| Reality Check |
| Avatars98 Conference to Be Held Entirely Online |
| African Tartans |
| Mexican Pottery |
| Escher Would Be Proud |
| Scrap Metal Furniture |
| Netsurfer Book Recommendations |
| World Wide Wine Spectator |
| CyberStones' Satirical News |
| Genealogy Gem |
| Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It... |
| Info for Authors |
| Space to Order |
| The Layman's Quantum Theory |
| WWW.Talk.Origins |
| Inquiring Minds Want to Know |
| Weird, Wonderful Sea Critters |
| Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 5 Beta |
| UNIX Software to Dramatically Speed up CGI Processing |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
The government everybody loves to abuse sues the company everybody loves to hate. Throw in a bunch of faceless lawyers cross-examining techies who possess all the charisma of a video driver and you've got a spectacle of thoroughly miniscule proportions. Nevertheless, industry insiders and the ever-ravenous media mob are having a ball, and who are we to scoff at their fun. Surprisingly, you too can get some amusement out of this little cauldron of Machiavellian maneuvering. Michael Lewis is producing in Slate - ironically owned by Microsoft - rip-roaring accounts of his days in the courtroom: "The new Microsoft lawyer has the warmth of a corpse. He wears a funereal dark charcoal suit and matching hairdo and has the pallor of a man who hasn't seen daylight in years. If the courtroom population were asked to vote who in the chamber was most likely to be a vampire, he'd win by a landslide." Innocent bystanders, have fun and read Lewis. For the seriously interested, Yahoo offers an excellent media overview.Lewis: http://www.slate.com/code/DDD/DDD.asp?file=MSTrial
Yahoo: http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/Tech/Microsoft/
Talk about embarrassing! Here you are, a big all-powerful global corporation at legal war with a big all-powerful wanna-be-global government for picking on your big less powerful global competitors, and what should float to the top of the corporate water cooler but a memo detailing how you'll crush a globally beloved charity case. Last week, several Microsoft (MS) internal memos that detail company strategy against Linux and other open-source software surfaced on the Web. Eric Raymond of Open Source received the memos via e-mail from sources within Microsoft, and yes, they are for real. The documents reveal that MS considers Linux and other open-source efforts a threat to its products and detail possible strategies to "deny OSS products entry into the market". Eric has extensively analyzed the memos and MS's responses. Learn how big all-powerful global companies get that way.
http://www.opensource.org/halloween.html
Rio MP3 Player Survives Legal Challenge, Picks up Content
In NSD 4.30, we reported that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) tried to block the release of the Rio MP3 player. A judge has ruled against the RIAA. The Rio will be available in mid-November for $200, and will hold 60 minutes of music, more if you buy a memory upgrade. In a major blow to the RIAA crusade, a major music label has announced that it will release MP3 versions of songs from well-known artists. Platinum Entertainment will post free songs by Dionne Warwick, The Band with Eric Clapton, and others at MP3.Com. A CD with 152 MP3 tracks by independent artists and MP3 player software can be had from MusicMatch for $30. In related news, Liquid Audio's lawyers warned MP3.Com that it objects to MP3.Com's links to the a2b2wav software, which cracks Liquid Audio's encoding format.Rio Player: http://www.diamondmm.com/products/current/rio.cfm
Platinum Songs: http://www.mp3.com/news/123.html
MusicMatch: http://www.musicmatch.com/local_artists/best_of_list.html
Liquid Audio Letter: http://www.mp3.com/news/122.html
ECHELON: America's Secret Global Surveillance Network
That's the title of a new report about the extensive electronic surveillance network run by the National Security Agency. The system can reportedly intercept, record, and translate any electronic communication anywhere. It's not hard. The network consists of intercept stations all over the world which capture all satellite, microwave, cellular, and fiber-optic communications traffic, then process this information with huge computer facilities. The computers employ pattern matching, voice recognition, and optical character recognition to look for specific phrases and flag interesting messages for further analysis. The network remains pretty secret, but over the years journalists and researchers have pieced together details. This work clearly supports the privacy/liberty perspective as it spotlights the scary spook stuff.http://www.freecongress.org/ctp/echelon.html
ACLU vs. Reno II and the National Freedom Scorecard
