---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash SunFLASH Vol 32 #9 August 1991 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note the correction under Item #5, Public Domain Software. SunNet(TM) is Sun-Nets without the trademark. ********************************* * * * S U N E R G Y E M A I L * * * ********************************* NEWSLETTER 1 August, 1991 Distributed by the Sunergy Program staff, Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation; all rights reserved. Contact the Sunergy email editors by sending email to Sunergy_Information@Sun.COM. ====================================================================== = CONTENTS - ISSUE #1 = ====================================================================== ANNOUNCEMENTS *1* The Sunergy Program *2* Sunergy email Newsletters *3* Satellite Conference Recap *4* Invitation for SIGs ROADMAPS TO SUN *5* Public Domain Software *6* SPARC Applications Catalog INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS *7* Status of IEEE 1754 Standard NOVICE NEWS *8* Creating a Library of Sunergy E-Mail TECHNICAL TOPICS *9* SunTips: Technical Advice *10* Object Management Group (Whitepaper) UPCOMING EVENTS *11* Tradeshow Calendar ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - ANNOUNCEMENTS - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************** *1* The Sunergy Program * *************************** Welcome to the Sunergy Program. Our mission is to provide the Sun community with: * Roadmaps to resources available at Sun. * Information (both technical and non-technical) for more effectively leveraging Sun products. * A feedback mechanism to open communications between you and Sun management. In order to accomplish this mission, the Sunergy Program offers the following services (free of charge) to any interested Sun user: 1. A referral list containing up-to-date phone numbers for important contacts within Sun Microsystems. 2. A guide to technical white papers and other literature available free of charge. 3. A listing of public domain software sources. 4. A bimonthly electronic newsletter. 5. Live, interactive satellite broadcasts featuring eminent engineers, developers, and executives from Sun and the user community. For further information on the Sunergy Program, send email to Sunergy_Information@Sun.COM. ********************************* *2* Sunergy email Newsletters * ********************************* Sunergy electronic newsletters are distributed bimonthly to the international Sun community. These newsletters contain useful and timely information including: news about the Sunergy Program; information on Sun products; current listings of important contacts within Sun Microsystems; articles and discussions about relevant technical topics; answers to questions commonly asked by Sun users; and announcements of upcoming events like conferences and tradeshows. Sunergy newsletters are distributed via electronic mail. If you want to add other names to our distribution list, please send e-mail to Sunergy_Information@Sun.COM. ********************************** *3* Satellite Conference Recap * ********************************** In June, the Sunergy Program aired the first satellite broadcast. This broadcast featured Scott McNealy, President and CEO of Sun, John Gage, Director of Sun's Science Office, and Keith Erskine, a Sun Engineer. Also included was a live question and answer session with participation of audiences in California, Washington, and New Jersey. The following is a recap of the first broadcast. If you have comments or suggestions about the broadcast, ideas for future broad- cast topics, or you would like information to set up a broadcast downlink site in your area, or need a videotape of this broadcast, please call the Sunergy Office at (415) 336-0609 or send us e-mail. * Scott McNealy talked about Sun performance and the new reorganization. Revenue for the last fiscal quarter equalled $848 million, representing a 34% growth over this same period last year. Today, Sun systems account for 38% of the UNIX market. This is the largest share and almost twice that of the nearest competitor. Sun Microsystems recently reorganized into several separate companies. Overall, this reorganization enables Sun to focus increased investment in technology areas that most benefit Sun customers. Other than the increased investments, Sun customers will feel no impact from this reorganization. SPARC suppliers will benefit from faster access to new Sun technology. * John Gage presented SunNews -- hot topics in the industry: - The Object Management Group (OMG) is a consortium of over 130 companies whose intent is to advance software to a new world -- that of distributed objects. The benefit is the ability to write applica- tion software without concern for data location, format, or architecture. Sun and Hewlett-Packard have jointly submitted a proposal to the OMG that defines how to create distributed objects. NCR and Bull have now joined Sun and HP and the companies will work together with DEC to provide a combined common application software environment. - The IEEE 1754 committee is very close to a standard for an open 32-bit microprocessor based on the SPARC architecture. This means that this architecture will be available in the public domain. SPARC chips can then be built by anyone, without license fees. IEEE 1754 has the potential to make a major change in computing as we know it today. If you'd like more information on IEEE 1754, send e-mail to phil@sparc.com. * Keith Erskine presented SunTips -- technical advice. See the TECHNICAL TOPICS section of this newsletter for a recap of these useful tips. *************************** *4* Invitation for SIGs * *************************** This newsletter can be a convenient channel for Special Interest Groups (SIGs). If you would like to form a SIG or already have one organized, please send us email and let us know about your activities and plans. We can publish notices to the readers, invite others to join your group, or send out articles and announcements in a special column for SIGs. In other words, we'll take care of all the communications logistics if you would like to use the Sunergy email newsletter for your group. