Wednesday, May 5, 1999
I am somewhat new to the Web and just wanted to say what a cool attitude I found portrayed in your introductory e-mail. Thanks for the normalcy and honesty!
Bob Smith
No prob, Bob. - LN
I am glad that I found your site. I found the site through the magazine Fast Company. Thank you for being there.
Margaret Spoor
I can't tell you how pleased I was to see you cover the birth of Nunavut (NSD 5.10). I watched coverage of the celebration and was touched by the humility and strength of these people.
Often Canada is taken lightly at best, and is sometimes totally ignored, by the popular media of the United States. I believe this agreement in self government, reached between the original and settled peoples of Canada, will deserve a place in history classrooms around the world. Your global view gives me encouragement for future of the Web.
I live in south central Alberta. My husband and I work and teach at a local agricultural college; we also run a small mixed farm. My husband's relatively new to computers and I've only been subscribed to your service for the last 18 months. I enjoy NSD and have often used links you've provided to help my students utilize the Web.
I fear a bit for these students. Here they are, with freer access to more information than there has likely been in history, and our society has given them virtually no critical thinking skills. They are not well equipped to determine the editorial viewpoint of any writer, let alone one who answers to no editor. Services like yours, however, give me hope to continue to discuss this kind of issue with them, and hope that there will continue thoughtful uses of the Web for their new found critical skills!
Lorrene Laursen - Olds, Alberta
Thank you so much for the review in NSD 5.11. Wow! We're really stoked.
Susan MacTavish Best - Editor, The Upfront Guide to San Francisco
I can't thank you enough for reviewing my site ("Webcams of the World United", NSD 5.11). Your kind summary has added about 400 visitors over last two days and I hope has enlightened a few of your readers.
When I started on the site in January this year, my aim was to provide a simple, free, and attractive site so the world's surfing voyeurs could watch anything from a chairlift in the Alps to a newsroom in Atlanta. I get my kicks from watching the hit counter and the kind e-mails I receive. Thank you again and I look forward to the next issue.
Paul Tweedle
Just wanted to say that I have subscribed for three issues and believe you are one of the very best things about the Web. Thanks for helping me sort through all the dross.
Mark Sullivan
Thanks. Keep up the good work.
y2k
I learned and saw that Hotmail can now show Netsurfer's e-zines. It is an improvement for them... and a victory for you!
Congratulations for your victory in that struggle!
Francois Colpron
I can't thank you enough for your wonderful piece on El Rancho de Weblo (NSD 5.12). It was really great. And yes, I remain open for wooing!
James Porteous
I've enjoyed watching your site (and your regular mail posts) evolve over the years, and am glad to see that if anything, you've become more diverse and relevant.
Wired's daily posts have become noise; your less-frequent ones are refreshing and engaging. Thanks for the good work.
David Tharp
I have been a subscriber almost from the beginning. It used to be that I had time to surf around and find lotsa cool and useful links, and it was more than a little satisfying to find some of the links I had discovered in my latest ish of NSD. But you would always turn me on to more. These days I depend on you guys to keep me at least sorta current. I especially like the range of sites you feature.
Thanks from a long-time fan.
Mark Coward
Loved the link to the Jockstrap history ("The Serious History of Jockstraps", NSD 5.13). What a hoot!
Burton K. Smith
"Take a Seat at the Counter" (NSD 5.13): "...Most NSD readers probably don't remember the soda fountains and lunch counters that were standard features in drug stores and five-and-dime stores with worn wood floors...."
I beg your pardon! I'm the same age as the year I was born in this century, (you figure it out), and I remember them! ;-)
Keep up the good work
Ron McGann
I saw your note on Orientation Costa Rica. Thank you for your kind words and especially your validation of our approach to navigation.
Phil Ingram - International Marketing Manager, Orientation
I thought that article about USNO master clock ("Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", NSD 5.13) was very funny! The perverse logic tickled my funny bone.
Robert Williams
Thanks for your article about the Daily Drill ("Drill through Your Calendar" NSD 5.09). One clarification, though: we don't sell demographic information, unless the user specifically opts in. Instead, our data is aggregated anonymously to give users a one-way window on offers that should genuinely be of interest to them, while irrelevant ads are filtered out.
