From the web page http://www.samizdat.com/news25.html INTERNET-ON-A-DISK #25, September 1998 The newsletter of electronic texts and Internet trends. This issue and all other issues are available at our Web site, http://www.samizdat.com, which is hosted by Acunet, in Marlboro, MA, providers of dial-up Internet access, Web hosting, Web design, and Cyberbazaars (a low-cost Internet commerce service). Permission is granted to freely distribute this newsletter in electronic form for non-commercial use. All other rights reserved. Parts of this are being collected in a book entitled The Social Web by Richard Seltzer. If you would like to "talk" directly with Richard, connect to http://www.web-net.org/ and click on Richard Seltzer's Chat: Business on the World Wide Web, on Thursdays from noon to 1 PM (US Eastern Daylight Time, GMT -4) Send your comments, letters to the editor, and related articles to [log in to unmask] For information on who we are check http://www.samizdat.com/who.html To access other issues, go to http://www.samizdat.com/#ioad. The full text of all issues is available for free, with hypertext links to the sites referenced. (Please keep in mind that URLs frequently change. We will attempt to update the information in this on-line edition, but don't expect perfection.) We believe in the importance of freely sharing information on the Internet, but do not have the time or the inclination to deal with all the hassles of maintaining a massive mailing list. If you would like to receive entire issues in email form, the cost to be added to the distribution list is $10. That's a one-time charge, not a subscription fee. You are free to forward those messages to whoever you like. For details on the how and why of this policy, check http://www.samizdat.com/plan.html. Table of Contents Web notes -- * Automatic email updates to AltaVista queries (from TracerLock) * Reverse telephone lookup (from Anywho) * Changes to Advanced Search at AltaVista Portable electronic book readers -- by John Mark Ockerbloom Recommended plug-ins and utilities -- by Tracy Marks New electronic texts -- from the Gutenberg Project, from The Internet Public Library Online Texts Collection Off-the-wall ideas * "Cultural citizenship" -- an alternative form of government made possible by the Internet -- by Richard Seltzer * Reply from Alfred C. Thompson * Castro, baseball, and a possible end to political conflict with Cuba -- by Richard Seltzer * Baseball -- time for a rule change: from intentional walk to "home walk" -- by Richard Seltzer * Why Clinton might resign -- by Richard Seltzer Letters to the Editor * Marketing the book vs. marketing the author -- from Brett Hart * Asking for advice re: do-it-yourself Web hosting by cable modem -- from "martin--the birdscaper" and from Eric Eldred * Advice regarding anti-hate pledge -- from Denise Rogers Web notes Service provides automatic email updates of your AltaVista queries (when you want to be alerted of new developments) TracerLock http://www.peacefire.org/tracerlock/ TracerLock can monitor the AltaVista search engine for you and notify you by e-mail when a new instance of a search term is found. After registering (for free), you enter the queries you are interesting in tracking -- using the format for Advanced Search (Boolean) at AltaVista. All the features of AltaVista queries apply, such as searching for a phrase by putting it in parentheses. For instance, you could set up link:yourdomainname AND NOT host:yourdomainname e.g., link:samizdat.com AND NOT host:samizdat.com to find new Web pages that have hyperlinks to pages at your site. You also can set up newsgroup searches. Since newsgroup items are only archived for 2-4 weeks at AltaVista, it would be very helpful to get alerts about new items there that match an on-going interest of yours. For instance, you could set up from:ford.com AND newsgroups:comp AND productname to find new items posted in computer-related newsgroups by people who work at Ford and that mention your "productname." NB -- when I signed up, the server or connection was very slow. Be patient. It's worth the wait. (Thanks to Bruce Spencer at Cobb/Ziff-Davis for the pointer to this one.) Reverse telephone look up (enter the number and get the name and address) Anywho (from AT&T Labs) http://www.anywho.com This directory service includes white and yellow page telephone listings (including toll-free numbers), as well as email addresses and URLs. Purportedly, they have over 90 million consumer and over 10 million business listings. If you are searching for a business, you get all relevant info about them in a single listing. You also can click to get a map generated on the fly, with driving directions (from MapsOnUs). But the feature I find most useful is the reverse telephone lookup. I tried my own home phone number, then clicked on the address and got a list of the names, addresses, and phone numbers of everyone on my street. I've lived here for 21 years and there are neighbors I've bumped into off and on for years, without knowing their names (when you've said "hello" to someone for years, it's a bit embarrassing to ask them what their name is...) Now I can finally put names to those faces (and can even phone them if I like). Changes to Advanced Search at AltaVista (possible source of confusion) AltaVista http://www.altavista.digital.com In the recent redesign of the Advanced Search page at AltaVista, they swapped the positions of the query and ranking boxes, and changed their labels. If you were a regular user of this service, you might well have been confused by the changed and wondered why you were getting bizarre search results. What had been known as the "query box" is now the "boolean expression" box (the box on the bottom), and the "ranking box" is the one on top. So, for instance, to get recipes when you don't know anything about cooking, enter recipe in the Boolean box. And in the box at the top of the page, enter the list of everything you happen to have in the refrigerator. For more detail, check my on-line tutorial on how to get the most out of AltaVista, starting at http://www.samizdat.com/script/title.htm Portable electronic book readers by John Mark Ockerbloom [log in to unmask] (moderator of the Book People mailing list, admin. and unsubscribe address: [log in to unmask]) (reporting on Digital Libraries '98, an annual conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery) I finally got to try one of those portable electronic book readers. These devices have been discussed (and hyped) in the press for a while ... and are often promoted as the future of books, though none of them have taken off in the market yet. If the device I tried (a research prototype from Fuji Xerox labs called XLibris, and not a consumer product) is typical of what's being offered, there's still some way to go before these things will have general appeal. But the prototype I tried also had some unexpectedly appealing features, and I might be inclined to get one if I needed to carry a lot of information in a portable package. The device was about the size of aa large notepad. It displayed a portrait-oriented page of about 8 1/2 by 11 inches, and came with a special pen. The pages in the demonstration were image scans of journal articles. Both the pad and the pen were untethered. The display was color, and backlit. You could tilt it to some extent and still read it, though if you went more than about 20-30 degrees off center, the display became hard to read. The text itself was fairly easy to read and skim in its regular typeface, though the resolution wasn't quite up to the smaller type used for footnotes and captions. The pen was used to turn pages (by pointing to a "dog-eared corner" icon whose thickness varied depending on how many pages were "behind" the one you were looking at. Another prototype (which I didn't get to try myself) had what I thought was a better page-turning design; you could squeeze the corners of the pad to turn a page, or if you kept squeezing, "riffle" though the book pages as if you were flipping through a book's pages rapidly; a nice touch. I'm not sure my device would have been quite up to that, as there was a small but noticeable delay in turning pages. The pen could also be used for highlighting and freeform annotations in various colors. The device would save these annotations, and could also, if you entered a special mode, suggest other pages and documents in its internal library that were related to the words and phrases you highlighted or underlined. (Basically, it did a similarity search on the words.) You'd see a small version of the other page suggested, and could hit it with the pen to bring up that page and article. The new page could then highlight the related material. (I suspect that this feature was the main innovation the prototype was designed to investigate.) With other pen touches, you could browse the overall "library" stored in the pad, visit other documents, and also keep (and navigate through) a record of what you'd read and highlighted. The interface was a bit more modal than it needed to be (that is, you had to remember what mode buttons you'd hit, and performance got a bit sluggish or unexpected if you left certain modes on longer than intended.) Some of the "modes" could have naturally been made part of the pen itself. For example, it would be useful to just flip over the pen to use the "eraser", and perhaps click on levers on the pen (like the ones used in 4-color pens) to select different annotation and highlighting colors, instead of having to click on the displayed toolbar to use these features. Still, if the device has high enough capacity, I could see it as being very useful when you needed to have large amounts of documentation around. Right now at work I'm working on setting up some servers in a machine room to be usable remotely, and am having to lug around about a foot and a half worth of large computer manuals. It would be very useful to be able to just carry around a pad like this, and be able to annotate the documentation, and follow cross-links to related material. Likewise, I could see it very useful for doctors to have a medical library and journal they could carry around while visiting patients, so they could consult studies on strange symptoms as they discovered them. Other professionals working with large amounts of knowledge could also find such a pad and library useful. The page image format, now used for some on-line books, has some disadvantages of being large and expensive to store and transmit (unless one uses a low resolution that makes it less useful). This may change now that there are new image compression algorithms coming out that are optimized for reading book pages over the Net. I saw a demo of one of them (DjVu from At&T Labs) and was rather impressed. From what I could tell, the technology uses two-stage compression, foreground/background differentiation, feature detection, and progressive loading, to get page images that are 5-10 times smaller than comparable GIF or JPEG images, and which can be viewed very quickly over a download connection, since the text and the other main features people of the page load first. (Further loading just sharpens the detail on the fonts and the graphics, but the text seems to become legible very fast.) The plug-in for the format also allows images to be panned and zoomed to minute detail. There's a web site for DjVu at http://djvu.research.att.com/ . Recommended Plug-ins and Utilities by Tracy