TidBITS#637/07-Jul-02
=====================
Have you missed a few TidBITS issues here and there? Geoff Duncan
explains how overly aggressive filters on your email server could
be bouncing TidBITS issues (and other email) into the ether. Also
in this issue, Eolake Stobblehouse sings the praises of the flat-
panel iMac, Adam looks ahead to events at next week's Macworld
Expo New York, eBay buys PayPal for $1.5 billion, and Microsoft
releases Internet Explorer 5.2.1.
Topics:
MailBITS/07-Jul-02
Macworld Expo NY 2002 Events
Living Under the Snow Dome
Email Filtering: Killing the Killer App
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-637.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2002/TidBITS#637_07-Jul-02.etx>
Copyright 2002 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
Information: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Comments: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------
This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* Make friends and influence people by sponsoring TidBITS!
Put your company and products in front of tens of thousands of
savvy, committed Macintosh users who actually buy stuff.
For more information and rates, email <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
* READERS LIKE YOU! You can help support TidBITS via our voluntary <- NEW!
contribution program. Special thanks this week to George Smith,
Jesse Kaysen, and Robert Pickel for their generous support!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
* Small Dog Electronics: iMac G4/800 SuperDrive: $1,649!
AirPort Base Station 2 Ethernet Port Version (refurb.): $199!
Factory Refurb. 22-inch LCD Cinema Display: $2,099. Kensington
FlyFan: $20 <http://www.smalldog.com/tb/> 802/496-7171
* Get IPNetTunerX for OS X! Boost any Internet connection speed <---- NEW!
20% or more with this new tool. Includes Link Rate and TCP Rate
tools: show real-time increases with on-the-fly adjustments.
$30 from Sustainable Softworks! <http://www.sustworks.com/tb/>
* DEALMAC: Digital Research CD-R media 100pk for $3 after rebate. <-- NEW!
<http://dealmac.com/articles/37719.html?ref=tb>
DEALMAC: Hitachi 73 GB SCSI 7200 rpm for $300.
<http://dealmac.com/articles/37700.html?ref=tb>
* Bare Bones Software Mailsmith 1.5 -- Extra-Strength Email for <---- NEW!
Mac OS X and 9. Imports mail directly from Emailer, Eudora,
and Apple Mail. Powerful filters, robust scripting, and more.
For more info and a free demo: <http://www.barebones.com/>
---------------------------------------------------------------
MailBITS/07-Jul-02
------------------
**eBay to Buy PayPal for $1.5 Billion** -- Internet auction
pioneer eBay has announced plans to acquire PayPal, the leading
Internet payment service, for $1.5 billion in stock. The move is a
natural one - approximately 60 percent of PayPal's business takes
place on eBay, and 25 percent of eBay auction payments are settled
using PayPal (another 15 percent are settled via other electronic
payment mechanisms). eBay will phase out its competing service,
eBay Payments by Billpoint, which struggled to compete against
PayPal and was losing $10 to $15 million per year. PayPal's
services will continue, with the exception of the company's
support for online gambling, a field that's coming under increased
legal scrutiny. Though both companies are highly regarded in
general, both have also endured criticism - eBay for its response
to security exploits and for not cracking down on fraud hard
enough, and PayPal for poor customer service (resulting in several
class-action lawsuits from users whose accounts were frozen) and
investigations from several U.S. states as to whether or not
PayPal should be regulated as a bank. [ACE]
<http://www.shareholder.com/ebay/news/20020708-84142.htm>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06260>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06652>
**Internet Explorer 5.2.1 Released** -- In a singularly unhelpful
move, Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 5.2.1 for Mac OS X
with absolutely no indication of what has changed. Installing
Internet Explorer 5.2.1 did require quitting all running
applications, which seems unnecessary, but it didn't change my
home page setting this time (others have reported differently).
We presume Microsoft fixed a bug or two, but without release notes
of any sort, it's impossible to recommend the update either way.
I'd encourage Microsoft to read "The Seven Deadly Product Release
Sins" in TidBITS-491_. [ACE]
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/IE/ie521.asp>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05497>
Macworld Expo NY 2002 Events
----------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Put on your walking shoes and Mac t-shirts - it's show time!
