Wednesday, August 8, 2001
I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I appreciate NSD. I just got back from a week's vacation and I find that I am poring over the two unread NSDs more than any of the other 200 pieces of e-mail I got. Thanks for NSD!
Mike Lerch
P.S. If my name sounds familiar to Arthur, it's because I was his tech editor on "Creating Web Pages for Dummies"!
Hey, thanks for your review of Tragos (NSD 7.13). We've got a new issue out now - just a couple of days old. We appreciate the review, and agree with it entirely.
Gadi Dechter
Thank you for the reference to the Southern Yat Hysterical Society (NSD 7.21). It is priceless to me (having lived in N'awlens 50 years ago).
Also, thank you for the link to Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) in the same issue. I have been a listener of MPR for many years, and a listener to Prairie Home Companion ever since it first aired. It is a wonderful program.
JonPatrice
Think your magazine is great, and read it everytime it comes out.
I thought the reference on those annoying pop-up ads (NSD 7.21) was wonderful. Been bombarded with them for months and cannot get rid of them. Thanks.
Stephen
Thank you for the enjoyable write up of Am I Annoying or Not (NSD 7.22). We created this site with nothing more in mind than to have fun and share the humor.
We truly appreciate your visit to our site and we had lots of fun reading NSD. Thanks again and we are happy to have entertained you!
Marc Cutler
Imagine our delight when we found your wonderful write-up of our TheTravelzine! Thank you so much for the vote of confidence. New visitors are always welcome and kind comments are treasured.
Don and Linda
A broken link equals denial of service to your users. You'll rot in jail, I assure you! :-)
Seriously, thank you so much for the plug. I love your newsletter. (FYI: the 700-year-old fractal page in NSD 7.07 fooled me, too.) Keep up the great work.
Rob Rosenberger
Our original link to Rob's assessment of Code Red, the broken one he refers to, is gone. You can look for it starting at his virus myths site's home page. - LN
NSD is the best thing I get in my e-mail! Keep up the great work!
Bob Parks - Las Vegas, Nevada
Just wanted to let you know that I enjoy NSD very much and often pass on articles to my friends, giving credit to the source. Keep up the good work!
Hal Erwin - Albuquerque, New Mexico
This latest edition - 7.24 - was one of your best. Keep it up.
Your devoted fan,
Graham Earnshaw - Shanghai, China
Is there any way you can print a hard copy of NSD, without the left-hand links column? I have a heck of a time, fiddling around with margins, fonts, styles, and sizes, so as not to cut off words with the right margin.
Serge Wrangel - Montreal
The best idea is to copy NSD to a word processor and print it from there. - LN (also from Montreal)
What about printing in landscape orientation? - AB
Well, thanks. That's the fastest reply I have ever seen. You must live in Montreal West or something!!!
I've already used the Corel WordPerfect technique before. It's such a drag. How about having a link to a printable version, like some Web sites are doing?
The whole point of my printing NSD is font size. I suffer from "40-year-old syndrome" (deteriorating eye sight). I'm now 61. Used to read in the dark in my 20s, literally in the dark.
Printing in landscape mode might work. I'll give it a try. If I could talk to God face to face, I would tell him I willingly will give up my left arm in exchange for 20 years of youth. LOL! (or is it "crying out loud?).
Just out of curiosity, is Arthur the Chief Editor, and living in Montreal?
SW
Yeah, tell me about it. It's starting for me, too. I attribute it to reading under the covers with a flashlight as a kid. :) That and the Illuminati consipiracy, of course. To paraphrase, youth is wasted on the stupid.
Lawrence Nyveen is the day-to-day editor, and yes, he lives up there in the North somewhere. I'm the Executive Editor, which means that I had to call myself something and "Guy Who Licks Stamps on the Check Envelopes" just didn't sound like it would get me invited to any power lunches. Basically, Laurie takes all the compliments and I'm responsible for everything that goes wrong. :) - AB
This may be useful to others. I tried everything with Netscape Navigator (and Messenger). Nothing doing! But with MS Internet Explorer 5.x, I got it working without cutting off any words at the end of the lines.
Use Text Size="Smaller" (next up from "Smallest"), and left/right margins = 0.586".
