zjod.net

sos@zjod.net

My name is Steve Siegfried and this is my home page in cyberspace. Bypassing the ethereal nature of just what cyberspace is for a moment, why would anyone want a home there? I already have a home. What do I need with a new one in cyberspace? Feh!

But, by finding this web-page, you've found my home in cyberspace. So, in a way, I really do have two homes. So, if I have two homes, shouldn't I also have two home-pages? Well, actually, I did have a second home-page, but it looked pretty much like this one, so I sold to a dot-com multi-level marketing company for options on a gizillion shares. <sigh!> THAT sure didn't work out.

As you can see, I've furnished my cyberhome with stuff I've found along the infobahn. Sort of early cyber-okie... which, now that I think about it, kinda describes me, too.

Contents:

Cyberspace

Your Government at Work

Skip This Part if Catherine MacKinnon is One of Your Personal Heros.

Computer Related Stuff

My Resume

News, Weather, Sports and Entertainment

Finding Stuff on the Net

Useless Wastes of Electrons

Disclaimer

Cyberspace

           The mainland papers will exaggerate this 
               -- Anonymous man to Time reporter
                  December 7, 1941

So what is Cyberspace? Here's some definitions I've found useful when talking about the 'net:

Internet:A vast collection of computers, all talking to each other over everything from modems at 10 characters per second to hyper-mega-links at millions of characters per second. That you can even read this page means you're on the Internet right now!
Cyberspace : A popular marketing term for the Internet.
Infonaut: A consumer on the 'net.
Infonaught: An America OnLine or Microsoft Network subscriber.
Information Superhighway: What liberal politicians called the Internet before they called it the NII.
The National Information Infrastructure: (also NII): What liberal politicians now call the Internet... As if if was only a U.S. thing, right? Harrumph!
Infobahn: The Internet after Newt Gingrich, Senator Exon and Janet Reno get through with it.
World-Wide Web:(also WWW)Cyberspace for people who can't program and like pictures. The Web is also the ideal medium for literate people with short attention spans. If you can see my cartoonish picture at the top of this page, not only are you on the Internet right now, but you're also on the WWW. So how does it feel being in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
Usenet: The news distribution mechanism of the net. Remember kids, it's the Usenet news not the Internet news.

Please note that my definition of cyberspace differs somewhat from some of the X-generation's:

"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation...A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..." --William Gibson, Neuromancer

But mostly, cyberspace is about making money.

Your Government at Work:

In the New Mexico Legislature's 1995 session, Sen. Duncan Scott, a Republican from Albuquerque, proposed an amendment to a psychologist regulatory bill offered by another senator. The Scott amendment would have dramatically changed the face of New Mexico's legal system.

The admendment said:

``When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant's competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The surface of the hat shall be imprinted with stars and lightning bolts. Additionally, a psychologist or psychiatrist shall be required to don a white beard that is not less than 18 inches in length, and shall punctuate crucial elements of his testimony by stabbing the air with a wand. Whenever a psychologist or psychiatrist provides expert testimony regarding a defendant's competency, the bailiff shall contemporaneously dim the courtroom lights and administer two strikes to a Chinese gong.''

Source of information: Manchester Union Leader via rec.humor.funny from ClariNet.

Skip This Part if Catherine MacKinnon is One of Your Personal Heros.

Remember how Newton Minnow (okay, so maybe it was Marshall McLuhan) once called TV a vast wasteland? After all, where else could people like Ricki Lake or Rush Limbaugh become Personalities, even for fifteen minutes? Well, the Internet achieved that status in half the time it took any of the broadcast television networks to get there. On the up side, the cult of personality hasn't yet reached too far into cyberspace as net.personalities are relatively few and far between. Never the less, the public flocked (and is continuing to flock) to the net. Depending on who you choose to believe, there's currently somewhere between 10 and 50 million folks world-wide hooked up to the net. Most of 'em are younger than 36, male, and can't get a date to save their pathetic lives but continue to use the 'net as a substitute for dating. Don't believe me? Tune into the alt.sex.* stuff on the Usenet news and find out for yourself. The shear volume of stuff is mind bending. If your philosophy of life leaves no room for different philosophies of life, the content of the alt.sex.* newsgroups probably is as well.

If selecting that last item gave you a No such newsgroup error of some kind, you might want to ask your internet supplier why they stoop to censoring the Usenet news. If being able to view hundreds of gigabytes of copyright violations and explore lifestyles you've never imagined is really important to you, button the the blue ribbon at the of this page. Why? Well because not being able to view hundreds of gigabytes of porn uploaded to the net is a free speech issue. For those fellow Americans who'd like a peek at what our founding fathers thought about important stuff like that, click here. For a more up-to-date peek at what an actual net.personality thinks on these weighty matters, click here for an essay by John Perry Barlow (one of the founders of the EFF).

