329 lines
16 KiB
Plaintext
329 lines
16 KiB
Plaintext
Chaos Corner V02 N08 17Aug92
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A BOLD NEW PROPOSAL FOR MATCHING HIGH-TECHNOLOGY PEOPLE AND PROFESSIONS
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Over the years, the problem of finding the right person for the right
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job has consumed thousands of worker-years of research and millions of
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dollars of funding. This is particularly true for high-technology
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organizations where talent is scarce and expensive. Recently, however,
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years of detailed study of the finest minds in the field of
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psychoindustrial interpersonnel optimization have resulted in the
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development of a simple foolproof test to determine the best match
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between personality and profession. Now, at last, people can be
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infallibly assigned to the jobs for which they are truly best suited.
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CLASSIFICATION GUIDELINES
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Mathematicians hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out
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everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is
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left.
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Experienced mathematicians will attempt to prove the existence of at
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least one unique elephant before proceeding to step 1 as a subordinate
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exercise. Professors of mathematics will prove the existence of at
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least one unique elephant and then leave the detection and capture of an
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actual elephant as an exercise for their graduate students.
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Computer scientists hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A:
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1. Go to Africa.
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2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
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3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent
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east and west.
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4. During each traverse pass,
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(a) Catch each animal seen,
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(b) Compare each animal caught to a known elephant,
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(c) Stop when a match is detected.
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Experienced computer programmers modify Algorithm A by placing a known
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elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate.
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Assembly language programmers prefer to execute Algorithm A on their
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hands and knees.
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Engineers hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching gray animals at
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random, and stopping when any one of them weighs within + or - 15% of
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any previously observed elephant.
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Economists don't hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are
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paid enough, they will hunt themselves.
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Statisticians hunt the first animal they see N times and call it an
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elephant.
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Consultants don't hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at
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all, but they can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do.
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Operations research consultants can also measure the correlation of hat
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size and bullet color to the efficiency of elephant-hunting strategies,
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if someone else will only identify the elephants.
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Politicians don't hunt elephants but they will share the elephants you
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catch with the people who voted for them.
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Lawyers don't hunt elephants, but they do follow the herds around
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arguing about who owns the droppings.
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Software lawyers will claim that they own an entire herd based on the
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look and feel of one dropping.
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Vice presidents of engineering, research and development try hard to
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hunt elephants, but their staffs are designed to prevent it. When the
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VP does get to hunt elephants, the staff will try to ensure that all
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possible elephants are completely prehunted before the VP sees them. If
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the VP does see a non-prehunted elephant, the staff will (1) compliment
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the VP's keen eyesight, and (2) enlarge itself to prevent any
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recurrence.
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Senior managers set broad elephant-hunting policy based on the
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assumption that elephants are just like field mice, but with deeper
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voices.
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Quality assurance inspectors ignore the elephants and look for mistakes
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the other hunters made when they were packing the jeep.
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Salespeople don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants
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they haven't caught, for delivery two days before the season opens.
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Software salespeople ship the first thing they catch and write up an
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invoice for an elephant.
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Hardware sales people catch rabbits, paint them gray, and sell them as
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desktop elephants.
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Ann Halpin (halpinae@dayton.bitnet) contributed the preceding,
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originally from Peter Theobald, National Center for Software Technology,
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Bombay, India.
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-------------------------------------------------------
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Static in the Shortwave Listening Article
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Dick Crepeau (szyy@cornellf.bitnet) reported problems with reaching the
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archive of shortwave listening (SWL) information mentioned in the
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previous Chaos Corner. Dr. Chaos points out that I typed the address as
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vmsserv@arecibo.aero.edu rather than vmsserv@arecibo.aero.org.
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Apologies to Dick and anyone else who tried to reach the archive.
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A recent addition is "DX'ers Guide to the Galaxy", now available from
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vmsserv@arecibo.aero.org ("send galaxy.txt"). The guide contains
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information on DXing (long distance listening) satellites and other
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space communications, produced by Radio Sweden.
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Interested in helping with cloud movies (like the Weather Channel?)
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Joe Ahlgren (author of GeoClock, remember?) has been thinking for quite
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a while of developing a system where cloud overlays could be played
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across GeoClock maps, just as the sunlight overlay is now played. One
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of the local "crazies" there (Geoff Chester, who runs the planetarium at
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the Air and Space Museum) has built a system in his home to get weather
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satellite transmissions automatically and convert then to GIF format.
