Info-Mac 3/Info_Mac_1994-01.iso/Periodical/TidBITs/TidBITS#184

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TidBITS#184/12-Jul-93
=====================

 Matt Neuburg returns to rescind some of the negative points he
   made about the Now Utilities 4.0.1 when it came out last year,
   and Rick Sutcliffe editorializes on the future of distribution
   in the Information Age. In the practical world, James Brigman
   offers tips and information about refilling DeskWriter
   cartridges, we announce a prototype setext viewer for Unix,
   and lots of other bits about SCSI, ZipIt, Communicate Lite,
   ClarisWorks, and QM-PAGE.

This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:

* APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- [e-mail]
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Topics:
    MailBITS/12-Jul-93
    Now Utilities Palinode
    Unix Setext Viewer
    DeskWriter Cartridge Refilling
    A Distribution Paradigm for the Fourth Civilization
    Reviews/12-Jul-93

[Archived as /info-mac/per/tb/tidbits-184.etx; 28K]


MailBITS/12-Jul-93
------------------

**SCSI Confusions** -- Don Norman of Apple writes: At the last
  Computer Bowl contest, the question of "how many SCSI IDs" was
  asked. One of the contestants said "eight," but this was ruled
  wrong by the judges who said "seven." The audience yelled. I
  myself called out, "number 0 is one of the ports." The question
  was turned over to the referees, and after consultation, they very
  carefully, in a measured tone of voice, announced, "The highest
  number is 7." This is, of course, correct, so the answer of
  "eight" was ruled wrong. Poor show by all involved.


**Communicate Lite** may replace some of the abysmal programs
  currently bundled with modems. The communications program from
  Mark/Space Softworks uses a document-oriented approach along with
  support for Apple's Communications Toolbox, which allows users to
  add power by adding tools. Communicate Lite is available for
  bundling, and costs $49.95 for single copies direct from
  Mark/Space. A more-powerful version due this summer, Communicate,
  will add more communications tools, Apple events scripting for
  Frontier and AppleScript, automated virus detection, and
  integrated In and Out boxes that simplify file transfer.
  Mark/Space Softworks -- 408/982-9781 -- 408/982-9780 (fax) --
  [e-mail]


**ZipIt Wires** -- Jacob Ahlqvist <[e-mail]>
  writes, "In TidBITS #182_, Jim Wheelis, in his review of ZipIt,
  failed to mention one great advantage of ZipIt - it is Apple
  event-aware and ties in completely with Kem Tekinay's Freddie
  1.2.5 (and only 1.2.5) to provide automated
  decompression/opening/reading of PC .QWK files downloaded from a
  PC BBS for off-line reading. Now you can just drop the .QWK file
  onto Freddie and leave it for a few minutes to do the trick rather
  than unzipping manually with UnZip or StuffIt Deluxe.


**ClarisWorks has expanded** to the Windows market, with Claris
  announcing that IBM and Toshiba will bundle ClarisWorks for
  Windows with certain computer models. If you have to buy
  ClarisWorks for Windows (a good way to achieve cross-platform
  compatibility), you can buy it for $99 until 15-Aug-93. Claris --
  800/3CLARIS -- 408/727-8227


**Wolf Creek Technologies** recently slashed the price on QM-PAGE,
  their alphanumeric pager gateway for QuickMail, dropping it to
  $995 for 20 users and adding 10 and 5 user packs for $595 and
  $325, respectively. Wolf Creek Technologies -- 407/334-0448 --
  407/334-2303 (fax)


Now Utilities Palinode
----------------------
  by Matt Neuburg -- [e-mail]

  A while back (November '92, in TidBITS #152_, to be exact) I said
  some positive things and some negative things about Now Utilities
  4.0.1. Now I'd like to take back a substantial portion of the
  negative things. I have three reasons why:

* I complained that despite the purported fixes between 4.0 and
  4.0.1, Super Boomerang and NowMenus together still caused some
  crashes on my machine when the Standard File Dialog tried to come
  up. (Since this usually happened when I tried to save a document
  for the first time, I wasn't too pleased.) However, it has been a
  long time since my Macintosh has had one of these crashes. I think
  rebuilding my desktop may have helped; also, turning off Keep Show
  Info and Remove Unmounted in Super Boomerang's Control Panel may
  have had something to do with the change. Whatever the reason, I
  now regard the pair as more stable than I used to.

