To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Internet expansion is similar to plant growth
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 08:41:47 -0500

                1.5 billion Web pages linked by 19
                clicks of separation

                Internet expansion is similar to plant growth,
                scientists find

                Monday, February 7, 2000

                By TOM PAULSON
                SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

                The World Wide Web is growing like a weed. Literally.

                Scientists say it's developing according to the same
                organizing patterns and mathematical principles observed
                among plant life in the wild.

                Nobody knows exactly why.

                The rapidly expanding Web today has about 1.5 billion
                pages. But some scientists think its size is best measured
                by the average number of connections it takes to link any
                two random sites.

                Thus was born the "19 clicks of separation" theory of the
                Web. This scientific effort to size the Web has helped
                reveal the organic way in which the global network is
                growing.

                Like the celebrated "six degrees of separation" that
                supposedly can connect any two people on the planet,
                researchers at the University of Notre Dame recently
                estimated that any two randomly selected sites on the
                Web are connected, on average, by 19 clicks.

                The original six-degrees notion, based on a sociological
                theory popularized in the 1960s, posits that each person
                on the planet is linked to any other person through no
                more than five mutual acquaintances. Out of the total 6
                billion people on Earth, you can get from one person to
                anyone else in at most six people.

                The Notre Dame team says, on average, you can get
                from one site on the Web to any other randomly selected
                site in about 19 clicks.

                "Based on this kind of information, we can construct
                more effective search engines," said Hawoong Jeong,
                one of the Notre Dame scientists.

                Today's search engines typically cover less than one-fifth
                of all publicly indexed sites on the Web.

                The 19-clicks theory, while interesting, has left other
                Web experts less than impressed.

                "Who cares?" responded Oren Etzioni, developer of the
                search engine Metacrawler and a University of
                Washington computer scientist on leave while working as
                chief technology officer at the Web company
                Go2net.com.

                "Whether the Web's diameter is 11 or 19 or 7.5 might be
                a fun academic curiosity, but that's not how people use
                the Web," Etzioni said.

                What's more interesting to Etzioni is the Web's structure.

                When the Notre Dame researchers tried to find a
                meaningful way to describe the diameter of the Web,
                they also demonstrated something mysterious about its
                growth and development.

                Basically, they found that the Web is a lot like a living
                plant. For some unknown reason, it is developing along
                the same mathematical principles that govern the organic
                development of plants in the natural world.

                "It was a complete surprise for us," said Albert-Laszlo
                Barabasi, a physicist at Notre Dame and principal
                investigator for the team that reported their finding on the
                Web's 19 clicks of separation. It was reported last fall in
                the journal Nature.

                Barabasi and his students, Jeong and Reka Albert, last
                year set loose a "robot" search engine on portions of the
                Web to tally links and measure how far away each of the
                links encountered were from one another. The robotic
                search engine was a computer program that traveled the
                Web documenting its encounters.

                Barabasi said everyone expected the robot to encounter
                a simple, exponentially increasing number of links based
                on the assumption that the links on the Web are
                distributed randomly.

                Instead, he said, the data clearly showed the links are
                distributed according to a more sophisticated and
                self-organizing mathematical principle known as the
                "power-tail law." Nobody knows why.

                Another team of researchers, Bernardo Huberman and
                Lada Adamic at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,
                found the same growth pattern on the Web through a
                different method of analysis. Their findings were also
                reported in Nature.

                "It's just like the growth of a tree," Huberman said. "The
                more pages a site has, the more likely it is that more
                pages will be added to it."

                Just as the number of branches on a tree limb is greater
                near the trunk than out at the tip, growth on the Web
                takes place so that links with more associated links (or
                branches) end up closer to the Web's "trunk."

                This cybertrunk is perhaps best thought of as the main
                flow of information on the Web.

                Because the Web does not exist in physical space and its
                "branches" always reconnect rather than spread out into
                thin air, the tree analogy is not perfect.

                But the point is that the Web's growth appears to follow
                some of the same natural laws at work in ecological
                systems.

