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Chaos Corner v02 n06
Chaos Corner V02 N06 22Jul92
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Summary for Chaos Corner V02 N06
Thanks to a recently received birthday present, the lead topic for this
issue is Ham radio; in particular Short Wave Listening (SWL). Other
topics will include OS/2 (since I'm entering this on a system running
OS/2), fax software, KEDIT, Kermit, weather, and, if there is time,
WAIS. First let's rummage around in the ...
Mailbag
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Anonymous FTP from puffin improved (working?)
Lee Butler at csn.org reported several times to Dr. Chaos that he has
been unable to get and of the individual back issues from puffin (that's
puffin.cit.cornell.edu). At first, Dr. Chaos figured that puffin had
gotten hung up and just needed re-booting (Windows 3.1 never puts out
UAE messages anymore ... you either get GPF messages or no response at
all ... from ANYTHING). Things were fine between pelican and puffin so
Dr. Chaos advised Lee to try it again. In the next batch of messages
was one saying it still didn't work. After much experimentation (and so
that an already long story doesn't get more out of hand), Dr. Chaos
discovered that the failure occurred when using ftp from a Sun machine
but not from a machine running AIX (either AIX/370 or AIX 3.1)! Even
stranger was the fix ... Dr. Chaos got the latest version of the
WNQVTNET package (2.6 is current and he was running 2.3), and the
problem seemed to go away. We hope to hear good news from Lee at any
time, that he can now get at the files.
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Motifgif movies and watching the weather
Brian Carcich at cuspif.tn.cornell.edu writes Dr. Chaos to tell him that
he has modified the motifgif program to play several images as a movie.
He reports that it's great for playing the satellite images to watch the
cloud motion (your own private Weather Channel, eh?). The diff's are in
the file motifgif.movie.dif in the /pub directory on moe.tn.cornell.edu.
The RS/6000 executable is also hiding there ... look in the same
directory for 'pict' since that is what motifgif forks to for the real
work. Brian claims that the BEST image viewer is 'getx11' from the Utah
Raster Toolkit (URT). For right now, Dr. Chaos is sticking with xv and
xloadimage (all these viewers are available from the /contrib
directory on export.lcs.mit.edu).
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A version of nn for AIX on the RS/6000
Gerhard Rentschler at Uni Stuttgart asked where Dr. Chaos got the
version of 'nn' (NetNews reader) that he is running pelican. It only
took Dr. Chaos only a few hours to finally locate nn.tar.Z in the /pub
directory on acsc.acsc.com (that machine isn't searched by archie, so
locating it was a real piece of detective work). The convenient thing
about that versio is that it aleady contains the s-aix3.1* and m-rs6000*
files needed to build nn and run it on an RS/6000.
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Product Warning Labels (copyrighted article, see Journal in next issue)
As a contribution, and in exchange from being put on the subscription
list, Terri Tracey at HP sent the following for your amusement:
Scientific Truth in Product Warning Labels
by Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky
(Stolen Without Permission from
Journal of anillegiblycopiedtitle)
WARNING: This product warps space and time in its vicinity.
WARNING: This product attracts every other piece of matter in the
Universe, including the products of other manufacturers, with a
force proportional to the product of the masses and inversely
proportional to the distance between them.
CAUTION: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent
of 85 million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.
HEALTH WARNING: Care should be taken when lifting this product,
since its mass, and thus its weight, is dependent on its velocity
relative to the user.
ADVISORY: There is an extremely small but nonzero chance that,
through a process known as "tunneling," this product may
spontaneously disappear from its present location and reappear at
any random place in the universe, including your neighbor's
domicile. The manufacturer will not be responsible for any damages
or inconvenience that may result.
COMPONENT EQUIVALENCY NOTICE: The subatomic particles
(electrons, protons, etc.) comprising this product are exactly the
same in every measurable respect as those used in the products of
other manufacturers, and no claim to the contrary may legitimately
be expressed or implied.
CONSUMER NOTICE: Because of the "Uncertainty Principle," it is
impossible for the consumer to find out at the same time both
precisely where this product is and how fast it is moving.
