______ _ __ __
/ ____/___ ____ ___ ____ __ __/ | / /___ / /____ _____
/ / / __ \/ __ `__ \/ __ \/ / / / |/ / __ \/ __/ _ \/ ___/
/ /___/ /_/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / /| / /_/ / /_/ __(__ )
\____/\____/_/ /_/ /_/ .___/\__,_/_/ |_/\____/\__/\___/____/
/_/
This Week's Contents:
My Notes:
1) We've been gone again . . .
2) Doug Reed Items . . .
Columnists' Corner:
1) More Linux with Harry . . .
Authored by Harry Baecker (hbaecker@duncan.island.net)
News:
1) Lexis Nexis Redesigns Web Presence . . .
2) Windows NT 4.0 Debuts . . .
Reviews:
1) HTML: The Definitive Guide
Reviewed By: Bob Johnson
2) Windows95 Interactive Training
Reviewed By: Russell G. Johnston (gray@posh.internext.com)
3) Spycraft: The Great Game
Reviewed By: Steve Lozowski (slozowsk@locke.ccil.org)
4) The Web Page Design Cookbook by William Horton
Reviewed By: Dennis P. MacPherson (pctc@infi.net)
Web Sites:
1) NetBest Yearly Awards (www.ypn.com)
2) ZDNet Offers Personalized News (www.zdnet.com)
Interview:
1) None this Week
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date : August 10, 1996 |CompuNotes is a weekly publication available
Issue : 49A |through email and many fine on-line networks.
--------------------------|We cover the IBM computing world with
CompuNotes is published |software/hardware reviews, news, hot web
4Point, Inc., |sites, great columns and interviews. We also
1315 Woodgate Drive |give away one software package a week to a
St. Louis, MO 63122 |lucky winner for just reading our fine
(314) 909-1662 voice |publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we
(314) 909-1662 fax |are here to bring you the way it is!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Backroom Workers: |We are always looking for
Patrick Grote, Managing Editor |people to write honest,
(pgrote@inlink.com) |concise reviews for us. Send
Doug Reed, Asst. Editor / Writer Liaison |a message to Doug Reed at
(dreed@panda.uchc.edu) |dreed@panda.uchc.edu with
Judy Litt, Graphics Editor/Web Master |your list of qualifications.
(jlitt@aol.com) |If Doug thinks we can count
------------------------------------------|on you to make things happen
I am looking for a collection of shareware|you'll receive free software
reviews I put out in the 87-88 timeframe |of your choice for review.
under my handle of NEVER BEFORE. I think |We like new writers!
they started as NB*.ZIP. Can you look |-----------------------------
on your local BBS? THANKS! | Go Dole/Kemp!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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If you are interested, fill out the following lines and send them
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick's News
Being The Publisher and Managing Editor Has Its Perks!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, No More Delays . . . .|
---------------------------
Yes, I know it has been one month since we last published a CompuNotes.
Please understand that this delay has been with me and not with Doug
Reed or Judy Litt. I was working on my old job and my new job the past
month and wasn't exactly successful with either.
This past week I have been focusing 100% on my new position and am
getting a handle on it. This means my weekends and evenings are now back
to being mine! CompuNotes will be weekly from here on out!
This is Issue #49A because I wanted Issue #50 to be very special! Issue
#50 will be out next week with a special interview and reviews.
Also, I need to let everyone know that if they have a special talent
with something related to computers, I'll offer you the space for a
column. Look at Harry's Linux column!
-------------------
Doug's Items . . .|
-------------------
Doug wanted me to let you know a couple of things . . .
1) We are OK on writers right now. The REVLIST has been discontinued. If
you feel like you have something to offer in the way of writing
reviews, please contact Doug directly.
2) Doug is now handling the news section. I was going to drop the news
section (notice the FTP section is gone), but Doug wanted to keep it,
so he is now running it. I suggest sending all press releases and
news items to him and myself.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Columnists' Corner - We bring you a different person each week!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linux and Tcl/Tk
August 1996
Authored by Harry Baecker (hbaecker@duncan.island.net)
After the very pleasing welcome my first article on the above received
from you I only hope I can retain your interest with more on the same
topics.
First, though, a disclaimer. I am no universal guru, even as regards
Linux and Tcl/Tk. My expertise, such as it is, derives from my daily use
of these tools in the ongoing construction of a ôdatabaseö system for
use by fieldworkers such as archeologists and social workers and in
addition the experience gained in my employment from 1956 (yeah!) until
1991 as a systems programmer or consultant therein or teacher thereof,
much of that involved with Unix. Since 1991 my retired status has also
been that of programmer. In all that time my little mind has encompassed
very little of the whole field of computing.
In order to sample the wealth of stuff available you should subscribe to
the relevant Usenet newsgroups: the comp.os.linux* hierarchy (about 11
newsgroups) and comp.lang.tcl(.announce) Apart from books on Linux and
Tcl/Tk there is an interesting magazine, the Linux Journal,
subs@ssc.com, and there are rumors of another, Linux World, to be
published in Britain but I cannot trace it. There is also an echo on
Fidonet called Linux and dedicated to, guess what? Linux.
Often I see remarks to the effect that ôI would try Linux if it weren'tÆt
so bigö a comment no doubt prompted by the fact that Linux distributions
come on CD-ROM and give the impression that it is all Linux, and that
you need to install it all. Those CDs are more a measure of the sheer
volume of free software available for Unix/Linux, and even so you get
nowhere near ALL of it, only a small fraction of the most useful stuff
on the Internet imprinted on a CD, the rest you have to get for yourself
when you need it. So it is the case that the Slackware distribution of
Linux includes the TeX typesetting/text processing system Many
publishers of books and periodicals around the world now require that
authors submit copy for publication on disk in TeX format (TeX is not
restricted to the use of our Roman alphabet.) That little toy alone
accounts for about 4% of the space used on the CD, including the arcane
alphabets included, like the Thai.
