Scout Report: Week ending September 30, 1994

September 30, 1994

The Scout Report is a weekly publication provided by InterNIC Information Services to assist InterNauts in their ongoing quest to know what's new on and about the Internet. It focuses on those resources thought to be of interest to the InterNIC's primary audience, researchers and educators, however everyone is welcome to subscribe and there are no associated fees.

The Scout Report is posted on the InterNIC InfoGuide's gopher and WorldWideWeb servers where you can easily follow links to resources of interest. Past issues are stored on the InfoGuide for quick reference, and you can search the InfoGuide contents to find the items reported in all previous issues. The Scout Report is also distributed in an HTML version for use on your own host, providing fast local access for yourself and other users at your site.

http://www.internic.net/infoguide.html
gopher is.internic.net choose Information Services/Scout Report

Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu.

See the end of the report for additional information and detailed access and subscription instructions.

Highlights In This Week's Report:

  • Le WebLouvre, with a guided tour of Paris
  • EPA on the Web
  • Ann Rand on the 'Net
  • 2020World: a new mailing list with potential

World Wide Web

  • The American Physical Society (APS) has established the E-Print Forum on its home page on the World Wide Web which will serve as a temporary archive for discussions, meeting bulletins, papers, etc., concerning e-print (preprint) archives and the potential role of APS. The American Physical Society has also established a listserver, for discussion on ideas and issues pertaining to e-prints.

    listserv instructions:
    send email to: listserv@aps.org

    in the body of the message type:

    subscribe eptalk

  • Le WebLouvre offers a French medieval art demonstration, a collection of well-known paintings from famous artists, and a tour around Paris including the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysees. The tour of includes two options - walking around on your own or a historical guided tour with comments. Le WebLouvre is a Best of the Web '94 contest for the Best Use of Multiple Media. The Web site is the work of primarily one person and is not officially associated with The Louvre Museum in Paris.
  • NASA's Astrophysics Data System has announced the availability of the Einstein Archive Service. This service provides query and retrieval capability for the Einstein X-ray Observatory's processed data archive. The archive includes about 5000 X-ray observations (in astronomical standard FITS format) taken between 1978 and 1981. A listing of other ADS data services available via the WWW is also available.
  • The Nebula File System is a structured file system based on dynamic views of information. A WWW/Nebula gateway is available from the Penn State Computer Science Department. The gateway exports two contexts that can be searched with structured queries like description=emacs. The PC-archives context contains descriptions of more 27,000 software packages available through network archives. The StarGazer context contains bibliographic citations for operating systems, computer communications, and programming languages.
  • Objectivism is a philosophy originated by Ayn Rand, as presented in her works The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and many others. Its basic tenets are: in metaphysics -- an objective reality existing independent of man's mind; in epistemology -- reason as man's means of obtaining knowledge; in ethics -- egoism; and in politics -- capitalism. The Objectivism WWW Service provides information on the philosophy and pointers to resources both on and off the net.
  • The Shell Centre for Mathematical Education, a centre for research and development within the School of Education at the University of Nottingham, offers WWW pages which includes a collection of information technologies used in the classroom, details of publications and research, as well as a Distractions Page "intended to contain entertaining items of varying degrees of educational value."
  • StarHeads, the last product of the Star*s Family is now available at the Centre de Donnees astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS). StarHeads gives access to about 400 individual pages of astronomers and space scientists, and this figure is rapidly growing. Forms based browser is required.
  • The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announce the availability of a WWW server providing Public Access to the EPA's Public Information.
  • The Center For Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) home page serves as an information resource of CRCA activities, research, programs, and software, a link to other art resources, electronic and terrestrial, and the future home of image and sound galleries. CRCA is a research unit of the University of California, San Diego.
  • The University of South Africa's WWW server includes links to other WWW servers and FTP sites in South Africa as well as information about the university.
  • The Entertainment u Technology Center at the University of Southern California is now on the Web. The site is an information source for those interested or involved in the entertainment industry, containing at present several hollywood magazines, production house catalogues, and Hollynet, the prototype for the ETC's future commercial web site.

Gopher

Email/FTP

  • New List: REHAB-RU. Physical medicine and rehabilitation, especially in rural and community settings, is the topic of the REHAB-RU list. The list is unmoderated and open to all who wish to share ideas, opinions, inquiries, and information related to the topic. The REHAB-RU list is provided by the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA, which serves a large population in Appalachia and other rural areas of our region.

    send email to: LISTSERV@ukcc or LISTSERV@ukcc.uky.edu

    in the body of the message type:

    SUBSCRIBE REHAB-RU Yourfirstname Yourlastname

National Information Infrastructure

  • Advanced Digital Video in the National Information Infrastructure (NII) is a report on a recent Workshop organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). At the Workshop, government and industry speakers and participants gathered to define a vision of the role of digital video within the NII; to identify the architectural, scaling, and performance issues in realizing this vision; and to recommend the research, experiments, and steps to be taken in resolving these issues. Sponsors in addition to NIST were: Technology Policy Working Group of the Information Infrastructure Task Force, Electronics Industries Association, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - USA, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Advanced Television Systems Committee, and the Cross-Industry Working Team.
  • New documents on the Department of Commerce National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) gopher.
    • OMB Bulletin on Government Information Locator Service -- Comments Requested
    • TIIAP Grant Program Updated Information
    • Public Telecom Facilities Program FY94 Grant Awards
    • Committee on Applications and Technology Charter
    • CAT Meeting Minutes 06/14/94
    • Telecom Policy Working Group Minutes 09/14/94

