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The Internet Informer Issue 001
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: October Issue :
: 1994 Presenting 001 :
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: "Information from the material and electronic worlds" :
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: * A donation supported magazine * :
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: ..Business..Entertainment..Usenet..Internet..Online.Services :
: ..Muds..IRC..News..Writing..Trends..People..Places..Events.. :
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The Internet Informer is an Internet based magazine that includes news
and information from both the material and electronic worlds that we exist
in. The purpose of this publication is to encapsulate the changing world
of the Internet, blend it with the transforming world we live in and
deliver it all in one package to your electronic mailbox as often as
possible.
The Internet Informer is available by email, free to the
interested public. Suggested donation amount of $1.00/year accepted to
support the writing staff and defray online costs. The Internet Informer is
a NetBank (R) Merchant. Subscriptions are available by sending EMAIL to
MAJORDOMO@CSC.NCSU.EDU with these words in the message body:
approve c0k3 subscribe inform-l <e-mail address>
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Make Checks { )-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-( }
Payable To The | : : |
Editor: : | The Internet Informer | :
| : P.O. Box 262 : |
Steven : | Hitchcock, Texas | :
Baker | : 77563 : |
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: . . :
: . Departments . :
: . . :
: [ 1 ] Shift Foreword..........Steven.E.Baker............. :
: [ 2 ] Dateline:Internet.......Guest.Commentary........... :
: [ 3 ] The.Top.Tens............Sources.and.Surveys........ :
: . . :
: . Columns . :
: . . :
: [ 1 ] Internet.Business.......J. Elsworth................ :
: [ 2 ] Online.Court.Surfing....Brian.M.O'Connell.......... :
: [ 3 ] Money.Net...............Susan.Luntz................ :
: [ 4 ] Informed.Investor.......Douglass.Martin............ :
: [ 5 ] Electric.Word...........Gary.Gach.................. :
: [ 6 ] Net:Neighborhoods.......Kathleen.Crieghton......... :
: [ 7 ] Wild.Wild.WeB...........Charles.Deemer............. :
: [ 8 ] MuD.TiMeS...............R. J. LaRoe................ :
: [ 9 ] AOL.and.You.............Bill.Toscano............... :
: [10 ] A.Lady.Online...........Stephanie.Brail............ :
: [11 ] Macintosh.and.the.NeT...David.Good................. :
: [12 ] Hollywood.Informer......Scott.T. Spencer........... :
: [13 ] Ingenuity...............Dr.John.Lienhard........... :
: [14 ] BackPage Letter.........Craig.Heath................ :
: . . :
: . Features . :
: . . :
: [ a ] Internet Media.................Jordan.Green........ :
: [ b ] A Virtual Education............Andie.Foster........ :
: [ c ] The Wireless Revolution........Greg.Youngblood..... :
: [ d ] The Flame Wars of k12Net.......Billy.Biggs......... :
: [ e ] An Email Encounter.............Lindsay.Edmunds..... :
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by S t e v e n B a k e r
October 1994
The Internet is a tough beat to cover. Usenet and IRC evolve at your
fingertips and no one, no matter how connected, can precisely tell you
where a newsgroup or a channel is headed. The World Wide Web is growing so
rapidly that even the most authoritative lists become outdated in fifteen
minutes. By current estimates by the Internet Society there are somewhere
around 20 Million people with active Internet Email addresses, and 3.7 new
people acquire addresses of their own every minute.
What this means is that the Internet is not the same place it was a few
years ago. The scientist and researchers that established and maintained
the Internet are now a small minority among a vast crowd of new users
enamored with thoughts of a media-hyped cyberspace. These new users have
brought their ideas and interests with them -- Sex, politics, and business
opportunity.
Welcome to the premiere issue of The Internet Informer, an electronic
publication for all users of the Internet. Inside this magazine you will
find a variety of columns and feature articles covering the various aspects
of the Internet and the world in which we exist. This magazine, much like
the Internet, will evolve over the next few months -- so hang on and enjoy
the ride.
The media-at-large would have you believe that soon after connecting to
the Internet you will be a virtual reality cybernaught cruising down the
Infobahn of the future. We know that those themes sell magazines, but are
not accurate representations of a typical online experience. The Internet
is a tool and can be used to extend our capabilities -- and certainly a
device to expand our mind. The Internet Informer seeks to show you how and
why to use the Internet -- with writers who are using it every day.
Jill Ellsworth covers the Internet business scene with her column,
"Internet Business." She is an accomplished writer with the recently
published book "Doing Business On The Internet" by QUE BOOKS. Following up
the Business section are articles by Susan Luntz and Douglas Martin. Susan
covers personal finance and the editors of Money Magazine chose her as one
of the top personal finance managers available. Douglas is an accomplished
investor and licensed investment counselor. Brian J. O'Connell complements
the business section with his views on the legal aspects of the Internet.
A graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1987, he is
currently lecturing and writing on issues involving ethics, law and public
policy.
Jordan Knight dives into Internet Journalism with his feature article
on the Media and Gary Gach follows up with his Electric Word -- teaching
new and established writers how to use the Internet to their advantage. On
toward the lighter side of the Net we find John LaRoe's MuD TiMeS -- a
regular series keeping us up to date with what is happening on the MUD
scene. MUDS have grown into educational tools (MUSE's) that Andie Foster
relates to us in "Virtual Education." Charles Deemer takes on a tour of the
World Wide Web with his regular feature "Wild-Wild-Web" and Craig Heath
follows up with his "Fishing the Net" -- a catch all feature highlighting
interesting new places to be found on the Net.
Lindsay Edmunds tells us about how Email keeps her in tough with
family. Stephanie Brail speaks about what it is like to be a woman online
with all of the challenges of a woman entering a male dominated world.
"Net Neighborhoods" brings us closer to the smaller and sometimes
overlooked sections of the Internet that Kathleen Crieghton has found.
David Good, an AOL chat host, tells us how he best used his Macintosh to
connect with the Information Superhighway. Dave Toscano keeps us updated
with America Online in his regular column "AOL and YOU." As a special
feature we have attracted the talents of Dr. John Lienhard and his series
of articles discussing the engines of our ingenuity. Scott T. Spencer, a
New York City publicist, covers the entertainment world in the "Hollywood
Informer."
The next issue will be available in December, and sometime next year we
will be working towards a monthly edition. The Internet Informer is
committed to developing new talent and ideas -- you are encouraged to
submit your dreams. While distributing this magazine is not costly,
compensating our talented group of writers is a struggle. Your donation is
appreciated, and can be sent to PO BOX 263, Hitchcock Texas -- 77563. The
Internet Informer does not accept advertising at this time, and it is free
to the interested public.
You can send EMAIL to any of the writers by writing "Informer@Cris.Com"
with the writers name in the subject line. Letters to the EDITOR are
encouraged and will be published starting in the DECEMBER issue. Please
direct new subscribers to MAJORDOMO@CNCS.CS.COM instructing them to place
the following text in the message body:
accept 00k67 inform-l <email address>
See you on the Net-
Steven E Baker
Editor
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Dateline Internet Index
1. Commentary: InterNIC Domain Games R. Warren Piatt
2. News: Online Stalking Bill Proposed
3. News: Uk Porno Overload
4. News: Internet Pizza
5. News: AT&T Targets Hackers
6. News: Rosanne Bar and the $7,000,000 Email Letter
7. Press Release: "Freelance Success"
8. Press Release: Nasa and the World Wide Web
9. New Product: Internet Pager
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1 *Domain Games*
by R. W a r r e n P i a t t
The Internet is experiencing explosive growth, and the virtual
shrapnel from this EXPLOSION is being felt in many segments -- including
the territory of intellectual property. InterNIC, the organization that is
paid by the U.S. government to assign names over the Internet, gave out
2,000 new addresses to people and organizations last month. At the same
time last year they gave out about half that many, showing the advance in
Internet utilization by the world. These electronic addresses are handed
out on a first come -- first serve type basis. This RUSH of new
registrations has brought some complications with it -- conflicts in
registered Internet domain names.
Later this year The Internet Society will devise a system to prevent
what an individual named Jim Cashel tried to do last month -- register
electronic addresses for use on the Internet that could possibly BELONG to
someone else. The addresses he registered resembled RECOGNIZED commercial
names such as "hertz", and he did not WORK for any of the companies.
Apparently, by registering the FAMOUS names of commercial and
entertainment entities, he hoped they would have to BUY back the names if
they wanted to get Email at a logical address. When news of what he had
done broke out at the Washington Post, many companies contacted InterNIC to
see if their names had been used. None of the names he had registered even
BOTHERED to contact him about it -- in fact, the only calls he received
were from reporters.
Under PRESSURE from the media, Jim relinquished the domain names and
freed them up for use by their namesake -- but others using the same
tactics are holding on for what they can get. No one has received any
money to release control of a famous name, but a few have had the
registered names pulled and given to the true owners. Microsoft pulled out
the big guns when "Windows" was used, getting a patent registered on the
term "Windows". Now their lawyers are busy contacting EVERYONE who has
ever used "Windows" in their product names. This will affect just about
every software developer that has ever put something out for Windows, but
who knows if Microsoft will carry it THAT far.
The direction InterNIC and the Internet Society wants to take is one
towards protecting intellectual property through guidelines restricting the
issuance of patented but previously UNASSIGNED names. At this point
InterNIC is requiring the interested parties to come to their own
agreements. The Internet is enormous and growing at a tremendous rate,
leaving a lot of loopholes out there for people to try and take advantage
of. Only broad based protection of our intellectual property can tighten
things up, and that is what the Internet Society is hoping to do.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2
*Online Stalking Bill*
Maryland Democrat congressman Kweisi Mfume has proposed federal
legislation against online stalking and harassment. The "Electronic
Stalking Act" will prohibit use of a modem, telephone, or other electronic
device to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any person. Mfume sais that
bill HR-5015 will respond to the many complaints he has heard of. "along
with the benefits of the Information Superhighway come the dangers..."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
3
*Porn Photos Overload British Computer*
After a British student stored hundreds of hard-core pornographic
pictures in a computer at a United Kingdom university, the machine
overloaded and shut down for two days. Reuters reports that the
unidentified engineering student transferred the images from the United
States via a modem and telephone lines. He has been severely reprimanded.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
4
*Internet Pizza*
Pizza Hut announced it is pilot testing in Santa Cruz, California, a
new ordering system that will allow computer users to use the Internet to
order pizza and beverages for home delivery.
Called PizzaNet, the system will be available through the World Wide
Web portion of the Internet and will provide users with a variety of
product and price information through a simple, user-friendly interface.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
5
*AT&T Forms Anti-Hacker Unit*
AT&T has formed an investigative team to track the theft of business
long-distance service. The telecommunications giant notes that AT&T Global
Business Communications Systems (GBCS) has created an investigative unit
whose sole purpose is to monitor, track and catch phone system hackers in
the act of committing toll fraud. The unit will initiate "electronic
stakeouts" with its business communications equipment customers and law
enforcement agencies, working with them to prosecute the thieves.
Kevin Hanley, marketing director for business security systems
(AT&T/GBCS) says, "We're in a shoot-out between `high-tech cops' -- like
AT&T - - and `high-tech robbers' who brazenly steal long distance service
from our business customers." He added, "our goal is not only to defend
against hackers but to get them off the street." --Source: Online Today
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6
*E-Mail Foils Roseanne's Ex*
Roseanne's first husband has been forced to return half his divorce
settlement for sending an electronic mail letter to a Nashville, Tennessee
woman.
The Associated Press reports that Bill Pentland, who was divorced from
the star of the popular American television series, "Roseanne" in 1990
after 15 years of marriage, signed a gag order as part of the divorce
settlement not to disclose details of the marriage. Pentland said the
Nashville woman made rude comments to him, to which he responded via
electronic mail. The contents of the message apparently violated the gag
order.
"My impression ... was that I was not to do the talk show circuit, talk
to reporters, radio and TV or media," Pentland said in an interview on
"Geraldo". "I never for a minute thought that it meant I could not have a
private conversation."
The woman printed the electronic mail letter and sent a copy to
Roseanne's lawyer, Marvin Mitchelson.
"I was then hit with a $14.3 million liquidated damages lawsuit that I
had to settle out of court for half the settlement," Pentland said. "I'll
be putting my house on the market. It's going to cost my retirement, my old
age pension, a lot of securities and bonds and things like that."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
7
*"FREELANCE SUCCESS" NEWSLETTER GOES ONLINE*
Marketing & Management Newsletter for Experienced Journalists
now available on CompuServe Journalism Forum"
(New York City, September 30, 1994): Freelance Success newsletter has become
the first newsletter for writers available online when it opens to paid
subscribers to the newsletter only in Section and Library 22 of the Journalism
Forum (JForum) on CompuServe. [E-mail: 70421,2063 or 70421.2063@Compuserve.com].
"This move is a natural and inevitable one," says Judith Broadhurst, the editor
and publisher. "Freelance Success has grown largely by word-of-mouth and
subscriber recommendations online. So it became a techno-era grassroots success
story. That's reason enough to go in this direction, but I also want to keep up
with what's happening in publishing, and much of what's exciting and what's
happening in publishing, period, is happening online. Increasingly, that's where
the editors and media-monitor people are, so that's where writers and this
newsletter need to be. Writers aren't online just so they can chat, or even
just for the wondrous research resources. Most make money because they're
online."
Broadhurst founded the Freelancers Section in JForum which she staffed through
May 1993, and has been the guest for conferences on America Online and GEnie.
Since its launch 18 months ago, in March of 1993, Freelance Success has been
mailed, on paper. Broadhurst says gradually converting it to an electronic-only
publication provides many benefits for subscribers.
Freelance Success has subscribers in 42 states and eight countries. It features
in-depth interviews with editors of top-paying national magazine; runs a popular
Market Guide; covers news, gossip and trends in the publishing industry; and
includes regular columns called Biz Basics, Multimedia Issues, Global Marketing,
Legal Lexicon, Corporate Writing and Writer's Voice. Its purpose is to help
experienced freelance writers make or save money. Therefore its focus is on
marketing and management for those who write books or do freelance writing for
magazines, newspapers and clients, and it does not encompass fiction or run
how-to-write articles.
Broadhurst, a full-time freelance writer herself, writes about online services
and the effects of technology for magazines such as Glamour, Working Woman,
Columbia Journalism Review, Home Office Computing, Mobile Office, Online Access
and Executive Female, and is writing a book for a major publisher called The
Women's Guide to Online Networks to be published next spring. She receives no
payment from CompuServe.
