Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 17:14:33 -0800 From: Jim Warren Subject: GovAccess#12: Policy; $20/*YEAR* access; Library online; Wildlife; more Feb.12, 1994 "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1820 [passed along by retired Linus Pauling research librarian Ruth Reynolds] SHARE WORTHY WORDS Please forward *brief* (max. of ~5 lines + citation) quotes from the history of our nation, and the much longer history of freedom/liberty and democracy for prefix to future postings. Please verify wording & source. (History extends back in time, starting from a minute or so ago.) === WHEN SENDING INFO, PLEASE INDICATE IF I MAY REPOST IT & MAY CITE YOU AS SOURCE I receive some information. Some of it - perhaps much of it - is *well* worth sharing by repost to this list and/or elsewhere; the power of the net. Some of it is highly sensitive and/or provocative. CONTENT Some of it is clearly offered in confidence, not for reposting - and I have and will honor such confidences, when requested or otherwise self-evident. (I don't burn my sources! :-) Some of it is clearly offered for reposting, which is - by definition - at my discretion. Some is ambiguous as to whether I may or may not repost. Thus, GovAccess groundrule: I reserve the right to repost anything I receive, unless it includes an *explicit request* that I not do so - which I will honor. SOURCE I always *prefer* to give full attribution to my sources - of ideas, opinions and alleged information - by including the header source-address and date-stamp as is customary across the net. However, because I get so much "inside" information, I will often redact (remove) all source- identifing components before reposting - especially for possibly-sensitive or provocative information, lest the source harmed or disciplined for their disclosures. Please explicitly state whether I may give due credit the my source, which is my preference, or should remove source-id info before reposting. Otherwise, God Forbid!, I will exercise my own ever-so-imperfect judgement. === SV-PAL OFFERS INTERNET ACCESS FOR $20 PER *YEAR*!! All the talk and promotion for the information highway has companies and investment groups scrambling to determine their part in this new age for communications. Much of the attention is focused on how the network will be organized, architected and constructed. But more important is who will it serve, what is its benefits and how can it be used. Answers to these issues are more likely to come from the efforts of groups like SV-PAL, the Silicon Valley - Public Access Link, when it opens its doors in late February. SV-PAL is committed to increasing the numbers of people in Silicon Valley that access and benefit from on-line information. SV-PAL's three fold objectives: o Provide broader on-line access to local information, o Provide on-line access to global information through the Internet, and o Educate people about on-line resources, goes to the heart of determining the purposes and values for the coming age of communications. Because SV-PAL is so committed to expanding the access to on-line information beyond the present base of users, a comprehensive menuing interface was developed to simplify the user interface. One of its most amazing attributes is how the resources of the Internet are made available without technical education on UNIX shell commands for users. Preparation for SV-PAL's general roll out at the end of February has been progressing for about a year. Over 100 users have been in a Beta Test since October of 1993. By March SV- PAL plans to make available to individuals and households full local information and Internet access for a twenty dollar annual fee. Special arrangements for independent accounts for minors will also be available. There are no time based usage charges although individual sessions will be limited to one hour of connect time in order to provide equity of access. Local information will include items like city council agendas, schedules for cultural attractions, schedules for youth activities and sports programs as well as information of a more commercial nature. Later, SV-PAL expects to offer a geographical data base that allows for graphically locating events, specific activity routes and any other graphical information. Global information is provided through access to the Internet: o Electronic Mail to the 20+ million Internet subscribers around the world, o Telnet connections to remote hosts, o FTP, WWW and Gopher access to remote data bases, o News net access to the thousands of news topics carried on the Internet. Other features may be added in the future. Even though its doors are not yet officially open, SV-PAL became instrumental to at least one part of the world's largest information resource (the Internet) when it offered the first Gopher service to the new California Legislative Data Base in January just days after the data became available to the Internet. In its first week of existence almost 1000 inquiries were made through this Gopher. Most of these were from people at other Internet hosts pointing their Gophers at SV-PAL's Gopher for the information. Just as significant as the actual on-line services are the educational programs designed to make novice users more effective in approaching on-line services. For a nominal fee anyone can attend a two hour class that describes how to use the on-line facility including the Internet. In preparation for general availability, SV-PAL held six classes in January and plans to conduct seven in February. A full schedule is planned through the spring and early summer. Beyond classes, SV-PAL plans to locate public access terminals with some limitations on the functions provided at various public locations around the south bay. At one of these terminals people can experience accessing data remotely as well as getting information about what is happening in the Silicon Valley. Although inspired by the success of freenets, SV-PAL is a significantly new type of on-line experiment. SV-PAL is designed to be self sustaining. Other freenets have been spectacularly successful. But, typically they depend upon a large institutional or corporate sponsor. SV-PAL is planned to be self sustaining. Chartered as a 501(c)(3) non profit corporation, the organization benefits those who choose to donate equipment and in fact depends upon equipment donations. The volunteer staff of over 30 people come from Silicon Valley's most respected companies. Systems procedures comparable to the procedures at the volunteers host companies have been developed to ensure SV-PAL's smooth operation. The beta test has been operating from Monta Vista High School in Cupertino. (The school Vice-President Gore visited in January.) A second site, networked with the first, will be brought up at San Jose State University, in February. A third site is planned in the next few months. Organizations with information to provide are encouraged to contact SV-PAL. Information providers are grouped into those with less than one Megabyte of information, one to ten megabytes, and those with more than ten megabytes. Information