The Spring as a whole and pointers to other topics

Perhaps this topic will be a place to respond to all the email queries about "why is this free?" and "what can I do to help?" and other questions along a similar thread. The Spring is building some contract websites. One that is currently under construction is http://www.childrenstory.com I am billing a customer for this website. The revenue will go to replace a badly needed hard drive for one of our servers, make upgrades, and pay our kindly bandwidth provider. So, those of you with website contruction skills, this is something very specific and concrete you can do to help support the Spring and keep it going. You can help build this site, which is going to have a Real Audio server and will provide children with stories in written and spoken form. You can help directly by writing html code (I'll give you access) or you can just make suggestions. I'm going to open a new conference called 'projects' and this will be one of the first topics and we can carry a discussion of how to build and improve this site there. Another website under construction to look at would be: http://www.tvpc.com Let me know!

A pointer to a new conference: poetry. It just started this morning. I sent out a few invitations. If you have that poem hidden away in the bottom of that sock drawer, type it out and post it. Any poets or poetry lovers here?

Hey Terry, you can link to or kipe my HTML-ization of George MacDonald's The Light Princess, at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/lprincss.html

Oh, HC - do you have any more MacDonald up your electronic sleeve?

I also converted The Day Boy and the Night Girl (The Romance of Photogen and Nycteris) to HTML, but that was for the CCEL people, and it's on their web-site (you can find it through the CMU on-line books page, or I think there might be a lin k to it at the end of the text of the Light Princess).

Who are CCEL? [something] Children's Electronic Literature, perhaps? Do you happen to have a link handy for CMU on-line books?

"Christian Classics Ethereal Library", I think... I'm too lazy to look up the CMU on-line books URL right now, but there's a link to it from the Jane Austen info page at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/janeinfo.html

I looked at the Jane Austen info page and it's terrific. I got into reading some of Jane Austen's works and I'll be coming back for more visits. What I'd like to do is set up a team of folks who have shell access to this site and who are able to work in various websites of their own and on the projects that I'm developing to help support this conferencing system. Has anyone visited the projects conference yet? I'm on Microsoft Netmeeting all day today so if anyone wants to "talk" please drop by. I'm on the uls1.microsoft.com server. You need to have NetMeeting software, which is free from Microsofts site.

Poor mixu! He's posting all alone in the books conference about his favorite books and putting out a mystery quote for folks to guess. Is anyone up to giving him a bit of company in the 'books' conference? http://www.spring.com/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/books/all/

Check out the interesting comments on community in topic 4 of the community conference and respond, if you care to.

Terry, are you sure that you mean topic 4? That is the same (linked) topic as the "ramble" topic (with a different topic number) here. We don't have to "go there" to see it.

Ooops, no it is the last topic added I believe. What other conferences on the Spring have folks here in Austen been visiting? Any suggestions for new topics elsewhere on the Spring?

It's topic 5 in community actually.

If you want to read some very eloquent stuff: Topic 14 of 14 [music]: Players you have met Response 21 of 21: drymartini (drymartini) * Thu, Dec 26, 1996 (21:27) * 3 lines One of my all-time favorite interviews. Carlos Montoya, playing for a college crowd at Alfred, NY. Small, very dapper guy in this elegant tux, with a white hanky in his breat pocket, folded just so.... [much more]

We have got permission from ronks@well.com to reprint his celebrated tech news comments, starting today. Here's a sample: Scientific American has an interesting article in its January 1997 issue about developments in fiber-optic bandwidth and their implications for the telephone industry. Companies including AT&T, Fujitsu, and Nippon T&T have already used a single optical fiber to transmit data over "many kilometers" in excess of a trillion bits per second. NEC has gone them one better by using wave division multiplexing to create multiple channels transmitting at different wavelengths; with WDM they sent 132 channels, each carrying 20 billion bits per second, over a single optical fiber. While these "hero experiments" are not yet ready for commercial deployment, they seem to demonstrate big changes in store: glass cable is much cheaper than copper, and WDM is said to eliminate both the need for expensive boosters along the path to clean up the signals periodically and for a separate laser on each channel. As the cost of providing humungous bandwidth plummets, the phone companies' revenue and even their monopoly status could be in jeopardy. A rogue spokesman at British Telecom says technology will make "bandwidth free and distance irrelevant." The director of H-P's labs says phone companies will become digital utilities something like the water or the power company, and an independent analyst estimates "telephone service should cost about three cents a month." Check out topic 2 in techbusiness.

The Spring was down for the past hour. I apologize to Myretta, Henry and others that may have been trying to access it. I'm going through the log and emailing folks that have tried to access it and letting them know that it's back up. I messed it up this morning trying to reconfigure and restart the logs. If you're interested in the technical details of what I did you can read the sordid details in the web conference. Sorry folks, I'm not happy about being down for an hour this morning.

That is OK Terry it is working fine now.

Thanks Terry, happy new year 1997 (it's 1997 already here in Singapore)

On a cheerier note, Paul McCartney is now Sir Paul McCartney And you can read all the details in the new Sir Paul McCartney topic in the music conference. Please do my a favor. Do a search on Paul McCartney and find a neat website about Paul McCartney, then email the webmaster or whatever email address is listed on their website and ask them to please put a link on their page to our Paul McCartney discussion group. Tell them this is the link to add: http://www.spring.com/yapp-bin/public/read/music/16 Let's see if we can honor Paul in this way! Thanks.

I'm encouraging folks to do this same kind of thing all over the Spring. If you have a favorite topic, do a search for websites about it and then email the person in charge there to put in a link to the Spring. Just copy the link from your browser window and sub the word public for the word restricted. (test it) Beep beep beep beep yeeeahhh!

The Spring was down for the past hour. I apologize to Myretta, Henry and others that may have been trying to access it No apology necessary Terry. Been there, done that. All's well, they say, that ends well.

Terry -- thanks for getting things back together so quickly. I did try to get on this am, and kept getting called an "Unprivileged User"!! I was afraid it was something wrong w/ my system, and I am much relieved to see that all is again well. Have a Happy!

We're back. And I just got back from installing another server on our network. So we even have more ooooomph now.

The austen conference is featured today on the Spring's front page. Along with a revision of the whole page. Take a trip through the past in the archives. The new golf site is my sisters (she lives in the SF Bay area).

The restaurants conference has a much bigger menu of topics and a place to talk about the best restaurant in your town and the best restaurant in the world. Any ideas?

Amy, this has started up just recently -- http://www.islandmm.com/islandmm/cgi-bin/bbs.pl?action=bbs&mbaction=msgs&item=alice

Amy, this has started up just recently -- http://www.islandmm.com/islandmm/cgi-bin/bbs.pl?action=bbs&mbaction=msgs&item=alice

That board looks familiar.

That board looks familiar. Indeed.

You'll find the rest of this poem in the poetry conference. This is just a taste. Flowing Like Spring Waters Tonight is the night, my dear friend. The feeling has ripened inside for months... Every time you and I were together Laughing, chatting, and rambling endlessly much more in the poetry conference --------->

There's a new conference called 'unix' and I posted quite a few things in the Internet and Web conferences. You'll find out about the seven new domains that are going to be on the Internet. This will shake things up for sure. Maybe we should get austen.art? Or eeyieeyi.io? Or spring.firm? Things are going to get very interesting. You have to read the whole thing.

What are you watching on tv right now? That's a new topic in the tv conference. Have fun with this one.

In the sports conference, news of a womens' sports site that has been months in the making. Topic 39 on sports web sites ------------ go there -------------->

Like figure skating on ice? Then you'll like the new figure skating topic in sports which has all the latest schedules of ice skating events on tv. And there is a packers joke there too.

Very Highly Recommended dept: Gerard Van der Leun, boswell@well.com, has an excellent cookbook recipe for a successful virtual community in the virtual community conference. http://www.spring.com/yapp-bin/public/read/vc/12

Two new Michigan virtual communities are the subject of new topics in the vc or virtual community conference: grex and m-net.

I am trying to get an alternative medicine topic off the ground in the health conference. Even if you don't take vitamins and think acupuncture is a bunch of hooey, check it out and say so.

I'd like to point out some topics getting activity in the travel conference: 16 15 dive travel with Divine Spark 17 3 India 18 4 Micronesia and the Pacific region 19 3 Fiji There is a fascinating tale of travel to India and some comments from some islanders themselves in topics 18 and 19. Have you traveled any places that we could start a new topic about?

How about Germany, where I'm from? (Specifically Swabia)

Swabia?

Swabia?

uh huh. that would be the southern country where i'm from. the city is Stuttgart. Hi wer!

Sure start a topic!

I put some procative posts in the Internet conference today in a new topic. Something called Cyberwar: The Information Revolution and Warfare. It turns out, for the last half century, the US has been intercepting and decrypting the top secret documents of most of the world's governments. It's topic 22.

Cool! What will we Yanks think up next?! :-)

Hmm...just occured to me that this topic and "What's hot on the Spring?" rather overlap with each other. Perhaps one or the other should be frozen?

thumbs down on that, it would leave us one less place to babble, and we can't have that now, can we?

dunno, wer, maybe we can talk the higher powers into creating a conference just for babbling-we'd never have to leave!!

Good idea Mike, which one should I freeze. Anyone object?

I don't know, but definitely kill 16 and 19.

In music, topic 44 is Van Morrison - the Man with news of an upcoming Van and Dylan tour. About time to pay some tribute to Van Morrison. Gotta get me that Astral Weeks CD.

Done deal on killing the redundant topics, this is now spring pointer to other topic world headquarters.

wait, what was 16 and 19?? terry, didja catch my hint for a blabbing conference? *grin*

they were just doubles, Wolf...

I got the hint, I'll hold hearings for more comment.

thanks *smile*

What's hot, hot, hot. News. There's now a whole news conference. Go there and find out stuff you should know (maybe), talk about your Spring anniversary, discuss spam, enter your offsite email address if you care to do so, request favors, talk about springeurs who have hit the big time or made the news, pat yourself on the back, and find out about places to go and things to do.

In the media conference, bet you didn't know we had one, there's a new topic on the Drudge Report. My friend Judith Lewis of the LA Weekly is just down the streeet from Matt Drudge and has been known to pay him a visit every so often. Go to media and get in on this drudgery.

And also something about our homeboys. Guess where?

Let's rewind to June 22, 1995 and pick up where we left off. Nike was there. So was Gena. GenX is back!!!!!! Here's the scoop: 1 4 genx conference bidness 2 1 genXer intros 3 0 drugs 4 1 sex or . . . 5 1 Embarassing Things I Did in the '80s 6 1 First jobs from hell and beyond ... and a total of 64 topics to come Melissa Marie, I still love you.

The Spring's original topic list from 1995: http://www.spring.com:/~dbii/forum/confs/confs.html

Some very good thoughts on the CFP conference in the last topic in our cfp conference: From: Lorrie Faith Cranor [For the past five years I have written a Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference report (see the archive at=20 http://www.research.att.com/~lorrie/pubs/cfp.html). This year, turned the job over to Danielle Gallo, an undergraduate student who has been working with me. Feel free to forward this report. -- Lorrie Cranor] Danielle Gallo's CFP98 Conference Report Computers, Freedom and Privacy '98 was held February 18-20 at the Austin, Texas Hyatt Regency Hotel. Although there have been eight in total, this is the first CFP I attended. The program featured daily single-track sessions, lunch breakout sessions, and several concurrent tutorials. . . . contines with her extensive observations. A good read! Recommended.

