textfiles/magazines/BITSBYTES/bnb0201

[This is actually Vol2, Num1, Rev1, fixing the misattribution of the
open quote, below, as reported in BNB Vol2 Num3]



       I programmed three days
       and heard no human voices.
        But the hard disk sang.
                       -Geoffrey James, author of The Zen of Programming,
                         The Tao of Programming and Computer Parables.

======================================================================
  BBB  III  TTT  SSS       BBB  Y   Y TTT EEE SSS    ONLINE EDITION:
  B  B  I    T   S         B  B Y   Y  T  E   S     =THE ELECTRONIC
  BBB   I    T   SSS  AND  BBB   YYY   T  EEE SSS   =NEWSLETTER FOR
  B  B  I    T     S       B  B   Y    T  E     S   =INFORMATION
  BBB  III   T   SSS       BBB    Y    T  EEE SSS   =HUNTER-GATHERERS
======================================================================
Volume 2, Number 1                                 (January 31, 1994)
======================================================================
                              CONTENTS                               =
- The Search For Intelligence    | - Chaos is the Form               =
- Planning For the Future        | - That's Infotainment             =
- Top Ten Technology Hits and    | - Thrown For a Loop               =
  Misses of the Decade           | - The More Things Change...       =
- Playing the Wisdom Game        | - Explicit Talk                   =
- Bits and Bytes Bookshelf       | - SPECIAL SECTION:                =
- On The Newsstand               |   FOCUS ON BUSINESS ISSUES        =
- RIDING THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY | - PLUS: High Tech News            =
======================================================================
Chaos is the Form            (Dave Hughes)

Things are not the way they seem. Tom Peters warns that anyone in a
business who understands it completely is probably already failing.

Last summer at the BBSCON in Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2,000 intense
individuals - not hackers and hobbyists, but serious economic players
- pursued their futures with a zeal that would startle many people.
One bulletin board system operator, whose BBS operates out of his
basement, grossed more than US $5 million last year.

That BBS will probably be gone next year, but the operator had
recovered his investment in the first two weeks of operation.

A lot of smug businesses, organizations, and implementations built
around technology are going to be bypassed in the next few years - so
fast it won't even be funny. I'll bet the Internet as we know it will
be passe in five years - just as the largest number of people are
waking up to it and making investment decisions about it. They will
soon look foolish.

Wireless will yank the cords of an awful lot of companies who think
they have it with LANS, TCP/IP, fiber, and cable. And who knows what
is "beyond wireless?" Perhaps some incarnation of Tesla's crazy
experiments in Colorado Springs in 1899, where he got electrical
resonance using the earth as a transmitter, signals pulsating so
strongly that they made a roar across the city and blew out the town's
power station? Maybe that annoying "noise" around Santa Fe is a 14-
-year-old working on it.

Change is driving everything. Chaos is the form.

Maybe a fractal is more descriptive of a company than a spreadsheet.
(WIRED 2.01, January 1994, p. 44)
======================================================================
FUTURE TECH

=> PERSONAL AGENT SOFTWARE. The software of the future will be capable
   of sorting your e-mail, paging you for important news from your
   office, faxing you a shopping list from home and brushing off
   unsolicited sales calls. "It sounds like science fiction, but folks
   are working on this right now," says Marc Porat, president of
   General Magic Inc. Watch for more information on personal agents in
   an upcoming B&B. (St. Petersburg Times 12/9/93, p. E1) (E/P)

=> SINGLE ELECTRON CHIP. Hitachi Ltd. has demonstrated what it says is
   the world's first memory chip that uses only a single electron and
   can operate at room temperature. The technology could be the basis
   for development of a chip capable of storing 16 billion bits, about
   1,000 the capacity of most advanced chips sold today. (NYT 12/8/93,
   pg. D5) (E/P)

=> TI'S QUANTUM CHIPS. Texas Instruments announced lab tests of a new
   chip that operates three times faster than the speed of
   conventional microprocessors at room temperature. The chips are
   based on principles of quantum physics, and use wavelength filters
   rather than traditional circuitry for directing the path of
   electrons. (WSJ 12/9/93, pg. B4) (E/P)

