Human-Nets-Request%rutgers@brl-bmd.UUCP (Human-Nets-Request@rutgers) (01/06/84)
HUMAN-NETS Digest Friday, 6 Jan 1984 Volume 7 : Issue 3
Today's Topics:
Responce to Query - Networks, Networks Everywhere
Computers and the Law - The IRS welcomes you to 1984
Input Devices - Keyboards
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Date: Thu, 5 Jan 84 01:34:37 pst
From: fair%ucbarpa@Berkeley (Erik E. Fair)
Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V7 #1
Re: The Plethora of Networks
Since I have been at an ARPANET site for about three years, and a
USENET site for the same amount of time, I think I can comment on some
of the Networks that exist out there. Particularly since Berkeley has
become a gateway for several of them.
ARPANET
Brought to you by the fun folks at DARPA, it was one of the very first
experiments with computer networking, and certainly the first on a
national (and later international) scale. It is centrally controlled
and implicitly routed (i.e. the network figures out how to get from
point a to point b). To join, you have to have a gov't sponsor and it
is for the execution of official gov't business & research. (sure it
is...)
In so far as I am aware, all links are faster than 9.6Kbaud, and a
good number of them are 56Kbaud. All appear to be dedicated. Number of
sites is somewhere between 250 and 300. If you choose to count the
whole internet, things get a little bigger. Anyone have any ideas
about the number of internet sites? Three basic services are offered
by the ARPANET:
FTP File Transfer Program (fetch/send files anywhere)
telnet Interactive access to other hosts on the network
MAIL Electronic Mail
MILNET
Stepchild of the ARPANET (or perhaps goosestepping child?), MILNET is
where the military sites gather to do the same things ARPANET does,
without disruptions caused by networking reseach (i.e. it is a
production version of the ARPANET). It split from the ARPANET in
October of 1983.
CSNET
This is a network funded (initially, although they will be
self-sufficient later on) for the purpose of Computer Science Research
by the National Science Foundation (and probably many others). By
`self-sufficient', I mean that the individual member sites of CSNET
will pay the full cost of central control, administration, and ARPANET
access. Last price I was quoted was $30K/year. Presently seems to be
between 50-100 sites.
I'm a little shaky on what this network has in terms of services, but
here goes: Services seem to be limited to MAIL, but FTP is coming.
Mail is handled with the MMDF software, which operates over the phone.
There are two ARPANET gatways: UDEL-RELAY and RAND-RELAY. These two
sites handle the phone traffic to the rest of the net (??) from the
ARPANET. Network addressing is implicit. To get to a CSNET site from
the ARPANET:
mail person.site@RAND-RELAY (or UDEL-RELAY)
BITNET
This is a network of IBM hosts, and seems to be built along the same
lines as the ARPANET (implicit addressing, dedicated lines, central
control) but not all the sites have the same capabilites. Services
supported: MAIL, and FTP (for those sites that have RSCS). Presently
is about 50-60 sites. Founded by CUNY, after they got IBM to cough up
the software that is used in the IBM internal VNET. I have no idea how
fast it goes. Scope: national. To address someone on the BITNET from
the ARPANET:
mail person%site.BITNET@BERKELEY
BERKELEY's mailer converts this to
G:SITE=PERSON
and it gets sent to UNIX G (in the UCB Computer Center), which in turn
sends it to the IBM 4341 (UCBVMA on the BITNET), and from there it
goes where it's supposed to...
DEC Engineering NET (E-NET)
This is DEC's internal network of engineering machines (now you know
where VMS comes from!). It is centrally controlled, semi-implicitly
routed (they are converting from an explicit routing scheme) and is
composed of somewhere between 2000 and 2100 sites. Primary service
seems to be MAIL, but there is no doubt some form of FTP as well.
Speed seems to be somewhere in the higher ranges (4800+ baud), but I
infer this from speed of mail propagation alone. This network is
international in scope, with several European sites. For ARPAnauts,
you can mail to the E-NET:
mail decwrl!rhea!site!person@BERKELEY
The site `decwrl' talks to `ucbvax' with UUCP. `ucbvax' is the ARPANET
site BERKELEY. The mailer at decwrl converts address syntax to
RHEA::SITE::PERSON
and away it goes...
There is a DEC site on the ARPANET (DEC-MARLBORO) which appears to do
gatewaying duty now and again, but by hand only. This would be an
ideal point to establish a real gateway (hint, hint...)
