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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 198 responses total. |
keesan
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response 119 of 198:
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Dec 4 03:05 UTC 2000 |
Win NO and Win 95 have built-in Unicode. Can a 16-bit font be added to Win
31?
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remmers
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response 120 of 198:
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Dec 4 14:24 UTC 2000 |
Re resp:118 - Right, Roman Czyborra's website is an excellent
reference on Unicode and other character encodings.
Re compression: I assume you're referring to the UTF-8 encoding
of Unicode. In UTF-8, not all characters get "compressed" to
one byte; that would be impossible. *Certain* characters are
encoded in one byte, others in more than that. See
http://cyzborra.com/utf for the technical details.
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keesan
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response 121 of 198:
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Dec 4 16:51 UTC 2000 |
I am told Win31 cannot handle Unicode (so why does Netscape 4.08/Win31 offer
the UTF-8 and -7 encodings?). I did read cyborra and got a thank you email
for my thank you email today. An anonymous grexer has informed me that on
his version of lynx at school the р codes come out as transliterated
Russian instead. On my version of lynx, the 8-bit font characters are
displayed as one-for-one correspondences, for instance Q for Ya, and V for
Zh. A bit difficult to read until you get used to the code. But for him,
the Ya, a single Cyrillic character, displayed as 'ya'. I suspect he has Lynx
2.8. Grex has 2.7. Are there plans to upgrade grex to 2.8?
I have a little DOS conversion program that maybe can be set up with a table
of my own construction to convert the six-character Unicode codes to the
corresponding extended ASCII characters, which can be made to display as
Cyrillic. There are sites listing the codes for each character. But surely
someone must already have developed such a convertor. I don't know if my
conversion program will convert something other than single character to
single character.
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keesan
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response 122 of 198:
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Dec 4 23:27 UTC 2000 |
An expert has informed me that the page I cannot read is NOT unicode, it is
just badly written HTML, in Russian but the tag says it is CP-1252, which is
Western European. FOr some reason it is readable in IE (it was composed with
MS Frontpage for IE) but cannot be read by this expert with Win NT and
Netscape. I was able to read Unicode at the test page
www.ccss.de/slovo/testuni.htm, where it looks the same in lynx as any other
correctly written Cyrillic page. Q for Ya, V for Sh, s for s, a for a, etc.
I am instructed to ask the author of the unreadable page to correct his code.
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keesan
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response 123 of 198:
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Dec 6 17:26 UTC 2000 |
Two people are attempting to help the guy who wrote the bad website.
Apparently you can read it with the latest version of IE, or the latest
version of Netscape (6, which needs 64M RAM) but not with Netscape 4 or the
other browsers I have tried on it. There is an online convertor program that
worked to convert his 'internal code' from р to CP-1251 characters so
he will not have to retype all his pages again. 'Express' is their name for
the code he ended up with - what might this mean? Frontpage web editor.
Has anyone used Links browser for UNIX, which I am told supports tables and
graphics?
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keesan
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response 124 of 198:
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Dec 6 17:43 UTC 2000 |
Here is what I got when I looked for www.links.com:
Can one become a millionaire by investing in domain names?
----------------
Links.com Domain Name is for sale!
This is a very desirable, generic, five (5) character domain name with
great name recognition. It can be used as a domain name for Internet
portals, telecommunication companies, media services, and many other
types of Internet sites. It has received very high appraisals from
independent domain name appraisers and much interest on auction sites
such as eBay and Afternic. The current auction site (if any) is listed
under the Auction Site Tab.
[1]Visit our listing on the International Domain Brokers Coalition
Asking Price: $500,000
Minimum Offer: $200,000
Contact information
Richard Finkelstein
rfinkelstein@ameritech.net
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gelinas
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response 125 of 198:
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Dec 6 17:46 UTC 2000 |
Only if you can afford the lawyer fees (i.e., you are already a millionaire).
