Ask Dr. Internet for August
Michael S. Hart
Questions and Answers for August, 1995
The major questions of this installment of "Ask Dr. Internet" are:
1. How Do We Make Our Presence Known on the Internet?
2. Is the Internet Still Getting Bigger?
3. Disney Bought ABC, On Tuesday Westinghouse Bought CBS.
Do You Think This Have an Effect on the Internet?
4. When was the term "Surfing the Internet" first used?
***
1. How Do We Make Our Presence Known on the Internet?
There are several ways to make your presence known on the Internet:
A. Fileservers
B. Listservers
C. Web Pages
D. Getting The Above Into Indexes
***
When you consider your choices between Fileservers, Listservers, and
Web Pages, you might want to consider the following:
99.9% of Netters do Email
[50 million]
[You can reach nearly anyone via Email]
72% of Netters do Email ONLY [on the average day]
[36 million you can reach ONLY via Email on the average day]
89% list their primary interests as Email [85% Usenet News]
[40 million]
10% of Netters surf the World Wide Web
[5 million] [highest estimate is that 13.5 million COULD]
1% of the world's computers are on the Internet
[5 million out of 500 million]
[about 50 million people]
[If you limit yourself to the Internet,
you wipe out 99% of possible computers]
50% of business computers have modems
[much less for home computers]
70% of business computers have faxes
[less for home computers]
***
A. Fileservers
A Fileserver is a computer that allows people to download files,
usually by an FTP program [File Transfer Protocol]. Beware. . .
many "point and click" programs that emulate FTP do NOT allow an
entry at the "command line" level. . .meaning that you can't see
anything other than what the other end decides by default to let
you see. This means that you can NOT "cd" [change directory] to
a hidden directory, even if you have the proper instructions, or
the proper password, simply because you can't issue the command,
and you can't point and click because it is hidden.
Be sure to test your FTP program for the ability to send direct,
before you spend any time getting used to it. If you would care
to send a list of which ones have this capability, and how to do
commands, we will be glad to keep an index of them.
You might want to make the right FTP programs available over the
fileserver you make, just to insure that your users can use it.
Fileservers can be any kind of computer, as long as it has drive
capacity for the files you want to post and good enough programs
to run FTP type downloads.
Fileservers are easy to run. . .but. . .they are passive. . .you
have to wait for people to call you. . .you can't call them.
***
B. Listservers
A Listserver is a computer that sends Email to everyone on lists
that are specified by the "list moderators." Beware of those in
power situations who call themselves "list owners" as opposed to
"list moderators." List "owners" consider this list, the Email,
and anything you say to a list to be their own private property.
List moderators tend to think the list belongs to the people who
are on the list, and that your Email to the list is yours.
Listservers need less drive space than Fileservers but need more
bandwidth if they are going to get a lot of Email out quickly.
***
Listservers and Fileservers operating together seem to work well
as you can send Email to the list members to advise them that an
assortment of files has been posted on a Fileserver to download.
Integrated operating systems often come with, or will supply, an
assortment of Listserver and Fileserver programs.
***
C. Web Pages
The latest rage, of course, is to have your own Home Page on the
"World Wide Web" [WWW] just is a fancy name for the computers on
the Internet that support HyperText Transfer Protocol [HTTP].
This is an FTP based program that operates on images and text in
a simultaneous download. Unless you have a lot of time, we will
suggest that you turn the automatic download of images off, so a
Home Page with 25 Megabytes of movie images will not require you
to cancel your access and then try again later with images off--
better the basic page layout is SEEN QUICKLY and THEN DECIDE the
images are worth seeing than to have to wait each and every time
and then realize that half the time you wasted both your time in
the download process and that you wasted everyone else's time in
line for access and also wasted a lot of bandwidth.
Web Page sites use more bandwidth than any others, because those
images each take as much space and time as downloading a smaller
book such as Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan. . .each and every
time you access a new Web Page. If you have just accessed pages
then a review of that page might come from your disk cache; this
is why you will see your disk light trashing so much when you do
any viewing of images. . .it is saving all the images, in case a
particular image is called up again.
This is much faster than downloading the images again, but would
wear our your hard drive much faster. If you listen closely for
hard drive head thrashing, you will know what we mean.
Being cautious with what you download will not only preserve the
bandwidth and access for everyone else, but will also preserve a
hard drive a lot longer, presuming it dies from usage as opposed
to those that are dropped or hit by lightning or kill motors.