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He posts them on a BBS 4 times per day. Unfortunately, he cannot seem
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to get any calibration data so that pixel coordinates can be turned into
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lat/long. Joe wonders if there is anyone the Chaos Corner list who
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might be interested or helpful in this project?
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Time Zone Map Available
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Joe Ahlgren's time zone expert, Roger Wollstadt, said that the list of
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time zone names in the message we sent Joe confirmed his opinion that
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there were no standard names. He pointed out that quite a few zones had
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English names but no English speaking people! There is a new time zone
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paper map, beautifully done, which sites GeoClock as a source. It is
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available from MapLink, 25 E Mason St, Santa Barbara CA 93101, 805-965-
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4402, for $9.95 plus $5 S&H. (Joe says he doesn't have a piece of the
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action, but it is nice to seem his name in print.) Some interesting
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things are shown by the map. For example, the Navajo reservation in NE
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Arizona celebrates DST (unlike the rest of Arizona), but the completely
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surrounded Hopi reservation does not. The DST map, therefore, shows a
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square donut in NE Arizona.
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Got an old version of NCSA Telnet? --- Update it!
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Older versions of NCSA Telnet for both the Macintosh and the PC had a
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security loophole that you may not be aware of. By default they were
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shipped with a configuration file that specified "ftp=yes" meaning that
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an FTP server was available in your system any time the program was
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active. That FTP server allowed ANYONE on the internet to have
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read/write access to all the files on your personal computer. Scared
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yet? If not, it may be because you wisely removed that line from the
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configuration file -- *wrong* -- "ftp=yes" is the default, so that
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option is in effect unless you changed the configuration file to specify
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"ftp=no", or unless you set up a password file using the "passfile="
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option and the 'telpass' command. Current versions of NCSA Telnet are
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available from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the /PC/Telnet or /Mac/Telnet
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directories. The Macintosh version was last updated in July, 1992 and
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the PC version was last updated in April, 1992.
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Cleaning Up Empty News Directories
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If you happen to get a newsfeed to your Unix system, one problem you
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face is that as groups come and go, (particularly in the alt sections)
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the directories that were created are left behind to clutter up your
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file system. The "last word" on the appropriate command to clean up all
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these unused directories is the following Unix 'find' command:
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find /usr/spool/news -depth -type d -exec rmdir {} \; >/dev/null 2>&1
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This command removes all empty directories, even for active newsgroups,
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but that is OK because NNTP (or is it C-News?) will recreate the
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directory structure as necessary when articles come in. The only
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problem is with the directory 'out.going' (used for posting articles to
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the network). The suggested solution is to create a dummy file in the
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'out.going' directory so that it doesn't get removed.
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Converting sound files between various formats
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So now you have Windows 3.1 and are having troubles finding the sounds
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you want in the .wav format? The popular utility, sox, for converting
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between various sound formats is available for PC users, pre-compiled
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and located in the /mirrors/msdos/sound directory on wuarchive.wustl.edu
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and in the /pc/sound directory on garbo.uwasa.fi (for those of you in
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Europe). Look for the file sox4d.zip, and don't forget to use the
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'binary' option when transferring it.
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Now that you have sox, you can convert the .au format files that you
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find on sciences.sdsu.edu in the /sounds directory into .wav files so
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that you can associate them with the various Windows events (just like
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Mac users have had for years!).
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Frequently Asked Questions on Audio File Formats (Sound)
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All you ever want to know about sound file formats is here in one easy-
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to-read 1400 line file. Like most of the FAQ files, this one can be
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found on pit-manager.mit.edu. To retrieve it via anonymous FTP, look in
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the directory /pub/usenet/alt.binaries.sounds.d, OR for an e-mail
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version, send mail to Dr. Chaos at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu
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asking for a copy of the FAQ on Audio File Formats.
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Keeping up-to-date on the Time
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If you want your Unix workstation to maintain the correct time, you
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should use the Network Time Protocol (Version 3 is most current). The
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authoritative source for information is on louie.udel.edu. The source
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code is in pub/ntp/xntp3.tar.Z. There is a file (clocks.txt) which
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lists the best NTP peers to use and also sources for your very own high-
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precision radio clocks.
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If you just want to know the current time, try the command (this doesn't
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work very well from real or simulated 3270-type terminal, but otherwise
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it is OK) "telnet india.colorado.edu 13".
