Digital Village Radio June-September 1996 Programs

Digital Village Archives

Digital Village Radio
June - September 1996 Programs

9/28/96:Women and Technology We were joined today by Elisabeth Freeman & Susanne Hupfer, who both created The Ada Project, and Carolyn Leighton, the Executive Director of Women In Technology International. These two sites offer many resources for both women and men. We discussed their efforts to get more women into hi-tech studies and jobs. While more and more women are discovering the world of hi-tech, there is still a huge gap between the number of women and the number of men, especially at the higher levels. The future is bright, but there is still a long way to go. Be sure and read Elisabeth's story of Ada & the Analytical Engine and visit WITI's Museum & Hall of Fame. Also mentioned was the Girl's Games web site, which encourages girls to use computers by being about exactly what its name suggests.

In the news:
The FTC has recommended that Congress change the FCRA - Kevin Mitnick is indicted on more charges - AOL will provide live coverage of the upcoming Presidential Debates - a bunch of Usenet bulletin boards got wiped clean by cancelbot programs - Apple is rumored to be in discussions with Be - Apple and Netscape are teaming up on streaming audio and video - Daniel Akst sent us his last Postcard from Cyberspace - Doran has found HomeSite and thinks it's terrific
9/21/96:A Webraising in the City Our guest today was David Jensen, the Project Manager for The Los Angeles Concept at the Getty Information Institute. Today's webraising of the L.A. Culture Net took place at Breakaway Technologies in South Central Los Angeles. It's an effort to put the power of the Internet into the hands of the community. Included in the two-day event were a number of small workshops designed to give participants the knowledge and tools needed to create effective web pages.

In the news:
Lexis-Nexis has created a furor over personal information it's listing in its P-TRAK system - The FBI loses in court, for now... - The CIA get's hacked - AOL can block spammers - Caldera is going to publish the source code to DR DOS - iNTEL's new netphone is available - The fight between Microsoft and Netscape over Windows NT Workstation continues - Internet Explorer isn't as secure as some people think
9/14/96:Eco-Activism's New Era We were joined on the phone today by Michael Schrage, the Tuesday columnist for Packet and author of books and articles on collaboration and today's marketplace. He says that eco-activism is changing with technology. For example, monitoring will be used by activists to keep industrial polluters in check, and by responsible companies as a marketing tool. We also talked about privacy and how much monitoring does it take before things go too far. Who will monitor the Monitors? Should illegally obtained material be posted on the 'net? Is the viewer of this information somehow responsible for its theft, either legally or morally? Who owns your personal information? What if there is a mistake? All good questions. Got any answers?

In the news:
anon.penet.fi (a very popular remailer) is closed down - the PRO-CODE bill may be voted on - The White House plans to profile airline passengers - c|net found a nasty little security bug in IE3
9/7/96:Privacy, Win95 & Open Phones with Steve Bass We were joined in-studio by Steve, who followed up on last week's theme by talking about more places online (such as Lexus/Nexus & Deja News) that can be used to find out information about people. These services (and others, such as Oregon's DMV Records online) are often seen as a two-edged sword, providing a useful service to some (finding lost friends, searching government records), but perhaps invading the privacy of others. After all, how much of your financial or personal information do you want online?

We also talked about the benefits vs. the pitfalls of installing the Windows95 operating system. Some suggestions are:
- Fully backing up your system first. Verify backup with "Compare".
- Getting the latest drivers for any installed components before the installation begins. Try Frank's Driver Page.
- Removing any unnecessary components. Steve says this should include just about everything but the video card and CD ROM. Other people also suggest including the sound card. Extra equipment should be added later, after the operating system is installed.
- Remove any non-essential icons from your Windows' "Startup" group. This prevents possible compatibility problems during installation. These can be added to Win95's Startup Group after installation. Just make sure these programs run in the Win95 environment first.
- Make your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files as "clean" as possible, eliminating any uneeded TSR programs or other unusual settings. NOTE: Be sure and make backup copies of these files before editing them!
- Make an emergency boot diskette which includes the drivers for your CD. Test boot your system before the installation to make sure this diskette (and your CD) work.
- Cold Boot (turn off, then back on) your system after making the above changes. This way they'll take effect.
- Make sure your tape software is at hand in case you need to reformat and reinstall from backup.
Steve also mentioned Free Agent as a terrific program to read USENET newsgroups. Also, for something completely different, check out the Total Entertainment Network. Once again we mentioned Internet FastForward, a filter to get rid of banner ads and cookie file abuse.

