To: papval@otenet.gr (Vassilis )
From: dlanor@oden.se (Ronald Andersson)
Organization: 
Subject: Re: BNET_TCP
X-Mailer: NEWSie Version 0.82 (Atari)


Hi again Vassilis.

This is the second time I reply to this email, since I did not have
time to answer everything last time.


>Shame on me, i'm still using the PC to send mail. My only excuse
>been that until the 15 Oct version of STinG, PPP bombed out.

Yes, I've heard it has done so for some others too, and some versions
have given me these problems too.  This was usually in the form of a
bomb raid striking during the 'countdown' of the dialer.  The current
version does not give this problem any more, and I think Peter has
finally managed to kill that bug.


>> Producing words is one thing, but meaningful statements are another.
>> These do not follow any simple mathematical rules.
>>
>I'm not sure i can follow this. You mean you know this theory to be
>wrong or has to do with my bad english? Do you know any other
>language that those rules can apply, or should i start refering to
>thousands of examples that produce completely meaningful words in
>English, but absolutely sensible Hellenic words?

Nothing so far-reaching.  I just meant that no mathematics, no matter
how advanced, can ever simulate the way humans formulate their thoughts.


>> That may be better because I find it a bit hard to see how it works,
>> and the purpose of it, from your description.
>>
>Now that i read it again, i agree, it's bad! Let's say it's a data
>base of ancient texts (each 15 lines maximum) displayed in a window
>in such a way that one can (using the keyboard or the mouse) select
>sentences or words and depended on the mode, get information,
>answer questions, etc, etc ( better now? )

Yes, I think I get the general idea.


>> So the whole project seeems (to me so far) to be mainly linguistically
>> oriented, though it naturally touches on various subjects relating to
>> the culture in which the language was used.  Right?
>>
>Yes, with more emphasis in syntactical analysis, so that the
>translation is easier.

Ok, so the main goal is to educate people in the use of the language to
the point where they can themselves translate between these ancient texts
and modern languages.  Right ?


>> Most european languages are quite closely related, and not just within
>> the 'Germanic' or 'Latin' groups either.  This is unavoidable because
>> the interaction of various peoples and tribes in ancient times was much
>> more international than many people today realize.
>>
>This is also true, my sources are talking about unbelievable movements
>between nations those days. Seems to me that our ancestors were
>travelling too much! (and they also had some unexplainable detailed
>earth maps!)

Yes, and some also had an uncanny ability to travel far distances and get
to the correct places even without maps in many cases.  This is something
most peoples today have forgotten how to do, although a few retain it.


>> For example, it is a fact that both Nordic and Celtic warrior tribes
>> often served as mercenaries in many of the wars between Greek city-states.
>>
>Well, i don't know that, but i can ask the Phillogic team.

It's really quite well documented, though not in 'normal' history books.


>That's good, i also have many interests, some of them being reading,
>designing and building audio amplifiers and speakers (normally i
>graduated as an electronic engineer), music, flight simulators

Reading has always been an important interest for me too, and though I
never took any formal degrees I too started in computers through being
already deeply interested in electronics (both analog and digital).
Music is quite important to me too, although I have never given it the
time needed to become proficient at making or playing music myself.


>(in fact i hacked flight simulator II and added several new
>options and the ability to play in 640x400x16 colours on the faclon.

I never have had a really good flight sim, so I have never felt motivated
to dig into them, but I have done similar 'hacking' in other programs.
My favourite computer game is Civilization, to which I have added three
new difficulty levels and made various other improvements and bug fixes.
eg: I removed Americans replacing them by Nordics, since after all there
    were no Americans (in the modern sense) in 4000 BC (game start).


>Then i did some DSP 3D code but due to lack of time...

In my case it's even worse...  I haven't coded any DSP stuff at all,
though I have meant to get into that too for quite some time now.


>Is it time to say i'm now at 38, married, with two lovely kids and
>crazy enough to go against Microsoft? (and many others!)

Ok.  I'm 42 myself, single, and detest Microsoft vehemently too.


>As for Phillogic it started back in 1988 (mainly the phillological
>work) and i joined them in late 1991 when i left Nixdorf computers
>after the takeover from Siemens. There, i was responsible for the
>UNIX systems -based on 68xxx and MIPS risc CPUs- and for the PCs.

Sounds rather neat, despite the 'PC' connection.  In practice it's
very hard to work with computers proffessionally today and avoid
the PCs entirely.


>That was the time i 'loved' PCs so much! Many problems (hard and
>software), and totally non compatible with Hellenic character sets.

Actually the latter is merely a matter of software, and I have seen
some PC software packages capable of handling any character sets.
eg: Syrian, Arabic etc.