Marks [log in to unmask] (from a message sent to Nettrain August 31, 1998 and posted at http://www.webwinds.com/classes/plugins.htm copyright 1998 by Tracy Marks and reposted here with permission of the author (Recommendations here are W95 and Netscape4-based.) In regard to programs I use and recommend to my Internet students... The programs that I believe are essential are: a) an antivirus program, preferably one of the following: * Norton http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/index.html * McAffee http://www.mcafee.com/ * Dr.Solomon'shttp://www.drsolomon.com/index_new.cfm * Thunderbyte http://www.thunderbyte.com/ b) a zip and unzip program program (WinZip recommended http://www.winzip.com/tucows/ ) I find these extremely useful for most Net surfers: a) Adobe Acrobat reader http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html b) PowerPoint viewer if you don't have PowerPoint http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/index.htm#downloads c) Quick View Plus http://www.inso.com/qvp/index.htm (All three reachable on Netcape Navigator for the pc via Help, About Plugins or at: http://home.netscape.com/plugins/index.html ) d) a quickie image viewer (ACDSee recommended - http://www.acdsystems.com/ or http://www.acdvictoria.com/pages/index.html e) a bookmark manager program (Compass recommended - http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/way/5500/compass.html Note: Many people also like PowerMarks: http://www.kaylon.com/power.html f) a separate-from-browser email program (Eudora Lite and Eudora Pro recommended http://www.eudora.com ) Also a web-based email account such as Netscape's webmail at http://webmail.netscape.com/ or a separate email address to use with newsgroups (Mailbank recommended - http://www.mailbank.com/) These are enjoyable multimedia extras: a) Crescendo for enhanced midi online http://www.liveupdate.com/crescendo.html b) Real Audio and Video Player http://www.real.com/ c) Quick Time for Windows (video) http://www.apple.com/quicktime/ (All three available at Netscape's plugin site) d) An enhanced Midi player (Wingroove recommended - http://www.cc.rim.or.jp/~hiroki/english/ review at http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/ info.html?fcode=000RQ7 For more midi and Crescendo recommendations and music files, see my midi and Crescendo links at http://www.webwinds.com/friends/midi.htm And other Internet browsing and communication extras: a) ICQ for instant communications http://www.mirabilis.com/ b) for active newsgroup readers, a newsreader such as Gravity (previously Anawave, now MicroPlanet - downloadable at: http://www.microplanet.com/ and reviewed at: http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/Newsreader/ss04.html c) an offline browser (Teleport Pro http://www.tenmax.com/pro.html ) For Windows 95: In regard to additional freeware and shareware that is not Internet-related, but very useful for W95, I personally rely on: * Microsoft's TWEAK UI for getting rid of Microsoft desktop icons http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/info/powertoys.htm * EZDESK for keeping my desktop icons where I want them http://www.windweaver.com/w95tips7.htm#desktop, or search here: http://www8.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/download/index.html * IDA for viewing my free hard drive space from the toolbar http://www.systeam.dk/index.htm * MULTILAUNCH for multiple file associations in W95 (an invaluable, hard-to-find tool, only available by searching here: http://www8.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/download/index.html * EZ-SPLIT for transferring large files to floppy disks (also available at zdnet's pcmag software: http://www8.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/download/index.html ) * NOTESPAD for an enhanced and html-friendly Notepad (I regard Notespad as essential for html text editing...) ftp://ftp.realtime.net/vendors/newbie.net/NotesPad/ ntspad32.zip For more info and downloads on several of the above programs, see also my W95 tips: http://www.windweaver.com/w95tips.htm Frankly, I warn students against installing too many plugins, as they slow down one's computer. I also most highly recommend Tucows http://www.tucows.com/us.html, Stroud http://www.stroud.com, Dave Central http://davecentral.com/ and Zdnet hotfiles http://www.hotfiles.com for freeware and shareware because of their xcellent reviews, although Winfiles http://www.winfiles.com also has An outstanding collection. Zdnet's PC Magazine software library at http://www8.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/download/swlib.html also continually posts reviews and recommendations of the best Internet as well as Windows 95 shareware. Tracy Marks [log in to unmask], Windweaver Web Training and Design, Arlington, Massachusetts, http://www.windweaver.com/ Internet training and web design for individuals, schools, businesses and nonprofit organizations. Internet Search Bookstore http://www.windweaver.com/booksrch.htm, Webwinds Web Cameras http://www.webwinds.com/, Webcards: Annotated Guide http://www.webwinds.com/cards/cards.htm, Figure skating photos http://www.webwinds.com/skating/skating.htm New electronic texts Etexts recently made available over the Internet from the Gutenberg Project ftp://ftp.prairienet.org/pub/providers/gutenberg/etext98/ http://promo.net/pg/ (Adding dozens of new ones every month, Gutenberg has already made over 1500 etexts available for free over the Internet. These include classic works of literature and history, as well as out-of-print and little-known works by great authors. If you can, connect by ftp, rather than the Web, to get the most recent ones. Here's a list of those recently added, alphabetized by author. The file name