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Chaos Corner v03 n07
Chaos Corner V03 N07 20 October 1993
Copyright 1993 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.
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Welcome to 112 New Subscribers
Thanks to a mention in the Bits and Bytes online newsletter, we've
processed over 112 new subscriptions in the 12 days since the last
issue; including the addition of what appears to be a list exploder in
the Ukrainian city of Kiev, 8 other subscribers in Europe, 2 in Africa,
and one each in South America and Australia.
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Mailbag - ANI and CID
Thanks to all of you (and believe me, there were too many to mention)
who corrected Dr. Chaos's misstatement concerning CallerID features.
When you call a toll-free 800 number in North America, the called party
is billed for the call, and receives a coded message identifying the
caller (Automatic Number Identification or ANI). CallerID services
attempt to provide somewhat the same service to all customers receiving
a call if the call originates within the caller's area (Local Access
Transport Area or LATA). Again, thanks to all who responded so quickly
and with such patient explanations of the true situation!
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Mailbag - Correction concerning Microsoft
As Al Williams at Penn State (and other eagle-eyed readers) were quick
to point out, the line in V03 N06 that stated Microsoft is not on the
Internet was supposed to read Microsoft is NOW on the Internet.
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Mailbag - Dr. Chaos has finally made it .. an honorary Ph.D.
"I like your little publication. I don't think you should worry about
not having a Ph.D and calling yourself doctor chaos. ... Ph.Ds can
traditionally be conferred by anyone who has a Ph.D. Since you are
doing mankind (at least the computer literate ones) a service of
immeasurable worth I hearby with the authority invested in me confer
upon you an honorary doctorate degree. No longer do you have to say you
are merely a master because you are not an honorary member of the elite,
for whatever that is worth."
Kent Palmer, Ph.D.
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Mailbag - Musical notes - not that simple
Concerning the file with the chart of musical notes frequencies offered
in the last issue, Edward Stuebing writes, "This is a little simple-
minded. These are the "average" frequencies of a compromise system. I
suppose a computer can be used for this but it is menial compared to
providing a correct calculation. The frequencies of the notes actually
depend on the key you are in, which is an important adjustment made by
professional musicians. For us amateurs & beginners it would be nice to
have a computer program to calculate the adjustments for us."
Does anyone have such a chart or know of the adjustments?
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US Government information available online
The huge FedWorld bulletin board system is now accessible through the
Internet. Just 'telnet fedworld.doc.gov' or 'telnet 192.239.92.201' and
answer a few questions to register on the system ... you will then have
direct access to a wealth of information but that's not all. FedWorld
is a gateway to over 100 other bulletin board systems run by various
federal agencies. Try it out; you will be amazed at the amount of
information available.
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Cliff Stoll's speaking engagements - online
Would you like to be present at a lecture given by Cliff Stoll, author
of Cuckoo's Egg? Well, if you missed his speech at Harper College last
night, plan on making it to the dedication of the Kensington Library
(just north of Berkeley, California) on November 4th. In general, you
can keep up with Cliff's speaking engagements by issuing the command:
finger stoll@ocf.berkeley.edu
and also to find out about last minute updates and/or changes.
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Ig Nobel winners announced
As we were writing our last issue, the winners of the Ig Nobel prizes
were being feted at MIT in Cambridge, MA. The award we enjoyed the most
was the Peace prize awarded to Pepsico in the Phillipines for announcing
the wrong winning number in a lottery ... a number that was evidently
held by about 800,000 people. It united a lot of warring factions.
Close behind was the Chemistry award to the Campbells for inventing sent
strips; thereby allowing publishers to supply us with fragrance-filled
magazines. For a complete list of the winners, just send some mail off
to Dr. Chaos at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.
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Public accessible NetNews sites
Did you ever want to grab an article that just expired at you local news
site? Or look at a group that is not carried my you local news source?
Arnold Lesikar has produced a compilation of publicly addressable news
sources, annotated with comments like whether or not they allow posting,
etc. Before you get too excited and go looking for a site carrying
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica, forget it ... the administrators at these
sites know that their systems are going to be on the list, so it's
unlikely this list will provide you with that kind of source. You can
get the latest version of the list from nctuccca.edu.tw (Taiwan) located
in Lesikar.NNTP-Servers in the documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other
directory. Alternatively, 'finger lesikar@tigger.stcloud.msus.edu'.
