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The Internet Access Company (TIAC) now provides 10 Mbytes of free Web space with a SLIP account. We are taking advantage of that additional space to make available:
The following text is in html (the hyptext markup language used on the Web).
The following text is in html.
The following texts are all in html.
Numerous literary texts, many apparently obtained from other sites. Most are restricted to use by U. of Virginia students, but some from the Oxford Archive are available for all and are automatically converted from SGML to HTML when you access them.
This new site is intended as an Internet archive of out-of-print poetry books. The books are stored as individual text-only files. "Poets or their executors who hold copyright to books may place them in the archive free of charge; once a volume is archived, it may be read on-screen, searched electronically, or downloaded freely. However, the author retains copyright and must be compensated if multiple copies are made (e.g., for use in the classroom). When the author receives an offer to reprint the book, we will withdraw it from the archive and post a publication notice in its place."
For further information and guidelines, contact Wendy Battin, Director, CAPA, Box 603, Hadley, MA 01035 (413) 585-9149, wbattin@smith.smith.edu
This small publisher of electronic books now has a home on the Web. They provide electronic books for DOS and Windows in ancient history and the history of religion, historic transportation image collections, and art image collections.
The Business Guide [for the Internet] -- this complete book has been placed in the public domain by its author.
Journey Toward the Dawn -- a shareware novel made available in electronic form by its author. (No charge for the plain vanilla ASCII version.)
For those who do not have the capability or the time to retrieve electronic texts from the Internet, many are available at a nominal price from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK, a project of The Samizdat Express. For further information, send email to samizdat@samizdat.com or check our Web site
http://www.samizdat.com/
A quick and easy way to get ZIP codes for any US address.
The Home Page of the Advanced Laboratory Workstation System at NIH is a good starting point on the Web for anyone interested in biology and medicine.
This is the Web site for on-line real-time chess play. It looks like they are improving and commercializing use of the old Internet Chess Server -- which works very well.
LIVE FROM THE STRATOSPHERE will allow students to take a virtual trip aboard the Kuiper, to interact with astronomers and the flight-crew in real-time, to better appreciate the nature of contemporary astronomy and its incredible discoveries over the past decades, and the promise of the decades ahead.
NASA'S K-12 Internet Initiative will provide online materials accessible via a World Wide Web page; alternate Internet access will be be provided via Gopher and basic Email. As was the case with LIVE FROM ANTARCTIA, these materials will also be available on diskette from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK (samizdat@samizdat.com ) Another similar program , LIVE FROM THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE will be offered in the spring of 1996.
To receive introductory materials and other background information, send an e-mail message to: info-lfs@quest.arc.nasa.gov
This is one we've seen demoed and read about but haven't had a chance to try out directly. A set of software products makes it possible to create your own radio station on the Internet. When you click on an audio file, you begin to hear it immediately, in real-time, rather than waiting for the entire file to download before you hear anything. You can get the viewer software from their Web site. They charge for the server software that lets you create the files and make them available this way. I understand that some bands are using this as a way to by-pass record companies and broadcast radio stations and take their music direct to the public.
If I had the time and money, I'd be tempted to use this capability to post a radioplay of mine (The Lizard of Oz).
This is a disk drive add-on for your PC or Macintosh, which accepts 100 Mbyte diskettes. I have the PC/parallel port version which plugs right into the printer port, and can be readily moved from machine to machine. This makes it easy to store and move large files and programs (bigger than the 1.4 Mbyte capacity of a high-density 3-1/2" diskettes)
The drive sells for about $200 and a set of three diskettes sells for about $50. The product has only been available since March of this year.
It's being marketed as an alternative to a hard disk upgrade, as a way to back up your hard disk, and as a way to store large files (such as the video, audio, and images you can retrieve from the Internet, which are too big to fit on ordinary diskettes and which can eat up an inordinate amount of hard disk space).
I see it more as the equivalent of a writeable CD ROM, which would be particularly useful if you only need to make a few copies (rather than hundreds) or want to make copies on demand, or where the user would periodically download updates from the Internet. This capability could also be the basis for interactive multi-media games on the Internet which require large writeable local storage.
I'm interested in providing the electronic texts in our PLEASE COPY THIS DISK collection in this new format (the equivalent of about 100 ordinary diskettes on a single ZIP disk). Please let us know if you would be interested in the service. (seltzer@samizdat.com )
But there is one major exception to that rule -- the use of photos and other artwork and even sound and video for purposes of recognition, self-esteem, and motivation.
What's the point of all the thousands of personal home pages that are proliferating so fast on the Web? Who will ever see them? Who cares?