                "What's most interesting is how the Web's structure has
                evolved without any central authority," said Steve
                Lawrence, a computer scientist at Princeton University
                and at NEC. He has been internationally recognized for
                his work on Web information distribution and access.

                "It's ending up with a high degree of structure,"
                Lawrence said, and it's somehow creating that structure
                on its own.

                Barabasi and his students demonstrated that efforts
                aimed at quantifying the Web can aid in the effort to
                better understand its structure. The Notre Dame
                researchers play around in the field of "topology" -- a
                branch of mathematics in which number and shape are
                the same thing.

                As the number of Web pages increases over time,
                Barabasi said, the Web's size -- degree of separation --
                can be expected to increase slowly.

                It will not increase as fast as might be expected based on
                simple exponential growth, he said.

                If it operates according to the power-tail law, Barabasi
                said, a tenfold increase in the number of pages on the
                Web probably would result in just a small increase in
                Web size (again, size being the degree of separation
                between links).

                But again, Etzioni said, so what if it does? The real trick
                here is to make more efficient and accurate search
                engines, he said.

                "The typical search engine today only indexes about 16
                percent of the Web," Etzioni said. "That fraction keeps
                getting smaller as the Web increases in size."

                The key to getting better search engines, many of these
                Web experts say, is to better understand how the Web is
                organized -- why it's growing like a weed -- and how to
                use that knowledge to improve our ability to find the
                information we seek.

                P-I reporter Tom Paulson can be reached at
                206-448-8318 or tompaulson@seattle-pi.com

http://www.seattlep-i.com/local/clik07.shtml

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========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Arutz-7 News items (2/20/00)
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 19:20:35 -0500

NEW MAP: SIX SETTLEMENT BLOCS TO REMAIN

Israeli security elements have prepared a rough draft of a permanent-status
map of Judea and Samaria, according to which only six settlement blocs in
Yesha will remain under Israeli sovereignty. Arutz-7 correspondent Haggai
Huberman reports that the six are: * Gush Etzion - including the
communities of Efrat, Alon Shvut, Kfar Etzion, and others; * Northern
Shomron - three communities very close to the Green Line; * Western
Shomron - Ariel, Karnei Shomron and neighboring communities, as well as
Peduel and Alei Zahav; * Western Binyamin - Kiryat Sefer, Matityahu and
Hashmonaim, as well as Na'aleh, Nili, and others; * Eastern Binyamin - Beit
El and Ofrah; * Eastern Har Hevron area - Susia, Carmel, Maon and others.
Some of the blocs will not be contiguous with the State of Israel. Kiryat Arba
will not be included under Israeli sovereignty, according to the proposed
maps.

At the same time, Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh denies that he
has prepared a plan detailing the future evacuation of 21 Yesha communities.
The denial came in reaction to a report today on Galei Tzahal Army Radio
that the government intends such a plan.

DETAILS OF THE SETTLEMENT-BLOC MAPS

Arutz-7 correspondent Haggai Huberman reports that according to the new
maps and the Galei Tzahal report, there will be three types of communities:
"Those that will fully be annexed to and physically connected with Israel; a
new category of towns that will come under Israeli sovereignty but which will
have no territorial contiguity with the State of Israel; and those in territory to
be handed over to the Palestinian territory - these last will be uprooted.

"The first group of settlements will simply be incorporated into Israel," said
Huberman, " - in some cases by making simple border adjustments. In the
northern Shomron, for instance, this group includes a bloc of communities in
close proximity to one another and to present-day Israel. The same in the
Modi'in bloc, in western Binyamin. Other areas will be connected to Israel
by way of a narrow strip of territory, such as Ariel and the Karnei Shomron
towns. Gush Etzion, too, south of Jerusalem, will be connected to Israel via
the current Tunnels Highway."

"Ofrah and Beit El," continued Huberman, "which Ehud Barak promised
would 'remain Israeli forever,' will be incorporated into Israel, and will be
linked territorially by the Ramallah bypass road, as they currently are, to
northern Jerusalem. At the same time, it is important to understand that the
government plans to hand over Jerusalem's northern neighborhoods, which
will effectively become subsumed in the Palestinian entity in the Ramallah
region."

