HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,sci.math
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers
From: ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Thomas Koenig)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 04:48:40 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

I think there is quite an important distinction to make when you look at
the type of programs scientists write: what it is for.

Personally, I have encountered four types of programs.

One is the "one - shot" program, which is typically written to show that
it is safe to neglect X, or that Y holds. These programs are usually
optimized toward development time minimum: just get it running as fast
as possible, no matter how efficient it is, or what dirty tricks it
uses. For these programs, documentation is almost unheard of, and
persuading people to write them "cleaner" is probably going to be
impossible.

The second class of program is the "production version", which you
may need to run quite often, say once for every experiment you do.
If efficiency is indeed critical, people may spend some time on
optimizing the code; with some luck, they may even document it.

The third class of program is the general libary, which implements
commonly (or not so commonly) used algorithms. Usually, people who write
these use professional software development methods, and probably few CS
purists would find fault with their methods (except that they usually
use FORTRAN :-)

The fourth group is that of data aquisition programs. These could
probably benefit most from CS, and yet the experimental scientists who
are usually stuck with writing them for their own rigs are least likely
to have any experience with programming. They might even have to use
a language like GWBasic because the hardware can only be accessed by a
vendor - supplied library.

There is, however, another aspect to this. Scientists usually view a
program as a means to an end. Any time they spend on the niceties of
program documentation, code cleanup etc. is going to come straight out
of the time when they could have written that other publication or made
these four extra experiments to check out that exciting new theory.
Making life easier for someone who might someday come across a similar
problem is not going to be high on their list of priorities.
-- 
Thomas Koenig, ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz, ib09@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic
diagram.
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran
From: bwallet@apssgi.nswc.navy.mil (Brad Wallet)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Date: 1 Sep 92 11:58:49 GMT
Organization: Naval Surface Warfare Center

In article <1992Aug31.195540.13074@ctr.columbia.edu>, shenkin@avogadro.barnard.columbia.edu (Peter S. Shenkin) writes:
|> Well, there's variation person-to-person within all disciplines, and we've
|> heard scientists and "computer science types" comment on how well, or
|> poorly, scientists write code, but in my experience the implicit notion that
|> "computer science types" are automatically good programmers is false.
|> 
|> In many or most CS departments, computer science has more to do with 
|> proving theorems than writing code, and the experience obtained by
|> students getting degrees, at whatever level, in these departments
|> reflects the leanings of the department.
|> 
|> I've recently concluded that expecting a computer science graduate to
|> be a good programmer is like expecting an English major to be a good
|> writer.  Both expectations are, unfortunately, false.

As I have said previously, you are getting computer scientists and 
software engineers confused.  Software engineering is the discipline
concerned with writing good code.  Software engineers study the design
process, design philosophy, testing, life style management, reliability,
and all that other stuff that defines good code.

Computer science compares to software engineering much as math and physics
compare to the various engineering fields.

-------------------------------------------------
Brad Wallet                 Mathematician
bwallet@relay.nswc.navy.mil Naval Surface Warfare Center
(703)663-4950               (AVN)249-4950
DSMAC - "Tomahawk's Eyes"
"I can neither confirm nor deny that these opinions
are entirely my own and may or may not reflect those
of the US Navy." 
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
From: ak45ldp@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: Texaco
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 13:41:33 GMT

In article <BtwJGC.1F1@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, ceblair@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charles Blair) writes:
|> zweben@linguine.cis.ohio-state.edu (Stu Zweben) writes:
|> 
|> >This is one of the main reasons that the Computing Sciences Accreditation
|> >Board was formed by ACM and IEEE-CS in the mid-80s.  Programs that are
|> >accredited through CSAB must require 2/5 of a year of science (four courses,
|> >including the equivalent of a two-semester sequence in a lab science for
|> >science majors, and ...
|> 
|>    I do not see why somebody intending to programming work, even in a real
|> world setting, needs two semesters of lab science.

