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| Two Geeks Give Homelessness a Try |
| The National Record Buyers Study: Two Interpretations |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Henry and Kathleen See Europe |
| Videos of the Central California Coast and More |
| The Hidden Gems of Israel |
| Waka Waka Bang Splat Round Song |
| Make Yourself a "South Park" Beefcake |
| RealNetworks Releases New Streaming and Production Software |
| Ogg Vorbis 1.0 Open-Source Music Software Released |
| Perl 5.8.0 Released |
| We Now Know What COSI Means, but We're Not Happy |
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BREAKING SURF
Politics, Wealth, and the History of America
With stock markets reeling, this is a good time to look at "The Price of Wealth", a debate series running in the Atlantic Online. Kevin Phillips, who wrote the recently published book, "Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich" (see the book recommendation below), is challenged by James Fallows, who comments on NPR and writes as well - notably for Atlantic Monthly and formerly as editor of US News and World Report. Fallows debates Phillips about current events in the business and international arena and how they relate to the larger historical perspective of the book and the historical analogies advanced there. A good read if you want to think a bit about the larger picture of politics, money, markets, and the raise and fall of nations. The first three exchanges are ready to read.Part One: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/fallows/jf2002-07-03/
Part Two: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/fallows/jf2002-07-03/fallows2.htm
Part Three: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/fallows/jf2002-07-03/fallows3.htm
A Hundred CDs You Need to Trash
The Web doesn't get much better than this. Here's an opinionated list of 100 albums you should toss from your CD collection from a music-oriented e-zine called Jaguaro. If you've been buying CDs, you probably have at least something on this list, particularly if you're prone to succumb to mild peer pressure whenever an acquaintance describes an album as "just awesome!" You get home, play the CD once, then leave it to be excavated by future archaeologists seeking to understand the demise of consumer culture. You won't agree with all 100, but you will agree with some. Perhaps you can sell them online? (Note that the HTML is ill-coded and that Netscape/Mozilla will not display the whole list of 100.)http://www.jaguaro.org/feature/03-09-02_wesk.shtml
Sysadmin Day: Hug Your Sysadmin Today
Expect to hear a lot about Sysadmin Day online as sysadmins everywhere make their bid for a bit of appreciation. And why not, considering all the dreck they have to put up with. The relatively new tradition puts Sysadmin Day on the last Friday in July and provides an excuse to express your appreciation to the person who keeps your computing life from being a lot more hellish then it already is. The Sysadmin Day website has a handy list of suggested gifts, a Sysadmin Day photo gallery, and some good links to sysadmin related humor such as the classic Bastard Operator from Hell (BOFH) Official Archive.http://www.sysadminday.com/
The Interplanetary Superhighway
Worried about the high cost of fuel for your next interplanetary adventure? Martin Lo, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has found a clever way to cut costs for interplanetary travel via what's been dubbed the Interplanetary Superhighway. Every planet and moon in the solar system has Lagrange points where the forces of gravity acting on it from other celestial bodies cancel out. A vehicle at a Lagrange point feels very little gravity even though it is relatively close to a planet, and does not need to expend much energy to maintain its position. Lo mapped all possible paths among the Lagrange points of the planets and moons in the Solar System. Software called LTool now lets mission planners use the new highway to save money and fuel. While working on NASA's Genesis mission, which is collecting solar wind samples, Lo used LTool to plot the probe's course. Spacecraft aren't the only vehicles on the Interplanetary Superhighway; natural space travelers like the Shoemaker-Levy comet also use these paths of least resistance. NASA has a press release on Lo's discovery and an interview with the man himself.NASA: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_147.html
Lo: http://www.genesismission.org/people/lo/lointerview.html
On Jan. 31, 2000, Dr. Harold Shipman was convicted in Britain of murdering 15 of his patients and sentenced to life imprisonment. A subsequent public inquiry has concluded he probably killed another 200 patients over his 25-year medical career, and perhaps more. The Shipman Inquiry site is impressive, well organized, and full of information about Shipman, but the most compelling item is the 346-page Phase 1 report of the investigation's findings. This reveals with dispassionate prose but chilling detail whom he killed and how - usually by lethal injection of a drug such as diamorphine. The "why" remains shrouded in mystery. Shipman was held in high regard where he practiced and most of his patients loved him. Yet he could be cold and brusque, was a consummate liar, and was often intolerant of authority. In the case that led to his undoing, he forged the will of a patient he killed, naming himself beneficiary. The forgery was inept, and the whole business clumsy. But for that forgery, Shipman might still be killing patients. The inquiry now must consider what to do about it. The BBC has an in-depth look at the case and its history.
