The Technical Reference Page of

Charles Pique

  1. The great search engine sabotage  
  2. The Computer industry rat race.
  3. Physics
  4. Electronics
  5.  The truth about the United States
  6. Religion vs Honesty
  7. The political Parties
  8. Tutoring is Free! Just Call  Me

1. How all search engines have been deliberately crippled.

I have spent many hours searching for technical data on the web. It is a difficult task made more difficult by the degree of commercialism. Most web pages are advertising and contain no useful technical information. The builder has nothing to offer for free and will do anything to attract attention to his pages as long as possible.  If there is no technical content at the end of the links then the top page ought to contain a warning "This page has no technical content." Web pages ought not require search engines but should be properly indexed with a tree.
A system for organizing information for quick retrival has already been produced and used in libraries for years. There is a reason why such a system is not allowed on the web. It is the power of commercial interests.
As a help for those using the web for research a system of numeric identification codes is needed to enable the "commercial cockroaches" to be avoided. I offer a system here for classifying web pages, according to technical usefulness, that could be used by search engines to greatly narrow a search scope. This system (code field) along with the library codes (Dewey or Congress) would go a long way to enable intelligent searches.
Now that we have seen the "V Chip" and all kinds of inane ways to control the access of children, let the great wizards do something useful like provide scholars with a fair warning on each and every web page that contains no sign of intelligence, and in particular does not contain the material that its title advertises. Speaking of advertisers, it is common practice to choose popular technical words for totally insane things like a rock group just to trick search engines into delivering garbage. Amoung many fiascos, I exchanged links with several folk and never saw my link on their page so guess where their links went? The bit bucket.

Pique's Rules For Web Pages

2. Why computers are so hard to control

Standard interfaces enable easy use.

But standards are violated by many manufacturers to force buyers to a single source. Just about every piece of hardware or software or new technology has been designed with unpredictable and hidden twists to make it difficult to understand and control.
Enormous numbers of things are designed wrong.

 In the early DOS based machines when you tried to access a peripheral device and it did not respond, a bit was set on the motherboard and it could only be reset by restarting the machine. If you decided to print and forgot to turn the printer on, then you had to turn your computer off! This single piece of stupidity has cost industry millions of dollars.

When the IDE bus was designed it could only support two hard drives. It should have been set up to support eight devices like SCSI.  When IDE cards were made only one could be used. That also prevented the user from connecting many hard drives in a single machine.
Similarly the Motherboards were set up so that only one video board could be used.  That prevented the user from using two monitors at the same time.
Hard drives were designed so that they had to be told by a shorting clip whether they were master or slave. The system was the opposite of standardized so that a user spent many tries to find the right pins to short. Also hard drives could easily have been designed with write protect tabs or clips like floppies to make them immune to viruses.  Windows could have been designed to run from a CD, once again providing immunity from many kinds of errors, but the managers said no.

Hard drive software could have been written to enable the user to control the boot sector and FAT table, and some primitive parts of this were done, but nothing is out there nice pretty and simple for the user to fix drives corrupted by viruses or failed partition software.

Hardware interfaces are not documented in the help files. This makes it very difficult to write code for peripherals.

Windows has not met expectations.

The record is becoming clear on the issue of user control. The first machines had very little ability and were hard to manage because they were cryptic. The batch file instructions could not handle any number of the multitude of tasks needed for backup and file housekeeping. For example copy the files in this folder that are not found in that folder to another folder.
Today we have seen the parade of increasingly sophisticated windows machines and although the power has increased the ability of the user to interfere in the machine's operation has diminished. DOS programs ran in a particular directory and unless they went berserk their effect was limited to that folder. Each file could be replaced by a backup and any corruption thus removed.
In windows 3.1 the windows folder could be backed up periodically and replaced at the first sign of corruption. The responsible files could be identified by their date.
With Windows 95 the user cannot determine how corruption has spread through the system.  Hyper Terminal cannot answer the phone and cannot be manually erased.
With Windows 98 came direct cable connection and the failure of the loader to find files.
Windows Milennium dropped DOS mode and the restore function is not very useful.
Windows XP is difficult to network especially to other operating systems.