The Web has too many customer relationships - too many sites vying for credit card numbers, bookmarks, daily visits, etc. It's like the ill-fated 500-channel universe, or a magazine rack stretching for five blocks. The solution is to differentiate between "hub sites", which genuinely drive daily traffic, and "spoke sites", which add value (e.g., a golf club manufa cturer).
Hub sites should find out what visitors want - what spokes they need - and source that information so customers don't have to try to form relationships with every site out there. Instead of selling directly themselves, Hub sites need to trade an application or information for valuable, anonymous demographic data which it can then packaged and sell to appropriate spoke site owners.
It's not really a new concept, it's just the next step toward one-to-one: a new twist to harvest the highly granular demographics of mass customization. Because the hub-and-spoke model solves so many Web commerce problems, we set out to build a hub site. We could have built a financial planner, a tailored search engine, or some other viable hub; we happened to see a particular need for a Web calendar.
Tom McClintock - The Daily Drill
I responded to a situation like the Beyond.com deal ("Capitalism Run Amok: Free Software from Beyond.com", NSD 5.11) about a year ago, in which I purchased software called Utility Belt, by Synchronys. The purchase price was $25 Cdn and the rebate coupon was for $20 US. I have yet to receive my rebate.
Maybe these rebates are just a come-on, and because they take so long to arrive you'll forget about them. A fairly reasonable time frame is three months. Make sure that you keep a copy of the rebate form and the purchase receipt, along with notes about when you sent for the rebate. This way you can keep contacting them about it. Which reminds me, its time to e-mail Synchronys again. Do have any other suggestions for getting your rebates?
Kathy Dusoewoir
You're more likely to get a rebate from Microsoft then from Mom & Pop Software. Big reputable companies tend to be better at it then small shops, and I've had good luck getting rebates from places like Iomega, Intuit, and such. True, it takes forever, but hey, it's free money :) - AB
Regarding the Melissa virus story (NSD 5.11), you say: "Police authorities and AOL traced the hack of Steinmetz's account through phone lines to Smith's New Jersey apartment and arrested Smith, whose exact role remains unclear."
I think you are missing a larger implication here, and it's a privacy issue. The implication is that AOL routinely records the telephone numbers of all incoming connections. Many people who are concerned about privacy have outgoing Caller ID blocked on their telephone. They are misled into believing this will grant them anonymity when posting about controversial issues. I have reason to believe that AOL is illegally recording "ANI" information with all incoming telephone calls. This ANI information is only supposed to be recorded when a prior court order has been obtained (after presenting a judge with evidence that there is a reasonable suspicion of wr ongdoing).
I hope some enterprising reporter will look into this issue.
Gary VanderMolen
I found a definition of Kwyjibo here.
Aryeh Goretsky
Congrats, you're first. Here's your 72 points (but I could swear there was a triple-word score on that 22 points...). Honorable mentions go to Larry Lima, Richard Standridge, Eric, and Gordon Mullan. - L N
Thank you so very, very much. I will always treasure my 106 points. I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am that - oh, wait a second, the dog ate them. Never mind.
Use Windows's "Find" (in your Start menu) to locate the file(s) called "normal.dot", which is your macro master file. Turn on the "r"-bit to write-protect all copies of that file. This prevents any Word document you open from updating your macro master file, which is how you would then spread the virus to all subsequent documents that you open.
Think about it. Why would you ever want anybody updating your Word macro master file? When would you ever consciously do it yourself? Usually never. If and when you do, (or whenever someone has sent you an infected document) Word will issue a warning that your normal.dot file is write-protected and cannot be updated. In the rare instance when you have create a macro and want to update your macro master file, you can carefully unprotect normal.dot, update it, then carefully reset the protection before you open any other documents.
This is the simplest way to protect yourself from Word macro viruses. You don't have to keep updating your virus protection software to detect new st rains.
Bruce A. Pomeroy
I'd like to point out (as I'm sure many, many others will do also) that the benchmarks you cite in your story were provided by a study paid for by Microsoft and done by a company who promises that will make the study come out how the sponsors want it to.
ZDNet's story about these same benchmarks shows that the NT machines were tuned for the study and not only were the Linux machines not tuned, they turned off a part of Samba, the file sharing server they tested, that would make it much slower.
Apache has been found time and time again, in studies done by unbiased and reputable organizations, to beat IIS at every turn. Having a webserver that can perform well on perfect networks with low latency but fails on scalability tests and on real-world connections is not very valuable, except of course, for putting out these studies that will undoubtedly be used for anti-open source stories such as this one. I would suggest that you check the sources of these studies from now on, it will no doubt help keep you out of trouble.
