Mostly: Classical

[Sexton O Blake]

Reading programming books are we?

Years ago when I was just a wee tike (ok about 13 years ago when I was 23), our boss decided to change from one business basic to another (legal reasons of which I won't go into). My co-worker (about 10 years older) couldn't believe how in days, I had already mastered the editor keys - not intuitive as windows and just a ChUI screen.

A few years ago our version of Progress was updated. Now the last time they really added a bunch of new tools was V7 - a move from character (ChUI) to graphical (GUI). The nice thing is that they give you "GUI" tools that work under ChUI. Character has a bunch of formatting issues, but technically you can write apps (a single program) that literally will run under both environments. Anyways, since V7 (I think that was the version that finally added ABSOLUTE if you can believe it! -- christ my 1992 APPLE basic had that!).

Anyways, an upgrade to V8 didn't offer much in the tool department improvements, and eventually we moved to V9. The biggest thing there was an adjustment to the combo-box.

A combo-box - basically a drop down with values. The old sk00l version said "value,value,value". So to figure out what the guy chose (there are various means; but this was typical) - you would have to inspect the value and/or say as much as was unique. Well in V9 they added (and it was buried in a tech update no less - found only when I was reviewing help for the widget) -- "LIST-ITEM-PAIRS".

So now it was "label,value,label,value,label,value". So I could say "Michael,F,Spots,K,Louis,L,Sexicusmewillya!,S". Then if someone chose Spots, I know because the value is "K".

I do get a kick out of those "updates" still and my latest venture into PHP has once again put a smile on my face.

Been busy these past few days so not much movement with my system - neither with the PHP stuff.

Tonight while F*ING around with my cable & DSL modems - changing networking around, I get this message at bootup of XP. "Your hardware has drastically changed.. you need to reactivate windows." Ok I figured, whatever - I just added a scanner to boot. I go to reactivate - and they say "YOU HAVE EXCEEDED YOUR ACTIVATIONS WITH THIS PRODUCT - ENTER ANOTHER ACTIVATION CODE". Mine didn't work but I could buy one or call on Monday for assistance. I ghosted (really cool and fast when it works well!) back over the drive a few times. Haven't figured out the problem - but I think it had something to do with the Internet connection was with Bell - and I unplugged and moved and kept it in the settings. When I removed it from internet options it seems so far so good. The last thing that I didn't do that I did previously was DISABLE on of my NIC ports that nothing is plugged into. For now I have just HID it. I just finished GHOSTING the current set - as a lark, I may just disable and see what happens upon bootup.
After reading the stuff below, I can't see how I did anything of value to cause this to occur.

Activation is expected to be a one-time activity for mst users. Reactivation will only be necessary if the computer's components are drastically changed or in the unlikely evoent that you want to move (not copy) Windows XP to another machine. Microsoft promises that the activation system will work seamlesslyand even reactivation will be easy. Yet, the entire activation process is so new and different that it is already causing controversy. The ease-of-use and impact of the activation scheme will be fully realized when Windows XP is released October 25th.

Old article too..
http://www.compukiss.com/populartopics/computercenterhtm/article406.htm

Old too but interesting spin on this whole issue..
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,462414,00.asp

Beatrice Arthur

EDIT: On the PCMAG stuff - I read this

2. "remarks claim that activation prevents hard drive cloning": If a cloned hard disk is put into an exactly same PC from which it was cloned activation may not stop usage since only the MAC address and hard disk volume number is different. The MAC address takes 3 places and the hard disk volume number takes 1 place. Re-Activation is required only if this count rises to 6 in a system that has a NIC. If NIC is not present then 4 changes mean re-activation. Therefore changing just the NIC counts as 3 changes and this is NOT enough to trigger re-activation. Cloning however is defeated when the hardware is even slightly different.

So my take is - YES I installed the machine using the DSL via an add-on NIC. Today I DISABLED that NIC as I moved the cable back to the onboard NIC. That reason alone is why it probably failed - it can't see the same MAC anymore once I disabled and that caused an activation problem. So next time I reinstall (DUH!) I have to ensure I activate it using the NIC at night.

Crazy..


Maude.