CYBERSPACE mythology has it that the Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Because it has no central control, the Soviets might have knocked out various bases, but they could never disrupt the system totally. There would always be a link or two left, however tenuous, and the Pentagon鈥檚 messages would get through.
How wrong can you be? The experience of reader Alan Vaughan shows that instead of trying to bomb the Internet, all the Soviets needed to do was join an electronic discussion group and then go on holiday.
Here鈥檚 what happened. Vaughan subscribes to a group which discusses geotectonics by e-mail. To facilitate discussion, any message sent to a particular machine (in Newcastle) is echoed to all the group鈥檚 subscribers.
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Fine 鈥� until a fellow group member in Durham set his e-mail system to reply automatically to any incoming mail with an outgoing message saying: 鈥淪orry, I鈥檓 on holiday until 鈥︹�� This, of course, went back to the Newcastle machine, which thought it was a vitally interesting message about geotectonics, and echoed it to the rest of the group. The same thing happened every time anyone sent the Durham member a message.
This would have been tolerable, just 鈥� except that the e-mail server of a Canadian group member filled up. When it received a message, it automatically replied: 鈥淢ail undeliverable, disc full.鈥�
This message went back to the Newcastle machine, which reckoned it must be urgent information about geotectonics, and sent it to the group 鈥� including the holidaying Durham member, whose computer happily replied to the group, via Newcastle, that he was on holiday. The Canadian machine replied again that its disc was full, a message rapidly relayed to all the group, including Durham 鈥�
Vaughan and the other group members had their e-mail boxes jammed full. 鈥淎long with 329 repeat messages when I logged on, there were irate messages from all over the world, including one person in Zaire who had received almost 1000 copies, as well as users in the Netherlands, Britain and France. Auto-reply sounds good when you first learn about it, but in practice when it goes wrong it鈥檚 a good approximation to an all-consuming life form.鈥� And, he notes, 鈥渋t鈥檚 quite a good way of disabling the Internet, if one was so disposed鈥�.
ONE of the great things about the World Wide Web is its hypertext links. If you click on a highlighted phrase that interests you in a piece of text, information linked to that phrase will appear on the screen.
The WWW was originally created to share information between the groups of physicists from different countries that use CERN, the European particle physics centre in Geneva. In celebration of this, CERN held a series of 鈥淲orld Wide Web Days鈥� last month, opened in person by the British science minister David Hunt.
But why go to the expense of paying for a trip to Geneva for Hunt and his cronies? Surely all that was necessary was for him to click on the appropriate phrase from the comfort of his office in London.
THE party thrown recently to launch the British version of the American magazine Wired reminded Feedback of the parties the record industry used to throw to launch new albums. Those parties were always in a dingy nightclub decorated with pinball machines and arcade games. The guests were glamorous blonde girls and scruffy guys scavenging for free food and drink, and always close to signing million-dollar deals on pet recording projects.
Wired partied in a nightclub basement, with an old pinball machine, some newish video games and the usual glamorous blondes. But this time round the guys were cybertypes, many of them dressed in silver. Feedback talked to several who were close to signing multi-million dollar deals on their pet interactive video projects.
There was another difference. A line of computers alongside the dance floor was hooked into the Internet. To the sound of deafening disco music, revellers could call up pictures and text from Wired鈥檚 own WWW site.
To Feedback鈥檚 jaundiced eye, the pictures looked very coarse and even the text was painfully slow to appear on screen. In a shouted conversation above the dance floor din, we were just able to establish why. The organisers had been so busy planning the party that they had neglected to arrange for installation of the ISDN connection on which the computers relied for smooth running. So they were all limping along on an ordinary domestic phone line. Fortunately, few of the cyberguests seemed in a fit state to notice such subtleties.
STUDENTS at the California Institute of Technology learned more than they expected when they designed a small instrument to study gamma-ray bursts that will fly in a 鈥済etaway special canister鈥� on the space shuttle. One lesson was that a windowed lid on the instrument was not a 鈥渓id鈥� but, in NASA-speak, a 鈥淯ser-Designed Mounting Device,鈥� or UDMD. The canister that will carry their instrument has its own lid 鈥� but this one is called an MDA, Motorized Door Assembly. The distinctions are important, NASA told the Caltech students, so that nobody gets confused.
SUPPOSE refuse collectors were in the habit of having a good look at your rubbish before disposing of it? Come to that, suppose reporters from tabloid newspapers decided to sift through your dustbin in the hope of finding evidence of your latest secret love affair?
Is there any one among you who would not turn pale at the thought of such people peeking at your discarded underwear? So raise a cheer for the Japanese company Katakura Industries, which, according to the newspaper The Nikkei Weekly, is marketing the world鈥檚 first soluble knickers. Miracle Shorts are made of a fabric woven with Solvron, a type of yarn which dissolves in water heated to more than 90 deg;C. They come in four colours and the material feels virtually the same as regular underwear, according to a company spokesperson.
However: 鈥淔or those who tend to spill their coffee or tea, an extra bit of caution is advised,鈥� the newspaper suggests.
Feedback wonders if Solvron hasn鈥檛 in fact been around for some time 鈥� and used by sock manufacturers for just one of a pair of socks, ensuring that it will self-destruct in the washing machine.
IT SHOULDN鈥橳 even raise an eyebrow, and it鈥檚 all in a good cause. But Feedback can鈥檛 help finding something incongruous about the fact that the Defeat Depression Campaign is organising a Fun Run in London on 12 April.