screwmez app

What I find strange about this is , apart from me and one other, no one else has posted that it doesn't work for them, and, even stranger, apart from Neil, no one has posted that it DOES work.

Very interesting.

Roy (who seems to have started something)

Perhaps most people already have MSVBVM50.dll - it's fairly ubiquitous. If peoples' recent Windows installations are upgrades, it would have been carried over from the Windows previous version even if a clean install didn't include it (and I wouldn't expect it to).

Moreover, these are the Visual Basic runtime files. What's supposed to happen is that, if someone writes and distributes an application in Visual Basic he includes the runtime file as part of the installation. He might check to see whether they already exist on the target machine or even specifically ask the end-user but those files are part of the program and the application installation is incomplete without them.

For this reason, many people have the runtime on their machine - even with later versions of Windows - without ever consciously putting them there themselves.

The strange thing here, if there is one, is that the program (Screwmez) doesn't include the runtime - with at least an option to install it - in the package. It's incomplete without it (not that it would be the first time).

FWIW, this machine running Win-8.1 has a copy (dated 2004). It started as a clean install of Win-8 then upgraded to Win-8.1 neither of which is likely to have installed the VB runtime. Somewhere along the line, something that I installed provided a copy.

John,

I don't completely disagree with you, nevertheless there is some very good open source software some of which is actually far superior to the commercial equivalents. And without open source the software the world as we know it would not exist, there would be no internet,no email, no web, no cloud computing and no Android phones. 3D graphics would be in its infancy and 3D printing a pipe-dream. Linux a poster child for open source may not have made the significant impact on the desktop (although I haven't run anything else for years) that its proponents had hoped for, but it has a commanding share of the server market as well as being the operating system used by the countless embedded computers that industry relies on; no doubt it is even to be found in much of the CNC equipment you use on a regular basis.

The problem however is that far too many developers, whether they be professionals or hobbyists, will with best of intentions throw out some software that they wrote as "gift" for others to make use of, blissfully unaware that the buggy or ill-documented gift that they have given is not actually free if the recipient has to waste hours trying to make it work before giving up in frustration.

Clive

Edited By clivel on 10/09/2016 20:11:23

Do carry on and print more apps. I found screwmez very interesting. Yes there was a problem with no dll (Windows 10) but downloaded the appropriate file from Microsoft and so far no more problems. Perhaps new apps should be published with a health warning and it might be a good idea to create a recovery point before installing.

Best wishes Graham.

Cannot comment on the downloads - I was going to download them but just haven't got around to it yet.

With regards the whole MS Office thing - I was a very early "business" user of "PCs" - using 20/20 (on a Z80 CP/M "PC" ) and running customer leasing forecasts (that had taken me three days to do manually before and which were the worst part of my working month) that suddenly took just 10 minutes to run - although three file outputs had to be added together because all the data couldn't be handled at once in the 64kb memory.

I also remember the cost and pain of running my business using Wordperfect, 20/20 and various other "proprietary" applications (all incompatible) across a number of users. I wasn't a great fan of Office to begin with but it slowly dawned on me how easy it made my working life compared to what had gone before - and it saved us lots of money too when compared to buying separate apps from multiple vendors. So Neil's comments certainly ring bells with me!

It's strange people get upset about paying money for a 'virtual' product that has taken billions of dollars to develop over the years and knock it for all sorts of reasons. Without MS and the PC there would be no affordable computing (or the Internet - so perhaps not a complete blessing). It was because the PC was effectively an open hardware platform that competition drove down prices. My first 286 AT (from IBM) cost nearly four grand altogether (a lot more money back then!).

And whilst I'm having a bit of a rant in this area - I do get fed up with the Microsoft knockers who bang on all the time about how dreadful MS is - but seem perfectly happy to get ripped off by Apple. Apple may make very nice products but they are not cheap nor are they 'open' in any sense of the word (from a hardware or software perspective) as my sons have learnt.

Of course all of this is old hat and already history in reality. Everything will move online and only be available as 'compute' hours, with all your storage and apps running in cloudland somewhere. You will pay for access via subscriptions and my grandchildren will view all this just like we view the gas, electricity and phone bill - as a utility. When they find Grandad's old Core i5 PC in the attic - they will look at it with the same kind of amused bewilderment that we now view some of those wonderful early Victorian inventions... whilst complaining that Google has screwed up their tera-byte charges (again) this month....and that their phone implant is already out of date...