An example of settlements to be included under Israeli sovereignty but with
no physical connection to Israel is the mid-western Binyamin bloc of Dolev
and the Talmons. "Travelers to and from this bloc will have to pass through
Palestinian territory," Huberman said. "They will be provided with enough
land in which to expand, such that they will not be limited... Another bloc of
settlements is in northern Binyamin, south of Tapuach: Shilo-Eli-Ma'aleh
Levonah-Shvut Rachel will remain a bloc, but the question is whether they
will be annexed and connected to Israel's Jordan Valley area, or whether
they will remain an enclave unto itself." In Gush Katif, Netzarim, Kfar Darom,
and Morag are scheduled to be uprooted, according to the plan, while the
northern Gaza Strip towns of Nisanit, Dugit, and Elei Sinai will be annexed to
the Ashkelon area of Israel.

When asked about Deputy Defense Minister Sneh's denial - which was later
echoed by Prime Minister Barak - Huberman replied, "I know who my sources
are, and I know that this information is accurate. It could be, though,
that Sneh is referring to the intention to uproot some of the towns,
because that is really not an army decision, but rather a political one.
The defense ministry people merely recommend that certain towns should
remain outside the final Israeli borders; what happens to them afterwards
is no longer in their realm of authority."

REACTIONS

* Housing Minister Rabbi Yitzchak Levy (National Religious Party): "No
settlements will be uprooted, such that anyone preparing such maps is
simply wasting his time."

* Justice Minister Yossi Beilin (Labor) opposes the uprooting of
communities in Judea and Samaria; he is rather in favor of giving the
residents the option of remaining in place under Palestinian rule or
re-locating to Israel. He says that Jewish communities in Gaza will have
to be uprooted, however.

* Professors for a Strong Israel notes that the uprooting of communities is not
"peace" but rather "transfer."

* The Yesha Council stated today that it is confident that a majority in the
government and the nation will not allow the minority that wishes to uproot
the Yesha settlement enterprise to do so.

* Gaza Regional Council Chairman Aharon Tzur says that the uprooting of
settlements would deliver a "mortal blow to Israeli society." Tzur said that he
is convinced that the nation would prefer "internal peace among Jews" rather
than doubtful agreements with external enemies.

Binyamin Regional Council Head Pinchas Wallerstein, former Chairman of
the Yesha Council, does not accept the concept of settlement blocs.
"These maps do not indicate blocs," he told Arutz-7 today, "but rather that
whichever settlements will remain will do so - if at all - in all sorts of niches
and enclaves. If not, then why wasn't Kokhav HaShachar [between Ofrah
and the Jordan Valley] included in the eastern Binyamin bloc?... This is not
just a map of individual communities that will or will not be uprooted, but
rather a map of intentions by the government for the entire Judea and
Samaria and Jordan Valley. For instance, the cession of Tapuach is not
merely significant for the people of Tapuach - it means that the government of
Israel has made a conscious decision that Ma'aleh Ephraim ["capital" of the
Jordan Valley] will be cut off from the entire Tel Aviv region. There will simply
be no Cross-Samaria Highway... Similarly, there was no reason to uproot
Kokhav HaShachar unless there is a plan to give large chunks of the Jordan
Valley to the Palestinians."

His voice pockmarked with sighs and emotion, Wallerstein said, "Leaking
this list is a trial balloon of sorts, to see how the people of Israel will
react to hearing a list of names of settlements. The expectation is that many
of them will say, 'OK, well, it's only the settlers.' But it's really much more
than that - it's major portions of the Land of Israel, as well as the tens of
thousands of people who will be affected."

EGYPT INCITES AGAINST ISRAEL

Egypt, via its official radio, publicized a statement of support for Hizbullah,
prompting Foreign Minister David Levy to call on Egypt to "prove its
commitment to peace and to cease its incitement against Israel." An
Egyptian radio commentator said that Israel has adopted Nazi policies, and
has even out-done the Nazis in this regard: "Israel is creating a real
incinerator, according to the Nazi model, against our Lebanese brothers."