If all you want to do is program, you don't need a CS degree.  You can get 
a degree in MIS or Computer Engineering.  MIS degrees prepare one for
programming in a buisness setting.  CE is a more broad than MIS, with a
software/hardware engineering slant.  CS is more science than engineering.
However, it is a science of "how things should be" as much as it is a 
science of "how things are."

-- 
Larry D. Pyeatt                 The views expressed here are not
Internet : pyeatt@texaco.com    those of my employer or of anyone
Voice    : (713) 975-4056       that I know of with the possible
                                exception of myself.
dov
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: tcpip and gobbler
From: dov@menora.weizmann.ac.il (Dov Grobgeld)
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 08:52:41 GMT
Organization: Weizmann Institute of Science, Computation Center.

We have had problems with intruders to our network and I have run
the PC Gobbler program to snif up ethernet packets on the local
ethernet segment. With the included software I can look at the
data of tcpip packets, packet by packet, but it is quite tedious
to follow what the intruder typed this way.

Included with Gobbler is a program that dissects the surrounding
ethernet packet and extracts the tcp-ip packet. Unfortunately I have
not been able to decipher the tcp-ip packet manually to extract the
data section.

Could someone please describe the anatomy of a tcpip packet? Or
refer me to a document where it can be found.

Please reply by E-mail, as I am not a regular subscriber of this
group.

--
                                                        ___   ___
                                                      /  o  \   o \
Dov Grobgeld                                         ( o  o  ) o   |
The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel             \  o  /o  o /
"Where the tree of wisdom carries oranges"              | |   | |
                                                       _| |_ _| |_
From: randy@psg.com (Randy Bush)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Why does my slip line die overnight?
Keywords: slip
Date: 30 Aug 92 20:52:45 GMT
Organization: Pacific Systems Group, Portland Oregon, US

ghawkins@unix1.tcd.ie (George C. Hawkins) writes:
> When I leave my machine overnight and come back in the morning I
> find my slip connection has died on me.

We see the same thing here in Orygun's RAINet.  We believe (urban legend)
that the telco does an 02:00 blast to clear the lines.
-- 
randy@psg.com   ...!uunet!m2xenix!randy
From: nazari@ecn.purdue.edu (Jamshid Nazari)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Need TCP/IP source
Keywords: TCP/IP, SCO, X11
Date: 31 Aug 92 20:49:22 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network

I have SCO 3.2 version 4.1 operating system, with version 4.0 development
system. I would like to install X11 R5. I don't have TCP/IP. 

Could any one tell me the ftp sites where I  might be able to get public
domain TCP/IP source for unix. 

Thank you.
From: ghawkins@unix1.tcd.ie (George C. Hawkins)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Why does my slip line die overnight?
Summary: see subject.
Keywords: slip
Date: 27 Aug 92 12:47:01 GMT
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin


When I leave my machine overnight and come back in the morning I
find my slip connection has died on me. Does it timeout on inactivity
in the belief that it's saving dialup line money (I have a fixed
link)? There is no mention of such behaviour in my docs. Can I
disable this "feature" or do I have to get my machine to run ping
over the connection at regular intervals or is it something completely
different?

Thanks for your time, yours,


George.
--
george lives at:
___________________________________________________________________________
|   ghawkins@unix1.tcd.ie (mostly)  |   ghawkins@vax1.tcd.ie (sometimes)  |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xref: sparky comp.protocols.tcp-ip:4251 comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains:603
From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip,comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains,arpa.bind,arpa.nets
Subject: Re: Maintaining DNS resource records for sites with many hosts
Keywords: bind
Date: 1 Sep 92 01:10:25 GMT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.1992Sep1.011025.3429
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA

In article <1992Aug31.163615.16509@tc.cornell.edu> kakazu@cornell.edu writes:
>I would like to see if anyone has developed a front end for maintaining
>resource records that named uses, particularly for sites that have many
>hosts.
>
>What we do is maintain a file in hosts.txt format (RFC 952), which is
>sucked in nightly by a bunch of scripts which produce files with the
>records.  This has been working fine for several years, but it is less
>than forgiving for typos, error checking illegal addresses, etc.
>I think this method is fine if you don't have many hosts, but we are
>now approaching several thousand hosts.
>
>I would like to find some type of user friendly front end where one
>could input the DNS info, do some error checking, and have the resource
>record files automagically generated.

