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 RUMOR MILL - PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
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John Perry Barlow - co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and
lyricist for the Grateful Dead band appears to have relocated from the wilds
of Montanna to take up residence in NEW YORK CITY, where no good Salsa can
originate. But persistent rumors indicate he's working on some type of book
dealing with Cyberspace. For those who missed his original missives on
Operation Sun Devil that made the rounds online, most notably Crime and
Puzzlement, Barlow has a rare online gift - he can write. In fact, he writes
really well. We would look forward to such a book.

On the topic of the EFF, we published their announcement of their
reorganization and redirection last issue largely without comment. We thought
they might hear quite enough about it from the online community without any
of our bumbling assistance. Apparently so. They've taken quite a beating on
the wires. Partial recovery seems to involve reinstatement of Mike Godwin,
who has done quite a bit of good work counseling BBS operators on legal
positions. Under the reorganization, Godwin was "out." Rumor has it he is now
back "in" and going to join the Washington D.C. office. Almost concurrent
with the EFF's reorg, it seemed the damn burst on BBS raids this past
January/February and Godwin is quickly becoming popular with BBS operators -
probably entirely unrelated to his reinstatement, but fortuitous nonetheless.

The Clinton White House is looking to become a little bit more technically
aggressive regarding internal communications. Rumor has it that Clinton was
aghast to find a telephone system manned by operators plugging cords into
jacks to connect calls in the White House. Despite harsh economic times,
Clinton apparently feels the nation can afford a new phone system for the
White House. And electronic mail is going to figure into the equation. The
White House and CompuServe have been wrangling with the question of what you
do with all the e-mail if a public e-mail address were published. We think we
might be able to hurry things along by telling you that an Internet message
to 75300.3115@compuserve.com pretty much IS the White House. Messages to that
address have been resulting in a return message that the message buffer for
that address is full. The "buffer" was recently expanded to a 1000 slots and
will go to 10,000 soon. We understand CompuServe was actually called into the
site on February 5th to talk about an MHS hub connection to the service to
pick up mail, and helping the White House staff learn how to use various
software programs to automate the sifting, sorting, directing, and so forth
they will have to do to manage the influx of mail once the cat is out of the
bag. (For Boardwatch readers, it is out). Rush Limbaugh (70277.2502@
compuserve .com) should be all pink and giggly to learn this. He's been
pretty actively promoting CompuServe's $12.80-per-hour-overpriced service on
his radio show as THE way to be online.

Artisoft's LANtastic, despite some early misadventures with Windows and
upgrades, is apparently making some moves of interest. They now have a card
and software allowing Macs to connect to DOS networks, they apparently are
pretty much cozy with Windows 3.1, and they are introducing a VERY
interesting TCP/IP add-on for their network. BBS operators have been split on
this product for several years with many reporting all-encompassing love
affairs with LANtastic and others reporting chilling horror stories. The
company has had some internal personal changes, and released a flurry of new
stuff in the last 6 months. We're going to some effort to put the new stuff
through its paces and you can expect full details in a future issue of
Boardwatch. We're hoping to bring you some pleasant surprises...

Windows for Work Groups seems like a neat idea. A darling little e-mail
application, a group scheduler, real time "chat" and you can hook up Windows
machines with LAN hardware and no real LAN operating system except for
Windows for Work Groups. LANs for the rest of us. This seems to be a
Microsoft jab at Novell, part of an emerging battle of software titans.
Novell has made a fortune in high priced LAN software averaging some $2500 a
pop, while Microsoft never has been able to quite give it away. So apparently
Microsoft has decided to literally give it away. But there are problems. For
one thing, it really won't work with any other already installed LAN. And if
you have mixed Windows and DOS machines, you are out of luck. Rumor has it
that DOS 6.0 will include the LAN links to work with Windows for Work Groups.
But even worse, the FIRST question asked by technical support groups for
software all over the country has just been revised to "Do You Use Windows
for Work Groups." Apparently, most everything has problems with it at this
point...

Interesting numbers department - Prodigy Services is now noting that
subscribers are entering some 170,000 messages DAILY into their now 400 some
odd bulletin boards. Including both reads and writes, they are processing
some 400 message transactions per second on the system.

RAM Mobile Data is making some progress selling their pricey wireless e-mail
network. Hewlett Packard is going to announce built-in software in their new
HP-95 palmtop model to work with the MOBIDEM wireless modem. Intel is
apparently going to announce distribution of a compatible wireless modem. And
Bell South is going to extend the RAM Mobile Data network to another 192
cities. We still think this technology, pricing, and network model is a BIG
loser. But they are working hard at gaining allies.