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - ROADMAPS TO SUN - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ****************************** *5* Public Domain Software * ****************************** [In future issues, we will include other lists and information about key Sun contacts and sources.] ONLINE SOURCES - The USENET group comp.sys.sun is a reflection of the articles in Sun-Spots. Each medium has its advantage. The USENET group boasts a much more rapid turnaround (approximately 24 hours from submission to posting) but lacks much of the structure of the Sun-Spots Digest. The Digest is more structured, with its breakdown by topic area, and also serves sites unable to receive USENET news. - The Sun-386i mailing list covers issues related to the Sun386i. Send e-mail to sun-386i-request@rice.edu to be added to the mailing list. - The Sun-Managers mailing list covers issues of special interest to managers of sites using Sun workstations or fileservers. Send subscription requests to sun-managers-request@rice.edu. - Sun-Nets mailing list covers articles regarding networking using Sun hardware. Send subscription requests to sun-nets-request@umiacs.umd.edu. Adobe Systems PostScript Fileserver Archive The PostScript(R) fileserver at Adobe Systems, ps-file-server@adobe.COM, is an automated mail-response program. The first message you send to the fileserver should consist of a single word: help. You will be sent a message explaining how to use the fileserver. Argonne National Laboratory Archive - NETLIB NETLIB, the mail-response archive server from Argonne National Labs, is a system for distribution of mathematical software by electronic mail. For an index and information about using the service, send an e-mail request to netlib@ornl.gov with the message "send index." If your UNIX(R) system doesn't talk directly to research (AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey), you might try forwarding through ihnp4 (Bell Labs in Chicago) or mcvax (Math Centrum in Amsterdam). Someone will be paying for long-distance phone calls--please be conservative. Those with access to the ARPANET can use netlib@mcs.anl.gov (at Argonne National Labs). For an introduction to the mysteries of networks and address syntax, refer to J. Quarterman and J. Hoskins, Comm. ACM (Oct 1986) 29, 932-971. For background information about NETLIB, refer to Jack J. Dongarra and Eric Grosse, "Distribution of Mathematical Software Via Electronic Mail," Comm. ACM (1987) 30, 403- 407. Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation has a variety of interesting, freely redistributable software with documentation. The software is directly available to the Internet community through anonymous File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and is stored at many UUCP archive sites. Several tapes containing the current source collection are available for $175 each. For more information, contact: The Free Software Foundation 675 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 876-3296 gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu NCSA Scientific Visualization Software Archive The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) maintains software, documentation, and source code that can be downloaded at no charge from an anonymous FTP server located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. If you are connected to Internet (NSFnet, ARPANET, and Milnet) you can FTP to ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu (128.174.20.50) using the login "anonymous" and your login name for the password. The first file you should get is README.FIRST, which includes complete instructions concerning the organization of the FTP directories and the procedures for downloading the files. The NCSA software tools enable scientists or researchers to generate images from datasets, analyze and animate images, create color maps, present the results of their research to colleagues and students, and share files and data among numerous machines and operating systems. Old Dominion University Archive The Computer Science Department at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, maintains software archives for UNIX systems and for Amiga systems. In the UNIX archive are the files from the Software EXchange tape (the sextape) from January 1989 as well as the latest version of Berkeley's sendmail and ftpd, sunfixes--a collection that might make the Network Information System (NIS) (formerly YP) and the domain name system interact better on your machine--and the mimsy collection of worm-related fixes. To get these files, FTP to xanth.cs.odu.edu (128.82.8.1) as user "anonymous," password "your- user-name" and