NOTE: The most fundamental particles in this product are held
together by a "gluing" force about which little is currently known
and whose adhesive power cannot therefore be permanently
guaranteed.
ATTENTION: Despite any other listing of product contents found
hereon, the consumer is advised that, in actuality, this produce
consists of 99.999999999999% empty space.
HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE: This product contains minute
electrically charged particles moving at velocities in excess of
five hundred million miles her hour.
READ THIS BEFORE OPENING PACKAGE: According to certain
suggested versions of a grand unified theory, the primary particles
constituting this product may decay to nothingness within the next
four hundred million years.
PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW: Any use of this product, in any
manner whatsoever, will increase the amount of disorder in the
universe. Although no liability is implied herein, the consumer is
warned that this process will ultimately lead to the heat death of
the universe.
NEW GRAND UNIFIED THEORY DISCLAIMER: The manufacturer may
technically be entitled to claim this product is ten-dimensional.
Legal rights above and beyond those applicable to three-dimensional
objects, since the seven new dimensions are "rolled up" into such
a small area that they cannot be detected.
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS: The entire physical universe,
including this product, may one day collapse back into an
infinitesimally small space. Should another universe subsequently
re-emerge, the existence of this product in that universe cannot be
guaranteed.
PLEASE NOTE: Some quantum physics theories suggest that when the
consumer is not directly observing this product, it may cease to
exist or will exist only in a vague and undetermined state.
THIS IS A 100% MATTER PRODUCT: In the unlikely event that this
merchandise should contact antimatter in any form, a catastrophic
explosion will result.
Now, what have YOU contributed to Chaos Corner recently?
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Chaos Corner Feedback
Rhomulos - Head Jester, (where? In Australia, of course) thanks Dr.
Chaos for adding to the subscription list, and said, "I was reading your
old articles and if I had had them 6 months ago would have saved me lots
of trouble."
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Chaos - lyapunov style - articles and GIF images
Bill McQueen from Toronto, also getting into the spirit, sent along a
couple of items. The first, in the spirit of chaos, is an archive site
for preprints and programs concerning nonlinear dynamics and signal
processing (is there anything else?). The node name is (of course)
lyapunov.ucsd.edu. (If you would like to see some of the striking
figures generated by lyapunov figures, check out the ly*.gif files in
the /pub/gif directory on pelican.cit.cornell.edu.)
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Find people on the net with netfind
The second item from Bill McQueen concerns the netfind tool that is
available from ftp.cs.colorado.edu in the pub/cs/distribs/netfind
directory. The program runs under SunOS 4.0 or higher it searches a
number of Internet sources given a rough description of a person's name
and where they work (company and/or location). People without a Sun on
which to run Netfind on can telnet to bruno.cs.colorado.edu and log in
as "netfind" (with no password). If nothing else, just take a look at
it, Dr. Chaos used it just this afternoon; eh also suggests you ask him
(chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu) for the FAQ file from
news.answers on "How to find people's E-mail addresses".
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More Chaos Corner Feedback
Last and certainly not least, in the "Made My Day" category from Charles
Lindsay at Simon Fraser University, "I've been following your postings,
as they have been available, and I've concluded your postings actually
Add information to my day, rather than simply consuming time, as
elsewhere..." Thanks Charles!
In the next issue we will cover how to catch elephants thanks to an item
sent in by another reader.