NetBytes

  • New List: 2020WORLD will be a global group exploration of life in the year 2020, sponsored by the Seattle Sunday Times in conjunction with a column published in the paper weekly. The column will be posted to the 2020World mailing list every Monday in hopes of encouraging outrageous, yet intellectual, ideas that are far outside the typical, boring discussions of home-shopping and video-on-demand. 2020world will explore how our lives will change when the information highway is a familiar and integral part of our society. The column will *NOT* be about technology, that's why the year 2020 was chosen, by then we can all agree that a broadband, fully switched, ubiquitous network will have been in place for many years. How that network will change our lives, not how it will work, is the question 2020world will address. With each column, an idea will be put into play, a toss of the first jump ball. Then we want to inspire readers to comment, explore, and extend that idea with their responses. The best will be published in the paper. Your responses and ideas are needed and welcomed, hence this invitation for you to join the mailing list.

    send an email to: MAJORDOMO@SEATIMES.COM

    in the body of the message type:

    SUBSCRIBE 2020WORLD

Weekend Scouting

  • The members of the Internet mailing list "murmur" and newsgroup rec.music.rem have created a home page dedicated to the music of the group R.E.M. Also includes a nice collection of links to other music sources on the Web.
  • There is now a WWW page devoted to figure skating, including a link to the Competitive Figure Skating FAQ List.

About the Scout Report

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offered by InterNIC Information Services to the Internet community as a fast, convenient way to stay informed about network activities. Its purpose is to combine in one place the highlights of new (and newly-discovered) online resources and other announcements seen on the Internet during the preceding week.

A wide range of topics are included in the Report with an emphasis on resources thought to be of interest to the InterNIC's primary audience, the research and education community. Each resource has been verified for substantial content and accessibility within a day of the release of the Report.

The Scout Report is provided in multiple formats -- electronic mail, gopher, World Wide Web, and now HTML. The gopher and World Wide Web versions of the Report include links to all listed resources. The Report is released every weekend.

In addition to the ascii version, the Scout Report is distributed in HTML format via a separate mailing list. This allows sites to easily add the Scout Report to their local WorldWideWeb servers each week, providing fast access for local users. Subscription information for the scout-report-html mailing list is included below. Note that permission statements appear on both versions of the Scout Report, and we ask that these be included in any re-posting or re-distributing of the report. Thank you.

If you haven't yet subscribed or told your friends and colleagues, now is the time. Spread the news by word-of-net. Join thousands of your colleagues already using the Scout Report as a painless tool for tracking what's new on the 'Net!

Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu.

-- InterNIC Info Scout (SM)

Scout Report Access Methods

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Resource Addressing Conventions

After each resource in the Scout Report one or more network addresses are listed. In all cases a convention is used for listing the network address of each resource. It is assumed that users recognize the type of address and know how to use it. However, for those users unfamiliar with the Internet we provide here the order in which addresses are listed (by network tool) and instructions for accessing additional information in the InterNIC InfoGuide about each network tool. A brief explanation of one tool, WWW is included below.

The four network tools referenced most often in the Scout Report are World Wide Web, gopher, email, and FTP. Occasionally WAIS and Telnet addresses are also listed.

After each resource at least one address is listed, and sometimes more. This is because some resources are available through multiple network tools. The network tool addresses are always listed in the same order after each resource:

  • World Wide Web (WWW)
  • Gopher
  • FTP
  • Email
  • Telnet
  • WAIS

A WWW address is called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and always begins with a string of characters followed by a colon and two right brackets. For example:

http://www.internic.net/
gopher://gibbs.oit.unc.edu:70/11/research.d/grants.d
ftp://ftp.digex.net/pub/access/hecker/internet/slip-ppp.txt

To access the resource through the WWW you will need a WWW client installed on your host computer. Clients are available for all major computer platforms, including Macintosh, PC, and UNIX. To use a WWW client on your computer, you will need a TCP/IP connection to the Internet, either through a dedicated line connection or a SLIP/PPP connection. See the InfoGuide for additional information about the World Wide Web and for sites which archive WWW clients. For more information about SLIP/PPP, which can be used over a dial-up connection, see the document listed in the NetBytes section above.

gopher://is.internic.net/11/infoguide/using-internet/basic-resources/email/

Gopher to: is.internic.net
** Choose: Information Services/Using the Internet/

Send email to: mailserv@is.internic.net
In the body of the message type:

send INDEX
Copyright 1994 General Atomics.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice, this permission notice, and the two paragraphs below are preserved on all copies.

The InterNIC provides information about the Internet and the resources on the Internet to the US research and education community under the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. NCR-9218749. The Government has certain rights in this material.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, General Atomics, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.

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