=> FROM RADIATION TO RAYS. Samsung announced that next year it will
   begin marketing a "Bio-TV" next year that turns harmful
   electromagnetic radiation into ultraviolet and infrared rays,
   capable of making plants bloom and grow. (Telecommunications Policy
   Review 12/5/93, p.10) (E/P)

=> WIRELESS E-MAIL. Wireless e-mail has great potential, but the
   systems now available still have a few kinks to work out.
   Improvements are needed in service range, cost, transmission speed,
   capacity, security and integration with e-mail systems on local-
   area networks. (Communications Week 12/6/93) (E/P)
======================================================================
The Search For Intelligence      (Lee Gomez)

The elusive intelligent machine one of mankind's grandest dreams,
appears to be slipping through the cracks. Take the results of this
year's "Turing Test," in which people try to discern whether they're
communicating-via keyboard-with a computer or a human being. In 1991,
five people were fooled into thinking they were conversing with a live
person; this year, the number was zero. (In Artificial Intelligence
Test, Humanity's Hubris Is The Loser, San Jose Mercury News 12/13/93,
p. 1C)
======================================================================
That's Infotainment          (Katherine Fulton)

Journalists don't have to be technophobes to be concerned about what
will be lost in the digital future. What will happen to those who
refuse to be "infotainers"? Will editors do nothing but create
hypertext links from on-line libraries? (Future Tense, Columbia
Journalism Review, Nov/Dec 1993, p. 29)
======================================================================
Thrown For a Loop            (Jerry Michalski)

The local loop's a mess: Should we have dumb devices and a smart
network or distributed switching and a client-server architecture?
Should the transport be all digital or hybrid? How far downstream can
we carry fiber? How much, if any, upstream capacity should we offer?
What protocols should we use? Who should be allowed to compete; who
should be restrained? And where's the aspirin? (The Future Of The
Local Loop, Release 1.0, Nov. 22, p. 1)
======================================================================
THE ONLINE WORLD

=> WELL, WELL, WELL. The Well (an acronym for Whole Earth 'Lectronic
   Link) has been bought by businessman Bruce Katz, who plans to run
   it as a for-profit business. A technological overhaul is planned.
   It'll be interesting to see what happens to this respected online
   community at this juncture in it's history, and at this juncture
   in the net's evolution, when so many new services and technologies
   are being introduced.

=> INTERNET TO THE RESCUE. The Internet can help companies coordinate
   far-flung research and development, design, manufacturing and sales
   efforts. High-performance companies understand they must
   incorporate workers' knowledge and insight at all levels into their
   ongoing operations. Those that do this fastest and best tend to
   make superior products, deliver better service and build a bigger
   bottom line. (Chris Locke, "Time to Cash In"  Network Computing,
   1/15/94, p. 60)

=> WALL STREET JOURNAL/INTERACTIVE. The WSJ is scheduled to be be
   available in an interactive electronic format in the fall of 1994.
   Dow Jones, the Journal's parent company also plans an on-screen
   service called Personal Journal. Sounds like the technology used in
   Dow Jone's DJINN executive news service (B&B v1 #15) is ready for
   prime time. Or else DJ feels the interactive mating call and feels
   that urge to get out there and DO IT. The WSJ is a useful
   newspaper. If they can price point this thing so the savy executive
   or small businessman or entrepreneur can afford it, they might just
   have something here. On the other hand, a reader pointed out that
   in the WSJ's recent Internet pull-out section they identified
   trends and resources and never once listed an email address, a
   pretty glaring omission.

=> APPLE'S ON-LINE VILLAGE. Apple's new on-line information service
   will be called eWorld, and it will use a village as its metaphor
   for information services. Individual buildings in the village will
   designate particular categories of information, such as business
   news, entertainment, etc. (Atlanta Constitution 1/4/94 D5)  (E/P)