Letter to me and Mike: Sounds like a good trade to me. I am doing a CGI project for the Exploratorium in San Francisco on a volunteer basis and that is why I need the test space. I don't have years of experience doing this, but there are some prewritten CGI libraries available that allow a developer to write a CGI script that will put up the HTML form and collect the data. At this point I would have to say that I could probably write the part that put up the HTML and collected the data. So, in that regard, let me take a stab at what I think you might mean. Name: Email: What you do in real life: Favorite sites on the web: Other interests, and miscellaneous biographical information: Other or different fields that you have in mind: A couple of areas that I am going to have to do some research on, or get ideas about: If there are variables that I can access for the visitor's email address, or am I going to have to make them enter it by hand. How to link the information I collect to the visitor's alias. Maybe the people at the Well would be willing to part with some secrets in that regard. Anyway, I think it would be fun to be involved in writing the CGI script for this, and if the library I mentioned is loaded, or could be loaded, on the server, I don't think it would be too much work to get to the point of having the form displayed and collecting the information. Let me know what fields and other form elements you think should be in there. I will follow up with some questions for Terry. Regards, Bill

Allie McBeal, a new topic in the tv confernce (and also 'babes'). See, there's this tv show called Ally McBeal. And it features three *hot babes*. That little bit of sexual subconscious out of the way, let me say it's a very funny show. It's a great show, I'll go even further. It's about a law firm. And Allie's ex lover just happens to be a member of the firm and he's married to a gal that has a jaw and blonde hair that Allie doesn't have. Billy, the ex lover of Allie, has mixed emotions And Allie has become friends with Billy's wife. We're talking age ranges of 25-28 here, folks. My theory is that this is a guy type show, and that women will find it embarassing. I don't think it will end up on the feminist top ten listing of tv shows, maybe the bottom ten. The women are too cute and too bimboish at times. And the women aren't the aggressive, free wheeling Marcia Clark types, they're quite timid usually. But how can you not like a show whose lead actress is *** Calista Flockhart *** That name just does it for me. I would love to have a girlfriend like her just so I could introduce her to people. Uh, I'd like you to meet my girlfriend, *Calista Flockhart*. Dream, dream. I'll have more to say about Allie McBeal. It's my favorite tv show. I hope others will join me in this quaint little discussion.

Jordan's up to bat, does that mean Lewinsky's in the on deck circle. Politics, in the topic on the Clinton Presidency. Hey, it's great to see the new conferences, news and genx, off to such a roaring start! I have a lot more surprises in store in both conferences in the way of stome startling new topics. Stay tuned.

There's an *awesome* array of new material in the cfp conference. Warning, this is heady stuff, the legal and moral consequences of today's cyberspace mileau and the implications for our future freedom, privacy and lives are freely discussed. It's a stretch to get past the gate, but the effort may be worth your time. Danielle's observations are far reaching and comprehensive in her roundup of the confernce. Danielle Gallo, on CFP98. j cfp.

The most underutilized, ready for prime time conference on the Spring that has potential for future stardom: cultures Hear me now, or hear me later. Pump it up!

Yes, dad.

Dad!!!

Is there something you want to share with us, Terry??

You mean I haven't been forthcoming, autumn?

ok, terry (aka wer's dad)..... Hi Autumn!

Heya, Wolfie, havin' a good weekend? :-) Mine has been soooo relaxing....

not really, kinda stressin', been working on my site and trying to figure out what the deal is with this browser....... got the baby girl's ears pierced yesterday, she did soooo good. the part she can't handle is the cleaning and turning the posts, but today it is going much better and she's doing it for herself. am very proud of her. the whole thing was her decision, told her she didn't have to if she didn't want to, but she was gung ho!

Good coverage by Gary Chapman of the Bruce Sterling speech in the cfp conference. j cfp

My older daughter came to me yesterday asking for pierced ears for her birthday (she'll be 6). Her dad said age 15, I said 10, so it'll probably be next year! How old is your little girl?

4, she'll be 5 next month (didn't we have that conversation before?) didn't get mine done til i was 16 cuz the big d said heck no. we let her think about it for a while and i carefully explained the whole thing, my big thing was letting her make up her own mind, you know?

yeah, but mine also wants to be bald (she literally cries about wanting to have her head shaved), black (which I can do nothing about) and handicapped (which I'm tempted to do something about--just kidding!) So giving her too much control is definitely o ut of the question. Oh, she also wants me to get a job so she can go to day care (just tear out my heart, I tell her!)

Babe of the week in babes. I know, we pale next to drool.

what is this an invite? Autumn, my daughter hasn't gone that far yet! she wants me to tell my boss i'm not coming back so i can be with her! (she's mama's for sure)

New topics in the news conference: Asteroid! WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's not time to panic, but Earthlings need to keep an eye on a mile-wide asteroid that will zip very close to the Earth in 30 years and could even smash into the planet, causing widespread destruction, astronomers say. Is it time to book that flight to Mars or is this a bunch of hype? Discuss among yourselves in the news conference topic called Asteroid!

That will be the year 2028 in case you need to mark your calendars. It will be 1:30 on a Thursday morning. October 26, 2028. Thursday. 1:30 am. Got that? Did you have anything planned for that day?

wait.....do dayrunners plan that far in advance? (anyway, it's gonna be a near miss by about 600,000 miles)

I was very concerned about this when I saw it on the news. As a student of geophysics, and the science of major collisions, if this thing hits it's going to be The Big One. For the religious ones amongst you (including me), it's time to get your on your knees =)

hey, it's going to MISS US......

Maybe. It will be four months till they have accurate calculations. But even if was aimed dead center at Manhattan, they'd turn it into a media circus and attach rockets to it and turn it into a theme park and steer it into a different orbit. And the commercials would dwarf what it costs to put an ad on the superbowl.

I wondering Terry what did you mean you pale next to drool? I'm chewing my nails waiting for the day my son will be born. So please you guys don't scare me so that I start chewing my fingers... O.K. thanks, drool

I meant drool the conference!!! ha!

A certain Gerard van der Leun, boswell, shows up doubting the Spring will make it, and giving it poor grades. He posts in the Spring's most infrequently utilized Internet conference.

A photography topic is now in the art conference. I talk about some findings I got re: 3d photography.

terry, theres a confrencecalled drool? really? How do I get there from here? I am sorry if I offended you or anything. drool, the person

There's a link to it from our main http://www.spring.net page. Wow, just getting used to that dot net!

I will be giving a live talk via realaudio at http://www.spring.net today and call ins will be accepted (512.303.4000), it will be a live internet "talk show".

Rush Limbaugh has come out in favor of legalization of marijuana. Full details in the Rush Room topic in the radio conference. This is not a joke, he did come out in favor of legalization. It happened March 12 10:40 am pst. Three times!

wasn't limbaugh one of the bastards that so unmercifully tormented clinton's first surgeon-general (forget her name) for basically saying that we should consider decriminalization of some drugs?

I'll guess Jocelyn Elders, if we're talking about the "pro-decriminalization/pro-masturbation" surgeon general.

what elders (thank you) said was that it (decriminalization) was an issue that merited discussion... she's in good company with that view... re: masturbation, don't think it really means a tinker's damn what her opinion is, one way or the other... (and regardless of one's view, really must ask one's self where republicans would be, without it?...(especially rush)... they're certainly repressed enough, as it is)...

(hi autumn)

Just mentioned that, because she'll forever be remembered for her ideas on masturbation rather than decriminalization...

We'll be going live with our talk show again in an hour.

Right here on the Spring we had an event that shocked even the hoary old WELL. Sunday, we all went live and really "met" one another for the first time, I only wish I had pumped it up more on the spring. Next Sunday we'll do it again. It was a gas, gas, gas. See Mikes topic 26 in this conference. What should we call this? Sunday Night Live on the Spring?

About the canabis thing out of the 265 chemicals in tobbaco I think 80 of them cause cancer. out of the 18 chemicals in pot none are known too cause cancer... also a hemp plant produces forty percent more wood products than the trees being cut down now. I wouldn't mind being able to smoke my coffee table occasionally. hahahah DROOL,

*smile*

Yeah, cannabis is great apart from the mind-threatening hallucinations and permanent psychological disturbances (e.g. Schizophrenia)

Wow, that explains a lot....

aha!

Where in the world did you hear that pot causes schizt. I know that it can stunt your emotional growth if you start at a young age. I think you've been watching to many of those old anti-pot movies. Did you know thatthe gov. did a test were they gave a mentally disturb man some L.S.D and twelve hours later {when he came down} he was no longer clasified as mentally disturbed. If you ever get to the library of congress you should look up these facts. Knowlege Is Power. {or at least understanding..} I do not condone the use of L.S.D. {at least not the street stuff, never know whats in that crap} Remember the gov. has all of the best drugs. And clinton did inhale... And probly still does. Drool

read it in a newspaper article, quoting some recent research at a UK university. I'll look it up again and post it for you

this is an extract, since the article is about 500 words -- BEGIN QUOTE "We do not yet know enough about its causes to say how schizophrenia can be prevented, but one specific factor is important: drug use." SANE continues by pointing out that cannabis can cause ahllucinations and paranoid delusions similar to those found in schizophrenia. The psychotic effects induced by these drugs do not always clear up readily, and there is some evidence that they may tr igger a prolonged schizophrenic illness. In addition, such drugs can cause a relapse in an established illness. Most doctors have harrowing stories of psychotic breakdown after a young person has been exposed to cannabis. Detailed research is scant, although a study of the role of cannabis in precipitating schizophrenia in Swedish men who had undertaken national s ervice seemed tod demonstrate a clear link. It is usually considered unlikely that smoking cannabis could be a primary cause of schizophrenia, but likely that it could be a factor in the condition's development in those who are unfortunate enough to have a genetic susceptibility. ... Apart from its intoxicating effects and any persistent damage to the psyche, cannabis may also cause acute anxiety or a panic reaction, particularly if the plant has been bred to give a high yield of cannabinoids, a type of cannabis referred to as "skunk" . Panic attacks may be treated with benzodiazepines, acute psychotic reactions with neuroleptic drugs. Smoking cannabis mixed with tobacco combines the delterious effects of both plants on the air passages. The ill effects of cannabis are not confied to the brain and lungs. it also causes impotence in men, reduces the sperm count and alters the reproductive hormonal systems. babies born to cannabis-smoking mothers are smaller than average, and feed and set tle less well. -- END QUOTE Dr Thomas Stuttaford, The Times (Tuesday, 17 March, 1998)

Helen Huth died crossing the bridge over the river in Cape Girardeau Missouri. She was a college student. I loved her and I loved her poems. I got a batch of her poetry in the mail today from Merle Busch, who is trying to dig up some more of her work, about 150 poems, which we are praying are not lost forever. What a loss for the world, that she died so young and didn't get to keep writing these poems and that we only have a few scraps from her prolific output. Reading these today, tears came to my eyes, and I had to go for a long walk in the woods.

A few of the ones I got are posted in the poetry conference. In a topic called Helen Huths poems.

forgive me Paul, I do not know of the woman you speak... but I will wander over to 'poetry' and see what I can discover.

I think you will discover some magic.

Today at 1:55 is the start of Spring! We should have an online cyberparty! It's also this Spring's anniversary.

Yee-haw!!!

WooWoo!

Our fourth anniversary, since we officially went live on the web on the exact beginning of Spring four years ago. And this is the tenth anniversary of the Spring as an organization which started on this date in 1988. We'll be live on the web at 1:55 pm today CST if anyone wants to call in or post something (I'll read it aloud via our realaudio server).

boing, boing--happy spring!

A new topic, number 260 has been started to discuss the potential for bring the show "My Solitary Elegance" to Austin. from Karen Hannum (sunflower@well.com): A friend of mine from England is bringing her show on Jane Austen, "My Solitary Elegance", to the US for a very limited run. It has enjoyed a great deal of success in England and Scotland including being featured on BBC2. It will be performed in San Franciso from October 2nd-5th at the Jane Austen Society of North America AGM. She has some open dates from the 6th through the 8th and would be interested in filling these bookings. Perhaps at a college or some other venue. If anyone is interested - please contact me at and I can put you in touch with her. Thank you...

Oh, I didn't mention that this topic is in the austen conference. I plan on attending the international Jane Austen conference in SF and promote the Spring's austen conference. Also, I've registered the name austen.com

Good Will Hunting. Titantic. New topics in the movies conference. Have you seen these? Comment in movies!

If you drop in tonight or later on, come by and comment on this years Oscars in topic 29. Hot. Now.

mikeg, Well without getting long winded you did say the sickness was potentialy pre-exsisting sickness,. If pot was not illegal people would not get peranoid and annxious. as for impotence, I have aa very high sperm count and am expecting a strong and healthy baby boy to arrive any day. as for sexual drive well three times a day doesn't sound like a {decreased sex drive} as you so said. If you take a trip to Amterdam, you would see that somking hemp,pot,skunk,red hair sinns.,ganja, the bomb, bolo rolo,canabis,canaboid,the huch-cauw,a blunt, or canabis sativa, mota, purple, blue, green, or gold haired marajajuana, is not so detrimental to a persons health as you might be lead to beleive by the Ronald Regan, Nancy Drew (just say noer's} people. theend drool...