Matt Grommes
Good netmag - I've been on the list since it started - but it appears as though you have been taken in by Microsoft's newly initiated campaign of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) against Linux. Your summary says exactly what MS wants you to say - NT is superior to Linux - and you say it gleefully!. The trade press has already debunked the study as bogus. First of all, the study was commissioned by MS and NT was set and and tweaked by MS engineers. Linux was installed out of the box with an added 2.2 kernel - no tweaking or config file settings for the hardware it was on.
Go figure. You could have at least told us it was a pay-for-information prog ram.
NSD is one of my favorite Web publications - don't start dissing me with MS propaganda or you guys are /dev/null.
Bob Daye
Where do you get the gleefully part? We just
reported what the study said and pointed you to where it was. Not even an
exclamation point anywhere in the item - surely that would be a sign of
glee.
The study was careful to note that they went around looking for tweaks and
tuning information but had a hard time finding it. They were very
straightforward about the fact that Linux and Apache were not tuned very
well due to the fact that, unlike for Microsoft, that info is hard to find.
That's a legit complaint, especially for commercial outfits who need this
info easily accessible. As it happens, I once tried to find info on tuning
Apache for Solaris and got nowhere fast.
By now, you know we followed up on the reaction in the next issue - we
originally reported it hot off the presses before any discussion had set in.
In this, like in any of our items, we hope you decide if it's propaganda or
not. We don't coddle our readers. Each either has a brain or not - we're
not going to hold hands and spoon feed the "right" opinions. If you read
the piece closely, you'll find that we expressed no opinion about the
validity of the study, and indeed went out of our way to soften the
potential blow by noting that performance is a tradeoff against other
considerations. - AB
Boy, did you guys blow it this time! I mean, did you even READ the Mindcraft "report"? Especially the part at the bottom where it said "Sponsored By Mic rosoft"?
It's a little late now that you've become (unwitting?) shills for Bill Gates but you might want to take a look at other opinions.
nurmot
Sure we read it. At the bottom it says "Sponsored By Microsoft". So what? You read it too. You made up your own mind. That's the whole point. As the man said, we don't make the news, we just report it. - AB
You're right. There was news there. The news was that Microsoft hired a company to pose as an independent computer testing lab and do a hatchet job on Linux - just as it had done previously on Novell and Solaris.
This company did what it was paid to do, including issuing a press release that reads like a MS ad. MS loves to do this because it's great advertising. They know from experience that most of the reporters in the technology media have little knowledge or even interest in what they write about. They simply parrot the press releases and thereby give them a legitimacy to which they're not entitled. The news for me was to learn that you folks are solidly in the parrot camp. That's ok - gives me one less thing to read each week.
Not to beat a dead horse, but yeah, sure we are in
the parrot camp, every reporting org has to be to some extent. We survive
by feeding on what's floating in the net, with the very important
distinction that we don't parrot everything - we pick and choose what to
pick up.
With this, you have to agree that whatever the merit of the study it was
surely newsworthy, if for no other reason then the furor it unleashed. We
knew that was going to happen and noted that "You can bet that hackers
everywhere are feverishly working on tuning both Linux and Apache" as a
result of this. In fact, I personally made the choice to include this item
because I knew that the Linux camp would go nuts over this, and that the
resulting foaming at the mouth would be quite fun to watch.
Last but not least, it's not our job to spoonfeed opinions to our readers,
though we may sometimes choose to express our own. In this case we decided
the study was interesting (always our criteria) and just did a straight
report of what was in it, pointed you at it, and let you make up your own
mind. You'd be surprised how many people have a problem doing that.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts, we always appreciate intelligent feedback,
good or bad. - AB
Please. I thought you ran a respectable Digest, but now I have to wonder. Since the Mindcraft test results came out, they've been the subject of discussion on numerous Web sites.
But before you blindly copy only the Mindcraft results, you should do your own analysis of their methodology. If you just copy any garbage without looking over the test and what they say about how they conducted it, etc., you are no better than they are. And they have a questionable track record at best.
The fact that a dozen other tests show the opposite result should not make you question the results, but go back and look at methodologies employed in every test, especially the lastest one.