is useful for fetching the text from the ftp site. Many of these are also available on diskette from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK for those who cannot get them themselves. For the current catalog, check http://www.samizdat.com/catalog.html or send your email request to [log in to unmask]) Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper, et. al. (cndrl10.txt) Horatio Alger, Jr. -- Frank's Campaign/Farm & Camp (frcmp10.txt) Hans Christian Andersen -- Fairy Tales (hcaft10.txt) J.J. Astor -- A Journey in Other Worlds (ajiow10.txt) Honore de Balzac -- * The Lily of the Valley (tlotv10.txt) * A Distinguished Provincial at Paris (adpap10.txt) * The Marriage Contract (mrgct10.txt) * A Passion in the Desert (apitd10.txt) * Adieu (adieu10.txt) * The Hidden Masterpiece (hmstp10.txt) * Modeste Mignon (mdmgn10.txt) * A Daughter of Eve (doeve10.txt) Joel Benton -- The Life of Phineas T. Barnum (ptbnm10.txt) James Boswell -- Life of Johnson (ljnsn10.txt) E.S. Brooks -- * Historic Girls (hgrls10.txt) * True Story of Christopher Columbus (ttscc10.txt) Edward George Bulwer-Lytton -- Last Days of Pompeii (tldop10.txt) Frances Hodgson Burnett -- A Lady of Quality (ladyq10.txt) Edward Carpenter -- Pagan & Christian Creeds (pchrc10.txt) David N. Carvalho -- Forty Centuries of Ink (40cnk10.txt) J. Storer Clausen -- Count Bunker (cbnkr10.txt) Wilkie Collins -- * A Rogue's Life (rgslf10.txt) * The Black Robe (blkrb10.txt) * Man and Wife (mandw10.txt) Hilda Conkling -- Poems By a Little Girl (pbalg10.txt) Richard Harding Davis -- Lion and the Unicorn (liuni10.txt) Alexandre Dumas (fils) -- Camille [La Dame aux Camilias] (cmlle10.txt) Theron Q. Dumont -- The Power of Concentration (prcon10.txt) T.S. Eliot -- Poems (tsepm10.txt) Edna Ferber -- Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed (dwnhr10.txt) John Fiske -- The Unseen World and Other Essays (nswoe10.txt) Louis Ginzberg -- * The Legends of the Jews, Volume 1 (1lotj10.txt) * The Legends of the Jews, Volume 2 (2lotj10.txt) R.B. Cunninghame Graham -- A Vanished Arcadia (vajip10.txt) Hale -- The Life of Columbus, [in his own words] (tlocc10.txt) Julian Hawthorne -- The Golden Fleece (gldfl10.txt) Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Most Interesting Stories of All Nations (misan10.txt) William Ernest Henley -- Poems (pmweh10.txt) O. Henry -- * Options (optns10.txt) * Whirligigs (whrlg10.txt) Thomas Hughes -- Tom Brown's School Days (tbssd10.txt) Ibanez -- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (4hrsm10.txt) Andrew Lang * (translator) -- Aucassin and Nicolete (aucnc10.txt) * Letters to Dead Authors (letda10.txt) * A Monk of Fife (mnkff10.txt) * Essays in Little (esltt10.txt) Maurice LeBlanc -- The Crystal Stopper (cstpr10.txt) Jack London -- Smoke Bellew (smkbl10.txt) John Lord -- * Beacon Lights of History, volume 3, part 1 (31blh10.txt) * Beacon Lights of History, volume 3, part 2 (32blh10.txt) Martin Luther -- Commentary on Galatians (mlglt10.txt) Christopher Marlowe -- * Massacre at Paris (msprs10.txt) * Tamburlaine the Great Part 2 (tmbn210.txt) Cleland Boyd McAfee -- Study of the King James Bible (sokjv10.txt) Charles Morris (editor) -- The San Francisco Calamity (sfclm10.txt) H.H. Munro ("Saki") -- The Toys of Peace (toypc10.txt) Abraham Myerson -- The Foundations of Personality (prsty10.txt) William Osler -- The Evolution of Modern Medicine (teomm10.txt) Eden Phillpotts -- The Grey Room (gryrm10.txt) Plato (translated by Benjamin Jowett) -- * Laches (lachs10.txt) * Charmides (crmds10.txt) * Lysis (lysis10.txt) * Timaeus (tmeus10.txt) * Critias (criti10.txt) * The Republic (repub11.txt) * Euthydemus (uthyd10.txt) * Symposium (sympo10.txt) * Protagoras (prtgs10.txt) * Cratylus (crtls10.txt) Howard Pyle -- Men of Iron (femen10.txt) Mary Roberts Rinehart -- * The Breaking Point (brkpt10.txt) * The Amazing Interlude (mzgnt10.txt) Ernest Savage -- Old English Libraries (nglbs10.txt) Sir Walter Scott -- Kenilworth (knlwt10.txt) George Bernard Shaw -- Perfect Wagnerite, Commentary the Ring (sring10.txt) Upton Sinclair -- The Profits of Religion (prfrl10.txt) Chester K. Steele -- The Golf Course Mystery (glfms10.txt) James Stephens -- The Clock of Gold (crkgd10.txt) Robert Louis Stevenson and L. Osbourne -- * The Wrong Box (wrngb10.txt) * The Ebb-Tide (ebtid10.txt) D.O. Stewart -- A Parody Outline of History (apooh10.txt) J. M. Synge -- In Shadow of the Glen (sglen10.txt) Booth Tarkington -- Seventeen (svntn10.txt) Henry van Dyke -- * Little Rivers (ltrvs10.txt) * The Blue Flower (blflr10.txt) Kate Douglas Wiggin -- A Cathedral Courtship (cthrc10.txt) Mary Wilkins -- * Stories Of The Supernatural (sotsn10.txt) * The Wind in the Rose-Bush (sotsn10.txt) Woods -- How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers (httbf10.zip) The Internet Public Library Online Texts Collection http://www.ipl.org/reading/books/ A joint project of the Internet Public Library and the Michigan Humanities Text Initiative, the "Online Texts Collection contains over 7700 titles that can be browsed by author, by title, or by Dewey Subject Classification." The do not store any texts locally, but rather catalog texts elsewhere on the Internet, making it easy for you to search for what you want and linking directly to the texts themselves. (It was a pleasant surprise to search for "Seltzer" and see all of my own books and stories, from, included in the catalog, complete with Dewey classification, and with links to my site http://www.samizdat.com ). Off-the-wall ideas "Cultural citizenship" -- an alternative form of government made possible by the Internet by Richard Seltzer, [log in to unmask] We have grown accustomed to thinking of the U.S. as a "melting pot," with people from many different cultural