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 11/09/2016 09:06:41

Thanks Graham,

Sadly your solution (and I posted the link to the missing file above) seems to simple.

I'll put the link in the article though.

Neil

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Ian,

I deliberately avoided bringing Apple into this conversation, but I would like to mention that I watched as Microsoft callously manipulated the office-software market and emerged triumphant. [Dave 's-o-d' described it very well in his recent post]. For example: Lotus SmartSuite was a perfectly good product, but was effectively killed by Microsoft's skill in the art of war: Excel would import 123 files beautifully, but 'struggled' to export in that format [and similar for the other products in the two suites] ... Somehow this 'difficulty' helped lead many businesss to adopt MS Office as their preferred product.

There are many thiings I don't like about the Microsoft products, but the aspect that I like least is, the way that Microsoft does business.

MichaelG.

A common misunderstanding!

The PC was IBM's reluctant entry into an already burgeoning Microprocessor market. At the time profits from selling traditional mainframes and mainframe services were being seriously undermined by competition from minicomputer makers. It was fairly obvious as 8-bit microprocessors joined the gamethat not only could money be made from these devices, but that their future potential was huge. They were a major source of competition and opportunity.

Above all else the IBM PC made the Personal Computer respectable to accountants. The idea that it wasd supported by the world's most successful computer company meant that decision makers could buy them in large numbers without having to argue the case for buying the same thing from an unknown start-up. (They were confident about IBM's future even though IBM's accounts were starting to indicate the need for major restructuring.)

IBM didn't have an operating system for their new PC but there were two candidates they could buy in. CP/M-86 was in pole position. It was based on by far the most popular microprocessor operating system, CP/M-80. The other candidate was the much less well known MS-DOS. Back then Microsoft was a tiny company best known for their successful BASIC interpreter and compiler.

The story goes that that Digital Research's Gary Kildall was on the golf course when IBM rang to offer him the contract and, over-confident of his position, he gave them the run-around. IBM weren't impressed with DR and went to Microsoft instead.

My point is that neither IBM or Microsoft was essential to the development of personal computing. There were and are plenty of alternatives that would have put us more-or-less where we are today. A slight twist of history might have us all bashing evil corporate Linux at the expense of the brave little Microsoft and their Open Source offering.

What's most interesting to me is that technical merit often plays such a relatively minor part in events. Money, politics, risk, greed, chance, ignorance and emotion were all more significant factors in the PC revolution, at least from where I was standing.

None of this is new. James Watt got nowhere until he was partnered by Matthew Boulton. Boulton's access to money and his credibility in the marketplace were essential to trigger the steam revolution. It's why successful salesmen get paid more than successful techies. What people believe is more important than what people know.

Cheers,

Dave

Neil (and others),

Like many others on this thread I tried and failed to get screwmez running. However, in my case I suspect that it is due my lack of a Windows PC and hence trying to get it to work through an emulator. I accept that this is part of the problem with not being a Windows user, but as it looked like such a good idea for a tool, I decided to go with an alternative solution: make my own cross-platform version.

I've written a first attempt at re-implementing screwmez in javascript so that it will run on any modern operating system with a reasonable web browser. The implementation is here:

**LINK**

A few caveats:

• It's had very little real-world testing (I'm hoping a few readers of MEW will try it out and let me know of problems...);
• I've never used screwmez (as described above) so I don't know for certain whether it does the same thing - I've based it on the screenshots in the magazine and the equations from my copy of Machinery's Handbook;
• I haven't found (or worked out) equations for minimum and maximum wire size - I've found equations specific to UNC and Whitworth threads, but nothing for BA or (more usefully) generic to a given thread angle;
• It was knocked together over the course of one evening, so there may be plenty of other mistakes - please be gently in your criticism!

I'd obviously welcome any comments, corrections, suggestions etc (although preferably through the comments form on my website as I'll probably see the comments somewhat quicker than if they're posted here). Also if anyone has any requests for other similar calculators, then please get in touch (preferably with the required equations as figuring them out is by far the hardest bit!).

Al

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Let me be the first to congratulate, and thank, you

Obviously, I haven't done any 'testing' but, it opens and runs on the iPad

... That's a great first-step in my opinion

MichaelG.

Thanks Michael

Except for people like me who disable javascript as a security risk

Neil

Good job you use Windows and have no problems running arbitrary executable files that people email to you then...

Al