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