SW
Isn't it interesting that California ISO ("Roll Your Own Blackout: Call for Bush Protest by Turning Out the Lights". NSD 7.18) has acknowledged that the "gougers" excoriated by Gov. Gray were really acting in accordance with the rules it established? In its desperate attempt to blame all the ills of civilization on the Bush administration, the Gray administration has been lying to the media - and the media, as usual, has been complicit in perpetuating a lie. I suggest we stop calling the lack of power a "blackout" and call it a "grayout" in honor of the real culprit.
T.W. Donaldson - Claremont, California
Heh! It's really amusing watching both sides, you included, spin the issue. The Republicans are attacking Gov. Gray Davis because he's got a pretty good shot at the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination and they're desperately afraid he'd win. So they're running ads on TV that try to blame him for this whole power mess - with the silly "grayout" slogan that makes everyone shake their heads in disbelief at its clumsiness. It's utterly silly since it was the state legislature during the last governor's term - a Republican - that tried to please both the power companies (remove price controls on power) and the great unwashed masses (regulate the retail price, and force companies to eat higher costs) by passing this half-assed deregulation. Everyone who gives a damn on both sides of the issue knows what the ads are trying to do and are laughing themselves silly at how clumsy the Republicans are in their spin control.
On the other hand, the Democrats, led by point man Gray Davis himself, are trying to spin the energy industry as the Big Giant Evil Empire. This is equally silly, since the energy companies did exactly what any good company would do for their shareholders - take every possible advantage of the law to maximize profit. That's what they're built to do and excoriating them about it is kind of like yelling at a hedgehog because it's spiny (Spiny Norman, where are you when you're needed?). Naturally, the Dems are spinning it this way not only to ingratiate themselves with the voters, but to raise Davis's profile on the national stage for the 2004 run. Meanwhile the middle class - the big voting bloc - is wishing that they'd invested in Enron rather then Yahoo a year ago. Talk about missing your propaganda mark!
Nobody on either side seems to realize that spin control no longer really works on an apathetic and disgusted public. Add to that the indisputable fact that this country is awash in energy and that only the stupidity of a half-regulated market is keeping its distribution from being efficient and cheap and you have to laugh so hard you have to cry.
That's my political rant of the week. And before you flame me (not that I mind), note carefully - carefully, mind you - that from the above you should have no clue as to my political affiliation. That is as it should be.
Thanks for reading and taking the time to write. - AB
It has just come to my attention that I have been majorly ripped off by a site that you featured in "Zoran of the Outer Limits" (NSD 7.03).
The problem is, a significant amount of the work on this site was not done by Zoran, and was in fact stolen from other people. Case in point: Zoran has a whole section dedicated to the spacecraft from "2001: A Space Odyssey". Unfortunately, many of these models, most notably the Space Station and Orion Shuttle, were done by me, and are available on my Web site.
Zoran writes about how he continues to refine these models, when he has merely regurgitated them unchanged. One can only guess how much of this guy's supposed work is stolen from elsewhere.
Just thought you should know.
B.J. West
You hit upon the reason for the disparity of drinking ages between the US. and other countries when you typed the word "civilized"! No other country gives guns as teething toys and allows anyone above the level of amoeba to carry a weapon. Of course, weapons of the caliber of an Abrams tank or Pathfinder are illegal, except to collectors. That's what keeps our streets so safe.
Eugene L. Weishan
I am tired of Barney attacks. Barney is not for adults, he is for kids, and kids love him. What is wrong with a big fuzzy creature that teaches kids it is okay to say "I love you" and to love people instead of make fun and bad mouth others a la "The Simpsons". Adults need to get over it and look at some of their own behaviors and role models!
Linda Cox - Champaign, Illinois
The motorcycles might be Beemers, but the cars are definitely Bummers!!
Richard Hatch
I've been reading NSD for longer than I can remember, and, every once in a while, I get the urge to reply - a forum for feedback from your articles might engender some scintillating prose (perhaps haiku?) and exchanges from your readers.
Anyone who endures NSD deserves to meet fellow masochists and exchange attitudes. Who knows - brilliance may present itself.
Ya, ya, I know - go to Salon....
