BREAKING SURF
| A Death on IRC and Webcam - Maybe |
| More on Astroturfing |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| The Saab Sauna |
| dnL |
| KDE 3.1 Released |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Slammer Worm Results in Widespread Net Slowdowns
Last weekend's Slammer worm propagated with remarkable speed and brought many networks to their knees by clogging them with attempts to propagate. Post-mortem estimates put the number of infected machines at around 250,000. The worm exploited a well known security hole in Microsoft's SQL Server 2000. Despite the fact that Microsoft released a patch to fix the problem last summer, many SQL servers connected to the Net were unpatched, including, ironically, many of Microsoft's own machines. The Slammer code may have grown from code posted at a Chinese hacker board which in turn was an outgrowth of a British security researcher's demonstration of how to exploit the SQL hole. This does not mean that Slammer was released by Chinese hackers, and indeed it may be difficult to pinpoint who did it due to the nature of the worm and the way it propagated. Wired looks at the reaction to Slammer and the attempt to find its origins. CNET also has a reaction piece, as well as news of Microsoft's vulnerability.Wired 1: http://wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57412,00.html
Wired 2: http://wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57462,00.html
CNET 1: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-982135.html
CNET 2: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-982305.html
Social Dilemmas of the Internet Revolution
David Manasian, legal affairs editor at the Economist, thinks the Internet's glory days of innovation and transformation are far from over. In a collection of articles that makes up "Survey: The Internet Society", he argues that we're still in the shallow vanguard of the computer and telecom revolution, with a great tidal wave of change still ahead of us. If your morning java hasn't given you the jolt you need to start the day, head to this set of sometimes exciting, sometimes worrying prognostications. It's good to know there's lots of juice left in the old infotech revolutionary engine, but Manasian doesn't focus on the technology as much as on the social dilemmas that result. Perhaps the most troubling is the unprecedented erosion of privacy, fueled by corporate desires to wring revenue from us and big government's quest for security. Other topics include copyright issues, direct democracy, and disturbing evidence that the Internet might actually strengthen, not weaken, repressive regimes. Manasian also describes what life might be like in 2033. All in all, it's a thoughtful set of pieces in typical fine Economist style.http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1534303
It's time again for Gary Kasparov to take on a computer, this time Deep Junior, to find out who is the better chess player. Kasparov, as you recall, wound up losing to Deep Blue, an IBM computer specially designed to play chess. Despite repeated calls for a rematch, Deep Blue went into retirement. Deep Junior isn't a specially designed chess machine, but instead uses a program developed by a group of Israeli programmers. Unlike the Deep Blue match, this contest has been sanctioned by the World Chess Federation (FIDE). As such, this marks the first time a computer has been seen as a legitimate competitor and may presage computers as regular competitors in chess tournaments. The Kasparov-Deep Blue match generated a fair amount of hype about the changing status of humanity vis-a-vis the machine, mostly relying on the idea that playing chess was the acme of humanity. It remains to be seen if the commentary accompanying this match will prove more sensible. Although slow, the X3D site lets you watch the games in real time, if you can get connected.
Kasparov: http://www.kasparov.com/
FIDE: http://www.fide.com/
X3D: http://www.x3dworld.com/Entertainment/CI_X3DEvnt_MvM_Big_Frameset.html
State of the Union Address Drinking Game Results
The "more or less official" count for the State of the Union Address Drinking Game are in. The winning phrase(s) by far, "Iraq or Saddam Hussein", merited 35 Presidential mentions. If you were following along honestly, by the end you would have taken a total of 160 merciful drinks. If you have no idea what we're talking about, visit the site. The transcript of the President's State of the Union speech is available at CNN - a link is provided. This year the Drinking Game actually made it to National Public Radio (NPR), which has the RealAudio feed.Game: http://www.marcmelzer.net/sotudg/
NPR: http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/20030128.atc.11.ram
Security Problems Plague .Mil Domain Registry
The Register broke a story about some terrible, essentially non-existent security surrounding the registration and administration of .mil domains. Those domains are meant to serve the US military, but some creative use of the suspect pages, live or in Google's cache, revealed numerous security holes. The original Register story has the general details while the enterprising techie goofs at Slashdot managed quickly to come up with numerous specific examples of problems with the .mil administration framework. Considering recent orders from the Secretary of Defense to lock down military Net sites, this laxness is rather surprising.Register: http://theregister.co.uk/content/55/29026.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/26/1449249
A Kuro5Hin contributor known as KWillets did a couple of simple experiments using gzip to distinguish between a collection of spam and a collection of legitimate e-mail messages. In theory, the different compression ratios measure how many repeated fragments, words, or phrases occur in the text. Spam should display more repeated patterns than desired e-mail and the presence of the patterns may provide a signature useful for spam filtering. Sure enough, simple experiments do show small but measurable differences in compression between the spam and "ham", as KWillets calls legit e-mail. The discussion of the story provides more data from other experimenters and a bunch of related resources on the Web. Spam warriors will definitely want to check this out.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/1/25/224415/367
Starting an E-Zine? Get a Staff Cheap!
