Flux
Happy Gosh Darn New Year: Golly! Peruse this month's Electric Word and you see two cases of Morality's Stormtroopers on Parade. In one case, a guy was told that he couldn't even draw stuff he was thinking. Time for the nutty legislators in Oklahoma and Florida either to get with the program or, better yet, secede.
Eye on the Newt: Speaking of nutty legislators, probable House Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich (georgia6@hr.house.gov) tossed an impressive-sounding bone to the digital masses after his party won control of Congress. He proposes that all committee reports and other government info generated in Congress's daily work be "electronically available" at the instant it is released, so that "every American everywhere in the country has the same access as the lobbyists, has the same opportunity as the insiders, and that information is available automatically for free to the entire county when it's made available to the members of Congress." Sounds great, Newt. But we already know what you'll say when it comes to actually doing this: "Oh, gee, you mean it's gonna cost money?" Case in point: 1993 House legislation that mandated its Legis online service be opened up to the public. So far, nothing's happened. Why? No funding.
Mourning Cantwell: The GOP landslide swept aside Rep. Maria Cantwell, the feisty freshman who spearheaded the fight against Clipper in Congress last year. Her replacement, Republican Rick White, thinks loosening export controls on encryption technologies threatens national security.
Net.News: The Internet Society reports a third-quarter 1994 net.growth of 21 percent. That's even faster than the explosive growth of the past four years. The .net domain, which is used by most commercial service providers, is growing at an astounding 66 percent. Based on these figures, the society projects the number of Internet hosts will grow to 100 million by 1999. Also of note are the fastest-growing domains by country: Argentina (from 248 to 1,287), Iran (from 4 to 14), and Peru (from 42 to 114). The US grew from 16,556 to 24,861 total net domains. For all the facts, ftp://ftp.isoc.org/isoc/charts/hosts3.ppt.
FedEx.com: Look for both FedEx and UPS to be online in the near future. The competing package-delivery services will create areas on CompuServe and Prodigy (UPS), and AOL and CommerceNet (FedEx) in the coming months.
Only 11 Months Till 1996: Microsoft anticipates 30,000 customer-service calls a day once it releases Windows95, its "easy to use" operating system. The company has contracted with five separate customer-service providers to handle the deluge. Is it just us, or is Microsoft not quite certain how "easy to use" Windows95 really will be?
Watch Yer Ass, Bill: The combo of Microsoft, the yet-to-be-beta Microsoft Network online service, and Intuit may have given the fossilized banking system a wake-up call. A senior vice president of electronic banking at Meridian Bancorp Inc. told BusinessWeek that "Not all dinosaurs roll over and die. Some of 'em can run real fast and bite the hell out of you." Meanwhile, America Online's Steve Case whined recently that "Microsoft should show some restraint and not try to leverage its operating system" as the de facto window into the online world. "Show some restraint."
PCTV Trivia: The Electronic Industries Association reports that personal computers accounted for US$8 billion in gross sales in 1994 - that's $500 million more than sales of color televisions for the same period.
Mighty Morphin' Power Legislators: You know that really dumb show in which blow-dried teenagers in shiny spandex fight off stuntmen in ridiculous alien monster rubber suits? It's called Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and it's the Speed Racer of the '90s - kids eat it up like Coco Puffs. Only those francophile Canadians have banned it because violence in the show does not contribute to "the development of either plot or characters." In fact, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council insists, "violence is depicted as the only method of resolving conflict." Memo to the writers at Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: add this line to each episode: "C'mon guys, let's go kick some rubber space-alien butt." That oughta pass muster as "plot development."
One more look: First reader to guess the secret code on our cover this month wins a free subscription and a trip to your local CompUSA to find out why we had to make it a secret in the first place.
