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Volume 7, #04                     /___________________________________________
                                                                 April 7, 1994

Table of Contents:

Section a: National/World News
[a 1] Dave Barry Responds to E-Mail Hacking Charges
[a 2] CPSR Newsgroups Created
[a 3] Annual Meeting Slated


Section b: Metro/Northwest
[b 1] CPSR Voting Project Goes to South Africa


Section c: Calendar
Calendar of Events


Section d: Forum
Letters

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  ___                  /______________________________________________________
  ___|                                                                CPSR/PDX
 |   | Section a:
 |__/| National/World News


[a 1] DAVE BARRY RESPONDS TO E-MAIL HACKING CHARGES

CPSR/PDX received the following letter from syndicated columnist Dave
Barry's office:

> Let me tell you what happened, and you can decide how immoral it was.
> During the Olympics, a lot of rumors about Tonya Harding were floating
> around the press center.  One of these was that some numbers were
> Tonya Harding's e-mail code.  A lot of people punched these into the
> computer to see if they were.  I was one of those.  As soon as I saw
> the numbers worked, I signed off, _without_ reading any e-mail.
>
> Perhaps you wouldn't have done what I did.  I respect that.  But I
> view what I did as checking out a rumor, and no more.  I never saw any
> private correspondence, nor, as far as I know, did other reporters.
> When some reporters' names surfaced in connection with this, I
> volunteered the information that a lot of people, including me, had
> tried those numbers.  I was trying to put what happened into
> perspective; Unfortunately, the quotes that were printed made it sound
> as though I was defending the practice of reading other people's mail.
> I wasn't.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Dave Barry
>
> DB/js

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[a 2] CPSR NEWSGROUPS CREATED

Recently, new newsgroups comp.org.cpsr.announce and comp.org.cpsr.talk
were voted in, giving CPSR a presence in net news.

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[a 3] ANNUAL MEETING SLATED

By Judi Clark

           Computer Professionals For Social Responsibility
                         1994 Annual Meeting
                 University of California, San Diego

                        CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The program is now bing organized for the 1994 CPSR Annual Meeting
which will be held at the University of California, San Diego,
sometime in September or October.  The goal of our annual meeting is
to empower activists to put this vision into practice.  To this end,
we would like to bring together a diverse set of people and
communities to share their experiences and their plans for the future.

Past CPSR annual meetings have covered topics such as privacy
protection, equitable information access, women's issues in computing
and networking, workplace computing, and participatory design.  Our
emphasis this year is on practice: we would like to invite people who
are doing remarkable things, and we would like to organize workshops
that provide people with the knowledge, skills, and connections they
need to do good deeds in service of a democratic vision of technology.

Please help us: what topics do you see emerging this year? Who is
doing remarkable things?  Who should computing and networking
activists be listening to?  Who can put on a dynamic workshop that
helps people to develop their own vision and their own practice?  How
can we involve other communities in our work? Which professions are
emerging centers of insight and enthusiasm on computing and networking
issues?

This is not just a meeting for computer people.  This year, for
example, we are working with several librarians to develop a program
that reflects the urgency of information access and intellectual
freedom issues in the development of the National Information
Infrastructure. We'd like to work with you too.  Please send us a
note.  The Program Chair for the 1994 Annual Meeting is Phil Agre, who
teaches in the Department of Communication at UCSD.  His internet
address is <[e-mail]>.

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                            /_________________________________________________
 |                                                                    CPSR/PDX
 |___
 |   | Section b:
 |___| Metro/Northwest


[b 1] CPSR VOTING PROJECT GOES TO SOUTH AFRICA

CPSR/Portland members Bob Wilcox and Erik Nilsson will spend most of
April in South Africa assisting the Independent Electoral Commission
with the development and operation of computer systems for the
upcoming South African Elections.

Twenty million voters are expected in South Africa's first pan-racial
elections.  While ballots will be counted by hand, computer systems
will be used to tally the results from regional counting centers, and
keep track of logistics, personnel, purchasing, transportation, and
other systems in the mammoth undertaking.

The election system consists of 9,000 Windows PCs networked to NT
servers with TCP/IP.  The servers are connected via 64KBPS leased
lines.  Applications are written in Visual Basic and Microsoft Access.