backgrounds. But the same is true of many other countries around the world. Hence many people feel a dissociation between their cultural identity and the political entity that rules the geographic area where they happen to live. At the very least, this dissociation can lead to feelings of isolation, of being out-siders, of not belonging. Where cultural minorities are large enough, it can lead to political unrest, rebellion, and civil war. The Internet makes it theoretically possible for people with a common cultural background to communicate with and bond with one another, regardless of where they may happen to live. We will increasingly find ourselves with two intertwined identities -- the bonds (social and economic) that arise from where we happen to be physically located and the bonds that arise from cultural background and belief and conviction and on-line interaction. And now that Internet usage is spreading broadly -- reaching all countries, and increasingly becoming available to the many, rather than just the elite few -- perhaps it is time to consider the opportunities this opens, not just for increasing mutual understanding, and building virtual culture-based communities, but also for changing our basic concepts of what constitutes a government and what it's role should be. One possibility would be to recognize a "cultural citizenship" in addition to today's "geographic citizenship". I was born in the United States and live here and pay taxes here and vote here. But I may feel I have a cultural identity that is German or Irish or Scottish or Italian. Someone who lives in Israel may feel cultural allegiance to Judaism or to the Arabic world. For a moment, forget the current geo-political landscape, and consider the possibilities. Say each individual in the world had the opportunity to declare his or her "cultural citizenship." Say that then some part of taxes collected from this individual went to support an organizational entity devoted to that culture/background, and that individual had the right to vote to determine the leadership and direction of that cultural entity. Then in a country with many cultures, no single culture would be the "winner" and all the others "losers" or "minorities." Everyone, regardless of where they live, would belong to the culture of their choice and have a say in the preservation of its past/traditions and the direction of its future development. This virtual, cultural citizenship need not be limited to national or religious or other pre-existing "cultures." People should be able to belong to whatever cultural entities they wish, including newly created ones, based on any common interest. And "cultural citizenship" need not be "all-or-nothing." Someone could, for example choose to be 60% German, 20% Turkish, 10% Argentinian, 10% Mormon Church... In that case, the taxes and the voting rights would be similarly divided -- e.g., 60% of that person's cultural tax going to support the German culture and 60% of that person's cultural vote going to that entity. The infrastructure and the habits of behavior supported by the Internet make this bizarre notion possible. Would it be desirable? How might it work? And how might we get from here to there? I'd be very interested in hearing your reactions. [log in to unmask] Reply from Alfred C. Thompson II <[log in to unmask]> http://www.tiac.net/users/act2/ I like the idea of cultural citizenship in many ways. The Internet does facilitate this sort of concept. I tend to think of myself as a resident of both New Hampshire and of Cyberspace for example. I see a number of problems with your concept. Many of them revolve around taxes. For New Hampshire people, such as myself, taxes are a most important issue. Through my involvement in public schools, as an elected official, I have become painfully familiar with many emotions and issues around taxation. I believe that many of these issues go far beyond the narrow bound of this little state. Problem number one is the American notion of separation of church and state. While many nations do use tax money to support churches, Americans have an almost pathological objection to this. And it's not just that they don't want their money going to churches or that they don't want taxes going to other people's churches. They don't want to see anyone's tax money go to anyone's churches. So you'll never see Americans agreeing to the inclusion of religious affiliations getting tax money. I also see worldwide an objection to governments helping collect taxes for groups that some people do not support. There are probably enough people who have enough of an objection to enough groups that this will never fly. Now you can argue logic, but *every group* gets money, until you are blue in the face. Rational arguments and taxes are about as useless as rational arguments and religion. And I say this as one who supports taxes, religion and rational arguments. Reality is reality. For the notion of taxes to work in this global system they must be voluntary. No government is going to use its force to collect for other entities. They spend enough resources collecting for themselves. Voluntary taxes do work. Else churches in most of the world would fold. They require that members have a strong belief in the mission of the organization. And that the money raised supports that mission. The Internet can be used to support more global organizations. However the idea of citizenship implies more than just common affiliation and financial support for an organization. Citizenship implies duty, rights and privileges. Duty includes financial support (paying of taxes), adherence to laws, and, in many states, contribution of time and effort (military or other public service.) This much you've started