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Monday, April 1, 2002
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 Monday, April 1, 2002
started 4/1/2002; 2:30:30 AM - last post 4/1/2002; 7:14:44 PM
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Doc Searls - Monday, April 1, 2002 
4/1/2002; 6:30:30 AM (reads: 5284, responses: 14)
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Word spreads 
Fuckin' C
| | Fucker Brand products are created to appeal to free-thinking people from around the world. Fucker makes stuff for individuals who are sick and tired of dealing with mass-production, mass-merchandise, and hyper-consumption. Screw corporate propaganda. Fucker customers are people, not "consumer markets". Fucker staff are individuals, not "workers". We're not left, we're not right, we're the extreme center. Fuckers aim to make a meaningful difference in the world. We also aim to have a great |
Recursive customer support hell
| | So my mail opens, tortures me with a glimse at all its open windows, then gives me this dialog box. When I click on it, I arrive at a Eudora Updates page where my only apparent choice is to download Eudora 5.1.0, which it turns out is for OS 9. The expired beta is for OS X. There is nothing I can find anywhere on the Eudora site that suggests the existence of an OS X version, beta or otherwise. |
| | I'm still awaiting a call back from tech support. |
| | [Later...] After repeated tries, one of the installers I got from Versiontracker (5.1b21-4.02) installed and ran without invoking the message above. I converted the backed up inbox (through 3/23) into an archival box, and proceeded with an empty inbox that starts with today's mail. And everything not saved off ot other mailboxes between 3/23 and 4/1 has gone byebye. Major bummer. |
| | By the way, the Eudora beta page (I am told by many readers, all of whom I thank) is here. |
| | And yes, I will try Mailsmith, which many readers recommend as a path off Eudora. And I'll let ya'll know how it goes (right now it's importing eight years of email archives... goin' kinda slow...). |
Wither .ps?
| | I have a couple files here I need to open and print. Their suffix is .ps. PostScript, no? They're spreadsheets, many pages apiece. I can look at them with a text editor, but can't make sense of them. The only app I can find that sees anything is Photoshop, which only sees the first page, as a spreadsheet image (only one layer as well). |
| | I'm using OS X here. The Linux box is down, awaiting a cable. |
| | [Later...] Ghostscript (in this case, MacGhostView) did the job. Got them converted to .pdfs too. I'll send my shareware money in next... By the way, I tried PS2PDF.com, but it didn't work. Too bad, 'cuz it's a good concept. And thanks to everybody for helping out. Most appreciated. |
Marching ahead with both feet
| | Andre Durand has some helpful thoughts today on the reasons for Jabber's success, and the AND logic of combining the proven success strategies of both open source and commercial development methods. |
Independence, 6 years later
| | John Perry Barlow wrote A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace in Davos, Switzerland on February 8, 1996. The precipitating hostility at that time was the late Communications Decency Act. The threats this time around are far worse, since the Net's new opponent is the entertainment industry and its powerful lobbies, not a few congresspeople worried about porn. |
| | Worth reading again. As a statement of principles, it's pretty hard to beat. |
Listen down
| | For Beethoven.com, one of the highest-ranked independent Internet radio stations by the Arbitron (news/quote) ratings service last year with more than 100,000 unique listeners a month, that could mean an additional $100,000 in costs a year, at a time when the station has yet to break even. The Webcasters are also accountable for four years of retroactive payment. |
Hell, cont'd
| | A note to everybody who has sent me mail since 3/22: all my mail between that date and 6am this morning is gone. If you sent anything that mattered during that period, please re-send it. Thanks. |
| | For an explanation, see the post below. When I wrote that headline, I didn't hate Eudora. I do now. |
I really don't want to hate Eudora. I really don't.
