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Computer Undergroud Digest Vol. 10 Issue 36
Computer underground Digest Sun Jun 28, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 36
ISSN 1004-042X
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
CONTENTS, #10.36 (Sun, Jun 28, 1998)
File 1--Seized the server of Islands in the Net (Italy)
File 2--"Internet Kidnapping" case update - TELECOM Digest reprint
File 3--On-Line Guitar Archive closes to avoid lawsuit
File 4-- A Week of Free Hacking (Telecom Digest reprint)
File 5--New Mailing List - Cybercafe & Community
File 6--Protecting Judges Against Liza Minnelli
File 7--DR DOS and the Browser Wars
File 8--Imaginary Gardens. The Year 2000 Fear Bug. June 11, 1998
File 9--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Apr, 1998)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION ApPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 18:00:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: Arturo Di Corinto <arturo@Psych.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: File 1--Seized the server of Islands in the Net (Italy)
Hi Jim,
I have a very sad news. The server of Islands in the Net has been seized
by the police and we need your help to ditribute widely these infos.
Apart of that, any comments or suggestion from you will be very
appreciated.
Please insert the message below in the bulletin.
Thank you
*** please re-distribute widely ***
Saturday, June 27th at 10:30 am the server of Islands in the Net (Isole
nella Rete, an Italian non-profit association that offers communication
spaces to social centres, free radios and collectives of the movement) has
been seized by the Postal Police in Bologna for allegedly defamatory
material posted on its system.
Starting from now, and who knows for how long, the server at
http://www.ecn.org is down, its web pages are no longer available online
and all its e-mail services that permitted in the last years the
construction of a strong solidarity network among several self-organized
collectives are shut down.
The seizure took place in the office of the Internet provider hosting the
server, ordered by the State Prosecutor of Vicenza Paolo Pecori and was
executed by officers of the Postal Police of Bologna.
It is a 'preventive' seizure, claiming the crime of 'prolonged defamation'
toward a travel agency in Milan. The reason for the seizure would be the
web publication of a message posted by an Italian collective, accurate
transcription of a printed flyer publicly distributed. This message was
first sent to a mailing list (cslist) hosted by the server of Islands in
the Net and then published on the web through the usual automatic procedure.
The flyer (and the message posted on the mailing list and on the web as
well) claimed that Turban Italia Srl, a travel agency in Milan, had strong
financial ties to former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, then
suggesting a boycott of the agency services in solidarity with Kurdistan
people persecuted by Turkish government.
Although the seizure order still does not explicitly mention any person
formally charged with the crime of defamation, the judge that ordered this
action evidently holds Islands in the Net liable for the content of
anything hosted by its Internet server. The liability of the providers for
the contents they carry is actually a very hot topic worldwide still far
from a viable solution.
However, the main direction is that Internet providers should NOT being
hold liable for the contents they carry, at least on grounds both of
technical feasibility and commercial suitability.
The order of seizure of the server (and its entire content), furthermore,
seems exceptionally harmful because it hits a service used by hundreds of
users in Italy and abroad, completely unaware of the events that conducted
to the charge. Now those users are suddenly deprived of their communication
tool, without any notice or explanation. Their rights have been clearly
violated.
We are currently closely studying the situation in order to find the best
solutions to what seems to us an extremely serious event that will, in any
case, be known far and wide.
For now the web server at www.ecn.org, all the mailing lists and all the
e-mail addresses hosted by the server are down. We are working to set up a
backup server as soon as possible.
