Caught In |  | by Al Massey |
For a cybersurfing good time point your browser to http://www.worldvillage.com. Joel Comm and Ken Burge have carved out a nifty chunk of virtual reality in cyberville to bring you this on-line community complete with games, chat, software, reviews, articles and download areas and best of all, no registration screen or credit cards. So far about the only thing this "mini-AOL" is missing is customers.
The "LiveChat" area is one of the more popular areas of worldvillage with areas set aside for live interviews with net-notables from around the world and trivia contests on Wednesday nights. In addition to chat, software, reviews, etc. worldvillage makes extensive use of Java and Macromedia's Shockwave. For a rollicking good time check-it-out!
"Virus alert2: MCI VIRUS: Every three minutes it reminds you that you're paying too much for the AT&T virus."
The David vs. Goliath battle of the Internet is now taking place in Gig Harbor, Wash. where townsfolk are waging war with the basher from Bentonville, Ark. Wal-Mart. Drawing a "virtual" line in the sand, the residents have fired the first shots in the "Battle of Gig Harbor" by declaring Wal-Mart persona non grata. Http://www.harbornet.com/pna.
The Bulldozer Blockage page at http://www.hookup.net/~claytons/default.html offers "Eight Ways to Fight Wal-Mart." High-school student Andrea Kincaid's essay "Dealing With Growth," http://www.webcom. com/pcj/essay.html#kincaid, offers a less than rosy picture of life after Wal-Mart. Kincaid based her article on the small town of Wooster, Ohio.
Wal-Mart's rebuttal can be found at http://wal-mart.com/. Wal-Mart has fought this battle in small towns across America but this time the results may be different as the war is being waged on a different front.
"... it is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big enough hammer."
Sun System & Network Admin manual
Well, after some weeks of posturing and ballyhooing, Yahoo!, the premiere Internet search engine, hit the market running April 12, to become the latest five-hundred pound gorilla on Wall St. In demonstrating the volatile nature of Internet, IPO's Yahoo! started off at $13 soared to $42 while its 2.6 million shares changed hands at least six times before closing at $33. Yahoo! was but the latest Internet search service to come to market as both Lycos and Excite floated IPO's in April as well. Lycos sold 3 million shares at $16 each on April 1 and Excite 2 million at $17 each on April 4. Because there is little to differentiate the technology of search service companies and the fact they depend on an advertising business that is unproved analysts have been expressing their concern regarding these issues. Time will tell.
"... nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."
Ross Macdonald
As the number of prankster and hacker incidents raise the bar for security on the Internet, security measures such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) for authenticating messages and documents are becoming essential. Companies and individuals are finding they can't even trust an e-mail message that is not verified by the message creator using a digital signature. There are just too many people with too much technology and too much time on their hands with too many axes to grind. The need for PGP and client authentication aimed at preventing such incidents as forgery on the `Net came to light recently when administrators of Internet news servers received hundreds of "forged" messages announcing bad or invalid newsgroups which were automatically created on news servers everywhere. The forged messages came from tale@uunet. uu.net or David Lawrence, a UUNet Technologies, Inc. administrator who regularly announces new newsgroups on his own time. While the incident did not cause any major harm to anyone's server or network, it was an inconvenience by adding to administrators workload.
"...Yes, the lectures are optional. Graduation is also optional."
PointCast, http://www.pointcast.com, announced PointCast I-Server which will give companies the ability to enable a "Broadcast" channel in order to deliver confidential information to customers and employees in an efficient manner without exposing it to the `Net at large.
PointCast uses an application called SmartScreen, downloadable at http://www.pointcast.com, which operates as a screen saver to deliver information such as headlines, stock quotes and sports scores to personal computers. Another key for PointCast is support for 23 different firewalls, ranging from Digital Equipment Corp.'s Firewall for UNIX to Trusted Information System's Gauntlet Internet. PCN claims security risks are minimal for users because the application downloads content, as opposed to executable programs.
Animation and stock ticker code comes as part of the PCN client. Work has also been done to support firewall authentication types, meaning that PCN can support authentication parameters if network managers require user names and passwords from their corporate users.
Content for the PCN broadcast service will be piped in from various major media sources, including Reuters, SportsTicker, AccuWeather and the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and Interactive Age Digital's parent CMP Publications Inc. to provide feeds to the news service.
If you are blessed with a fast on-line connection at work but a slow or no connection at home or have longed for a way to show off some of those "really neat web pages" to your modem impaired friends, take heart. Check out WebWhacker http://www.ffg.com and Milktruck Delivery http://www.milktruck.com. Both of these utilities allow you to "grab" complete web sites or individual pages complete with graphics, sounds, video and even Java applets, stash them on your hard drive and then either play them back at your convenience off-line or transfer them to another machine. More on both of these programs in a future issue.
"A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street."
The National Educational Technology Initiative stated goal is to put computers in every school in America by raising money through the Net-A-Thon http://www.neti.org. Net-A-Thon, a cross between a telethon and a charity silent auction, will be held twice a year coinciding with the Electronic Entertainment Expo and Comdex trade shows in May and November. Combined, these events attract over 250,000 participants and are the cornerstone of the $100 billion computer industry. Millions of dollars worth of software, hardware, and celebrity memorabilia will be auctioned over the Internet at these events.
The NETI will keep having Net-A-Thons until the job is done, and at least one computer connected to the Internet is in every school that wants one. Proceeds will go directly to our nation's public schools, on a matching basis, with preference given to schools in low-income urban and rural neighborhoods. NETI is asking everybody on the Internet to participate in the silent auction, and to publicize the Net-A-Thon by the icon on their home page with yours.
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain and most fools do."
Dale Carnegie
That giant sucking noise you keep hearing is Microsoft and Netscape sucking software products into their operating systems and killing off the companies that developed them. I moved recently and before I notified anyone it seems FedEx and UPS found out. Software keeps arriving for evaluation at the `Puter Pit and an ever increasing amount of it carries the Microsoft and Netscape Logo. Where or when this Netscapian, Microsoftian monster will end is up to the gods but I suspect their appetites will not be appeased until large numbers of software developers have been gobbled up.
Al Massey is a HAL-PC member.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
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