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T A B L E__T A L K Netscape's source code is out. Now what? Discuss the future of the browser wars in Table Talk's Digital Culture area - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Black and white and Web all over By Janelle Brown African-Americans aren't flocking online -- a new study puts the numbers together. (04/17/98) 21st Challenge No. 8 By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau Phony Microsoft support letters. (04/16/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg For Microsoft's PR machine, "innovate or die" becomes "innovate or buy" (04/15/98) Let my software go! By Andrew Leonard Netscape was desperate for a new strategy against Microsoft. Eric Raymond had one (04/14/98) Consider the source By Laura Lemay Why Netscape's program code causes geeks to swoon (04/13/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURE ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - _______

- - - - - - - - - - gun mad WHILE THE OLDEST, NASTIEST DEBATE ONLINE REMAINS DEADLOCKED, GUN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ON THE NET GET ORGANIZED AS THEIR OPPONENTS FALL BEHIND. BY ANDREW LEONARD | Just minutes after the March 24 shootings that left four students and one teacher dead at a public school in Jonesboro, Ark., gun control flame wars began, once again, to rage across cyberspace. Not that they had ever really simmered down. Incessant "gun thrashes" are one of the defining features of virtual life, and have been for as long as anyone can remember. In newsgroups, chat rooms and via dueling Web pages, the "gun grabbers" (pro-gun control) and the "gun nuts" (pro-gun rights) are constantly whacking each other over the head. Jonesboro just raised the volume. The typical exchange left little room for compromise. "Here's whom I blame," wrote one participant in the Usenet newsgroup talk.politics.guns, "two boys with redneck parents and guardians who kept guns at home and raised their little rednecks-to-be with firearms as central values in their lives." "If that teacher ... had been packing," riposted another, "she could've perhaps returned fire. Ditto for any other teacher or adult on site." Arguably, more words have been exchanged online on the topic of gun control than on any other single subject. And for what? To an observer surveying the wreckage of a forum like talk.politics.guns, where the ratio of Nazi references to actual messages approaches 1-to-1, the hopeless sound and fury of online gun fervor truly does seem to signify nothing. What good is the greatest medium of communication ever invented if all we do with it is scream at each other? Such surface hostilities, however, obscure the real role of the Net in the gun control debate: as a tool for grass-roots political activism. The Net's potential for fostering political change is well-hyped -- but examples are hard to find. Gun politics deliver on the promise: Gun rights activists in the United States are effectively employing the Net as part of a state-by-state campaign to push for legislation that will make it easier for citizens to carry concealed weapons. While the yahoos on both sides blather on in the newsgroups and chat rooms, the gun rights activists are marching. N E X T_P A G E .|. You can have my mouse when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers - - - - - - - - - - - - ILLUSTRATION BY BART NAGEL