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Internet Story: 10 Dec 1998
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| 50th Anniversary - Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Today is the 50th anniversary of the day in 1948 that the General Assembly of the
United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The
U.N. is hosting a series of commemorative events today, including addresses by U.N.
secretary general Kofi Annan and French president Jacques Chirac, as well as the
presentation of human rights awards. In the US the EFF
is sponsoring "Cyber Rights = Human Rights:
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is Not a Local Ordinance in Cyberspace"
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Check out the UN
site for lots of historic photographs and loads of information relating to this.
Online Surgery So you thought you'd seen it all, eh? Well go take a look at just what happens when you have your breasts "augmented", or when someone Hoovers yer innards. There's more to come. After just completing a successful screening of an anonymous breast lifting (mastopexy) we are to be treated to a penis enlargement operation just before Christmas - keep your eyes peeled on http://www.OnlineSurgery.com/. The worrying thing is that this site is owned by Internet Entertainment Group Inc., a Seattle-based company best known for Sexquotes (sexquotes.com), a Web site mixing pornography and stock information.
No Smut For Us At the other end of the scale, Infoseek (search engine, 43% owned by Disney), has announced that it will no longer be showing advertising from the sex industry. The move is seen as a precursor to the beta launch of their joint venture with Disney - the Go Network, expected to be live next week. It was always seen as unlikely that Disney would enter into any deal that was not seen as family-friendly, hence the change.
New Web Standard Who says they can't all get together behind a standard? Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Netscape, Xerox are all backing the newly announced WebDAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning) standard. WebDAV is an extension to the HTTP standard web protocol that standardizes the way that web authoring tools (such as Microsoft's FrontPage) publish information to web servers. "HTTP is a protocol for reading documents, and DAV is a set of extensions to HTTP that lets you both read and write documents," said Microsoft product manager for platform marketing Steve Sklepowich. "It lets you move Web documents around as you would as part of your file system." The IETFs RFC for WebDAV will take between 6 to 24 months to ratify, however Microsoft has committed to adopting the RFC specification (at least) in their Office 2000 product range and NT2000.
$2.35 billion This Season That's the latest prediction from DataQuest (a division of Gartner Group) of online spending this season in the USA. Up from $1 billion last year. And, just in from Reuters:
- NEW YORK (Reuters) - As some shopping malls blame light crowds of holiday shoppers on
unseasonably warm weather, they
might want to pay close attention to a small, but rapidly growing competitor--online retailers. Industry experts expect online retailing to triple this holiday season to approximately $3.5 billion. Still, retailing analysts say online shopping remains a small portion of retailing, considering that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. alone is on track for more than $120 billion in sales for its year ending January 1999. See also, http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/16741.html
Nice story in the NY Times about online shopping (Warning: access is free but you need to register with them first). Not much regular readers won't have learned in this column, but much better presented with some nice examples... you want o buy a used cello? Check out http://knock-knock.com/mie/cellos.htm. Just a shame it's all in the US!
See also: Myths & realities of E-Commerce
1 in 3 households on the net by 2003 Datamonitor is predicting that by the year 2003 1 in every 3 households across Europe will be using the Net. That represents an increase of about 250% on current values (from 12.5M to over 43M). Driving this increase are several factors - increased uptake of PCs (and other Internet enabled devices), decreasing ISP charges, and improved content. Today, the German Internet access market is by far the largest in Europe, making up more than 40 percent of the total Internet access market in Europe and generating US$948 million. The U.K. is the next largest market at $519 million in revenues and the Netherlands follows with $196 million. The least-developed Internet market is Greece, with only $4 million in revenues and 20,000 subscribers.
4 Hours to Bury the Cat? Well it may have take Mrs. Conclusion 4 hours to bury her cat but the average surfer takes about 10 minutes to read online news, according to a study by Jupiter Communications. Nearly half of online users turn to Internet news sources for quick headlines and details, but television remains the overwhelmingly popular source for breaking news, according to a survey issued on Tuesday. Mark Mooradian, Jupiter's director of Consumer Content Strategies, said that with 28 percent of the U.S. population now connected to the Internet either at home, school, or the office, the growing popularity of online news is no surprise. Mooradian said this finding "shows that many online users choose to use online news as a source for quick headlines and breaking news, not for deep analysis."
Correction: Mouse 30 yesterday! Seems I jumped the gun on Monday - it was yesterday, the 9th, that was the birthday of the mouse - see the two CNN articles covering this #1 & #2.
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Die Linuxbierwanderung! The Linux Beer Hike - Linux anoraks like to do things different, we've known that all along. So pick up your laptop and hiking boots and get thee off to the Bavarian Alps (August 9-15, 1999). Participants will take part in outdoor Linux lectures by day, and make frequent nighttime visits to "Bavarian brewpubs." Keep your eye on the event's web site for more details. |
And we end today with a song for the event:
Mein durst ist nicht fur Wasser
Mein durst ist nicht fur Milch
Mein durst ist nicht fur Saft
Mein durst, es ist fur Bier
Bier Bier Bier
Ich liebe Bier
Fuerlich ist der Mann mit Bier
Fuerlich ist das Maedchen
Fuerlich ist das kleine Junge
Bier ist gut fuer dich
Bier Bier Bier
Ich liebe Bier
See http://slashdot.org/articles/98/12/02/1644237.shtml
Andrew Stringer, © Pendle.Net Ltd, 1998