From crispen@INTERNIC.NET Thu Oct 16 00:00:19 1997
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 15:44:12 -0400
From: crispen@INTERNIC.NET
Reply-To: TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
To: TOURBUS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Subject: TOURBUS -- 16 OCTOBER 1997 -- VRML/TOURBUS CHAT/UBER-COOKIES/NTK NOW
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TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): VRML/TOURBUS CHAT/UBER-COOKIES/NTK NOW
TODAY'S ADDRESS:
http://www.tourbus.com/
http://hiwaay.net/~crispen/vrml/
http://www.tourbus.com/chat.html
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,15119,00.html?latest
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/1007/151567.html
http://www.spesh.com/cgi-bin/now
Howdy, y'all! :)
We have a _bunch_ of different stuff to talk about today, so I'm going to
dispense with the normal introductory chit-chat and get today's journey of
our little bus of Internet happiness under way.
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On the right side of the bus you can see our first stop . . .
VRML (PART DEUX)
----------------
It looks like I am not losing my mind after all. Last week I mentioned
that I could not find an old TOURBUS post in which my dad talked about VRML
(Virtual Reality Modeling Language). Well, thanks to the help of several
alert TOURBUS riders, I have once again found that post (along with another
VRML post that I had completely forgotten about).
Anyway, if you want to find out a WHOLE bunch more about VRML (the modeling
language that molecules.com uses to make those neat, 3D molecule models),
hop on over to the TOURBUS archives at
http://www.tourbus.com/
and take a look at the 20 June 1996 post titled "Virtual Reality." We also
talked a little about VRML in our 23 July 1997 post "Mars or Bust!," but
that first post, coupled with my dad's "Introduction to VRML page" at
http://hiwaay.net/~crispen/vrml/
should give you a pretty good understanding of VRML. :)
TOURBUS CHAT
------------
As Bob has mentioned a couple of times, TOURBUS has a new chat room at
http://www.tourbus.com/chat.html
Well, in honor of the fact that I keep making silly mistakes in each of my
recent TOURBUS posts (last week's improper use of the word "guffaw" being
the most glaring example), I am happy to announce that on Thursday, October
16, from 6:00 PM Central Time (Noon GMT) to 8ish PM Central Time (2ish GMT)
your fearless bus driver will be in the TOURBUS chat room apologizing for
all the mistakes that I am bound to make in today's post. :)
Seriously, though, I invite you to stop by the chat room on Thursday night
and say hi.
AOL UBER-COOKIES
----------------
Time to squish another urban legend! :)
Many of you may have recently received an anonymous e-mail letter from a
disgruntled former America Online (AOL) employee warning you that AOL 4.0
(code name "Casablanca") contains an "uber-cookie" that is
far more treacherous than the simple internet cookie. How would
you like somebody looking at your entire hard drive, snooping
through any (yes, any) piece of information on your hard drive.
It could also read your password and log in information and store
it deep in the program code.
The letter goes on to say in breathless prose that
anytime you are signed on to AOL, any top aol executive, any aol
worker, who has been sworn to secrecy regarding this feature, can
go into your hard drive and retrieve any piece of information
that they so desire. Billing, download records, e-mail,
directories, personal documents, programs, financial information,
scanned images, etc ...
GASP! The story, of course, is a complete and utter hoax. Big shock
there. You can read the whole story about the hoax at CNET's news.com at
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,15119,00.html?latest
or at ZDNet at
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/1007/151567.html
As Bob Rankin wrote in his 29 July 1997 TOURBUS post titled "A Closer Look
at Cookies" (one of the best cookie articles I have ever read, by the way)
It's important to remember that a cookie cannot store any
personal data such as your name, e-mail address or phone number
unless you enter that information on a form at the site creating
the cookie. The safety features built into the cookies
technology does not allow a website operator to rifle through the
files on your hard disk, or to look at cookies that were created
by other sites.
