HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: duck@nuustak.csir.co.za (Paul Ducklin)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Re: Product Test 45, Virus Prevention Plus, version 5.10 (PC)
Date: 4 Oct 92 17:21:40 GMT

Thus spake padgett@tccslr.dnet.mmc.com (A. Padgett Peterson):
>2) Tandon - uses a custom BIOS that actually checks the BIOS for a valid
>   partition table (bravo !),

Not quite sure what this means -- especially since the partition table
is not part of the BIOS [or is there a version of FDISK out there
which can remask ROMs while they're in use :-)]. Assuming that the
second "BIOS" should read "HDD", then so what? Most MBR viruses leave
the partition table intact, altering only the *code* zone of the MBR,
so an integrity check of the partition table at BIOS level will show
nothing wrong. Lastly, if "partition table" should read "MBR" (ie:
code+table), then what constitutes "valid"? There are lots of "valid"
partition record boot loaders out there -- the FDISK one, Coherent's
multiboot one, XYZ Corp's multiconfig one, etc. Seems like defining
"valid" partition record boot loader might be a bit tricky, and even
trickier to implement an algorithm to perform the "validation"...

- -- 
- --<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--<>--
Paul Ducklin                                           duck@nuustak.csir.co.za

    CSIR Computer Virus Research Lab * Box 395 * Pretoria * 0001 S Africa
From: JFL@HOBBES.CCA.CR.ROCKWELL.COM
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Virus Scanner Comparisons (PC)
Date: 6 Oct 92 22:35:00 GMT

Some time back, virus scanner comparison data was posted to this
newsgroup.  I thought I saved a copy of it, but apparently I was
halucinating. I would really appreciate it if some kind soul would
either re-post it or point me to an ftp site containing the
information. Our department is in the process of choosing a scanner or
scanners for internal use. Post or E-mail, whichever you prefer.

- --
Joe Lawrence                   |"All opinions are mine, not Rockwell's"
Engineering Support Services   | To do is to be - Nietzsche
Rockwell International         | To be is to do - Sarte
jfl@hobbes.cca.cr.rockwell.com | Do be do be do - Sinatra
From: TYETISER@ssw01.ab.umd.edu (Tarkan Yetiser)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: re: Review of VDS (PC)
Date: 8 Oct 92 06:45:28 GMT


   Hello everyone,

   rslade@sfu.ca  writes:

> Subject: Review of VDS (PC)

> As usual, I have given the developers a chance to respond to the draft
> i have made some minor changes on the basis of this response, but I
> suspect that Tarken will be responding to this review at great length.

   Looking at the "review", you barely read our response :-) BTW, the
name is Tarkan, sir, not Tarken. As far as a lengthy response goes, I
will not waste bandwidth since the stuff you posted does not seem to
be about VDS.  Worse yet, it omits major features of the package and
it does not even mention how it handled a common virus infection.
Considering that no criteria is given in any of your evaluations, we
have to say that there is no context in which some of your comments
make sense. We think that the main principle of reporting performance
evaluations should be reproducibility. Please share with us and the
rest of your readers how you go about testing products. We have the
impression that your "methods" are ad hoc and cannot be taken
seriously. Hope we are mistaken.

   The sad part is that you are giving your readers an incomplete picture.
Reviewing an integrity package is not the easiest thing to do, compared to
the simplicity of scanner zoo-testing; and to some extent, gross
inaccuracies in your posting are understandable.

   Individuals who wish to look at VDS can do so by downloading a copy
of the trial version (fully functional with a few features missing) from
many FTP sites, including Simtel-20 and its mirrors. And if anyone finds
that the F1 key does not do anything perceptible as you say, we would
like to hear :-)

   VDS is a very comprehensive package with carefully selected components.
The documentation may not do justice to each one; however, calling it
flippant or containing little substantive material is ludicrous. And if it
maintains a sense of humor at certain points, that is for those who can
appreciate such an approach. It is readable, unlike many others you would
see.
   In the light of what you call a "review", I cannot help but quote a
sentence from our "flippant" documentation:

  "... Similarly, some product reviewers get their stopwatches and virus
  samples ready and babble the same old rhetoric about the numerous (but
  irrelevant) features of these anti-viral programs. This situation hurts
  the end-users in a non-obvious way: it adds to the existing confusion
  about what the problem is and what a good solution should entail."

