TBTF for 1996-08-08 [1] summarizes a messy fight between Microsoft and Netscape, et al., over the licensing provisions of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. One of the combatents not mentioned in the earlier coverage is O'Reilly Associates, who like Netscape makes a Web server that can run on the less expensive NTW platform. Two days ago O'Reilly senior editor Andrew Schulman <andrew at ora dot com> published an article [2] claiming that NTW and NTS are in fact identical, except for the values of two registry settings [3]. Tests run by PC Week [4] are cited in the O'Reilly article, although the results seem to me to bolster Microsoft's claim that NTS is optimized for a server role. (Either Microsoft's or Netscape's server, running on either NTW or NTS, could easily serve enough users to saturate a T1 connection, according to PC Week.)

[1] <http://www.tbtf.com/archive/1996-08-08.html>
[2] <http://www.software.ora.com/news/ms_internet_andrews.html>
[3] <http://www.pcweek.com/news/0902/06ent.html>
[4] <http://www.pcweek.com/news/0826/26lic.html>

America Online blocked all email from five Net addresses belonging to companies AOL believes responsible for sending upwards of a million "spam" email advertising messages to AOL subscribers. According to AOL the volume of unwanted spam email is the now number-one complaint of its members. One of the alleged spammers, Cyber Promotions Inc., filed suit, and the next day a Federal judge ordered AOL to stop blocking the mailings pending a trial scheduled for November. AOL has appealed. NetDay provides details at [5].

[5] <http://netday.iworld.com/simba/9609/96090601.html>

Johan (Julf) Helsingius of Finland, who has run the anonymous email server anon.penet.fi since 1993, shut it down last week. On 1995-08-25 the British Observer newspaper had run a banner-headline front-page article [6] titled "The Peddlers of child abuse." The article, which is both technically inaccurate and seemingly libelous (a lawsuit has in fact been filed [7], [8]), accuses Helsingius and the owner of England's largest ISP of willing complicity in child pornography. Helsingius attributed his decision not to the Observer article's appearance, but rather to the lack of clearly defined laws relating to the Internet. Helsingius is a scarred veteran of the anonymity wars, fighting the Church of Scientology to keep the identity of a user private (see TBTF for 1995-08-25 [9] and [10]).

Other anonymous remailers remain in service; Community ConneXion supports a free encrypting interface to ten of them [11].

[6] <http://scallywag.com/>
[7] <http://www.demon.net/observer1.html>
[8] <http://www.demon.net/observer2.html>
[9] <http://www.tbtf.com/archive/1995-08-25.html>
[10] <http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/anon/penet.html>
[11] <http://www.c2.net/remail/>

It's long been my belief that the content on the Net must mirror the interests of humans in the aggregate. Business, science, politics, pornography, religion -- if people spend energy on it in "meatspace" they will spend energy on it on the Net. Recently I've been accreting pointers to religious sites. Here are a few.

• A site that offers free home pages to churches and Christian-related groups [12].

• The Monestery of Christ in the Desert [13], where the brothers have brought the ancient art of the illuminated manuscript into the electronic age.

• The German Conference of Bishops recently renounced Confession by Computer, a PC application developed in Cologne that lets users confess to one or more of 200 sins. The program also offers advice on how to reach priests and ministers on the Net. (A year and a half ago TBTF for 1996-04-29 [14] covered a new Internet-based electronic confessional operated by the Diocese of Pittsburgh [15].)

• The Virtual Diocese of Partenia [16], presided over by Bishop Jacques Gaillot. This outspoken French bishop was stripped of his former seat at Evreux by the Pope in 1995. But since bishops cannot be defrocked unless excommunicated, Gaillot had to be given another diocese. The Church's solution was to make Gaillot bishop of Partenia, a small area in the Sahara Desert in which no people have lived for at least 1,500 years. Since he had been made the Bishop of Nowhere, Gaillot decided to become the Bishop of Everywhere -- i.e., of cyberspace.

Ultraseek [17] provides a quick count of Web pages having the following words in their titles. The total of 63,785 compares favorably with the cyberporn count of 11,702.