| | I've been using the OS X beta version of Eudora for awhile, and it's been working fine. But for the last several days it's been telling me, "This beta version of Eudora will expire on 4/1/02. Please visit our website to get a new beta or the final version." The first time I saw this I clicked on the "Visit Site" button and was led to a page that said "You have version 5.1.0.20 of Eudora. This is the latest version. For your reference, here are links to the current installers and documentation...: |
| | The first link below that was "Eudora 5.1.0." When I clicked on it, nothing happened. So I pressed on with the current version. This happened each time I restarted the program |
| | Today the first message was updated to read "This beta version of Eudora has expired. Please visit our website to get a new beta or the final version." The only useful button was "visit and quit." Once again, nothing happened. So I went to the Eudora site, where I found that the only available downloads were for OS 9 versions of the program. Then I went to the Apple site, found the OS X version downlod page, downloaded the program, installed it, and got the same "This beta version of Eudora has expired" message." I hit "Visit and Quit" again and went to the same page that told me I had version 5.1.0.20, etc. But this time the link to 5.1.0 worked, and I downloaded an installer... for the OS 9 version. |
| | I already have that one, so that's what I'm using for now. Meanwhile, I'm pretty steamed. I've been a paying customer since 1994 or something, not one of those guys who lives with ads on the freebie version. |
| | If any of ya'll know some voodoo that will work around the problem, let me know. Thanks. |
| | And Happy Easter Fools Day. |
| | [Later...] The OS 9 version of Eudora keeps telling me I have a damaged Settings file. ... now it gives me no choice about rebuilding the inbox... and the contents are zero. It's destroyed. Oh man, I am so deeply fucked. It's been a week since I backed that sucker up. |
| | Now I can't open the OS 9 version either. It keeps telling me that version has expired. This is utterly fucking unreal. |
| | By the way, I'vwe only had one serious complaint about Eudora, over all the years I've used it: very time something goes wrong, it gives me a choice about "rebuilding" a damaged mailbox. Without exception, rebuilding has always been a mistake. The "Use Old" choice might result in lost mail (as the dialog warns), but I never knew. Thinks looked and worked normally if I used the old table of contents. But every rebuild I ever did resulted in piles of lost data, along with lost mail, mail with bad dates, and other awful things. But what happened today is a the worst disaster I've had with Eudora. Horrible. |
| | [Later again...] I called tech support at 8:25am, was put on hold until 8:35, and then got told by a recording to leave my name, number and serial number so a technician could call back. It's now 11:40 and nobody has called. Im not holding my breath. |
Webcasting fates in the wind
| | The compulsory license for webcasting was not just about protecting labels and artists from digital copying. It was much more about ensuring fair compensation to the creators of the recordings upon which webcasters have built their business. Doesn't it seem fair that a company using someone else's property should pay for that use? Most webcasters pay huge sums of money -- many times their revenues -- for bandwidth, marketing, hardware, software and other things necessary for their business. If they can pay for all these things, they surely can pay for the single most important asset they have -- the recordings that labels and artists created at great risk and expense. |
| | The responses to Marks' letter are just as interesting, and run both ways. |
AOL Keyword: Searls
| | I never wanted to say that headline, but money makes all things possible, no? Don't say No, say How Much, the old saying goes. The short answer: a lot. I don't come cheap. But hey, at my age it's good if you come at all. |
| | So now I'm just trying to count up all the commercial entities I'm not free to crap all over. Quite the shitload, it turns out. |
| | What the hell. I can still dump on the feds, I think. Steve Case hasn't bought them yet, has he? Not literally, anyway. That's good. |
discuss
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Doc,
BareBones recently released version 1.5 of Mailsmith, now native on OS X (amongst other improvements.)
It'll import your mail store from Eudora.
There's a trial version...
http://www.barebones.com/products/mailsmith.html
I've been using it for quite some time. It just attained a lot of the power of BBEdit.
'best,
d.
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Doc Searls - Re: Mailsmith
4/1/2002; 6:52:28 PM (reads: 541, responses: 5)
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I looked at it. Like Outlook, it puts mailboxesm box summaries and the mail itself in three panels of one window. I hate that. Forgive me: it's so freaking Microsoft, even though I think Netscape was the first to use that convention with its awful mail client. Eudora uses separate windows for everything, and I love that. I can have any number of mails open at once, and click between them. Very handy. I also love Eudora's speller. I don't get the impression that BB even has a speller for Mailsmith, though they might. Not sure.
But if Eudora continues to not call me back, I might have no choice after a while.
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Doc Searls - Re: Mailsmith
4/1/2002; 6:53:28 PM (reads: 567, responses: 1)
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I looked at it. Like Outlook, it puts mailboxes, box summaries and each item's text in three panes of one window. I hate that. Forgive me: it's so freaking Microsoft, even though I think Netscape was the first to use that convention with its awful mail client. Eudora uses separate windows for everything, and I love that. I can have any number of mails open at once, and click between them. Very handy. I also love Eudora's speller. I don't get the impression that BB even has a speller for Mailsmith, though they might. Not sure.
But if Eudora continues to not call me back, I might have no choice after a while.
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Dave Ely - Eudora
4/1/2002; 7:03:54 PM (reads: 441, responses: 1)
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Doc, the latest beta was linked on VersionTracker at the end of February. Also, when Eudora wants to rebuild your mailboxes, all it really wants to do is rebuild the TOC file for them and I've never had any harm come from that operation.
