arachne-digest Tuesday, May 29 2001 Volume 01 : Number 1537
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 23:14:47 -0500
From: "L.D. Best" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Internet morons force wake-up call
1st -- I want to make it quite clear that I am *not* a masochist
2nd -- I have cable modem so I don't have to worry about slow downloads
from my end, nor tying up my phone line for hours.
��
- -oa
3rd -- I did not spend the entire day centered on the computer screen.
Today was big-time racing day ... After linking to the site with
1.70r3 I watched the last 125 laps of the Indianapolis 500; I
then switched to PBS and watched 2 presentations of the British
version of Antiques Roadshow. Somewhere between a & b I made and
ate some breakfast. I also took the dog down to the park on the
corner so that she could do what she will not do in "her" yard.
Next I tuned into something or other until the NASCAR CocaCola 600
started, and also did some major pruning on the weeping cherry tree I've
been nursing. After the 600 started I got around to grabbing something
for lunch snack, and took time out for a quick "dog trip" and to
hopefully seal the bark on one of the main trunks of the same weeping
cherry which was showing dead leaves at the top. I watched some more of
the Coke 600, and periodically checked the website being downloaded.
They have more problems than just page design, btw ... some of the
transfers occured so quickly the status line was a blur, but the
majority of the transactions were sliced by their server into segments
ranging from 240 to 328 bytes -- that bytes per slice, with long waits
between each slice. After the sun had gone down in North Carolina and
the lights had come on at the race track, with well over 100 laps still
to go, it was another walk to the park and around the park until dog had
done all that was necessary. Then back to the race on TV and the
website images are still being downloaded by Arachne. This set a new
record a couple of hours prior to that point. <G> But I watched the
race to the end, got some dinner down, started on the NBC reprise of the
attack on Pearl Harbor, and waited .... and then waited some more.
Then, after more than 6 hours of downloading, I said F-It! 1.70r3, of
course, did it's "blank screen" act when I terminated the download.
Attempts to get the page to load from disk were OK, but not the images.
They started downloading again from scratch. I checked the cache, and
there were 257 files. That didn't sink in at the time. I tried to get
1.70r3 to show me *any* of the pictures in the cache, and it was a no-go
for all half-dozen tries.
4th -- Only as I typed this did I realize part of what the problem is
with the combination of "that URL" + Arachne. There were 1029 html
Atoms on the page alone, there were supposedly 257 pictures but I didn't
count the blocks and I think Clarence is wrong there. Read on and see
why ... Arachne is set to clear cache automatically whenever 256 items
are in it; that means if there are more than 256 items on a page to
download, things get deleted from the top down as each new thing is
added to the bottom. And that means that every time Arachne is
successful in downloading a few files, and goes to verify images, it
discovers that a bunch of images at the front of the list aren't there
in cache! So I downloads those missing items to cache, and in doing so
erases an equal number of items off the top of the list again... and so
it goes. And that is why after more than 6 hours of constant
downloading, I never *did* get the page downloaded. And that is why I
think that there are more than 527 pictures on the site ... it's just
that only 526 anything plus the index file can be kept in the cache, so
that is all that can ever be found in the cache, regardless of how long
one has allowed Arachne to download. :<
5th -- I'm glad I'm not a drinker, or I would have gone through *at
least* a fifth as the eternal download progress today.
Now I have some SUGGESTIONS! First, would the closest person in the
Czech Republic to that server and/or that domain office please go visit
them and blow them away for their absolute stupidity! Second, and most
MOST important: Arachne needs to have some sort of routine added where
it stops dowloading from a page when the max number of cache items are
reached. I cannot think of a decent way to do it. If I've been to more
than one site, the cache will have bunches of stuff in it, and I'd hate
to have a download of a site stop simply because the cache is full. And
most of us would not want the cache to automatically clear each time we
go to a different URL ... that could be terrible. My only hope is that
the "HTML ATOMS" number means the number of 'pieces' or 'files' which
will have to be downloaded to render the page; if that is the case, then
Arachne could be "taught" to download only 256 items on any page where
the HTML Atoms number is in excess of 256. If there could be a warning
issued prior to starting the download, something like "this page has too
much crap and cannot be completely downloaded" would be nice. If
Arachne could be additionally "trained" to take instances like that and
accept some "N"ext hotkey or whatever, and then download as many more
files as cache can hold, we could at least see a page like that in "bits
and pieces" ...
