Netizens-Digest Friday, December 31 1999 Volume 01 : Number 348 Netizens Association Discussion List Digest In this issue: [netz] Re: HMO sues [netz] New Domain May Unite Europe (EU) [netz] Yet another thought of Christmas [netz] The Internet, Netizens and a New Millennium: Past as Prologue ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 12:20:34 -04 From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller) Subject: [netz] Re: HMO sues > Health Net... registered two Web site addresses in 1996, healthnet.com > and healthnet.net, [but] only recently became aware of the healthnet.org ... > If SatelLife had done a trademark search before naming the site [in 1993], > there would not have been a problem, Haines says. In any other climate, it would be laughable. On the Net, who knows, but I should think if there was ever a reason to take a stand on the original hierarchical domain concept, this is it. Either stick with it, and force the *legal issue to be whether a .org is doing commercial things with the site (which is itself a very sticky issue) -- or let's reconstruct the entire DNS. Of course I dont mean fiddle with *this one! There's no need to "create confusion" by forcing everyone to change names (and of course by "getting the word out to thousands of workers" in cyberspace! -- I mean, what's the g.d. net for?) I mean, make the *legal case that an alternative, parallel DNS is the less intrusive solution. People who dont like to play by .com/.org rules can go off and be 2HealthWithU.MakeMoneyTheEasyWay. kerry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:12:05 From: John Walker Subject: [netz] New Domain May Unite Europe (EU) Registrations for the On-line Learning Series of Courses are now being accepted. All courses are delivered by e-mail, are two to three weeks in duration and cost between $5.00 US and $25.00 US. Information is available at: http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/course.htm Starting 1 January 2000 Introduction to the Internet and On-line Learning Effective Use of E-Mail Using Linux Level 1 Creating web pages with HTML Level 1 Creating web pages with HTML Level 2 Creating web pages with HTML Level 3 How to Search the World Wide Web Level 1 How to Search the World Wide Web Level 2 Using Eudora Lite and Pro Level 1 Eudora Pro Level 2 Using Eudora Pro Level 3 Using Microsoft Outlook Express Level 1 Using Netscape Messenger Level 1 Using Netscape Messenger Level 2 Using Netscape Messenger Level 3 Using Netscape Messenger Level 4 Using Netscape Messenger Level 4 (a) The following is an excerpt from the CSS Internet News. If you are going to pass this along to other Netizens please ensure that the complete message is forwarded with all attributes intact. - -------------------- New Domain May Unite Europe (EU) by Joanna Glasner 3:00 a.m. 20.Dec.1999 PST http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,33156,00.html In the brand-obsessed world of Internet domain registration, European companies have often found themselves in a quandary. While their US counterparts have been busily gobbling up every word they can attach a dot-com to, Europeans setting up shop in their native countries have had to grapple with nation-specific domains. A European company headquartered in Germany might use "company.de," a French one "company.fr," and so on. The codes work for a company doing business in a single country. But to those plying their wares to the whole of the Western Europe, the plethora of country codes can be a marketer's nightmare. The European Union has proposed a solution: adding a new domain to the list, dot-eu. A new European Commission communication on Internet technology policy says it "will support creation of a dot-eu top-level domain to encourage cross-border electronic commerce within the EU." The proposal follows years of lobbying by EuroISPA, an organization of European Internet service providers that has lobbied for government backing for the dot-eu domain. Although European companies are eligible to apply for dot-com or dot-net addresses, they've generally been overshadowed by their US counterparts. "Although dot-com was intended originally as a global top-level domain, it's turned into an American top-level domain," said EuroISPA president Jim Dixon. As a result, many companies whose primary business is in Europe are mistakenly taken for US businesses when they take on a dot-com address. Although there is a domain expressly for the US -- dot-us -- American companies haven't taken to it. That's probably because it's not as simple as going out and registering amazon.us, said William Sommers, president of the Association for Internet Service providers. Sites in the dot-us domain have to include a state and typically a city code in their name, something more on the lines of amazon.seattle.wa.us -- not the kind of thing customers flock to. But Amazon.eu -- now that's a different story. "There are a lot of businesses whose scope of business isn't any one European country, but Europe as a whole," Dixon said. "Dot-eu would be a perfect fit." If and/or when a new domain will actually get approved, however, is anyone's guess. To get a domain established, the European Union needs the approval of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to add eu to a list of established country codes. So far, the ISO has shied away from doing that. "The European Union, of course, is not a country, but a grouping of countries," ISO spokesman Roger Frost said. Still, the ISO has considered the request, and has reserved dot-eu for Europe, even though it hasn't approved it as an official country code. Even if it gets a country code, the EU needs to get the green light from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) before it can