Inquiry: http://www.the-shipman-inquiry.org.uk/
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2000/the_shipman_murders/news_and_reaction/default.stm
Fearful regimes censor, and what they censor reveals their fears. With the cooperation of Saudi authorities, whose Internet Services Unit routes and filters all Internet traffic in the country, two legal researchers tested Saudi access to almost 64,000 Web pages and found 2,038 blocked by Saudi filters. The report, "Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia", includes a complete, alphabetical list of the blocked pages. More than a third of the blocked sites are sexually explicit, but the rest pertain mostly to women's issues, religion, medicine, entertainment, and humor. The study spawned a newsy piece in Wired that compares the Saudi approach to filtering with the more draconian Chinese approach. China fears politics more than women and blocks many news sites. It also promotes self-censorship by local content providers. China and Saudi Arabia aren't the only places where Big Brother thinks it knows what's best for the people; North Korea is the biggest nervous Nellie, blocking access to the Internet, period.
Report: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/saudiarabia/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53933,00.html
Extra! Online Newspapers Dabble in Online Subscriptions!
Whither free online news? Will it wither? What about weather? This article in Online Journalism Review examines the increasing use of subscriptions for news sites. The use of subscriptions is growing overseas and in the US Midwest, but not at the US's big newspapers, save for the Wall Street Journal. The LA Times is also considering a subscription fee. Newspapers demand subscription fees of online readers to turn profits, and therein lies another issue. There is no standard way to define the profitability of a newspaper Web site. Media company accountants don't agree on what should count as costs, especially the money paid to use the newspaper's hard-copy content. The figures are confusing but the striking fact is that no one, not even the Wall Street Journal, seems to be turning a profit. Expect to see either a great deal more advertising to support your free news habit or perhaps nothing at all.http://www.ojr.org/ojr/future/1026348638.php
Old Yahoo Bug Resurfaces in the Media Machine
If you use Yahoo's free e-mail service to send and receive attachments, you might have noticed occasional text in your messages getting mangled. Yahoo is - and has been for years - scanning HTML e-mail for malicious code and is trying to automatically neuter that code. When Yahoo's filters encounter words used in executable code, like "eval" and "mocha", they change these words into benign synonyms like "review" and "espresso". "Medieval" becomes "medireview", for example. This bug was first noted by BugNet in September 2000, but a recent story in Need to Know (NTK) was noted in Slashdot and then picked up by New Scientist and the BBC and other outlets. We can't decide if the Yahoo bug or the media trail that rehashes the old news is the more interesting story. Need to Know provides a list of some of the altered words.BugNet: http://www.bugnet.com/alerts/bugalert_000922.html
NTK: http://www.ntk.net/2002/07/12/
Slashdot: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/15/2039227
New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992546
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2138000/2138014.stm
The Guardian plans to find and reward the best weblog in the UK. It's hosting a judged competition and will hand over £1,000 to the winner and £100 to each of five runners-up. If you're a UK resident, we suggest checking in - and if you haven't been blogging already, invent one. If you aren't a UK resident, can't be bothered to blog, or whatever else, you really ought to check out the Guardian's guide to blogs, with accompanying bloglist. The breadth of informed opinion may surprise you.
