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Chaos Corner v04 n02
Chaos Corner V04 N02 5 June 1994
Copyright 1994 by Robert D. Cowles; Ithaca, NY 14850. Permission is
hereby granted to republish complete issues in unaltered form.
Republication of partial issues must reference the source and state that
subscriptions to Chaos Corner are available (free) by sending electronic
mail to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.
--------------------------------------------------
Service tales - Good and Bad
All warrantee service is not the same. When the Trackpointer on our IBM
Thinkpad stopped working properly, we thought we had arranged with a
service department that they would examine the laptop when we took it in
and give it back to us until the parts arrived. Our view was that that
way we might be without the machine for a day at a time but not for a
long period of time. It turned out that while I could have the machine
back after a technician looked at it, the technician wouldn't be able to
look at it for 5 days! To make a long story shorter, The Computer
Center in Ithaca was able to perform all the work in three trips, never
keeping the machine more than a half day at a time. Thanks!
Just before a recent trip to Dallas, Texas, we learned of a service
providing local Internet access. Thinking that it might be possible to
work out some deal better than long distance phone rates between Dallas,
Texas and Ithaca, NY ($0.08 - 0.09 per minute for night-time rates) we
contacted the service. We arranged for an ID on their system at a rate
that would be $23 per month for SLIP access but pro-rated just for the
time I was actually in Dallas. It all looked very good except that I
was not able to get the SLIP connection to work and was unable to get a
response from the telephone number or via electronic mail for over a
week. More later about how using DFW.COM works out as an Internet
service provider.
In an attempt to extend the life of some IBM PS/2 model 80 machines
(Intel 386-20 processors), we purchased some upgrade chips from
Evergreen Technologies ($230 each) that should double processor speed.
Although the re-seller, Treasure Chest, claimed that OS/2 was supported,
the chips are shipped without OS/2 support to enable the cache (without
the cache, there is no noticeable performance improvement). Tech
Support for Evergreen Technologies said that their OS/2 driver was just
coming out of beta-test and they would mail me a copy on a diskette.
Dr. Chaos grabbed the telephone from me and heaped ridicule on the poor
fellow for actually wanting to send me a diskette through the mail when
he could just put the appropriate files up on their BBS and we could get
them much more quickly. The fellow checked with the BBS operator and
agreed to put the file up (including appropriate documentation). The
file did actually appear about 24 hours later, but it had no
documentation (not necessarily a problem), and the ZIP file was
encrypted (big problem). Meanwhile, it takes about 10-15 calls to the
BBS to get a good connection (that may be due to a modem incompatibility
since I got a good connection on the first try using the MegaHertz modem
on my laptop), and no one responds to the messages I leave. On a
technical note, a rough test that we performed by enabling the cache in
a DOS session under OS/2 showed a factor of 2 performance improvement
... the problem is the random lockups encountered several minutes after
the cache is enabled. We'll keep you posted on how this works out.
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Planned Chaos can be Pretty Ugly
One of our favorite new groups on Usenet is alt.humor.puns. Ask Dr.
Chaos at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu if you would like to
receive a copy of the list of oxymorons compiled by Edward Lunny as an
example of the contents of the group. In addition to the ones listed in
the title of this item, consider: happy camper; jumbo shrimp, artificial
grass; civil servant; and the ever popular - military intelligence.
--------------------------------------------------
Clipper Chip follow-up
A recent headline article in the New York Times announced that Matthew
Blaze has discovered the Skipjack algorithm used in the Clipper
encryption chip is flawed. The flaw allows transmission of messages
using the chip that cannot be decoded with the special keys the
government holds. The US Government's response was that anyone wanting
to keep their messages really private would probably use a simpler
alternative. Anyone decoding the secret message in this volume of Chaos
Corner can claim a free bound copy of Chaos Corner volume 3. Dr. Chaos
recommends the Usenet newsgroup sci.crypt if you want to follow or
participate in the discussions.
--------------------------------------------------
Cello and Mosaic follow-up
We finally obtained the IBM fix to OS/2 TCPIP Winsock code that allows
the Cello browser for World Wide Web (WWW) to operate properly. The fix
also allowed us to use Mosaic on a system where it had never operated
properly before. If you're interested in an alternative to Mosaic under
Windows (especially since the newer versions of WinMosaic can't be run
under OS/2) take a look at Cello on fatty.law.cornell.edu in the
/pub/LII/Cello directory. Dr. Chaos points out that I need to start
complying with our new standard ... so I will modify the above to say
that the URL is ftp://fatty.law.cornell.edu/pub/LII/Cello/.
--------------------------------------------------
Correction on Jupiter collision
In the last issue, we mentioned that there would be a collision between
a comet and Jupiter in June. Sorry, but there has been a change in
plans and due to an illness the comet has been forced to reschedule the
show into the latter part of July. Unfortunately, the actual collision
will occur on the side of Jupiter that is away from Earth, so the
effects will not be visible until a few hours after the impact. We
expect images to be available on the net soon after event.
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Novell joins the Web
Novell offers World Wide Web access to a number of electronic manuals,
including 10,000 technical support documents that answer frequently
asked questions. To help you wade through the documents, there is a
boolean search capability. The technical support databases are updated
every 2 weeks. Access to the Novell Web server is by the Uniform
Resource Locator http://www.novell.com/. If you don't have a Web
browser, don't worry -- just use gopher to access the alternate site
gopher.novell.com.