* I said that "the lists [in the pull-down menus] are not
  hierarchical. Documents can be attached as submenus to programs;
  but programs themselves cannot be made submenus to anything. So if
  you want a really extensive list of your programs, you get a huge
  scrolling menu." A reader wrote in immediately to inform me that
  this was false. You can include a folder in a pull-down menu, and
  this folder can contain aliases of programs. If you make a bunch
  of folders representing categories (Font, Word Process, etc.) and
  put aliases of appropriate programs inside them, you can get a
  hierarchical arrangement of your programs by category in a menu.
  Furthermore, by some miracle I don't understand, recently used
  documents appropriate to those programs automatically attach
  themselves to the names of their aliases in the menu. So much for
  accuracy in my reviews; anyhow, that objection is transmuted to
  delight.

* I lamented that DroppleMenu, one of my favorite extensions,
  didn't work under NowMenus 4.0.1. That has changed, thanks to
  David Winterburn, whose latest version of Menu Dropper (7.1b6 is
  the one I saw) does work with NowMenus. This means you can drag an
  icon onto the Apple menu and right down through its hierarchical
  menus, and have the thing the icon represents be moved, copied, or
  aliased to a folder, or opened by an application. This puts Menu
  Dropper up where DroppleMenu was when I was able to use it, in my
  Top Ten category of extensions, namely, "Things so valuable and
  obvious you can't believe Apple didn't build them into the System
  (or Finder) in the first place."

  Since I already said in the earlier review that no one should be
  without Super Boomerang, and that the whole price of Now Utilities
  was worth it for just this one application, it remains only to say
  that those of you who still haven't bought it should (a) download
  and read the review, mentally correcting it to take account of
  these retractions; (b) try out the demo version available at most
  FTP sites right now; and then (c) run, don't walk, to your phone
  or software store and purchase Now Utilities 4.0.1 immediately.
  Better still, skip (a) and (b).


Unix Setext Viewer
------------------
  Those of you who read TidBITS or other setext files on Unix boxes
  may wish to check out a prototype setext viewer now posted at
  <sumex-aim.stanford.edu> for anonymous FTP as

    info-mac/text/setext-viewer-02-unix.txt

  This 13K program, sv-02, requires System 5 and the curses library.
  It will not run on a Macintosh, except perhaps under A/UX. Oguz
  Isikli, a graduate student at Bilkent University in Turkey, wrote
  the code. Oguz ported the parsing engine from Akif Eyler's Easy
  View, and Oguz based the user interface on the Unix Gopher client.

  Oguz and Akif do not consider sv-02 complete, and are looking for
  comments, suggestions, and possibly source code contributions to
  the project.

  Although anyone who knows enough about how to compile a program
  under Unix probably knows how to deal with uudecode, uncompress,
  tar, and so on, Akif provided the following instructions for
  defunking the file. Since the sumex moderators changed the name,
  you may wish to rename it to sv-02.tar.Z.uue before starting out.

Instructions for defunking:
    uudecode sv-02.tar.Z.uue
    uncompress sv-02.tar.Z
    tar -xvf sv-02.tar
    cd sv-0.2
    make
    sv tidbits-184.etx

  Information from:
    Akif Eyler -- [e-mail]


DeskWriter Cartridge Refilling
------------------------------
  by James Brigman -- [e-mail]

  Although Hewlett-Packard does not recommend refilling their
  disposable DeskJet/DeskWriter cartridges, there is little risk and
  much profit in refilling your own model 51608A or 51626A print
  cartridges. The HP DeskJet/DeskWriter color cartridge 51625 is not
  refillable. HP made this happen by not putting vent holes in the
  top of the color cartridge. Over the course of three years
  experimentation, the following helpful hints should save pain for
  the neophyte user who plans to refill cartridges.

