Computers : Editor's Choice
by José Márquez

Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International
www.atr.co.jp/
Yes, there is a cutting-edge, it is very sharp and you can get a hold of it at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) Web site. No doubt there are similarly brilliant research projects underway outside of the ATR's maze-like complex in Kyoto, Japan -- but then, who knows if there is an Intergalactic Resource Locator (or IRL) for such a home page. The Institute's diverse and stunning array of goals include "realizing communications that facilitate mutual understanding beyond differences in place, time, language and culture," creating technologies that facilitate "mental image expression" and "the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems."

But you won't find a litany of techno-futuristic jargon at the ATR site. On the contrary, this advanced technology Oz is buzzing with images, diagrams, research abstracts and conference memos. Particularly compelling are the diagrams that accompany the ATR Media Integration & Communications page. These simple, almost intuitive illustrations allow visitors to identify and understand the differences between "Face-to-face communications" and ATR's proposed "Hyper-realistic communications" -- the latter consisting of "3D vision, tactile sensation" and "3D audio." Exactly what the future of telecommunications and human-machine interactions will look like is still unclear, but you can bet that image is coming into focus at this very moment somewhere on the ATR Web site.

Computer News Middle East
gpg.com/cnme/
In the new world of the Global Village (modem), a quality hometown paper can turn up on the other side of the Web. Computer News Middle East (CNME) is a classic hometown paper for folk who live around these here parts we locals like to call the Net. It's got gossip about new products, new industry alliances, new technology trends and, of course, services that have recently come to the Middle East. All of the articles are written in English and the local culture evident in the journalism is flavored more by San Jose, Calif., silicon than by Riyadh, Saudi Arabia sand. In fact, there's little to the CNME that is specific to the Middle East.

Instead of alienating esoterica, the CNME is chock-full of easy-to-digest blurbs, written in a casual, detailed and no-nonsense voice. Sure, you won't find advertisements or links to the mentioned manufacturer's site and there are no illustrative images to fill up your phone line, but hey, what did you expect from the local newsletter? Now, if you're interested in the inside track, the "Analysis of computing in the region" section has tidbits of interest to potential consultants and distributors. If you're looking for a morning paper that rises earlier than you, bookmark the CNME for a brighter tomorrow.

David A. Bader's Parallel Sites
www.umiacs.umd.edu/~dbader/sites.html
"Would you like to play a game?" An invitation, a warning, a cliché -- these legendary lines will forever be associated with America's first supercomputing sweetheart: the fictional W.O.P.R. supercomputer featured in the late Cold War classic, Wargames. While such a pickup line is not likely to be overheard in any of the sites listed at this index of parallel computing sites, the same spirit of voyeuristic fascination that endeared the 80s generation of would-be cyberpunks to these room-sized supercomputers lives on -- the Web, that is.

Today, thanks to David Bader's nearly encyclopedic collection of links to supercomputing sites, anyone from an accountant to a zoologist can occupy the same virtual space as the computers the arms race conceived and academia nourished into a peaceful -- if busy -- adulthood. From the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center to the ZIAM GmbH (Center for Industrial Applications of Massively Parallel Systems), Bader's list accounts for an estimated 600 supercomputing sites. The site is maintained at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, where Bader himself is a member of the "administrata." So, if you feel like coming terminal-to-terminal with the steroidal counterpart to your own puny PC, this is the place to be.

Dictionary of Computing
wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/
The Free Online Dictionary of Computing is so hot that if it were included in its very own directory it would be cross-listed under CooL (the Combined object oriented Language), COLD (Computer Output to Laser Disc) and, yes, ICE (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics). Simply put, the Free Online Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC) is one of the most elegant sites on the Web. In fact, FOLDOC might really be the definition of a Web site, par excellence: It's infinitely useful, efficient, attitude free, advertising free and, needless to say, free of charge.

Of course, if you already know everything you ever wanted to know about computers and are afraid to ask an anonymous, electronic dictionary displayed on your own PC, then maybe you don't need the FOLDOC. But if you do find yourself wondering what SLIP means or how to get your hands on "brochureware", look no further -- ask no more. Plus, for your added convenience, you can visit FOLDOC mirror sites in New Jersey, California, France and Turkey. Doubtful of FOLDOC's versatility? Want to sink your teeth into its encyclopedic bowels? Try browsing through the contents, section by section -- there are 500kb of entry names, alone. Traveling through the Sahara with your laptop in hopes of writing the new techno-American novel? Download the FOLDOC and run it locally. Looking to get lucky with learning? Try the random definition option. It's all true. We told you so. Right here.