Mr. Wilcox will be a network administrator for the network.  Mr.
Nilsson will join the development team for applications.

"We feel honored to be selected for this project," said Mr. Nilsson.
"We will do our best to help make these historic elections
successful."

Mr. Wilcox left for South Africa on April 2nd.  Mr. Nilsson leaves on
April 8th.  They both return in the beginning of May.

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  ___                                                                 CPSR/PDX
 |     Section c:
 |___  Calendar


4/23/94       Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing
              "Developing an Effective and Equitable Information
               Infrastructure"
              April 23-24, Cambridge, MA.
              Sponsored by CPSR
              [e-mail]
              Workshop proposals: [e-mail]

4/1/94        Spring Technology Conference
              Sponsored by The Communications Technology Center, others
              April 1-2, Kirkland, WA
              [e-mail]

4/8/94        Gary Chapman Appears on NPR's "Talk of the Nation"
              Subject: Clinton's science and technology policy
              "Talk of the Nation" is a national call-in show.

4/13/94       Computing for the Social Sciences 1994 (CSS94)
              "Information: Society, Superhighway or Gridlock?"
              April 13-15, University of Maryland at College Park
              [e-mail]

4/23/94       Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing (DIAC-94)
              "Issues related to the National Information Infrastructure"
              April 23-24. Sponsored by CPSR
              [e-mail]

4/24/94       ACM  CHI '94  (Computer-Human Interaction)
              April 24-28  Boston
              [e-mail]

4/25/94 Mon   Computers in Health Care 1994: The Information Highway
              Georgetown University, Washington, DC
              [e-mail]

4/27/94       National Telecommunications and Information Administration
              Public Hearing on Open Access and the Networ
              April 27, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
              [e-mail]

4/28/94       Information Technology and Organisational Change
              The Changing role of IT and Business
              April 28-29, Nijenrode University, Breukelen, The Netherlands
              [e-mail]

5/20/94       4CyberConf (cyberspace and virtual reality)
              May 20-22, Banff, Alberta
              [e-mail]

5/21/94       Navigating the Networks
              Sponsored by The American Society for Information Science
              May 21-25, Portland, Oregon
              [e-mail]

5/28/94       PROMPT Conference (HP handheld users)
              May 28-29, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
              [e-mail]

6/5/94        Ethical and Professional Issues in Computing
              June 5-10, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
              [e-mail]

6/9/94        Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computer Science
              June 9-11, Washington, DC
              [e-mail]

7/2/94        5th Conference On Women Work And Computerization
              "Breaking Old Boundaries: Building New Forms"
              July 2-5, UMIST, Manchester, UK
              Abstracts by 10/1/93
              [e-mail]

7/13/94       First International Workshop On Community Networking
              "Integrated Multimedia Services to the Home"
              July 13-14, Westin Hotel, San Francisco Bay
              workshop abstracts by 4/15/94
              [e-mail]

7/22/94       DEF CON ][ ("underground" computer culture)
              "Load up your laptop Muffy, we're heading to Vegas!"
              July 22-24, The Sahara Hotel, Las Vegas, NV
              [e-mail]

8/23/94       VRST '94 (Virtual Reality Software and Technology)
              August 23-26, Singapore
              [e-mail]

9/14/94       MHVR'94 (Multimedia, Hypermedia, and Virtual Reality)
              September 14-16, Moscow, Russia
              [e-mail]

10/14/94      National Symposium on Proposed Arts and Humanities
              Policies for the National Information Infrastructure
              Sponsored by The Center for Art Research
              "It must be a serious conference, it takes two breaths
              to say the name."
              October 14-16, Probably somewhere in Boston
              [e-mail]

10/28/94      Information Systems Education Conference
              Sponsored by Education Foundation of the DPMA
              October 28-30, Louisville, Kentucky
              [e-mail]

11/11/94      Ethics in the Computer Age
              November 11-13, Gatlinburg, Tennessee
              [e-mail]

8/14/95       Computers in Context (Third Decennial Conference)
              "Joining Forces in Design"
              August 14-18, Aarhus,  Denmark
              [e-mail]



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     |                                                                CPSR/PDX
  ___|
 |   | Section d:
 |___| Forum


Well, I got a slug of letters about the April 1 issue.  I'm afraid,
once again, a few people appeared to take it ever so slightly
seriously, so just in case: IT WAS A JOKE.  Really.