For more info and the latest news:
http://strano.net/news
http://geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/2184/inr.html
mailing list (in Italian) <hackmeeting@kyuzz.org>
[send mail to <majordomo@kyuzz.org> including 'subscribe hackmeeting' in
the body message]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 21:11:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: editor@TELECOM-DIGEST.ORG
Subject: File 2--"Internet Kidnapping" case update - TELECOM Digest reprint
Source - TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 May 98 Volume 18 : Issue 80
((MODERATORS' NOTE: For those not familiar with Pat Townson's
TELECOM DIGEST, it's an exceptional resource. From the header
of TcD:
"TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but
not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is
circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various
telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and
networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also
gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to
qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell
us how you qualify:
* ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * ======" ))
==================
This is just an update on the 'Internet Kidnapping' case which was
first reported here in the Digest on Wednesday March 20, 1996 (in
volume 16, issue 131 'Youngster Kidnapped by Internet Chat Companion')
and on Friday, April 5, 1996 (in volume 16, issue 163 'Internet Kidnap
Suspect Pleads Not Guilty').
Richard Romero, believed to be 39, a native of Brazil and resident of
Jacksonville, Florida in 1996 was a frequent user of Internet Relay
Chat, and in several sessions on line, he posed as a fifteen year old
boy named 'Kyle'. During those sessions he chatted frequently with
another fifteen year old boy in Mt. Prospect, IL, a northwestern
suburb of Chicago. He and the boy exchanged photos (he had a photo of
some child who became 'Kyle' for his purposes) and at some point in
their various conversations on line, he became himself, and began to
talk with the Chicago-area boy on a regular basis via telephone.
After several phone conversations and online chats, the boy decided to
run away from home, and go live with Romero in Florida.
At some point in their various conversations, the boy's mother found
out about the online/telephone relationship and asked her son to
break it off immediatly and have no further contact with Romero.
Romero came to Mt. Prospect on March 18, 1996 and checked into a
motel in the community where the boy met him the next day. From
there, they went to the Greyhound Bus Station in Skokie, IL where
they boarded a bus bound (eventually) for Jacksonville, FL. leaving
at 9:15 AM.
When the boy failed to appear in school that day at the regular time,
school authorities contacted his mother. His mother went immediatly
to check the boy's room, where she found he had packed many of his
clothes in a duffle bag which was missing. He had also packed his
computer into a backpack. The mother reviewed her phone bills and
other items in the boy's room and found Romero's address and telephone
number in Jacksonville. The rest was easy ...
Police were able to detirmine that a boy matching the description of
her son and Romero -- whose picture she had seen earlier when she
confronted her son about his online companion -- had been seen boarding
a bus for Florida that morning at the Greyhound Station in Chicago.
The bus would be stopping for a dinner break just a couple hours
later in Louisville, KY at about 6:00 PM. FBI agents in Louisville
met the bus when it pulled in to the station there, and placed Romero
under arrest.
On April 5, 1996, the story in the Digest reported that Romero had
chosen to remain silent in court. He appeared without an attorney and
the judge (a) appointed an attorney to represent him and (b) entered
a plea of not guilty.
Since that point, Romero has had two trials. His first trial actually
ended as a mistrial, with a jury which could not reach a decision.
His second trial, which was concluded late last year, resulted in
a finding of guilty by the jury on charges of kidnapping, and transport-
ing a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity.
At his sentencing on Thursday, May 21, 1998, Romero was sentenced to
34 years in federal prison. US District Court Judge Charles Kocoras
in Chicago stated that, "Richard Romero's crimes represented the worst
thing anyone can imagine," and that "Romero created a nightmare for
the family, for which there is no comparable dimension in the course
of human experience."
Virginia Kendall, the assistant US attorney handling the case, said
that Romero was the nation's first convicted 'Internet kidnapper'.
(Quote marks around 'Internet kidnapper' inserted by TELECOM Digest
Editor.)
And that concludes still another chapter in the history of the net.
When this story first appeared in the Digest in March, 1996, I
received mail from a couple readers who objected to the use of the
word 'Internet' as an adjective for 'kidnapper', however, since the
very beginning of this saga, the accounts which have appeared in
the print media -- most noticably the {Chicago Sun-Times} have
routinely used the phrase when discussing Romero. I've sent written
objections to the newspaper about that description, but to no avail.