Funny, I always pictured Nancy Drew for a "Mary Jane" girl....

I think I saw that movie...

purty graphics! The visuals almost make up for the ridiculously slow pace through a browser.

You at home, or a different setup at school?

at home. and now I'm at home again, up at a ridiculously early hour, suffering from a bad case of insomnia. *sigh*

Did you drink too much caffeine. I'm in California up at a ridiculously early hour cause I'm still on Austintime. I'm out here because my mom's condition is pretty serious. Lung cancer from years of smoking. She's having an opertion and some chemo treatmetns this week.

good luck, Paul. To you and your mom. Sounds like nasty stuff, I'll be thinking good thoughts. No, not too much caffeine. Rain. It rains so rarely in Colorado through the winter that when it starts up in Spring it's always too loud for me to sleep. Snow is very quiet coming down *smile* I wasn't up for too long. The whirr of the computer soon lulled me back to sleep.

I love the sound of rain when I don't have to get up and go out in it. Lying in my bed at about 5am, the weather lashing against the glass, is one of my favourite times. And, moving back on topic, the new community I'm involved in developing, Farrawae, seems to have accelerated from an absolute stop to a snail's pace, which means things are happening! You can check out the website (I encourage you to do so - get a feel for what we're doing!), and then drop into the Farrawae conference to catch up on what's been going on!

My best wishes, also, Terry...

My big news: SPRING BREAK!!! starts now! all the kiddos are on busses and I'm hankering for a magarita!

I'm in Walnut Creek with my son watchin' the Final Four and taking care of mom. Party on Stace. Where ya goin for break?

terry, very sorry about the family illness, i understand now why you have been scarce. hope everything goes well

Thanks orange. Mom is doing well. And I'm tripping around with my kid in SF and Santa Rosa and trying to hook up with some old friends like fig@well.com

And we're back. We're having problems with the domain change. Please email terry@spring.net if you notice that our system is down. And I'll get it back up and running Sorry for the downtime folks!

Or call 512.303.4000. Either way. Please let me know if you can't get in! Terry

Spring Break plans have changed a few times... first it was going to be Washington DC for a long weekend of museums, Ethiopian food, skating along the Potomac, etc. But since this is Cherry Blossom time, tickets were cost prohibitive. Then it was going to be four days of primitive camping in Fruita Wednesday - Sunday. Then it was going to be three days of primitve camping in Arches Nat. Park and Moab Sat - Tues. (Brandon's business travel keeps f***ing everything up!) BUt NOW it will be Stacey tagging along to Savannah GA w/ B on a consulting job and B taking an extra few days to play around in the garden of good and evil! I'm excited. And Saturday we biked thru Denver in search of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." BTW excellent book!

Terry, I too am sorry to hear about your mother's health problems. I'm sure it means a lot to her to have you there. Thanks again for helping me out last night. Enjoy the time you're having with your mom and son.

I'm in SF, and having a good time, the system seems to be having a few glitches every now and then but I emailed our system admin, jeff@www.spring.net about them. I just fixed the date. I notice we're having our year 2000 problem again. Yesterday we went and visited Brian Zisk (San Franziskgo website) in SF, and then met in a little bistro in Mill Valley with Cliff Figallo, who just got a conference hosting job with Salon. And then out to dinner at a great Thai place in Santa Rosa. Mom is doing well. And Shey is still beating the pants off me on the basketball court, it's hard to compete against 6'5" of muscle. I hope I can keep this system together with band aids till I get back, sorry for any downtime! The domain name change from spring.com to spring.net will fully take place in the next few days, so please remember our new address is http://www.spring.net

Or alternatively, it's always: http://206.97.234.70 In case our name server has fits.

Like this morning?

In the vc.6 topic (Virtual Communities) are details of Vassilios Koronakis (vassilio@well.com) affair with Stacy Horn. Some pretty juicy insider stuff about the doyenne of ECHO by one of its most controversial members. Sizzzling tale... j vc and read topic 6

Myretta emailed me a while ago and said we were down. So I just rebooted the server. Sorry folks, I been out doin' nonvirtual stuff today. In the event you notice you can't get in, please email jeff@spring.net and terry@spring.net And one of us will get things moving again. Wish I had heard about this sooner! I started a coupla new topics in genx. Check 'em out!

Sorry, Terry, I thought it was down cause you was grep-ing...

What me grep?

Well, I had heard that was the plan...

terry sorry about helen and your mom, hope she's doing well. live talks? oh my, not sure if i'm ready for that, everyone thinks i'm a kid when i answer the phone or answer the door-uh, is your mom there? *giggle* please post whenever you plan to have another one *smile*

Wanted. Person to drive my Buick Regal (30,000 miles on it) from the SF Bay area to Austin, Texas. I'll pay $200 and put you up for a week in Austin free and wine and dine you. Serious about this. I need to get this car out here.

So tempted... so tempted...

What else would it take, Stace?

I have several semi-serious inquiries so far but nothing solid. The car is in Walnut Creek, CA at my moms place. If you could do this Stacey, that would be great!

would you fly me out to SF, too? :-)

Nice try.

Hey Terry, why don't you get that author whose doing book signings in SF and Austin to do it? :-)

Autumn! What a knack for putting things together!

Here's a pointer to talk about the NBC miniseries that showed the other night: Merlin Find a discussion in topic 17 in 'babes' and in the tv conference.

(and just ignore anything I might say in either one... apparently I am tired past the point of my usual inabiliy to post coherently...)

Just regroup William and take another run at it, because you seem to have some insight and perception in this area of Arthurian legend (surpassing that of your knowledge of babe-onomics).

really?????

Surprised, Stacey?????

Gary Chapman asked me a question and a favor. You have probably heard about the shooting of Texas Monthly writer Jan Reid down in Mexico City last week. Jan is in the hospital in Houston now, recovering. (Jan is a friend of Garys.) A bunch of people in Austin are putting together a fundraiser for him at the Driskill Hotel on May 9th. Jan can't be there, obviously, because he'll still be in the Rehab Hospital in Houston. Gary was wondering is if I knew how we might get a live video feed over the net to Jan from the Driskill. They're going to check to see if there's a fast net connection in the hospital itself, but Gary'd like to investigate how he'd handle his end at the gig. So I'm volunteering and looking for someone to assist me, someone with a good on camera presence to interview folks.

yes WER. Surprised (and ticklish!)

Back on the tickle contest thing again, are we?

In topic 8 in the art conference, Lenadams Dorris vegas@well.com Enigma is the focus of discussion, visit her website and comment. Lenadams: Hello, everyone...I've been pretty absent lately, mostly because my cafe, the Enigma, has been so terribly busy. We're up to 14 employees now! We were honored to again win in the 1998 Best of Las Vegas Awards, this time for "Best Art Scene." Many of you have stopped by to visit when in Las Vegas, which is wonderful. You may be interested to know that we are about to celebrate our fifth anniversary, with ten days of art, music and spoken word events. I redesigned our web site to bring it all up to date, and included an ongoing scrapbook of pictures of the Enigma and its people and things, if you want to get a better idea of what we look like. Some of you will remember that on our third birthday in 1996, a lot of WELLbeings sent postcards to help us celebrate our grand re-opening after renovations. While many of those cards are still around, many have been lost to time and careless coffee drinkers. If any of you are into it, we'd love to get a bunch of new cards from all over the world (in the scrapbook you can see some of the cards pasted to the front of the coffee counter...) People love seeing all the cards, and we love hearing from our far-flung friends. If you want to send postcards, our address is: Enigma Garden Cafe (or just "Enigma") 918 South Fourth Street Las Vegas, NV 89101 Thanks everyone...even when I am not online so much, you are my extended family who has helped keep me going all these years. Smooch!

In the media conference, linked to the news conference: Item 30 entered Sat, May 2, 1998 (08:58) by Paul Terry Walhus (terry) Live from LA, it's suicide on the freeway! They just has a live broadcast of a freeway suicide in LA, with closeup shots of someones head being blow off as they popped off a shotgun. We are at the point where everyone must know everything that's going on as it happens. Both a new low in journalism and a taste of the future.

euwwww

Riette is on a roll in philosophy. She's got the scoop on truth, wisdom and even started up a new topic. Glad to see Riette jumping in to this little known backwater of the Spring.

Riette has taken philoslophy by storm. I think she's a night person!

New topic in travel: England.

wooo hoooo.....i'm pilin' in there!

Windows Conference: Texas vs. Microsoft (AG wants to raise campaign funds and keep job. Bolt from sky tells him he is barking up wrong tree.) Texas Puts Off Action Against Microsoft (05/12/98; 8:58 p.m. ET) By Kora McNaughton, TechWeb Pressure from Texas-based licensees of Microsoft Windows has given pause to that state's attorney general, Dan Morales, who was expected to file an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft later this week. In a statement issued Tuesday, Morales said, "Before contemplating any legal action against Microsoft, I feel it is prudent and wise to personally hear the concerns of our Texas-based companies." Morales will meet with the Companies over the next few weeks. Morales said his office has received letters from several Texas computer executives worried that a lawsuit against Microsoft would "negatively impact" their companies and the state as a whole. Morales' postponement of any action is an additional boost for Microsoft, which won an important victory against the Justice Department Tuesday when a federal appeals court ruled that Internet Explorer may be bundled with Windows 98. Expectations have been building that several state attorneys general and the Justice Department were readying broad antitrust complaints against Microsoft, but Morales' statement indicates such lawsuits may not happen for weeks, if at all.

The tv conference: 5 19 Seinfeld Tomorrow night, Thursday, is the Last Seinfeld. Some folks are watching jsut for the commercials. The show about nothing is no longer. Just re-runs for here on out. The cast is going to be on the Tonight Show.

Daniel Cardenas wrote: The Justice Conference will focus on topics of criminal justice. Sample top ics could be Death Penalty v. Life, rehabilitation v. punishment, juvenile justice, women in prison, ethnic makeup of jails and prisons. Also could talk about serial killers, famous prisoners now in prison, current prison cases, laws, crime, statistics, studies, etc.. It could go into Native American law, white collar crime v. blue collar, constitutional law. My plan for getting conversation going, is to talk to friends of mine to signing up, also, since I am new, I havent participated in any conversat ions yet. Through those conversations, I could steer people to the Justice conference. So, now there is a 'justice' conference. j justice

Austin's still "smokin'". Literally. A surreal pall hangs over us as smoke blows in from Mexican fires out of control. Check out topic 28 in the austin conference or topic 7 in the environment conference (they're crosslinked). air Austin The Mexican government procrastinates and the US Governement does a "study" while Austinites choke.

I hope Riette sticks around, I look forward every day to reading her cool insights in the philosophy conference. New in the spirit conference, a topic on the Sufi Order and Sufi dancing.

you mean like the Kavadi(sp?)?

Guess who's back? Howard Fredrics! Great!

Jim Moss aka Leplep Le Plep is doing his fair share in Philosophy, also, things are getting quite interesting in there... and, this in from Wolf (and edited, a little, of course...): Hi Wer!! Dude, thanks for writing me. It's good to hear from familiar folks. You can write here all the time, I do have regular access to it. As for the Spring, I do that when I'm not working and won't be on it as often as before for the time being. It's very very hot here, but it's not too bad. Drink lots of water and stay cool. Got up to 120 the other day, whew! But it's a dry heat *laugh*. Talk later, Elke :) mswolf68@hotmail.com

oh, yeah, and I updated the GenX Storybook annex page at http://www.spring.net/~spew/chap1.html

I've just opened a new topic in Spirit, which I would like to link to Philosophy -"Why Christianity is not Religious"

But, Christianity is WAY to religious...

sorry, I seemed to have lost an o while camping... how are we gonna go about this semantic wrestling match, Mike? see you there...

