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Chaos Corner V01N08 13Nov91
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Audix voicemail information
First of all, Dr. Chaos wants to thank each and every one of you who
pointed out to him that #7 worked on the Cornell telephone system to
redial the last number. He points out to me that is in fact clearly
documented on page 13 of the new "System 85 User's Guide." As a sign of
his appreciation, he has allowed me to share with those of you who use
AUDIX a small shortcut that people seem not to be aware of. When you
call to get your messages, you would normally enter <your-number>#<your-
password># ... well if you are already at your number, the System 85
should know it, right? Right! It does! That means when you are in your
office, to get you voice mail you need only enter #<your-password># .. a
small thing that could save you whole minutes each year.
Mailbag
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Chaos Corner feedback
Joan Winters (formerly of Cornell) at SLAC asks how Dr Chaos got the
single quotes (apostrophes) to disappear from the last Chaos Corner. The
technique is actually simple; by using a sophisticated word processing
program it is no trick at all to mistakes like that. I am using Word for
Windows, and run a macro by default that turns on "smart quotes." The
result is that whenever I type a '"' the computer pauses for a bit while
it figures out if the quote marks should curve to the left or to the
right (and the same thing applies for the "'" character. When I save the
file as ASCII text in preparation for sending it out, the quotation marks
get changed back to their normal ASCII value, but for some reason the
curves apostrophe gets converted to a very straight blank. When things
are going well, I remember to remind Dr. Chaos to not forget to select
the "Disable Smart Quotes" menu option.
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Stereo photography
Joan also points out that there is a list for discussion of Stereo
photography and imaging that is quite active. If you would like to know
more about what's going on in this field (a lot has happened beyond the
View-Master), send a request to be added to the list to: 3d-
request@bfmny0.bfm.com
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GIF image of Oakland
Another slight Oooops! .... In typing the machine location where you
could find the gif picture of the burned area in Oakland, we managed to
come up with something a little creative and wrote
cs.sequoia.berkeley.edu rather than the correct name of
sequoia.cs.berkeley.edu ... Sorry for any confusion.
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MacAstro and Orion spaceship simulator
Scott Brim of CIT's Network Resources admits to having (and using!)
MacAstro (ChaosCorner V01N07) and says it is both fun and useful for
stargazing freaks. He likes the Orion spaceship simulator which allows
you to travel to and from stars within 30 light-years. (It was written
by a Science Fiction author to be sure that he had his descriptions of
the sky correct.)
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Boston weather (and other places too)
Scott Stansbury, in CIT's Network Management Center, points out that if
you are traveling to the Boston area, a quick way to check on that area's
weather forecast is to enter the command 'finger
weather@synoptic.mit.edu' -- of course, it helps to be on a Unix or VMS
system at the time. If you are traveling elsewhere, or just staying at
home and want to know about the weather, a quick:
telnet madlab.sprl.umich.edu 3000
will connect you to receive the weather reports across the country.
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Weather Talk
Eileen Driscoll at Cornell's ILR School pointed out that I was remiss in
explaining how to subscribe to the WX-TALK list. Since it is a VM-based
listserv, from a VM system you just have to enter the command:
tell listserv@uiucvmd subscribe wx-talk <your-name>
or from other systems send mail to listserv@uiucvmd.bitnet where the body
of the mail contains the line "subscribe wx-talk <your-name>". We have
noticed that Eileen is now subscribed to the list but haven't heard if
she got the news early enough about the incredible aurora displays last
Friday evening to get out and see them. Evidently there were lots of UFO
reports in Ohio when people saw the bright lights in the sky.
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German - Samstag and Sonnabend
Gerhard Rentschler at the University of Stuttgart enjoyed Dr. Chaos'
comments about Samstag and Sonnabend in issue number 7. Just today, our
German professor was trying to convince us that German was logical and
English was illogical ... at the same time that he was trying to explain
the subjunctive mood. If you never wished for anything, were never
polite, and would never apologize, then you would be able to almost avoid
the subjunctive mood (except this sentence uses the subjunctive mood 4
times).
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OS/2 & Dr. Chaos
Gerhard asks what Dr. Chaos thinks of OS/2 (or OS half, as he has heard
it referred to). At a recent Share Europe meeting (users of large IBM
computers in Europe), someone asked what OS/2 could do that Unix couldn't
do. Dr. Chaos, if he would have been at the meeting, would have
responded with two things: (1) be able to afford a large number of
attractively priced commercial applications; and (2) have time left over
after maintaining the system to perform real work (for mere mortals,
anyway).
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Chaos Corner is famous (NOT)
Ken Laws at SRI has mentioned Chaos Corner in his Computists Communique
(a weekly newsletter for career-oriented AI/CS/Neural-Net people), and as
a result has boosted the readership somewhat. One reader thought Dr.
Chaos might know more about chaos that the state of his office ... (it IS
a Masters Degree!).
Random things that are all alike and just a little different ...
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Weather maps
The names of the weather map GIF file at vmd.cso.uiuc.edu is no longer
named WXMAP.GIF, but rather is stored with a coded name, starting with
SA, followed by the month, day, and GMT hour of the data collection (e.
g. SA111323.GIF is the latest file as I write this). The Infrared scan
file has the same format except that it starts with the letters CI rather
then SA. The updated files are available by 10-15 minutes past the hour.
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4dos
In the PC-DOS world, one pleasant event is the availability of 4dos
Release 4.0. This excellent utility now takes advantage of both Windows
3.0 and DOS 5.0 to improve on an already fine product -- it is what
COMMAND.COM should have been from the beginning. You can find it at
Simtel20 (or one of the many mirror sites like wuarchive,wustl.edu in the
mirrors/msdos/4dos directory) in two ZIP files: 4dos40p.zip contains the
programs, and 4dos40d.zip contains the documentation. Get it, register
it! You'll be glad you did.
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TSR Management utilities
Another fine set of PC utilities has been recently updated -- they allow
you to load and unload your TSRs. Look in the mirrors/msdos/sysutl
directory for tsrcom31.zip.
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Borland customer support on the Internet
For those of you with Borland products, you can now get customer support
across the Internet. Send electronic mail to customer-
support@borland.com for price lists, maintenance upgrades, etc. ...
everything *except* buying things (you can't do that on the Internet).
We applaud Borland's move in this area and hope that other vendors will
follow their example.
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archie
The service that allows you find programs across the Internet has
undergone a slight change. Archie servers are now located in the
following locations (try not to use trans-oceanic links):
archie.mcgill.ca (Canada)
archie.sura.net (SURAnet, College Park, Maryland)
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (Imperial College, London, UK)
To use the service, telnet to one of the above locations and login as
'archie'. An electronic mail interface is also available.
That's enough for now .... Remember - Dr. Chaos!
(rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu)