Internet

Ocean City -- The owners of Trimper Rides are turning to the Internet to drum up support for a tax break they say is needed to keep the 117-year-old Ocean City landmark afloat. The arcade company launched a Web site yesterday, asking patrons to contact local and state elected officials about new tax assessment rules that would cut the property's $914,000 tax bill, which has nearly tripled in three years. The assessed value of the Trimper property, which stretches from Dorchester Street to the Inlet, was $24 million in 2004 and increased to $62.9 million this year - jumps that reflect the 16 percent to 20 percent annual increases in Ocean City.

ATLANTA -- As a college student, attending the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the future of Napster is a little bit like eavesdropping on your parents when they discuss what they should do about a fight you had with your younger brother. They know little about the situation (and probably don't care), they have all the power and there's a good chance you could end up losing one of your favorite toys if your brother cries loud enough. In the case of Napster, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, wants to be your daddy, 20 million people stand to lose a toy that is also a boon to their lives and, for good measure, Lars Ulrich of Metallica plays the part of the whining tot. As I sat through hours of political posturing from all sides at the hearing earlier this summer, I was able to console myself with the knowledge that no matter what the committee decides to do to Napster and its users, there will still be plenty of free music on the Internet when classes resume next month.

With all the attention we pay to the still-high market values of all those profitless Internet start-ups, it's understandable that we sometimes forget that there's a real industry there - an industry with an actual economic benefit besides making our monthly brokerage statements go up and down. In fact, in just a few short years, the Internet sector has become the fastest-growing, and most vibrant, slice of the economy - not only nationwide, but here in Maryland, too. These Net firms create jobs - and nice paying ones, at that.

In generations past, the world's oldest profession was a tawdry trade practiced mostly in the shadows of unlit street corners and darkened alleys. Today, vulnerable young women and girls are still being tricked or forced into selling their bodies to strangers by predatory and amoral pimps who deceive, threaten and abuse them - but the locus of "the stroll" has changed from sidewalks to computer screens. Increasingly, traffickers are going online to market their victims, and as a new study by the Abell Foundation warns, the rise in Internet sex trafficking is rapidly outstripping efforts to combat it. The study's authors concede that hard numbers are notoriously difficult to come by, since the vast majority of transactions take place out of view of authorities, and traffickers have become extremely sophisticated in managing their businesses.

My Windows ME system can no longer find the Internet with Windows applications. Using the DOS prompt, I can ping out to the Net, but apps like Internet Explorer return error messages. What could cause this? Ping is an operating system command that sends a signal via the Internet to another computer and prompts that computer to send a return signal - a ping. In Windows ME, click on Start, then Run and type "command" to get that command-line box. Type in "ping" plus an address to check if the connection is live.

Less than a year ago, the nation's long-distance companies saw the future, and it nearly scared them to death.A new technology was emerging that threatened their landlocked core business. Internet telephones were on the horizon, and, on their face, they posed a powerful new threat: The Internet could connect long-distance telephone calls and could do it significantly cheaper than dialing directly to a given location.For a time, the giant phone companies appeared quite mortal.But in the short space of a year, those same companies are surprisingly calm.

Students sent E-mail messages to government officials and competed in an Internet scavenger hunt, wading through a tide of information to locate particular sites or facts.They were participants in the Academic Champions of Excellence (ACE) program, which is run by Morgan State University. Part of the program included a two-week course on the Internet conducted at the Lattanze Center at Loyola College.ACE, supported by the Carnegie Foundation and the Maryland State Higher Education Commission, helps students prepare for college and improve their math and science skills.

America Online Inc. said yesterday that it was testing a system that alerts Internet users when people they know are logged on, so they can hold electronic discussions with them.The country's No. 1 online service, which has 8 million users, is extending to the Internet the services, called Instant Messenger and Buddy List, that are already available to AOL members. Dulles, Va.-based AOL is holding trials of the Internet service, which will also be available to nonsubscribers, through the middle of this summer.

Imagine calling a friend in England, Germany, Australia or Hong Kong and chatting for free. Legally. No black boxes, hacking or cracking involved.If you have a reasonably well-equipped multimedia computer, you can do it with a $49 program that may well revolutionize how people use the Internet.Internet Phone, from an Israeli company called VocalTec Inc., does exactly what its name implies. It turns your PC into a telephone that uses the Net as a long-distance carrier to transmit your voice in real time to anyone equipped with the same software -- and transmit their voices to you.The amazing thing is that Internet Phone worked the first time I tried it. I couldn't hear a pin drop at the other end of the line, but I spent a couple of days chatting quite understandably with equally amazed people around the world who had downloaded trial versions of the Windows program from the Internet server at VocalTec's American headquarters in Northvale, N.J."

STRAPPED INTO the seat of his X-Wing fighter, my 17-year-old surveyed the pilots who were about to join him in a battle against the Imperial fleet.His wingmen, unknown computer jockeys from around the country with names like Yoda and Wimper, showed up as bright green dots on the screen of Microsoft's Internet Gaming Zone. There were other player-dots, yellow and red, but none in Ike's squadron."Green is good," Ike said. "They're all low latency. It'll be a fast game.""Yeah," I grunted. "That latency will get you every time.