to cover in your essay. But what of rights and privileges? For a state, rights and privileges includes such things as are stated in the American Bill of Rights. Due process of law, freedom to contribute to the process of government and to benefit for the system. Privileges include the protection of the government from enemies (internal and external.) It is from these rights and privileges that citizenship aquires its value. In fact, one can (and often must) pay taxes without getting the benefits of citizenship. From what I've seen, American citizenship is moderately difficult to acquire. The US requires several years of residence and the passing of a test. There are countries where citizenship may be purchased. I read the other day that one country in Africa sells citizenship for $5,000. Other countries require years of residence and official acceptance by the government. Rules for acquiring membership in cultural citizenship groups must be clearly defined and probably non-trivial for them to be accepted. The rights and privileges must also be clear. And they must be supported. I'm not sure what they will be or how supported. But it is something to think about. Castro, baseball, and a possible end to political conflict with Cuba by Richard Seltzer [log in to unmask] Perhaps Major League Baseball could help put an end to tensions between the U.S. and Cuba. Baseball is extremely popular in Cuba, and Castro himself used to be a quality player with pro potential before he became a revolutionary and then dictator. Consider the possibilities if Major League Baseball were to (gratis, for the good of world peace) offer Castro personal ownership of a major league franchise for Havana. The sole condition would be that he retire from politics. This would in one swift stroke * give Castro a way to step down, gracefully, without losing face, * give Congress and the President an excuse to re-establish normal relations, without losing face, * create a firm basis for quickly opening commerce between Cuba and the US (with all the multiple business contacts and opportunities related to the games, the news coverage, the television rights, the stadium, the travel, the visitors/tourists, etc.), and * provide a common ground for understanding between the American people and the Cuban people, through their enthusiasm for baseball. Such a move could not only reduce political tensions, but could also be the first step toward establishment of a Carribean or Latin American League, which could have equal status with the American and National Leagues, and have inter-league play with the American and National Leagues, and participate in the World Series. Baseball -- time for a rule change: from intentional walk to "home walk" by Richard Seltzer [log in to unmask] When sluggers like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa come to the plate, we want to see action. But, under the current rules, opposing managers often call for an intentional walk when they come to the plate. It's only logical -- you take the bat out of the slugger's hands at the minimal cost of putting the guy on first base. A simple change in the rules could have interesting implications, and add some additional excitement to the game. As it is now, the choice of an intentional walk is entirely in the hands of the team in the field. Why not give the batter a chance to decline? In other words, when you have four balls, you can walk to first; but you can also decline the walk, and continue to bat, keeping whatever strikes you may have. If you then get eight balls (before getting three strikes), you again can walk if you choose -- but this time you would go to second base, instead of first; or you can opt again to continue to bat. At twelve balls, you can choose to go all the way to third. And at sixteen balls, you get a "home walk." That small rule change could lead to some interesting and difficult choices for both the pitcher and the batter, a lot fewer intentional walks, and more action. (If you know anybody who involved in rule changes for Major League Baseball, please forward this to them. :-) Why Clinton might resign by Richard Seltzer, [log in to unmask] Bill Clinton seems determined to hold onto the presidency to the bitter end, relying on his continued popularity to avoid impeachment. As long as economic prosperity continues, the public will remain generally apathetic regarding his mistakes -- avidly following in the media the tale of his troubles and the continuing revelations of his misdeeds, but with the same kind of not-really-caring distance as they follow soap operas. Basically, Clinton's personal problems are no surprise to anyone, even though the lurid details are shocking. And very few people perceive that it is important to their own personal well-being that Clinton be removed for office. (He has not yet become a scapegoat for public ills. There are no public ills, at the present time, for him to be a scapegoat for.) But there is one compelling reason why he might very well resign. It is a certainty that if Clinton were to suddenly, unexpectedly resign, the stock market would drop precipitously. It might rebound the next day, or even that same afternoon, but the immediate effect would be a certain drop in the Dow of hundreds of points. Hence, Clinton has in his hands a virtually sure-fire way to make a fortune over night, initiating stock transactions based on his fore-knowledge of his own decision. There would be nothing "illegal" about this action, for he would have no "insider-knowledge" regarding any company. Rather, he would be taking advantage of the fact that his decision would affect the entire market. And he could thereby leave office as a "winner," with enough wealth to ease the pain of political