News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
	Mail Starting 10/16/97

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From: tito@saturn.cecnet.com (Richard Clayton);
Sent at 10/16/97; 4:06:07 PM;
trouble here too

I've just successfully connected to Scripting News for the first time in weeks and saw that I was not alone in my unsuccessful attempts to use Scripting News. I didn't have time to raise this issue with my ISP until this week after a failed trace route to www.scripting.com.

Fortunately, the service provider was able to redirect the traffic using an MCI backbone and all is well again (Scripting News is the only site I use that was effected by this problem).

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From: brian@techsoln.com (Brian Andresen);
Sent at 10/16/97; 1:32:06 PM;
AGIS frustrations

Thanks for your attention to AGIS' blunders in Scripting News today. (I happened to check the page while on campus today; I still have no connectivity from techsoln.com.) I'm still banging my head against the problem, and it helps me to know that:

1) I'm not the only one who considers AGIS exceedingly arrogant/foolish, and

2) I'm not the only one who is suffering from their rash decisions.

Aside from the decisions of peering or not peering, there's always a "end run" available: AGIS' routers could pass the packets to one of the many other providers they peer with, and the packets could then make their way to ConXion. All of the information that I've been able to gather says that AGIS is *terminating* ConXion-bound packets instead of re-routing them. This looks more like a malicious action than a business decision.

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From: pholmes@ucsd.edu (Preston Holmes);
Sent at 10/16/97; 12:04:55 PM;
nitty gritty on PRISM/Storyserver

If you ever want more technical details on the CNet workflow, check out the storyServer docs page which has tons of details:

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From: bruceb@cs.uidaho.edu (Bruce Bolden);
Sent at 10/16/97; 11:48:10 AM;
Java Info

Saw that you are working on some more Java stuff. I saw an article by Terence Parr, "Why we care about Java", from the latest JavaWorld.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-11-1997/jw-11-portability.html

There are links from the article to some of Dr. Parr's work. One of those pages describes how his compiler-compiler was reduced in size considerably by switching to Java.

http://www.parr-research.com/antlr/doc/antlr2story.html

Maybe they will be of some use to you.

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From: calebjc@well.com (Caleb);
Sent at 10/12/97; 1:40:24 PM;
Re:Money Money Money

I too dove into SimCity 2000, even got interviewed for the book "SimCity 2000, Power, Politics and Planning" because of a city I built called, egotistically enough, "Calebopolis".

You've made me realize that SimCity is a spot on metaphor for some of the ridiculous hemming and hawing that is being played out in the technical economy! People usually build big at first, end up with LA no matter what they do, and then rethink the game and decide what really gives them pleasure in a town or city. This is like businessmen going for the gold, ending up with a big machine of a corporation and then deciding if that is what they really want? The power mongers seem to stay with the power, while some head for building the hills. Maybe all Bill wants is POWER, and that's why he does what he does regardless of the money?

In the waning days of my SimCity phase, I ended up getting real pleasure from creating simple coastal towns, or islands for nothing but universities that you had to sail to. I also loved making power stations completely hydrogen run and out of view of the city. When I stopped playing I began to dream of building nothing more then a simple chain of a few islands that had a subway system between them and used boats, bikes and scooters on land...I'll wait for 3000 I think.

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From: bkelly@cloud9.net (Brian Kelly);
Sent at 10/16/97; 1:19:40 AM;
Finally understand PGP!

After the past few days of PGP discussion I decided to go and investigate PGP. I downloaded PGP 5.0 for MIT and got it working relatively fast. My main concern was I didn't understand how it worked. After toying with it and talking with others I finally figured it out:

When _I_ sign a message using YOUR _public_ key and send it to you, then only YOUR _private_ key can unlock that message.

Simple!

Sad to say, I just didn't get it the first few times I tried to figure it out. It's always nice to understand things :-)