                                        VDS 2.10 documentation, page 3

   Have a nice day of virus-free computing!


P.S.: VDS Pro 1.0 is in beta-test phase, and it should be available in a
      few weeks. Interested individuals can send me e-mail and I will try
      to answer any questions as my time permits.


Regards

Regards,

Tarkan Yetiser
VDS Advanced Research Group               P.O. Box 9393
(410) 247-7117                            Baltimore, MD 21228, U.S.A.
e-mail:  tyetiser@ssw01.ab.umd.edu
Newsgroups: comp.msdos.programmer,comp.os.msdos.misc
From: wutcd@chemnitz.guug.de (Joerg Wunsch)
Subject: Format for backup WANTED
Keywords: backup format
Organization: tu-chemnitz
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 15:16:25 GMT

Hi Netfolks:-)

We have to establish connections between our U**X workstations and several
DOS boxes at our customers. Of course, we can use any ethernet link (the
current solution), but this is ugly since we have to open their boxes,
and they're afraid we'd destroy something. So i decided to write DOS
diskettes on the workstations.
The problem is: if the file(s) don't fit onto a single disk, they must
be split. I can use tar, or i can write a program myself to resemble
the parts into a single disk file on DOS. But i guess that must be possib-
le to use the format of backup (ugly, i know...) since this is a standard
program which should be available at any newer DOS system. So i won't have
to use any own software at destination and thus are not suspected to make
something wrong (and you know, there's always something wrong on DOS:-).

In short: is there anyone having pointers where to find a description
of backup/restore format?

eMail would be appreciated, i have to remote login to use NetNews.

	thanx in advance,
	J"org


--
J"org Wunsch, TCD GmbH Dresden, R"ahnitzgasse 18, D-O-8060 Dresden
                                                              \     ~.~. 
	joerg_wunsch%bonnie@hadrian.hrz.tu-chemnitz.de         \   ~  | ~ 
	voice: +49-351-5965 137                                 \    ===
Xref: sparky comp.msdos.programmer:71 comp.os.msdos.misc:5634
From: johnboyd@ocdis01.UUCP (John Boyd)
Newsgroups: comp.msdos.programmer,comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: Format for backup WANTED
Keywords: backup format
Date: 8 Oct 92 20:57:55 GMT
Followup-To: comp.msdos.programmer
Organization: Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma

In article <wutcd.718470985@hadrian> wutcd@chemnitz.guug.de (Joerg Wunsch) writes:
>le to use the format of backup (ugly, i know...) since this is a standard
>program which should be available at any newer DOS system. So i won't have

I don't know all the whys and wherefores, but suffice it to say that the
backup function is not compatible across all MS/PC-DOS platforms.  I had
occasion to try it once.  My recommendation is.. don't.  Use something that
works the same at both the PC and *nix end, such as the tar you suggested,
or something else.
____________________________________________________________________________
"Cherish your memories, the rest ends up in a garage sale" -Ferris Beuller
Disclaimer: If you ask the Air Force, they'll tell you I don't know what
              I'm talking about.
Xref: sparky comp.programming:2887 comp.lang.c:14897 comp.lang.pascal:5959 comp.lang.objective-c:614
From: pdomain@emory.edu (Mike Mitten)
Newsgroups: comp.programming,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.pascal,comp.lang.objective-c
Subject: Re: NO NUMBERS! (or even SHORT INTS!)
Date: 13 Oct 92 13:33:11 GMT
Followup-To: comp.programming
Organization: Emory University, Atlanta, GA
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

J. D. McDonald (mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu) wrote:
>I calculated "e" to 9000 digits once, programming the machine in machine
>language (not assembler) and it chugged out the answer correctly.

How do you know?  :-)

Mike Mitten - pdomain@emory.edu - Irony is the spice of life. - DoD#522
I do not speak for Emory University, nor for Public Domain, Inc.
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: thompson@atlas.socsci.umn.edu (T. Scott Thompson)
Subject: Re: Ellipses?
Reply-To: thompson@atlas.socsci.umn.edu
Organization: Economics Department, University of Minnesota
Distribution: comp
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 18:18:22 GMT

dseal@armltd.co.uk (David Seal) writes:

>In article <1992Oct15.144816.9814@geovision.gvc.com> pt@geovision.gvc.com
>(Paul Tomblin) writes:

>>I need an algorithm for generating points along an ellipse.  I assume I
>>would have to specify three input points (centre, semi-major axis end,
>>and another?)  These ellipses cannot be contrainted to have the semi-major
>>axis along the x-axis.

