We at BTN try our best to assure the accuracy of articles and
information in our publication. We assume no responsibility for
damage due to errors, omissions, etc. The liability,if any for BTN, its
editors and writers, for damages relating to any errors or omissions,
etc., shall be limited to the cost of a one year subscription to BTN,
even if BTN, its editors or writers have been advised of the likelihood
of such damages occurring.
With the conclusion of that nasty business, we can get on with our
policy for publication and reproduction of BTN articles. We publish
monthly with a deadline of the fifteenth of the month prior to
publication. If you wish to submit an article, you may do so at any
time but bear in mind the deadline if you wish for your work to appear
in a particular issue. It is not our purpose to slander or otherwise
harm a person or reputation and we accept no responsibility for the
content of the articles prepared by our writers. Our writers own their
work and it is protected by copyright. We allow reprinting of articles
from BTN with only a few restrictions. The author may object to a
reprint, in which case he will specify in the content of his article.
Otherwise, please feel free to reproduce any article from BTN as long as
the source, BTN, is specified, and as long as the author's name and the
article's original title are retained. If you use one of our articles,
please forward a copy of your publication to:
Mark Maisel
Editor, BTN
221 Chestnut St.
BHM, AL 35210-3219
We thank you for taking the time to read our offering and we hope that
you like it. We also reserve the right to have a good time while doing
all of this and not get too serious about it.
I have once again been asked [spelled BLACKMAILED!] into writing
the guest editorial for this month's BTN. It seems that when Mark
'crowned' me guest editor that he had put super-glue on the interior of
the 'crown'. I hereby formally swear that I will never again drink
heavily at a BTN meeting; it is too incriminating and Mark tends to take
notice of things that benefit him.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
IT IS BTN'S FIRST BIRTHDAY!
I once had a woman show me a mutated dog with two heads. She
proudly told me that "He is one year old today! Isn't he pretty!"
Yeah... Sure. I'm real impressed, lady.
Well, some people are proud of it anyway. In honor of this great
occasion, Mark, has promised to give away a brand new 1989 Cadillac
Seville from the monies he has garnered from BTN (as soon as he gets
some).
This issue should prove to be a goodie: Rocky Rawlins has written
an interesting article on the SEA version 6 vs PKZIP version 090. Chris
Mohney has compiled a list of top ten user peeves about Sysops as well
as the ProFile this month, which is on Keith Cahoon. The Sysops of the
ST BBS have provided us with a revelation in BBS security. Barry Bowden
has an article on another source for PD software as well as his regular
Message Board. Mr Extortion is back with the local BBS Profile and the
Known BBS List. Chez Stephan is also back with some nice recipes on
grilling either filet mignon or veal chops.
I'd like to take a moment to point out that this issue of the BTN
is Volume 2, issue #4. Our resident Idiot-in-Chief apparently cannot
count from one to four correctly and the March issue of BTN was
incorrectly labeled as Volume 2, issue 4. He has promised to make
restitutions which as yet are unspecified and to always remember that
three comes between two and four.
Mark also asked me to inform all of our readers that in order to
increase BTN revenues and therefor acquire the Cadillac even sooner,
that as of this issue, BTN has doubled in price...
I didn't have the heart to tell him. Maybe next month we'll teach
him a little multiplication to go with his addition.
If you are a regular caller to Amiga Alliance, then please don't be
alarmed or impatient. The sysop is testing some new software and is
having a troubles. Among them is a problem with the modem answering and
connecting at 2400 baud. Please be patient and try to help the sysop by
commenting on the new software. If you have trouble connecting at 2400
baud, please switch down to 1200.
If you have not done so, please take the time to call one of the
new boards in town, Sparta PCBoard. This is one huge system and it
appears to be well organized and run. All four nodes are on rotation
and calling the first will get you into the first available one. The
first threee nodes have HST 9600 baud modems and fourth has a Hayes
V-Series 9600 baud modem.
America Online has a HST 9600 baud modem on node four and would
appreciate it if you would help them to evaluate its usefulness. If you
have one of these modems, please try to connect using node 4 so they can
determine if they need to keep the modem.
There will be an open house at the end of this month. If you are
interested in meeting some folks face to face, then keep a lookout on
EZNET and a few other systems for details.
Comparing S.E.A.'s ARC 6.00 and PKWARE's PKZIP 0.90
by Rocky Rawlins, Sysop of America Online
As some of you may know, there has been a great deal of
controversy in the last few months over the Systems Enhancement
Associates' (SEA) lawsuit against Phil Katz ("author" of the PKARC
series of compression programs). There has been a lot of hearsay,
innuendo, name calling and mudslinging by both sides and by a lot of
third parties.