Terry has moved into his new casa, and won't be back on here full time until his ISDN line gets installed somewhere around the 4th or 5th of June...(I think, however, he is sneaking around here tonight)

Yup, dialin' in. My isdn line goes in on the 4th. I'll be havin' another pool party soon. I'm sittin' here with my notebook by poolside, with the tv cranked up on the music awards. Swimmin' rockin' out and lurkin' the Spring a bit.

News conference. Obits. Phil Hartman of SNL fame. Shot dead, possibly by his wife who killed herself.

I'm sorry I haven't been around much. It's Early Finals time here at Sussex again, which means that I'm studying like crazy (just as I should be now...) I will be around occassionally, but not much. However, after June 25 I will be back, with the trauma of 14 examinations over!!!

So, that's where you've been all this time - I was beginning to worry; thought you got run over by a car or something. I didn't know you were English; I just love England and Scotland - I go there at least once or twice a year. It is just so beautiful with the rolling landscapes, quaint little towns, and the people are incredibly nice. I even married one of them! Anyway, I hope your exams will be going well, and hope you'll be back more often after that.

Good luck on your finals, Mike!

14 examinations?!?! how many classes are you taking?

excuse me, I'm butting in for a second, the GenX Storybook pages can now be found at http://www.spring.net/~spew/genxstory/chap1.html http://www.spring.net/~spew/genxstory/chap2.html come by and read 'em, puh-leeeze! now, back to our regularly scheduled conversation...

The index page is up for the GenX Storybook...it's at http://www.spring.net/~spew/genxstory/indeX.html it's kinda graphic intesive, let me know what ya'll think...

Thoroughly Modern Jane This conference is for fiction using Jane Austen characters in non-Regency settings. Fiction based on Jane Austen and set in her period is at The Republic of Pemberley Your host is Carolyn http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/browse/modjane/all This has been in the works for a while, and the time was ripe to announce it. Credit is due to Amy and Myretta, the wonder workers from the Republic of Pemberly, a board that was incubated right here on the Spring.

The announcement is at: http://www.pemberley.com/pemb/admin/fiction/webbbs/boi.html and there is a little discussion on the help board at: http://www.pemberley.com/pemb/admin/help/index.html

and if anyone has noticed, there has been more modjane-ing than firthing lately, so there's already plenty o' stuff to read...

ok, i'll ask...what in the heck is modjane?

Moder Jane Austen... Jane's characters in modern settings...

I'll have to start reading her works . . . sounds like fun!

Saw a preview for a movie tonight with Jane Austen in the title. It didn't look like it had anything to do with Jane Austen though.

How exiting! A movie with Jane Austen in the title which really has nothing to do with her!

It's really a novel idea when you think about it! The possibilities for future films are endless!

Jane Austin, pet detective.

Riette is now set up with host powers in 'art'. Which means she can customize it to her heart's desire. More specifically: The Role of the Conference Host Each conference has at least one host. The duties of the host vary from maintenance-only hosting which might involved clearing out old and unused topics to high-involvement hosting where the host takes an active role in encouraging and participating in the discussions. Hosts can help topics stay on the subject, answer questions, and bring up new subjects. They help new users and lost users. They generally keep things rolling along in the conference. Hostly Powers Hosts can perform the following acts that regular users cannot. Open the first topic in the conference. Retire any topic in the conference. Kill any topic in the conference. Change the conference header. Change the bulletin which is a message displayed (if new) once for everyone. Change the welcome message which is displayed when someone joins for the first time. Change the conference configuration commands. Change the ulist which is the list of participants' logins. Change the login message which is displayed when entering the conference. Change the Logout

OOOH, all that power . . . am I allow to tie people up too?

allowed, that is.

only if you include me

"Jane Austen, Pet Detective"--ROTFLMAO!!! Good one, Riette!!

ha-ha! Mike, you mean, you've not even noticed that you're already tied to me? Broken arm to broken finger! Which finger? Because if it's your right, then we can make music together! My right hand, your left. You do the cords, I strum. How does that sound?

woo woo! then BOTH of you are still handcuffed to the couch!

So we're tied to one another AND the couch? This is getting complicated. Now all we need is for you and Wer to join us, and we'll be a Spring Quartet!

lol :) nice pun, riette :)

I changed the Spring's base href tag to "http://www.spring.net/ by adding the trailing / Check out the website and see if it's working in your browser, if you care to. Is the picture refreshing automatically every 60 seconds like it is supposed to do? We're building a new server soon. I just ordered a CD-R to use for backing up our present system. Should be here tomorrow or the next day. Spring party here the 18th, hope all the local springeurs can make it by, even ok for wer to drop in late after work. We should still be jammin' Everyone, please invite someone you know or don't know to join our conversation! Let's start growing incrementally! Back to the All Start game.

Start sb Star.

Holland is out of the World Cup!!!!!! YAAAAAA-HOOOOOOOOO!!!

you're happy? i was gutted. they were the only non-cheating team left in. now Brazil, and their team of professional divers, will win.

("professional divers"??? what does this mean?)

All I gotta say is, GO CROATIA!

Me too. Mike!!! I'm shocked! You shouted for Holland?! They played like big bullies! But I don't really care who wins, and it wouldn't have bothered me much if they HAD won . . . as long as it isn't France (or Germany, I was going to say, but they're out already, thank heavens!)!!

professional divers refers to the Brazilian penchant for jumping to the floor at the mere hint of an opposition player coming close to them. a technique prevalent on the continent, it is scorned here in England, and rightly so.

"jumping to the floor" ??? Should we take this to the soccer topic in sports?

No, NO NO!! They play with their feet, Holland plays with those big, chunky muscles! And all the teams do that opera thing anyway to try and get the other team a yellow card. Was it in that one game between Paraguay and WHO? where the one guy from Paraguay did that magnificent roll practically from one end of the field to the other after tripping over someone's foot? I was in stitches. But I adore the Paraguayan goalkeeper. He's SO charismatic, and a great player too. I also liked that young English player, Mike Owen who kicked that wonderful goal against Argentinia. WOW! Sorry, Terry, I won't say more - I really can't go to sports; I know Nothing about Nothing there. I just enjoy watching the WC, because then I can cuddle the little guinea-piggies at the same time.

So, is Croatia still alive?

the team? no, they went out to France. France vs. Brazil in the final. I reckon 1-0 to Brazil.

The Babes conference header has had a bit of an update. A new logo, and a couple of "additions". Head on over. You might also fancy dropping into the Alicia Silverstone topic, to check out this wonderful wonderful (wonnnnnnderrfulll....i should stop now) actress.

Who do you think will score the goal?

Warning: a comment slipped in ahead of yours at 225!

i've no idea - i didn't watch any of the Brazil matches. and maybe we should this chatter to Sports - it's a bit irrelevant here :) are the slippage warnings supposed to be posted?

No, not usually, it's just so rare!

Topic 13 in Spirit: 13 1 Steven Seagal, sacred vessel of Tibetan Buddhism and reincarnated lama

I'll have a look, Terry, but that's a good thing, isn't it? I mean those monks look very holy to me - I respect them.

Of course it's a good thing. This was brought up in response to your comments on the vacuity of Jean Claude Van Damme.

I'm not changing my mind about van Damme though! If he were to become a Tibetan monk, I would advise all the others (including Seagal) ALWAYS to stand with their backs against the wall. He's such a horny old thing, one never knows what he might get up without women to adore him . . .

Did you find the Seagal topic?

Oh, here it is! Found it. Ehm, Terry, this response is now in one of the other topics, the reasons are there too, but I can't remember which topic! Anyway, I just more or less said that is was cool about Seagal being a tulku now. Don't you find?

hey folks, i am trying to build traffic to one of my conferences on the spring, science. come on by and post away!

But, Ray, I know absolutely nothing about science. Does that matter?

Tell us some of the things you want to talk about there in science!

right now i am posting news clippings from cnn.com related to science. these news clippings range from very cool and noncontroversial (stars and galaxies) to very controversial (mammal cloning). these are topics that everyone has at least one comment on. riette (and most folks here for that matter) may not know a lot about science, but is very smart and bound to add something positive. anyway, at least come on by and read then news snippets so when i do a "parti" command it shows more than 3 people who have been to the conf!!!!!!!!!!

believe it or not, ratthing, but I lettered in science three years in high school...

well, then, come on by!

Will do, Ratthingy.

Wired for mayhem By Mark Ward Economic booms and busts will become more frequent and more severe if programs called software agents control electronic commerce. Agents tend to exaggerate the worst market swings and create disastrous price wars, say two research groups in the US. As more goods and services are bought on the Internet, observers predict . . .

that people will find ways to overcome problems that may occur, if they occur.

This points to a new topic in the internet conference, where you can read the rest. Or just take Riette's word for it!

�smiling sheepishly�

Did anyone perchance read it?

Where was tv banned? What country? Find out in news topic 10.

In the windows conference a new topic, security. And a new product guranateed to scare the daylights out of you, Back Orifice.

new topics in art, justice, and genx, as well...

And porch 30 has a visual thesaurus (long) discussion to go along with our banter about synonyms.

vc conference topic 12, an excerpt: Amsterdam Public Digital Culture On the Contradictions Among the Users by Geert Lovink & Patrice Riemens By the late nineties, the (in)famous Amsterdam squatters movement, which had dominated the socio-cultural (and law-and-order) agenda in the previous decade, had petered out in the city's streets, but its autonomous yet pragmatic mode of operation had infiltrated in the working of the more progressive cultural institutions. It was the time that the cultural centres 'Paradiso' and 'De Balie', which were at the vanguard of local cultural politics, embraced the 'technological culture' theme in their programming. In the beginning, this took the shape of a critical, if somewhat passive, observation of the technologies surrounding us, and of their attendant risks, but it quickly evolved in a Do-It-Yourself, from below approach. Technology was no longer seen as the preserve of science, big business, or the government. It could also become . . .

In travel, a new topic on Paris and France.

feel free to talk about their overabundance of wers...

Yesterday, the Senate moved one step closer to passing legislation which jeopardizes free speech and access to information on the Internet. Two measures, which were attached to a spending bill for the Commerce, State, and Justice departments after a voice vote, are based on two previously introduced bills: The Communications Decency Act (CDA) II (introduced by Senator Coats) and the Internet School Filtering Act (introduced by Senator McCain). for the rest see http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/internet/12

Gambling on the net is also about to be outlawed.

One can GAMBLE here? That can't be fun.

It could get expensive, with all they shysters out there.

Yeah, well, if one is stupid enough to take the risk, one must take the consequences when they present themselves. I must confess that Chris and I adore playing the slot machines in England or Namibia when we're there. It's great fun, and we laugh ourselves to bits over each other's efforts to coax money out of the machine.

The internet conference has a new topic inspired by some of Bruce Sterling's literary freeware: Topic 25 of 25: 'hackers (Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling)' Response 1 of 1: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) Mon, Jul 27, 1998 (10:52) 743 lines Bruce Sterling bruces@well.sf.ca.us Literary Freeware -- Not for Commercial Use Speech to High Technology Crime Investigation Association Lake Tahoe, Nov 1994 Good morning, my name's Bruce Sterling, and I'm a sometime computer crime journalist and longtime science fiction writer from Austin Texas. I'm the guy who wrote HACKER CRACKDOWN, which is the book you're getting on one of those floppy disks that are being distributed at this gig like party favors. People in law enforcement often ask me, Mr Sterling, if you're a science fiction writer like you say you are, then why should you care about American computer police and private security? And also, how come my kids can never find any copies of your sci-fi novels? . . . ya gotta go there to get the rest.

But please go there and comment as a special facor to me if nothing else, I want to show Bruce we care.

facor sb favor

In travel: Item 23 entered Mon, Jul 27, 1998 (11:16) by Paul Terry Walhus (terry) bargain airfares Bargain airfares. Where to get 'em mostly on the web. 1 new of 1 response total. Topic 23 of 23: 'bargain airfares' Response 1 of 1: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) Mon, Jul 27, 1998 (11:17) 6 lines A good place to start: www.cheaptickets.com I heard of someone who got a $600 round trip ticket to Paris instead of the $3,000 the airlines wanted.

Who's beginning to look like a tomato? I won't tell, but you can find out in the food conference.