Opened in 1985 by Peabody Award winning former NBC News anchor and news director
Jim Cameron, JFORUM now offers its membership message board areas and libraries
dealing with all aspects of journalism, including Jobs, Ethics, Journalism Law,
Freelancers, Radio/TV, Print, and Newsroom Computers. JFORUM also hosts
"Shoptalk", the widely read daily electronic newsletter on broadcast journalism
published by consultant Don Fitzpatrick. Starting this fall, JFORUM began
offering Masters Degree courses in Journalism in conjunction with the University
of Memphis.
Established in 1979, the CompuServe Information Service provides its worldwide
membership of 2.3 million with databases and services to meet both business and
personal interests. In addition to the CompuServe Information Service,
CompuServe Incorporated provides frame relay, wide and local area networking
services, electronic mail, business information services and software to major
corporations and government agencies worldwide. CompuServe is an H&R Block
(NYSE: HRB) company.
CONTACTS: Judith Broadhurst, "Freelance Success"
CompuServe E-Mail 70421,2063
Phone 718-625-5577
Jim Cameron, JFORUM Sysop
CompuServe E-Mail 76703,3010
Phone 203-655-0138
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
8
*Nasa on the Net*
I happy to report that the baseline NASA public affairs homepage is now
ready for release. Please be aware that the page is under construction and
may radically change from day to day.
The URL is: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/hqpao/hqpao_home.html
The page contains images, sound and text to explain what NASA does and why
it is important. It also has links to many other NASA pages.
Enjoy!
- Allen Clark
Nasa
NASA
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
9
*Internet Pager*
For as little as $19.95 a month you can recieve Internet Email on a
special pager provided by AirNote. The pager itself retails at $299 and
features local, regional, or national paging and Email announcement. You
are assigned an Internet Email address and messages sent to that address
can be reflected to your regular Email address. At the same time the
message header is broadcast to your pager to alert you to the new message.
The message header is parsed so only the pertinent information is
received on the pager. The messages is edited to include only the sender's
name, subject, body and character count of the entire message ( name|
subject | body | character count ). The user can specify the number of
characters from each message they want sent to the pager. AirNote users
can choose to have an acknowledgment sent back to the sender showing the
data that was transmitted to the AirNote pager.
AirNote is advertised as the all-in-one solution that will keep you
updated with the information you need to know NOW. In a single box you
will receive a text pager, AirNote software, network service activation,
Internet mail address, along with toll free customer support as long as you
are an AirNote subscriber. Basic plan also includes a free subscription to
a headline news service.
FOR ORDERS AND PRICING CALL OR E-MAIL:
1-800-732-9900 or sales@airnote.net
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.....o-O-o......
: The.Top.Tens :
O....o-O-o.....O
o-Usenet Facts-o
"as of September 15th, 1994"
1,006,399 articles were submitted from 58,402 different Usenet sites
by 200,747 different users to 10,696 different newsgroups for an
average of 150 Mbytes per day.
Average number of megabytes of USENET news, per day: 150
Estimated number of USENET sites: 180,000
Estimated number of readers of news.announce.newusers: 800,000
Estimated worldwide disks space used by USENET news: 61 terabytes
Top News Categories
.................................................
: : : Article : : :
; # : Category : Count : Mbytes : Percent :
:...:...........:.........:...........:.........:
: 1 : alt : 281,644 : 1,156 : 55.1% :
: 2 : rec : 206,574 : 294 : 14.0% :
: 3 : comp : 132,621 : 201 : 9.6% :
: 4 : soc : 65,920 : 136 : 6.5% :
: 5 : misc : 36,863 : 52 : 2.5% :
: 6 : clari : 38,705 : 48 : 2.3% :
: 7 : sci : 22,981 : 46 : 2.2% :
: 8 : talk : 20,699 : 43 : 2.1% :
: 9 : relcom : 39,864 : 43 : 2.1% :
: 10: bit : 26,167 : 37 : 1.8% :
:...:...........:.........:...........:.........:
Historical Traffic Data
....................................................................
: 14 days : : Mbytes : Posting : Active :
: ending : Articles : per day : Sites : Users : Groups :
:...........:...........:...........:.........:...........:........:
: 01-24-94 : 673,328 : 89.412 : 43,439 : 141,421 : 8,910 :
: 02-09-94 : 736,124 : 99.331 : 48,119 : 152,136 : 8,825 :
: 02-23-94 : 734,372 : 100.445 : 48,466 : 152,994 : 9,068 :
: 03-14-94 : 744,204 : 109.073 : 48,605 : 164,284 : 8,432 :
: 03-28-94 : 736,136 : 105.760 : 47,404 : 160,123 : 8,269 :
: 04-25-94 : 706,233 : 100.243 : 47,057 : 159,858 : 9,366 :
: 05-15-94 : 1,011,667 : 143.988 : 55,027 : 193,072 : 9,233 :
: 05-22-94 : 923,578 : 130.331 : 55,798 : 187,601 : 9,377 :
: 06-08-94 : 925,834 : 132.664 : 57,889 : 180,351 : 9,887 :
: 07-22-94 : 845,238 : 118.355 : 56,424 : 183,773 : 10,205 :
: 08-22-94 : 913,469 : 129.005 : 57,785 : 198,176 : 10,512 :
: 09-08-94 : 1,006,399 : 150.023 : 58,402 : 200,747 : 10,696 :
:...........:...........:...........:.........:...........:........:
Top 10 News Groups by Kbytes for the last 2 weeks
.......
........................ :Post :
: Number of :..................................:per :
: #: Kbytes : Articles: Usenet Group :User :
:..:.........:.........:..................................:.....:
: 1: 491,023 : 14,891 : alt.binaries.pictures.* : 4.3 :
: 2: 125,788 : 3,074 : alt.binaries.sounds.* : 4.6 :
: 3: 40,198 : 660 : alt.binaries.multimedia : 3.6 :
: 4: 23,979 : 752 : news.answers : 1.0 :
: 5: 18,599 : 7,666 : ncar.weather :7666 :
: 6: 19,089 : 1,975 : alt.sex.stories : 3.2 :
: 7: 14,180 : 388 : de.alt.binaries.pictures.* : 7.5 :
: 8: 11,563 : 3,323 : rec.games.deckmaster.marketplace : 4.4 :
: 9: 9,108 : 187 : alt.sex.pictures.male : 11 :
:10: 8,818 : 305 : alt.binaries.doom : 2.1 :
:..:.........:.........:..................................:.....:
Top 10 News Groups by Articles for the last 2 weeks
.......
........................ :Post :
: Number of :..................................:per :
: #: Kbytes : Articles: Usenet Group :User :
:..:.........:.........:..................................:.....:
: 1: 491,023 : 14,891 : alt.binaries.pictures.* : 4.3 :
: 2: 20,405 : 7,666 : ncar.weather : 7666:
: 3: 8,874 : 5,380 : inet : 2.0 :
: 4: 2,982 : 4,798 : relcom.commerce.food : 6.4 :
: 5: 7,867 : 4,670 : cbd.procurements : 1.0 :
: 6: 6,557 : 4,616 : misc.jobs.offered : 5.4 :
: 7: 8,074 : 4,531 : rec.games.deckmaster : 3.9 :
: 8: 4,902 : 4,071 : alt.games.doom : 2.9 :
: 9: 8,809 : 4,049 : alt.fan.rush-limbaugh : 5.1 :
:10: 6,594 : 4,030 : alt.atheism : 6.3 :
:..:.........:.........:..................................:.....:
Internet Informer Top Ten Interesting Activity UseNETters
posts/kbyte
........................................................................
:01: 34/5242 ummilit2@cc.UMANITOBA.CA (Giovanni John Militano) :
: : 84% alt.binaries.pictures.* :
: : 7% alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc :
: : 7% alt.cracks :
:..:...................................................................:
:02: 1531/471 graefja@ucbeh.SAN.UC.EDU :
: : 100% alt.flame :
:..:...................................................................:
:03: 524/82 sameer@cdrom.COM :
: : 100% alt.test :
:..:...................................................................:
:04: 459/1419 avc@ace.COM (Avc) :
: : 39% misc.jobs.offered :
: : 38% ne.jobs :
: : 14% misc.jobs.contract :
: : 7% misc.jobs.offered.entry :
:..:...................................................................:
:05: 367/263 da825@cleveland.FREENET.EDU (Richard N Kitchen) :
: : 23% rec.arts.tv.soaps :
: : 16% alt.folklore.urban :
: : 13% rec.arts.movies :
: : 12% alt.showbiz.gossip :
: : 7% alt.tv.real-world :
: : 6% alt.history.what-if :
:..:...................................................................:
:06: 341/705 lizard@char.VNET.NET (Lizard) :
: : 24% alt.politics.libertarian :
: : 17% alt.politics.radical-left :
: : 17% talk.politics.theory :
: : 14% alt.society.anarchy :
: : 8% alt.gobment.lones :
:..:...................................................................:
:07: 322/457 cswigg@dorite.USE.COM (Craig Wigginton) :
: : 71% misc.jobs.offered :
: : 13% fl.jobs :
: : 6% misc.jobs.contract :
: : 5% ne.jobs :
:..:...................................................................:
:08: 315/559 ckalina@gwis.CIRC.GWU.EDU (Charles Kalina) :
: : 17% alt.fan.rush-limbaugh :
: : 16% alt.feminism :
: : 11% alt.atheism :
: : 9% alt.politics.clinton :
: : 7% alt.politics.homosexuality :
: : 5% alt.rush-limbaugh :
:..:...................................................................:
:09: 303/283 mwilson@ncratl.ATLANTAGA.NCR.COM (Mark O. Wilson) :
: : 17% talk.politics.misc :
: : 10% alt.politics.clinton :
: : 8% alt.politics.libertarian :
: : 6% talk.abortion :
: : 5% alt.politics.radical-left :
:..:...................................................................:
:10: 302/374 jdawson@netcom.COM (Joe Dawson) :
: : 48% alt.smokers :
: : 37% alt.support.non-smokers :
: : 6% alt.politics.libertarian :
:..:...................................................................:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The Sept 15th snapshot of the commercial domains registered with
InterNIC shows 20,242 unique commercial domains compared with 18,403 as
of Aug 15, 1994. The net increase of 1,839 domains represents and 10.0%
month gain."
- The Internet Scout Report
____ Internet _
| __ ) _ _ ___(_)_ __ ___ ___ ___
| _ \| | | / __| | '_ \ / _ \/ __/ __|
| |_) | |_| \__ \ | | | | __/\__ \__ \
|____/ \__,_|___/_|_| |_|\___||___/___/
by J. E l s w o r t h
Percentage of PCs using TCP/IP in 1993: 3.9
Sales of PC TCP/IP products in 1993: $272 million
Average time between new network connections: 30 minutes
Number of CommerceNet Sponsors: 53
Number of Commercial Internet Exchange members: 85
Number of commercial domains registered between 7-15 and 8-15: 1401
Number of domains registered to Fidelity Investments and related companies:15
WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON?
For most Internauts, it is no news that business is becoming a great
deal more visible on the Internet. In fact, business is booming. I know
some of you just said, "I thought that you couldn't do anything commercial
on the Internet".
The current NSF acceptable use policies certainly limit the commercial
activity on certain parts of the net, but non-invasive advertising is fine.
The use of passive tools like Gopher and WWW are popular, especially with
the growth of Mosaic and other graphical WWW browsers.
The commercial domains now account for more than half of all domain
registrations, and that number has risen again to 16,000 plus. California
leads the pack with registrations, followed by Colorado, Massachusetts and
New York. InterNet Info compiles information on the commercial activity on
the net, and for more information e-mail to info@internetinfo.com.
In these new registrations, we find names like coke.com, sex.com,
money.com, hertz.com, trump.com, startrek.com and windows.com. And all of
these registrations are not from the companies suggested in the name. The
ownership of these domain names is creating new opportunities for
controversy.
I imagine that "I want my mtv.com" is what MTV is saying to Adam Curry.
Last year, Adam Curry decided that bringing MTV to the Internet would be a
cool idea, and so set about to do that. MTV was not interested, so he
created mtv.com and went on the Internet with MTV information. Now, MTV is
suing Curry to get ownership of mtv.com. Where you find lawyers fighting
over domain names, business must be interested!
But, what kinds of business are using the Internet? Well, you will find
hundreds of large companies like Exxon, Transamerica, GTE, Unisys, Texas
Instruments, Boeing, Motorola, Lockheed, Ford Motor Company, and more. Lots
of smaller businesses are online too, selling flowers, books, swings,
crafts, T-Shirts, etc., and you will find dairies, reporters, consultants
and more all online.
Some quick examples:
Canadian Airlines International has a WWW homepage at
http://www.CdnAir.CA. They provide destination information, news updates,
weather and you can find flight arrival and departure information online.
In addition they provide page links to an online movie, and access to the
Big Dummies Guide to the Internet.
The Center For Arthroscopic Surgery -- "Get a leg up on the
competition" their ad says <groan> at
http://mmink.cts.com/mmink/dossiers/cas.html. They specialize in
arthroscopic surgery for the knees, and their page describes their
services, and provides contact information for their business in Los
Angeles.
Located in Maine, DeLorme Mapping services maintains an Internet
presence through a WWW page at http://www.delorme.com. They proved mapping
software and databases for education, business and government. They publish
printed atlases of individual states, and offer an online product catalog,
map demonstrations, ordering information and technical support online.
The venerable financial company, Dun & Bradstreet is online with a www
server at http://www.corp.dnb.com. Currently, their Internet presence is
"under construction" but they plan to provide information on The Dun &
Bradstreet Corporation's Statement of Values, Business
Information|Donnelley Yellow Page Service|Smartstream Support and currently
you can take a customer survey online. They have been working closely with
CommerceNet to prototype the business models of the future.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia Roswell's Bookstore is online at
http://www.nstn.ns.ca/cybermall/roswell/roswell.html, and on the Nova
Scotia Technical Networks CyberMall on gopher at owl.nstn.ns.ca. They have
both an Internet bookstore and a walk- in bookstore devoted exclusively to
computer books with a database listing over 7000 titles. Online the
database can be searched by title author, and ISBN, and orders can be
placed using data input forms.
The World Real Estate Listing Services provides real estate listings
all over the world, although mostly focused on the US. The listings are
organized by country, and then by state or province and city. Have a look
at their homepage: http://interchange.idc.uvic.ca/wrels/index.html. They
have an interesting map based navigation feature as well.
Pizza Hut has come online with http://www.pizzahut.com where you can
order pizza on the Internet -- if you live in Santa Cruz California. If
the experiment works out, they will be expanding their services nation wide
-- I for one am already waiting.
And last but not least, Scottso the Clown is online with an ad at
http://mmink.cts.com/mmink/dossiers/scottso.html, and via e-mail to
rdegel@ctsnet.cts.com (put "scottso" on the subject line. In his listing,
he provides information on his appearances in Southern California and San
Diego area.