But that doesn't express my discovery that BMW is actually a contraction of "BumWad", the metallic grey sludge between the ears of anyone who believes that happiness has a gas engine. What happens when 10 billion Chinese can afford and want their own Isetta? What will we be breathing when it happens? Will VP Dick still maintain that the oil shortage is not consumers' fault? Where is that pesky mouthpiece Dubya and his awl buddies when yuh need 'em? "Aw shucks, guess we didn't think that far down the highway...."
In short, who cares? If it burns gas, our species can't afford it.
Manfred Humphries - Toronto
In NSD 7.24's "Citizens on Petrol", you say: "We've all ridden the wave of rising and falling gas prices for a while now, and it doesn't look like relief is coming anytime soon. So, what to do to keep from getting gouged at the pump? Well, short of springing for that new ten-speed you've had your eye on..."
Sorry, you can't get away with that. Cycling is a healthier real alternative to driving a car. Please take a look at the Critical Mass Web site.
Critical Mass aims to get more people cycling more often, and we ride the cities of the world in groups, and exercise our right to be traffic.
Jeff Craig - Parkville, Victoria, Australia
Ironically, cycling is not a healthier alternative in major urban areas. You're sucking in smog, which damages your lungs. There's also the danger of being run over by a car. Riding a bike in a major city takes several years off your life expectancy if you're willing to extrapolate from health studies of outdoor urban joggers. Of course, cars produce that smog and the crash hazard in the first place. :)
I'm quite familiar with Critical Mass since I live in the Bay Area and the revolutionary cyclist masses always gum up the traffic on the last Friday of every month in San Francisco. I have nothing against bikes, but they can be annoying as Hell if you're trying to get anywhere in the city on that day - which I suppose is the point. All that energy would be better spent on an effective lobbying effort, but in my experience that amorphous mass of fun-loving pedalers has all the political savvy of a root vegetable. Pity, because I wouldn't mind seeing more bike trails around here, though frankly I have other, higher priorities to fight for. Having said that, the Bay Area is probably one of the more bike friendly major urban areas in the US as it is. - AB
Just thought I might change a couple of words in your recent e-mail:
I have nothing against cars, but they can be annoying as hell if you're trying to get anywhere in the city on any day - which I suppose is the point. All that energy would be better spent on an effective sustainable transport lobbying effort, but in my experience that amorphous mass of gas-loving machine-heads has all the political savvy of a root vegetable.
Next time you are drivin around SF remember that some people have never had and never will own a car.
G. Browne
In your intro e-mail, you write: "On any given mass mailing we get between 5%-10% bounced E-mail. This means our software tried to deliver to your address but could not. Some of the reasons we've seen why this happens:
- A conspiracy involving aliens, Elvis, and the Trilateral Commission wanted to prevent _you_ from learning the truth."
Yeah, and I bet they're responsible for all those nasty viruses too!
"If you have problems don't get mad, just e-mail us at editor@netsurf.com, and a real live human will be happy to assist you in getting off the list."
Real live human eh? You don't have any other species answering mail yet?
"Thank you for letting us into your mailbox. We'll try to mind our manners."
Be sure that you do or I will sick mamma on ya. ;-)
Greg Mosier
Welcome aboard.
I wrote this sentence to avoid a one-line reply. - LN
Actually, at least two real live humans. There was that experiment with the keyboard and the chicken, but even though nobody noticed any difference, the chicken feed fees were killing us.
Personal attention works well for lists up to several thousand. After that, it gets harder, unless you have pretty savvy readers who don't really need any handholding. Surprisingly, for our 90,000 or so subscribers, the volume of e-mail which deserves the human touch is still pretty manageable.
Is the mamma the one who smells of elderberries? Or the one with the army boots? :) - AB
Just curious if you realize that your e-mail From: address is "Lawrence" while your signature is "Laurie". Just an oddity I noticed that could certainly make a person wonder.
GM
I know. I go by Laurie, although my given name, and my professional name, is Lawrence. Actually, Lawrence is my given middle name - no one has ever called me by my given first name, Stephen. - LN
That's interesting indeed. Maybe it's me, and I do apologize if it is, but isn't Laurie generally a female's name only? Or is it that it is a female's name, and that's why you use it? Not really wanting to pry into your personal affairs but the oddity of it sparked my interest initially, and now I'm questioning my knowledge of male/female/bi-gender names.