cd to Sun. If you have problems, check first with your local system administrator. If you still need help, send mail to ftp- bugs@cs.odu.edu. Use binary mode to retrieve the Sun files. With the exception of the README files, all of these files are in compressed tar (.tar.Z) format. Rice University Archives and Mailing List The Computer Science Department at Rice University in Houston, Texas, moderates and distributes Sun-Spots, an electronic mailing list for Sun users. The Sun-Spots Digest is an electronic forum for exchanging information about the systems made by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Discussions take the form of electronic messages submitted by readers around the world. These are compiled into digests by topic and sent out as volume merits (generally seven to ten times per week). The Sun-Spots Digest is available on BITNET, Internet, and over the UUCP network by normal mail routes. In addition, Rice maintains several Sun-related archives, available to the Internet through anonymous FTP or by mail-response archive service for those who do not have direct Internet/ARPANET access. The Rice archives include the Sun-spots archives; sun-icons, a collection of source files for icon and background pattern bitmaps; and sun-source, source code extracted from Sun-Spots submissions. To subscribe or cancel Sun-Spots, send your request to sun-spots-request@rice.edu. Sun-Spots is also available on the USENET news group comp.sys.sun. BITNET readers can subscribe directly with the CMS command TELL LISTSERV AT RICE SUBSCRIBE SUN-SPOTS My Full Name. To access the archives from the Internet, FTP to the host titan.rice.edu, using the login anonymous and your user ID as the password. This places you in a special part of the filesystem with several subdirectories: sun-spots, sun-source, and sun-icons. Each subdirectory contains at least two files: directory and index. The former is a directory listing. The latter is a more descriptive record of the directory's contents. Most entries in the archives (including the icons) are in 7-bit ASCII form and can be transferred with the default FTP settings. To get a tar file or other 8-bit data, use the image transfer type. The Rice archive server's address is archive-server@rice.edu, but the address archive-server@titan.rice.edu will also work. For additional information about the server, send e-mail containing only the word help to the server. To talk to a person rather than the program, use the address archive-management@rice.edu. Sun NeWSprint Archive Server The NeWSprint(TM) system is a Sun product that moves the page rendering process from the printer to the workstation, enabling PostScript compatible printing on many popular printers and plotters when connected to a SPARCstation(TM) system. For further information, send a message to np-archive@Sun.COM with the word help in the subject line. Sun X11/NeWS Archive Server The X11/NeWS(TM) archive server is a repository of NeWS(R) information, including applications, documentation, and other helpful data. For information about using the server, send e-mail containing the words "send help" to news-archive@Sun.COM. If you have useful NeWS demos, programs, or interesting pieces of NeWS lore, please send a copy of them to the moderator at manager-news-archive@Sun.COM. UNIX-SW Software Repository The UNIX-SW software repository is stored on SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL in the directory PD2:. SIMTEL20 is a DEC 2065 system running TOPS-20 and is located at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. You can FTP to SIMTEL20 using the login anonymous and your user ID as the password. European users can access the software repository over the Internet or through BITNET-Trickle servers using WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL. (TOPS-20 is a registered trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation.) To receive updates about new programs added to the repository and other administration data, send mail to UNIX-SW-REQUEST@SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL and ask to be added to the UNIX-SW mailing list. USENET Sources to many public domain programs are posted to various USENET NeWS groups, news.announce.newusers, for access to different sites and sources for USENET software versions. For example: o comp.sources.d For any discussion of source postings o comp.sources.games Postings of recreational software (moderated) o comp.sources.misc Posting of software (moderated) UUNET Source Archives on Tape UUNET is making its collection of freely redistributable UNIX source archives available on tape to any interested parties. UUNET has more than 500 MB of source archives online for subscribers to access. These archives are now available to anyone. They are distributed on three 6250 bpi half-inch tapes. All files are compressed. The all-inclusive cost of these tapes is $225 with prepayment or $275 otherwise. The distribution is also available on seven 1/4-inch cartridge tapes (QIC-24, 60 MB tapes, compatible with Sun systems) for an additional $175 (that is, $400 prepaid, $450 otherwise). To obtain the tape distribution or for further information, contact: UUNET Communications Services 3110 Fairview Park Drive, Suite 570 Falls Church, VA 22042 Phone: (703) 876-5050 Fax: (703) 876-5059 info@uunet.uu.net UUNET Source Archives Online UUNET now provides online access to its extensive collection of UNIX