The LangaList

The "Billion Monkey" Rule And A Surprise

You've heard the adage: "If a billion monkeys banged on a billion keyboards for a billion years, one of them will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare."

The idea behind this saying is sound, even though the numeration is probably much too conservative. It would be less colorful but more accurate to say: Given infinite time, then just one immortal and tireless monkey's random keyboard pounding would eventually reproduce Shakespeare. Or: Given an infinite number of monkeys, one might produce those works almost immediately.

The upshot is simply this: Given enough time or enough instances, even low-probability random events eventually do happen. In October's Scientific American, columnist Paul Wallich riffs on this thought in a wonderful way. Let me paraphrase several of his examples; they'll help lay the foundation for the point I'd like to make later in this column. 

Let's say a CD ROM has an error rate of about one in a trillion bits. Sounds great, until you do the math: A business installing a large CD-based office suite on, say, 1000 PCs might expect about five of those installs to contain an erroneously flipped bit. Depending on where the bad bit resides, it might be harmless. Or, the flipped bit could cause lockups, instability, or other system problems. (Of course, we always blame the software vendor for crashes, but in reality these are unavoidable *hardware* errors!)

It's worse for hard drives, which have error rates that---while low---are statistically higher than CDs. With today's large hard drives, you might expect something like 200 bad bits spread across the same 1000 PCs for every full disk write. And again, these bad bits could either be in harmless or critical disk or file areas.

Then there's RAM, which has several factors that affect error rates, including the ultimate "bolt from the blue:" cosmic rays. With 128MB systems, that same 1000-PC installation might experience something like one or two RAM bits randomly flipped per day.

It's much worse for relatively sloppy, high-error-rate technologies such as networks: A T1 line might sustain an error every second or two; a nontrivial chunk of router time is lost in detecting these errors, and bandwidth is lost in retransmitting the munged packets.

That last factoid got me to thinking: All Wallich's examples (paraphrased above) are based on standard error rates under standard conditions. But there's a surprise in store because right now we're all entering a decidedly nonstandard period where error rates in our PCs are almost sure to climb. What's more, there's absolutely nothing we, or anyone, can do about it! This surprise--- one that I'll bet you haven't thought about---is the subject of my column at Byte.Com this month.

No, I don't expect catastrophic effects, and I certainly don't expect that my PC will suddenly start typing Shakespeare on its own. But as the example above show, with enough instances, even low-probability events do happen. And as the probability of errors goes up in our systems (as I believe they are about to) we might well see noticeable ill effects. It's something to think about!

Check out the Byte column at http://www.byte.com and then join in the discussion--- it's bound to be a interesting!

(BTW, the Byte column also lists links to Wallach's and related articles, so you can read deeper in this surprising topic area if you choose to.)

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Wayward IE4/5 Patch, Take #3

Two issues back (see http://www.langa.com/newsletters/oct-18-99.htm#patch ), I told you about a patch for the "IFRAME ExecCommand" Vulnerability.

I had successfully downloaded the patch from the site at ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/peropsys/IE/IE-Public/Fixes/usa/IE50/MSHTML-fix/x86/q243638.exe 
but the day my newsletter went out, that page (on the Microsoft server) died: That URL gave a "page not found" error.

Last issue, I told you about the broken URL. But the day the newsletter went out, the link was repaired.

Of course, this probably means that today the link will die again... 8-)

In any case, if you want the iFrame patch and if the gods of Microsoft smile upon you, it should be available again at the link above.

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Java Insecurities

Proponents of Java like to boast of how safe it is. "Java apps *can't* harm your system," they say, "because they run in a 'sandbox' where they're prohibited from direct system access."

And that is indeed the way it's supposed to work. But hackers don't play by the rules; they do all kinds on nonstandard stuff. Now some are starting hand-code Java applets in a way that makes them look safe to run (thus bypassing your system's security settings) but which in actuality can allow them to do just about anything, including nasty little items such as reformatting your hard drive.

There's a new patch on the Microsoft site that can shore up Microsoft's Java "virtual machine identifier" to help detect these bad Java apps. Here's how to tell if you need the patch:

Open a DOS Box (Start/Programs/MS DOS Prompt) and type JVIEW. Look at the top line of the information that is displayed. If the last four digits of the Version number are 2000 through 2438, or 3000 through 3167, you are vulnerable.

Grab the 7MB(!) patch at http://www.microsoft.com/java/vm/dl_vm32.htm, or you can wait for what will probably be a probably more streamlined version of the patch that will show up on the Windows Update site soon.

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Attention Web Designers

I'm about to rebuild the entire www.langa.com site and---I'll be first to admit---I'm no designer.

If you have web design experience and would like a chance to have your work be seen by (literally) millions, drop me a line at fred@langa.com . Maybe we can help each other out!