GM
It's a Canadian thing. I know of seven other male Lauries, the most famous of whom was Laurie Boschman, NHL player. - LN
I love your NSD and NSS, but after logging onto to the site reviewed in "Pornolizing the Web " (NSD 7.24), I found an executable (msbb.exe) running on my computer doing God knows what. It was linking to a DLL in my system32 folder. That is sacred turf in which I don't trust a Web site to monkey around unsolicited. I want to trust sites you review and don't expect you to be my guardian, but thought you should know. I was able to prove that it came from the following site by way of reading header info and a fiz1 file in the directory it created [C:\ Program Files\n-case].
Gill
A Web site can't really hurt you unless you download a program and run it, or it exploits some JavaScript or Java bug to deceive you into doing the same. Exploitable Java/JavaScript bugs are not generally a problem with the latest browsers.
I can't comment on your detective work, but having checked out the site I did not notice any ill effects. I can only suggest that you run your virus checker and see what it says. We would certainly not promote any known infectious site. - AB
Arthur, I figured it out. In another article from the same NSD issue, I discovered that TOPtext had been installed when I had upgraded my KaZaA program. It had also installed an app called n-case. It was n-case that had a little text file in its folder that made the reference to http://www.pornolize.com/ and hence my suspicion that it was Pornolize that had snuck into my machine and installed something. Thanks for your reply and for the heads up about TOPtext. It was a wake up call for me....
G
I applaud NSD's policy of not allowing your advertisers to use either pop-up or pop-under ads.
Too bad your values do not extend to advertisers with dubious and underhanded privacy policies such as Amazon.com. Who said it was OK for them to alter their stated privacy policy after the fact? Shame on you for continuing to do business with them after they pulled this kind of chicanery on their customers. Do you really need their money that badly?
Frank Briard
Actually, yes.
Who needs to approve Amazon's practices? They own their own business and you don't have to do business with them if you don't like them. It's called the free market.
Shamefully yours, AB
I really adore your newsletter. I carve out 30 minutes to read and digest it. I also need the time to follow all the wonderful links, like the Czech film.
But I seem to remember a holier than thou proclamation like "we won't do pop-up ads." OK, you don't - thank you - but isn't the blinking "You are a winner" ad an example of not violating the law while trashing its spirit? Also, it sucked me in and for that I'm annoyed.
Andrew N. Jordan
NSD is an excellent read - but the Bell Sympatico pop-up is just too damned annoying! Innocuous ads that I may or may not click on are one thing, but a page-spawning ad from the corporate Devil incarnate itself is just too much "in-the-face", blatant advertising. I hope that you get loads of e-mail just like this one and that you stop this annoying practice. I find myself using pop-up ad blockers more and more in my travels along the Net, but having to use them when I read my e-mail is just too much.
Kevin Milburn
Did a casino ad slip through your defenses? It popped up when I open NSD 7.24 (although not each time). Please investigate and eliminate this practice.
D. Miller
Last week and this week, I got spammed by casino ad that just jumped in when I clicked read. This ad has only occurred on your newsletter
Lloyd Penrose
First off, let me say I absolutely love NSD. It's brilliant work by many talented folks.
I do take notice of the embedded banner ads, and very much appreciate your stand against renting or selling your mailing list.
However, lately I've been getting many pop-up/pop-under windows opening up all over the place when I open NSD in Outlook Express. For NSD 7.24, there were five such windows sprouting off. Is this something that I can opt out of? I understand the need for your revenue stream, but I'm sure you can appreciate that those pop-ups/unders are much, much more intrusive than the embedded banner ads. Just curious, and hoping for a solution...
Trevor Crawford
We have a naughty ad service that keeps feedings us popping ads. We are getting fed up with reacting to them and asking them to cancel these ads everytime when in fact they are supposed to know beforehand that NSD doesn't accept ads of that sort.
