[11072] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Ask Dr. Internet (long)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Public-Access Computer Systems For)
Fri Feb 14 20:47:10 1997
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 13:45:12 -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>
1 Message; 540 lines
From: "Michael S. Hart" <hart@prairienet.org>
Subject: Dr. Net!! Phone Bill Internet Surcharge, and more. . .
This is "Ask Dr. Internet" for February 14, 1997
Questions from January 15th to February 14th
!!! Hot News Flash!!!
Just in: The phone companies have filed for an Internet
surcharge by the minute. Info is at the very end. . . .
Says comments must be in by today. . .apparently word is
just now leaking out. Email address for comments to FCC
is there for your use.
*
Introductory Comments
Due to the length of several of the subjects this month,
and their importance, we will be addressing less queries
than our usual 10, and will be putting off our interview
of geekgirls and Jude Milhon, the first "female hacker,"
until a later date, hopefully next month.
There are reports of some serious intentional trends out
there that are hardly accidental wastage of bandwidth in
an ever increasing effort to turn what have been two-way
streets of communication back into the one-way street of
the media moguls of previous generations.
The continuing movement to change the Internet and World
Wide Web into a bandwidth carrying their information for
their purposes to you, rather than your information to a
wide audience, for your purposes. . .is a danger we must
be aware of if we are to avoid having this new medium be
just an extension of the old media empires in the future
. . .and the future is now.
Q0.
What is this wide left margination I have started seeing in email,
particularly email on the larger listservers and discussion groups?
Q1.
I keep hearing that older versions of software either cannot be
reinstalled or have even been erased by newer installations of
the same or similar products. What is the story on this?
Q2.
More about the biggest sites on the Web.
Q3.
More about the number of hosts on the Internet.
Q4.
Questions about new offers from Encyclopedia Britannica.
Q5.
We have heard about "Microsoft Office 97 Professional Upgrade" bugs.
What can you tell us.
Q0.
What is this wide left margination I have started seeing in email,
particularly email on the larger listservers and discussion groups?
A0.
We have pursued this question at some length over the past months,
and to a certain degree for even longer, and have seen the results
of this on more and more of the listservers we are on. I would be
sending notes to the list moderators and postmasters of the sites,
requesting that they not forward email that has such wasteful sets
of margins. Several examples are included below. If you have the
patience, read on, if not, just skip to A1.
However, I would remind you that the result of eliminating the 10%
waste factor would be the same as increasing the capacity by 10%--
which would cost millions of dollars.
The recent explosion of wide left margination in email material or
other materials posted on various parts of the Net is on purpose--
not just the result of email being forwarded from person to person
with each mailer program adding a couple spaces of indentation for
the purpose of separating questions from their replies.
The purpose of these margins is supposedly to attract attention to
the material in question, but the real attention it is attracting,
from people who understand how the Net works, is just that this is
a wasteful practice, and that wider RIGHT margins would do just as
well the wider left margins that are now in vogue with the highest
echelons of our business and political communities.
I will grant you that placing a word
here
and continuing here will
have more impact than just placing inside a bunch of other words
but when line after line is indented, often every line of entire
articles, then the impact is lost.
Using wide right margins is just as effective,
and draws just as much attention to the words,
and it doesn't COST anything, as there are not
a multitude of spaces travelling in cyberspace
to make those wide right hand margination.
I am sure your eye is just as attracted to the
wide right margins here as the wide left ones.
We shall see.
Using wide right margins is just as effective,
and draws just as much attention to the words,
and it doesn't COST anything, as there are not
a multitude of spaces travelling in cyberspace
to make those wide right hand margination.
I am sure your eye is just as attracted to the
wide left margins here as the wide right ones.
You decide for yourself, and please let me know to keep track.
We have recently been exposed to article after article, with these
new wide left margins, often 15 spaces, unvarying for screen after
screen of an article. . .15 spaces followed by 35 characters, with
a waste ratio of nearly 1 extra space for every 2 characters.
When you receive one of these, you should be aware that 30% of the
space in your mailbox has been wasted, and that your system and as
many systems as relayed this message could each have processed 100
pages of this stuff without such margins as 70 page with.
What can you do about it?
Several things.
First, and most effective, reply to the email, with just one line,
Please stop sending email with those wastefully wide left margins.
You might add a line stating that you are more likely to respond a
bit less than positively to the content of such messages.
But keep it short.
Anyone who has any consideration will at least consider this.
What if they don't stop?
