Caught in |
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by Al Massey |
In the "my ISP (Internet Service Provider) is better than your ISP department" comes word from c/net.com, arguably one of the premiere content providers on the World Wide Web, that our very own HALNet is the number two ISP in the state of Texas and number thirty-seven nationwide. Way to go HALNet.
Thanks also to HAL-PC's board of directors for having the foresight to provide a budget that will allow HALNet to go all-digital when it moves to HAL-PC's new headquarters early this year. When I think of all the ISPs I have watched start up with great fanfare over the past three years only to crash and burn a few months later, I can't help but be proud of the way our digital cowboys have handled themselves in putting this system together. Check it out at http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/ISP /area.html.
A little over a year ago I attended a conference where the Duke of Redmond, Bill Gates, candidly admitted that, as far as the Internet was concerned, he basically "didn't have a clue." However, the head MicroSofty went on to say that he "was taking steps to correct my lack of judgment regarding the Internet." Those steps included throwing giant wads of greenbacks at cyberspace and hijacking, kidnapping and hiring some of the top people in the field. He then embarked on a grab and snatch rampage where he bought virtually any vendor with the words Internet or Web in its title.
So here I sit today watching his "Billness" at a press conference broadcast over the Web extolling the virtues of Office 97 and predicting that 1997 "will be the year that rank and file computer users become true Netizens." Yea buddy, what a difference a year makes. One year on the Web is roughly equivalent to four decades in real time. The World Wide Web in early '97 has the mindset of a Ferrari, the body of a Peterbuilt and the engine of a 1957 Volkswagen racing down a two lane country road.
In introducing Office 97 Gates said "We have brought the two worlds [of paper- and Web-based publishing] together" with Office 97, and vowed to "take leadership through innovation" as an Internet company this year. Noting that the package supports not only HTML script and Office file formats but other Internet protocols like HTTP, FTP and Microsoft's ActiveX and VBA technologies, Gates said the company is "moving toward the idea of letting users simply type in what they are looking for" and letting the computer software do the work of retrieving information from corporate databases or the Internet. Stand by as others follow Microsoft's lead in attempting to conquer your desktop.
As a charter member of the "virtual" support group, NetHeads anonymous, I have been accused of spending way too much time online. After reviewing countless thousands of Web sites and finding absolutely, positively no reason whatsoever to return, it is a great pleasure to stumble across one that offers something of value in return for the time you spend there. One such site is http://www.pcorder.com/.
This is the brainchild of Carl Samos, the same Carl Samos that developed the National Center for Supercomputing application, Mosaic 2.0 browser. Everyone from Microsoft to Netscape has tried to get their hands on this guy but he has fought them off saying "I didn't want to become employee No. 20,012 in a large company when I could be No. 12 in a small promising one."
Starting in 1995, with the backing of Trilogy Development Group, Samos has spent more than $100 million developing an online configuring technology, the result of which is pcOrder.com, Inc. Simply put, this site offers users the ability to "get the exact computer they want at the lowest possible price."
Visitors to the site can not only design the system of their dreams, but they can place a request with the site to be automatically notified via e-mail when the price of the configuration reaches a certain level. Samos envisions the Web "will become a central place for people to buy all kinds of things, but computers ought to be particularly successful because of the kind of people using the `Net."
With over $100 million invested, sixty employees and a transaction volume increasing at more than fifty percent per month, http://www.pcorder.com is rapidly becoming one of the largest applications on the Internet, providing information on over 150,000 products from more than 800 dealers. Check it out!
The Internet has formed many "cottage industries" since its inception. Most have been harmless, some have even been helpful. Last year we heard from the Clueless and the Braindead when they gave us the Communications Decency Act. This year the group has moved their headquarters from Washington, DC to Geneva and goes by the name of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
WIPO is going to "save us from ourselves," establishing rules and treaties covering copyrights on the Internet and legal rights for database owners. YAWN!
First off WIPO was about to codify a treaty that would have strangled the free flow of information in cyberspace. This little darling would have treated all unauthorized copying of a document as an infringement of a copyright. Sounds good on first reading but fails the smell test by refusing to admit that the Internet depends on machines that reproduce the messages they receive so that even temporary copies like those produced on Internet servers when e-mail and Web pages pass through, as well as images found in your Web browser cache file, would have been illegal. Those in favor of the treaty said the language is "only relevant in cases of knowing or willful infringement", but opponents want to know why it isn't spelled out.
Just a few more words in the document would be all that would be required to make it palatable for all, but the backers of the treaty wouldn't budge so everybody from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Library Association to the Electronic Frontier Foundation jumped on the opposing side and the measure was tabled for at least a year.
Oh, I didn't mention that another provision to the treaty would have made online service providers responsible for all infringements on their systems, whether they were a party to them or not.
Another treaty regarding Databases is under consideration by WIPO. This marvelous document is a testament to journalism 101 and makes a great read. Through the judicious use of grammar and punctuation this treaty would strip away the cornerstone of copyright law; the idea that the expression of facts or concepts, but not the facts or concepts themselves, should be protected by law.
Databases themselves would be protected simply by virtue of having required investment and effort to assemble. Databases themselves are not now protected unless the content is copyrighted. "This is bound to have a chilling effect on research of all kinds," said Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation staff counsel. "There are all kinds of reasons facts shouldn't be owned by anyone." At the time of publication sanity seems to be prevailing and this measure seems headed for the bit-bucket, but "who knows what evil lurks in the mind of man?"
Under the calm hand of Webmaster Dave Beers, FedCenter, http://www.fedcenter.com, the federal government is spending some $27 million per year of your money on information technology to improve efficiency. A princely portion of that money is earmarked to streamline communications between government buyers and vendors. Beers is president of InterFed Group, Inc. and is helping develop the site in an effort to stimulate electronic commerce within the federal environment. "Our goal is to provide one-stop-shopping access to IT products and services, training and other value added content for the federal government's data processing communities," Beers said.
On the first day the FedCenter site was up it recorded over 75,000 hits and has been getting over 100,000 hits per day ever since. This is just another example of what I like to call the Web done right.
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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