negative press realease
A full weekend of work has spilled into the beginning of a full week of
work. If you are _so_ sick and twisted that you've actually noticed this
missing edition then "Thanks", I missed you, too. Let's not be apart so
long, next time.
The coolest thing I've come across in the last week is a quaint little
e-zine called "Entirely Other Day". I found it in my favorite bitchin'
spot, http://www.suck.com. I'm not gonna 'splain his 'zine to you, but
when I wrote the author (asking for an original piece for the WU and for
permission to discuss him in the open), he actually responded. (I know --
it's not as cool as Dilbert's Scott Adams writing me back but Greg Knauss
seems like a swell kinda guy.) He had this to say:
From: Greg Knauss
Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you, but I've been buried
under the Martian Death Flu.
> Let me know if you're interested [in writing a piece for the WU].
I'm interested, but, alas, unable. You're welcome to re-print anything
you'd like, but my original output is on the smaller side of "occasional."
Thanks for the offer, though.
SO! With Greg's permission here's two of his pieces PLUS the info on
getting onto HIS mailing list.
**************************************************************************
Subject: I Understand Some People Make Lists Before They Go
July 8, 1994
So I walk into the supermarket and instantly become some sort of
id-turned-physical. I wander up and down the aisles, yelping "Want that
and that and that and that and that." I'm not shopping so much as impulse
buying on a massive scale.
As I'm wheeling the cart back to the car, I realize that, among other
things, I've bought:
* A giant, mutant three-liter bottle of pineapple soda
* JIF peanut butter, and the only reason I can think of is because
"Choosy moms choose JIF!"
* A one-pound bag of salami
* Some hard, crunchy plums
* A giant, mutant two-quart jar of salsa
* Shampoo
* Pop-Tarts, grape, with frosting
* Some aerosol spray by the name of "Easy Cheese, Cheddar and Bacon
Flavor"
Using this stuff to organize a coherent meal would be a real challenge if
I didn't have a blender.
**************************************************************************
Phil, Trent. Trent, Phil.
September 8, 1994
So I'm driving out of Chavez Ravine with Phil after watching the Dodgers win
a squeaker and Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" comes on the radio. "Closer" is
angry music, brooding and distorted, so I turn it up loud. 'Cause, y'know,
I'm a brooding and distorted kinda guy.
You let me violate you, you let me desecrate you,
You let me penetrate you, you let me complicate you.
Help me, I broke apart my insides,
Help me, I've got no soul to sell,
Help me, the only thing that works for me,
Help me get away from myself.
I want to [silence] you like an animal,
I want to feel you from the inside,
I want to [silence] you like an animal,
My whole existence is flawed,
You get me closer to God.
I turn the radio down a bit and say, "Hee."
Phil looks a little unsettled. "Ah," he says, adding "Um" a moment later.
"That's not 'I want to
invite-out-out-for-coffee-and-maybe-have-a-nice-conversation you like an
animal,' is it?"
**************************************************************************
From: "Entirely Other Day Request"
Subject: Welcome to an Entirely Other List
Welcome to An Entirely Other List!
This list is meant to distribute the crazed rantings
of Greg Knauss (greg@continuus.com), though any
subscriber can post to the list.
To subscribe, send mail to eod-request@pip.macuser.ziff.com with
the word "subscribe" as your subject.
To post to the list, send mail to eod@pip.macuser.ziff.com.
To unsubscribe, send mail to eod-request@pip.macuser.ziff.com with
the word "unsubscribe" as your subject.
To only see messages from Greg (and not from other list members),
send mail to eod-request@pip.macuser.ziff.com with the word "SET NOCHAT"
as your subject.
A Web archive of Greg's madness is available at
http://www.etext.org/Zines/EOD/
If you have any list server questions, mail Jason Snell at
jsnell@macuser.com.