Prime Minister Barak sent his security aide Danny Yatom to Cairo this
afternoon, to explain Israel's Lebanon policy to Foreign Minister Amr Mussa.
Likud MK Uzi Landau said that this is a mission of "kowtowing," and that
Israel would be better advised to lobby the U.S. to diminish its aid to Egypt
in light of the latter's hostile efforts internationally. Other Likud leaders said
that the worsening diplomatic situation is a result of the poor management of
the situation by Prime Minister Barak; Barak set forth "great expectations,
and issued far-reaching promises, even though he knew that he could not
deliver on them." The Likud says that Barak must make a personal
accounting.

PROF: MEDIA STEERING PUBLIC OPINION TOWARDS LEBANON
WITHDRAWAL

The Israeli media are creating a public atmosphere demanding a speedy
withdrawal of troops from Lebanon, according to Prof. Gadi Wolfsfeld of the
Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An
expert on the role of the media and wars, Wolfsfeld says that since the
elections last year, when Ehud Barak promised to withdraw from Lebanon,
the media have adopted his stand - "and have served to further and to
strengthen the idea among the public that there is no alternative other than to
withdraw from Lebanon."

According to Prof. Wolfsfeld, who released a statement on the topic, the
media is looking for stories which complement the line they have taken,
emphasizing the tragedy of Lebanon. Examples he cites include interviews
with bereaved mothers and visual emphasis on the bloody costs of the
conflict. An extensive platform is given to politicians vehemently favoring
withdrawal from Lebanon, he notes. As opposed to this, he states, the
media do not show soldiers who are proud to defend the communities of the
north and who are positive about combating the Hizbullah.

ARABS ACCUSATIONS SHOULD BE SEEN BY ISRAELIS, SAYS HENDEL

Aryeh Stav, whose Ariel Center for Policy Research keeps tabs on anti-
Semitism in the Arab Press, sees nothing unusual in the latest examples
accusing Israel of Nazism. "The Nazi caricatures are not new," Stav told
Arutz-7 today. "These kinds of images accompany the media and
educational materials in several Arab countries, mostly Syria, Egypt and
Jordan, and even intensify following the signing of various 'peace' treaties
between Israel and her neighbors. This began with Camp David, continued
with Madrid and Oslo, and reached a height when Israel signed a deal with
Jordan."

Stav also noted that the Arab accusations that Israel is exhibiting Nazi
tendencies "is ludicrous." He said that the late Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat "was a Hitler sympathizer... and the Arab states fully backed the
Nazis in World War II. Hitler's Mein Kampf has been released in countless
editions in Cairo, Damascus, and most recently within the Palestinian
Authority" - where it reached the best-seller charts. The deeper reason
behind the using of the Nazi imagery in reference to Israel, Stav noted, "is so
that the Arab governments may prepare their respective populations for the
fateful day on which Israel will be destroyed once and for all. By denying the
Jew his human essence, and by removing the legitimacy of the Jewish state,
the Arab world is looking for a moral license to eradicate 'the Zionist blight
from its midst.'"

Stav concluded by observing that the Israeli public is not sufficiently aware
of the extent of open Arab anti-Semitism. "Our press does everything it can
to hide the facts from the public, especially the intense anti-Israel rhetoric of
Israeli-Arab citizens. The facts are simply outflanked by the all-
encompassing mantra of peace." Stav would therefore probably welcome
MK Tzvi Hendel's demand late this afternoon that the Arab and Palestinian
stations be included on the basket of cable TV stations offered to Israeli
viewers. "Peace is made between nations," Hendel said, "and it is therefore
important that Israelis see what their neighbors in Syria and the PA are
viewing. Only in this way can we prepare for a true
peace."

Arutz Sheva News Service
  <www.ArutzSheva.org>
Sunday, February 20, 2000 / Adar Aleph 14, 5760

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