In the news:
Aaron Nebil put Oregon's DMV records on the Web and some people didn't like it - TCOMA & @Home are bringing high speed Internet access via cable to Freemont California - Frankenberg is out at Novell - AOL is going to offer voice capabilities between its subscribers - Adobe Systems releases Photoshop 4.0
8/31/96:Spies & Stalkers Online Today we talked about how much personal information is available online. How much can somebody find out about you online? First we were joined by Michael Wolff of Wolff New Media and publisher of NetSpy: How you can access the facts and cover your tracks. This is the latest book in the "Net" series put out by Wolff and Your Personal Net. The book contains hundreds of sites found and assembled by YPN's staff of over 50 editors. Many privacy advocates see this as a threat to an individual's own privacy. Wolff counters that he didn't create the sites and it's in the public's interest to know what information is available on them.

One privacy advocate who isn't complaining about NetSpy is Glen L. Roberts, author of The Stalker's Home Page. Like Wolff, Glenn believes it's more important that the public know what is available, rather than keeping them ignorant. His concern extends to such things as cellular phones (essentially little radio transmitters) which many people use without considering the potential loss of privacy. Also mentioned was how some complaints about the lack of online privacy are bogus, since much of the information is available through legal government sources such as court documents or the Congressional Record and has been available to journalists, private investigators and others for years.
8/24/96:Bill Frezza & DigitaLiberty. Also alt.press.convention. Our guest today was Bill Frezza, co-founder of DigitaLiberty and author of a regular column in Communications Week. What is the price we each pay for government regulation? Mass use of powerful encryption will allow for anonymous and pseudonymous commerce and correspondence, shifting a tremendous amount of power to the individual who uses it. How will the governments around the world react. Indeed, is government regulation as it exists now even going to mean anything in the future, given the global nature of this technology? Good Questions. Stay tuned.

We also spoke with Gerry Bello from Countermedia in Chicago, who is posting a Alternative Democratic Convention website. Countermedia's all volunteer staff is dedicated to bringing stories out quickly, focusing on those subjects the mainstream media aren't talking about.

Ric Allan reported from Boston this week where he is battling the very analog problem of street construction. It's eased a little by using the net to get around. This is a city that is very net-savvy, with many stores and public institutions online. He had also found this when he was in the SoHo District of N Y C last week.

In the news
The U.S. Department of Justice got hacked - The Hare virus came and went - An extension is granted in CDA case - New top level domains are on the way, but Alternic doesn't think IANA is playing fair
8/17/96:Corporations trying to control content. There is an increasing number of corporations trying to eliminate Web pages which present them in less than glowing terms. One example is The Smith Barney Page, created by our guest today, Michael Lissack as part of his Municipal Bond Scandal web site. Smith Barney originally sent him a number of letters threatening legal action unless he removed The Smith Barney Page from his site. He did not and ultimately "they claimed victory and went away" as Mr. Lissack said, leaving his site intact.

Another variation on the above came about when Banyan tried to make Glen L. Roberts remove a link to their Switchboard service (which returns a person's phone number when you enter their name) from his Stalker's Home Page site. Again, he resisted and they relented. We hope to be joined by Glen in the coming weeks to talk not only about this incident, but also about the larger implications of the amount of personal information that can be found on the Net.

In the news:
An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court has been filed by the Justice Department in the second case against the CDA, in which a three judge panel unanimously decided that the CDA was unconstitutional. This is the second three judge panel to do so (the first panel ruled on June 12th) - Princeton tries to ban the use of their computer network (including email) for "political purposes" - InterNic tries to clarify its policy on domain name conflicts - Speaking of domain names, Mailbank is hogging them all. Is this fair? - Softbank is buying Kingston Technologies (located in Orange County) for a reported 1.5 billion dollars. c|net has a good listing of Softbank's vast investments - Microsoft's NT webservers are having problems delivering its latest version of Internet Explorer - Microsoft is mad at Netscape for promoting the use of NT Workstation as a web server. Others think it's Microsoft who's in the wrong - Yahoo is launching regional sites, such as Yahoo L.A. (maybe they'll start listing Digital Village's home page now) - @Home has a new CEO - Ric called from N Y C to say the surfing is just fine in the New York Public Library
8/10/96:Resources for the Homeless. The National Coalition for the Homeless is a national advocacy group committed to ending homelessness. Our guest today was Barbara Duffield, who told how the Coalition is using the internet and its resources to spread their message about homelessness and the people it affects.