system related sources to nonsubscribers. By calling (900) 468-7727 (900 GOT-SRCS) and using the login "UUCP" with no password, anyone may UUCP any of UUNET's online source collection. Callers will be charged 40 cents per minute. The charges will appear on their next telephone bill. SUMMARY For more information, please see the Academic Software Portfolio. To obtain a copy of the portfolio, call your local Sun sales office. ********************************** *6* SPARC Applications Catalog * ********************************** The Sun Catalyst Program publishes an annual catalog of SPARC- compatible third-party software application and add-on hardware products. If you wish to purchase copies of the Catalyst Catalog, you may order them directly from the Summit Group. The cost is $21.95 U.S. dollars. California residents, please include applicable sales tax. The Summit Group 15720 Winchester Blvd. Los Gatos, CA 95030 (408) 395-9522 FAX (408) 395-0544 Outside the U.S., please contact the Summit Group for shipping charges. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ************************************ *7* Status of IEEE 1754 Standard * ************************************ The IEEE 1754 standard was discussed in the Sunergy Satellite broadcast. As mentioned, this standard will define an open 32-bit microprocessor based on the SPARC architecture. The draft of the standard will be ready for ballot this fall and should be finalized and ready for general distribution in late 1991 or early 1992. If you would like to participate on this committee, they welcome your comments and input. You can contact the committee chair, Phil Huelson, by sending email to phil@sparc.com. For details about meetings and other administrative information, contact Debbie Wagner (debbie@sparc.com). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - NOVICE NEWS - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *********************************** *8* A Library of Sunergy E-Mail * *********************************** You may want to save all or some of each Sunergy email news- letter. We have designed the format to help you organize your own library of past issues. Consider these suggestions: * Create a directory for Sunergy newsletters. Create the following files under this directory. * Merge the table of contents from each issue into one master index file. The header for each lists the issue number. * Save each newsletter in a file with a name that clearly identifies the issue number. * To find a desired article or articles on a subject of interest, simply use your editor to search the index file. Then pull open the relevant issue files. Also note that you can quickly move through the issues by taking advantage of a few format characteristics: * Each article is numbered. To quickly move to an article, use the search command on its *#* pattern. * Each article has a banner around the title. To skip forward to the next article, do a search for the next ***** string. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - TECHNICAL TOPICS - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ********************************** *9* SunTips: Technical Advice * ********************************** In the first Sunergy satellite broadcast, Keith Erskine presented the first SunTips session. We summarize his useful advice for you in this article. Security Tips Security is a hot issue today. Your first line of defense is your password. You should have to enter your password every time you log into a system. To create or change your password, use the 'passwd' command. The best passwords are those with a mix of numbers and letters. The next line of defense consists of two files that can challenge a person trying to access your system. The first is the /etc/passwd file. By removing the last line, your system will ask anyone trying to log into your machine for a password. The other file to change is the /etc/host.equiv file. Again, by removing the last line, this will challenge anyone using the "super user" method of access for a password. Audio Tips You SPARCstation has built-in audio. It allows you to record and play audio, and use it in applications. The audio port is bi-directional, meaning it can receive data from the microphone and play it out at the same time on the speaker. In the demo directory you'll find x_soundtool. This is a recording rool that gives you some advanced editing features. Sound can be recorded and then cut and pasted together. There is also a play command that lets you put audio into a shell script. Performance Tips You might feel the need for speed from time to time. So, until your SPARCstation-2 arrives, here are some tricks you can do to squeeze out some more performance. * Electronic mail - a big mail box can drag down your system. Keep up with your mail. Organize more things into folders. Use News for those most-often-used aliases. * Scrolling - this can cause big delays. Command Tool keeps a lot of text in memory. Use shelltool, and only turn on scrolling when needed. * 'out of memory' messages - when these occur often, you might not have enough swap space. A good rule of thumb is to have two times the amount of swap space as memory. Swap space can be added using the swapon command. * Network configuration - on your network, you probably only have one route out of your sub-net onto a backbone. If that's the case, you can create a static routing, and stop the route.d demon. * Diskless