=> E-MAIL PRIVACY. A high-profile Los Angeles Times reporter was
   recalled from the Moscow bureau after snooping into colleagues'
   e-mail. He will be reassigned to an as-yet-undisclosed position.
   The Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 protects
   the privacy of messages sent over public networks like MCI Mail
   and Compuserve, but it DOES NOT (emphasis mine) cover a company's
   internal e-mail. (NYT 12/6/93 A8)  In November Sen. Paul Simon
   introduced a bill that would force companies to tell workers ahead
   of time if they regularly monitor e-mail messages. Companies would
   also have to disclose after the fact that they accessed an
   employee's hard drive. (WSJ 10/26/93, pg. A1)  (E/P)
======================================================================
Planning For the Future      (Marvin Weisbord)

Representation in planning enhances democracy. It is not sufficient
for productive workplaces. Dignity, meaning, and community come from
deep engagement in our work. Each person needs real tasks that make a
contribution to the whole. That means a form of corporate democracy
still being invented. (from: Productive Workplaces (Organizing and
Managing for Dignity, Meaning, and Community) Jossey-Bass Publishers
1987, 1991. 433 pp. $22.95)
======================================================================
Explicit Talk                (Esther Dyson)

"Explicitness" is the giving of names to things that were unspoken
before. Explicitness helps us handle things, but it diminishes their
true complexity. To automate business systems, we need to define their
operations explicitly. The question for vendors and systems designers
is, how can you balance the need for explicitness with the need to
encourage that inexplicable, unpredictable process: human creativity?
(An Explicit Look At Explicitness. Release 1.0, Oct. 31, p. 1.)
======================================================================
RIDING THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY

=> THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY: UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Twenty-eight companies
   have banded together to make recommendations to the Clinton
   administration on how best to achieve a seamless electronic
   superhighway. The Cross Industry Working Team includes AT&T, Apple,
   Citicorp, BellSouth, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.(WSJ 12/13/93, pg. B3)
   In January, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown named the members of the
   NII advisory council. Members include Mitch Kapor, chairman of the
   Electronic Freedom Foundation; Nathan Myhrvold, senior VP for
   advanced technology at Microsoft; Bert Roberts, chairman of MCI;
   and John Sculley, former chairman of Apple. (InformationWeek
   1/10/93, p. 10)

=> PUBLIC SERVICES. You'll be glad to know that Craig Fields, the CEO
   of Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, a research
   consortium, says his company will be supplying "the maps and gas
   stations necessary to use a national information highway." Please
   check the oil while you're at it, fella. (SOURCE: "Out of the Ivory
   Tower" Information Week 12/13/93, p. 57)

=> ROAD KILL ON THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY. Small cable operators will
   have a hard time keeping up with the Joneses as the industry giants
   spend the billions necessary to develop networks capable of
   carrying movies on demand, video telephone service and interactive
   games. The WSJ predicts small firms may become "the information
   superhighway's first road kill." (WSJ 12/13/93, pg. B2)  (E/P)
======================================================================
Would You Believe FREE Long-Distance Calls?

A small startup company in New York City could soon have the lowest
long-distance rate of all: FREE. The only catch would be the radio-
like commercials would periodically interrupt your chat. "Why don't
you catch up on old times in person -- American Airlines fares from
Philadelphia to Atlanta have never been better."

This concept is also being considered as an option in the brave new
world of online entertainment -- you'd pay a fee to see the
commercial-free version, but those willing to put up with the ads
do so on a See-For-Free (tm) basis. The commercials in effect
subsidize your TV-viewing pleasure. This is actually the situation
now. Things will just be spelled out more clearly, and consumers will
have more say in how TV interacts with their lives. (SOURCE: Business
Week, 8/16/93)
======================================================================
Top Ten Technology Hits and Misses of the Decade (Communications Week)

   HITS                              MISSES
1) E-mail                         1) SAA (IBM's System
2) 10Base-T (though personally       Application Architecture)
   I prefer 12Base-T)             2) ISDN
3) Novell NetWare                 3) Public Network Reliability
4) Routers (used in LANS)         4) Manager of [network] Managers
5) TCP/IP (packet transfer        5) IBM's Telecom Strategy
   protocols used on internet)    6) Lotus-Novell Merger
6) SNMP (Simple Network           7) TRIP '92 (Transcontinental
   Management Protocol -             ISDN Project)
   already I like it)             8) System One (Eastern and American
7) Switched 56-Kbps Services         airlines flop reservation system
8) Cell Switching                 9) MAP/TOP (Manufacturing Automation
9) Facsimile (FAX)                   Protocol from GM, Technical
10) Windows 3.1                      Office Protocol from Boeing
                                     Computer Services)
                                 10) Central-Office-Based LANS

(Communication Week's 1/3/94 issue is a tenth anniversary "Rise of
Networking" edition, and has some interesting articles and overviews,
an essay by VP Al Gore and an interview with Alvin Toffler)
======================================================================
Statistically Speaking...

