239 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
239 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
Chaos Corner V01N07 30Oct91
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Chaos Corner thoughts
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Chaos Corner returns! Back from California, newly married, and having
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gotten a passing grade on the first exam in German, we are going to try
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changing the format a little bit. Dr. Chaos was having trouble getting
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together the "perfect newsletter" (especially one that was 4-6 pages
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long), and we learned that readers were also having trouble digesting
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information in that large a chunk. Therefore, we will experiment with
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producing the information in smaller chunks and in a bit more timely
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fashion than we have been in recent weeks.
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--------------------------------------------------
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German - Samstag and Sonnabend
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The results of the great German survey are now in (thank you Walter)...
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the word used for "Saturday" is "Sonnabend" in the North and "Samstag"
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in the South. Unless you happen to go very far south (and east) and end
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up in Vienna. We guess that Saturday being considered as "Sunday Eve"
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in German goes a long way towards explaining why in English (which has a
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great deal in common with German) Christmas Eve is December 24th and not
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the evening of December 25th (the same thing applies to "All Hallows
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Eve"that is coming up on October 31 ... just before All Saints Day on
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November 1).
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Seemingly Random and Similar Things
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Macintosh stuff
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Let's get the Macintosh stuff out of the way first. The archive at the
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University of Michigan continues to grow. You can signup as a frequent
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FTPer, and while you don't get credited with miles, you do get put on
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the mailing list for recent additions to the archives. Send mail to
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mac-recent-request@mac.archive.umich.edu
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to get added to the list. Recent additions include a number of After
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Dark screensavers (including one that powers your Mac off after a
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certain interval); also, an application that creates yellow PostIt notes
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on your screen and allows you to cut and paste from them.
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Macintosh and MacAstro
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Dr. Chaos has heard of a shareware program for the Mac that allows the
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display of the sky, even on cloudy nights. Included are the planets,
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Sun, Moon, and 2500 brightest objects (not on the display all at once).
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Has anyone tried this program? It is available (shareware) from sumex-
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aim.stanford.edu in /info-mac/app/mac-astro-15.hqx and we would be
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interested in any reactions people have about it.
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Shoebox (for storing notes)
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An interesting textual database management program has come to the
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attention of Dr. Chaos -- in the linguistics subdirectory of the
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wuarchive of the simtel20 mirror (that means it's in
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/mirrors/msdos/linguistics on the machine named wuarchive.wustl.edu) is
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file named sh12a.zip that when decompressed yields the program SHOEBOX.
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SHOEBOX has various features and we quote:
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+ A text editor for the entry and editing of data,
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+ The ability to conduct very rapid searches; any data record can be
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accessed nearly instantaneously for editing or review,
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+ A rigorous select option that allows the user to view only those
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records that conform to certain criteria,
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+ The ability to specify a special sort ordering, taking into account
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groupings of digraphs and characters from the IMB extended
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character set,
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+ A flash card function to aid in language learning,
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+ Functions to number and interlinearize text.
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Sounds like it may not be fancy but it may be useful for dealing with
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textual information (better than putting index cards into a shoebox,
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right?). Dr. Chaos hopes to use the flashcard feature to learn the
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strong and irregular verbs in German.
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Frequently Asked Questions -- where to get the answers
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If you have read any of the Usenet newsgroups for any length of time,
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you know there are certain questions that come up over and over again.
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Some of the newsgroups organize a list of Frequently Asked Questions
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(FAQs) and their answers and post them to the network on some regular
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basis. These FAQs are also collected and available via anonymous FTP
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from pit-manager.mit.edu in the usenet directory. Look for postings
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either under the name of the newsgroup you are interested in, or under
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news.answers.
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Word for Windows (W4W) upgrade to 2.0
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Microsoft is currently taking telephone orders for the Word for Windows
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2.0 upgrade that is expected to ship just before the end of November.
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Once you get an operator, the process is pretty painless. Dr. Chaos
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found that the regular 800 number was always busy, but the educational
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800 number allowed you to eventually get to the same people (if only the
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Cornell telephones had a re-dial feature like the telephone we got from
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Radio Shack). Version 2.0 is supposed to really take advantage of
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Windows 3.0 (the previous version had to run with older Windows
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versions).
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comp.unix.aix available in digest form via mail
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The comp.unix.aix newsgroup is now available in digest form over BITNET.
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About twice a day, collected articles from comp.unix.aix are
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redistributed in digest form. To subscribe: send mail to
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listserv@pucc.princeton.edu and in the body of the file place the line:
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sub aixnews your-firstname your-lastname
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While you can t post items directly to AIXNEWS, you can send items to
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comp.unix.aix@cc.ysu.edu for forwarding to the usenet group.
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Hockey discussion List
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Now that the World Series is over, and the morning temperature is below
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0 (C), it is time to turn attention to the next season s sport Hockey!