**************************************************************************
[ From membryk@madison.vislab.com, who seems to change ISP's and email ]
[ names more often than I change which butt-cheek I rest on. (He used ]
[ to go by the address kmembry@greenmnts.com). ]
http://www.interworld.com/vrml/weather.xgi
realtime thermometer in vrml, I like the fact that the words ALWAYS
face the viewer, I have to learn how to do that (I'm sure all labels
do, just never used them)
[ This is a small, but pretty cool site. If you're setup to see VRML ]
[ sites (with WebFX/Netscape or something similar) this is mighty cool.]
Pioneer Joel is another good vrml site -
http://honors.uhc.asu.edu/~joel/vrml/
[ I was wary when I started here, but if you pull this one up, be sure ]
[ to check out his "Garment" vrml. This guy's a pretty good VRML art- ]
[ ist (is this art?), but it's not that hard when you've got access to ]
[ college equipment and lots of free time. ]
**************************************************************************
[ Also from membryk@madison.vislab.com is the URL to the hottest come- ]
[ dian on the curcuit today: Carrottop! His website's even funny. ]
http://www.carrottop.com/
**************************************************************************
[ mjankows@beta.centenary.edu wasn't paying attention when I reviewed ]
[ these several weeks ago, but since I don't have anything else for a ]
[ "KMc Pantry Review", a second opinion's better than none at all. ]
I don't know how new they are, but they are a great snack if you like
building dams in you arteries. Doritios cracker sandwiches are great.
The taste of nacho cheese doritios has been applied to a cheese subsitute
and pastes two nice little white crackers together. They have a nice
taste, if you like the chips, and as an added bonus, each little sandwich
has perforations along its diagonal so you can break it into two pieces
which are shaped like the chips. Wow.
**************************************************************************
[ stavros@eden.com sent this along and calls it "Cosmic Thoughts - dumb ]
[ but passed on anyway" -- and I agree...kinda funny, though. ]
QUOTES ON THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE
Carl Zwanzig: "Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark
side, and it holds the universe together...."
Douglas Adams: "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody
discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will
instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already
happened."
Albert Einstein: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human
stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Unknown: "Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting
thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things."
Edward P. Tryon: "In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer
the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things
which happen from time to time."
John Andrew Holmes: "It is well to remember that the entire universe,
with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
Max Frisch: "Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man
doesn't have to experience it."
Kilgore Trout: "The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."
Woody Allen: "I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe
when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown."
Douglas Adams: "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made
a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
William J. Broad: "The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of
the universe seems to be missing."
Rich Cook: "Programming today is a race between software engineers
striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the
Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe
is winning."
Fred Hoyle: "There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't
know what it's a plan for."
Ray Bradbury: "We are an impossibility in an impossible universe."
Christopher Morley: "My theology, briefly, is that the universe was
dictated but not signed."
Edward Chilton: "I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing.
It's not holding a charge."
Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson): "The surest sign that intelligent
life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to
contact us."
**************************************************************************
[ From membryk@madison.vislab.com. I really won't go off on this one. ]
http://www3.gse.ucla.edu/~cjones/mentos-faq.html
everything you ever wanted to know about Mentos!
**************************************************************************
[ People who know me know I haven't seen the PF movie, but I know ]
[ it was popular, so here's some info you may or may not know or ]
[ have guessed. ggibson@astate.edu sent me this. ]
[ ...and don't try to talk me into seing it, it'll only make me ]
[ less interested... ]
If you all are anything like me then you had no idea what was in
the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. So, through a friend of a friend of a
friend who had a two hour conversation with Quentin Tarantino himself, I
now know, and I thought I would pass along the information because it
makes the movie even 100 times better than it already is.
Remember the first time you were introduce to Marsellis Wallace. The
first shot of him was of the back of his head, complete with band-aid.
Then, remember the combination of the lock on the briefcase was 666.
Then, remember that whenever anyone opened the briefcase, it glowed, and
they were in amazement at how beautiful it was; they were speechless.