I don't feel like cranking up NetScrape to see if it could handle that
page; I get the feeling it probably could, or at least until I ran out
of drive space, since windows software never has learned that limits are
necessary and good things.
And thus ends today's saga of Arachne in SW Ohio...
l.d.
====
On Sat, 26 May 2001 04:34:38 -0400, Clarence Verge wrote:
> Hello All;
> Some totally amazing stuff is coming out of various points in czland
> but web page design isn't part of it. :((
> I stumbled onto this collection of images from the International Space
> Station group. There are at least five real beauties here, although
> they are cropped versions of the originals - which I understand are
> about four times the size in both X and Y directions.
> It's hard to believe that the wacko(s) who assembled the collection
> are dumb enuff to think everyone has a T1 connection, but it must be
> true - THEY PUT TWO HUNDRED & FIFTY-SEVEN IMAGES ON THE PAGE !!
> If you dare to visit:
> http://iwebs.upol.cz/iss/galerie_sts98.htm
> even *WITH* a T1 connection, don't expect much from Arachne.
> She will happily waste your time downloading the thumbnails, and then
> just sit there and do NOTHING when finished. I suppose that's better
> than crashing. If you surf your cache and ask for an image gallery,
> she will have to be poked a few times to start, and then will convert
> only a small part of the images in cache.
> Arachne 1.62 will convert (on my P90) 98 out of 257, present red boxes
> for about 100 more (not counted) and then fill the rest of the page with
> the message "Too many images converted" for each of the remaining files.
> At this point only about 25% of my available TEMP space on Ramdisk has
> been used.
> Think I should use a later version ?
> I went straight to A1.70r3. I found it much more difficult to prod her
> into doing it, but when activated this version would only convert 47
> images. Switched to A1.66. I found this version to be a little easier
> to bring to life, but I only got 47 images out of 257 here also.
> Back to A1.62 (with the .BMPs in TEMP cleared). A recheck confirmed
> that A1.62 would do 98 of 257, and only required a manual conversion
> of one file to teach her what to do.
> Seems A1.62 is the best in this area, but I've run into several pages
> lately while on Hollywood patrol with more than 98 images on them.
> *
> Here's a little comparison for you:
> Using Netscape 2.02 on a 33Mhz '486 (NO ramdisk) that page downloaded
> in 8 min 36 sec @ 31200 and the screen displayed IMMEDIATELY although
> NS cranked the disk for about another minute while it created all the
> off-screen images.
> Arachne on my *P90* with the same ISP and at the same baudrate took
> 9 min 21 sec to finish downloading the images and deciding to do no
> more. A later experiment with a shortened page indicates she would
> have taken almost two minutes more to display the page if she had
> been up to it.
> As a matter of interest, she will get the page with images OFF
> in only 17 seconds.
> I've had a little luck downloading with images off, editing the page
> into thirds and then selecting one image for display. Arachne will
> download the shortened list of images after displaying that image.
> - Clarence Verge
> - Back to using Arachne V1.62 ....
- -- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 00:19:09 -0500
From: "L.D. Best" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Runaway Downloads
Glenn,
I don't think so ... Your premise has the same validity as a statement
that accidents are caused by any red cars, which sometimes "spontaneously
trigger" loss of control and result in crashes; and if they don't
spontaneously cause a crash, an attempt to pull it over to the side of
the road will often cause a runaway and crash.
Not *all* these pages *always* trigger a "runaway"; some I've met *do*
fit the "always" parameter, but not all. At least one of the "always"
category is PRAGMA NO CACHE, although Arachne *did* cache it or it
couldn't have been loaded to the screen; a return to the page meant it
would always be downloaded again, however ... despite still being in
cache.
Now the metacrawler page was 'fun' ... it was not being cached, even
though there is nothing in the META tags that should have prevented it.
It took me about a half-dozen tries before F-6 showed that the page even
existed; at that point ALT-E shell out allowed me to find the page in
cache. Same way multiple attempts to get anything from "=" resulted in
failures ... F-4 couldn't work, even if it wanted to, because of long
lines in the code.