start registering Internet sites. "Policymakers would need several months to consider making any addition to the top-level domain name pool," said ICANN president Michael Roberts. "ICANN has yet to receive a proposal to add dot-eu to the domain name," he said. In the meantime, ICANN is gearing up plans to pick up the top-level domain issue next year, when it will consider adding new domains to the current roster. Links: http://www.iso.ch/ http://www.icann.org/ - -------------- Also in this issue: - - Leveraging The Internet Underground (US) If you are one of the few people who haven't yet heard of Mahir, let me tell you about the guy. - - New Domain May Unite Europe (EU) In the brand-obsessed world of Internet domain registration, European companies have often found themselves in a quandary. - - Writing Compelling Copy - Part I (US) Ask just about any salesperson what components are essential to closing a sale, and he or she is bound to tell you that one of the most important is the ability to establish rapport. A very basic premise, to be sure... and one that can (and should) be applied to the email channel. - - Writing Compelling Copy - Part II (US) Having touched on the overall "tone" of an email message and how it should speak "to" instead of "at" your prospects, we now dive into one of the most powerful components of an email promotion: The subject line. - - Net brings the old folks home (UK) The thousands of miles separating Agnes and Owen Davis from their grandchildren in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado are being melted away this Christmas by the marvel of e-mail. - - Happy hours of seasonal surfing (UK) Enormous directory of Christmas sites - - Running on Net time (US) Most business people know there's time and then there's Internet time. It appears that the federal government recognizes this too, judging from the latest report on the digital economy provided by the White House on Friday. - - Registrars race to profit from longer domain names (US) It did not take long for San Diego attorney Michael Eddy to jump into action when he learned that longer domain names are now for sale. - - Digital vandalism hits Irish websites (Ireland) Fiachra ÓMarcaigh on the outbreak of widespread attacks on websites earlier this month - - Seattle battle showed Internet's populist power (US) Web brought together WTO protesters, now tells their stories minus media filter - - New Lists and Journals * ADD: FLINT-KNAPPING * ADD: DOLLHOUSE-MINIATURES * CHANGE: Stargate SG1 Mailing List On-line Learning Series of Courses http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/course.htm Member: Association for International Business - ------------------------------- Excerpt from CSS Internet News (tm) ,-~~-.____ For subscription details email / | ' \ jwalker@hwcn.org with ( ) 0 SUBINFO CSSINEWS in the \_/-, ,----' subject line. ==== // / \-'~; /~~~(O) "On the Internet no one / __/~| / | knows you're a dog" =( _____| (_________| http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker - ------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 22:07:42 From: John Walker Subject: [netz] Yet another thought of Christmas Yet another thought of Christmas This Christmas end a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion, and replace it with trust.... Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. En- courage youth. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate. Be kind; be gentle Laugh a little. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Go to church. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Speak it yet once again. Happy Holidays and all the best in the New Year. John Walker CSS Internet News http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 21:08:09 -0500 (EST) From: ronda@panix.com Subject: [netz] The Internet, Netizens and a New Millennium: Past as Prologue What will the new Millennium mean for the Internet and for the Netizens who have emerged with the development of the Internet? J.C.R. Licklider's research in the 1950s recognizing the importance of the question of what should be the relationship between the human and the computer set a foundation for time sharing and interactive computing. He proposed that the relationship should be one of human computer symbiosis, that is the human doing what the human could do best and the computer doing what it was most suited for in the partnership. Licklider then was invited to work at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1962. He set up the Office of Information Processing (IPTO) which spearheaded many of the outstanding changes that we have witnessed in the development of computers and networking and then internetworking in the past 40 years. Not often in people's lives do they witness the significant events that have occurred in the past 40 years of our past century. This includes the development of time-sharing and interactive computing with Project MAC and of other centers of excellence projects in the 1960s. These made it possible to replace the form of batch processing that was the computing paradigm until then with interactive computing and time-sharing. The work on time-sharing also led people like Donald Davies in Great Britain and others thinking. Davies realized that multiplexing could be applied to the transport of computer data as well as to the organization of an operating system. Davies had the idea for packet switching along with others like Paul Baran. By the later part of the 1960's Larry Roberts had been brought to IPTO by Robert Taylor. Roberts spearheaded the developments at ARPA that would make it possible to create the ARPANET as an early and outstanding example of packet switching technology and that would make a new form of computer and