


C|NET CENTRAL
TRANSCRIPT
- EPISODE 6 -

Original air date:  5/6/95


HOSTS:  RICHARD HART and GINA ST. JOHN

(MUSIC)

RICHARD:  The computer of the future.  Will it read your mind?  Will 
it understand your body language?  Or maybe just answer the 
phone?

VOICEOVER:  Jill Gilbert is calling back.

VOICEOVER:  Hi, Mike.  What's up?

(MUSIC)

GINA:  And...don't get flamed.  Three Internet rules you need to 
know before you go online.

(MUSIC)

GINA:  Hi.  I'm Gina St. John.

RICHARD:  And I'm Richard Hart.  Let's not forget our favorite.  A 
little later on in the show we have basketball-playing robots...coming 
up.

GINA:  And Satan, we'll tell you more about that later.

RICHARD:  Yeah, if you're afraid of having your computer broken 
into, you'll be interested in that.  All those stories plus John C. 
Dvorak's latest reviews of CD-ROMs--next, on c|net central.

(COMMERCIAL)

RICHARD:  OK.  Recently we explored computer interfaces for you.  
We showed how we progressed from typing in commands in DOS, to 
pointing and clicking with a mouse in Windows and on the Mac, to 
navigating virtual living rooms with the help of cute little creatures 
in Microsoft Bob.  This time, we're going to explore even wilder 
interfaces.  Because in coming years you could be interacting with 
your computer using a glove, or using a bicycle, or even mind control.  
Could it be that this is what hand-eye coordination is going to mean 
in the next millennium?  Are some sort of pedal-powered interfaces 
on our digital horizon?

We asked Fred Davis, author of The Windows Bible, about the 
interfaces of tomorrow.  Starting out with some of the farthest out.  
For example, how about an interface that reads your mind?  That 
seems to be what's happening at this interactive research center.  
The headband this man is wearing is actually a sensor that lets him 
control these micro-mechanical cockroaches.  But all that's really 
happening here is a kind of avant-garde biofeedback.  The slower the 
operator's brain waves, the brighter the lights and the faster the 
light-powered bug mobiles.  So, how close are we to having 
computers that read our minds?

FRED DAVIS:  In sci-fi books they dream about the cerebral cortex 
tap, where you'd really tap right into your brain and read those 
directly but we don't even know how the cerebral cortex works, how 
your brain works, what any of those signals are all about.  We're 
really 50 or 100 years from having computers being able to tell what 
we're thinking.

RICHARD:  The verdict on thought control interfaces?  Don't even 
think about them in this lifetime.  What about using body language 
to control your computer?  This isn't your basic lounge chair.  It's a 
combination cockpit and control room.  Lean forward and move 
forward in a computer-generated gallery.  Swivel left, turn left.  Tilt 
back, go back.  You get the picture.  Or in this case, pictures.  So, are 
body language interfaces the wave of the future?

FRED DAVIS:  One of the big problems that I have with the body 
language interface is that computers are really moving away from 
that.  Because using your body in a repetitive fashion for things like 
word processing, spreadsheet, database entry, the business kinds of 
applications that use a computer for a lot of the time, really can have 
problems.  Even typing is really bad for you.  The trend is definitely 
away from physical interfaces, from body, moving your body, your 
arms, your fingers, running around, whatever.

RICHARD:  The last word on practical physical interfaces?  
Impractical.  If we could see around the next truly useful interface 
corner, this is what we'd probably find.

VOICEOVER:  Today you have a faculty lunch at 12 o'clock, you need 
to take Kathy to the airport by 2.

RICHARD:  This is a scene from Apple Computer's now legendary film, 
Knowledge Navigator.  The navigator here is what's called an 
intelligent agent program.  A sort of virtual secretary.  You interact 
with the agent on your terms.  The agent operates your hardware 
and software.

AGENT 1:  Excuse me.  Jill Gilbert is calling back.

VOICEOVER:  Hi, Mike.  What's up?