�turning red�

Sssh, you'll give it away.

Give what away? I didn't tell anyone about your hay fetish!

Whew! Good.

It would be hard to convey how wonderful are the descriptions of Paris provided by Riette, you'll just have to journey to travel to find out for yourself.

And oh, if you'd like to find out about Terry's fetishes, you can go look in Music or even, hey, ask him yourself!

If the Internet is such a wonderful and diverse environment then how come we're all going to the same places. Yahoo, Netscape, AOL, Microsoft, Alta Vista, Excite, Geocities, Amazon and a few others command over fifty percent of Internet traffic. for more ifs, and/or to supply some answers, go to http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/internet/26

Because fools never differ?

Been there already, a good read.

New topic in the tv conference: Ushuaia: The Ultimate Adventure Hosted by Perri Peltz, "Ushuaia: The Ultimate Adventure" offers a fascinating look at the real-life adventures of French dare-devil Nicolas Hulot and his Ushuaia team. The one-hour adventure series, which takes its name from a small town in Tierra Del Fuego at the tip of South America, features incredible expeditions, extreme sports and fierce competitions . . .

Do you want to see what the Spring looked like in 1995? check out http://www.spring.net/~dbii/forum/ or for a real pastblast: http://www.spring.net/~dbii/forum/confs.html

Ooops, wrong url, it's http://www.spring.net/~dbii/forum/confs/confs.html

Will go have a look as soon as I wake up.

Tired from your long trip?

I sure was, Terry. We were supposed to get back Tuesday evening, but the flight got cancelled after we boarded the aircraft. Then they tried to put us on another flight to London, and from there to Basle, and then they wanted us to take a TAXI from there to Z�rich. At which point I decided it was a good time for a tantrum - because this was like 22:00 at night, my kids were shattered, and we would not have arrived home before about four in the morning. So they gave us free hotel accommodation, two fre meals, and all that stuff. Which was fun, but we had to be up early again to catch the flight to Z�rich, which, in the end, didn't go until 12:20 - so we did get in at 4:00 - in the afternoon, that is. I always swore I wouldn't fly Swissair again after the first time I did. Chris thought I was merely being prejudiced, and so the past two days pretty much proved my point! Mad as a bull, he was! They are the most unprofessional airline since the Kipkana express!

How far is it from Basle to Zurich?

I'm not sure in miles or kilometres, but per car it's between one and a half and two hours. How far is it from Austin to Boston?

About 1800 miles at least.

Damn. Was hoping to be able to combine my Spring excursion next year with a little visit to my sister. Well, if she can get holiday I shall just have to bring her along.

Great, bring her along!

Thanks - I'll consider that an invitation! Think I'd be less nervous about coming with her by my side.

I think the two of you would love Austin. And just think all the hours and hours of real live face to face conversation we could all have.

Real live face to face, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, hand to hand, body to body.... �BIG BIG SMILE� Have I seduced you?

not yet, but you can keep trying if you'd like...

Damn! My mum always says she hasn't a clue how I was able to produce two children - she says I'm too stupid to be sexy. Guess she's right. Luckily one doesn't have to be sexy in order to have sex! Are you still on holiday, or are you back now?

I'm back...

Good. People had better start coming alive in the Spring, or I shall respond to every single topic in every single conference, and cause a spring scandal.

Scandal, controversy. Awesome! Go for it Riette! And on the Spring's main page today, a piece put together by my friend Mangala, an English lady who is very passionate about saving Texas from the nukes: The video you are watching is about the proposed nuclear dump in Sierra Blanca, Texas. It was filmed in early July of this year. The 53rd anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima in Japan has just passed and, in an attempt to heighten the Public's awareness of the dangerous nuclear situation in West Texas, many brave souls, at least 200, are currently marching from El Paso to Sierra Blanca. Unless the People speak out NOW, a license will be granted by the T.N.R.C.C. for a nuclear waste facility to be built in this beautiful pristine area of Texas which is 16 miles from the Mexican border where the Rio Grande runs and over an earthquake fault line. This facility will serve as a dump for other states including Maine and Vermont. Trucks will bring the waste right across the U.S. If you have the possibility to join the marchers then please do so. They have been on Highway 20 past Fort Hancock and now are joining I10 to march the rest of the way to Sierra Blanca. They are supposed to arrive in Sierra Blanca around 1.30pm tomorrow, August 9th. Topic about this in environment.

Does anyone want to put up a gallery page of pix of springeurs that I can point to from the main page?

I'll put it on the list...

Hi, Wer!!

we *really* need to start a weird-like conf here on the spring. there are sooooo many topics there just begging for riette!

new topics in poetry too! (and yeah, this place has been dead, what's up?)

wer now has conference creation capabilities. Go William!

I wondered when you were going to let that out of the bag... actually I was holding off on starting any new confs until you had the new server up and running...

Oh, magnificent!!! What's your conference going to be called? And, Wer, we're all with you! Ray, you think me weird??? You flatterer!!

Check out Mangala's video!

It's ok because we'll be transferring all this content anyway. And I'm not phasing in the new server for a while, because these one chugs along fairly reliably. And the new server will be a support machine until it proves it's metal. And also there's the issue that it's a difference flavor unix (Free BSD instad of BSDI).

ok, ratthing and every one else, Riette and I have already gotten http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/screwed and wouldn't you know it, she came first... and introduced herself!

yeah, I know, the url should be http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/screwed/all but it worked, didn't it? (and read better, as well)

Nothing like a good screw! ha-ha!

is this, like, a whole new conference?

yes! please visit screwed!

ok!!!

I whupped up a coupla new topics, mostly related to Austin goings on but of general interest also. The first is in poetry. It's about teh 98 national Poetry Slam which is going to kick off in a few days. This is the Superbowl of poetry, folks. And I'll be there. The other is a website and discussion about Body Choir, a group that I have fun with and which I have talked about briefly. http://www.spring.net/bodychoir And the Pledge Drive is still going strong with two new contributions, Read the topic in this conference.

Terry, when you click on it, it says "File Not Found."

It's fixed now.

Oh, very interesting! PS: check your email.

Varoom! Keep them names coming, in, of all places, babes? Any Mike Griggs sightings? And catch either the Internet or the Austin conference for a listing of interesting websites about race, class and the Internet from Arthur McGee. Art goddess Riette continues on her roll in the art conference. It's a great education!

Thought you had problems? the entire cap the size of the USA and part of Canada 20,000 feet thick will slide into the ocean causing huge waves... In the news conference.

!!!!!!!!!!!! WHEN?!?!?!

Don't know. Sounds kind of hokey, should have put it in the news of the weird topic (do we have one?) . . . along with the alien abductions. You'll have to visit news and check the web links, I spose.

SpringSearch! http://www.spring.net/search New!

too cool! check out this feature, as well... http://www.spring.net/~spew/ss/

Looks good Terry. Now we know why you're so busy ;-)

It only took about 10 minutes to set up. Ooops, didn't call you last night. Give me a buzz later.

This topic now linked to drool.

This topic now linked to drool Yes, I noticed. Did you upgrade the software or something? I've been able yo post without getting a Yapp error the last couple of days.

No updates! Unless Kaylenes been working behind the scenes. wer is taking an active role in overall system management and design, which is great. New topic internet (topic 28) which lists communication clients, these are ways we can meet using audio, video and text chat. Here are some of the best communications clients: Here are, in general, the best apps for communicating over the net (not just videoconferencing in some cases) in order of effectiveness and overall quality: Iphone 5.01 ftp://ftp.vocaltec.com/pub/iphone/iphone50.exe WebPhone ftp://ftp.netspeak.com/pub/wpsetup.exe VDOPhone ftp://ftp.vdo.net/vdptrial.exe NetMeeting http://mssjus3.www.conxion.com/msdownload/netmeeting/Nm21.exe OnLive! Traveler http://www.onlive.com/cgi-bin/travreg.cgi PowWow32 ftp://ftp.powwow.com/powwow36.exe PhoneFerret ftp://ferret.aitcom.net/pub/ferret/PFT111.exe Virtual Places http://download.vplaces.com/clients/VP32r21.exe Active Worlds http://aw.mpl.net/downloads/awb.exe Speak Freely http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/windows/speakfb.zip WinTalk ftp://ftp.elf.com/pub/wintalk/wtalk127.zip VoxPhone ftp://papa.indstate.edu/winsock-l/Windows95/tx32v20.exe

Slippage!

Let's talk to a prisoner. See justice topic 4.

You mean a married man?

nope, that's what he'd a meant if I had said it...

You feel like marriage is an imprisonment? I don't really, except when Chris doesn't want to go on the merry-go-round with me. Then I wish I hadn't been married, 'cos then I would not have WANTED him to come along in the first place, and I wouldn't have had to nag him about it.

Topic 7 of 13: 'NATO and European politics' Response 11 of 11: naive (ergopublic) Wed, Aug 26, 1998 (15:56) 18 lines Strange (or funny) to read this discussion. At "beeing wired - beeing human" I was told to have a look at spring. The NATO and European politics page is really astonishing for a citizen that is not member of the U.S. nor the NATO nor even the U.N. ... ... read the rest in the politics conference. Wow, we can mentioned at being wired, being human! New blood. And Swiss too.

Read the story of the "Tech Ranch" radio program - about Austin technology - in the austin conference (topic 30) and it's linked to the 'radio' conference. Riette's art conference is awesome, it's forcing us telnetties onto the web to see it!

All this flattery is going to make me very vain soon..... MORE PLEASE!

She's absolutely stupendous! For you host sysop types, you can click on help on the Spring's main page and now get to a "sysops corner" which tells you how to use telnet to create conferences and do sysop type things.

Keep that technology stuff away from me! They and me - we don't exactly get along.

Geoff posted a new topic, number 49, in the web conference about a new postal service on the internet. I was running out the door and could only skim it real fast. Could someone else please take a look and post a better synopsis here? And welcome geoff, 'cause he's finally come out of the woodwork after hanging around here for at least a year. Maybe we can keep him out in the open now!

Gregory Kallenberg's online version of the XL article: http://austin360.com/tech/browser/browser.htm

thanks for posting the URL, terry. what a great blurb for the Spring! so are we *all* "edgy and cool" or just you, terry?

Remember, Ray,THE WALHUS IS OUR MASTER!

We're all so hip, groovy, cool and edgy that it's awesome.

like, totally dude!

No-one should touch us - we're so hot, we'll burn them to ashes!

This may be tasteless and it may make you gag. That warning out of the way, it's topic 30 in babes. Jailbabes. Something to stir Mike up on his return.

I think he'll laugh himself into a coma!

hi i am a newbie whats hot.....

this is what's hot--the spring! didn't you hear? we're edgy and cooooooool, woohoo!! welcome judy! look around, feel free to jump in on any topic...

thank you and well i am,,but right now i am just looking around and thanks again...

welcome to the spring isis! what are your interests?

What's hot! The people here. The topics. Food. Art. Restaurants. Science. Babes. Drool. Movies. TV. And we like to hang out on our little 'Porch' and listen to the frogs croak down by the spring, and swap comments about what's hot. And you're hot, cause you're new!

While there are tens of thousands of websites to visit, it is only the very seasoned netizen who will actually explore the wider reaches of the Internet. We know that most people tend to visit the same sites repeatedly. The average person has a list of ten websites they visit on a weekly basis and outside of that there is not much divergence. check http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/vc/all for the rest of the article...look around, you'll find it...

Books, Isis. Books are HOT. Come tell us what you're reading, even if it's trash.

Or: get SCREWED!!! That was not an insult!

Really, wolf has read a book in nearly every state (you can take that two ways). And I posed the question to her whether or not she could remember which states she read which books. It's my way of steering a discussion back on topic. Books. Hot. Read. I love the creative direction Ree and wer a giving this place. Here guys, have a high 5! www.colinfirth.com and www.austen.com are coming, if I can get the new machine more organized with Peters help. Then the respective design teams can take over. I love drool and austen. I wish we could revive austen in a cway complemenatary to what Amy and Myretta are doing Sports. Baseball, I know you say ugh. But nonetheless I have made some comments on the current home run race between McGwire and Sosa in the sports topic 10 on the Cardinals if you care to join me. More later....