US lawmakers, with infinite stubbornness, have yet again passed what will probably prove to be an unconstitutional restraint on free speech. The Child Online Protection Act makes it a federal crime to "knowingly" communicate "for commercial purposes" material considered "harmful to minors". A broad coalition of organizations challenged this new Internet censorship bill the moment President Clinton signed it as part of the recent budget bill. Read the text of the lawsuit to understand the issues at stake. The ACLU, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, has also just launched the National Freedom Scorecard site, which holds members of Congress accountable for the surprisingly large number of civil liberties votes each year. Whatever your position in the political spectrum, all those votes deal with your freedom - probably even if you aren't American. This tool should be in your voter's toolbox.Lawsuit: http://www.epic.org/free_speech/copa/complaint.html
Scorecard: http://scorecard.aclu.org/
Long-time readers already know about the periodic GVU Surveys, which provide some of the best demographic data about who is online, what they are doing, and how they feel about it. The tenth such survey is now underway, and as always we encourage all our readers to participate. Even if you don't answer any questions, the results of previous surveys make for fascinating reading.
http://www-survey.cc.gatech.edu/
Security Roundup in Netsurfer Focus
Long time readers probably know that every now and then we publish an issue of something called Netsurfer Focus. One of the more succesfull series of Focus issues deals with Computer and Network security. We've just released several updates to past issues on this topic and we've also put together a compendium of security related items from the past year or so worth of Digest issues. Check out the Netsurfer Focus home page for more information, and take a look at the compendium of past Digest articles if you're interested in historical patterns of computer and network security problems.Focus: http://www.netsurf.com/nsf/
Compendium: http://www.netsurf.com/nsf/v03/01/
ONLINE CULTURE
Reality Check is newly dedicated to "challenging dialogues about the issues and events of our time...." It wants to counter the effects of media saturation on our perception of public issues. The site experiments with online discussion formats. It hosts Dialogue Groups, forums in which a small number of (hopefully) non-flamers agree to participate for a defined period of time with a chosen level of anonymity. The most interesting posts wind up in a Featured Posts section. Users can also contribute to Open Letters, a section for writing what you'd say if you could get the undivided attention of any one player involved in the event under discussion. Finally, you may speak up about what you'd like to see covered - and how - in the news media. One downside to the launch is that the topic of the opening dialogue is the Clinton mess. Nevertheless, we think it's a noble experiment.http://www.realitycheck.com/
Avatars98 Conference to Be Held Entirely Online
The previous two Avatar conferences took place in San Francisco. Fittingly, the latest Avatars conference will be held entirely in cyberspace around November 21 - a tribute to the advances in VR and Avatar technology covered by this gathering. The virtual 3-D exhibit hall will feature booths from numerous universities, government agencies such as NASA, Internet design studios, and others, and will complement an all-day show full of online speakers, art shows, the annual Avvy Awards, webcasts, and guest appearances. The event, free and open to the public, can be attended in a variety of virtual worlds, software for each of which is available at the conference site.http://www.ccon.org/conf98/index.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Just as tartans signify kinship and once conveyed dangerous political symbolism, kente fabrics produced by the Asante of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire carry more than dye. The patterns - reminiscent of familiar quilt patterns - signal rank, attributes, history, memory, identity, and tribute. We especially like the evocatively named "God's eyebrow", a kente fabric echoing a rainbow and denoting grace, beauty, and creativity. In addition, the Asante produced adinkra fabrics, bearing stylized geometric symbols with name and meaning derived from history, attitude, ecology, or the forms of objects. Adinkra symbolism visually represents social thought relating to the history, philosophy and religious beliefs of the Akan Asante peoples. These pages detail the meaning of the fabrics and their appearance. Where but the Web would you have easy access to this kind of information?Kente cloth: http://www.erols.com/kemet/kente.htm
Adinkra symbolism: http://www.erols.com/kemet/adinkra.htm
The Potters of Oaxaca make pots the same way their ancestors did a thousand years ago, molding the red clay by hand into bean pots, water jugs, and cooking pots complete with authentic scorch marks. The ancient craft is dying out, as Oaxacans discover the benefits of Tupperware and stainless steel. Tony Mindling wants to keep the craft alive, and he has populated this site with beautiful photos, evocative descriptions, and the chance to partake of a workshop study tour for six days, in small select groups, to watch the potters at work. A clever blend of common-sense realism (the tour is not inexpensive) and philanthropy (the potter's communities get most of the money), the tours may in fact save the craft for posterity.