The answer dawned in me a few days ago when my five-year-old son Timmy brought home a particularly good picture he had made at Tot Spot. My wife was ecstatic -- so proud of him that she immediately hung it on the kitchen wall, and he was delighted to receive such recognition.
What was happening? She expressed pride and joy in what he had done and affirmed his worth and importance and the value of what he had done by the act of posting it where it can be seen by and shared with others. That same model can work on the Internet.
Shortly after that, my 14-year-old son Michael wrote a particularly good science fiction story for a school assignment. He's a bit jaded now when it comes to posting things on the kitchen wall, so I posted it on the Web instead (http://www.samizdat.com/comic1.html ) Take a look and drop him a note if you like it.
Yes, the Internet can be used for publishing -- simply putting text in electronic form and making it easy for people to retrieve it. But remember that regardless of whether anyone pays for the information, publishing is a two-way proposition. The reader obtains the information, and the creator gets the satisfaction and recognition of having his or her creation posted where others can see it and read it.
Consider the example of Hillside Elementary in Minnesota -- http://hillside.coled.umn.edu/ A year ago that was the first elementary school on the Web. One of their first projects was setting a sixth grade class loose to use the Internet for research and then publishing their papers on the Web. At the time, I was particularly impressed that instead of footnotes the students included hypertext links to their on-line sources. That looked like an excellent example of how research papers could and should be written in the future. Now, however, I realize the importance of the fact that the papers were made available over the Web and that all the students had their own individual home pages, complete with pictures of themselves or pictures that they had drawn and whatever they wanted to say about themselves. They were given recognition on a global scale. Anyone anywhere in the world with access to the Web could see them and their creations. The success of their site would not be measured in "hits" per day, but rather the motivating power of knowing that what you do can be seen by people you've never met,by people on the other side of the world. In this context, sheer numbers mean nothing, and the potential to be seen and read is everything. We should keep in mind that people -- students as well as customers and business partners -- are motivated at least as much by the need for recognition and self-esteem as by economics. There are good reasons for hanging photos and plaques to commemorate winning teams and academic achievers, just as businesses post the names and/or photos of the employee of the week or month and for rewarding people with important-sounding titles and printing them on business cards. And there are valid reasons for having company and individual home pages that are not directly related to costs and revenue -- that provide recognition and motivation, and can help build relationships and loyalty.
Photos of individuals, which in a direct marketing/business sense are relatively useless (what information do they convey to the reader?), can be very important to the self-esteem of the person shown -- regardless of how many people may choose to look at them. Consider the Special Olympics site -- http://www.worldgames95.org/ -- which under "Yale Special Olympics Contacts" provides pictures and profiles of a variety of volunteers, including the janitor who serves as "chair of Yale's Sanitation and Recycling Committee for the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games". Those pictures are buried deep in the hierarchy of directories. They are not intended to attract readers to the site, but rather to publicly express appreciation.
Consider the possibility of a school using Web space to recognize:
When everybody does it, does it have less value? Like the photos of teams and plaques of achievers hanging in the corridors of schools, even if only the students and a handful of visitors will see them, still they are a source of pride and motivation, and the number of other schools with similar photos in no way diminishes their value. And the community of people who feel they belong to that Web site will look and return and show what they find to others, regardless of how many other new communities are created.
My favorite soundbytes from the book:
It's the year 2021. 300 gigabytes of data (cure to a disease) are on a CD ROM. Rebels are willing to pay a fortune to upload this data onto a chip implanted in someone's brain, so he can carry it to the other side of the world for downloading. What's the big deal about 300 gigabytes 25 years from now? It should be terabytes or orders of magnitude above that to be credible and interesting. The data is already on an easy-to-carry and easy-to-hide little CD ROM; so why bother to transfer it to a chip in someone's brain? Also, the world in 2021 is supposed to be an Internet-centric society. Why use sneaker-net when you could transmit that data anywhere, anytime, instantaneously?
And the guys doing the sending use FAX (not Internet) to transmit the code needed to download the data at the endpoint. This is a bizarre use of FAX and bizarre non-use of the Internet. Above all, what's the need for security if you want to broadcast the data to everyone?
Use of the Internet is growing at an incredible rate. It's hard to say with any certainty that any part of the world is not now connected by some roundabout route. Our subscribers in Ethiopia and Pakistan work for the UN, and hence their email addresses do not include the country codes for those countries.
From: leisen@ftn.ca (Lewis S. Eisen)
I support the free distribution of information, the increase of literacy, and all the apple pie -type goals you stand for. I do believe, however, that one gets what one pays for, and that quality costs. If a publisher wants to attract the best typesetters, and the best graphic illustrators, and the best bookbinders to produce editions of good quality, then it should pay those people properly for their skills. That pay costs dinero. If I want to buy that book, I must pay my share to have it.
