April 1987; Volume 5, No. 6; Whole No. 54

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 1

Election Notice

Notice is hereby given that the Board of Directors has set the May 3, 1987, meeting of CFOG, to be held at Triton College's College Center Building, 2000 River Road, at 1:00 p.m., for the annual election of officers of CFOG. Notice is further given that at that meeting an amendment to the Articles of Incorporation (described in a separate article in this issue of PIP, which is incorporated in this notice) will be submitted to a vote of the members. It is important that you be present at the meeting so that we can have an official quorum and complete the business of this meeting.

By order of the Board of Directors

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 2

How to Win Friends and Influence People?

[This is another contribution from the world of modems. The author is that prolific writer Anonymous. -- bhc]

For a limited time only, you are being introduced to an amazing offer: THE  R U D E  Operating System (tm) from ROBKO!!!

Are you tired of a boring, slow, nerve-racking operating system? Change all that with the  R U D E  Operating System (tm). Now you can liven up your system and have an interesting, slow, nerve-racking operating system at your fingertips. If you order now, we'll also throw in the new, revolutionary  R U D E  Compiler for a small additional fee!!! Take the boredom out of spending fourteen hours in the computer room by making your session even more challenging with the  R U D E  Operating System (and the  R U D E  Compiler).

The  R U D E  Operating System offers the following features:

• User ID Management: For users who make too many errors (including:)
  
  • Random Password Scrambling
    
  • Random File Dispersal (the system scatters the user's programs throughout the system)
    
  • Random Password Advertisement (the system randomly picks other users on the system to tell the user's password)
  
  
• System "Busy Software": the system will occasionally (on purpose) cause certain hardware parts to "crash" so that the system people will be kept on their toes (including):
  
  • Auto Printer-Jam Software (including paper misalignments)
    
  • Random Terminal Crashes (including keyboard lockups)
    
  • Total System Crash Procedures (including file erasure)
  
  
• Random Command Management: practice of the operating system to execute a random command instead of the command specified by the user. (DELETE *.* is a common example) (also includes):
  
  • Null Management of commands: the operating system does nothing instead of executing the command (but acts as if the command was executed).
    
  • The Zero Time-Slice Syndrome: this happens when some user offends the operating system (making too many errors) and the operating system decreases the user's allotted amount of CPU time (eventually to zero).
  
  
• Added System Security: to facilitate breakins (including):
  
  • Monthly Password Scrambling: to protect the users' files.
    
  • an O.C.A. Commando Squad for quick dispersal of misusers.
  
  
• Random Clock: the system clock and the random number generator are one in the same.
  
  
• Largest-Job-First Queues: this operating system takes all the larger jobs and works on them first leaving the smaller jobs to wait (and wait, and wait ...)
  
  
• and MANY, MANY MORE Features (in future articles!!!)
  
  

How much would you pay for this Computer Science extraveganza??? WAIT... DON'T ANSWER... If you order now, you also get the  R U D E  Compiler, available in all colors, including FORTRAN, COBOL, PL/I, BASIC, ADA, Assembler, etc. This compiler masterpiece has the following features:

• Advanced Error Management (including):
  
  • Random errors upon execution, or - R U D E - type errors:
    %ERROR-E-FIND-
    You have an error in your 10000 line program but you should be able to find it (pinhead).
    %ERROR-E-BOMB-
    Your Program (if I can call it a program) just bombed (you keyboard klutz).
    %ERROR-E-QUOTA-
    Your latest compiling of this program caused you to run out of directory space, therefore, ALL other files are being deleted to make room for it...
    %ERROR-E-TIRED-
    You have exceeded your error limit quota (3 errors) and I think that you should start from scratch. Therefore, your program (or collection of faulty algorithms) is being deleted.
  
  
• Random Error Management: The compiler will occasionally (and I mean occasionally) generate random (unfindable) errors to make the programmer's life more interesting.
  
  
• A direct link between variables in a program and the random number generator.
  

 

 

 

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 3

Questions and Answers

[Please submit questions to the Editor, in person, by mail, or via CFOG's remote systems. If you're shy, do it by mail and leave your name and address off. I'll try to find answers to all questions. If I can't, we'll publish here without answers and hope a reader will submit one. -- bhc]

Question:
I want to maintain a list of names and addresses that I can quickly and easily insert into letters and other documents. What's the best way?