(and now, for the grand finale... {drum roll please})
UUCP/USENET (ta da!)
These two networks are forever intertwined, and from the ARPANET point
of view, there is little difference between the two. By the nature of
the beast they must be discussed together. UUCP is an acronym for
Unix-to-Unix Copy, a file transfer and remote execution facility which
operates over a direct line (max 9600baud) or over the phone lines
(typically 1200 baud).
Mail is transmitted through the network on a pass it on basis, and at
present, only the mail software knows how to transfer stuff beyond a
site's immediate neighbors. The UUCP network exists because some of my
neighbors talk to some of your neighbors, so through them we can send
mail to each other. The network has no central control, and no one
knows how many sites there are, or how far the network extends. Anyone
can join the network, all it takes is a UNIX system, and another site
willing to talk to you. After four months of traffic analysis, I have
found just over 2000 UUCP sites.
USENET is a subset of the UUCP network. On top of the existing UUCP
software, sites in this network run `netnews', which is a bboard
system, also on a pass it on basis. Imagine a bboard system in which
you post something, and you pass it on to the other USENET sites you
talk to (and so on, and so on, ad nausem), until the whole network has
seen the item you posted. The discussions are separated by topic, and
if you thought that the ARPANET had a wide range mailing lists, the
USENET has currently somewhere between 150-200 active network wide
newsgroups discussing things as esoteric as UNIX bugs to mundane
things like cooking. There are approximately 600 USENET sites covering
the continental US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. There is a USENET
directory kept by Karen Summers-Horton (cbosgd!map@BERKELEY), and it
is posted monthly on the first of the month to net.news.map.
The anarchy of the network is interesting. Among other things, it
means that you must have an educated network community (ever try to
educate people at 600 sites??) and punitive actions are very nearly
impossible on a unilateral scale. It makes path routing difficult,
however. The directory includes information about links that a
particular site has, but it is up to the site to provide and maintain
that information. Since the network is in a constant state of flux,
it is very hard to map the whole thing. Unlike the ARPANET, usually
the best you can do is get a snapshot.
(finis)
Now. Where I err, please correct me. Most of the networks mentioned
get HUMAN-NETS in one form or another, so I expect that corrections
will filter in over the next few days. However, on the whole, I don't
think I have missed anything major.
For the networkingly confused, I hope I have been of some help. This
got just a touch longer than I had anticipated.
Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucb-arpa.ARPA
RHEA::DECWRL::"amd70!dual!fair"
{ucbvax,amd70,zehntel,unisoft,onyx,its}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California
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Date: Thu, 5 Jan 84 09:01:53 pst
From: unisoft!pertec!bytebug@Berkeley
Subject: the IRS welcomes you to 1984 ... (a true story)
.
.
All those whose names appear on the commercial list but not
the IRS list will be notified that they are subject to a
revenue service inquiry about their tax liability. The
notices will start going out next spring.
.
.
I'm sure that I'm not the only one that always gives a slightly
different name on give-away offers, subscription requests, conference
registrations and the like. That way, I have some idea about who gave
my name to whom and whether or not some important looking envelope is
actually just junk mail.
I also wonder how many other people are entirely truthful on all the
forms we fill out. After all, if I register for a computer conference
as the president of BYTEBUG CONSULTING, I'm certainly going to lie and
tell them my income is at least six figures (else, how could I
possibly afford the VAX/780 that I say I own?).
I'd really be surprised if such lists are worth more than the paper
they're printed on to the IRS. They'll probably pay several hundred
thousands of tax-payer's dollars checking out "leads" their computer
program generates. I'll really be surprised if they come out ahead.
-roger long
pertec computer corp
-richard long
bytebug research foundation
-ralph long
system software servies
.
.
.
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Date: Thu 5 Jan 84 09:53:01-PST
From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Keyboards ...
In reply to Lars@ACC: The "guy who devised the phone pad" was Bell
Telephone Laboratories. They did human factors studies on the many
numeric keypad arrangements in use on adding machines as well as on
their own designs, then chose the arrangement leading to the fastest
data entry with the fewest errors. These studies were specifically
for telephone use by novices, and might not apply to calculator or
computer applications. I wonder, though, whether the calculator
manufacturers were as careful in designing their own layouts.
On the subject of DVORAK keyboards: I am reprinting below two messages
from the Editor-People discussion on this subject. [I have not
cleared this with the authors: facts or opinions may have changed in
the intervening two years.]