=> HOME SOFTWARE. Total spending on home educational software programs
   is pegged at $200 million for 1993 alone, according to market
   research firm PC Data. (USA Today 12/7/93, p. A11) (E/P)

=> MULTIMEDIA PC's. Link Research reports that nearly 718,000 PCs sold
   in the U.S. this year will be multimedia machines, and more than
   550,000 upgrade kits will be installed on older systems -- a nearly
   five-fold increase over last year. (Business Week 12/13/93 p.117)
   (E/P)

=> CYBERSPACE MARKET. The market for on-line services is estimated at
   $800 million in revenue a year, and is growing at 25% annually.
   (Tampa Tribune 12/13/93, p. B&F11) (E/P)

=> TELECOMMUTING TRENDS. One million more people are telecommuting
   this year than last, a 15% increase in company employees who work
   at home part or full-time during normal business hours. A recent
   survey of more than 100 companies nationwide by Home Office
   Computing found that 30% had some type of telecommuting program in
   place. Another survey by Work/Family Directions found that 20% to
   40% of employees surveyed would like to telecommute. (WSJ 12/14/93,
   p. B1) This trend toward working at home (supported by computers,
   modems, fax machines and cellular phones) accounted for 45% of all
   new jobs from 1987 to 1992 according to a Deloitte & Touche report.
   (Atlanta Constitution 1/2/94, p. E2).  (E/P)

=> PC PRICES CONTINUE TO FALL. PC prices will continue to plummet in
   '94, following this year's downward trend. Cheaper components and
   stiff competition are largely responsible, with microprocessors,
   hard drives, and modems all going for much less than last year.
   (Washington Post 12/27/93 Business p. 15)  (E/P) I read somewhere
   that Pentium system prices, currently in the $3000 price range, may
   be as low as $1000 by year's end. YOW!!

=> PRICE FOR SUPPORT TO RISE. That was the good new - with companies
   slashing profit margins to remain competitive, something had to
   give, and that something is support. Microsoft already has a 900
   number where you pay for software support on any of their products.
   Expect to see this trend continue, with perhaps a certain amount of
   free support when you first buy the product.

=> AND THE LOSER IS... The mainframe computer. A Dataquest survey
   indicates that personal computer gained 5% of market share in 1993,
   at the expense of mainframe systems. (Atlanta Constitution 1/6/94,
  pg. F2)  (E/P)
======================================================================
The More Things Change...

"We trained hard, but it seemed every time we were beginning to form
up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life
that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a
wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while
producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation."

(From Petronii Arbitri Satyricon AD 66, attributed to Gaius Petronus,
a Roman General who later committed suicide) (SOURCE: Unplastic News)
======================================================================
SPECIAL SECTION: FOCUS ON BUSINESS ISSUES
==================================
Pay Up If You Want to Keep Your Staff   (John P. McPartlin)

After many months of relative stability on the IS staffing front, you
may need a scorecard to keep track of turnover in 1994. Perlin's firm,
New York-based Edward Perlin Associates Inc., just completed its 1993
professional salary survey. They talked to IS executives at 50 large
corporations with an average staff of 700. The executives surveyed
expect turnover to increase rapidly in 1994 as the economy continues
to warm up and companies compete for experienced IS people.

The competition could be costly. Perlin has heard of companies putting
money into contingency funds in case they have to react to an increase
in turnover. "They've tucked away maybe half a percent of their salary
budget, pre-approved by top management, so they're ready to defend
their good people if those employees start to go," he explains.