may be loaded onto SV-PAL's hosts as text files or may be built into a postgres database to allow users to search through the information. Special programs allow information providers with large and dynamic information to maintain the data on their own machines and be contacted on-demand when users make specific requests. Very nominal annual fees comparable to the user fee are charged. For those seeking to learn what the coming age of on-line communications and information is really about, you might want to call SV-PAL at 415/967-2873. --- >From selmeier@svpal.org Sun Feb 6 22:17:10 1994 I am the marketing director for SV-PAL. You may direct any questions back to me. Thank you. --Bill Selmeier === PUBLIC LIBRARY OFFERS 80 TERMINALS CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET Here 60 miles north of San Francisco, our Santa Rosa Public library announced free public access to the internet starting in March, the only one in the state of CA. This has been brought about through a State Grant and is in concert with our State University System. Not only will there be 80 terminals located throught our public library system, there will be eight dialup lines for people to connect from home or business. Hope this helps. PJ ~ Patrick Laherty ~ Education Specialist-Technology plahert@ctp.org ~ Sonoma County Office of Education Voice (707) 524-2809 ~ 5340 Skylane Blvd Fax (707) 578-0220 ~ Santa Rosa, CA 95403 === CALIF STATE GOVT INFO-TECH STRATEGY -- SANS PUBLIC ACCESS? [from a possibly-sensitive source] ...have you seen a copy of "Strategic Direction for Information Technology in California State Govenment 1993-1999" published by the DOF Office of Information Technology last July? (Copies available via snailmail at 915 L Street, Sacramento, 95814-3706) Lots of chatter about "strategic management of information technology", "infrastructure-based technical management" and "competitive management of information technology" but not a word that I saw on a quick cruise through the document of public access to the resources. The official snapshot of information technology implementation in state government. === NATIONAL WILDLIFE SEEKS ONLINE INPUT TO ADMINISTRATION PLANNING Organization: National Wildlife Federation > Date: Fri, 21 Jan 1994 20:23:55 GMT > Approved: riddle@tic.com (Moderator, Prentiss Riddle) > > The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has asked President Clinton to > issue an Executive Order directing all agencies of the federal government > to establish processes for accepting on-line comments to public notices. > A copy of NWF's request follows. Please express support by sending your > comments to president@whitehouse.gov -- Bill Clinton's e-mail address. > You can obtain further information about NWF's Request for Action > regarding the Administration's "Alaska Wetlands Initiative" by sending > e-mail to: alaska-wetlands-info@igc.apc.org === CALIF DEFENSE-WORK CONVERSION PROJECT From : "John Jewell (jjewell@library.ca.gov) Tue Feb 8 11:36:35 1994 Subject: Defense Conversion Workshop (California) Good to see the AB1624 materials now up. We have pointed our internal gopher at both the UCSC and SV-PAL gophers, so that our staff can have access and see which structure is most useful for them. One of the people here at the Research Bureau has put together what I think is an outstanding workshop on defense conversion the last week in February. The speakers are major players, both from Washington and here in California). I have sent announcements to PACS-L and CALDOC-L, and will be sending to GOVDOC-L, but would like to get it circulated much more. --- The California Research Bureau, within the California State Library, has been actively involved in defense conversion issues during this last year. One of the products is a major workshop to help those working in this area, developed in cooperation with the University of California Extension at Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, and others. I would appreciate your bringing this announcement to the attention of individuals you know who might be interested. Contact information for the workshop is included at the end of the announcement. For additional information regarding the work of the California Research Bureau in defense conversion, our lead person is Charlene Simmons, Assistant Director for General Government. She can be reached at: (916) 322-0600. Her Internet address is: csimmons@library.ca.gov. John Jewell California Research Bureau / California State Library jjewell@library.ca.gov (916) 322-0262 --- Conference on Defense Diversification and Economic Conversion, presented by the California Research Bureau and University Extension. Two Locations: February 24 - Marriott Hotel at Los Angeles Airport Los Angeles, California February 25 - Santa Clara Convention Center Santa Clara California These one day conferences are intended for California defense-dependent companies, their subcontractors and suppliers, trade associations, universities and federal laboratories, and interested local, state, and federal officials. Co-sponsors are the U.S. Department of Commerce, California Trade & Commerce Agency, Silicon Valley Defense/Space Consortium and the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation. Speakers include key industry experts and policymakers, leading industry and government efforts to diversify California's defense-dependent companies and economy. They include H. Lee Buchanan III, of the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and Director of the Technology Reinvestment Project; and Dorothy Robyn who is Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Key topics: federal programs available to assist defense-dependent businesses move into the commerical sector; business diversification strategies being implemented by California companies; technology transfer opportunities; and market considerations. Conference fee is $95, including lunch and materials. For more information, or a brochure, send inquiries via Bitnet e-mail to ydomingu@unex.ucla.edu or call the UCLA Extension Public Policy Program at 310-825-7885; or fax your inquiry to Y. Dominguez at 310-206-5066. === CASCADING GovAccess POSTINGS ACROSS THE NET I am resending your messages to alt.california, ca.politics, ca.general, la.general, and recently, to ba.general, and ba.politics. There may be additional regional groups, but I haven't posted there. The ca.* heirarchy is sufficiently low-traffic that most Cal sites should carry it with no problems (and quite a few out-of-state ones, as well). Robert L. McMillin | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com --- *Many* thanks, Robert. --jim === My apologies for delay in posting these (and those that will follow shortly). Have been up to my eyestalks in offline government swamps. Mo' as it Is. --jim Jim Warren, columnist for MicroTimes, Government Technology, BoardWatch, etc. 345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax/415-851-2814 **To join or drop from the GovAccess list, email to jwarren@well.sf.ca.us.** >>Permission herewith granted for unlimited reposting and recirculation.<<