Macworld Expo in New York City rolls around again 17-Jul-02
through 19-Jul-02. I'm looking forward to the show, as I do every
year, although there's trepidation in the air once again thanks
to the news that two major companies - Adobe and Macromedia -
wouldn't exhibit. The two previous Macworld Expos, in San
Francisco in January and New York last year, proved surprisingly
strong given the economic climate, and I hope this show does
as well.
**Macworld Keynote Webcast** -- For those not attending Macworld
Expo in New York, you may still be able to view a streamed webcast
of Steve Jobs's keynote via QuickTime Player at 9:00 AM on
Wednesday, July 17th. I say "may" because success with such
a heavily watched event is often sporadic. Obviously, it helps
to have a fast Internet connection.
<http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwny02/>
**TidBITS Events** -- The East Coast contingent of the TidBITS
staff, meaning me and Contributing Editor Mark Anbinder, will be
looking forward to meeting TidBITS readers. If you don't see me on
the show floor, you can be sure of finding me at one of the events
below - come by and say hello.
* At 1:00 PM Sunday, July 14th, on my drive down to New York City
for Macworld Expo, I'll be giving a "Meet the Expert" session and
signing copies of my latest book, iPhoto 1.1 for Mac OS X: Visual
QuickStart Guide, at the Apple Store Palisades in West Nyack, New
York.
<http://www.apple.com/retail/palisades/>
* On Wednesday, July 17th at 12:30 PM, I'll be giving a Macworld
Users conference session entitled "Getting Started with iPhoto" in
room S09. I plan to do an overview of iPhoto, making sure to pass
on the various tips and tricks I learned while writing the iPhoto
Visual QuickStart Guide. Then, at 2:00 PM, I'll be at the Peachpit
booth (#661) to sign copies of the book and answer questions about
iPhoto.
<http://www.macworldexpo.com/macworldexpo/v31/conference/session.cvn?eID=39>
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321121651/tidbitselectro00>
* On Thursday, July 18th at 3:00 PM, I'll be at the Aladdin
Systems booth (#1742) to do a Q&A session on iPhoto. Bring your
toughest iPhoto questions and problems - I may not be able to
answer every one, but I'd like to hear what you're experiencing.
* On Friday, July 19th, at 11:00 AM, I'll be talking about
TidBITS, the state of the Internet, Apple's show announcements,
and the status of Mac OS X in the User Group Lounge in room 3D04
(just off the show floor). Then at 2:00 PM, I'll be back at the
Peachpit booth (#661) to participate in a panel discussion about
digital photography.
<http://www.mugcenter.com/macworld/mwnyc2002/ugl.html>
* At 6:30 PM Saturday, July 20th, during the grand opening week of
the Apple Store Soho in Manhattan, I'll swing by on my way out of
New York for another "Meet the Expert" session and book signing.
<http://www.apple.com/retail/soho/>
**Netter's Dinner** -- Al Tucker is organizing the 5th Annual NY
Macworld Netter's Dinner on Wednesday, July 17th. Everyone should
meet at 6:00 PM by the doors leading out of the Javits Convention
Center. The food will be a Mexican-style buffet with appetizers
and soft drinks included. Pre-registration via Kagi is required,
so be sure to visit the Netter's Dinner Web page for the details.
I have an engagement for later that evening, so I'll be at the
dinner for the beginning.
<http://avalon.rockefeller.edu/nettersdinner/>
**Hess Event List** -- Although the downturn in the economy has
put a significant dent in the Macworld party scene, there are
still some events happening, and the place to find them remains
Ilene Hoffman's Robert Hess Memorial Macworld Expo Events List.
If you're going to Macworld, be sure to check out Ilene's list,
and if you're hosting an event, send it to Ilene for inclusion.
<http://www.ilenesmachine.com/partylist.shtml>
Living Under the Snow Dome
--------------------------
by Eolake Stobblehouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I discovered to my shock recently that during my short career
as a Mac user (since 1995), I have already owned something like
10 different Macintoshes. Although each one was different, I have
loved them all. So when Steve Jobs says that the flat panel iMac
is perhaps the best Mac Apple has made yet, do I agree? In a
nutshell, yes - but not simply because of its catchy design or
impressive hardware specifications.