Answers:
I say answers because, like a lot of things we do with our computers, there isn't one best way to do this. Which method best suits your needs will depend on a number of factors, including whether you are running on a floppy disk system, with a RAM disk, or a hard disk, and how many names and addresses you need to store. The methods below are adaptable to all systems.

One solution is to use a 'keys' program, such as GKEY2, SmartKey, XtraKey or SuperKey. You can store names and addresses to be recalled instantly, with formatting, with one or two keystrokes. The number of addresses you can store is limited by the particular program, only a few with the public domain GKEY2 with it's limit of 512 bytes of definitions, up to about 7.5K bytes with SmartKey, even more with XtraKey, but the more addresses you store the more you intrude on your transient program area (TPA). This may or may not be important, depending on other factors. You can, of course, have more than one definition file.

An alternative is to store names and addresses in a file. You could simply read the file into a WordStar or NewWord file, then delete the unwanted parts.

A combination solution is offered by programs like Sidekick and Presto!. You would access the notepad, load in the file, search for the text key that you wanted, then 'cut and paste' the wanted section into the text. These programs both offer a 'keys' functions, also.

File based solutions are better suited to a RAM disk or hard disk, since disk access time is required, which can be slow with a floppy system. 'Keys' program and Presto! solutions are faster since the data is be stored in memory. On the other hand, a 'keys' program makes you remember which key has which name and address, while with a file-based solution you could search the file for the name you wanted.

Any additional solutions to this problem should be sent to the Editor for inclusion in a future issue of PIP.

 

 

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 4

Murphy's Laws and Other Observations

[File found on a local RCPM -- bhc]

Murphy's Laws

1. If anything can go wrong, it will.
   
   
2. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the first one to go wrong.
   
   
3. If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
   
   
4. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
   
   
5. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
   
   
6. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
   
   
7. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
   
   
8. Mother nature is a bitch.
   

O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Laws

Murphy was an optomist.

Ginsberg's Theorems

1. You can't win.
   
   
2. You can't break even.
   
   
3. You can't even quit the game.
   

Forsyth's Second Corollary to Murphy's Laws

Just when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, the roof caves in.

Weiler's Law

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

The Laws of Computer Programming

1. Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
   
   
2. Any given program costs more and takes longer each time it is run.
   
   
3. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
   
   
4. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
   
   
5. Any given program will expand to fill all the available memory.
   
   
6. The value of a program is inversely proportional to the weight of its output.
   
   
7. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
   

Pierce's Law

In any computer system, the machine will always misinterpret, misconstrue, misprint, or not evaluate any math or subroutines or fail to print any output on at least the first run through.

Corollary to Pierce's Law

When a compiler accepts a program without error on the first run, the program will not yield the desired output.

Addition to Murphy's Laws

In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right something is wrong.

Brook's Rule

If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set!

Grosch's Law

Computing power increases as the square of the cost.

Golub's Laws of Computerdom

1. Fuzzy project objectives are used to avoid embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs.
   
   
2. A carelessly planned project takes three times as long to complete as expected; a carefully planned project takes only twice as long.
   
   
3. The effort required to correct course inercases geometrically with time.
   
   
4. Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.
   

Osborn's Law

Variables won't; constants aren't.

Gilb's Laws of Unreliability

1. Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
   
   
2. Any system that depends upon human reliability is unreliable.
   
   
3. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
   
   
4. Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.
   

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology

There's always one more bug.

Troutman's Postulate

1. Profanity is the one language understood by all programmers.
   
   
2. Not until a program has been in production for six months will the most harmful error be discovered.
   
   
3. Job control cards that positively cannot be arranged in improper order will be.
   
   
4. Interchangeable tapes won't.
   
   
5. If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it.
   
   
6. If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent systems will malfunction.
   

Weinberg's Second Law

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Gumperson's Law

The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability.

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics

Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can (old worms never die, they just worm their way into larger cans).

Harvard's law, as applied to computers

Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity and other variables, the computer will do as it damn well pleases.

Sattinger's law

It works better if you plug it in.

Horner's Five Thumb Postulate

Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.

Cheop's Law

Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

Rule of Accuracy

When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.

Zymurgy's Seventh Exception to Murphy's Law

When it rains, it pours.

Westheimer's Rule

To estimate the time it takes to do a task: estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by two and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus, we allocate two days for a one hour task.

Atwoods Corollary

No books are lost by lending except those you particularly wanted to keep.

Johnson's Third Law

If you miss one issue of any magazine, it will be the issue that contains the article, story or installment you were most anxious to read.