IS staff turnover peaked in the early 1980s at 18% or so, then dipped
to the single digits in the uncertain economy of the past few years.
Now, as companies seek specialized skills, "things are definitely
heating up again," Perlin adds. This year's average staff turnover
rate at companies surveyed by Perlin was around 11%, but nearly a
third of the respondents expect an increase in turnover in 1994.

How to hold on to people? Perlin suggests bonuses. In 1993, according
to Perlin, bonuses paid to IS employees ranged from nothing to under
20%, while bonuses for senior IS managers ranged from zippo to a
92% (schwing!), with 30% the average.

The survey also found that the average starting salary for entry-level
IS jobs ranges from $24,000 to $43,000. For next year, executives
surveyed by Perlin expect starting salaries to increase by only about
2%.

For more information, call Perlin Assoc. at (212) 714-0588.
(InformationWeek 12/13/93, p. 80)
==================================
Outsiders Looking In         (Mickey Williamson)

Hiring an outside consultant to help with an IS project can be tricky.
Such arrangements require the CIO to cede control of many of the
project's aspects to outside consultants. Yet, in the end, it's the
CIO who's accountable to top management for the project's success or
failure. The solution? CIOs who have worked happily with consultants
say the only way to make it work is to stay involved. (Improving Your
Outside Chances, CIO, Nov. 15, p. 30)
==================================
Avoiding the Query from Hell (Doug Bartholomew)

Don't look now, but your Achille's heel is showing. Information users
in business units demand a skill many IS shops lack: forethought. ...
"Solutions are being built in an ad hoc way instead of a strategic
way," says Howard Dresner of the Gartner Group's Burlington, Mass.,
office. ... To better handle business-user demands, Dresner recommends
that IS shops create a new position: the business-applications
specialist, a business person trained in technology. That way, he
explains, "information systems will be designed to support business
intelligence." (Sidebar to article "Mining For Data", Information Week
11/22/93, p. 26)
==================================
Taking Email Seriously       (David Morrison)

As electronic mail matures from a cutting-edge curiosity to an inte-
gral part of the business world, many firms are grappling with issues
such as E-mail etiquette and conflicting standards. The rewards for
getting it right can be great: One firm that used E-mail at the core
of its reengineering project to automate processes saved itself
$250,000. (Electronic Mail: What Hath Samuel Morse Wrought, Beyond
Computing, November/December 1993, p. 24)
==================================
How to Let Your Team Succeed (John P. McPartlin)

How do you keep a self-directed work team from falling apart at its
carefully sewn seams? Wilson Learning Corp., a Minneapolis
management-training and development firm recently studied 4,500 such
teams at 500 organizations has some advice for any IS chief looking to
make teams the basis of a companywide strategy.

Their conclusions? Managers should not make all the decisions.
Instead, try to help team members confront problems on their own.
Develop ways for the team to resolve conflicts without always needing
your input or involvement. Communicate a clear vision to self-managed
teams and explain how the team's daily activities fit into the larger
goals of the department -- even the company. Never control or withhold
information from the team, the study adds, and actively encourage team
members to freely debate their own ideas and proposals. That way, they
can stay focused and remember they're not working in a void.

For more information, contact the Wilson Learning Corp. at (800) 328-
7937, ext. 8868. (InformationWeek 12/13/93, p. 80)
======================================================================
THE KULTCHUR KORNER

=> INTRO TO COMPUTING. Video games -- with their warrior and
   adventurer heroes -- seem to be designed mainly for boys rather
   than girls. "That's very disturbing," says media critic Marsha
   Kinder, "because video games provide an entry into the world of
   computers." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 1/1/94 D1) (E/P)

=> VIDEO GAME RATINGS. In an effort to stave off government interven-
   tion in the face of growing public concern, Sega, Nintendo, Sears
   and others announced they're going to create a rating system for
   video games. Games will be rated for blood, violence and sex
   content. A spokesman for Sega said the plan was designed to give
   consumers more information about the products they purchase. That
   sounds reasonable to me, but for some, it's still not enough. Sen.
   Joseph Lieberman, for example had hoped the industry would "simply
   stop producing some of the worst stuff, in terms of violence and
   sexual content." Funny they don't tell Hollywood what it should
   make and not make. Too much entrenched power there. Let's blame it
   all on video games. "I'd like to shoot those idiots who think this
   stuff affects me!!" (Calvin)

