Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!matthew
From: matthew@castle.ed.ac.uk (M White)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: Binary Programs on Info-Iris
Message-ID: <6451@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Sep 90 16:34:18 GMT
References: <9009201522.AA00565@> <1990Sep21.175208.266@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Organization: Edinburgh University Computing Service
Lines: 45

In article <1990Sep21.175208.266@odin.corp.sgi.com> msc@sgi.com writes:
>In article <9009201522.AA00565@>, lmo@lsr-vax.UUCP ("Lance M. Optican - LMO")
>writes:
>|> 
>|> Who is Paul Haeberli, and why does he give away
>|> all those nifty programs in binary?
>Paul is a Principle Engineer in our research group and he gives away all those
>swell programs because he's a nice guy.
>
>|> 
>|> It would be a big help to us mere mortal programmers
>|> if instructions were included on extracting and
>|> running such programs.
>
>Save the article in a file somewhere and issue the command
>
>	uudecode <somewhere>
>
>uudecode creates a new file which is the executable binary.  Read the uudecode
>man page for more details.  The executable binary extracted by uudecode is
>ready to run.

Very useful Mark, however, the code does not do much on some systems.
When run on our 4D/220 GTXB (IRIX 3.2) it eats CPU time with nothing
appearing on the screen. I have two points :

1) Binaries should not be posted to the net: I have been slated by
workmates, quite rightly, for attempting to run Pauls program on our
machine.  The net is not secure and running binaries straight off it
(even if the appear to come from sgi) is not a good idea. 

2) SGI personnel, of all people, should provide at least SOME
instructions with code. If you have not seen a uuencoded file before, it
is not obvious what should be done with it. It should not be necessary
for net-time to be spent with queries such as Lance's above.

In future, if someone from SGI wants to be a "nice guy", I would feel
happier if they took notice of the above points.

Despite my moaning, it is nice to see software being distributed for
people to play with. Please don't let me put anyone off posting.

-- 
Matthew White - Visualisation Support - Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre
"All right, hands up if you think it was a Russian water tentacle." - Abyss