If you have mailboxes which lost mail, you might want to back it all up somewhere, stop Eudora, kill off the .toc files and start Eudora again. It's pretty unlikely that the mbox files themselves are damaged.
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Daniel Berlinger - Re: Mailsmith
4/1/2002; 7:16:41 PM (reads: 627, responses: 0)
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That's not required. It's a window called the mail browser.
You can open up each mailbox as an individual window... two panes list at top mail at the bottom... (the right hand side of the mail browser window) and you can expand the list to encompass the entire mailbox window and double click on individual messages to open a message window (with up down arrows for threaded reading).
There's a seperate mailbox list (the left hand side of the browser) so that you never have to use the Mail Browser window.
Also, there's a POP monitor which let's you browse mail on the server etc. within certain limits.
And of course, some of the best text handling...
d.
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Doc Searls - Re: Eudora
4/1/2002; 8:36:20 PM (reads: 477, responses: 0)
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In my experience, that's not all it wants to do. Before this morning, my inbox was about a 200Mb file. After rebuilding the table of contents (the .toc file), the inbox file was 32k. Hard to imagine recovering anything after a change like that.
I'm usually better about backing up. I screwed up this morning by not doing it first. The most recent backup was 3/23, before I went to Arizona. I think I'll take that inbox, give it an archival name, carry on with the new inbox, and chalk up everything between 3/23 and 4/1 as a loss.
And chalk up the OS X beta as a loss, too. For now, at least. When I download and run the version at Versiontracker, it just gives me the same dialog box I just put up on the blog.
Infuriating.
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Ryan Irelan - Re: Easter Suday, March 31, 2002
4/1/2002; 8:47:59 PM (reads: 426, responses: 0)
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Michael Yacavone - Re: Mailsmith
4/1/2002; 9:24:42 PM (reads: 582, responses: 1)
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Another vote for Mailsmith. It simply works correctly. And, Bare Bones is an honest company, focused on their customers, with real support. Eudora was bought by a cell phone company or something, right?
As Daniel pointed out: three viewing panes not required. Also: of course there's a spell checker for Mailsmilth - you are evaluating this under stress and not paying enough attention. Yes, you will have to adapt to a few new things. It's not a big deal.
Really - check it out.
Mike
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Dori Smith - Re: Mailsmith
4/1/2002; 9:58:53 PM (reads: 604, responses: 2)
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Like Outlook, it puts mailboxesm box summaries and the mail itself in three panels of one window. I hate that. Forgive me: it's so freaking Microsoft, even though I think Netscape was the first to use that convention with its awful mail client.
I know it's not a popular choice here, but I'll put in my vote for Entourage. The three-pane format is just an option. I hate it, so I use two-pane.
And you're correct that MailSmith doesn't have spellchecking, but Entourage does.
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Doc Searls - Re: Mailsmith
4/1/2002; 10:45:36 PM (reads: 632, responses: 0)
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I'll do it. And I do want to support the BB folks. Much better than whatever is left of Eudora. Kind of like moving from a sinking ship to a floating one that's going somewhere.
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Greg McNeill - Re: Easter Suday, March 31, 2002
4/1/2002; 10:52:33 PM (reads: 457, responses: 0)
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This seems to be caued by qualcomm keeping everything so hard to find. I go to <search> at the eudora home page type in OSX and look through the resuts 'til I find latest beta. Why so hard to find tho' eh? As I have email going back too many years to be sane; you have given me cause for concern though
Greg
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Michael Bernstein - Re: Independence, 6 years later
4/1/2002; 11:14:44 PM (reads: 426, responses: 0)
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Michael Yacavone - Re: Mailsmith DOES have spell checking
4/2/2002; 2:02:23 AM (reads: 685, responses: 1)
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Mailsmith DOES have spell checking. (Where did this meme come from?) How could anyone release a credible mail app today without it?
They have had a spell checker since 1.0. (Menu: Text > Check Spelling. I've set it to trigger on F11, but that customizable, just like BBEdit.)
Mike
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Dori Smith - Re: Mailsmith DOES have spell checking
4/2/2002; 10:03:33 PM (reads: 784, responses: 0)
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Mailsmith DOES have spell checking. (Where did this meme come from?)
To me, spell checking is something that Entourage and some other programs do as I type. If I have to go and choose "Check spelling" manually (or even hit F11) for every outgoing email message, it just ain't going to happen. Ergo, it's the same to me as no spell checker at all.
Back when I was on OS 9, I loved SpellCatcher for just this reason. Unfortunately, there's no OS X version, so I hate recommending programs that don't have built-in on-the-fly spell checkers.
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