The staffers of ZDNet Tech Update were laid off earlier this month and since they play well together, they have decided to try to find collective employment elsewhere. To secure the jobs, they have auctioned their services on eBay - twice. eBay removed the first auction at the request of CNET, which owns ZDNet, because the explanatory text mentioned ZDNet. eBay also stated that it bans auctions that require further payments beyond the online bid, and the group demanded "salary and benefits in the high six figures." The second auction, listed here, avoids these problems. At press time, bidding had topped $200. The Boston Globe has more.eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2909389388
Globe: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/030/business/A_last_ditch_bid_for_jobs_on_eBay+.shtml
Inviting Comment on Pending US Regulations
Regulations.gov is a new US government site that makes it relatively easy to submit comments about pending US regulations. We'd be a whole lot happier if there weren't so much to comment about in the first place, but we suppose it's nice to see the red-tape types opening up the process to the Internet community. Unfortunately, the search tool allows retrieval only by keywords or agency name, and there's no way just to browse through regulations open for comment, which seems a little off. Also, none of the agencies we looked at allow comment electronically, but require a specific form to be used and mailed. We guess you have to just take it on faith that comments given this way will actually influence things, but label us skeptical. This is one of those good/bad things: good that it's done, bad that it's needed.http://www.regulations.gov/
Lawyer Sues eBay over Negative Feedback
A man who says he was libeled by eBay feedback has sued the auction company, charging that it ignored his demands to take down the offending posts. Robert Grace, an attorney (of course) and publisher of a Los Angeles legal newspaper, got entangled in a dispute with a seller of some vintage Hollywood magazines. The two got into a war of words in their feedback sections, and Grace sued eBay to force it to revise its policy of not interfering with those comments. The company has survived similar lawsuits in the past, but other elements of this one add new dimensions. Grace also demands that buyers and sellers, who use aliases as screen names, register said names with the state of California as fictitious business names, and that eBay be forced to collect state sales tax on all California transactions. MSNBC has more.http://msnbc.com/news/863886.asp
easyInternetCafes Set to Spread
Internet cafes seems to work fairly well in many countries, although such businesses are dicey propositions where home and free public access are ubiquitous - take New York City for example. A company called easyGroup is advancing applying a demand-based pricing system to its Internet cafes, one in Manhattan. If the name and business model seem familiar, think of easyJet - the low-cost airline making huge headway in Europe. The same folks manage easyGroup. Will this dog run? In the short term, it looks that way. The company is largely unchallenged and the field is disorganized. It is looking at putting these puppies into established franchises across the US. MSNBC has more info.http://www.msnbc.com/news/862286.asp
Fans of the movie "The Matrix" - and there are many - will want to take a look at the trailer that debuted during the Superbowl telecast. Watch lots of people in black doing impossibly neat fight moves in slow motion. How cool is that? Two sequels will be released this year, "The Matrix: Reloaded" in May and "The Matrix: Revolutions" in November.