machines - look into tmpfs. This is a memory resident program that allows your system virtual memory to be used as a filesystem. * Kernel reconfiguration - this is the most advanced method of performance tuning. If you are a novice in this area, don't try to do this alone; ask your system administrator for help. ********************************************* *10* Object Management Group (Whitepaper) * ********************************************* Summary of Sun/HP Joint Submission to the Object Management Group Introduction In response to the Object Management Group's request for proposal, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems jointly submitted the Distributed Object Management Facility (Distributed OMF) technology. The Distributed OMF allows the creation and management of objects independent of any operation system, network, or remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism. The Distributed OMF is an evolution of three independently successful technologies: HP's NewWave environment, Sun Microsystems' Open Network Computing (ONC), and HP's Network Computing System (NCS). The Distributed OMF technology builds on the expertise of the two leaders in distributed computing technology utilizing Sun's ONC and HP's NCS. It also builds on the success of a mature, industry- acclaimed object-oriented application environment: HP NewWave. Together, Sun and HP have significantly advanced the industry by combining object technology with distributed computing. Their efforts have resulted in a single, cohesive architecture with one design philosophy: to provide a distributed object management foundation that can be commercially utilized in a broad software environment that benefits developers, end users and OEMs. Developers benefit from: * A flexible, object-oriented application environment that reduces design complexity to enhance application integration * A common Class Definition Language (CDL) that supports the development of portable distributed applications across multiple RPC systems * Ease of use in integrating and managing objects in a distributed environment Users benefit from: * Transparent access to information throughout a worldwide network via industry standard distributed computing protocols * Access to a broad range of applications in a multi-vendor, multi-platform network * Easy and dynamic integration of applications within the framework of a single, consistent environment OEM's benefit from: * Preserving their investments in technologies such as operating systems, computer architectures, network protocols, user interfaces and hardware. * Interface specifications placed in the public domain. * Broad availability to the industry through open licensing. Architecture The Distributed Object Management Facility (Distributed OMF) is the underlying foundation of the Distributed Application Architecture (DAA), which defines a comprehensive object-oriented environment that is compliant with OMG's Object Management Architecture (OMA). The Distributed OMF provides all the functionality of the OMG's Object Management Architecture-Object Request Broker. Other layers of the Distributed Application Architecture correspond to the OMG Object Management Architecture-Object Services and Common Facilities. The Distributed OMF is designed to provide the basic functionality required for all applications while higher layers provide object- management policies and services required by some, but not all, applications. The Distributed OMF meets the Object Request Broker requirements, but also provides a way to extend the Object Request Broker, making it easier for existing architectures to use the Object Management Architecture. Specifically, the Object Request Broker can be extended to support various object models and object managers and the communication between them. This allows each application to use the object model and services appropriate to its needs, yet the application can still interoperate with objects following another model. For example, an object-oriented database vendor may use the Distributed OMF to convey operations between machines while maintaining the state of the objects in the object-oriented database developed by the independent software vendor. Implementation The Distributed OMF consists of the following components: Communication Services Provide a uniform mechanism for issuing and delivering requests between objects. These services are layered above the traditional communication services of existing distributed computing technology. As such, the current implementation uses either HP's Network Computing System (NCS) or Sun's Open Network Computing (ONC) standards for a remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism to transmit requests in a distributed, heterogeneous environment. This does not preclude other RPC mechanisms being used to achieve similar results. The NCS implementation is NCS 2.0, which is an integral component of the Open Software Foundation's (OSF) Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) offering. The ONC implementation is the Transport Independent (TI-RPC) version, which is the distributed computing foundation for UNIX Systems Laboratories, Inc. (USL) UNIX System V Release 4. Both RPC mechanisms facilitate communications between objects on distributed systems and provide full interoperability between objects. Object Location Service Allows the Distributed OMF Core to find an object regardless of where