Now, bring in some Bible knowledge, and remember that when the devil
takes your soul, he takes it from the back of your head. Yep, you
guessed it. And what is the most beautiful thing about a person: his
soul. Marsellis Wallace had sold his soul to the devil, and was trying
to buy it back. The three kids in the beginning of the movie were the
devil's helpers. And remember that when the kid at the end came out of
the bathroom with a "hand cannon," Jules and Vincent were not harmed by
the bullets. "God came down and stopped the bullets," because they
were saving a soul. It was divine intervention.
Ezekiel 25:17
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities
of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the
name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of
darkness, for he is truely his brother's keeper and the finder of lost
children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengence and
furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And
you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengence upon thee."
**************************************************************************
[ the kMc sent this and it left ROTFL with my hands around my crotch! ]
Take this away, it's killing me!
for a little background, first see:
http://www.the-wire.com/kranna/hotnuts.html
--
Subj: The Amazing Hot Nut Machine
Date: 95-12-14 13:51:20 EST
From: Baked Ham
To: kranna@the-wire.com
CC: Baked Ham
I think I need to warn you that I saw something in Amsterdam called
"The Amazing Hot Nut Machine." And it didn't dispense filberts, if
you get my drift.
Keep it up,
John Hargrave
--
Subj: Re: The Amazing Hot Nut Machine
Date: 95-12-17 14:34:41 EST
From: kranna@the-wire.com (kranna Distributors Ltd.)
To: BakedHam@aol.com
Dear John:
Thanks for the e-mail, but I do not understand your drift. Please
explain.
Regards,
Ed Kozlowski
Kranna Distributors Ltd.
RR#1
Palgrave, Ontario, Canada
L0N 1P0
--
Subj: Re: The Amazing Hot Nut Machine
Date: 95-12-18 10:06:46 EST
From: Baked Ham
To: kranna@the-wire.com
CC: Baked Ham
Mr. Kozlowski:
It was a testicle warmer.
Best Regards,
John Myers Hargrave
**************************************************************************
stavros@eden.com, jhatorn@shreveport.promus.com and I (etrigan@eden.com)
have decided to take my first full-fledged self-supported adult style
(in real hotels and on planes) vacation. If you care to know where:
http://www.nets.com/skinm/FastF.html
(the Ski resorts of New Mexico) and when is: the last full weekend of
February. Care to join?
**************************************************************************
[ Occasionally Kelly.McCollum@chronicle.com (better known as the kMc) ]
[ sends me a copy of one of his favorite zines, "MEME". They can be ]
[ long and tedious, but are good for keeping the mental facilities at ]
[ a nice warm temperature. Here's some excerpts from the most recent ]
[ MEME and information on how you can get on their list if you want. ]
[ Oh, and kMc sent this with the subject "The sky is falling." and if ]
[ you belive everything in this piece (and that is completely up to ]
[ you, since I'm not gonna say one way or the other) then maybe it is ]
[ looking pretty bad for the internet. ]
MEME 2.01
This issue of MEME is dedicated to Bandwidth, Blockages, Brownouts -- a
close look at wether the Internet is teetering on the verge of collapse,
overstuffed by too much data.
"In the last three months, traffic to our site has doubled," Mark Kosters
tells me, "We have a root name-server at InterNIC, and the number of
queries is now at 230 to 250 queries per second." The site Kosters is
talking about lies at a major traffic center for the Internet -- Network
Solutions, in Virginia -- they're the people who decide who gets what
domain name (burgerking.com for instance, or bennahum.com), the closest
thing the Net has to a center.
Kosters is worried; from his vantage point, as principal investigator for
the InterNIC (http://rs.internic.net/), he must keep abreast of technical
problems fouling the world's largest computer network. Kosters claims that
the Net appears stretched to the breaking point, or perhaps, "shredding
point" is a better description: as you read this there's a better than 50-50
chance that somewhere a major switching point, or node, on the Net is
teetering on the verge of yet another brownout. "MAE-East," Kosters
explains, "has a problem with congestion. It goes down quite often, once
every couple of hours. Packets wind up getting dropped."
