190 lines
8.3 KiB
Plaintext
190 lines
8.3 KiB
Plaintext
Chaos Corner V01N08 13Nov91
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Audix voicemail information
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First of all, Dr. Chaos wants to thank each and every one of you who
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pointed out to him that #7 worked on the Cornell telephone system to
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redial the last number. He points out to me that is in fact clearly
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documented on page 13 of the new "System 85 User's Guide." As a sign of
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his appreciation, he has allowed me to share with those of you who use
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AUDIX a small shortcut that people seem not to be aware of. When you
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call to get your messages, you would normally enter <your-number>#<your-
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password># ... well if you are already at your number, the System 85
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should know it, right? Right! It does! That means when you are in your
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office, to get you voice mail you need only enter #<your-password># .. a
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small thing that could save you whole minutes each year.
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Mailbag
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Chaos Corner feedback
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Joan Winters (formerly of Cornell) at SLAC asks how Dr Chaos got the
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single quotes (apostrophes) to disappear from the last Chaos Corner. The
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technique is actually simple; by using a sophisticated word processing
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program it is no trick at all to mistakes like that. I am using Word for
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Windows, and run a macro by default that turns on "smart quotes." The
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result is that whenever I type a '"' the computer pauses for a bit while
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it figures out if the quote marks should curve to the left or to the
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right (and the same thing applies for the "'" character. When I save the
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file as ASCII text in preparation for sending it out, the quotation marks
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get changed back to their normal ASCII value, but for some reason the
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curves apostrophe gets converted to a very straight blank. When things
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are going well, I remember to remind Dr. Chaos to not forget to select
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the "Disable Smart Quotes" menu option.
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Stereo photography
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Joan also points out that there is a list for discussion of Stereo
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photography and imaging that is quite active. If you would like to know
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more about what's going on in this field (a lot has happened beyond the
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View-Master), send a request to be added to the list to: 3d-
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request@bfmny0.bfm.com
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GIF image of Oakland
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Another slight Oooops! .... In typing the machine location where you
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could find the gif picture of the burned area in Oakland, we managed to
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come up with something a little creative and wrote
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cs.sequoia.berkeley.edu rather than the correct name of
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sequoia.cs.berkeley.edu ... Sorry for any confusion.
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MacAstro and Orion spaceship simulator
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Scott Brim of CIT's Network Resources admits to having (and using!)
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MacAstro (ChaosCorner V01N07) and says it is both fun and useful for
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stargazing freaks. He likes the Orion spaceship simulator which allows
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you to travel to and from stars within 30 light-years. (It was written
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by a Science Fiction author to be sure that he had his descriptions of
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the sky correct.)
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Boston weather (and other places too)
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Scott Stansbury, in CIT's Network Management Center, points out that if
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you are traveling to the Boston area, a quick way to check on that area's
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weather forecast is to enter the command 'finger
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weather@synoptic.mit.edu' -- of course, it helps to be on a Unix or VMS
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system at the time. If you are traveling elsewhere, or just staying at
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home and want to know about the weather, a quick:
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telnet madlab.sprl.umich.edu 3000
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will connect you to receive the weather reports across the country.
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Weather Talk
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Eileen Driscoll at Cornell's ILR School pointed out that I was remiss in
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explaining how to subscribe to the WX-TALK list. Since it is a VM-based
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listserv, from a VM system you just have to enter the command:
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tell listserv@uiucvmd subscribe wx-talk <your-name>
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or from other systems send mail to listserv@uiucvmd.bitnet where the body
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of the mail contains the line "subscribe wx-talk <your-name>". We have
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noticed that Eileen is now subscribed to the list but haven't heard if
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she got the news early enough about the incredible aurora displays last
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Friday evening to get out and see them. Evidently there were lots of UFO
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reports in Ohio when people saw the bright lights in the sky.
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German - Samstag and Sonnabend
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Gerhard Rentschler at the University of Stuttgart enjoyed Dr. Chaos'
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comments about Samstag and Sonnabend in issue number 7. Just today, our
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German professor was trying to convince us that German was logical and
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English was illogical ... at the same time that he was trying to explain
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the subjunctive mood. If you never wished for anything, were never
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polite, and would never apologize, then you would be able to almost avoid
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the subjunctive mood (except this sentence uses the subjunctive mood 4
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times).
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OS/2 & Dr. Chaos
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Gerhard asks what Dr. Chaos thinks of OS/2 (or OS half, as he has heard
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it referred to). At a recent Share Europe meeting (users of large IBM
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computers in Europe), someone asked what OS/2 could do that Unix couldn't
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do. Dr. Chaos, if he would have been at the meeting, would have
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responded with two things: (1) be able to afford a large number of
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attractively priced commercial applications; and (2) have time left over
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after maintaining the system to perform real work (for mere mortals,
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anyway).
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Chaos Corner is famous (NOT)
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Ken Laws at SRI has mentioned Chaos Corner in his Computists Communique
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(a weekly newsletter for career-oriented AI/CS/Neural-Net people), and as
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a result has boosted the readership somewhat. One reader thought Dr.
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Chaos might know more about chaos that the state of his office ... (it IS
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a Masters Degree!).
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Random things that are all alike and just a little different ...
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Weather maps
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The names of the weather map GIF file at vmd.cso.uiuc.edu is no longer
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named WXMAP.GIF, but rather is stored with a coded name, starting with
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SA, followed by the month, day, and GMT hour of the data collection (e.
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g. SA111323.GIF is the latest file as I write this). The Infrared scan
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file has the same format except that it starts with the letters CI rather
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then SA. The updated files are available by 10-15 minutes past the hour.
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4dos
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In the PC-DOS world, one pleasant event is the availability of 4dos
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Release 4.0. This excellent utility now takes advantage of both Windows
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3.0 and DOS 5.0 to improve on an already fine product -- it is what
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COMMAND.COM should have been from the beginning. You can find it at
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Simtel20 (or one of the many mirror sites like wuarchive,wustl.edu in the
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mirrors/msdos/4dos directory) in two ZIP files: 4dos40p.zip contains the
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programs, and 4dos40d.zip contains the documentation. Get it, register
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it! You'll be glad you did.
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TSR Management utilities
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Another fine set of PC utilities has been recently updated -- they allow
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you to load and unload your TSRs. Look in the mirrors/msdos/sysutl
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directory for tsrcom31.zip.
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Borland customer support on the Internet
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For those of you with Borland products, you can now get customer support
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across the Internet. Send electronic mail to customer-
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support@borland.com for price lists, maintenance upgrades, etc. ...
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everything *except* buying things (you can't do that on the Internet).
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We applaud Borland's move in this area and hope that other vendors will
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follow their example.
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archie
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The service that allows you find programs across the Internet has
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undergone a slight change. Archie servers are now located in the
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following locations (try not to use trans-oceanic links):
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archie.mcgill.ca (Canada)
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archie.sura.net (SURAnet, College Park, Maryland)
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archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (Imperial College, London, UK)
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To use the service, telnet to one of the above locations and login as
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'archie'. An electronic mail interface is also available.
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That's enough for now .... Remember - Dr. Chaos!
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(rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu)
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