it exists in the system. Object moves are registered with the Object Location Service so applications do not need to keep track of where objects are. In addition, the Distributed OMF Core provides interfaces that enable objects to be registered with external naming services, such as an X.500 directory service. Manager of Object Managers Integrates object managers, each of which supports a distributed object model, into a common location and messaging system. Third parties or application developers can add their own object managers to a Distributed OMF environment and their objects can communicate with the Distributed Object Manager via the Manager of Object Managers. Distributed Object Manager Enables object creation and deletion, activation and deactivation, and the installation of new object classes. CDL The Class Definition Language (CDL) allows developers to add distributed applications to an OMA environment by giving them a declarative interface independent of the underlying RPC mechanism. Therefore, applications developed to CDL are portable to multiple Distributed OMF implementations. CDL has syntax and semantics that are similar to those of the C++ programming language and generates interface specifications in either ANSI C or C++. The CDL compiler generates whatever code is required to assist in the interaction of distributed application objects. Conclusion In addition to those mentioned above, the Distributed OMF architecture includes the following advantages: * The Distributed OMF builds on mature, proven products that, in their own rights, have been widely accepted as international industry standards. * The Distributed OMF is designed to be portable. The Distributed OMF itself is highly portable, requiring only ANSI C and a small set of POSIX calls. Each implementation, in turn, provides a portable foundation for application objects. * Distributed OMF environments are easier to manage. Objects are activated and deactivated automatically by object managers, so servers do not need to be started or stopped manually (an improvement over current RPC implementations). Also, classes can be installed and deinstalled dynamically. Coupled with location transparency, these features offer system managers unparalleled ability to manage software resources. Given the flexibility of the Distributed OMF design, many implementations are possible. Initial implementations by Hewlett- Packard and Sun Microsystems, two of the industry pioneers in distributed computing, will address those applications and markets that we believe will most benefit from the capabilities provided by the Distributed OMF specifically, and Distributed Application Architecture in general. We are confident that our proposed layered, scalable Distributed OMF architecture meets the requirements expressed in the Object Request Broker-Request For Proposal and meets the needs of Object Management Group member companies for Object Request Broker functionality. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - UPCOMING EVENTS - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************** *11* Tradeshow Calendar * *************************** Although Sun does not participate in all of the following shows, we present this comprehensive list of computer industry tradeshows for your planning purposes. If you know of other shows or events that would be of interest to our readers, please send your suggestions to the Sunergy staff (see the top banner of this newsletter for an email address). SHOW DATES (91) SHOW NAME LOCATION Aug 11-15 URISA '91 San Francisco Aug 20-22 TechDOC Seattle Aug 24-30 IJAI Sydney, Australia Aug 26-31 ACS Washington, D.C. Aug 27-29 American Chemical Society New York Sept 10-12 Sun User '91 Conference Birmingham, U.K. Sept 11-13 Buscon East Washington, D.C. Sept 16-20 EurOpen Budapest, Hungary Sept 17-19 FCC Washington, D.C. Sept 18-20 SC&A Philadelphia Sept 24-26 EDMS User Forum Cincinnati Sept 24-27 AUUG Sydney, Australia Sept 29-Oct. 4 Oracle International User Florida Oct 1-3 Seybold San Jose Oct 2-4 City Management Europe Oct 6-9 SPE Dallas Oct 7-11 Interop San Jose Oct 10-11 Multi-User C Show Montreal, Canada Oct 16-19 Educom San Diego Oct 21-25 Comdex Las Vegas Oct 27-Nov 1 GIS/LIS '91 Atlanta Oct 28-31 ISA Anaheim Oct 31 SUG-NL Technical Meeting '91 Netherlands Oct 31-Nov 3 UNIX Expo New York Nov 4-7 Am. Soc. of Civ. Engr. San Francisco Nov 10-14 Society of Exploration Houston Nov 12-15 Autofact Chicago Nov 13-15 4th Int'l Symposium on AI Cancun, Mexico Nov 22 NSUG Symposium Kanagawa Science Park, Japan Dec 4-7 AEC Expo New York Dec 9-11 Sun User Group San Jose Dec 16-18 UKUUG Edinburgh, U.K. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For information send mail to info-sunflash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Subscription requests should be sent to sunflash-request@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Archives are on solar.nova.edu and paris.cs.miami.edu. All prices, availability, and other statements relating to Sun or third party products are valid in the U.S. only. Please contact your local Sales Representative for details of pricing and product availability in your region. Descriptions of, or references to products or publications within SunFlash does not imply an endorsement of that product or publication by Sun Microsystems. John McLaughlin, SunFlash editor, flash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. (305) 776-7770.