  Use only water-based ink, as alcohol-based inks will immediately
  dry up and clog the print head. Previously, the Parker "Super
  Quink" brand was the ink of choice for veteran cartridge
  refillers, but Parker no longer produces it. The remaining Parker
  ink, known simply as "Quink," will not provide good results. The
  best current brand for refills is known as "Skrip." Found in a
  yellow box, this is an extremely common brand of office ink
  generally used for stamp pads and fountain pens. You'll get the
  best results from the permanent black ink, but colored inks such
  as blue and red work fine too. When experimenting with a brand,
  keep in mind that price is no indicator of performance.

  You can refill the cartridges using an ordinary 3 cc diabetic
  syringe, available at most pharmacies for less than 50 cents. (In
  North Carolina, U.S., no permits or prescriptions are required to
  purchase these syringes, however that may not be true in other
  states or countries.) Wash out the needle with warm tap water and
  you can reuse it almost indefinitely. Start-up costs for your
  homemade refill kit should run less than $3: about $2 for the ink
  and less than $1 for the syringe. You can get 11 refills from a
  single 2-3 ounce bottle of ink at a cost of less than 20 cents per
  refill!

  Don't refill a cartridge that has sat empty. Refill cartridges
  immediately after they run out of ink. It does no good to wait and
  collect used cartridges because remnants of the original ink will
  dry up and render the unit worthless.

  To refill the cartridge, assemble the ink container, cartridge,
  syringe and a few absorbent paper towels on your work surface. Do
  your work on a glass-topped or ceramic surface which will not
  absorb any ink spills, and be sure to place a paper towel under
  the cartridge. Don't pour the ink into the top of the syringe;
  instead, immerse the tip into the inkwell and withdraw the
  plunger, sucking the ink into the cylinder. Plunge the syringe
  into the top of the cartridge, through the vent hole for the
  entire length of the needle and slowly press the plunger. If you
  see ink bubbles around the hole, don't let them pop, as the ink
  will splash everywhere. Hold a clean paper towel around the vent
  hole to catch the bubbles. One cartridge will hold two injections
  of ink from a 3 cc syringe.

  Wipe off the print head. You should have some leakage from the
  refill process, which indicates a successful refill. If you see no
  leakage, the print head may be clogged. It's possible to unclog
  the head by blowing into the vent hole (carefully!) or wiping off
  the print head with a wet paper towel. You know the refill worked
  if you can wipe the print head with a tissue or paper towel and
  get a thick band of ink on the paper.

  Using the right kind of printer paper with your refilled
  cartridges will provide better-than-new results. Use a paper with
  high cotton content and a tight fiber "weave." Hammermill Bond,
  Hammermill Laser Copy, St. Croix Laser/Xerographic, and Xerox 4240
  provide great looking printouts from any cartridges, refilled or
  not. Refilled units also work fine with transparencies.

  You can refill the HP 51608A up to ten times before the electrical
  contacts on the cartridge begin to deteriorate. I have used
  refilled cartridges in the same DeskWriter for the past three
  years with no damage to the printer.

  Refilled and new cartridges should be good for about 500 pages of
  printing text or light graphics. If your printer gives less than
  200 pages from a cartridge, there is an upgrade kit available only
  to early purchasers of the DeskJet and DeskWriter that greatly
  extends the print life of any cartridge, refilled or new. This kit
  is available free for affected users from Hewlett-Packard by
  calling 800/538-8787. I don't have the serial number range handy.