Do you know how you sometimes get an emotional sort of vision
that is hard to describe? Well, I got one of those in the late
1990s when Apple described the upcoming next-generation Mac OS.
Looking ahead to a much slicker and more stable operating system,
coupled with the (then) future developments of the PowerPC chip,
gave me a wonderful feeling. I imagined a computer which never
got in the way, never delayed me, and which multitasked at least
as well as I did. I may be a long-time Mac user, but I am not a
geek. I've never programmed, and I haven't even launched Terminal
in Mac OS X.
This ideal of a Mac has been a bit slow in the coming, for a
number of reasons. Apple clearly bit off an awfully big chunk
in developing an all-new operating system, based on Unix, no
less. Motorola and IBM have failed at fulfilling the promise of
the PowerPC chip: it's barely keeping up with the Pentium
(remember Apple's snail ads?). Of course, the tech slowdown
around the millennium, along with a loss of focus on the part
of the PC industry in general, has hampered everyone's
development schedules. But there's also the simple fact that
I am getting better with practice. A computer which is as fast
as I am and multitasks as well wouldn't have had as high a bar
to clear three years ago.
Now, Apple offers the flat-panel iMac. A couple of weeks after
purchasing my new iMac, sitting there using it, I suddenly
realized how close the machine really is to my vision of the
ideal Mac.
**A Professional Consumer** -- I think first I should explain why
I have the iMac at all. After all, I work with photos and art,
design for the Web, and so on. I have a nice dual-processor Power
Mac G4 tower with a Cinema display. So why would I want a consumer
computer? Well, apart from the fact that I just like the iMac, it
boils down to the fact that I am one of those hyper-sensitive
"ahhhtistic" types for whom pleasing industrial design actually
makes a significant difference. So, I kept the Power Mac G4 for
my creative work, and switched to the more discreet iMac for the
communications work (Web, email, and writing) which occupies the
bulk of my time.
I've liked just about everything about the iMac. The half-
basketball design with the flat-panel screen supported by a
gleaming chrome arm is eye-candy, but it's also highly functional.
The screen moves smoothly and I find I adjust it small amounts
throughout the day to match my posture. The performance of the 700
MHz G4 processor has been more than sufficient for Mac OS X and my
email and Web use. Even the speakers sound wonderful, much better
and even much louder than those in my Power Mac G4. Speaking of
sound, I hate the noise of the Power Mac G4 tower - it grates on
my nerves. If I were to be granted one favor from Apple, it would
be a quiet professional Mac (and one with more power and expansion
possibilities than Apple's first experiment in this category, the
Power Mac G4 Cube).
It's important to note that the iMac was the first machine on
which I use Mac OS X full time, so my impression of the iMac is
tied into my impression of Mac OS X. I've tried all the versions
back to the public beta, but they just weren't up to snuff, since
my important applications ran poorly under Classic. However, since
I primarily use email and the Web on the iMac, it runs just fine
with Mac OS X; I've never booted into Mac OS 9 at all.
Well, I do have one half-hearted reservation: it's clear that Mac
OS X is designed with future developments in screens and screen
size in mind. It looks good on the iMac's 15-inch screen, but
it's even better on the 22-inch Cinema display. (After Photoshop
7.0 went native, I switched to Mac OS X on my Power Mac G4 as
well.) But setting aside overall dimensions, the iMac screen is,
in a word, fantastic. It's much brighter than the 22-inch Cinema
display.
If we take economics into consideration, it will be a while
before you see 22-inch screens on consumer computers, and the
dual processors in my Power Mac G4 are great for intensive image
processing work. So in all practicality, even if I'll keep using
the Power Mac G4 for my design work, the iMac is as close to my
idea of the perfect consumer computer I can imagine. It's fast,
it's quiet, it's compact, and it looks great.
In short, the iMac is so good that it almost makes me wish I was
in its target audience, just to have the pleasure of getting such
a fantastic computer for the first time. For the student or family
member, messing around at an amateur level with email, Web
browsing, digital photos, and maybe a bit of video editing in
iMovie, this is... well, like I said, as perfect a machine as
I can imagine.