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Radio -Shortwave Broadcast schedules
The key resource for Shortwave Listening (SWL) and also for people who
love to try and pick up distant stations (DXing) is the set of broadcast
schedules maintained on nic.funet.fi in the /pub/dx/text/schedules
directory. Not all the schedules are very current but they do give you
a good idea of the times and frequencies to look for a particular
station. (Dr. Chaos spends hours watching me write and listening
to Deutsche Welle -- a station that broadcasts in German and English
from Koeln (Cologne for the French speakers) each evening. Once DW is
no longer broadcasting to North America (at about 0200), He switches
over the Radio Austria being broadcast from Wien (Vienna). Another
handy resource is a one page sheet listing the general use of frequency
ranges, time frequencies, and a chart to translate GMT (or UTC or CUT)
to USA time zones. If you would like the guide, let Dr. Chaos know at
chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. If you enjoy scanning rather
than listening to the SW bands, check out the frequency lists for
different parts of the country that are available on ftp.cs.buffalo.edu
in the pub/ham-radio directory. There is also software available for a
couple of the more expensive scanners that allow control through an
RS-232 port. Of course, the way to get started is by reading the
Frequently Asked Questions lists, available on the NetNews group
rec.radio.shortwave, at the FTP site mentioned above, or at the
repository of all FAQ files, pit-manager.mit.edu, in the directory
/pub/usenet/rec.radio.shortwave.
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Is your scanner legal?
One of the big controversies in the scanning world has been over the
laws passed to prevent people from using information they got by
scanning the cellular telephone bands. Some scanners are being sold
that do not scan those bands, but only require a pair of wire cutters
and about 10 minutes to restore that capability. Interestingly enough,
there does not seem to be any law covering what information is picked up
by listening in on portable telephone conversations. Dr. Chaos believes
that the best rule to follow is that if you are broadcasting on the
airways, then assume that you have traded privacy for convenience and
shouldn't be surprised at who might be listening.
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Archive of ShortWave Listening (SWL) articles
An archive of articles on ShortWave Listening is available from the
mailserver at vmsserv@arecibo.aero.edu. Just put in the BODY of your
mail file one or more of the following commands: DIR, GET, HELP,
INDEX, or ?.
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OS/2 & this version of Chaos Corner
For the first time, this issue is being written under OS/2 2.0, running
C-Kermit for OS/2 in one window, and running KEDIT for OS/2 in another
window (I find it crucial to be able to use copy-and-paste to transfer
names of machines and directory paths). The version of Kermit allows
two extra editing options ... one is copy-and-paste -- one operation
that copies the highlighted text to the location of the cursor; and the
other operation is 'append' that adds the highlighted text to whatever
is
already in the copy buffer. KEDIT, the Xedit-like editor (with REXX
macro interface) for DOS and OS/2 has some nice new features in Version
5.0 ... of course, I've always thought that KEDIT was the REAL product
and that CMS Xedit was just what you had to live with because of the
3270 interface.
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OS/2 C++ computer (GNU) and OS/2 archive sites
OS/2 is getting to have a significant amount of software available for
it via FTP. One significant addition was the availability of the latest
version of the GNU C++ compiler. By the time Microsoft and Borland get
around to producing C++ compilers for OS/2 they will have to product a
reasonably good product to be able to compete against what people can
get from GCC for free. For OS/2 software via FTP, look on machines
cc1.kuleuven.ac.be (the list of files is named O2.FILELIST, but 'cd' to
ANONYMOU.201 to locate the files) and ftp-os2.nmsu.edu.
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Weather information available on the Internet
For those of you following the weather, there is a wealth of information
over the Internet. Not all of it is well organized or put in standard
formats, but with some work (and maybe with some pressure in the right
places) things can happen. Right here at Cornell is a large collection
of climate data for the Northeastern USA. Only a limited amount of
current/forecast data is available ... the researchers are more
concerned with long-term climate changes than with short-term forecasts.
If you are interested in getting access, contact Keith Eggleston at
keith@metvax.cit.cornell.edu or (607)-255-1749 (or 3034) to signup for a
userid. There are no charges, but they don't think that weather
information is of very wide interest on campus (except for some isolated
"crazies" who have the current weather map updated hourly as the
background for their workstation display). As usual, the other place to
start looking for information, is the FAQ list for the NetNews group
sci.geo.meteorology. Send electronic mail to Dr. Chaos at
chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu if you would like a copy of the
information on weather data sources available across the Internet (and
other places).
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Out of time and space for now; the fax and WAIS topics will just have to
wait until next time (maybe by that time Dr. Chaos will have them
working).
For your own subscription to Chaos Corner, just send your request off to
chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.
Dr Chaos (I have a Master's Degree)