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/trailer_frames.html
The band Phish offers a service called Live Phish that features, among other things, high-quality recordings of their concerts within two days of each performance. Wired looks at the tech behind the idea, which seems solid. The sets are distributed in both MP3 and SHN formats, and are unrestricted. The idea is very cool, though - and very Phish: pay between $10 and $15 for unrestricted rights to use your downloaded music however you wish. Burn it to a CD if you want - you bought it, and it's yours. Copy it to tape to play in your car. Copy it to your MP3 player. No limits. No restriction. The RIAA could learn a lot from these folks.
http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57324,00.html
Kazaa Decentralizes Administration
If you want to know what has Jack Valenti and the RIAA so freaked out about peer-to-peer file-sharing, read this excellent Wired article on Kazaa. Having successfully decentralized its administration, Kazaa now resembles the network it enables, and this is going to make prosecuting Kazaa difficult if not impossible. As the article makes clear, the only way to bring down Kazaa is to bring down all its users. Whether that is even remotely possible remains to be seen. We saw this situation coming years ago.http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/kazaa.html
Kazaa Counterattacks Music and Movie Industries in Court
Sharman Networks, which owns the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-trading network, has filed a lawsuit against major music labels and Hollywood studios. The suit alleges that the media organizations engaged in a conspiracy to drive potential rivals out of business. The media industries are already suing Sharman Networks for aiding and abetting massive online copyright violations.http://rss.com.com/2100-1023-982344.html
Google Services, All in One Spot
Google has been unveiling a slew of new information services lately, and has finally decided to put links to them all on one convenient Web page. You'll want to bookmark this collection, which links to such indispensable and well known services as Google News, Google Catalogs, and Google Groups. The page also links to some of the more obscure services like Google Special Searches, Google University Search, and Google Wireless. All of them are pretty self-explanatory and worth having handy on one page and in a prominent bookmark.http://www.google.com/options/index.html
Office Netsurfing Under Attack
Business concerns about office netsurfing aren't exactly new but what was once tolerated, even encouraged by some outfits in the heady days of the dotcom era, is now watched much more closely, CNET reports. Most companies still seem to tolerate office surfing during breaks but increasingly are cracking down on anything that cuts into office productivity or compromises network management. The most visited sites during office hours are places like eBay, Match.com, and Sims Online. Some of these places report that as much as 40% of their business is done from office connections, so any move by IT managers to limit access, as some have done to block file-swapping sites, can have a real dampening effect. Websense estimates that $85 billion in lost productivity occurs because of office surfing, although like claims by the music industry for damage from file swapping, this needs to be taken with a grain of salt.http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981877.html
Music videos - you either love them or don't watch them. If you appreciate the art, check out this list of the 100 best videos at Slant Magazine. You probably won't agree, so go vent in their forum. Be prepared, Madonna has 11 videos in the top 100 and at least four in the top 20. If you do go through the list you will get a great education in pop culture, assuming you want one.
Slant: http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/features/greatestmusicvideos.html
RSS May Help Consolidate Your Browsing
There's a problem with the Net, one you may have noticed: there's just too much information out here. Content grows exponentially but, unfortunately, your ability to assimilate it does not. Some new apps are cropping up to help you address the problem, and they have a couple of things in common: they're built on XML, and they check for Rich Site Summary (RSS) data. These little aggregators leave a small footprint on your system, but return a lot of relevant information. Online Journalism Review (OJR) has an excellent story, while the O'Reilly Network and WebReference explain RSS tech and look at the state of the art.OJR: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/lasica/1043362624.php
O'Reilly Network: http://www.oreillynet.com/rss/
WebReference: http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/
ONLINE CULTURE
A Death on IRC and Webcam - Maybe
Late at night, Jan. 12, Brandon Carl Vedas signed on to IRC using his nickname "ripper", turned on his webcam and started ingesting drugs - methadone, OxyContin, Inderal, and others. An hour later, he was dead. During that hour, his IRC buddies egged him on, encouraging ripper to take more drugs and commenting on his webcam feed. After his death, Vedas's brother posted a partial log of the IRC conversation on Vedas's own site (Ripperlogs.tk has a longer excerpt). Is the story true or is this an elaborate hoax? In some ways, the answer is irrelevant. Even if Vedas's death is a hoax, it is only a matter of time before something like that does happen. In any event, the online reaction by people who are made aware of this is quite genuine. There is healthy skepticism, but also genuine shock, at least as demonstrated in the threads on Metafilter and Metatalk. We leave you to ponder the many layers of this story on your own.Vedas: http://www.dovee.org/
