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October 1997 Newsbyte | |
EDITOR'S
CORNER
OUR OWN WEB PAGE!!! Thanks to Brian Powell!! He has set up a web page
of our own with all kinds of bells and whistles!! Check it out at:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/1681/, a long address, but the price is
right!! It's Free!! Brian has spent many hours making this a very nice web page. Visit
it often, and let us and Brian know how you like it.
E-MAIL !!! Who would have thought that in my tenure as editor of this great
newsletter that we would advance into Electronic mail???? The September issue was
sent to 18 members electronically reducing the "mailed" hard copies to 31 saving the
club $5.76 just in postage.
This issue, hopefully, will even save more as I had only a portion of the members
addresses.
Another upcoming step will be having a meeting all the months instead of having a
break for the fair. Let me or Earl know your feelings on this. If too many people object,
we won't have a meeting in September.
You can still put an advertisement in the newsletter when you have a computer item to
sell. Simply E-Mail me your ad. Address is above.....
I'll include a complete list of members' E-Mail addresses in a future issue. Or
do you want your's published? Let me or Earl know. (Webmaster's Note: A list of
Member's E-mail Addresses and Web Sites is already available. Click Here to get it.)
1998 Dues are due in October and should be paid before the first of the year.
Doesn't seem possible that we could even think about 1998. Time flies when you're
having fun.
| President | Earl McGaha | 264-7950 |
| Vice Presidents | Jim Pfaff | 262-6805 |
| Tom Zimmerman | 264-5521 | |
| Secretary-Treasurer | Pat Johnston | 264-8726 |
| Librarians | Joe Luster | 682-7815 |
| Phillip Crosby | 264-1444 | |
| Editor | Harry Geiser | 682-7486 |
BOSTON -- Mayor Thomas Menino leads me to his conference table overlooking
Boston's inner harbor and gets to the point right away. His decision to install
Net-filtering software on city computers has nothing to do with censorship, he says.
Rather, it has everything to do with porn. "Kids are using these computers to get
pornography," Menino declares. "That was unacceptable."
That volatile mix of children, sex and tax dollars was especially unacceptable to
Mayor Menino. He may not understand cyberspace, but the florid, burly politician
possesses a keen sense of political timing. When a city councilwoman announced in
the Boston Herald on February 12 that she would investigate ways to bar
schoolchildren from accessing playboy.com, the mayor decided to seize the issue and
move even faster. Later that day he announced (and the library board of trustees
agreed) that censorware would be installed in public libraries, schools and community
centers -- anywhere Junior might have access to the Net.
Boston is one of a growing number of governments that are trying to balance the
freedom to read with the demands of outraged parents -- and often coming down on the
side of censorship through censorware. The Supreme Court has ruled that trying to
"quarantine" books "to shield juvenile innocence" reduces adults to reading only what is
fit for children. The justices have said the "Constitution does not permit the official
suppression of ideas" -- but how does this rule apply to web sites?
To Menino, the Net is like cable television, where the adult channels can be
yanked easily. "When I buy my cable TV service for my house, I decide what services I
want, right?" he leans forward and asks me. "Same thing with Internet. I should be able
to decide what services I want on my Internet. I should not have to take every service
they want here." "Kids are using these computers to get pornography. That was
unacceptable."
Not so, says John Roberts, the head of the Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union.
"This is banning information based on content, making decisions on what people can
and can't read," he says, arguing that a government restriction on information in
libraries violates the First Amendment. In other words, Menino's decision is more like
the government ordering a cable company to stop broadcasting the Playboy Channel
completely. Roberts has pledged to sue the city unless Menino backs down.
Michael Hernon, the city's chief information officer, chose CyberPatrol, sold by a local firm in
Framingham, as the censorware of choice for the 26 public libraries; public schools will
use proxy servers instead. "The basic concept here is we're dealing with an acceptable
use policy for computer equipment. It's not censorship. It's not the CDA," he says. "I
agree with the mayor: Hardcore porn has no place in the hands of our children."
Of course, CyberPatrol blocks more than just porn. It bans access to gay and
lesbian resources such
as Reuters news stories and the Queer
Resources Directory, AIDS web sites such as the Critical Path AIDS Project, and women's
resources including the moderated newsgroup soc.feminism. Because CyberPatrol keeps this list secret and updates it weekly,
library patrons don't know what's being blocked.
Today Netly is providing a first-ever peek at the guts of this list.
At least one city official isn't too pleased with the mayor's decision. Maureen
Feeny, the city councilwoman who was the first to discuss controlling access to the Net,
describes Mayor Menino's
move as a "knee-jerk" reaction and says she plans to hold hearings. "I feel very
strongly that the mayor acted very impetuously... blocking not just porn but archives of
other things that may be helpful or useful
for our young people," she says. "That's really unfortunate. That's one of the purposes
of my requesting
a hearing."
