Scout Report: Week ending November 25, 1994

November 25, 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 servers for quick reference, and you can search the InfoGuide server 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.

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES

  • Last week the HTML version of the Scout Report was sent in error to the mailing list for plain text version, resulting in folks on that list receiving two copies of the same Scout Report. Have no fear, you haven't been mistakenly added to another mailing list -- it was only an error on the part of an un-named (ahem...) InterNaut. Apologies for the confusion.
  • You may have noticed that recently the Scout Report has been arriving a bit late in the week. This is due to two factors: one of them human related (too many airplanes) and one computer related (too much work). Action is being taken to alleviate both situations. ;-) In the meantime, thanks for your patience.

Highlights In This Week's Report

World Wide Web

  • American Memory Project - The Library of Congress has added a collection of sound recordings to its American Memory project. The Nation's Forum collection consists of fifty-nine sound recordings of speeches by American leaders at the turn of the century. The speeches focus on issues and events surrounding the First World War and the subsequent presidential election of 1920. Speakers include Warren G. Harding, James Cox, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Gompers, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John J. Pershing.
  • Banned Books Online is a new Web page featuring books available on-line that have been the objects of censorship, particularly by legal authorities or by schools. The on-line exhibit gives short descriptions of the titles, which range from "Ulysses" to "Little Red Riding Hood". It also describes how and why each book was censored or suppressed. You can then follow hypertext links from the top-level page to the works themselves, so that you can see what the censors didn't want people to see. Pointers to other resources (both on- and off-line) on censorship issues and on-line literature are provided. The exhibit is based at Carnegie Mellon University, where the administration recently announced the university would censor numerous newsgroups (including text-based groups) related to sexuality, citing fears of legal liability as its reason. The exhibit is particularly appropriate now, as a reminder of the continuing struggle for free expression and the increasingly important role of computer-based forms of expression.
  • The Berlin Wall Falls Project is being initiated by the Patch American High School in Stuttgart, Germany. Do you remember where you where when the Berlin Wall fell? It's been 5 years now, and Patch American High School has started a collaborative Web project that invites participation from students and researchers around the globe. Over the next twelve months, the Berlin Wall Falls: Perspectives from 5 Years Down the Road project hopes to link student-produced Web documents from as many as 30 different sites. Willkommen!
  • The Cabot Science Library at Harvard University has announced its new WWW home page providing a variety of information and directional links to assist science students and researchers at Harvard and elsewhere. In addition to providing information about the library's services, collections and policies, this resource also provides guidance in how to access major scientific databases on campus, and points to useful Internet-accessible science resources including home pages of other science libraries, as well as a number of Harvard scientific publications currently being produced via WWW. Also included are HTML versions of Cabot's popular topical research guides and of the Library newsletter.
  • The City University of New York, New York, USA contains the 19 CUNY colleges. Offers previews of multimedia programs developed by CUNY faculty and links to an innovative gopher containing resources for teaching English as a second language. Featured in the CUNY Multimedia Development Initiative page is "The Art of Renaissance Science," a prototype hypermedia article that explores the interconnections between art and science in Renaissance Italy.
  • Guide to Stars and Galaxies, produced by the Engineering in Astronomy team at the University of Bradford, England, is a multimedia guide to stars and galaxies. The guide has been converted from a popular CD-ROM (with permission), is rich in graphics and audio, and is nicely done.
  • The Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo now has a WWW server. The server offers Social Science Japan, an online magazine containing articles on recent trends in economics, political science and legal research on Japan. An events diary of conferences, seminars etc. for social scientists interested in Japan.
  • The World Data Center A for Marine Geology & Geophysics, located at the National Geophysical Data Center, USA, is now accessible through the Web and includes a forms interface allowing full on-line inventory searches of all Marine Geology & Geophysics Division holdings.
  • Xerox PARC Web Map Viewer offers a "clickable" world map which lets you zoom in on areas of interest. Cities, roads, and rivers are not labeled since the underlying map data contains only line data such as coastlines, borders, rivers, roads, and not the data or software to add labels or topographic information. However, there is a link to link to the Geographic Name Server which allows searches by name, and returns a Map Viewer page which pinpoints the searched item on the appropriate map.

