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The future of the internet, or just the imagination of someone with another MicroSoft conspiracy theory?
It is possible, but some say unlikely, that MS could monopolize the internet in the same way it's monopolized the OS market. Monopoly? Ok, I'll grant it isn't a monopoly of force, but tell me what option exists for a 32 bit graphical interface for pc's besides Windows?
To prove Windows is simply the best, and that's why it's on 90% of the personal computers, MS could release Win3.x for the public to play with, allow someone to make it a 32 bit system capable of competing with Win95/98. Make a 'Red Hat', if you will.
If the majority of net users have the MicroSoft Internet Explorer browser, it is possible pages will be written to codes interpreted only by the IE browser, and other browsers will either adopt the IE codes, or view less and less of the net.
In order to prevent MS from taking the browser market, the judge in the anti-trust case may take away the Explorer start page. That's the first page you see when you open your browser. Unless you use MSN, you probably wouldn't ever see it. Most service providers have the browser set to open on their own front page. Some smaller ones don't, and if you hook up with a service provider and don't load their version of the browser, you'll be on the MS site, and you'll be going to their advertisers, or contracted sites. So within their options you have your limited choice to decide
     "Where would you like to go today?".

Of course most of the long time net users have their own start page. Some set their favorite search engine as their start page, others, like yours truly, just make an html with their most used links. If you make your own you have the option of link order, and graphics, and you avoid annoying ad banners, and dancing eye-candy.
Some people don't even know they have the option of changing their browser start page, and since finding one without all the ads, etc. is near to impossible, I've made one. It's called PAGe ONe, and I managed to keep my personal opinions out of it.
Wasn't easy mind you, but you won't find anything saying IE is the devil's browser, or Yahoo! is a graveyard for old links. PAGe ONe has links to all the major search engines, in alphabetical order so no one can tell I prefer HotBot for tech searches, AltaVista for current searches, and Magellan when I'm just goofing off. It also has definitions, in their simplest form, for a few net terms new users may be unfamiliar with, and links for more information. No advertising, no prejudices, just a start page for the Internet, not the MicroNet.

Go where you want.

I can see now. I can hear now. I'm writing this in a Windows editor, not my Dos editor. But, that is the difference, 'my' Dos editor. Dos was mine, is mine ...Windows, it's just a necessary evil.

I recently bought a new computer. I really didn't think I need one, but friends felt sorry for me, "You're still on that 286? Hasn't that thing died yet?" ...died? Ha! It couldn't be killed if you tried. I locked myself out of it a few times. Even lost my cmos settings once. I hear in Windows that isn't a big deal, but with a 286, I had a computer with complete amnesia.

Computer:

"I'm sorry, I have no idea what kind of computer I am. I can't let you in."

Guy at computer store:

"You'd have to write the manufacturer for a disk to boot from. It would probably be easier to use it as a paper weight, or an anchor."

But I got in and reset the cmos.    My stuff was in there.

On the 286 I had net access through a shell account. I still do, because I don't feel like I know what's going on when I look at things through Netscape, or mIRC, or a window's file transfer program. It's like something is blocking me, standing between me and the action, trying to make everything 'pretty' for me and I'd rather see what's going on. Just last week I couldn't get onto my account through Windows. I popped out to Dos, loaded up Telix and there I was - pine (mail), lynx (browser), ircII - it was all there. Sure there weren't any spinning animations, no embedded sounds, no little icons, but those are just window dressing.

A few weeks ago this nice new computer crashed. I guess 'crashed' is the term to use. Files were being corrupted faster than I could delete them. I had just loaded my video driver.

Everyone:

"It's a virus, get (McAfee, F-Prot, Norton, etc.)"

It was the video driver. Memory maker was using the monochrome range and so was the video driver. Very messy. But Dos held it's ground. Sure, it was loaded first, in high memory, to it's own area, but it was still there. I had deleted everything down to Dos before I figured it out. I lost a lot of files I had for years. I'm still trying to shake technophobia. GPF's don't help. As much as I like the Dos prompt, being suddenly taken there from Netscape isn't a pretty sight. Closing Netscape, only to find program manager has completely disappeared is rather bizarre as well. Just my dialer icon sitting on my 'desktop'. That's happened twice. I just close the dialer and stare at the desktop before I reboot. The thing that is supposed to make my computer easier has taken all my options away. I can't imagine how anyone in their right mind could get Win95.
I suppose I should respect Win95 people for admitting their shortcomings. Getting Win95 is saying :

'I don't believe I can handle a computer, so I submit to the computer.
I will let it do everything for me. It knows best.'.