FRED DAVIS:  One of the best things about the intelligent agent 
technology is that it's sort of like an interpreter between you and the 
language of the computer.

RICHARD:  This is the kind of technology we grew up seeing in 
movies and on TV shows.  But is it finally about to show up in stores?

FRED DAVIS:  Before the intelligent agent technology could become a 
reality, we need to have continuous speech recognition networks.  
That's probably two or three years away for that to happen.  And 
then we need to have expert systems software-- there's probably 
another five years of software development before we see that.  So, 
it's probably in five years we'll see crude versions of this and in 10 
years we'll have ones that really work.

RICHARD:  The verdict on virtual secretaries?  Brush up on your 
dictation skills sometime in the next few years.  Finally, this is what's 
happening now in interfaces.  User testing.  Here at General Magic, 
users are showing the engineers what works for them on this 
personal communicator called the Sony Magic Link.  And the results 
are screens that make you feel right at home, or in this case, right at 
work.  The goal is exactly that, a computer environment that's 
familiar and easy to use even if you've never seen it before.  So, 
what's the score for user-tested, user-friendly interfaces?

FRED DAVIS:  One of the cool things about the Magic Link is that all 
the icons that you see on the screen actually represent what they 
really are, so you don't have to have anything translated for you.  If 
you want to make a telephone call, there's an icon of a telephone.  
You want to send a fax, there's a little icon of a fax machine.

RICHARD:  The future of user-tested interfaces?  They're already at 
your service.

(MUSIC)

AGENT 1:  Hello.  Professor Bradford is away at the moment.  Would 
you like to leave a message, leave a message, leave a message, leave 
a message...

RICHARD:  Oh, and by the way, don't count on voice control to be a 
solution to interfaces very soon because, well, for example, how'd 
you like to work in an office full of people who, instead of typing, 
were yacking to their computers all the time?  Gina?

GINA:  Or better yet, how about sitting next to an executive on a 
plane trip and having him talk to his PC the whole time?  Coming up 
next on c|net central, John C. Dvorak's latest reviews of CD-ROMs, and 
the robot gladiators battle it out.

(COMMERCIAL)

GINA:  And now a man with a mission, our resident expert on what's 
hot and what's not in CD-ROMs.  The world's best-known computer 
columnist, John C. Dvorak.

JOHN:  Yeah, they give me the job where they kind of torture me, 
making me look at these things.  This week’s first title is The  
Multimedia Cartoon Studio from the Cartoon Bank.  This is a goody.  
If you like cartoons or you're just looking for a few good laughs, then 
check this one out.  It's a cartoon playland.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

JOHN:  Hundreds of cartoons broken down by categories, people, 
holidays, professions, and lots more.  You even get a shot at making 
your own cartoons.  Choose a background, how about a beach?  Pick a 
character, let's see, crying baby.  Add some props, let's use this 
spaceship.  And voila!  You've got your own professional cartoon.  
More or less.  If you're not in a creative mood, then just sit back, 
click, and see what happens.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

JOHN:  The Multimedia Cartoon Studio sells for $59.95 and is 
available on both PC and Mac.  I say buy it.  You need an odd sense 
of humor to appreciate some of the stuff, but if you have a sense of 
humor at all, you'll get your money's worth.

The next title's also a keeper, especially if you're an art lover.  A 
Passion for Art.  It's a virtual gallery of Impressionist painting--
Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Van Gogh, and many, many more.  You 
move freely through the gallery as if you were there.  Click on any 
painting, like this Picasso, view it full screen, zoom in, check out 
those famous Picasso brush strokes, click here and you get his 
biography.  Did you know that Picasso was a communist?  You can 
take time in this museum.  There's no closing.  There's no security 
guards giving you dirty glances for touching the art.  A Passion for 
Art sells for $49.95 and is available on both PC and Mac.  I say buy 
it.  I do have one complaint though:  no music in the art gallery.  Sure 
there's no music in most museums, but let's not get so literal.  These 
CD-ROMs are capable of storing stereo digital sound--might as well 
put it on there.

