************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** Random Rumblings Mailing Lists: When you subscribe to a mailing list, you usually get an initial welcome message. Buried in a dead obvious place is a note about how to unsubscribe from the list. Save this message! Sooner or later you're going to want to unsubscribe. Simply sending a message to the list saying "Jane, get me off of this crazy thing" isn't going to do it. Java: So Java will let you run a program half a world away. Great. What program? I'll wait for the Java killer app before I give up my non- crippling version of Netscape 1.1. Anyone have an idea what the killer app might be? It's worth $20 billion. $500 Internet Appliance: It's here today. It's called a used 386. Give me, instead, a $500 notebook. Nothing fancy, except maybe a good keyboard. Toss in a simple word processor, a terminal program, and a built-in modem. Make it run off of rechargeables I can buy at Radio Shack. Edit Your Folllow-ups: Take a close look at what newsgroups your responses are going to. Odds are, if you're jumping into the fray after several days, the message has lost its relevance to half the groups. Trim groups that no longer seem to apply. Edit Your Subjects: Why is it that new human rights legislation always makes wired rednecks simultaneously discover net.news and their caps lock key? (They never discover how to create messages with proper line lengths, however.) Users you've never seen before suddenly start dumping rants onto net.news. Has surfing for Pamela Anderson pics really lost its appeal? Just one tip if you're going to put a knuckle-dragger in his place -- think about editing the subject line so you don't perpetuate an offensive message to casual observers. Change the subject in your follow-up to reflect your position. Or follow the lead of tor.general regular Shawn Berry (sberry@ivory.trentu.ca) who warps the subject lines of loathsome posts into amusing witticisms. V-Chip: Haven't parents always had low-tech versions of the V-Chip, namely the off switch and the 9 pm bed time? If parents aren't using those, what makes people think they'll fiddle with some new chip? Web Builders: Remember, not everyone surfs with Netscape 2.x. Don't make your pages accessible by only one company's browser. The last thing the industry needs is another monopoly. Promoting Your Page: Anyone else getting tired of people promoting their "cool new" web page on newsgroups that have nothing to do with what their web page is about? Just because the page is run out of Toronto doesn't mean an announcement is on topic in groups like tor.eats, tor.news, or can.infohighway. First figure out what the newsgroups are about and then figure out if announcements are appropriate. As Reverend Jim Carroll has preached many times, the net is about marketing not advertising. Show people you have something to offer by providing on-topic content and then let them find your cherished site in a sig line. Slow and steady... as they say.