Ripperlogs.tk: http://ripperlogs.tk/
Metafilter: http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/22971
Metatalk: http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2952
Last week, we reported on a specific instance of astroturfing: sending off the same letter to the editor of a newspaper and making it seem as if it came from many different readers. This week, the New York Times weighs in on the subject in a story of the battle between editors and the well organized lobby groups who engage in the practice. News editors even maintain a 600-member-strong mailing list to keep tabs on the problem and regularly Google for suspicious phrases in letters to the editor. Even so, some get burned anyway, and that may increase in frequency as astroturfers employ better technology on their side.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/27/technology/27LETT.html
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Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Autobiography
America's Victory
Jennifer Government: A Novel
Regeneration: Telling Stories from Our TwentiesSURFING SITES
Adbusters Takes On the Corporate for the Consumer
A small but growing movement of activists seeks to help us reclaim control of our lives from corporate overlords. The activists believe that none of us are truly free, and that all of us are slaves to corporate dominancy. Adbusters subscribes to that belief and in this online campaign teaches what this crusade for social transformation is all about. Dubbed "Corporate Crackdown", this Web site explains how corporations rose to become omnipotent entities, mightier than their creators - us. Explore the campaign further, and learn how you can participate in the movement with local initiatives, such as securing airtime on local television stations, or how to deploy legal strategies, such as lobbying the government for change. Even if protesting and lobbying aren't your style, this site is still worth the visit. We can all use a little more knowledge at the end of the day, and as the saying goes, "knowledge is power."http://adbusters.org/campaigns/corporate/
RepairClinic.com, a commercial appliance parts service, offers the RepairGuru to help users get the parts for and repair every type of kitchen appliance as well as air conditioners, dehumidifiers, and washing machines. The PartsDetective uses an intelligent question system to identify exactly which parts are needed even if you know little about your appliance and less about its insides. It's quite amazing. The site has manuals and can provide by mail order the parts it identifies. Also included are lots of repair and preventative maintenance tips. If you've ever had to have an appliance repaired, you know the idea of doing it yourself is very attractive. Here is where to start.
http://repairclinic.com/
It's pretty hard to find a corner of North America that doesn't harbor raccoons. Most folks don't realize they've been overrun by these largely nocturnal touchy-feely critters, unless the raccoons happen to hold a dance party on the roof of the house. Some people, however, go out of their way to embrace raccoons, sometimes literally as they bring them into the family fold. This site describes such an adoption. Along the way, it provides a lot of information about the furballs who likely comb through your backyard while you sleep. Worth a look, especially if you're a raccoon aficionado. By the way, you really should get a rehab permit, if you want to take them in. If, after reading "A Domestic Tail of Two Procyonids", you want more, check out the mother site, the World Wide Raccoon Web.
Domestic Tail: http://www.loomcom.com/raccoons/info/saga/saga1.html
World Wide Raccoon Web: http://www.loomcom.com/raccoons/
Take a First Step to World Dominance on Your Desktop
Chances are you have pretty dull desktop wallpaper on your computer. It might be a photograph of loved ones or a favorite pet, but does it make you feel like a James Bond villain in your secret hideaway, observing the world and plotting how to subject it to your cruel dominion? No, we thought not. Well, away with that boring, static wallpaper! You can instead set up a super-villain nerve center on your own desktop. The idea is a simple one - this site links to 57 different live feeds or real-time graphics from around the world and gives straightforward instructions on how to set these up on your Web-enabled desktop. In a matter of minutes, you can wallpaper your desktop with satellite images, metereological data, stock market info, and live webcam images from cities world wide. We cannot stress enough just how cool this is. All you'll need now is a fluffy white cat to stroke and perhaps an inscrutable smile.http://www.formandcontent.net/projects/worldview/worldview.htm
Ever since the first cowboy cooked beans in a tin over a campfire, beans have been a staple of American culinary legend and poetry. The Bean Bible aims to add to that legend, but not the poetry. The site claims to know "beans about beans" - which in some twisted way means the opposite - and certainly its growing recipe selection impresses as it covers bean soups, salads, side dishes, main dishes (including one intriguingly named Shipwreck Casserole), and even desserts. (We must admit our taste for Chinese red bean paste pastry and red bean ice cream, although these aren't listed.) Not only vegetarians eat beans - there are plenty of recipes with meat here - but they are catered to with an inventive meatless adaptation of the famous Boston baked beans. Some Bean Bible shelves are barely stocked at the moment, but the site appears to be gaining content regularly. The most important question is answered in the Bean Lore section where you can learn how to control the "indelicate social consequences that sometimes arise from eating beans."