I knew the next title would be crap just by looking at the name.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

JOHN:  How could you expect much from a CD-ROM called People 
Magazine's 20 Amazing Years of Pop Culture?  What's amazing is to 
what depths the multimedia community will sink.  True shovelware.  
Slap 20 years of covers and cover stories into a CD-ROM and throw in 
a few extra gimmicks, like Princess Grace morphing into Dolly 
Parton--as if that's something you'd really want to see.  And look, 
Princess Di was on the cover of People over 30 times.  And there's a 
young Tatum O'Neal.  Hmm...do you know that by age 10 Tatum had 
developed an ulcer?  People Magazine's 20 Amazing Years of Pop 
Culture sells for $29.95 and is available on both PC and Mac.  I say 
skip it.  Life's too short.  I'm John C. Dvorak, I'm out of here, I'll see 
you next week.

RICHARD:  Well, John, I think you just ruined any chance you ever 
had of being on the cover of People magazine.  All right, next we're 
going to take you to what could be the biggest video game in the 
world.  It involves real robots radio-controlled by high school 
students who designed the robots on computers.  This is like the 
most boisterous basketball tournament you've ever attended.  It's 
growing every year, and I think will become an annual event that 
will capture America.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

RICHARD:  They call this Ramp and Roll.  Robo-gladiators constructed 
of a really wide range of materials.

VOICEOVER:  We can't be any bigger than this or any higher than 
this.

RICHARD:  There's PVC pipe, aluminum, plywood, foam, weighing in 
at less than 70 pounds.

VOICEOVER:  Two drive motors, one fall ripper motor...

RICHARD:  And under the hood, two 12-volt batteries scavenged 
from power drills energize as many as six Delco car seat motors.

VOICEOVER:  This joystick controls the right side of the robot.  This 
one's the left side of the robot.

RICHARD:  All of it is remote control.  Not by model airplane radios, 
but by a new digital radio network called R-Net, provided by 
Motorola.

VOICEOVER:  I make the ball go back and forth on the arm and it 
scores every time.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

VOICEOVER:  I wanted to get involved with engineering and see how 
it's like, and building a machine; I've never done this before, it's my 
first experience in life like this.

RICHARD:  Here's how Ramp and Roll works.  Each robot must grab a 
vinyl ball, race up one of three ramps and pass that ball through the 
goal post as many times as it can.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

RICHARD:  If you think controlling one of these things is easy, it's not.

VOICEOVER:  You just open the arms slightly, which is up...

RICHARD:  OK.

VOICEOVER:  OK. Now what you want to do is lift the bottom arms up, 
grab it...

RICHARD:  Got it, OK.

VOICEOVER:  Got the bottom arms up...

RICHARD:  Oh, this is tough.

VOICEOVER:  Raise your upper arms, above...

RICHARD:  OK.

VOICEOVER:  Raise the lower arms.  Oops, other way.

RICHARD:  He scores!

VOICEOVER:  Yeah!  Touchdown.

RICHARD:  The big ball is worth three points.  The small one, two.  
You can also shoot it through the uprights, like a field goal, but there 
were very few NFL prospects at this camp.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

RICHARD:  With their units sporting corporate logos, like stock cars, 
teams began preparing for this months ago on computer.  One 
corporation, Autodesk, donated professional versions of its AutoCAD 
design software and animation software to every school. 

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

RICHARD:  After three days of chaotic competition, 47 teams are 
whittled down to just three, Pulp Friction from Walnut Hills High in 
Cincinnati, Stealth from Woodside High in California, and the Big 
Bopper from Edison Tech in Rochester, New York--a 70-pound 
behemoth that used its superior weight to bowl over the competition.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

RICHARD:  With the crowd nearing a frenzy matched only by a 
summer slam wrestling match, it came down to two, the George 
Foreman-sized Big Bopper and the Sugar Ray scrapper, Stealth.  In 
the best of three match-up, Big Bopper bullied it's way up the ramp 
and blind-sided Stealth for an injury-producing knockout.  In a 
return match, the Bopper got off another fast start--but utilizing a 
strategy that goes back to the first caveman, the scrappy Stealth 
pulled an upset unknown in the annals of Ramp and Roll.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

RICHARD:  With the thrill of victory and the agony of a short circuit, 
the Stealth-y guys from the West Coast take the rubber match and go 
on to their very first Ramp and Roll.  A true coast-to-coast shoot-out 
for robot supremacy.

