Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 17:58:52 CST
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
Reply to: TOURBUS-REQUEST@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
To: Multiple recipients of list TOURBUS
Subject: TOURBUS - 20 FEBRUARY 1996 - THE CDA
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\___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/
TOURBUS - TUESDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 1996
TODAY'S STOP: THE CDA
TODAY'S ADDRESSES:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/s652_hr1555_96_draft_bill.excerpt
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/index.html#cda
http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Civil_Rights/Censorship/
Censorship_and_the_Net/Communications_Decency_Act/
cda96-l@willamette.edu
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/eff-aclu_cda_lawsuit_021596.update
Due to some minor technical difficulties here in Alabama,
I wasn't able to send a TOURBUS post last Thursday. To
make up for this, your fearless Bus driver is going to
write both of this week's TOURBUS posts. After all, Dr. Bob
deserves a break :)
I am, however, proud to announce that I recently upgraded my
Macintosh Powerbook 520C by installing a new PowerPC chip.
For those of you who may not know the difference between a
megahertz (definition: "it REALLY hurts") and a teraflop
(definition: "what happens when Tera falls down"), let me
just say that the PowerPC chip that I installed makes
my Mac three times faster than it was before (I just went
from 33 megahertz to 100 megahertz (think of megahertz as
either miles-per-hour or kilometers-per-hour and you'll
start to understand what everyone is saying when they
talk about different computer clock speeds)).
Unfortunately, the only thing that works on my Macintosh
right now is the graphing calculator (which, might I add, is
three times faster than it used to be). Don't get me wrong,
I *like* the graphing calculator -- I just miss being able
to use my modem and my ethernet connection and my copy of
Microsoft Office (this is the reason I was unable to send
last Thursday's TOURBUS).
So, for those of you who have had to go through nightmare
situations upgrading your computer, take heart: it happens
to the best of us. Oh, and if you have a really good graphing
calculator (like, for example, a graphing calculator on a
Macintosh Powerbook 520C running the PowerPC chip) that
can graph inequalities, have I got an inequality for you!
(ASCII does not have a character for theta, so I am just
going to use $ to represent theta -- make sure you replace
$ with theta when you plug this in)
cos 10$ < tan sin 2r
ROADMAP??
---------
For those of you who were confused by last week's announcement
that two of the Roadmap workshop's lessons have been rewritten,
let's see if we can clear things up a little.
Roadmap is a free, text-based, 27 lesson Internet training workshop
that I wrote a little while back. You can find out how to
retrieve the Roadmap workshop lessons and also how to
get a FREE copy of Dr. Bob's guide "Accessing the Internet
by E-mail" by sending an e-mail letter to
LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU
(that's "you-ay-won-vee-em") with the command
GET NEWUSER PACKAGE F=MAIL
in the body of your e-mail letter. The LISTSERV will respond
within 24 hours with 2 e-mail letters: one telling you about
Roadmap, and another telling you about Dr. Bob's guide.
THE CDA
-------
(*In light of all of the recent comments that have been made
either for or against the CDA, I have decided to keep my comments
to myself and instead present this issue as impartially and
factually as possible. If you feel the following is not
impartial or factual, please accept my deepest apologies in
advance*)
The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was recently signed into
law by President Clinton as part of the Telecommunications Act
of 1996. For those of you who may not be in the US or who may
not have followed the debate about the CDA, the CDA outlaws the
use of the Internet to distribute indecent material to minors,
and it also outlaws the use of the Internet to discuss abortion.
It looks like the Library of Congress link to the text of the
Communications Decency Act of 1996 expired shortly after I posted
it on February 8. Not to worry ... here is another link to the
text of the CDA:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/s652_hr1555_96_draft_bill.excerpt
If you want to find out the latest news about the CDA, you probably
should check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) CDA page at
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/index.html#cda
One word of warning: the EFF opposes the CDA, so their Web page is
rather slanted against the CDA (their link to the text of the CDA
uses the words "unconstitutional 'Communications Decency' amendment").
Yahoo also has a pretty comprehensive section dedicated to the CDA.
Unfortunately, the URL is longer than a presidential debate:
http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Civil_Rights/Censorship/
Censorship_and_the_Net/Communications_Decency_Act/
Your best bet would be either to pop on over to Yahoo
(http://www.yahoo.com/) and do a keyword search for "CDA",
or make the section jumps by hand (go from the main menu to
"Society and Culture", then to "Civil Rights" ...).
For those of you who would like to join the online discussion
about the CDA, there is a new CDA discussion list that you can
subscribe to. To subscribe, send an e-mail letter to
listproc@willamette.edu
with the command
SUB CDA96-L YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME
in the body of your e-mail letter, replacing YOURFIRSTNAME and
YOURLASTNAME with your first and last names. I have not subscribed
to CDA96-L, but since it is an unmoderated list I am willing to bet
that the mail volume on CDA96-L is on the far side of overwhelming :)
Here is the latest information about the legal challenge to
overturn the CDA, courtesy of
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/eff-aclu_cda_lawsuit_021596.update
"A federal judge in Philadelphia has issued a partial temporary
restraining order prohibiting enforcement of the 'indecency'
provision of the Communications Decency Act (CDA)." ...
"The court agreed with the plaintiffs' claim that the CDA will have
a chilling effect on free speech on the Internet and found that
the CDA raises 'serious, substantial, difficult and doubtful
questions.' The court further agreed that the CDA is
'unconstitutionally vague' as to the prosecution for indecency.
But the court left open the possibility that the government could
prosecute under the 'patently offensive' or 'obscene' provisions -
provisions that are actually redundant, as obscenity is already illegal
online or offline. The obscenity laws are not medium-dependent the way
indecency laws are, and have already been enforced against online
services (c.f. the U.S. v. Thomas case.)"
I'll try to keep everyone up to date on what happens with the CDA.
Without a doubt, a lot of information is going to be written about
the CDA in most of the major news magazines. I can't think of
a better reason for you to visit today's TOURBUS sponsor:
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| |
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| dream about. Plus, Dr. Bob's new "Internet Goodies" is FREE. This |
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--------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY
--------------------------------
RICE - Noun. A contest of speed.
Usage: "Y'all going out to Talladega to see the rice?"
(Special thanks goes to John Munroe for today's wurd)
YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE
SOUTHERN WORD HOMEPAGE AT http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html
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TOURBUS - (c) Copyright 1996, Patrick Crispen and Bob Rankin
All rights reserved. Redistribution is allowed only with permission.
Send this copy to 3 friends and tell them to get on the Bus!
(\__/) .~ ~. ))
/O O ./ .' Patrick Douglas Crispen
{O__, \ { pcrispe1@ua1vm.ua.edu
/ . . ) \ The University of Alabama
|-| '-' \ } )) http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/crispen.html
.( _( )_.'
'---.~_ _ _& Warning: squirrels.
