259 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
259 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
Chaos Corner V04 N02 5 June 1994
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Copyright 1994 by Robert D. Cowles; Ithaca, NY 14850. Permission is
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hereby granted to republish complete issues in unaltered form.
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Republication of partial issues must reference the source and state that
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subscriptions to Chaos Corner are available (free) by sending electronic
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mail to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Service tales - Good and Bad
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All warrantee service is not the same. When the Trackpointer on our IBM
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Thinkpad stopped working properly, we thought we had arranged with a
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service department that they would examine the laptop when we took it in
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and give it back to us until the parts arrived. Our view was that that
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way we might be without the machine for a day at a time but not for a
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long period of time. It turned out that while I could have the machine
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back after a technician looked at it, the technician wouldn't be able to
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look at it for 5 days! To make a long story shorter, The Computer
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Center in Ithaca was able to perform all the work in three trips, never
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keeping the machine more than a half day at a time. Thanks!
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Just before a recent trip to Dallas, Texas, we learned of a service
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providing local Internet access. Thinking that it might be possible to
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work out some deal better than long distance phone rates between Dallas,
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Texas and Ithaca, NY ($0.08 - 0.09 per minute for night-time rates) we
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contacted the service. We arranged for an ID on their system at a rate
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that would be $23 per month for SLIP access but pro-rated just for the
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time I was actually in Dallas. It all looked very good except that I
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was not able to get the SLIP connection to work and was unable to get a
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response from the telephone number or via electronic mail for over a
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week. More later about how using DFW.COM works out as an Internet
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service provider.
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In an attempt to extend the life of some IBM PS/2 model 80 machines
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(Intel 386-20 processors), we purchased some upgrade chips from
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Evergreen Technologies ($230 each) that should double processor speed.
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Although the re-seller, Treasure Chest, claimed that OS/2 was supported,
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the chips are shipped without OS/2 support to enable the cache (without
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the cache, there is no noticeable performance improvement). Tech
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Support for Evergreen Technologies said that their OS/2 driver was just
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coming out of beta-test and they would mail me a copy on a diskette.
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Dr. Chaos grabbed the telephone from me and heaped ridicule on the poor
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fellow for actually wanting to send me a diskette through the mail when
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he could just put the appropriate files up on their BBS and we could get
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them much more quickly. The fellow checked with the BBS operator and
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agreed to put the file up (including appropriate documentation). The
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file did actually appear about 24 hours later, but it had no
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documentation (not necessarily a problem), and the ZIP file was
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encrypted (big problem). Meanwhile, it takes about 10-15 calls to the
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BBS to get a good connection (that may be due to a modem incompatibility
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since I got a good connection on the first try using the MegaHertz modem
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on my laptop), and no one responds to the messages I leave. On a
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technical note, a rough test that we performed by enabling the cache in
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a DOS session under OS/2 showed a factor of 2 performance improvement
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... the problem is the random lockups encountered several minutes after
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the cache is enabled. We'll keep you posted on how this works out.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Planned Chaos can be Pretty Ugly
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One of our favorite new groups on Usenet is alt.humor.puns. Ask Dr.
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Chaos at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu if you would like to
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receive a copy of the list of oxymorons compiled by Edward Lunny as an
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example of the contents of the group. In addition to the ones listed in
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the title of this item, consider: happy camper; jumbo shrimp, artificial
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grass; civil servant; and the ever popular - military intelligence.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Clipper Chip follow-up
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A recent headline article in the New York Times announced that Matthew
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Blaze has discovered the Skipjack algorithm used in the Clipper
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encryption chip is flawed. The flaw allows transmission of messages
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using the chip that cannot be decoded with the special keys the
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government holds. The US Government's response was that anyone wanting
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to keep their messages really private would probably use a simpler
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alternative. Anyone decoding the secret message in this volume of Chaos
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Corner can claim a free bound copy of Chaos Corner volume 3. Dr. Chaos
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recommends the Usenet newsgroup sci.crypt if you want to follow or
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participate in the discussions.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Cello and Mosaic follow-up
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We finally obtained the IBM fix to OS/2 TCPIP Winsock code that allows
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the Cello browser for World Wide Web (WWW) to operate properly. The fix
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also allowed us to use Mosaic on a system where it had never operated
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properly before. If you're interested in an alternative to Mosaic under
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Windows (especially since the newer versions of WinMosaic can't be run
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under OS/2) take a look at Cello on fatty.law.cornell.edu in the
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/pub/LII/Cello directory. Dr. Chaos points out that I need to start
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complying with our new standard ... so I will modify the above to say
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that the URL is ftp://fatty.law.cornell.edu/pub/LII/Cello/.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Correction on Jupiter collision
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In the last issue, we mentioned that there would be a collision between
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a comet and Jupiter in June. Sorry, but there has been a change in
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plans and due to an illness the comet has been forced to reschedule the
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show into the latter part of July. Unfortunately, the actual collision
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will occur on the side of Jupiter that is away from Earth, so the
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effects will not be visible until a few hours after the impact. We
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expect images to be available on the net soon after event.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Novell joins the Web
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Novell offers World Wide Web access to a number of electronic manuals,
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including 10,000 technical support documents that answer frequently
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asked questions. To help you wade through the documents, there is a
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boolean search capability. The technical support databases are updated
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every 2 weeks. Access to the Novell Web server is by the Uniform
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Resource Locator http://www.novell.com/. If you don't have a Web
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browser, don't worry -- just use gopher to access the alternate site
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gopher.novell.com.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Documentation on World Wide Web standards
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The documents on the Web are often in the form of a hypertext document
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conforming to the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) specification. HTML
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is written in the international standard ISO 8879 - Standard Generalized
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Markup Language (SGML). If you have a Web browser, look at the file
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http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/htmldoc.html for a description of HTML. Lots
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of other documentation, both on HTML, and on Uniform Resource Locators
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(URL) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) can be found at the
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"mother-of-all-web-sites" info.cern.ch in the /pub/www/doc directory.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Maps of the World
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Over 230,000 maps are available covering most of the world. Warning, a
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number of these maps are over 200K bytes, so you will want to have
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plenty of time of a fast Internet connection to do much browsing. The
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URL for the site is http://rowan.lib.utexas.edu/map_collection.html.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Financial information available
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As an experimental service, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab is
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providing stock market information across the net. For a number of
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stocks, you can obtain graphs of stock price and volume over the past 6
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months. A new commercial service will soon be starting that can provide
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more complete information, including such things as a portfolio report
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detailing the value of all your stocks as of the close of the market and
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sent to you via electronic mail each day. Point your Web browser to:
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http://www.ai.mit.edu/stocks.html.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Calling all weather freaks!