>> Are you saying you found a reliable answer for _how_ to do that...?
>> I find that to be quite a chore, though I've been aware of the
>> potential as far back as I can remember.
>>
>It will take a lot of hard work to find this answer. Especially if one
>follows today's trend 'make money - watch TV - die', then it'll take
>much more lifes to get it!

Actually that trend leads away from it, so the time needed is eternal...
But hopefully modern culture will not get stuck in that rut that long.
In fact it can't, because then it will not survive very long.


>----- snip ----- re: Codebase 4
>I'm afraid this is a 'close to the original' port. Codebase 4
>consists of 112 'C' and 8 header files and some of them need changes
>to work. But suppose you buy it and try to compile using ATARI libs.
>It will not work. So, if you have any dbase needs (and can find a
>dbase III manual or relevant book), just tell me. I find it useful
>because i can ceate compatible dbases and indexes, it is relational,
>has expressions etc. I have also written the conversion routines
>to import and export from/to #!"@ PC.

Well, I don't know that I have any actual need of it, but it could be
nice to look it over anyway.  Sometimes the improved ability to do a
thing with a new piece of software 'creates' a sense of need that one
has not felt previously, so who knows, perhaps I will need it then.


>----- snip ----- re: MagiC and C
>> the original singleTOS.  No compiler, and certainly not any of the
>> ones available on microcomputers, can ever compete with a skillful
>> human being in these things.
>>
>Reminds me some TOS source code i had seen many years ago. Not only
>in C, but bad C (ok i'm not an expert) It was from Digital Research
>with lots of PC code in it!

Yep, DR did write the original singleTOS almost entirely in high
level C, and used a very old and inefficient compiler for it.


>> >  Still not bored?
>>
>> I don't bore easily ;-)
>> At least not from the same things others expect me to.
>>
>Which are?

Well, that varies, but for some reason most people do not find
mathematics, comparative linguistics or even cultural anecdotes
from ancient times to be very entertaining, whereas I do.


>Ok, after we have a perfectly working STinG with all it's clients and
>servers runing smoothly and at lighting speeds and ...
>(just joking, this will take us to the next millenium!)

Well, that is only a bit over 2 years now, so you may be right...
;-)


>> I fail to see why anyone would draw a line so close in time, unless
>> it is based on those odd attempts to apply biblical time tables to
>> the real world.
>>
>That's more than true, but who are they that apply those 'biblical
>time tables' (i liked that!) And until when?

There are many groups who do this, usually for religious reasons.

Several of those groups draw the line at either beginning or end of
the year 2000, a bit like earlier millenarians did 1000 years ago.
Some few hedge their bets by various calendar adjustments.


>> Human beings similar to our kind have definitely existed for about
>> two million years, because we have found a few remnants of them.
>> They may have existed much longer than that, and only by the rarest
>> chance would we ever find those remnants, because organic materials
>> do not normally survive that long in recognizable form.
>>
>Hmm, that's difficult to prove. I believe that one day a spaceship
>came and the play started. It's strengthen from the fact that 'God'
>in Hellenic is 'Theos' and the verb 'Theo' means 'going up with great
>speed'. Sure there are thousands others indications on the subject
>but i consider this important because it's 'hidden' (also with
>thousands others).
>
That is a possibility that I do not completely rule out, although it
actually raises more questions than it answers.  There is a definite
relationship between human beings and other creatures of this world,
too close to be explained by parallel evolution.  We can of course
solve that by assuming that all life on this planet was 'seeded' by
colonization ships from other star systems, but all of this remains
speculation while no proof is available.


>If you think we are technologically advanced, think again.

Compared to what we know from the last couple of thousand years we
definitely are, and probably for quite some time longer even.  It
would take a very long time for all (or almost all) trace of such a
civilization to disappear, even if it was destroyed by nuclear war.
And such a disaster would leave clues of its own too.


>I'm sure you also have 'legends' and 'myths' saying very strange
>things about 'Gods', 'battles in the sky', etc.

Yes we do, and describing various artifacts of the gods' with some
very strange properties too.  Like the ship 'Skidbladner' owned
by the god Balder, which could be folded 'into itself' until it
fit in a pouch, yet could be unfolded indefinitely to take any
amount of passengers and cargo traveling through sky or sea.


>They are so many (in every tribe i know of) that even if they are
>reproductions of the same events, at least they need a closer
>examination.

I agree, but unfortunately two attitudes predominate amongst those
who discuss these subjects, and both are equally wrong.  One is to
uncritically accept everything said as literal truth, disregarding
proof and/or indications to the contrary.  The other is a totally
set disbelief which will not be budged by any proof whatever.