=> I WANT MY FISH TV!! Last summer, the cable television station that
   serves Columbia S.C. aimed a camera full-time at an aquarium to
   occupy a vacant channel, which was awaiting the September start-up
   of the Science-Fiction Channel. When Sci-Fi replaced the 'fish
   channel,' complaints were so numerous that the company was forced
   to find another channel for the aquairium, which now runs 14 hours
   per day, sharing time with the Bravo Channel. (SOURCE: Unplastic
   News)

=> IN FASHION NEWS, men's suit sales have plummeted as men
   increasingly "dress down" for the office. "With so many offices
   going into electronic status, dealing with people through faxes and
   computers, there is no need for appearance to be as large a
   factor," says the president of a clothing store company in Kansas
   City. (St. Petersburg Times 1/3/94 p.19) (E/P)

=> NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT. Brian Moran is Manager of Technical
   Evangelism at Microsoft. "Our job is to work with folks who are
   interested in our technology and tell them all about it." Including
   the infamous undocumented Windows system calls, I wonder?

=> SUBJECT: SATAN CLAUS! Parents in Grand Saline, Texas, removed a
   picture of Santa Claus from a school because the letters in "Santa"
   can be rearranged to spell "Satan". This caused Esquire to note
   that the letters in "Grand Saline, Texas" can be re-ordered to
   spell "Grand Anal Sex Site". (SOURCE: Unplastic News)

=> WISHFUL THINKING. A Roper survey sponsored by IBM found that more
   than half of the respondents don't want a computer that requires a
   manual to use it. Two-thirds requested a computer that would
   recognize a user's face and automatically pull up the file s/he
   typically uses. (Washington Post 12/27/93 Business p. 13).  (E/P)
======================================================================
"Why spend thousands of dollars on a personal computer? Why not spend
your money on something fun, like a boat?" -- A question put to David
V. Evans, VP and director of IS at J.C. Penney, when Evans bought
his first PC in 1982. Evans replied, "That PC is my boat -- that's
what I like to play with on weekends" (Information Week)
======================================================================
Playing the Wisdom Game      (Howard Rheingold)

[Shumpei Kumon is a former professor at the University of Tokyo and
cofounder of the GLOCOM Institute, which is dedicated to studying and
advancing the principles outlined below. This excerpt is from Howard
Rheingold's book The Virtual Community (Addison-Wesley 1993) (see B&B
v1 #12)]

In Kumon's framework, the three most important stages in the history
of human civilization are most usefully seen in terms of the social
games that governed those civilizations' sources of power: first the
Prestige Game, then the Wealth Game, and finally the Wisdom Game. The
Prestige Game was triggered by militarization, the use of force and
the threat of force to gain and maintain power over other actors. The
idea of nationhood came along and the use of force was abstracted on a
higher level, in which national economic and cultural power challenged
raw military power for importance. The industrial revolution made
possible the most recent era in which technologically produced wealth
rather than either prestige or military power alone became the most
important marker in the world's highest-level social games. The older
games continue to exist, but the center of attention moves from royal
courts to national elections to virtual, transnational, communication-
mediated relationships as the system evolves.

The current trigger for a transition to a new stage, in Kumon's
theory is the world telecommunications network, and the next game will
involve information, knowledge, and folklore-sharing cooperatives
around the world that will challenge the primacy of traditional wealth
the way industrial wealth challenged the primacy of military and
national power and prestige. Today's virtual communities, Kumon came
to understand firsthand, offer a small-scale model of a society in
which people communicate in a way that creates collective wealth. A
kind of wealth that includes the existence of Parenting conferences is
more than a cold-blooded exchange of information, hence his
characterization of the coming social framework as the Wisdom Game, in
which the source of power is "consensus-formation through information
and knowledge sharing."
======================================================================
Bits and Bytes Bookshelf:

Balancing Act: How Managers Can Integrate Successful Careers and
Fulfilling Personal Lives - by Joan Kofodimos [Jossey-Bass, 1993.
167 pp. $25.95]