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If you have considered joining the college hockey discussion list but
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considered that it would be too many mail files, consider subscribing to
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the newly created list HOCKEY-D. It contains all the information in
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HOCKEY-L but clumped together in digest form. To subscribe, send mail
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to listserv@maine.maine.edu with the following line in the body of the
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file:
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sub hockey-d your-firstname your-lastname
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PC software for dealing with images (GIF and other formats)
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Getting around to pictures and images, Cornell s own Homer Smith has
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recommended the GIF (and other format) viewer Graphic WorkShop (GWS).
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The program is on wuarchive.wustl.edu in /mirrors/msdos/graphics in a
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file named grafwk60.zip. It allows on to zoom in on a particular part
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of a picture, a feature that Homer finds very desireable.
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JPEG information
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There are discussions flaming in a number of the picture-oriented
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newsgroups about the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) algorithm
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for compressing images. There have been several informative postings
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and a lot of uninformed panic. The summary seems to be that JPEG is
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"lossy" (meaning that some information is lost in the compression
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process). The JPEG compression of gray-scale or full-color images is
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usually much smaller than many currently popular forms of compression.
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However, JPEG does not perform well when the image contains many sharp
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boundaries (e. g., scanned images of text). JPEG is only a compression
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standard, not a file format standard. The file format that seems to be
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gaining some popularity is called JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format).
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A standard for JPEG in a TIFF format file is being worked on, but Dr.
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Chaos thinks it will be some time before anything results from that
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effort. DOS users can experiment with JPEG files (they usually have a
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file extension of .jpe) if they get a program called alchemy -- get
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alchmy14.zip from the /mirrors/msdos/graphics directory on
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wuarchive.wustl.edu. Unix users should get jpegsrc.v1.tar.Z from the
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/graphics/jpeg directory on uunet.uu.net. By the way, Apple is using a
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slightly modified (of course) version of JFIF for their recently
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announced QuickTime software.
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GIF image of Oakland fire area available (and other things)
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A few more pictures that are available: a GIF image of the map of the
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area damaged by the file in Oakland is available from
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cs.sequoia.berkeley.edu in /pub/firemap.gif; two CDROMs of pictures
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taken by the Magellan space probe are mounted at ames.arc.nasa.gov and
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are accessible in /pub/SPACE/CDROM and /pub/SPACE/CDROM2. There are a
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total of 6 volumes that are rotated onto the two drives on some basis;
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an image of hurricane Grace made last Sunday is named oct27_01.gif in
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directory fna101.195 on machine uriacc.uri.edu.
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Aurora
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If you weren't outside looking to the north on the evening of October
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28/29 before moonrise, then you missed the most visible aurora display
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in the last while. Brian T. Carcich, at Cornell, reported on the WX-
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TALK list that he was able to observe the aurora from his home in Groton
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at about 2200 hours EST. Dr Chaos is more than a little annoyed that I
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didn't take him to see the display. Just when we thought about trying
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to catch the display this past evening, the storm ended and the auroral
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activity warning was downgraded to a watch. Maybe next time we'll be
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better prepared. Dr. Chaos really enjoys the aurora information that
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has recently been added to the WX-TALK list.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Kermit
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For those interested in Kermit (not the frog), the current version of C-
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Kermit 5A can be found as the obviously named file cku173.tar.Z in the
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/kermit/sw directory on watsun.cc.columbia.edu. There are LOTS of very
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nice new features in this version of Kermit so if you haven't picked up
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a recent distribution of Kermit for your Unix system, you might want to
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take a look at it.
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--------------------------------------------------
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ELM mailer on RS/6000
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Lou Montulli at the University of Kansas has been having trouble bring
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up the ELM mailer on his RS/6000; but now reports that if one adds the
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-U_STR_ and -lcur switches and get rid of -ltermcap, then ELM will not
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only work, it will use the more complete Terminfo library (rather than
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Termcap). He also points out that if you do use Termcap, you can get an
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updated, expanded version of the file from the wuarchive in the unix
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directory.
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--------------------------------------------------
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OS/2 beta testing continues
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Dr. Chaos now has the 6.605 level distribution of OS/2 Release 2.0.
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Since the old version was level 6.147 and the discussion groups are
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talking about level 6.169 just becoming available; we're very confused
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about IBM's numbering systems. (IBM SE Extraordinaire Charlie Hill is
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working on the problem.) In any case, anyone at Cornell who has a 386
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(or better) system and would like to test drive OS/2 2.0 should give Dr.
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Chaos' OS/2 tester a call at 5-7572. Only 8 more copies allowed and
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they are going fast. Before you get your hopes up, the Workplace Shell
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is not available yet.
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--------------------------------------------------
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Fixes 4, 5, and 6 for X11R5
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Last but not least, fixes number 4, 5, and 6 to the X11R5 distribution
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are now available from your favorite X11R5 distribution point. Dr.
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Chaos seems to recall that 6 fixes was the magic number before Scott
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Brim was interested in looking at the new code ... is that right Scott?
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Well it didn't get all that much shorter this time ... it would help if
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Dr Chaos would stop shoving interesting items under my nose, but it
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never seems to stop.
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Read! Dr. Chaos (I have a masters degree) rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu
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