Contest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weblog/bestbritishblog/0,12252,756320,00.html
Guide: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weblog/special/0,10627,744914,00.html
The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has posted the list of nominees for the 54th Emmy Awards at the Emmy Web site. Did you know there are categories for outstanding costumes, outstanding hairstyling, and main title design? Still, its the series and specials we're mainly interested in. We won't disgorge the lists of nominees here, but we will highlight a few features. "Emeril", on TV for about seven minutes before its plug was pulled, garnered a nomination for Outstanding Art Direction for a Multi-Camera Series - which might go to show just how important art direction is for a successful sitcom. "South Park" got a single mention, in the Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour) for its episode called "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants". You'll have to wait until Sept. 22 to find out how your favorites do.
http://www.emmys.com/primetime/2002/2002awards.html
Star Trek Conventions, Real and Virtual
The news of another Star Trek convention would not normally make it into NSD but this one has an online spin that makes it worth noting. A live convention will take place Aug. 2-4 at the Las Vegas Hilton. The massive guest list is packed with Star Trek and other science fiction luminaries major and minor. Events include the Star Trek Music Video Contest - submit your own for consideration - the Star Trek Stunt Team, the Ferengi Family Hour, and more along the same lines. The online component is in some ways just as interesting. If you can't make it to Vegas, check out the Virtual Convention. You can either fully participate (Windows and DSL or better connection needed) or just view the proceedings (Win or Mac and a modem). Participants will be able to interact in a 3-D environment with a choice of avatars and receive streaming video from the live convention. Prices range from $110 to $250 for different options.Las Vegas: http://www.creationent.com/cal/stlv.html
Virtual Convention: http://www.vir-con.com/index.html
Company Claims Patent on Part of JPEG Image Format
A small Texas company called Forgent Networks is laying claim to a patent on the ubiquitous JPEG image compression format. The JPEG format is a de facto Internet standard administered by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (which is what JPEG stands for). The group has looked at the patent, which covers a particular encoding method that is part of the larger JPEG standard, and is seeking prior art to invalidate it. Their latest JPEG 2000 standard is not encumbered by patents since the controlling group went to some lengths to reach agreement with various large companies to make sure it would be license-free. CNET has the story, and the Register adds that the ISO standards body may drop JPEG as a standard and that the patent protection, if not invalidated, runs out in 2004 anyway.Forgent: http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=FORG&script=410&layout=-6&item_id=314044
JPEG: http://www.jpeg.org/newsrel1.htm
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-945686.html
Register: http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25711.html
Broadband Monopoly vs. Free Speech
The ACLU has released a pair of documents, a white paper and a study, that conclude that concentrating broadband services among a handful of large firms threatens free speech. The white paper bases its case on the results of the independent study, which examined the cable industry and its consolidation of broadband services. The white paper contends that the open nature of the Net - a vital factor in its success - is threatened by broadband cable networks that are not open and not subject to any effective competition or regulation. Both the white paper and the study are available at the ACLU Web site.http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/broadband.html
What to Do Before the Telecom Storm Hits
WorldCom's assets include MCI, the second-largest long distance provider, and UUNet, the busiest of the Internet backbones. Now that WorldCom is bankrupt, its customers are properly worried sick over what will happen to those services. MCI and UUNet won't simply cease to be, but as MSNBC reports, client companies have to prepare for financial disasters like this just as they have disaster recovery plans for natural catastrophes. But which companies should they turn to? Small telecoms are struggling but how safe are Sprint, Qwest, and AT&T? The bankrupt KPNQwest, which provides Internet services through Europe's largest fiber optic network, may shut down any day now. It will be hard to nurse struggling economies to full health in the face of this plague as almost all companies depend on telephone, Internet, and wireless communications for critical aspects of their business operations.http://www.msnbc.com/news/782984.asp
Forbes Magazine is running a week-long series of articles about the impact of Linux on "competitors, customers, and investors". It has pieces about biotech supercomputers based on Linux, how Linux has done from an investor perspective, a case study of a retailer who switched to an all-Linux set-up, and several on Linux applications - web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, etc. The series is a good snapshot of how Linux looks to the non-geek world.
