CHAOS CORNER


                                Volume 1

                           June-December, 1991

















                               Bob Cowles
                    dr_chaos@pelican.cit.cornell.edu









                               Dedication







This work is dedicated to my wife, Rebecca Alexander.  Through my work
both on Chaos Corner and an introductory German class, she survived
being awakened at 3 am on many mornings and to be told the latest from
alt.sex or asked questions about German grammar.  She kept her humor and
sense of the absurd -- and her stories of this period will bear up under
many retellings.

Bob Cowles
13 February, 1992









                       Chaos Corner v01n01 25jun91


A Beginning? or is it An Introduction?

This is the first in what is hopefully a series of reports on random and
(in my opinion) interesting things I have come across recently that
might be of interest to some of you.  Since I spend a lot of my time
(when not in meetings) reading about or banging on new things, I think
it is important to pass along what I might have discovered.  Future
topics will probably include such things as file transfer software,
compression utilities, graphics viewers, and whatever else strikes my
fancy.  Comments, criticisms, and contributions can all be directed to

     rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu.

One of the first resources that I am going to be pushing is the network
(Internet and BITNET) and the community currently using the network to
discuss almost any topic you might imagine (yes ...  that one too!).
There are three major information transports: file transfer (FTP),
network news, and mailing lists.


FTP

The most direct transport in terms of your actions is "anonymous FTP"
(where FTP means File Transfer Protocol).  A large number of sites
maintain archives of computer software, graphical images, inane
discussions, and it is available to anyone with network access.  The
standard list of "known" sites that make files available to anyone
across the network (anonymously) is normally accessible from a machine
named pilot.njin.net in the directory "/pub/ftp-list" in the file
"ftp.list".  In case you want to try out getting the list, I have put a
copy of the June 24 list on pelican, the RS/6000 in my office.  To get
the list for yourself enter:

     ftp pelican.cit.cornell.edu
     anonymous                (in response to request for userid)
     <userid>@<machine>       (in response to request for password --
                               I would enter rdc@cornella)
     cd pub                   ("change directory" to "pub" directory)
     get ftp.list             (retrieve the ftp list.  In CMS the
                               file will be named FTP LIST)
     quit                     (end the FTP session)


The file is about 3200 lines long (a little over 160 Kbytes), so you may
want to be sure you have enough disk space to hold it.  Remember, when
transferring compressed or executable files enter the "binary" command
before issuing the "get" command.  If you want to list the files
available, use the "dir" command; use "cd <directory name>" to move down



                             1-1






in the directory tree, and "cd .." to move up one level in the directory
tree.


Network News

Network News is a set of more or less formal discussion groups on any
number of topics (racism, fitness, French culture, movie reviews, etc.).
The more formalized discussion groups are moderated -- which helps to
remove a lot of redundant questions and answers.  Since some people want
to see the "raw data" there are sometimes unmoderated versions of the
moderated newsgroups.  Some number of the newsgroups also exist as
mailing lists (see below) or carry postings from mailing lists in the
newsgroup.  If you want more information about getting access to Network
News you will need to ask around and/or get a userid on Vax5.


Mailing Lists

The easiest way to get involved in network discussions is through
mailing lists.  There are both Internet mailing lists and BITNET mailing
lists ... sometimes there is a connection between these for the same
group and sometimes there isn't.  For more information on BITNET mail
lists that are currently available, from CMS enter the following
command:

     tell listserv at suvm list global

and from Unix or other systems send mail to listserv@vm1.nodak.edu where
the text in the mail file consists of "list global".  For CMS, the file
LISTSERV LISTS is returned to your reader in Card Dump format (use the
CARD LOAD command to read it in), for requests via mail, the response is
returned as a mail file.  If you see a list you want to subscribe to,
just "tell" or send mail to a listserv with the command "subscribe
<name-of-list> <your-name>".  If I wanted to join the Macintosh News and
Information list I would enter (from the CMS userid where I wished to
receive the discussion list mail files):

     tell listserv at yalevm subscribe mac-l Bob Cowles

and I would shortly receive messages back that my subscription had been
accepted.  Alternatively, I could have sent mail to the listserv that
consisted of the line "subscribe mac-l Bob Cowles".

The Internet Interest Groups "List of lists" is available via anonymous
FTP from ftp.nisc.sri.com in the file netinfo/interest-groups .  The
file is over 500,000 bytes long at this time.  To get the file back in
smaller pieces via electronic mail send mail to the address of mail-
server@nisc.sri.com with the following line in the body:

     send netinfo/interest-groups

Requests to be added or removed from a mailing list should never be sent
to the list itself.  For listserv's you would "tell listserv at <site --


                             1-2






suvm probably will work> unsubscribe <list name>" and for Internet mail
lists you send a mail file to <list name>-request@<internet-site-name>
requesting the desired action.  (Note the addition of "-request" to the
name of the list.)

As I write this, I am transferring a file from a computer at U.  Mich
that is a hypercard stack providing a guided tour of the Internet.  The
file internettour.sit.hqx is located in the "pub" directory on
pelican.cit.cornell.edu.  For a future issue, perhaps someone will be
kind enough to explain what the "sit" and "hqx" suffixes mean.  Any
takers?


What's going on?

Borland bug reports for TC++ and BC++ are available via anonymous FTP
from sun.soe.clarkson.edu in the directory pub/Turbo-C++/bug-report and
the file is updated on the first of every month.  I seem to recall
seeing that there are Apple bug lists available on apple.com, but I'm
not sure.  For Microsoft bugs, the only thing I know about is available
on CompuServe, and that gets expensive fast (has anyone been touched by
Microsoft's new outreach program?  A kinder, gentler Microsoft -- except
to IBM!).  Hmmm, I just looked on apple.com and didn't find anything but
Unix stuff; I'll leave it as a puzzle until next time.

Extensive collections of PC software are online.  The
wuarchive.wustl.edu has copies of a number of PC archives (including
Simtel20, PC-BLUE, and the Usenet contributions in comp.binaries.ibm.pc)
and I find I am more successful at getting software from the wuarchive
than from Simtel20.  I used to spend long periods trying to get
connected to Simtel20 and not get bounced for "too many anonymous
users"; once connected there was a good chance of the link getting
dropped somewhere between here and White Sands (yes, Simtel20 really is
at the White Sands Missile Range) in the middle of a transfer.  In
addition, Simtel runs on an aging DecSystem 20 and there are some real
strange incantations for getting transfers of binary files to work
between that machine and an IBM system.

For Windows 3.0 applications, the best place I've found is
cica.cica.indiana.edu.  Look in the pub/pc/win3 directory.  One of my
favorite applications is QVTNET in file qvtnet16.zip in the directory
pub/pc/win3/util.  QVTNET runs under Windows 3 and allows you to telnet
(VT100 emulation only, no 3270 emulation) and ftp right from within
Windows.  It comes with a special module that handles the interface
between the Ethernet packet driver (you have to get that from Clarkson)
and the Windows dispatcher so that packets don't get lost while you're
writing something like this in WinWord.  QVTNET also allows reading
Network News (if you can find a systems administrator who will give you
access) and runs FTP server software that allows me to move stuff
between CornellA and my PS/2 at work when I am logged on from home.  If
you try an anonymous ftp to puffin.cit.cornell.edu, the software can be
seen in action.  The "world's largest BBS," Exec-PC in Milwaukee, has
all of its files mirrored at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu.



                             1-3






If you're looking for pretty pictures, ames.arc.nasa.gov has many space-
related images including ones from the Voyager missions and current
images being sent back from the Magellan mission to map Venus.  Daily
satellite weather photos showing that we still aren't going to get rain
are available on vmd.cso.uiuc.edu (you will need to enter "cd
phil.515").  To the south of us, vmtecmex.cem.itesm.mx (yes, it's in
Mexico) has a lot of GIF image files but more importantly contains a
list of known GIF file archive sites on the Internet (I have a copy of
that file if you're interested).  An alternative that I have seen
mentioned is to ftp to nic.funet.fi (yes, it's in Finland) where GIF
files are stored by subject.  If you see a GIF file that you want, write
down the name and then retrieve it from wuarchive.wustl.edu (it will
probably be there) where they are stored alphabetically.  Please try to
find the GIF you want at a US site before using the international
network links.  Some warped minds spend time looking for X and R rated
GIFs, but by NSF policy they are not allowed to be stored on a US site
that is connected to the Internet.  Of course, CompuServe (the source of
the GIF image format) has an extensive library of ALL kinds of images.

If you have ever wanted to view a PostScript file on your PC screen,
check out Ghostscript (available at Simtel20 or wuarchive.wustl.edu
among other places).  The latest version is 2.2.1 and comes with support
for EGA, VGA and Hercules displays and a number of fonts are also
available (in additional files).  Look for GS22.ZIP for the executable
and GS22FNT*.ZIP for the fonts.

Taking a trip this summer?  The alt.rec.auto newsgroup has been
compiling a Great Roads Survey.  The current list contains about 75
roads in the US and can be found at ftp.vitalink.com in the
pub/usenet/rec.motorcycles/Road-list file.  You are also invited to send
in your own nominations for your favorite roads to be added to the list.
(I wonder if Cayuga Heights Road would qualify, it certainly has enough
dips!)

A package of programs that address areas of Unix security is available:
the Computer Oracle and Password System (COPS).  Version 1.02 attempts
to automate security tests that are often performed (or should be
performed) by a Unix system administrator.  The files are found at
cert.sei.cmu.edu.  Does anyone have experience with this package?

A list and guide to the over 200 library systems that can be reached
across the Internet is available at vaxb.acs.unt.edu in the library
directory (in ASCII, PostScript, and WordPerfect 5.1 formats).  FLASH!
The catalog is now searchable on-line.  To access the catalog telnet to
vax.sonoma.edu and enter LIBS to the prompt for a username.  This will
not work well from CMS, but other versions of telnet that can emulate a
VT100 terminal should be OK.  The database search software is available
for evaluation only; they want you to run it on your own VAX if you like
it.  I also have a crude PC Hypertext implementation of a database that
allows you to wander through the listing of the library systems.  Ask
about it if you're interested.

Along the lines of interactive access to search software, if you are
looking for something that might be available by anonymous FTP, try


                             1-4






telneting to quiche.cs.mcgill.ca and logging on as "archie".  There is
extensive help available once you are on.  This one even works OK from
CMS, but is better from an emulator that understands VT100 terminals.

For X-Windows System software, the place to look is export.lcs.mit.edu
in the contrib directory.  The compressed file x-source-list.Z is a
growing catalog of the programs that are available (there is much more
available than is in the catalog).  One example of a program available
is xmartin (in xmartin.tar.Z of the contrib directory) that allows a
number of options for decorating the background of your X display (known
as the root window).  While I have no direct experience, there appear to
be options to generate some of the fractal patterns that you can see in
Clifford Pickover's new book published by St.  Martin's Press titled
Computers, Patterns, Chaos and Beauty (Graphics from an Unseen World).
I met Pickover when I visited IBM Research at Yorktown Heights last
November and got to glance through a copy of the book then; now I have
my own copy.

Radio Shack now has a CDR-1000 CD-ROM drive they are selling for $399
that fits into a half-height slot and comes with an adapter card that
goes into a short 8-bit slot.  According to Byte Magazine, the transfer
rate is good (150 KB/sec) but the seek time is slow.  Of course, there
is a headphone jack on the front of the drive and audio output jacks on
the back of the card if you really insist on playing music.  I called
the local dealer at Pyramid Mall and he told me that they are "order-
only" items for right now, so don't expect to walk-in and carry one out
with you.  He promised to get back to me with information on the actual
lead time to get a drive; I would imagine that the blurb in Byte (July
issue) won't make it any better.

On the small Mac front (also from Byte Magazine) Technology Fusion, Inc.
has a TotalVision product that goes into a 9-inch display Mac (Classic,
SE, or Plus) and tricks it into thinking the screen is 1024 x 1024
rather than 512 x 342.  As the mouse cursor touches the edge of the
screen, it pans across the virtual desktop at hardware speed. "Hardware
flex" and "hardware zoom" modes are also available.  I'm still trying to
figure out if I should repair my Mac at home and get a hard disk.  The
diagonal lines that go across the display suggest that a "hardware zoom"
from a height of about 6 feet might be the most cost-effective option.

Finally, for those of you who could never quite master the C programming
language, help is here!  At oak.oakland.edu you can get f2c-exe.zip from
the pub/msdos/fortran directory and it will convert fortran 77 code into
C (source is available too, if you want it for other than a Intel
platform).  The really neat thing is that if you have a C compiler, this
effectively gives you a fortran 77 compiler for free!

I'm amazed at how once I got started there seemed like no good place to
stop.  Let me know what kinds of things you find most interesting and
what you really hate; that way I won't have to make up the letters in
the questions and feedback section.

Dr. Chaos (I have a Master's Degree)



                             1-5






               (an inside joke for those who listen to National Public
Radio)
rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu





















































                             1-6







                      Chaos Corner  v01n02 10Jul91

Here we are, back again.  Things seem to remain busy here in the Corner
even with a birthday, a holiday, and a day at work with no
interruptions.

This time we'll spend a little time trying to demystify some of the
hocus-pocus and spells that surround transferring files.  You should be
warned, however, that this attempt cannot be entirely successful.
Successfully transferring files does require magic, good karma, or
something that always runs out just when the network daemons are closing
in.

"Transfer files using FTP; isn't that a Unix thing,"  you ask?  If you
have a userid on a Unix, VMS, or VM/CMS system, then just enter the ftp
command to find out if it's available.  FTP will prompt you for input
and you can exit by entering "quit".  If you have a PC with an ethernet
card there are a number of commercial, shareware and free products that
will get you started.  NCSA (the national supercomputer center in
Illinois) has  PC (and Mac) software implementing ftp client (you can
get/put files from/to other systems) and ftp server (other systems can
get/put files on your workstation).  For DOS/Windows users, Dr. Chaos
likes the network version of WINQVT from QPC Software that implements
ftp client and server, telnet client, and allows one to read Network
News.  Both of these programs support the use of the free Clarkson
packet drivers to provide the interface to the Ethernet card (the packet
drivers are in "drivers.zip" at sun.soe.clarkson.edu in directory
pub/packet-drivers).  Unfortunately, neither of these programs support
telnetting to the IBM mainframes in 3270 mode.

On the Macintosh side, you need a network connection (Ethernet or
PhoneNet), MacTCP, HyperCard and then you can use a great HyperCard
stack written by Doug Hornig in CIT's Information Resources division
called HyperFTP.

If you want to get files for your workstation but you don't have a
network connection, an option is to transfer the files to your userid on
a timesharing system (Unix, VMS, VM/CMS) and then use a serial
communications program like Kermit, C19, or a number of others to send
the file down (download) to your workstation (the timesharing systems
are often on raised floors, so the data goes "down" to get to your
workstation).  Every time a transfer occurs, an incantation has to be
performed to get the computers at each end to cooperate -- by increasing
the number of transfers you increase the likelihood that you will forget
some of the spells, or get then in the wrong order and the whole thing
won't work.  Going through the whole procedure again to correct an error
isn't too bad when the file transfers proceed at the 20-40 KB/sec rates
you can often get from some sites on the Internet (if you aren't
crossing an ocean), but transferring even a 200 KB file over a 2400 baud
link will take longer than 20 minutes!  The bottom line is, get a
network connection if you possibly can!




                             2-1






MailBag -- (Read! Dr. Chaos)

Gerhard Rentschler at U. of Stuttgart asked if I knew of a place where
they could get copies of the LPR command and the LPD daemon, since they
are not included in UTS 2.1.1 (Amdahl's version of Unix).  I didn't know
where they were located, but Dr. Chaos came to the rescue by telneting
to archie at quiche.cs.mcgill.ca and very quickly coming up with about
10 different sites, some on both sides of the Atlantic, that had the
source for that BSD Unix software.  By the way, a recent posting claimed
that fully 40% of the TCP/IP traffic in and out of McGill University is
"archie-related" -- archie is really a valuable service for finding
software on the net, and McGill is starting to distribute the software
and database in an attempt to improve the service and spread the load.

Both Bob Blackmun at UNCCVM.BITNET and Rob Vaughn from the Cornell
Materials Science Center sent mail to Dr. Chaos explaining the .sit and
.hqx extensions on archived Macintosh files.  The .hqx extension means
that it has been processed by BinHex to turn the binary file into a
printable ASCII file -- one that could be sent through e-mail.  The .sit
extension means the original files were compressed into a library by the
utility StuffIt!.  Therefore, to make internettour.sit.hqx useable, you
would first use BinHex to turn it back into binary, and then use
StuffIt! to uncompress and restore the original file(s).

Bob Blackmun also asked if there was any software that would allow
people using telnet from VM (in a 3270 session, for example) to emulate
a VT100 terminal.  As far as Dr. Chaos knows, there is no such software
available, but maybe some of you might let him know of a solution.

Roger Garnett of Cornell Agricultural Economics suggests Dr. Chaos delve
more into the networks at Cornell and carry items about what is
available on local archives or BBS servers.  Dr. Chaos would certainly
be glad to pass along announcements or blurbs that he receives.  (Why
does it always seem harder to get information about where you are than
anywhere else?)

Steve Peterson from Penn State had a problem trying to FTP the
internettour file from pelican to a VM/CMS system -- he got a message
about an invalid filemode HQ.  The problem lies in the way CMS FTP
command creates default CMS file names from Unix file names.  CMS
"tokenizes" the Unix name by: (1) making all the characters uppercase,
(2) separating tokens at the point where a '.' appears, (3) truncating
the first two tokens to 8 characters, if necessary, (4) mapping the 3rd
token to the CMS filemode which is either one letter or one letter
followed by a digit (usually 0, 1, or 2).  In the case of the file
"internettour.sit.hqx" CMS tries to create a file named "INTERNET SIT
HQ" and fails because HQ is not a valid filemode.  The solution is to
specify on the "get" command what the local file name should be; that
is:

     get internettour.sit.hqx   tour.sithqx

will result in the file being stored on the A-disk (the default) with
the name "TOUR SITHQX".