The very fact that these two attitudes are so common makes it very
hard for those seriously interested in finding the truth to discuss
such things publicly and be taken seriously.


----- snip ----- re: Romans and Tyrrhenians
>>
>This is also correct. ( what are we doing with computers? ! )

I don't quite follow your parenthesis here...
Sensible people use the best tools they can get for the things they
do, and for many things done today computers are the _only_ tools.

Perhaps you refer to the unfortunate fact that many consider the
interests in 'hard science' subjects (eg: computers) to conflict
somehow with an interest in such subjects as cultural history etc.
But that is actually a very recent prejudice, not at all common
in older cultures, and evidently not shared by either you or me.


>I'm absolutely certain that this is the case. And some day i think
>we must ask the 'experts' to define who is barbarian and who is
>not. I'm also tired with the 'labels' they put in humans. But it
>needs an open mind to realize that every human is different.

So it does, and I think we must (reluctantly) accept that only a
minority of any culture have ever managed to keep an open mind.


>I'm glad you don't believe silly propagandas, (i'm trying to forget
>the 'history' i learned in school). As of barbarians, just watch the
>international news, you'll find many.

That is very true.


----- snip ----- re: legends and myths of Hellas
>
>Sure, and at least for Hellenic language, 'legend' is completelly
>different from myth. 'MYTHologo' means transfer(?) historical events
>without writing them, while legends, tails, etc can be anything.
>(fantasy, science fiction etc). Does that mean that Hercules and
>others were real? Who knows. One thing i know is that the guys with
>the 'biblical time tables' took care to leave us in the dark.

Yep.  Of nordic prechristian stories only a small remnant remains, and
most of those are Icelandic (which is how they survived) meaning that
they are not representative of those of the general nordic population.

This is because Iceland was settled by refugee chieftains and kings
(with their households of course) escaping from Harald Haarfagres
unification of Norway.  We know enough to say that the populations
of both Norway and Sweden held very different views from the Icelandic
ones (Thor being more important than Oden etc), but since most actual
writing documenting this was burned or otherwise destroyed, we have
lost the detailed knowledge forever.


>> That is really a misstatement, though it is true that they are dominant.
>>
>You think so? Well, let's say that i suddently found out that i'm not
>very happy with what we now call 'civilization' and 'democracy'.

There are serious problems and drawbacks of both, but they are still the
best alternatives available right now, though we need them to change.

Sometimes people berate me for saying that 'democracy' can be wrong,
but no implementation of it was ever perfect, and even if it was so
it is based on the fallacy that the majority is always right.

It is important to remember that even when a majority has the right to
make the decisions it is never guaranteed to be factually right too.

Or as I sometimes put it:

	One hundred billion flies can not be wrong:  "Eat shit!".

An even more serious fallacy is that the opinions of a majority are
quite likely to include many unfair prejudices, and that means that
majority decisions based on those opinions will be morally wrong.


>And believe me, we have seen nothing yet. As for Microsoft i can hardly
>consider it a computer company. First their income is not 'normal'.

I know.  This is the most serious consequence of IBMs original mistake
of granting Microsoft an effective monopoly on the most rapidly expanding
market this world has yet seen.


>(This is not my discovery, financial cycles declare it). Second they
>spend their money in genetic (DNA) projects(!), satelites, etc
>(do you really believe they need 760 low orbit satelites for internet
>services?)

They have passed the point where a company is defined by the activity
that gained them their wealth, and reached the point where this wealth
itself defines both their future purpose (power) and their activities.


>> I'm not overly fond of IBM either, but what Microsoft did stinks !
>>
>And it continues to do so. I wonter what windows 98 will look like
>now that very few things have left for them to steal.

Oh, I guess they can still add some network improvements, and borrow
some X-windows stuff etc...  and then they will possibly stagnate.
Then again, with the money they now have they can buy up most talented
companies they find interesting, and those guys may be able to come
up with more real improvements.  This remains to be seen...


----- snip ----- re: BNET_TCP comments
>
>!!!

What I meant is that since I am used to puzzle out disassembled code,
I am not entirely dependent on comments, though they can help a lot.


>> ----- snip ----- re: FTP-Server
>
>> Btw: are you soon going to release another version?  I think I remember
>>      you mentioning that a few weeks ago...
>>
>It's coming, it's coming! And it also runs with BNET_TCP installed.
>(although AFTP crashes when it tries to access it, if it's more than
>one machine away! )

Huh ?!?  Why is that ?

To aFTP the position of a server in the network should not even be known,
and all valid IP addresses should be equal.