Corollary to Johnson's Third Law

All of your friends either missed it, lost it or threw it out.

Brooke's Law

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Cohen's Laws of Briefcases

1. The amount of stuff you need to carry execeds the size of your briefcase.
   
   
2. Getting a larger briefcase won't help.
   

 

 

 

 

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 5

FOG Library Disks Updated

CFOG has received from FOG, our national user group, disks number 1 through 150 in its CP/M series and 1 through 9 in its MS-DOS series. Only members of FOG are allowed to copy FOG disks at meetings. CFOG members who are interested in joining FOG will find a membership application in this issue <if I remember to put it in and there's space!>.

 

 

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 6

MS-DOS NewSweep is Here!

by Benjamin H. Cohen

It has taken a while -- the last update of NSWP for CP/M, version 2.07, promised it way back in July, 1984, but Dave Rand has finally, finally, come up with an MS-DOS version. You can all forget about CWEEP and the other inadequate substitutes for NSWP, the real thing is here! Interestingly, although the old CP/M software asked for a contribution, this one says it's pure public domain software and no contribution is asked.

"Revision of the week" fans will be pleased to know that the DOC file in NSWPPC18.ARC indicates release of version 1.0 on February 5, 1987, with revisions on February 6, 8, 9, 11, 15, 21, 22, and finally 1.8 on February 23! Anyone reminded of what happened when 8 bit NSWP was coming out?

The documentation is not complete, but here's a sampling of features ADDED -- most of you know the 8-bit NSWP features, and it seems they are all present. The "I" command activates timestamp display. Timestamping version of SQ/USQ is supported. Wildcard function accepts "!" as a "not" indicator. Move, copy, and log commands accept paths, but they must exist. Copy and move check free space before starting. Squeeze is 5-8% more efficient than 8 bit version. "Zoom" on ".." goes to the previous directory, on "." relogs current directory. Command "." allows creation of a new directory.

Delete will delete a directory, with prompt if there are files in the directory. The "!" command exits to DOS so you can run DOS commands from inside NSWP. Files that are squeezed, unsqueezed, or copied to the current directory show in the directory listing without relogging. Tagged files that are not processed during a squeeze (no compression factor) are untagged so you can hit A<gain>, E<rase> T<agged> to delete all files that were 'dealt with'. Jump command goes to file number in list, or "+" or "-" nn files -- this command wraps at the ends of the list.

Find has been extended to search the children of a directory for ambiguous filenames. Find <cr> after zoom <log> to the previous directory (..) gets you to the current file position.

ARC wasn't added until February 21! Zoom in on an ARC file, NSWP does the rest. View, Copy, Move, Print, files from the ARC.

 

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 7

For Sale

Kim Bartko advises us that she 'inherited' an Osborne 1 from her father but it hasn't been used much in the last two years and she'd like to dispose of it before she moves on May 1. It's a gray case, double density, 52 column model with the usual software and Personal Pearl. Reasonable offers to Kim Bartko, 944-4446 (office) or 549-0978 (home).

 

 

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 8

IBM Announces New Operating System

PROGRAMMING ANOUNCEMENT

From:	IBM Information Systems Group National Accounts Division National Marketing Division
Re:	New Operating System OS/VU: Product Number 5748-2001

Because so many users have asked for an operating system of even greater capability than VM/370, IBM announces the Virtual Universe Operating System -- OS/VU.

Running under OS/VU, the individual user appears to have not merely a machine of his own, but an entire universe of his own, in which he can set up or take down his own programs, data sets, system networks, personnel, and planetary systems. He needs only specify the universe he desires and the OS/VU system generation program (IEHGOD) does the rest. This program will reside in SYS1.GODLIB. The minimum time for this function is 6 days of activity and 1 day of review. In conjunction with OS/VU, all system utilities have been replaced by one program (IEHPROPHET) which will reside in SYS1.MESSIAH. This program has no parms or control cards as it knows what you want to do when it is executed.

Naturally, the user must have attained a certain degree of sophistication in the data processing field if an efficient utilization of OS/VU is to be achieved. Frequent calls to non-resident galaxies, for instance, can lead to unexpected delays in the execution of a job. Although IBM, through its wholly-owned subsidary, the United States, is working on a program to upgrade the speed of light and thus reduce the overhead of extraterrestial and metadimensional paging, users must be careful for the present to stay within the laws of physucs. IBM must charge an additional fee for violations.

