| Demolition Does Detroit |
| Green Maps: Portraits of Urban Ecology |
| Mac OS 8.5 Preview |
| RealNetworks Releases New Beta of G2 Video Player |
| Adobe Brings Web Design Creativity to Non-Pros |
| NYT Hack Source |
| Remove a Dash of Art de Provence |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
Credit Card Data Compromised at Online Auction Sites
Mark Dodd owns AuctionWatch, a neat auction site information center. He was running searches on the major search engines and by sheer accident uncovered a security hole in some software used by many of the online auction houses. It's a big one, too. If the auction site misconfigures its software, and apparently many do, the first happy hacker to come along can steal its customers' credit card numbers and addresses. Mark went to CNet with the story, which warned many of the affected sites of the potential havoc and scooped up a good story in the process. Remember, the safety of your credit card data is only as good as the security savvy of the webmaster guarding it.AuctionWatch: http://www.auctionwatch.com/
CNet: http://www.news.com/SpecialFeatures/0,5,26760,00.html
New Hacker Tactic: Slow, Coordinated Attacks from Multiple Locations
A clever new twist in the evolutionary arms race between hackers and online security forces gives us an excuse to bring you this fascinating Web site. Hackers, it seems, have discovered herding behavior. Their latest tactic is to coordinate probes and attacks against online sites from a large number of separate machines and over a long period of time. By limiting probes to rates as low as two per hour and dispersing their sources, hackers can probe beneath current security software's threshold of detection. The Navy Cooperative Intrusion Detection Evaluation and Response team (CIDER) just released a report on the technique. The CIDER site is also worth visiting for information on security and intrusion detection software projects, notably a database comparing commercial and government tools. Cool spook stuff.CIDER: http://www.nswc.navy.mil/ISSEC/CID/
Report: http://www.nswc.navy.mil/ISSEC/CID/co-ordinated_analysis.txt
Annoy.com Wins Legal Right to Annoy You
But that's a good thing. Annoy.com filed a lawsuit against the part of the infamous Communications Decency Act which criminalized the sending of indecent online content with the intent to annoy. In a divided ruling, a federal court ruled that the Constitution protects the right to communicate material with intent to annoy someone over the Internet. The court did not declare the statute unconstitutional, meaning that "obscene" content can still get you in trouble. Annoy.com is pondering an appeal to the Supreme Court in an attempt to have the whole statute thrown out. Incidentally, this is the first serious and important press release we've seen with the phrase "Right now, Kenn Starr should kiss my ass." We love this job.Annoy.com: http://www.annoy.com/
Release: http://www.annoy.com/cda/press/press_release010.html
Starr Poll Fallout: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
We like empirical data, we really do. As you recall, after a number of readers vociferously asserted that we were way off base for suggesting that most people don't give a rat's behind, we asked in our Starr Report poll a simple question, whether you do or do not give a rat's ass about the whole Clinton affair. The results are in: 204 hours of data with some amusing surprises. It's a bit of an eye opener to those who respond and look at poll results in the media. The raw numbers seldom tell the whole story, particularly on the Web. You'll find the results and some off-the-cuff analysis on this page. Have fun!http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/poll/starres/
Get Your Halloween Goodies in, Pronto
We're already preparing for our 1998 Halloween issue, so if you have or know of a site with ghoulish, ghostly, gross, or gummy goodness, get off your duff and send it in already to mailto:pressroom@netsurf.com and forever rest in peace.A rapier wit and a well lubed mouse-click finger can lead you to an exciting career as a Netsurfer. Oh, yeah - a reliable capability to deliver five to ten digest articles per week for the rest of your natural life (or until you get sick of it) wouldn't hurt. You can also write for our cerebrally entertaining Netsurfer Science e-zine if you want. Not a full time job, this'll buy you some pizza and beer every now and again. Or tea and crumpets. Or more mouse-click finger lubrication. Or whatever. Send a plain ASCII text resume outlining your previous writing or journalism experience (yep, it's a test) to mailto:writers@netsurf.com.
NSD: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/
NSS: http://www.netsurf.com/nss/
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Netsurfer Book Recommendations Books our staff likes and you might too. Click on the cover or title to order the books at a hefty discount from Amazon.com and send a few pennies our way as well.