>> >I have many problems with CAB 1.5 and CAB 2.0 Is it CAB.OVL ?
>>
>> That is very hard to say, not knowing which you have.  For me 1.2619 works
>> rather well, though I don't really exercize it a lot by 'surfing' around.
>> I have too many other things to do.  (Like writing mails for many hours.)
>>
>Sorry, this is the one i have. And having many problems.

Is this equal on all machines...?
The most common problem STs have with CAB 2.x is lack of system RAM.
The need of 'ALLOCMEM' RAM also varies between CAB versions.


----- snip ----- re: BNET_TCP false starts
>
>I'm having that problem only if i kill BNET_TCP and start it again.
>Never when i start all computers and run BNET_TCP for the first time.
>(and also never in file transfers, the TCP socket remains open after
>the first connection, as you'll see in the sources).

I'll dig into it soon, and see what I can do.


>So it can be a BNET_TCP bug. There is no 'keep alive' mechanism, so
>if someone closes unexpectedly, the other machines can't notice that.
>(but this will be corrected).

Well, I plan to rearrange things so that no single machine can mess
up anything for others, but your parenthesis indicates that you too
will do this.  I see no problem with our working on it as different
implementations, and I hope you feel the same way about it.  If you
like we can arrange future swaps of the sources too, so we can take
over improvements from each other, though as yet I've made none.


----- snip ----- re: Ethernet
>
>I'm talking about 'pocket ethernet adapters' that connect to parallel
> ports, but since we don't have all signals to our ports, an adapter
> is needed. Of course the 'dual parallel port approach' will be
> much faster.

I've just heard from Peter that he has started some actual coding for
the ethernet board he has.  I have no idea if that is compatible to
your stuff though.


>I'm not surprised by bugs poping up from nowhere, better say i was
>worried it didn't work at once.
>As of Freedom, i'm sorry, they just lost a registration. But i'm
>still using 1.15 and have no problems with STinG so far.

Then perhaps you should stick to that old Freedom version then.  The
main improvement in the new version is of course that it also is a
CPX server, but WDIALOG+COPS also serves that purpose very well, and
though there have been compatibility problems these may be solved now.
Wilfried Behne just sent me a WDialog 1.98 beta that solves all the
problems I had (and had reported to him).


----- snip ----- re: BNET_TCP under singleTOS
>
>Ooops, that's true. It bombs if the single-TOS host tries to open the
>connection! But if you connect to this host from MagiC, then it works
>fine (folders, file transfers, everything!). I'm working on that.

I'll look into this too.


>> Are you absolutely sure you never ever call GEMDOS from within GEMDOS..?
>> I know that works in MagiC but it is guaranteed to bomb under singleTOS.
>>
>Yes and no :-) I need the DTA from Fsfirst and Fsnext, but at this
>time Gemdos has another stack.

Yes, I studied this code a bit, but I will have to experiment a bit more
to say whether this is involved in the problem or not.  Whatever the case
we will solve this eventually, it is only a matter of time.


>Well, the big moment! The sources of BNET_TCP. Looking at them from
>'outside', i can say i'm not very proud of them. I see lot's of
>stupid naming convensions, and space for improvement. But since it
>came from BNETWORK which is actually a 1993 started project, it's
>understandable (at least for me!)

For me too.  It is usually so with projects that grow over a long time.
Sometimes I've actually been grateful (a bit later) when circumstances
have forced me to rewrite a project completely, because this is a good
way to clean up the code and unify the conventions used.


>It was the time a had switched from
>GFA basic to C, and i had also spent hundrents or hours dissasembling,
>checking, sleeping with ATARI INTERNALS and the DEVPAC manual, you
>know, things like that. Then came SYSMON which made my life easier.
>Then came Mag!X which again caused trouble. Problems with preemptive
>multitasking, Pexec, etc. An invaluable tool for ROM dissasembly
>(and others) was EASY RIDER 4 wich i took in Hannover (hi Peter :-)
>Expensive, considering the German manuals, but really good (i'm sure
>you have it).

Yes, I do.  I used it for my disassembly of Civilization in making the
additions and improvements I mentioned further above.  I also like the
disassembler 'Desert Drain' a lot, but it is much slower and thus less
suitable for huge programs (like Civilization).


>Since you're in a hurry, here it is, with sparse comments.
>(far from 'literar masterpieces in the margins'!)
>
>I hope (in fact i'm sure) you'll make it better and more useful.

I'll certainly try, but to be honest I still haven't made any changes.


>Well, what else? I'll wait for bugs. Good luck!

I'll naturally mail any significant changes to you for evaluation,
regardless of whether motivated by bugs or other considerations.


----- snip ----- re: The L_fsfirst problem

I'll try to keep this in mind in debugging.
I'm sure it's fixable.