Where can I find out more information? If you are interested in doing
business on the Internet, here there are several resources for you.
Start with the Commercial Sites on the Web at: URL:
http://tns-www.lcs.mit.edu/commerce.html and http://tns-
www.lcs.mit.edu/commerce/whatsnew.html. This listing is comprehensive and
interesting.
Next, hit the Commercial Use of the Net Page. The URL is
http://pass.wayne.edu/business.html.
Have a look at Thomas Ho's favorite Electronic Commerce WWW page at
http://biomed.nus.sg/people/commmenu.html.
Check out CommerceNet -- specifically oriented to the commercial user.
Their URL http://www.commerce.net/.
Some other good sites:
Interesting Business Sites on the Web at
http://www.rpi.edu/~okeefe/business.html
BizWeb at http://www.bizweb.com/
The Quantum Internet Mall at URL http://www.gcr.com/mall/.
There are lots of others - The Shops at world.std.com, The Shops at
pipeline.com, and on the Nova Scotia Technical Network (owl.nstn.ns.ca:70).
The commercial domain is the fastest growing segment of the Internet.
Look for lots of activity, and for discussions of security, how to purchase
online, and more.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
____ Online _ ____ __ _
/ ___|___ _ _ _ __| |_ / ___| _ _ _ __ / _(_)_ __ __ _
| | / _ \| | | | '__| __| \___ \| | | | '__| |_| | '_ \ / _` |
| |__| (_) | |_| | | | |_ ___) | |_| | | | _| | | | | (_| |
\____\___/ \__,_|_| \__| |____/ \__,_|_| |_| |_|_| |_|\__, |
|___/
by B r i a n M. O ' C o n n e l
Number of lawsuits over use of trademarks in domain names: 2
Average time between new network connections: 30 minutes
Number of PGP keys in the MIT public key server: 6398
Number of advisories issued by the Computer Emergency Response Team : 98
Recently, there has been an explosion of legal commentary covering
everything from celebrity murder trials to bankruptcy hearings. An entire
cable channel is now dedicated to the broadcast of law-related stories and
prognostications. We can court surf daily with a cadre of attorneys
offering predictions about case outcomes. They are often accurate and
reinforce the common notion that law is objective, steady and intelligible.
As a lawyer writing about the Internet, I have to contend with this
long held belief of predictability. Legal experts are rightly expected to
pinpoint trends and anticipate results. What follows is something of a
challenge to this assumption. It is as much about law as it is about "the
Net."
A familiar image of legal training is that of the menacing professor
grilling the hapless student about the most minute detail of an arcane
case, originally argued in another century. Far from a caricature, the
"case study method" is the cornerstone of nearly every American lawyer's
education and is based on the assumption that unchanging legal principles
will be revealed through a close examination of the facts and analyses
employed by the courts.
A similar thesis, one which is equally ingrained in our legal system,
is that whatever disputes are involved in any given case, chances are that
they have been considered by a previous court which has formed a rule on
how to deal with them. This is known as the doctrine of "precedence" and
it is grounded in the belief that universal rules can be culled and applied
to most if not every circumstance.
These theories have served us well. Their use has permitted a certain
degree of welcome consistency in the resolution of legal controversies.
The law does not need to be reinvented each time a new suit is filed and
while the progress of civilization has at times caused some alterations to
precedent, they have often been no more radical than substituting the word
"wagon" with "automobile" or "steamship" with "airliner."
If for instance, something viewed to be an unreasonable hazard is let
loose upon one's property, the law provides a general principle which will
make it's owner liable for any damage caused. This outcome may be traced to
an 1868 judgment reached by an English tribunal. It will unlikely be
affected by whether the "something" is a pet lion kept by nineteenth
century squire or a toxin developed by a modern laboratory.
Lawyers, judges, and even legislators have understandably been guided
by precedent. Courts routinely base their decisions about the law upon
their understanding of prior decisions made in related matters.
Consequently, the outcome of almost every case is dependant upon what has
come before it.
The advent of the Internet threatens to change this status quo and
make predicting case outcomes extremely difficult. It is beyond the scope
of this discussion to list every topic through which jurisprudence will be
challenged, however two things are certain. The first is that the Net will
attract litigation. The second is that courts and attorneys will be hard
pressed to apply normal legal theory to the resolution of these conflicts.
As for the likelihood of litigation, the current state of the Internet
makes it inevitable. In a recent Scientific American article, Paul Wallich
observed that at this stage of its genesis, the Net resembles not so much a
superhighway, but a train running through the badlands of the Old West.
This machine, travelling largely uncharted territory is supported by mutual
cooperation and trust rather than by any formal agreement. When trouble
breaks out, there is often no marshal.
Much attention has been given to the practices of flaming, spamming
and Internet "worming." In most of these instances, the resolution of
frontier disputes has taken the form of "self help" such as
counter-flaming, cancelbots or site and account restrictions. Other times,
they are met with benign neglect, presumably in the hope that this too
shall pass.
What is troublesome is that home remedies will not solve the problems.
Human nature dictates that even in a collective Utopia, not everybody can
be pleased all the time. More significantly, legal history teaches that
when an injury, real or perceived is unrequited, a lawsuit is born with
each party looking for the law to take its side. Those who will try to
determine where the law "stands" on the Internet will look to precedent and
develop eyestrain.
What, for example, will the law say about the place of privacy in
cyberspace? For centuries, dwellings have been regarded as castles,
subject to intrusion only on the basis of a valid search and seizure
warrant. Society has been prepared to recognize this special zone of
privacy because it is familiar with what goes on within the home and has
accepted the need, absent the most compelling circumstances, to protect it.
Frequently, courts have had to determine the boundaries of the home,
deciding for example, whether the same protection is given to a back yard
garden as to one's living room. Not surprisingly, their decisions have
been based upon experiences and expectations common to most every person in
today's society and often in those of the past.
Some 23 million people "inhabit" the Net. Here they engage in a
multiplicity of transactions in both public and private venues. Through
various channels such as Usenet forums, or email, information is shared.
In the former case, the messages are shared with the public. In the
latter, the information is normally directed to an individual. In reality,
computer experts will say, both communications will be unwittingly
addressed to potentially huge numbers of people as a consequence of the
packet switching protocols employed by the Internet. As the Net becomes
the target of litigation, the level of legal privacy protection which these
mediums are accorded will be a subject for a court's consideration.
A familiar image of legal training is that of the menacing professor
grilling the hapless student abonsider the competing interests inherent in
socio-technical interaction. Textbook law may provide some clues to these
debacles, but they it will not supply the answers.
The Internet is no longer the affable province of academicians and
researchers. Whatever it's relation to futurist's dreams of global
villages and superhighways, the arrangement which currently exists is a
precarious mixture of many personalities, temperaments and agendas. The
emergent litigation will not only reflect this situation, but will force
the creation of entirely new law. As legal analysts attempt to divine
outcomes and formulate predictions, it will be well to remember that court
surfing will be an even more complex task than that of navigating the Net.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
__ __ Personal _ _ _
| \/ | ___ _ __ ___ _ _ | \ | | ___| |_
| |\/| |/ _ \| '_ \ / _ \ | | | | \| |/ _ \ __|
| | | | (_) | | | | __/ |_| |_| |\ | __/ |_
|_| |_|\___/|_| |_|\___|\__, (_)_| \_|\___|\__|
|___/ by S u s a n L u n t z
Are you still playing on that stupid computer? Did your Mom, Dad,
significant (or insignificant) other ever say that to you while you were
surfing the net? Well, next time it happens tell him or her there is news
and information on spending, and investing - information on tracking your
investments, news on currencies, federal economic data, even job openings
around the country and the world, and lots more. Money.Net column will
appear in each issue of the INTERNET.INFORMER with news and information on
investing and personal finance from both the material and the electronic
world. This column will talk about finding investing and personal finance
information on the internet through gophers, freenets and fee-based
networks; on usenet, ftp, chat, listservers and more. This first column
features my favorite resource, namely misc.invest.
MISC.INVEST
There are thousands of usenet groups or bulletin boards. Each focuses
on a more or less specific topic. The topics range from tropical fish
keeping (rec.aquaria), Rush Limbaugh (alt.fan.rush. limbaugh) and particle
physics (sci.physics.particle). A most popular usenet group on investing
and personal finance is misc.invest. My usual way of getting there is
through the Youngstown freenet (TELNET yfn2.ysu.edu). You can get to the
usenet groups from your favorite usenet reader or go through a gopher (such
as at UPENN). On the Youngstown freenet, anyone can logon as visitor, but
you have to register to read and post (or send messages) on usenet. The
misc.invest group is unmoderated - no one censors the postings. There are
usually more than 100 postings a day. More postings appear when the stock
market is going up then when it goes down. It seems that a down day is a
downer for the regulars of misc.invest.
Some recent "threads" or continuing discussions on this group have
included rise of interest rates, pros and cons of term insurance, where
best to put $1,000, and asset allocation issues. Some real good
discussions are held on a rather high plane. Other threads include how
Jupiter affects the market and some offers regarding real estate in the
former Soviet Union. There are discussions of individual stocks and mutual
funds. In addition there are chain letter offerings (send a dollar and in
a month you'll get millions) and offers of "opportunities" for
castles-in-the-sky where the first investors will make money on the later
investments (otherwise known as Ponzi schemes). In summary, there is lots
of worthwhile information along with fluff and even somewhat illegal
schemes.
Beside the threads of discourse, there are some regular features. HOLTZ
has 3 daily reports which appear each workday a little after 5PM. These
include closing numbers for the U.S. markets (the DOW 30, S&P, AMEX, NYSE,
Russell 2000 and other indexes) as well as foreign markets. Also included
are the highs, lows, closing numbers and volumes for the most active stocks
on a variety of exchanges and more. A second regular feature, ClariNews,
lists on a daily basis, the highs, lows and final prices of a number of
computer and telecommunication stocks. In addition, there are daily and
weekly market reviews by a number of newsletter editors and services.
There are surveys on investment styles and a contest to guess the DOW on
December 31. These regular features have changed over time as their
compilers move on to other things. A feature I looked forward to and has
since stopped was a test (I looked forward to being tested!) on personal
finance. Well I guess that it wasn't so much the testing that I liked, but
the well thought out and authoritative answers that appeared the following
week. Sample questions and answers follows:
1: What are pork bellies?
Pork bellies are, obviously, from the underside of
pigs/hogs. They are used predominately to make bacon.
2: What does it mean when a stock is trading ex-dividend?
The seller not the buyer, is entitled to the recently
declared dividend.
The series consisted of 3 "tests" which appeared about once a week.
Why am I mentioning this defunct feature? For one, although it ended
perhaps, with some encouragement, it will start up again. In addition, I
wanted to point out to you the variety that appears here. Also, the
expectation I have that next week a new and even more worthwhile feature
will be available. So I continue to browse.
I feel that the wide variety of information and views on misc.invest is
of tremendous value. People interested in investing and personal finance
read magazines, newspapers, listen to talk shows on TV and radio on the
various issues involving investing and personal finances. Misc.invest
gives one an avenue for discussion on just the issues raised in those other
media. The big difference here is that you can join right into the
conversation. Even the flaky views and the "opportunities" for investing
are worthwhile, as long as you think first. Reading those views and
reading the "flames" that get thrown at them makes one a more wily investor
and ready for the next new scheme.
The next issue will feature the 3 FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions
that are associated with this group.
SUE'S VIEWS
I was recently asked by an editor of Money magazine what my one single
piece of advice to new and experienced money handlers would be -- My
answer was, Don't forget to THINK for yourself. Whether it's an urging from
unknowns on misc.invest, TV info- commercials to BUY ME, cold telephone
calls or offers in the mail, it is vital to think before acting -- think
about your goals, the relevance and merits of the solicitation, the
credibility of the source. Think! You and only you are responsible for
the consequences of your actions. Think before acting!! At an early age,
as we watch TV or go to the super market we are barraged with BUY ME
signals. From the bright red on the cereal boxes, to the latest in
clothes, from the special offer for a new credit card or a bridge in
Brooklyn, we are urged to spend our money. We all need new clothes and the
latest features on a new telephone are valuable, but THINK before you sign
on. After that, the rest of investing and personal finance is a piece of
cake.
See you on the Information Highway.
Happy Computing and Happy Investing!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
___ __ The _
|_ _|_ __ / _| ___ _ __ _ __ ___ ___ __| |
| || '_ \| |_ / _ \| '__| '_ ` _ \ / _ \/ _` |
| || | | | _| (_) | | | | | | | | __/ (_| |
|___|_| |_|_| \___/|_| |_| |_| |_|\___|\__,_|
___ _
|_ _|_ ____ _____ ___| |_ ___ _ __
| || '_ \ \ / / _ \/ __| __/ _ \| '__|
| || | | \ V / __/\__ \ || (_) | |
|___|_| |_|\_/ \___||___/\__\___/|_|
by
D o u g l a s M a r t i n
Risk, Risk, and More Risk
Risk is that four letter word that usually sends many investors
scurrying for safety. Risk is inevitable when it comes to investing, no
matter where you invest your money, whether it be a savings account or junk
bonds. But how many people really understand what risk means in relation
to their investments, and how many people actually take into consideration
all of the risks that an investment may have before committing their hard
earned money to that investment?
People tend to confuse their uncertainty about an investment with the
risks associated with an investment. Risk is really a measurable
possibility of an investment losing or not gaining value. This is
distinctly different from uncertainty, which is not measurable. In order
to quantify the overall risk of an investment we need to know what its
different types of risk are. So let's go through some of the commonly
encountered types of risk that need to be considered when selecting an
investment.
Inflation risk is the biggest and surest risk that we face when
investing our money. This is simply the risk that your invested dollar
will not grow at the same pace as overall inflation. In other words, your
principal plus returns will actually buy less over time. It is no mystery
that every currency in existence has less purchasing power today than it
did 20 years ago. Remember in 1974 when a first-class postage stamp cost
10 cents? Inflation is what caused the price of that stamp to triple in 20
years. As inflation affects all types of investments, there is no escaping
it. So the person who says he abhors risk and invests his money in a
savings account for the long term because it is "safe", is really assuming
all of the risk associated with inflation without even knowing or
considering it.
Market Risk is the risk that your investment will fluctuate in value
based on changes in the overall market, regardless of the fundamentals of
the investment itself. If the market as a whole has a major correction in
response to news, the risk of your investment correcting along with the
market exists. Stocks, bonds, and mutual funds are the most affected by
market risk, whereas an investment where the principal is fixed, such as a
CD, is not affected at all. The risk associated with the market is enormous
because of the possibility of losing your entire investment, but it can
largely be offset by investing for the long term. In addition, the
potential for higher returns will compensate for the higher level of risk.
