A HALF CENTURY OF INDEPENDENCE: INDIA AND PAKISTAN
Fifty years ago, India and Pakistan gained independence, an event
commemorated on and off the Net. These sites present interesting
anniversary perspectives. Rediff's good compilation of articles and
features, produced by Indian natives, covers the myriad facets of that
sprawling country. Click on the 50 Years of Freedom link, or simply enjoy
this Indocentric e-zine which covers everything from lifestyles to business
to cricket. A Pakistani perspective can be found at the decorative
"official" Pakistan page, which offers many links to that country's
resources. For something short and pithy, you can always read the
diplomatically correct message from the president of Pakistan released on
the eve of the anniversary.
Rediff: <http://www.redifindia.com/>
Pakistan: <http://www.pak.org/>
Message: <http://www.undp.org/missions/pakistan/1497084b.htm>
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) came out strongly against
voluntary Net self-rating this week, partly in response to calls by US
government officials for more self-policing by the online industry. The
ACLU released a white paper explaining why rating systems are bad for free
speech. Go right to the source and read the press release, paper, and the
accompanying open letter to the Net community.
Release: <http://www.aclu.org/news/n080797a.html>
Paper: <http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/burning.html>
Letter: <http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/letter080797.html>
CINEMA.U OFFERS ENTERTAINING ONLINE FILM COURSES
A movie lover's dream come true: class credit for watching "The Rocky
Horror Picture Show". Of all the online education programs springing up,
this certainly seems to be the most entertaining. Cinema.U bills itself as
both an online film club and a virtual film university for movie lovers.
All you need is the Net and a VCR. Each class features an online lecture, a
movie-viewing assignment, and an online critical discussion for instructors
and students. If you can't find the assigned movie in your local video
store, Cinema.U will ship you the tapes for $3 each; you return them at the
end of the course. You can sign up for individual classes or tracks such as
Film History, Stars and Directors, Film and Society, and Wild Side. Prices
range from $9.95 to $14.95 per course. Sign-ups are being taken through the
end of August. <http://www.reel.com/cinemau/>
It's been well nigh 20 years since the King of Rock 'n' Roll left behind
the glitter of Graceland and the embrace of his fans for parts unknown,
only the manner of his leaving and current whereabouts are still in
dispute. As befits a notable anniversary (one divisible by 10), this must
be traditionally observed by dredging up the past for the entertainment of
the present. Yahoo! has a whole category dedicated to Elvis Worship whence
we've mined the following: the hullabaloo must begin with Graceland, the
official shrine, and moves on to the fantastic compendium of links
pertaining to the King, called Big Elvis. Proof of Elvis's divinity can be
sought at la Toile d'Elvis, one mere skin tag on the giant hide of Elvis
admiration French Canadian culture wears.
Graceland: <http://www.elvis-presley.com/>
Big Elvis: <http://www.nwlink.com/~timelvis/new_elvis.html>
Proof of His Divinity: <http://pages.infinit.net/jeanboi/elvis.html>
VOTING FOR COOL SITE OF THE YEAR BEGINS
The nominees are in and the voting has begun. The original Cool Site of the
Day site hails from the murky beginnings of the Web so we can rightly call
these awards "venerable". Categories include personal sites, cool
innovations, cool designers, live online events, cool programming, cool
writing, cool design, and the still cool site of the year. All the nominees
are pretty hot and well worth spending a few days visiting. Think of it as
a tour of the best the Web has to offer.
<http://cool.infi.net/csoty/csoty97_how.html>
SOJOURNER WAKE UP SONGS AND USELESS PATHFINDER WEB STATISTICS
Bet you didn't know that NASA ground controllers continue the grand old
tradition of waking up spacefarers - robotic or not - with a repertoire of
appropriate songs. Every Sol, Sojourner awakes to a jaunty tune chosen by
the fearless terminal jockeys at JPL. This Web site lists the selections.