Email Filtering: Killing the Killer App
---------------------------------------
by Geoff Duncan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
One of the things I handle behind the scenes for TidBITS is bounce
management: the tedium of figuring out which addresses should be
removed from our various mailing lists due to delivery errors.
We consider maintaining "clean" mailing lists part of running an
email-based publication responsibly: just as we don't want to send
TidBITS to people who don't want it, we don't want to waste
bandwidth, effort, or time (for us or anyone else) trying to
deliver TidBITS to addresses which aren't accepting it. I can't
claim there are no undeliverable addresses on our mailing lists -
that's an impossible goal - but we try to run a tight ship. And
it's necessary work: Internet access providers regularly shut
down, are acquired, and change their names; and - if our
experience is any indicator - people simply abandon (or are
forced to abandon) email addresses far more often than they
unsubscribe from mailing lists. So we get lots of bounces.
I briefly outlined TidBITS's bounce management process in "Not
Your Grampa's Mailing List" back in TidBITS-420_, and although
some of the details have changed, the idea remains the same.
Basically, a custom tool I wrote ferrets out bouncing email
addresses from the collection of bounces we receive each week,
determining whether an address is eligible for removal based on
the number and types of errors that come back over a particular
period. Different lists have different removal criteria: it might
take four to eight weeks of errors for an address to be removed
from the main TidBITS list (which only sends a message once a
week), while addresses would be removed from a discussion list
like TidBITS Talk more quickly (although a higher number of
errors would be required).
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04761>
In the last year or so, we've noticed a new trend: some weeks,
we get errors from hundreds (or even _thousands_) of subscribers
whose servers refuse delivery of TidBITS issues. On the heels
of these errors, we usually receive a flurry of complaints:
"Why didn't I get this week's issue?" or "Please fix my
subscription - I didn't get TidBITS today but your system
says I'm still on the list!"
The reason for these errors is that from time to time, some email
systems conclude that TidBITS is spam or - worse - an email-borne
worm or virus. These email systems are utterly wrong - TidBITS is
never sent to any address that has not subscribed, and an issue of
TidBITS has never contained a worm or virus - but they serve to
highlight some interesting points:
* Email is increasingly being filtered for its content;
* That filtering is often being done without the knowledge or
consent of affected users;
* Over time, inaccurate filtering will substantially reduce the
general utility of email.
In short, we're starting to see signs that email, often hailed
as the Internet's "killer app," is in danger of becoming an
unreliable, arbitrarily censored medium - and there's very
little we can do about it.
**Them's Spam-Fighting Words!** What causes some email systems
to misinterpret TidBITS as spam or malicious email? I can't be
specific here - or thousands of subscribers will never receive
this TidBITS issue! - but I can point to some recent examples:
* Jeff Carlson's article on the Palm i705 in TidBITS-635_ made a
passing reference to a well-known Pfizer drug for men, technically
known as sildenafil citrate. Our mail error logs indicate over
2,500 TidBITS issues were rejected by over 1,000 sites because
they contained the drug's name; many of the rejections were from
relatively high-profile sites like the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM) and VeriSign. (Even leaving aside errors which
cited that particular word, we received a substantially above-
average number of errors for the week, which probably puts the
total closer to 4,000 rejected issues, or about 10 percent of
that week's mailing).
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06856>
* Adam's article on bandwidth limitations on Apple's Mac.com
service in TidBITS-634_ caused TidBITS to be rejected as a worm
by approximately 250 sites because it contained the proper name
of Apple's Web page hosting service and the words "my" and
"pictures" in succession.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06851>
* In a particularly bizarre example, approximately 180 mail
servers rejected TidBITS issues containing Matt Neuburg's articles
on Unicode under Mac OS X, seemingly because the title of his
articles named a particular fruit and the text contained the
words "keystroke" and/or "keycode."