http://www.foothill.net/~mindling/
You may not know the word "tessellation", but you know what it is. It means an interlocking pattern that repeats itself - think of M.C. Escher's art. The symmetrical intricacies of Islamic architecture, which relies on such patterns largely because it's forbidden to depict living beings, inspired Escher. This beautiful site has examples from many cultures, especially Islam and Japan. It gives a little background on scientific and mathematical interest in such patterning. And once you're completely enthralled, it'll even show you how to make your own satisfying tessellations.
http://library.advanced.org/16661/
Sometimes furniture is just furniture. Sometimes it is an art form, a statement about civilization, a beautiful curve. Asher creates furniture from junk: old battered machines recycled into lamps, tables, and chairs - the ugly waste of society transformed into art. You would not buy an Asher chair to sit on and watch TV; it is a sculpture of form, not function. The Web site presents photos of all the artwork, with an option to buy.
http://retech.org/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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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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Windows 98 Annoyances
The Best of Outside: The First 20 Years
Come Hell on High Water: A Really Sullen Memoir
Dynamic Html: The Definitive Referencehttp://www.winespectator.com/
CyberStones encourages anyone to contribute to their selection of hilarious articles. From "Atheists Protest" ("We can't breathe, We're choking on the religious and spiritual groups popping up everywhere.") to "Pam Anderson's New Look" ("Still, the former Baywatch star isn't ashamed of her former 'Ten Bucks for a Quickie' look.") and the Queen mother rejecting a gift of reinforced undies from Auckland, it was a wealth of opportunities to laugh at your fellow human beings. And isn't that what life's all about?
http://www.cyberstones.com/
We don't want to minimize the value of material at this genealogy site, but clearly its most productive offerings may be available only in hard copy. Family Chronicle Magazine, "the magazine for families researching their roots", hangs its Web hat here. It proffers promising and detailed tables of contents from its print version, a few dozen valued links, advice for people just beginning to look for their roots, tips on using the Web in your search, and a few exemplars of historic resources you can expect to encounter in your quest - a census of 24,000 names, trades, and locations from the Klondike gold rush, for instance. This site is just a taste of the hard copy, yes. Too often, though, Web sites for hard copy publications leave you buying a pig in a poke. Family Chronicle Magazine feels more substantial, as if you've stumbled onto a reliable guide for a long trek through unfamiliar territory.
http://www.familychronicle.com/index.html
Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It...
You Be the Hero lets you solve a murder in Sicily in 1650. It's a choose-your-own-adventure type piece, with writing par for the genre. "Four nights ago the pope was found in his bed, all swollen and completely dead." As opposed to only mostly dead. Part of the awkwardness might stem from the fact that English is probably not a first language for the author, since the mirror we're referencing is on a free Web account from an ISP in Quebec and the e-mail points to the Israel Institute of Technology. Although it's distracting that the rules of capitalization and punctuation are rather randomly adhered to, the multiple frames offer occasion for an interesting concept of carrying objects with you in a separate frame. Likewise, there's a save function, something long needed in frames-based text games.http://www.spectr.com/avi/index.html
Providing a home where authors can publicize their wares and learn about their craft, AuthorWorld is devoted to furthering the cause of writers around the world. As Gerald Brenan said "It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs." The page is full of great quotes like this and offers articles such as "How to Be an Editor of the Slush Pile at The New Yorker Magazine". With resources like an Author Base and Name Master (with 8,000 first names), this site should heal any writer's block.