- "After 10 years of interviews and consulting with executives and
  managers, Joan Kofodimos has gathered insights that cut through
  trite rationalizations and force you to answer critical questions
  about how you conduct your life and, in turn, damage the lives of
  others at work and home. Kofodimos offers alternatives that can lead
  to personal as well as professional success." (Jerry P. Miller,
  Information Week 11/29/93, p. 58)

The Internet Complete Reference - by Harley Hahn and Rick Stout
[Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1994. 817 pp. $29.95]

- This is the latest (last time I looked) in a seemingly endless
  stream of Internet how-to books. What this one has going for it is
  completeness. You've got 500+ pages of information on the Internet,
  from the basics (What is the I-net, A Quick Tour of the I-net, How
  to Connect to the I-net, I-net Addressing, I-net Mail) to chapters
  explaining the various tools available to net.surfers (Telnet,
  Finger, Usenet (seperate chapters for the rn,trn, nn and tin
  newsreader programs), anonymous FTP, Internet Relay Chat (IRC),
  Gopher, Archie, Veronica, Jughead, WAIS, World Wide Web, mailing
  lists and more! Next come 150+ pages of Internet resources by
  subject area and 100+ pages of appendixes listing USENET newsgroups,
  public access providers, and lots more. All the details are here
  (with tables listing the commands for the utilities), but the book
  also explains things for the beginners in the audience. *IF* you're
  only going to have one Internet Reference book, this one would be
  a good choice.

Insanely Great (The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That
Changed Everything) - by Steven Levy [Viking Books, 1994. 292 pp.
$20.95]

- Seen but not reviewed. Levy is also the author of Hackers (1985)
  and Artificial Life (1992, see review B&B v1 #5), both of which
  are now available as paperbacks. Based on those books, I would
  venture to say that if you are interested in the subject, you will
  find this book to be informative and well-written.
======================================================================
=  Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?   =
======================================================================
On The Newsstand

WINDOWS MAGAZINE. The January 1994 feature a six page preview (with
lots of screen shots) of Chicago, the Windows 4.0 prototype.

BYTE. The January 1994 issue features a special report on advanced
operating systems. Articles on microkernal architectures, object-
oriented operating systems, and cross-platform OS's. Is your head
spinning yet? No? Byte's regular State of the Art section features
articles on next-generation CPUs, with much talk of superscalar
processing, the Intel/VLSI Polar chip set, Cyrix's M1 chip, and a
variety of RISC architectures. Also, the 1993 Byte Awards, which I'll
be summarizing next issue. For the techno-weenie in all of us.

NEW MEDIA. This special issue, titled The 1994 Multimedia Tool Guide,
lists over 750 MM products for Macs, PCs. Amigas, and Silicon Graphics
machines. Divided into functional categories (Presentations and
Authoring, Graphics, Audio, Video, Optical Media, Display Systems and
Multimedia PCs) each section gives an overview of the state of the
technology, product features, and page after page of cross-referenced
product comparison charts. Essential if you're in the MM market.
(ACCESS: New Media 609/786-4430)
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I recommend no sour, ascetic life. I believe not only in the thorns on
a rosebush, but in the roses which the thorns defend. Asceticism is
the child of sensuality and superstition. She is the mother of many a
secret sin. God, when he made man's body, did not give us a fiber too
much, nor a passion too many.
                              - Theodore Parker
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======================================================================
BITS AND BYTES ONLINE, an electronic newsletter for text-based life-
forms, is printed using 100% recycled electrons, and is intended for
distribution IN THAT MEDIUM. We use only the *finest* electrons in
B&B. B&B is published on a fractal schedule. You figure it out.
======================================================================
Jay Machado            =  (Copyright 1994 Jay Machado)  *unaltered*  =
1529 Dogwood Drive     =  ELECTRONIC distribution of this file for   =
Cherry Hill, NJ 08003  =  non-profit purposes is encouraged.         =
ph (eve) 609/795-0998  =  The editor is solely responsible for the   =
========================  editorial content or lack thereof. Opinions=
========================  expressed are not necesarily shared by the =
========================  editor. Just say NO to flame-fests.        =
======================================================================
=============== End of Bits and Bytes Online V2, #1  =================
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