Translation: MAE-East (http://www.mfsdatanet.com:80/MAE/east.html) is one
of the major points where Internet traffic meets, gets re-routed, and then
sent off one step closer to its destination. Located near Washington D.C.,
MAE-East is a kind of barometer for the state-of-the-Net. Every time
MAE-East collapses under a tidal-wave of data, packets of information
simply disappear, swallowed into a black-hole of inadequate bandwidth. As
a user, the symptoms are subtle, often nothing more than an alert-box in
your Web browser telling you that the host is "unreachable." We often
assume that means a lot of other people are trying to access the same Web
page -- that's one explanation -- another is that you've just experienced a
temporary Internet brownout. Your packets just went down the drain.
When I first discovered this problem, I didn't really believe it. For
instance, this fall, you may have come across this story, or one similar to
it:
A major brownout on the Internet in mid-September was just a foretaste of
the online downtimes to come, say local experts. "I anticipate it
happening again," says Dan Benjamin, a local technology consultant. "It's
just a matter of time." The brownout resulted in many Internet users
unable to use the World Wide Web or other Internet services such as E-mail.
"It took down entire parts of the Internet -- it was severe," Benjamin
says. "Nobody was prepared for it to happen. The hardware in place simply
became too
overworked. There was too much traffic."
That little blurb ran November 24th, 1995, in the Orlando Business Journal,
a local Florida paper. Similar stories reared their heads in Inc.,
Internet Week, and Computergram International -- Internet brownout didn't
exactly make for front-page news, and I was skeptical anyway. The theme of
an overburdened Net returns from time to time to woo us with uncertainty,
and like the elemental "cry wolf" story, after awhile you just want to say,
"shut up." Conventional wisdom has it that the Net does not follow the
laws of physics, there is no limit to how big, fast and dense the Net can
become. Like Intel, with its magical semiconductors constantly doubling in
speed and halving in price, we assume the stuff that makes the Net -- you
know, cables and routers and switches -- the stuff 99% of us barely
understand -- also grows like silicon wafers. Well. Maybe they don't. In
fact, they definitely don't. And that spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
Culprits -- Sticky Webs.
When evaluating anyone's opinion, their background, or "provenance" (as the
French say), matters most. Only a handful of people in the world can look
at the Net from Kosters vantage point. So I called him expecting him to
refute these persistent rumors of Internet outages and brownouts. When he
confirmed the rumors were true, I asked for culprits. Kosters went on to
explain why the Net suffered from a bandwidth problem, beyond the obvious
"it's growing" explanation. Culprit number one: the World Wide Web.
"The Web has taken everything by storm," Kosters says, "but it is
inefficient." Here's the logic. When Tim Berners-Lee created the rules
governing how HTTP servers would serve up Web-pages, back in 1989, the world
of the Net was a nice cozy place -- a universe measured in the thousands of
people, sort of like a big bulletin-board service. Back then, the Web that
Berners-Lee envisioned didn't even have pictures, it was a text-only
universe. The GUI (Graphical User Interface) way of computing was something
for Macintosh users and computer scientists into graphics. Berners-Lee
wanted to create a way for fellow physicists to share research papers, and
yes, he did want a way for charts, tables and pictures to be included in the
paper, through the use of "hyperlinks." In the context of this stable
world, Berners-Lee had a choice, he could let a client-computer read a Web
page bit-by-bit, uploading chunks of information and making it available to
the human as it came in. Or he could have the client-computer download the
entire Web-document in one big fat gulp (sort of like FTP), and *then* let
the human see it. The latter is more efficient because the client "calls"
the server less often, reducing Internet traffic. The former is better for
the human -- you get to read the page as it is coming in, bit by bit. In an
era where computer science was (rightly) learning to emphasize the human
over the computer, Berners-Lee made the right choice, favoring people.