Despite the example just given of an enormous and complex program, and
of what some people regard as the quintessential Unix program, emacs,
the text-processor-that-does-everything-including-handling
your-email-and-may-tomorrow-make-you-brea kfast the real, well, anyway
original Unix idea was to have lots of little programs each of which did
one little task very well indeed and then to string these together using
pipes, an idea not totally unfamiliar in the MS-DOS world, to perform
some gigantic complex task.
Hence it is that no Unix/Linux text- or word-processor includes a
spellchecker program. The original Unix program to perform this job was
called spell, today we use ispell, and already the next generation
product, jspell is visible on the horizon. Just remember that the spell
family come free. One of the most unfortunate aspects of MS-DOS-Windows
spell checking software is that in all but the most expensive products
there are severe limitations on the usersÆ choice of dictionaries and on
the usersÆ ability to augment dictionaries with terms encoded for high
speed search in the way the original main dictionary is (often not too
successfully at that.) Not only are there British English and American
English spelling dictionaries for ispell, as well as ones for most
Indo-European languages, but also the instructions and tools for
building new ones and for incorporating your private personal and
technical topic dictionaries, accredited from your own texts, into the
high -speed search format of the main dictionary. Most text-handling
Unix/Linux programs allow the user to call a member of the spell family.
In addition to the form of piping available in MS-DOS, where the
standard output of one program is piped to the standard input of
another, with the difference hat execution of the two processes may be
concurrent, thanks to Unix/Linux multitasking a receiving process is
triggered to execute as soon as some of anotherÆs output is available
for it to read, a Unix/Linux program may also open named pipes
explicitly to communicate with programs named at the time the program is
written. Because of Unix multitasking you may thus feed ispell small
chunks of text to check rather than your whole epic at once.
Fate in the kindly guise of John Ousterhout has conspired that the Unix
pipeline facilities are available in the Tcl language If in Tcl you
include a file open command where the filename is preceded by a vertical
bar, so: |tinkerbell, the Tcl interpreter assumes you wish to execute
the program tinkerbell, which must be on your PATH, or more explicitly
specified with a full pathname, feeding it the rest of the statement as
command-line parameters in anticipation of your program reading from
and/or writing to that pipe later. The pipe may be to a compiled
program or to a script executable by some interpreter or other available
on your system. If, that is, the script has the right ritual at the
beginning to invoke its interpreter. In the case of a Tcl/Tk script that
ritual incantation is: #!/bin/sh # The -f below is only needed for a
wish (Tcl/Tk) interpreter built with Tk 3.6 # The backslash makes the
next line a comment too in Tcl \ exec wish -f ô$0 ô$@ö .....here goes
the meat of the script.....
The first line calls the shell program, sh to execute the script. Texts
with the first line starting ô#!ö are recognized as shell scripts to be
interpreted by the shell itself. A shell? You know, like COMMAND.COM,
except that Linux and Unix offer a variety of shells, so the program
name sh is always linked symbolically to the shell in use. Text lines
beginning with ô#ö alone are recognized by both the shell and Tcl as
comments. Hence eventually the shell executes wish which itself in turn
ignores the call to exec executed by the shell as if it is part of a
comment. This ritual here for obvious reasons only invokes magic shared
by all the shells.
If you are sure of the whereabouts of the interpreter you can invoke it
directly in one line, like: #!/usr/local/bin/wish
You will note that Tcl/Tk are given the courtesy of being allowed to
behave like a shell. All interpreters are. Think about it. All shells
are interpreters. I recall a colleague of mine who was hot on
programming solutions to the Towers of Hanoi problem in as many
programming languages as he could. So he did it in JCL, Job Control
Language, the shell of the IBM System/360Æs OS/360 operating system.
Unfortunately it is not yet very clear how much of this article is
relevant to the MS-Windows and Mac implementations of Tcl/Tk . This
stems mainly from the vagaries of the exec command in the several
implementations. All too many things that Unix and so Linux, and so the
Tcl/Tk implementations there, assumed to be part of the basic
necessities of existence that are not part of the MS-Windows or Mac
environment. It is all too easy to dismiss these as mere conveniences
for computernerds, but the real impact is economic, how for instance, do
you pipe stuff between MS-Windows programs without investing in a
special-purpose tool? In Linux you can pipe between XWindows programs
and scripts as easily as between command line programs. In truth the
distinction does not exist. Simply because XWindows added no
functionality beyond graphics and the client/server relationship to
Unix, the rest, including task switching, memory management,
communications, were already there, as were multiple virtual consoles
instantiated in the same physical terminal.
There exists a specification of the minimal properties an operating
system is supposed to have according to the gurus of the IEEE Computer
Society. Part of it has been adopted by the US government. The POSIX
specification covers 7 areas including system calls, system utilities
file systems, i/o facilities, and debugging support. The collection is
very obviously derived from experience with the more popular
implementations of Unix. Microsoft claims that Windows NT is POSIX
compliant. Many challenge that claim. As befits the most recent
implementation of Unix Linux is claimed to be the most POSIX-compliant
Unix around. This claim is not easy to document, however, one
distribution, Linux-FT revision 1.2, has been certified as POSIX.1
compliant.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWS OF THE WEEK| This section is dedicated to verified news . . . All
News (C)opyright Respective Owner - Will Only Reprint
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LEXIS-NEXIS Redesign . . .|
---------------------------
PORTLAND, Ore., Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ - Inherent.Com announces the signing
of two multi-year contracts: one to design a World-Wide Web Site for
LEXIS- NEXIS; the other to provide Web services to Martindale-Hubbell's
clients.