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Documentation on World Wide Web standards
The documents on the Web are often in the form of a hypertext document
conforming to the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) specification. HTML
is written in the international standard ISO 8879 - Standard Generalized
Markup Language (SGML). If you have a Web browser, look at the file
http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/htmldoc.html for a description of HTML. Lots
of other documentation, both on HTML, and on Uniform Resource Locators
(URL) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) can be found at the
"mother-of-all-web-sites" info.cern.ch in the /pub/www/doc directory.
--------------------------------------------------
Maps of the World
Over 230,000 maps are available covering most of the world. Warning, a
number of these maps are over 200K bytes, so you will want to have
plenty of time of a fast Internet connection to do much browsing. The
URL for the site is http://rowan.lib.utexas.edu/map_collection.html.
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Financial information available
As an experimental service, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab is
providing stock market information across the net. For a number of
stocks, you can obtain graphs of stock price and volume over the past 6
months. A new commercial service will soon be starting that can provide
more complete information, including such things as a portfolio report
detailing the value of all your stocks as of the close of the market and
sent to you via electronic mail each day. Point your Web browser to:
http://www.ai.mit.edu/stocks.html.
--------------------------------------------------
Calling all weather freaks!
If you would like to know the current conditions and/or local forecast
for any part of the United States, the service provided at MIT is very
nice. When you connect to http://www.mit.edu:8001/usa.html, the
document transferred is the current US weather map which you then click
your mouse pointer on to obtain the local conditions and forecast. Very
nicely done except that we encountered a small problem with the image
being too large to fit in the Mosaic window and there was no way that we
could figure out to reposition the image to show the eastern US. It
could be a problem caused by the early version of WinMosaic we are
using.
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Movie Reviews available online - you supply the popcorn
The Usenet group rec.arts.movies.reviews has a good reputation as a
source of movie information. If you have ftp access, you need look no
further than the directory usenet/rec.arts.movies.reviews/long.dir on
site ftp.uu.net. The reviews are filed in subdirectories by the first
letter of the movie name. European users can get the reviews from
ftp.funet.fi in the directory /pub/culture/tv+film/reviews.
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How to keep current with the latest Windows software
The following from comp.os.ms-windows.misc by Chris Johnson at SUNY
Buffalo: Every morning at 3:00 EST, I have a program that runs and gets
a list of the files in the uploads directory at ftp.cica.indiana.edu,
the definitive ftp site for Windows programs. My program separates the
new files from the old files, and then goes back to the site to get the
new text files. Once all the files are received, the program packages
it up in one message. The first part of the message is an explanation
of CICA-List. The second is the list of new files (.zip, and .txt).
And finally, the third is the actual text files. This allows one to
keep abreast of the new programs available at cica, without ftp'ing
there everyday. This list was created because I got tired of trying to
keep up with the new files there and decided to automate it... them a
few friends asked for it, and the list was born. There are currently
more than 200 subscribers and is growing at a steady rate.
If you would like to subscribe to CICA-List, please send mail to
cmj@acsu.buffalo.edu with the following characteristics...
in the Subject line: CICA-ADD
in the body: add username@internet.address
where username is your username, and internet.address is your computer's
internet address.
--------------------------------------------------
Need to develop Internet training, fast?
Deborah Newkirk at the University of Alaska has made available Internet
training presentations she developed for the DECUS Symposium in May '94.
They are available via anonymous ftp at orion.alaska.edu in the
subdirectory decus-no94.mac-ppt or decus-no94.dos-ppt depending on your
need for DOS or Mac version. Sessions are named IN00#.PPT (black &
white) and IN00#C.PPT (color) for the Mac and IN#-D.PPT (black & white)
and IN#C-D.PPT (color). The seminar handouts are designated with INET
in a similar fashion.
INET Seminar: Software Tools for Accessing Internet Resources
IN001 Opening session: The Internet Puzzle: Putting the Pieces Together
IN004 Internet Puzzle: What's in the Future?
IN005 Community Information Systems: Internet information for the Public
IN006 Software Tools for Accessing Internet Resouces
IN007 Global Discussions and Information Exchange via the Internet
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Boon to Computer Science researchers
A collection of bibliographies in various fields of computer science is
available via anonymous ftp and the World Wide Web. The bibliographies
contain about 240,000 references, most of which are references to
journal articles, conference papers or technical reports. The
collection has been formed by using various freely accessible services
in the Internet (anonymous ftp, mailserver, telnet) and converting each
bibliography into a uniform BibTeX format. It is organized in files
containing references to a (more or less) specific area within computer
science. All files containing bibliographic data are compressed with
gzip (extension ".gz"). The bibliographies are accessible
FTP: ftp.ira.uka.de (129.13.10.90):pub/bibliography
ftp.cs.umanitoba.ca:pub/bibliographies
faui80.informatik.uni-erlangen.de:pub/literatur/Mirror/bibliography
Read the README file in that directory
WWW: ftp://ftp.ira.uka.de/pub/bibliography/www/bibliography.html
ftp://ftp.cs.umanitoba.ca:pub/bibliographies/www/bibliography.html
ftp://faui80.informatik.uni-erlangen.de:
pub/literatur/Mirror/bibliography/www/bibliography.html
Read the introduction in that document
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Dr. Chaos
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