OS/VU will run on any IBM 90xx equipped with Extended WARP assist. Rental for this feature is twenty-million dollars per cpu/nanosecond.

Users should be aware that IBM plans to migrate all existing systems and hardware to OS/VU as soon as our engineers effect one output that is (conceptually and virtually) error-free. This will give us a base to develop an even more powerful operating system, target date 2001, designated "Virtual Reality". OS/VR is planned to enable the user to migrate to totally unreal universes. To aid the user in identifying the difference between "Virtual Reality" and "Real Reality", a file containing a linear arrangement of multisensory total records of successive moments of now will be established.

 

 

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 9

New PC-File Versions for CP/M

KaftorWare Corporation, an operation of Ben Cohen and Glen Ostgaard, announces that the company has entered into a contract with ButtonWare, Inc., to produce a new upgraded version of PC-File for CP/M-computers. Release is expected by the end of June.

 

 

 

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 10

VDE Version 2.5

by Benjamin H. Cohen

VDE/M version 2.4 came out in January and I wrote about it, but it got squeezed out of the February and March issues of PIP. It finally makes it into the April issue -- but not before version 2.5 hits the boards. Another bumper crop of new features marks version 2.5, though it gets a bit fatter at 11K bytes.

The official list of changes includes user area support, variable tabs (settable in the install program), double spacing (on screen), search wildcards, more standard block functions, improved formatting, and many additions to install.

There's now a marker at the end of a block. It's the same marker at both ends, possibly a bit confusing, and defaults to a highlighted "B", but is changeable in the installation routine for those who want to be able to embed a ^B. The procedure is now more WordStar-like, and a bit disconcerting to those who have gotten used to the process of (1) yanking a block into memory, (2) deleting the block, (3) copying the block somewhere. You cannot do that any more, since now marking the block does not yank it into a memory buffer. If you forget the change and follow the old procedure, you'll find yourself hung out to dry (unless you can get the block back from a saved version of the file). Of course, that may be freeing up a buffer, so it's not altogether bad. You can copy the block any time, then delete it even from the new location. Of course, you may need to go back to the original location to reformat. If you're using a RAM disk or hard drive, write the block to a file, then delete, clean up, go to new location, read the block from the file, etc. You can hide the block markers with ESC-H.

Editing ASCII files with VDE 2.5, including those created with earlier versions of VDE, will find a lot of hard carriage returns, making it impossible to format. Back to Hardsoft. Hard <cr>s show on the screen now, with an angle bracket. You can toggle these off with ^OD. One advantage of all this is that in VDE's WordStar mode you can put hard <cr>s in for lines with dot commands and they won't reformat as they would before.

A table has been added detailing the differences between WordStar and VDE command sets. Aside from noting that ESC is used instead of ^K, the table is a mere 12 lines. WordStar users will feel very much at home with VDE -- the only thing they'll miss are the delays!

 

---

 

CFOG's PIP, April 1987, Volume 5 No. 6, Whole No. 54, page 10

Boot It!

[Found on a local RCPM. -- bhc]

Sing this one to Michael Jackson's "Beat it"...

You're processing some words when your keyboard goes dead,
Ten pages in the buffer, should have gone to bed, The system just crashed, but don't lose your head,
Just BOOT IT, just BOOT IT.

Better think fast, better do what you can,
Read the manual or call your system man,
Don't want to fall behind in the race with Japan,
So BOOT IT.

Get the system manager to
BOOT IT, BOOT IT,
Even though you'd rather shoot it.
Don't be upset, it's only some glitch.
All that you do is flip a little switch.
BOOT IT, BOOT IT,
Get right down and restitute it.
Don't get excited, all is not lost.
CP/M, UNIX or MS/DOS
Just BOOT IT, boot it, boot it, boot it...

You gotta have your printout for the meeting at two,
The system says your jobs at the head of the queue,
Right then the thing dies but you know what to do,
BOOT IT.

You always get so worried when the system runs slow,
And when it finally crashes, man you feel so low,
But computers make mistakes (they're only human you know)
So BOOT IT.

Call the local guru to
BOOT IT, BOOT IT
Go ahead re-institute it.
If you're not lucky, get the book off the shelf,
But if you are, it'll do itself.
BOOT IT, BOOT IT,
Then go find the guy who screwed it!
Operating systems are built to bounce back,
Whether it's a Cray or a Radio Shack.

BOOT IT, BOOT IT!