"The LEXIS-NEXIS Human Rights Law Web will be a multi-media discussion
of the Bill of Rights," said LEXIS-NEXIS's David Vandagriff, "and it
will take advantage of the latest Internet technology while drawing on
the wealth of information available on LEXIS-NEXIS databases." The Site
will also contain information about LEXIS-NEXIS products, services, and
the LEXIS-NEXIS bar association partnership program.
Martindale-Hubbell's contract with Inherent.Com enables
Martindale-Hubbell to offer World-Wide Web Site services to its clients.
The Martindale- Hubbell(R) Law Directory, the largest and most respected
attorney directory, has been available on the Internet since June. "The
Internet is a key element in Martindale- Hubbell's distribution
strategy," said Martindale-Hubbell Associate Publisher Carol Cooper,
"and custom Web Sites are a logical extension of the services we provide
our clients." Web Sites designed, developed, and hosted by Inherent.Com
under the agreement include links to and from the Web-based
Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory.
"The LEXIS-NEXIS Site is a showcase project for us," stated Gregory
Miller, Inherent.com's CEO, "and by teaming with Martindale- Hubbell,
together we offer real definable Web Site products."
LEXIS-NEXIS (http://www.lexis-nexis.com), headquartered in Dayton, Ohio,
is the world's leading provider of enhanced information services and
management tools. LEXIS-NEXIS is a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. and
part of Reed Elsevier p1c, one of the world's leading publishing and
information businesses. Reed Elsevier has annual sales in excess of $5
billion and 29,700 employees. It is owned equally by British firm Reed
International P.L.C. (NYSE: RUK) and Dutch firm Elsevier NV (NYSE: ENL).
Martindale-Hubbell (http://www.martinda1e.com), a division of Reed
Elsevier Inc., is headquartered in New Providence, New Jersey. Founded
in 1868, the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory is the authoritative guide
to the legal profession, serving as the primary research source for
information about the professional qualifications and expertise of
attorneys and law firms worldwide.
Inherent.Com (http://www.inherent.com), headquartered in Portland,
Oregon, and with Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston offices, provides
World-Wide Web Sites and other Internet and Intranet solutions for legal
and financial service professionals.
-----------------------
Windows NT 4.0 Debuts!|
-----------------------
REDMOND, Wash., July 31 /PRNewswire/ - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
today announced the release of Windows NT(R) Server 4.0, the latest
version of the world's best-selling server operating system. This
release brings customers unmatched ease of use and management, higher
network throughput, and a complete set of tools for developing and
managing intranets. Manufacturing of Microsoft(R) Windows NT Server 4.0
began today, with general availability anticipated within the next
month.
According to International Data Corp. (IDC) Windows NT Server led in
server operating system shipments in 1995 and again in first- quarter
1996, outselling other server operating systems including NetWare 3(R),
NetWare 4 and all versions of UNIX combined. Windows NT Server growth
is most evident in its year-over-year sales increase of 154 percent from
first-quarter 1995 to first-quarter 1996.
Windows NT Server 4.0 is the only server operating system to include
built-in Web services that provide a complete, integrated intranet
solution. Windows NT Server 4.0 includes Microsoft Internet Information
Server (IIS) version 2.0, currently in use by more than 200,000 users.
Other intranet features include the Microsoft FrontPage(TM) 1.1 Web
authoring and management tool, the latest version of the tool for
creating and managing Web sites, and Microsoft Index Server, a content
indexing and querying search engine (available from the Web).
Analysts believe Windows NT Server 4.0 is positioned to capture a
significant percentage of intranet server sales, which will fuel its
strong growth. According to a recent study conducted by MSI
International Inc., an independent marketing research firm, adoption of
intranets will grow by 150 percent by year end.
"The concept of the intranet is dominating the thoughts of IT managers
trying to improve both employee productivity and the competitive
performance of their companies," said Rob Enderle, senior industry
analyst at the Giga Information Group. "With this release, Microsoft
has effectively targeted these intranet needs with a highly integrated,
low-cost platform. As a result, we expect Windows NT Server 4.0 will be
the preferred choice for most IT organizations."
"Windows NT Server 4.0 is a major milestone in our development. It is
substantially faster, much easier to use and incorporates significantly
new intranet functionality," said Jim Allchin, senior vice president,
desktop and business systems division at Microsoft. "With over 200,000
beta users, this is the most widely tested version of Windows NT.
Because of rigorous testing and substantial customer feedback, Windows
NT 4.0 is the most robust version of Windows NT we have ever shipped."
Windows NT Server 4.0 offers scalability improvements of up to 33
percent, yielding more linear scalability on machines with eight or more
processors. The additional fine tuning for the Pentium(R) Pro platforms
to ensure high performance makes Windows NT Server 4.0 optimized for
this type of hardware.
"The combination of Pentium Pro processors and Microsoft Windows NT
Server 4.0 delivers superb value and price/performance," said John
McNulty, director of enterprise server programs at Intel Corp. "The
scalability and performance of Windows NT Server 4.0 on Pentium Pro
processors will continue to fuel the strong industry wide adoption of
Windows NT Server and will help further drive the growth rates for
Pentium Pro processors and standard high-volume servers."
Windows NT Server 4.0 provides features to reduce the number of steps
required for a system administrator to install, use and manage a server.
It offers a set of Internet and intranet tools and improved performance
as an applications, file, print and communications server. Enhancements
include the following:
.. The Windows(R) 95 user interface and new management wizards.
These enhancements make Windows NT Server 4.0 one of the easiest
server operating systems to use and manage.