Mindcraft chose equipment on the NT list of certified hardware. Was it also on the list of Linux certified hardware? I don't know. They also tuned NT. Did they tune Linux? By their own admission they know next to nothing about Linux, but did manage to detune several critical functions, at least in Samba (this was addressed by the Samba team). If you do your research, you'll find all these articles for yourself.
I'll bet if they deliberately detuned NT it would run several orders of magnitude slower than the tuned NT. Same applies to Linux. What they proved is that a tuned NT in its home court (approved hardware) beats detuned Linux on hardware with questionable support.
Mindcraft's claims that NT beats Netware and Solaris also came under criticism for their methodologies in both those tests. The fact that other independent tests of those operating systems against NT shows the opposite makes all Mindcraft test results highly suspect, and not worthy of a posting without at least some mention of this fact.
Objective reporting is critical to the credibility of any publication that expects to be taken seriously. Guess I can't take your digest seriously.
David A. Bandel
While I am by no means a Linux fanatic, several serious problems with the Mindcraft study have prompted me to let you know that their results should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
Andrew B. Forman
I was amused to note that you did not mention that the comparison was sponsored by Microsoft. Neither did you reveal that the NT system was aggresively tuned with the help of Microsoft staff, while the Linux system was an off-the-shelf configuration with no tuning. There is loads of information regarding this comparison on the Web. You may want to do a little more investigation before publishing your response in the next issue of NSD.
Brian Gollum
I'm sure you'll get a bazillion letters from worked-up Linux advocates about this blurb, but there are some things to point out about the report.
First, the test was funded by Microsoft, which is not too big a deal but noteworthy. Second, the Windows NT machine was tuned to optimal settings for the test, and the Linux machine was running stock, generically configured versions of both the kernel and Apache. In particular, there are some default settings that can slow you down dramatically, and those were not adjusted before the test on the Linux side as they were for NT.
The media is having a field day over the test because they're dying to report on Linux backlash. However, touting simply the results of this one test at the top of the headlines without examining the methodology behind it or criticism from both sides is kind of irresponsible. It would have been nice to see a link or two to further new items that followed the initial report that could put it in perspective.
Thanks for putting together a terrific newsletter anyway...
Bret Mogilefsky
You may want to check out the various other benchmarks that show a completely different outcome. They shouldn't be hard to find.
Doug Hamilton
I fail to understand why you bothered to report the useless and biased Mindcraft comparison of NT vs. Linux.
What a travesty of a study, and you folks are supposed to have something on the ball. Guess not. We are now unsubscribed.
Spencer T. Kittelson
Biased, yes; useless, no. It's our job to point things out, your job to make informed judgements. If you can't handle it, you already know the remedy. - AB
Please get your facts straight. First of all, the tests were paid for by Microsoft. Second, NT was tuned to maximum effectiveness. Linux was straight out of the hat.
Joe Balbona
Unfortunately you failed completely to achieve what journalism is about. It is not repeating stupidly what companies say. It is more about reflection on why they say what they say.
You failed as well in writing this story. The most important sentence in the article is: "Microsoft Corporation sponsored the testing reported herein." At least you should read the articles you write digests about.
Rik Dams - Bordeaux, France.
I read slashdot for Open Source/Linux information. It's the flavor of the month.
NSD has so far stood the test of time. Focus on that task at which you've always been good, finding excellent sites that I didn't know I wanted to visit, and presenting them in an interesting way. "Remembering a June 4 Fight for Freedom" and "And the Winners Are..." (NSD 5.12) are both excellent examples of why I continue to subscribe to NSD.
Richard Herrell
I just unsubscribed from NSD after receiving it for a long time.
Why? Because you posted that lame Mindcraft fixed benchmark report without even mentioning the many public factual rebuttals it's received. There has even been one on ZDNet, but you just need to read Slashdot or Linux Today to find the rebuttals.
It's not that I don't like seeing Linux be beaten, I just want to see it fairly beaten (if possible). I don't want to see people rig benchmarks and get away with it.
