[11411] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Ask Dr. Internet Part II
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Public-Access Computer Systems For)
Thu Jun 19 21:28:40 1997
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 18:57:51 -0500
From: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
Moderator's Note: This is "Ask Dr. Internet" Part II.
*-----
Q10.
The Dr. Internet Interview With Jude Milhon, First Lady
Of Computing. . .Though She Will More Than Likely Throw
That Appellation Back. [Part Three of Three parts]
How about first female computer geek?
Of course WE all know her as the first female hacker--
but the term hacker has been SOO abused. . . .
A10.
3. About the movies.
Are there really people like those in Hackers, or are they
more like Sandra Bullock's character in The Net? Are your
preferences more for one kind? Which kind? Why? Etc.
>>>>>>>>
I used to be like the Bullock character, actually. A true agoraphobic
geekgirl, except that I had an on-call husband and wife and kid or two.
(Only if I wanted them around.) Nowadays, if I have any identifiable
community it's the Cypherpunks, who are like the people in Hackers,
only not so well-groomed.
Is it true that people can break into nearly any computer?
If so, how can you send money over the Net?
>>>>>>>
Many many smart people are working on just that problem,
including my two husbands. Whoever comes up with the big solution
becomes very rich. That could be good.
Michael told me, in private, that you like Cronenberg and
Lynch movies. . .don't you think this is kind of dark and sad?
Do you think the world is really that way?
>>>>>>
I used to like Cronenberg and Lynch more,
back when I was more desperate about the way
the world seemed to be going, and my own failures within it.
It's great desperation fodder, yum yum.
But I tend to like mainstream stuff more now,
now that mainstream's getting smarter.
True. I hated CRASH, because it's a perfect recasting of the book,
in fact, and although I will watch James Spader do anything or anyone,
I was bored and resentful. Other people's obsessions, pfoo.
On the other hand, I liked JERRY MAGUIRE, a rather weepy hokey movie,
but with these strange incursions of intelligence in it.
Attacks of non-craziness-- someone's ranting,
surfing their emotional wave, and suddenly they see through themselves
and make a wry joke. This is very Buddhist. Spontaneous detachment:
being able suddenly to stand aside from your own personality,
take it or leave it alone. So is Hollywood full of
Buddhist paradigm-twisters?
This could be okay.
***
Our great thanks and best wishes to Jude Milhon!!!
***
Notes From The Drnet staff:
Apple Quicktime keeps hassling me to update,
every single time I download a .mov file,
then kills ALL my older versions when I do.
From the Dr. Internet Guru's Guru, Kevin Gilmore
Phone frame switches are only used in local to local lines.
And this is not really true anymore except the older switches.
Everything is converted to u-law 12 bit 8khz sampling rate, and then
shipped around by computer. ISDN uses the same wires, but they are
run thru a different computer switch capable of higher data rates.
A standard 2B+D isdn line is good for about 128 kbps max. A T1 line
typically uses 8 isdn lines to deliver the 1mbps data rate. Unshielded
twisted pair (standard telephone line) is good to about 128kbps for
distances less than 5 miles.
DVD drives are about $400 to $500 depending on who makes them and
how much internal cache. There is still virtually no software that
requires these yet.
Notes From Edupage:
NEW GRADUATE REQUIREMENT CALLS FOR WEB PAGE CREATION
Starting with the year 2000, students at Kalamazoo College will be required
to create a portfolio of Web pages documenting their academic and
extracurricular activities. Called a "K Portfolio," the exercise is meant
to improve the academic advising process, by dividing activities into five
categories: lifelong learning, career readiness, social responsibility,
intercultural understanding and leadership. "We're changing the entire face
of advising, basically," says one of the project's coordinators. "The Web
organizes things by theme or topic. It encourages you to see how many
little physical blue links you can make between different things."