PAT
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 11:55:15 -0500
From: cal woods <woods.232@osu.edu>
Subject: File 3--On-Line Guitar Archive closes to avoid lawsuit
The On-Line Guitar Archive (OLGA) has closed its doors to try to avoid a
lawsuit from the Harry Fox Agency, which represents various music
publishers. The issues center on the legality of the files at OLGA, which
give instruction in how to play song on the guitar, in chord and/or
tablature format. OLGA goes back to pre-web days - it was originally an ftp
archive for a newsgroup - and has remained free and community-oriented.
Many many people are severly pissed off - 4000 people have signed a
petition in two days!
I thought this might be relevant to your site and of interest to your
readers. For more info, check out the OLGA web page at
http://www.olga.net/
in particular the pages
../hfa.html
../support.html
../hfa2.html
thanks a lot
cal woods
OLGA admin
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 23:19:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: editor@TELECOM-DIGEST.ORG
Subject: File 4-- A Week of Free Hacking (Telecom Digest reprint)
((MODERATORS' NOTE: For those not familiar with Pat Townson's
TELECOM DIGEST, it's an exceptional resource. From the header
of TcD:
"TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but
not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is
circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various
telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and
networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also
gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to
qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell
us how you qualify:
* ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * ======" ))
==================
Source - TELECOM Digest Sun, 21 Jun 98 Volume 18 : Issue 99
Date--Mon, 22 Jun 1998 00:41:19 +0200
From--Paul Boots <bootsch@acm.org>
Dear reader,
Over the past week Holland resembled to be the hacker's paradise
of old; initiated by the "Cracking Competition" called for by ISP
World Online. To blow of steam and steer my agressive energy towards
positive motion I have written this small fragmented evaluation.
The whole thing caused a lot of rumour. It involved the national
press (papers, radio, tv and ezines) where different parties had
a chance to throw their opinions, allegations, reality-distortions
and a lot of mud. The press itself was a party in this whole thing
as well. The image of the hacker as young innocent geek hero revisited.
In the digital age all boundaries blurr; there are really no exceptions
(personally I doubt that boundaries have ever been very clear).
After witnessing this 'event' from very close my conclusion is a sad one:
"The part of the Internet called Holland" is far from being a save and
secure public infrastructure.
It seems a lot of companies and individuals involved do not understand
their responsibilities or even worse, are ignorant of the fact that
they have certain responsiblities.
Their have been multiple claims of unsecurity of an ISP, this ISP is
still in a phase of denial. Nobody outside this ISP really knows what
really is the case: broken into or not, full of holes or not. Details?
The claims of unsecurity are not widely published in detail either.
How exactly is the ISP insecure. How were claimed breakins executed?
All questions remain unanswered. Is this ISP save or not? Have there
been breakins? What were the intentions of claimed breakins?
The fact that a major ISP is claimed to be unsecure and broken into
ultimately is not just an issue for that ISP and it's customers. It
will become an issue for any indivual or company dealing with this ISP
or it's customers! It will become an issue for the ISP suppliers as
well; hardware, software and network facilities. It will become an
issue for fellow ISP's as well as their customers.
After all the gigling, finger pointing and mud throwing where does this
leave all people not directly involved in this 'incident'?
How many steps are needed to involve you?
Hackers come in as many forms as people do. This means there are
hackers for hire. They make money, a lot of money. They are hired by
so called governments, governments agencies, multi-nationals and other
companies, organized crime, terrorist groups and probably political
activist groups as well. Basically anybody with enough money and
purpose.
Let's assume their was in fact a professional breakin at certain ISP.
This breakin happily went unnoticed due to all the fuzz around a
certain "Breakin contest" called for by same ISP. Let's assume as
well that this ISP remains unaware of the intruders after the dust
settles. Would you still feel very secure?
For the benifit of all netizens every claim of breakin (or whatever
maliscious digital act) need to be taken seriously and verified.
Every ISP should be forced to have its anwers regarding questions on
such incidents checked and verified by trusted third parties.