Can't fault Berners-Lee for that. He never imagined Time Warner, for
instance, would create something called "Pathfinder," or that someone would
create "Real Audio" -- and let people listen to radio broadcasts and sounds
through web pages -- need I mention the fish-tank, coffee-maker,
soda-machine images beamed through the Web in real-time -- and that, oh
millions of people, would be doing this in 1996. As they say, "oops."
What's done is done. But that "inefficient" Web protocol did two things:
it attracted lots of people because it, as Berners-Lee hoped, sure was
"user-friendly;" it also clogged the drain big-time.
Culprit number two -- thin pipes.
So bandwidth is up. One solution, the obvious solution, is to make bigger
data-pipes. By and large that's been happening. Companies valiantly (or
rather profitably) come out with improvements all the time. Unfortunately
the growth of traffic on the Internet is on another order of magnitude from
the pipes. For now, the situation is getting worse, not better. Since
people's eyes tend to glaze over when the words "router", "node", "switch"
enter the conversation, I'll keep it short.
"Routing hasn't scaled very well," Kosters says. He goes on to name a
certain specific telephone company as being "on the bleeding edge," meaning
that its Internet data-handling business teeters on the brink of perpetual
breakdown, victim of poor engineering choices (can't say who, sorry, but
no, it is not MCI). "The biggest problem for everyone," according to
Kosters, "is the switches." The switches, those hardware devices that
control the flow of data, just can't do it fast enough. The switches,
which are part of the routers, mean the routers don't fare so well.
"Everybody uses Cisco (http://www.cisco.com/) as their core routers," says
Kosters, "there were software bugs that crashed the routers. That was a
major cause of outages. MCI had problems with their routers in Denver, and
that led to an outage between the East and West coast. Traffic increases
means Cisco can't make these bigger switches soon enough. We are near the
point of falling down, waiting for new technology to catch up."
Solutions -- Living in a sticky tub.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), another obscure Internet
governing body, is working on these problems
(http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us). They are responsible for setting the
standards for the Net, like how many numbers can be an Internet Protocol
(IP) address (mine is 198.7.7.184). They're examining what to do, which
includes examining the Web and seeing if there is some way to alter the way
HTTP servers send and receive data to make it more efficient; that alone
will make a big difference. Another proposed solution would meter Internet
usage, charging heavy users more, light users less, in the hope that the
magic hand of the market will put some logic into the system. Dream on.
Unless every Internet Service Provider (ISP) by unprecedented government
fiat everywhere in the world simultaneously agrees to do this it will not
work. All it takes in one mutineer to offer "unlimited Internet service"
for a flat-fee to destroy this idea -- and odds are a whole lot more than
one will do this (and even if they all agreed, the mathematical modeling of
this solution is so complex that predicting the weather seems easier to do;
we don't actually know for sure that traffic will go down this way). So
what's a plumber to do? Get used to a sticky tub?
Seriously, what's to be done?
There is no clear solution to the Internet bandwidth problem. There is one
comforting thought, however. Computer science has a long tradition of
countering the odds, of coming out with a solution which defies all
expectations. The pot of gold at the end of this problem is massive. Expect
a solution to arrive from somewhere, sometime this year, that will once
again redefine the limits of the Net and set the stage for 1997 (Any readers
out there with ideas? I'm willing to devote an issue of MEME to them). In
the meantime, learn to "multi-task" -- get things done while waiting for
your Web page to load. You can practice this by watching television,
reading and talking on the telephone at the same time. It works.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The contents of Meme are (c) 1995 by David S. Bennahum. Pass on the Meme
anywhere you want, including other discussion lists, just be sure to keep
this signature file at the end.
Meme propagates bi-weekly. You can subscribe to Meme directly via email by
emailing LISTSERV@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU with a message that reads "subscribe
MEME firstname lastname" where firsname is replaced by your first name and
lastname by your last name (do not include the quote symbols.) Visit the
WWW home of Meme at Into the Matrix:
http://www.reach.com/matrix/
Send comments to davidsol@panix.com.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=