I have a friend who doesn't mention Windows without adding 'Hail Bill' in parenthesis. At first I thought it was funny, now I see it as a sigh of resignation.

On PBS they ran a report about the founders of Yahoo! and how they broke new ground, and made themselves millionaires with their wonderful search engine.

What?

Yahoo! is falling apart at the seams. Searches give no hits, or old invalid hits. The only good use for it is running your search on other engines all from one page.
When Send Coffee first went up on it's own domain, I entered some pages in Yahoo! along with all the other search engines. Now SC is in all the search engines, some have even gone through the entire site, but not Yahoo!. Not only have they only added TWO pages of the many I submitted, they will not remove a bad link from their directory. I've tried every method they have for removing or changing it, even reported a 'bug' in their removal system. At last I know why there are either no hits for keywords, or the hits you do get are no longer valid. If I were on the internet for the first time, and knew only of Yahoo!, I would be very disappointed by how little information I could find, and how often links are no longer valid. I would think the internet was full of holes.

It's undeniable that Yahoo! is no longer, really, a search engine. It's an information area. It will link you to real search engines, news resources, live chat events, but it isn't a search engine. Going through it's categories is alot like looking through an old phone book. Information is there, but it's not usable. I don't know if this is the intent of Yahoo!, or if they're just asleep on the job, but I know I'd never recommend it to anyone.

If you want a real search engine, use MetaCrawler but don't be surprise when it shows how many hits it gets from each place it checks, and the count for Yahoo! is 0.

I was looking at yet another article about some older pervert luring some young person away. The headline claimed yet another internet offense, yet in smaller text it mentioned the real accomplice - AOL. Does American Online offer free memberships to reporters who misinform readers, or are reporters really so ignorant of what is, and isn't, the internet? Plain and simple, AOL is not the internet. It is merely a glorified BBS (bulletin board service).
Sure, after promising it's subscribers for almost a year, they finally got an internet connection some years ago, but they are not the internet. Unless, or until, a user clicks that 'internet' button, they are on AOL.
American Online is like a reststop on the way to the internet. It has the neon signs, the riffraff and the stuff that turns your stomach. It's a place to hang out when you really don't have anything interesting going on in your life. It's a place for local BBS'ers who were revealed to be idiots, to try a new stomping ground. It's for kids who want to pretend they're hackers. It's for bored housewives. It's for people who are afraid of that big weird place called 'the Net', or people who are so new to the idea they just don't know any better.
It's a step above WebTV.

Every time an article is written about some perv, they say they met their victim on the internet, yet most of these cases are AOL cases. AOL - not the internet, not IRC, not some chat area off a website. Like the net hasn't been knocked around by the press enough? I honestly believe the first thing anyone does when they get net access is go to a porn site because it's the main thing you hear about the net, how much porn their is. While the internet has it's share of pathetic people, pages, IRC channels, the 'population' is so diverse it's just a small percentage.
Sure, there's porn, but there's everything else you could imagine as well, and just like a magazine rack at some convenient store, you can choose to pick up Hustler, or Omni.