Interest Rate risk is the risk that a fixed-rate debt instrument, such
as a bond, will decline in value as a result of a rise in interest rates.
As an example, let's say you purchase a bond with a face value of $1000 and
it pays a fixed rate of interest of 7% or $70 a year. Now if interest
rates in the market suddenly increase from 7% to 8%, the value of your
bond in the market place will decline to about $875, so, the $70 interest
payment will represent an 8% yield to a new investor. As you can see, a 1%
increase in interest rates resulted in a 12.5% decline in the value of your
investment. This is the type of risk you definitely want to avoid, if at
all possible. Bonds with longer maturities are more susceptible to
interest rate risk, so one way of reducing this risk is to keep the
maturity of the bond you buy short. Many people will buy a bond with the
intention of holding it until maturity so they are not affected by changes
in interest rates. Really, they are just giving up the opportunity to
reinvest their money at higher interest rates, and if interest rates are
moving up, so is inflation. So, they really assumed all of the inflation
risk instead.
Another important risk to consider is liquidity risk. This is the
risk that you will not be able to buy or sell an investment when you need
or want to. This usually occurs when a security is thinly traded, either
because th
e total number of shares outstanding is small or the shares are
closely held. Low volume or a large spread between bid and ask prices can
be good indicators of liquidity risk. Bonds are very susceptible to
liquidity risk, especially for an individual investor that is trading a
small number of bonds. One investment that many people do not relate with
high liquidity risk is a bank Certificate of Deposit or CD. If you need the
money before the maturity of the CD, there are usually substantial
penalties for early withdrawal, which equates to very high liquidity risk.
Some other types of risk to consider are exchange risk, where there is
a chance of loss on foreign currency exchange, and political risk, where
governmental action may affect the value of an investment. These risks are
becoming even more important as many people start looking around the world
for investments and as we move toward a more global economy.
After all this, is there really any investment that could be
considered risk-free. Actually there is. The three month U.S. Treasury
bill is considered a risk-free investment because it is a direct obligation
of the U.S. government and its term is short enough to minimize the risks
of inflation and interest rate changes. But for the most part, every
investment is going to have some measure of risk involved with it. The
idea is to understand what these risks are, how they affect your investment
and how to minimize them, while still getting the best possible return on
your money. Investment risk shouldn't scare you away as long as you
understand it.
Doug Martin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
_____ _ the _ _ __ __ _
| ____| | ___ ___| |_ _ __(_) ___ \ \ / /__ _ __ __| |
| _| | |/ _ \/ __| __| '__| |/ __| \ \ /\ / / _ \| '__/ _` |
| |___| | __/ (__| |_| | | | (__ \ V V / (_) | | | (_| |
|_____|_|\___|\___|\__|_| |_|\___| \_/\_/ \___/|_| \__,_|
by G a r y G a c h
Introduction & welcome
________________________
THInk of it.
The technology of the word -- ("A"-"B"-"C" ..., etc.) -- is one of the
most ancient foundations of human civilization. Over millennia, it has
undergone modifications. In Tell el Amaran, Egypt, for instance, about
3500 years ago, the world's first library was established. More recently,
Gutenberg brought movable type to the West, and now desktop publishing
makes everyone his or her own Gutenberg. The words you are reading right
now represent an equally significant transformation the technology of
writing.
These words are appearing via a medium whose vistas and applications
we're only beginning to grasp -- as it grows exponentially, hither and yon,
in form and function. For one thing, this medium practically transcends
time and space, appearing in cyberspace e- mail boxes way earlier than
postmen and inktrunks arrive at our doors. For another thing, it creates a
virtual community, linking people and enabling them to communicate
point-to-point, point-to-mass, and mass-to- point, (as in the various
e-mail), and mass-within-mass, (as in mailing lists and conferences).
For our purposes, a key element of this medium is its revival of the
written word. In a tv/film-saturated world, millions of people are
rediscovering, and reinventing, the joys of applying the A-B-C, the
technology of written communication. True, people don't always use their
spell-checkers before posting an epistle, and the _emphases_ and
typographic *inflections* ARE different. Moreover, it's paperless!
To be sure, just as the typewriter was instrumental in the revolution
known as modern literature, so is the Internet working its own
transformations today. In the Information Revolution, as in any
revolution, there exist three strata simultaneously: those who don't quite
yet "get it," those who are clueing in and acting upon it, and those whose
world is already transformed into something else. This monthly section of
The Informer is aimed at all three.
The Electric Word is for writers (fiction, non-, poetry, children's,
journalism, screen-, technical, etc.), editors, publishers, and imaginative
readers. In coming months we'll bring you cyberspace tidbits and compass
points, news of events and Internet sites of interest to the virtual
writing community ... plus editorials and forums on relevant issues and
themes, such as copyright, decentralization, and commercial uses. If
you've discovered a tidbit or site you wish to share with other readers, or
have a topic you'd like to see aired, please don't hesitate to contact us
directly, at our address, below.
So -----: welcome!
--------------------------------------------------------
The <misc.writing> FAQ & The Internet Writer Resource
Guide
________________________________________________________
FOR this inaugural number of The Electric Word, we'll spotlight a pair
of basic online resources for writers. To fill in some background, many
telecommunications networks host conferences -- (aka forums, chats,
discussion groups, caucases, mass-within-mass communication) -- particular
to that system, (e.g., America Online, the Well, PeaceNet, etc., to name a
few, common, big ones). The largest site for conferences held across the
entire Internet itself is Usenet. Usenet generically refers to its
conferences to as "newsgroups," but I tend to avoid that term, as it can be
easily confused with the news as tv and newspapers report.) Each
conference represents a special interest group (SIG), and often a moderator
will create, usually cxollaborating with other group members, a document
that lists and answers Frequently Asked Questions (abbreviated FAQs).
A FAQ is usually re-posted once a month, often updated and revised.
One Usenet conference, <news.answers>, is devoted just for the posting
FAQs. This is a landmine of information, for any writer wishing to quickly
get up to speed on a wise range of topics.
(As L. Detweiler points out, the FAQ is one instance of a new form of
writing proper to the Internet: diverse, collaborative, evolving, elegant,
informative. And it often reaches an audience of tens of thousands -- as
much as one could hope with paper!)
The <misc.writers> FAQ answers the following: What format to use for a
manuscript, how to get a children's book manuscript illustrated, how to
find a market for a manuscript, how to submit a manuscript, whether agents
are necessary, how to get an agent, what do agents charge, electronic
publication vs. paper publication (posting online counts as publication and
can dilute interest in secondary rights) and what are useful professional
groups for writers. (The latter includes two electronic conferences which
work via e-mail -- mailing lists -- Writers and Fiction Writers Workshop.
Note: this FAQ is also available from <ftp.apple.com>, in the path:
-=-
Where the FAQ to the <misc.writing> Usenet conference is primarily
paper-oriented, The Internet Writing Resource Guide is electronic. It
begins as a list of magazines and various outlets accepting submissions by
email, then branches out into Internet resources for the writer in general.
While not exhaustive, it's an excellent beginning resource directory.
Somewhere around the middle, the primary author, L Detweiler, inserts a
futurist vision:
> I think we are entering an age where *everyone*
> will be able to run their own publishing stations
> at home (sort of like FTP sites but far less
> complicated!) -- they will become perhaps as
> common as answering machines. ... I seek to
> advance this vision of the future where everyone
> who can type can `publish'.
This invaluable resource guide is available a number of ways. It can
be found in the ftp archive for FAQs: <rtfm.mit.edu>, via path:
to the following Usenet groups: <misc.writing>, <rec.arts. prose>,
<rec.arts.sf.written>, <misc.answers>, <rec. answers>, and <news.answers>.
If you only have e-mail, send a message "help," (leaving the subject line
blank), to <mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu>, to learn how to pry it loose via
e-mail only.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The thought for the month is:
______________
Keep writing!
--------------
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
GARY GACH teaches Internet for Writers at the Learning Annex and UC
Extension, in the San Francisco Bay area. When not teaching, scouting, or
consulting in, on, and about the Internet, he writes. His work has been
published in The American Poetry Review, AsianWeek, New Asia Review,
Renditions, Shambhala Sun, Transpacific, Zyzzva, as well as such newer,
paperless magazines as RIF/T, Grist, and Connect. His addresses in
cyberspace are <ggach@path.net> and <Gary_Gach@wwire.net>.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
_ _ _
| \ | | ___| |_
| \| |/ _ \ __| "amongst friends..."
| |\ | __/ |_
|_| \_|\___|\__|
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
| \ | | ___(_) __ _| |__ | |__ ___ _ __| |__ ___ ___ __| |___
| \| |/ _ \ |/ _` | '_ \| '_ \ / _ \| '__| '_ \ / _ \ / _ \ / _` / __|
| |\ | __/ | (_| | | | | |_) | (_) | | | | | | (_) | (_) | (_| \__ \
|_| \_|\___|_|\__, |_| |_|_.__/ \___/|_| |_| |_|\___/ \___/ \__,_|___/
|___/ by K a t h l e e n C r i e g h t o n
NET NEIGHBORHOODS...reporting from around the net, telnettable
pockets of virtual community
by Kathleen Creighton (casey@well.sf.ca.us)
ECHO (East Coast Hang Out)
New York City residents and ex-patriates are gathering around, talking
about "da neighborhood", Brooklyn (is there any other?) on ECHO. Hurry on
over--the New York conference is due for an overhaul in a few weeks.
--> To get there, j newyork, item 7.
The Whitney Museum of American Art has made itself at home in the
virtual world. "Art and National Identity: What's American About American
Art?" is a rousing discussion for art lovers and cultural analysts.
--> To get there, j whitney, item 5.
For ECHO subscription information, send email to info@echonyc.com or
telnet echonyc.com and log on as "guest".
*****
WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link)
The newest addition to the WELL archives is reports live from Woodstock
II. WELL staff set up five terminals at the event and the result is candid
views of the weekend, along with remininescences from WELL users.
--> To get there, g woodstock.
In the "some things had better never change" department, Berkeleyites
are discussing coffee in the topic "Peet's vs. Starbuck's: Who wins? Who
loses?", in which they rant and rave about the intrusion of Starbuck's, a
national coffee chain which would be considered stunningly gourmet in
Wichita, into the sacred territory of Berkeley's own local brew.
--> To get there, g berkeley, topic 459.
Should a 16-year-old be living on her own? Follow the story of a
father who's having to make some difficult decisions about his daughter's
future.
--> To get there, g parenting, topic 632.
For WELL subscription information, send email to info@well.sf.ca.us or
telnet well.sf.ca.us (or well.com) and log on as "guest".
*****
If you know of an active virtual community, commercial or Freenet,
available by telnet, which would welcome participants from all around the
net, please send email with information to casey@well.sf.ca.us.
Kathleen Creighton is the BBS/online service columnist for MicroTimes, a
computer newspaper in the San Francisco Bay Area.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a
__ ___ _ _ __ ___ _ _ __ __ _
\ \ / (_) | __| | \ \ / (_) | __| | \ \ / /__| |__
\ \ /\ / /| | |/ _` | \ \ /\ / /| | |/ _` | \ \ /\ / / _ \ '_ \
\ V V / | | | (_| | \ V V / | | | (_| | \ V V / __/ |_) |
\_/\_/ |_|_|\__,_| \_/\_/ |_|_|\__,_| \_/\_/ \___|_.__/
by C h a r l e s D e e m e r
The "Best of the Web '94" Contest winners have been announced, and
the novice to the World Wide Web can do worse than to explore the Home
Pages of the winners. The "Best Entertainment Site" winner was a
still-growing site maintained by Eric Richard of MIT for sports
enthusiasts, called the "WWW Sports Information Server."
You'll find Richard's good work at:
http://www.mit.edu:8001/services/sis/sports.html
Although the new visitor may be disappointed to discover on the
2-page Home Page that only two sports - professional basketball and
football - are served by Richard, each sport is covered in enough detail
to satisfy most enthusiasts, and Richard says he does plan to add more
sports, such as baseball, in the future.
Once connected to the Home Page, then, you have two choices:
linking to the Professional Basketball Server or to the Professional
Football Server.
Each of these servers is organized the same. For example, linking
to the Professional Basketball Server provides new links organized in
sections.
"The NBA at a Glance" provides a 1994 Playoff Chart, as well as
daily game summaries. Information about any team or player is available in
the somewhat misnamed "Daily Coverage," as are schedules, statistics and
rosters (including some visuals for those linking with Mosaic or something
similar). "Basketball Archives" cover the drafts from 1976-92, as well as
payroll statistics and individual team histories. Year-by-year awards, such
as MVP and Rookie of the Year, are also provided.
The same information is available on the Professional Football
Server, although this link is less developed (the team histories are not
yet written, for example). But with football season coming fast upon us,
this server is a fine addition to the sports pages of your newspaper,
providing schedules by date or team, reviews of games updated weekly, draft
selection histories, and so on, much the same as the basketball server.
The football server also includes the four proposals for a 1995
realignment of teams. Super Bowl histories and awards are included in the
archives section.
There is an FAQ (frequently asked questions) in the Basketball
Server that properly belongs on the Home Page, in which Richard discusses
future expansion of his WWW Sports Information Server. It's a great chore
of voluntary work to keep this current, and my guess is that when football
season gets underway he's going to need some help.
Richard can be reached at erichard@mit.edu. His server well
deserves the Best Entertain Site of 1994 award for its completeness in two
sports, its clear organization and its informative service.
______________________________________________________________
Charles Deemer | cdeemer@teleport.com | (503) 227-5030
Home Page: http://www.teleport.com/deemer/index.html
**Electronic screenwriting workshop info: see home page**
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are
__ __ ____ _____ _ __ __ ____
| \/ |_ _| _ \ |_ _(_) \/ | ___/ ___|
| |\/| | | | | | | | | | | | |\/| |/ _ \___ \
| | | | |_| | |_| | | | | | | | | __/___) |
|_| |_|\__,_|____/ |_| |_|_| |_|\___|____/
by R . J . L a R o e
" News you can MUSE "
1. Commentary: Virtual Harrassment R. J. LaRoe
2. News: Fresh New MuD list
3. Press Release: MediaMOO Announcement
4. Feature: England Invades France!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1
MOOs Arm Users Against Harassment
The most widely reported bad news coming out of the MOO metroplex since
it emerged on the virtual lanscape was the cyberspace rape(*) that occurred
this past year in LambdaMOO. Four players were violated by a VooDoo doll
controlled by a character named Mr. Bungle. Virtual charges were preferred
against Mr. Bungle and that character was toaded (virtually executed).