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keesan
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response 126 of 198:
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Dec 8 02:30 UTC 2000 |
Today we went to fix whatever was wrong with our Russians' computer. He could
only get into pine one time out of ten. We tried it with another version of
Procomm, and another account, and he was right. And he could not get the
chess program in Windows entertainment pack (WEP) to work. For us it worked
three times in a row. We checked for viruses - nope. We did scandisk
andfound some lost clusters. Defrag said to fix a crosslinked file. Chkdsk
fixed a file in Windows/system. After this the chess game would not load,
nor would Windows. We informed our friend that he would not be using WIndows
chess again, on the theory that since he only knows how to exit the chess game
by using the power switch (and refuses to learn any; other way) Windows would
again mess up the computer so there would be no more Windows. The other chess
games were okay. After disabling Windows, Pine works perfectly. Arachne
seems tolerant of being turned off, in fact it is simpler than the correct
routine of answering a bunch of questions about deleted the lock file, etc.
We now have 30M free on our 40M disk again. Can anyone suggest any good
DOS-based chess games without sounds or 3D figures? We hav Ed Chess and Power
chess. Battle Chess was too annoying. He prefers parallel lines on his chess
board. We reconnected the reset button and told him to use that instead of
the on-off switch to start a new game, and showed him the innards of the
computer. Transformer, ears (modem), eyes (video card), memory, brain.
We were sent home wtih 2 backpacks full of canned fruits and vegetables
which the Russians had been given. They prefer to cook fresh.
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mdw
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response 127 of 198:
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Dec 8 03:40 UTC 2000 |
Using "reset" is better on the hardware, but no better for the software.
Using either instead of shutting the system down nicely is more or less
equivalent to performing electro-shock therapy on an animal. You need
to run chkdsk (or some other disk fixit utility) religiously when you
bring the system back up, if you aren't willing to shut it down nicely.
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keesan
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response 128 of 198:
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Dec 8 04:11 UTC 2000 |
Can you put chkdsk in autoexec.bat and have it run without asking questions?
This guy is not willing to learn more than the minimum. We also have
smartdrive installed, as requested by Arachne. Should we take it out?
The reset button is likely to be pushed at any time, in fact we could not stop
him from pushing it.
If we put chkdsk in autoexec.bat, even with switches, it would run every time
before he could start a new chess game. Jim is thinking of setting it to run
on some schedule, such as once a week, or every tenth time that the computer
is rebooted. Which might be every day, or every hour. Today it was about
30 times, which is why we reconnected the reset button. Better every day.
Jim cannot understand how a crosslinked file in Windows/system could have
prevented Pine from working - we only got a blinking cursor. With two
versions of Procomm.
The Russian chocolates (from Brooklyn) were very good. The Russian jokes
could not be accessed, they were so popular.
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mdw
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response 129 of 198:
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Dec 8 06:16 UTC 2000 |
You need to run it *every* time, if you can't stop him from pressing
reset. Putting it in autoexec.bat will certainly accomplish that. I
don't know if chkdsk can be made totally automatic or not. Any damage
you get in the filesystem is likely to spread and cause more & more
problems until it's stopped, so running it every 10th time isn't a good
idea. I don't know what "smartdrive" is - if it's some sort of disk
caching system, and it has the effect of delaying disk writes, then yes,
you might get less filesystem damage with the unexpected resets by
taking "smartdrive" out.
A crosslinked file may be linked to itself. If that happens, then the
file may appear to have no last block to the filesystem code, which
could cause it to get stuck in an endless loop. If there are
cross-linked files, or even if there aren't cross-linked files (yet),
the disk free list, which is also kept in the FAT, may be corrupted. If
the free list contains an endless loop, then that could also cause
bizarre and unpleasant behavior when the system tries to allocate disk
blocks.
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scott
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response 130 of 198:
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Dec 8 07:27 UTC 2000 |
There's a setting for smartdrv (mdw - it's a disk caching program) that
disables write caching, and this may stop some of the corruption.
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gull
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response 131 of 198:
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Dec 8 15:52 UTC 2000 |
Re #126: Chessmaster 2000 comes to mind, if you can find an old copy. It
has both 2D and 3D modes. It even has a 2D *text* mode for machines that
don't have graphics cards.