The background of the suit in a nutshell is this. SEA developed a
series of programs several years ago to compress and combine files.
They used several different publicly available and well known algorithms
written in a reasonably easy to use program and then distributed it
widely as Shareware. It of course caught on quickly in the BBS
community and there are few of us that haven't used it at one time or
another.
They made a point of making the file format and the source code
easily available to everyone. Several other folks used this source code
in variations of the ARC program and other specialized applications.
Some time later, Phil Katz released a program series called PKARC which
always seemed to be a step ahead of the SEA ARC program in speed
features and efficiency. It was not long before the PKARC program
eclipsed SEA's ARC program almost entirely.
Late last year, SEA brought a lawsuit against Phil Katz alleging
that he was using their source code in his program and that he had
failed to obtain either a license or to respond to their requests that
he license the code. The case went to trial and allegedly at the point
that an expert witness testified that the PKARC program did indeed
contain much of the SEA code verbatim, Phil Katz settled out of court
and asked that the record be sealed. Part of the settlement was that he
would no longer use the code in question and would no longer develop
programs to access the ARC file format.
After the trial, there was a flurry of accusations,counter-
accusations, charges, and slanderous remarks thrown in all directions by
everyone with an opinion, informed or otherwise. The general impression
was that big, bad SEA was using the courts to put tiny little Phil Katz
out of business for fear of the competition. Interestingly enough, Phil
Katz's company is many times the size of SEA and primarily from the
sales of PKARC.
After the fury had settled down a bit, I began to do my own
investigating. I found the SEA folks to be courteous, helpful, friendly
and quite pleasant to deal with. I found the people at PKWARE to be
hostile, aggressive, unfriendly, and quite unpleasant. This was true in
all dealings with the two companies. At this time in late 1988 and
early 1989, SEA was touting their new release of ARC (Version 6.00)
which was to be released shortly and was said to be quite superior to
older releases. Katz was putting out some beta releases of a
compression utility that was quite poor in just about every respect.
Based on the situation at that time, we on America Online made what
seemed to be the only reasonable and ethical decision; we chose to
continue using the ARC format as our standard compression format. Well,
so much for good intentions....
Another month rolled by and SEA released ARC 6.00. PKWARE released
PKZIP 0.90. Then the fun began. On a whim expecting to see blinding
speed and efficiency from ARC 6.00, I ARC'ed several large files. After
10 minutes I rebooted the machine because I had decided that it had gone
off to Never-Never Land. I began to test it on some smaller files and
found out that is was not as efficient in terms of compression as the
six month old PKARC and was decidedly slower. Figuring I had nothing to
lose, I tried PKZIP. I was done so quickly that I knew there had to
have been a problem However when I checked, sure enough, there was a
ZIP file with the right name and when I Un-Zipped it, the file restored
quite nicely. That is when I began to have some serious reservations
about the decision we had made.
Over the next few days, I ran a series of tests comparing the two
programs on a variety of file types and sizes and in the case of PKZIP,
with various levels of compression efficiency. The following chart
displays the results:
ARC 6.00 vs PKZIP 0.90
Comparison
(using Maximum and Default compression switches on PKZIP)
File DOS size ARC ZIP % of ZIP % of
(Default) ARC (max) ARC
There are a couple of things you need to know to fully understand
the above figures. PKZIP has variable compression efficiency
parameters. The default setting are level 2 (out of 4). As the
efficiency of compression increases, the time required also increases.
The default level of 2 provides in almost all cases a marginally
superior compression ratio to ARC and takes about half the time. It
provides overall about a 2% improvement in overall compression with
about a 50% reduction in time. The higher levels of compression
efficiency in PKZIP were markedly superior to ARC but as can be seen in
the results requires almost twice the time.
So the results are pretty clear: the SEA product, the newest and
best of a long line was soundly trounced by the PKWARE program in it's
first release. I was, quite honestly, a little shocked and was
disappointed that the SEA product was so poorly done. It was only
marginally better than the earlier versions and in fact was not able to
perform all of the operations that earlier versions could. All in all,
it was a great disappointment.
The results of our study was a decision to reverse our earlier
stand and move to embrace the .ZIP standard on our board. First and
foremost, the .ZIP standard is quite clearly superior to the .ARC
standard both in compression efficiency, flexibility, and in speed.
Second is the less obvious factor that in the microcomputer industry the
"good" guys don't always win. It is a fact of life that the better
program usually prevails and in this case, there is little question as
to which is the better program.