  21740    church,temple,mosque,archdiocese
  19560    hindu,catholic,baptist,lutheran,muslim,orthodox,protestant
  12569    christian
   6120    bible,koran,torah
   3796    jesus,buddha

In TBTF for 1995-11-08 [18], written from Sun's first Java Day, I alluded to the new (to me) idea that the Java language might be good for more than animating Web pages. Last November people weren't talking much about the intranet with a little "i"; the term first appeared in TBTF, for example, on 1996-05-12 [19]. It has since become a commonplace that the money made from Net technologies over the next several years, at least, will mostly be made by targeting the builders of corporate intranets. The MIS world is now taking seriously the notion of using intranets and Web browsers to develop and deliver corporate applications. In a real sense Web technology has picked up the gantlet from the declining client/server model.

Here are some recent developments in the conquering march of Java.

• IBM has announced that the next version of its OS/2, code-named Merlin, will have Java technology built-in to the operating system [20], [21].

• Remember Taligent? The collaboration (by everyone except Microsoft) to invent next-generation frameworks for software development hasn't been heard of much lately. Now the Computer Industry Daily reports that Sun has licensed some of Taligent's technology -- specifically its multilingual class libraries -- to implement worldwide applications and applets in Java [ 21a].

• On 1996-07-18 winners were announced [22] in the Java Cup contest, reported in TBTF for 1995-11-08 [18].

• Sun has delivered its Java Workshop development environment [23] and is selling it for $99 for the rest of 1996 -- a price point far below the competition's.

• Finally, this note about a new, Taligent-like collaboration between Sun and IBM; hope springs eternal.

  >>From Computer Industry Daily (1996-08-22):

  > IBM Plans Java-Based Business Apps

  > IBM and 50 independent software providers launched the "San
  > Francisco Project." The initiative will provide high-level
  > application frameworks written in the Java development language.
  > The frameworks, such as general ledger, accounts payable, and
  > inventory control, will permit developers to build multi-
  > platform business applications. Frameworks will significantly
  > reduce development time.

[18] <http://www.tbtf.com/archive/1995-11-08.html>
[19] <http://www.tbtf.com/archive/1996-05-12.html>
[20] <http://ncc.hursley.ibm.com/javainfo/latest/j1prods.html>
[21] <http://zebra.asta.fh-weingarten.de/os2/beta-faq/beta_faq.html#Merlin>
[21a] <http://www.taligent.com/CompanyInfo/PressReleases/javasoft_8_96_release.html>
[22] <http://sunsite.utk.edu/winners_circle/index.html>
[23] <http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/9608/sunflash.960821.17244.html>

Collected at [24]

A new user queried the Apple Internet Authoring mailing list for advice on getting the word out about his new Web page. The query drew this detailed and cogent response [25] From Bob Reap <reap at counsel dot net>. It's a blueprint for doing the hard work of letting the world know about your site, to the point of diminishing returns.

[24] <http://www.tbtf.com/essential-tools.html>
[25] <http://www.counsel.net/info/marketing.html>

Whether you call it "marketing via email" or "spamming," you might be interested in following a moderated conversation among its practitioners. The Direct Email Marketing Association (DEMA) hosts a mailing list and Web archive [26]. I've subscribed for a while now and even posted once or twice. The moderator, Rob Zee <dema at kww dot com>, maintains an upbeat tone and seems sincerely to want to educate the list about what is and is not acceptable behavior on the Web -- with the goal of finding ways to make unsolicted commercial email palatable to recipients and ISPs. Zee is also collecting names/addresses of Netizens who wish not to receive commercial email; he plans to make the list publicly available, at which time reputable marketers should begin to filter their mailing lists against it.

I learned of the DEMA list from Phil Agre's <pagre at weber dot ucsd dot edu> Red Rock Eater news service.

[26] <http://kww.com/dema/>

Thanks to Bruno Unna <bruno at sac dot org dot org dot mx> of Internet de Alta Calidad in Mexico City, TBTF will henceforward be available to Spanish-speaking readers. See [27] for the first translated issue. In future the latest issue can be found at [28]. I don't read Spanish myself, but it's apparent that Bruno translates the news and omits my wisecracks. His site is better designed than mine, too.

[27]
<http://www.iac.com.mx/cgi-bin/uncgi/iackernel.pl?dest=/nw/hd/th/960904.html
>
[28]
<http://www.iac.com.mx/cgi-bin/uncgi/iackernel.pl?dest=/nw/hd/th/ultimo.html
>