Linnux is primitive and supposedly well documented, but the documentation is generally not applicable.

Most computer programmers are paranoid about strangers seeing their source code. They make it proprietary to hide their poor programming. The market forces users to buy code that then gets thrown in the trash. Today's programs are so complicated that if you weren't looking over the shoulder of the guy who wrote it you are out of luck. Software manuals are not worth the paper they are printed on and don't call and ask. The price is too high. The company has gone out of business or changed its name like a bunch of famous names just recently.  Often no one knows how the code works any way. The original programmer is long gone.
I write BASIC and C. My programs work.  If you can't thouroughly test your code, it is written wrong.

3. Physics

The Best Science is Heavy Science

The hard sciences use mathematics as their language for description. You cannot get a clear understanding without mathematics so you might as well start learning it now. Contrary to popular belief mathematics is neither hard nor unduly boring. Education is exciting and kids love to learn. What no one likes is mathematics and science distorted into a form of punishment. Making learning fun requires hands on machines. No one is more interested in learning about a machine than its owner. Owning devices that do something is very important. If your company can give kids samples of your product for toys, they will know how your stuff works and prefer your product over the competition.

Simple equations make strong statements that hold true everywhere and for all time.

Take the equation of gravity:   F=GMm/r2
This equation holds for each and every pair of particles in the entire universe.
F is the attraction of gravity.
M is the mass of the large object
m is the mass of the other object.
r is the distance between the objects.
G is the universal constant which is the same throughout the universe.

Read about the  Big Bang Theory.
See the roots of evolution in physics, a paper on self organizing phenomenon or autocatakinetic systems.  Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Behavior  by Rod Swenson of the Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action at the University of Connecticut.
For more see the fabulous calculus.
For the ultimate mathematics, see the differential equations of electromagnetism -  Maxwell's Equations.
Want to get in deep? Try Quantum Mechanics.
How I boiled water with the heat of my hand -  Test tube.
My  superconductor.
See my orbit programs in quick BASIC.
Physics links:  My Favorites

4. Technology is Hardware

There is no fun like the fun of running your own machines. This is the best way to learn.
Try  playing with Circuits.  The five true lies of the Operational Amplifier.  My instruments for static electricity.   Try acoustics - a  Helmholtz resonator.  Don't hold your breath for my paper on digital signal processing - the  Bilinear Transform is delayed.  My experiments with  sensible current  have produced numbers close to those used by the government.

5. The Truth About the United States

History is for those with long memories. Most Americans act like they were born yesterday. The right wing dominated news media have mis-educated so many Americans that the country acts like an animal farm. The economic theory of the day is a cover for hidden schemes to manipulate the market.  For a short history of the US foreign policy and domestic national politics see my  history section.  Remember I was there and I saw the news reports.  Read my paper on American prejudices. For a list of issues and where the two major parties have historically stood read my issues.  For a reasonable definition of market fairness see my paper on the American Slave Market .

6. Why can't you be honest ?

Every country and religious organization worldwide has a number of lies which they believe. This fault is identified by noticing those beliefs that they have no evidence for. This is cultural prejudice. Generally anyone there who doubts the ideology of the day is punished. The US is no different. Read my paper on  American prejudices.  See the back issues of  Free Thoughts  a monthly secular magazine. Read my writings on Atheist Politics  and why the Atheist approach will solve social problems. Atheism is based on Hard Science.  See my proof.

7. A guide to the Political Parties

For  the historical position of the political parties on a number of issues see my summary.

8. I tutor in Math and Science

Just  e-mail me   and I will give you my phone number. Then you can call during the free hours 7-11 pm, and I can talk "all night."

Yes phone is better than Free Online Tutoring in Math and Free Online Tutoring in Physics.