[10997] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Ask Dr. Internet 2 of 3
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Public-Access Computer Systems For)
Thu Jan 23 00:28:34 1997
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 21:22:03 -0600 (CST)
From: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
PART II OF III
*-----
Q5.
Are hard drives dropping in price as much as RAM?
A5.
No.
The best deal we have had on hard drives is about 3.2G [gigabytes=
billions of characters] for $334. . .at Fry's in Silicon Valley.]
This is approximately 10 cents a megabyte [million characters] and
is perhaps half the price a megabyte was a year ago in fast drives
of name brand quality. This one was a Quantum Fireball, and these
drives we tested also ran very cool. . .a nice feature.]
Q6.
What about the new modem speeds?
A6.
I don't think you will notice much improvement.
If you are happy with the modem you have, don't spend over $100 on
a new one unless you have thoroughly tested it and find it worthy.
Q7.
What about new chip speeds?
A7.
Right now the best "bang for the buck" is the 120Mhz Pentium chip.
You can get one for nearly as little as half the price of the 133,
which is only about 10% faster. . .not really enough to notice.
The truth is that most people only feel really impressed with chip
upgrades when the difference is around 3.3 times faster. You will
pay over $125 for a P 120 right now, but you will pay over $225 to
get a 133. . .this is no bargain in terms of increase per dollar.
133's were supposed to drop in price early last summer, but due to
predicted low earnings that ruined stock options, the price didn't
drop, and stock and options turned around.
People are pushing toward a gigahertz chip [one billion cycles per
second] and I predict you will hear more and more about these over
the next few years. . .however. . .by using some thousands of more
current slower chips teraflop [trillions of operations per second]
computers have already been made.
Nevertheless, as long as bloatware programs continue to flood your
market, you will probably continue to buy faster home computers on
a steady enough basis to encourage makers to continue research and
there will be the gigahertz chip you can take home with you in the
next decade. However, you should realize that this is only little
faster in today's terms than was the change from the earlier 386's
to a 486. . .so don't expect huge changes in that area to change a
performance standard you are already used to. You will get larger
changes by playing with a RAMdisk, as above.
By the end of 1997 you may see 400Mhz chips that you can buy for a
computer to take home, but these will almost certainly NOT be what
you could use to upgrade your current computer, and they shouldn't
be expected to provide a huge leap from what you have now. Buying
an upgrade CDROM drive. . .going from 2X to 8X will impress you in
many more ways than buying a new CPU right now. Check it out. . .
you may like it. . .and some 8X IDE drives were only a little over
$125 last time we looked.
RAMdisk and CDROM upgrades are what we suggest you do research on,
rather than a whole new computer, unless you have a slow 486. . .I
did notice enough difference, just barely, between my 486/66 8MRAM
system and my 586/66 16MRAM system to think about possible upgrade
prices, so going to a 586/120 might be enough to consider. I will
not suggest the 686 systems. . .too much money. . .not enough in a
real performance increase, unless you have a specific use in mind,
that really takes advantage of the Pentium Pro [Alias 686].
Q8.
What can you tell us about Internet growth?
A8.
As our readers from a year ago are aware, hosts
on the Internet passed 10 million just about on
the dot as we entered 1996, and with that there
were probably 100 million Internet accounts, if
the trend of 10 accounts per average host is on
track for the umpteenth year. Obviously such a
trend cannot continue forever. Nevertheless it
would appear to be continuing now, as there are
now 1 1/4 billion computers in the world, and a
1% share of them are Internet hosts, just as it
has been year after year in the past.
I am going to crawl out on a limb here and say:
we will not reach 20 million Internet hosts, OR
2 billion computers in the world during the two
year period from last January [1996] to January
of next year [1998].
Remember, you heard it here first.
Q9.
What can you say about World Wide Web growth?
A9.
Some Very interesting information!. . . .on how
much of the Web's pages are controlled by whom.
Of course this is all data from 1996 and is now
relatively out of date, but it tells you a lot.
You will note that there is as much information
controlled by the 5 largest sites as by 336,893
sites with 3 pages or less.
How many of YOUR friends have sites with over 3
pages in them?
You may think that that information is only for
certain readers of a certain kind; but it could
reach you, too, through search engines, mirror-
sites, and all the other ways information would
be transmitted around the Internet, and you may
never know who is supplying it. . .or why.
# Sites # of Pages % of All Pages
25,822 0 0%
311,141 1 - 3 1% 1/2 the sites are no bigger
79,276 3 - 10 1%
80,516 10 - 30 2% 3/4 the sites are no bigger
68,373 30 - 100 6%
42,707 100 - 300 11% | <----91+% of the information
25,907 300 - 1,000 21% | <is controlled by those with
10,765 1,000 - 3,000 22% | <over 100 pages on their site
3,715 3,000 - 10,000 23% | <These are the mega-companies
543 10,000 - 30,000 10% | <that want to control all the
52 30,000 - 100,000 3% | <Internet and World Wide Web.
