NETSURFER SCIENCE

Letters to the Editor #3.07

Monday, April 24, 2000

AOL and HTML mailed publications like Netsurfer Science

First, we'll start with response to the steady trickle of letters we get from AOL subscribers. They are unable to read Netsurfer publications in their mail reader. Here we offer two items. First is the suggestion that you might want to get a real e-mail client; AOL is a mail reader and not much more. Mail is only going to get more sophisticated. The first rate Eudora mail client is free if you're willing to put up with some ads, or you can pay a reasonable amount and get the ad free version. Both support HTML in e-mail.

The second item we'll offer under this heading is the instruction - provided to us by no less then AOL support - for reading publications like Netsurfer Science.

AOL Supplied Instructions for Reading HTML in Email

Now, a man who knows his movie quotes

Thanks for remembering Buckaroo Banzai, one of the most wonderfully wacky spoofs ever. And where John Lithgow did the homework for "3rd Rock".

In case the preceding makes no sense: The italic line on your Earth Systems header is a near-quote from the movie, "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" (suitably described in the Internet Movie Database at http://us.imdb.com/Title?0086856), and was, arguably, the first time anyone voiced the notion. Lithgow gives a clearly over-the-top performance as the seriously-mad-scientist-inhabited-by-a-crazed-alien Dr Emilio Lizardo. I think he probably had more sheer fun in the movie role than in his NBC sitcom alien -- but the network bucks can't be all bad.

Geoff Martin

Your note made perfect sense to us, Geoff. You nailed the source for that particular quote. I don't know about the rest of the Netsurfer staff, but yes, I think of "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" very fondly. Too bad more people don't know and appreciate it.

Judi

... and a woman who knows her vehicles

Mars Polar Landau? Jane Austen in space? There's a thought...

Cheers

Helen

Oh, the disadvantages of taking a spell check for granted when you're in a hurry. On the matter of Jane Austen in space, though ... Perhaps "North Hangar Abbey"?

Judi

The kindness of strangers

Great issue - but I have liked them all. The sites are very well-chosen and the text does a good job in helping you see what there might be to see "there." Thanks.

Bob Gregory

If you want to recommend some sites ...

Just signed up for your site this week and I LOVE IT! Wonderful wonderful wonderful job...

I passed on the [Netsurfer Science and Netsurfer Education] site to the kids in my family, I've passed it on to my collegues in academia--it's great and the sites I've surfed to are as described in your newletter.

Thanks again for a great job.

I'm on faculty at Cornell's medical college ( in psychiatry) and hoping to see articles on solid research in psych.

Sanderson8

Thanks again for the good words. Our doc is a cardiac surgeon, so I admit that my options lists more often lean to matters physiological. I worked for several years for a national medical association, so I'm very familiar with the "problem" that most solid research reports are behind subscription barriers, and that most research exposed for critique at conferences appears only in hard copy proceedings. Medicine, of course, isn't the only science in which this happens ... but there do tend to be a lot fewer gifted amateurs with Web sites in medicine than there are in some of the other sciences.

I'd be happy to hear of any solid research in psychiatry on any front that you'd like to point me to. If the name of Sanderson8 is among the authors, so much the better. And, I'll double my own efforts, too.

Readers are always welcome to suggest sites that they think are worthy of review by sending mail to sci-pressroom@netsurf.com. I add them to the options lists that go out to our reviewers and they snap up the best of the lists. Sites remain on the list for three or four cycles before they drop off in favor of new suggestions.

Judi

See? It really can happen!

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy getting your E-zines. I can usually find at least one page to throw into the favorites and peruse at a later date. I haven't really come across any bad or broken links.

Good job, keep it up.

We value this reader in particular because he may be entirely unique among our subscribers in having had no experiences with bad or broken links. The last thing we do before sending the copy on for final coding is to confirm that all the links are working. Sometimes sites go down temporarily for maintenance or the page name changes or the site is removed for whatever reasons. Certainly the links were working within the week to two weeks before publication when our reviewers visited. Sometimes, though, yes, mea culpa.

Judi

Mr. Feynman!

I just read your description of "The Secrets of Lock Picking". Apparently you've missed one of the best reads on lock picking (and safe-cracking!) ever written. The late Professor Feynman in his book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" spends several pages sharing his knowledge & interest of lock picking and safe cracking. I've picked many office desk locks based on the knowledge he imparts in his book.

Just thought you'd like to know.....

I really enjoy your newsletters--keep up the great work!

Mark

Ah, the virtues of a mis-spent youth. Not missed, no. We just can't include all the relevant allusions for every site.

Judi

Cookies, privacy, ads, and a little bit of canoodling

Greetings

I note with increasing displeasure the presence of Java content and other animated graphics in your publication. What a pain. it takes longer for the damn ads to down load than it does for the text.

I used to be annoyed at cookies in your pubs, and had a correspondence with the editor in which he justified them for financial supposrt. Okay, a decent point. But the presence of ads which impede the speed of communication is just obnoxious. They don't need bells and whistles to be effective. all they need is an attractive message. Presumably people who are interested in science pubs by email are at least minimally more rational than the average TV viewer, and can be expected to respond to the steak as much as the sizzle.

Can you not impose a style limitation on your advertisers in the interest of less thumb twiddling while your content downloads? I will leave aside for the moment the obnoxity of possible Java cookies and the evil they may do.