I needed to see for myself. Yesterday I headed over to the main branch of the
Boston Public Library in Copley Square. On the third floor of the cavernous modern
annex, I found the public computers: all seven of them, with no CyberPatrol yet. This
much fuss over seven PCs? Yes, a librarian told me. Worse yet, since Menino's order
and the ensuing publicity, "demand has doubled. We used to allow two hours per day.
Now we allow only one."
Could Junior wander into uncharted areas of the Web, I asked the librarian. Or
does it matter? After all, the library subscribes to Playboy. "Librarians can't be
babysitters," she replied. Rather, parents should take responsibility for what their
children search for and read online. "I'd question the wisdom of any parent who left
their child unattended in a major metropolitan library."
Of course, this isn't the first time that the Boston Public Library has become
entangled in a heated controversy over children being exposed to "vulgar" imagery in
the building. On my way out of the library, I found the "Bacchante," a life-size statue of
a nude woman holding an infant that came under attack exactly 100 years ago.
The condemnations were the same. Immorality had infiltrated the public library.
Boston's religious conservatives were outraged at this "menace to the Commonwealth."
Local newspapers campaigned in support of "moral responsibility." Without even
viewing the sculpture, city officials in October 1896 voted against allowing it in the
courtyard and unceremoniously banished "Bacchante" to a basement.
A century later, library trustees and the city's arts commissioners decided to replace the
statue and "erase an error of 100 years ago." Today, civil libertarians upset over
censorware are hoping the city doesn't wait that long again.
The Censorware Search Engine can also be found at http://www.pathfinder.com/netly/spoofcentral/censored/.
"A review of John Seabrook's memoir of life online."
from Getting Deeper by Rebecca
Eisenberg
February 26, 1997
"The great web site design-off at the Web97 conference."
from Cool Site in a Day by Michael
Sippey
February 25, 1997
" 'Pornographer' Mikki Halpin defends her actions on People's
Court."
from I Was a Punk Rock Pornographer by
Mikki Halpin
February 24, 1997
"Nine groups join the ACLU and ALA lawsuit against the CDA."
from Last Words by Declan McCullagh
February 21, 1997
"I started the AOL riot of 1997."
from What, Me Riot? by David Cassel
February 20, 1997
Now, even computer screens are going back to nature. Researchers at Penn
State University believe
that the liquid-crystal displays now used in PCs and other devices may someday be
replaced by
organic thin-film displays that are cheaper and easier to manufacture.
Liquid crystals inhabit a never-never world that lies between crystalline and
liquid structure. These substances, composed of long-chain molecules, can undergo
sharp transitions from liquid to crystal and back again. In a portable computer's
flat-screen display, millions of cells composed of these crystals form changing images
by being rapidly turned on and off by electric charges controlled by a transistor. The
problem is that manufacturing LCDs is exacting work, and therefore relatively
expensive. Moreover, they are not terribly durable products.
Enter organic semiconductors. The idea dates back to the 1940s, but the
materials were deemed impractical--until Thomas Jackson, professor of electrical
engineering at Penn State, and two graduate students tried a hydrocarbon named
pentacene. The compound, a blue solid at room temperature, can be deposited as a
thin film at low temperatures, and can be spread on lightweight, durable plastics.
Therefore, the researchers believe, it might be possible to use relatively inexpensive
continuous-web manufacturing techniques. Most LCDs use amorphous silicon thin-film
transistors, which require fragile glass substrates.
The market for thin-film applications, including smart cards and LCDs, is huge: Color
LCDs are a $12 billion business, and the market is still growing. --Arthur Fisher
Can a color inkjet printer really churn out pictures that look like photographic
prints? Based on our printouts, that may depend on your definition of "like."
Epson's Color Stylus 800 ($449) and Lexmark's 7000 Color Jetprinter ($399) are
two of the latest to make the photo-quality claim, and there's some reason to take them
seriously. They are the two highest-resolution inkjet printers to date, with the Epson
printing at 1,440 by 720 dots per inch, while the Lexmark inks an even denser 1,200 by
1,200 dpi. (Most previous inkjets print at 720 by 360 dpi or less.)
Dots per inch isn't everything--ink and paper types can have a big impact on the
final result--but more dots certainly help. We put the Stylus 800 and Jetprinter 7000 to
the test using VGA-resolution (640- by 480-pixel) photos taken with Canon's
PowerShot 350 digital camera and Kodak's glossy, postcard-size Inkjet Snapshot
Paper. The 3- by 5-inch pictures we printed were surprisingly impressive, with vivid
colors, good saturation, and, with properly focused images, reasonably sharp details.