I, personally, feel this is sort of fighting fire with fire, but I
am aware that the big Internet spammers [those who send a wasteful
message to millions of people] have been stopped by simply sending
all their mail back to them. If you do do this, please wait for a
weekend or early morning hour, so you ease the load on the system,
while hopefully also ease the load later.
To increase the efficiency of the Internet by 10% would cost about
$100 million. . .
We could accomplish the same thing by being 10% more efficient.
That's why we don't use indentation, of any kind. It only takes a
cr/lf to separate these paragraphs, while the average indentations
obviously take more.
Here is an example, untouched other than to leave out several more
pages with the same margination.
"FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age
FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE
Vol V, Issue No. 3 (144 lines) February 10, 1997
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is
a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to
crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him.
But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be
more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that
he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the
universe knows nothing of this.
All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must
elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot
fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the
principle of morality.
Blaise Pascal (1660)
Pensees, sec. VI, The Philosophers, 347
CLOSING THE "VALUES-GAP":
The substance of power
By Vigdor Schreibman
I quoted from Pensees, to inaugurate FINS, Jan 11, 1993."
Here is their sig block, if you would like to subscribe.
============================================================================
JOIN A 21st-CENTURY PROJECT: TO UNCOVER THE COLLECTIVE WISDOM OF THE PEOPLE
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GET 24 issues of your own email copy of Fins News Columns + Special Reports
+ Fins Information Age Lib + A people science and dialogue: Now only $12.95.
Subscription by check or money order. For details GET DEMOSOPHIA INITIATIVE.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Federal Information News Syndicate, Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher,
18 - 9th Street NE #206, Washington, DC 20002-6042. Copyright 1997 FINS.
Internet: fins@access.digex.net. Browse Fins Information Age Library at the
inforM system of the University of Maryland HTTP://www.inform.umd.edu/FINS/.
============================================================================
Q1.
I keep hearing that older versions of software either cannot be
reinstalled or have even been erased by newer installations of
the same or similar products. What is the story on this?
A1.
Many software publishers don't really like the idea that their
programs may be out there forever; some because they are in an
entirely new field and don't want their mistakes to show up to
haunt them a few years from when they were first published and
others because they want you to buy a new product edition each
and every year, or even month, or at least every time they are
trying to sell a new one.
Some examples are various viewers such as QuickTime, which try
and succeed in erasing older versions of themselves before the
installation of the new version even gets underway.
This is contrary to every policy of operating system design in
which the old file is always preserved until the new one is in
place completely. The last step in the process is the erasure
of the old file.
Thus, if your installation of QuickTime was not completed, for
whatever reason, then your old versions of it were deleted and
you have nothing to work with.
_I_ would prefer to keep BOTH versions installed until I had a
good opportunity to test the new versions on all the files the
computer already had for it to view. . .often a new version is
not quite willing or able to work with ALL the files the older
versions were.
This has happened on a number of occasions with versions of an
entire array of programs and releases. One version of program
"X 4.5" might work just fine with hundreds or thousands of the
files people made for it, but which did not perfectly employ a
particular header standard that no one ever used, but which is
in the "developers instruction manual."
Then one day version "X 5.0" comes out and none of the program
files that do not perfectly toe the line will run on the newer
version, and the word goes out not to buy it.
Some people say the publishers have a right to do anything the
publisher wants with the next version of their program because
it is THEIR program, but with something as fast as the Net for
people to post "bug reports" they won't sell many copies, even
if the new "feature" isn't what THEY call a "bug."
The fact is that the public decides what programs will sell to
them. . .not the publishers. . .and you might wonder where are
some of the HUGE publishers of just a few years ago.
*
The worst trouble is that several of these are products I like
immensely, such as Books In Print, Books Out Of Print, etc. I
love these, as they are often more complete records of what is
available than any other source provides, including bookstores
and libraries. I have hundreds of pounds of these paper books
as indices to what has been published during my lifetime and I
will probably continue to collect them because I can use them,
over and over, for the rest of their physical lifespan.
However, at least the earlier CDROM versions of Books In Print
not only required a separate floppy disk to install them, but,
they also were often incompatible with each other and installs
of a new version often meant you could no longer use a version
from last month or before. The only way to avoid this was the
creation of an entirely new directory to install a new one in.
On the other hand, I am certainly a minority here, as Books In
Print is/was usually licenced in such a manner that you had to
destroy the old CDROM or send it back in.
*
This certainly gives the publishers the right to turn off that
access to previous versions, but it also gives rise to further
my complaint that electronic information is being designed for
a VERY fast "planned obsolescence". . .faster than anything we
have ever experienced before.