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1217>
* Adam's article in TidBITS-618_ on copyright caused issues to be
rejected by approximately 120 servers because it mentioned the
name of a well-known peer-to-peer music swapping service and the
name of a pop music group.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06729>
* Adam's article "A Couple of Cool Concepts" caused TidBITS-616_
to be rejected by over 1,100 sites because it sarcastically
referred to an advertising campaign for a particular type of
wireless video camera. Still other sites rejected it because
it contained the word "undress" and another word describing a
hair color.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06720>
**Filter Me Timbers** -- It's important to note that these TidBITS
issues are being rejected by mail servers - typically run by
businesses, organizations, or ISPs - rather than by individual
mail clients like Eudora or Outlook Express. Current email
programs can process incoming mail in any number of ways, and
there's no way to prevent users from intentionally - or
unwittingly - creating a rule or filter which marks TidBITS
as spam and deletes it outright. In fact, publications like
TidBITS have run afoul of client-side filtering such as that
included in Microsoft's Outlook Express and Entourage.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05647>
Although the utter opacity of tools like Microsoft's Junk Mail
Filter somewhat belies this distinction, the crucial difference
between client-side mail filtering and server-side mail filtering
is that the former are largely under the control of individual
email users, while the latter are typically governed by
organizational policy. In an organization, this may mean only
one or two people in charge of thousands of email accounts
determine what mail will or won't be accepted in the organization,
and there's often no way for users to determine whether or how
their email is being filtered.
For instance, the servers which rejected Adam's article on Mac.com
services largely did so because they were running particular
commercial anti-virus packages, and those organizations trusted
those products would not reject legitimate email. Obviously, they
were wrong. On the flip side, every copy of TidBITS-601_ sent to
subscribers at a large aerospace company (whose name sounds like
"boing!") was rejected because it contained a particular URL;
apparently, an email administrator somewhere within this
organization of tens of thousands of people decided that any
email message containing that URL should be rejected outright.
Ironically, the offending URL was owned by a company that counts
the aerospace company among its clients. Oops.
**Senseless Censors** -- It's hard to argue with the practical
necessity of filtering email, given the tremendous amount of
spam clogging the Internet. (A company that provides an anti-spam
filtering service to large organizations, Brightmail, estimates
that the amount of spam has gone up by 600 percent this year.)
The costs of spam are quite real in terms of storage, bandwidth,
and processing power, not to mention vast amounts of human time
deleting, filtering, identifying, and cleaning up after spam.
There's no denying administrators are trying to save time,
trouble, and (in some cases) actual harm by assaying email
before it gets to users's desktops. Even TidBITS performs some
very basic filtering on incoming mail, and I'm more aggressive
with mail filtering on my business's servers.
<http://www.brightmail.com/>
The thing to remember is that, like Web content filtering, email
content filtering is at best unintelligent and arbitrary. A rule
which seems perfectly sensible to reject spam regarding long
distance telephone service may have the unintended consequence
of rejecting all email from your Aunt Tillie, simply because Aunt
Tillie's Internet provider has IP numbers which contain a subset
of a spammer's advertised phone number. (That's a real problem one
of my clients encountered - although Aunt Tillie's name has been
changed.) Similarly, a rule designed to screen out promotions for
adult Web sites might prevent a user from participating in a
breast cancer support group's mailing list. It's easy to come
up with countless examples where blocking mail based on specific
words, terms, and phrases in email can do the wrong thing.
As much as on-target filtering might save administrators and users
time, money, and trouble, filtering that backfires also has direct
costs. Part of that cost is passed off to the sender whose email
has been improperly identified: every time spam filtering hits
TidBITS, I get to track the problem down, deal with email
administrators, and assuage irritated subscribers. (That's time
I could be spending - _should_ be spending - doing useful things
like writing articles or improving TidBITS services.) Part of the
cost also stays with the organization doing the filtering, largely
to support users who didn't receive expected email or dealing with
remote administrators like me to figure out what's going wrong.
Misfiring filters reduce the utility of email for all involved.
**Put a Sock In It** -- We've sometimes tried to avoid words and
terms in TidBITS that might trigger overly broad content filters.
(Here "we" mostly means "me," because I'm the staff member most
familiar with the email errors and problems TidBITS encounters.)