communications possible. The marriage of computers and communication by the early 1970s had countries and researchers around the world excited about the potential that computer networking. The ICCC'72 conference in Washington DC not only was the event that demonstrated packet switching would work to those who attended from around the world. The conference was an interdisciplinary event with papers from researchers around the world. A number of those present realized that the significant developments in computers and in communications on their own would bring great change to the world. But the marriage of these developments would prove to be an especially important development. Among those at the conference, some predicted that computer networking developments would challenge government officials and all other institutions of society to make the promise they held possible. And they questioned whether the public would indeed benefit from these important developments or would only those already with the power benefit? Countries around the world were planning computer networks. Would it be possible to have these different networks interconnect? After the 1972 conference, Bob Kahn, was among those researchers thinking about the problem of interconnecting computer networks or Multiple Networking problem that it was then called. Working with Vint Cerf, he took on to propose a philosophy and a design for a way to solve the problem of linking up diverse packet switching networks, without interferring with the technology of those networks. The philosophy was open architecture. Working to create a protocol that would make an Internet possible, Kahn and Vint Cerf drafted their paper describing a new protocol for Internetworking, for the creation of a protocol that would be called Transport Control Protocol, or TCP (and evenually TCP/IP). The ideas for the new protocol were presented at a meeting in Sussex England to a group of researchers working on networking problems in Fall of 1973. And their paper describing TCP was published in May 1974. Kahn went ahead and created an internetting project at IPTO, by exploring how to link up a ground packet radio network and a satellite packet switching network with the ARPANET so they could all share resources. By 1975 he had connected them in a way to know that they would work, and by 1977 IPTO conducted a demonstrations of the TCP implementations that had been developed and a demonstration of internetworking showed it was possible to send packets to Great Britain and Norway and back to the US using the ground packet radio network, the satellite packet switching network and the ARPANET. By January 1983 there was a cutover to TCP/IP on the ARPANET. Actually the cutover took a bit of time to carry out, but by October 1983 it was possible to split the ARPANET, into the MILNET and the ARPANET networks and to have communication made possible across this early internet. Also by 1983 there had been a linking up of the ARPANET mailing lists with some Usenet newsgroups. In the mid 1980s there were Unix user groups around Europe using UUCP and Usenet to explore email and online discussions. And the Internet began to make communication possible among these diverse networks of users. By 1992 there were users around the world connecting to the Internet. And online research exploring the experiences of those users showed that a new social form was emerging online, the social form of the Netizen. That there were people who participated in the resource sharing that the Internet made possible, and they were finding that there was a vibrant and exciting new online community that was being developed. And they took on to make this new online means of communication available to others so they could benefit and contribute to it. Much has happened in the past 8 years, much that has spread this new medium of global communication around the world, and much that has shown that the new medium has some who don't understand its nature or the vision that has given it birth. There are some who are out to try to limit who benefits to those who feel that their money or power should give them special privileges to determine what the future of the Internet will be. But there are also those who are trying to carrying out the original vision of pioneers like JCR Licklider and Robert Taylor that access to the Internet should be a right for all not a privilege for the few. A contest is being waged. A contest that is tugging at the essence of the Internet. One manifestation of the contest has been the efforts by the U.S. government to try to turn over the publicly developed and important essential functions of the Internet like its protocol creation and development process, its domain name and numbering system and its root server system to a private corporation that has been created by the U.S. government. This would take away the public protection that is so important for these essential functions that can give controlling power over the Internet to those who are able to control this private corporation. And as one would expect there is a fierce battle on trying to seize such power by those who feel their gain is more important than the health and well being of the Internet and the global community it has created. There have been other contests in the developing life of the Internet. Some of these contests included the passage by the U.S. Congress of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) which would have limited the right of people to the global communication that the Internet makes possible under the guise that adults are to be limited to what might be appropriate to children. Online discussion and protest along with a lawsuit led to a court decision overturning the CDA and