                             2-2







Dr. Chaos notes that only newsletter recipients on the west coast (Dave
Gomberg at UCSF and Ted Johnston at SLAC) seemed particularly concerned
about his credentials and what his Master's Degree might be in.  Maybe
only they keep their radios tuned to NPR.  Considering the number of
sentences that end in prepositions, the degree is NOT in English!

Walter Wehinger, University of Stuttgart, would like to see the network
bandwidth for the international links improved.  He is concerned that
his poor collector's soul will get mad because of the poor response time
between Germany and the US.  Dr. Chaos points out that according to his
copy of the network map (from site nic.eu.net, directory ripe/maps), the
thickest, widest black line goes from Cornell to CERN (site of a very
high-energy particle collider) in Geneva, and there it stops.  He
suggests that CERN, at this point, must be the sink of all network
information and that they must be encoding it into the particle beams
and storing it in the accelerator (opposing views go in opposite
directions), and that understanding the politics governing information
flow across national boundaries in Europe is not even close to the area
in which he received a Master's Degree.

Mark Sincock of CIT asks what a GIF file is.  Dr Chaos immediately
started babbling TLAs (three letter acronyms) and for quite some time it
was not possible to make out more than RLE, BMP, TIF, PCX, and MSP.
After several moments, I was able to gather that a large number of
formats exist for files that are graphical images.  The CompuServe
Information Service developed one such graphical image format (gif) and
it has proven to be quite popular -- if for no other reason there exists
an incredibly large number of images stored on CompuServe available for
downloading.  Programs to view GIF files and convert them to other image
formats exist on a large number of platforms.  Dr. Chaos seems partial
to WinGif on his DOS/Windows systems.  Users of Macintosh systems have
suggested Giffer and QuickGif as being good programs.

Kim Kohler of CIT responded to the question in the last issue concerning
COPS -- the set of programs and scripts to test the security of your
Unix system.  She recommends it for use by new Unix system
administrators who aren't sure what to look for -- COPS provides a
"quick and dirty" test of the system.

Peter Siegel at the Cornell Theory Center asks if there will be an
online archive of "Chaos Corner."  Dr. Chaos was momentarily pleased at
the suggestion but finally realized that "quality" was not the issue and
who's-disk-space-it-would-occupy was.  Watch for future announcements on
the availability of back issues.

That's it for the MailBag this time around.  Remember to send questions
and comments to rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu (Read! Dr. Chaos)


What going on? (Random Dr. Chaos)

Unix International has announced plans to unveil in September their
Atlas Distributed Computing Architecture.  Claims are that it will be


                             2-3






compliant with the rival OSF's Distributed Computing Environment and
include extensions in the areas of object-oriented technology,
distributed systems management, and distributed transaction processing.
Development on Atlas is starting this summer and continues through 1993.
With that schedule, it will be an interesting race between the OSF DCE
and DME products vs. UI's Atlas.  Dr. Chaos wonders if Atlas being DCE
compliant means that UI will have to throw out Sun's RPC?

RAID disk drives capable of transferring data at 18 MB/sec and available
in capacities ranging from 10.8 GB to 43 GB have been announced for the
IBM RS/6000 by Maximum Strategy.  A transfer rate 4 times that of IBM's
mainframe disk drives at a cheaper price per byte!

Software AG has announced the first Unix implementations of ADABAS and
Natural will be tested on HP 9000 machines this summer, and
implementations for Sun, DEC, IBM, and SCO systems will be available by
the end of this year.  Although this version is written in the C
language, it is supposed to be source code compatible with the mainframe
versions of those products.

Apple and IBM are rumored to be working on a deal allowing Apple to use
RS/6000 chip sets in future computers.  In addition, there is talk of
cooperation on future object oriented operating systems (code name Pink)
able to run both OS/2 and Macintosh applications.  As evidence of a "new
IBM" we see quotes such as: "They need to understand that they can
survive in this industry without being a monopoly."  This sentence being
spoken by IBMer Lee Reiswig (aka Blue Ninja) about Microsoft.  Is it
time to sell Microsoft short?

Blyth Software Inc. will soon be shipping toolkits to give developers
the ability to create database front-end programs that are portable
between PCs (running DOS or DOS/Windows) and Macintoshes using the Data
Access Language (DAL).  Working under a license agreement with Apple,
they will be producing OS/2 and Unix versions of the toolkits in the
next year.  This is good news because it means CIT can start
investigating applications using Apple's DAL without the fear of being
locked into a single vendor technology.  (Has that stopped anyone
before?)

Many people have the perverse idea that digital devices ought to be able
to simulate analog devices.  As a result, computers often have programs
written for them to display the face of an analog clock.  The latest in
this analog-on-digital line is a small PC program called SCRIPTO that
reads text and outputs block cursive to the screen or redirected to a
file.  It's great for making up a signature file to append to all your
mail files.  (See below for sample output).  There is a separate file
containing the font that you can easily customize if you want to
"improve" the output.  SCRIPTO.ZIP is available on Simtel20 in the
pd1:<msdos.txtutl> directory, or at wuarchive.wustl.edu in the
/mirrors/msdos/txtutl directory.
      .---.                    .-.    /
     ( /  |  ,_.              /  :   /_    __     __   __
      /   | /  :             /      /  )   __)   /  ) (_
     /__,/ /   :_ @         (__./  /   (_ (__(_ (__/ ___)


                             2-4







Also on wuarchive.wustl.edu, ALED153.ZIP described as "a small
programmer's text editor" -- should be just the thing for all you small
programmers out there.  This program has stirred up an amazingly heated
discussion on one of the Usenet news groups as being yet another example
of a program that did not take into account the needs of people using
languages other than American English.  I haven't actually used this
program, but it caught my eye because of the description and the long
Usenet discussion.  It is at wuarchive.wustl.edu in
/mirrors/msdos/editor.

DAZE41F.ZIP in the /mirrors/msdos/graphics directory is really a great
kaleidoscope program for EGA or VGA displays.  I was particularly
impressed with the patterns this program was able to produce on an EGA.
SCANV80.ZIP, CLEAN80.ZIP and VSHLD80B.ZIP  in /mirrors/msdos/trojan-pro
are current copies of McAfee Associates PC virus protection programs.

Several interesting Windows 3 utilities are now available in the
/mirrors/msdos/windows3 directory.  ACHART12.ZIP displays a chart of all
the characters (printable and control characters) in several character
sets.  WINHV11.ZIP is a hex file viewer that allows you to specify
search strings.  Last and definitely not least, Microsoft has finally
reacted to all the complaints about Windows applications being unstable
and the number of times users are seeing the infamous message
"UNRECOVERABLE APPLICATION ERROR, Terminating current application."  (At
this point, if you are lucky, you can still gracefully exit your other
applications and re-boot the machine.  This message is known as the "UAE
message.")  The solution to these problems is to provide a program
(DRWATSON.ZIP) that will trap the UAEs and display lots of cryptic
diagnostic information.  An application developer can send this
information into Microsoft and their software engineers can figure out
where the application is going astray (it couldn't be a Windows bug,
could it?).  In any case, if you do any development of Windows
applications, this program is a must, and it's only about 2 years too
late.  If you are not an applications developer but are still bothered
by UAE messages, the general consensus on the net was that you could use
it as leverage to get Microsoft to send you a free upgrade to Windows
3.0a ... where a lot of bugs are fixed.  If you act quickly, the updates
to bring Windows up to 3.0a are rumored to be at cica.cica.indiana.edu
in the pub/pc/win3/uploads directory.  Look for win3a1.zip, win3a2.zip
and win3a.txt (the first two files are binary and the last is ASCII).
You will need about 1.3 MB of disk space to transfer these files.

The /mirrors/msdos/ncsatelnet directory contains the just released
version of NCSA's telnet  (2.3.01) for PCs ... update.tel is an ASCII
file that describes the changes in this version, and info.tel is a
description of NCSA telnet and its utilities (FTP, etc.).

The original developers of the Unix operating system are still working
for Bell Labs and still developing operating systems.  The latest is
called Plan-9 (after a science fiction movie called "Plan-9 from Outer
Space"), and while not available outside of AT&T (the movie is
available), some documentation is available as a PostScript file at
ftp.cs.toronto.edu in /doc/plan-9.ps.Z (this is a Unix compressed


                             2-5






PostScript file; there are decompression utilities for this format on a
number of other platforms -- let Dr Chaos know if you need help).

Many of the Usenet news groups have periodic postings to remind new
readers the purposes of the newsgroups, proper etiquette on the network,
and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).  Copies of these
periodic postings are maintained at pit-manager.mit.edu in the
/pub/usenet/<newsgroup> directories.  These postings, particularly the
FAQs, provide valuable information and work-arounds for problems
commonly encountered in any number of areas.  The newsgroup
"comp.mail.misc" maintains an Inter-Network Mail Guide;
"comp.binaries.ibm.pc" maintains a Beginner's Guide to Binaries and a
Beginner's Guide to FTP; and newsgroups "rec.sport.basketball" and
"rec.sport.football" contain the weekly results of the sportswriters'
poll during the course of the sport's season.  Jonathan Kamens of MIT's
Project Athena maintains this archive on a volunteer basis.

At the site sh.cs.edu in the nsfnet directory, you can find two files
that may be useful: "questions-and-answers-beginners" and "questions-
and-answers-advanced."  These files provide background information on
NSFNet in addition to telling how to access nic.ddn.mil and query the
"whois" database to find out if a site has a computer on the Internet.

The Sun Users Group has announced their 1991 SUG CD-ROM. The CD-ROM
contains over 300 MB of source code, software archives, compiled Sun 4
binaries and nearly 200 MB of Sun Microsystems' software patches.
Prices vary from $260 to $330 depending on whether you are a SUG member
and if your location is domestic or international.  The contents appear
to be quite impressive and Dr. Chaos has an electronic copy of the order
form if you are interested.

In the last issue we reported that Radio Shack was selling a CD-ROM unit
and expansion card for PCs at $399.  The local dealer did call back and
let Dr Chaos know that the drives were available 5-6 days after you
place an order.  We blindly (blush) reported the information from Byte
that the drives were a little slow on access time but transferred data
at a rapid 150 KB/sec -- we didn't realize at the time that all CD-ROM
drives transfer data at 150 KB/sec.  There is a very nice summary of CD-
ROM technology written in 1988 by Andy Poggio of Apple Computer that Dr.
Chaos  has enjoyed.  "If you are buying a CD-ROM drive, ... two factors
NOT to consider are capacity and data rate.  The capacity of all CR-ROM
drives is determined solely by the CD they are reading. ... All CD-ROM
drives read data at a net 150 Kbytes/sec for CD-ROM data."  This summary
is in the archives for the CDROM-L mailing list on BITNET, maintained by
the LISTSERV at UCCVMA.  Let Dr. Chaos know if you need more info.

The fascinating program award this time goes to some software called
Unix Windows.  While running from a single DOS PC over a single
communications port, Unix Windows allows you to have up to seven shells
running at once. The protocol requires you to have a server running on
the remote Unix machine to manage the switching between windows, etc.
The author promises to have a new version out Real Soon Now that
includes many more features (like X/Zmodem file transfer), and he speaks
in glowing terms of a future version written to run under Windows 3.


                             2-6






For now, you can get the programs from wuarchive.wustl.edu in the
/mirrors/msdos/modem directory under the name UWPC105.ZIP.

On the RS/6000 AIX 3.1 front, byron.u.washington.edu has collected
programs that have been ported to AIX 3.1.  Dr. Chaos poked around at
the site and found things like kermit, emacs, and xntp among other
things.  If you have an IBM RS/6000, it might be a good place to keep an
eye on (or a good place to contribute to if you have already ported some
software).

For those of you more interested in looking at a tube than out the
window, how do you get a picture of what the weather is like?  The
answer is that at site vmd.cso.uiuc.edu in directory phil.515 there is a
GIF image of a national weather map containing  station reports,
isobars, the radar summary, any current severe weather watch boxes, and
the latest position plot of warm and cold fronts.  At approximately 15
minutes past the hour you can retrieve the just-updated file wxmap.gif
and see what's going on across the nation (even better than looking out
the window, right?).

If you would like to be able to view GIF files and you are most
comfortable with the Macintosh environment, the most popular utilities
seem to be Giffer and QuickGif.  Dr. Chaos hasn't used either program
but has just sent copies to his delta-tester.  If the tester promises to
report back, he will be told where he can access "cowgirl.gif" (only as
an experiment to test the features of the programs).  The programs came
from (where else) wuarchive.wustl.edu in the /mirrors/info-mac/art/gif
directory and the files are named giffer-110b1.hqx and quick-gif.hqx,
respectively.  Dr. Chaos is having trouble with this delta-tester since
BinHex seems to consistently give a checksum error for files this guy
downloads from VM/CMS (even though binary transfers have been done in
all cases).  Righteous Dr.Chaos is confident the HE is not doing
anything incorrectly -- does anyone have suggestions for the tester?

While cruising the network, Dr. Chaos noted in the download statistics
from garbo.uwasa.fi (a well known archive site in Finland) that the file
balls2.gif was being downloaded very frequently.  Quickly checking
wuarchive in the /graphics/gif/b (the GIF files are stored in the
directory corresponding to their first letter) directory, he transferred
the rather large file (over 500KB) to pelican (a RS/6000).  Using the
motifgif program to display the file, he discovered that balls2.gif is a
beautiful picture that appears to be the Mandelbrot set in 3-D, where
the surfaces are silvered balls that show the reflections of the other
balls.  His immediate reaction was to transfer it to puffin (a PS/2-80
running DOS/Windows), use the WinGif program to convert the GIF file to
a BMP-format file the same size as the screen (768x1024 pixels), and
then load it as wallpaper (the Windows background).  It is really great!

That's all for now.  If you would like to receive electronic copies of
Chaos Corner or have comments/questions/objections, send them to:
rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu
 .---.             .-.    /
( /  |  ,_.       /  :   /_    __     __   __
 /   | /  :      /      /  )   __)   /  ) (_


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/__,/ /   :_ @  (__./  /   (_ (__(_ (__/ ___) (I have a Master's degree)























































                             2-8







                      Chaos Corner  v01n03 24Jul91

Here we are again!  The topic for today is archive and compression
programs!  An alternative way of putting it is, "I went to that server
with the funny name you told me about and got the file, but now when I
try to execute it, nothing happens!"

Most files that are available for you to retrieve by anonymous FTP are
actually compressed libraries.  Each system platform has one or more
"standard" ways of building libraries and compressing/uncompressing
files.  There are even some areas of compatibility so that you can, for
instance, pull the documentation out of a MS-DOS-style library while you
are logged onto VM/CMS and see if the program looks interesting enough
to download to your PC over a 2400 baud modem connection.

The first concept is one of the library.  If a program package requires
multiple files, it is very handy to be able to combine the multiple
files into a single file allowing easier retrieval from bulletin-board
systems and across the network.

Because of the even slower speed of normal communications (300 baud),
algorithms were quickly developed to "squeeze" the files as they were
combined into the library.  The compression algorithms became more
sophisticated and for some time the standard format in the PC world used
the .arc extension.  The vendor of the leading program was System
Enhancement Associates (SEAware).  Along came Phil Katz who wrote an
excellent shareware version of the software called PKARC, and he even
extended the .arc format to include some better and faster compression
techniques!  SEAware got upset and decided to sue Phil Katz; and, to
make a long story short, Phil was prohibited from using ".arc" and now
produces and maintains PKZIP -- using .zip as the filename extension.
The grassroots resentment against SEAware was so great, almost all
bulletin-boards and FTP sites immediately converted to .zip format files
and almost so .arc files can be found any more.

Now the problem with .zip is that the format and the software basically
belongs to Phil Katz.  Progress hasn't been as swift as some people
would like; there exist programs to un-zip archives in VM/CMS and in
Unix, but there are no utilities on those systems to create archives in
that format (a Unix program to create zip archives is rumored to be
available Real Soon Now).  One format that IS publicly available is the
.zoo archive, and recent work has resulted in ZOO 2.1 which has one of
the best (space) compression algorithms (but it still runs slowly).  The
major advantage for ZOO is that the C source is widely distributed and
so is available on a number of platforms.  There are many suggestions
that the archives on the network convert to the .zoo format on some
date, say August 15, 1991.  The zoo 2.1 files are available on
wuarchive.wustl.edu in the mirrors/msdos/zoo directory as .exe files.
These are "self-extracting archives" because when you enter the file
name as a command, the command uncompresses and extracts all the files
that are stored within it.  The file you should retrieve is zoo210.exe.




                             3-1






For the Macintosh platform, things seem a bit more calm, with the
standard utility being StuffIt!, written by a 17 year-old high school
student.  (He is now in his third year at MIT, so your shareware
registration fees will help put him through college).  Mac files that
have been processed with StuffIt! usually have a .sit extension in the
filename.

Of course, with Unix, the rule is to not use one utility when you can
use two.  The program to build libraries is "tar" (tape archive) and the
utilities to compress/uncompress files is (oddly) compress and
uncompress.  Files that are in a tar archive have a .tar extension, and
files that have been compressed have a .Z (yes, an uppercase z)
extension.  So, if I have a file named glarch.tar.Z, I would first
uncompress it (uncompress glarch.tar -- will automatically find the file
and remove the .Z suffix) and then un-tar it (tar -xvt glarch.tar).  You
may want to use "tar -cvt glarch.tar" first to see where tar is going to
place the files it extracts ... especially if you are running with root
privileges!