(Chronicle of Higher Education 23 May 97)
MICROSOFT ADDS BUSINESS NEWS PARTNERS TO EXPLORER
The browser wars continue: Microsoft announced it has signed up more than a
dozen major business information providers, including Dun & Bradstreet,
First Call, Forbes, Time Warner's Fortune magazine, and Dow Jones & Co., to
beef up its "push" channels for Web content that will be included in
Explorer 4.0. "This is a real strike against Netscape's attempt to
penetrate the enterprise market," says a Dataquest analyst. Meanwhile,
Netscape's list of new content providers includes Knight-Ridder, Federal
Express and Excite Inc. The company had announced earlier that information
providers such as CBS Sportsline, CNNfn and Hearst's HomeArts Network will
create channels that work with Netscape's Communicator software. (Wall
Street Journal 22 May 97)
CD SALES SOAR ON THE WEB
It turns out that online music buyers isn't just for twenty-somethings,
after all. A recent survey of Music Boulevard's customers shows that half
the frequent buyers are over 30, and that "Leonard Bernstein's New York
Philharmonic Review" has been the best-selling disk since Christmas. "A
45-year-old guy doesn't want to hand his Frank Sinatra CD to a kid with a
Mohawk and a nose ring" at the cash register, says the president of another
online music seller, CD Now. Jupiter Communications predicts that online CD
sales will more than double this year to $47 million -- up from $19 million
in 1996. (Business Week 26 May 97)
AT&T WORLDNET SECURITY HITS A SNAG
A security window on AT&T's WorldNet service has been left wide open, says a
database engineer who subscribes to the service. The account access pages
on WorldNet's Web site are not protected by Secure Sockets Layer, the widely
used protocol for authenticating and encrypting transactions over the
Internet. "We sat there and just started grabbing packages and dumping them
into a database," says the engineer. "Read them off and you can get
people's e-mail IDs, passwords, all that data." An AT&T representative says
they're investigating the possible exposure, but says the chances that any
damage has been done is slight, because only WorldNet subscribers have
access to those pages. (PC World News Radio 21 May 97)
SONY AIMS HIGH IN NEW OPTICAL DISK STORAGE
Sony is planning a new technology for high-capacity recordable optical disks
that will hold 2.6 gigabytes, or about an hour of regular-format television.
The disks are due out by the end of the year. Future plans call for a
revised format capable of storing 12 gigabytes of information on a single
side of a disk the size of a CD. That product should be available by 2000,
and will hold about 1.2 hours of high-definition TV programming.
(Investor's Business Daily 21 May 97)
INTERNET THIEF APPREHENDED
A computer cracker who broke into a San Diego Internet service provider's
computer and stole 100,000 credit card numbers has been nabbed. The thief
used a "packet sniffer" program to gather the information from a dozen
companies selling products over the Internet, and was arrested as he tried
to peddle them to an undercover FBI agent for $260,000. "What is unique
about this case is that this individual was able to hack into this third
party, copy this information and encrypt it to be sold," says a Bureau
spokesman. The cracker was using an account at the University of California
at San Francisco, although authorities have not determined whether he is
affiliated with the university. (New York Times 23 May 97)
HIGHER ED CIOs COME IN ALL SIZES
"The three major problems that confront higher education today are quality,
costs and access," says Educom President Robert C. Heterick, Jr.
"Institutions that are trying to improve in those areas are invariably
looking to information technology." Meanwhile, Peter Segall, a partner in
Coopers & Lybrand's higher education consulting group, points out that these
information technology needs vary by institutional size, making the academic
CIO's role flexible: "You can't be a chief of anything at (large research
institutions) because they are feudal empires. Decision making is
decentralized to the local level where each dean runs the show." Mid-sized
universities with budgets ranging from $25 million to $200 million are more
manageable, while smaller colleges allow a CIO to have the most influence:
"Those CIOs have an easier time dictating technology decisions because
there's more acceptance of centralized control, particularly when it comes
to administrative computing," says Segall. (CIO 15 May 97)
CABLE ADS, BY SPECIAL DELIVERY
Cable company advertisers are slicing and dicing cable viewers -- targeting
their ads to more narrowly defined market segments. New digital ad
insertion technology from SeaChange International Inc. puts the ads into
digital form and then enables cable operators to run dozens of ads
simultaneously -- for instance, a couple in Chicago's swanky suburbs might
see a commercial for a nearby bakery, while downtown viewers would see an ad
for a local rib joint. The best part is, the cable company can sell the
same space over and over. (Business Week 26 May 97) [Best part?!?]
SERVICE AIMED AT NABBING MUSIC PIRATES
A newly formed company called Intersect, Inc. is marketing a product aimed
at detecting unauthorized use of copyrighted music on the Internet.
MusicReport uses Audio Video Scan technology to search for RealAudio, MPEG
Audio Layer 3 and other media formats commonly used to deliver video and
audio over the Internet. It also provides the source of each file,
including the Internet service provider, the domain name, and a list of
files for downloading. The product was developed in response to music and
film industry concerns over misuse of copyrighted material. (InfoWorld
Electric 3 Jun 97)
NAME SPECULATORS EYE NEW DOMAINS
The seven new top-level domain names haven't been introduced yet, but
speculators already are eyeing the new possibilities hungrily, and some
entrepreneurs have established "preregistration" services, offering to take
reservations for $15, with an additional $35 due if they're successful in
securing the deal. If they fail, they get to keep the $15. One of these
services claims it's already received 1,800 preregistrations. "We're
already seeing the beginning stages of a rush to get these new names as more
people are finding out about it," says the operator of a preregistration
service. To date, more than 1 million Internet addresses have been
officially registered through Network Solutions, 90% of them with the ".com"
suffix. (Wall Street Journal 5 Jun 97)
WHAT'S IN A DOMAIN NAME? MAYBE $150,000
An undisclosed company in Houston, Texas, has paid $150,000 to purchase the
domain name "business.com" from the British company that had registered it
without charge four years ago. The company that brokered the purchase
claims the price is the highest ever paid for a domain name. (New York
Times 5 Jun 97)
INTRANETS AIM AT EMPLOYEE SERVICES
A survey by Creative Networks predicts the use of corporate intranets will
rise by 110% this year, and Ziff-Davis's Computer Intelligence research arm
estimates that 45% of large companies already have an intranet installed.
