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Chaos Corner V02 N05 19Jun92
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Top files requesed from CC V02 N04
For those who are interested, the top files requested from the last
issue were: the Unofficial Smiley Dictionary, 100 Ways to Say I Love
You, Dave Barry on Computing, and the information on getting personal
Internet access for $29/month at 9600 baud -- the List of Telephone Area
Codes for US and Canada also had some fair amount of interest shown in
it. Of course, the people who asked for "all three list" received all
four lists (since no one pointed that out, Dr. Chaos wonders if his
readers are similar to the small furry creature he just pried out from
between the jaws of the household cat.
Mailbag
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More on time, UTC, CUT and GMT
In the category of corrections, Norris@athena.mit.edu points out that
the choice of "UTC" for the time zone name was because the order of the
letters did not correspond to the proper ordering in ANY major language.
Joe Ahlgren (author of GeoClock) has had to do a lot of work with time
for a number of years (Joe --- I still tell stories about the program
you developed on the Wang calculator back at Ft. Huachuca). In any
case, Joe had the following clarification on the difference between UTC
and GMT.: "The change from GMT to UTC is very fundamental. GMT as a
time standard WAS based on astronomical measurements. It is now quite
well established that the motion of the planets is nowhere near as
regular as atomic clocks. UTC as a time standard is based on atomic
clocks, and the time used by most of the scientific world is sync'ed to
this standard. The difference between this standard and the planetary
motions is why there are "leap seconds" from time to time. However, GMT
as a time zone still exists and is still the basis for most other time
zones. GMT is sync'ed to UTC. It is still quite proper to say that
Eastern Daylight Time is 4 hours behind GMT. GMT is a derived standard,
but still the standard for time zones. Of course, there is no practical
difference between UTC and GMT. I think the ultimate authority on these
names is Ted Turner, and he still uses GMT. ... Paris is responsible
BOTH for keeping the atomic time standard and keeping UTC in sync with
the observed day by adding leap seconds. The astromomy for the later is
scattered all over the planet, but of course not in Greenwich since it
is too close to London."
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GeoClock reviews - correction
We made the mistake last time of saying that
something had appeared in PC Week about GeoClock ... having read all
those back issues at one time must have fried Dr. Chaos's brain, because
the mention was in CompuServe Magazine rather than PC Week. Sorry for
the confusion.
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What is this Chaos Corner stuff?
Sean Pogue at Ohio U. may have actually asked what some of the rest of
you were thinking when he saw Chaos Corner for the first time -- "So
what gives with all this Dr. Chaos stuff?" The response of Dr. Chaos
was (for those of you who wondered and didn't ask) " Chaos Corner is a
small, randomly published electronic newsletter I write that mentions
things I have found in the process of wandering across the network.
Back copies are available, and a copy of Volume 1 from last year (with
an *index*) is available in PostScript form (via ftp) or bound hardcopy
with nice covers. What you have here is a combination of Dr. Science
(from National Public Radio), Chaos Manor (from Byte), and Rumor Central
(from PC Week). One writer from Finland (and unfortunately we have lost
the name) is connecting to the internet from a Mac and is not familiar
with any of those references (but wanted ALL the back issues!).
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Personal Internet access - clairifications
There are a couple of clarification/additions relative to the item on
personal internet access. The service that we have information on is
provided by PSINet, and if you are associated with Cornell (or probably
with the New York State University system), an ID on PSI seems to be
available for the asking (for more information on those options just
"telnet cornellc.cit.cornell.edu 300" and then enter the command
"computing access info". Of course, PSINet isn't the only game in town,
and Harry Bartholomew has the following report from California -- "I get
9600 baud access to Internet for $17.50 /mo with unlimited time and 5 Mb
storage at no extra charge. The vendor Netcom has POP's at local numbers
all around the San Francisco bay area and is moving into Southern
California as well. Contact Network Operations Mgr. Bob Rieger for
further info at bobr@netcom.com or 408 554 UNIX for voice."
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4DOS and 4OS2
The 4DOS discussion list has become quite active in the last few days.
For those of you who might not have heard, 4DOS is a replacement for the
DOS command processor COMMAND.COM. The major thing we like around here
is the ability to recall and edit previously entered command lines, but
there are also features like the fact that it swaps itself out of
memory, it has a reasonable help system, it has some additional useful
commands like 'list' and 'move', and it seems well supported shareware.
The company (J. P. Software) has recently distributed a similar program
for OS/2 (it replaces the OS/2 command processor CMD.EXE). The most
recent versions of 4DOS and 4OS2 can be found on wuarchive.wustl.edu in
the /mirrors/msdos/4dos directory.(this is for 4DOS ... look for files
named 4dos401p.zip (programs) and 4dos401d.zip (documentation)), and in
the /mirrors/misc/os2 directory for 4os210.zip. You can get a break on
registering both products at the same time, and believe us, once you get
used to the capabilities of these programs, you won't want to be without
them in either the OS2 or the DOS environment.
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4DOS alias to delete a subtree of files
One recent question on the 4DOS list was how to set up an ALIAS that
allows the removal of a whole subtree of files. It turns out that the
4DOS 'delete' command has some extra capabilities and so the answer was
just to enter the command "ALIAS ZAP=DEL /SXYZ *.*" after which the ZAP
command will wipe out the directory subtree that you are in.