  The upgrade kit is better described as a hardware patch. The early
  DeskJets and DeskWriters used a cartridge cradle that wasn't
  perfectly airtight. As a result, the cartridge could prematurely
  dry out. The classic symptom of the problem is when someone gets
  only 200-300 pages out of a cartridge instead of the 500 page
  design limit. Usually, the print quality will be terrible for most
  of those 200-300 pages.

  The upgrade kit consists of a new cartridge cradle and a little
  tool with which to install it. You use the tool to remove the old
  parts and to install the new parts. After you install the kit, (it
  takes about five minutes), you will notice better print quality
  and many more pages per cartridge. Refilled cartridges especially
  like the new sled.

    Hewlett-Packard -- 800/538-8787


A Distribution Paradigm for the Fourth Civilization
---------------------------------------------------
  by Richard J. Sutcliffe -- [e-mail]

  When the seller of goods is no longer a village craftsman dealing
  with friends and neighbours on a one-to-one basis, but a
  multinational company with hundreds of products and millions of
  end users, it is impossible to deal with each customer
  individually. Thus, the late industrial civilization created
  complex patterns for the distribution of goods and services. A
  manufacturer sold to a limited number of regional distributors,
  who in turn resold in smaller bulk lots to local distributors, who
  moved product to retailers in case lots, who then sold to the end
  user in one-of quantities.

  The advantage of the distribution pyramid is its simplicity at
  each stage. No one level creates an unmanageable number of
  customer records. The disadvantage is that the price may increase
  by three or four hundred percent by the time an item reaches an
  end user - this without any value being added to the product along
  the way.

  Already, many home-based businesses are built on short-circuiting
  this process. They offer soap, jewelry, clothing, cookware, and
  other goods directly from the manufacturer to the consumer through
  in-home sales representatives. However, these schemes can still be
  improved, for most still have distribution chains, and only the
  physical overhead is really saved.

  Information technologies such as automated ordering/billing and
  computer assisted manufacturing (CAM) enable a better way.
  Customers could view sample goods online or in a local showroom
  licensed by a manufacturer and/or order items to personal
  specifications from a catalog. The goods would then be made to
  order on demand by automated assembly lines receiving computerized
  instructions for each item.

  Electronic ordering and funds transfer would enable manufacturers
  to deal directly with the millions of customers. No paperwork
  would have to be handled, for none is created, and building to
  order cuts inventory and reduces costs further. This method might
  be most fully applied to goods requiring customizing - clothing,
  automobiles, and computer hardware. There is less to gain in the
  production of general hardware, household items and tools, for
  they can be identically mass produced. However, all would benefit
  from the shortening of the distribution chain.

  There is nothing new in these ideas; indeed, they could be
  regarded as obvious extrapolations of current methods of doing
  business. Direct distribution coupled with automated ordering,
  manufacturing, and paperless payment is just a natural outgrowth
  of information age technology applied back to the problems of the
  industrial age. Such a development would contribute to making the
  industrial infrastructure as invisible as is the agricultural
  infrastructure today. How many people do you know who make their
  living growing food? More to the point, how many First
  Civilization people do you know - those making a living as hunter-
  gatherers? About as many as your children will know of factory
  workers and store clerks.

  If this is not so far revolutionary, then how will information age
  techniques create new distribution paradigms? How will information
  and the (software) tools needed to create, manipulate, and access
  it be distributed and accounted for? After all, the number of
  contributors to a particular data bank or manipulation tool may be
  legion. In an age of reusable software components, the
  intellectual creations of scores or hundreds of people may be
  employed for a single information transaction. The industrial
  paradigm was that such techniques were licensed or purchased
  outright by a manufacturer, and the cost spread out over the
  number of items. If the new product was a success, not only did no
  further payment go to the creator of the enabling techniques, but
  the law allowed the new owner of the technique to restrict its use
  in other products. This may be an acceptable stopgap for hard
  goods in a society that is limited even in its ability to record
  the sales of goods, much less the use of methods, but it is
  already feasible to propose much better.