By the way, the term "planned obsolescence" has been around an
extremely long time by reference book standards, since the 60s
as a matter of fact, but only the most liberal reference books
include much, if anything on this subject, while other will do
everything they can to include something on the order of a new
phrase such as "politically correct" but will not include much
older phrases such as "planned obsolescence."
Example: The Merriam-Webster's dictionaries, which used to be
my favorites. I have one here which 20 years after the facts,
included "preppie" from 1967, but still left out this "planned
obsolescence" phrase from the same time period. Random House,
in several of their editions, includes both, and, has recently
become my favorite dictionary. They sometimes have an offer--
buy the hardbound and CDROM versions together for $100, and it
was only $57.50 at some of the warehouse stores.
In fact we have entirely new methods of extending the reach of
"planned obsolescence" to include things that may not be in an
entirely planned obsolescence category, such as encyclopedias,
dictionaries, and other reference works that were originally a
product designed to be copied, whether into your own notes for
a paper, or directly into the paper itself. Some encyclopedia
CDROMs put a copyright notice on every screen of data you save
nowadays, some only put it at the beginning and/or the end, in
much better taste, in my professional opinion.
Q2.
More about the biggest sites on the Web.
A2.
Several people asked about these large sites. . .research on a
related topic turned up that two of these sites are in France,
and that some of these large sites are repositories of some of
the automated data storage programs that create and store huge
amounts of data for commercial enterprises.
Q3.
More about the number of hosts on the Internet.
I meant to say "domains" instead of "hosts" last month, in the
part about how much money is being sent to Internic. Yes, the
number of hosts on the Internet passed 10 million a year ago--
but you only have to pay once for the "domain" name, which may
have many hosts under it. The domain name is usually the last
two parts of an address of the form subdomain.domain.dom where
the .dom is one of the meta-domains such as .edu, .com, .org.
Various reports came out during the last month that the Net is
running out of addresses, so expect to see more meta-domains.
However, other reports indicate the new addition of these will
possibly slow down routers in making your connection.
Q4.
Questions about new offers from Encyclopedia Britannica.
A4.
"Dear Dr. Internet,
I have watched britannica over the years and their attitude to CDROM.
~8 years ago they told me they would NEVER put EB on CD.
Until recently their price was way beyond my means. The new price of
$299 is better, but still to high for me.
This Saturday i got a special mail offer to get it for $125 + $7 S&H fee.
My friend brought me the exact same ad where HE was offered the same thing
for $99 + $7. Well, i ordered the $99 copy as i figured that was a fair
price.
My question to dr. internet is: How many prices are they offering, might I
have gotten it for $59? if i was on the right mailing list? ANy of your
contributors seen a better price than $99? Thanks."
We would appreciate hearing from as many people as possible who have
received this offer, what prices were quoted, and what connection is
possible between the price and how you were placed on their list.
Q5.
We have heard about "Microsoft Office 97 Professional Upgrade" bugs.
What can you tell us.
A5.
I have just installed "Microsoft Office 97 Professional Upgrade". Needless to
say, this altered some of the settings or communication protocols as far as
connecting to the "Web" via Internet Africa. (also E mail and news settings)
[From our readers]
Here are some notes from Edupage that might be of interest.
Our comments are in [brackets.]
[Obviously the US Government can now easily break all 56-bit codes.]
THREE COMPANIES OKAYED FOR 56-BIT TECHNOLOGY EXPORT
Digital Equipment Corp., Cylink Corp. and Trusted Information Systems all
have received the go ahead from the Commerce Department to export products
incorporating the 56-bit Data Encryption Standard algorithm. Previously,
companies were limited to exporting products with a key length of 40 bits or
less, except for applications in the financial services sector. "This makes
the Internet more attractive for our customers worldwide, and represents an
exciting market opportunity for Digital," says Digital's chairman. The
assistant secretary of commerce for export administration was quoted by
Cylink as saying that the new policy "marks the start of a new flexibility
in U.S. encryption export policy." (BNA's Electronic Information Policy &
Law Report 7 Feb 97)
[Those making the case against software piracy admit they have been lying,
just to make you and your governments more sympathetic to their causes.]