Wayne Schuller
The item went to press right after the study was published, and before there was any reaction. A follow-up appeared in the next issue, with all sorts of interesting links. Since we're on a weekly publishing schedule we are obviously not able to keep up with daily news - if it happens after we go to press, we can't get to it until the next issue. - AB
I was very disappointed to note that your blurb about Mindcraft's benchmark of Win NT vs. RedHat Linux failed any sort of basic journalistic investigation. If you had looked at more than the passing headers, you would have noted: the test was paid for by Microsoft; Microsoft gave big-time help to Mindcraft in tuning NT/IIS for the test; neither RedHat nor Apache were even approached for tuning assistance; and RedHat Linux and Apache were installed with default settings only.
Linux has time and again beaten the hell out of NT for both file serving and Web serving. What the hell planet have you been on?
By the way, I am former MS emp, presently HP SysAdmin, and run NT WS at work and Win95 at home with a small Linux box on the side.
I mean, wow...even ZDNet isn't fooled on this one. You win a big rasberry for missing the boat.
Marshall Webber
As someone who uses, administers, and programs for Windows 9x, NT, Linux, and other flavors of Unix on a daily basis, I normally ignore FUD pieces like the Mindcraft "test" and those who report it. (Pretty few this time, actually.) I did that for your first article. However, this second one contains a comment that I feel warrants a response. Specifically:
"But the study reports that the authors asked the Linux/Apache community for performance tips and received "no relevant responses". If anything that may be the real news value - pointing out that Linux performance expertise is hard to find."
The above was an essentially untrue claim. In fact, Mindcraft had posted (based on extensive Dejanews searches and confirmed by the poster) a single cross-posted article to various newsgroups. None of them were particularly well-suited to the groups, but the post did receive one response requesting further information on the exact problem. No further information was ever supplied. They did not ask for support from the Samba team, in an Apache newsgroup, and their only call to Redhat was to Redhat's free post-installation help line, which is not the support area intended to help with advanced server tuning issues.
There were any number of articles that delved into the claim that they sought support and could not find it. I prefer the Salon article myself.
It is also interesting to note that Mindcraft appears to be an organization of one or perhaps two people that does not have their own testing facility. It appears they are instead using the Microsoft Performance Lab. And it does not look like Mindcraft II will be much better.
Two articles by Eric Raymond on the Mindcraft test are also worth reading:
http://www.linux-hw.com/~eric/mindcraft.html
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/5296.html
I have been a subscriber to your publication for many years now and have generally found it an excellent resource.
Scott Morizot
Unlike most periodicals, why does NSD omit e-mail addresses of letter-to-the -editor writers? In my recent letter regarding Swatch Internet Time (NSD 5.10), you also deleted two URLs which offered your readers further information.
Greg Vigneault - Toronto, Ontario
telic@korax.net
'Cuz many people don't want their addresses published. Tell you what, though. If anyone specifies they want their address included, I'll put it in. But note: "Letters and signatures edited for clarity and brevity." - LN
I just read all the way through my edited letter, and saw that you completely misquoted what Newsweek Magazine said about Swatch Internet Time. You cut their quote entirely and used my subsequent paragraph!
Here's what Newsweek Magazine actually said:
"Swatch entered the digital age last week with a line of watches that keep Swatch Internet Time. They can't access the Net, but models like the Webmaster, Download and Net-time will divide the day into 1,000 time-zone-free Swatch Beats, purportedly to help coordinate international chat sessions. "Cyberspace has no seasons," MIT Media Lab founder and Internet guru Nicholas Negroponte opined at the Internet Time launch last year. Neither, it seems, do marketing schemes."
Your readers are likely curious about what's involved in converting their local time to Internet Time. A step-by-step explanation is in file ITIME.ZIP available at my home page.
Let's have full and accurate information dissemination, please!
Sorry about that. - LN
In the last Letters to the Editor, you wrote about celebrating the millennium this coming New Year's Eve:
"First, no one cares when a car odometer rolls over to, say, 50,001. It's not nearly as exciting as watching it pass 49,999. And aren't parties and celebrations supposed to be exciting? Second, no doubt all those who try very hard not to enjoy themselves this coming New Year's Eve will hold awesome parties at the end of 2000. Why not celebrate twice? I can't even think of a single practical reason - remember, year-counting isn't practical, it's theory - why we should wait until 2001 to deem the start of a new millennium."
You get excitement from watching your car odometer roll over? They're digits - get over it. And that parties and celebrations are supposed to be exciting is the theoretical ideal, but it's a strawman argument. Excitement is in the head.