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keesan
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response 132 of 198:
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Dec 8 17:56 UTC 2000 |
Of what benefit is smartdrv with write caching disabled? Smartdrv comes with
Win31 and newer versions with MSDOS 6.0 and 6.22. Arachne recommends it
increase speed. We have set both temp and cache to a RAM drive - is smartdriv
still of any use? Speed is much less important here than stability. Before
we put in smartdrv, pine and windows were working okay.
What is a disk free list? What does smartdrv do other than cause problems?
Opera 5.0 is now available free, with ad banners, but only for Win32. I
downloaded the 30-day-trial version for Win31 (version 3.6.2?). It installed
itself with no questions asked when I typed the filename, using the dialer
from Netscape. It would not send mail until I typed in the name of a news
server. There was no obvious way to turn off graphics but of course I did
not first read the instructions. 5.0 has a toggle for graphics.
I will look online for Chessmaster 2000, thanks.
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keesan
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response 133 of 198:
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Dec 8 18:01 UTC 2000 |
A search for "chessmaster 2000" with altavista brought me several sites, the
first of which was "Chess Shareware", which for some reason all my other
searches had missed. For DOS, along with Chessmaster, this site offers
AVOG, Bluebush, Chenard, Chess8, ChessFiz, Chess FX, Clueless, Comet WM, Comet
A, COmplete Chess, Cyrus, Dabbaba, Diep, Diogenes, Drago, Edchess (we have
this), Exchess........ Since our player insists on a mouse, what year should
be our cutoff? Chessmaster is 1986.
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mdw
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response 134 of 198:
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Dec 8 19:57 UTC 2000 |
A write-thru cache has lots of advantages - for most people, most or all
of the disk I/O that takes place is actually reads, so the more reads
that can be eliminated, the better. DOS does have a disk cache of some
sort built-in, but it's apparently not real good, so not much of a win.
The disk is a huge linear array of disk blocks. At any given time, some
of those disk blocks hold file data, some hold directory information,
and some are dedicated to "housekeeping". In DOS, one of those
"housekeeping" functions is a table the file access table, or "FAT".
This has an entry for every block in that filesystem, which points to
the "next" block. For regular files, the directory entry includes the
file name, the size of the file, and the first block number. To get to
any block after that first block, the FAT has to be consulted; by
tracing the linked list in the FAT, every block belonging to that file
can be located. The filesystem also has to store the information used
to locate unallocated blocks (blocks that do not belong to any file and
are not in use). This is kept as another list of chained blocks in the
FAT. To allocate a disk block, the algorithm is to "pop" the top of the
FAT - that is, take the first block on the freelist, find the next block
after that, set the free block list to point to that next block, and use
that first block that is now no longer on the free list. There are no
checks inside of DOS to see if a block on the free list is also used by
a file, or to see if there are any loops or cross links in the FAT. It
just "assumes" everything is ok. If things are not ok, something bad
will happen, and a "hang" is certainly one of the possibilities.
Other filesystems store things differently. On a CD (ISO-9660
filesystem), all files are stored contiguously. Since you can't write
to a CD, it's not possible to grow files, so a start & a count is
sufficient to describe all the blocks in a file. Unix bsd "ffs" uses a
bitmap to store the list, and a succession of direct and indirect block
lists to store the addresses of all the blocks in a file. The bitmap is
a more efficient way to store the free list (a win on larger disk
drives--Unix was using 500 Mb disk drives when Dos still had a 33 Mb
upper limit), and helps fight the disk fragmentation problem. The
indirect block structure means Unix doesn't have to thread its way
through 300 blocks to find the address of the 301st.
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keesan
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response 135 of 198:
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Dec 8 20:57 UTC 2000 |
Does this mean that smartdriv with write cache turned off will not cause the
same problems? Or should we just eliminate it? Jim claims to understand what
you wrote.
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mcnally
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response 136 of 198:
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Dec 8 21:23 UTC 2000 |
You run a greater risk of file corruption caused by sudden reset when
write caching is turned on, so yes, if you turn write caching off you
will have less chance of encountering these problems.