You can do your part to reduce this wastage, by optimizing those
pictures you do include on your Web Pages. . .jpg files are easy
to optimize.
***
2. Is the Internet Still Getting Bigger?
The Internet itself is still growing fairly rapidly, but it will
probably not double from 50 million to 100 million users in only
one year from now. With computers becoming more commonplace, it
is more likely that the number of computers on the Internet will
double from 5 million to 10 million before the number of persons
on the Net doubles from 50 to 100 million and the average number
of people on each Internet computer will finally drop from 10...
the figure it has been ever since the Net started.
Certain new features on the Internet will more than double in an
early several years but then they will be hard pressed to double
any longer, as the number they are doubling is further away from
zero, and thus doubling become more significant.
My guess is that traffic or "used bandwidth" will double, plus a
fraction, this year, but that the number of computers and people
will probably not quite double.
***
3.
Disney Bought ABC, On Tuesday Westinghouse Bought CBS.
Do You Think This Have an Effect on the Internet?
Yes. It will have a big effect on making the big bigger and an
opposite effect of reducing the traffic to everyone else: they
will undoubtedly want to become a Net presence: hoping for one
million hits per day.
The more sites that are getting a million hits per day, then an
ordinary site will get less hits, resulting in an Internet that
has a greater and greater resemblance to network television, in
that variety gets more and more limited, the number of voices a
person can hear gets reduced to only members of the virtual OLD
BOY NETWORK, which is selling links to their Web sites for huge
money, and selling advertising on them for even more.
The commercialization of the Internet is bringing more and more
focus on a smaller and smaller portion of the Internet: namely
the commercial portion. Commercial portion growth rates are in
the highest categories, and they have the money to handle those
million "hits" per day their Web Pages are receiving, and these
sites charge huge amounts of money to put a link on their pages
or to advertise there.
When the United States government "sold" the Internet to phone,
cable, and other companies last year, it pulled the commercial,
financial and other "Old Boy Network" doors wide open, and this
has led to a narrower rather than wider spectrum of information
distribution on the Information Superhighway, as more and more,
read more and more of the SAME material, while individuals, and
small groups are finding their readership declining. . . .
It reminds me of the "Mother's Lament of the 70's". . .when the
mothers and teachers complained that they could not get much of
their children's attention. . .because they were being totally,
and I mean TOTALLY, out-competed by the television programs who
could literally spend a million dollars to get kids' attention;
leaving the mothers and teachers an alien in their own homes or
classrooms. . . .
It is an interesting situation in that the "Big Three" Networks
are losing market share to smaller networks and cable companies
. . .but the Internet is losing "market share" to the Big Boys.
If you would like to keep your individual voice, or small group
voice on the Internet, you might want to look at:
homeb10.zip and 1when10a.zip
in the /etext95 directory on
or any of the Project Gutenberg sites.
These are examples of Shareware HomeBrew HomePages you can use.
Create your own World Wide Web Pages with minimum effort and at
minimal expense. New Media, Inc., the people who made up these
HomeBrew HomePages for you at our request, will post indexes of
all the HomeBrew HomePages, and also post a "Top Ten List" of a
variety of the best pages you set up.
***
4. When was the term "Surfing the Internet" first used?
This term was coined by Jean Armour Polly as an article title--
in the Wilson Library Bulletin in June, 1992.
You can download this file from most Project Gutenberg sites as
surf10.txt
***
"Our first Dr. Internet server operator is in Italy
However, the server is physically in Oregon
and has been improved this week.
http://promo.net/gut/
Operated by Pietro Di Miceli
old issues are at
mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu [128.174.201.189]
get /pub/etext/articles/drnet*.*
or
uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu [128.174.5.14]
get /pub/etext/gutenberg/articles/drnet*.*
Testing a new one here in the US:
http://drinternet.soltec.com
This one is in Central USA
also try http://www.pobox.com/drnet
from the folks who brought permanent
email addresses to the Internet
Please reply to inte...@jg.cso.uiuc.edu
or
***
This file is 10K.
***
If you want to try some free Internet classes,
you can Email <spec...@PACIFICNET.NET> Lisa Kraft
***
Our home system has been having trouble with the high
temperatures and humidity for the last two weeks, and
we hope to have everything running better shortly, as
we installed a dehumidifier, and are toying with this
concept known as "air-conditioning."
Thanks to you all, will catch up with all the mail as
soon as we can.