Personally, I've seen some of the porn on the net, and it isn't very good. So if it's important to you and you can't get this stuff, it's really no loss... go buy a Playboy or visit your local library or book store and pick up a copy of The Tropic of Cancer or any Anïas Nin book. And if this approach isn't your speed, then get about 9,999,999 friends, some banners, torches, and pitchforks and go for a Sunday afternoon walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. Better hurry, though, I understand they're putting up barricades.

Yeah, well now that you're here... what next? Pointers to other places of possible interest include:

Computer Related Stuff:

Linux - Free Posix compliant Unix for all sorts of computers, probably even yours
Used to work here, banging on Fortran compilers & runtime libraries. SGI makes computers and sells 'em. They also make and sell software, do consulting, research, and various other high-tech type stuff.
and
I used to I work here. CMSI does lotsa cool stuff with CM5's and owns Encore, who does lotsa cool stuff with real time..
I used to work here, too... banging on Fortran90. Digital makes computers and sells 'em. They also make and sell software, do consulting, research, and various other high-tech type stuff. After I left, they got bought by . Later, most of the people I worked with got traded to Intel in some soft of corporate "and a player to be named later" deal... kinda like Major League Baseball, but probably not as rewarding for those involved.
Used to work for these folks, as well. After I left, they got bought by , who later sold the Cray portion of SGI to Tera, which promptly renamed itself "Cray, Inc.".
Pointers to other `` supercomputer'' references

News & Entertainment:

My home town newspaper puts out an electronic edition.
Pioneer Planet - My other hometown newspaper, The Pioneer Press, which apparently thinks having a stupid web-name is cool.
Yahoo News digest - Mostly Reuter's articles, all kept up to date.
A.P. News Wire
- All the news that's fit to download
This stuff needs Real Audio, which you can download free here.
- NPR Online News.
- A.P. Radio Network News.
- B.B.C. World Service, News on the Hour..
- B.B.C. Radio 5, Live broadcast..
- 92 KQRS Radio.
Dilbert - If you have to ask why, you probably won't think it's funny.
News of the Wierd by Chuck Shepherd. Chuck is one of my personal heros.
Powerball, HotLotto and Gopher5 lotto results because, hey, lightening has to strike somewhere, right? But, in case it strikes somewhere else, other gambling options are also available.

Finding Stuff on the Net:

Search engines:
- Google - Forget all those other search engines. These guys are the real deal.
- Yahoo - The card catalog of the net... go there, type a subject and ShaZAMM more useless references to off-topic pages than you'll ever know what to do with.
- Alta Vista from good folks at Digital... search the Web or Usenet.
- All4One - A meta-search engine
- Savvy Search - Yeah, right.
- WebCrawler - Like Yahoo, but faster and dumber.
Finding people:
- Switchboard - Telephone book of the net. Find people and businesses by name and state.
- DejaNews - Search Usenet News postings that go waaaaaaaaay back... so watch what you say now, okay kids?
- NetPages - Another phone book.
- Internic - Gopher server.
- Internet address finder - Email addresses
- Four-1-1 - Email addresses
- A Directory of directories for finding directories of almost everything (by category).
Sending 'em stuff once you've found 'em:
- US Postal Service - Nine digit Zip codes for snail mail... get yours here.
- UPS package tracking
- FedEx package tracking
- Faxaway - An email to fax gateway... first one's free!
- Amazon.com - Books - Over 1 million volumes
- Ebay.com - watch a seller's auto-bid robot try to jack up the price for something you thought was a bargin.

Avoiding junk email:

Ziggy's anti-spam page

Useless Wastes of Electrons:
The Internet, of course, is more than just a place
to find pictures of people having sex with dogs.
--Time Magazine, 3 July 1995

God's home page - Yeah, even He's on the internet now.
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest home page- Most C programs are already obfuscated, so send in your programs today!
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) - 8 out of 10 intellectuals agree that television is the way it is because of this man. The new wave of Netizen-intellectuals blame him for the 'net, too.

The large print giveth... and the fine print taketh away.
The words "Compaq", "Digital", "Cray Research", "Silicon Graphics", "Intel", "IBM", "Apple", et cetera and their respective logos are trademarks and/or service-marks of their respective holders, Digital Equipment,^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Compaq^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Hewlett Packard, Cray Research,^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Silicon Graphics^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Tera^H^H^H^H^H Cray, Intel, IBM, Apple, et cetera. The author makes no claim of ability, usability, serviceability, merchantability, warrantability, profitability or sanity on their behalf.
Steven Siegfried, the author, is solely responsible for the opinions, statements of fact, rumors, innuendo and ennui expressed, written or implied on all web pages anchored at http://zjod.net/sos bearing the legend ``© 1996-2008, Ziggy's Auto Body and Tanning''.
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