.. Performance and scalability improvements. Windows NT Server 4.0
offers significant scalability improvements over Windows NT
Server 3.51, achieving considerably higher performance on
four-processor machines and offering much more linear
scalability on machines with eight or more processors. File
server performance in Windows NT Server 4.0 also shows
dramatic gains, achieving more than twice the throughput of
Windows NT Server 3.51 (tests were performed using
Netbench(TM) 4.0).
.. Improved Internet and intranet communications. Microsoft
Internet Information Server 2.0, the fastest Web server for
Windows NT Server, offers up to 40 percent greater performance
than its predecessor, version 1.0. Also added are Web
browser-based remote server administration and Index Server, a
searching technology that offers automatic content indexing of
HTML pages and other documents stored on corporate intranet
servers, such as those created in Microsoft Office. Windows NT
Server 4.0 also includes Microsoft FrontPage 1.1, allowing
nonprogrammers as well as experienced developers to create and
manage professional-quality Web sites. The Distributed
Component Object Model is one other key addition to Windows NT
Server 4.0. The Component Object Model (COM) allows software
developers to create component-based applications. Distributed
COM in Windows NT Server 4.0 extends COM to allow components to
securely communicate across the Internet. Distributed COM is a
growing Internet standard, and it has been published in
conformance with the format specified in RFC 1543. A completely
new version of DNS includes a graphical administration utility
and integration with WINS services for dynamic updates of host
names and addresses. To enable the creation of virtual private
networks across the Internet, Windows NT Server 4.0 offers
point-to-point tunneling protocol (PPTP), a technology that
extends the capacity of RAS to enable secure, low-cost private
networks without the need to change the client software.
Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 is scheduled to be available within the
next month for approximately $1,129 for the new 10-user version.
Customers with previous versions of Windows NT Server can upgrade to
version 4.0 for approximately $539 for the 10-user version. Additional
information on pricing for Windows NT Server 4.0 is available at
http://microsoft.com/ntserver/40price.htm.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEWS OF THE WEEK | Interesting software/hardware you may need . . .
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product: (Book) HTML: The Definitive Guide
Reviewed By: Bob Johnson
Author: Chuck Musciano & Bill Kennedy
Price: $27.95
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So now you want your own homepage. But just where do you start? How
about right here with this book! HTML is a fairly easy language to learn
and this title will make it even easier. This book is under 400 pages
long (including index) which makes it easy to get through and easy too
go back to find what you may have forgotten.
You will first learn a little of the history and the possible future of
HTML. The book will also give you a very small primer on the Internet,
but that is not the focus of the book and it is VERY small.
Chapter 2 will take you to a quick start in HTML programming. This is
something I think everyone will like. Instead of spending hours or even
days studying HTML before attempting to write some code, the authors
take you right to the heart of the matter, encouraging you to begin
writing some simple HTML code right off the bat. All you need to get
started is the book and a text editor that can handle ASCII text file
format. The first HTML document that you will create is quite simple
indeed, but you will amazed with the feeling of success that you will
feel after producing and viewing it in the window of your browser. You
will also learn a little about various tags and the building of
hyperlinks in this chapter, but the main purpose of the chapter is to
teach you to write simple text documents using HTML.
Chapter 3 delves a little further into simple tags and the overall
appearance of your document. You will learn more about the basic tags
used in HTML such as
, , and . You will also learn
about ending tags, and the proper nesting of tags. The authors also
explain to you why your document looks different when using different
browsers.
Chapter 4 will guide you on text formatting and layout. You will learn
how to create headlines and how to align them. You will also learn about
using special characters in your text. The book goes on to describe
paragraphs and line breaks and how to add certain attributes to your
text, such as italics and bold text. By the time you get through this
chapter you will feel quite comfortable laying out and producing simple
text documents in HTML.
Chapter 5 begins with instruction on horizontal rules and inserting
images into your documents. It will also explain to you the use of
colors and background images in you documents. Now you're really
starting to have some fun! Want to add some background sound to your web
page? That is also covered in the chapter, along with animated text and
a small section on applets.
On to chapter 6 and an in-depth study of hyperlinks. While this part of
the process may not be fun it is definitely important. How many web
pages have you seen that don't contain any links? Not to mention the
fact that if you have several documents (and you will) you will have to
know how to link them together.
Chapter 7 teaches us about lists that we can use in our documents. You
know, the long lists often using bullets or that look like some kind of
book report outline. This is pretty self-explanatory, but if you want to
add lists to your documents this section will help.
Back to having some fun! Chapter 8 will teach you how to create forms
and surveys. While most of the forms that you encounter on the WWW are
created using CGI scripting, they can be created using simple HTML. The
authors even try to help you create forms that will appeal to people
encountering them out there on the Internet. Some of the programming
gets a little tricky here, but anyone with normal intelligence will have
no real problems.
Chapters 9 and 10 deal with tables and frames. These items can really
add spice to your document with very little work. You will find yourself
designing like a real pro by this point.
Chapter 11 deals with server push documents. While most of you will not
really need the information in this chapter it is there for those that
decide to implement it.
Chapter 12, the final chapter, will teach you some neat little tricks to
make your pages stand out among the rest. These include marquees, custom
bullets and multiple columns of text.
The rest of the book includes some appendices that cover HTML grammar, a
quick reference to HTML tags, Document Type Documentation, character
entities, color names and values, and of course an all inclusive index.
You will also find a tear-out desktop reference card with all of the
most used HTML tags.
In conclusion I would recommend this book to anyone that has not used
HTML and wants to, and also people that are familiar with the language
and wants to learn more or just needs a good reference for those tags
and such that they don't use often enough to become rote.