Gopher

Email

  • Eye On Government is a one way list service that functions like a bulletin rather than a forum, brought to us by the folks who bring us Gopher Jewels. Subscribers will receive bulletins that both praise and question government when they take new actions that impact public access to government information. Most bulletins will be authored by David Riggins, but may (on rare occasions) be supplemented by posts from others. The number of bulletins should be infrequent, but may become frequent for short periods of time. The philosophy is not to stifle debate, but recognizes many readers don't have time to manage the high level of traffic forums tend to generate. Posts from this service may be forwarded, by subscribers, to forums for consideration or debate. Opinions expressed in this service should be take as just that....opinions. Readers should take them in context with the opinions of others before forming their own opinion.

    Send email message to: listproc@einet.net in the body of the message type:

    subscribe eye-on-government type-your-first-and-last-name-here
    • Two new mailing lists related to laser technology, Laser Sources Listserver (INFO-LASERSRC), and Laser Beam Transport Listserver (INFO-LASERTRANS) are now open to anyone interested in lasers. Topics in LASER SOURCES will include solid-state lasers, semiconductor lasers, dye lasers, gas lasers, resonators, other coherent sources, power supplies. Topics in LASER BEAM TRANSPORT will include optical design for lasers, optical materials/coatings, laser diagnostics, laser damage, atmospheric propagation, laser physics.

      Send email to info-optolink-request@spie.org in the body of the message type:

      subscribe info-lasersrc
      and/or
      subscribe info-lasertrans

    National Information Infrastructure

    New documents on the Department of Commerce National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) gopher:
    • Government Information Locator Service Announcement
    • IITF Meeting Minutes
    • G-7 Meeting Information

    NetBytes

    • "New on the Net" states that the Nov. 15th snapshot of the commercial domains registered with InterNIC shows 24,762 unique domains compared with 21,777 as of Oct 15, 1994. The net increase of 2,985 domains represents and 13.7% month to month gain. This smashes the previous record number of additions set in the month ended Sept. 15, 1994 when 1,839 domains were added. A detailed analysis of the data wasn't complete at the time of release of the Scout Report, but author Mike Walsh of Internet Info says the growth appears to be coming from all sectors e.g. high tech, consumer products, financial services, publishing, etc. Notable domain name registrations: "Mosaic Communications registers MOZILLA.COM. Let's see how long it takes for their corporate name change to catch up. The Coca Cola Company finally registers some domains COCA-COLA.COM and COCACOLA.COM. Bet they wish they had COKE.COM. And if you thought the Net was just for geeks, Harley-Davidson registers HOG.COM (along with a couple of other variations). The National Hockey League registers NHL.COM. Hey, they got nothing better to do."

      After analysis, two versions of "New on the Net" will be released. If you want to receive the short version which is free, just sent email to short@internetinfo.com. The long version includes noteworthy registrations and charts which breakdown registration by state, area code and Internet Service Provider. The long version isn't free but is cheap.

    • RODEO INRIA High Speed Networking, France, is offering information about the INRIA Videoconferencing System an IVS videoconferencing package which enables audio and video to be sent over the Internet. Included are a description of the system, the H.261 coding scheme, the changes required to use this video coding over packet-switched networks, platforms currently supported, and pointers to freely retrieve the package.

    Weekend Scouting

    • A Guide to Covered Bridges, offered by Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, transforms the Web into a time machine. Find the answer to the question, why are there so many covered bridges, and why in Pennsylvania and the Northeast? The Drexel University Honors Program sponsors this guide to dozens of covered bridges of the Philadelphia region. Driving tours are suggested, and bridge images are indexed by season (fall color, winter, snow and ice, spring/summer) and structure as well as county.
    • Dan Brown's Beer Page serves as something of an index to other beer-related resources on the net, from the alt.beer FAQ to Finnish beer aficionados. The contributor of this item summed it up nicely when he said: "We're talking good beer and home brewing technology here, not cheap swill and reckless indulgence."

    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 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

    • To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report each weekend, join the scout-report mailing list which is used only to distribute the Scout Report once a week

      Send mail to majordomo@is.internic.net in the body of the message, type:

      subscribe scout-report
      to unsubscribe to the list, repeat this procedure substituting the word "unsubscribe" for subscribe.
      • To receive the Scout Report in HTML format for local posting, subscribe to the scout-report-html mailing list, used exclusively to distribute the Scout Report in HTML format once a week.

        Send mail to majordomo@is.in ternic.net in the body of the message, type:

        subscribe scout-report-html

        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 forward slashes. 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
        and 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.

        scout@is.internic.net
        guide@is.internic.net