Some useless statistics show that Pathfinder Web sites racked up 565
million hits worldwide between July 1 and August 4, peaking on July 8 with
47 million hits across the 20 mirror sites. Assuming that each page
contains, say, 25 hits (i.e. downloading parcels - GIFs, text blocks,
etc.), a useless calculation reveals that to be about 22.6 million
impressions (i.e. visits to the pages). By charging a justifiable high of
$20 per thousand impressions, NASA could have cleared $450,000 by running
banner ads on its sites.
<http://entertainment.digital.com/mars/JPL/rover/roversongs.html>
DUMBEST MANAGEMENT REMARKS CONTEST PROMOTES NEW DILBERT GAME
The game, The Corporate Shuffle, is based on the insanely popular Dilbert
comic strip. The Corporate Shuffle "Words of Wisdom" online contest invites
everyone from interns to executives to tell in 50 words or less "the
dumbest thing you've ever heard management say." Entries will be judged on
originality and, of course, stupidity. The contest winner will receive a
cash prize of a month's salary and Dilbert merchandise. Entries will be
accepted until August 31, 1997. When asked about the feasibility of a
similar promotion for Netsurfer Digest, our publisher remarked, "It'll
never work. This whole Web thing is just a passing fad anyway. We should
switch to peddling Network Computers. We'll make a fortune!"
<http://www.wizards.com/Games/CorporateShuffle/WoWContest.html>
NEW JAVA BUG IN NAVIGATOR AND EXPLORER
This time it's possible for a Java applet to open unauthorized connections
to hosts on the Net. Normally, an applet can only contact the host it came
from, but this workaround looses it on the wild, wild Net to fetch data.
The major problem seems to be with Explorer running on various flavors of
Windows (surprise!), but Netscape users who go through a proxy also may be
vulnerable. This page has details and a test.
<http://neurosis.hungry.com/~ben/msie_bug/>
It's not Kurt Vonnegut's, nor was it a speech. It was a column by Mary
Schmich, falsely labeled as a commencement speech author Vonnegut gave at
MIT this past spring which flowed out of control and into many e-mail
in-boxes. The media jumped on the story like hungry fleas on a hound with
the usual profound statements about rampant online hoaxes contaminating the
innocent purity of the Public. Storm in a teacup, but mildly amusing. Read
the column, then read Steve Silberman's essay, which takes the NSD award
for best use of the phrase "Net-porn-crazed Ponzi schemers" in a sentence.
And heed the acerbic Vonnegut's take on the situation: "So some jerk
infected the Internet with an outright lie. It shows how easy it is to do
and how credulous people are."
Column: <http://www.chicago.tribune.com/news/current/schmich0601.htm>
Silberman: <http://www.wired.com/news/news/wiredview/story/5976.html>
THE BOOKSMITH BANNED, PROUST PROHIBITED, DOMINATRIX DELETED
This story is a stark reminder of the rather coarse grinding Web sites take
at the virtual mill of filtering software. The Booksmith is a respected
general interest bookstore here in NSD's own Bay Area. Their decent online
site has one small section devoted to mild erotica - nothing you wouldn't
find under your grandparents' bed, you understand, but that's not the
point. Due to that one small section, CyberPatrol has banished the entire
bookstore site, including the innocuous rest of it, to electronic oblivion.
CyberPatrol prevents customers from finding out "How Proust Can Change Your
Life" (Alain de Botton, $19.95) while depriving them of "My Darling
Dominatrix" (Grant Antrews, $6.95). The Booksmith press release, first-rate
publicity wordsmithing that thoroughly relieves us of the onus of rehashing
the details for you, has all the details.