Of course you can only feel secure and save upto a certain level, but
I rather live in an open and free society than in one plagued by
paranoia and fear.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 22:45:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: President b!X <baby-x@millennium-cafe.com>
Subject: File 5--New Mailing List - Cybercafe & Community
Cybercafe & Community Mailing List
cybercafe-community@millennium-cafe.com
http://www.millennium-cafe.com/cybercafe-community/
Dedicated to discussing how cybercafes can position themselves as hubs of
community activity (and even activism), becoming not merely part of the
global communities of the net but part of the local communities where they
are located.
Matters of interest may include:
* Can cybercafes play some of the roles of the more traditional
community computer networks, especially since cybercafes provide a
physical presence for any networked community, which traditional
community networks lack?
* Are cybercafes valuable sites for local/neighborhood activism and
political activity?
* Does the identity of cybercafes as profit-making business ventures
negatively impact their ability to play an active social role in the
community which it serves?
Welcome participants include: concerned cybercafe owners, community
network specialists, community/neighborhood activists, and any other
legitimately interested individual.
To subscribe, send email to majoromo@millennium-cafe.com with no Subject
header and a body containing only the words
subscribe cybercafe-community
and then respond as required to the confirmation message you will receive.
There is not at present a digest version of this list.
Although not available at the present, a web archive for the list will be
made available at a later date.
Christopher D. Frankonis, President baby-x@millennium-cafe.com
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 07:06:54 -0400
From: Jonathan Wallace <jw@bway.net>
Subject: File 6--Protecting Judges Against Liza Minnelli
Protecting Judges Against Liza Minnelli:
The WebSENSE Censorware at Work
By The Censorware Project
http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/
June 21, 1998
In April, the Censorware Project reported that the WebSENSE
blocking software from NetPartners Internet Solutions of San Diego
was in use in the federal courts in the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth
Circuits, covering twenty-two states and Guam. WebSENSE is also
installed in the Orange County, Florida, and Fulton County,
Indiana public libraries. (The April 22 Censorware Project report
is at http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/courtcen.html)
said: "Its an outrage....I don't do stuff like that to my
children." (Quoted in James Evans, "Blindered Justice: 9th
Circuit Judges Chafe Over Software That Restricts Access
to X-Rated Internet Sites", Los Angeles Daily Journal, April 27,
1998, p. 1.)
After publicizing the installation of censorware in the federal
court system, The Censorware Project evaluated the WebSENSE
product. We wanted to determine what kind of speech the court
administrators were seeking to keep from the judges' eyes.
The answer: our tax dollars are being spent to protect judges,
and library users, against Liza Minnelli, Jewish teens, a grocer,
a speakers' bureau, a mortgage company--and some free speech
advocates.
All of these sites are blocked by WebSENSE under the Sex1, Sex2
or Adult Entertainment categories, the settings used in the
federal courts and in libraries.
On its website at http://www.websense.com,
NetPartners brags that:
[W]e do not use key
words or wild cards when adding
sites. Instead, we rely on our team of
Internet surfers who personally check
each potential site to verify the
contents..... This
process ensures that only those
sites that actually meet the category
definitions are included in the
database.
The Censorware Project tested WebSENSE to see if this claim
could be verified. We discovered that, like any censorware
product, WebSENSE blacklists numerous sites erroneously.
We concentrated on sites blocked under WebSENSE's Adult, Sex1
and Sex2 categories, which are enabled in both the federal
court's and Orange County library's WebSENSE implementations.
The company defines Adult as "Adult Entertainment --Full or
partial nudity of individuals. This might include strip clubs,
lingerie, adult- oriented chat rooms, erotica, sex toys, light
adult humor and literature, etc." Sex1 is defined as "
(Pornography) --Heterosexual activity involving one or two
persons, hard-core adult humor and literature, etc." Sex 2 is
described as "(Sexuality/Lifestyles) --Heterosexual acts
involving more than two people; homosexual and bisexual acts,
orgies, swinging, bestiality, sadism, masochism, fetishes, etc.,
and related hard-core adult humor and literature."