(COMMERCIAL)

GINA:  For years, hackers gone bad have broken into computers by 
typing in thousands of passwords, or some other trick, one at a time.  
Sooner or later, someone was bound to write a program that would 
automate the process.  Well, it's here, and it's called Satan.  However, 
Satan's creator, Dan Farmer, claims that Satan's a good thing and he 
also says that it points out security loopholes to computer operators.  
We asked Dan to shows us his controversial creation.

(MUSIC)

DAN FARMER:  I am very odd.  There's no doubt about it.  You know, 
I'm very dedicated, very immersed in computers.  Computers, 
philosophy, music, sex, religion.

GINA:  He's been called the bad boy of the Internet.

DAN FARMER:  Well, I always liked knowing things I wasn't supposed 
to know, you know.  There's something about someone saying, well, 
you shouldn't be doing that, that's classified, you're not good enough 
to know this kind of thing.  And I just really resented that.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

GINA:  Dan Farmer turned that rebellious curiosity into a career.  By 
the age of 30, he was making a six-figure salary in the Silicon Valley 
as a self-styled hired gun of computer network security.

DAN FARMER:  There are very few people that, who really are as 
fanatical about security as I am.  It takes a very kind of odd 
individual to want to devote their nights and weekends to this kind 
of thing.

GINA:  It was that fanaticism that Farmer says led him to create 
Satan.

DAN FARMER:  Well, me and Satan have a long and close relationship.  
Satan is a security tool, a security program that I wrote with my co-
author, Wietse Venema, to discover problems and vulnerabilities in 
systems in the Internet.  When you first fire up Satan, what 
generally happens is you're tossed into the World Wide Web 
browser.  It doesn't look like Mosaic or Netscape or anything like 
that.  And basically, you're just presented with menu options and 
you can select a target, select a host or network that you want to look 
at. You click on that, you type in a couple of commands, say, OK, I 
want to look at the Pentagon, or I want to look at, you know, choose 
your target, and then you go ahead and just run a scan.  And you can 
select how intense the scan is, how heavy, how light, how intrusive 
the probe is going to be.

GINA:   A powerful tool like Satan that searches for weaknesses in a 
network system is a good thing.  Systems on the Internet, such as the 
phone company, credit card companies, even the government, can 
then fix those weaknesses.  But in the wrong hands, Satan could be 
dangerous.

DAN FARMER:  I think the reason why people are afraid, security 
people in specific, is that they saw this as something that's very easy 
to use.  People could take the tool, run it from basically anywhere in 
the world, and try to potentially break into systems all over the 
world.

GINA:  Instead of taking that program and using it to further his 
career, perhaps even make a small fortune, Farmer turned it loose on 
the Internet and was promptly fired from his job.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

CHARLES WOOD:  Why did he do that?  Why did he think it was 
necessary for him to disseminate the information on an unrestricted 
basis?  And I can't help but think that he wanted to encourage the 
hacker community to go at it.  I don't know.

GINA:  Like Dan Farmer, Charles Wood is a computer security 
consultant.  He's written books and is a columnist on the subject of 
computer security.  To say Wood disagrees with Farmer is an 
understatement.

CHARLES WOOD:  You wouldn't think of standing outside on the street 
and handing out loaded machine guns and giving those loaded 
machine guns to anybody who happens to walk by.

DAN FARMER:  They don't trust people.  They think that people, 
when given a chance, will steal things or break into things and do 
things--and I think my basic premise is quite the opposite.  I think, 
by and large, most people are pretty good and you give them 
information or you give them tools and you know, you don't see 
people running around with machine guns on the streets.

