me know when you have removed this behavior.

Thank you,

— doug

 

My guess is the response won’t be satisfactory, but should be interesting to see what happens.

…12:19 AM 20080903, no response at all.

On the other hand – the host dreamhost placed me on had root filesystem space issues tonight – they responded, and I could watch through the (full) bash shell on the server as they fixed it, up until

 

Broadcast message from root@server (pts/8) (Tue Sep 2 19:22:38 2008):

 

The system is going down for reboot NOW!

Connection to server closed by remote host.

 

The website was also down after they assigned a dedicated IP address – this was resolved within 5 minutes of reporting it. Just an apache misconfig.

This kind of sysadmin stuff I can tolerate, within reason.

At this point I have two dedicated IP addresses and SSL enabled successfully on both of my primary sites. I’m paying slightly more than for the single account at hostgator, but certainly less than two or more shared accounts on hostgator would have cost.

 

— dsm

 

Tags: web hosting, website.

 

I tested a large number of clipboard history managers in windows, as well as several virtual desktop programs. There are two programs in KDE and one functionality I use all the time. In order to at least have some semblance of a sane working environment and not feel completely crippled in using Windows, duplicating this on windows was important to me.

Konsole – the KDE terminal program – can be duplicated by console2, with UNIX functionality added in on the backend by Cygwin.

Klipper, KDE’s clipboard and history program – to duplicate that functionality would require a searchable clipboard history available instantly. By default Windows has nothing like this. I tested a large number of programs before finding what worked best for me – clipx.

Some minor glitches – if the history setting is very large (800 plus entries) bringing it up for use can take several minutes. The solution is to set a reasonable history – 250 entries seems to be workable. The history is brought up by shift-ctrl-F3, and then searching is typing text within the search field in that window. Pasting depends on the windows program behavior – each individual program seems to be different. Sometimes clicking “paste” in the window will actually paste text in – for other programs it sets the current clipboard to that entry – but you will still need to shift-ins or right-click or whatever to actually paste.

 

This has some of the same risks as a clipboard history in KDE and your .bash_history file – if your system is compromised (hacked), data is kept available to be perused and used. Some caution is in order, be aware of this.

Multiple desktops – I had tried the desktop utility that came with the Windows Resource Kits back when I had a Microsoft Tech Net subscription (a long-time-ago). I tried various other free desktop products including a java-based program in the last several years. They mostly all worked but either had some odd way of reordering and dropping windows when shut down, or didn’t follow my method of working closely enough to be really useful.

One of the desktop programs – I can’t recall which, it didn’t stay on the machine very long – was unpredictable in behavior and occasionally made windows unusable. It required a reset of the machine to resolve, either a three finger salute (ctrl-alt-del) or a hard reset by holding the power button for ten seconds until it powered down.

virtuawin has turned out to be stable in over two years of use and to provide much of the functionality of UNIX desktops in KDE. I set up hot-keys to have ctrl-alt-1 bring up desktop #1, ctrl-alt-2 desktop #2, etc. I’ve been using a two-headed windows machine (two 1650×1400 LCD screens), and this hasn’t been as necessary as in the past. It still comes in very handy on a single head desktop or laptop.

 

 

— dsm

 

Tags: cygwin, UNIX & Windows.