So, our plans on America Online now encompass taking the board down
for about 2 days and doing a wholesale conversion of over 6000 files
from the .ARC format to the .ZIP format. While the conversion itself
will be simply a matter of automated brute processing for a lot of
hours, the task of updating over 6000 DIR entries with new names and new
file sizes promises to be a real treat, but we have automated as much of
it as we can. We are currently planning to switch over in late March or
early April.
Regardless of which format you personally prefer, you are going to
have to become accustomed to working with both standards since files are
beginning to show up on most boards in both formats and there is no way
to prevent it. Most of the board around the area now have copies of the
PKZIP programs which are distributed as an .EXE file which un-
ZIPsitself. There is also a very convenient file out called ZIPQUIK5
which will convert from just about any compression to any other format.
This one is definitely a good one to have in a multi-format world.
Whichever way you choose to go, you are going to be different from
someone else.
As things look now, the .ZIP format seems to have the best future,
but like most standards in the microcomputer industry, those calls can
really only be made in hindsight. never with reliable foresight.
This feature is an unashamed copy of the regular sketch of the same
name on "Late Night with David Letterman". The entire thing is a joke,
and should be seen as such; no offense is ever intended, it's just
something to laugh about. If you do have any complaints, write them on
the back of a postage stamp along with return address and I will do my
best to ignore them. Thank you.
Our Local Bulletin Board Systems
Number Three In A Series
by Mark Maisel
Name: ST BBS
Sysop: Steve Turner
Software: PC Board 12.1/D (working on conversion to 14.0/D)
Been Around: 1 year
Baud Rates: 300-2400
Bulletins: General System Information
Conferences: EZNET - local message echo
Diplomacy - 2 online Diplomacy conferences for playing
strategy game of the same name
Computers Supported: IBM & Assorted Clones, Commodore 64 & 128, and
Amiga
Files Available: variety of shareware and public domain offerings,
selection of adult oriented text and graphics files
Doors Available: ProDoor, Card Guppies, Bay Street Bulls, 2 Trade Wars,
MOTU, and Star Trek
Special Information: another great place to call for information,
files, and online games
Q. Why did you start your BBS?
A. I got involved with telecommunications and became extremely interested.
I was looking for a hobby and decided to set up my own board.
Q. What has been your greatest reward from running your BBS?
A. Meeting some extremely interesting people through messages and in person.
Q. What are your greatest regrets and annoyance associated with running a
BBS?
A. I have not really had the problems that other sysops have had. I have
only had to trash can a few folks for rules violations and that is
about all I have had.
Q. What are your future plans for the BBS?
A. I am going to upgrade to PCB 14.0/D. I probably will be adding a second
line for subscribers only. I hope to do this within the next two months.
Q. What is the funniest thing that has happened on your BBS?
A. With Joey Bruno as co-sysop, most everything ends up being funny.
Q. What is your favorite hobby/pastime outside of your BBS and computers
in general?
A. I like to go camping. Getting away from it all is very relaxing.
Q. What do you think your system offers that might cause someone to
prefer your board over others?
A. A wide variety of doors to use and a diverse message base. Some of the
opinions of our users keep the board always interesting.
Q. Why?
A. Lots of users call here because I don't exert pressure on them to leave
messages or files. I try to stay in the background as the boss and
interact more as just another user.
BBS security has been a problem, not only in our area, but around
the country for years. Too often have well established boards been
crippled and even taken down because some, too-big-for-his-britches,
wise guy, hacker has broken down a boards defenses. This leaves the
Sysop and his or her board in a dangerous position. The worst case
would mean losing another board, or at least, many a long evening trying
to rebuild what is left of a well fragmented system. But have no fear,
help is on its way.
In the late seventies the U.S. Government, in an effort to increase
security and identify valid users, developed a program named Algorithmic
Process Redundancy Intelligent Logic File Output Operator Location
System. ( We will refer to this as A.P.R. ) A.P.R. had the ability to
identify it's users by the style of type input by the user. We aren't
talking about fonts, but rather the characteristics of a user's typing;
ie. spacing, speed, wording etc. These factors were combined and were
recognized as a "fingerprint" to the computer. The main system, through
a very complex artificial intelligence scheme, could deduce who was
accessing its information and from where.
Today A.P.R. has been introduced into the public domain as a
support file for P.C.Board and R.B.B.S. This file resides with the
other watchdog files as a mainline for security. When you log onto a
system, the board you are calling will go through its regular NAME &
PASSWORD checks. Once this clears, A.P.R. goes into action. It will
monitor your activities and update the system log, while also checking
your "fingerprints". If all checks out, then you will continue on with
no problem. The program is invisible to the user and lightning fast, so
no major slowdown should be evident.
