Online Dictionary of Internet and Computer Terms
PowWow is an incredible personal communicator. It's elegant simplicity belies
it's power. It's very easy to install. It allows you to keyboard-chat
with folks from all over the world. While this is generally used to
make new friends, it also allows you to connect your computer with
that of someone you already know, transfer files from your computer
to your friend's computer via the internet, share a white-board
(for drawings), or even surf the web together.
It seems like another person fires up their PowWow, which registers
almost instantly on the PowWow server, every second! Which makes
the list of those who've just logged in ever-changing, and thus very
interesting. It's also a pretty good way to learn of the web sites of
those people, which leads to exploring and learning. It's also a pretty
good way to make your web site known to others.
There were 1,641,926 registered users of this freeware product as of
Nov 3 1997. The latest version is Version 4.1 as of June, 2000
(which I have not yet tried). Versions below 4.0 are no longer supported.
With version 3.0b3, I finally could do voice chatting, and it's
pretty good, though only hands-free if you have a full-duplex sound card.
The voice chat feature is about as reliable as a good clean fast solid
storm-free internet connection (on both ends)
(test yours now!).
The nifty new text-to-speech feature is very reliable and sometimes amusing.
In the paraphrased
words of Philip Zimmermann, author of
PGP,
the first government that attains the ability to know everything
that everyone communicates to everyone else will likely be the
last government ever elected.
You probably send very little snail mail, and almost none of
any real consequence, on postcards! You place your written
correspondence in sealed envelopes. But email is far easier
for others to read (and store?) than are communications
on post cards. In that vein, think of PGP as an envelope for
your email. It can also be used to encrypt what you store on
your hard disk, so that only you can gain meaningful access it.
PGP offers military-grade cryptography for the masses. The U.S.
government, which seems to mistakenly believe that it has been endowed
with some sacred 'right' to eavesdrop (listen secretly to the private
conversations of others) finally, in January of 1996, dropped it's
legal(?) case against Philip Zimmermann for having released PGP to
the masses (us). The U.S. government does retain a claim of the
right to control export of PGP. Despite this, however, PGP has
somehow managed to find its way into the hands of those in other
countries. In some cases, the privacy offered by PGP has saved
the identities and lives of those who otherwise would have been
persecuted by totalitarian governments.
The real beauty of PGP is the public/private key pairs that it
generates. This allows you to widely distribute your public
key via unsecured channels. With PGP and my public key (below),
you can encrypt a message so that only I can read it.
PGP v2.6.2 takes a bit of time to install. In Bill's World, it requires
adding 3 lines to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. And, for ease of use
under Billsoft Windows, a graphical interface (shell) is highly
recommended. And while there are several ways to tie PGP directly
to your email program, I prefer to be able to interface with PGP
via the clipboard or a file using the graphical interface.
There are now newer, 32-bit, bloatware versions of PGP that you
can use without modifying your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. But if you use
a newer version and choose Diffie-Hellman keys, you will not be able
to communicate with long-time PGP users, who use RSA keys.
Just in time for the millennium, PGPfone v2.1 has been released.
This free download turns your multimedia computer into a secure
'net phone!
Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. Home Page
Here's my public PGP key (copy/paste this to a file named dspubkey.asc,
Well, I finally tried
FreeTel. And it's easy and it works. It's advertiser-supported.
If you like the idea of having a computer-to-computer(s) connection, you still
will prefer PowWow. But if having voice-actuated free voice communication
from one person to another is what you're after, you definitely should check
out FreeTel. (PowWow takes advantage of the fact that the internet
is the best communications tool ever devised. FreeTel tries to turn
it into a communications appliance, and partially succeeds.)
FreeTel also offers a pair (in/out) of tiny keyboard chat windows
and the ability for friends to send files across the 'net.
The voice chat feature is about as reliable as a good clean fast solid
storm-free internet connection (on both ends)
(test yours now!).
Caveat: during high-usage periods, access is restricted. Priority
access is available, but that's not free.
It seems to me that while Bill's busy trying to take over the world,
the good folks at Netscape have been busy bringing it together, allowing
folks both in and out of the Billsoft world to share the goodness of
Netscape and The Web across a variety of computing environments. I like
that; inclusion rather than exclusion.
