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NETSURFER DIGEST
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 05, Issue 07 Friday, March 05, 1999 |
NETSURFER LINKS
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BREAKING SURF Did Hackers Really Hijack a British Military Satellite? Reuters news service reports that hackers seized control of a British Skynet military satellite and tried to blackmail the UK government for undisclosed terms. Apparently, the satellite left its normal orbit and supposedly hijackers claimed to have taken control of it and demanded a ransom. The BBC interviewed ostensible experts saying it can't be done since hackers would either have to control the satellite by their own easily detectable pencil-thin microwave beam or by hacking the closed-loop communications network. Reading between the lines, if this did happen, it either was an inside job or through another country - read the US. Time has more details and various hacking journals brim with interesting theories - inside jobs, hoaxes, and even the ever popular US intelligence agencies. Slashdot has a great thread discussing satellite hacking in general.Time: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,20639,00.html BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid%5F288000/288965.stm Slashdot: http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/02/28/1037229&pid=0#176
Rolling Stone Opens Music Portal With MP3 making waves among users, the major media outlets are piling on to the online music bandwagon. Rolling Stone, the granddaddy of music press, backs Tunes.com, the newest effort. According to their blurb, Tunes has "a million song clips from 350,000 albums, over 1000 music videos, profiles on 85,000 artists and bands, exclusive concert photos, daily music news, reviews and nightly live and archived performance webcasts." Pretty impressive. As a "big name" site, it offers the usual professional effort that blends content with related news. Naturally, Tunes wants you to sign on and join their online community so they can collect your demographics, although this is not required for most content. It's a good site, worth watching for its proprietary broadcast content.http://www.tunes.com/ Followup: EarthLink Auctions a Year of ISP Service As we reported last issue, eBay pulled EarthLink's offering after deciding it amounted to an advertisement for their service in the guise of an auction for Internet service. EarthLink apparently reached an agreement with eBay, posting a genuine auction item offering one year of Internet service. The list price was $240, though it's not likely that the item will still be there by press time. CNet has the story.http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,32992,00.html Uncensored Australian Crypto Report Leaks to the Net Some official bungling down under has resulted in the release of an uncensored report on Australian cryptographic policy. Apparently, the report made its way to various national libraries before the government recalled it. Even though the physical copies could be recalled, the text wound up on the Internet, and well.... The report, entitled "Review of policy relating to encryption technologies", suggests that the Australian law enforcement be allowed to bug private PCs and hack into private computer networks. Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) offers a history of the issue and the report itself.EFA: http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Crypto/Walsh/recall.htm Report: http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Crypto/Walsh/ SURFING SITES Exhibitionists everywhere, listen up. If you've ever wondered how to display every facet of your life to the unwashed masses, check out Icepick, which has it nailed. With a combination of strategically placed cameras, scanners, and sensors, Alex van Es has put his entire house online. You can tell who's at the door, what's in the refrigerator, what Alex has been throwing away, and even how often his cat eats. It may not be as popular as the Jenni Cam, but who can resist knowing, for instance, that Alex has four cans of Coke in his fridge right now? Remember the soda machine at Carnegie Mellon which would tell you how many of each type of cola was left and what temperature they were at? This is what it evolved into.http://www.icepick.com/
In the Beginning, Turing Created the Machine Thank goodness for the King James Bible (KJB), for otherwise we would not have the stylistic signifiers that let us know we are reading a Holy Book and nothing else. The Bible itself no longer possesses those signifiers, having moved on to more accurately translated and less inspired prose, but the KJB still sets the standard for any would-be Revelation. The latest Holy Book is the Gospel of Tux, the religious history of computing from the Divine Turing to the gentle Linus of Torvald, who leads the chosen people out from their torments in the land of Microsoft. Learned exegetes can parse the many obsolete operating systems, and frantic commentary on that score is appended to the sacred text itself. Note the second-order influences of Tolkien and Star Wars, themselves KJB-derived texts.http://segfault.org/story.phtml?id=36bb63bb-01bfac60&mode=1&table=stories If you feel like your day just isn't complete without derision from some little snot-nosed punk and you don't have the time to go to your local fast food joint, go here. Bet you didn't know Hell was registered with InterNIC to one Kenneth Aronson, self-described conceptual strategist, leading edge creative mind and creator of new media presence. If you're a left coaster, you may know Kenneth as the coder behind LA Cyberport. Hell is a private Web cabal, presumably open only to card-carrying members and those who know the secret modem handshake. Even its closed doors are amusing, if only because of the pleadings for membership