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Maximum Security: A Hacker's Guide to Protecting Your Internet Site and Network
The Starr Report: The Findings of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. StarrSURFING SITES
This latest installment in our dedicated series of frog coverage takes a look at African clawed frogs as pets. You may not have thought of said frogs in terms of pet-like characteristics; possibly, you see them more as a topic for wildlife shows on obscure satellite channels. You might even know them by their generic name, Xenopus, in which capacity they serve as biological test subjects. In fact, as Lyn Duedall demonstrates with her well-stocked information site, they have personality, poise, and the escape skills of an aquatic Steve McQueen. Their lack of hair also makes them ideal - ideal, we say! - pets for kids with asthma. Whether you have an African clawed frog, you'd like to know more about them, or neither, this site has plenty of information, photos, and first-hand stories.http://members.aol.com/sirchin/afc.htm
Doodlers may get a kick out of the Midnight Experience. This section of 3M's Post-it site uses Shockwave applets that let you select from a few colors and draw on a small virtual tablet, then submit your creation to an onsite gallery. Although our belief that the mouse is a poor drawing tool was quickly confirmed in our hands, messing around here can be fun. We spent less time trying in vain to imitate Salvador Dali than we did browsing the gallery, populated by a lot of kindergartenish flourishes more expressive than ours. Modem users will have to wait a while for the applet to download. Don't miss Art's Lab wherein - like Romy and Michele, but without the devastating embarrassment - you too can learn about Art Fry the Post-it guy.
http://www.3m.com/postit/midnight/
Flame-Broiled Comedy in a Spicy Secret Sauce
When wandering this surreal restaurant chain site, one at times wonders if the Nando family of Johannesburg - purveyors of piquant Portuguese flame-broiled chicken - will one day rule the world. They'd be jolly despots, and the food sure would be better than the stuff with which the Kroc empire cakes our arteries. While the recipe page is succulent, this transcends food; it's an ambitious mix of advertising, investor come-on, and an exuberant, goofy, deep, deep hunger to write for National Lampoon. Satirical news stories might have been penned by Bart Simpson at 22. Sample headlines: "Mime receives standing ovation after heart attack" and "Eating nuclear waste is good for you". You can find Nando's restaurants on five continents but not in the US... yet.http://www.nandos.co.za/
Values, Morals, Philosophy, Fiction
With articles entitled "10 Nice Things about Directing: Too Bad There Aren't 11" and "Tower of Baloney: Bilateral Danish-Estonian Diplomacy", this site will be hard pressed not to have something to catch your eye. Author, gadfly, philosopher Wolf De Voon discusses intellectual property and copyright, writes fiction (e.g. "Death of an Innocent: A Rake's Progress in Downtown Gomorrah"), and woos at least one of our reviewers with a discussion of why Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" still hasn't made it to the big screen ("know that cinema qua art form is dead, because this property never had a chance").http://www.wolfdevoon.com/51_solution.html
When you're named "Allura", you've already got an image to live up to. You've got to be enticing and fascinating, and Allura Ellington pulls it off with flying colors. A mixture of eloquence and elegance makes her page an Audrey Hepburn among personal Web sites. The spot is spare but not sparse, offering a handful of each element - graphics, poetry, random information - for the curious reader. It whets the palate but does not saturate it. Happy little style sheet tags contribute to the overall cleanliness of the page but make it difficult to tell what's clickable and what's not. Be sure to run your mouse over all the header words. For the truly curious, Smitten, undoubtedly the capstone of the site, reveals some of what makes Allura tick (and ticked off).
http://allura.net/
With the very first page, this site captures the eerie atmosphere, tense expectation, and totally '60s setting of "The Outer Limits". Take our advice and wait the few minutes it takes the intro to load - it's worth it. The site contains the special sound effects, the voice of the Controller, the creepy music, and the plot of every episode. The background information may interest you, too - original screenwriter Joseph Stefano called all monsters "bears", and ABC changed the show's title from "Please Stand By" because the network execs thought people might otherwise think it was real.
http://www.subnet.co.uk/brendan/outer.html
When portal and governmental sites choke on traffic generated by the latest scandal or disaster, you might find what you're looking for at Just the News, which specializes in audio and video news feeds from networks such as ABC and BBC. You're in luck if you understand spoken English, because there's a nice balance of American and British sources, with reports from correspondents in major European nations and the Caribbean. The Just the News server we connected with responded quickly on a Friday evening, with RealAudio downloads of excellent quality. As you might expect, the video on your monitor won't be larger than a few square inches, but that's the state of streaming video at the moment. We only wish Just the News had more varied content. Many will find the multiple links to the Starr Report (prominent at our most recent visit) more than enough to keep them clicking.