http://www.authorworld.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
If you have any interest in space at all, Windows on the Universe has something to offer. The University of Michigan succeeds admirably in developing a fun and different Web site about the Earth and space sciences. This is a Web site you can make to order. We have no objection to well-used frames, so we chose Door #6. (The Java option only made us cranky.) From there, we surfed our solar system and the universe, choosing the same core of information presented in beginner, intermediate, or advanced packages. This is a graphics-intensive site, though - except for that Java entry - our 33.6 kbps connection handled it readily. Menus offer just the package of information you want, from mythology and art inspired by the sky to straightforward discussions of Hubble's latest observations and the hypotheses they inspire on phenomena like gravitational lensing. We highly recommend this one.http://windows.engin.umich.edu/
It's not easy to explain quantum theory to your everyday netbounder. Even the cleverest of physicists don't know how it all works. New Scientist has, however, made a valiant effort to explain the complex theories, covering topics such as the teleportation of photons.. Other subjects include Schroedinger's cat, which is dead and alive at the same time, and a bizarre method of bomb detection that relies on the ability of a photon to be in two places at once so long as no-one is watching it. You may conclude quantum physicists are all barking mad, but it certainly makes fascinating reading.
http://quantum.newscientist.com/
Ever wonder where we come from? Apes, spacemen, God, or blind chance? Some riveting and often heated discussions take place on Usenet, between some of the brightest (and most obstinate) minds in the world, on just this topic. Most of those discussions lie moldering in unvisited news archives, and never see the light of monitor again. The denizens of one newsgroup, the talk.origins group, have created an attractive and navigable site with the theories, FAQs, papers, and diatribes that have appeared (and appear again and again) as threads. Apart from friendly explanations of jargon and acronyms, the site contains an exhaustive collection of arguments and theories about creationism.
http://www.talkorigins.org/
The attic is now open for exploration. And not just any attic, mind you. This is the Franklin Institute Online's "inQuiry Attic". To honor the Franklin Institute Science Museum's 175th anniversary in 1999, this new feature offers a look at scientific history. Each month will see a new feature and recent episodes have looked at the Wright brothers' early flight research. A great flight of fancy for teachers and other inquiring minds.
http://www.fi.edu/qa98/attic11/attic11.html
The Strange Critters of the Deep Web site offers glowing graphics, entertaining prose, and an educational visit to creatures that dwell in the depths of the sea. There's a Fisheye Gallery, for example, where you can troll for images and click on ones that hook your fancy. Learn about fish worship, creatures who "cruised the ancient oceans" and more. Guaranteed to delight and amuse any small fry (and adults may find themselves reeled in as well).
http://www.trollart.com/STRANGECRITTERS.html
SOFTWARE
Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 5 Beta
The browser wars go on. The new Internet Explorer is definitely not yet ready for everyday use. This beta software previews what will be in the final release. Major new features include search enhancements, tweaks to the user interface, a new Dynamic HTML rendering engine, and enhancements to various administration and installation features. The support page has details.http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie5/?/windows/ie/ie5/main.htm
UNIX Software to Dramatically Speed up CGI Processing
VelociGen has released two products which it claims speed up CGI processing up to 25 times. Sites which rely heavily on CGI scripts in Perl or Tcl will benefit from VelociGen for Perl or VelociGen for Tcl. The products, server-side plug-ins, are backward compatible with your existing scripts. Try 60-day evaluation versions for free. Non-evaluation versions cost from $1000 to $5000.http://www.binaryevolution.com/velocigen/velocigen.vet