Press release: <http://www.bookweb.org/news/btw/820.html>
Booksmith: <http://www.booksmith.com/>
THAT WACKY QUEBECOIS GOVERNMENT
If you're like the average American, you have but dim knowledge of the
language debate in Canada's province of Quebec. While the ruling separatist
Parti Quebecois (PQ) shuts hospitals and passes tax burdens on to
municipalities, it has a spare $5 million to feed their Office de la Langue
Francaise (OLF), an agency that fines citizens who display signs not merely
in English only, but also bilingual signs with English lettering more than
half as tall as the French lettering. Why mention this? Another brilliant
PQ idea is mandatory French on commercial Web pages. This charter was toned
down severely after criticism, but even in its present state, we'll let it
speak for itself. May the Net recognize all censorship as damage and route
around it. One cute OLF page provides French translations of standard Net
terms. See you in a bavardoir and beware les bidouilleurs.
Charter: <http://www.olf.gouv.qc.ca/charter.html>
Net terms: <http://www.olf.gouv.qc.ca/service/pages/internet2.html>
This time our intrepid Joanne stays awake all night to review "Teach
Yourself C++ in 24 Hours". <http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/books/book.03.27.html>
FORBES DIGITAL CAPITALIST TOOL
Entrepreneurs and other money mavens have an online haven in Forbes Digital
Tool, companion site for Forbes Magazine. With free access to articles from
the print magazine along with case histories of movers and shakers in
finance, high tech, and other business ventures, why subscribe to the print
journal? Many of the online topics and opinion pieces intend to fire you up
for economic battle with conventional wisdom. Recently, Digital Tool
devoted an issue to failure "because one of the best things about the warp
speed of the information age is not that you will fail less but that you
have the freedom to fail faster and learn quicker." Though the stock
listings don't impress, you may return repeatedly to check out the Toolbox,
which includes Forbes's lists of the world's richest people,the "200 Best
Small Companies", and other references. Hang here for shoulder rubbings
from the power elite. <http://www.forbes.com/>
Zines - alternative publications, proudly marginal, with tiny but select
circulation - are the subject of "The Book of Zines". Editor Chip Rowe
(a.k.a. the Playboy Advisor) is evidently fond of zines and the spirit that
spawns them. From the book's links, you can check out recommended reading
in the best of the crop: Funkapotamus; Teenage Gang Debs; Reign of Toads;
Bubba's Live Bait; Crap Hound; XYY; and Crimewave USA; to mention just a
few. Rowe surveys his subjects, and each link includes publishers'
responses to questions about their vision and passion for publishing on the
fringe. In Roll Your Own, you too can learn the pitfalls and rewards of
joining these true believers in their irresistible calling.
<http://www.zinebook.com/>
ALT-N PRESENTS COMIC AND SERIAL ENTERTAINMENT
Alt-n bills itself as an online entertainment network, but can be better
characterised as a pop media compendium. Bounce around here and you'll find
16 daily comics, four soaps, and a Shockwave animated comic book. One
example, Buzz the Fly, is a reasonably offensive thrice weekly comic about
the exploits of your typical everyday fly. The Survivor episode we saw had
some scarred guy going on about magic immortality cloaks, Hitler clones,
and nuclear explosions. You can't really go wrong with Hitler clones, now,
can you? The Crystal Planet appears to be a retro sci-fi serial about a
solar system on the other side of a "spatial disruption", presumably in the
author's imagination. You get the idea. The site is a collection of offbeat
pop work which you're not likely to see on the local comics pages. Mildly
diverting, in a juvenile sort of way. <http://www.alt-n.com/>
Flushing them down the toilet just doesn't seem, well, cyber enough. Hence
this page. As it states: "Your tama flown out! You feel empty and you can't
forget your little tama... To abate the pain and the traumatic experience
you can raise a memorial for him here"
<http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/3195/index.html>
60 Across: Pastry tray item. 4 Down: See 60 Across. Yikes! There's even a
timer for added stress and to scientifically measure the pathetic limits of
our knowledge. <http://www.student.net/xwords/>
Give an address to get a map or a set of directions. Route planning and
yellow pages services are also available. So is a nifty text-to-speech
feature to read the directions. From Lucent, the ex-phone company.
Naturally, it's scary as hell if you think about it.
