Re: On-line faq: anyone have a copy?

[Alex Lancaster]

>>>>> "PJ" == Paul E Johnson <address@hidden> writes:

PJ> If anyone happened to download and save a copy of the online
PJ> SwarmFaq.html, I would be grateful to have a copy back.  Here's
PJ> the sad story to explain why I'm in this pathetic situation:

PJ> Without a doubt, I have suffered the most ridiculous string of
PJ> computer hardships that anyone can imagine.  Within a space of 1
PJ> week, one computer was hacked by vandals and erased and the other
PJ> had a power supply failure and the technician who is working on it
PJ> can't get it to reboot after replacing that (I fear he is not
PJ> knowledgable).  I had tape backups of my research and the Online
PJ> SwarmFaq, but I can't read those tapes now because that machine is
PJ> not working and (here is what really scares me) I took the tapes
PJ> to a friend's machine and it claims they are empty.

PJ> This morning I configured the FAQ manager software to run on a DEC
PJ> alpha system my university has.  This machine is administered by
PJ> professionals from San Antonio who (presumably) know what salsa is
PJ> supposed to taste like, er, know how not to lose content.  The
PJ> address is here:

PJ> http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn/SwarmFaq/SwarmOnlineFaq.html

PJ> That document is hollow and has a link to the old faq, which I've
PJ> not updated since SwarmFest 1998.

PJ> In the happy but unlikely event that one of you did keep a copy of
PJ> the online FAQ, send it back and I'll plug it in there.  If not,
PJ> when my machine is repaired, there is high likelihood I'll be able
PJ> to retrieve it from the disk or the tape.

Sorry to hear of the loss - that's really bad, for all of us.  

I did a search through the cache files in .netscape on my Sun box, and
my RedHat Linux laptop and on Marcus' machine - but zip, nada,
nothing...  I'll ask around SFI as well - but I don't hold out a lot
of hope.

It would be incredible if no-one's browser out there had a cache file
somewhere.

Maybe you could put another e-mail out to the list and with specific
instructions on how to search the cache file.  One idea of mine (if
the person is on a Unix machine) is to do the following:

$ cd .netscape/cache
$ strings index.db|less

look for original URL (or part thereof) and *underneath* or *above*
the location that's returned by the string-ing of the (binary)
index.db file should be the name of the cache file.

So something like:

http://www.santafe.edu/images/horiz2.gif
19/cache35CA8DB90792B20.gif
image/gif   

means that the URL (to a GIF file in this case) is cached at
19/cache... (blah, blah)

(you may have to fiddle a little around with the ordering to get the
right cache file - I'm not certain how the database stores the
information internally)

We definitely need to do everything in our (collective) Swarm power to
find this missing file!

 --- Alex

-- 
  Alex Lancaster           |  e-mail: address@hidden
  Swarm Program            |     web: http://www.santafe.edu/~alex
  Santa Fe Institute       |     tel: +1-(505) 984-8800 (ext 242)
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