While much of the growth initially was fueled by a desire to provide
Net-based purchasing and sales opportunities, companies now are devising
ways to use their intranets to deliver information, benefits and services to
their employees. High on the list for intranet/Internet use are
health-related services: IBM has paired with Allina Health System to
provide HMO members with general medical information, enrollment services
and appointment scheduling over the Internet, and Blue Shield of California
offers some of its 1.5-million subscribers Net-based services through
Healtheon Corp., an online healthcare company started by Jim Clark, who also
founded Netscape. (St. Petersburg Times 2 Jun 97)
WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY
A recent survey commissioned by Avon Products Inc. shows that contrary to
the popular perception of females as technophobes, women increasingly are
embracing technology as a business ally: "Women view technology as the
leveler," says the pollster. "They see it as an integral tool in the
workplace and for entry into fields they felt might not have been available
to them." Eighty percent of the 400 women surveyed said technology was a
good way to get into male-dominated fields, and 75% attributed a recent
advancement at work to their ability to use technology. The more women used
technology at work, the more likely they were to earn salaries higher than
$25,000. (St. Petersburg Times 2 Jun 97)
WILL MICROSOFT STAY IN "ACCESS" BUSINESS?
Industry analysts are speculating that Microsoft will eventually drop out of
the Internet service provider business and concentrate instead on providing
information services ("content," as it's described in the industry). But
Microsoft Network (MSN) denies it plans to stop providing network access
services and says it will be trying to enlarge its own subscriber base while
offering MSN as a content package to other Internet service providers. A
Microsoft marketing executive says: "We didn't expect to make money in the
overall business for two to three to four years" -- when the network has 30
million subscribers (up from the current 15 million). "At that size, when
you get 30 million people going on regularly, then you have a mass medium."
(San Jose Mercury News Center 3 Jun 97)
NASA PUTS STOP TO TEENAGER'S "CRACKING SPREE"
Delaware law enforcement officers seized the personal computer of a teenager
charged with invading Web site of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space
Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, and posting the message: "We own you. Oh,
what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive," and calling the
NASA site administrators "extremely stupid." A NASA statement described the
teen's hacking as "a cracking spree" and said, "We live in an information
environment vastly different than 20 years ago. Hackers are increasing in
number and in frequency of attack." (USA Today 3 Jun 97)
THE ULTIMATE INTERNET NAME FIGHT -- WHO OWNS "INTERNET"?
In 1990 the word "Internet" was registered with the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office as a trademark by a Reston, Virginia, company called
Internet, Inc. (now called Honors Technologies Inc.) which runs the "MOST"
automated teller machine network for 450 member banks, savings and loans,
and credit unions. Recently, Honors Technologies has sent letters to other
companies, warning them that their use of the word "Internet" is a trademark
infringement. But Don Heath, chief executive of the Internet Society (also,
coincidentally, located in Reston) says: "We think i's preposterous that
anyone should trademark the word 'Internet.' Our objective is the
cancellation of the trademark so that it can be used by anybody." Honors
Technologies maintains it is interested only in restricting the use of the
word by companies in the banking business. (Washington Post 2 Jun 97)
MICROSOFT MIFFED BY STUDENT NAME-POACHER
Here's another name controversy in the news. Microsoft is taking action to
stop a California college student from continuing to use a WWW page he
developed using the name "microsoftnetwork.com," which he had registered
through the Internic domain-name clearinghouse. The student has also
registered more than a dozen other addresses with names related to Microsoft
products. A Microsoft spokesman says the student "is clearly involved in
copyright infringement, trademark infringement and unfair trade practices.
We will try to contact him and request him to stop. Failing that, we'll
send a cease-and-desist letter requesting he stop infringing upon our name."
