From this week's TIME: Cancellation item
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
reposted with permission. For permission to reprint or repost, please
contact p...@well.com.
TECHNOLOGY
NETWATCH
FLAMEWAR
Someone or something has been busy lately on alt.religion.scientology,
the Usenet newsgroup that carries the escalating flamewar on the Internet
between the Church of Scientology and its critics. Over the past few
weeks, dozens of messages -- some of which contained documents the church
considers secret and sacred -- have mysteriously disappeared. Dennis
Erlich, a former Scientology minister, accuses the church of unleashing a
''robot canceler'' that deleted his messages. A spokesperson calls his
charges ''baseless.'' Erlich says he will repost the material as soon as
he figures out why his phone line suddenly went dead.
NEWT.NET
With a rhetorical flourish and the click of a mouse, Newt Gingrich last
week unveiled ''Thomas'' (for Thomas Jefferson), perhaps the world's most
long-winded Web site. Intended to put ordinary citizens on the same
footing as professional lobbyists, it will be the definitive repository
for legislative information on the Internet -- including, eventually,
every bill introduced and every speech uttered on the floor of the House.
And how will the modem impaired reach it? In what he acknowledged might be
a ''nutty idea,'' Gingrich suggested ''a tax credit for the poorest
Americans to buy a laptop.''
RUSH FOR A DAY
Just before New Year's, somebody played a cruel prank on former
Democratic speechwriter Peter Tauber: they posted his America Online
address on the Internet, telling everybody that it was Rush Limbaugh's
secret E-mail account -- ''the one he uses personally ... as opposed to
the accounts that are answered by his flunkies.'' For a day or so, Tauber
was inundated with messages intended for the conservative talk-show host.
''It gave me a certain empathy for him,'' says Tauber. ''People were
extraordinarily rude.''
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Copyright 1995 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Transmitted: 95-01-08 12:06:18 EST
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