Following the execution, Haakon, Lambda's archwizard, established a
"New Direction" for Lambda and a milestone in MUD history. He instituted,
albeit by fiat, a free-form sort of democracy for Lambda in which virtually
anyone may propose, in petition form, laws for the MOO society.
LambdaMOO residents used the system over the next several months to
forge tools for protecting and avenging themselves: creating an @boot
command, which they may use to eject offending "guest" characters from
their virtual spaces and establishing an arbitration system in which
mutually acceptable ad hoc judges settle behavioral disputes between
registered users. These judges, it should be noted, may invoke a broad
range of wizardly punishments -- including toading.
The New Direction continues, as does the debate over just what should
be done about what. How, for example, does a virtual society distinguish
between regulation of behavior and the free expression of thought? This
past summer, for instance, Lambda players considered, discussed and voted
on a petition/ballot which would have distinguished between virtual rape
and merely offensive speech.
Had the ballot been approved, "MOOrape" would have been defined as a
"sexually-related act of a violent or acutely debasing or profoundly
humiliating nature against a character who has not explicitly consented to
the interaction" using "'emote' (locally or remotely), a spoof, or ...
another verb performing the equivalent presentation." Using "say," "page,"
"whisper," or other functions which provide "an equivalent sense of
quotation," however, would have been considered speech -- unless that
speech "explicitly and provokingly reference[d] a character performing the
actions associated with rape."
Perpetrators of rapes would have been subject, following the first
offense, to "@toading ... and @recycling of their character[s] and any
secondary characters and refusal of additional character registration
requests known to originate" from them. But the petition explicitly stated
that it "should not be interpreted to abridge freedom of speech within
LambdaMOO."
Five hundred forty-one (541) Lambda residents voted in favor of the
ballot, and 379 against. But since Lambda ballots must receive twice as
many approving as disapproving votes, the measure failed.
Sexual and general harassment, especially on the part of "guest
characters," remain issues at Lambda and other mu*s, however. Lambda
players should expect to see a new ballot in their mailboxes soon (if they
have not seen one already) which, if passed, will establish guest
registration.
In response to similarly anti-social behavior on their virtual campus,
registered characters at Diversity University MOO were armed this past
month with two new verbs that DU's wizards hope will provide "an effective
defense:" @witness and @banish. After the behavior of an abusive guest has
been @witness-ed, which initiates a logging procedure, it can be @banished
from the MOO and (as with @boot at Lambda) guest connections from the
ex-guest's domain will be disabled for one hour thereafter.
Both DU and Lambda permit ejected guests to protest their ejections and
both MOOs hold their characters accountable for the usage of @boot or
@banish. Lambda's @boot requires a second "confirming @boot request" from
another Lambda player, within two minutes of the original @boot, before
ejecting the guest.
DU also initiated an @tag-ging system this past month to counter
harassment on the part of registered users of the MOO. Characters who feel
they're being harassed by other characters may now @tag the offender. "A
tag," according to DU's help message on the subject, "consists of a little
chunk of information" recorded against the tagged character.
But it's a powerful little chunk. In it are the tagger's name, the
time and date of the tag and the "rationale for the tag." The DU wizards
are notified when a character has been tagged three times and they, at that
point, in the words of the help file, "will have a word with the person and
decide ... his/her fate." So be nice!
end note:
(*) Both the rape and the toading (virtual execution) of the
sociopathic Mr. Bungle were thoroughly reported by Julian Dibbell
(Lambda's Dr. Bombay) in "A Rape in Cyberspace" in the December 21,
1993 issue of *The Village Voice*, available in e-text via gopher at
actlab.rtf.utexas.edu 70 under "Virtual Spaces: MUD/".
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2
Fresh MUD(s)
Administrators and players of the following MUDs proclaimed their
presence in Usenet News' "rec.games.mud.announce" over the past several
weeks.
**Texas Twilight MUSH**
Theme: Roleplaying is the emphasis but a +stats system and judges are
available. Via Telnet: Krynn.solace.mh.se 6250 (193.10.118.130 6250)
**PARANOIA MUSH**
Theme: Self-described as similar to the movie *Logan's Run* "except
more silly." Via Telnet: nomadd.fiu.edu 6969
**Northern Lights**
Theme: Games and puzzles. Via Telnet: aber.ludd.luth.se 6715
(130.240.16.29 6715)
*SlothMUD II**
Theme: DikuMUD- Via Telnet: ai.cs.ukans.edu 6101
**LegendMUD**
Theme: Offers "thoroughly researched areas that are accurately
representative of actual historic periods, legendary eras, or literary
frameworks." Via Telnet: moraff.austin.com 9999
**ANGREAL**
Theme: Roleplay in a fantasy setting based on Robert Jordan's works.
Via Telnet: SARCAZM.RESNET.CORNELL.EDU 9000 (128.253.150.10 9000)
**ChromeMUSH**
Theme: Cyberpunk. Set in a "dark future" in which "Megacorps run most
of the world, the government is powerless, and people struggle to survive
in a world that simply doesn't need or want them anymore." Cheery, eh? Via
Telnet: colossus.acusd.edu 4444 (192.195.155.200 4444)
**House of Wax**
Theme: Surreal. Self-described as "small, ... a social mud with
role-playing elements - sort of like attending a Dinner Murder Mystery
Theater." Via Telnet: gojira.monsta.com 7777
**Wayne's World**
Theme: Boasts, if this is boasting: "We have a small (too small, in
our opinion!) populace, (obviously) no overcrowding problems, friendly (if
occasionally drunk) implementors ("big kahunas"), and a generally cool
atmosphere." A DikuMUD. Via Telnet: Drake.eushc.org 9000
**Tazmania**
Theme: CircleMUD with "no Pkilling" and lots of "social fun." Via
Telnet: Ukko.Rowan.Edu 5000
**Eternal Twilight**
Theme: Self-described as "Based on ROM (2.3) by Alander." Via Telnet:
eews11.usask.ca 9000
**ToonMUSH ]I[**
Theme: Toons, silly. Sheesh, can't you take a hint. "Boink!" Via
Telnet: brahe.phys.unm.edu 9999
**Blue Facial Mud**
Theme: Self-described as "a clan/pkill mud" which tries "to emphasize
role playing and characer developement." Via Telnet: dallet.channel1.com
1234
**FoxMUD**
Theme: Reportedly "a fun place to hang." <gulp> Via Telnet:
mud.eskimo.com 4848
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
3
Netoric Gets Gopher Site
Tari and GregS of MediaMOO announced in mid-August that Netoric, the
sponsor of MediaMOO's Tuesday Cafe series, now has its own gopher space.
Available documents include logs of recent Netoric events and announcements
of upcoming events. Gopher: daedalus.com:/Alliance for Computers and
Writing/NETORIC/ Ftp: daedalus.com:/ACW/NETORIC/ MediaMOO's Tuesday Cafe
regularly attracts a national gathering of writing teachers who use MOO
programming in their curricula. It's interesting. Honest.
_
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
4
War Declared! England Invades France!
Exclusive Front Line Report
R.J. LaRoe
Outside the city of Calais: a mangy peasant, wearing a broadcloth shirt
and pants cinched with a hemp belt, drops an archer's longbow, stake and
brigandine as a similarly clad, ragged peasant watches. The archer's
equipment is followed by a poleaxe (once the property of Thomas Camoys,
Lord of Camoys), a dagger (once the property of Sir Thomas Erpingham,
Steward of the King's Household) and a great helm (previously owned by none
other than Henry V, King of England).
The ragged peasant comments through yellow, broken teeth, "you did
quite a bit of stealing in there."
The mangy peasant drops a sword (once the property of Thomas Morestede,
physician to the King) and smiles, revealing his own broken, yellow teeth.
Mangy_Peasant looks innocent. "Who me?"
His disingenuous ploy is unnecessary. He's not really in trouble, even
though the accusatory ragged peasant is, in virtual reality, Jeanne,
Archwizardess of DUmoo, in disguise. You see, Jeanne and this mangy
peasant have just finished a tour of Mogue(iRL: Bill Kretz)'s
sim-MOO-lation of scenes from the 100 Years War, where players are
*supposed* to steal stuff. And the mangy peasant is, in this case, um,
your humble reporter: me!
Mangy_Peasant jumps up and down and waves. He removes his cap and
points to his red hair.
And the sim-MOO-lation is a "wow." At least that's the conclusion
Jeanne and I reached, and neither of us is easily wowed, especially in
virtual reality. But this is the sort of cyber-construction that can (and
ought to) be appreciated by history buffs, RenFest freaks and battle gamers
alike.
Players sail with Henry to France from the port of Southampton, where
they can take a nice long look at the fleet and discuss its composition
with Thomas Beaufort (Earl of Dorset) before embarking. On their arrival
in France, they lay siege to the city of Harfleur, march on Arques and Eu
and other French cities and towns, ford rivers, get sick, get more ragged,
get mangier. It's all great fun!
And educational! Seriously.
Along the way, players encounter key members of Henry's entourage, with
whom they may engage in conversation and from whom they may steal neat
stuff for closer examination. They also learn a great deal -- about armor,
weapons, tactics, medieval technology in general and the battle of
Agincourt (in which an English force of 6,000 encounters a French force of
24,000) in particular. This final battle in the sim-MOO-lation is
supplemented with ascii maps and detailed descriptions of just what
happened when.
There's so much information in this cyber construct that you may wish
to visit it repeatedly, to get ragged, mangy and (if you're lucky)
lice-ridden as well. To join Henry's army, telnet to DUmoo
(erau.db.erau.edu 8888) and connect as peasant (no password). You don't
need to be a DU regular to enlist in this particular campaign.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
___ _ _ __ _____ _ _
/ _ \ ___ | | __ _ _ __ __| | \ \ / / _ \| | | |
| |_| |/ _ \| | / _` | '_ \ / _` | \ V / | | | | | |
| _ | (_) | | | (_| | | | | (_| | | || |_| | |_| |
|_| |_|\___/|_| \__,_|_| |_|\__,_| |_| \___/ \___/
by B i l l T o s c a n o
************
When American Online trumpeted its connection to the Internet earlier
this year, subscribers quickly realized that actually meant connection to
newsgroups and the ability to request mailing lists rather than the
elusive "complete Internet access."
That access was rather quickly expanded to include Gopher and WAIS
databases, and in his September letter to subscribers, AOL president Steve
Case said the expansion will continue.
Among the additions to AOL planned between now and early next year
are Mosaic support to allow access to the Worldwide Web, as well as ftp
(file transfer) and telnet capabilities. This will greatly reduce the
frustration felt by those of use who use AOL as an Internet connection,
then see listings of terrific resources that we cannot access.
In his letter, Case also said AOL is planning to expand its
frontier of providing high-speed service. AOL has expanded its 9600 baud
access, and Case said the service will add to that and is working with
network providers to give 14.4 baud access, as well as ISDN, TCP/IP, and
cable connectivity).
AOL is also adding a new multimedia interface, according to Case,
and will be sending free upgrades to its 1 million subscribers in October
or November.
OTHER NEW SERVICES
Three new areas have opened so far this month -- "Your Money
Forum," yet another personal finance service, "Time Warner Interactive,"
and "Bed & Breakfast USA," an outgrowth of a popular book series. This
includes a searchable database of B&Bs across the country.
Of course, the most annoying thing about checking out new services on
AOL (accessible with the keyword "new") is that you have to wait for your
computer to receive the new artwork that comes with them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
_ _ a ___ _ _
| | __ _ __| |_ _ / _ \ _ __ | (_)_ __ ___
| | / _` |/ _` | | | | | | | | '_ \| | | '_ \ / _ \
| |__| (_| | (_| | |_| | | |_| | | | | | | | | | __/
|_____\__,_|\__,_|\__, | \___/|_| |_|_|_|_| |_|\___|
|___/ by S t e p h a n i e B r a i l
Take Back the Net!
Don't Let On-Line's Dirty Little Secret Prevent You From
Exploring Cyberspace
By Stephanie Brail
You are at home, sitting at your computer, reading the latest
messages, via electronic- or e-mail, from friends and family around the
country. You're tired and have been scanning the screen quickly--when
suddenly one message leaps out at you: "Why don't you get a life you
on-the-rag, stuck up c-nt? Geez, you really need to get f----d in the ---."
That's what happened to me a few months ago. I was shaken and scared.
The message was signed "Hemroid," and it was the first of many such
communications to scroll across my screen, telling me what an "evil cunt" I
was and how my opinions were worthless. The man, who also called himself
"Mike," sent me reams of pornographic text. And I couldn't do a thing
about it. Mike's fake e-mail addresses protected him from even my nasty
rejoinder, let alone punitive actions by computer authorities.
My life in cyberspace, as the electronic world is sometimes known,
hasn't always been this eventful. I began going "on-line" when my dad
insisted I get a computer account at college so he could send e-mail
messages to me and save on long distance phone charges. When messages are
sent using a computer modem each party only has to connect to a local
network phone number.
o-O-o No more snail mail o-O-o
I joined the university network and my dad belonged to Compuserve;
the two are connected through Internet, a vast publicly-supported
super-network--part of that information superhighway Al Gore always talks
about. Once I learned how to get mail from my father ("Hi, Stephanie, I
hope you are doing well in English") and send messages to him ("I'm getting
all A's. Please send money."), I was hooked.
After college I found a commercial Internet provider in my area. With
that I could send and receive e-mail, "telnet" to other computer networks
and join newsgroups. I also got my own Compuserve account, which gave me
news, weather, special interest forums, more e-mail and access to
databases.
o-O-o We are talking world-wide o-O-o
If commercial networks are like bookstores, Internet (known as "the
net") is like a vast well-funded public library, with access to the best
and biggest libraries everywhere. It connects thousands of computer
systems--from businesses and universities to the Library of Congress. There
are 15 million users worldwide--some say it's expanding by a million new
members a month--and so far women comprise only an estimated 10 to 15
percent of users. Millions of members access the Internet every day for
research , e-mail and, perhaps... sexual harassment.
Being a personal victim of electronic harassment made me wonder if
other women have the same experiences. Was high-tech harassment such as
this the reason why so few women connect to Internet?
In a survey taken by Dr. Anita Borg, founder and administrator of the
Systers mailing list, a group of 1,500 women computer system operators, one
in five of the 500 respondents said they had been sexually harassed
on-line. Half of the women surveyed fe lt that changes in the systems
were needed "to make them more conducive to the participation of women and
girls."
o-O-o Real-life anarchy o-O-o
There's no central authority on the net, which is an anarchic
conglomerate of thousands of smaller networks. As a small but visible
minority, the problems women run into there are not surprising, but simply
a reflection of Real Life. We get to experience the common problem of
having our ideas ignored, for example, while a man gets lauded for saying
the same thing. We can also be the object of unwanted requests for dates or
sex, known on the net as "wanna f----."