CHARLES WOOD:  People don't appreciate that computers are used in 
virtually every aspect of their lives today.  Automated teller 
machines.  Their paycheck is generated with computers.  When we 
put these powerful tools on the Internet and we make them 
available for virtually all comers, we are at the same time making 
them available for children and for people, adults, who act like 
children.

GINA:  But Farmer said Satan has now been on the loose for weeks 
and nothing has happened.

DAN FARMER:  The world hasn't ended.  The Internet's still around, 
you know.  I think people went a little overboard.  They were sure 
that, you know, you have these little drive-by, Internet drive-bys 
and people taking Satan and just spraying the Internet, taking down 
computers left and right.  And it just doesn't happen.  Wall Street is 
on the Internet.  You can break into some of these Wall Street houses 
and cause significant damage to the stock market.  It's an interesting 
thing, and they better be taking damn good care of their security as 
far as I'm concerned, you know.

(BACKGROUND NOISE)

GINA:  Satan may or may not be the answer, but something has to be 
done.  The number of "security incidents" per day on the Internet 
has more than doubled over the past two years.  Richard?

RICHARD:  Now, besides security, one of the other concerns of many 
people when first logging onto the Internet is, do I know the rules?  
Am I going to look like an idiot?  What do I do?  Well, here at c|net 
central we can help you from time to time with our rules of etiquette 
for the Internet.  We begin by taking you to one of those cafés, one of 
the first, that provide computers on tables connected to the Internet, 
and we're going to talk to some people about what we call 
"Netiquette."

(MUSIC)

RICHARD:  Netiquette, Internet etiquette, what does this have to do 
with the online world?  Well, like table manners, Netiquette exists 
for a good reason:  to ensure that everyone, even new users, or 
newbies, can use the Internet on common ground.  This Netiquette 
lesson features the rules of email.  Simple rules to live by and well, 
break.

CHARLIE:  I guess what I hate most that people do on the Internet is 
what's called "spamming."

(MUSIC)

CHARLIE:  "Spamming" is when a commercial enterprise basically 
posts an ad to all the newsgroups at once, and basically, it's like 
taking a piece of Spam and throwing it at a pan and having it splat 
everywhere.

RICHARD:  OK.  What about some email rules?  First, be careful with 
flame mail, which is email you send when you're angry.  Flaming can 
be an art form, but be forewarned, don't flame the wrong person.

RICHARD:  Before you send any flame mail, for example, to your boss, 
print it out on a piece of paper and read it to yourself in front of the 
mirror.  Chances are you'll change it a little.  Or maybe not send it at 
all.

CHARLIE:  Flaming's great fun.  I love to flame.  And every time I 
flame, of course, it's justified.

WOMAN:  I do a lot of my business on email, but I guess I really 
watch who I do business with and who gets my email address.

CHARLIE:  People come into the newsgroups and they haven't read 
the FAQ, that's what they call frequently asked questions, and they 
violate this charter, basically, and people flame them and they get 
really defensive and whine and try to get people's accounts yanked 
because they're mean to them.

WOMAN 2:  That did happen to me actually.  I was on a bulletin 
board, and I tried to get off, it was when I first started, and so I 
responded to one of the things on the bulletin board saying please 
take me off of this list. And there were like 200 people on this list 
and they all got this message, so they all ganged up on me and 
started filling my box with all kinds of stuff.

CHARLIE:  Now you've got these millions of newbies coming on the 
Internet and they're basically like people with learners’ permits on 
the so-called Information Superhighway.  The main problem with 
newbies is that they don't smoke enough cigarettes.

GINA:  I think he's going to get flamed for that one.

RICHARD:  Maybe he ought to.  That's it for c|net central this week.

GINA:  Thanks for tuning in and logging on!

(MUSIC)

(COMMERCIAL)

END OF TAPED MATERIAL