>The main problem with specifying non-axis-aligned ellipses in terms of
>points is that they have 5 degrees of freedom. You can specify them in many
>different ways - e.g.:

[3 different ways deleted]

>When you specify a curve in terms of points, you always get an even number
>of degrees of freedom. When an odd number are needed (as in this case), you
>need to throw one away in some way. The classic example of this is the

[lots of other stuff deleted, but no algorithm that directly uses the
major / minor axis points ]

All of this degrees of freedom stuff is easily disposed of.  Given
three points (x0,y0), (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) that do not all lie on the
same line, there exists a unique ellipse centered on (x0,y0) that
passes through the other two points.  You can take (x1,y1) and (x2,y2)
to be on the major and minor axes if you want, and this will make the
following algorithm less prone to round off errors, but this is not
necessary.

   If we happen to choose (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) as points on the axes
then they must satisfy the equation

             (x1-x0)*(x2-x0) + (y1-y0)*(y2-y0) = 0

which explains why there appears to be an "extra" degree of freedom
here.

An algorithm can be constructed using the fact that an ellipse is the
image of a circle under a linear transformation of the plane.  The
linear transformation is not unique (again explaining why there
appears to be an "extra" degree of freedom) since a circle is
unchanged by rotation of the plane around its center.  But we don't
need to find a unique transformation, we just need _one_ of many
transformations that yield the desired ellipse.

Here is the algorithm:

Choose how many points N you want to construct on the perimeter of the
ellipse.  I recommend making N a multiple of 4.

For i = 0, ... , N-1 construct the points:

  Xi = x0 + (x1 - x0)*cos( i/(2*Pi*N) ) + (x2 - x0)*sin( i/(2*Pi*N) )

  Yi = y0 + (y1 - y0)*cos( i/(2*Pi*N) ) + (y2 - y0)*sin( i/(2*Pi*N) )

The N points (Xi,Yi) are all points on the ellipse centered at
(x0,y0).  The first point will be (x1,y1) and the N/4 'th point will
be (x2,y2), provided N/4 is an integer.

This algorithm will give you points such that each pair of successive
points makes a uniform angle relative to the center of the ellipse,
provided that (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) are on the axes.

Easy! No?
--
T. Scott Thompson              email:  thompson@atlas.socsci.umn.edu
Department of Economics        phone:  (612) 625-0119
University of Minnesota        fax:    (612) 624-0209
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Friday, 9 Oct 1992 09:10:58 CDT
From: <U59919@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: ASCII char. remapping

My name is Theodore-I hate those numbers up there.
what I need is some info on something.
I want to re-define the ASCII characters in the LOWER
128 ASCII group.
I want to be able to totally re-bitmap them.
They should respond to the same keys, but just look like the new bitmapped

character.  Any help, source code, completed programs, etc. would be helpful.


Just remember...Insanity is the only thing that keeps us sane.
Newsgroups: comp.programming,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.pascal,comp.lang.objective-c
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: reference counting garbage collection
Date: 7 Oct 1992 19:34:42 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: telecaster.think.com

In article <14935@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <LOWRY.92Oct4170206@rotor.watson.ibm.com>,
> lowry@watson.ibm.com (Andy Lowry) writes:
>> reference counting does have its place.
>
>One example:  the UNIX file system.  Hard links are references, and a file
>survives just as long as (its reference count is non-zero or it is open in
>a running process).  There are cycles (due to ".."), but that's one of the
>reasons why rmdir used to be a separate program.

That's a good example.  The fact that directory links are very restricted
(only "." and "..") are examples of my posting, where I said that reference
counting can work well when you have regular patterns of references.

Also, several posters have mentioned that reference counting can be
supplemented with an occasional full GC; in UFS, that would be fsck.

-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: dak@rama.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (David Kastrup)
Subject: Re: How to implement interpolation?
Keywords: interpolation, curves
Organization: Rechnerbetrieb Informatik  /  RWTH Aachen
Date: 10 Oct 92 15:47:41 GMT

oksalahti@hylkn1.Helsinki.FI (Oksalahti Mikko) writes:

>Hello curve-coders,

>What is a simple way the program the following interpolation:

>	I have a list (or array) of controlpoints in 3D-space (x,y,z). For
>	example n points.