If books are recopied without payment of royalty and distributed freely, there will be no money in the publishing business. If there is no money to be made in publishing, people will leave the business. Authors won't be able to find publishers, and will not write books, since there is no money to be made. The same is true in the drug market: if a generic drug is allowed to be sold more cheaply by someone else to the disadvantage of the company that discovered it, that company will stop researching and creating new drugs. Then we all lose out.
You can't get something for nothing.
Lewis S. Eisen Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, lewis@ftn.ca, Prefex Services Inc., Computer Training & Consulting for the Legal Profession
> If books are recopied without payment of royalty and distributed freely, there will be no money in the publishing business.
Royalties should be paid to authors for work in paper form, as in the past. But electronic information should be free and for the benefit of all.
Those who can afford and prefer paper, and other value-added extras can pay for them. Making info free in electronic form benefits:
Keep in mind that very few authors make significant money from royalties. Most would value having a large audience far more than they would the few dollars they might make from publication. But in any case, as noted above, making a book freely available in electronic form is likely to increase rather than decrease traditional book sales.
Anyway, that's how it looks from here. Thanks for taking the time to send such a thoughtful response.
My intent is to air concerns like yours, and try to clarify my message. When it comes to electronic texts and copyright, there are no simple answers. But I feel that opportunities are opening and we need to find reasonable ways to take advantage of them for the benefit of all.
The notion that electronic information should be free is an extension of the concept of the free public library. It would be a way of raising the lowest common denominator in terms of access to information and access to the tools needed for self-education. Free libraries don't threaten the publishing industry; nor would free electronic texts. (Or at least that is my opinion. But the truth probably lies somewhere in that vicinity.)
Best wishes.
Richard Seltzer
From: Ed Langthorn <edlang@ccnet.com>
In one of your newsletters you described how you set up Your WWW home page with a web server on your home system. I recently stumbled across a method by which anyone can set up a page with their Internet access provider at no cost whatever (unless a large amount of storage is used).
It can be done with a basic shell account.
First you make a sub directory in your home directory named "public_html" Within it create a file named "welcome.html" which contains your home page material. This can be accessed with URL "http://www.<your access provider>/~<yourname>
It worked on a test, but I haven't yet completed my home page. You might want to share this with your readers.
Regards,
Ed Langthorn
From: Jim Zwick <fjzwick@mailbox.syr.edu>
Just a quick note to welcome you to the World Wide Web and to let you know that I've added a link to your page from my Mark Twain Resources on the World Wide Web page. I have a separate page connected to that one that lists all of the Twain e-texts available on-line, but thought it would be more appropriate to list your site under the section of the main page on "Syllabi and Other Resources for Teachers" since I understand that your service is primarily geared towards getting e-texts into the classroom. That section is one all teachers probably look at. The page is at this URL: http://web.syr.edu/~fjzwick/twainwww.html
If there are any problems with how your service is described, please let me know. I also maintain the Mark Twain on the Philippines site that is listed there under Exhibits.
I am always on the lookout for additional educational resources to list on my page. If you add any additional Twain-related resources to your site down the road (e.g. a sample syllabus or class outline that uses e-texts from your Please Copy This Disk service), please let me know.
Best Wishes,
Jim Zwick, fjzwick@mailbox.syr.edu
From: Boris.Vidovic@oleh.srce.hr (Boris Vidovic)
hr means Hrvatska, that is to say, Croatia. I am Headmaster of the Pujanke Primary School, Split, Croatia, Europe. By the way, I live in the City of Split, which celebrates 1700 anniversary of its existence. I am currently serving on the Organizing Committee of the HUPE (Croatian Association of Teachers of English) Conferenc. I have made the first Internet announcement of the Conference (with the help of Abamarija and Mrki). It is still under development.There are few thing about my native town Split. I would like you to have a look at http://bjesomar.srce.hr:1920 and let me know how it looks in the States.
Regards and best wishes,
Boris Vidovic
From: Trin Tantsetthi <trin@nucleus.nectec.or.th>
Subject: Re: Internet-on-a-Disk #10
do you have a complete collection of Internet-on-a-Disk available for FTP? if that's the case, would you kindly allow me to mirror them and make it available on ftp.nectec.or.th for Thailand domestic users to fetch freely? i find that your compilation is very useful. but if each of the Thai user would fetch a copy of your newsletter, our international link would be drowning. thank you for your kind consideration. -trin
Editor's Note: Back issues of Internet-on-a-Disk are now available in Thailand at ftp://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/info/inet-on-disk.
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