I lost count of the letters I got somewhere in the forties, and there
were more than that number of subscription requests.  The letters were
largely positive.  I'm not going to print all of them, but here's a
representative sample:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I LOVED your April Fools issue--especially Alvin and the Chip Monks. Keep up
> the good work.
>
> Mike Epstein
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> You know, Erik, you people are really twisted.  You had me going for the
> better part of two paragraphs.  Then I remembered what day it was.
>
> Am passing this along to my friends, who will no doubt appreciate your
> singular sense of humor.  I know I did..
>
> Peace,
> Road Angel
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Now that was one of the funniest April Fools' Day bits I've seen in a long
> time. I wonder how many people will catch on. God knows, Pournelle's April
> Fools column fooled a few people this year.
>
> One thing, though. That commentary on Queen Victoria... how serious was that?
> Because, even if you meant it as a gag, it wasn't that far from reality. At
> least the facts were straight, if not the motivations.
>
> Thanks for the laughs!
> Brenda Daverin
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ha ha ha - every year I get your newsletter and every year
> I take it seriously for the first few seconds.  When will I
> learn.
>         - Aki
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I also received, regrettably, a few hate mail messages, along with the
love mail.  While I attribute most of that to the greater distribution
of CPSR/PDX over last year, "Queen Victoria Got a Bum Rap" (QVGABR)
seemed to attract negative reviews:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
....
> One such occurrence is enough to make me consider SIGNING OFF the listserv
> and become one of the millions who couldn't give a shit about CPSR.
....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> What the fuck was that?  I was under the vague impression that
> this was a serious list existing for the purpose of keeping its
> subscribers informed on issues concerning information privacy and
> government regulation, not a venting ground for some pathetically
> repressed pseudo-historian polishing his letter for _Penthouse Forum_.
>
> .... the last thing I need is drivel such as the Queen Victoria crap.
> .... please make certain that something like this does not happen
> again.  Thank you.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not all of the reviews were negative, however:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> interesting!  esp. the bit on Queen Vickie.   -r
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Well, you got the piercing right, you got the outfits she wore right,
> and the people she surrounded herself with. She did strike out the
> lesbian parts of the anti-gay sex laws, but her public remark was to
> the effect that women just didn't do that sort of thing. As for the
> motivations... well, Albert Hall, yes. The legislation and the rest? I
> don't know, but I'd love it if it were true!
>
> Thanks again,
> Lysana
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's the neat thing about QVGABR, it's basically
true.  Now, I'm not saying it's totally true: I have no idea what time
Victoria got up in the morning, for example.  It was a joke, after
all.

In any case, I've seen documentation on the piercing bit, and I have
personally seen the statue in front of Albert Hall.  If anything, the
effect in person is even more warped than my description.

QVGABR may have been away from the editorial thrust of CPSR/PDX, even
for a joke issue.  I say this not because it was particularly rude,
but because it had particularly little to do with computers.  One
correspondent made that point, and it sticks.

What amazes me is that someone would start reading an article that
embarrasses or offends them, and then KEEP READING so that they can
then take time out of their busy schedule to tell me in precise and
comprehensive detail exactly how offended they are and how much they
resent having their time wasted.  I'm glad you can't burn electrons.

I'm sorry people were offended by QVGABR.  Sorry, and disappointed.
You may return your issues for a full refund.

- Erik Nilsson, Editor

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                                                  /___________________________
Editor:      Erik Nilsson                             Contributing Editors:
Copy Editor: Andrea Rodakowski                         Judi Clark

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CPSR/PDX is published approximately monthly /_________________________________
by CPSR/Portland. Subscription to CPSR/PDX  Copyright 1994, CPSR/Portland.
is free.  No advertising is accepted. For  Permission to reproduce part or all
correspondence or subscription requests,  of CPSR/PDX is granted to non-profit
send e-mail to [e-mail]            publishers, as long as material is
______________________________________  properly attributed to CPSR/PDX.
____________________________________ /________________________________________
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