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mdw
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response 137 of 198:
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Dec 8 21:24 UTC 2000 |
In theory, smartdrv with the the write cache turned off should be the
same as no smartdrv, and should keep most of the performance benefits
except for certain applications (which you could only determine by trial
& error). This isn't a substitue for running chkdsk - it just means
you'll be less likely to lose data.
The only way to avoid the need to run chkdsk would be to run some sort
of fault tolerant system with a log based filesystem. IBM AIX is a
possibility, or a decade ago, Tandem made a line of computers marketed
for banks and other businesses that thought they needed very high
reliability and redundancy, and were willing to pay for it. Of the two,
AIX is likely to have a better selection of chess programs.
Another possibility would be to run a laptop with *no* reset switch and
a soft power switch, but only if you make sure not to tell your friend
how to pop the battery out of the computer. If you ran linux on that,
linux is smart enough to run fsck (its equivalent to chkdsk) only when
it wasn't powered off nicely and needs to check. I believe there's also
an experimental log filesystem for linux (or there certainly is one for
netbsd), but so far as I know it's not fully functional yet, and
shouldn't be trusted with real data.
Or, here's another way to avoid chkdsk: run everything off a CD-rom, and
don't have any hard disk storage at all. You wouldn't be able to save
anything in this configuration, but you'd definitely be virus-proof.
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keesan
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response 138 of 198:
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Dec 8 23:20 UTC 2000 |
The computer does not have a CD-ROM and we are not planning to purchase and
install one. Nor will LINUX fit comfortably into the 40M drive (although
Arachne does have a beta linux version). I don't want to be hunting for linux
chess programs. Our friend flat out refused a laptop because it was hard to
read. He also has trouble with the full-size keyboard (cannot find the keys).
And he will be very upset if we dare take away the two chess programs that
he already learned. I think the solution is to remove smart drive and do
occasional maintenance. Our laptop also only has 3M RAM so is too slow.
But thanks for all the clever suggestions to our problems. Some day someone
will come up with a really idiot-proof computer with all the programs
installed in ROM, no keyboard, etc. It will play chess games for you, and
decide which web sites you want to visit. And even answer your mail. All
the programs on it will turn themselves off unless you are looking directly
at the screen.
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mdw
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response 139 of 198:
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Dec 9 00:56 UTC 2000 |
They've had those for a long time. Problem is people don't like a
computer that can't be programmed.
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gull
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response 140 of 198:
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Dec 9 03:25 UTC 2000 |
Radio Shack had several pre-programmed chess computers, with the program in
ROM. They point out the flaw in your idea, though -- that's all they do,
chess.
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keesan
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response 141 of 198:
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Dec 9 03:32 UTC 2000 |
Hi, I am trying out backtalk with Opera. The PgDn button does not work at the
grex site. Opera (3.6.2/Win31) has its own six-legged quirks. Some images
displayed with a green grid over them until I enlarged them twice. You can tab
to some things on the page but not others - the others including the results of
a search with altavista. Opera does SSL and javascript but no Cyrillic. Sends
but will not receive mail (unless you add a mailer). Probably handles FTP.
Telnet if you add it. As advertised, much smaller and faster than Netscape.
LIke Arachne, if you page down and then tab, you are still on the same page.
(Netscape 4 and Skipper stick you back at the page top, really annoying!).
Easy to toggle graphics and graphics loading on and off even in mid-load. I
did not see a way to toggle on just one image (like in Arachne or Netscape but
not in Skipper) - is there one?
Backtalk is set up so that it cannot be used without graphics unless you have a
good memory. I see to the right 'image' 'image'
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keesan
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response 142 of 198:
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Dec 9 16:01 UTC 2000 |
Can anyone help me install Lynx 386 on my computer? There seems to be zero
interest in updating grex's Lynx 2.7.x to 2.8.3.
Opera can display one image at a time. Lynx is way less buggy and can handle
other charsets. Who needs graphics.
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jor
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response 143 of 198:
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Dec 9 21:19 UTC 2000 |
right on, sista
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