http://www.forbes.com/2002/07/16/linuxintro.html
802.11 Wireless Security Blackpaper
Although wireless 802.11 networks have numerous security issues and require care when being set up, specific information about all the security issues has until now generally been scattered across a number of papers and obscure articles. The geeks at Ars Technica have gathered all such information in one place to produce a blackpaper - a guide to security issues. This is fairly technical material, but if you're setting up a wireless network and care about security you should become familiar with it. Fortunately, the final section gives a list of bullet points with practical advice for locking down your network. It's a fine and necessary technical overview.http://arstechnica.com/paedia/w/wireless/security-1.html
Symantec Acquires SecurityFocus
SecurityFocus, the premier security information Web site and home of the highly respected BugTraq security issues list, has been purchased by Symantec. Symantec, best known for its anti-virus software, paid $75 million in cash. SecurityFocus is much more than just a Web site. It also owns a huge database of vulnerabilities and runs an automated early warning network called Deep Sight that can detect hacking attacks based on data collected from more than 15,000 online partner sites. The acquisition has naturally generated a great deal of discussion about the continued independence of the highly regarded BugTraq list. Symantec says it won't mess with BugTraq, but much of the online community seems skeptical and is already looking for alternatives. Taste the debate at Slashdot.SecurityFocus: http://securityfocus.com/
Symantec: http://www.symantec.com/press/2002/n020717.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/07/17/2129249.shtml
DrKoop.com Sells for a Relative Song
Former US Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop founded an eponymous health Web site in 1997. At one time, DrKoop.com was worth over $1 billion, but earlier this month, a health products retailer bought it lock, stock, and barrel for $186,000 (the e-mail addresses of its two million or so registered users were part of the contents of that barrel). The purchasing company, Vitacost, doesn't seem to want to change the DrKoop.com content, but no doubt it will cut costs. Yahoo has a story on this development and a modicum of discussion.http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020715/wr_nm/health_drkoop_dc_1
ONLINE CULTURE
Two Geeks Give Homelessness a Try
Two Seattle guys decided to see what it was like to be homeless in Seattle for one week. Derrick Clark, a 24-year-old multimedia director, and Scotty Weeks, a 25-year-old Web designer and bartender, took to the streets with just clothes purchased from a local Value Village store. They documented their experience on a Web site via a local cybercafe. To say that they were out of their element is an understatement. They endured cold, blistered feet, a lack of showers, and yearnings for super-premium coffee. Panhandling - "This sign is for sale: $2", "Will be coldly ignored: 25c" - gained them $25. Communicating with the real homeless proved difficult. Clark is quoted as saying "We ran into some people who just weren't really fired up there." The apparently serious experiment would be funny if it weren't so, so... - well, actually it is pretty funny. Homeless Week is the Web site. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has some choice quotes.Homeless Week: http://www.homelessweek.com/
Post-Intelligencer: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/78558_homeless15.shtml
The National Record Buyers Study: Two Interpretations
Edison Research has released the results of a recent survey of music buyers. The press release highlights the fact that "nearly three-quarters of teens do not have an ethical issue over the downloading of music from the Internet" and "10.1% of 12-17-year-olds who actively download music from the Internet did not purchase a single CD or cassette in the last 12 months." Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire noticed that the report of the research seems to spin support for the music industry's war against file trading. He deconstructs the results of the survey and sees the results actually supporting the idea that file trading is good for music sales. Along the way, he takes some shots at the well documented exploitation of musicians by draconian record label contracts. Who's right? Decide for yourself.Study: http://www.edisonresearch.com/R&RRecordBuyersII.htm
Press release: http://www.edisonresearch.com/RecordBuyersIIPress.htm
Menta: http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/teentrade.html
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