 Incase you haven't noticed, which, if you are on SendCoffee for the first time, you may not have, we have given in and gotten a virtual domain. That's right, I mocked them, called them ridiculous. They are in alot of cases. People try to pretend they actually setup a server - from their kitchen or something - but I confess, sendcoffee.com is a virtual server. There, I feel alot better.
 I can justify this switch-over though. Unlike a grand number of virtual sites who believe they will 'cash in' on the pot of gold at the end of the internet (who started that fairytale?), the domains that you go to with sometimes really spiffy names, but no content - none, zip, zero ...just some junk about their 'services' and ads for places they hope will pay their monthly charges, MorJava and I were reluctantly (at least on my part) dragged into the craze. We had three 'sites' scattered across the net - SendCoffee, Dog-O-matic, and my mom's pages. Only one of the servers allowed me access. So in the name of convenience (and MorJava's sanity with my incessant requests for updates of this or that file), and finding out it would cost us nothing really because of our access, we have succumbed.
 We now have a domain name - heck, I even have a Internic handle ...very bizarre ...we have email that goes to our domain name, which is a lot better than having to choose your server by their domain name. I mean who, seriously, would want erols.com on their email? Sounds like they have email through some guy's trailer. Not us, nope, we are SendCoffee people. We will rule the world one day. Ok, not really, but we might be able to get a good cup of joe more often. We could have t-shirts.
 Think about it, would you want your access provider's name on a t-shirt? What about the name of your virtual domain? Billboards, yup, we could do that too. Point is, it's ours. I guess that's really the main reason anyone gets a virtual server. You are no longer relegated to being ~whoever. I'm sure alot of people get off on being 'webmaster' as well, but we don't have one of those. That title is more ridiculous than getting a virtual server - think about it - webmaster, like 'master of the web'. Sounds like something a fourteen year old would use as a nick on a small bbs.
 We don't (won't) have a guestbook either. Yeah, I know, Matt's has a script for just about anything you can think of. Need the dog walked? Go to Matt's and get the dogwalker script. We didn't even decide not to have a guestbook. Heck, MorJava could be considering the idea right now, but you know what? I would bet good money against it. I'm guessing MorJava doesn't understand the purpose of them as much as I don't.
 What do you read on guestbooks? I read the bad things. That's it. Just the bad ones. If something starts off sounding bad, then starts turning complimentary the little reading voice in my head starts saying "oh blah, blah, blah, could I kiss your ass more?". So if you really like our pages, write us. I can't promise the little voice won't do the 'blah, blah, blah" bit, but I've gotten alot of mail since SendCoffee first went up and apparently the voice only kicks in when I'm reading other peoples letters. It's like the writer writes in the guestbook, rather than email, just to put their name on the board, and the site operator has the guestbook just to have their praise public.

 Anyway, that's my little tale. We have a virtual domain.
We have succumbed to the ridiculous. Enjoy.

 I don't understand spam. Just don't get it at all. Why would any business purposely want to piss off their possible customers? Sure, people go to Ed Debevic's, but they -know- what the deal is.
 The junk mail spammers must know no one reads what they send. It's not like the net is filled with people in their seventies looking to supplement their social security with some 'get rich quick' scheme. I've never had someone send me a copy of junk spam telling me it sounds like a great idea, and I should check it out. The furthest I know of -anyone- reading junk spam, is to read down to the 'REMOVE' instructions, and that's just to send it in and keep the little mail-demons on their toes. Which is another major confusing aspect. Why send mail with a bad return address?
Sure, some have their system setup to bounce just the messages they get with 'REMOVE' in the subject, but others, nothing will go through. So what was their purpose? No return address, no web address, nothing. Are the people who send these spams just incredibly bored? Looking to be as famous as Sandford Wallace at annoying people?
 Gotta admit, Wallace's goal in life seems to be to piss off as many people as he can, and to ruin as many company reputations as he can, all while making as much money as he can. He is reaching his goal. If you don't recognize his name just yet, you will, one day. Don't let him piss you though, every person who just gently hits delete when they see email in their box from one of his domains, is another person making him short of pissing off the entire planet.

 His goal is clear, but what of the people who use his 'service' to send the junk mail spams? They are paying someone to help them ruin their business' reputation. They intentionally make their product, ideas, etc. look untrustworthy and ridiculous. They can't all be netnaive, as has been suggested. Poor unknowing businesses conned into using junk mail spamming to further their sales. Any business, any business which wants to succeed, knows to check out whatever options for advertising come along to see how they are received, and any business looking up junk spam would see it only leads to failure, and word-of-bandwidth hatred.
 Yet some businesses brazenly state they will not remove you from their list, and there's 'nothing you can do about it'. I actually got an email from someone saying that. Luckily, they weren't with Cyberpromo, so I simply wrote to the webmaster of the domain their 'virtual' site was off and never received mail from them again. But what was their intent?

"I'll anger you to the point of sending me all your money!"

 So, no, you've read this far and I have no solutions for you (besides the little hint on gently hitting the delete button). I don't know the answers myself. You can write to your server and ask them about their blocking services, but junkspammers find their way around even those. The only real solution would take a grand effort on everyone's part. We'd all have to just gently hit the delete button. Don't send any 'REMOVE' replies, take down all the webpages complaining about spam, and wait for them to realize you simply don't care. They want attention. Doesn't matter what kind of attention, obviously. When someone wants to be annoying, the only thing you can really do is ignore them.

 Then it would be the net pissing of the junkspammers.
Sanford who?

