Cisco - Packet[R] Magazine - Fourth Quarter 2002

FOURTH QUARTER 2002 ARCHIVE ISSUE

CACHE FILE

Snippets of wisdom from out on the Net

South Korea Reaching Internet Saturation Point

The Korea Times (koreatimes.co.kr) reports that 25.65 million South Koreans regularly access the Internet, up by 1.27 million since December 2001. About 58 percent of the entire population goes online on a regular basis, according to the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication, which also warns that domestic Internet penetration is now reaching saturation. The latest findings reveal that while the number of Internet users as a whole has risen since December, there's a widening gap among different age groups. Ninety-three percent of users between 6 and 19 years of age are online, while those between 50 to 60 years of age account for just 9.6 percent of the total online population. But the gender gap is steadily closing. Three years ago, the proportion of male Internet users stood at 67 percent; however, increasing numbers of female users has brought that number down to 55 percent.

Internet Ad Revenues Up a Notch

According to CMR, an advertising and market intelligence agency based in New York, Internet advertising revenues in the US increased 1.9 percent in the first half of 2002 -- from US$1.504 billion to $1.532 billion -- versus the same period last year. The Internet's uptick compares to a 0.2 percent drop over all forms of advertising, including newspapers, cable TV, consumer and business-to-business magazines, and others. Find out more.

Demystifying Bread Crumbs

According to Webopedia, bread crumbs are a Web site navigation technique. They typically appear horizontally near the top of a Web page, providing links back to each previous page that users navigate through to get to the current page. Basically, bread crumbs provide a trail for users to follow back to the starting or entry point of a Web site. For plenty more definitions related to computer and Internet technology, see webopedia.com.

Cyber Quote

"Before we work on artificial intelligence, why don't we do something about natural stupidity?"

-- Steve Polyak, Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute, University of Edinburgh

England's Mobile Phone Antennas A-Spire Upward

The Archbishop's Council of the Church of England has signed a deal with new telco infrastructure provider Quintel S4 to allow England's 16,000 churches to have mobile phone antennas installed discreetly within their towers or spires, reports a June 2002 article in Nature Science Update (nature.com). The height and location of churches in the center of settlements throughout England make them ideal sites for mobile phone base stations.

Flouting "Stupid Links"
David Sorkin, associate professor of law at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois, has a lot to say about what he calls "stupid linking policies." His Web site -- called Don't Link to Us! -- was launched largely in reaction to recent legal cases, such as the Danish Publishers Association versus Newsbooster.com, in which courts upheld Web site terms and conditions that prohibited or restricted links. "But I've really focused more on sites that don't seem to have any plausible reason for wanting to restrict links -- in other words, that are doing so out of mere ignorance," writes Sorkin in an e-mail interview with ZDNet News. Find out about these sites at dontlink.com.

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