The get screwed comment was in reference to the Judy topic in screwed. Getting screwed is a peak experience around here.

ABSOLUTELY

wait! terry, you wanted to know in which states i've read a book? not which states i've been in? well, now, this will have a completely different answer.

Waiting to hear it....

Yeah, waiting for what states in what states.

crazy in all of them and i haven't a clue what i've read where!

Good things and new people going on in the Internet conference. And, yes, Ray, I'd love it if you'd work on those menu scripts. Topic 1 of 29: 'allow me to introduce myself' Response 38 of 40: Ray Lopez (ratthing) Mon, Sep 7, 1998 (22:57) 3 lines terry, i did not know you needed someone to work on the menus. i'd love to do that! Topic 1 of 29: 'allow me to introduce myself' Response 39 of 40: Arthur R McGee (amcgee) Mon, Sep 7, 1998 (23:19) 3 lines Yeah, thanks. I understand UNIX just fine, I just wasn't aware of how my shell needed to be setup for the conferencing software to work. On most systems, the conferencing software has it's own independent settings. Thanks again. Topic 1 of 29: 'allow me to introduce myself' Response 40 of 40: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) Tue, Sep 8, 1998 (08:20) 5 lines Thanks Art, it's an issue that our conferening software should address. But our web population is much, much bigger than our telnet group, so naturally, the web is where most of our development has been. [1/29] Respond, forget, or pass? Item 10 entered Sun, Sep 22, 1996 (16:09) by Paul Terry Walhus (terry) ISPs - who is the best Internet Service Provider? 1 new of 3 responses total. Topic 10 of 29: 'ISPs - who is the best Internet Service Provider?' Response 2 of 3: Ito (ITO) Tue, Sep 8, 1998 (21:03) 4 lines I use shaw wave through the cable company in Calgary and I love it!, too fast, no phone line tied up and 24-hour connection. I pay $40Canadian a month; it ain't so bad but for those that need it it's worth it, there is no web space for a site but there is for ftp. Also, you are allowed to have up to 5 email accounts, which I guess some people would benefit from. The program I am into is the Home network. We'll be moving to Austin pretty soon, does anyone know whether there is cable internet service through the local cable company?, who is the cable company down there? if the service exists does anyone know what it costs? Thanks and happy surfing! Ito Topic 10 of 29: 'ISPs - who is the best Internet Service Provider?' Response 3 of 3: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) Tue, Sep 8, 1998 (23:23) 4 lines Welcome Ito, yes, we either have it or we're getting it very soon. Very glad you're joining us.

ooh, and don't forget to try the last 50 postings option on http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/main either...will be coming to a conference near you soon, also... (and maybe I can finally get the frames version and the goto button working, too)

I love that 50 last postings, everyone give wer a hug, ok?

didya see the cartoon? it changes everyday...

Terry, e-mail me the mailing address for your Austin casa, okay?

Goodness, do you guys actually have enough brain space to store all these techno terms in????

ok, how come i only got the cartoon once? and the 50 option is cool too, so here ya go, wer *squeeze*

what do you mean, once?

i mean one time, not twice, not more than one time *hehe*...a few days ago, i logged in, got my personalized deal with a cartoon on the right side of the screen. ever since then, no cartoon has shown up when i log in. got it?

got it...couldn't make it fit right with differenct hotlist lengths, so it now appears at the bottom of the last 50 postings page...

okay! t'anks, wer *grin*

oh, wer, i gots an idear, you know that cartoon you put at the bottom of 50 responses? well, what if we post a cartoon and have folks submit their own caption to 'em? huh, whatcha think, huh?

I don't care...I can't draw, however... speaking of, everyone go to http://www.spring.net/~spew/b/ and look at the buttons I'm working on, then come back and tell me what you think...

don't have to be able to draw, just post a cartoon!

That could be a topic too. Post a picture and then the responses that follow are suggested captions.

wer's top 50! Check it out: http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/fifty

HEY HO HO HEY, is there some kind of favourism going on here, or what?? I've got no cartoon!!! �wailing bitterly�

Happy Birthday Colin Firth! http://www.colinfirth.com or http://www.firth.com hosted by the Spring and produced by the awesome babes of drool.

Wow! Cool and edgy psychedelic new buttons.

Kristen has her own Spring page and has said she wants to start taking part in our discussions. It might help if folks here would send her some encouragement in the form of email and comments in her discussion area in 'babes'! http://www.spring.net/kristen ... which has a link to babes.

ooooo...she doesn't even have a tilde...

Would it be rude of me to say that I hope flattery is not going to become the basis or condition for our friendship here?

i hope not! while the core group of us here enjoys a very jovial relationship, we shouild be careful not to let that supress creativity of thought and exposure to new ideas and people.

...with that said, i feel that it is imperative that we maintain a level of civility here. if this place turns into the WELL i am leaving.

I think we all really like each other and I don't see any signs of that!

GOOD. Just checking.

We're very full on disk space. We have another machine (access) with 8 gb and it's nearly empty. Use it to store graphics files, etc and to start new websites and other projects. If there's anything in your directory you don't need, nuke it or move it to the new machine. We'll crash very soon if this keeps up. We're 95% full on this machine and bursting at the seams. I'm going in and moving everything I can to access that is in my personal directory. And I'm running a diskhog report which I'll publish later ... it takes a long time to run. It shows all directories on the system in descending order of size.

Ok: !df Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/sd0a 19454 17614 866 95% / /dev/sd0h 2956188 2620738 187640 93% /usr We've got to cut out file storage on this machine and use our other machine(s) for storing files, expecially large ones.

The gory details: bash$ cat hog du / | sort -rn > hogwww.txt bash$ su Password: bash# du / | sort -rn > hogwww.txt du: /usr/var/www/docs/.chai.html.tmp: No such file or directory bash# head -100 hogwww.txt 2637922 / 2620310 /usr 994658 /usr/home 929378 /usr/var 831078 /usr/var/www 604854 /usr/var/www/logs 417362 /usr/var/www/logs/spring.net 304514 /usr/bbs 167836 /usr/local 142238 /usr/home/work 115282 /usr/var/www/logs/childrenstory.com 113072 /usr/home/jeff 112028 /usr/bbs/part 102986 /usr/bbs/confs 99812 /usr/var/www/webdocs 86578 /usr/home/terry 82944 /usr/contrib 79210 /usr/var/www/docs 67458 /usr/var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com 61896 /usr/var/log 56710 /usr/home/dbii 51682 /usr/local/src 46708 /usr/home/terry/Mail 46636 /usr/var/www/rafiles 46044 /usr/home/wmmeyers 45988 /usr/home/wmmeyers/public_html 45330 /usr/var/www/logs/spring.com 45162 /usr/home/jeff/perl 44746 /usr/bbs/www 44378 /usr/home/dbii/public_html 44278 /usr/home/anneh 44170 /usr/home/dbii/public_html/forum 44148 /usr/home/anneh/public_html 42196 /usr/local/src/pine4.02 41956 /usr/local/realaudio 40440 /usr/home/nbba 39502 /usr/contrib/bin 39398 /usr/home/wmmeyers/public_html/album 39238 /usr/bbs/www/home 38054 /usr/home/work/terry 37326 /usr/home/msworks 37296 /usr/home/msworks/MSWORKS 37030 /usr/share 36300 /usr/home/jeff/olddns 33398 /usr/var/mail 33108 /usr/home/anneh/public_html/derby 30402 /usr/home/nbba/incoming 30302 /usr/home/kreblon 29924 /usr/home/kreblon/public_html 29240 /usr/home/dbii/public_html/forum/confs 28588 /usr/src 28586 /usr/src/sys 27742 /usr/var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com/tales 26680 /usr/home/jeff/perl/perl5.004_04 26062 /usr/local/frontpage 26034 /usr/local/frontpage/version3.0 24748 /usr/home/paul 23924 /usr/home/paul/Mail 23580 /usr/home/terry/public_html 22892 /usr/var/www/webdocs/adultstory.com 22226 /usr/var/log/oldlog 21898 /usr/bbs/confs/drool 21362 /usr/var/www/logs/adultstory.com 21338 /usr/local/realaudio/pnserver.old 21054 /usr/contrib/lib 20976 /usr/home/ham 20680 /usr/home/bernie 19638 /usr/home/mrobens 19070 /usr/src/sys/i386 18914 /usr/bbs/confs/modjane 18834 /usr/local/src/pine4.02/bin 18514 /usr/var/www/docs/wle 18196 /usr/var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com/christmas 18178 /usr/home/mrobens/public_html 17848 /usr/var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com/tales/snow 17602 /usr/var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com/tales/snow/images 17552 /usr/home/jeff/sendmail 17540 /usr/home/work/Mail 17420 /usr/var/www/docs/bayless 17346 /usr/var/www/docs/bayless/images 16998 /usr/bind 16996 /usr/bind/named 16434 /usr/home/bernie/public_html 16034 /usr/bbs/confs/austenarchive 15646 /usr/home/mrobens/public_html/Ann 15496 /usr/src/sys/i386/OBJ 14762 /usr/local/pnserver 14686 /usr/var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com/christmas/images 14512 /usr/home/nan 14340 /usr/home/snap 14242 /usr/bin 14204 /usr/home/snap/public_html 14168 /usr/lib 14150 /usr/home/ham/Mail 13998 /usr/contrib/man 13922 /usr/share/man 13878 /usr/home/jeff/dns 13460 /usr/home/work/AWORKB 13452 /usr/home/alweeda 13188 /usr/bind/named/bin bash#

Terry, I nuked the topics on modjane, but don't have permissions to delete the conference. It will give you some more room, but the conference should be deleted.

That's pretty much a drop in the bucket, but thanks. I'll delete the conference and remove it from the main page. We just need better log file management which means archiving the big logs over to access.spring.net. And I have about 45 mbs. of personal files that I'm copying and nuking.

Terry, does the Art conference have something to do with this problem? Could you move it wherever it has to go in order to solve another drop in the bucket? I haven't a clue about these things - I thought one could just post and post, and it never gets full, 'cos it's internet files.

We're in pretty good shape now, I just freed up 45mb last night and when I clean up the log files that will free up a lot more. We can get you an account on access.spring.net and you can have an area there for storage of art files. But, as you can see, we're in much better shape: bash$ df Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/sd0a 19454 17614 866 95% / /dev/sd0h 2956188 2450354 358024 87% /usr bash$

terry, there are several tar files in the /usr/bbs directory, and probably elsewhere. you could get a little more space out of the system by moving or compressing those files too.

Cool, do you have any recommendations on log file handling and archiving (to access.spring.net)? Something like: tar cf - ./games | rsh access.spring.net cd /tmp \; tar xvBpf - (Solaris example of moving directories between machines -- we need something a little different, copying to another machine without compressing so we can grep and analyze still and restarting the log file on the source machine). Something you'd be willing to take on? I think there should be a top 50 button on every page you go to, and the cartoon is great, but I wish it were on another page than top 50 (imho), because I use it constantly now as a bookmark and I when I go to it I immediately hit page down because it is in ascending order. (descending would be better) and then I have to hit the page up key. Top 50 is an insanely great way to navigate the Spring!

there are several topics in poetry that aren't used at all, later, i'll give a warning that those topics will be retired then you can do whatever you need to clear up space.

I can do the fifty to print in reverse, no problem... I just stuck the cartoon thingy there cause it fit... have written the conference fifty page, also, just haven't installed it... hopefully, I'll have them fixed and up by Sunday...

Very cool. Where did you post the dinner thing relating to Kristen. I told her about it but she couldn't find it just now.

her topic in Babes...

Right, speaking of Kristen, she's our Spring birthday girl today. Bend over Kristen, we're going to give you a spanking! (twap) (twap) 26 times . . .

wer, please check out projects. Also, anyone interested in a little paying gig on our cs site, check out projects childrenstory topic (requires some understanding of webtv).

will do...

Welcome heidi and karen as hostesses of Drool!

WELCOME!!! I thought Nan was hostess all along. Is she coming to inner, or what? What is going on in there??

Evelyn Boake was the previous droolhostess. And she is passing the baton on to Heidi and Karen. I think I got Heidi spelled right that time!