they've garnered on public message boards across the Web. It's really too bad all this innovative coding is wasted on a private site. We thought Heaven was supposed to be the hard place to get into. http://www.hell.com/ As an addendum to their large site for the PBS special "The Race for the Superbomb", WGBH has provided some disturbing special features. The Nuclear Blast Mapper will take any town and show you the radii of destruction created by bombs of one and 25 megatons: something perfectly pertinent in a world of decentralized nukes. A Panic Quiz taken from a 1951 Collier's magazine is indeed stress inducing, and will prove even the most stolid of citizens to be a concealed hysteric who will have to be valiumed and straitjacketed in the event the bomb shelter needs to be defended. A fascinating interactive map reveals the secrets of Project Greek Island, a fully equipped bomb shelter beneath the West Virginia resort of Greenbrier, which was built to hold both Houses of Congress, with family, and allow them to continue essential legislative tasks, like Presidential impeachments. The shelter remained deep secret until a few years ago. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/amex/bomb/sfeature/blastmap.html We frowned at the peculiar "history" of the Church, but chuckled when we realized we had no idea what was going on while we bumbled along anyway, answering quiz questions and wondering what would happen next. Not much did happen, but we somehow joined the church and now that we're part of a large and illustrious group, we're sure grandeur and dangerous high jinx will arrive at our door any day. The Church of the Quivering Otter has much to offer those with time on their hands and an odd penchant for the unknown, but then that's pretty much the entire population of the Web, so they should be just dandy. http://www.xvt.com/users/kevink/coqo/ Got something you just have to get off your chest? Think telling your stories anonymously on the Web will make up for that terrible faux pas? Well it won't, but it will make you feel better and entertain millions. Read "I broke wind and scared a burglar away", "I spent an entire day working for the wrong company", or buy the (real) book "I Forgot to Wear Underwear on a Glass-Bottom Boat", a collection of some of the stories found at the site. Although some stories seem fishy, we loved reading the confessions of a wee willy and the hot stories of the Senate janitor. Just take it all with a pinch of salt. http://www.secretxchange.com/ Ever wonder just what the heck rappers mean when they pump out lyrics like "bitches get mad cause we highside"? This rap dictionary will help you get about as cool as you're ever gonna get (which we, in our case, discovered was just not cool enough). With a "throw up" being two-tone basic graffiti and not a more abstract collage of stomach contents, and "turn (it) out" meaning either to make records or to have sexual intercourse, we eventually decided we'd leave rapping to the professionals - we're in enough hot water in Australia (see Corrections, below). A whole 'nother language? Oooh yeah, I gotta get me sum o' dat! http://www.sci.kun.nl/thalia/rapdict/ Ooohh, we loved this site. Ever sat there trying to work out if it's really "if I was" or "if I were", "I've drunk the beer" or "I drank the beer"? Almost all your questions are answered at this fantastic site, from the dumb things you momentarily forget such as choosing the right one among "gamut", "gauntlet", and "gambit" to bigger issues like juggling "eighteen hundreds" and "the nineteenth century". The site goes on to discuss why the year 2000 is the last year of the second millenium not the first of the third - like you've never heard that before. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html Are you handbidextrous? Do you suffer from corporal tunnel syndrome? Maybe you believe flying saucers are just an optical conclusion? You may not be unusual - it seems most of us mangle the language at one time or another. This amusing little Web site has collected some modern-day malapropisms that Mrs. Malaprop herself would have been proud of. Don't ignore the Malapropism Process page - ACME didn't get to be world leader in malapropism technology just by sitting on its buff. A 1950s flavor adds real appeal. http://www.execpc.com/~jab2/Welcome.htm You can enjoy PC Magazine's neat "Top 100 Web Sites Tour" two ways: take the Autopilot Tour and read successive thumbnail reviews of Web sites in a pop-up window, or view each review deliberately by category. If you have a network connection, you may want to let the automated version run a while and check in between tasks. Whichever method you choose, it's easy to jump forward or backward. You can submit your opinions (and you may well disagree with some of the editors' selections) for posting. The posts aren't threaded and you'll see a lot of ads, but those are minor shortcomings. Purists might object that ZDNet wastes bandwidth, but you could just as readily argue that many top 100 lists seem dull after you've seen a few without the features ZDNet adds. http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/web100/index.html If there's a huge community on the Net that seems largely ignored, it may well be lovers of Chinese food. British Web producer Ian Fenn serves the informational needs of gourmands and amateur gourmets with Chopstix, a fine assortment of tips, recipes, and articles - including a section of background articles and recipes by Chinese chef Deh-Ta Hsiung. If you ever wonder about wood ear fungus, lily buds, shark fin, or more common fare such bean curd or spinach, check out Asian Ingredients by Ken Hom, who also writes about utensils and Thai cooking. In the Kitchen covers practical matters, while Eating Out tempts us with topics such as the Take Away Cam (a kitchen webcam updated every 30 seconds) and "The world's