And not *all* the pages without a 'size' will run away wildly if one
attempts to abort the download -- 15 attempts at metacrawler and I quit
trying to get clicking X to cause a runaway. Point of fact, as many
pages as I have "hit the X" on, I have never had it lead to a "runaway"
and I've been running 1.70r3 since the day it became available, and I do
more than a little bit of surfing.
The lack of "informed size" may be a symptom, but I think there's more
to it than that ... and I think 'no cache' or the failure of Arachne to
cache [or at least create headers] could be part of the problem also.
And as far as that goes, this problem with the endless download of files
- -- because the page needs more than 256 items cached -- could very well
be linked to the endless count-up of non-existant bytes in a file, the
problem we currently refer to [when being polite] as "runaway download."
l.d.
====
On Sat, 26 May 2001 20:46:49 -0400, Glenn McCorkle wrote:
<snip> my stuff
> Thanks very much for such diligent work.
> However, we already know what type of page causes it.
> Any page which does not send the file size of the HTM, HTML,
> SHTML, ASP, CGI, etc, etc, etc...
> Such pages will sometimes "spontaneously trigger" the bug.
> Others will be fine unless we attempt to abort the D/L before it has
> completed.
> Try aborting http://www.metacrawler.com/ at about 10kb
> (might take several tries to trigger the bug)
- -- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 00:35:17 -0500
From: "L.D. Best" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: It could be very bad for business ...
... very bad, indeed, if potential customers for your website hosting
and design found out that you are up to your eyeballs in designing sites
for what are obviously MLM schemes, and spamhauses. MLM may not be
illegal in Canada, but it is a boundary free internet these days ...
If you're not part of "the whole package," you might want to stop
designing websites for "organizations" like homebizla.com
Spammers digust me, if for no other reason that they think I'm stupid
enough to do business with a group which breaks just about every rule of
netiquette there is. Those who should be "in the know," but who deal
with spammers because there's money to be made, are even more
distasteful.
- -- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 03:51:50 +0100
From: "Laurie L Proud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Hello List
Hello Everyone on the List,
I have been using Arachne for a few weeks now. I am a newish user to
the internet. I have been reading the list for a week or so and have
found the discusions regarding putting a "recomended" A version together
without the major bugs a very good idea.
I first installed 1.68 but am now using 1.70r3. It runs very well,
apart from the surfing the cache which Clarence in a helpfull email
said was a bug, on my 486 DX4 100 Mhz Apricot LSpro machine, which is
designed for a LAN.
A company office were going to dump several PC's in all, and I rescued
them all. I have added some RAM and have 36 Mb.
So picture the scene, There are PC's from Dell, Digital, Siemens
nixdorf, and six others by Apricot lying about that I have to sort out
and then give away to worthy causes...it's a right tip !
Anyway I'm waffleing, This PC is the fastest 486 and It came with
WIN95 (Boo Hiss), and to get me up and running I run Arachne as a basic
install from the HD, and run her in a full screen DOS window and configured
Windows (boo Hiss) to give her all system resources.The spider.ikn on the
WIN95 (boo hiss) desktop calls A.bat. Actually It works quite well....
What am I saying!!....
Following Clarence's words of wisdom I have now setup a 6mb ramdisk and
have pointed my Arachne TEMP directory to it. Everthing working fine so
far, but the data in the ramdisk rattles like a pea in a pod with only
200Kb or so used. That will change when the cache goes there too.
Now I have the other PC's here I am now ready to follow Clarence's
excellent advice and DELTREE WINDOWS, reformat the HD and install DOS
and then reinstall Arachne properly. As I now have two PC's running side
by side, I won't loose my internet connection if I catch a crab!.
I tried to look at the OPENDOS 7 site but when I tried to download a
info file Arachne Crapped out and I haven't been back. I have DOS 3.3,
4 (Turkey, codepage nonsence), 5 and 6.3 all IBM PCDOS, So in the
absence of Opendos 7, which I understand is recommended, I'm not stuck.
I just wanted to say hello to everyone, keep up the good work ! Remember
me in your prays while I try to do the same as seak hey here, because
I'm not confident in what I'm doing with Arachne.
Bie for now, Cherio
Laurie
Undersecretary to the British Ambassador to the Kingdom of Padua
- -- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 10:11:46 +0200 (CEST)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Richard Menedetter)
Subject: Hello List
Hi
28 May 2001, "Laurie L Proud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
LP> my 486 DX4 100 Mhz Apricot LSpro machine
LP> I have added some RAM and have 36 Mb.