In the news:
There's going to be an Alternative Media Webcast from the Republican Convention in San Diego this week - A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. has ruled the National Security Council is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act - The House Oversight Committee is setting rules for representatives - Netcom and Scientology settle their long-running feud - AOL now has a $1,000,000 Bikini Lawsuit on its hands - just to rub it in, AOL goes down for 19 hours - John Romero quits ID Software to go in new directions - A law professor in Cleveland is going after the State Department for limiting his free speech - intel's 150mhz is a snooze - new Novell client for NT on its way, so it NDS - British Telecom is talking up its Soul Catcher 2025. Is this thing for real?
8/3/96:Olympic Sized Web Sites We were joined on the phone by Hari Sreenivasan from c|net. He's one of the people responsible for their Olympic Links page. He and his colleagues have been busy in the recent weeks checking out hundreds of sites related to the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. We talked about both official and unofficial web sites. Among the many sites he's seen, Hari likes the Sports Illustrated site, with its fine writing. Ric mentioned The Atlanta Journal's site, and Doran enjoyed both Apple Computer's Atlanta Street Scene site and looking back at the Britannica Sporting Record site, which lists the medal winners in all events since the modern Olympics began in 1896.
In the news:
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved an Anti-Terrorism bill, but it didn't include controversial provisions regarding encryption, web content and wire tapping - intel's net phone has a long way to go - the U.S. and Japan have reached a non-agreement regarding chips - DVD may actually amount to something - Wired Ventures sez it's a Digital Revolution, so you had better not! (oh yea? Tell it to these guys)
7/27/96:John Bates, The Silicon Surfer. John is Director of Online Services at Virtual Vegas and one of the founders of RadioNet which airs Sunday mornings on KSCO in Santa Cruz, where he provides the weekly Silicon Surfer Report. We talked about some of the new technologies that are coming to the net to address problems such as Bandwidth. We also talked about Virtual Vegas, where they are working through many issues that are important to the future of the net, such as online commerce and verification of identity (while maintaining some degree of privacy).
In the news:
IBM is having problems at the Olympics - The net is slowing down, is there any hope? - AOL tries to go "English only" in a message area - Ralph Nader is after the White House for not releasing documents - Congressman Rick White is proposing HR478 which is supposed to open up more House records to the public - The SEC has closed an online site and accusing its owner of fraud - Microsoft says it's going to support HTML standards and make ActiveX into an open standard - The Pointcast Network has been getting some flak for creating too much net traffic - Hackers are meeting this weekend in Las Vegas at Defcon 4 and this time they invited the FBI.
7/20/96:What's the Future of the Independent ISP? We were joined in-studio today by Jim Pickrell, formerly of Leonardo Internet. We discussed some of the challenges facing today's small and middle sized ISP, including new pressures from the Telcos and Cable companies. Jim cited personalized service and close contact between customer and provider as reasons to choose a local provider.
7/13/96:The Amiga Computer Douglas Nakakihara, who writes the Amiga column for Microtimes, was our in-studio guest this week. The Amiga is still in use in many places and has a loyal following. We talked about the viability of the Amiga and whether this terrific platform has a future. Amiga Technologies has been sold to VSICorp. and it's yet to be seen what will happen to the machine or the OS. A good place to find out more is The so called Amiga Home Page.
7/6/96:Bringing Politics to the Internet. We looked at different ways that politics are covered on the Internet, whether it's mainstream, grass-roots, or something in-between. We first spoke with Troy K. Schneider, the Campaign Editor for PoliticsNow, an online site sponsored by The Washington Post, ABC News and the National Journal. He mentioned how journalists from the more traditional (print and broadcast) media are just now beginning to realize and exploit the differences in reporting via the 'net. Longer stories, discussion groups, archives and hyperlinks are all things that can be used by the wired publication to deliver the story to the user in a way not possible elsewhere.

Next, we were joined by self-described "political irritant" Jim Warren. The politically savvy net-surfer knows Jim as a tireless advocate for the rights of cybercitizens. He continues his fight for "at-cost" access to government information, instead of the premium prices being sought by some politicians. Jim also thinks that the continued success of grass-roots activism depends on limiting the "per-bit" billing proposed by some telcos. By being charged "per-bit", some people couldn't afford to access government information or participate in any form of Electronic Democracy. These people would be effectively shut-out of using the power of the Internet to contribute and help make decisions. Not only is this bad, but also wrong.