Elvis+
www.elvis.ru/
Americans would like to think that they won the Cold War just like they won the so-called Space Race. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we "won" because the other side got tired of playing with us and moved on to work on wireless LAN/WAN hardware. One result of the victory: We can now consider the "other side" from their perspective and the help of Russia's ELVIS+ corporation. Founded in 1991, ELVIS+ borrowed most of its initial staff from the Electronic Apparatus' Systems of the former Ministry of the Electronics Industry of the USSR.

Remember the peace dividend? Remember the financial assistance that was promised to fledgling "democratizing" markets in Russia? Well, none of that applied to ELVIS+. Nope. Instead of receiving a helping hand from Uncle Sam, ELVIS+ got a leg up in 1993 from Sun Microsystems Inc., as the expanding Silicon Valley, Calif., corporation took a ten percent equity position in the company. So what's the ruckus? While American political culture is wallowing in the quagmire of its dubious New World Order, ELVIS+ and Sun Microsystems -- to name but a few -- are helping to make erstwhile wide area networks into quite local area networks; transforming, both physically and metaphorically, the -- wireless -- ties that bind together international communities of workers, managers and consumers. Romeo and Juliet knew the story of ELVIS+ very well, indeed.

Guardian Insurance
www.gre.co.uk/
For the most part, commerce conducted on the Internet puts the proverbial cart before the horse. But not at the "Internet site of Guardian Insurance, the UK operating company of the Guardian Royal Exchange Group." You see, the Guardian Insurance site allows UK-based visitors to actually buy an insurance policy for their personal computers directly from the Guardian site. Imagine the following scenario: You jack into cyberspace and are cruising along the blue-light district when suddenly a deadly bot crashes into your souped-up cruiser and demolishes your shell. Sounds fantastic, doesn't it?

Consider the same scenario recast in different terms: You log on to the Web and are browsing through various spreadsheet archives when suddenly the Java applet you're downloading crashes your PC and erases your hard drive. Wouldn't you be a bit more at ease if you'd bought Guardian's Networker policy before you started surfing those unpredictably exciting Web waves? Read the fine print of this particularly progressive insurance policy and decide for yourself if the Guardian Royal Exchange Group has the right idea. The site's literature covers the following rhetorically asked questions: "What makes 'Networker' so Simple?", "What protection does 'Networker provide?" and "What are the prices and how do I apply on-line?"

International Telecommunications Satellite Organization - INTELSAT
www.intelsat.int:8080/
Ever wonder who keeps the world afloat? Wonder no more. INTELSAT, an international non-profit cooperative of more than 130 member nations, builds, maintains and leases the satellites that keep our mass-mediated Global Village intact. INTELSAT boasts a fleet of over 24 "spacecraft in geostationary orbit" with thirteen more satellites "in order for launch over the next two years." Together, this fleet of "flying toasters" carries more than "half of all international telephone calls, virtually all transoceanic television broadcasts" and a score of domestic transmissions. Impressed yet?

The INTELSAT site also features pictures of powerful people and multi-million dollar equipment none of us lowly simulcast television viewers and long-distance telephone callers could ever hope to understand, let alone control. Yet at the INTELSAT site, almost anyone can learn how to operate a multi-billion dollar operation by reading through the Annual Reports section -- and, while you're at it, why not add a few of the names under the contacts link to your own rolodex? You never know when this orbital telecommunications leviathan will line up with your destiny. Remember, the Web is like a giant slingshot on a grassy plain ... forever under the intangible weight of a giant's shadow.

Introduction to PC Hardware
pclt.cis.yale.edu/pclt/pchw/platypus.htm
When the Web works, it works like Howard Gilbert's Introduction to PC Hardware. This casual primer covers the basics and all the bases of the modern Personal Computer. Find out how the CPU is connected to the RAM and how the RAM is connected to the PCI bus and how the PCI bus is connected to the thigh bone. This step-by-step and comprehensive guide explains the minutiae of personal computers with charm and a casual, user-friendly tone. If you would like to build your own PC or simply buy the best PC for your money, Gilbert's suggestions are straightforward and concise.