DECathena uses its service management system, Moira, as a front end
for generating input to BIND.  This feature will be available in the
next (1.1) release.

Of course, DECathena/Moira is a bit more than you might need, since
it also deals with maintaining users, groups, file systems, printcap
files, and an armslength of other info which an installation needs
to keep track of.


-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
From: dsiebert@icaen.uiowa.edu (Doug Siebert)
Subject: What is the minimum set of options a telnet server must negotiate?
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 21:58:03 GMT
Organization: ISCA

I'm wondering what the minimum required set of telnet options the server side
of a telnet connection (the telnetd) is?  That is, what options is it required
to respond to, and how should it respond to requests for negotiation on the
options it declines to support?
 
I'm asking because I have an application into which I may want to try to
include some very primitive telnetd capabilities, so that I can negotiate to
turn off echo, turn on character at a time mode, and get the terminal type of
the connecting client.  Would it be sufficient to just properly negotiate
these options at the start and then refuse ANY negotiation after that time?

-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Doug Siebert                             | "I don't have to take this abuse |
| Internet:  dsiebert@isca.uiowa.edu       |  from you - I've got hundreds of |
| NeXTMail:  dsiebert@chop.isca.uiowa.edu  |  people waiting in line to abuse |
|     ICBM:  41d 39m 55s N, 91d 30m 43s W  |  me!"  Bill Murray, Ghostbusters |
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------/
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
From: jmfres11@ucs.usl.edu (Karthikeyan Gurnswamy)
Subject: source code for SMTP
Organization: Univ. of Southwestern La., Lafayette
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 18:40:22 GMT


Hi !,
I am looking for a public domain source code for SMTP. Can someone
help me ? 

Karthik
/----------------------------------------\--------------------------\
| Karthikeyan Guruswamy                  | Why does'nt my           |
| Graduate Student, Computer Science     |                          |
| Center for Advanced Computer Studies   |    NET always WORK ?     | 
| Univ. of SouthWestern Louisiana        |                          |
| Lafayette, LA 70501                    | -- Life beats any logic  |
| Email: jmfres11@ucs.usl.edu            |                          |
|                                        \--------------------------\
| The opinions stated are solely mine and does not reflect the views|
| of anyone in my organization ...                                  |
\-------------------------------------------------------------------/ 
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
From: peter@cujo.curtin.edu.au (Peter N Lewis)
Subject: FTP RFC and multi-line replies?
Followup-To: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Organization: NCRPDA, Curtin University
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 03:30:28 GMT

Hi All,

I've noticed that some ftp servers implement multi-line replies like this:

123-Message
123-Message line 2
123-Message line 3
123 Mesage last line

Now, my reading of this section of the RFC:

         Thus the format for multi-line replies is that the first line
         will begin with the exact required reply code, followed
         immediately by a Hyphen, "-" (also known as Minus), followed by
         text.  The last line will begin with the same code, followed
         immediately by Space <SP>, optionally some text, and the Telnet
         end-of-line code.

            For example:
                                123-First line
                                Second line
                                  234 A line beginning with numbers
                                123 The last line

         The user-process then simply needs to search for the second
         occurrence of the same reply code, followed by <SP> (Space), at
         the beginning of a line, and ignore all intermediary lines.  If
         an intermediary line begins with a 3-digit number, the Server
         must pad the front  to avoid confusion.

In particular the last sentence, would indicate that the above format is in
fact illegal (although any client should be able to cope with both, since
they should be searching for a line that starts with '123<space>').  As
well as that it looks much worse than padding each message line with
spaces:

123-Message
    Message line 2
    Message line 3
123 Mesage last line

But thats neither here nor there.  I'm wondering if there is any
disagreement on this point, is the first format actually valid?

Thanks for any info,
   Peter.