Any new topic ideas anyone? Does anyone have a burning passion that would be fun to talk about? Ideas?

Java! It's my new thing to learn, and I'm rather hoping it will get me a very good job after graduation!

Sure, what conference should we put it in? computer? web?

since it's really just another programming language, how about putting it in computer and linking it to web?

Sure, you want to start it, Ray? We don't have a java topic now? I'll talk to you about Java.

sure!

"It's a software initiative that could decide who owns corporate desktops for the next 10 years. More vaporware from Microsoft Corp.? Hardly. This time, it's IBM Corp. taking the offensive. Indeed, IBM (NYSE:IBM) has drawn up a strategic blueprint to transform its enterprise business into an electronic-commerce powerhouse that spans millions of corporate desktops. In addition to betting the bank on Java, the blueprint calls for IBM to pump up Netscape's desktop business, head off Microsoft's Web browser and aggressively push OS/2 Warp customers onto other platforms. ... read more and comment in the computer conference topic on java. ratthang, would you mind linking this to the web conference, cause I keep going there to look for this.

can i do that? i thought only hosts of confs could do things like that and AFAIK i dont host this conf or the web conf!

yeah, yeah, yeah...I'll do it...

We can add you if you want, Ray.

wer: hahaha!!!! ray and terry: see, it worked *heehee* i see java stuff everywhere but don't understand what it means. i know it's another code and all that but what can it do? and please explain appelets to me-there is a site on the web with a picture of a wolf sitting by a body of water and the bottom half of the picture is a reflection of said wolf with ripples in the water. HOW does that work? and is it tedious?

java is a programming language developed by some engineers at sun microsystems. the big deal about java was that it was designed to operate on any computer platform, whether Windows, Unix, Mac, etc. another important aspect of Java is that it was designed to run across networks, so that the programs could transmit themselves across a network to operate and that they could also transmit information across networks. if you already know how to program in C++ or another OO language then Java is actually pretty easy to learn. Otherwise it would be daunting for a beginner to pick up. the wolf near water you are looking at is a java applet. applets are small programs that run inside of web browsers that do any cool things you want them to, all written in java.

so where can i learn this stuff? is it easy to pick up like html? should i move this discussion to web????? am i asking too many questions? help!!

Sure, talk to us in web. I'm sure there's an html topic or two there. There are many resources for learning html on the web itself. Try doing a web search in http://www.infind.com and type the words html resources or html tutorial or html class and see what it brings back. What kind of system and software are you running, wolfie?

windows 95, compaq pentium. html is okay, as i learn it as i go, but the other stuff--so, i'll do the search and will probably join web. thanks!!

There's also a great book with color illustrations but I'm not at home now to pull it off the shelf. It has a yellow border and is full of good examples. Let us know what your search unveils ok? Maybe we can post some of the better instructional sites in the web conference or perhaps even make a page of links. I use FrontPage for ease of use, but for years I've mostly coded html using the simplest of text editors like Windows Notepad.

i'd really like to know if a code exists to put pictures where you want them-- i.e., center them in relation to each other (if one is bigger than the one next to it) have smaller graphics sprinkled about without having to edit them into wallpaper---that kind of stuff. i tried doing it with the front page thingy i've got with this system but to no avail. will look about and let you guys know. i can't be the only one with questions!

try using dynamic HTML (DHTML). there is a DHTML editor called Astound that might be useful, wolfie. you might also try some creative use of tables or frames in regular HTML. what i would do in that situation is to simply lay the pictures out the way i want using a photo editor (e.g., PaintShop Pro) then just merging them all into one bigass gif or JPG.

yeah but wouldn't that take some time to download? the page would take forever to load up! i've heard of dhtml but don't know anything about it...thanks.....

William, please check the projects conference for some notes about what Evelyn needs, eg. getting Heidi and Karen set up to push content. When we get a little further along, wolfie, you can have a front page enabled website here which will make it a lot easier.

Ree didn't check in last night!

New! Topic 55 in music: The Beatles.

The weather in Austin is getting out of hand. See topic 31 in the austin conference.

Topic 27 in cars: car jokes Find the car you drive in the list of cars and their personalities.

tv. ally mcbeal. Ally jumps on John Ritters face.

Bruce Sterling Establishes "Viridian List" If you watch the news, you may have noticed that we Texans have had a summer of unprecedent heat and drought, followed by an autumn of unprecedented floods. I have therefore started a new, second mailing list, which will center around 21st century Green design issues. The new "Viridian Mailing List" seeks a historical understanding of technology, society, and their future trends, centering around the Greenhouse Effect. Unlike Dead Media, which has been very calm and scholarly, this Viridian list will probably be rather strident and opinionated. If you would like to join the Viridian List, send me email. I will send you the 6,633-word text of my recent San Francisco lecture, in which I vent some of my strong feelings on this subject. Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com) Where can we start a topic on this? Which conference and what would the topic be called. Any suggestions?

hmmm...how about spirit since that is where saving the world started... or put it in cultures...

That sounds sensible.

topic 333 in apps: What are buddy lists? Read Microsofts astonishing press release. Is this the beginning of the end for ICQ? Can you find our newby from China? I hope he keeps coming back. End male topic creation dominance!

y2k Talk about it in Internet 31 (internet conference topic 31). " For those absent in byline, I'm being bombarded with vitriolic and often bizarre email about my story last week, "Y2K: The Missionary Position." I'd be interested to know what folks think of the criticisms at... http://www.wired.com/news/news/wiredview/story/15875.html One person who wrote directly to me accused me of blaming Christians for the Y2K problems." _ Joe Nickell, Wired writer

From a Ralph Nader funded mailing list that is an excerpt from a supposed Microsoft internal paper on the threat of Linux to Microsoft in the server realm. See the linux topic in the unix conference. When was the last day you visited the exciting unix conference?

Topic 8 in the computer conference is about the Halloween Memorandum about how open software is a threat to Microsoft (the leaked memo) and Microsoft's response acknowledging it is not a fake. I call it the how convenient department, the best possible time for a competitor to emerge!

Comics as art? Discuss in art 42!

Will the real vegas please stand up? See topic 7 in the art conference about the Enigma Garden Cafe and well, read it and and comment.

Jesse "the body" Ventura, the Governor elect of Minnesota, has a very interesting spin on things. Read in topic 15 in the politics conference.

techbusiness has some interesting new topics. And read about both cfp 99 and cfp 00 in the cfp conference. Glad to see Stacey checking in today, she's like sunshine!

Tantric Yoga. New topic in sex. Or call it tantric sex if you will. Have you tried it?

what the hell is it? does it sink in frigid water? (titanic pun)

ha-ha! Tantric sex is the kind of sex women practice while suffering from PMS - all to do with tantrums, you see.

No not titanic sex. And not trantrum sex. *Tantric* sex. I can see you gals need an introduction. Check out the topic and then comment.

Have you been following Bruce Sterlings Viridian list? It's in cultures and it's very interesting stuff. Head over there and comment!

Rumi. A linked topic I created in poetry 32 or spirit 40, take your pick.

Help a striking NBA player to get that Mediterreanean cruise! See the NBA topic in sports.

there are some new response items in the science conference, pointing to different stories from the world of science. feel free to read and discuss!!!!!! i have considered doing a little on-line tutorial on quantum physics. this would consist of me making postings about quantum physics in the science conf for folks to read along with and discuss. any takers?

I wish Steve Manson was still around to join you in quantum physics talk. http://www.spring.net/~boyce

and it harm none, do as thou will, ratthing!!!

i wish steve were here too. i am no expert on quantum physics by a long shot but i am learning alot about it and it is always fun to share when you are learning new stuff.

I wish Steve Austin were here too.

Something tells me we're not talking about Stephen f. Austin, the founder of Austin...

a man barely alive. We can rebuild him. We have the technology.

Or in Afrikaans: Steve Austin. Ruimtevaarder. Onherkenbaar vermink. Maar ons kan weer van hom 'n mens maak. Ons beskik oor die tegnologie. Love it!

Happy to help with the quantum physics stuff, Ray...

how wonderful! you can be the reality check for everything i post.

Got a call from Mahalene in Cedar Creek, and Ree's tape arrived. First chance I get, I'm going to pick it up or have someone from there bring it by. Good news, it has made the transatlantic crossing and now just has to be transported across town to the Springs vcr!

But I'm so sorry, Terry! The tape will be alright - nothing can make it more boring than it is - but your cheese!!! It's going to be pink, purple AND green by now!

That will make it tastier, right?

I don't know! I hope so - I just don't want you sickened at the sight!

I've been peppering the Spring with all kinds of cool things today. Go check 'em out. In web, internet, and lotsa other places. And you do the same, post some cool stuff around the Spring. And read topic 51 in this conference and invite some more cool folks to join us. We're gonna make it happen here! Gonna do it!!! You with me?

Sure!!

Yes, Dad!

Yes, Master Claw!

Man was I hyped when I wrote that, exsqueeze moi.

Hey, the Ree Ree video is here and we should be playing it soon. Went out to the Creek house yesterday and picked it up. Haven't tried the cheese yet, but it looked fine. We can pick off the mold around the edges! Tim got a juicy looking package too. Thanks a bunch Ree! You'll be playing on spring.net soon.

what's the latest on Ree-Vision??

there are some new topics in the SCIENCE topic. i have broken down the Science in the news topic into specific areas, such as physics, biology, etc. check em out and post away!

!!

okay... anyway, there's a Spring cookbook topic going on in the food conf, and everybody should go check out the collecting conference, as well...

Horoscope, here and in spirit now. Since it vaporized from genx. heh.

What do you want to talk about today. Topic 56. It's going to be a question posed on our main http://www.spring.net page, which is due for a makeover don't you think?

yep...if I only had the time and the access...

One of those is easy to fix.

true

Thanks to a very kind benefactor, http://www.austen.com is back online today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, almost online, the domain name got paid for another year ($35), part of a $150 donation and Internic is churning it's wheels to get the site relisted. It just gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling to have supporters like these!

yes it does!

Jon Lebkowsky's latest cyberdawg rantings, actually his top ten list for the year is in the Internet conference. Jon is a local writer and Internet maven at Whole Foods.

Read Gary Chapman's latest column in the cfp conference.

Topic 2 in vc (virtual community) is about a Salan Magazine article about eh use and misue of the word "community", comment on how this relates to the Spring if you like in this topic.

Someone on the Spring earlier we talked about the Yapp manual in Postscript format. Well, I just noticed an ad on my table that Daniel left about some software that creates PDF files. It's called EZ-PDF and there may be a demo version at http://www.acquiredknowledge.com This may enable Ray to convert that Postscript file to PDF format so William and I can read it. Now, what topic and conference did we discuss this earlier? Their ad says "Now you don't have to be a rocket scientist to confiture Acrobat Distiller correctly. Of course, since Ray is a rocket scientist of sorts, he may not need this and may be able to make Distiller work.

It's was in the making VC's pay (not verbatim on the title) topic in vc...

now if i just *had* distiller!

Distiller is payware? Ooops.

Roan Carratu has some very interesting observations on "why the Farm failed" in the farm conference. Please encourage Roan to explore other nooks and crannies of our virtual community, he being quite the communitarian to begin with!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Want to make a little extra cash. Get yourself a Schwab, Etrade or Suretrade account and read Laura's Internet Stock Report in the techbusiness or internet conferences. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

that's one of those Catch 22 things with me... gotta have money to make money...

like spending money to save money...

and she grabbed response #500!

woohoo!

The Forbes open letter to the hacking community is in the internet conference hacking topic. It's getting too quiet around here! Hope folks come back out of the woodwork soon!

The Oscar nominatations are out and you can see them in the movies topic. Discuss.

Free PC? Don't laugh. A company's giving away PCs. Read about it in techbusiness

there is a catch....don't remember what it is but it was on the news last night!

but, Wolf, the first hit is always free...

It's at http://www.free-pc.com. It's not a joke, the "catch" is that you have to use it 5 hours a week and you have to view their commercials. But it's a Compaq, so it's a decent pc. And it's free. And how are they going to enforce this is anyone's guess.

Ray, please see projects conf.

Check out http://www.spring.net/capzeyez for details of the Spring's Saturday night webcast. This is a fun music show.