Mailbag- Questions to Read! Dr. Chaos (rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu)

On the question of VT100 emulators for people using 3270s, Gerhard
Rentschler at University of Stuttgart found a reference on VMSHARE
indicating that a company called Trax Softworks had a product
(VM/Dialout) that provided some emulation.  As Gary Buhrmaster of
Cornell points out, the emulation must be very basic (no interrupts on
each keypress) unless you are willing to pay a terrible price in host
cycles.  Nick Gimbrone from Cornell forwarded an item from the IBM
TCP/IP List (IBMTCP-L) indicating a product named A-NET from Teubner and
Associates also existed that performed the emulation and ran as a VTAM
application.

On the topic of GIF viewers for the Mac, Bob Blackmun at UNCCVM
recommends GIF-converter 2.2.8 as being very solid  with lots of
capabilities for manipulating and storing files in various formats
(PICT, TIFF, RIFF, EPS, and others).  My tester verified that while the
output options are nice, the program does not get along very well with
Mac System 7.0.

One reader reported problems with connecting to the archie server at
quiche.cs.mcgill.edu.  Dr. Chaos caught this problem immediately since
he has watched me make the same mistake time and time again.  McGill
University is in Canada (the pink country to the north of us on the map)
and therefore the network name ends with '.ca', not '.edu'.

Tom Young of Cornell sent Dr. Chaos an explanation of the Macintosh
utilities BinHex 4.0, BinHex 5.0, and StuffIt! that he posted to the
info-mac list in February, 1990.  From Tom's article, it appears that a
major confusion might arise from the fact that BinHex 4.0 is actually
more advanced than BinHex 5.0.  (The 4.0 version is the one that creates
files with the .hqx extension.)  If you download from a bulletin-board
or archive site, a frequent problem is a reported "checksum error."  The
usual problem is that the posting is actually an e-mail message with the


                             3-2






hqx file attached -- and BinHex 4.0 isn't smart enough to remove all the
text above the line "This file must be converted using BinHex 4.0".
Doing that by hand with word processor and saving the result as "text
only" should allow BinHex 4.0 to decode it.


Seemingly Random and Self Similar Things

Bill Gates, the Microsoft CEO, wrote a memo to his senior exective staff
that was leaked to the press and has created lots of opportunities for
"analysis" of Gates' psyche and Microsoft's health.  Dr Chaos was able
to obtain a copy of what is claimed to be the text from the memo.  He
assures me that the text seems to agree substantially with what has been
reported (although it sounds a bit more reasonable in proper context).
If you are interested, look for file gates-memo in the /pub directory on
pelican.cit.cornell.edu.

In case you are not aware (Dr Chaos assures me that he is ALWAYS
aware!), Cornell is a member of the Open Software Foundation and has
site licenses for the currently shipping OSF/1 and OSF/Motif products.
OSF/Motif is currently at release 1.1 (compatible with X11R4), patch
level 2 (otherwise known as 1.1.2).  The next patch level (fixes about
150 bugs) is expected to start shipping sometime in August.  Contact
Steve LaSala if you are interested in obtaining access to this software
(lasala@trumpet.cit.cornell.edu).  While there is no cost if you are
associated with Cornell, there are some licensing restrictions that you
need to agree to before you can get the software.

A utility named COPYTAPE is available (in public domain) that will copy
tapes, preserving blocking structure and placement of tape marks, and it
reportedly also provides information about the format of the input tape.
Has anyone used this program and/or have any comments about it?
According to "archie", a copy is located at ftp.acsu.buffalo.edu in the
/pub directory under the name copytape.tar.

The GNU Project (GNU is Not Unix -- yes, it's a recursive acronym) has
released a number of Unix-like file utilities (cat, grep, chmod, chown,
cp, etc.), and, like the other GNU software, they are available by
anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in the /pub/gnu directory.  GNU
software is free from AT&T licensing restrictions, although you should
read the copyleft (that's correct, copyleft) agreement before you use or
make available GNU-based software.

Ever wonder how to print a PostScript file generated on a Macintosh from
your Unix system on a PostScript printer that hasn't been initialized
properly?  There is a program on apple.com called macPs, it's in
/ArchiveVol2/Postscript directory.  Assuming that you have the Laser
Prep file from a Mac, and the PostScript file you want to print, macPs
will act as a filter and edit the prep file into the PostScript file at
the appropriate point.  Dr. Chaos suggests you could always just use a
Mac to drive the LaserWriter ... anyone have some spare 128K Macs?

If, in the Unix shell game, you are a devotee of tcsh, there is a new
version available that is being distributed in full (for the first time)


                             3-3






under the Berkeley copyright agreement.  You can find it locally at
tesla.ee.cornell.edu in the file /pub/tcsh-6.00.tar.Z.  For those of us
with fumble fingers, one of the great things about tcsh over csh is the
ability to easily do command recall and editing.  Of course, Dr. Chaos
never mistypes a Unix commnad, so he doesn't need this feature.

Ever want to preview PostScript files easily in an X-Window?  In a
previous issue I referred to a PostScript (well, actually Ghostscript)
previewer named ghostscript.  There is now an X-Window user interface
for Ghostscript available called GSPreview from export.lcs.mit.edu under
/contrib/gspreview1.0+wcl.tar.Z.  The files for ghostscript are not
included here, you have to get them from the same place you get the
other GNU software -- prep.ai.mit.edu in the /pub/gnu directory.
GSPreview includes a small patch to ghostscript so the two programs can
communicate.  X11R4 is required, as is the Athena widget set.  This
software is announced as release 1.0 (beta) so there might be some rough
edges.

There was a possibly confusing item in the last Chaos Corner about an
update to Windows 3.0a being available.  Dr. Chaos has suggested an
improved explanation, so we are going to try again.  The update is at
cica.cica.indiana.edu in the /pub/pc/win3/util directory.  Because of
some problems in the initial uploads, there are three (3) files that
have to be retrieved (win3a1.zip, win3a2.zip, and win3a3.zip).  Gerhard
Rentschler at the University of Stuttgart wondered how to install
updates and it activated Dr. Chaos to start cruising the network looking
for the answer.  Thanks to Holger Veit at the University of Duisberg we
have the following answer:

     1.   Create a new directory, let's say C:\WININST;
     2.   Unzip WIN3A1.ZIP, WIN3A2.ZIP, WIN3A3.ZIP (in this sequence;
          allowing PKUNZIP to overwrite old files) in this directory;
     3.   Do SUBST A: C:\WININST; and
     4.   Set A:, run A:SETUP, answering the questions correctly.

The result, as Dr. Chaos can proudly verify, is a working Windows 3.0a.

Some acquaintances of Dr. Chaos have been known to poke fun at his
personal computer because it is not only air-cooled, but it doesn't have
an indicator to show the CPU utilization.  While the recent spell of hot
weather has demonstrated the need for water-cooling, real help has come
from another direction.  Performance Meter 2.0 is a Windows 3.0 program
that puts a small CPU utilization bar chart (similar to xload on Unix
systems) in the upper right corner of the screen.  The program can be
found on cica.cica.indiana.edu in file /pub/pc/win3/util/perfm201.zip.
Dr. Chaos is already trying to figure out how to save the charts into an
Excel spreadsheet so he can justify a CPU upgrade.

Several interesting programs Dr. Chaos downloaded recently may help him
eliminate his annoying habit of bringing up a fullscreen version of DOS
every time he needs to do some file manipulation in Windows.  Two
programs, WINCLI and PSHELL bring the DOS command line to a window with
scrollback and (in the case of PSHELL) most of the functionality of 4DOS
(including command recall and editing).  Another program, File Manager,


                             3-4






puts up a window containing what appears to be to independently
functioning "Open" dialog boxes with action buttons like "move" and
"copy" between them.  File Manager seems fairly easy to use and is
certainly better than the program that comes with Windows 3.0!  All
programs are on cica.cica.indiana.edu in the /pub/pc/win3/util
directory.  PSHELL is in 4win105.zip; File Manager is in fileman.zip,
and WINCLI is in wincli21.zip.

The Windows program Dr. Chaos favors for network access (WinQVT/Net) has
just been updated again.  Simtel20 (and mirror sites like
wuarchive.wustl.edu) have version 1.73, but version 1.8 has just
appeared at cica.cica.indiana.edu in the /pub/pc/win3/util directory
under the name qvtnet18.zip.  The new version has a two-statement script
language allowing you to fire up telnet sessions and logon to hosts
during the Windows startup (you can also change the foreground and
background colors on the FTP and NNTP screens).

While some people were traveling to various parts of the world to view
the recent solar eclipse, Dr. Chaos viewed the eclipse from a different
perspective -- that of the GEOS weather satellite.  A series of striking
(black and white, unfortunately) satellite photos is stored on
vmd.cso.uiuc.edu in the phil.515 directory.  SOLAR17Z.GIF through
SOLAR21Z.GIF (the number is the approximate Greenwich Mean Time of the
photo - Zulu) is a series of pictures as the shadow of the moon moved
across the earth from Hawaii, across Mexico and South  America.

For those of you who would rather conduct searches of library card
catalogs than view pretty pictures, there is a newly announced hypertext
viewing program that runs under Windows 3.0 and provides connection and
search information for the On-Line Public Access Catalogs (OPACs).  The
software is called CATALIST and it is available from ZEBRA.ACS.UDEL.EDU
in the directory pub/library.  You will not be able to list the
directory, but you can get the readme.txt file that explains how to get
everything else you need.  Dr. Chaos hasn't had a chance to unpack the
files yet, but it does look promising.

Dr. Chaos loves connecting his machines together and trying to discover
new, unnatural acts for them to perform.  The latest activity (performed
in the dead of the night) was to NFS mount his PCs hard disk on his Unix
system and (gasp) back up the disk to an 8mm tape!  It all worked after
only about 20 tries (not the fault of the software), and, in fact, the
files we discuss here can often be found in the /pub/puffin directory of
pelican.cit.cornell.edu -- and that directory is REALLY /pub of the
DOS/Windows machine puffin.cit.cornell.edu.  The NFS server software,
soss (Son of Sam's Server), can be found on grape.ecs.clarkson.edu in
the /pub/msdos/tcpip directory.  The file soss.zoo contains source and
executables, and sossexe.zoo contains just the executables.  Get
sossread.me for more information.  Unfortunately, the software doesn't
cooperate with WinQVT/Net, so the puffin directory is present when Dr.
Chaos isn't "doing" Windows.  Now, the REAL reason for bringing this up
is that the aforementioned directory contains some VERY important files
... back issues of  ..(you guessed it!).. Chaos Corner -- they can be
found under the user-friendly names of ccv01n**.<ext> where ** is the



                             3-5






edition number, and <ext> is doc for the winword document, mac for the
Macintosh Word format document, and txt for the plain text file.

Ever wonder what is maximum data rate that can be achieved over current
voice-grade lines?  The current bottleneck (according to the discussion
on the comp.dcom.modems newgroup) is the analog-to-digital converter
used in the central office.  Based on the rate that the converter
(called the CODEC) samples the analog line, the maximum data rate is
about 22-24Kbps -- of course, that does not take into account any
compression the modems may be doing for you.  Dr. Chaos was heartened by
the possibility of a modem speedup by a factor of 10 over what he is
currently using.

If you are buying any of the new high speed modems, you should know that
many manufacturers have bulletin-board systems available for you to call
and receive software, tips, and customer support.  Some of the numbers
are:

     Hayes Public BBS        404-446-6336    BBS/email&messages
     Hayes Public BBS        800-874-2937    BBS/Tech Support
     Intel                   800-538-3373    Tech Support
     Intel Support           503-645-6275    BBS
     Telebit Corp.           800-835-3248    Tech Support
     U.S. Robotics           708-982-5092    BBS
     Everex                  415-438-4650

There are also some cute numbers like 1-800-DIAL-USR, or 1-800-US-HAYES,
but Dr. Chaos doesn't like to talk about them.

As a change in pace from displaying pictures, your computer can also
make a variety of sounds.  To help you know more about what is
available, there is an online newletter carrying information on such
topics as:

     -- Midi BBS listing (issue 4)
     -- FTP sites that carry sound files and players
     -- Reviews of new sound software
     -- Questions asked about playing sound files
     -- Latest in sound hardware

Dr Chaos has not extended his environmental pollution to include the
aural sense (yet) -- it is just a little chilling to hear HAL's voice
come out of the speaker on your computer.  At any rate, the issues of
the sound newsletter can be found on wuarchive.wustl.edu in the
mirrors/misc/sound directory in the files sound1.txt -- sound5.txt.  The
program in remac.zip is supposed to allow PCs to play Mac sound files,
and playmac2.zip contains a "point-and-shoot" interface for remac.  The
5th issue of the newsletter contains a list of FTP sites and BSSs for
sound files.

Quiet! (or, if you leave in California, Peace!)

Dr. Chaos (I have a Master's Degree)



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Send requests to rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu to get on the e-mail list.























































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                             3-8







                     Chaos Corner V01 N04 07August91


It has been a VERY busy two weeks here in Chaos Corner.  For some
unknown reason, Dr Chaos decided to attempt a network-load of a BSD Unix
operating system onto an IBM RT.  One week later, with many phone calls
to Paul Schwartz and Gary Kakazu in the Theory Center and the job was
basicly complete.  Dr. Chaos would have mentioned the invaluable
assistance he received from Gary Buhrmaster of CIT Systems Programming
Services, except that Gary already extracted full repayment in terms of
the abuse he gave Dr. Chaos during the process.  Sometime when you have
some spare moments, ask Dr. Chaos about the "ifconfig" command that
displays the current value of a parameter in one format, but only
accepts a new value specified in a different format.  Ask him how many
times he updated the items on the install menu (for a program that can't
remember the changed values from one time to the next).  Ask him about
the keyboard that was locked and wouldn't function until the key on the
front of the machine was locked and then unlocked.  Ask him about what
it's like to have the system finally boot and then realize that you only
know the password to an unprivileged userid and the system won't let you
login as root to complete the configuration.  Ask him how, with a
bootable diskette and physical access to the machine, Gary B. and Dr.
Chaos were able to crack the system and login with root privileges.
Finally, when it appeared that success was at hand; Dr. Chaos, with
trembling fingers entered "cd /usr/games" .... and discovered that the
directory was empty!  Aaaarrrggghhh!

All in all, the experience of the networked installation of Unix on the
RT made the installation of OS/2 2.0 on a PS/2 seem trivial.  Partition
the disks; let the installer load the contents of 6 floppies; and there
you are.   Ahhhhh .... Solitaire! Reversi! Tetris!  The big question now
is why OS/2 on penguin doesn't accept the same file for wallpaper used
by puffin with DOS/Windows?  The online HELP didn't.  It looks like it
must be time to hit the OS/2 Forum on CompuServe.  One neat program is
called Pulse ... it opens a small window that gives a recent history
graph of the CPU utilization.  It sometimes doesn't take much to amuse
Dr. Chaos.  A program similar to Pulse that runs under Windows 3.0 is
available in cica.cica.indiana.edu in the /pub/pc/win3/util directory in
a file named perfm201.zip.  (Of course, all these programs are based on
the Unix "xload" utility.)

Dr. Chaos did do some real work during the past two weeks.  He bravely
volunteered to test some new 9600 baud (V.42, V.42bis, V.32, V.32bis)
modem hardware.  I tried to tell him to read the manual first, but he
grew impatient after a day (and I wasn't making much progress on the
manual), so he hooked it up and just tried it.  It was beautiful!  It
was fast!  It worked!  Before you get too excited, I have to remind you
that Dr. Chaos was using this modem with a PC-AT Model 339, so it was a
nonstandard setup and the gremlins must have been asleep.  When Tester-
Tom testily tried the modem with his Mac, the communications gremlins
had recovered.  The modem would not connect to its partner at the other
end (that's what we all expected, right?).



                             4-1






One final comment on the network-install of BSD Unix.  A second RT was
loaded and configured across the network in a single afternoon.  Like
many things, its not IMPOSSIBLE to do quickly, it's just very difficult
to do without already having done it before.  The best policy appears to
be to make as many mistakes as possible the first time, 'cause it makes
things go easier after that.  Dr Chaos figures that all of you oldest
children out there know what it is like to be the prototype on whom your
parents concentrated their child-rearing mistakes.  In any case, say
hello to click and clack (the RT brothers) and penguin -- the newest
additions to Chaos Corner.


Mailbag

In the last issue, we reported some information from Tom Young about the
confusion between BinHex versions 4 and 5.  Tom also related that there
are some helpful utilities written for (gasp!) CMS available from Brown
University.  BINHEX allows you to verify the integrity and check the
contents of MacBinary (BIN, BinHex 5.0) and HQX (BinHex 4.0) files
before downloading to a Macintosh.  BINHEX can also convert files
between the two formats.  Assembler source for the BINHEX program is in
the file binhex-vm-cms-files.txt at wuarchive.wustl.edu in the
mirrors/info-mac/utils directory.

Bob Blackman points out (relative to the comments about StuffIt! being a
standard) that since StuffIt! has turned into a commercial product
(StuffIt Deluxe), there is a new "standard" called Compactor.  It seems
that Compactor generates files with a ".cpt" extension, stuffs them into
files with a ".sit" extension for subsequent processing by BinHex.
Compactor also has a facility for creating "self-extracting archives"
(with an extension of ".sea", of course).  Look for Compactor on
wuarchive.

CORRECTION! RETRACTION! ERROR!  In the last issue we made the mistake of
maligning GIF-converter by saying that it did not seem to get along with
Mac System 7.0.  It seems that tested version retrieved from wuarchive
was 2.2.6 and the current version (supporting System 7.0) is 2.2.8 (also
on wuarchive).  Anyway, it works fine and uses less memory than Giffer.

Tom Bruce at the Cornell Law School asked Dr. Chaos if he knew of PC
utilities that could deal with the Unix-processed files ending in ".tar"
and ".Z"?  The "standard" uncompress utility (to deal with ".Z" files)
is in comp430d.zip on wuarchive in the mirrors/msdos/sq-usq directory.
Similarly, pdtar.zip is also available from wuarchive to handle the
".tar" format files in the /mirrors/msdos/fileutl directory.