 I was going to rant about vanity domain names, but it's become so common, it's just funny now. Then I was going to rant about Win95 because I'm sick of arguing with my brother about it, but if I did that I'd have to give away the code-phrase for the future. Can't have that. All the trend-hoppers would be spouting it like they have some idea what it means. So instead, I'm going to move to something that doesn't really piss me off, as much as it ....well, surprises me.
 I was looking through some search engines a few weeks ago, just checking to see if SendCoffee was on them, and came across one of our pages, BUT not at this URL. Seems some lameass in Belgium decided he was too stoned to come up with original material and just made off with five from this site.
 I did the logical thing, wrote to him, and his server. The server says they'll take it down when I fax them the copyright. Simple enough, but in a way, I hope they don't. I'm thrify, but I ain't broke ...might be fun to sue them. A few friends said it's no big deal, you can't make money off a webpage, but it's not about money, it's about reputation and lameness. I don't want to contribute to the decline of mankind.

 Lameness is promoted lately. As I told a friend, we worship the weak. Well, maybe you do, I don't, but we all know those who do. From whining pitiful male singers (Vedder, Reznor, Corrigan) and victim female singers (Morissette, and whoever does that "I'm a Bitch" song) as the idols (poor babies, go have some heroin and relax), to a president who 'feels our pain'.
 Even Bill Gates is headed for a brick wall because he's too weak to admit Win95 was/is buggy and awkward, and Java is good. Women are called 'feminists' when they crack and kill someone, or if they stalk someone, or if they manipulate others ...that isn't strength, it's sad, and those who try to put it in the light of feminism are sadder.
 Men, by nature, are not generally sensitive. If there were as many 'sensitive' men throughout history in the same proportions as it now seems, the human race would have died out a long time ago.
 Everyday millions tune in to see the lowest forms of humanity appear on talkshows, then stayed tuned to watch emotionally immature movie stars fake smiles, giggle nervously, and turn defensive at the drop of a hat.
Darwin was way off the mark.

 Imagine watching a shelf full of knick-knacks shaking, first ever so slightly, then more and more vigorously. You could jump forward and try to stop them from falling and smashing, or you could just sit back and see how many pieces they break into when they crash. I'm not going to shake the shelf, but I am going to watch them crash.

 So, 39 members of a cult killed themselves, or I guess 38 members and their leader 'Do'. It's on every news channel - Top Story of the Day. I don't get it. Not the death part, I fully understand they're dead. I even understand why they're dead. I just don't get the big fuss. People slowly kill themselves, or refuse to live, all around us every day.
 The cult members died for what they believed in. How could intelligent people believe there's a spaceship following a comet and to get aboard they have to kill themselves? Oh, that's the easy part. People have to believe in something. It's a human trait that can't be shaken off. That's why atheism is now a religion. Take the intrinsic desire to believe, add a bit of manipulation and mind control and you've got a bunch of dead people in a mansion with purple triangles across them. They fully believed in what they were doing.
 Worse to me are the living dead. The people who see the manipulation and control others use on them, but still exist under it. They don't live under it ...they don't really live ...they just exist.
 I knew a guy in an abusive relationship, not just mentally mind you, physically abusive, who said the thing he liked about women was how manipulative they can be. That's like saying "The thing I like about my dog is that it bites me all the time.". What he meant to say, I'm sure, was "I don't think I have any worth and I'm too much of a coward to leave.". I think he just worded it wrong. No one wants to be abused. Well, there are those people, but with masochist the toys are their way of distancing themselves from intimacy - focus on the whip, not the person your with. The ultimate confession of fear of inadequacy, or boredom, is the introduction of props. But, of those not merely bored, why would they stay in a controlling, or abusive relationship?
 Many can see every detail of how they are being manipulated and controlled, but come up with books worth of excuses why they shouldn't get out of the relationship.

"The dog only bites when it's mad."
"It's a good dog most of the time."
"The dog only bites me because it cares about me."
"The dog promised to change and I think it really will this time."
"The dog is always sorry it bit me."
"This dog is all I have, it's always been there for me."

 Sound ludicrous to say those things about a harmful animal? Imagine saying them about a human. It's just as ridiculous to me. If the dog has a problem, that's the dog's problem. There's no way you can change it's behavior, but people believe they can change other people's behavior. They believe the person who takes advantage of them loves them. If they just struggle through long enough, everything will be 'ok' one day.
One day never comes.