>	I want the draw a nice smooth curve which is interpolated through
>	these controlpoints (THROUGH them, not any Bezier/B-spline curve).

Spline interpolation goes through the points. That's why it is
called interpolation.
Newsgroups: comp.programming,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.pascal,comp.lang.objective-c
From: bena@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Ben Aveling)
Subject: Re: NO NUMBERS! (or even SHORT INTS!)
Organization: Monash University General Access Unix
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 12:32:07 GMT

Geoff Kuenning (geoff@ITcorp.com) wrote:
: In article <tholle16.717655308@ursa> tholle16@ursa.calvin.edu (Tim Hollebeek) writes:
: 
: (3) It is *always* poor practice to name a constant after its value.
: There is nothing stupider than:
: 
: 	#define ONE 1
: 	...
: 	x += ONE;
: 
: Name constants after their purpose.

I've heard of something stupider.  Started off much as above, 
#define FOUR 4

After some time, a major change was made, line had to change to
#define FOUR 5

:-)

	Ben
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: dak@tabaqui.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (David Kastrup)
Subject: Re: Calculating a CRC of other CRCs
Organization: Rechnerbetrieb Informatik  /  RWTH Aachen
Date: 12 Oct 92 22:09:22 GMT

gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) writes:

>Here is a warning.  If you reorder the statements in a program, then
>an 8-bit CRC will not change.  If you employ a 32-bit CRC, then there
>is still a 1/16 chance that any given statement reordering will not
>change the CRC.
If you exchange 2 bytes in a program, you effectively xor the xor of both
bytes on the first byte as well as the second. Now running this modified
pattern through a reasonably useful CRC (which would have a period of
256), the 8-bit CRC would only be the same if the statements would
be a multiple of 32 bytes apart. (Maybe it was 255 bits period).
This is quite ok concerning theoretically 1/256 probability.
But 8 bit is really not that secure. I do not know how you arrive at
your figures, but with 32-Bit CRCs, probabilities are REALLY good
that reordering will cause CRC difference.

I hope we mean the same thing by CRC (cyclic redundancy check). A thing
generated by a devious combination of shifting and XORing that is guaranteed,
when fed with all zeros, to run through all possible patterns before repeating
once. Maybe you are confusing CRCs with checksums, I am afraid.
From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: filling a BST from random and sorted data
Date: 8 Oct 92 04:07:49 GMT
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia

In article <1992Oct6.045044.6353@netcom.com>, pdh@netcom.com (Phil Howard ) writes:
> Does anyone have any references for an algorithm suitable for filling
> in a binary search tree from data that in some cases will be in random
> order and in some cases will be sorted in ascending sequence?  I'd
> like to approach the average tree search access times as would be
> expected from random input.

I would suggest
    - reading in the data treating the tree nodes as LIST nodes (e.g.,
      ignore left child, use right child as "CDR" link).
    - sort the list using natural merge; this will take O(N) time if the
      list is already sorted, O(N.lgN) if it is not, and the constant
      factor is very good.  [I can supply C code for this.]
    - now you have a linked list in ascending order whose length you know;
      you can build a balanced binary tree from it in O(N) time.

Result:  O(N) time if input is in order, O(NlgN) time if it isn't, which
is as good as you could get for building a BST anyway, and no auxiliary
data structures needed.
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: tyamamot (Taro Yamamoto)
Subject: Re: Learning Pascal...
Followup-To: comp.programming
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 05:32:38 GMT

Here I list the following two books.

David A. Niguidula and Andries van Dam, Pascal on the Macintosh: A
Graphical Approach,
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1987.

Kathleen Jensen and Niklaus Wirth, PASCAL: User Manual and Report, 2nd Ed.,
Springer-Verlag, New York Inc., New York 1975. 

The former will be a good guide when you start learning THINK Pascal
(without
its object-oriented extension). But I guess you will need to consult the
latter book
when you try to fully understand the language: its syntax and semantics.

To learn how to write Mac applications, you need some other books, but I do
not have
any list of such books.