This has been going on for a while. We may go with inexpensive pay subscriptions soon, without ads. Would you pay $10 for a year of NSD? - LN
We keep trying to kill those pop-ups and they keep coming back. I'll see if I can track these down. Personally, I strongly endorse pop-up blockers.
Eventually I want to get rid of advertising entirely; it's just getting way too annoying these days, and the money is almost not worth the trouble. I'd rather collect a small fee from readers then keep having to deal with this crap. - AB
Woah! A step backwards. Your latest NSD is spilling off my screen at the right, causing a scroll bar to appear at the bottom.
You always before managed your display to not hide the right ends of text lines. What happened?
Marlin Greene - Seattle, Washington
Odd. I don't see any problems in either Netscape or Explorer. Have you changed any settings in your browser lately? - AB
No changes on my end, but I reloaded it today and it looks normal again. Ain't computers wonderful?
MG
I don't know if there's anything you can do about it, but it seem to me that with the newest version of Hotmail, the font for your newsletter is now so small as to be almost unreadable. The IE setting for font size doesn't affect the body text size, only the size of the links. I have no idea why the new Hotmail design would affect the text size, but it seems to.
John Nestoriak
You had the right idea in the first half of your first sentence.... Talk to Hotmail tech support. - LN
In "Sircam, the Clueless, and the Dumb" (NSD 7.24), you say "Attachments are evil. We don't use them and we don't open them. Neither should you." So why is it that I have this attractive little gold paperclip that announces "This message contains attachments" showing prominently as I'm reading your deathless prose? I'm sure you have a perfect answer; share it, will you?
Jean L. Hohnstein
I have to totally disagree with not sending attachments. I used text-only e-mail at my last place of employment. Life is so much easier now in ITville than it was then. I can send all sorts of important stuff to people right over e-mail, from programs to Word docs to .zip files to you name it. I can't live without this. There must be a better option than simply not sending binary attachments.
Hugh Kallen - Kalamazoo, Michigan
In NSD 7.24, you say: "more importantly, stop sending e-mail attachments. If you must transfer files, use scp, FTP, or carrier pigeon. Attachments are evil. We don't use them and we don't open them. Neither should you." Except, of course, that NSD arrives in my mailbox with attachments.
Karen Davis
Why is there always an attachment symbol when I receive my NSD? Is there something I'm suppose to open, or what does it open? Attachments make me a little leery... I love your digest - it is full of information!!
Debbie
Firstly, thank you for providing you newsletter. Reasoned sanity is not the norm online and your newsletter is a breath of fresh air when it arrives.
However, in your recent "Sircam, the Clueless, and the Dumb", you advised your readers to "never open e-mail attachments, and more importantly, stop sending e-mail attachments".
According to Outlook Express, your newsletter contains attachments. Is not that the meaning of the little paperclip icon?
Jim Blue
Your little paperclip was coded by some kid fresh out of college who does not really understand the distinction between inline content and attachments. Either that or by some really sophisticated marketing type who did not want to confuse the typical naive user with technical details. - AB
In NSD 7.24, you say, "stop sending e-mail attachments. If you must transfer files, use scp, FTP, or carrier pigeon. Attachments are evil. We don't use them and we don't open them. Neither should you." Are you aware, your newsletter, and thus this warning not to use attachments, comes as an attachment?
Steve Shank
Are you aware that Outlook sucks? I assume you're using it, since that crapware doesn't make the distinctions it should. - LN
What you technically have from us is "inline" html. Typically, attachments use a specific encoded MIME format which we don't use. If you look at the headers of our e-mail message you'll find something like this:
Content-Type: text/html
Note the word "inline".
On the other hand, if you look at an attachment - to take as an example one of the innumerable Sircam pieces of junk we're receiving - you'll see this:
Content-Type: application/mixed; name=pred2000.doc
Note the words "attachment" and "application".
The distinction is important in Windows because of how Outlook deals with attachments by default. The inline HTML stuff, it just displays. With attachments, on the other hand, Outlook tries to run whatever application they belong to, or run them directly if they're programs. In this case it would invoke Word to display this file. If it had been an ".exe" file, Outlook would have tried to execute the program if you opened the attachment - and then game over, the hacker owns your machine.