Case in point: "It seems unlikely that anyone would ever try and put an eight cylinder engine in a Saturn, but most computer vendors overload their systems with CPU power." Some of the topics covered in this primer include the CPU and Memory, the I/O Bus, Video Adapters and IDE or SCSI Disks. Each section relates the particular to the general, the preceding component to the following device. If the sound of computer jocks kvetching over Java makes your blood curdle, sauntering at your own pace through the halls of this veritable PC summer school will help you get the answers you need when you need them.

Jumbo! Official Web Shareware Site
www.jumbo.com/
Shareware is Bingo for the 90's. Every once in a while you win. Oftentimes, it's just fun to play the game. After all, the company's good and the stakes are just right. In that case, think of Jumbo! as the world's largest church basement, with over 59,208 titles available for anonymous download at almost any time of the day. The catch? Advertisements, about five small ones per page. The latch? Turn "Auto Load Images" off. But even if you make it past the tantalizing, animated billboards at the top of the page, you're not guaranteed to find the game, utilitity or system tool you're looking for -- when you're looking for it.

The site allows for a maximum of 60 connections from 11 pm 'til 4 am, Monday through Friday, and only 10 users are allowed to download files during weekday "business hours." But then, would anything Bingo-esque be immediate delivery? If you're fully in touch with the Bingo vibe, you can get a winning ticket, faster, by eschewing the hi-fi "http" connection and opting for a no-frills "ftp" route. Jumbo provides several mirror sites for players who don't mind the uncertain loss of graphics -- and advertisements -- for the certain gain of a quicker queue. There might be other archives this big, but none are this Jumbo!

Macworld Magazine Online
www.macworld.com/
Welcome to the party. If you own an Apple product -- or just wish you did -- this is the place to be. How we do love this site -- let me count the ways. Reason numero uno: The Macworld Online site serves up every issue of Macworld ever published, free of charge and in a searchable directory. If you're looking for extensive and comprehensive third-party product reviews, the technically-savvy (and user-friendly) technicians at Macworld's testing facilities are folks you can count on to give you the real deal -- sans such corporate-speak gems as "software solutions" and "revolutionary design."

Reason numero dos: Not all computer magazines represent computer users, but Macworld Online not only promises helpful tips and tricks, they actually deliver state-of-the-art tools and utilities straight to your own computer via their North Pole-esque Software Directory. Anyone who visits Macworld Online can flip through these well-documented and Macworld-evaluated product listings and download enough freeware and/or shareware to start a Third World software vending empire. The bottom line: Macworld Online's no-nonsense approach to Apple computing is your ticket to a better tomorrow -- today.

NCSA Education & Outreach
www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Edu/EduHome.html
The expansive, ever-changing Web and open-eyed, curious children were made for each other -- the problem is, how should the two connect? The Education Group at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) might just have the answer. Remember, the NCSA was the first to develop and distribute a graphical Web browser, as well as a host of free Web server software. These visionary folk are serious about the Web and, at this site, they're also serious about learning.

School administrators, teachers and parents can all benefit from a studious trip through such thought-provoking and inspiring links as: Selected Educational WWW Resources, SuperQuest for Teachers and the Networking Infrastructure for Education. Some of these sections contain classroom-ready materials while others relate some of the NCSA Education Group's long-term and wide-range goals regarding Web-based teaching and learning tools. The Group's own stated goals are to "help enable citizens to prepare for their future by... transferring to all sectors of society...scientific knowledge related to High Performance Computing." In layman's terms, the Education Group is making sure that the kind of well-educated democracy which Thomas Jefferson once described won't be erased by a growing disparity between those with technical "know-how" and those without.

Newton Medical
med-amsa.bu.edu/newton.medical/newton.medical.html
You scoffed, you chuckled and you guffawed -- now, prepare to be awed. Apple Computer's Newton, the premiere Personal Digital Assistant, is becoming a lifesaver in the hands of health care professionals who find that they now need more than a pen and paper to make their rounds. The Newton Medical site, hosted by Nader Yaghoubi of the Boston University School of Medicine, brings together many of the software resources and product updates which are making Newton PDAs indispensable to doctors and technicians previously infamous for their indecipherable prescriptions.