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
103 Morris Street
Suite A
Sebastopol, CA 95472
(707) 829-0515
WWW: http://ora.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product: Windows95 Interactive Training
Reviewed By: Russell G. Johnston (gray@posh.internext.com)
Reviewed on: Pentium 120, 16 MB RAM, Windows 95
Requires: 386SX, 4 MB RAM, Win 3.1, 3.11, NT or 95, 1xCD; sound
board or CD audio jack, VGA, 9MB hard disc space
Recommended: 486, SVGA (800x600), 2xCD
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This tutorial on two CDROM's is a series of lessons designed to
familiarize the user with the Windows 95 interface. As you can see in
the above, it can run under Window's 3.1, or Windows for Workgroups.
Most lessons contrast performance of tasks within the 3.1 environment
with the same task under 95. Thus the program is aimed at those
migrating from 3.1 to 95. There is also a network version available for
enterprise-wide upgrades. Users with some Windows 95 experience and new
users with little or no experience on either platform will find this
program instructive as well.
The installation program on the first CDROM performed without problems,
both on my home system, running Windows 95, and on the Windows 3.11
workstation at the office. The version I received for evaluation
included a floppy disk with a software update, which replaced a couple
of program files previously installed on my hard drive. Development
obviously took place prior to the release of Windows 95. Try and run the
program without the update and an "Unpardonable Sin" dialog will cut
short your tutorial session. Actually that experience in itself is a
useful lesson in following the directions included with your software.
The uninstall program worked well, unless it was run close on the heels
of the tutorial session. As you might already know, Windows 95 will
not allow access to recently-used program components. While certain
library files remain in cache memory, they are designated "in use." If
this happens, the uninstall program informs you that "certain elements"
of the program could not be removed, and that you should remove them
individually. This is a trifle unsettling, since it doesn't tell you
what or where the elements are. A reinstall-uninstall sequence will do
the trick, should this happen.
The video portion of the program consists of three windows. At startup a
"Contents window" presents the course structure listing the lessons and
topics covered on the two discs. Each new user signs in to maintain a
record of his or her own progress through the lessons. A check appears
next to each completed lesson, as you work your way through the series.
This feature simplifies returning to the program and resuming where you
left off. I suppose one could say that if you don't remember where you
left off, you weren't paying very close attention. But one has other
things on one's mind. Now what was I saying?
Oh, yeah..the windows. The second of the three program windows is a
graphic of the Windows 95 desktop. This is the place where the examples
are presented and where you are instructed to work through the
exercises. This demonstration area is fixed in size and fills a monitor
at 640x480 resolution. The reason this is significant, and the reason I
found it best to run the program at 800X600, is that the third window
overlaps the demonstration area in 640x480 resolution. Though this
"Control window" is small, it tends to get in the way as you click and
drag your way through the lessons. Running under 800x600 or greater
allows you to place the "Control window" out of the way above or below
the demonstration area.
Available on the control window are flow-control functions, e.g." back",
"next concept", "pause to get beer." Included with these buttons is a
text window. Should you be unable to understand what the instructor
expects of you, in the form of a keystroke or mouse movement, a clue
appears here.
So you start lesson number one with the "demonstration area" and the
"control area" on screen. The music starts and Monica and Jim alternate
the lecturing duties. There is intermittent badinage, but it never
becomes overly cute or irritating. The speakers are a bit dizzyingly
positive about Windows 95, but there's logic in that. A less uplifting
approach might further discourage a worker who has been told that
Windows 95 is coming to Acme Industries, like it or not.
Not to wander too far afield, but the first time I encountered the style
of alternating male and female voices was in the late 60's on Radio
Havana. I had a Fiat with a short-wave radio, and not much to do during
summer evenings. It was unusual then, but is now commonplace, in fact
sort of a cliche. I don't know why I find it annoying. I think it's, as
they say, just me.
I learned most of what I know about Windows 95 from all the computer-mag
articles like "314 Win95 Secrets Bill Gates Doesn't Even Know." So you
can imagine all the minutiae I have managed to accumulate (and forget).
My wife learned Window's 95 in self defense when she sat down to balance
the checkbook, and was greeted with the user-friendly Windows 95
desktop. I had spent most of the previous night "upgrading" the
computer. Each of us managed to carry away quite a bit after spending
two hours or so with the program. It contains general advice: "Don't
store files on your desktop." It offers non-obvious details like how to
format a floppy in Windows 95. Quick; no peeking in the Help files;
where is it?
It's possible to lock the program up by anticipating the mouse clicks
requested in the lesson. I've seen this behavior in other programs where
scripting is used. It isn't a severe problem.
I guess the real question that comes to mind in the end is: what sort of
teaching method is most effective, and is the "follow-along" method used
in this program a good one. If my point is cloudier than usual, my
excuse is that I'm not a teacher. Here's an example. A friend purchased
a new (first) computer, preloaded with Windows 95. She asked me to give
her a brief orientation. So off I went, "Windows 95 Secrets" in hand.
After I had given her an introduction to the system, I trundled home,
considering a new career in new-user enlightenment. That evening she
called to say that, when she tried to demonstrate her newfound expertise
to her son, she couldn't remember how to do much of anything. She just
stared at the desktop. Her learning had not involved enough effort, and
my instruction had been too much a demonstration. Yet most people find
"Windows Resource Kit" a poor introductory text.
I believe this program achieves a good balance between the two extremes.
I recommend it to anyone interested in becoming more comfortable with
Windows 95 (a trademark of Microsoft Corporation, I suspect I should
have said somewhere along the way.)