5 100,000 and on up 1% | <<These are the tera-companies
648,822 Total Number Of Sites
Q10.
General information.
A10.
Here is some general information gleaned from the Net last month.
***
Sending URLs from Netscape
Hmm, if you right-click on a link, my version of Netscape seems to have
a "copy location" option, which copies the URL into the clipboard for
pasting into mail.
From:
Vik :v)
***
Thank you for your reply. I have finally solved the problem, with the help
of other users on the net. Apparently, when I moved Winword to my desktop I
unintentionally converted it to a Windows 95 file (somewhere deep in the
inner recesses of Windows 95) and not only confused the "ini" file that
looks for it but got into the 16-32 bit problem. I should have used a
short-cut link, I'm told. Anyway, I DID have backup files from Microsoft
Tools floppy disk backup, so I deleted everything on Windows 95 that
referred to Winword, then restored C:\Winword from my backup files. So
finally it is working as it used to. At the moment I'm afraid to do any
more tinkering with it till I'm a lot more familiar with the workings of
Windows 95.
Also be sure your associated programs do not get damages, and are
installed in the proper 32 or 16 bit versions.
***
MERGER MADNESS IN '97
An astonishing 72% of North American information technology firms are
planning a merger or acquisition in the coming year, says Broadview
Associates L.L.C., a New Jersey-based M&A adviser. That's up from the 64%
that responded positively last year in a poll of 175 senior executives in
strategic development positions in IT companies. Most of the anticipated
activity can be traced to the influence of the Internet, with
telecommunications companies buying Internet service providers, software
developers acquiring Net surfing specialists, etc. (Investor's Business
Daily 19 Dec 96 A8)
***
BUSINESSES RELUCTANT TO TRY E-COMMERCE
U.S. businesses are reluctant to set up shop on the Internet, although
consumers are becoming more willing to try electronic commerce, according to
an AT&T survey. Nearly 40% of adults polled said they expect to make
purchases on the Internet next year, and 55% say they expect to shop online
within the next five years, according to the first-time survey conducted by
Odyssey, a San Francisco-based Internet research firm. Of the 2,003
American adults surveyed, 7% said they already have made online purchases,
while 20% said they use the Internet for information about products. Of the
503 executives surveyed, 20% expressed concern that "customers aren't ready"
for electronic commerce. While 33% predicted the Internet will be a
significant marketing tool in five years, only 17% said online sales are
"very important" to their businesses today. The study found that 45% of
American adults, or 80-million people, have access to commercial online or
Internet-based services through home or work, while about 71% have access to
personal computers. (Ottawa Citizen 12 Dec 96 D13)
INTERNET TV -- AN IDEA BEFORE ITS TIME?
A Dataquest Inc. poll of 7,000 households indicates that a whopping 93% of
the respondents are not interested in buying an Internet-enabled TV set or
set-top box. Furthermore, while companies such as WebTV have primarily
targeted consumers who don't yet own a PC, the Dataquest survey results
indicate that households with PCs are more likely to buy an Internet device
that works with their television set than ones without. (Investor's
Business Daily 18 Dec 96 A6)
DIGITAL SLASHES ALPHA CHIP PRICES IN HALF
Digital Equipment has cut the price of its Alpha chip by as much as 50% in
an effort to boost sales. Despite being one of the world's fastest
microprocessors, the Alpha has been unsuccessful in cutting into sales of
Intel Pentium chips, which now power about 85% of the world's PCs.
(Investor's Business Daily 13 Dec 96 A17)
VIRTUAL SUPERCOMPUTER
Andrew Grimshaw at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has
designed a virtual parallel supercomputer with mix-and-match components
(including traditional supercomputers, modern parallel computers,
workstations, and a variety of types of personal computers) distributed
across the Internet. His system, which now includes more than 100 computers
from different manufacturers, appears to its users as a single machine that
hides the peculiarities of the particular operating systems of the component
systems. (The Economist 14 Dec 96)
JUNK E-MAIL UPDATE
Prodigy has reached an understanding with junk e-mail promoter Sanford
Wallace, who has promised not to open any new Prodigy accounts and has
agreed to pay the company an undisclosed sum in settlement of a trademark
infringement case it brought against his Cyber Promotions company. Wallace,
who sends more than 3 million e-mail messages daily to persons throughout
the Internet, will still be allowed to send messages to Prodigy subscribers.