 In the mean time, they are dead. Zombies walking through life wasting every day they stay in the relationship, never getting a chance to be who they are - being who the other persons defines them, never getting to do what they want - only doing what they are allowed to do (encouraged only in things that won't threaten their partner's control) - and fully knowing they are at the mercy of the whims of the person who uses, controls, and manipulates them.
 They stay in a relationship "for the children" or for financial security, and believe they have no one to turn to - of course they don't, that's the first and primary goal of any manipulator (or cult leader) - alienate the person from all 'outsiders'. Like children who never go out on their own, or fledgling birds afraid to leave a nest, they stagnate in an atmosphere of fear, doubt, and confusion, deliriously happy for the few times of respite when they can pretend things have turned out great, retreating back to their fantasy world when things are bad.
They'll keep the insane dog that won't stop biting, rather than admit failure and gather up the courage to move on and live, really live.

Those are the people I don't understand.

Heaven's Gate mirror site: zdnet

 Imagine the net crashes. Sure, people have been saying it will for years now, but no one actually believes it's going to happen.
I believe the net is headed toward groups of similar webpages. You've probably seen the 'WebRing' logo on some sites you've been to. Owners of pages linked together through cgi scripts.
 Basically the net is 'ringed' already, with sites listing links to other similar sites, but it isn't very organized, and WebRings could require a login to visit the sites included. With no 'open admission' to belong to a Ring, those who manage the Rings can keep out the sites with useless babbling. I saw a page the other day for a 4 month old baby and one for a dog. That's got to be as useless as it can get, right?
 You may soon login to 'your Ring' and have to 'quit' the ring to access information outside of it.

 The pages full of farce that really serve no purpose except amusing their author, will be outside the Rings, scattered somewhere in the wastelands of the net. Or maybe they'll all link together for company?
 If Millicent comes to be, the pages without Ring connections will be styrofoam peanuts for the search engines -

"Get three real hits at 1/8 cent and we'll throw in 15 useless hits *free*"

Anyway, where was I?
Oh yes, the net crashes ...

Look up from your screen.

 Where are you?

Thursday, April 4, 1996 11:27pm

 I always heard the net was huge, millions of people.... millions, billions.
Sure, there are alot of people. Some live. Sitting in rooms together, not talking because they all hit /list at the same time and can't get it to stop scrolling. I figured out how to make it quit once, but I lost my note and can't remember.
 Then there are sites and webpages and such. You know when a cheap page is coming up. The screen is grey. They didn't have the time to get a spiffy background. The better ones make the screen black till they're loaded. Then you know you've hit something. Some have holographic backgrounds, also known as stereograms. Those are ok, but sometimes just staring at the background is better than the page itself.
  Webpages don't change that much. Most are indulgent shrines to their owners. Few are just for fun. Too much of what I have seen falls into the "I'm so smart, here is what I know" or the "I am so afraid I am not cool here is what I think you will think is cool and then think I am cool because I have a link to it on my webpage" category.
  Oh, I forgot the "I am really dull, but I figured someone will come here some day, so why not?" category.

  In the uh...real world there are very few people I find truly interesting. Funny thing is, I thought with the whole world out there (ok, so the whole computer literate world out there), I would find more interesting people. I have decided I have either too narrow tastes (sheah, ok you love your car and think frogs are cool) or everyone I would find interesting has already been on and off the net.
  You notice I said 'interesting' people, not 'cool' people. I could find a million cool people anywhere I look. They are all sooo cool. They know what to say they like, what to say they don't like, they all fit right in, even if they are fitting in with the "fit-out" crowd.
 Interesting is a word I use for few people. They are the ones who, though there may (perhaps must) be something of a common bond, entice me to see things from a slightly different perspective. They challenge me to go one step beyond what I thought, to discover what I could think, could do, could experience. They aren't cool people.

 I've run out of keywords.
I've done them all.
No more left.
Most of them give me nothing. Take "circle", no one tells me about the circles, the ones Jung mentioned. They don't know. and physics will get you alot, alot of boring papers, and equations. Sure, I found Kaku on there, that was cool. He was linked in with fractals (yeah, really strange huh?) and LSD (not what I was looking for, honest, but the praying mantis tiling was neat), but it wasn't anything I hadn't read already.
I tried being specific....

 World Wide Web......world, a big round thing; wide, going all around; web, an area with more holes than substance ...go figure.