LearnIt Corporation
P.O. Box 7220
Gainesville, Florida 32605
Sales: 800-352-4806 Other: 904-375-6655
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product: Spycraft: The Great Game
Reviewed By: Steve Lozowski (slozowsk@locke.ccil.org)
Reviewed On: 486/DX-33, 16 MB RAM, Double Speed CD-ROM
Requires: 486/DX2-66, 8 MB RAM, Double Speed CD-ROM,
VESA LB or PCI SVGA Video, DOS 6.0 or Windows 95
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spycraft lets you play the part of a CIA agent in an interactive
multimedia espionage adventure. Set in the current day, the story line
adds fictional elements to real events. William Colby, the former
director of the CIA, and Oleg Kalugin, a former Major General of the
KGB, worked with Activision on the game, and also portrayed themselves
in the game. Correspondent and spy novelist John Adams wrote the story
plot. All told, Activision spent over four million dollars producing
this game which spans three CD-ROMs. And it shows, Spycraft truly is a
great game!
I evaluated the MS-DOS version of the game. Since I was running it on a
less than suggested machine, I decided to use the maximum hard disk
install option to increase performance, which took up a whopping 47 MB
of space. The recommended installation takes 30 MB of hard disk space.
I initially had a problem with the default VESA driver included with the
game - it hung my machine when I quit the game. But once I used the
VESA driver included my video card, I had no further problems. Of
course, running on a DX-33 machine, I did experience some blockiness and
dropped video frames in the full screen video sequences. But it is a
tribute to this game that I was not really bothered by that, at least
not enough to stop playing.
Spycraft may not be for everyone, as it does have some violent aspects.
There are pictures of murder victims, and a graphic video assassination
scene. The game also has the capability to use torture in
interrogations, but there is an option to block out the torture scenes.
I would say that Spycraft is a lot less violent than many games out
there, and violence is part of the nature of espionage. So if you
really want to live out the life of a CIA operative, you have to be
ready to break some eggs.
I don't want to give away too much of the story line, but I feel that I
should provide some teaser. I'll just say that you'll encounter the
assassination of a Russian presidential candidate, ex-CIA agents up to
no good, stolen nuclear weapons, and the Russian mafia. That's only a
teaser, but the story line is very believable.
While full-motion video is an integral part of this game, Spycraft if
not an interactive movie. It is an adventure game with a first-person
viewpoint that has many facets. This game has a great interface
concept. You are part of a team of agents, the others existing only in
the computer. You communicate with them and other CIA personnel via a
Personal Digital Assistant that allows email and video messaging and
teleconferencing. I really got the feeling that there were other
"players" in the game. When you complete an objective and report back
to the team, you will receive messages on their progress and suggested
actions for you to take next.
You talk to other people you meet by selecting from a number of text
sentences at the bottom of the screen. Your selection determines what
they will answer, and affects your remaining options for the
conversation. This is especially important in interrogations, as you
may have to start over if you take the prisoner down the wrong path, and
cannot get the information you want. (Of course there's also the
torture "bullpen".)
Spycraft contains a wealth of high-tech tools for you to use, as well as
information on and from the CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, ATF and Secret Service.
This is not official information, but within the universe of the game.
The tools are either accessible from your PDA or your office computer in
the game. The PDA contains INTELINK, which is based on the secret
network used by U.S. intelligence agencies, and includes COMLINK,
NEWSLINK, DATALINK, and WEBLINK. COMLINK gives you access to your
video, audio, and text messages, and has an Operations Manager which
tracks the to-do list for you and your team. NEWSLINK connects you to
news within the Spycraft world, including the "National Intelligence
Daily". By requesting news, a video news segment on that topic will
appear in your COMLINK. DATALINK takes you to home pages for the
intelligence agencies within Spycraft.
WEBLINK is a feature only available under Windows 95 with a 14.4k or
faster Internet connection through an Internet Service Provider using a
32-bit Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet
Explorer. WEBLINK is a unique optional feature that lets you access the
Internet Spycraft WWW site from within the game. This allows you to
link to real intelligence Web sites, automatically download real-time
news updates which then appear in the game, chat live with other game
players, and post and view messages.
The same INTELINK functions are available from your computer within the
game, as well as many other tools you will need. The Kennedy
Assassination Tools are used to locate the trajectory of bullets. Image
Analysis can help find information in photographic images, including
Optical Character Enhancement to make text more readable. Mix and Match
lets you revise computer sketches of suspects to match and identify one
in the database. Databases such as the Science and Technology weapons
database contain information necessary to complete certain tasks. Other
tools allow you to identify sounds, decode cyphers, and doctor
photographs. The photodoc tool took me a while the first time I used
it, as you have to get the size of objects and reflected light just
right.
The shooting scenes are pretty basic. You move your way through a
setting, with a computer-aided display to help you find or avoid
enemies. Once an enemy is located, you cannot move until the fire fight
is resolved. Using the mouse, you target your intended victim and
shoot.
Add to all these features commendable acting and a riveting story line,
and you have a game that you can enjoy for many hours. I really got
immersed in the world of Spycraft. Be prepared to break some laws to
get the job done. I heartily recommend Spycraft: The Great Game to
those who want the thrill of espionage without the real bodily danger.
Activision
P.O. Box 67713
Los Angeles, CA 90067
(310) 479-5644
Compuserve: GO GAMBPUB
E-Mail: support@activision.com
Web: http://www.activision.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product: The Web Oage Design Cookbook by William Horton
Reviewed By: Dennis P. MacPherson (pctc@infi.net)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I liked this book. It's well written, comes with a CD-ROM full of neat
stuff, and I recommend you add it to your bookshelf with the other books
about HTML and creating Web pages.
The format of this book resembles that of a standard cookbook and I
agree with the authors: "Good cooks learn by using the recipes of more
experienced cooks." The recipes, in this case, are templates for Web
home pages, and all the recipes can be found on the CD-ROM included with
the book.