I enjoy the publication, but not the waiting time. I think one reason the net is increasingly slow these days (been on for 9 years) is the wasted bandwidth on advertising graphic fluff.

E. Gosfield III, MD

Although we regularly hear complaints - and Laurie's Netsurfer Digest sees them far more often than I do - yours is the first letter in a long while - perhaps a year and a half - to raise the subjects in the way that you do. They're worthy of discussion.

First, on the matter of the Java ads ... I can't speak for Arthur and Laurie and, to my knowledge, there's no Netsurfer position on Java ads, but you'd probably find that I agree with you in the main. You happen to be talking about a subject that interests me very much. A large part of my university education was devoted to propaganda studies, from Aristotle to Goering to tobacco merchandising and image marketing. On that note, I'll warn you that I really haven't had an outlet for discussing these things for a while.

I spend a lot of time surfing, searching out and evaluating sites to be included in the three publications that I edit (and in the fourth one, the Digest, for which I choose the sites that I review). I live in a small town where high speed access isn't yet available in any form, so a 56.6k modem is my best friend in the venture. Do some ads take an appreciable time to load? You bet. Are some irritating in the extreme? Absolutely. Are they everywhere? That too.

Just the same, I often think of how spoiled we've all become. The first modem I ever used brought FTP material crawling onto the screen at my research desk at a blistering 300 baud. We waited a whole lot longer then, ads notwithstanding.

If we buy just about any high-end hard-copy magazine from the news stand, we have to wade through whole sections of ads looking for the meat. I think the parallel holds true on the Internet. It's the price of being the consumer in a warehouse where we can pluck almost entirely free information off the shelves on demand.

Ditto television ads. They bring us the likes of "NYPD Blue", "Law & Order", "ER", "The West Wing", "Oz", "The Sopranos". The price we pay is sitting through the ads. Yes, the ads are generally targeted to specified demographics as you suggest, but many still register high on the irritation scale. Nor is the ads' content substantively different from the content of those appearing in "Nash Bridges", "Suddenly Susan" or "Walker, Texas Ranger". How much of a waste of my time are ads? I fast-forward through them in videotapes, certainly. As for waiting time ... well, television ads take blocks of time, and even dictate the structure of the drama within the classic three- or four-act model. Act I. Commercials. Act II. Lots of commercials. And so on.

On top of that, with the rare exception of very occasional ads like the smart Gap "Swing" come-on, seeing an ad more than a couple times is like hearing the same joke a hundred times. Even as fodder for analyzing propaganda, they get tired pretty fast.

Even public television isn't entirely ad-free. Granted the ads are judiciously placed and subtle ... but then come the membership campaigns, with disrupted schedules and wholly uncharismatic station personnel laying guilt on freeloading viewers like peanut butter. Even those of us who've ponied up have to sit through it. Now *that's* irritating. One more cost of being a consumer of free goods.

And, I won't even get into the shrinking difference between the irritation of AM radio and the annoyance of FM.

Yes, Internet ads use bandwidth and try our patience. People expect the Internet to work as an entirely different model from print and air media. I don't know why. The existing TV model becomes even more applicable as standard transfer rates increase, and dedicated domestic phone lines and unlimited access for a flat fee become more common.

As far as cookies are concerned --- and it may have been Arthur Bebak or Lawrence Nyveen who responded to you before --- I have no objection to them, but for other reasons. First, I appreciate that a site can identify me as a previous visitor and cue me about which pages I've read, which issues I've visited. I appreciate that some will remember my ID and password so they can deliver customized material to me with a minimum of keystrokes. As a student of propaganda, I'll say that advertising has a legitimate role in notifying consumers about changes in the market and products. So, I even appreciate that the ads might be customized to my interests, 'cause I really don't care about cars, but do want to know about new products and offers for perennials gardeners and dog owners.

As for extracting information about me from cookies ... Oh, to be a fly on the wall at that session. The confusion would make heads explode. I have far, far more objection to the sale of my name/address on mailing lists, and I check those privacy provisions out thoroughly before offering even the most mundane information. Just to spice it up, I often lie in the forms. My mailbox - were it not for the fact that sci-editor@netsurf.com has been harvested - is spamfree. I can't identify any way in which cookies haven't served me more by my being open to them. Print mailing lists seem to be far more insidious. My mother died four years ago and my father is still getting direct mail come-ons in her name despite assiduous efforts to stop the flow.

As for the potential for misuse of cookies ... it's potential, as exists in everything. I was searching Index Medicus online a dozen years ago, too, give or take. I've seen all the changes, but what I haven't seen is that particular threat taking real shape, let alone coming to fruition.

We're consumers too at Netsurfer. The same ads irritate us. (Oh, man, do they irritate us!) Would we pay to make them go away? Not I. In fact, to keep the Internet as democratic and catholic as other "free" media - to the limits of being democratic and catholic in the real world - I'd prefer that the choice not be offered. As for cookies ... when they become a threat, I don't doubt for a moment that the Internet will find a way to neutralize or, at least, frustrate it.

And, by the by, thank you for believing that Netsurfer Science's audience has those capabilities. We really are gratified.

Judi

Publisher: Arthur Bebak
Editor: Judith David

Address your letters to sci-editor@netsurf.com.
Letters and signatures edited for clarity and brevity.