The following pages are a small sample of the sites we found
inappropriately blocked by WebSENSE:
The Liza Minnelli Web Site,
http://cobweb.cc.oberlin.edu/~dfortune/lizapage.html, blocked as
Adult Entertainment 3. Includes a discography, photos of the
singer, and links to other relevant sites.
The Jewish Teens page, http://www.jewishteens.com, blocked as
Sex 2. Its current top page includes articles on "How to Talk to
Your Kids About the Holocaust" and "Jewish Female Role Models for
Our Daughters."
The Laboratory of Molecular Medicine at Michigan State,
http://www.msu.edu/user/zemkedan/ ("Sex2"). "The Canine
Molecular Genetics project, funded by the largest private grant
ever given solely for canine health, aims to use the powerful new
tools
of molecular genetics to prevent the hereditary diseases that
affect dogs."
Visionary Voices Professional Speakers Online,
http://www.visionaryvoices.com/ ("Sex2"). "Visionary Voices is a
powerful speakers bureau designed to bring dynamic, quality
speakers into organizations and ignite their team into action."
Sterling Funding, http://www.sterlingfunding.com/, a mortgage
company ("Sex2"). "Tax Deductible Loans for Home Owners!"
A. Bohrer's Inc., http://www.abohrer.com/, a grocer ("Sex2").
"Our product line now encompasses fresh produce as well as, a
full line of frozen products, fresh meats, fresh seafood, and
groceries."
The Swallows, http://165.76.244.1/yakult/swallows/, a Japanese
baseball team, rated Sex2. We found many Japanese-language
sports sites listed as porn by WebSENSE.
The Indiana Twisters, http://www.indianatwisters.com, a soccer
team ("Sex2"). "Now with our indoor team joining the Blast and
the Blaze, soccer fans in Indiana will get to follow the game
year-round, and root for the familiar players they've come to
know and love." Also blocked in the same category: the Indiana
Blast, http://www.indianablast.com/: "Promotions like 'Godzilla
Night'... make BLAST games fun!"
We found several advocacy and freedom of speech sites
inappropriately blocked as if they were porn:
A copy of http://bloodstone.globalnet.co.uk/~probon/demon1.htm,
The Demon Internet Policy on Censorship, ("Sex2"). Demon is a
British ISP.
MIT Student Association for Freedom of Expression "Censorbait"
page, http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/notsee.html, blocked as
"Adult". "Throughout human history, attempts have been made to
suppress certain writings and pictures. This is a collection of
links to material about such suppression, or material likely to
be suppressed."
A former location of the Safer Sex Page,
http://alexander.ucsf.edu/~troyer/safesex.html ("Sex2"). This
site is dedicated to AIDS prevention; the webmaster was a
plaintiff in ACLU v. Reno, the case which invalidated the
Communications Decency Act. The blocked page was last updated
in January, 1996. "The straight dope on safer sex: what's
safer? what's risky? What's the latest on
HIV? How do I protect myself?"
Conclusion: Like all other censorware we have examined,
WebSENSE contains numerous bad blocks. Contrary to the marketing
claims, clearly no human being examined these sites before they
were added to the blacklist.
We believe that, like most censorware companies, Net Partners
uses an automated tool, called a "spider" to search the Web for
sites which meet certain criteria, including the use of keywords
such as "teens" or "sex". The company claims, as quoted above,
that every site is then examined by a human being. The grossly
inappropriate blocks listed here--Liza Minnelli, a grocer, a
speakers' bureau, a mortgage company, a teens page all blocked as
PORNOGRAPHY--belie this claim.
In the case of the blacklisted Japanese sports sites, we believe
that NetPartner's spider is picking up a common string of
Japanese characters as an English-language word on its blacklist.
Unseen by a human reviewer, these Japanese language sites then
end up being blocked as porn.