Some women have even had men look up their on-line names in phone
books and call them on the telephone. In order to escape such attention,
some have adopted gender-neutral or male on-line pseudonyms. When Patricia
Currier, a 19-year-old computer science major at Worcester Polytechnic
Institute, changed her moniker to Terrylee, sexual harassment stopped.
E-mail is not the only site of on-line harassment. Chats, talk
requests and other real-time communications in which participants type in
whatever they want to say and it is read by others simultaneously, are
often used as virtual pick-up joints. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is one
such place.
Melinda Shore, a 37-year-old software engineer at the Cornell Theory
Center, has used the net for decades. She finds it an invaluable resource
for maintaining friendships with people all over the world. But as a member
of soc.motss, the gay and lesbian n ewsgroup, she's received some "truly
nasty" e-mail. Finally she stopped responding to talk requests from
strangers. "It's not uncommon for undergraduate men to cruise the network
late at night, looking for women and trying to talk to them," she says. "I
know it's loneliness but it's annoying, too."
The Denver Free-Net is one of a growing number of free public
access-to-Internet sites across the country. Open only since January 1993,
Free-Net already has 6,000 users. After just three months of operation, it
began receiving complaints about sexually suggestive conversations. Male
staff entered the system under assumed female names, to see if the
complaints had merit. They found plenty of evidence, and solved the
problem by closing down IRC completely in July.
o-O-o Someone is watching over you o-O-o
Women who want to test the waters of cyberspace might want to begin in
a closed commercial system like Compuserve or Prodigy. Given the rich
resources available there, they might never need to venture into Internet's
newsgroups. They are certainly less l ikely to receive obscene messages.
Many of these services have stringent policies on harassment and will
revoke a perpetrator's account if necessary.
Prodigy, a large commercial services with the highest complement of
female users--40 percent--has a strict policy regarding obscenity and
harassment, according to Debra Borchert, manager of communications. Obscene
messages posted to bulletin boards are sent back to the poster for
rewriting. If a member receives an obscene message in e-mail, Prodigy
managers will contact the offender and ask that the messages stop. One more
instance results in a terminated account.
ECHO (East Coast Hang Out) founded by Stacy Horn in 1990, is
well-known for its woman-friendly atmosphere and has attracted 40 percent
female participation. Fifty percent of ECHO's conferences are moderated by
women, and that includes not only traditional women's forums but also
conferences of a technical nature. Horn also gave free one-year accounts to
female charter members.
That alone was enough to cause resentment among some male cyberspace
users. After a favorable article about ECHO appeared in the hip computer
magazine .MDUL/Wired.MDNM/, male readers passed around a parody entitled
"The Evil Cunts Hang Out." Horn was not surprised, but finds that most men
members like ECHO.
The men on ECHO are actually "terribly civilized," Horn explains.
"Men have found it valuable that women feel comfortable here. These women
stick around and get to know them and it's like a real community. So they
have a vested interest in keeping it t his way."
o-O-o Say no to yo? o-O-o
ECHO has its occasional problems, especially with a real-time talk
feature called "yo" which Horn says is not very popular. "One thing we've
noticed is that men `yo' more than women, and when a new woman comes
on-line, they'll, like, `yo her up,'" Horn explains. "It can be annoying,
so we'll say 'Look, chill out.'"
ECHO also has a special place for women to report harassment and
hassles. If a member has a complaint about another member, Horn's system
operators often will talk to the person who sent the offending message.
Most cases are resolved easily. "Usually they're very embarrassed," Horn
says. They had no idea that some women resented their flirting.
Horn doesn't consider this censorship; she says most users can be
trusted to abide by the tone of individual conferences. In ECHO's three
years of existence she has only had to force two people out. Both were men
who were offending and harassing the re st of ECHO's members.
Following Horn's lead, Ellen Pack and Nancy Rhine founded WIRE (
Women's Information Resource and Exchange), a new commercial on-line
service based in San Francisco, created to fill the void of women's
information on-line services. Rhine describes the service as a practical
place where women can find all the information they need in one stop. She
considers this particularly helpful for women with work and family
responsibilities who often don't have as much time as men do to play on
different services.
The service, which opened in September, offers a easy-to-use Windows
interface. Databases such as "Herstory," a news feed which brings in
articles about women's issues, women's health topics, and networking for
women business owners, activists, and others, are services decidedly
different from the usual on-line fare.
If such women-owned and women-designed services become the norm,
perhaps more on-line communications will become like Horn's ideal of ECHO.
"It's not like just the one or two strong voices...women who would be heard
no matter what...but it's women are generally heard in pretty much every
topic and every conference," Horn explains "There is a different tone and
atmosphere to the place because of the presence of women."
Sexual harassment instances should not obscure the fact that there are
a lot of satisfied women network users. "It bothers me that women aren't
taking more advantage of these services," says Judith Broadhurst, a
freelance writer who specializes in psycho logy and is heavily involved in
on-line communications. "It's the new good ole boys network. And women are
depriving themselves of it. A lot of wheeling and dealing is now going on
in cyberspace... the whole nature of work and communication has changed
forever." If women don't learn to navigate in cyberspace, Broadhurst
predicts: "we're going to end up back in the typing pool."
Perhaps the best advice about dealing with the male-dominated net
comes from Desiree McCrorey, a 38-year-old computer-user interface
designer: "I wouldn't give any serious consideration to not using the net
based on any disturbing events. If I did, I wouldn't use a phone or go into
public. In fact, I've been telling all my friends about the Internet...They
find it fascinating and full of potential."
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Mail & Your Mac
by David Good, DGood@iu.net
The Internet originated, actually, as a communication tool. When most
people want to get connected to the Internet, they do it because they want
to be able to send and receive email. I enjoy surfing around the Net,
telneting and Webbing my way through all of the available information.
Even with all the options available to me online, Email is the one thing I
use most on the Internet.
I subscribe to a few mailing lists that I like to keep up with. I get
the TidBITS (info@tidbits.com) newsletter delivered to my electronic "front
door" every week. I get some stuff every so often from FringeWare - plus a
few other less interesting lists. My mail piles up rapidly - I recently had
85 new messages in two days.
I correspond with many people online - and even started joking with
them that I only write to people with an electronic address. I still
consider it remarkable to write friends in Europe and have a response
almost immediately. It was not that long ago that email was limited to the
workplace, if available at all.
Like most people, when I do one thing more than others, I want it to
use the best tool available. When I chose a computer to help me with my
tasks, I embraced the Macintosh. After I found Macintosh, I found the
online world. The online world introduced me to email, and email became
something I spent a lot of time in. I decided that I needed a tool to
navigate the messages I was sending and receiving - I have found the
Macintosh program Eudora to be the best tool.
Like many internet applications, Eudora was written at a university
(the University of Illinois), and is, therefore, free. The author, upon
leaving the university, kept Eudora for further development into a
full-fledged commercial application.
Having both a freeware and a money-making background, Eudora is
available in two forms: freeware (currently version 1.4.3) and commercial
versions. For $65 you can get v. 2.1 from Qualcomm
(eudora-sales@qualcomm.com) - and for $99, it comes with SpellSwell.
However, even it's freeware version is a highly useful application.
Eudora allows users with a PPP or SLIP connection have a Mac interface
to their email. It has powerful features, like defining an unlimited number
of mailboxes to store archived mail in an organized manner. I have a
mailbox for all my issues of TidBITS, for example. All these powerful
features can lead to some confusion in a new user, so it's suggested you
might try turning on balloon help (which is actually useful in Eudora) if
you are confused.
User-definable nicknames like "fred" allow users to quickly send mail
without typing long addresses like "flint@bed.rock.net". It will send
waiting mail and check for new mail with a single keystroke. And given a
user-defined time constraint, will check your mailbox automatically every
few minutes.
Power users can define all kinds of specialized settings, like how
recipients see the "From" field on mail, or adding a "signature" file to
the end of all your outgoing mail. You can even tell Eudora to leave
copies of your mail in your mailbox, instead of deleting it as soon as it
is downloaded to your Mac.
MIME is fully supported in Eudora 1.4 and above, allowing other MIME
users to see non-textual characters like smart quotes. But in case you are
sending mail to old Eudora users or people who are unlucky enough not to
have a Mac at all, you can force Eudora to strip out any the MIME support.
A MIME is a terrible thing to waste, so I leave it off on mine. <ducking>
Eudora works with MacTCP, Apple's Comm Toolbox or offline. In fact,
most of my work in Eudora is offline. I read the mail I've received,
respond to it or create new mail. Then I log on to my internet provider,
and with the touch of command-m the new messages are sent. To the many
people we know online, our email is the only perception we have of each
other -- offline support allows us to spend them time we need to work
with our mail and make it look right.
The author of the aforementioned TidBITS newsletter, Adam Engst, uses
Eudora for his mail reader. He writes extensively about Eudora in his book
"The Internet Starter Kit" (TISK) - which I cannot recommend enough to Mac
users. TISK also discusses alternate mail reader applications, should you
be interested.
Overall, I feel email is one of the most important features of the
Internet. Managing your email effectively will save you a lot of time and
effort. Eudora is an excellent tool for helping you with that task.
Available in commercial and freeware versions, just about anyone in the
Macintosh world can take advantage of this dependable utility.
---
about the author...
David Good (DGood@iu.net, DuoDave@aol.com) has owned Macintoshes since
1985. An America Online member since 1988, he is a Guest Host in its Mac
Comm Forum Nomadic (PowerBook) chat. He has previously had accounts on CIS,
GEnie, Delphi, and is now surfing the net. David is Sysop of the MacMAD BBS
and was Editor of MacMAD's newsletter for five years.
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Scott T. Spencer's
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|___/ I n f o r m e r
OCTOBER
Thank God school's back in session. I'm back in front of the set all
ready to see how Dylan deals with poverty (apparently not very well), and
what the potsmoker staying in Brenda's room for the year has up her sleeve
(Didn't we see her last on Saved by the Bell? Who cast her?) Three cheers
that Brenda's gone -because she did so well over the summer at the Royal
Academy for Acting in London (uh-huh) : "At this rate we may never see her
again". Ashley Hamilton's hoping.. Leaves me wondering how Shannen's going
to pay the bills. Hugh Hefner?
Kathy Ireland is now on Melrose Place, but her talents would surely
be better suited for Models Inc. She could probably save that show, give it
some real talent. With the exception of Linda Grey, Models Inc. still
stinks. Since Kelly from 90210 was once on Melrose Place dating Jake, and
since Amanda's mother played by Linda Grey from Melrose Place is now
running the show over at Model's Inc., we know the shows have the capacity
to bleed into one another.
What I predict for the season is that Linda Grey will bond with Dylan
because she played a drunk on Dallas. She'll throw Dylan and the potsmoker
into the Betty Ford Clinic. No doubt Models has a corporate account there.
Then she'll get Dylan an apartment at Melrose Place and send the potsmoker
back to high school. By the end of the season, Dylan will be a boy
supermodel at Models Inc.. He'll get a jeans campaign. His picture will be
on the sides of buses. While she's over at Melrose Place, moving Dylan into
his new apartment, Linda can scout Kathy Ireland and pull her over to
Wednesday nights where she belongs.
Looking forward to more Emmy award winning performances from Laurie
Metcalf on Rosanne, and more of My So Called Life, a show that is
guaranteed to run Claire Danes straight through her teens. A brilliant
career has begun. Party of Five also has a noteworthy newcomer, Scott Wolf
(also from Saved by the Bell- what's going on?), the boy who plays Bailey.
When that show is cancelled mid-season, he's bound to be up for some great
film roles. And I have my fingers crossed for Margaret Cho who is coming
into our living rooms this fall as an All American Girl: looks like I'm
alone on that one. Those are my picks for the season. Oh and keep watching
NYPD Blue, even though I won't be and be skeptical of that new Gen X
spin-com called Friends.
Watch the Jon Stewart Show to recover from Baseball and the next time
Ken Burns comes around play dodgeball. (p.s. Anyone who has 18 and 1/2
hours free to watch anything needs to go out there and pick up a day job.)
With VCR+ we've now got enough (albeit unwatched) footage from the World
Cup, the U.S. Open and Baseball to open our own sports bar. Somebody should
call Dan Rucks.
Last but not least, watch the Carrie Buck Story on Lifetime (No,
there is no end to what Melissa Gilbert can do) and the Ivana movie when
they happen so you'll have something to talk about with people on subways
or in elevators. Hit the remote when you start seeing previews for
Scarlett. And stop watching Court TV- unless you hear the name Johnny Depp
as you surf past. Then only watch Court TV.
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/ / / \_______\/ / / / / /\ o f
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\ \/ / \ \ \ \ /
\__/ / \ \ \_______\/ * I N G E N U I T Y *
/__________/ \ \ /
\ _____ \ /_____\/
\ / /\ \ / \ \ \ by Dr. John Lienhard
/____/ \ \ / \ \ \
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The Engines of our Ingenuity: No.46: 16th CENTURY CLOCKS
by John H. Lienhard
Today let's see what clocks have to tell us beside the time of day.
The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the
people whose ingenuity created them.
__________________
The mechanical clock was invented around 1300 AD -- give or take a
little. 250 years later, clocks had become very sophisticated
machines. Otto Mayr's book on the third century of clock-making -- The
Clockwork Universe: 1550 to 1650 -- provides a remarkable insight, not
just into the glorious clocks of this period, but into the nature of
invention as well.
As machines go, clocks have an odd character. You wind them up and
then sit back to watch them carry out their function. A More?
well-designed clock goes on and on, showing the time-of-day without
human intervention and without self-correction. And so the ideal clock
-- the clock that we almost, but never quite, make -- became a parable
of divine perfection.
By the middle 16th century, clocks weren't just accurate; they were
also remarkably beautiful -- adorned with stunning, but seemingly useless,
mechanical trimming. Robots marched out on the hour and performed short
plays. Extra dials displayed the movements of planets. Clocks were
crowned with exquisite miniature gold, bronze, and silver statuary.
The intricate wheels and gears of these Baroque clocks became a
metaphor for the solar system, for the universe, for the mind of man, and
for the very nature of God. The best minds and talents were drawn into
the seemingly decorative work of clock making because clocks harnessed
the imagination of 16th century Europe.
All this was rather strange, because there was no need for precision
time-keeping. Later, during the 18th century, the clock began to take
its role as a scientific instrument -- More? especially for its use
in celestial navigation. But in 1600, the clock was primarily an esthetic
and intellectual exercise.