Anyway, hope that clears things up. Thanks for reading and for asking intelligent questions. - AB
No, I don't use Outlook. I try to prevent my clients from using it as it is dangerous. I use Calypso for e-mail (Opera for browser by the way). I leave my inline attachments outline and would not allow the preview pane to be on, either. Also, I don't have Word or Excel on my machine, but open those attachments with Microsoft's free viewers or Quickview. Nonetheless, NSD comes "attached" to your e-mail (as it should, in my opinion, and as I send out my own newsletter). Your article regarding Sircam made no mention of what types of attachments. As far as I'm concerned, any second item attached to an e-mail is an attachment and it is certainly what most other people consider attachments.
Minimally, your paragraph was unclear. I consider it a flub, but only the first big one I have found as a long time subscriber, though apparently the David McOwen article (NSD 7.24) flubbed, too. I really like your newsletter and feel you are entitled to an unclear article on occasion. Glad you were meaning something different than I was reading.
If I attach a PDF file or a .zip file, is that an attachment? Should I really stop sending clients proposals with PDF attachments or a small utility they might need via .zip file?
SS
The stress in Wired's article - and our slant, although some of us at NSD are stricter than others - is that you should stop sending unannounced attachments. Most Net users - i.e. the dumb - wouldn't be able to discern a virused attachment from something called, say "Proposal.doc.lnk". They open the latter, thinking it's work-related and boom! Another infected computer.
My view is that you shouldn't open any unsolicited or unexpected attachments. If you e-mail, or better yet telephone, a client and say to him that you are sending such-and-such a file, that's OK. But the client really shouldn't open something he does not know in advance is coming, although he probably will on the assumption that he should.
That assumption lets these things spread. - LN
We are in total agreement.
SS
Your "Sircam, the Clueless, and the Dumb" blurb may be the new view of some on the Net, and to a degree warranted. But considering the methods at hand, and the education of most current Net users, I have to say that you, and Wired, are a bit harsh and forget that those of us that spend every day eking out livings in this field should know better than to open e-mail attachments, and most of us do.
We also have a good idea as to who will be sending us attachments and who won't. We (I have, anyway) have established with my clientele certain rules concerning attachments. If I stopped sending and receiving attachments from my clients, I would be out of business. I can't afford to walk these people through an upload process each and every time they have a file they need posted to their site.
I have had, for some time, a simple uploading tool on my site that clients can use to upload graphics, files, etc. for inclusion in their Web sites. Do they use it? No! Why? I have no idea, maybe it is just too much trouble, too hard and complicated, and they refuse to read. I don't like speaking badly of my clients, but realistically, I am forced to admit that all of them are close-minded and refuse to learn anything that takes more than two clicks, and/or the lightest of mental skills. Call it their comfort zone - they will not leave it.
My other option is USPS floppy delivery, which I can say is far less reliable than anything received via e-mail, viruses or not. I still check the attachments before opening them, provided they are from known sources.
In your blurb, you wrote: "If you must transfer files, use scp, FTP, or carrier pigeon." Will you tell me what "scp" is, and exactly how one would use it? I have never had dealings with a "Service Control Point" to the best of my knowledge.
Edward Hudgeons - Albuquerque, New Mexico
The problem isn't legitimate attachments. The problem is virus-laden attachments that people don't think not to open. Yes, most people are morons - but that's why you have to adapt to their comfort zones to stop the practice. - LN
eBay's Half.com (NSD 7.17) is not the least bit new. But it is still interesting, and sometimes good.
What is interesting about this site is that it is driven by a huge database, with which Half.com attempts to set suitable prices.
One problem (as with any huge database) is that the contents are often junk, and thus the prices are often ludicrous. I looked at the "Blue Book" (more formally, "A Uniform System of Citation" - ask your landshark). The newest edition is not yet in Half.com's database, and an older edition has a list price of $195.
Another problem is that the majority of the time I go to Half.com looking for something, I find innumerable listings from the database for books for which there are no sellers. There seems to be no way to weed these out. Again, it's a flaw in the basic design. In contrast, eBay proper has a search engine which finds real sellers and gives a gesture at reporting real prices.