When (and how) did this come about?

I stayed up after Saturday Night Live one night and switched to channel 10. It was a pretty cool music show so I called in and asked them if they wante dto be webcast. Week after next I'll be on as co-host. they're plugging the Spring big time on their website and show. They were voted the top music show in Austin by the Chron, beating out even Austin City Limits. I more or less stubled in to it.

I know who they is...been watching on and off for five years or so...

cool beans!

We have yet to have the first call in from someone watching and listening on the web. I hope it happens this Saturday night.

Straw houses and cob houses. http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/read/home/2

Ray set up http://www.photobooth.com and, thanks to an alliance, there's some cool stuff there. Ever step in to one of those photo booths like at Amy's Ice Cream, you 'll find that and other photo booths around the country listed here. I'd like to do a "cyber" photo booth at SXSW. If I can only find the time and $$$. The domain name thespring.com is being sold to help pay some Spring bills and help keep us running, but keep the donations coming in, they really help. I'll be cohost weekend after this one on the Saturday Midnight live music program that we webcast along with Dean Truitt, the host. Tune in and call in!!!! http://www.spring.net/capzeyez will get you the call in phone number and details about this program. The call in number is 512-472-2255! Watch and listen on the web and call in!

The email I got from Dean Truitt: From: DaveSpice Organization: none today Sounds great!! I will get on some new links very soon. Let's look at the first Saturday in March as co-host. Does that work for you? We have to stay away from direct commercial-type references. For instance, pretty much we can't say action verbs - "come" "get" "look" etc... Just think of ways to get around those words. Thanks again, we'll talk to ya soon...

terry, i think it'd be neat to open up a conference for the paranormal (you know, e.t., esp, clairvoyance, etc.). it may bring some interesting people and theories. watcha think? (oh, and is there a way to alphabetize the conference list?)

Can we do this in the 'spirit' conference or is that too broad?

i think paranormal needs it's own conf. i considered spirit but that seems to be more religion based (whether it's buddhism, etc.). paranormal is something else alltogether. i'll host it until we find someone else willing. of course, i don't want it to become the satanists panel, because that isn't what the paranormal is about. wiccan is spirit stuff. but ghosts, aliens, etc. are more on the paranormal realm than spirit.

yes, Wolf, you can alphabetize your own list manually... I'll go look up the link to the right page shortly... as to your paranormal conf, would that include esotericism, too? (think we should call the conf paraspring ...)

guesso, don't know what that is though. (thanks in advance for helping me with the organization of the conference list)

click below, Wolfie, and you can re-organize 'em howsoever you wants... http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/changelist

since you are already setting up topics in there, Wolf, I guess you found your paranormal conf, http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/paraspring/all

yup, thanks *hug*

eerie, isn't it?

indeed!

and inspirit!

Way to go wolfie!

and here's the official announcement of the opening of Paraspring, a place to discuss the paranormal. see ya there!!

ok, the hyperlink will take you to an error screen, BUT, you can get to the conference by clicking on the hyperlink at the bottom of that screen *sorry*

and with the recent flash into 2036, you may just want to http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/paraspring/all/since/-1

t'anks.....

Bob Nagy and I will be co hosting the Capzeyez show this Saturday night at midnight on Channel 10 in Austin. Tune in and call in! Check out http://www.spring.net/capazeyez and also join the discussion in the capzeyez topics in the music and austin conferences. Call in and talk up the Spring, and get your friends to call in as well! Or email me your number and I'll call you from the show.

Everybody welcome Alexander as a host in the music conference!!! http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/music/all or, for those not registered, http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/browse/music/all

Watch out for Melissa, the virus. Details in the computer conference. This is the most virulent computer virus ever. Watch out for emails that say "Important message from xxx" It could send out a list of porn sites to 50 of your friends in your Outlook Email address list.

How's Melissa look like, Terry? Might be worth the trouble...

Excuse me, everybody, but Wer made me a HOST fer Pete's sake! Give him a talking to, please, for rushing me, and please also some host tell me something about hosting on the Spring - like what snacks, what drinks, and who not to seat with whom... I got no clue, but found some check boxes I now could twiddle around with, also it says "You're a host", and I got two new kool buttons - kill and retire, which is fine with me. Always wanted to tell 'em, and wanted to make it to retirement in more or less one piece, too!

don't seat me next to anyone...

Wer talked Alexander into hosting the music conference! (*guffaw*) Attaboy, wer!

hehe...now, back to you and your conference...

and, to everyone, I'm re-doing some of the web layouts on here, so if I do something you don't like, please let me know!!!

That's great! Can you you put the last 5 or 10 responses on the main spring page? (/var/www/docs/index.html is the main page) This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I know that the executable is in /usr/bbs/www/cgi-bin/restricted

I'll look and see...

Wow, you guys promote fast around here! "Put the last x responses" on index.html! MY name there with the stars! Oh, Wer, I'm not sure I like the "Post It!" button, should read "Submit!" because that's what we really want, right? (Hi Autumn! How are you?)

Amy needs help. See my email to you and to Ray, wer. She's a special person around here since she helped so much with the design and in getting the fan folks happening here. Anyone want to help put together a www.suzyamis.com site for fun? You could get help from the folks at drool, who already volunteered. That's amyloo@bluemarble.net . . . let's give her a hand! I asked if you or Ray would fix her account and do some other things for her.

Guten tag, Alexander!

ummm...I didn't get the e-mail, Terry... (I hope my mail isn't getting bounced again...) And, you're right, Alexander, all I want is for you to submit...*wink* (and a few others around here, I might add...)

I'll forward it again. Or better, here it is: Hi Terry. I don't seem to be able to get onto access with my old account. I wonder if you could re-instate me. Pick any password you like. And thanks again, for letting us keep our old P&P board archives there. I think they're rarely accessed but nice to have. Just let us know if you ever want to dump them. I wonder if you are still needing income and might be willing to let me use Spring for a guinea pig. I want to try out some web ad rep firms for a site at work, but university bureaucracy is so cumbersome about suppliers it's hard to just try people without bidding, and sometimes hard to fire them, too. (I don't know if you knew, I've been webmaster for the Indiana University Alumni Association for about a year now.) Anyway, I was thinking of auditioning two rep firms: Burst, which lets sites go on month-to-month contracts for a 50% commission; and FlyCast, the apparent leader, which requires a site or sites with at least 100k hits a month. If you would be willing to allow it, I would sign up for the services but have you sign the contracts. I'd do all the arrangements for ads for a period of six months without compensation. I just want to learn how it works. You'd also want to make the decisions, of course, about which of your Yapp conferences or the "free-hosted" sites you'd want to put ads on. Let me know. (I gave her a resounding "yes" answer to the query about the ad rep firms).

I'll grab a book and see what I can do...

terry, i did not get your email either. but i have a pretty long list of things i need to do for the spring and would be glad to offer my help. we really need to coordinate as to what specific tasks need to get done.

completely off topic... there's a new conf called today http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/today/all where I am attempting to gather all the today topics scattered throughout the other conferences... (omitting some conf's, of course...)

what, wer, you don't want to sit next to the ole wolfie? you know i don't bite! congrats to alex-hosting is kewl! hey, just a minute ago it was submit, now it's respond? well, which one is it wer? *wink*

oh, and wer, sweetie, couldja add paranormal today to your today conference? i tried but got an internal server error (whatever the heck that means)......thanks! *lick*

yep...

Best summation yet on the Melissa virus in either the software or computer conferences.

while confusion runs rampant elsewhere on the spring...

Hey Terry, everyone. Terry, I guess you e-mail was not reaching anybody that day last week; I never saw your "resounding yes". Still have a copy in your outbox? First, I guess you need to decide which conferences or site you want to put ads on, since the sign-up process needs specific URLs. This will be interesting.

Hey, Amy! What size ads/banners? Just asking because Terry will probably have me work with you on placing the ads...I know for certain you can put ads up in food, restaurant, porch, news, today, collecting, books, and music... when you sign up, use www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/browse/ followed by conference name, in case you didn't know, so that they can verify the ads and such without being registered...

or, we could put up a store/banner page that we can link to from main and/or the index page...

and, how do the folks over in drool feel about ads and other stuff? I am always wondering how my changes are viewed by them...

wer, sent you e-mail. re: the conference /browse directories -- because lurkers overbalance posters, right. In a way it would be nice to only have ads for the lurkers, who don't contribute to the community by posting, but I don't guess there is a way to do that, since everybody sees the same Yapp header files.

wer, your Juno inbox is jammed.

you can get around that, but that would assume that all lurkers lurked through public instead of restricted...the headers can be set differently for each...sent you an e-mail with the usable e-mail address...

everyone go and check out the new Geo conference, headed up by...*drum roll*...Marcia! http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/Geo/all

John F. Kennedy Jr. is missing. He took off with his wife Caroline to attend a Kennedy family wedding last night in a small plane. Follow the events in news 30 and pray that JFK Jr. is ok.

Whether you like boxing or not, John Burnett (former boxer himself) gives an explanation of what the cornerman does that is gripping in it's details and insight. If you've ever wondered what goes on in the corner of boxing ring, this is the place to find out. A very, very good read.

In the web conference, a cool site where you can find *everything*, inclusind thousands of recipes. A site you will most like bookmark forever.

Help the Wild One bob win $1,000 in a contest. Vote for his idea at http://ssl.adhost.com/icomamerica/contest/contest.cfm See the topic in the radio conference.

Here's my intro to the newest topic in the news conference. Have you read about the scheme to market the eggs of drop-dead gorgeous babes on the web? Supermodel eggs! They ain't cheap, babe. The minimum bid one model set is $50 grand. What are the pros and cons of this? Is it ethical? Would you sell one of your eggs (sorry guys)? And if you would, what price do you think it would fetch? Do brains count at all? Or just looks? And what will the offspring be like? Will they pop outa the womb with silicon implants in place already? And capped teach and windblown hair? And what's the next logical step? Why, I'll answer that. A night with the supermodel herself. And, as someone says, will the supermodel babies grow up and sport bumper stickers on their cars that say: "My other Mom is a Supermodel"

Terry, this is sick. Brains had better count or we are well on our way to third world status. The mind is the most enticing and enchanting part of the human animal...we must not substitute fleeting beauty for long term character and intellect. This is insane!

Please comment on the poems of Dorothy, the newest topic in poetry. She says she'll post more poems if she gets feedback! So please give her some.

Off I go to do just that. Thanks for the reminder.

Thank you!

My pleasure! I hope she post more and more. Very interesting lady...!

I created a new topic in the Farm conference called Farm Net News, Karen Flaherty just sent her the first issue she sturggled to put together and I've got some comments on it and will be commenting more over the next few days. Even if you're not an old Farmie, some of the things the Farm did and are doing still are a fascinating bit of history. "I stayed at the Bionics Women's Cooperative and Guesthouse, which as room enough for a dozen people with a small kitchen and bathroom. Resting in the hammock out the back porch, I thought about the people I'd met, and while gazing at gorgeous views down the mountains to the ocean, coconut palms swaying as seabreeze brings the afteroon rain, I could hear a mucical mosaic of drums, reggae radio, children singing and strains of Cher's latest song" ".. if you beleive in love .. in love " .. It was a wonderful blend of the sounds and spirit that emanate from Dominica, and reinforced the sense of being in a special place at a time with great potential for preservation, before globalization gobbles it up." - Karen

By coincidence I added it to my hot list last night. I'll have to check!

Did you check it out?

I got inspired by a visit to http://www.girlson.com to add a few more tv shows $ 44 4 top tv actors 45 2 tv websites for listings and reviews 46 0 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 47 0 Charmed 48 0 Dawson's Creek 49 0 Dharma and Greg 50 0 ER 51 0 Friends I quote a few reviews from the fabulous girlson site. And I'm cogitating on ramping up the Spring's own http://www.tvreviewer.com. .

and when you have a minute, perhaps a crafts conference? *grin and hugs*

Oooh...Yes, Please!!!

Sure, I'm just rusty on conf creation.

Get the resident creative HTML-person to do it - we'll wait til he has time. Make Wolfie and Me the hosts (crafters?)

Y'know, the one who created Geo....

thanks!