For instance, we changed portions of Dan Kohn's "Steal This Essay"
series to omit a term describing adult materials (it starts with
the letter P and rhymes with "corn"), and lately hardly a week
goes by where we don't make changes to an issue to avoid phrases
and terms which have set off overly aggressive filters. Recently
self-censored articles include Adam's series on converting to Mac
OS X, "Corrupt Audio Disks Stick in Mac's Craw" in TidBITS-631_,
"Goodies from Kensington" in TidBITS-630_, "Mac OS X: Curse of the
New" in TidBITS-629_, and "Was Bill Gates Lying?" in TidBITS-628_.
These articles run the gamut of everything TidBITS covers from
analysis and commentary to news and reviews. As you've noticed, in
this article I'm also trying to avoid terms or sequence of words
which have caused TidBITS to be rejected.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1209>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1219>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06815>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06804>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06821>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06829>
To a degree, publishing offensive or controversial terms is a
judgment call: is the editorial value worth the potential backlash
and arbitrary rejection of TidBITS? But when we reach a point
where TidBITS cannot mention the name of Apple's Web hosting
service in the same _issue_ as a phrase such as "my" followed by
"pictures" without confusing hundreds of readers and committing
(already limited) staff hours to sorting out the problem, a line
has been crossed. When TidBITS cannot publish the name of a common
fruit in the same _issue_ as a word like "keystroke," mention a
type of medication even in passing, or discuss a well-known online
advertising campaign, we've exited the Realm of the Reasonable and
landed squarely on Planet Preposterous.
**All Done Now** -- There's no way TidBITS can hope to self-censor
against these types of mishaps: the terms and phrases are simply
too arbitrary and unpredictable. Maybe tomorrow someone will
release a new Windows worm, and commercial anti-virus software
will start blocking all email containing the words "stopwatch"
and "banana." (If you didn't get this issue as expected via email,
maybe that's why!)
As a result, there's no way we can make reasonable assurances
TidBITS will be able to reach you via email: we simply have no
way of knowing what you or your provider might consider content
non grata. We will continue to make reasonable efforts to avoid
controversial or offensive terms, and may "dress up" such terms
in ways so they are likely to get by some types of email
filtering. We will not, however, refrain from publishing
commentary about topics that are likely to set off spam filters:
that's knuckling under to the email administrators who - probably
unintentionally - have caused this situation. And although all
discussions of true censorship and freedom of the press are
generally only relevant in relation to the government, if this
sort of content filtering continues to become more prevalent,
there will be no freedom of speech through email.
So here's what you should do. If TidBITS doesn't arrive when you
expect in email, first check our Web site to make sure the issue
was published (we _do_ take a couple of issues off each year).
Then send email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, which should always
return the current issue, probably within minutes. If it hasn't
arrived in an hour or two, it's a good bet that whoever manages
your email server has a foolish content filter in place that
we've failed to anticipate in our use of the English language.
(If this requested issue does arrive, it's more likely that
there were communication problems between our servers and yours
that have cleared up since we sent the first copy.) The next step
is to ask your email administrator - nicely - if they are
performing content filtering on incoming email because you
haven't received mail you expected. You may wish to ask them
to remove their content filtering for all the reasons mentioned
above: feel free to point them at this article. These actions
won't solve the larger problem, but it might make administrators
think a little harder about the impacts of email filtering.
If all else fails, you subscribe to the announcement version
of TidBITS, which delivers a brief email message containing an
abstract of the issue and a table of contents with links to
articles on the Web. Because the announcement version of TidBITS
doesn't contain the full text of the issue, it has a good chance
of passing through content filters.
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/list.html>
$$
Non-profit, non-commercial publications may reprint articles if
full credit is given. Others please contact us. We don't guarantee
accuracy of articles. Caveat lector. Publication, product, and
company names may be registered trademarks of their companies.
This file is formatted as setext. For more information send email
to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. A file will be returned shortly.
For information: how to subscribe, where to find back issues,
and more, email <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. TidBITS ISSN 1090-7017.
Send comments and editorial submissions to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Back issues available at: <http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/>
And: <ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/>
Full text searching available at: <http://www.tidbits.com/search/>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