disaster. Letters to the Editor Marketing the book vs. marketing the author From: Brett Hart <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 21:39:22 -0400 As a writer hopeful, I read with interest your article on using the internet to distribute writing to a wide audience -- initially for free, with the hopes of a publishing contract later -- and agree with your analysis on the current reluctance of publishers to submit potentially profitable work on so open a forum. However, I would like to add that until publishers either take such an initiative (or, better still, peruse the 'net for examples of worthy talent), aspiring writers such as I will be in a frustrating situation. I, like other fellow hopefuls, have to maintain a full-time job (fortunately for me, one that does allow some use of my writing ability) in order to make ends meet. This, naturally, consumes the majority of my daily energy which could otherwise be spent in writing on a scale which could be publicized across the internet. However, if I were to reduce my working hours and divert some of that energy to undertake such an endeavor, the lack of compensation for my efforts (as you described in your article) would leave me financially desparate. Until some means is discovered for allowing piece-rate writing on the internet by hitherto unknown authors (the same concept that was applied with great success by newspapers in the early history of American journalism), a lot of talent (including mine, if I may be so bold) will be stifled before it has a chance to be seen. Any advice or comments you have would be appreciated. Again, I enjoyed your article. Reply from Richard Seltzer, [log in to unmask] Posting on the Internet is part of the writing process, rather than separate from it. That is how I get feedback, which helps me better understand the impact of what I have written, and helps me edit and improve, it also brings interesting comments that help stimulate me to think in new directions. (It's a lot easier, less time-consuming, and more valuable than begging friends to read my work.) And publishers/editors, etc. do, increasingly, use the Internet to search for new material. * my fantasy The Lizard of Oz was found by Ebooks Multimedia, an outfit in San Francisco that makes interactive CD ROMs for kids. I now have a contract with them (but they'll have to raise some funds to actually go ahead with it) * my play Amythos was found by a small theater company in Spokane, WA, that wants to produce it (I should get about $295 royalties for their performances) * my translation of two books about Ethiopia from the Russian was found by a professor/historian in Addis Ababa, and thanks to his enthusiasm, they will be published next year by Red Sea Press. No, I'm not going to get rich from such "successes". But works that otherwise would simply gather dust are likely to reach audiences beyond the Internet, and gradually I'm building a name for myself as a writer. I couldn't ask for anything more. Asking for advice re: cable modems From: martin--the birdscaper <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 10:29:30 -0700 (PDT) I do believe your article that cable modems will be the trend later on as everyone wants to be a publisher and put his family or himself on the web. I've recently talked with mediaone--cable company here in jacksonville florida and once a customer subscribes to mediaone cable service (TV & INTERNET), then mediaone automatically becomes the ISP of that customer. A direct connection & a speed of 1.5mbps or greater will make a desktop become a webserver. In fact, honestly, I've been contacting DELL or DIGITAL for a CPU which will house both as my personal desktop and webserver. Now, may I ask your opinion on this. I want to buy a web server (compaq, if you may recommend)and at the same time a graphics workstation. Please. tell me the specs and hardware that will be enough to run a webserver. won't my desktop files be invaded by someone accessing my web site? Aren't my personal files at risk since I have my webserver and personal desktop in one CPU casing? if you can give me a dream machine, then be it. I'll appreciate your response. thank you very much. martin Reply from Richard Seltzer, [log in to unmask] I suggest that you check the responses to that article, at http://www.samizdat.com/news24.html#summary and #cable t #cable, you'll find messages from several people who are doing this today. I suggest that you contact them directly and get their advice. From their experience, they might be able to save you headaches and money. (e.g., they all seem to be running Linux). Once you have sorted out the issues and determined the right questions to ask your cable company to make sure you won't be pounding your head against a wall, (some of them today just don't get it, and deliberately make it difficult, if not impossible to do your own Web server from home), then you can shop for hardware. (And naturally, I think Compaq would be a good choice :-) Reply from: Eric Eldred <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 07 Sep 1998 10:40:46 +0000 I know it is tempting to get the most powerful machine you can afford. Nowadays a K6-300MHz box is very inexpensive, and what I'd recommend. However, you don't actually need that much power for a web server. Instead of an ultrafast CPU, you should get plenty of RAM (64MB minimum, which means your motherboard and BIOS need to support it all--not every MB will go above 64MB) and as much L2 cache as you can get. Web servers don't tax the CPU as much as they do RAM and sometimes random disk access. I run my web server on a Cyrix P166 (actually 133MHz) box I put together myself, with 64MB RAM and 512KB cache. I use Linux (RedHat 5.0) with some patches for