Remember, folks, cookie files -- even UBER-cookie files (am I am still
laughing at that word) -- are simple ASCII text files. ASCII text files
are like pieces of paper. Just as a piece of paper sitting on your desk
cannot sprout arms and legs and beat up your office's stapler, an ASCII
text file (like a cookie) can't "come to life" and do _anything_ to your
computer. Both ASCII text files and pieces of paper are inanimate objects
that simply sit around, doing nothing more than containing the information
that has been put in/on them. Period.
By the way, special thanks goes to TOURBUS rider Rich Tatum for pointing me
to ZDNet's article (I tend to get most of my tech news from news.com and
Good Morning Silicon Valley). :)
NEED TO KNOW
------------
Our final stop actually comes to us from Peter Langston's "Fun People" list
(which we visited back on 12 December 1996). Peter forwarded a post from
the "NTK now" list that was so off-the-wall and sarcastic that I just _had_
to check out "NTK now" a little further.
NTK now is self-proclaimed as "*the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for
the UK." According to one of the guys at NTK now,
If more than 60% of your life is spent online dealing with exotic
technology -- or if you wish it was, NTK now would be a good
thing to read. It's a weekly e-mail newsletter looking at things
from a UK Net perspective.
That perspective can, at times, be a tad bit askew. You can read all of
NTK now's old posts on the Web at
http://www.spesh.com/cgi-bin/now
including stories such as
MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER 4.0 was launched on Tuesday. By
Wednesday, it had almost finished loading. Reviews were mixed,
yet universally scared: impartial observer Mark Andreessen
described it on CNN as "a 60MB hairball" (as opposed to those
30MB Netscape snowflakes, we guess) . . .
and
Well, we missed the actual start of the MC ESCHER exhibition but,
frankly, with his stuff, *who's gonna know*? . . . Plans to link
the show with a Bach recital in Romford and a Godel retrospective
in Harrow (thus completing London's "Orbital Golden Braid") are
as yet unconfirmed.
Granted, you have to know about Hofstadter's Puliter prize-winning book on
artificial intelligence and recursion to understand that last joke. Still,
it is a refreshing breath of fresh air to see Internet commentary and news
that doesn't emanate from this side of the pond.
NTK now's weekly newsletters are available on the Web at
, or you can subscribe to their mailing
list by sending an e-mail letter to
majordomo@unfortu.net
with the command
subscribe ntknow
in the body of your e-mail letter. At least I _think_ that it goes in the
body of your e-mail letter. I keep forgetting my majordomo syntax
(something I am sure to be reminded of in Thursday night's chat). :)
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+------------------- ---------------------+
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): VRML/TOURBUS CHAT/UBER-COOKIES/NTK NOW
TODAY'S ADDRESS:
http://www.tourbus.com/
http://hiwaay.net/~crispen/vrml/
http://www.tourbus.com/chat.html
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,15119,00.html?latest
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/1007/151567.html
http://www.spesh.com/cgi-bin/now
--------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY
--------------------------------
LOWERED (noun) -- A deity.
Usage: "Lowered, bless this pick up truck."
(Special thanks to "Mike or Carmen O'Donnell in Kingston" for today's wurd)
YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD
HOMEPAGE AT http://ua1ix.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html
[By the way ... that's "you-ay-won-eye-ex"]
=--------------------------------------------------------------------=
For info on my new book "Atlas for the Information Superhighway"
Visit http://ua1ix.ua.edu/~crispen/atlas.html
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.~~~. ))
(\__/) .' ) )) Patrick Douglas Crispen
/o o \/ .~ Network Solutions Inc. / The InterNIC
{o_, \ { Business E-mail: crispen@internic.net
/ , , ) \ Personal E-mail: crispen@brigadoon.com
`~ '-' \ } )) http://www.brigadoon.com/~crispen/
_( ( )_.'
'---..{____} Warning: squirrels.