Richard L. Schmeidler
Half.com has been in existence for well over a year and has been an eBay company for at least six months. Is the rest of your news so fresh? By the way, I have nothing to do with either company except as a satisfied customer of both.
John Alvey
Your article on Steve Gibson was somewhat misleading. You state that IP addresses can be spoofed in Win9.x, WinNT, and WinMe. Did you read where Steve says "it is not possible on the unmodified Operating Systems"? Almost anyone can do something he wants done with enough time, energy, and work.
You seem to want people to believe that WinXP won't lead to a huge problems with its Full Raw Socket ability. Don't be so delusionary. Problems will effect everyone, not just sysadmins. Why is Microsoft so unwilling to accept this? Microsoft could implement the Fix before a problem starts, just as a precaution - and much better than writing a ton of patches later. Insane.
By the way I am not a programmer, or expert on network attacks. But I know when it's time to listen to the music.
Ron Schultz
Check out NSD 7.19 for a follow-up.
Broadly, I agree with you over XP. Microsoft could do a lot more then it's doing about shipping an OS which is secure right out of the box. I understand that they've done some work on that with XP, but probably not as much as they should. They don't have a great record in this area. Problem is, security is hard, and even with a totally secure operating system, lack of user education will get you into trouble. - AB
I am one of your oldest subscribers, since 1994. Your attacks on Steve Gibson in NSD 7.18 and NRDC in NSD 7.19 is not the NSD of old I know.
Very poor show. I was close to unsubscribing.
I doubt Gibson "displays questionable understanding of the technology". Geez, sounds like jealousy to me. It was a minor point on which he was fundamentally correct. Your response was like that of a competitor not a reporter.
As for lampooning the NRDC, you will not win many friends with that.
Grow up!
Paul Rogers - Oz
There's an update in NSD 7.19 which clarifies why we said what we did about Steve. He changed his Web site, after we looked at it, in response to criticism.
Steve has a history of some technically shaky background - viz his invention of "NanoProbes" last year, which turned out to be basically TCP/IP port scans with fragmented packets. We just wanted to tell people to use their judgement. Having said that, he's still a great writer and a colorful hacker who deserves to be read. We basically like him, but think he could use a technical review editor - though I suppose he's getting some of that via the public review of his pieces.
As for the NRDC, we call 'em as we see 'em. It's basically a political agenda site. A pretty nice political agenda, as it happens, but still it's mostly about getting donations and writing letters to congresscritters.Which is basically what the item said. Incidentally, in general don't confuse our site opinions with any political agenda, pro or con, on our part. The only judgement call we make is "Is the site worth writing about?" We don't claim we always make the right decision. Personally I think it's newsworthy enough to let people know about it.
Thanks for reading. We know we can't please everybody every time, but we certainly don't try to piss too many people off too often - with varying success at times. :) - AB
Thanks, still with you.
PR
C'mon you guys! I thought that you were a quality outfit with something intelligent to say. What is up with the lop that reviewed the NRDC's BioGem site in NSD 7.19?
Clearly, the dude had way too many bong hits or more likely, his wife didn't put out the night before. Everything that is mentioned in his brief little emotional diatribe is so far from what I experienced when I followed the link that I had to raise the question: who the fuck wrote this ditty? They need to visit the site and get a clue!
Wow! What shoddy writing of an even less-than-shoddy review. There is no smokescreen, buddy, just look right underneath the BioGems insignia on the opening page. What do you see? Very good, a project of the NRDC. Yes, there is even information there, but now is that the purpose of the BioGems site? No, I'm afraid your information-overloaded and under-laid reviewer failed to go to the little button that says "About us". "Specific agenda"? No shit, moron, it's the NRDC for crying out loud! Yeah, they have a specific agenda and it isn't about spreading poorly written material on the Internet that is far from accurate (or literate).
So, Mr. under-laid Netsurfer dude, I think that you need to pay another visit to the site after your wife puts out and see what you think about your less than intelligent assessment of the BioGem website.
Jonathan Buckmaster
You should have seen this one before I fixed all the spelling mistakes.... - LN
NSD 7.23 has quite a lot of grammatical errors.
