Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Some reactions to the March 1, 1995 issue. Unfortunately they are mostly negative. :( First, FIND A FORMAT! It was really hard to read your latest issue with the headlines in ten million different fonts. Please try and find a format which is easy on the eye and does not take away from the content. It was really distracting to go from one story to the next and have a different style/size or form of headline. Please try and formalize this part of the paper's layout

Next, I looked to the "Internet Product Reviews" with some interest. It is important to try and make the new computer and network technologies available to all who want to try and use them. Sadly, the product reviews were written without full knowledge of how to use or what they were! One common misconception is that Usenet equals Internet, or that Usenet News is on the Internet. Usenet News is a collection of world wide discussion forums which can be accessed through methods other than the Internet. This is a misconception which the media as a whole seems to be unable to grasp. I would hope that Columbia's Science and Engineering newspaper would have enough comprehension to understand and put forward technological understandings that are closer to the truth. The article on News Xpress is weird in that it makes it seem like the only other available newsreader is PINE - whose main functionality is a mail program! Pine was just recently (last year or year and a half?) upgraded to be a newsreader. As such it has severe limitations. Other news readers available on CUNIX include TRN, and if you are lucky to have an ethernet connection or SLIP, Trumpet for PCs and Newsgrazer for Macs (there are other graphical interfaces). The "Internet Terms of Endearment" article was a good idea. Sadly, some of the definitions were fairly inaccurate. HTML is used to link both multimedia files (graphics, sound, movies, etc.) along with text. Without text, this collage of multimedia would be without purpose! Many of the articles in the issue seemed to leave out text as a useful medium for communication. Again Usenet is restricted to the Internet.

It is good that the Moment is attempting to introduce new networking software to students, however, it would be good if the articles could provide a stronger foundation upon which students can build their knowledge from. It was interesting to note that most of the article spoke about graphical programs which need to be run from a MAC or IBM-PC environment hooked to Columbia's computing resources via SLIP or Ethernet. It would be good if the Moment could provide assistance to students who only can access CUNIX through text-based modem hookups or on-campus computers. Articles on how to use real newsreaders such as TRN would prove useful.

Michael Hauben CC'95

Ed. Note:

I am sorry to hear that your response to the March 1 issue of the Moment was negative. I will do my best to address each of your concerns in this response. First, the paper has a strict layout format which my staff and I do our best to adhere to. Yet we are relatively lax with headlines. We do limit the number of fonts which can be used per issue. For the last issue, 74% of headline fonts were either Times or Helvetica Black, and 97% came from two font families. Good headlines are meant to be distracting in order to get the reader's attention.

We incorrectly stated that Usenet is a collection of news groups on the Internet. To be more exact, there is almost nothing on the Internet, yet it is becoming (primarily because of the media, and the introduction of people with little computer experience to the Internet) common place that anything that can be accessed via the Internet is said to be on the Internet.

I feel that Mr. Dubler was clear, in his article, when he wrote "To access Usenet, one needs to use a news reader such as PINE." Also, PINE is currently defined by the man page on CUNIX as "a Program for Internet News and Email."

The "Internet Terms of Endearment" article was meant to give people a description of what some common terms represent. Some were not complete descriptions, but I feel all were sufficient to convey their meaning.

I completely agree that it would be a good idea if someone would write a piece on ways of getting around CUNIX and the Internet in a text-based scenario. It is difficult to find people to write good articles about such modes of communication since the Columbia computer system is changing to a more graphical environment. Thank you for your time and comments; they were sincerely appreciated by myself and my staff.


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