Why didn't you celebrate the end of 1998 as the start of a new millennium? Let's do the same for 2001 and 2002, too. Hey, why not celebrate five times? More is better, right? Let's put Christmas twice a year, too. That's got to be better than once a year. And who says I can't enjoy myself even if it's not the end of the millennium? You're implying that if it's not the end of the millennium, some people will think it's not right to have fun. So all those previous New Year's eve parties were just filled with people "try(ing) very hard not to enjoy themselves"?
The Indiana state legislature couldn't think of a single practical reason to keep pi equal to 3.1415..., either. "Let's make it 3!" "Be practical - pi is just a theory!"
In summary, it doesn't matter what you or I want, the end of the millennium is not the end of 1999, it's the end of 2000. It is what it is, in spite of ignorant denials.
You do so well with grammar and spelling, but you seem to think math is just theory - no practical applications.
Bob Schulze
If you take a look at your article on Nunavut in NSD 5.10, you will find that the spelling of the kapital of Nunavut is inkorrect. The korrect spelling for the kapital is Iqaluit, not Iqualuit. I always thought that the editor of any publikation always checked the text of each artikle to ensure that all reported facts were accurate and spelt korrectly. Of course, with the decline in spelling ability by most people in North Amerika these days errors like this do not surprise me. Most people that live in New Yourke, Bosstun or Myamee could be forgiven for incorrectly spelling the kapital of Nunavut. It doesn't take much effort to make sure that place names are spelt korrectly.
Richard Nixon
At least we do well with math.... - LN
A sarcastic "Thanks" for doing your homework on "Hacking and Cracking 101" (NSD 5.11). I took your advice and informed my IS director of this site and here is his reply:
-----
This page contains a snippet of code with two "document.write" commands that
fetch a script of unknown code from their server and then add it to the
page that you are viewing. This allows a browser to be loaded with
scripting code but denies you access to inspect the code. Also, the snippet
breaks up the initial "script" tag string likely because the scripter
wishes to circumvent certain firewall's pre-screening processes.
We don't police the use of browsers and e-mail (yet), but it would help us
out significantly if you steered clear of hackers and didn't visit their
sites.
-----
Michael Dube
I did the "The Humor Filter" thing (NSD 5.11) and frankly I didn't find any of the jokes funny at all! I was expecting something a little more offbeat and maybe a little racy, but all I got was some pretty lame "college student" humour. Ha! (Actually, not Ha! at all!)
Robert Williams (again)
Tell them. I found that they zeroed in on my humour pretty quickly. - LN
Please, please. Up until now you folks have been able to maintain the credibility of objective journalism. But in NSD 5.13 you are skating on thin ice (excuse the pun) when you refer to some athlete as the Great One. There is only one "Great One". And that will never change in our lifetime. To be the Great One, you must have charmed people of all ages, of all races, and of both sexes for a lifetime on TV, on Broadway, in Hollywood, and on radio, nationally and internationally. Jackie Gleason will always be the only Great One. One of these days... to the moon
Steve Imhof
How many hat tricks did this Gleason fellow get? - LN
I received NSD 5.13 on May 1. It's dated April 26. So I missed out on the Ben and Jerry's giveaway. No big whoop, but I notice that I'm constantly getting the digest many days after the so-called publication date. What giv es?
Tony Semczuk
If you are going to send an article that is time sensitive, then perhaps you should get it to us before the supposed date. I did not receive your e-mail until May 1. By the way, I check my mail every hour. You are the editor, it is your job to catch these flubs. Wake up boss!
Joel B.
Why is it that an online publication takes four days to be delivered? That is worse than the worst newspaper on Earth! Have you achieved such a pinnacle that the "c" has gone from the word cares?
How about getting it together.
GB Nichols - Gillette, New Jersey
Ares? Anyway, We have more than 75,000 separate
e-mails to send out. We have two servers working on each mailing 24 hours a
day, and still it takes us four or five days to mail them all out.
Unlike newspapers, we can't deliver them all at once. You have to think of
us as standing at the door, handing newspapers out one by one to a line of
customers.
I had a choice to make with the ice cream. Either let half of the readers
know, or skip it completely. I chose the former. - LN
I am really enjoying your monthly digest, but was wondering if you have an archive facility. I browsed a few recommended sites here and there over the months, but didn't bookmark them. I would like to refer back to or find info on a lot of the sites to cure that feeling of "I've seen something on that recently, I just wish I had bookmarked it at the time."