_______________________________________________________________________
Peter N Lewis, NCRPDA, Curtin University       peter@cujo.curtin.edu.au
GPO Box U1987, Perth WA 6001, AUSTRALIA             FAX: +61 9 367 8141
From: paola@hplb.hpl.hp.com (paola fulchignoni)
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 08:32:28 GMT
Subject: Secure TCP-IP
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Reply-To: paola@hplb.hpl.hp.com (paola fulchignoni)


Does anyone know whether a "secure TCP" or "secure IP" exist (providing
security
services such as access control, source authentication, integrity, etc.)?
If so, where can I get information about them from?

Please e-mail directly to me any reply to this message.

Thank you in advance
Paola
From: chris@frcs.Alt.ZA (Chris Old)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: ka9q router unstable under heavy load
Date: 3 Sep 92 16:27:15 GMT
Organization: Free Range Computer Systems CC

We have a mini internet, with four ka9q routers on the main ethernet
backbone, connecting remote sites via slip.  The version of ka9q has a
version number of 911229 (7 months ago).  All we did to it was undef the
various hardware and software options that we didn't need in config.h.
Otherwise it is stock standard.

The slip lines run over 9600 async lines (well actually sync, but we have
async to sync converters) and the serial ports are fitted with 164550's.
We used to have 16550's, but we changed them to see if that fixed the
problem described below.

Now two of the routers connect sites with very little load, and are very
stable.  The other two routers hang on average 3 times a day.  By hang I
mean that they don't answer pings on the local ethernet, and on the rare
occasions that they have keyboard and screen plugged in, the keyboard is
dead.

The loaded routers have ~8 telnet sessions being routed through each
router, onto the ethernet.  The telnet sessions are running a menu driven
piece of software on a unix machine, and so have to carry a lot of data
(redrawn screens etc.).

At one stage I doubled the MTHRESH, NIBUFS, IBUFSIZE and DEFNSOCK in
config.h, but this made no difference.

There is no hardware or software difference between the routers that
crash and those that don't, except hostname and ip addr in autoexec.net.
We used to use 286s, but now they are 386s and this makes no difference.

Any clues anyone?

chris
From: antonis@helios.ntua.gr (Antonis Kyriazis)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: OSPF in 3COMs NetBuilderII
Date: 1 Sep 92 15:51:33 GMT
Organization: INTRACOM sa


Did someone install successfully OSPF routing in 3COMs NB2s?
I posted an article in bit.listserv.3com-l but I think it
is inactive and I don't want to use bandwidth here...

thanks
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Antonis Kyriazis                                              |
| Networks & Communications       e-mail: antonis@intranet.gr       |
| INTRACOM sa                                                       |
| 19.5 km Marcopoulo Ave.          fax:   +30-1- 66 44 379          |
| Peania 190 02                           +30-1- 66 43 718          |
| GREECE                          phone:  +30-1- 66 44 961-5        |
|                                         +30-1- 88 43 715          |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
From: tb@Materna.DE (Torsten Beyer)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: TCP/IP over ISDN
Date: 27 Aug 92 07:18:53 GMT

Hi Folks,

I have a problem concerning TCP/IP over ISDN. We have an ISDN implementation
for TCP/IP that is able of a so called short hold mode. This means, ISDN
connections that are idle for a certain time get closed without closing the
overlaying TCP connections. As soon as one of the communication partners
starts sending data again, a new ISDN connection is established. All this
happens (nearly) transparently to the IP layer.

However there is a problem: How can a server tell wether an established
connection is still established or already broken due to a crash on the
client side. We don't want to poll clients (i.e. ping) since this would
actually break the cost advantage of ISDN short hold mode.