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More Time Information than you'd ever want to Know
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The original GMT was the mean time derived from mean solar time (based
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on *smoothed* time between successive noons - it's smoothed as the
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actual solar time gains and loses about 16 minutes throughout the year
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due to the earth's elliptical orbit, etc.). This smoothed time,
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however, was not able to correctly deal with the small variations in the
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earth's rotation (on the order of thousandths of a second per day).
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UT0, based strictly on celestial observations, became the time which
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accounts for these variations. UT1 then became the time (based on UT0)
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which adjusted for the large scale variations on the earth's rotation.
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This time standard, however, was still not precise enough and in 1958,
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the US Naval Observatory established A1 using atomic clocks with the
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time coordinated with the Greenwich observatory. In 1967, a second was
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defined as 9,192,631.770 oscillations of a specific radiation from
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cesium 133.
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Until the end of 1971 the time was adjusted to match the earth's
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rotation when it was about 1/10 second "out of sync." On 1 Jan 1972,
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the system was changed and atomic time took over. Enter UTC. When UTC
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is out of sync with UT1, a leap second is added (or removed) to UTC.
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The last leap second was *added* at 23:59:60 30 June 1992 (note the
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second is *60* and not *59*).
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So what is GMT? GMT is UT1 (celestial time adjusted for the earth's
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rotation). What is Zulu time? So-called Zulu time is UTC which is
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based on a set of atomic standards and it may be close to 1 second out
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of sync with UT1. Who cares about this difference? Navigators taking
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fixes with a sextant need UT1/GMT. A one second error in timing a
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sighting will have a 1/4 mile error in the fix.
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(The above is abstracted from "Types Of Time" by Bill Brogdon appearing
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in Ocean Navigator No. 47) with thanks to Rick Emerson at ssg.com.
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How do you REALLY write code for BSD Sockets?
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In the oldies-but-goodies department (as Dr. Chaos looks through some of
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the files that have been around for a while but that people still might
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find to be useful) we have a summary of where to locate information on
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and programming examples on how to use BSD Sockets for communications.
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It was compiled by "Tundra" Tim Daneliuk (tundra@eskimo.chi.il.us). If
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you want a copy, send e-mail to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu
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and ask Dr. Chaos for one.
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What to do! What to do!
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If you say that very often, you just might need the XView To-Do List
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manager (XVTDL) that has been recently updated to version 3.1 and, like
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much other fine X-Windows free software, is available from THE X11 site,
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export.lcs.mit.edu in the contrib directory. For XVTDL, look for the
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file xvtdl-3.1.tar.Z.
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PC Games and supplemental programs
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Of course, Dr. Chaos is sure that all you loyal readers recall that the
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"standard" collection point for PC games is at ftp.ulowell.edu in the
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msdos/Games directories. What you may not know is that a number of the
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games (in particular, the Apogee games like Commander Keen and
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Wolfenstein 3D have had supplemental programs written for them that do
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things like provide maps (or allow you to easily build your own map),
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add new levels of play, and describe methods of patching the programs to
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get unlimited lives, ammo, etc. Jeff Bryer (umbryer@ccu.umanitoba.ca)
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maintains the archive at ccu.umanitoba.ca in the /pub/wolf3d directory.
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For a description of what's in the archive, send mail to Dr. Chaos at
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chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.
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Weather satellite images for others than North America
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Weather satellite images in both the visible and infrared bands are
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available in gif format for anonymous FTP from two places that Dr. Chaos
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knows about. The files are updated several times a day and may be found
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at cumulus.met.ed.ac.uk; look for files /images/gifs/eur.vis.gif or
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eur.ir.gif. Other images are available if you replace "eur" with
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"norden", "uk", or "world" (this last one shows Europe, Africa, and the
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Middle East). Many of these images can also be found at mirror site in
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Switzerland, liasun3.epfl.ch in the /pub/weather directory (for your
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information, EPFL is the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne on the
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north side of Lake Geneva).
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For weather on the Australian continent, FTP to marlin.jcu.edu.au and
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get some of regularly updated GMS-4 images. The images are available
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for various Australian states, and the entire country. The images are
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in a unusual format, but this is solved by retrieving a public domain
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package (ALCHEMY) from many FTP sites. It will handle the conversion
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from their format to gif or other formats.
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-------------------------------------------------------
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Dr. Chaos apologizes for the length of this issue, but the items were
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backing up and he was running out of disk space (isn't that always the
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case?). Remember, for subscriptions to Chaos Corner, send your request
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to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.
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Dr. Chaos (I have a Master's Degree
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