Chaos Corner V04 N03 22 June 1994 Copyright 1994 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. -------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents for V04 N03 Just a few corrections Further info on the Jupiter event US National Archives is on the Internet Chaos Corner not enough information? Service tales - Good and Bad - Continued Continuing selections from alt.humor.puns German Tutorial NERDATHON '94 - Call for Presentations Do you like to watch other people work? - CU-SeeMe Saving your e-mail? Humorous signature files Get your Free Subscription Here! -------------------------------------------------- Just a few corrections Bill Homer (my college roommate from the 60's, now at Cray) and Ken Stuart (not ever my college roommate) were quick to point out that the current way to get on the mailing list that keeps you updated with information about the new files on CICA (the Windows archive) is now: Send e-mail to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu. In that message put a line that says Sub cica-l Where is your first name and is your last name. Apologies to Chris Johnson at SUNY Buffalo, who probably wondered where all those requests suddenly came from. A number of you asked how Dr. Chaos manages to get strange characters substituted for the apostrophe. It's very simple ... the "smart quotes" feature of Word makes it a trivial task to do some really dumb things like that. Interestingly, some of you have mailers that reject any mail files that appear to contain special characters (the company initials are HP), and others of you have mailers that will convert the mail file to something that is uuencoded. In any case, if you think we sometimes send out some strange stuff, you should see what we get back from 2000 different mailers around the world! (Over 900 new subscribers so far this year.) -------------------------------------------------- Further info on the Jupiter event This in from Keith Dawson about the collision of the comet Shoemaker- Levy and Jupiter scheduled to begin on July 16, 1994: There will be a string of impacts over a period of a week or so. All will hit in the same spot, from our point of view, behind the terminator; each point of impact will rotate into view about 11 minutes later. The fireball from each impact will last only a minute. That's the bad news. The good news is that some of the impacts are expected to brighten particular Jovian moons measurably: impacts that occur when the moon in question is dark (eclipsed by Jupiter) and in our line-of-sight. Some impacts could even brighten the rings! The times of impact are known for some of the large chunks within 40 minutes; 24 hours before the first impact the accuracy should be better than half a minute. For much more detail see the Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impact Home Page, the URL http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/sl9/sl9.html Send electronic mail to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu if you would like to receive the list of Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) concerning this event. To subscribe to the "Comet/Jupiter Collision Mailing List", send mail to listproc@seds.lpl.arizona.edu (no subject) with the message: SUBSCRIBE SL9 Firstname Lastname. -------------------------------------------------- US National Archives is on the Internet The National Archives has made available an Internet Gopher server that provides key information relating to the National Archives, including descriptions of facilities nationwide; information on agency holdings; publications and general information leaflets; and some Federal records regulations. Researchers can access information on some of the most widely-used collections, including the Nixon Presidential Materials, Ansel Adams photographs from the Still Picture Branch, captured German sound recordings, electronic records, and an index of selected census records. Text-based information can be accessed with a Gopher client by connecting to the address gopher.nara.gov. This information, together with future additions of hypertext and multimedia documents, can also be found on the WorldWideWeb (WWW), using a client such as Mosaic, at http://www.nara.gov. -------------------------------------------------- Chaos Corner not enough information? If you are interested in reading real books, printed on real paper, we have just the list for you. Kevin Savetz has assembled a list of reviews of (currently 109 books, but growing all the time) books about the Internet and Internet resources. For your own copy of the list, send a request to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu ... careful, it's over 1700 lines long! -------------------------------------------------- Service tales - Good and Bad - Continued In the last issue of Chaos Corner, we thanked The Computer Center in Ithaca for being able to repair our ThinkPad on a schedule that didn't require them to keep it for long periods of time. Of course, the REAL name of the business is "The Computing Center" (sorry, Larry). Also in the last issue we promised to keep you up-to-date about the Dallas-area Internet provider DFW.NET. There was apparently a lost mail file ... a couple of telephone calls later and the SLIP connection from my ThinkPad to the Internet through DFW.NET was working fine. If you're in the DFW area, you might want to give them a try ... tell Jack that Dr. Chaos sent you. (E-mail to root@dfw.net, or telnet to info@dfw.net or call 1-214-748-4000). On the continuing saga of the PS/2 model 80 upgrade ... we have spent time talking on the phone to the IBM OS/2 support team and we have also requested help from the net, and we quote: I purchased several Evergreen Technologies chip upgrades to speed up some old PS/2 model 80s we had (386-DX 20). The first machine I upgraded was running OS/2 2.11 and has an XGA video adapter. I found that icons in open windows on the desktop were generally not visible after I enabled the cache on the chip (either with a OS/2 driver or from a DOS session). The icons were there, and would show up if you selected them, but would usually disappear again if you selected something else in the window (but not always). The icon behavior would return to normal if I disabled the cache or re-booted. I tried the chip in another PS/2-80 that had a 8514 graphics adapter thinking that the different video card might make a difference. Sure enough, everything worked OK. Then I realized that the OS/2 system on that machine was at 2.1 rather than 2.11. I upgraded the system to 2.11, and the strange icon behavior returned! The people at Evergreen don't have any other experience with this kind of problem (but with the latest info they were going to check out 2.11) and the IBM OS/2 support team is also unclear as to what could be causing this kind of