These would be GREAT Linux boxes.
If you have a bit time, than get yourself a Linux distribution, and try for
yourself on one of those machines !
You could setup one as an Internet Gateway, dial into your account, and let
the linuxbox share the connection with the other PCs. (If they are
networked together ...)
[I have done it here with a cablemodem connection ... and it works
extremely well ...)
You could configure it, to get your mail/newsgroups automatically when you
dial in. (fetchmail/leafnode)
You could do .... ZILLIONS of things.
And you would not be so incredibly limited by the DOS kernel with
singletasking/singleuser no direct network support, no memory protection,
....
LP> in the absence of Opendos 7, which I understand is recommended,
As long a it's DOS compatible and it runs its OK ...
LP> Bie for now, Cherio
LP> Laurie
CU, Ricsi
- --
|~)o _ _o Richard Menedetter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> {ICQ: 7659421} (PGP)
|~\|(__\| -=> This message is SHAREWARE! To Register, send $5 <=-
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 05:07:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Thomas Mueller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: FREE DOS Multi-tasking?
(begin quote)
I tried DOS multasking, too, but without success. It seems that DR-DOS
stops any traffic at serial or ethernet ports when switching to an other
task. I also tried mt.com with wget.exe and dss.exe and it doesn't work
'cuz wget run exclusive and mt was not able to start a second task.
Regards Joerg
(end of quote)
I tried multitasking with DR-DOS 7.03 but kept running out of memory with DOS
Lynx386, though I have 20 MB RAM. I noticed DR-DOS Task Manager severely limits
the amount of memory allocated to one process. This running out of memory never
happened with OS/2 Warp 4 VDM. So for all intents and purposes, I say DR-DOS
does not support multitasking.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 05:07:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Thomas Mueller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Down with windows
On Fri, 25 May 2001 23:34:20 -0400 (EDT), Thomas Mueller wrote:
> Does anybody know what happens with Arachne Insight when an incoming
> message has a line of 1024 or more characters?
now from Glenn McCorkle:
http://www.angelfire.com/id/glenndoom/long_lines-and-Arachne_Insight.jpg
(213kb)
Does that answer your question?
(end of quote)
Is this the 128th-character whiteout bug? Is it on outgoing or incoming mail?
I am now reading and composing offline, not yet back online.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 05:07:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Thomas Mueller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mindspring/Earthlink tech support team is very sophisticated I believe
to Thomas Tabler regarding Mindspring/Earthlink denying access to Web site based
on OS,
With Lynx, you can modify the User-Agent string. Maybe add "for Win 95" just
for Mindspring/Earthlink, then change back to normal User-Agent? Is this for
ISP or just for access to Web site?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 06:15:11 -0500
From: "Sam Ewalt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Googol and google
On Sun, 27 May 2001 18:55:53 -0400, Glenn McCorkle wrote:
> How many here already knew that a variation in spelling of "google"....
> "googol" is the name of a number?
> (such as hunderd, thousand, million, etc....... googol)
Well, I certainly remember this from eighth grade math class. But I
thought it was spelled "google" and the search engine was named
after the number because you can find a large number of things
there. Perhaps they changed the spelling in order to trademark
the name.
Btw, the only other thing I remember from eighth grade math is our
visit to a computer at the local university. It filled a large
room! I was quite excited to actually see a computer for the first
time. As a demonstration, a fellow student was chosen to play the
computer in a game of chess. I think I remember the moves being
made through what looked like a teletype machine. Despite it's
vast size, this computer played a poor game of chess as it was
promptly beaten by my classmate.
This was in 1962. The idea that ordainary people would one day
have more powerful computers than this behemoth in their homes
was quite unthinkable. We were just starting to use pencil marks
on punch cards for some of our standardized tests at school.
Sam Ewalt
Croswell, Michigan, USA
- -- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 15:41:03 +0200
From: "Michal H. Tyc" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: FREE DOS Multi-tasking?
Did you look at your TASKMGR.INI file?
What is the memory limit per task (Limit=...) in [Memory] section?
You can set it, e.g., to 20480. But then some poorly written
programs will be able to allocate whole memory and nothing will be
left for other tasks.