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Dissenting View On "Milly"

"Millennium" is the code name for the follow-on to Windows98, and last week's item (see http://www.langa.com/newsletters/oct-21-99.htm#milly ) brought dissenting mail from another beta tester (who also shall remain nameless):

I don't know who the person is who wrote to you about Milly, but whoever he is he has this all wrong! This person has NO idea of what he is speaking of.

I took Milly and placed it on a p2 266mhz Puter with 90+ mb of ram and benchmarked it with Sandra Sci Soft 99 before I did. The chipset was running with a 260 to 290mhz varied.

I then installed Milly and it located three faults in the base data files and REPAIRED THEM! (I didnt even know they were damaged) after rebooting twice (once for the repair) The most amazing thing happened! 

*the graphics were sharper
*seek time was cut to almost nothing
*the programs started faster and ran better
*the new backgrounds were better with larger icons

and most important after RE-benchmarking the program...I found that the
p2 266mhz chip was running at...ready?... BETWEEN 330MHZ AND 360MHZ!!!!

For the math deprived, this is a 66% INCREASE IN CHIPSET SPEED!!!!!!

After checking with microsoft, and other computer mags...this was the NORM ALL ACROSS THE BOARD! Everyone received a very IMPROVED speed and some were higher then others. The average speed increase is 42% Sounds to me like this person is p.o.'ed that they didn't make Milly to his specs.....

As for the UI he was complaining about, that is in the new win 2000 and that is for business users and people like that, milly is more inclined for the home pc user that may NOT need a new UI. Jeeze, the things people find to whine about....and no I do NOT work for Microsoft.

Well, there are a few red-flag items in the above: Software can't change the actual speed of your CPU, for one thing. Perhaps the writer means that his 266-based was operating as speeds normally associated with a 333MHz machine. That's a relative speed measurement, and that is indeed possible. (But the actual chipset speed doesn't change at all.)

It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out, eh?

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No Tricks, Just Treats

If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, just use the following link to recommend the LangaList to a friend. Your friend just may find a new source of useful information; I just may gain a new subscriber; and you just may win a Palm III organizer for your trouble (full details also available via this link):

http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#1

Or, win a copy of "Poor Richard's E-Mail Publishing: Creating Newsletters, Bulletins, Discussion Groups and Other Powerful Communications Tools." This book has been described as "An excellent, straightforward manual on email publishing, banner ads, driving traffic and especially ethics." (Full details also available via this link):

http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#2 

Either way, thank you, and good luck!

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Free Cleanup App

I've been following your newsletter for a while...In some respects its an eye opener.... It's hard for me to believe that there are people who don't know what MS-DOS is nor ever dropped down to the command line (been in the computer field for 28 years.) And yes I can see peoples confusion as to what files are safe to delete......

I've enclosed a URL to a program (public domain) that is very very *neat*. It's called EasyCleaner, cleans up the registry, deletes garbage files and also finds duplicates. I was surprised when I first tried it out....*WOW*, a proggy that actually does what it claims to do with no bugs, no gotchas.... I've tried this out on both my systems here at the house as well as systems up at the office, Win95A/B/C versions and Win98.... it does what it claims to do. (and no, it's not just a mirror of RegClean 4.1a.......

http://www.saunalahti.fi/~tonihele/ecleane.htm 

I've downloaded a couple of things from their site and have encountered no trojans nor viruses....

I use the Trojan Defence System for trojan checking and Norton AV for virus checking (just thought I'd pass that along if you are as paranoid as I am about stuff on the net.)

Thanks, Peter!

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Just For Grins

Philip A. Finlaw sends this along:

Q: How many internet mail list subscribers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Exactly Five Hundred:

• 1 to change the light bulb and to post to the mail list that the light bulb has been changed
• 7 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently.
• 4 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.
• 17 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs.
• 21 to flame the spell checkers
• 49 to write to the list administrator complaining about the light bulb discussion and its inappropriateness to this mail list.
• 20 to correct spelling in the spelling/grammar flames.
• 32 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and to please take this email exchange to alt.lite.bulb
• 69 to demand that cross posting to alt.grammar, alt.spelling and alt.punctuation about changing light bulbs be stopped.
• 41 to defend the posting to this list saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts **are** relevant to this mail list.
• 106 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique, and what brands are faulty.
• 12 to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs
• 8 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly, and to post corrected URLs.
• 2 to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to this list which makes light bulbs relevant to this list.
• 15 to concatenate all posts to date, then quote them including all headers and footers, and then add pointedly, "Me Too."
• 6 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy.
• 9 to quote the "Me Too's" and happily add, "Me Three!"
• 3 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ.
• 1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup.
• 24 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion was meant for, leave it here.
• 53 votes for alt.lite.bulb.

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See you next issue!

Best,

Fred

(fred@langa.com)

(Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win a Palm III)

An easier-to read formatted HTML version is available in the "what's new" section of http://www.langa.com.  (The HTML version of each issue normally is available by 9AM EST [GMT-5] of the issue date.) All past LangaList issues are also available via the same link.

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