Finally, we were joined by Clair Whitmer the News Editor at c|net. Ever since the Communications Decency Act made the news, c|net is finding the lines between Computer News and Political News are becoming more and more blurred. They are now beginning to report an increasing number of political stories now that government is becoming increasingly aware of the 'net.

In the news:
It looks like the Pro-CODE Bill will have to wait until the next session of Congress - AOL agrees to give one hour free time to customers it may have overbilled - Smith Barney is mighty upset at a former employee who has his own Smith Barney web page at his Municipal Bond Scandals site. "The purpose is to provide insight into unethical and potentially illegal activities by both Smith Barney and Travelers." says the site's creator Michael Lissack - El Paso student Jose Saavedra got himself arrested, has spent weeks in jail and faces years more in prison for comments he made on the Internet regarding California State Senator Tim Leslie. Should somebody face years in prison for a usenet posting? Some people don't think so - Banyan Systems doesn't like its Switchboard service being included at The Stalker's Homepage. I wonder why...
6/29/96:Designing Good Web Pages. In the first half of the show today we were joined by Daniel Akst who, among other things, writes the Postcard of Cyberspace column for the L.A. Times. He said that the best web sites often do not have a lot of fancy graphics and sounds that get in the way. We also talked about online publishing with Slate and Salon, listening to music with TheDJ Player and how you can check prices at PriceWatch.

In the Second half of the show we were joined by Tom Barron, David Chen and Ken Lobb, all from Ikon Communications, a web design company in Southern California. Ikon recently redesigned the KPFK web site. We spoke about what it takes to make a nice web page. All three mention that it is particularly easy to learn HTML and a person shouldn't hesitate to jump in and design pages on their own. That said, we all agreed that the nicest looking web sites are useless if they don't have any meaningful content. The page should not only look good, but it also must say something.

In the news:
The Justice Dept. is going to appeal the recent CDA ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court - In the meantime The Supreme Court ruled (in a split decision) against the 1992 Cable Act which banned material considered indecent from Cable T.V. - Education Secretary Richard Riley wants free internet access for schools - RAM prices are WAY down
6/22/96:After the CDA Ruling, Now What? We spoke with Jonah Seiger from The Center for Democracy & Technology and Brock Meeks from Netizen about what the recently ruling on the CDA really means. Is there any hope for true free speech on the net? maybe. Is the fight is over? Hardly! Be sure and stay tuned, this should get interesting...
6/15/96:The Wiz from Wwwiz Don Hamilton, the Editor of Wwwiz Magazine returned as our guest today. Wwwiz is a free magazine that is available throughout Southern California. We talked about the state of the Web & things to come and we took your phone calls.

In the news:
The three judge panel hearing the ACLU vs. Reno case against the Communications Decency Act has ruled 3-0 that the CDA is unconstitutional. The judges recognize that the Internet is "the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed" and it "deserves the highest protection from government intrution". So far, the White House has yet to decided whether or not they'll file an appeal to the Supreme Court --- Pac Bell seems to be ordering minimum security against Caller-ID for some of its customers who ordered maximum security. Pac Bell customers should call 1-800-386-0000 to verify their blocking request or the blocking option for the phone being used --- The FTC chooses a "wait and see" attitude with regards to regulating "data gathering" of personal by corporations on the net --- Lexus/Nexus stops giving out Social Security numbers --- RSA And Nihon have developed 1,024 bit encryption in Japan, apparently freeing the companies from restrictive U.S. export laws --- Microsoft promises a 64-bit version of Windows NT in 1997, while at the same time it seems version 4.0 of the operating system will be delayed for months until at least October of this year --- James Buckley is out as the President of Apple Americas as Gil Amelio continues the reorganization of Apple
6/8/96:How's Windows95 Working for You? Today we opened the phones so you could tell us how well Windows95 has been working for you. Just about every caller who is using Win95 pointed out serious compatibility issues - a serious problem for an operating system that touts its Plug & Play capabilities. Most (but not all) problems seem to stem from using older components with this new operating system.
6/1/96:BEEMNET & Women's Wire. After the New's, Ric & I were joined on the phone by Laurie Kretchmar, Editor in Chief of the online magazine Women's Wire, which is re-debuting on the Web this Monday (6/3/96).

In the second half of the show, we were joined in studio by Dr. Deborah Colbern, President of the Brain Exchange Electronic Mentorship Network (BEEMNET), a wonderful effort to bring 3-6 grade students and neuroscientists together via the Web. The result is that both groups learn things that they never suspected. Remember this when somebody asks you for a tangible example of the value of the Internet.
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