Chaos Corner V03 N10 29 December 1993 Copyright 1993 by Robert D. Cowles; Ithaca, NY 14850. Permission is hereby granted to republish complete issues in unaltered form. Republication of partial issues must reference the source and state that subscriptions to Chaos Corner are available (free) by sending electronic mail to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. -------------------------------------------------- Mailing Errors Again --- Solved Now? After the number of duplicate mailings reported from issue number 8, we were embarrassed by the number of reports of people getting three (3!) copies of issue 9. At Rich Greenberg's suggestion, we contacted Pat Townson, the moderator of the TELECOM DIGEST (he maintains a mailing list of about 2000 names ... Chaos Corner is approaching that but not that big yet.) Pat was kind enough to send back four pages of advice on how to deal with mailing lists of that size. As a result, this final issue for 1993 is being sent out by a new technique which we hope will result in much faster and reliable delivery. Happy New Year! -------------------------------------------------- Mailbag - Plan Now for 1994 This just in from Dianne at JGR-Planets (one of five sections published under the umbrella of the American Geophysical Union's JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH). Start planning now for the impact of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy on the planet Jupiter. Scheduled for release in June --- watch this space for the times and locations of any sneak previews that might be scheduled. -------------------------------------------------- Mailbag - Skydiving Information After seeing the item in the last issue about where to find information on rock-climbing (assuming you have World Wide Web access), Eric Johnson wrote to provide the WWW pointer to information about skydiving: http://snoopy.cis.ufl.edu/skydive -------------------------------------------------- Mailbag - Source for Weather Maps at Cornell Jeff Honig volunteered that current weather maps and the Ithaca-area forecast (Ithaca, New York, USA ... not the one in Greece) are available for anonymous ftp from his machine gated.cornell.edu in the directory pub/wx. So, if you are on the Cornell net, you can help reduce net traffic by getting the maps from Jeff's machine. -------------------------------------------------- Legal Resources on the Network A comprehensive list of law related computer resources is available by anonymous ftp at ftp.midnight.com. The file, called LegalList, is in pub/LegalList/legallist.txt If you have NetNews access, look for the list of legal resources posted to the misc.legal.moderated newsgroup. -------------------------------------------------- BIOS Survival Guide - Available Here! We recently broke down and upgraded an original PC-AT 339 that we had with a replacement 386DX-33 motherboard ($165 from a local dealer). Since we decided to do the upgrade ourselves, we developed a sudden interest in the hardware groups on Usenet. (Considering how well we do with mailing lists, can you imagine the damage possible if we are turned loose with a screwdriver?) One file we found there was the BIOS Survival Guide, by Jean-Paul Rodrigue Rodriguj@Mistral.ERE.Umontreal.Ca. The guide is in the early stages of development right now, but provides a good starting point for understanding the options that are presented when the system comes up in setup mode. Ask for it from Dr. Chaos at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. -------------------------------------------------- AIX Software Sources - POP and others When someone asked how to get POPPER working on AIX, Brian Gerstel responded by recommending that the person download IMAP-3.2 from ftp.cac.washington.edu ... it included a POP2 and POP3 daemon that compiles relatively painlessly under AIX. If you would really like to get POPPER working under AIX, check out the /pub/rs6000 directory at ftp.cts.eiu.edu for a tar file of the source and a README.POP3 file containing installation instructions. What is all this stuff? The Post Office Protocol allows you to set up servers (postoffices) that collect mail for a number of users, and these users can pick up and send mail by using any of a number of POP clients running on PCs or Macs (or Unix workstations). The software allows a site to provide electronic mail services in a client-server form (not the only one, certainly) and the client machine is responsible for managing saved files. Dr. Chaos also picked up an annotated file of sources for RS/6000 software -- if you would like a copy just ask for it by electronic mail at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. By the way, people with Silicon Graphics workstations can get a precompiled version of Sam Leffler's FlexFax software -- it allows your workstation (in conjunction with a fax modem) to send and receive faxes. Support for a number of other manufacturers systems is available (including AIX 3.2), but expect to spend some significant time getting this package up and running. For example, the README says: It is easy to setup a mail to fax gateway facility with the tools included in this distribution and some simple additions to your sendmail configuration file. Dr. Chaos know of NO "simple additions" to sendmail configuration files! If you are interested in this software, it can be obtained from sgi.com, look in the sgi/fax directory. -------------------------------------------------- What's the hot new game on the Net? -- DOOM ID Software has released their long-awaited action game DOOM. The shareware version is available via anonymous ftp from the home of the Internet game archive -- ftp.uml.edu (ftp2.uml.edu is also available to for downloading only to handle the increased load during this period when many are retrieving DOOM, Blake Stone, and Duke Nukem II) -- look in the msdos/Games/ID directory for version 1.1 of DOOM, or just explore the many demo or shareware games available. Dr. Chaos recommends you don't bother with DOOM without a fast 386 or 486 processor (it was not playable on a 386-20 under OS/2). When it's just you against the aliens, you'll want as responsive a processor as possible. -------------------------------------------------- At Last -- All Sites with X-rated Images Found In a landmark discovery, Astronomers at the Waikato Observatory in Hamilton, New Zealand have used advanced Astronomical triangulation techniques to locate Computing sites that store X-Rated GIF and JPEG format pictures. The technique was pioneered by Dr. Ian Analpeeper and is based around variations in the Earth's rotation and predicted orbit about the sun. "It's quite simple really", Dr. Analpeeper explained to our reporters, "The Earth revolves somewhat like a car wheel turns; and like a car wheel, it is *precisely* balanced. When the balance is upset, the wheel does not revolve as smoothly. Bearing this in mind, we used the facts before us to locate the sites we wished to get to. The get the details on how exactly these sites are located, just sent a request to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. Note that this file was posted on the alt.humor.best-of-usenet newsgroup. -------------------------------------------------- Most Requested Files from Chaos Corner - 1993 The most popular file by far was the one describing how to get the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet. Just ahead of the pack, was the file giving information about modems, followed by Educational Software, Ig Nobel Winners, Gopher Jewels, US Geological Survey Information via Gopher, Dr. Chaos's notes from the Downsizing Expo, Telecom Resources on the Internet, Sam Ko's reviews of Useful DOS programs, Cross Stitch software, and accessing Commerce Business Daily online. Some have asked why Dr. Chaos doesn't just provide the files by anonymous ftp. The answer is really simple -- your comments are the fuel that keeps this process going and if we didn't provide a mechanism that encouraged you to write and request files, the amount of feedback received would be much lower (unless we manage to use "not" instead of "now" or send an issue three times). The comments that many of you make about the value of the information in Chaos Corner is the "fee" that keeps the effort going. Thanks very much from all of us here in Chaos Corner and the best wishes for the New Year! -------------------------------------------------- Get your Free Subscription Here! Just send a message to Dr. Chaos - chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu and ask to be put on the subscription list. From CompuServe, use the address INTERNET:chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. It's that easy. Don't delay ---- act now! Dr. Chaos .