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If you would like to know the current conditions and/or local forecast
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for any part of the United States, the service provided at MIT is very
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nice. When you connect to http://www.mit.edu:8001/usa.html, the
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document transferred is the current US weather map which you then click
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your mouse pointer on to obtain the local conditions and forecast. Very
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nicely done except that we encountered a small problem with the image
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being too large to fit in the Mosaic window and there was no way that we
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could figure out to reposition the image to show the eastern US. It
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could be a problem caused by the early version of WinMosaic we are
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using.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Movie Reviews available online - you supply the popcorn
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The Usenet group rec.arts.movies.reviews has a good reputation as a
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source of movie information. If you have ftp access, you need look no
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further than the directory usenet/rec.arts.movies.reviews/long.dir on
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site ftp.uu.net. The reviews are filed in subdirectories by the first
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letter of the movie name. European users can get the reviews from
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ftp.funet.fi in the directory /pub/culture/tv+film/reviews.
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--------------------------------------------------
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How to keep current with the latest Windows software
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The following from comp.os.ms-windows.misc by Chris Johnson at SUNY
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Buffalo: Every morning at 3:00 EST, I have a program that runs and gets
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a list of the files in the uploads directory at ftp.cica.indiana.edu,
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the definitive ftp site for Windows programs. My program separates the
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new files from the old files, and then goes back to the site to get the
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new text files. Once all the files are received, the program packages
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it up in one message. The first part of the message is an explanation
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of CICA-List. The second is the list of new files (.zip, and .txt).
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And finally, the third is the actual text files. This allows one to
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keep abreast of the new programs available at cica, without ftp'ing
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there everyday. This list was created because I got tired of trying to
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keep up with the new files there and decided to automate it... them a
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few friends asked for it, and the list was born. There are currently
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more than 200 subscribers and is growing at a steady rate.
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If you would like to subscribe to CICA-List, please send mail to
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cmj@acsu.buffalo.edu with the following characteristics...
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in the Subject line: CICA-ADD
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in the body: add username@internet.address
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where username is your username, and internet.address is your computer's
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internet address.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Need to develop Internet training, fast?
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Deborah Newkirk at the University of Alaska has made available Internet
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training presentations she developed for the DECUS Symposium in May '94.
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They are available via anonymous ftp at orion.alaska.edu in the
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subdirectory decus-no94.mac-ppt or decus-no94.dos-ppt depending on your
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need for DOS or Mac version. Sessions are named IN00#.PPT (black &
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white) and IN00#C.PPT (color) for the Mac and IN#-D.PPT (black & white)
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and IN#C-D.PPT (color). The seminar handouts are designated with INET
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in a similar fashion.
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INET Seminar: Software Tools for Accessing Internet Resources
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IN001 Opening session: The Internet Puzzle: Putting the Pieces Together
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IN004 Internet Puzzle: What's in the Future?
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IN005 Community Information Systems: Internet information for the Public
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IN006 Software Tools for Accessing Internet Resouces
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IN007 Global Discussions and Information Exchange via the Internet
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--------------------------------------------------
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Boon to Computer Science researchers
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A collection of bibliographies in various fields of computer science is
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available via anonymous ftp and the World Wide Web. The bibliographies
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contain about 240,000 references, most of which are references to
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journal articles, conference papers or technical reports. The
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collection has been formed by using various freely accessible services
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in the Internet (anonymous ftp, mailserver, telnet) and converting each
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bibliography into a uniform BibTeX format. It is organized in files
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containing references to a (more or less) specific area within computer
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science. All files containing bibliographic data are compressed with
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gzip (extension ".gz"). The bibliographies are accessible
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FTP: ftp.ira.uka.de (129.13.10.90):pub/bibliography
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ftp.cs.umanitoba.ca:pub/bibliographies
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faui80.informatik.uni-erlangen.de:pub/literatur/Mirror/bibliography
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Read the README file in that directory
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WWW: ftp://ftp.ira.uka.de/pub/bibliography/www/bibliography.html
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ftp://ftp.cs.umanitoba.ca:pub/bibliographies/www/bibliography.html
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ftp://faui80.informatik.uni-erlangen.de:
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pub/literatur/Mirror/bibliography/www/bibliography.html
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Read the introduction in that document
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--------------------------------------------------
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Get your Free Subscription Here!
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Just send a message to Dr. Chaos - chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu
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and ask to be put on the subscription list. From CompuServe, use the
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address INTERNET:chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. It's that easy.
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Don't delay ---- act now!
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Dr. Chaos
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