Our thinking is so practical today. We'd probably condemn this
activity as a misuse of resources. But the stimulus of the clock
eventually drove us to unimagined levels of quality in
instrument-making. It drove and focused philosophical thinking. In the
end, the precision of this frivolous high technology was a cornerstone for
17th century scientific revolution, for 18th cen- tury rationalism, and --
in the long run -- for the industrial and political revolution that
brought in the 19th century.
16th and 17th century clock-making was the work of
technologists who danced to their own free-wheeling imaginations and
esthetics -- technologists who were having fun. That kind of technologist
really changes his world, and make no mistake -- these Baroque
clock-makers set great changes in motion.
I'm John Lienhard at the University of Houston, where we're
interested in the way inventive minds work.
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by J o r d a n G r e e n
The quiet rap-a-tap tapping of keys is all that is heard in the somber
silence of the newsroom of the future, as more journalists discover the
Internet.
Ah, the Internet, that so-called 'information superhighway', the
'infobaun' of knowledge, receiving the few soundbites and pages of print
not yet devoted to O.J. Simson and his dearly departed.
Recently in the Toronto Star's FastForward section, Jim Carrol called
the media's bluff, by naming the Internet the "information superhypeway."
As reporters come online, they'll stop using road metaphors to propagate
artificial images, and simply join the net community.
Many reporters (including myself) are already surfing the net for our
assignments.
"I write a genealogy column for the Salt Lake Tribune and the Tri-City
Herald (Kennewick-Pasco-Richland, Wash.) and have used the Internet in two
ways to produce this column," said columnist Terence L. Day.
Day explained how he uses the Internet to scout out potential sources
using ProfNet, just one of a handful of mailing lists which connects
information hungry reporters to professors and public relations officers
around the world. He also uses the net to conduct interviews through
Electronic Mail (E-Mail).
"I've used E-Mail to conduct entire interviews for some of my column,"
explains Day. "An excellent example is my column for Sunday, Sept. 18. It
is an interview with Yigal Rechtman, of New York. We have never spoken,
but have exchanged a series of E- Mail posts."
Reporters can save their news organizations mega-bucks in long
distance charges, by conducting interviews via E-Mail.
"You may remember the flesh-eating bug scare a few months back?" asks
Arik Hesseldahl, the Idaho State Journal's education and technology
reporter. "When I decided to do a story on that I got in touch with a
doctor in England who debunked the entire thing for me via the Internet
E-Mail and I quoted him directly."
Other reporters use electronic interviews to get in touch with those
who are hard to reach.
"The Internet lets me reach difficult to locate people and then
conduct some of my interviews by E-Mail -- in some cases it has proven all
but impossible to reach a person by phone, yet I'd get an E-Mail reply from
that person almost immediately -- sometimes within minutes of sending an
inquiry," said Peggy J. Noonan, contributing editor for Longevity magazine
and writer for OMNI, Family Circle and American Health, among others.
However fast, and cheap E-Mail interviews, there is always the
question, just how reliable are they?
"Internet and other nets have become important sources of sources --
that is, we can find experts," said Steve Sander Ross, a journalism
professor at Columbia University. "Problem is that we still have to
interview by phone. Too easy for someone to assume an identity on the net."
Body language, the messages we unintentionally convey to others around
us by a flick of the finger, or that hairy-eye-ball-stare you get from your
boss when you ask for a raise, don't come across in type written
correspondence. Neither do various voice intonations which can mean the
difference between surprise and shock. Does this negatively impact the
E-Mail interview?
"Absolutely not!" exclaimed Adam C. Engst, Editor of the online
magazine TidBITS. "I'm actually rather more comfortable with E-Mail
interviews because I can think about what I'm saying, make sure that the
words convey my opinions, and feel relatively certain that I won't be
misquoted."
"The phone is often necessary for instantaneous answers or comments,
whereas E- Mail is far more efficient and in my opinion, a much more
interesting method of communication," he said. "People say things in E-Mail
that they'd never say in person or on the phone."
Digging through dusty archives in libraries, can take hours, not any
more, with powerful Internet search programs such as Gopher, Archie, Wide
Area Information Servers (WAIS), and Veronica, looking things up has never
been easier.
Shaun McLaughlin, a graduate journalism student at Carleton University
in Ottawa, Canada and a freelance writer has been using the net for 10
months for research, gave this example.
"I had to write an article on a new human relations policy for a
corporate in-house magazine. Knowing zip about human relations, I ran a few
keyword phrases through Veronica and found details of how a hospital board
in the Carolinas had implemented a similar policy. It gave me the
explanation I needed to frame intelligent questions and to understand the
answers."
Many newsrooms still haven't come online. The Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation (CBC) has a beautiful new building in Toronto, with all the
latest high-tech gizmos, including touch-screen TVs that point the lost in
the right direction. Although the CBC has audio files of some of their
radio news shows available through File Transfer Protocol (FTP), the staff
doesn't have Internet access yet.
Still, news organizations are slowly making the leap online.
"I'm currently working to set up a locally based online service in
Northwest Indiana that is linked to The Times, a 70,000 circulation daily
paper focusing on Northwest Indiana and the south suburbs of Chicago," said
Justin Kerr, Content Director, CaluNET online service.
"In addition, we have just opened up access to the Internet to our
entire newsroom, all reporters are just dipping their toes into cyberspace,
learning what's out there and how to use the tools we've given them," he
said.
Kerr is using Mosaic to ease reporters gently onto the net. Mosaic is
a Windows-like environment, which allows people to click on highlighted
words to access various items, such as E-Mail, Usenet and the World Wide
Web (WWW).
Online publications such as this one allow net users to get their
daily dose of information without leaving their terminals, something this
month's Wired magazine called the death of print.
"Print is not dead and will never die," said Engst. "However, there is
a lot of trivial print that will suffer."
"Print will have a hard time switching to electronic publishing
because it is a different world," explains Engst. "People aren't as locked
into a single source for information, so if a statistic is reported, it's
much easier to see if it's actually tru
e at the original source, for
instance."
The future of the printed page may be in doubt, but one things for
certain, the Internet has changed the way we communicate forever.
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by A n d i e F o s t e r
You're sitting in a classroom amid a small group of students about the
same age as you. But instead of four drab creme-colored walls, your
classroom is an Amazon Rainforest where you and your classmates are
learning about the microenvironments thriving within the lush vegetation.
You and your peers travel north and arrive at lab where the Alaskan
winter constellations are your ceiling and you study the movements of a
nearby binary star.
When you break to do your own work, you settle into a replication of
the Old West, putting finishing touches on a saloon and start building the
town bank down the street where you can park your horse and watch for
ornery hombres.
Such a learning environment is fairly nonexistent in the real world,
obviously. It may even seem the fantastical creation of a daydreaming
student, her chin resting heavily on the heel of her hand, distractedly
wishing to be anywhere but her history class. And is this sort of
environment suited for intense learning, if it were possible?
Well, this type of variation and creativity is possible and exists now
on the Internet in the form of instructional programs called MUDs, or Multi
User Dimensions.
Where MUDs were once frequented by game-playing hobbyists, their type
of interaction is drawing the interest and attention of instructors who
have developed their own programs, called MUSEs or Multi User Student
Environments.
Although MUDs traditionally drew from a programming or computer
science populous, MUSEs and other versions of MUDs, such as MOOs and MUSHs,
are finding audience with individuals interested in social science,
literary theory and physical sciences.
The largest and most publicized version of the MUSE environment is
MicroMUSE at Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Artificial Intelligence
lab. Barry Kort, director of MicroMUSE and consulting scientist in
educational technology research at BBN labs at Cambridge, Mass., sees
MicroMUSE as an ideal area for students to get experience in a wider range
of skills than just complex programming, where the topics are only bound by
educators and students creativity.
"Initially, I was interested in Informal Science Education, but there
is a clear interest in and demand for areas featuring many nonscientific
disciplines and subjects and we do in fact have other such areas on the
MUSE," Kort said in an e-mail interview late last month.
Since its inception, MicroMUSE has branched out with six sites in an
Educational Muse Network, each focusing on a specific area of education,
such as engineering or biology.
A similar environment, called a MUSH, is popular with English
instructors who use the program to foster writing and creativity skills in
this entirely text-based space. WriteMUSH, running out of Colorado State
University, is one such program, is based on the familiar environment of a
small town.
But are MUSEs and MUSHs valid educational working spaces? Will they
reduce classrooms to a laptop and a modem with none of the social
interaction of the present educational system?
Many on-line educators see definite improvements on the traditional
education environment with the human-created setting and characters on
MUSEs and MUSHs. Since there are no physical cues, participants must be
creative and believable in what they write and programmers must be able to
create objects and settings that are user-friendly.
Marcia Bednarcyk helps instructors better use MUSH environments and
has extensive experience with WriteMUSH. Bednarcyk sees MUSE and MUSH
environments possessing their own useful attributes that can't be gained in
a real-world classroom.
"I think it has a great deal of value as an additional teaching tool,"
Bednarcyk said from California in an e-mail interview.
"It can give you access to many more people and ideas without having
to go to where they are. It puts people on a more level playing field--each
person is judged solely on what they type in. For today's mostly text-based
servers (programs), it teaches people to communicate through writing very
quickly, since there's no other way to communicate."
However, Bednarcyk doesn't see WriteMUSH rendering the English
classroom obsolete.
"I don't see it replacing in-person classrooms. When you communicate
online, you miss things like body language, intonation, etc. You miss the
in-person 'many things going on at once' discussion, since everything
appears to be linear," she said.
Kort sees MicroMUSE as offering an alternative environment compared to
the overcrowded, oftentimes impersonal physical schools where students go
to classes with those of their own social class and rely on competition to
"get along."
"Some children find public schools a physically terrifying place, full
of violence and abuse," Kort said. "Without belaboring the pros and cons of
such a radically altered medium of social interaction, suffice it to say
that it tends to empower the weak and weaken the powerful. It also fosters
mulitculturalism as we have users from all over the world."
Bednarcyk agrees that MUSEs and MUSHs capitalize on mental
capabilities as opposed to class strength and good fortune.
"One of the great benefits is that people who are shunned in real life
for their physical attributes are finally given a chance to participate
fully in a social environment, which is often closed off to them," said
Bednarcyk. "I've seen a lot of people 'come out of their shells,' as it
were, and start developing self-esteem. In fact, the whole social hierarchy
on (MUSEs and MUSHs) isn't based on money or looks, as it so often is in
real life."
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by G r e g o r y S. Y o u n g b l o o d
The Information Superhighway of the nineties is going to be
complemented by the communications dirt road of the sixties. No other
technology is going to have as much of an impact on computers and
telecommunications as the wireless communications industry. Using radio
waves to transmit information from point A to point B is far from new, but
the wireless industry is undergoing many changes -- incorporating and
inventing new technologies that will offer new services for just about
everyone.
Wireless communications takes on many forms, ranging from the LED
transmitting/receiving abilities of little handheld pocket organizers to
special radios designed specifically for transmitting data through the air.
To see how popular wireless communications has gotten, take a look at the
latest offering of personal organizers, the Personal Digital Assistant
(PDA).
Several companies are marketing their vision of what people on the go
are going to use to organize their schedules and keep in touch with the
world. Apple has the Newton, AT&T has the EO, and Motorola has just joined
in with the Envoy, planned for this summer. These are just some of the big
name companies that are in the process of redefining portable computing as
we know it. Apple and AT&T are already working on their second generation
of PDAs, promising faster systems, better handwriting recognition and many
new and exciting features.
The one thing all of these PDAs have in common is the ability to send
and receive data, faxes and other information without the need of a
telephone line. While they can use regular telephone lines when they are
available, to really see their strengths, you need to go wireless. With
additional equipment each of these can connect to various wireless
communications networks to exchange e-mail, receive pages like a pager,
send a fax or get the latest sales figures from your office computer. The
AT&T EO goes one step further, and offers a telephone handset for voice
communications over the cellular telephone network.
The popularity of these new devices, which look like an electronic
tablet, remains to be seen. The first generation of PDAs were expensive
and were not able to do as much as some would have liked. While they boast
several features, including handwriting recognition and built in software
for most needs, the handwriting recognition was slow and not very accurate,
and the software was little more than an electronic Day Timer. Several
software applications are being developed and hopefully will make these
more attractive for those who need this type of portability.
PDAs are by no means the only way to break away from the bonds of
telephone lines. Right now, one of the easiest ways to go mobile is with
cellular telephones. Most models of cellular phones currently on the
market have the ability to add an RJ-11 jack to the phone. This allows the
use of portable computers, fax machines and virtually any device that can
be plugged into a standard telephone line to be used in a wireless
environment. Some handheld cellular phones, such as one from Nokia, even
have special interfaces that can plug directly into a notebook's PCMCIA
port for true portable operation from just about anywhere cellular service
is available.
It would seem that these interfaces are just starting to really get
popular, but they are by no means new. Motorola had a device that could be
used with their cellular phone back available for at least the last six
years, and probably longer. This device was totally invisible to the user.
You just plugged in your modem into the RJ-11 jack and used your computer
like you were at the office or home.
At the time, 1200 baud was about the fastest you could go and maintain
data integrity. Now, with error correction protocols built into the
modems, it is possible to go 2400 and faster, while still maintaining data
integrity. There is even one error correcting protocol that was designed
specifically with cellular communications in mind, MNP-10.
UPS uses cellular telephone systems for the tracking system, and are
probably one of the first large users of cellular data, but they are not
the only ones taking advantage of cellular. Cellular has gotten to be more
and more affordable, and with just a modest investment, it is possible to
have a totally mobile office. All that is required is a cellular
telephone, portable computer, and possibly a portable fax machine or fax
modem. With those items it is possible to connect to the office LAN, send
out orders or receive information about a client.
Imagine driving to a customer's site, and while driving there that
customer faxes or calls in a request for some information that you don't
have with you. Instead of turning around or arriving at the customer's
site empty handed you call into the office and have the information faxed
to you while you drive. You meet with the customer, and have in hand
exactly what he wants to know. That's not coming in the near future, that
is here right now. The wireless communication industry holds the key to
taking the Information Superhighway and routing it where we need it -- the
job site.
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by
B i l l y B i g g s
Kids have their own way of looking at things. The Internet is no
exception. In the hidden corner of the Usenet discussion group
k12.chat.junior, vast empires are forming and crumbling, flame wars are
breaking out and virtual religions are hailing the electronic monarchy.
k12net is the worldwide network linking students and teachers from
kindergarten to grade 12. The junior chat is the usenet k12 discussion for
kids in grades 6 to 8, the junior high range. In this past year, .junior
has become an explosion of flame wars against empires of kids, the messages
ranging from the humorous to the intense and dramatic.