<http://www.mapsonus.com/>
JAVA COUNTDOWN TO THE MILLENIUM
For those of you who just have to know how many seconds there are to the
millennium here is the Java Millennium Countdown clock. Frankly, to us it
looks more like the counter's ticking off time to April 19, 2000.
<http://www.forteantimes.com/countdown/>
HEIKKI LUHTALA'S BACKGROUNDS PARADISE
Cool name. He's from Finland and invites you to download some of his 2300
original background designs. Neat set of other pages also makes this a
worthwile casual netsurf. <http://www.medios.fi/heikki/heikki.shtml>
A new corporate site from one of the big names in speakers. Some neat
tidbits about sound technology lurk here. Slick, corporate, and for
audiophiles. <http://www.bose.com/>
Yep, they're all here ranging from Adultjokes to Zoomies Humor Mailing
List. Hmmm, let's see, what shall it be today? Sarcasm's Mailing List, the
Hecklers Online Newsletter, or perhaps the always popular Gag-O-Matic?
<http://www.angelfire.com/pa/humorlists/index.html>
LOST MOOSE PUBLISHING FOR THE NORTH BOUND
A small publishing house with some cool and quirky books about the Yukon.
Everything from an eclectic compendium of community writing, photography
and Northern art to a cartoon history of the Klondike Gold Rush. Good
reading for northern riding. <http://www.yukonweb.com/business/lost_moose/>
TERI HATCHER FAN PAGE GENERATOR
Choose a banner: Romantic, Assertive, Pensive, Unrealistic, Manic,
Infantile, Champagne, or Classic. Choose an image: whore-madonna,
(quote "not the whore Madonna"), innocent girl next door, or the good-time girl.
Add a background, divider and some awards. Top it off with your devotional
prose, and bingo! you're elibible to join the Inside Teri Hatcher Web map.
<http://home1.gte.net/taxis/ITH/ITHcreate.html>
Want to know how loving you are? Your score on the Keirsey Temperament
Indicator? What your favorite color says about you? The Personality Online
page offers a slew of pop and non-pop psychology tests for your
self-examinatory pleasure. Wanna know how we fared? In general, we're in
loving, committed relationships, our biases toward certain purples and
black indicate an everlasting contempt of astrologers and tarot readers,
and only one of us is likely to snap into a murderous rage at the mention
of a specific vegetable. <http://www.catech-uk.com/fresh/>
FOCUS ON ATTENTION DEFICIT - WOW, THE SKY IS BLUE TODAY
Betcha didn't know the 1990s are the "Decade of the Brain". As such, the
National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) wants to bring a special focus
on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This little page
describes some - fidget, fidget, scratch - fictional case studies and
symptoms of the condition. Best of all, the bottom of the document contains
long lists of additional information and of helpful organizations. Another
page of resources - hmmm, did that daydream really last seven minutes? -
will prove useful as well.
NIMH: <http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/adhd.htm>
Resources: <http://www4.interaccess.com/add/>
MEAT IN - ERR, MEET THE WILDERNESS
Take a kid out of the urban jungle, toss him into the wilderness for six
days with some guides and a few survival problems and you just might turn a
life around. Meet the Wilderness (MtW) does just that. The wilderness can
be just as unforgiving as the urban jungle, but it's much more
philosophically satisfying, don't you think? MtW is a non-profit
organization supported by a number of private sources including
individuals, businesses, treatment programs, schools, and foundations. Take
a look, donate if you like what you see. <http://www.meetthewilderness.org/>
TREASURES OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
As a result of some mangled copy (computers are so good at that sort of
thing, and don't all craftsmen blame their tools?), some of our readers got
last week's issue with the wrong URL for the Treasures of the Library of
Congress. The site is monumentally worthwhile so here is the corrected URL.
A digest about Ambit, the URL we erroneously included with the Treasures
item, will be run in the next issue.
Treasures: <http://lcweb.loc.gov/treasures/>
Ambit: <http://www.ambitweb.com/>
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