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Wealth and Democracy: How Great Fortunes and Government Created America's Aristocracy
Underexposed: Pictures of the 20th Century They Didn't Want You to See
Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography Online
Mastering Regular Expressions, Second Edition
SURFING SITES
The Japanese ASCII Kitten Fertility Dance Song
This Flash animated musical we found stars kittens, Japanese, and great whopping genitals. We have less knowledge of Japanese than we do of the actual topic of this cartoon, which appears to be about mighty penises and the joy and power they bring to the little boy kittens that sprout them. Plus, apparently, they make great wobbly hats. We're at a loss to explain the whale that flies across the screen, but we think one verse might be "John Ashcroft has a reputation for being a prude, but when he does his dance, he does it in the nude. Like This!" This has the potential to become an All Your Base-like phenomenon.http://www7.ocn.ne.jp/~helpme/flash/chinko_anesan.swf
Country-Specific Searchable Data
Designed and managed by Michigan State University, the MSU Global Access project is intended to help people learn about the world and important international issues. At last glance, the Web site offered more than 4,000 resources, which can be searched by country, region, and theme - such as "Kenya and environment". This facility vastly increases its usefulness. In addition, the Country pages afford quick and painless access to maps, facts, and travel advisories. For academics, this is a valuable resource. Would-be tourists will do well to bookmark the site and check into it before making their reservations. MSU Global Access provides country-specific data regarding required immunizations, health data, safety and security issues, and more. It has lots of good advice and information, all packed into one small space.http://www.msuglobalaccess.net/
Search Google and Amazon via E-Mail
CapeScience has put Google's released APIs to work. It has created GoogleMail, a way for users to use Google to search the Web via e-mail. If you e-mail google@capeclear.com and put your query in the subject, CapeScience e-mails back a set of results. If you have a PDA that syncs up with your e-mail, you can review your search results while avoiding the lure of sleep during a meeting, and you won't be as obvious as the guy next to you playing solitaire. A clever idea would be to set up a rule in your e-mail client to run the same search each week to see how the results change over a period of time. Cape Science also developed AmazonMail, which does the same thing with Amazon searches, although the site cautions: "To be frank, we're not exactly sure why you'd want to do this, but now you can. Email us if you can think of a good reason." Combine this with the Accessing the Internet by E-Mail FAQ, and you can surf the Web without ever launching a browser.GoogleMail: http://www.capescience.com/google/
AmazonMail: http://www.capescience.com/webservices/amazon/
FAQ: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/internet-services/access-via-email/
You know about Amazon. What you may not know is that there's an Amazon Light. Kokogiak Media created Amazon Light based on Amazon's XML API, and has established it as a simple, clutter-free, Google-esque way to access Amazon's internal search engine. The site used to be a little too Google-esque for Google's legal department, but after the resolution of that issue, the site is still running, and running lean. It lets you search for books, music, DVDs, and other content quickly and easily. Follow the light. In this case, it isn't an oncoming train.
http://www.kokogiak.com/amazon/default.asp
Behind front lines, the military has scholars as well as warriors. The Department of History at the US Military Academy has put nearly 1,000 military historical maps online in its Map Library, an intellectual treasure trove for teachers and other veterans of education. What a spectrum of conflict! These large JPEG maps cover just about everything Hollywood has and more - from the battle of Marathon to the Arab-Israeli wars to the war in Vietnam to the mess in Somalia. Studying these flat digital records may remind you of staring at weapons in museum cabinets: a dry bit of proof hints at huge events you shudder to imagine. Here and there, you get collateral background details, such as the location of Indian tribes on a map of American colonial expansion in the 18th century and railroad lines that supported the Japanese occupation of China in the 20th. This site is modestly designed (content is king); follow the Atlases link to start your studies. As you might expect, modern wars are better documented than those of the distant past.