The story of Junior chat begins with Diana Biggs, a Canadian
junior-high student. When she entered the net in May of 93, she
immediately began flaming in .junior. "I got in a bit of trouble at
first", admits Diana, "they said that flames were unacceptable in junior
chat. No one had ever done it before".
Soon after Diana's entrance, Ned Watson, an 8th grade Internaut from
Georgia, took an interest in the junior chat. "It started a way way back
when I got on and saw Diana flaming everyone.. she was really cool So I
decided to get on." By way of k12net, Diana and Ned came up with some
strange ideas. Together, they formed the Diana and Ned religion, their own
cult of kid flamers. The kids of .junior were frightened by the notion of
a religion, they had never heard of anything so wild. As the ball began to
roll, Diana and Ned hired a few 'high-priestesses', Sarah Akers,
Demosthenes and Ursa Mahar. The religion prospered and grew, until the
wars.
In late '93 .senior chat, the k12 chat for high-school students, was
temporarily closed down to the students of VaPen, the largest source of
readers. The seniors decided to "invade" the .junior chat, temporarily
moving their discussion. Feeling that the invasion was unjustified, the
juniors under the leadership of Diana and Ned opened fire.
The Flame wars broke out across k12-net. The seniors started
discussions and debates. To the kids of junior chat, that sort of
conversation was "too real". It went against the free society created by
the juniors. Eventually, most of the invading forces realized they were
not wanted and backed out, but some remained to be flamed. By the end of
1993, the seniors got their chat back and all of them left junior. Well,
almost all of them.
One of .junior's opponents during the senior invasion was someone who
called himself, "the Flame King". After flaming him out, Ned and Diana
were proclaimed the King and Queen of Flames by their followers, thus
commencing the monarchy. Demosthenes and Ursa planned a royal on-line
wedding for them, even going as far as inviting Bill Clinton through e-mail
(who didn't show up).
The monarchy/religion was given a new name, the empire. They were
also given a new threat, the newbies.
The second invasion force of the junior chat was a civil war against
the newbies. Threads of messages popped up everywhere with subjects like
'Who is Diana?' and 'What is with all these empires?' . They had no idea
what anyone was talking about. Without looking for answers, these newbies
began empires of their own, creating mini-flame wars with cut-throat
competition. Most of the new empires either lost interest or lost the flame
wars.
Diana was contacted by teachers who expressed concern as to what she
was doing to the kids of junior chat. These teachers requested that Diana
cease playing 'mind games' with the children and that she end the
uncertainty over her identity. At one point, Diana had attempted to
confuse newbies by pretending to be 27 years old. According to Diana, the
teachers did not understand what was going on in the chat. Most of the
problems against her were misunderstandings of running jokes.
Now, people say that things in the Junior chat are changing, for the
worse.
Ned, losing interest in the junior chat, decided to exit gracefully.
He staged his own death. In a laughable message, he pretended to be his
father, saying how he had been shot and killed. The .juniors bought it,
hook, line and sinker.
"The part about me dying was just so I could leave for a little while
and screw with most of the kids on there. It was my plan and I discussed
it with Diana. Anyway she got all these letters say they were sorry and I
didn't even get one :(....Oh well....thats gratitude for ya..."
Diana also may be losing interest in her Internet endeavors. "it was
really fun when it was just my friends and the members of my religion. But
now everyone is trying to make their own empire, everyone trying to
outsmart the 'flame Queen' and forgetting the history of how it started.
It was all fun and games, but now people are taking it too seriously, which
is not what we wanted. This is our cyberspace, where you can be what you
want and do what you want away from the dangers and worries of the real
world."
So will children be using the information superhighway to play mindless
video games? Probably, but I don't think that is all they will be doing.
Diana can be reached at an483@freenet.carleton.ca
Billy Biggs, ae687@freenet.carleton.ca, is the editor of Line Noiz
e-zine.
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by
L i n d s a y E d m u n d s
Erasing the Miles with E-mail
"I really like having an email connection to you. It's so much
better than the phone, in lots of ways."
-- D
My brother David sent that note to me via the Internet last October.
We had exchanged some "e" earlier in the day on a now-forgotten topic.
David is three years younger than I am. Though we had our share of
sibling frictions, we were close when we were growing up in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. However, our adult lives quickly diverged. He is a
programmer; I am a writer and editor. He is married and the father of two
daughters; I am single. For the last ten years we have lived 3000 miles
apart, in northern California and suburban Maryland, respectively.
This could be a sad story of distance and separation eroding a
brother-sister relationship. But just the opposite is true. Today, David
and I are as close as we have ever been. Once or twice a week, we find the
time to chat about books and about day-to-day events in our lives, have
some serious discussions, and share a few good laughs.
No, we don't spend hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars talking
on the telephone. In fact, last year we talked long distance maybe four or
five times. We do not ever write ordinary letters.
Our bridge across the miles is email. For us, "e" has the advantages
of both telephoning and paper mail, with the disadvantages of neither.
Paper mail is to email what the typewriter is to the personal
computer. Apart from being slow, it is cumbered by envelopes, stamps, and
various problems of physical transportation. These small barriers are
irritating after you realize that they are unnecessary. True, it still
costs only $0.29 to send an ordinary first-class letter (if you don't mind
a long transit time). However, the fastest paper mail service, overnight
mail, manages to be both cumbersome and expensive.
Email, on the other hand, races across the phone lines like a panther.
It can be sent instantly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, always at the
same low cost and at the same resounding speed. If electronic mail ever
took so long as overnight to get between my brother and me, it would be a
sign that the system had broken down.
Because email is easier to send than paper mail, I write it more
often. Many times I have typed a quick sentence or two and sent it off just
because I wanted to share something, or ask a question. All email users do
this. For example, this week my brother sent a brief message asking for my
fax number so that he could fax me an article about Vernor Vinge, a
science-fiction author we both like.
The pleasures of writing email extend to sending postscripts to longer
messages sent hours (or minutes) earlier. I often send these postscripts
because I often think of something else to say. However, I cannot imagine
writing postscript messages using paper mail. I would feel silly mailing a
second one- or two-sentence letter a few hours after I mailed the first
one.
Paper mail is delivered to my home Monday through Saturday around 2
p.m. Email is delivered within minutes or hours of the time it is sent, and
it can be picked up anytime. One of the pleasures of "e" is logging onto a
service at odd times (6 a.m. on a Monday, for example) and finding a good
message waiting to be read. I also check email as a way to take fast
vacations from my work. Because the entire process takes only a few
minutes, it makes a good break.
Email also feels more special than paper mail. When unsolicited ads
for everything start showing up in my e-mailbox, I'll change my mind about
this feeling of specialness, but for the moment it is true. A letter in my
e-mailbox shines like a beacon. A letter in my home mailbox takes a certain
amount of digging even to find amid the half-ton of ads, mail-order
catalogues, and pleas for money.
Of course, there is the telephone. The long-distance phone companies
all assure us that racking up huge bills on long-distance calls is the best
way to overcome physical separation from friends and family. These
companies loudly promise "savings," while at the same time sending the
not-too-subtle message that the money spent on long-distance calls to
friends and family is well spent. I disagree. The time spent communicating
with the people you care about is well spent. But time does not have to
translate into money.
This is another revolution that email has brought.
With a long-distance call, the caller (or recipient of the call) pays
for every minute of the conversation. Different rates for different times
of day, elaborate savings plans, "teaser" discounts, calling circles, and
perks such as frequent flyer miles cannot obscure that basic truth-no
matter how hard they try. With email, however, both sender and recipient
can do all their communicating offline. For example, I might spend a
half-hour "talking" to my brother when I compose an email message offline
with America Online's text editor. But I can log onto AOL and send this
half-hour's worth of talk in a few seconds. Similarly, my brother can
download the message, "listen" to it offline, and write a response.
In the world of long-distance phone service, the meter is always
running. In the world of email, the meter only runs when you are actually
logged onto the system; you can read and compose your messages for free.
My primary connection to the Internet is through America Online. A
flat monthly fee of $9.95 buys five hours of unrestricted online time on
AOL, including an email gateway to the Internet community. Additional time
costs $3.50 an hour. In other words, I can keep in touch with as many folks
as I want, as often as I want, for $9.95 a month (assuming that my connect
time does not exceed five hours-not a problem when I read and compose
messages offline). I also can use AOL's other services, such as forums and
research databases.
Email offers another, subtler advantage over the phone: it waits until
you are ready to read it. It does not summon you with a shrill, ringing
bell, as if you were a servant. Email, like paper mail, is absolutely
silent.
The nonintrusive aspect of email is especially valuable when both
parties have busy lives. My brother, in particular, has little free time.
Phone calls are likely to drag him away from something he has to be doing
(or would rather be doing). But "e" is patient.
Email is faster and easier than paper mail. It is cheaper and less
intrusive than long-distance telephoning. These are objective advantages.
But my brother and I have found a subjective advantage as well: we have
great conversations in "e."
In email, for example, we talk a lot about what we're reading. David
reads by listening to Recorded Books while commuting to and from work. I
mostly read at night. For both of us, this reading time is a place of peace
in a maelstrom of busyness. Email-where we share our enthusiasm for
books-is another such place of peace.
Email has other infra-family uses. For example, parents who use email
to communicate with their college-age child can always stay in touch,
without "intruding." Their college kid, being of the computer generation,
will probably be very comfortable with email and may be impressed that they
want to use it, too. Both parents and children may find that "e" encourages
better listening and allows time for more thoughtful responses. They even
can print out paper copies of the email they want to save! (Try that with a
phone conversation.)
Everyone who communicates via email has conversations they would not
be having otherwise-at least not in exactly the same way. In the case of my
brother and me, email is the means by which we sustain a strong friendship
despite barriers of distance and time.
David tells me that his three-year-old daughter likes the Bailey's
Book House software I sent for her birthday last December. ("Bailey's Book
House is the place to start a passion for reading.") She enjoys playing
with the family computer. She dislikes the telephone. I take it as a sign.
_____________________________
Lindsay Edmunds is a self-employed writer and editor. She can be
reached via Internet email at lindsaye@aol.com.
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|___/ by C r a i g H e a t h
If You Meet the Buddha on the Net...
I can barely find my way around a Telnet prompt and only about fifty
percent of my FTP commands actually work, but when get a chance to
introduce new people to the Internet, I feel like a net.veteran. My
friends John and Noelle were ripe for a guided tour. He's a freelance
writer, she's a student, and they're both ready to upgrade their computer
and get wired. So they came to me, asking questions about prices and
specifications and just what the heck is this thing called Internet?
I jumped on and showed them the wonderfully cryptic prompts and
commands, trying to explain what little I knew while flipping through one
of the several large books I use to find my way around. Finding what you
need, I explained, was the hard part. Accidentally tripping over treasures
while you're looking for something else is easy - I do it all the time.
Noelle, who is studying comparative religions, asked me to find something
on Buddhism, a favorite subject of my own, so off we went into the ether.
Scrolling through the multiple-page listings on "Gophers by Subject"
yielded "Religion", then "Buddhism", where the somewhat cryptic selection
COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU seemed to beckon us to follow. That choice sent us
shooting down a Gopher tube to the Coombspapers Social Science Research
Data Bank at the Australian National University, Canberra, where we found
more listings on Buddhism and other Oriental religions than we could shake
a keisaku at. Directories containing lectures, discussions, poetry,
dissertations, translations and comparisons scrolled by on the screen,
while Noelle's eyes grew wider with intellectual greed. We'd struck
Buddhist paydirt. The ANU had set up the COOMBSPAPERS archives
specifically to provide "a major Australian electronic repository of
research materials dealing with the Pacific Region, SouthEast and NorthEast
Asia, as well as Buddhism, Taoism and other oriental religions".
The problem, of course, was deciding on something to download. We
jumped down to the /coombspapers directory and grabbed the
COOMBSPAPERS-META-INDEX. I explained that we could look at it and choose
more specific files for a later session, but while we were there, why not
just browse like the cyber-tourists we were? After all, now that we're
here in the (virtual) land down under, let's window shop.
We jumped down one level under /coombspapers to /otherarchives, then
down another to /electronic-buddhist-archives and finally found
point, and that's when the gem I didn't realize I was looking for was
uncovered. The selection "watts-on-zen.txt" called out to me from the
screen. A quick look revealed that a Mr. Alan Seaver from Columbia
University had come into possession of a scratchy old tape of Alan Watts
giving a lecture commemorating the Zen Center he founded in San Francisco
three decades ago. Mr. Seaver transcribed the tape, posted it on the
Columbia server, then mirrored it into COOMBSPAPERS.
I've been reading Alan Watts for a decade and searching for every
obscure book and monograph he's ever published, so this was, for me, a real
find. An accidental find, mind you, as we were looking for something else
entirely, but as I said, accidental finds are my net.specialty. Noelle's
interests were temporarily forgotten (sorry friend), while I hurried to
download the transcript, log off, then print and read my new find and give
copies to my soon-to- be-wired associates.
I go back there every now and again, pulling down senryu poetry and
papers by Robert Aitken, but finding an obscure transcription of a lecture
by Alan Watts was worth my service fee for the month. John and Noelle felt
the same, so they're out there now in some "Compu- Universe" warehouse
store, pricing systems with high speed modems. I figure the Net will grow
by a couple more net.newbies in about a month.
Other Alan Watts fans can get their own copy of his 25-year old talk by
linking to FTP server COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU, logging to
zen/information, and downloading "watts-on-zen.txt". If you know where
anything else by Watts can be found, I'd appreciate hearing about it. And
remember, if you meet the Buddha on the Net, download him.
Craig Heath
craigheath@delphi.com
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Dear Readers-
This concludes the first edition of the Internet Informer. You are
encouraged to submit comments, suggestions, and letters to the various
writers of this magazine. You may send them to me at:
StevenBaker@Delphi.Com
Starting in December will be publishing a selection of those letters
and reserve the right to edit them for space.
With the release of this edition of The Internet Informer comes a lot
of excitement on the part of the people who helped put this thing together.
I would like to thank my wife Tiffany, who is expecting our first child any
day now for all of her proofreading. I would like to thank all of the
writers for all of their fine work (the checks will be mailed out over the
weekend, I promise!) and timeliness. I would also like to thank Dr. Bill
Painter, Mike Pitt, and Bob Weaver for helping me get this magazine
distributed. Thanks to Delphi for not saying a word when over 300 messages
a day started pouring in from the Internet -- it is a wide world out
there and a lot of people rang my bell.
Please direct subscription queries to the proper channels, and keep in
mind that this publication is supported by readers such as yourself. The
Internet Informer relies solely on your donations to make this work.
Until December-
Steven E Baker