-- Ken Laws
Date: 10 Dec 1981 1928-EST
From: GILBERT at MIT-XX (Ed Gilbert)
Subject: Re: Moran's Comments
I just want to comment on an aside you made in your message to
editor-people.
The QWERTY keyboard wasn't designed to slow people down. I don't have
my reference materials here so I must hedge the details, but here is
what really happened:
In about the late 1870's Glidden and Sholes were working on a
typewriter which would eventually evolve into the popular and
long-lived Remington line. People operated the machine so quickly
that the type bars would jam. They needed an arrangement of the type
bar "basket" in which common sequences of two letters would have those
two letters on opposite sides of the basket. In the most
straightforward design of a manual typewriter this would have a direct
effect on the keyboard layout, but they were interested in the type
basket, not the keyboard. The brother of one of the two men, a high
school principal, determined the arrangement.
I do not consider myself an expert on the history of the typewriter,
but I believe this to be true. The only person I have talked to who
has done a lot of reading on the subject also feels that this is the
correct story.
It would seem that if all other variables were fixed and we only
addressed the issue of whether two letter sequences appeared on the
same or opposite side of the keyboard, then putting them on opposite
sides would allow for faster typing. Other factors, such as which
fingers type which keys, were probably not addressed at the time and
may be the cause of the QWERTY keyboard's being slower than some other
designs.
Sorry for the long note about a minor point, but the myth that Glidden
and Sholes were trying to slow people down is rather widespread and I
thought people might like to hear the true story.
By the way, it appears that touch typing was an invention; it didn't
always exist. Its merits, in fact, were quite vigorously debated.
Ed Gilbert
From: sdcsvax!norman at NPRDC
Date: 24 February 1982 0731-PST (Wednesday)
Subject: qwerty, alphabetic, and dvorak keyboards
Sigh, the Sholes versus Dvorak myth rises again. [...]
I believe Borden [not reprinted -- KIL] is talking about the linotype
keyboard, which uses the "shrdlu" arrangement. The Sholes keyboard
(aka "qwerty") was designed for a typewriter so as to minimize the
jamming of typebars as they moved to the platen. This caused the
placement of frequent pairs as far from one another as possible. In
fact, this SPEEDS typing because typing on alternate hands is faster
than on the same hand (list of references and reprints of papers
available on demand: see, for example Rumelhart & Norman in the next
Cognitive Science). This point wasn't appreciated at the time because
nobody thought of using all ten fingers, and typing without looking at
the keyboard was unheard of; as someone else said, touch typing was a
heroic, unexpected invention (and required a national typing speed
contest to prove that it worked).
There have been hundreds of studies comparing Dvorak arrangements with
Sholes arrangements. Dvorak fans claim massive improvements in speed.
(We have an old movie -- made by Dvorak in mid 1900's that makes
remarkable claims.) However, experiments done by neutral parties tend
to put the improvement around the 5 to 10% range -- not worth the
effort. Card and Moran at Xerox Parc have a computational method of
computing speed that yields numbers in that range and Rumelhart and I
have a full fledged typing simulation model that, when given the
Dvorak keyboard, only speeds up by 5%. As others have pointed out,
you can get a far greater improvement in typing speed by moving the
RETURN key, either to where it can be reached without distorting the
hand (say by the left thumb which our studies show is not used by
typists) or by having automatic RETURNs (as in various text editors).
Kinkead put it this way: elimination of the RETURN key gives a minimum
of 7% improvement in speed and "up to 30% when the original copy is
not properly formatted."
A while ago, I decided that alphabetically arranged keyboards would
surely be better for first time typists, so we did some experiments.
I was wrong. Randomly arranged keyboards and alphabetically arranged
keyboards were equivalent. (Sholes arrangements were better, but that
is probably because everyone has had some exposure to keyboards, even
though we tried to study only non-typists.) On the typing simulation
model, alphabetic keyboards were all slower than Sholes, confirming
the fact that putting frequent pairs on opposite hands speeds up
typing rate. Why wasn't alphabetic better? Because the mental effort
to make use of the alphabetic arrangement is too much -- and most
people don't know the alphabetic that well anyway (how far away -- and
in what direction-- is "p" from "u"?, or even "e" from "i"?).
If you want to improve typing speed, don't tinker with the current key
layout, but do dramatic re-arrangements, as in the new 5 key hebrew
keyboard (by Gopher) or the various chord keyboards suggested by
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