Gerhard. Dear Gerhard Rentschuler at the University of Stuttgart.
Gerhard actually questioned the correctness of the modified and updated
version of the instructions for installing the Windows 3.0a update!  In
the end, he did agree with Dr. Chaos (don't we all?) and claimed that it
took a whole hour to get his first UAE with the new version of Windows.
As an interesting sidelight, the original version of Windows was in
German; the update was in English.  The language that appears in any
given menu or popup is now unpredictable.  Gerhard claims that it keeps


                             4-2






him flexible.  Just thinking about it certainly makes Dr. Chaos go
'round the bend.


Random and Self Similar Things

Dr. Chaos received some interesting statistics on what it is like to be
a major archive site.  The Washington University archive in St. Louis
(wuarchive.wustl.edu) published their statistics for the month of July,
showing that there was an average of nearly 2,000 MB and 20,000 files
transfered EACH DAY!  Interestingly, two collections, /mirrors/msdos
(the Simtel20 mirror for PC software), and graphics/gif account for 75%
of the files and nearly 70% of the data.  One additional morsel is that
Simtel20 (wsmr-simtel20.army.mil) now has an interface to NSFNet through
WESTNET -- it seems that some people were getting upset about the
gateways between Milnet and NSFNet being clogged with Simtel's file
transfer traffic.  It's not often that you see a DECSystem 20 being
"better connected" as opposed to "unconnected" these days!

As an example of the international nature of the networks, someone from
Australia posted a query to the comp.unix.aix Usenet newsgroup, asking
the important question (for IBM RS/6000 users): how do you get the
keyboard to stop making the electronic click that is makes by default?
Answers came in from Heidelberg, Germany (a member of the Heidelberg Red
Barons Ultimate Frisbee Team); Boston, MA; Yorktown Heights, NY; Palo
Alto, CA.  Finally Andreas Siegert from the AIX Field Support Center for
IBM Deutschland in Munich (Muenchen), Germany responded with the
ultimate sledgehammer (it was quite apparent that getting the keyboard
to be less noisy on the RS/6000 was an issue that many people could
identify with).  The instructions were to first issue the command:

     chdev -l siokb0 -a click=0 -P

(this tells the ODM that you do not want it).  Then edit /usr/bin/xinit
and add the -c 0 option to all invocations of X.  Reboot the machine and
everything is quiet.  (have fun)  If you want a fast keyboard
permanently, before you reboot, use:

     chdev -l siokb0 -a typmatic_rate=30 -P

Also on the AIX front, Mark Whetzel reported in comp.unix.aix a happy
ending to a problem that he originally reported to IBM in January.  It
seems that there is a simple error that any user of an RS/6000 can make
and it will require the system be rebooted.  In April, IBM closed the
problem, saying, in effect, "Don't make that mistake!"  After Mark
complained on the network about the closing, IBM reopened the problem,
developed code that Mark has tested, and he reports that the problem is
now fixed!  General availability of the fix will occur with the 2007
update tape, but if you want it in advance, call the IBM support center
and ask for apar IX19117.  Dr Chaos wonders how long it will take Rick
Cochran (Cornell Materials Science Center) to obtain and apply that fix
-- probably not before he gets back from vacation!




                             4-3






Charlie S. Lindahl from the University of Texas posted the responses he
received to an earlier query on comp.unix.aix about archive sites for
AIX software.  The sites he has checked out are:

     acd.ucar.edu             128.117.32.1   pub/rs6000
     acsc.acsc.com            143.127.0.2    pub
     byron.u.washington.edu   128.95.48.32   pub/aix/RS6000
     cs.utk.edu               128.169.201.1  pub/ibm_rs6000
     merit.edu                35.1.1.42      pub/xntp
     lightning.gatech.edu     128.61.10.8    pub/aix

Dr. Chaos has discovered availability of a new twist in Fortune Cookie
programs.  QT-QUOTE has the ability to select quotes from its database
(it comes with over 4000 quotes) based on subject, in addition to the
standard random selection.  Look for QT201.ZIP at wuarchive.wustl.edu in
the mirrors/msdos/txtutl directory.

A recent media event that you probably didn't miss, but just in case you
did, was the open discussion of OS/2 Release 2.0 that Lee Reiswig (aka
Blue Ninja) had with developers on CompuServe.  A full transcript is
available in ninja.compuserve.transcript at pelican.cit.cornell.edu in
the /pub directory.

Enjoying the cooler August weather in the Eastern USA after the hot
weather in the earlier?  Dr. Chaos points out that the time for enjoying
it is now ... the EcoDigest reports that Adam Trombly of the Aspen
Institute for Advanced Studies and a member of a team just returning
from Kuwait, predicts that the combination of smoke from the oil fires
and the effluent from recent volcanic eruptions will produce a very cold
and violent winter in the Northern hemisphere this year.  Buy your
snowshovels early and often!

The prediction from William Gray (Colorado St. University) on the WX-
TALK list (on BITNET) is that the 1991 hurricane season should be below
average with 3 hurricanes and 7 named storms.  This prediction is based
upon indicators such as the directions of the high altitude winds above
the equator and the presence or absence of El Nino (warm water in the
Eastern tropical Pacific Ocean).  Dr. Chaos recognizes that many of you
plan August vacations in Florida, so he wants to set your mind at ease.

Speaking of severe weather, those of you who are fascinated with
tornados can order a videotape containing what is supposed to be great
footage of a number of tornados (including the Wichita freeway underpass
pictures from several months ago).  Name of the video is "Tornado
Warning II."  The cost is $29.95 plus $3.90 S/H. The address is:

          Weatherstock
          PO Box 44124
          Tuscon, AZ  85733

Users of Sun workstations (RISC ones) that also have a CD-ROM player may
be interested in a new offering.  A company named RAD has released a CD-
ROM containing software for 30 popular applications.  You can use the
software for free (except the save and print functions are disabled).


                             4-4






When you decide to buy a package, all you have to do is call an 800-
number to get the password that enables the missing functions.  Dr.
Chaos points out that during the course of the telephone call you will
likely be asked to provide some "coin of the realm" in exchange for the
password.  Neither the cost of the disk nor the cost of the software
(relative to other delivery mechanisms) are mentioned in the press
release, but you should expect to see more software delivered in this
fashion as CD-ROMs become widespread.

A bonus for Sun users with Mac envy.  This fall, Xcelerated Systems in
San Diego will be bringing out a SPARC implementation of an all software
emulation of a Macintosh.  (Dr. Chaos asks, "Will the lawyers from Apple
arrive before or after the product ships?")

Mark Bodenstein sent around an interesting book review (Dr. Chaos points
out that the book looked interesting too).  The review appeared to be
written by Clifford Stoll (The Cuckoo's Egg) and concerned a new
O'Reilly & Associates book titled Practical Unix Security, by Simson
Garfinkel & Gene Spafford (ISBN 0-937175-72-2).  If you're managing a
Unix system, get this book.  You'll learn much more than just how to
secure your system.  Garf and Spaf walk you through networks, file
systems, and Unix internals, a tour customized for finding security
weakness.  Previous Unix security books were aimed at stand alone
systems; this is the first that discusses Unix security in a networked
environment.  It sounds like a good buy ... have any of you seen a copy?
Dr. Chaos wonders at the fact that it takes 500 pages to explain how to
get a "secure" Unix system?

In the category of recommended books, especially for beginners in Unix,
Dr. Chaos found several people who liked The UNIX C Shell Field Guide by
Gail and Paul Anderson.  (Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-937468-X)

So, you've read this far through a lot of drivel and you're still
wondering what you have to show for it?  CRASH!  BOOM!  Here is what you
have been waiting for!  One simple word that will wow your friends and
force your enemies to their knees --- especially if you are among that
select group of people having boustrophedonic devices!  What?  You don't
know what it means?  Boustrophedonic comes from old Greek words for
"cow" (bous) and "turn" or "plow" (the rest of it) - describing the way
a farmer with an ox-drawn plow moves across the field.

For those of you waiting breathlessly for further word on the Hubble
Space Telescope (HST), wait no longer.  Current reports on HST can be
found on stsci.edu in the stsci/hst_news directory.  These include
number and types of observations made along with discussions and
comments about problems.

When you are confused; when you feel like there is no hope; just
remember that there are only 17,576 three letter acronyms (TLAs).

Dr. Chaos (I have a masters degree)





                             4-5






























































                             4-6







                 Chaos Corner, V01, N05, 21 August 1991


As this is being written, our news watcher has informed Dr. Chaos that
the coup in the Soviet Union has collapsed, and Gorby is coming back to
Moscow.  If you are interested in tracking current events on the follow-
up, the newsgroups below are recommended (but not necessarily endorsed)
by Dr. Chaos:

     soc.culture.soviet
     misc.headlines
     talk.politics.soviet

Other lists like soc.culture.german and soc.culture.polish may also have
opinions expressed (Dr. Chaos urges me not to leave out alt.conspiracy
as a source of opinion but not necessarily information).

Scott Yanoff at the University of Wisconsin has posted a very
interesting guide to "special" services that are available across the
Internet.  Because these services appeal so much to Dr. Chaos, we have
decided to quote from Scott's list:

     -Cleveland Freenet            telnet freenet-in-a.cwru.edu
       offers: USA Today Headline News

     -Geographic Name Server       telnet martini.eecs.umich.edu 3000
       offers: Info by city | areacode (Pop, Lat./Long., Elevation, etc)

     -IRC Telnet Client            telnet 128.2.54.2
       offers: Internet Relay Chat access

     -Library of Congress               telnet dra.com
       offers: Online catalog (you can even look up musicians work!)

     -Lyric Server                 ftp vacs.uwp.edu
       offers: Lyrics in text file format for anonymous ftp downloading

     -NASA SpaceLink               telnet spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov
       offers: NASA news, incl. shuttle launches and satellite updates

     -NLS                     telnet nls.adp.wisc.edu
       offers: Network Library System

     -UNC BBS                 telnet 128.109.157.30  (login:bbs)
       offers: Access to Library of Congress and nationwide libraries.

     -Weather Service                   telnet 141.212.196.79 3000
       offers: Forecast for any city, current weather by state, etc.

     -Webster                 telnet decoy.uoregon.edu 2627
       offers: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Spell checker. Type 'HELP'




                             5-1






Dr. Chaos would like to take a little bit of space to thank the
maintainers of the newsgroup comp.archives.  They scan a number of the
other newsgroups looking for articles that announce interesting software
or information being available for FTP access and publish that
information in comp.archives.  The newsgroup was not active during the
month of July and it has certainly made Dr. Chaos' job much easier to
have it back again.  Thanks guys!

Chaos Corner is no longer being carried in the internal CIT newsletter
Inside CIT.  Their publication dates were too irregular to match any
reasonably chaotic flow of information.  If you enjoy this service,
consider passing it along to a friend.  Requests to be added to the
direct distribution should go to rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu.


Mailbag (Send cards and letters to rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu)

Gary Buhrmaster of Systems Programming Services in CIT is quite
concerned that Dr. Chaos may have mislead you gentle readers in the last
issue.  Since he has been very concerned that your inquiring minds get
the correct information, I will quote from the text of his letter to Dr.
Chaos:

     I am sure you know the difference between bps (bits per second) and
     baud (the signal change rate per second).  Your fingers must have
     been trembling after your RT encounter.  In case it has become
     fuzzy, and because I know you want to provide correct information
     to your followers, perhaps you owe them a clarification.  In fact,
     most of the 9600 bps modems actually transmit at 2400 baud.  At
     each signal transition, four bits are represented in the new state.
     Four bits per transition at 2400 transitions per second and you get
     9600 bps.  I am sure you also know that V.32bis is a standard for
     transmission at 14,400 bps (not 9600 bps as you implied).

     My recollection from my days as an engineer was that 14,400 bps
     transmission was to use trellis encoding to reduce the number of
     errors in transmission (and actually transmits 5 bits per
     transition, resulting in a theoretical 19,200 bps, however the
     'extra' bits are used by the correction scheme).  I expect that is
     what V32bis eventually ended up 'standardizing'.

For those of you with a thirst for what V.32/V.32bis/V.42/V.42bis really
mean ... here is a summary of a summary written by Toby Nixon, a
engineer for Hayes (the modem people) and a frequent contributor to the
comp.dcom.modems newsgroup on Usenet:

     V.32 is the international standard for 4800 and 9600 bps modulation
     on dial-up and leased two-wire voice-grade circuits, both
     asynchronous and synchronous.  It was first standardized in 1984.

     V.32bis was adopted in February of 1991.  It is an upwardly-
     compatible extension of V.32 that supports 4800, 7200, 9600, 12000,
     and 14400 bps transmission on two-wire voice-grade circuits.  It
     also supports fast rate renegotiation, so that the modems can shift


                             5-2






     speeds rapidly in response to changing line conditions (whereas
     V.32 modems must go through a lengthy complete retrain cycle).

     V.42 is the international standard for error control in modems.  It
     defines two protocols: a primary protocol known as LAPM which is
     defined in the main body of the standard and is based on other
     internationally standardized protocols; and an alternative protocol
     defined in an Annex to the standard which provides for backward
     compatibility with MNP2-4 modems.  V.42 was adopted in November,
     1988.

     V.42bis is the international standard for data compression in
     modems.  It uses Lempel-Ziv techniques to achieve up to 4-to-1
     compression on text and other compressible files.

     Relationships:  V.32bis is an upwardly compatible extension of
     V.32; they both define only a modulation scheme.  V.42 error
     control can be used with either V.32 or V.32bis.  V.42bis data
     compression is an  extension of V.42 LAPM; support for V.42bis
     implies support for V.42.

If that isn't more than you ever wanted to know about modems in a single
sitting, then you'll do well on the mid-term exam (but Dr. Chaos claims
you will have a real case of burn-out by the time of the final).

Dan Bartholomew of CIT's Research and Analysis Systems (aka
SEX@CORNELLC) asks about packages for running X-Windows under DOS.  Dr.
Chaos points out that the August 12, 1991 issue of PC Week carried a
review of just those products.  Although you may have heard rumors that
they are slow, the testers found the performance of the leading products
to be acceptable on a 33Mhz machine.  Dr. Chaos has used only one of the
products reviewed, and was relieved to see that the people at PC Week
also had trouble getting it configured.

Melinda Varian of Princeton provided the following REXX Exec from her
CMS Pipelines presentation that is further proof of the value (?) of the
boustrophedon:

     /* BOUSTRO REXX:   Filter that writes records boustrophedon */

     Signal On Error

     Do recno = 1 by 1                      /* Do until EOF      */
        'readto record'                     /* Read from pipe    */
        If recno // 2 = 0                   /* If even-numbered  */
           Then record = Reverse(record)    /*    line, reverse  */
        'output' record                     /* Write to pipe     */
     End

     Error: Exit RC*(RC<>12)                /* RC = 0 if EOF     */

Paul Zarnowski of Systems Programming Services in CIT gets the award for
being awake (a cup of decaffinated coffee).  The rest of you need to sit
on a tack for a while for not having seen the example in issue number 3


                             5-3






giving the example for un-tar-ing a file with the command "tar -xvt
glarch.tar" when it clearly should be "tar -xvf glarch.tar".
Congratulations to Paul (he just got back from vacation); and deepest
regrets to the rest of you.  Dr. Chaos claims that the Unix programmer
corollary to the injunction "Have fun!" is "A misleading error message
is more fun than no error message at all!"


Random and Self-Similar Things

If you like maps, you must know that the U. S. Geological Survey is
distributing their 1:2,000,000 scale maps on a CD-ROM.  The last
reported price was $20 for data on all 50 states organized into 21
regions.  You need to have a PC with an EGA display and 512KB.  For more
information contact:

     Earth Science Information Center
     U.S. Geological Survey
     507 National Center
     Reston, VA 22092
     Telephone: 703+648-6045  or 1+800+USA-MAPS (872-6277)

Micro Design International has announced that they have the first CD-ROM
drive certified for Novell networks.  If you are interested. try
contacting:

     Micro Design International, Inc.
     6985 University Boulevard
     Winter Park, FL 32792

     Phone:    (407) 677-8333
     Fax:      (407) 677-8365

Do any of you have a passion for sweets?  If so, you can satisfy them at
site ftp.pitt.edu where in the info/general directory they have the file
pi.dat containing more than 1.25 MILLION digits of pi.  Dr Chaos
suggests that you try plotting them to determine if you can discern a
pattern.  Good luck!

On the local front, Dr. Chaos reports on a program called Kaos (for
sunview) written by Swan Kim and John Guckenheimer at Cornell to
investigate dynamical systems.  Look for the files kaos_4.1.tar.Z and
kaos_users_manual on marcy.tn.cornell.edu in the /pub directory.  Dr.
Chaos has a report that an X-windows version of the program will be
available soon in the same place.  Does anyone have more detailed (or
accurate) information?

The Scientists WorkBench project at the Cornell Theory Center is winding
up their pre-beta testing (is that like alpha-plus?) and plan to have
the beta version available on September 15, 1991.  If you havent heard
of SWB, it is an X-based application combining "tools to enhance the
development, testing, and execution of scientific codes."  Binaries are
available for IBM RS/6000 and SPARC workstations on eagle.tc.cornell.edu



                             5-4






in the pub/swb directory.  Dr. Chaos suggests reading the file
README.TOP for more information.

For those of you interested in the ISIS distributed system developed in
the Cornell Computer Science Department, it is still available on
ftp.cs.cornell.edu (look for ISISV21.TAR.Z).  There are some patches/bug
reports that are also available in that location.  Ken Birman reports
that version is no longer supported at Cornell because they are all
using the commercial version (ISIS V3.0.2) from ISIS Distributed Systems
Inc.  There may be another free version (V2.2) but it will take 6-8
weeks of time and as yet there is no estimated release date.