I'd hate to think that only folks who were in Bill's world could
properly access/view the WWW. What a sad day that would be...
In addition to having the best and fastest browser, Netscape's EMail
Client is just about the best there is, with it's 3-window (folders,
msg headers, msg) arrangement. And the way they work together (urls
that appear in your mail/news msgs appear as valid blue underlined
links, and clicking on one brings up the browser window and directs
it there!) is sweet synergy. And you're just a few clicks away from
possessing it...
Here is a site
at the University of Illinois that keeps track of, and summarizes, accesses
by various browsers to some 14K hosts in 75 countries, last time I checked,
which showed about 60% Netscape and 35% IE. But don't feel too bad for Bill.
It also showed about 80% Windows and 12% Mac. Updated daily; you can also
look up stats
for the most recent week or month or longer; the site also has links to
other sites' statistics.
Here is one of the best pages around for checking your computer's clock:
As you may or may not know, the
InterNIC
is a cooperative activity between the National Science
Foundation, Network Solutions, Inc. and AT&T.
InterNIC is responsible for the registration of domain names on the internet.
From InterNIC's web page you can access all sorts of internet resources.
You can even use it to help you locate an ISP.
InterNIC has a web interface to
WhoIs.
This allows you to quickly and easily locate some basic information about
any domain on the 'net.
Ah, the internet. It is its own best resource.
The model of economics I learned required informed
consumers for capitalism to work properly. So here's some
information for you.
A list of internet service providers, a way to determine if
you're ready to let go of aohell and move out into the big
world, and even free permanent email address resources, so
you need never again burden yourself with the inconvenience
of having to tell everyone about a new email address every
time you actually become so bold as to switch to a better
service provider.
Just as democracy cannot work well if we do not vote wisely with our
ballots, capitalism cannot work well if we do not vote wisely with
our wallets...
The "no one knows you're a dog" sense of anonymity on the 'net is largely a myth. Most web
sites know where you're from and what operating system and sometimes even what kind of
computer you're using.
The Anonymizer will let you get to the site
of your choosing (or it gets the site to you) via their system,
which acts similar to a proxy, without revealing information about you.
The Anonymizer
While practically everyone heard about the Department Of Justice's
web site having been altered on August 17, 1996, very few
actually got to see the alterations.
And so, as not only a historical public service, but also to augment the
incomplete presentation by the more traditional media, 2600 Magazine has preserved a copy of the hacked DOJ site.
Then, in September, the CIA's page was abruptly altered. In November,
a furrier's site's content was, shall I say, revised. December, the
Air Force. (I think hackers must get Octobers off!) In March,
NASA took quite a hit. Stay tuned, and remember to change your password...
As 2600 warns, both the hacked and unaltered sites are presented
uncensored, so be sure and shield your children:
Pow Wow
See who's just fired up their PowWow
Pretty Good Privacy
PGPfone 2.1 FREE Secure 'Net Phone!
International PGP, news, tools...
Nat Queen's PGP Page
Good fresh (2004) PGP downloads/resources site
Download (89K!) my favorite efficient W9x PGP shell
Download Pretty Good Privacy 2.6.2 from M.I.T. (U.S. only) (original link)
Download PGP 2.x (recommended) (DOS executable + W32gui)
from which you can add it to your PGP keyring):
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.6.2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=3qwY
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
FreeTel
Netscape
Newer (and slower) Netscape Browsers
Strengthen Netscape SSL Encryption
The Correct Time
WHOIS
Internet Service Providers
Observing AOL
AOL Sucks!
Graduating From AOL
Deleting AOL from your system
Free Complete Email Service
Free Web Page
Privacy
Anonymous Email
Cookie Pal
Recently Hacked Sites - Government
Visit the 9/96 hacked CIA site
Visit the 11/96 hacked furrier's site
Visit the 12/96 hacked AF
site
Visit the 2/97 hacked Indonesian govt
site
Visit the 3/97 hacked NASA site
Link to 2600's list of hacked sites
Defacement Mirror and more
History of Cap'n Crunch!