The use of WebSENSE in the court system and public libraries is
clearly a violation of First Amendment rights of court employees
and library users. In a recent decision in the first lawsuit
brought to challenge the use of censorware in libraries, Judge
Leonie Brinkema held that the Internet "more closely resembles
plaintiffs' analogy of a collection of encyclopedias from which
defendants have laboriously redacted portions deemed unfit for
library patrons." Judge Brinkema also said that "public libraries
are places of freewheeling and independent inquiry." Once having
chosen to provide access to the Internet, Judge Brinkema
concluded that "the Library Board may not thereafter selectively
restrict certain categories of Internet speech because it
disfavors their content."
Mainstream Loudoun v. Loudoun County Libraries,
http://www.venable.com/ORACLE/opinion.htm
Under the standard Judge Brinkema suggested should be applied,
censorware installed in public institutions must be "narrowly
tailored" to serve a "compelling government interest." WebSENSE
fails the "narrowly tailored" branch of the test for two related
reasons: First, the profound negligence illustrated by the
numerous bad blocks included in the product's blacklist;
secondly, the extreme vagueness of the company's standards. For
example, "Heterosexual activity involving one or two persons" as
a definition of pornography would permit the censorship of almost
every novel or movie currently available. As Judge Brinkema's
decision forecasts, censorware will fail to stand up to the
exacting standards demanded by First Amendment law. It has no
place in public libraries or in the courts. A briefing paper on
the unconstitutionality of such uses of censorware is available
at http://www.spectacle.org/cs/library.html)
It is the ultimate irony that co-workers of Judge Brinkema's in
other federal circuits cannot surf the Web without going through
WebSENSE, the product which protects them against Liza Minnelli,
Jewish teens, speakers' bureaus, and mortgage companies.
--------------------------------------
Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net
Publisher, The Ethical Spectacle, http://www.spectacle.org
Co-author, Sex Laws and Cyberspace (Henry Holt, 1996)
http://www.spectacle.org/freespch
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world."--Gandhi
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 11:10:11 -0700
From: Jeremy Lassen <jlassen@FREAKPRESS.COM>
Subject: File 7--DR DOS and the Browser Wars
One thing that that's been bugging me for some time that hasn't
been brought up in the context of the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit
and the browser wars is DR DOS.
Does anybody remember DR DOS? Around the Time MS Dos 3.2 was the
standard PC OS, a competitor released a clone product (DR DOS)
that included advanced features such as a text editor, undo
commands and a host of other utilities that enhanced the operating
system. While Microsoft was putting all of its eggs into its
windows basket, someone else beat them to market with a superior
DOS product.
Just as sales of DR DOS began to take off, Microsoft released its
windows 3.1 upgrade. Windows 3.0 had taken the PC world by storm
but it still had a LOT of problems that windows 3.1 promised to
fix. Microsoft decided this was the perfect opportunity to
eliminate the DR DOS competition, by including a DOS check in
Windows 3.1. While windows 3.0 ran just fine on DR DOS, Windows
3.1 refused to run. It wasn't a technical matter, it was simply a
version check. And all the companies and individual users that
invested in DR DOS got burned, and had to buy MS DOS in order to
keep their windows running Sure, a couple months later, DR
released a patch that allowed you to run win 3.1 on DR DOS, but
the message from Microsoft to the corporate and private world was
clear -- buy only MS products, or we will screw you.
This little history lesson is important, because it demonstrates
what Microsoft is willing to do in order to gain/keep market
share. A lot of people think the browser war is unimportant --
But what if Microsoft DOES win the browser war, and Internet
Explore/Win 98 is the only way to access the web from a windows
based PC system?
Would it be possible for Microsoft to put hooks into Explorer such
that it only displayed web pages that were hosted on NT-web
servers? How about if they simply added a delaying mechanism such
that Apache, Netscape and other competing web server's web pages
were displayed significantly slower then NT based web pages? Or
what if they simply required some new piece of code to exist on
all web servers in order for Explorer to display the pages -- a
piece of code which Microsoft would be happy to license to its
competitors for a small fee?