http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/dhistorymaps/MapsHome.htm
Professor Janke's Civil War Portal
The US Civil War is heroin for the American history buff. Once you've had a little taste - maybe a book, maybe a battlefield park visit, maybe even that Ken Burns special with the continuous violin dirge - you're only going to get in deeper. Next thing you know, you're lying awake in a wet field at 4:00 a.m. in woolen underwear waiting for the bugle to sound reveille. Jim Janke's The American Civil War page is an old-school, straight-text, HTML-driven big pile of links. There are hundreds of links to every aspect of the Civil War that you could possibly find on the Net: parks, books, re-enactor groups, maps, armaments... it's all here. We found a few dead links, but that happens and there aren't enough to be an annoyance. Janke teaches finance at Dakota State University, and this site stands as a testament to how hard that Civil War monkey is riding his back. Drop on by, the first link is always free....http://homepages.dsu.edu/jankej/civilwar/civilwar.htm
E-Commerce in Historical Documents
Let us throw a few keywords at you: Adolf Hitler, Pearl Harbor, Elvis Presley, Secret Service, serial killers, Osama Bin Laden. Interested? Check out Paperless Archives, which sells collections of declassified documents on CD and which also provides non-buyers with some stupendous free samples. Click the Titles button to browse by alphabetical listing, by category, or in the Subject Index. Many visitors will start with the Most Popular Titles. Did you know Ernest Hemingway was an operative in Cuba or that the FBI was interested in Marilyn Monroe's relationship with Norman Mailer? Here and there in the samples, text is blackened out, thanks to official censors concerned about security leaks. This is the kind of stuff historians love to pore over so they can reinterpret history for fame and tenure. The FAQ indicates that Paperless Archives sets are also popular among lawyers, movie and TV producers, and two state attorneys general. It's easy to imagine yourself a CIA agent or the next Oscar-winning scriptwriter while you browse this site.http://www.paperlessarchives.com/index.html
A New Take on the Old MUD, and Some Old MUDs
If EverQuest gives you motion sickness or you're not up for paying Ultima Online's monthly subscription fees, turn to the old-fashioned online adventure games - multi-user dungeons (MUDs). One MUD called Absolute Insanity dropped into our circle of sites to review, and we were pleasantly surprised by our re-entry into the world of text-based fantasy. For the MUD-savvy, Absolute Insanity is a ROM (non-MUD-savvy, read "hack and slash") in which we were greeted by an immortal within two minutes of our first log-in. If MUDs sound interesting, but Absolute Insanity isn't for you, check out the Mud Connector, which has been serving as an information clearinghouse for text-based gamers since 1994. The reviews of individual virtual worlds includes a great statistic: the average number of players, so folks can choose a world with their desired level of social interaction.Absolute Insanity: http://www.arcanum.net/~insane/insane.html
Mud Connector: http://www.mudconnect.com/
The Allegedly Coming Pretribulation Rapture
The Rapture is going to strike without warning, according to some in the Christian Fundamentalist camp. Whether or not you happen to believe in such things, Rapture Ready is an interesting Net stop. There's an astonishing amount of content in here, especially considering the fact that it all dwells upon one subject: the fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy of the Rapture (the site has a glossary if you need one). The Timeline section lists eight timelines that allegedly support the idea that the Rapture will happen pretty soon now. We weren't surprised to find the European Union included, but the Microprocessor timeline was unexpected. Throughout the site, the author clearly states his beliefs - such as his assertion that the Antichrist will require all people to be implanted with microchips. We found this approach refreshing, as so many authors under similar circumstances tend to state personal belief as simple fact. The infusion of time and thought placed into this site is clearly prodigious. It's the best place you can visit for an honest reflection of its particular perspective.http://www.raptureme.com/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Photos of sheep and pig slaughter are hardly what most of us expect from a travel site. Such scenes of daily life exemplify the down-to-earth realism and avid curiosity of Henry and Kathleen, a young American couple with an unusual personal travel site called Leafpile. Kathleen is a photographer and a Fulbright scholar; Henry is an ex-programmer and an aspiring screenwriter. Their literate, unpretentious site documents their travels across Europe in 1999 and 2000. They have a penchant for colorful festivals and campers. You may well get a better sense of Old World landscape and the lives of commoners here than you would from glossy travel books. In addition to small but splendid photos, you'll find an extensive travelogue, practical tips, and a microsite that features Kathleen's fine-art photography and her 2001 master's thesis on the peasants of Maramures, Romania. The largest section of the Leafpile covers the couple's discoveries in Transylvania. Kathleen and Henry plan to return to Europe this August for a year's stay, so their exceptional and already extensive site is sure to grow.http://www.leafpile.com/
Videos of the Central California Coast and More
You'll want QuickTime and a big pipe to see these videos, but if you're into the Big Sur, Monterey, or Carmel areas of California, you may find it worth your while. Some of us are products of the 1960s, and although we've never personally visited Big Sur, it's hard to argue with this, from "Hippie Wisdom": "When you're in the city, everyone's going someplace. When you're here, you're... here." Deep, man. While the site's mostly a promo for the Carmel-based videographing company called Endorphin, it has interesting content beyond the look at coastal California, like recent interviews with Grace Slick on art and life, Jay Leno on cars, and more.http://www.endorphin.com/index.html
Israel's always in the news. A few days ago, the news was that Israeli authorities had broken a ring of soldiers and settlers who were stealing IDF weaponry and selling it to Palestinians. The news from Israel isn't always related to violence, however, and we're here to prove it. The Gems in Israel Web site is about Israel, but at first glance, all it does is present a map that lets you click on place names to hear the Hebrew pronunciations. It's interesting technology, but it holds your attention for maybe ten seconds. Scroll down, and you'll find the site's raison-d'etre, an e-zine devoted to Israeli tourism off the beaten path. You can read a sample issue, and if that piques your interest, try the Archive, or the Maps of Israel link for more talking maps.