For those Systems Administrators that want to keep up on security by
making sure your users have not chosen easy-to-guess passwords, crack
3.1 is currently available from wuarchive.wustl.edu in the /packages
directory under the name crack3.1.tar.Z.  Dr. Chaos claims that a newer
version "that can take apart systems in just a few minutes" is being
worked on and will be available "real soon now."

Once again this fall, Duke University will be sponsoring a Internet
Programming Contest and is soliciting problems to use in the contest.
The problems should be solvable in C or Pascal in less than 4 hours and
the preference is for the "algorithmically challenging" type (as opposed
to coding long tables, etc.).  Send potential problems to
ola@cs.duke.edu.  More information about the contest itself will be
available at a later date.

For those Startrek fans among you, Dr. Chaos reports the availability of
the Lists of Lists for both versions of the show are available at
ftp.cs.widener.edu in the pub/strek directory -- look for tos_lists and
tng_lists.  A summary of each show is included along with original air
dates, episodes in which Picard violated the Prime Directive, and
mistakes/inconsistencies that people have caught.  Similar information
is available for the Simpsons' in the pub/simpsons directory.

Dr. Chaos was excited to see a posting on 19Aug claiming that there were
some nice gif images from the weather satellite showing hurricane Bob.
The bad news is that they are stored on a computer at the University of
Rhode Island -- and URI hasn't been on the network since some time on
that day (attempts to reach uriacc.uri.edu still get the "network is
unreachable" message).  All is not lost, Dr. Chaos manages to get a
satellite image from vmd.cso.uiuc.edu (in the phil.515 directory) that
shows Hurricane Bob approximately centered over Rhode Island.  Look on
pelican.cit.cornell.edu (our Unix home-away-from-home) in the /pub/gif
directory for the file ts-bob.gif.

On the PC front, the popular fractal generating program FRACTINT is now
at version 16.11 and is available at wuarchive.wustl.edu in the
/mirrors/msdos/graphics directory under the name of frai1611.zip
(fras1611.zip for the source).

If you have noticed that leaving your PC on overnight means that the
date doesn't get updated at midnight, here is just the program for you.
On a periodic basis, CLOCKDEV reads the battery-backed clock chip to


                             5-5






verify that the DOS date/time agree with it.  Dr. Chaos has installed
this program on puffin and found it worked like a charm ... the date is
now correct when he arrives in the morning.  Look for file clkdev14.zip
on wuarchive.wustl.edu in the /mirrors/msdos/sysutl directory.

Since Dr. Chaos has received an early evaluation copy of OS/2 2.0, he
has gotten interested in archives of OS/2 software.  The most promising
appears to be mims-iris.waterloo.edu (in the os2/* directories).  He
promises more info later after he has a chance to investigate further.

Tired of looking up the hex/octal/decimal values for various ascii
characters?  Xascii is a small application that displays those values
for the whole ascii character set and is available from
ftp.eng.auburn.edu.  Get the file xascii.tar.Z from the /pub directory.
For Windows 3.0 users, Dr. Chaos recommends ACHART from
wuarchive.wustl.edu in the mirrors/msdos/windows3 directory stored as
achart12.zip.

Speaking of Windows 3.0 software... there is an updated version of the
Performance Meter utility (it shows a moving graph of you CPU
utilization) that uses the keep-in-front option.  Look for perfm202.zip
on cica.cica.indiana.edu in the /pub/pc/win3/util directory.

At a Windows 3 conference last week, Microsoft distributed a white paper
detailing the Windows 32-bit API and products that would contain it.  A
compressed PostScript file containing the paper is on uunet.uu.net in
the /vendor/microsoft/isv-communications directory.  Look for file
ntwn32.zip (or ntwn32.txt for text-only).  Dr. Chaos reports that he
also found in the same directory the file win31be.zip which appears to
be a compressed form of an application to beta-test Microsoft Windows
3.1.  (I can hear the keys clicking away even as I write this.)

Confused by all the jargon in this business? Do you find that the person
next door to you speaks a different set of TLAs than you do?  A new,
updated version of the Jargon File is available from mc.lcs.mit.edu in
the pub/jargon directory (look for jargon296.ascii or, for the
compressed version, jargon296.ascii.Z).

Out of space and mostly out of time for this issue.  Please keep those
electronic cards and letters coming in ... remember! Dr. Chaos (rdc) at
cornella.cit.cornell.edu -- we all thank you!


Dr. Chaos (I have a Masters Degree)












                             5-6







                Chaos Corner, V01, N06, 04 September 1991


The big news, of course, is the pending release of X11R5 at 9 am EDT.
Dr Chaos has had difficulty sitting in one place he is so eager to LET
THE FTPs ROLL!  The network people have distributed copies strategically
across the network and you can expect some interesting statistics will
be gathered as a number of sites try to FTP 100 MB of data from the
distribution site farthest from them (doesn't it always work that way?).

The newest version is supposed to be smaller, faster, better, easier to
maintain, and just more wonderful in every way.  Dr. chaos is glad he
never quite got around to updating his RS/6000 to run X11R4, now he can
just skip to the next level and see how it works (or doesn't).  Tune in
next time for the updated report on where things stand.

Speaking of putting things on his RS/6000, Dr. Chaos spent some real fun
time bringing up a Usenet newsfeed on his RS/6000.  Many thanks go to
Mike Shappe of Network Resources in CIT for helping to find the
configuration file problems.  Dr. Chaos used the excuse that he was
losing access to the Cornell Theory Center system as a reason to attempt
running the news feed himself.  He doesn't know where some of the more
pungent material is being archived, tho.


Mailbag (Send cards and letters to rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu)

Bob Blackmun at UNCCVM points out that there is a very nice Unix package
available for Internet access to Libraries, Campus Wide Information
Systems (CWIS), etc.  In all, the shell script provides menued access to
over 200 libraries and databases.  It does require that the Unix system
have tn3270 available and that it is running BIND on the same host.  If
you want to take a quick look at the facilities offered, telnet to
bbs.oit.unc.edu.  If you would like to get a copy of the package, it is
available on ftp.oit.unc.edu as file libtel.unix in the pub/docs
directory.

Also from Bob Blackmun is information about a utility that gives a PC
user information on Internet accessible library catalogs, Freenets,
CWISs, Library BBSs, etc.  The latest version (3.0) includes many more
libraries as well as info on the "Weather Underground" (where you can
get current weather forecasts for all major US cities), and much more.
Look for file hyteln30.zip in the mirrors/msdos/hypertext directory of
wuarchive.wustl.edu, or in the library directory on vaxb.acs.unt.edu.

Tom Boggess of CIT forwarded a listing of Internet BBSs and information
services that came originally from Richard Holbert at Texas A&M
(X075RT@TAMVM1.BITNET).  Additions and expansions on the list in the
last Chaos Corner are (you should use the "telnet" or "tn" commands to
reach these sites):





                             6-1






     CONRAD.APPSTATE.EDU (login as info) - Contains world news obtained
     by monitoring short wave broadcasts from BBC and other global
     sources.

     TECHINFO.MIT.EDU - CWIS for MIT provides menus of Boston area
     restaurants and documents how to use the database of song lyrics.

     PSUPEN.PSU.EDU (login as pnotpa) connects you to PENpages
     containing reports, newsletters, and fact sheets on research based
     consumer-oriented and agricultural reports.

     Other BBS systems include: QUARTZ.RUTGERS.EDU (login as BBS - lots
     of discussions), ISCA.ICAEN.UIOWA.EDU (login as ISCABBS - much
     public domain software), and ATL.CALSTATE.EDU (login as LEWISNTS -
     Electronic Journals and the Art World).

Walter Wehinger at Uni Stuttgart asks if Dr. Chaos allows posting of
Chaos Corner in their publication or infoserver.  The findings are
really appreciated and Walter wishes to spread them out in his user
community.  Dr. Chaos is pleased to have Chaos Corner carried by or
quoted in other publications.  He only asks that the document be
completely included, or, if quoted, information be provided on
requesting complete copies or subscriptions to Chaos Corner (e-mail to
rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu).


Random and Self-Similar Things

The next major release of Kermit for the PC is due out Real Soon Now
(RSN).  Possibly at the end of this week or next week.  From the early
information it appears that some nice features have been added,
including: TCP/IP network support; VT220 support; simplified dialing
directory; and improved help and status screens.  If you want to try out
a test copy, get mstibm.exe from the kermit/bin directory of
watsun.cc.columbia.edu -- remember to specify "binary" before
transferring the .exe file.  Look for documentation and in the
kermit/test/ms* files.  Dr. Chaos asks you to send all bug reports
(and/or fixes) promptly to Dr. Joe R. Doupnik (he's probably a real
doctor) at Utah State (JRD@USU.BITNET with a cc to Info-
Kermit@watsun.cc.columbia.edu.

Those of you looking for an OS/2 PM version of Kermit can find one
(along with a lot of other OS/2 software) at mims-iris.waterloo.edu
stored as (both source and binary) the os2/volume1/ckpm5xe/*.zoo files.
There is also a report of the file in /pub/os2/ckpm5xe.zip on
ugle.unit.no (yes, that machine is in Norway).

Those of you interested in words may be interested in online
dictionaries that Henk Smit has made available in German (160,000
words), French (138,000 words), Dutch, Italian, and English (53,000
words).  Since Dr. Chaos is taking a German class, the German lists have
already been moved to his Unix home - pelican.cit.cornell.edu.  The
other lists are on ftp.cs.vu.nl (Amsterdam) in the dictionaries
directory.


                             6-2







The group on which the above information appeared (WORDS-L@UGA.BITNET)
has been the location of an elaborate hoax that was recently disclosed.
It seems that some graduate students at the TIFR (Bombay) University in
India created a persona of Virupaksha Mokshagundam that consisted of
output from a knowledge-base-and-natural-language program that had been
developed at the University named Vagvilasini.  They had originally only
meant to send one letter to the list, but it turned out to be so funny
that they sent some more.  All but two of the letters were entirely
written by the computer except for some slight "touch-ups" performed by
the students.  They are now leaving the University and so told the list
what had been happening.  The number of people who couldn't believe that
it was a hoax was really interesting -- it looks like the discussion of
that prank will go on for some time on that list.  Dr Chaos wonders how
long it will take before any of you suspect .....

In the Usenet group alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk there is a hot discussion
about the policies/rationales for carrying or not carrying such
newsgroups as alt.sex.  Glenn A. Malling of Syracuse University
(SYSGAM@SUVM) made a observation recently that the old paradigms about
communication (freedom of the press, freedom of speech, common carrier,
etc.) don't fit with computer communication because it is something new.
He asks, "What is this new thing?  Should it be public, private, mixed,
regulated, unregulated?  Who pays for it? And how? ... Who gets to use
it? And under what terms?"  He rightly points out that the network we
have today is not the network we'll have tomorrow, so we have to be
careful that our answers are equally applicable in the future.

As a follow-up to an article from the last edition of Chaos Corner, the
new version of the password checking program, Crack, is available for
FTP from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu in the file named pub/crack-3.2b.tar.Z (don't
forget to specify "binary" before the transfer).

For those of you with Unix systems, fax boards, and a desire to fax your
favorite pictures (stored in almost any format), the recommendation in
the newsgroup comp.dcom.fax is to use a program called pbmplus.  The
program is on sun.soe.clarkson.edu in pbmplus.tar.Z in the pub/src
directory.  (It's over 500K uncompressed, so be sure you have plenty of
free space.)  Many black&white, grayscale, and color image formats are
handled by the program.

A new version of the IMDISP program for PCs is now available (Dr. Chaos
asks me to remind you that it is the program used to display the images
sent from the Voyager and Magellan spacecraft.  The big enhancements
seem to be in the area of image processing (smoothing, edge processing,
3D perspective, power filtering, etc.), and in support for the GIF image
format.  You will need a screen that is at least 800x800 and several MB
of memory.  The file can be obtained from ames.arc.nasa.gov  in the
pub/SPACE/SOFTWARE directory under the name imdisp74.zip.  Included in a
separate file, imdispd.zip, is a collection of images and batch files
used to perform a demo.  Ron Baalke, one of the programmers, would
appreciate any feedback (baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov).




                             6-3






Dr. Chaos has real news for those vi-fans out there (for those of you
who don't know what vi is, don't worry, it's a text editor).  Anthony
Howe of the University of Waterloo has been collecting vi macros and
related files ... and has now made his collection available.  Take a
look at ftp.ai.mit.edu in the file pub/vi-macros.tar.Z (in Europe, check
alf.uib.no in the pub/lpf/misc and pub/lpf/misc/macros areas).  For
those interested in authentication and in obtaining a copy of the most
recent version of Kerberos (Version 5), Dr. Chaos reminds you that it is
available (as are the other Athena software products) from athena-
dist.mit.edu.  For Kerberos, look in the directory /pub/kerberos5.
(Once there, you will have to read the README file to get the real code
-- either the USA version or the export version).  A number of clients
for the Kerberos authentication services are provided as examples to
enable installations to add clients of their own.  Discussions about
Kerberos take place on the kerberos@mit.edu (requests to be added go to
kerberos-request@mit.edu), and are reflected to the Usenet newsgroup
comp.protocols.kerberos.

The big find for PC computer games is at ulowell.ulowell.edu.  In the
msdos/Games/Apogee directory are the first in a series of a number of
games: Jump Man, Commander Keen, Arctic Adventure, Pharaohs Tomb,
Monuments of Mars, and Dark Ages.  The distribution mechanism is a new
one that Dr. Chaos found intriguing.  You get the first of a series of
games for free.  If you like the action in the game, you can order more
of the games for a very reasonable amount of money (e. g. $10).  Apogee
is betting that you will get hooked enough on at least some of the games
that you will want to get more.  Dr. Chaos claims that the games are
worth trying out --- but he won't divulge which one is his favorite --
any guesses?

If you would like your PC to say things to you, you need to get
playbwc.zip from wuarchive.wustl.edu (it's in the mirrors/msdos/sound
directory).  Dr. Chaos was amazed at the sound quality that came from
the crummy internal speaker normally found on the PC or PS/2 family.  A
sound editing system is also included, so you can do much more than just
play sounds.

THE site currently (as Dr. Chaos reports) for OS/2 software is
novell.com.  Lots of stuff in the /os2 directory.  Please don't access
it during business hours (8am to 5:30pm).  Once again, Dr Chaos promises
a more detailed report on OS/2 - uh, would you believe Real Soon Now?

Speaking of OS/2.  The Early Evaluation Program is now open to all.  It
appears that if you call the IBM BBS in Atlanta (404-835-6600) you can
type in "OS/2 BETA" at the main menu and place an order.  There are a
limited number of copies, but Dr. Chaos thinks the program is still
open.  Of course, the catch is as follows -- you pay $58.95 per version
of the EEP code you receive (that covers cost of diskettes and
duplicating).  There is a new version due out in mid-September.
Sooo..., you might want to wait before ordering (but not too long)!

Ever want to look at a text file while you are in a FTP session and
wonder how to do it?  The key is to specify the proper thing for the new
file name.  On Unix, you would specify "-" or "|more" to read a text


                             6-4






file or "'|zcat - |more'" to read a compressed text file (notice that if
there are any blanks it must be a quoted string).  On a PC you could
issue "get <filename> CON:" to have the file written to your screen (or
LPT1: instead of CON: to send it directly to a printer).

If you are interested in tracking satellites, the orbital information is
updated weekly (and some documentation and software is available) on
blackbird.afit.af.mil in the directory pub/space.

The nearest thing that anyone has come up with as a directory of people
on the Internet is a list of people who have contributed Usenet articles
and have an Internet mail address.  The list can be accessed through a
mail server as follows: send mail to "mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu"
with the subject line or body of the mail file being "send usenet-
addresses/<name>"  <name> is case-insensitive but you should leave out
nonalphabetic characters like apostrophes.  A date on the response line
will indicate how recently the address was found.

As this issue winds down to a close ... take a look at the new version
of the document "Network Reading List: TCP/IP, UNIX, and Ethernet" now
available from the Network Information Center at the University of Texas
- Austin.  Look for it on ftp.utexas.edu - the text version is in
/pub/netinfo/docs named net-read.txt and the PostScript version is in
/pub/netinfo/ps named net-read.ps.  What you will get back is an
annotated list of books and other resources focusing on those three
networking technologies.


Read! - Dr. Chaos ... (I have a Masters Degree)



























                             6-5







                     Chaos Corner V01 N06.2  04Oct91

Things have been just a little more chaotic than normal, and while Dr.
Chaos hasn't gone completely into a state of shock, he is close to it.

We have to go to German class very soon, and from there take off for
California to attend a conference.  The next opportunity for a Chaos
Corner update will be in a couple of weeks ... depending on how much of
Dr. Chaos' netnews has expired by then.  Some really wonderful things
have been happening and Dr. Chaos has been reminding me almost daily
that these important items need to be published .... when he gets really
nasty, I just have him translate 10 sentences into German (ones that
require the dative case, of course), using nouns and then replacing the
nouns with pronouns.  It does keep him quiet enough that I can listen to
the lab tapes.

Lots of new OS/2 software posted at novell.com.  Dr. Chaos did try out
some of IBM's claims for OS/2 by loading up a directory with the
Clarkson Packet Drivers and NCSA Telnet ... and was able to run one DOS
window that was doing FTPs from novell.com at the same time as he was
moving other utilities (via diskette) from puffin.  It worked like a
charm and was much more smooth than attempts to do similar things under
Windows.  We are eagerly awaiting the new version of the OS/2 2.0 beta
code.

Microsoft and IBM appear to be playing a waiting game.  Microsoft
doesn't want to finalize the interfaces for the new Windows 3.1 until
IBM ships OS/2 2.0, and IBM would really like to ship OS/2 2.0 without
having to re-ship an updated version almost immediately.  Of course, the
software developers for Windows are going nuts while Microsoft plays
with the order of parameters on function calls.  It's beginning to look
like 1Q92 for both of these products.  Hopefully, we will not have to
wait longer than for the oft delayed Deskview/X product (scheduled for
late '90, and now scheduled for Dec '91); don't hold your breath for
that one.