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OS/2 archives
The OS/2 archives are starting to build. If you are on BITNET and don't
have ftp access, a good source is in Belgium, you can get a complete
list of the files available by issuing the command (from CMS)
TELL LISTSERV AT BLEUKL11 SEND OS2INDEX PACKAGE
or put the 'send os2index package' command in a mail file and send it to
listserv@BLEKUL11. (We put the node name in upper case so that the 'L's
could be distinguished from the '1's.) Note that you will not get a
response back immediately, since requests are queued for overnight
delivery. One recent addition that Dr. Chaos wants to try is a 3-D Maze
game.
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OS/2 Frequesntly Asked Questions (FAQ)
In addition to the current OS/2 Frequently Asked Questions list, Dr.
Chaos tells me that we have the current OS/2 Tips and Techniques file as
well as the Frequently Asked Questions for Programmers. Let Dr. Chaos
know at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu if you would like copies
of these lists.
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OS/2 and IBM Marketing
The excitement in the OS/2 world started on May 1 when a blast that an
IBMer made at the rest of the organization (on an internal IBM forum)
about the poor job that had been done of marketing OS/2 was "leaked" and
posted on NetNews. Needless to say, the person who leaked the article
no longer works for IBM .... but has gotten some round-about internet
access to enable him to post an apology on the net. This isn't a soap
opera folks, it's real life! (it just seems a little distant sometimes
with the slowness of keyboard interactions)
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OS/2 archive name change
Last time we mentioned the archive site at hobbes.nmsu.edu, and now we
get to announce that they are changing their name. It the future use
ftp-os2.nmsu.edu so if they decide to move the archive you won't be
lost.
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OS/2 fixes available on the Internet
IBM is making a number of fixes available for OS/2 across the network.
Check your favorite archive site for the fixes to the problems you most
want to get rid of. (ftp-os2.nmsu.edu in the pub/os2/2.0/patches
directory is a good choice because of the descriptive list that you get
in response to a 'dir' command.
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WINDOWS archive name change
Speaking of archives changing names, the large archive for MS Windows
software has changed from cica.cica.indiana.edu to ftp.cica.indiana.edu.
Dr. Chaos just reported to me that he has checked out one site that
advertised itself as a new ftp site for Windows software, but the
largest part of the archive seemed to be devoted to X/R-rated images, so
there is not much of interest there.
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Windows version of dogcow
Just to let you Mac users that Windows is finally catching up, in the
pub/pc/win3/games directory of ftp.cica.indiana.edu look for dogcow.zip
-- a version of the (in)famous Dogcow animated icon. (Thanks to Tom
Young for taking the time one day to explain the dogcow icon.)
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Best Windows shareware list
Diego A. Aranda maintains a list of the best Windows Shareware and
Freeware. His list is available via anonymous ftp from
ftp.cica.indiana.edu in the /pub/pc/win3/misc and the current version is
named bw2-31-2.zip.
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Windows 3.1 authors
If you would like to see the author list of Windows 3.1 then do the
following. In Program Manager. (1). Click Help/About. Hold down
Shift/Ctrl and double-click the Windows logo in the upper-left of the
About-box. Click OK. (Nothing will happen - keep going) (2).Repeat
step (1). (A waving flag and a "Dedicated to..." message appears)
Click OK. (3). Repeat step (1). (The Windows authors appear in the
About box)
Miscellaneous
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Hospitality Exchange Database
Thanks to Sheila Patterson for pointing out the existence of the
Hospitality Exchange Database, HOSPEX@PLEARN. The purpose of the list
is both to provide those interested in being a host a way to satisfy
their interests and to aid those interested in finding hosts when
traveling. They currently have hosts in over 25 countries, and on six
continents. To start the subscription process, issue the command
TELL LISTSERV AT PLEARN SUBSCRIBE HOSPEX <your full name>
from CMS or send a mail file that contains only the "subscribe..."
command. You will be sent a host's form to be filled out and returned
to HOSPEX@PLEARN; only then will you be considered a member of HOSPEX
and get added to the HOSPEX and HOSPEX-L lists, and will have the right
to search through the HOSPEX database for possible hosts.
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UNIX/X/Motif
The production version of the Scientist's Workbench (an X and Motif-
based software package developed at the Cornell Theory Center) has now
been released. "The main functions of the Scientist's Workbench are to
bring together the tools and software required by scientific researchers
in a distributed computing environment, to provide a graphical interface
to access those tools, and to provide the software necessary to allow
researchers to easily build their own graphical interfaces." The
interesting thing about this software is the ability to use the provided
widgets to implement a graphical interface on top of ordinary text
programs. The new software is available via anonymous ftp from
info.tc.cornell.edu, in the directory pub/swb. The file README.TOP
describes the rest of the files in the anonymous ftp, and the file
README.CHANGES lists the changes that were made since the beta version.
As before, we have provided binary versions of the Workbench for Sun
SPARC and RS/6000 (AIX 3.1), as well as the source code. The new tar
files are a complete replacement of the old software. If you have
comments or suggestions, or would like to be added to the Scientist's
Workbench mailing list, send a note to sciwb@tc.cornell.edu.
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To get put on the Chaos Corner mailing list, just send your request to
chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.
Dr. Chaos (I have a Masters Degree .... ) 8-)