TRADE GROUPS LOWER SOFTWARE PIRACY ESTIMATES
The Software Publishers Association and the Business Software Alliance have
acknowledged that they may have been overstating the losses suffered by
software companies due to illegal copying. "We've been hyping the numbers
that might or might not be true," says a spokesman. "Look, all we can do is
guess how many people who use computers in China or Bulgaria might actually
be willing to pay for Microsoft Office or Doom. But larger numbers get more
attention, so we go with the biggest estimate we can get away with." The
groups estimated losses due to piracy in 1995 at $13 billion. (St.
Petersburg Times 10 Feb 97)
[If we could only get a similar law against junk snail-mail.]
[There was an article that said the average US citizen spends
three years of life just on junk mail. This is what happens,
if you just allow someone to waste just a few minutes of each
hour of your life.] [You could deleted THIS message with one
single press of the delete key. . .please do, if you feel the
Dr. Internet notes are junk mail.]
COURT GRANTS COMPUSERVE INJUNCTION AGAINST JUNK E-MAIL
A U.S. district court in Ohio has granted CompuServe's request for a
preliminary injunction barring Cyber Promotions Inc. from sending
unsolicited e-mail to its subscribers while the commercial provider pursues
its lawsuit against Cyber Promotions. The injunction was granted after
Cyber Promotions foiled CompuServe's initial attempts to block its messages
by falsifying the point-of-origin information on its e-mail messages and by
configuring its network servers to conceal its actual Internet domain name.
"To the extent that defendant's multitudinous electronic mailings demand the
disk space and drain the processing power of plaintiff's computer equipment,
those resources are not available to CompuServe subscribers," the court
reasoned. In addition, because many subscribers had complained to
CompuServe about the mailings, the court found that Cyber Promotions'
intrusions constituted "harm" as well as trespassing under common tort law.
The court found that the "plaintiff is not a government agency or a state
actor which seeks to preempt defendants' ability to communicate but is
instead a private actor trying to tailor the nuances of its service to
provide maximum utility to its customers." (BNA Daily Report for Executives
7 Feb 97)
SOFTWARE THAT CHEATS [This title is all to self-explanatory.]
Commercial and entertainment applications, rather than military ones,
increasingly are driving artificial intelligence, and some AI software
developers are even working on the design of a networked world in which
software agents might try to take unfair of each other in commercial
transactions. Washington University computer scientist Thomas Sandholm
says: "the way to think about this is to consider software agents that are
capable of lying, cheating and stealing." (New York Times 10 Feb 97)
[More lying on the part of the media moguls.]
ONLINE COMPANIES ASK TELCOS, "WHERE'S THE BEEF?"
Tired of telephone companies' complaints that Internet usage is overwhelming
their network capacity, the Internet Access Coalition has released findings
contending that Net usage is, in reality, a bonanza for the Bells. The
study found that local carriers received a total of $1.4 billion in 1995 in
revenues resulting from the installation of second lines in homes, while
spending only $245 million to beef up their networks for the additional
usage. A Bell Atlantic spokesman says the real problem is that the telcos
have no idea when a line will be used for data rather than voice, and thus
tied up longer. Both sides agree that the ultimate solution is higher
capacity networks. (Business Week 17 Feb 97)
[More ways to keep the Riff and the Raff out of your systems,
very high tech, at very low cost.]
ORACLE DEVICE CAN FINGER HACKERS
Oracle is marketing a palm-sized biometric security device that compares a
user's finger prints to sets stored in a central database before allowing
access to a computer. The $500 unit, made by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based
Identix, "is the ultimate in security, because it doesn't depend on what you
know, but what you are," says Identix's CEO. The device can discern a real
finger from a wax model, or from a glove with someone else's print on it,
because a collection of sensors track blood flow, blood pressure and other
signals as part of the identification process. (Wall Street Journal 10 Feb 97)
Just in:
"I am writing you this to inform you of a very important matter
currently under review by the FCC. Your local telephone company has
filed a proposal with the FCC to impose per minute charges for your
internet service. They contend that your usage has or will hinder
the operation of the telephone network.
It is my belief that internet usage will diminish if users were
required to pay additional per minute charges. The FCC has created
an email box for your comments, responses must be received by
February 13, 1997.
Send you comments to isp@fcc.gov and tell them what you think. Every
phone company is in on this one, and they are trying to sneak it in
just under the wire for litigation. Let everyone you know hear this
one. Get the e-mail address to everyone you can think of.
The address again is isp@fcc.gov."
From the relayer:
This came to me yesterday. The more messages sent to the FCC the
better. I also think that each of your congresspersons should hear
about it. The estimates that have come in have been from $.04/minute
to as much as $.40/minute. THIS COULD BE SIGNIFICENT!!! There is
not much time.
*
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