http://listen.to/TheNews/
The Orientation Web sites let you click from Central and Eastern Europe to Africa, Asia, and other regions for the latest news and a variety of topics. The Orientation Africa site, for example, offers a wealth of resources focusing on that continent, from a pharmaceutical guide to over-the-counter and prescription drugs in South Africa to breaking news about Lesotho starvation - an intriguing blend of research material and up-to-date news. A Java chat area offers a variety of forums. Each region's Orientation site provides similar features.
http://af.orientation.com/
Except for its black background, Scour.Net Internet Media Guide looks much like portal sites that feature conventional content. But unlike those search engines, Scour.Net crawls the Web exclusively for multimedia files such as images, audio, and video in eight major categories: business, film and TV, news, sports, education, music, radio stations, and TV stations. This impressive brainchild of a group of computer science students at UCLA has a strong consumer slant. Here and there, the site disappointed us with subcategories that contained not a single link. You can submit URLs of sites rich in multimedia to help populate it.
http://www.scour.net/
Just when we thought all was lost, the Diva shows us the way. With her expert advice, no longer do we have to blight the world with our ill-applied rouge and smudgy liner. "Questions about concealers have been very popular lately", and ovine as we are, we learned to apply it so that we don't look like blotchy fools. When issues such as "I'm so tired of wearing the same old lipstick every day" come up, the Diva advises a new season's lipstains and glosses. Phew, the price of beauty.
http://www.makeupdiva.com/
What to Expect When You Market Your Cynical Book Online
This is great. The Cynic's Sanctuary is a blatant attempt to peddle a book, cleverly disguised as online entertainment. The crass commercialism doesn't relent - for example, the quiz, supposedly designed to calculate your inherent level of cynicism, contains statements that any right-thinking realist would agree with and hence be labeled a cynic. The definitions of everything from car phones to religion may be amusing, but they are also self-evident truths. Providing 714 things to be cynical about is a redundant exercise as there are literally thousands of things to be cynical about if people would only open their eyes. Sorry, are we just a tad too cynical about this? The one thing we can say in favor of this site is, for us journalists, it for some reason felt like home....http://www.amz.com/cynic/
Electronic Democracy for Seniors
MetLife's nonprofit SeniorNet offers exactly that - insight, help, and a discussion forum - for Internet users over the age of 50. Articles like "Old Dogs Must Learn New Tricks in the Modern Era" and "Seniors Rock the Web" clearly let you know just how relevant the pages will be to you. Chock full of great info, event dates of seminars and workshops specifically designed for older users, and good links, the site offers a fantastic chance for seniors to pool their experience and wisdom.http://www.seniornet.org/solutions/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Any resident of Detroit knows the dark truth behind the glossy postcards of the Motor City: the camera may zoom in on glittering Renaissance Center, but you never see the urban devastation surrounding it. In an interactive take on this persistent contrast, The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit compares the rustbelt remnants of a once-vibrant industrial colossus with ruins of ancient Ephesus, Athens, Rome, and other cities whose high points in history seem distant indeed. The main attraction, a slideshow tour of the Motor City, includes snapshot histories such as Industrial Ruins (in which an animated GIF loops an explosive moment), abandoned auto plants, the neglected and often ugly shambles of Brush Park and Trumbull Avenue mansions from the Gilded Age, and many other mute highlights. Take detours for extra photos and background. This site is a superb blend of architectural and industrial history, photography, Web design, and civic anguish.http://www.bhere.com/ruins/
Green Maps: Portraits of Urban Ecology
Green maps of more than 20 cities and towns are linked to this site. Some are little more than guides to local natural resources with a little boosterism for ecology groups thrown in, while others have the potential to give scientists a deeply significant understanding of a community's relationship with nature. The map of Montreal, for example - a combined effort of McGill University and the province of Quebec - is a compact, meaningful, visual statement comprising many layers of hard research: geology, fault lines, watershed basin characteristics, population center concentrations, urban green space, toxic waste sites, landfills, and many other significant factors. Other green maps cover cities such as Copenhagen, Kyoto, Athens, Ga., Prescott, Ariz., and New York.http://www.greenmap.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Check out this excellent, to-the-point essay by Mary Kevlin on copyright law - even if she does use the word "shibboleths" and other legalese.http://www.wld.com/general/frames/cowan1002.asp
McGwire it is in the best home run race in history. Here's another good site that a reader brought to our attention.
http://www.mcgwire.com/
A new Imax film comes to the big screen this fall: T-Rex (sic). Maybe the suits don't know nomenclature, but they do know trailers. You have your pick at this site of clips ranging from 864 kB to 4.4 MB. Cool ambient sounds, too.
http://www.iproject.net/WFH/TREX/
If you're humiliatingly naive when your friends chat about bits 'n' bytes, bone up at the PC Technology Guide. This nicely designed resource takes you by the hand and helps you understand such mysteries as "bus logic" and "digital subscriber lines".
http://www.dircon.co.uk/pctechguide/
Have We Got a Chipset for You...
