Jan 24 Assignment: Law & Internet Seminar (LAW 745)

Reading:

1. Laura Lemay, Teach Yourself WEB Publishing with HTML in a Week (1995), or the equivalent (you can find many basic guides on the Web).
2. John Perry Barlow's essay The Economy of Ideas.
3. Esther Dyson's essay Intellectual Value.

Doing:

1. If you have not already done so, figure out how to make your e-mail program automatically attach a "signature block" or ".sig" to each of your messages.

2. Find the source for the document you are now reading. Print it out. (You may want to study it too, but that's optional....)

3. Spend 30 minutes (or more) cruising the web. Find an interesting web site that was not mentioned last week. Write a short (I think 4 lines is too short...) description of the site, explaining why it's interesting, and post it to the class mailing list before 12 noon Jan. 22.

4. Acquire a means of authoring an HTML document.
   1. You can do this manually using the PICO editor at the law school if you are a control freak and/or have programming experience.
   2. You can find a freeware or shareware HTML editor on the Web. (Note, however, that some of the best ones such as HotDog expire after 30 days, and this course lasts longer than 30 days.....)
   3. You can buy one (not recommended since none of them are that wonderful).

5. Create a WWW directory for youself as follows:

   (a) log into cobra.law.miami.edu. If you are using the UM system, log into the network, type menu, then select choice E, followed by choice A. You will now have to log in again. (Note that the password for cobra is set separately from your password for the network. Even if you have changed your network password, you may still have your original password active on the cobra system.)

   (b) Type the following at the prompt

   mkdir public_html

   (c) Now that you have created this new subdirectory, change directories to it by typing

   cd public_html

6. Now create at least a minimalist homepage for yourself. Include the text of the "newsgroup review" and both of the "interesting WWW sites" that you posted to the class mailing list (and links to the interesting web pages themselves), and a link to the file that has the index of class assignments. Give your page the filename of welcome.html in the public_html directory that you created. (If you are using pico, you would type

   pico welcome.html

   at the prompt, and then manually enter the relevant HTML codes).

7. You may find it useful to check your HTML coding at the WebTech HTML Validation Service or the Weblint Validation Checker.

8. Send an email to the class mailing list advertising the existence of your homepage and stating the correct URL for the page.

9. Print out the source code for your pages -- even (especially) if they don't work -- and bring them to class.

10. Stop by Room 216B between 9:30-10:30 on Wed, Jan 24 or Thurs. Jan 25 to have your picture taken. This photograph will be digitized by the U.M. Law School Computer Resources Department, and will be placed in your public_htlm directory in a few days. You will then be able to include this picture in your web page. If you cannot make either of these times, you *must* bring your own color or black-and-white picture to class on Jan. 24 and arrange with Mr. Wolfgram to have his department scan the picture.

11. Visit this fancy web site

Optional

Version 1.3a. Last modified: Jan 19, 1996. 3:40