(New York Times 3 Jun 97)
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK -- INTEL SUES DIGITAL
In response to Digital's lawsuit against Intel, filed a couple of weeks ago,
Intel now has allegedly asked Digital to return confidential product-related
information that it had received as part of licensing arrangement. "When
you've got a situation where another company is accusing you of theft and
making accusations on your integrity, the last thing that you want to do is
take your confidential advanced intellectual property information and supply
that into that company," says an Intel spokesman. Digital has not yet
returned the information, so Intel sued. Meanwhile, Digital's suit alleges
that Intel stole Digital's Alpha microprocessor technology and incorporated
it into its Pentium-class chips. The acrimonious situation between the two
companies makes it highly unlikely that Intel will continue to supply
Digital with microprocessors for its products when that contract expires
next fall. (InfoWorld Electric 28 May 97)
WHERE DO YOU PUT 100,000 CELL PHONE TOWERS?
While the U.S. government eagerly sells off portions of the electromagnetic
spectrum in the interest of balancing the federal budget, legislators are
overlooking a major hurdle for the companies that want to use these
frequencies. Unlike analog cellular service, which is supported by fewer
than 15,000 towers nationwide, the next-generation digital cellular -- known
as PCS -- will require more than 100,000 cellular towers to provide reliable
service. More than 300 communities already have revolted, imposing
moratoria on cell tower construction, and the movement is growing. Fueling
the problem are fears that property values will be adversely affected by the
giant structures and suspicions that cellular transmissions can cause
increased instances of leukemia and other health problems. "Today, there
are 45 million users of wireless phones, yet we are still unable to certify
the safety of this product for American consumers because adequate research
apparently has not been performed," writes Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.),
who's asked the FDA to assess the research done to date. (Investor's
Business Daily 29 May 97)
WHEN E-MAIL SLOWS TO A SNAIL'S PACE
A recent study by Inverse Network Technology shows that on the average,
nearly 12% of e-mail takes more than five minutes to deliver, and some
providers keep 10% of their customers waiting more than an hour for their
mail. Inverse sent some 3,300 messages to and from each Internet service
provider to compile its data. "Generally speaking, you're not going to lose
mail," says Inverse's CEO. "What happens 99% of the time is that the mail
[I think what they mean here is 99% of the 10% of the time it take 1+ hours]
just sits in a machine somewhere for hours or even days." Some people blame
Internet gateways for most of the problems. Gateways are "where reliability
goes to hell," says the co-director of the Internet Mail Consortium, who
notes that flaky technology can play havoc with e-mail attachments, such as
spreadsheets or word-processing documents. "A bad gateway will mishandle
the attachment and drop it on the floor or turn it into something you can't
read." (Wall Street Journal 29 May 97 B1)
MAJORITY OF COLLEGES CHARGE TECHNOLOGY FEE
More than half of all U.S. public higher education institutions charged some
type of technology fee last year, according to a survey by Claremont
Graduate School's Kenneth C. Green. Such fees have become a "tried and
true" way to fund technology upgrades, says a spokesman for the American
Association of State Colleges and Universities. "They are not as
controversial as they were when they started. When you go to college, you
expect you'll have an e-mail account and go on the Web," he says, but the
cost of providing these services "was not built in or funded in the past."
Still, not everyone thinks the fees are a good idea: "An institution proud
of its technology environment and of its cost management doesn't need such
tricks," says John Stuckey, director of university computing at Washington
and Lee U. "Collecting it independent of overall tuition and fees is, at
this time, little more than a ruse for hiding or denying some of an
institution's cost." (Chronicle of Higher Education 13 Jun 97)
FTC VERSUS SPAMMERS
FTC commissioner Christine Varney says the Federal Trade Commission will
increase its efforts under existing fraud laws to punish e-mail spammers,
saying: "A lot of the problem with unsolicited e-mail is that it is
fraudulent and we want to start enforcing the laws in this area." Spamming
(unsolicited mass mailing by e-mail, which costs the sender virtually
nothing), has become so pervasive, that it's estimated that unsolicited
Internet messages account for 5 to 30% of the 15 million messages received
by America Online subscribers every day. (Washington Post 13 Jun 97)
EDUPAGE 101
As you may imagine, Edupage is used in a number of technology-related
courses as supplementary material. Here's how one college teacher included
Edupage in the final examination for his computer science course: "I asked
them (one on one), specifically: 'Did Edupage encourage you to think of the
breadth of computing?' (Using Edupage is part of our effort to instill in
first-year students the fact that computing is much more than
programming)." The response? "Student feedback is lively, typically around
one issue they followed, e.g., the year 2000 date problem; and students
used the material to help them 'tell stories' -- in computing, a valuable
skill for sharing information." (Marc LeBlanc, Wheaton College)
Edupage is written by John Gehl <gehl@educom.edu> & Suzanne Douglas
<douglas@educom.edu>. Voice: 404-371-1853, Fax: 404-371-8057.
***
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