Der Weltanschauung (The WorldView) Origin: HOUSTON, TEXAS USA %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % % % T H E W O R L D V I E W M A G A Z I N E % % % %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% August 10, 1992 Volume 2, Issue 7 FTP: ftp.eff.org pub/cud/wview -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Published and Distributed By Fennec Information Systems And Consulting *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Material Written By Computer And Telecommunications Hobbyists World Wide Promoting the publication of Features, Editorials, etc... To submit material, or to subscribe to the magazine contact this address: request@fennec.sccsi.com "Let us arise, let us arise against the oppressors of humanity; all kings, emperors, presidents of republics, priests of all religions are the true enemies of the people; let us destroy along with them all juridical, political, civil and religious institutions." -Manifesto of anarchists in the Romagna, 1878 @-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@ The World View Staff: InterNet Address: The Desert Fox [Editor] root@fennec.sccsi.com Cyndre The Grey [CoEditor] root@ashpool.sccsi.com Subscription Requests request@fennec.sccsi.com WORLD VIEW NEWSGROUP: wv@taronga.com FTP SITE: ftp.eff.org /pub/cud/wview @-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@ It is the policy of The World View to review any material that is received by us for the purpose of distribution. We respect the rights of all authors/contributors under the Constitution of the United States, and we will honor all requests for anonymity. Any inquiries regarding the questionable content of an article written by someone other than the editors of this publication should be directed to the author. A return E-mail address will be provided if applicable. Reprinting of material from this magazine is highly encouraged. Please site the source of the material, and gain permission from the author when refering to submitted articles. @-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@ Editor's Note: Due to a terrible error in the distribution/mailing of the last issue, some of the more important articles from that issue will be reprinted in this issue. The errors were not the fault of the writers. @-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@ TABLE OF CONTENTS 1) Current Texas Organizational Events................Bryan O' Blivion 2) Bringing New Users Into The Net....................Bryan O' Blivion 3) Network User Fees..................................Patricio Mason @-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@ Current Texas Organizational Cyberevents By Bryan O' Blivion (blivion@taronga.com) Next month will be a year since the organizational meeting of the EFF - Austin chapter, the first local chapter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the USA. At the organization's first annual general membership meeting in Austin in May 1992, over 60 members and interested persons appeared. Coalescing around the leadership and support of local cyber-celebrities Steve Jackson, John Quarterman, and the notorious Bruce Sterling (whose book Hacker Crackdown is due out soon), the group has set up active newsgroups and mailing lists (eff-a@tic.com) on the Net for discussion and organization around our common concerns. Solid achievements of the Austin EFF include the formal organization of the chapter, with adoption of bylaws and election and monthly meetings of a Board of Directors. A successful annual meeting and several other meetings, formal and informal, enhanced our mutual contacts; sort of an Elks Club for cyberspace frontiersmen socializing, after building our rude 386 cabins. Booths and appearances at cons and national conferences by distinguished Austin EFF members gave the movement good publicity, as did Bruce Sterling during his own work and travels. The flag and T-shirts are also real zippy. In Houston, the cyber-liberties scene remains loosely organized around the regular publications like WordView and NIA magazines, which continue to publish regularly. NIA magazine may even have its latest issue out soon. SummerCon in St Louis is the place to be in June for national exposure, but local 'snerds', cyberlunches' and 'cyberdawgs' (apparently the Austin version of such an event) as well as a series of continuing, highly educational private Saturday night parties provide the backbone of our networking strength. The setup of a Coherent unix (ashpool.sccsi.com) and a uucp'd dos-based node, (fennec.sccsi.com) by Cyndre the Grey and Desert Fox respectively have effectively merged our local nodes into the Net, which we count as a significant achievement. Taronga continues to provide its excellent support with access and our own wv@taronga.com newsgroup. But as John Quarterman put it, "It's easy to exchange warm fuzzies..." and basically get self-congratulatory about our common ideals, ignoring individual differences of opinion, but the real world brings a different set of problems. Communication between EFF National (Cambridge) and EFF Austin has suffered of late. After a meeting of the Austin EFF Board decided to incorporate, Mitch Kapor seemed to back off his support for that, indicating that incorporation may not be appropriate for a local chapter. This puzzled the EFF-BOD as well as all onlookers. Mitch recently responded to an inquiry from WorldView staff about a Houston chapter of EFF by saying that we were basically on our own, as no one had been tasked yet by National to deal with local chapter relations, and that all present National staff are running at 125% of capacity. Inexperience in major convention planning have caused the indefinite postponement of this event -- too bad! It appears to this writer that the event planning was too ambitious in scope, trying to involve everyone in the world. The WorldView heartily supports any such project, but it must be reasonable in scope at first, then allowed to grow naturally. Perhaps more informal gatherings, not as tightly organized and planned as a major con, can become something on the scale originally planned. In any case, thanks for trying and for all the work. Readers of the CyberTex mailing list know that it drew major interest from users all over the world, the WELL, etc. So here we are, in the second year of our fragile joint existence as a tenuous cloud, a web of potential connections. Our strength is in our networking, and I call for more informal get-togethers under any name, in Houston or in Austin. Networking, cooperation rather than competition, is our strength. Rather than planning the world's greatest virtual festival, let's just start by having a good time and learning from each other. We will continue to publish, the Austin chapter will proceed under its excellent Board of Directors, and we'll have a few parties..... @-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@ BRINGING