  Define a civilization's "metalibrary" to be the set of all its
  knowledge, (information and technique) together with the means of
  storing and accessing it. "The Metalibrary" is the universal
  information store, including data, journals, magazines,
  newspapers, books, TV programs, movies, artwork, in short,
  everything there is to know on whatever media. The Metalibrary
  already exists, but it will grow and develop to become something
  much more complete.

  Assume that anything could be posted or read (for a fee.) Assume
  that all will be hyper-indexed in space and time, so that any kind
  of multi-media thread can be followed through the Metalibrary.
  Indexing threads could be attached by individuals or by editors,
  and a user would be free to accept for view-use any thread
  collections, or only those of certain editors. (Journals would
  become collections of threads by the responsible editor.) Every
  home and business would have Metalibrary Terminals of various
  kinds. Some would do data searches, some show publications such as
  National Geographic in full colour; large ones might display
  artwork or symphonies.

  Each individual would have an indexing profile, started manually,
  but maintained by a "world view daemon" that monitored usage
  preferences. Every Metalibrary item (even the world views of
  others) would have a registered UIC (Universal Information Code.)
  This would be an index to the registry of contributors to that
  item, with their percentage share in the proceeds of its use. The
  registry would be hierarchical; one UIC might refer (with
  percentages) to other UICs through many levels to individual
  accounts.

  One distribution technique would be to download every instance of
  an item on a rental basis from the Metalibrary store - the
  ultimate in centralization . In this system, no goods are sold;
  everything is paid for each time a local instance is created and
  used. Such a method by itself has the advantage of allowing for
  proper automatic credit to the contributor, but the disadvantage
  of requiring communication bandwidths that may not be feasible.

  A better (self-auditing) payment mechanism was suggested by Brad
  Cox (Journal of Object-oriented Programming; Jun-92; Dr. Dobb's
  Journal; Oct-92) in his case for reusable software components. His
  technique is here adapted to the entire range of Metalibrary
  services.

  Local devices would have smart hardware accessed by distribution
  code contained in every software product. This code keeps a record
  by UIC of use instances (not purchase) whether items are copied
  from the Metalibrary store directly, or obtained in some other
  way. Periodic reports would be sent to an accounting daemon, which
  would employ the UIC registry to debit user accounts and credit
  creator accounts appropriately. The accounting code would also
  have to check periodically to ensure that its results had been
  sent and properly received, and refuse the application permission
  to run otherwise. This technique could be applied to the
  components of access or production software, as well as to the
  components of the data being viewed or manipulated, for all would
  have a UIC. It has the same access and payment advantages as the
  one above, and could be used in the same way, but information or
  tools would only have to be acquired once (saving much network
  bandwidth).

  Software would record each use of itself and of the information it
  accesses (publications on any medium, the display of artwork, 3-D
  artistic performances, and searched data). The software creators
  and data generators would receive royalties automatically in
  proportion to their contribution to the collection. If a user
  synthesized new tools or data from old, UIC codes for each
  component would be sent to accounting with appropriate
  percentages. (If the new tool were made a public product, some
  verification of the relative value of the parts to the whole would
  be necessary before actually registering a new UIC code.) For
  instance, if the user synthesized Walter Cronkite, Marilyn Monroe,
  and Elvis Presley as the evening news anchors, their estates would
  get a cut along with the reporters who produced the items, the
  team that edited that particular news thread for the day, and
  those who created the data files for the syntheses.