If, however, A.P.R. does suspect foul play, it will first alert the
sysop that a security violation has occurred. The board will drop
offline while maintaining the modem connection. The computer is then
instructed to call the local authorities, which will trace the
connection that is being held open. The police and F.B.I. will then
proceed to the location of the originating call and take what actions
are necessary. The BBS computer would then download all it's
information on the user in question, reset itself, and then continue
it's operation. Total downtime for the BBS is only three minutes.
So the next time you are planning to do a little hacking for fun or
profit, or are just trying to show off for your friends, think about
Algorithmic Process Redundancy Intelligent Logic File Output Operator
Location System. Or just remember " A.P.R.I.L. F.O.O.L.S. "
The Pro File is a short, half-serious biographical sketch given to
various computer telecommunications personalities around Birmingham.
Victims are selected randomly from a group of names put into the
notorious Hat. Anyone who thinks himself brave or witty enough may
petition for admittance to the Hat by leaving E-Mail to me (Chris
Mohney, most boards around town) to that effect. Anyone who wishes to
suggest more questions or sneakily nominate someone without their
knowledge may take the same route ....
---------
Pro File on KEITH CAHOON
---------
Age: 33
Birthplace: B'ham,Al.
Occupation: Electronic Engineer Specialist
My hobbies include: writing and playing music, woodworking, romancing
my wife, target shooting and reloading bullets
Years telecomputing: 10 years
Sysop, past/present/future of: Co-Sysop of my wife's bbs, Point of NO Return
My oddest habit is: playing the guitar
My greatest unfulfilled ambition is: to write a song which sells.
The single accomplishment of which I am most proud is: my family
My favorite performers are: Edward Van Halen, Eric Clapton,Jimmy Page,
Steve Vie, Lesley West
The last good movie I saw was: Clint Eastwood in the Dead Pool
The last good book I read was: C Programming for the IBM PC by Microsoft Press
(Charles Prezold)
If they were making a movie of my life, I'd like to see my part played by:
Clint Eastwood
My pet peeves are: dishonesty, messes, and brown nosers.
When nobody's looking, I like to: act goofy.... being myself.
I just can't seem to put my grill up and the weather is getting to
be such that I really don't have to. So here we go again and this time
we're going to something a little more special.
Step #1: Go to the store (I recommends either Mr. P's Market in
Bluff Park or Vincent's at the Brookwood Convenience Center) and
purchase either 2 nice Filet Mignon or 2 nice Veal Chops. Each should be
about 2 inches thick and somewhere in the 1 pound range. Act like you
know what your doing and what you want and they'll work with you a lot
more at Vincent's. At least that is what I do.
Step #2: Get yourself a nice bottle of red wine. Actually I suggest
getting 2 bottles because the first one always seems to go so fast. In
this range I suggest a Stag's Leap Cabernet Savignion, it's a little
expensive but well worth the evening I'm going to cook up for you.
Step #3: Get your mother or mother-in-law on the phone early in the
week and let her know she will be getting the kid's on Friday afternoon.
Grandparents never seem to mind this so try for the whole weekend but
settle for the night.
Step #4: Friday afternoon leave work a couple of hours early and
get the kids on their way.
Step #5: Put 2 large potatoes on to bake and open a bottle of the
wine. Red wine should always be allowed to breath for 30 minutes or so
before drinking. Try this at a restaurant, sometimes it will impress the
hell out of your waiter.
Step #6: Fry 3 strips of bacon and set aside to drain. Chop 1
medium onion and saute in the bacon fat until clear. Peel 1 small tomato
and finely chop; put in a cup and set aside. Shred 1/2 cup of sharp
Cheddar cheese and set aside.
Step #7: Get the grill going and put on one of those old Righteous
Brothers albums so that you'll be ready when the wife wheels in the
drive. Pour her a glass of wine and send her to get into something that
will be fitting for a meal and wine but not dressy. Say, oh, blue jeans
and a T-shirt. Don't worry about the clothes. The music and the wine
will handle all those details.
Step #8: Lightly salt and pepper the steaks. Put them on the grill
and flash grill them over HIGH heat to sear. Turn the grill down low and
get back to the kitchen.
Step #9: When the potatoes are ready squash them up real well and
slice the tops. Take a spoon and dig the shells out and place in a large
bowl. Add all the ingredients from step #3 and mix well. If you want you
can leave a little cheese out to garnish the tops with. After every
thing is thoroughly mixed put the mixture back into the potato skins and
place them in a warm oven.
Step #10: Pour the wife another glass of wine. Comment on the way
she looks and check the steaks. If you burn these suckers you might as
well go get the kids and bring them home. Please do not over cook the
meat. Either selection should be cooked no more than medium.