http://www.gemsinisrael.com/talkingmaps.html
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Waka Waka Bang Splat Round Song
Brush up on the pronunciation of symbols and your vocal range with Waka Waka Bang Splat, a poem set to music in round fashion. Two lines from the original poem have been omitted from the lyrical adaptation, but it's still entertaining. Just don't say "octothorpe" or you'll mess up the rhythm.http://www.roundsing.org/music/waka-waka.html
Make Yourself a "South Park" Beefcake
In this world of virtual makeovers, find out what you'd look like as a short, rude kid from Comedy Central. No, we don't mean Jon Stewart. This German site lets you accessorize your own "South Park" cartoon character, big head and all. We just wish it came with Cheesy Poofs.http://southpark.gamesweb.com/flash/sp-studio.html
SOFTWARE
RealNetworks Releases New Streaming and Production Software
RealNetworks has released an open-source streaming media client and server project called Helix. The Helix server can stream three different formats: RealNetworks' own audio and video formats, Apple's QuickTime, and, significantly, Microsoft's Windows Media format. Helix can support Windows Media because RealNetworks has reverse-engineered Microsoft's technology, without permission. This is legal but may embroil RealNetworks in litigation anyway if Microsoft decides to be nasty. Helix is open source, and RealNetworks will release the source code to much of the underlying technology, but not the core codecs that encode and decode the media formats. RealNetworks has to be hoping that programmers will create numerous streaming media applications and indirectly benefit the company - check out the Helix Community for details. CNET has more.Helix: http://www.realnetworks.com/solutions/leadership/products.html
Helix Community: http://www.helixcommunity.org/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-945406.html
Ogg Vorbis 1.0 Open-Source Music Software Released
Ogg Vorbis is an entirely free open-source alternative to the MP3 music format. The music encoding and streaming technology in previous betas has been slowly gaining popularity in the geek community, not least because it is completely unencumbered by patent or licensing issues - something not true of the MP3 format. The Ogg Vorbis team claims their product features better sound quality at various file sizes than alternative formats and provides music samples to prove their point. The software is now officially out of beta and ready for public release. At the site, you can download a large number of players and encoding software based on this technology, supported on all sorts of operating systems.http://www.vorbis.com/
This is a major new release of the Perl 5 language, attested to by the fact that the source code is about twice the size of the stable previous 5.6.1 release. Highlights of the new Perl include better Unicode support, a new thread model, new PerlIO implementation, better numerical accuracy, 64-bit platform support, and a plethora of new modules included with the base release.
http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2002/07/18/580ann/
CORRECTIONS
We Now Know What COSI Means, but We're Not Happy
Several readers wrote in to tell us that COSI (see last issue's "We're COSI Fans to a T") stands for "Center of Science and Industry" but none could explain why the abbreviation wasn't then COSAI. Tom Perry had the elan to add that "It's a big-ass $100MM science museum downtown. Very nice one at that." Now, we have no idea what $100MM stands for.