the GNU compiler for Cyrix, and Apache for the web server. You should be aware that my cable company does not officially support Linux. When they install the cable modem they require one of these OSs: Windows 95 or 98 or NT, or Macintosh. Also, the Network Interface Card (NIC) used at installation must be retained because its MAC address is used by the modem software (if you change the card you can have the cable company readdress the modem, with some delay). So what I (and many others) do is set up a Windows machine with the NIC so the cable modem can be installed. If you want to run a web server from Win95/98 you can use the Personal Web Server free from Microsoft -- available with Internet Explorer 4--or pay lots of money to run Microsoft's Internet Server from Windows NT. I used PWS for a while, but it lacks the control facilities and logging available with Apache's free web server (which, BTW, should be available on Windows NT soon as well as Linux and others). There are also some other shareware Windows web servers and firewall systems. The cable installers will remind you to turn off Windows file and print sharing so others will not be able to get at your files. Then, when your system is stable, you can add a Linux box for the web server, or convert the Windows box to Linux and use just it. Linux adds quite a bit more security and power--Linux and Apache have more than half of the web server market now, and your neighborhood ISP might just be running that too. Just move the NIC over to the Linux box. If you want to have a Linux web server and also a Windows or Apple PC connected continously to the Internet via the cable modem, you can set up the Linux server as a firewall (software comes with Linux, configuration help available from other users) and put in a second NIC. Then, with a cheap network hub and a third NIC in the Windows box you can set up a little network. Your files are quite safe on the Windows PCs behind the firewall, yet you can access the web or other machines on the internet outside the firewall, from any machine on the network. (I don't really need the network. I use the Linux box with Netscape to read mail and UseNet and surf the web. I use a Win95 machine with a scanner to OCR books, then I can move then to the web server with a ZIP disk as well as the network.) So maybe it would be wise to hang on to those old computers--they are useful for such tasks as web servers--and learn to set up a home network. This permits other family members to access at the same time as you, and the web server can be ticking away serving files at the same time to users all over the world! It is true that Mediaone does not officially "support" Linux or a home network, but as long as you have elementary security settings and don't cause problems for others they will tolerate you or even recognize that it is okay. You will need to get support from other Linux/Apache/Mediaone users if you have problems. All this is not intended for novices, as even networking experts have problems from time to time. I might mention that I used to have my web site on TIAC. However, bandwidth charges of about 3GB a month were costing me a total of almost $200 a month. This was a strong motivation to move to my home web server and drop the second phone line. I could have set up a permanent telephone connection to TIAC and run my web server from home, but it would have cost much more than the cable modem and provide even less bandwidth. I live too far from the Central Office for DSL to work here. (At last count, I had users from at least 85 countries, with about 150MB of files. You can see for yourself what the cable modem response time is.... I don't claim that all cable modems work this way, but it would be a pity to sit around arguing when it is simple enough to just do it--let the market decide!) "Eric" Eric Eldred Eldritch Press http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/ Advice regarding anti-hate pledge From: Denise Rogers <[log in to unmask]> Date: August 14, 1998 Hi, I was reading excerpts from your book about how to publicize your web site. I really, really could use your help. I am the executive director of a peace and justice organization called Montana Hate Free Zone based in Bozeman, Montana. We have launched an anti-hate, non violence pledge on the internet. Our goal is 1 million people world wide renouncing hatred and violence. This is a global effort. But I find it hard to get the word out. I am literally sending info like this one to groups and individuals one at a time. There has got to be a more effective way. We believe what we are doing is important. So I won't give up. Our web page is http://www.gomontana.com/hatefree on the bottom of the page there is the number 1,000,000. Click on the number and the pledge will appear. We are an all volunteer organization so funds are limited. If you have any ideas or suggestions please let us know. Thank you very much for sharing so generously your knowledge on the internet. Rev. Denise Rogers Executive Director Reply from Richard Seltzer, [log in to unmask] In the old days, email would have been the most effective method. But spam has so muddied the waters that most people delete messages that don't seem directly addressed to them as individuals. As opposed to mass mailings, I'd suggest sending personal notes to individuals, and asking them to send personal notes to a few of their friends, asking them to send personal notes to a few of theirs... Then if your message has merit and strikes a chord, the word should spread on its own. Published by B&R Samizdat Express, PO Box 161, West Roxbury, MA 02132. [log in to unmask] ---------- End of Document VICUG-L ARCHIVES http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html