The Super 7 Hardware Guide can also help you understand the whys and wherefores of your hardware purchases, here or elsewhere. Before you get a new processor, for example, read some helpful info to assist you in figuring out just what you really need.http://www.super7.net/
OK, that's an exaggeration. This site hosts only netcams of the US. The page categorizes cams by state and offers a netcam of the week and - well, you all know by now what the standard is.
http://www.mindstate.com/netcams/
Goblins and Treants and Flumphs, Oh My!
Any fantasy gamer who's played in a PBEM knows the logistical difficulties. Gary Gygax's new gig, Macray's Keep, sets forth to solve those problems. For $8.99 a month you get some special features, but the site provides a place for GMs to post games for free. Now, somebody go host a GURPS campaign.http://www.macrayskeep.com/
Think your life should be chronicled for the public? Are you an interesting or unusual person? Perhaps just incredibly egotistical? Then pop along to this site to post your bio for free. Don't leave poor Dwight Barnthouse hanging there, all alone.
http://www.lcc.net/~ted5943/
Line up for Liberal Legislation
If Not Now attempts helps advocates of liberal and progressive legislation influence congressional votes. It e-mails updates on select bills and lets you quickly add your name to petitions and prefab letters to decision makers.http://www.ifnotnow.com/
Major Philanthropic Foundations
A gift from big philanthropy to the grant-writers toiling in the nonprofit vineyard: guidelines and other information about charitable philosophies and programs online.Pew Charitable Trusts - http://www.pewtrusts.com/
Carnegie Corporation of New York - http://www.carnegie.org/
Gary Payton Foundation - http://www.gpfoundation.org/
MacArthur Foundation - http://www.macafdn.org/
Rockefeller Foundation - http://www.rockfound.org/
Although it contains a Space Site of the Day and resources, the Space Careers page most wants to help you find a job. It includes a list of the Web pages of major employers in the space industry with an additional link straight to their job openings, should they have them online.
http://www.spacelinks.com/SpaceCareers/
SOFTWARE
Mac OS 8.5 ships October 17 with some handy new features: more functionality in selecting a folder in a dialogue panel and an appearance manager that lets you customize your entire OS experience (like Kaleidoscope does now) among them. The finder/applications pulldown can now be shrunk to a thin icon strip, ripped away, and floated in the foreground (like Windows' task bar or third party Mac shareware). A desktop window's title bar displays its desktop icon, and with this the folder it represents can be dragged and dropped in a different folder. MacNN Review has put together an OS 8.5 tour for us. Another change is the exclusive presence of Internet Explorer in the bundle. As the US Department of Justice presses antitrust charges alleging unfair attempts to control markets, will this help or hurt Microsoft?http://www.macnn.com/thereview/MacOS8.5/index.shtml
RealNetworks Releases New Beta of G2 Video Player
RealVideo keeps getting better and better. In this beta round, RealPlayer gets 30-frame-per-second speed, stereo, and near CD-quality sound. New benefits for content creators include an increase in encoding speed, network management features, and other enhancements. Read all about it in the press release.http://www.real.com/company/pressroom/pr/98/g2beta2.html
Adobe Brings Web Design Creativity to Non-Pros
Adobe designed this ImageStyler package specifically to deal with the graphic design that goes into creating a Web site. Adobe aims to put "creativity and cool Web features in the hands of the non-design professional." The program's easy-to-use tools add effects to Web images and text. The software can also easily produce JavaScript effects, image maps, and optimized graphics. Check out the list of features at the Web site, which has both a demo and a beta version that expires at the end of October. The full program is available for both PC and Mac, and costs $129.http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/imagestyler/main.html
CORRECTIONS
Last issue, we pointed you to a copy of the hack of the New York Times Web page. We didn't explicitly tell you to look at the hack's source code for a more reasoned, less eleet-speak presentation of the hackers' stance, but you oughta. Like they said, "DOWNLOAD THE SOURCE T0 TH1S PAGE AND P0NDER 0UR W1ZD0M."http://www.antionline.com/archives/pages/www.nytimes.com/
Remove a Dash of Art de Provence
In case you couldn't figger it out, we had an extra slash after the Art de Provence link in our last issue. The correct URL follows.http://artsol.org/indexa.htm