  The making of a hard copy (where appropriate) would fetch another
  premium. Artwork (wallpaper?) displayed on the condo walls would
  generate a time-based fee to the parent museum. Symphonic,
  athletic, and other performances would generate royalties
  according to a formula agreed to by the participants and
  registered for the event along with the UIC. A percentage of each
  transaction would finance the Metalibrary itself. The hardest
  distribution problems to solve, as Cox has pointed out, would be
  tamper proofing the hardware and the software to store and
  transmit accounting information. A harder problem would be the
  initial cross indexing and storage of all available knowledge in
  every form. This task could be automated for new materials, whose
  primary medium of publication would be the Metalibrary.

  Though specific data searches might be done online to the
  Metalibrary (more likely a series of networked nodes than a
  central location), larger and less timely collections of data,
  artwork, performances, books, and software tools might be better
  distributed "hard," i.e. on a medium such as a CD-ROM or its
  future equivalent, the 3-D data cube. Indeed, some things might
  have to be distributed "hard" to prevent piracy, as there is
  probably no effective copy protection means in software. There
  would be no reason to charge for such distribution except for the
  out-of-pocket cost, as pay-by-use would cover the important fees.

  Metalibrary Terminals would take the place of the mail carrier,
  telephone, TV, book reader, journal and news reader, library card,
  computer, and personal data assistant. Equipped at a some stage
  with more sophisticated interfaces, they might eventually be known
  as "pocket brains," though there would be no need to suppose them
  to be artificially intelligent. The Metalibrary would also enable
  the creation of personal services partnerships or "metapersons" -
  like present day corporations, but of limited duration and
  changeable structure. These would be the primary vehicle for the
  assembly and sale of professional services such as education,
  training, counselling, accounting, writing, software production,
  and legal services. In no case would there be a distribution
  chain, for all consumers would directly access providers.

  A caveat: As in other cases, information technology only enables
  the scenario painted here. Besides the unifying aspects of these
  potentially global information paradigms, other forces are at work
  to fragment nations, stir up old hatreds, and prevent the free
  flow of information. Other paradigms may replace this one before
  it is realized. Thus, although the present distribution chain is
  already obsolete and overdue for replacement, subsuming its
  functions in the Metalibrary is only possible; it is not
  inevitable.

  [We welcome discussion of Rick's ideas, particularly in relation
  to software distribution, online in appropriate discussion groups,
  most notably the Info-Mac Digest <[e-mail]>
  and on CompuServe in the TidBITS section (#5) of MACDVEN. -Adam]


Reviews/12-Jul-93
-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 05-Jul-93, Vol. 7, #27
    Astound 1.0 -- pg. 37
    Remote AppleShare Tools -- pg. 37
      Server Sentry 1.0.1
      GraceLAN Server Manager 1.0.3
    Data Desk 4.1 -- pg. 44

* MacUser -- Aug-93
    PowerBook 180c -- pg. 43
    ClarisWorks 2.0 -- pg. 54
    CA-Cricket Draw III 2.0 -- pg. 56
    Apple Color Printer and Apple Color OneScanner -- pg. 60
    In Control 2.0 -- pg. 62
    TimeVision -- pg. 63
    MapInfo 2.0 -- pg. 65
    FontMonger and Incubator Pro -- pg. 71
    ColorSense -- pg. 75
    DiskFit Direct -- pg. 79
    DiskFit Pro -- pg. 79
    LinksWare -- pg. 79
    Apple Adjustable Keyboard -- pg. 80
    Small Blue Planet -- pg. 81
    QMS ColorScript Laser 1000 -- pg. 84
    Special Effects Generators -- pg. 92
      VideoFusion 1.0.1
      After Effects 1.0
    High-Speed Internal PowerBook Modems -- pg. 102
      (too many to list)
    14" & 15" Color Monitors -- pg. 120
      (too many to list)
    Accounting Programs -- pg. 132
      (too many to list)
    Paint Programs -- pg. 149

* BYTE -- Jul-93
    Quicken 4 -- pg. 40
    ClarisWorks 2.0 -- pg. 151
    PageMaker 5.0 vs. Quark XPress 3.1 -- pg. 157
    v.everything Modems -- pg. 172


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