Taro Yamamoto
tyamamot@adobe.com

Disclaimer:  
Views and recommendations, express or implied, are my own, and
do not reflect the opinion or policy of my employers.
From: jhenders@jonh.wimsey.bc.ca (John Henders)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Distribution: world
Organization:  One of these days for sure
X-News: HERMES MMAIL 1.04 Rev. Sep  5 1992
Subject: Best fit algorithm for group of dissimilar rectangles
Date: Wed, 07 Oct 1992 13:41:12 -0700

    Could anyone direct me to an algorithm to fit a group of 
different sized rectangles into one rectangle of the smallest 
size possible to enclose said rectangles? 
    I have a group of boxes enclosed by a window, and I'd like 
to be able to allow a user to select a subsect of the boxes and 
have the window enclose them by repositioning the boxes in the 
most optimal arrangement to minimalize the window size.

-- 
       John Henders      jhenders@jonh.wimsey.bc.ca
    I think your "evolutionary scale" needs an adjustment.  Either 
      that, or you've got your thumb on it. -> (lefty@apple.com)

Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: tma@encore.com (Thanh Ma)
Subject: turn off the cursor
Organization: Encore Computer Corporation
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 20:49:27 GMT
Summary: turning off the cursor
Keywords: cursor, editor

A while ago there was some discussions about how to turn off the cursor.
Would someone kindly send me information about this.

Thanks.
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: dak@tabaqui.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (David Kastrup)
Subject: Re: Calculating a CRC of other CRCs
Organization: Rechnerbetrieb Informatik  /  RWTH Aachen
Date:  8 Oct 92 20:29:34 GMT

schmidtg@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes:



>I am looking for a mechanism to quickly compare two programs.  Each program
>will reside on a different CPU and the programs may be large, so a direct byte
>by byte comparison would be too time consuming.  I only need to know whether
>the two programs are identical or they are different -- I will not be generating
>difference listings.  I would like to use a CRC computed on the entire program
>as a means of comparison.

Of course that is not safe, different programs may have identical CRCs.

>In addition, the program is organized as "chunks" and a chunk may be
>independently edited.  However, when the chunk is edited, I would like to
>avoid having to recalculate the CRC for the entire program.  I would like to
>somehow "incrementally" update the CRC based on a small change.  I doubt this
>is possible, so an alternative is to calculate a CRC for each chunk and then
>calculate the CRC for the entire program by calculating a CRC on all of the
>"chunk CRCs".  In that way, I can avoid having to examine the entire program
>each time a chunk has changed.

>However, I don't know how reasonable it is to calculate "a CRC of other CRCs".
>There may be some statistical pitfalls in doing this which may reduce the
>effectiveness of the CRC and introduce the possibility of error.

The possibility of error is always there when using CRCs. But you can
notice that CRCs are linear. So taking one chunk out and another one
in could be moderately easy, if both are same length (take CRC of first
chunk, xor with CRC of second chunk, let CRC generator run with zero input
for the length of the rest of the file after the replaced chunk (this
can be done more efficiently, of course, using the generating polynomial))
and XOR that into the old, whole file CRC. If the replaced chunkhas
a different length, you will either have to CRC the head of the file
(completely) or the tail (completely as well). If you do not like that,
simply take CRCs of the single parts and XOR them. That is the same
as XORing all the streaks (aligned at the tail), so that if the same
bit flips at the same position in two streaks, you will not notice it.

If you calculate CRCs of CRCs, then this situation is less probable
to occur. Since the bits of the CRCs are supposedly rather uncorrelated,
taking CRCs of CRCs is about as safe (or unsafe) as taking CRCs over
the whole file.
Newsgroups: comp.programming,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.pascal,comp.lang.objective-c
From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Pi (was Re: NO NUMBERS! (or even SHORT INTS!))
Date: 9 Oct 92 02:28:12 GMT
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

In article <389@ulogic.UUCP> hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman) writes:
 > 
 > Just off the top of my head:
 > 
 > #define PI ((double) 3.1415926535897932384626)
 > 
You want PI?  This program generates quite a lot of digits; you could even
check your final 6:

int a=10000,b,c=2800,d,e,f[2801],g;main(){for(;b-c;)f[b++]=a/5;for(;d=0,g=c*2;c
-=14,printf("%.4d",e+d/a),e=d%a)for(b=c;d+=f[b]*a,f[b]=d%--g,d/=g--,--b;d*=b);}
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj  amsterdam, nederland
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn  amsterdam, nederland; e-mail: dik@cwi.nl
Newsgroups: comp.programming