From my point of view the only way a server can tell a connection is
broken, is when the same client sends a SYN from the same client port to the
same server port. Is this true or are there other ways of detecting that a
connection is broken (or was broken) ?
--
Torsten Beyer                      	mail	     : tb@Materna.DE
Dr. Materna GmbH		   	vox humana   : +49 231 5599 225
Vosskuhle 37, D-4600 Dortmund	   	fax machina  : +49 231 5599 100
 "There must be a place, under the sun, where hearts of olden glory grow young"
From: booloo@framsparc.ocf.llnl.gov (Mark Boolootian)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Is info on the Delta-t protocol available electronically?
Date: 27 Aug 92 17:17:00 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

In article <STEINAR.HAUG.92Aug21174944@delab.sintef.no> Steinar.Haug@delab.sintef.no (Steinar Haug) writes:
>I have read the following two articles which (partly) describe the Delta-t
>protocol:
>
>"Timer-Based Mechanisms in Reliable Transport Protocol Connection Management",
>by R.W.Watson
>
>"Gaining Efficiency in Transport Services by Appropriate Design and
>Implementation Choices", by R.W.Watson and S.A.Mamrak
>
>I would like to understand the Delta-t protocol better, and therefore I need
>more info. My questions are:
>
>- Is any info on the Delta-t protocol available electronically? Anonymous
>FTP would be fine.
>
>- Is the Delta-t protocol still being used?
>

Well, I must say I never expected to actually see Delta-t mentioned on the
Internet!  

I worked for Dick Watson (up until a couple of years ago), and currently work
with John Fletcher (Watson and Fletcher are the orignators of Delta-t).  Sadly,
to my knowledge, there is no information available electronically on Delta-t.
There are protocols which, I believe, have drawn from Delta-t, such as VMTP and
XTP, and you can find information about these protocols on the Internet.

As for Delta-t still being used, the answer is yes, but not for much longer.
At LLNL, we designed a distributed operating system (eventually) called NLTSS,
which utilized Delta-t as its transport protocol.  We currently have Delta-t
implementations running on Vaxen and Crays (and maybe a Sun or two).  However,
we are in the process of migrating to standard vendor-supplied software, as
we can no longer afford to support large research and development efforts.  So
it is likely that, within the next year, the only existing implementations of
Delta-t (of which I know) will disappear, and Delta-t will exist only on
paper.

There are a couple of other papers you might be interested in:  "Mechanisms
for a Reliable Timer-Based Protocol," by John Fletcher and Richard Watson, the
original paper describing Delta-t, and "Delta-t Protocol Specification," by
Richard Watson, which includes a model of a transport user-interface.  There
have been a couple of memos issued by John Fletcher regarding various aspects
of Delta-t (such as performance enhancements), and a couple of memos
discussing the performance of our implementations.

I would be more than happy (thrilled might best describe it) to send you copies
of the above papers and memos (if I can track them down) if you so desire.

Glad to hear there are still people out there looking at Delta-t.  It's a
great piece of work that has been little noticed in the 15 years since its
development.

cheers,
mb
-- 
Mark Boolootian		booloo@llnl.gov		+1 510 423 1948

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be 
considered patriots.  This is one nation under God." - George Bush 8/27/88
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
From: pascoe@rocky.gte.com (Dave Pascoe)
Subject: SLIP for SunOS 4.1.1 - where?
Organization: GTE/SCSD - Needham Heights, MA
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 23:33:12 GMT

I've searched high and low for public domain SLIP server software for 
SunOS 4.1.1 and I've only had a little luck.  There are a bunch of files out 
in anonymous ftp land called slip-4.1.shar.Z.  This looks like it's probably 
what I want but I keep getting "Unexpected fi" errors when I try to run sh 
on it to extract the sources.  Also, does this version have the capability to 
use VJ compression?

There is also cslipbeta.tar.Z, but, according to the README file, shouldn't 
be attempted unless you are a real kernel hacker.  Has anyone got this to
work on SunOS 4.1.1 without hacking?

Is there another package out there that I just might be missing?  I used
archie but these two packages appear to be the only two available.

I just installed ppp but haven't had a chance to try it out.  Is there any
problem with running both SLIP and PPP on the same machine?  I think the
answer is no, but I'm still getting my feet wet.
--
Dave Pascoe		
Internet: pascoe@rocky.gte.com
From: bourman@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Bob Bourman)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 19:15:23 GMT
Subject: Re: Digital Pathway ?
Organization: the HP Corporate notes server