Step #11: Bernaise Sauce. 4 egg yolks; 2 tablespoons tarragon
vinegar; 4 tablespoons heavy cream; 3 tablespoons freshly chopped herbs;
1 shallot finely chopped; salt and white pepper to taste; one half stick
of butter melted. Combine vinegar, shallots, herbs and reduce slightly
over heat. Put in a double boiler and add egg yolks. Whisk vigorously
till mixture begins to thicken. Gradually add butter and cream, whisking
until light colored and THICK.
Step #12: Retrieve steaks and place on dinner plates with potatoes.
If you want you can have a salad and some bread that you picked up when
you bought the meat. Slice the meat across the grain and pour on sauce.
Light the candles, put on the Marvin Gaye album , pour two glasses of
wine and serve dinner in the living room at the coffee table where you
have placed 2 pillows for you each to sit on.
Step #13: After dinner, if you need to, pull out a Mrs. Smith's pie
for dessert. By this time you'll be able to get away with anything so
don't worry if you forgot to get ice cream or something to cover the
pie.
While calling several BBS's one morning, I discovered a note
someone left about free software at the downtown Birmingham Library.
Being the cheap,err I mean bargain hunter that I am, I had to
investigate this mystery.
I had never been to the downtown branch before, yet I was
impressed with the library overall. I began looking for clues as to the
whereabouts of this free software. My search took me to the third flour
where I found a PC sitting on a table all by itself in the business
department. I said, 'This looks tempting' and proceeded to sit right
down and play with computer. I noticed a small sign on top of the
monitor and on the keyboard which said, 'This Laser Disk Contains Only
Disks 1-1000', to which I started getting excited. I found a book
laying next to the computer entitled, 'PC-SIG Library Disks' and started
leafing through it to see what goldmine I had found.
What I had found was the library has purchased the first laser
disk with program disks 1 through 1000 for the popular PC-SIG library.
It has several hundred (probably thousands) of public domain and
shareware programs for our free use and all you need do is bring a 5 1/4
inch floppy disk to copy it on. The system allows you to format disks
there although you can save time by formatting them at home first. If
you do be sure to format your disks as Double Sided/Double Density.
The program is pretty straight forward to use. It will first ask
whether the files are to be copied ARCed or UnARCed to your disk. I
would suggest ARCed because it takes up less space. If you do not have
a program that UnARCs a program, then get PKARC by Phil Katz from this
CD, but have the program UnARC it first. Then when you are finished
getting it, tell the program to ARC all your other files.
I was told by one of the librarians that the main branch may be
buying the next CD when it becomes available, but not until it has disks
1001-2000 because they are expensive. I urge everyone who has thought
about ordering from the PC-SIG library and go to the library and use the
computer set up there. It is free (you do not even have to have a
library card) and if they know the computer community is using this
service, they will be encouraged to offer more services for our use.
While you are there, be sure to browse the collection of computer
text and manuals. All systems are represented: Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS
compatible, Commodore 64's and Atari computers are a few I have seen.
Topics range from programming, to the legal aspects of copyrighting your
software.
Whether you check out a book or copy a few disks, tell the
librarians that you like what they are doing and please feel free to
give helpful hints or suggestions to better improve this idea.
BEPCUG CCS
Birmingham East PC Users Group Commodore Club South
Jefferson State Jr. College Springville Road Library
RUBY Carson Bldg. 1st Floor-Computer Lab Huffman, Alabama
3rd Friday of Every Month 2nd and 4th Tuesday (C64/C128)
5:30PM to 9:00PM 3rd Monday (Amiga)
Paula Ballard 853-1200,ext 1463 (Days) 7:30 PM to 10:00 PM
Maurice Lovelady 684-6843
BCCC BAC
Birmingham Commodore Computer Club Birmingham Apple Corps
P. O. Box 59564 POB 5542
Birmingham, Alabama 35259 Birmingham, Alabama 32555
UAB School of Ed. Bldg. Room 153 Regular meetings - 1st Sunday
2nd and 4th Sundays UAB Building #2, Rm 115 at 2PM
Starts at 2:00 PM Informal get-every Saturday
Emmett Ferretti 823-3987 morning at 8:30AM at the
Rusty Hargett 854-5172 Kopper Kettle in the Brookwood
annex next to AC3
If you belong to or know of a user group that is not listed, please let
us know by sending E-Mail to me, Barry Bowden, on EzNet.
Please leave the following information :
User Group Name
Meeting Place
Meeting Time(Day/date,Time)
Contact Person
Any Other Important Information