Seth W. Phillips
Like what? - LN
So does real life. :)
Check this out: "Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose"
Thanks for reading! - AB
But the question begs to be asked: Why? Why should real life degrade into a less-than-six grade reading level? Why are supposedly educated people allowed to get away with printing incorrect grammar? I was going to allow this to drop because it is such a non-issue. Then, I got to thinking. NSD, though fun, is also an educational tool. I know I have learned vast amounts from the articles you print. I actually enjoy reading the newsletter.
I think it is a shame that a newsletter I have read for quite a few years would degrade to this point. I also think there is something wrong when I write to inform you that there are mistakes in an article, and
1) you editor can not even find them (i.e. read the first article - one sentence is borderline gibberish)
2) you blow it off like you approve of it.
P.S. Have you bought the recommended book for all your editors?
SWP
I must say, NSD was never meant to be an educational tool and I'm rather impressed and pleased that you find it so. Actually, what I should say is that the vast bulk of it is not meant to be educational, though some items we do are meant to encourage our readers to educate themselves about some issue or other.
Ultimately, enjoyable reading has always been our primary goal.
I'm more of a techie then an editor, which is why I explicitly don't even try to look for language mistakes in NSD articles. It takes a certain personality to be bothered by such things - not a criticism at all; it's a valuable skill which I just don't really possess. Having said that, we do have people who look over the issues and deal with grammar, spelling, and such. Sometimes they slip up, sometimes they let things go for other reasons, and sometimes they deliberately leave something as is.
It's more that I trust our editing staff to do the right thing, but I don't expect them to be anal about it. If something slips through, it's not the end of the world. We learn from our mistakes and life goes on. It's not as if we're warping young impressionable minds here, after all.
In any event, we do appreciate constructive criticism. I think Laurie asked you for specific examples, and I'll let him defend his editing choices - Lord knows, he's let me defend my own blunders often enough. :) - AB
When Seth wrote me the original letter, I replied "Like what?" Maybe that's what Seth means when he wrote I "can't even find them". What I meant was, "Tell me them so I don't have to bother reading the thing again."
On rereading, I guess he means this sentence: "It's been an action-packed week since we reported on the arrest of Def Con 9 conference presenter Dmitry Sklyarov on charges of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by disclosing how Adobe's PDF and e-book encryption formats work."
It is a mouthful, but it makes sense. I suppose I coulda broke it into smaller chunks, but I respected the prose of the esteemed author (Hint: initials AB) of this piece. There's a missing "'s" after Dmitry in the sentence following the one above - c'est la vie. And in this sentence - "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) first called for mass rallies in support of Dmitry, then canceled after Adobe agreed to a talk." - I should have replaced "canceled" with "demurred", I suppose, or added something in there.
I'm not surprised if this last issue had mistakes. I put it together on a mini-laptop with a screen of about 4" x 7". It's useful to take on trips (I'm tripping now) but it's a pain in the ass to do work on. So I guess I'll just blame it on the environment. And on Windows. I miss my home Mac. :)
Let's see, what else to add.... Basically, Arthur has it down. We do this part-time and it isn't the end of the world, although I do not take mistakes lightly. Believe it or not, a university actually gives me money to teach journalism students, so it's not like I'm a fly-by-night wannabe writer. We get very few complaint letters on our writing/grammar, and when we do, it's usually the complainer who's wrong. That's a record I can be proud of, even if I do sometimes spot mistakes or things I'd like to change after NSD goes to press. - LN
"Weak-kneed Canadian dollar" (NSD 7.24)? Give me a break. Why is it that the Americans like to slag their number-one trading partner? A country with whom their share the longest undefended border ever in history? Perhaps they have no respect for anyone who would be in their club.
By the way, you probably pissed off about 1000 other Canadians with a remark like that, but they will be too polite to tell you about it. Me? I'm giving up polite for menopause. :)
Jacqui Burke
Or maybe, just maybe, the person who wrote that is Canadian.... - LN
I am not sure that is an argument but it made me laugh. Hitler was part Jewish you know.
JB
I just meant that it is not a slag. It is a fact. - LN
Only one editor was implicitly threatened to finally make this page.
Publisher: Arthur Bebak
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Complaints and Other Reasons Why We Keep Making NSDs
Editor: Lawrence Nyveen
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