Keith Petersen, the maintainer of the Simtel20 archive has been
terminated (or rather his job has).  Lots of network bandwidth has been
devoted to concerns about when or if someone will be able to continue
the excellent job that Keith has performed in maintaining the archive.
The dust still hasn't settled on that one.

X11R5 is now up to patch level 3, and appears to have slowed down a bit
... although it may just be the case that there are BIG problems they
are trying to fix before the next patch.

Off to class .... Later...

Dr. Chaos ---(I have a Master's Degree)






                             6-6







                       Chaos Corner V01N07 30Oct91

Chaos Corner returns!  Back from California, newly married, and having
gotten a passing grade on the first exam in German, we are going to try
changing the format a little bit.  Dr. Chaos was having trouble getting
together the "perfect newsletter" (especially one that was 4-6 pages
long), and we learned that readers were also having trouble digesting
information in that large a chunk.  Therefore, we will experiment with
producing the information in smaller chunks and in a bit more timely
fashion than we have been in recent weeks.

The results of the great German survey are now in (thank you Walter)...
the word used for "Saturday" is "Sonnabend" in the North and "Samstag"
in the South.  Unless you happen to go very far south (and east) and end
up in Vienna.  We guess that Saturday being considered as "Sunday Eve"
in German goes a long way towards explaining why in English (which has a
great deal in common with German) Christmas Eve is December 24th and not
the evening of December 25th (the same thing applies to "All Hallows
Eve" that is coming up on October 31 ... just before All Saints Day on
November 1).

Seemingly Random and Similar Things

Let's get the Macintosh stuff out of the way first.  The archive at the
University of Michigan continues to grow.  You can signup as a frequent
FTPer, and while you don't get credited with miles, you do get put on
the mailing list for recent additions to the archives.  Send mail to

     mac-recent-request@mac.archive.umich.edu

to get added to the list.  Recent additions include a number of After
Dark screensavers (including one that powers your Mac off after a
certain interval); also, an application that creates yellow PostIt notes
on your screen and allows you to cut and paste from them.

Dr. Chaos has heard of a shareware program for the Mac that allows the
display of the sky, even on cloudy nights.  Included are the planets,
Sun, Moon, and 2500 brightest objects (not on the display all at once).
Has anyone tried this program?  It is available (shareware) from sumex-
aim.stanford.edu in /info-mac/app/mac-astro-15.hqx and we would be
interested in any reactions people have about it.

An interesting textual database management program has come to the
attention of Dr. Chaos -- in the linguistics subdirectory of the
wuarchive of the simtel20 mirror (that means it's in
/mirrors/msdos/linguistics on the machine named wuarchive.wustl.edu) is
file named sh12a.zip that when decompressed yields the program SHOEBOX.
SHOEBOX has various features and we quote:

     + A text editor for the entry and editing of data,
     + The ability to conduct very rapid searches; any data record can
      be accessed nearly instantaneously for editing or review,



                             7-1






     + A rigorous select option that allows the user to view only those
      records that conform to certain criteria,
     + The ability to specify a special sort ordering, taking into
      account groupings of digraphs and characters from the IBM extended
      character set,
     + A flash card function to aid in language learning,
     + Functions to number and interlinearize text.

Sounds like it may not be fancy but it may be useful for dealing with
textual information (better than putting index cards into a shoebox,
right?).  Dr. Chaos hopes to use the flashcard feature to learn the
strong and irregular verbs in German.

If you have read any of the Usenet newsgroups for any length of time,
you know there are certain questions that come up over and over again.
Some of the newsgroups organize a list of Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQs) and their answers and post them to the network on some regular
basis.  These FAQs are also collected and available via anonymous FTP
from pit-manager.mit.edu in the usenet directory.  Look for postings
either under the name of the newsgroup you are interested in, or under
news.answers.

Microsoft is currently taking telephone orders for the Word for Windows
2.0 upgrade that is expected to ship just before the end of November.
Once you get an operator, the process is pretty painless.  Dr. Chaos
found that the regular 800 number was always busy, but the educational
800 number allowed you to eventually get to the same people (if only the
Cornell telephones had a re-dial feature like the telephone we got from
Radio Shack).  Version 2.0 is supposed to really take advantage of
Windows 3.0 (the previous version had to run with older Windows
versions).

The comp.unix.aix newsgroup is now available in digest form over BITNET.
About twice a day, collected articles from comp.unix.aix are
redistributed in digest form.  To subscribe: send mail to
listserv@pucc.princeton.edu and in the body of the file place the line:

     sub aixnews your-firstname your-lastname

You can't post items directly to AIXNEWS, you can send items for
forwarding to the Usenet group to comp.unix.aix@cc.ysu.edu.

Now that the World Series is over, and the morning temperature is below
0 (C), it is time to turn attention to the next season's sport, Hockey!
If you have considered joining the college hockey discussion list but
considered that it would be too many mail files, consider subscribing to
the newly created list HOCKEY-D.  It contains all the information in
HOCKEY-L but clumped together in digest form.  To subscribe, send mail
to listserv@maine.maine.edu with the following line in the body of the
file:

     sub hockey-d your-firstname your-lastname




                             7-2






Getting around to pictures and images, Cornell's own Homer Smith has
recommended the GIF (and other format) viewer Graphic WorkShop (GWS).
The program is on wuarchive.wustl.edu in /mirrors/msdos/graphics in a
file named grafwk60.zip.  It allows one to zoom in on a particular part
of a picture, a feature that Homer finds very desireable.

There are discussions flaming in a number of the picture-oriented
newsgroups about the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) algorithm
for compressing images.  There have been several informative postings
and a lot of uninformed panic.  The summary seems to be that JPEG is
"lossy" (meaning that some information is lost in the compression
process).  The JPEG compression of gray-scale or full-color images is
usually much smaller than many currently popular forms of compression.
However, JPEG does not perform well when the image contains many sharp
boundaries (e. g., scanned images of text).  JPEG is only a compression
standard, not a file format standard.  The file format that seems to be
gaining some popularity is called JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format).
A standard for JPEG in a TIFF format file is being worked on, but Dr.
Chaos thinks it will be some time before anything results from that
effort.  DOS users can experiment with JPEG files (the files have a file
extension of .jpg) if they get the program alchemy -- get alchmy14.zip
from /mirrors/msdos/graphics directory on wuarchive.wustl.edu.  Unix
users should get jpegsrc.v1.tar.Z from the /graphics/jpeg directory on
uunet.uu.net.  By the way, Apple is using a slightly modified (of
course) version of JFIF for their recently announced QuickTime software.

A few more pictures that are available: a GIF image of the map of the
area damaged by the file in Oakland is available from
cs.sequoia.berkeley.edu in /pub/firemap.gif; two CD-ROMs of pictures
taken by the Magellan space probe are mounted at ames.arc.nasa.gov and
are accessible in /pub/SPACE/CDROM and /pub/SPACE/CDROM2.  There are a
total of 6 volumes that are rotated onto the two drives on some basis;
an image of hurricane Grace made last Sunday is named oct27_01.gif in
directory fna101.195 on machine uriacc.uri.edu.

If you weren't outside looking to the north on the evening of October
28/29 before moonrise, then you missed the most visible aurora display
in the last while.  Brian T. Carcich, at Cornell, reported on the WX-
TALK list that he was able to observe the aurora from his home in Groton
at about 2200 hours EST.  Dr. Chaos is more than a little annoyed that I
didn't take him to see the display.  Just when we thought about trying
to catch the display this past evening, the storm ended and the auroral
activity warning was downgraded to a watch.  Maybe next time we'll be
better prepared.  Dr. Chaos really enjoys the aurora information that
has recently been added to the WX-TALK list.

For those interested in Kermit (not the frog), the current version of C-
Kermit 5A can be found as the obviously named file cku173.tar.Z in the
/kermit/sw directory on watsun.cc.columbia.edu.  There are LOTS of very
nice new features in this version of Kermit so if you haven't picked up
a recent distribution of Kermit for your Unix system, you might want to
take a look at it.




                             7-3






Lou Montulli at the University of Kansas has been having trouble bring
up the ELM mailer on his RS/6000; but now reports that if one adds the -
U_STR_ and -lcur switches and get rid of -ltermcap, then ELM will not
only work, it will use the more complete Terminfo library (rather than
Termcap).  He also points out that if you do use Termcap, you can get an
updated, expanded version of the file from the wuarchive in the unix
directory.

Dr. Chaos now has the 6.605 level distribution of OS/2 Release 2.0.
Since the old version was level 6.147 and the discussion groups are
talking about level 6.169 just becoming available; we're very confused
about IBM's numbering systems.  (IBM SE Extraordinaire Charlie Hill is
working on the problem.)  In any case, anyone at Cornell who has a 386
(or better) system and would like to test drive OS/2 2.0 should give Dr.
Chaos' OS/2 tester a call at 5-7572.  Only 8 more copies allowed and
they are going fast.  Before you get your hopes up, the Workplace Shell
is not available yet.

Last but not least, fixes number 4, 5, and 6 to the X11R5 distribution
are now available from your favorite X11R5 distribution point.  Dr.
Chaos seems to recall that 6 fixes was the magic number before Scott
Brim was interested in looking at the new code ... is that right Scott?

Well it didn't get all that much shorter this time ... it would help if
Dr. Chaos would stop shoving interesting items under my nose, but it
never seems to stop.

Read! Dr. Chaos (I have a masters degree)  rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu




























                             7-4







                      Chaos Corner V01 N08 13Nov91

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

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 curved 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.

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.

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.

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.)

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


                             8-1






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.

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 about the incredible aurora displays last Friday
evening early enough to get out and see them.  Evidently there were lots
of UFO reports in Ohio when people saw the bright lights in the sky.

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).

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).

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 than the state of his office ...  (it
IS a Masters Degree!).


Random things that are all alike and just a little different ...

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.


                             8-2







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.

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.

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.

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)





















                             8-3






























































                             8-4







                      Chaos Corner V01 N09 29Nov91


Those little nasty details ....

In issue 8, we said that to subscribe to the weather-talk discussion
list from a VM/CMS machine you could 'tell listserv@uiucvmd ...'.  The
proper command is:

     tell listserv at uiucvmd subscribe wx-talk <your-name>

Note that the CMS tell command requires that you use the word 'at'
rather than using the @ symbol.  Thanks to Caroline Hecht at the Cornell
Theory Center for catching this.


Mailbag

Gary Buhrmaster of CIT's Computer Resources, ever the watchdog for Dr.
Chaos, observed the end result of the battle Dr. Chaos had with the word
processor in the last issue.  The word processor seemed very happy to
put either 80 or 60 characters per line and to absolutely refuse to
consider something like 72 characters per line.  Out of frustration, Dr.
Chaos finally resorted to using the fairly primitive 'para' macro under
VM/CMS XEDIT to get the lines formatted the proper length.
Unfortunately, the macro thinks that 'Dr.' ends a sentence and inserts
two blanks rather than one.  Thanks to Gary for catching this error.
Gary has also observed that this issue is several days late and asks for
a definition of "timely" from the good Dr. Chaos.  In return, Dr. Chaos
has suggested that Gary should occupy himself more with eating turkey
(doesn't IBM provide a free one with each MVS release?) and giving
thanks (das Erntedankfest) that this issue got out at all.

Bill Turner, Cornell University Libraries, asks about the formatting of
many documents he finds around the network.  They seem to be in the
worst possible format ("print to disk") and they have clearly never seen
a spelling checker.  He asks if there is some way to print these
documents so that they don't look terrible.  Dr. Chaos might initially
suggest that Bill look at the 'man' pages on his system, but then, the
'man' pages appear to be formatted in the same way.  Does someone with a
longer background in Unix want to jump in here?  Is there some way for
Bill to easily reprocess the text (removing the existing formatting
information) thereby allowing him to run it through a spelling checker,
pretty it up, and print it so it looks nice?

Dave Gomberg at UCSF is desperate to find a LISTSERV or NetNews list
that concentrates on recreational vehicles.  (Surely something of this
national importance cannot have been overlooked!)  Dave asks Dr. Chaos
to consult his readers for any information they can provide.  Before you
suggest it, Dr. Chaos already thought of 'rec.bicycles' but thinks that
might not be the kind of recreational vehicle that Dave was referring
to.



                             9-1






Rob Vaughn at Cornell's Materials Science Center thanks Dr. Chaos for
Chaos Corner.  "It is an invaluable collection of information, and a
blast to read as well."  Dr. Chaos and Rob were communicating because
Rob's machine (and several others) seem to choke on the long mail header
at the start of each Chaos Corner.  We hope to reduce that down to a
more reasonable size Real Soon Now.

Reaching farther down in the mailbag, we find a letter from John
Guckenheimer of the Cornell Mathematics Department (among other places),
who asks for information about who on campus is using and/or programming
in OSF/Motif today?  Dr. Chaos is planning on ordering Motif 1.2 (the
version that works with X11R5) as soon as its availability and pricing
are announced.  That will give Cornell a site license for the Motif
source code.  Contact Steve Lasala (lasala@trumpet.cit.cornell.edu) if
you are interested in getting on the Motif mailing list.

Mark Bodenstein, of CIT's Computer Resources, pointed Dr. Chaos to an
interesting editor for those of you with Macintosh computers.  Called
'prep', the editor:

     allows parallel columns of prose that are linked together.  Using
     these columns as content plus annotation is a particularly common
     example use of the PREP editor.  In addition, columns (which are
     the unit of exchange in the PREP editor) are movable, hideable,
     resizeable, and you can have as many columns as you want.  This
     allows for multiple sets of annotations to be viewed together which
     leads to easier integration of group-wide changes.

This editor is available for anonymous FTP from gnome.cs.cmu.edu.  Look
for file prepv39.sit.hqx in the /usr/chandhok/public/prep directory.
Once you 'get' the file (ascii mode), use BinHex or StuffIt! to un-
binhex it.  The resulting application, when you double click on it, will
unpack itself into the documentation and the application.  Has anyone
tried this editor?  It sounds like it might be useful (combined with the
QuickMail enclosure facility) for passing around comments that a group
of people have made on a document.  If you do get the editor, please
send questions/comments to prep-project+@andrew.cmu.edu so that the
authors get some feedback on their work.

Dick Crepeau from Cornell's Chemistry Department, says he enjoys reading
Chaos Corner and finds similarities in style with Jerry Pournelle's
Chaos Manor column in Byte Magazine.  He asks if Dr. Chaos had ever
considered writing Science Fiction.  While Dr. Chaos attempts to NEVER
write any kind of fiction (thanks to Gary Buhrmaster), he must admit
that the inspiration for writing Chaos Corner came to him on a trans-
Atlantic flight during which he read four back-issues of Byte Magazine
in one sitting.

John Balogh from Penn State asked for more information about getting the
weather maps from vmd.cso.uiuc.edu.  Dr. Chaos was remiss in not
supplying the necessary information to 'cd phil.515' to access the
minidisk (it's a VM/CMS system) to get the current weather map.  Dr.
Chaos, thanks to Jeff Honig of CIT's Network Resources, now has the
current weather map (updated hourly) as the background of his display on


                             9-2






pelican (it also becomes the "screensaver").  The magic shell script one
needs to run in a Unix system is as follows:

     #!/bin/sh

     KEY=0
     ONROOT=""

     while [ $# -ne 0 ]; do
          arg=$1; shift
          case ${arg} in
               -key)
                    KEY=1
                    ;;
               -onroot)
                    ONROOT="-onroot -fullscreen -border black"
                    ;;
               *)
                    echo "Usage: wxmap [-key] [-onroot]"
                    exit 1;
                    ;;
          esac
     done

     if [ ${KEY} -eq 1 ]; then
          files="wxkey.gif" ;
     else
      files=`date -u +"%m %d %H" | awk '{
               for (i = 0; i < 7; i++) {
                    j = $3 -i;  k = $2 - 0;
                    if (j < 0)
                    {j += 24; k -= 1;}

                    printf "SA%s%02d%02d.GIF\n", $1, k, j;
               }
          }'`
     fi

     # Note: The code has problems on month boundaries. Due to holidays
     #       and weekends, it shouldn't be a problem until April, 1992.
     #       At that time, Dr. Chaos will be in France. C'est la vie!

     for file in ${files}; do
          ftp -i -n vmd.cso.uiuc.edu <<EOF
     user anonymous ${USER}@`hostname`
     binary
     cd phil.515
     get ${file} /tmp/wxmap.gif.$$
     quit
     EOF

          if [ -f /tmp/wxmap.gif.$$ ]; then
               xloadimage ${ONROOT} -quiet /tmp/wxmap.gif.$$
               rm -f /tmp/wxmap.gif.$$


                             9-3






               break;
          fi
     done


Note that there may be some character translation problems that we
didn't get straightened out.  Also, if you happen to be running some
versions of AIX (eg. 1.2 or 3.1), the 'date' command is broken and
returns local time rather than CUT (GMT) even though the '-u' parameter
is specified.  Note that the script assumes you have access to a copy of
the free program 'xloadimage' to display GIF files.

Keith Boncek of Cornell says he has been looking for commercial software
programs for an IBM PC called "Metafile" and "Fund Master".  Does anyone
know what companies market these programs?

Joan Winters at the Stanford Linear Accelerator asks if Dr. Chaos has a
preferred home computer.  Dr. Chaos tells me that his favorite is any
computer that attaches to a 9600 baud modem.  Seriously, he really likes
the IBM RS/6000 model 320H with the 19 inch color display.  Now, if only
some vendor was willing to contribute one for his home use.