Regards,
Michal
On Mon, 28 May 2001 05:07:11 -0400 (EDT), Thomas Mueller wrote:
> I tried multitasking with DR-DOS 7.03 but kept running out of memory with DOS
> Lynx386, though I have 20 MB RAM. I noticed DR-DOS Task Manager severely limits
> the amount of memory allocated to one process. This running out of memory never
> happened with OS/2 Warp 4 VDM. So for all intents and purposes, I say DR-DOS
> does not support multitasking.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 16:04:11 +0200
From: Florian Xaver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: FREE DOS Multi-tasking?
Hi!
>But then some poorly written
>programs will be able to allocate whole memory and nothing will be
>left for other tasks.
Which ones? That shouldn't be able!
so long,flox
Dr-DOS - the unofficial page - http://www.drdos.org
SEAL - the best GUI for (Free)DOS - http://www.seal.de.vu
Ostbahnkurti - http://www.archlab.tuwien.ac.at/~hase/franz/konzert_kal.html
- -=Lieber Inl�nder Rum als Ausl�nder raus!=-
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 19:45:10 +0200
From: "Guenter Bietzig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: They are only ONE
On Sat, 26 May 2001 20:40:39 -0500, Clarence Verge wrote:
> Christof, the zip came down OK. Maybe I had a reception error, or your
> server didn't like the .ZBM filetype yesterday.
> That's interesting, with YOUR Arachne version the first and last images
> are the pix of Ron Clarke, and Glenn and Bernie get red boxes.
> With MY Arachne, (1.62) *ALL* are red boxes. :(
> Guenter, I think there may be a problem with the HTML.
> - Clarence Verge
Hello Clarence, Christof and All,
the .zbm (arachne photo gallery) is in fact a little mystic. Maybe Christof
did the D/L at time I've made some uploads to the server??
I've checked with Arachne 1.66 and today at the office with M$IE and
Netscape, no problems at all :-)
Please check:http://home.nexgo.de/guebie/photo.htm
I've uploaded 10 pics (250kB).
Regards
G�nter
Guenter Bietzig, Essen, Germany. Arachne BUG-,CRASH-,WISH-& LOVElist at:
ArachneHelpPage http://home.nexgo.de/guebie/arachne.htm
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 21:04:50 +0200
From: "Michal H. Tyc" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: FREE DOS Multi-tasking?
I can't give an 100% adequate example right from my mind, but
at least some programs need to be told how much memory they
shuold allocate/leave. E.g., in Turbo Pascal 7 protected mode IDE
(TPX.EXE) it's controlled by DPMIMEM and RTM environment variables.
If you don't set them, TPX takes all available extended memory for
its purposes. And when you set them too low, you can't edit huge
files.
But it becomes quite off-topic, doesn't it? :-)
Greetings,
Michal
On Mon, 28 May 2001 16:04:11 +0200, Florian Xaver wrote:
> Hi!
>> But then some poorly written
>> programs will be able to allocate whole memory and nothing will be
>> left for other tasks.
> Which ones? That shouldn't be able!
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 22:09:08 +0200
From: Bernie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: They are only ONE
G�nter wrote:
>Please check:http://home.nexgo.de/guebie/photo.htm
The question asked on the page is easily asnwered:
Because you are as crazy as the rest of us ;-)
//Bernie
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 22:42:32 +0200
From: "Guenter Bietzig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: They are only ONE
On Mon, 28 May 2001 22:09:08 +0200, Bernie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The question asked on the page is easily asnwered:
> Because you are as crazy as the rest of us ;-)
> //Bernie
I fear you are right ;-)
Regards
Guenter Bietzig, Essen, Germany. Arachne BUG-,CRASH-,WISH-& LOVElist at:
ArachneHelpPage http://home.nexgo.de/guebie/arachne.htm
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 04:03:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Thomas Mueller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Internet morons force wake-up call
to L.D. Best (and others with cable modems):
Do Ethernet cards generally come with DOS packet driver; otherwise, where do you
find DOS packet driver?
By the way, I can again boot Linux, and can mount Iomega Zip 250 external SCSI,
but when I try to mount the CD-ROM, system hangs: I can type, but the only
system response is to echo on screen what I type. CD-ROM is Texel, now Plextor,
internal SCSI, on same Trantor T130B SCSI as the Zip 250. I have Linux
Slackware 7.1.
------------------------------
End of arachne-digest V1 #1537
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