The Web Page Design Cookbook contains 650 pages divided into thirteen
chapters plus an index.
Chapter 1, "The Kitchen," is all about the World Wide Web, HTML, and
URLs. Browsers, TCP/IP, and the like are explained in the second
chapter, entitled "Tableware and Cutlery." Chapter 3, "Cooking
Lessons," begins with the book's philosophy: "The hard way to create Web
pages is to spend hours trying to figure out, type in, and debug arcane
HTML codes. The easy way is to find a Web page that you like, copy it,
and change it around as needed." Since I disagree, in part, with this
statement, I almost closed the book. I believe it's worth the effort to
struggle with HTML tags first; then see what the pros are doing and
learn from their expertise. In Chapter 3 the authors present a 9-step
plan for creating Web pages. The plan includes making a plan, picking
the templates (theirs, of course), filling in the blanks, modifying the
elements, linking, and testing. In other words, get organized. Good,
sound advice.
Fortunately, the authors redeemed themselves in Chapter 4 which contains
the templates or "Basic Recipes." In this chapter they present a
template for and clearly describe the following types of Web page
design:
* Generic Web Page * Home Page * Contents * Glossary * How-to Procedure
* Troubleshooting Procedure * Course Description * Biography * Book
Description * News Release * Organization Page * Download Menu *
Registration Form * Survey Form * Catalog Entry * Multimedia Sampler *
Research Report
Each recipe is provided in HTML format on the CD-ROM and is very easy to
find and use. Plus, the book references each section of each template
allowing easy lookup of how the section was created. Included with each
template is the actual HTML code used to create the template. Hats off
to the chefs!
I was also pleased with Chapter 5, "Ingredients, " wherein the authors
do an excellent job describing all the most common HTML tags. They give
wonderful examples and add useful comments and tips as well. Thus, if
you wish to learn how to create Web pages "the hard way, " Chapter 5
provides the tools.
Chapter 6 is entitled "Nutrition" and explains in detail how to format
text, work with pictures, and add sounds and moving pictures. Here the
authors do a great job of defining file formats and explaining the
differences between GIF and JPEG or AIFF files versus the AU format. The
more advanced subjects are discussed in Chapter 7, "Haute Cuisine." Here
you learn about forms, scripts, tables, and image-maps. The treatment is
cursory at best, but again well written. If you need to specialize in
these areas, seek out more advanced reference materials on the subjects.
I found several chapters rather boring and unnecessary. Chapter 9, for
example, called "International Cuisine" attempts to help the novice
Webmaster create pages that will be accepted globally. Here, for
example, you learn that the proverbial thumb up (in America we mean OK,
cool, or nice going) 'is an invitation to insert the thumb into a
private part of the anatomy' in Sicily. I agree: if your Web pages are
intended for a World audience, you should be careful how you use certain
symbols. On the other hand, there is no way you can possibly know all
the gestures, puns, totems, and meanings of every culture on the face of
the earth. Bottom line: let your intended audience guide the symbols you
use.
Another chapter I believe we should have been spared was Chapter 12:
"Cordon Bleu." Section headings include "What are you doing?" "Where's
this Headed?" and "What's My Role?" This chapter is nothing more that
consultant's gobbledygook. (Note: the authors are all consultants with
their own businesses). The chapter is difficult to understand and adds
little value to an otherwise lucid and useful text.
Before the book's index is a section (not a chapter) entitled "Resources
for the Web Chef." This is a good section and a good idea, but like all
resources in print, it will be surpassed and out-of-date by the time you
have it in your hands. Better resources can always be found on the Net
itself.
All in all, I recommend this book. It makes a great reference for the
hypertext markup language; the templates on CD-ROM represent an
excellent place to start creating good-looking Web pages; and the book
is well-written.
"The Web Page Design Cookbook: All the ingredients you need to create
5-star Web pages." (http://www.csn.net/~whorton/contents.htm),
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEBSITES OF THE WEEK! | This section is devoted to cool WebSites . . .
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NetBest Awards . . . |
----------------------
BOSTON, Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ - The Olympics may be over, but one more
award was unveiled today for the best in cyberspace. Today Your
Personal Net (www.ypn.com) and MACWORLD Expo unveiled the winners of the
first-ever annual NetBest Awards for creativity and excellence in Web
sites.
Chosen by judges from a pool of nominated sites, CyberMad, Crayon and
TerraQuest were heralded as the Best-of-the-Net in three categories:
Entertainment, News & Money and Living, respectively.
Judges, including best-selling Generation X and Microserfs author
Douglas Coupland, critic James Atlas, and NetBooks editor Kelly Maloni,
selected the winners from a pool of more than 2,000 nominated Web sites.
CyberMad, a cutting-edge, online pop-culture magazine, won the Grand
Prize for its eclectic mix of original content and design.
"NetBest is proud to recognize true excellence and originality on the
Net among what some might call cyberclutter," said Michael Wolff,
president of Wolff New Media and publisher of the NetBooks series.
"I'm amazed at how far Web design has come, and how quickly," said
Douglas Coupland. "Generation X has helped pave the way to bring
information to the masses in a highly interactive way."
The NetBest awards concludes a two month "people's choice" campaign and
nomination process sponsored by Your Personal Net and MACWORLD Expo. In
addition to Douglas Coupland, judges included Chip Bayers, executive
producer of HotWired; Lee Stein, chairman, First Virtual; Michael Goff,
founder and former editor-in-chief of OUT magazine; Roger Black,
creative director, Home and president, Interactive Bureau; James Atlas
of the New York Times; Michael Wolff, president of Wolff New Media; and
Kelly Maloni, executive editor of Your Personal Net.