http://www.beanbible.com/index.php
Somewhat Chaotic Interwoven Alternate Timelines
The world would be so much better if only history happened slightly (or completely) differently from what is accepted as real and true. After all, who can really say that what the historians and books say is what really happened? Maybe it was just a bit different.... Anyway, the Other Timelines site takes events that probably are real (or may be fantasy) and links them to other events. Visitors to the site create alternate historical events and turning points, and the site's mechanics determine, more or less, each particular potential journey through history. Often the timelines are beyond even the most accepting belief, but sometimes serendipity strikes and an alternate world comes to light. Maybe it's the real one. Patience leads to discoveries here.http://www.othertimelines.com/
Around 4,000 extras were used in the filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Among them, "ordinary folk" got to be hobbits or men of Rohan or Gondor, the beefcakes became Uruk-hai warriors, and conspicuously good looking men and women were cast as elves - the beautiful people of Tolkien's Middle Earth. One such elven extra was 26-year-old New Zealand musician Bret McKenzie, who appeared as a delegate at the Council of Elrond. Blink and you'll miss him - he appears onscreen for all of three seconds in "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", just after Frodo steps forward offering to bear the ring to Mordor, and he has no speaking lines - but net-friends Iris Haddad and Sherry de Andres noticed him. His pouting drop-dead gorgeousness caused them to exclaim "Frodo is great...WHO IS THAT?" From the initial of that statement, the name "Figwit" was born, and once Haddad and de Andres set up their Figwit Lives! Web site, full blown net-celebrity was only a step away. All sorts of craziness is here - fan fiction, poetry, pictures, press cuttings, and even songs.
http://www.figwitlives.net/
Clyven, the Talking, Intelligent Mouse
Meet Clyven. He's small. He's albino. He's photogenic. And he's smarter than the average human. Oh yeah - and he's a mouse. Clyven is the first transgenic mouse with human intelligence, thanks to a freak of scientific research. Don't believe it? Well, you're smarter than any fictional mouse then. Regardless, you can test out his powers of conversation online as he "speaks" through his neuro-helmet interface, although on the day we checked him out his verbal skills amounted to little more than an oft-repeated "huh?" in response to perfectly simple questions on his taste in cheesey tidbits. Well, we all have days like that. Alternatively, you can try to race him in the maze. He has to reach his cheese and you need to grab your burger. Beating this Speedy Gonzales is next to impossible. He really must love that cheese.http://www.rythospital.com/clyven/
It's amazing what you can do if you have enough time and enough Lego. Eric Harshbarger has both, and his Web site proves it. He builds breathtaking statues and mosaics purely out of Lego tiles - as his job. Some of his creations, mostly those for clients, involve glue, too. The mosaics are apparently tedious but mostly built on computer-generated patterns. The statues involve more artistic freedom, as there's not really a 3-D Lego modeling program. If you fondly remember playing with Lego as a child, drop by to see the marvels that can be created playing with it as an adult.
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Ever get into your car in the summer and complain that it's like a sauna? Magnus Bjork's Saab is a sauna any time of the year. Check out the transformation on his Web page. If they can fit seven in a Saab, imagine how many you could fit into a Ford ExSpadition.http://mbjork.home.cern.ch/mbjork/gase/events/saunaab_test/saunaab_test.htm
Lay down some fat tracks, get some free stuff, and chill out with the latest online campaign from the makers of 7up. To play, listen, win, and get it with new dnL soda, you'll require Flash installed. Frankly, the coolest thing is that dnL is literally 7up turned upside down.
http://www.dnlflipit.com/
SOFTWARE
This is a major feature update to the powerful Linux (and other Unix) windowing and desktop environment. The new feature list is too large to reproduce here but it includes 17 major packages and an integrated development framework. One of the major goals of this update is to introduce features which would be of use to major corporate and enterprise customers. These include features such as kiosk mode, improved mail encryption, Exchange 2000 compatibility, and remote desktop operation. The release also includes a new default graphical style and corresponding new icon designs. Read the announcement for the full scoop.http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.1.html