affirming the right of people online to participate in the global conversation that is so precious and that the Internet has brought into the world. There are many other examples of challenges to the Internet that have developed and many other examples of how those online who recognized the importance of the Internet and the communication it makes possible have been able to take on the challenges so that the Internet could continue to grow and flourish. What will be the future for the Internet and for the Netizen in this new millennium? The Internet and the Netizen are indeed some of what is important that has been developed over the past few decades that are prologue to the upcoming new millennium. What will the new millennium bring? How will the contest continue to unfold? A herald of the future is a conference I was invited to in Tampere, Finland in early December. The conference was on the topic of the role of the citizen in the coming new millennium. It was called citizen2000 and was sponsored by the European Union. (http://www.citizen2000.net) The seminar I was invited to participate in explored how the Internet can make possible new means of participation in the affairs of government for the citizen. The researchers who made presentations all were exploring what was actually possible with the new medium, and what were the benefits and the problems. If the Internet is to grow and flourish there may well be a necessity to explore how to increase the role of citizen in determining what will be the role that government will play in the future development of the Internet. It was quite special to see this research issue being recognized as important and explored at the citizen2000 conference in Finland. Below is the description of the seminar that was held in Tampere, Finland in early December. I wonder what others thoughts are as we enter this new millennium with respect to the important developments we are bringing with us from the past millennium and the challenges we will face in the next. Ronda Following is the description of the seminar held as part of the EU Citizens' Agenda NGO-forum 2000 in Finland, December 4th. E3. Civic Participation, Virtual Democracy and the Net What are the possibilities for more intensive democracy and participation while utilising internet and other new technologies? How can the internet facilitate local democracy? Finnish NGOs, Tampere-foorumi, Tampere Technology Centre Tampere Hall, VIP-room Languages: English A Digital Neighbourhood? The Vision of the Netizens? Public Sphere? If you are anxious to know more about these issues, take a closer view of the thematical seminar 'Civic Participation, Virtual Democracy and the Net'. In this seminar the matter in hand is the social impact of the so called information society. We will bring up for example the question of how one can encourage civic participation and create an active net community. We will also discuss the practices of virtual democracy and the problem of access. The seminar includes seven presentations and a panel discussion. In addition, there will be an interactive exhibition - a place where different kinds of net projects give food for thought. Speakers and their subjects Myrna J. Alejo: Information Technology and the Production of Democratic Ethos: the Philippine Case - How the uneven penetration of information technology affects the nature of "public sphere" in the Philippines; and how the philippine civil society is dealing with the problem of access. Ronda Hauben: Is the Internet a Laboratory for Democracy? The Vision of the Netizens vrs The E-Commerce Agenda - Why it is important for Netizens to participate in the contest being waged (as for instance: ICANN) over which strata of society will gain the benefit of the Internet and how the Internet provides the means for such participation. Steven Lenos: Networking for democracy: the digital future? - How organisations can use the Internet for (international) networking and how they are able to organise succesfull digital public debats. Jari Sepp Net participation - what can the City offer? - 10 years experience of work as a news repotrer in local newspapers and national tv-news - 12 years Head of Information of the City of Tampere, Finland He has acted as the chairman for two committees founded by the Association of Finnish Local Authorities, one creating the good practise for municipal information and the other one guidelines for municipal services presented over the Internet. In his presentation he will introduce some practical examples how the City of Tampere has developed civic participation via the Internet. We will hear how the Internet enables plan presentation, dialogue and lobbying, combined into the visual and functional opportunities provided by new media. Aija Staffans: Netted but not trapped. Local stakeholders on a digital neighbourhood forum constructing urban knowledge and planning - The main issue is whether a digital neighbourhood forum is able to bring together the municipality and local stakeholders (like inhabitants, citizen organizations, schools, kindergardens, shopkeepers etc.) in order to develop urban environment Lasse Peltonen & Seija Ridell: Citizen forums, virtual publicness and practices of local democracy: - The case of Tampere-foorumi (Lasse Peltonen) - Tampere-foorumi on the net (Seija Ridell) - The main issue is to describe the attempts, achievements and obstacles met by one local civic group in organizing opportunities for public interaction and dialogue - both in 'real life' and on the net - between city officials, politicians, economic actors and ordinary citizens. Civic Participation, Virtual Democracy and the Net ------------------------------ End of Netizens-Digest V1 #348 ******************************