Finally, on the AUDIX voice mail front, Larry Fresinski of CIT's
Workstation Resources has some additional information.  If you get
impatient with waiting through someone's long, boring message, just
press the '1' key and you can start recording immediately.  If you press
'1' at the end of leaving the message, you can hear your message, add
more to the end of the message, re-record the message, or delete the
message.  Dr. Chaos likes the idea of having a second chance to record
something that is understandable and hopes that the quality of
everyone's voice mail can now be improved.



Random Bits of interesting and (un)timely things

Loyal, long-time readers of Chaos Corner may remember that Bob Blackmun
was interested in software that allowed 3270 terminals to emulate DEC
VT-100s.  IBM recently announced that they are marketing some software
to do at least a partial emulation (for full screen applications).  Bob
promises to report back on his evaluation of the software once they have
had a chance to try it out.

It really is true that if you want to upgrade to OS/2 2.0 when it
becomes available, all you have to do now is to call an 800-number, tell
them you have PC-DOS, and give them an address and a credit card number.
With that (and the $99 charge on your card) you will receive OS/2 1.3
now, and OS/2 2.0 when it is available (April/May 1992).  If you are
feeling generous, check your local computer store for the same deal (the
local IBM sales team gets credit for local retail sales and they do not
get credit for the 800-number sales).

In the 'sub.jokes' newsgroup, we recently saw the ultimate in
programming -- the 0-byte version of the traditional Hello World!


                             9-4






program (the purpose of such a program is to type 'Hello World', and
often to introduce a new computer language):

     $ Hello_World!
     Hello_World!: not found
     $


In a recent court case, CompuServe Information System was held to be a
common carrier with regard to the messages posted on the system.  By
stating up front that they did not review the messages that subscribers
posted they could not be held liable for what other people might find
that was offensive on the CompuServe system.  It is hoped that this
decision will serve as a precedent that protects computer bulletin
boards and systems carrying Usenet news traffic.  It seems that the
important thing was that they did very little or nothing to control the
message traffic ... if someone tries to monitor and edit the traffic,
then they might be held libel for what appears.



According to W4W, I have exceeded 10,000 characters, so it is time to
close for now.  Due to Dr Chaos being on the road, and the approaching
holidays, the Chaos Corner schedule will be erratic in December.  This
issue will get posted to the 'cornell.general' newsgroup; if you want to
subscribe via electronic mail, send your request to:
rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu

Read Dr. Chaos! (I have a Masters Degree)



























                             9-5






























































                             9-6







                      Chaos Corner V01 N10 09Dec91


This will be the last issue of Chaos Corner for the year of 1991 and the
end of volume 01 (order your bound copy of volume 01 by December 6 to
receive it in time for Christmas).  We expect to return with volume 2 in
mid-January.


Mailbag

We have received a number of suggestions about the long headers on the
front of Chaos Corner.  Nick Gimbrone of CIT suggested that we use the
bcc (blind carbon copy) feature of the Ricemail package so that the list
of recipients is hidden.  The solution we picked was to create an alias
list on pelican.  Thanks go to Gary Buhrmaster for listening to our
whining about undocumented restrictions in the 'newaliases' command as
we set things up.  If you have received this  issue, then it either
worked (at least for your address) or it failed so miserably that I sent
it out again the old way.
-----
Kate Mink of Cornell's Engineering College and Joan Winters at the
Stanford Linear Accelerator facility believe that not all the topics on
Chaos Corner are of the same level of riveting interest.  They actually
want to be able to SKIP topics that Dr. Chaos thinks are interesting!
Hrumph!  In any case, Dr. Chaos has asked me to separate topics with the
name of the file folder containing the item (impose order on chaos?
REALLY!).
-----
Keith Boncek reports that his request for information on a software
distributor,  in the last issue of Chaos Corner, was successful; he had
what he needed in less than one half a working day after the issue was
distributed.  Thanks to you all!


Chaotic bits and bytes from various sources ...

Ever wonder where the "definitive sources" are for the free Unix
software is that is floating around on the net?  Brendan Kehoe at
Widener is the "source" of the following list:

      akcl             rascal.ics.utexas.edu
      AMX TeX          e-math.ams.com
      archie           ftp.cs.widener.edu  ( ;-) )
      cnews            ftp.cs.toronto.edu
      dig & dug        venera.isi.edu
      emacs lisp stuff archive.cis.ohio-state.edu
      elm              dsinc.dsi.com
      gnu stuff        prep.ai.mit.edu
      ida sendmail     uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
      microemacs       midas.mgmt.purdue.edu
      mit scheme       altdorf.ai.mit.edu
      perl & patch     devvax.jpl.nasa.gov


                            10-1






      rc               archone.tamu.edu
      rn & nntp        lib.tmc.edu
      tcsh             tesla.ee.cornell.edu
      telnet           ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
      tvtwm            mojo.eng.umd.edu
      X                export.lcs.mit.edu
-----
If you would like faster access to the msdos archives than can be
obtained from Simtel20 (in New Mexico) or wuarchive.wustl.edu (in Saint
Louis, Missouri), you might try accessing another one of the Simtel20
mirror sites, like oak.oakland.edu (near Detroit, Michigan).  The campus
at Oakland has a T1 (1.54 Mbps) connection to the Internet, and Dr.
Chaos tells me that based on some simpleminded tests he performed,
access to oak.oakland.edu was 2-3 times faster from Cornell, than access
to wuarchive.wustl.edu.  Of course, your results may vary depending on
your location.
-----
In the sick humor department, Dr. Chaos notes that help is available for
those who are confused or a little uncertain about anonymous FTP.  There
are "how-to-use-anonymous-ftp instructions" available by anonymous ftp
from ftp.cs.toronto.edu; look for file doc/ftp.help.
-----
One frequent question that arises in this time of chaos is how to get
the e-mail address of someone else on the Internet.  There is a periodic
posting in several of the NetNews newsgroups on various techniques to
use.  If you would like a copy, send electronic mail to:

     chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu

Be sure you have a valid return address and that you specify in the
subject or body of the message the type of information requested.
Donations of cash, hardware, and software gratefully accepted.
-----
If you like the facilities offered by archie at McGill University
(database lookup of files available across the Internet via anonymous
FTP), but you don't like to logon to the system at McGill, try using one
of the flavors of archie clients that are available.  If you can deal
with X, perl, or C, there is an archie client interface for you at
archie.mcgill.ca in the archie/clients directory.  If running archie on
the currently overloaded McGill system is too slow for you, note that
the following archie servers now exist:

     telnet archie.mcgill.ca  132.206.2.3         (Can./USA)
     telnet archie.funet.fi   128.214.6.100  (Finland)
     telnet archie.au         128.184.1.4         (Aussie/NZ)
     telnet archie.sura.net   128.167.254.179
     (login as user archie)
-----
As the end of the year approaches, it is still not too late to find out
the latest network wisdom on US Federal Income Taxes.  Subscribe to
FedTax-L by sending a MAIL message to:

     LISTSERV@SHSU.BITNET     (BITNET users)
     - or to -


                            10-2






     LISTSERV@SHSU.edu        (Internet users)
     with the one-line message:
     SUBSCRIBE FedTax-L
-----
Last but not least, the 500 and 1000 question sexual purity tests are
available at acm.rpi.edu in the pub/aragon directory.  Don't allow
yourself to suffer any doubts!  Find out the REAL truth about yourself
that you've been hiding all along.


CD-ROMs

A Canadian company, Photon Press, has announced Dr. Tomorrows Eclectic
Bookstore.  The company claims it is the first CD-ROM package to offer
individual works of literature for sale directly to the end user.  The
disk contains a certain amount of material available for the $79
purchase price, and with the payment of additional money you are given
the decryption keys to access a number of other titles that are
available on the same CD-ROM.  Titles are stored in a number of formats
to insure compatibility with a number of systems.  (A CD-ROM can hold
the text of about 6,000 books, so this distribution method has a lot of
potential).


OS/2

The Fernwood collection of OS/2 programs is in the process of being
loaded to novell.com (don't try to access this site between the hours of
8 am to 5:30 pm PST).  The descriptions of the programs from the
Fernwood collection that are currently available are in the os2/fernwood
directory in file FERNWOS2.ZIP.  As the moderator has time, he plans to
move these programs to the appropriate subdirectory of the os2
directory.
-----
Courtesy of Charlie Hill, IBM SE Extrodinaire, Dr. Chaos has received a
"Guide to the OS/2 2.0 Workplace Shell," explaining what paradigm shift
you must make to be comfortable with the current OS/2 2.0 beta.  For
your copy, request it from chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.


Pictures

Many questions have arisen on the network about how to deal with the
image files being posted with the .jpg extension (JPEG format).  While
the reason for posting pictures in that format is ostensibly to reduce
the network traffic, Dr. Chaos claims there is a balance between the
reduced bandwidth from the highly compressed pictures and the increased
bandwidth of people asking how to get a program to view/convert the JPEG
files.  The standard converter between JPEG and GIF on the PC can be
gotten from wuarchive.wustl.edu in the mirrors/msdos/graphics directory,
and it is named gif2jpg5.zip (don't forget to specify 'binary' for the
file transfer).  For the Macintosh, the recommended software seems to be
Picture Decompress 2.0.1, also from wuarchive in /mirrors/info-mac/apps
and stored in file picture-decompress-201.hqx.  Dr. Chaos would love to


                            10-3






hear reviews of these programs from any readers that have tried them
out.
-----
The standard JPEG viewers, already compiled and ready-to-go for a number
of Unix platforms can be found at procyon.cis.ksu.edu in the pub/JPEG
directory.  IBM PC '.exe' files are also there along with the other
popular viewer on the PC platform -- Alchemy.  Dr. Chaos reminds me that
Unix users will also want to have a copy of the pbmplus package close at
hand.
-----
If you are wondering where to look for GIF images, Dr. Chaos reports
that you merely have to get the file /archie/doc/giflist.Z from
archie.mcgill.ca -- it will tell you the same information that you would
get from archie if you had asked it where in the world all the GIF files
were stored (you can count on the X-rated GIFs being pretty much hidden
away and not in the list).


Misc (why? because many things here defy categorization)

Do you think you have run out of creative ways to coax people to leave
messages on your answering machine rather than just hanging up?  Dr.
Chaos has a greater than 1000-line file filled many sample messages, and
he feels they will excite your creativity -- get a copy by sending e-
mail to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu (be sure to specify the
file you are requesting).
-----
Ever wish you could login to CompuServe or Dow Jones services right from
a machine on the Internet?  Try issuing the telnet command to get to
hermes.merit.edu and entering 'compuserve' at the 'which host?' prompt,
and a carriage return after the 'call connected' message.  Dr. Chaos
does point out that it is really only useful if you have a CompuServe
account, and that it appears the connection is being made through
Tymnet, so network surcharges in addition to CompuServe charges will be
in effect.
-----
In a discussion of electronic mail to Santa Claus, Claus Tondering from
Denmark pointed out that Santa's schedule allows him approximately 96
microseconds at each stop.  Dr. Chaos points out that that includes
travel time.
-----
Chris Landers at Purdue University has put together a database of US
Postal ZIP codes.  The data can be ftp'ed from zeus.mgmt.purdue.edu
after 5PM EST. In directory /pub, the file zipcodes.zip contains: US ZIP
codes; a PC zip code lookup program (lookup.exe) database, and dbase
source.
-----
One poster on NetNews checked with the Secret Service to find out if it
was legal to post scanned images of paper currency.  It appears that
there is no problem so long as you never make a hardcopy.  Under certain
conditions, it is acceptable to make a black/white hardcopy, but no
color copies are legal.  This particular poster would like to post a
scanned image of a $10,000 bill, so if anyone has one to contribute to
the cause, Dr. Chaos would be happy to ...


                            10-4







TILT! Stop that before we get into trouble!  That's all for now.  See
you next year with volume 2 of Chaos Corner.  If you would like to be
added to the electronic mail list, send a note off to chaos-
request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.

Read Dr. Chaos! (I have a Masters Degree)

















































                            10-5






























































                            10-6

















                          Index to Chaos Corner

                                Volume 1







                                 CompuServe, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3,
                                 4-1, 4-4, 9-5, 10-4
4DOS, 3-4, 8-3                   Computists Communique, 8-2
A-NET, 3-2                       Contributions, 1-1
ACHART, 2-5                      COPS, 1-4, 2-3
ADABAS, 2-4                      COPYTAPE, 3-3
AIX, 2-7, 4-3, 4-4, 9-4          Cornell telephone system,
aixnews, 7-2                     8-1
Anderson, Gail and Paul, 4-      cpt, 4-2
5                                Crack, 6-3
answering machine, 10-4          crack, 5-5
arc, 3-1                         Criticisms, 1-1
archie, 1-5, 2-2, 3-2, 3-3,      CWIS, 6-1, 6-2
8-3, 10-4                        DAL, 2-4
Atlas, 2-3                       DCE, 2-4
AUDIX, 8-1, 9-4                  Deskview/X, 6-6
aurora, 8-2                      Dictionary, 5-1
baud, 5-2                        DME, 2-4
BBS systems, 6-2                 Dow Jones, 10-4
BinHex, 2-2, 2-7, 3-3, 4-2,      Dr. Tomorrows Eclectic
9-2                              Bookstore, 10-3
BITNET, 1-1, 4-4, 6-3, 7-2,      Dutch words, 6-2
10-2                             e-mail addresses, 10-2
   Mailing Lists, 1-2            EcoDigest, 4-4
Boston area, 6-2                 ELM, 7-4
boustrophedon, 4-5, 5-3          emacs, 2-7
bps (bits per second), 5-2       English words, 6-2
bug reports                      Ethernet
   Borland, 1-3                    packet drivers, 2-1
C, 1-5, 2-4, 3-1, 5-5, 10-2      Exec-PC, 1-3
C19, 2-1                         FAQs, 2-6, 7-2
Campus Wide Information          File Manager, 3-4
Systems, 6-1                     Finger
CD-ROM, 1-5, 2-6, 4-5, 5-4,        synoptic.mit.edu, 8-1
7-3, 10-3                        fortran, 1-5
   maps, 5-4                     FRACTINT, 5-5
   Sun, 4-4                      Freenet, 6-1
   Sun Users Group, 2-6          French words, 6-2
Cleveland Freenet, 5-1           FTP, 1-1, 1-3, 2-1, 2-2, 2-
CLOCKDEV, 5-5                    5, 2-6, 3-1, 6-4
CMS, 1-1, 1-2, 1-4, 1-5, 2-        acd.ucar.edu, 4-4
1, 2-2, 2-7, 3-1, 4-2, 5-3,        acm.rpi.edu, 10-3
8-2, 9-2                           acsc.acsc.com, 4-4
Comments, 1-1, 2-7                 alf.uib.no, 6-4
Compactor, 4-2                     altdorf.ai.mit.edu, 10-1
compression, 2-6, 3-1              ames.arc.nasa.gov, 1-4,
   arc, 3-1                        6-3, 7-3
   images, 7-3                     anonymous, 1-1, 3-1, 10-2
   Macintosh, 3-2, 4-2                list, 1-1
   PC, 4-2                         apple.com, 1-3, 3-3
   Unix, 3-2                       archie.mcgill.ca, 10-2,
   zip, 3-1                        10-4
   zoo, 3-1                        archive.cis.ohio-
                                   state.edu, 10-1


                           Index-1






   archone.tamu.edu, 10-2          pelican.cit.cornell.edu,
   athena-dist.mit.edu, 6-4        1-1, 1-3, 2-2, 2-7, 3-3,
   blackbird.afit.af.mil, 6-       3-5, 4-4, 5-5, 6-2, 9-3
   5                               pilot.njin.net, 1-1
   byron.u.washington.edu,         pit-manager.mit.edu, 2-6,
   2-7, 4-4                        7-2
   cert.sei.cmu.edu, 1-4           prep.ai.mit.edu, 3-3, 3-
   cica.cica.indiana.edu, 1-       4, 10-1
   3, 2-5, 3-4, 3-5, 4-1, 5-       procyon.cis.ksu.edu, 10-4
   6                               puffin.cit.cornell.edu,
   cs.sequoia.berkeley.edu,        1-3, 2-7, 3-5
   7-3, 8-1                        rascal.ics.utexas.edu,
   cs.utk.edu, 4-4                 10-1
   devvax.jpl.nasa.gov, 10-1       sequoia.cs.berkeley.edu,
   dsinc.dsi.com, 10-1             8-1
   e-math.ams.com, 10-1            sh.cs.edu, 2-6
   eagle.tc.cornell.edu, 5-4       stsci.edu, 4-5
   export.lcs.mit.edu, 1-5,        sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
   3-4, 10-2                       7-1
   ftp.acsu.buffalo.edu, 3-3       sun.soe.clarkson.edu, 1-
   ftp.ai.mit.edu, 6-4             3, 2-1, 6-3
   ftp.cs.cornell.edu, 5-5         tesla.ee.cornell.edu, 3-
   ftp.cs.toronto.edu, 2-5,        4, 10-2
   10-1, 10-2                      ucbarpa.berkeley.edu, 10-
   ftp.cs.vu.nl, 6-2               2
   ftp.cs.widener.edu, 5-5,        ugle.unit.no, 6-2
   10-1                            ulowell.ulowell.edu, 6-4
   ftp.eng.auburn.edu, 5-6         uriacc.uri.edu, 5-5, 7-3
   ftp.nisc.sri.com, 1-2           uunet.uu.net, 5-6, 7-3
   ftp.oit.unc.edu, 6-1            ux1.cso.uiuc.edu, 1-3
   ftp.pitt.edu, 5-4               uxc.cso.uiuc.edu, 6-3,
   ftp.utexas.edu, 6-5             10-1
   ftp.vitalink.com, 1-4           vacs.uwp.edu, 5-1
   garbo.uwasa.fi, 2-7             vaxb.acs.unt.edu, 1-4, 6-
   gnome.cs.cmu.edu, 9-2           1
   grape.ecs.clarkson.edu,         venera.isi.edu, 10-1
   3-5                             vmd.cso.uiuc.edu, 1-4, 2-
   lib.tmc.edu, 10-2               7, 3-5, 5-5, 8-2, 9-2
   lightning.gatech.edu, 4-4       vmtecmex.cem.itesm.mx, 1-
   marcy.tn.cornell.edu, 5-4       4
   mc.lcs.mit.edu, 5-6             watsun.cc.columbia.edu,
   merit.edu, 4-4                  6-2, 7-3
   midas.mgmt.purdue.edu,          wsmr-simtel20.army.mil,
   10-1                            4-3
   mims-iris.waterloo.edu,         wuarchive, 2-7
   5-6, 6-2                        wuarchive.wustl.edu, 1-3,
   mojo.eng.umd.edu, 10-2          1-4, 2-4, 2-5, 2-7, 3-1,
   nic.eu.net, 2-3                 3-5, 3-6, 4-2, 4-3, 4-4,
   nic.funet.fi, 1-4               5-5, 5-6, 6-1, 6-4, 7-1,
   novell.com, 6-4, 6-6, 10-       7-3, 7-4, 8-3, 10-2, 10-3
   3                               ZEBRA.ACS.UDEL.EDU, 3-5
   oak.oakland.edu, 1-5, 10-       zeus.mgmt.purdue.edu, 10-
   2                               4
                                 ftp.list, 1-1