Included in the file are the Gopher bookmark entries to access these
sites.
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Computerized fun on Halloween?
Turn your computer into a Halloween sound machine. There are a number
of appropriate WAV files (a popular format for sound files) that are
available on virginia.edu in the public_access/sounds directory ...
courtesy of John Crocker at North Carolina State University:
Send questions/comments to jbcrocke@eos.ncsu.edu
_/\== ==/\_
__/###// ( ) \\###\_
___/#####// |\/| \\####\____
__/########// (@::@) \\########\__
/##########(( \ / ))##########\
/############\\ (oo) //############\
|##############\\ / ** \ //##############|
/################\\/ \//################\
/##############/\##( /\ )##/\##############\
\/\##/\###|\##/ \/\ | | /\/ \##/\###|\##/\/
V V \#/ V V /| | | |\ V \#/ V V
V ( | | | | ) V
__\| | | |/__
(vvv(VVV)(VVV)vvv)
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Files available from Dr. Chaos
List of Internet accessible electronic newsletters of magazines;
Annotated list of sites with OS/2 software available via anonymous ftp;
Benchmark results comparing 386 and 486 chips from various manufacturers
and a file exploring the compatibility issues around the Cyrix 486DLC
chip (written by Norbert Juffa in Karlsruhe, Germany).
--------------------------------------------------
Still not comfortable with looking around the Internet?
There is a project underway to aid people in becoming acquainted with
the resources available on the Internet. Named "The Big Dummy's Guide
to the Internet," there is also a list of questions and answers:
This posting tells you everything you ought to know about an
exciting project that helps so-called Newbies to survive their
first year on The Net. It gets you softly into most of the often
severe details of mindboggling complexity that pop up when you're
hooked into The Net. It is also intended to help you get around
the trap doors, avoid pitfalls and other non-funny things (e.g.
local gurus that laugh at you), you'll encounter during life as a
Netizen in Cyberspace. It is styled after a FAQ list, ie.
"Frequently Asked Questions and their respective Answers".
Just ask Dr. Chaos at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu for the FAQ
about the Big Dummy's Guide.
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AIX 3.2 software, compiled and ready
When you're getting started as a Unix system administrator, it is
sometimes hard to get all the packages together, make sure they are
ported for the platform you are working on (and the particular release
of the operating system), make sure you have all the necessary other
packages to get things to build properly (gcc, GNU make, patch, etc) or
to run properly (perl, etc). For popular architectures, current
versions of popular software that is ready-to-run may be found at
info2.rus.uni-stuttgart.de in the /afs/rus/sw/ directories (hp700_ux90,
pmax_ul43, rs_aix32, sun4_411, and vax_ul4). Another -source- of
compiled binaries for IBM RS/6000s (Rios), Sun and HP boxes is found at
the machine ftp-aix.polytechnique.fr (129.104.3.60) in the /pub/bin
directories.
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Information on the PowerPC is available
Dr. Chaos ran across the following in a recent AIXTIPS release:
"When IBM first released the Risc System/6000 a Technology Book
detailing various aspects of the project was released. This included
H/W and S/W details for the POWER chipset, AIX, new compiler and
simulation technology, etc. In the almost four years since then many
new developments have appeared, including PPC, POWER2, better graphics
options and more compiler enhancements. To cover all this new
technology IBM has produced a second volume of the Technology Book. It
includes 4 papers on the PPC and IBM's PPC-based workstations as well as
many other papers on the POWER2 architecture.
"A draft of this book can be found on the anonymous ftp server,
ibminet.awdpa.ibm.com in the directory /pub/rs6kpapers as techbook.ps.
There are also UNIX and GNU compressed versions there, too."
Marc Pawliger
Dr. Chaos points out that if you visit that machine, you might also take
a look at the latest IBM AIX, RS/6000, PS/2 and OS/2 related product
announcements are now available for anonymous ftp in the directory
/pub/announcements. The file 00INDEX describes the contents of all the
files for this year, (the file names are just the announcement numbers,
(i.e. "191-026"). Previous indices are stored as 00INDEXnnnn where nnnn
is the year.
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Get your Free Subscription Here!
Just send a message to Dr. Chaos - chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu
and ask to be put on the subscription list. It's that easy. Don't
delay ---- act now!
Dr. Chaos (I have a Master's degree ....)
.