NEW USERS INTO THE NET By Bryan O' Blivion (blivion@taronga.com) InterNet-connected global wide area networks are still new enough that most users come from the 3 classic ARPANET communities: defense/government contractors' corporate sites, university researchers/students, and .gov sites. Folks who do not have such a job have historically had little or no access to common network services such as news feeds, email, and file/message posting and transfer, and little opportunity to learn how to use them. Several years ago, various private UNIX host systems began to make net access available to users in a few areas nationwide. DOS-based BBS activity simultaneously soared as modems became cheaply available. But these two areas of online activity shared little, and the user communities rarely interacted. The purpose of this article is to relate how some private computer enthusiasts in Houston, Texas, originally experienced as DOS and BBS users and sysops, obtained participation in UNIX-based WAN network communications and access to the InterNet. Congregating on several BBS's (there are hundreds in the Houston Metro area), our informal users group became a .sig for anyone who wanted to learn about networked computing. Dissatisfied with even FidoNet and the extensive 2000-user chat systems available in Houston, we longed for, studied for the freedom of the InterNet. UNIX command sheets were copied, manuals studied. We even tried to learn the vi editor. But we lacked that all-important account on a REAL system, one that gave us a $ prompt.. Public Unix came to the rescue. The widely advertised NixPub systems in Houston are three: NuChat, Taronga Park, and Sugarland UNIX. NuChat began by kindly offering a few of us accounts that had email. It seemed like magic to send email from a home PC and have it appear in a far system. Mailing to Austin took only 2 hours. Then Stephanie and Peter da Silva, the good-hearted and long-suffering sysops of Taronga Park, opened free shell accounts for such of us as had gotten a little command of Unix. For the first time I as a private citizen had access to Internet-borne email, newsfeeds, a UNIX operating system account.... and thru the Taronga system, had referrals to private TCP/IP capable sites, i.e. TELNET and FTP capability. It was a whole new world; with a cheap modem I had suddenly expanded my computer reach from one hard disk into the vast cloud of the Matrix. For this article, I asked the sysops of taronga.com, Stephanie and Peter Da Silva, some basic questions about her system and the guiding philosophy of this type of Net access. Since any editing of their replies would be superfluous, here are peter and arielle@taronga.com. The original messages were exchanged through the Coherent sys of a mutual friend whose sys was recently enabled as a local InterNet uucp email node (ashpool.sccsi.com). @-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@ NETWORK USER FEES By Patricio Mason A while ago, several members of the list debated the issue of user fees for access to computer networks such as the Internet. Most were rightly adamant that charging for use would have an incalculably detrimental effect. I thought you might like to know that here in Chile this scenario has suddenly become reality. Our Internet hookup is run by CONICYT, (National Council on Science and Technology) a government body. Recently, all users of the Internet, including universities, were notified that starting July 1st, there will be a minimum monthly rate plus a charge per megabyte of international traffic, with 18% sales tax on top. This is a reversal of an earlier decision whereby only a flat rate was charged, regardless of traffic. Both the minimum rate and the charge per megabyte are measured in units roughly equivalent to CDN$31.00 each, i.e., 10 MB of traffic equals CDN$310.00, plus the minimum rate, plus tax. The minimum monthly wage in this country is 38,000 pesos, roughly CDN$134.00. Although the CONICYT decision was sanctioned by Chile's Council of Rectors (university and college presidents), the academic community and other users such as NGOs, non-profit groups and private individuals are stunned and outraged. Needless to say, most university presidents are not users and simply chose from a limited set of options presented to them by administrators and CONICYT functionaries. This may very well mean that university professors will have to obtain clearance from department heads before replying to colleagues abroad or accepting mail from them. Since every byte will cost universities a pretty penny, it may also mean that students will be prevented from sending or receiving international messages. Few will be allowed to do FTP or Telnet. For outside e-mail users such as private individuals and non-profit groups, the high cost will probably entail reducing or eliminating use altogether. Access to the Internet is slightly wider here. High rates mean that only those who can afford them, i.e., government and corporate users, will have the run of the system. Although one of the consequences of the worldwide computer revolution has been to empower the individual as a counterbalance to the unbridled power of governments and corporations, the CONICYT decision in Chile means that those outside the circles of political or financial power will be left out. There is no Internet affiliate that I know of which charges on the basis of traffic volume. Universities are reeling from the implications: just figuring out who is to be billed for what, plus the processing and billing aspects, will most certainly prove an administrative nightmare. A whole new bureaucracy will have to be created at CONICYT and elsewhere to handle this. There is an international write-in campaign on to try to get CONICYT to reverse this decision and discard the notion of charging per amount of traffic. Along with members of the academic community within Chile, the members of CHILE-L --Chilean academics, students and others scattered throughout the world-- are leading this campaign. As a (albeit silent) member of CANADA-L and Internet user, I thought I'd tell you of this and try to enlist your support. If this type of mentality is allowed to prevail, it will certainly set a precedent. If you would like to help, please write a respectful note to CONICYT, the National Council on Science and Technology of Chile, stating your views on this issue. Notes should be sent to Mr. Alberto Cabezas and/or Mr. Florencio Utreras at acabezas@uchdciux.seci.uchile.cl futreras@uchdciux.seci.uchile.cl CONICYT may also be reached at: Canada 308 2o Piso Providencia Santiago, Chile Tel.: (562) 274-4537, 204-7541, 204-7542, 204-7566 I will be glad to provide further information to anyone interested. And of course, feel free to cross-post. Thanks in advance. Patricio Mason (Carleton/U of T) Santiago, Chile pmason@chasqui.mic.cl @-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@-==-@