The winning sites in this hotly contested campaign include:
- NetEntertainment Category: CyberMad
- (http://www.cybermad.com) - Created by Christopher Parr, CyberMad
is designed to take surfers on a slick and sometimes irreverent tour
of online pop in America. "CyberMad does a great job at generating
an experience that takes you totally inside other people's heads,"
said Douglas Coupland. The hip and eclectic cyberzine includes
comics, movies, art, and even America's number one online soap
opera. "CyberMad is delightfully rich and original," said Roger
Black.
- NetLiving Category: TerraQuest - (http://www.terraquest.com)
- An elegant adventure travel site featuring high quality
photography and original travel essays. "TerraQuest actually gave
the feeling of adventure and of having been to a strange new place,"
said Coupland. A joint venture between Mountain Travel-Sobek and
WorldTravel Partners. TerraQuest offers surfers a window to the
world through its original content written by correspondents from
the far reaches of the globe.
- NetNews and Money Category: Crayon - (http://www.crayon.net)
- The day of free, online, customized news and information is here.
"A staggering amount of resources with a gratifying result," said
Roger Black. Created by Dave Maher and Jeff Boulter, recent Bucknell
graduates, Crayon, short for CReAteYourOwnNewspaper, allows users to
build a customized "newspaper" consisting of links to dozens of news
and information sources on the Web, such as local newspapers and
broadcast networks. "The site offers a good opportunity to organize
the mass of information available on the Net," added Michael Wolff.
Your Personal Net (www.ypn.com) was created by Manhattan-based Wolff New
Media, one of the leading providers of information about the Net and the
emerging Net culture. YPN, along with its companion book series the
NetBooks, are general and subject-specific oriented guides to the
Internet and online services.
Other titles in the NetBooks series, published by Wolff New Media and
distributed by Random House, Inc., include NetCollege, NetStudy,
NetVote, NetChat, NetMarketing, NetMoney, NetTrek, NetSports, NetTech,
NetGuide2, NetMusic, NetTaxes, NetGames2, NetJobs, NetDoctor and Fodor's
NetTravel. Additional titles coming soon in the NetBooks series include
NetSpy (Sept. 1996), NetKids (Sept. 1996), and NetSciFi (Sept. 1996).
---------------------------
ZDNet Delivers Again . . .|
---------------------------
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 25 /PRNewswire/ - Raising the bar for free
personalized news retrieval on the World Wide Web, Ziff-Davis
Publishing's ZD Net, the leading source for online computing
information, today launched a significantly enhanced edition of its
popular ZD Net Personal View (http://www.pview.com). Introduced in
October 1995 as the first free personalized news service on the Web, ZD
Net Personal View has been enhanced in every way, from the range and
depth of computer news resources, to the focus and flexibility of user
customization, to the immediacy of news delivery.
"Personal View offers ZD Net users the equivalent of a custom made
newspaper, available on demand, for free," said Jim Savage, vice
president and general manager at ZD Net. "Personal View is already an
established, popular part of ZD Net. Now, ZD Net Personal View searches
more stories about all facets of the high technology business than any
other news source available. That's extremely important to ZD Net
users, who come to our site because they are focused on computing
technology and the digital revolution."
To customize Personal View, registered ZD Net users select as many as
six personalized computing topics they are interested in following.
Then, whenever they access Personal View, they are provided with a
separate view for each topic, with only the most relevant of the
thousands of available articles and news stories displayed. Users can
either create their own search topics or choose from a pre-selected list
of 24 of the most popular computing topics, such as the Internet,
Financial Reports, Government/Legal, Mobile Computing, Software
Development, and CD-ROM.
News stories are now filtered in real-time, the minute they are
available from Personal View's more than 650 news sources. Previously,
Personal View drew breaking news several times a day from ZD Net,
Newsbytes, PR Newswire and Business Wire. News services that have been
added to ZD Net Personal View now include: Reuters North American
Securities Report; Reuters Business Report; Reuters Online Technology
Report; IntellX, provider of full-text articles from daily newspapers,
trade journals, and business magazines; and Comtex, provider of national
and international news wire services including UPI, Xinhua, and
ITAR/TASS.
Personal View results are organized into three categories: News Flash,
Week in Review and New from ZD Net. "News Flash" features up- to-
the-minute news and press releases on the selected topic. "Week in
Review," a great resource for users who are unable to access the web
every day, contains the most relevant news and press releases for the
selected topic over the past five business days. "New from ZD Net"
lists the latest URLs on ZD Net that match the topic, plus it offers a
customized view of articles from current Ziff-Davis magazines, including
19 domestic and 11 international titles. Ziff- Davis' domestic titles
include: PC Magazine, PC Week, PC Computing, MacUser, MacWeek, Computer
Shopper, Windows Sources, Family PC, Computer Life, Interctive Week,
Yahoo! Internet Life, ZD Internet Magazine, Computer Gaming World,
Electronic Gaming Monthly, EGM2, Internet Underground, P.S.X.,
CyberSports, and Intelligent Gamer's Fusion.
In addition to its real-time news filtering capability, Personal View
was designed as a research tool. Its sophisticated search engine lets
users launch custom full-text searches through archived articles and
press releases. In addition, on top of each article is a button called
"Find Related Articles," an innovative search tool that instantly
retrieves the most relevant articles from Personal View's magazine and
news archive to provide related background information on the selected
news story.
ZD Net Personal View was developed in association with Paracel
Online Systems, Inc. (http://www.online.paracel.com), a Dallas-based
creator of customized news products for the World Wide Web, Lotus Notes,
and other electronic platforms.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH ????? | Weekly Interviews with the Movers and Shakers!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
No Interview This Week!
--END OF ISSUE--