Webmaster Yaghoubi assures prospective Newtonians that Apple now regards the medical community as a "vertical market" for the now well-tested Newton -- a guarantee that translates immediately into free software and upgrades, as well as the eventual delivery of more and better applications geared explicitly for health care professionals. It was this unique brand of personable treatment that made Apple's Macintosh computers as commonplace as notebooks in America's schools over the course of the last decade. The Newton Medical site may be the harbinger of a similar revolution on the PDA front -- and in America's hospitals. The site contains links to other health care-oriented Newton sites, Newton software archives (featuring utilities for patient management, reference information and quantitative analysis) and Newton news sites.

Phrack Magazine
www.fc.net/phrack.html
You are here. Probably, you are here for some inside connection to the Web, a network of otherwise public and anonymous connections. Well, you came to the right place. Eleven years of hacker notes compiled and archived for your edification -- and, of course, voyeuristic titillation. The first issue of Phrack magazine, posted in 1985 by Metal Shop, was served up on a Bulletin Board Service operating "24 Hours A Day" at "300/1200 Baud." Can you spell, Run DMC? That issue, in particular, features a step-by-step guide to cracking the copyright protection on tape drive games for the Apple II. Yes, tape drives. Audio tape drives.

But nostalgia isn't the only virtue of going back in Phrack time. In fact, past and present often merge when the thread at hand is one-upping the oldest mainframe in town: the telephone company. There are some very funny, very clever essays here about GTE, Sprint, MCI, AT&T and a few of the Bells, as well. But don't expect witty insights on mergers and acquisitions; the pseudonymous Phrack boys have ears only for special beeps, tones and clicks. In fact, you can learn a lot more about the world of computers from these phreaks than you will from c|net. In the words of Herd Beast (Volume Five, Issue Forty-Six, File 14 of 28): "In these days, where everyone seems to be so centered about the Internet and the latest Unix holes, it's important to remember that the information super-highway is not quite here, and many interesting things are out there and not on the Internet."

South to the Future
www.slip.net/~getaway/STTF/
The dukes of the information dirt road and the digital holler let loose their rebel war whoop in the form of this rousing call to arms for the next American -- online -- revolution. The South to the Future site invokes a world of technology that's no longer brother against brother, machine against man. This TechnoFree future belongs neither to the east nor the west, neither north nor south, neither to the citizens nor the illegal aliens, but, rather, promises "¡Derechos tecnologicos para todos!" On the electronic battlefield of the Web, the future southerners are staking their claims on the brains and backs of the GenX generation.

Unleashing an awesome production run of t-shirts, designer eyewear and even their own series of self-help books for the computer depraved, South to the Future will write the fables of the next reconstruction. You can download South to the Future desktop patterns, ergonomic liberation FAQs and mechanical schematics for personal computing machines not yet imagined. Do yourself, your family and your country a favor: go South (to the Future) and ¡Git Online!

The Year 2000 Information Center
arganet.tenagra.com/cgi-bin/clock.cgi
Dorky, techie, irresistibly redundant: The Year 2000 Project is more than a "patch" vendor list for computer systems that will begin to malfunction when their internal clocks fail to compute the new millennium -- it's an adventure in multi-mediated mixed-genres. The pitch: "To save storage space - and perahaps [sic] reduce the amount of keystrokes necessary to enter a year - most IS groups have allocated two digits to the year...These two-digit dates exist on millions of data files used as input to millions of applications... But what happens in the year 2000?"

The swing: "We must correct the data residing in all data files or write code to handle the problem." The connection: t-shirts, newsletters, conferences, video tapes, reference information and more. But hurry, supplies are limited and the clock is ticking...fast. There's even a Year 2000 Users Group so that "YOU DON'T HAVE TO FACE IT ALONE!!" Nor should you face "IT" without a secret decoder ring. Stan Price, of the Year 2000 site/project/clubhouse, recommends that concerned members of the public approach the news media "very carefully" so as to not scare off concerned companies or, worse yet, "out" companies that are secretly well-aware of this Digital Doomsday. If you're a fan of conspiracies, the endtime or the Two Digit Code of the Apocalypse, the Year 2000 organization has your number.