Does this sound paranoid? Microsoft justified its windows 3.1
version check by saying "we can't garuntee that Microsoft products
will work with competitors software." This justification would be
equally applicable to Internet Explorer and competing web server
software.
In case you're wondering, DR DOS never recovered -- its innovation
and nimbleness in getting a superior product to the market place
resulted in Microsoft destroying it with a separate product. (we
had to wait until MS DOS 5.0 for all the features of DR DOS).
Now that Microsoft has even greater power in the marketplace, and
now that Microsoft has turned its full attention to the Internet,
I see no reason why they won't pursue the above strategy if they
DO control your browser. And as much as I dislike government
intervention in the computer industry, I see the anti-trust
lawsuit as the only way to prevent Microsoft from using browser
dominance as a lock that would keep companies from competing and
innovating in the web server market.
Web Servers are just ONE area where Microsoft stands to gain
leverage and market power if it controls the browser. It is easy
to imagine other areas. I'm sure Bill Gates's imagination is
running wild.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 13:27:39 -0500
From: Richard Thieme <rthieme@thiemeworks.com>
Subject: File 8--Imaginary Gardens. The Year 2000 Fear Bug. June 11, 1998
The Year 2000 Fear Bug
by Richard Thieme
Dear Richard,
I have a dear friend whose mother is all freaked out about the computer
2000 thing. She is thinking about shutting down bank accounts,
accumulating cash, and taking other drastic actions because of
stuff she's heard on late night talk radio.
Is my friend's mom going overboard or are her fears justified?
Dear Reader:
I don't know.
I do know that people who know about the reality of the situation are
anxious.
The treasurer of a neighboring county told me this week that embedded chips
in their traffic lights and trucks will shut down and must be replaced. Is
that good news because they can fix it or bad news because it might be true
for power plants and communications systems around the world?
Will there be heat and light, food delivery, airplane flights? Will the
government continue to function? The economy has never been better, but if
we succumb to uncertainty and fear, the markets will plunge.
Are electronic deposits safe? Paper money? Where will you store your
platinum and gold? In bank vaults? Or the basement? Will you hoard food too
and guns and ammo or should we ask our cities how they plan to defend us
when the hordes invade, armed to the teeth, looking for food?
This is the Year 2000 Fear Bug, spreading like a virulent flu. Are rational
(but guilty) people secretly afraid that their undeserved prosperity will
end? Are they succumbing to the primordial fear of the end of the world? Is
this how a high-tech society comes to Armageddon?
In the absence of truth, we make it up. The earth IS a risky place, and we
have lived so long in a bubble of prolonged prosperity that we have
forgotten how difficult life can be. But it is also true that human beings
rise to the challenge. When we short-circuit our fear, we manifest our
capacity for heroic resilience. We may not be able to fix all the systems,
but we can prepare ourselves for dealing with whatever comes.
Given that we lack the x-ray vision that would enable us to see the full
truth, what should a prudent person do?
We should not locate our security in the form in which our money is stored
nor seek "truth" in tabloid journalism. We ought to fear our fear more than
the mountains we might have to climb. We are so much more than our fears.
We are a possibility for reasonable thinking, selfless collective effort,
and heroic response to adversity. Our security lies in remembering that and
acting on that when times get tough.
********************************************************************
Imaginary Gardens is a daily reflection on techno/spirituality --
the interaction between ourselves, computer technology, and the
ultimate concerns of our lives.
To subscribe to Imaginary Gardens, send email to
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Imaginary Gardens and the weekly column, Islands in the
Clickstream, are archived at the ThiemeWorks web site at
http://www.thiemeworks.com.
Copyright 1998 Richard Thieme. All rights reserved.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1998 22:51:01 CST
From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
Subject: File 9--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Apr, 1998)
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