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution 14 Dec 96 H3)
NEW AOL PRICE LEADS TO BUSY SIGNALS
Introduction of America Online's new flat-rate pricing plan resulted in such
an increase in customer activity that the system was overloaded yesterday by
the eight million individual sign-on sessions, the most ever recorded by the
company. Wall Street viewed the enthusiasm favorably, and AOL stock rose
almost $5 a share. A company executive says there will be sporadic system
slowdowns at peak times for at least the next month, because "we're going
into territory that nobody on the planet has ever been before." (New York
Times 3 Dec 96 C2)
MCI COMPLETES INTERNET UPGRADE
MCI has completed its $60-million upgrade to the Internet backbone, adding
approximately 13,000 ports and effectively quadrupling speeds from 155 mbps
to 622 mbps. MCI, estimating that Internet traffic is growing at about 30%
a month, plans to double its backbone capacity next year. (Broadcasting &
Cable 25 Nov 96 p62)
***$60 million doesn't seem so much when you figure that those eight
***million AOL customers would pay that much even of the average one
***of them spent only half a month on AOL. . . . There are billions
***being taken in here. . .and this is only 6% of a single billion.
***
From the Culture in Cyberspace Newsletter
The current craze among big web developers is "push" technology.
This refers to bringing information directly to the web user on a
regular schedule, as opposed to letting the user "pull" information
from selected sites. In other words, big web sites are looking for
ways to broadcast their content much in the same way as television
networks.
A Slate article talks about this development, noting that the
publication's sponsor, Microsoft, is jumping into push technology in
a major way. The potential for push is big: not only will viewers
have quick access to the information (it can be downloaded at night
or at some other time when users are away from their machines),
but providers can gain control over what content web viewers see.
The potential for advertising and other commercial activities is
obvious.
This kind of service is innocently described by vendors as akin to
having a personalized newspaper delivered to your doorstep. But
Slate gets it right in describing PointCast, the most successful push
service: "you quickly realize that this is nothing like having a
newspaper delivered. This is a lot more like watching television." A
good thing, apparently, because "that helps to explain PointCast's
popularity: The company claims... 1.7 million users" and 40 million
web hits a day.
Perhaps mixing in a little push merely enhances what the web can
offer. But CinC continues to worry that both content providers and
consumers might favor TV-style broadcasting from a few big sites
at the expense of the smaller, more diverse sites that currently
make the net so interesting.
Slate: <http://www.slate.com:80/webhead/96-12-19/webhead.asp>
Bill LeFurgy | Culture in Cyberspace Newsletter: www & e-mail
wlefurgy@radix.net | Subscribe to the weekly e-mail issue -- it's free
http://www.radix.net/~wlefurgy/welcome.htm
***
CHINA STRENGTHENS CONTROL OVER INTERNET
The newspaper called China Consumers Daily says that China plans to increase
its controls over the Internet, which already include the requirement that
all Internet users register with the police. In its war against pornography
and "cultural rubbish," Chinese police detained more than 47,000 people and
seized 320,000 pornographic products in the first ten months of 1996.
Chinese authorities use the term "cultural rubbish" to include anything they
consider unhealthy or politically suspect. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 27
Dec 96 D3)
CYBER FREEWAY OFFERS FREE RIDE ON INTERNET
Hyper Net USA thinks it has found a way around the flat-pricing dilemma
facing many Internet service providers today. After a one-time fee of
$29.95, its Cyber FreeWay service offers free unlimited access to residents
in San Francisco who are willing to provide their household demographic
data. The information is then given to advertisers who target users with
online ads, which are segregated in a secondary window on the right side of
the screen and change about every minute or so. The service has been a big
hit in Japan, home of Hyper Net's parent company, drawing more than 135,000
subscribers. (Investor's Business Daily 26 Dec 96 A8)
AOL PONDERS ALTERNATIVE REVENUE SOURCES
Admitting that it will never make money charging a flat monthly fee of
$19.95, America Online is considering charging extra fees for some premium
services, such as online games, which would become accessible only via a
separate amusement park area. "Offering something that is unique and
different could be translated into being able to charge money," says the
company's marketing VP. In addition to the tiered fee structure, AOL also
is looking to advertising and electronic transactions for alternative
revenue streams. (Investor's Business Daily 26 Dec 96 A9)
LITTLEBROTHER IS WATCHING
Workers who spend more time surfing the Net than attending to the bottom
line are in for a comeuppance. A new software product called LittleBrother
tracks and analyzes Web usage by employees and blocks selected sites. Made
by Calif.-based Kansmen Corp., LittleBrother can tell who is playing network
games, who uses chat rooms, and who is downloading non-work materials. The
software currently available runs on a Windows NT computer linked to an
Ethernet network, but early next year the company plans to roll out a
Windows 95 version. (Investor's Business Daily 24 Dec 96 A5)
All quotes with CAPS headers and (parenthesis on the sources)
are from Edupage.
***
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