The Lexmark tended to be a little more detailed, the Epson a little more brightly
colored. Neither matched 35mm prints; you could still see the grainy and banding
effects of the print process in many cases. But they were close enough to pass casual
muster: Grandma liked them.
At least a few inkjet printers do slightly better. Hewlett-Packard's PhotoSmart
and Epson's Color Stylus Photo printers produce slightly richer results, but both are
designed to be photo printers, not general-purpose models. More direct competition is
coming, however: Canon and HP each plan to offer high-resolution inkjets this fall with
photo-enhancing technology. Canon's new BJC-7000, for example, has bi-level ink
cartridges for seven-color printing, as well as a new "ink optimizer" that acts as a primer
for better results on plain paper. Pictures printed on the Lexmark 7000 and Epson 800
are close to film quality.
It's been more than a year since I computerized my checkbook amidst the great
promise-but also the real growing pains-of online banking. Has electronic banking
matured? Some, but neither quickly nor painlessly.
Two key drawbacks remain. Most electronic checks are still paid by a processing
center that prints and mails checks, which typically takes four business days-twice as
long as if I'd mailed them myself, in many cases. And the checks such centers print still
do not record any memo field or explanatory information about which invoice the
payment is for, which can confuse the payee.
There is some progress on the speed of payments. The company that processes
my Quicken checks now makes electronic transfers to several larger merchants, such
as Sears and JC Penney, so those companies get their money in a day or two (and I
have more time to pay them). Unfortunately, the acknowledgments of these transfers
that are downloaded into my checkbook do not include the merchants' names, so they
have to be reconciled manually rather than automatically marked as cleared. Intuit is
investigating the problem for its Quicken software. There's still no word on adding
explanations to electronic checks, however. Clearly, there is growing left to be done.
--Chris O'Malley
With the introduction of more than 20 new models so far this year, digital
cameras are now a plentiful species. But if the latest litter is any indication, they are still
a long way from bearing any family resemblance.
Sony's Mavica ($599) is a large, boxy, heavy camera, but it houses something
that's comfortingly familiar: a standard floppy disk. That makes transferring images from
camera to computer very easy. (Most cameras store their pictures on miniature flash
memory cards and rely on cables to transfer pictures to PCs.) The Mavica also has a
relatively generous 2.5-inch color LCD viewfinder, and in the $799 version, a 10x
power zoom.
Sharp's VE-LC1 ($749) has the same large LCD, but in a much smaller, lighter
package. And it has a built-in infrared port for transmitting images wirelessly to a
computer (an infrared adapter for PCs is also included). It lacks a flash, but has a
video-out port for showing pictures on a TV. Toshiba's even smaller PDR-2 ($499)
takes another route toward getting its digital pictures into computers:
The camera's back panel flips open and slides into a laptop's PC Card reader. Toshiba
also says it plans to offer an adapter enabling its removable memory cards to fit into a
floppy drive.
Thinking small? Mitsubishi's DJ-1000 ($249) is the slimmest, lightest digital
camera yet, at less than 1 inch thick and weighing a mere 2 ounces. Neither it nor the
Toshiba model sports an LCD screen or flash, however. Panasonic's CoolShot 601A
($549) is slim, too, but it's vertically oriented like a portable tape recorder, with an
attachable LCD screen. You actually can talk into Nikon's Coolpix 300 ($699), which
looks like a handheld organizer and lets you record voice snippets and handwritten
notations (with an included stylus), and snap pictures as well. More conventional
cameras, such as Fuji's DX-5 ($399) and Ricoh's RDC-300 ($450), round out an
increasingly affordable digital field.
While most of these cameras record images in VGA resolution (640 by 480), not
everyone has forsaken higher pixel counts. Epson's new PhotoPC 600 snaps digital
pictures at 1,024 by 768 pixels.
There is still a "gotcha" with many of these new digital cameras: Battery life can be very
brief, typically ranging from 30 to 60 minutes on models with LCD screens. Sony's
Mavica is the exception. Its rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack delivers up to 3.5
hours of use in playback or recording mode.
Fuji's DX-5 is a plain-vanilla VGA camera, but costs a modest $399. Sharp's
VE-LC1 sports a big color screen, a rotating lens, and wireless transfers. Mitsubishi's
DJ-1000 is incredibly thin, but lacks a flash, an LCD screen, and a TV-out port. Sony's
boxy Mavica has a 10x zoom and stores its pictures on a standard floppy disk. --Chris
O'Malley