Larry Steenkamer
We have an archive of back issues and a search engine. Just head for our home page. - LN
Eudora handles NSD email digest quite well and for free. iCab does the NSD home site and online digest without problems.
Perhaps it is time to write a feature article on the iCab development project, wherein the problems of ads and Java may soon become moot. NSD comes through clean and neat, for me. For general browsing, even in its incomplete preview version (1.3), it makes both IE Outlook Express and Netscape look like true real-time browsers, i.e. cows. Although, having used IE 4.5 for the Mac, I suggest that this was not an unduly difficult feat.
I quite like NSD and, although I personally seemed to have totally missed the arrogance factor, you should really try to keep it in check for the sake of those more sensitive and perceptive than myself.
Looking forward to your next (hopefully acceptably humble) issue:
Rand Nicholson - Saint John, New Brunswick
P.S. Thanks for the timely Nunavut piece. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, as I am aware that NSD has fellow Frostbacks on its staff. Having spent several years in Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories, I found "Happy Birthday, Nunavut" (NSD 5.10) to be of great interest.
I have to comment on iCab, which is a new Mac
browser under development in Germany. I have a beta on my hard drive, and I
use it occasionally. It's small, fast, and handy. There's two reasons I
haven't singled it out in NSD yet. One, it's Mac only, and Mac people at
last count made up only about 25% of our readership. Secondly, iCab can't
handle Javascript or plug-ins yet. Javascript and formats like Shockwave
are so prevalent, it's hard to recommend a browser that can't handle them.
On the other hand, I expect that iCab will eventually be have these
capabilities. Soon, I hope. - LN
Wondering why I get this message everytime I get a message from you:
JavaScript Error: http://adex3.flycast.com/FlycastUniversal/, line 1:
illegal character.
GIF89a
......
Michael Welber
I suspect you might have an old version of a browser. Try the latest Netscape 4.51 or Explorer 4.01 or 5.0. - AB
Yesterday, I saw NSD 5.11 in my inbox, with a content of 45 kB. When I clicked on it, not only did I get a completely blank screen, I was unable to return to Hotmail, despite numerous attempts!
There is a very bad gremlin at work here. If you are unable to correct this problem, I would like you to remove my name from your mailing list. Such problems, I don't need!
Ronald W. Kenyon - Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia
Did you see this from the latest issue? - AB
Many thanks. What has happened is really unbelievable and no, I didn't get an apology from Hotmail - of course, I didn't complain to them about the problem either. I do, however, apologize to you for the discourteous tone of my e-mail. Alas, not all of the changes that have been added to Hotmail since it was Microsoftened have been felicitous! Thank goodness I have several alternative e-mail accounts that I have been using more and more.
You indicated that the book Lindberg is a novel in NSD 5.12. It's non-fiction, isn't it, and therefore not a novel, but a biography!
Arthur F. Cody - Cambridge, Massachusetts
Yep, you're right. A phrase glitch on our part. - AB
Please let me know if you come out with a non-HTML version of your mailing list. I use Pine and it doesn't support HTML. I kinda like it that way, e-mail seems better when you keep it text only. ;)
Tom Leitner
I myself use Pine, and the latest version supports Lynx, the text browser for Unix. There's some config variable where you specify your favorite browser, which can be Lynx or even the XWindows version of Netscape, and pine will open up HTML pages with the browser. The Digest looks quite readable in Lynx. - AB
Thanks for your response. I tried to configure it for Lynx - which I used to use on a daily basis back in '93, but I guess the version we use is an older one. :( Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait until somebody upgrades our Pine.
I tried to bounce to the El Rancho de Weblo address, but kept getting the listbot.com error page. Was it my machine, just today, or what?
I look forward to each issue of your newsletter. Great work!
Jim Terwilliger
It looks like a listbot error. Try tomorrow, and if it's still busted, send listbot a nasty letter. :) - LN
Great response!
We of the great masses of illiterates automatically assume that it is an mistake on our part that results in the error page. It couldn't be the Web Masters, including the ones in our technical area, because they continue to assure us that they are infallible, and we are illiterate.
Some of the active ads in NSD 5.13 chew up so much CPU time (on a poor old Pentium 133) that it was almost impossible to page through the issue and follow any of the links.
Mark Levison
I notice it too. I think Flycast should lay off the sauce.... - LN
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