                           Index-2






games, 6-4                         services, 5-1
   Arctic Adventure, 6-4           tour, 1-3, 2-2
   Commander Keen, 6-4           IRC Telnet Client, 5-1
   Dark Ages, 6-4                ISIS distributed system, 5-
   Jump Man, 6-4                 5
   Monuments of Mars, 6-4        Italian words, 6-2
   PC, 6-4                       Jargon File, 5-6
   Pharaohs Tomb, 6-4            JFIF, 7-3
Garfinkel, Simson, 4-5           Joint Photographic Experts
gates-memo, 3-3                  Group, 7-3
Geographic Name Server, 5-1      JPEG, 7-3, 10-3
German words, 6-2                jpg, 7-3, 10-3
Ghostscript, 1-4, 3-4            kaleidoscope, 2-5
ghostscript, 3-4                 Kaos, 5-4
GIF, 2-3, 2-7, 3-2, 5-5,         Kerberos, 6-4
10-4                             Kermit, 2-1, 2-7, 6-2, 7-3
GIF-converter, 3-2, 4-2          kermit, 2-7
gif2jpg, 10-3                    LAPM, 5-3
Giffer, 2-7, 4-2                 Lempel-Ziv, 5-3
GNU Project, 3-3                 Library, 5-1
Graphic WorkShop, 7-3              Library of Congress, 5-1
GSPreview, 3-4                   library, 3-5, 6-1
GWS, 7-3                         Library of Congress, 5-1
Hardware                         Library Systems, 1-4
   Macintosh, 1-5                linguistics, 7-1
   PC, 1-5, 5-4                  Listserv
Hello World!, 9-5                  maine.maine.edu, 7-2
hex file viewer, 2-5               pucc.princeton.edu, 7-2
HQX, 4-2                           UCCVMA, 2-6
hqx, 1-3, 2-2, 3-2                 uiucvmd, 9-1
Hubble Space Telescope, 4-5        vm1.nodak.edu, 1-2
HyperCard, 2-1                   LPD, 2-2
HyperFTP, 2-1                    LPR, 2-2
IBM Research, 1-5                Lyric Server, 5-1
IBMTCP-L, 3-2                    mac-l, 1-2
IMDISP, 6-3                      Macintosh, 2-4
info-mac, 3-2                      News and Information, 1-2
Internet, 1-1, 2-1, 2-6, 4-      macPs, 3-3
3, 5-1, 5-5, 6-1, 6-5            MacTCP, 2-1
   Borland customer support,     Mail
   8-3                             andrew.cmu.edu, 9-2
   directory of people, 6-5        bfmny0.bfm.com, 8-1
   e-mail addresses, 10-2          borland.com, 8-3
   GIF file archive sites,         cc.ysu.edu, 7-2
   1-4                             cornella.cit.cornell.edu,
   Guide to Binaries, 2-6          1-1, 1-6, 2-3, 2-7, 3-7,
   Guide to FTP, 2-6               5-2, 5-6, 6-1, 6-2, 7-4,
   Interest Groups, 1-2            8-3, 9-5
   library systems, 1-4            cs.duke.edu, 5-5
   Mail Guide, 2-6                 kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov, 6-3
   Mailing Lists, 1-2              mac.archive.umich.edu, 7-
   map, 2-3                        1
   Network Reading List, 6-5       maine.maine.edu, 7-2
   Q and A, 2-6


                           Index-3






   pelican.cit.cornell.edu,      OS/2, 2-4, 4-1, 4-4, 5-6,
   10-2, 10-3, 10-4              6-2, 6-4, 6-6, 7-4, 8-2, 9-
   pit-manager.mit.edu, 6-5      4, 10-3
   pucc.princeton.edu, 7-2         2.0 beta, 10-3
   trumpet.cit.cornell.edu,        Beta Test Release 2.0, 7-
   3-3, 9-2                        4
   watsun.cc.columbia.edu,         Early Evaluation Program,
   6-2                             6-4
mail-server                        Workplace Shell, 10-3
   nisc.sri.com, 1-2             OSF, 2-4, 3-3
Mailing List, 10-2                 DCE, 2-4
   CDROM-L, 2-6                    DME, 2-4
   FedTax-L, 10-2                  Motif, 3-3, 9-2
   HOCKEY-D, 7-2                   OSF/1, 3-3
   HOCKEY-L, 7-2                 OSF/1, 3-3
   IBMTCP-L, 3-2                 packet driver, 1-3
   kerberos@mit.edu, 6-4         paper currency, 10-4
   mac-l, 1-2                    Pascal, 5-5
   remove, 1-2                   pbmplus, 6-3
   Stereo Photography, 8-1       PC-BLUE, 1-3
   unsubscribe, 1-2              Performance Meter, 3-4, 4-
   WORDS-L, 6-3                  1, 5-6
   WX-TALK, 4-4, 7-3, 8-2,       perl, 10-2
   9-1                           pi, 5-4
Mailing Lists, 1-1, 1-2, 6-      Pickover, Clifford, 1-5
3                                Picture Decompress, 10-3
McGill University, 2-2           Pictures, 10-3
Milnet, 4-3                      pictures, 1-4, 7-3
modem                              BMP, 2-7
   9600 bps, 5-2                   currency, 10-4
   high speed, 3-6                 EPS, 3-2
   V.32, 5-2                       fax, 6-3
   V.32bis, 5-2                    fractals, 5-5
   V.42, 5-2, 5-3                  GIF, 2-3, 2-7, 5-5, 6-3,
   V.42bis, 5-2, 5-3               7-3, 8-1, 10-3
   V32bis, 5-2                        balls2.gif, 2-7
Motif, 3-3                            cowgirl.gif, 2-7
motifgif, 2-7                         firemap.gif, 7-3
MVS, 9-1                              oct27_01.gif, 7-3
NASA, 5-1                             software, 3-2, 9-4
Natural, 2-4                          SOLAR17Z.GIF, 3-5
NetNews, 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-            SOLAR21Z.GIF, 3-5
1, 2-5, 2-6, 3-6, 4-3, 5-2,           ts-bob.gif, 5-5
6-1, 6-3, 6-4, 6-5, 7-2, 9-           weather, 9-2
4, 9-5, 10-2, 10-4                    weather maps, 8-2
   Q and A, 2-6                    GIF image files, 1-4
NFS, 3-5                           GIF list, 10-4
ninja.compuserve.transcript        GIFs, 1-4
, 4-4                              JFIF, 7-3
NLS, 5-1                           JPEG, 10-3, 10-4
NSFNet, 2-6, 4-3                   Magellan, 1-4
Objections, 2-7                    money, 10-4
online dictionaries, 6-2           PICT, 3-2
OPAC, 3-5                          R-rated, 1-4


                           Index-4






   RIFF, 3-2                       Macintosh, 2-1, 2-2, 2-4,
   software, 2-7, 4-2, 6-3,        4-2, 7-1
   10-3                               After Dark
     GWS, 7-3                         screensavers, 7-1
   space, 6-3, 7-3                    BinHex, 3-2
   TIFF, 3-2, 7-3                     GIF-converter, 3-2, 4-
   video, 4-4                         2
   Voyager, 1-4                       Giffer, 2-3, 2-7, 4-2
   weather, 2-7, 5-5                  HyperFTP, 2-1
   weather photos, 1-4                MacAstro, 7-1, 8-1
   X-rated, 1-4, 10-4                 macPs, 3-3
Pink, 2-4                             Orion spaceship
PKARC, 3-1                            simulator, 8-1
Plan-9, 2-5                           Picture Decompress,
playmac, 3-6                          10-3
PostScript, 1-4, 3-3, 3-4             PostIt notes, 7-1
PREP, 9-2                             prep, 9-2
PSHELL, 3-4                           QuickGif, 2-3, 2-7
Pulse, 4-1                            QuickTime, 7-3
QT-QUOTE, 4-4                         StuffIt!, 3-2, 4-2
Questions, 2-7                        Stuffit!, 2-2
QuickGif, 2-7                         Unix Windows, 2-6
QuickTime, 7-3                     OS/2, 2-4, 5-6, 6-4, 6-6,
QVTNET, 1-3, 2-1, 3-5              7-4, 10-3
RAD, 4-4                              Kermit, 6-2
Radio Shack, 1-5, 2-6                 Pulse, 4-1
RAID, 2-4                          PC, 1-3, 2-1, 2-3, 2-4,
redial, 8-1                        2-5, 4-2, 5-3
remac, 3-6                            4DOS, 8-3
REXX Exec, 5-3                        Alchemy, 7-3, 10-4
Roads                                 ALED, 2-5
   Great Roads Survey, 1-4            C19, 2-1
RPC, 2-4                              CLOCKDEV, 5-5
Santa Claus, 10-4                     DAZE, 2-5
satellites                            Exec-PC, 1-3
   orbital information, 6-5           f2c, 1-5
Scientists WorkBench, 5-4             FRACTINT, 5-5
sea, 4-2                              gif2jpg, 10-3
Security, 1-4, 2-3, 4-5, 5-           GWS, 7-3
5, 6-4                                Hypertext, 1-4
   Unix, 4-5, 5-5, 6-3                IMDISP, 6-3
sexual purity test, 10-3              Kermit, 2-1, 6-2
Share Europe, 8-2                     lookup, 10-4
SHOEBOX, 7-1                          PKZIP, 3-1
Simtel20, 1-3, 2-4, 4-3, 6-           playbwc, 6-4
6, 7-1, 8-3, 10-2                     playmac, 3-6
sit, 1-3, 2-2, 3-2, 4-2               QT-QUOTE, 4-4
Software                              remac, 3-6
   AIX, 2-7, 4-4                      SCRIPTO, 2-4
     ELM mailer, 7-4                  SHOEBOX, 7-1
     emacs, 2-7                       soss, 3-5
     xntp, 2-7                        tsrcom, 8-3
   CMS, 4-2                           Unix Windows, 2-6
                                      virus protection, 2-5


                           Index-5






     zoo, 3-1                         Scientists Workbench,
   Sun, 4-5, 5-4                      5-4
   Unix, 3-2, 3-3, 5-4, 6-3,          X11R5, 6-1, 6-6, 7-4
   10-4                               Xascii, 5-6
     akcl, 10-1                       xmartin, 1-5
     archie, 10-1                Software AG, 2-4
     C-Kermit, 7-3               solar eclipse, 3-5
     cnews, 10-1                 song lyrics, 6-2
     crack, 6-3                  soss, 3-5
     dig, 10-1                   Sound, 3-6
     dug, 10-1                     FTP, 3-6
     elm, 10-1                     newsletter, 3-6
     emacs lisp stuff, 10-1      sound, 6-4
     gnu stuff, 10-1             sound editing, 6-4
     ida sendmail, 10-1          space, 4-5, 5-1, 6-3, 6-5,
     jpeg, 7-3                   7-1, 7-3, 8-1
     Kerberos, 6-4               Spafford, Gene, 4-5
     libtel, 6-1                 Spell checker, 5-1
     microemacs, 10-1            Startrek, 5-5
     nntp, 10-2                    Lists of Lists, 5-5
     patch, 10-1                 Stoll, Clifford, 4-5
     pbmplus, 6-3, 10-4          StuffIt Deluxe, 4-2
     perl, 10-1                  StuffIt!, 2-2, 3-2, 4-2, 9-
     rc, 10-2                    2
     rn, 10-2                    Sun Users Group, 2-6
     scheme, 10-1                SWB, 5-4
     tcsh, 10-2                  System 85, 8-1
     telnet, 10-2                tar, 3-2, 4-2, 5-4
     TeX, 10-1                   tcsh, 3-3
     tvtwm, 10-2                 tell, 9-1
     vi, 6-4                     telnet, 1-4, 1-5, 2-1, 2-5,
     weather map, 9-3            3-5, 5-1, 6-1, 8-2
     X, 10-2                       archie.au, 10-2
     xloadimage, 9-4               archie.doc.ic.ac.uk, 8-3
   Windows, 2-3, 2-4               archie.funet.fi, 10-2
     3.0a, 3-4                     archie.mcgill.ca, 8-3,
     ACHART, 2-5                   10-2
     achart, 5-6                   archie.sura.net, 8-3, 10-
     CATALIST, 3-5                 2
     DRWATSON, 2-5                 ATL.CALSTATE.EDU, 6-2
     File Manager, 3-4             bbs.oit.unc.edu, 6-1
     Performance Meter, 3-         CONRAD.APPSTATE.EDU, 6-2
     4, 4-1, 5-6                   decoy.uoregon.edu, 5-1
     PSHELL, 3-4                   dra.com, 5-1
     QVTNET, 1-3                   freenet-in-a.cwru.edu, 5-
     Unix Windows, 2-6             1
     WINCLI, 3-4                   hermes.merit.edu, 10-4
     WinGif, 2-7                   ISCA.ICAEN.UIOWA.EDU, 6-2
     WINHV, 2-5                    madlab.sprl.umich.edu, 8-
     WINQVT, 3-5                   2
     WinWord, 7-2, 8-1             martini.eecs.umich.edu,
   X-Windows, 6-1, 10-4            5-1
     GSPreview, 3-4                NCSA, 2-5
                                   nic.ddn.mil, 2-6


                           Index-6






   nls.adp.wisc.edu, 5-1           rec.sport.basketball, 2-6
   PSUPEN.PSU.EDU, 6-2             rec.sport.football, 2-6
   QUARTZ.RUTGERS.EDU, 6-2         soc.culture.german, 5-1
   quiche.cs.mcgill.ca, 1-5,       soc.culture.polish, 5-1
   2-2                             soc.culture.soviet, 5-1
   quiche.cs.mcgill.edu, 3-2       sub.jokes, 9-4
   spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov,        talk.politics.soviet, 5-1
   5-1                           UTS, 2-2
   TECHINFO.MIT.EDU, 6-2         V.32, 5-2, 5-3
   vax.sonoma.edu, 1-4           V.32bis, 5-2, 5-3
Termcap, 7-4                     V.42, 5-2, 5-3
Teubner and Associates, 3-2      V.42bis, 5-2, 5-3
Thesaurus, 5-1                   vi macros, 6-4
TIFF, 7-3                        VM/Dialout, 3-2
TLA, 5-6                         VMS, 2-1
Trax Softworks, 3-2              VMSHARE, 3-2
TV                               weather, 2-7, 4-4, 5-1, 5-
   Simpsons, 5-5                 5, 6-1, 8-1, 8-2, 9-1, 9-2
   Startrek, 5-5                 Weather Underground, 6-1
uncompress, 4-2                  WESTNET, 4-3
Unix, 4-5                        whois, 2-6
   csh, 4-5                      WINCLI, 3-4
   System Administration, 2-     Windows, 1-3, 2-5, 3-4, 3-
   3, 4-5, 5-5                   5, 4-2, 5-6, 6-6
Unix Windows, 2-6                  3.0a, 2-5, 3-4, 4-2
US Federal Income Taxes,           beta-test 3.1, 5-6
10-2                             Windows32-bit API, 5-6
US Postal ZIP codes, 10-4        WinGif, 2-3, 2-7
USA Today Headline News, 5-      WINHV, 2-5
1                                WINQVT, 2-1, 3-5
Usenet, 1-3, 2-5, 2-6, 3-6,      WinQVT/Net, 3-5
4-3, 5-2, 6-1, 6-3, 6-4, 6-      WinWord, 1-3, 7-2, 8-1
5, 7-2, 9-4, 9-5, 10-2             2.0 upgrade, 7-2
   alt.comp.acad-                Word for Windows, 7-2
   freedom.talk, 6-3             words, 6-2
   alt.conspiracy, 5-1           world news, 6-2
   alt.rec.auto, 1-4             WX-TALK, 4-4, 7-3, 8-2, 9-1
   alt.sex, 6-3                  X, 10-2
   comp.archives, 5-2            X-Windows, 1-5, 5-3
   comp.binaries.ibm.pc, 1-      X11R5, 6-1, 6-6, 7-4, 9-2
   3, 2-6                        Xascii, 5-6
   comp.dcom.fax, 6-3            Xcelerated Systems, 4-5
   comp.dcom.modems, 3-6, 5-     xload, 3-4
   2                             xntp, 2-7
   comp.mail.misc, 2-6           Z, 3-2, 4-2
   comp.protocols.kerberos,      zip, 3-1
   6-4                           zoo, 3-1
   comp.unix.aix, 4-3, 4-4,
   7-2
   cornell.general, 9-5
   misc.headlines, 5-1
   news.answers, 7-2
   Q and A, 2-6
   rec.bicycles, 9-1


                           Index-7