problem. Does anyone have suggestions as to where the problem can lie ... like what might have changed in the way the display of icons is done in OS/2 2.11 that would create problems when the cache is enabled on one of these chip upgrades? Robert(s) and Ken at OS/2 support have been interested in the problem and have devoted significant time investigating the problem. Stay tuned... -------------------------------------------------- Continuing selections from alt.humor.puns Since puns are very dependent on the language, we are reproducing here a recent post from the Usenet group alt.humor.puns that is NOT in English. To be fair, the original had an explanation in English - if you would like the complete version, let Dr. Chaos know at by requesting the English version from chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. Ein Kind kam eines Tages von der Schule nach Hause. Die Mutter hat ihm gefragt: "Was hast du heute gelernt?" Es erwidert: "In der Religionstunde haben wir gelernt, dass Gott eine Kelle ist." "Was?", sagte die Mutter. "Kannst du das mir erklaeren? Habt ihr eine Bibelgeschichte gehoert?" Das Kind sagte: "Ja, wir haben gelernt, wie Gott den Himmel und die Erde gemacht hat." "Also, du hast gelernt, dass Gott der Schoepfer ist, ne?" sagte die Mutter. Das Kind sagte: "Ja, ich wusste, dass es etwas in der Kueche war." It always helps when the different meanings in one language corresponds to the meanings in another language. If your knowledge of German is anything like ours, it helps to know that "Kelle" and "Shoepfloeffel" mean ladle, and "Schoepfer" means creator (interestingly, "schopfen" is the verb meaning "to ladle" NOT "to create" ... but we digress). -------------------------------------------------- German Tutorial If you need to brush up on your German skills to understand the above passage, the SimTel PC archives may contain what you need. Look for the file gplus30.zip in /msdos/langtutr at the sites that mirror the contents of the SimTel archives (like oak.oakland.edu). German Plus v3.0 is a language tutorial featuring review and exercises of over 500 nouns, adjectives, and verbs conjugated in the four major tenses. The program contains a look-up feature for use with the database. -------------------------------------------------- NERDATHON '94 - Call for Presentations The Nerdathon is a computer industry get-together that is intended to bring visionary software (and hardware) developers together in a relaxed environment with venture capitalists to explore new opportunities for cooperation. The theme of the first annual Nerdathon (to be held November 18-20, 1994 -- immediately after COMDEX) is: "Windows into the Internet". This event will allow for sharing of real-world examples of how the Internet is opening up windows of opportunity and changes in how people are working and living. Presentations are being sought on the following topics: Software: Graphic user interfaces for use with Internet: (MOSAIC, Macintosh, MS-Windows, etc.,); Agents; Enablers; Knowbots; Multi- user games, Virtual reality, ... Hardware: Big screen terminals, fast modems, ISDN, ATM, ... Cable TV: Internet delivery via cable TV. Government: Plans for the National Information Superhighway, Grant sources, Security, Cryptography & the Clipper chip. Industry: Telecommuting via Internet, virtual corporations and entirely new kinds of businesses that are enabled by the Internet. Community: Local community networks; Examples of how small businesses are using the Internet and local networks to interact and compete; Life-style changes; Doing business from remote locations. Legal: Privacy, Patents, Copyrights, Nevada as a business environment. Venture Capitalists: prospects for Internet-related businesses. If you are interested in presenting, please E-mail a brief synopsis of your presentation to g_rider@libre.com by July 1, 1994. If you wish more information, please E-mail a request to g_rider@libre.com. If you are interested in attending, send E-mail to hyatt@libre.com for event and hotel room reservations. -------------------------------------------------- Do you like to watch other people work? - CU-SeeMe If you enjoy watching other people work at their computer ... especially from the point of view of the computer, take a look at CU-SeeMe. There are Windows and Macintosh versions available via anonymous ftp on comet.cit.cornell.edu in the /pub/video directory. Even if you don't have a camera mounted on your monitor so that other people can see you working, you can watch others AND if you subscribe to the mailing list you may hear about "special" net events. To join the list, send a message with the following line as the entire message body to listserv@cornell.edu: subscribe cu-seeme-l The software supports one-on-one and one-on-many conferencing; the Windows version does not yet support audio. Dr Chaos verifies that the Windows version runs just fine under OS/2 in seamless mode using the OS/2 TCP/IP 2.0 version of the Winsock code. -------------------------------------------------- Saving your e-mail? An article in the Los Angeles Times on 16 June 1994 by Leslie Helm, titled "The Digital Smoking Gun" warns that mismanaged E-Mail poses serious risks to companies. ... In the process of pretrial fact finding known as discovery, an attorney can demand from a company all electronic files having to do with a client's case. Federal rules introduced in December require companies to hand over a list of all available electronic data and to refrain from deleting any. ... "It's as if people put their brains on hold when they write e-mail," a consultant said. "It's a substitute for a phone call, and that's the danger." ... E-Mail Tips --: - Establish an e-mail policy that urges users to exercise the same restraint in writing e-mail messages that they do when writing letters or memos. Employees should be told that "anything you put in this computer can and will be used against you in a court of law." - The company should implement an aggressive document retention policy that limits the number of saved e-mail messages both on the company's central computers and in personal computers. - Warn employees to be careful about forwarding messages to employees or outsiders. -------------------------------------------------- Humorous signature files Do you have signature envy, those cute little sayings and drawing that people have appended to the bottom of each of their mail files or Usenet postings? Dr. Chaos has a collection of lighthearted and sometimes bizarre list of signatures that he found on Usenet. Maybe it will inspire you to improve your signature. For you own copy send mail to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu and ask Dr. Chaos for the .sig collection. -------------------------------------------------- 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 .