Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 17:58:52 CST From: Patrick Douglas CrispenReply to: TOURBUS-REQUEST@LISTSERV.AOL.COM To: Multiple recipients of list TOURBUS Subject: TOURBUS - 20 FEBRUARY 1996 - THE CDA /~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~/~~~|~\ | "Why | Surf When / You Can | Ride The | Bus?" / | \ |__________|__________/__________|__________|________/ | \ / /______|----\ / Send INFO TOURBUS to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM ///////| | | Or visit http://csbh.mhv.net/~bobrankin/tourbus |//////| | | |//////| | ~~~/~~~\~/~~~\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~\~~~~ \___/ \___/ 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: +-----------------> BIG-TIME MAGAZINES FOR $10 A YEAR? <--------------+ | ONLY TOURBUS RIDERS KNOW HOW! | | | | Magazine Express has exclusive TOURBUS discounts others can only | | dream about. Plus, Dr. Bob's new "Internet Goodies" is FREE. This | | is a limited time offer, so get details now by sending email to: | +------------------------> tourbus@magazines.com <--------------------+ -------------------------------- 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 ====================================================================== SUBSCRIBE : Send SUBSCRIBE TOURBUS Firstname Lastname to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM unSUBSCRIBE: Send SIGNOFF TOURBUS to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Web Site : http://csbh.mhv.net/~bobrankin/tourbus (stop in for back issues and the logo contest) Advertising: E-mail BobRankin@MHV.net w/ Subject: SEND TBRATES ====================================================================== 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.
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