best Chinese restaurant", really more of a guide to ordering. Those with laptops and a modem will be able to take advantage of the online menu translator at critical gustatory moments on the town. http://www.chopstix.net/ Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, an idea was born that spawned the greatest range of memorabilia in the history of mankind. Star Wars - soon coming again to a screen near you with the prequel. Gus Lopez has brought together a wide collection of information, pictures, and memories to form the most exhaustive Star Wars Collectibles archive on the Internet. The site includes international as well as American items - our British Netsurfer was startled to see her son's old lunch box is now worth a mint. And saddened to think it was trashed for a He Man lunch box. Check out the site, then dig through the attic. http://www.toysrgus.com/ The swinging bachelor, American folk hero? Well, no, but Java's Swinging Bachelor Pad wants a small space in mass-media throw-away history for that cool cat: the smoking, martini-swilling, swinging bachelor. The site could use more content but what little there is captures the bachelor mystique in an academic light without taking it all too seriously. As the site admits, "we only need them (the swinging bachelor) to hold our interest for a little while now and again." http://www.soltec.net/~java/ Nothing satisfies a shopper's soul like knowing an item was purchased at the lowest possible price (unless, of course, money is no object and paying more is a status symbol for you). But sometimes it takes just too darned long to sniff out the bargains. Well, that's not an issue if you use PriceScan. This Web site lets you compare prices for games, books, movies, music, and computers. You can also vote for what you'd like to compare in the future on the site, such as automobiles. Pretty cool - we've already used it to buy a monitor. http://www.pricescan.com/ Identikit pictures have always looked liked fun to assemble - and now you can create one on the Internet, at the Caricature Zone. The clever interface allows you to select various parts of the face, changing an eyebrow here and a jawline there, until you have a caricatured version of your best friend or your boss, or your editor. The site also includes over 200 instantly recognizable caricatures of the famous, past and present. A great online toy well worth a visit. http://www.magixl.com/ Tracy Conrad has taken it upon herself to categorize hundreds of links to all sorts of trivia-dedicated sites. Each link is listed with the number of hits it's gotten from Tracy's visitors, plus the date it was added. Some have Coolness Ratings and descriptions to help the overwhelmed visitor make an informed decision on which to visit. The best feature, however, is the search mechanism. Enter a single word and the search engine will return all the sites which have related trivia. This site will simply waste your lunch break. http://www.tonsoftrivia.com/ ONLINE TRAVEL Every major city has a visual history. Collage Portal, an image database with 20,000 works from the Guildhall Library and Guildhall Art Gallery, has increased London's accessibility with understated elegance and user-friendliness. The Web interface to this collection (which only covers the past 500 years or so) functions on several levels: as an online catalogue, as a research tool for art historians and others with an academic bent, and as a visual supplement for students of the humanities. You'll probably first want to explore the directory - sets of links to thumbnails and full-size images with textual details. Next, if you can, try the Java search. We especially like the Highlights. In a growing effort to expand their traditional role as repositories by becoming image providers, many museums will likely use Collage Portal as a model.http://collage.nhil.com/ Prince Edward Islanders, like members of other isolated cultures, have developed their own jargon, which apparently includes the above greeting. The provincial government maintains a Web site devoted to the native sayings of North American states and provinces. It goes without saying - but we'll say it anyway - that most of these expressions come from PEI, but you can use a handy form to add your own native expressions. The handy sorting lets you view sayings by place, topic, or both. http://www.gov.pe.ca/bag/ FLOTSAM & JETSAM Yahoo Opens Entertainment Portal The three big sections here - Movies, Television, and Music - cover news, reviews, and related Web sites in the typical portal style. You'll find the usual array of Yahoo community sections with discussion boards and chat rooms devoted to all things entertainment.http://entertainment.yahoo.com/ MP3Meta is the first MP3 meta search engine we've seen. It sends your query to several other search engines and integrates the results into a standardized format, removing duplicates and adjusting the ranking for optimal relevance. It's a bit slow, but a good alternative bookmark. http://www.mp3meta.com/mp3meta/ Check Your Mail - Anywhere, Anytime ThatWeb's free e-mail service lets you check your mail wherever you are (and no, you don't have to go through all that configuration stuff). The site also includes links to news and health sites. An upcoming feature will give you the chance to ask modem and multimedia questions.http://www.thatweb.com/emailf.htm You Can Hamster Dance If You Want to If you need a quick grin, a smart smile, and a distinct lift to your day, go see the hamsters dance. No, we have no idea why, who cares? It cheered us up no end, and not just because they misspell "hamster".http://www.hamsterdance.com/ Odd Little Subliminal Message Finder Weird, spooky, and totally fascinating, this simple page asks you to enter a text message. It then reveals the hidden subliminal agenda hidden in the words. Addictive - and strangely revealing!http://www.wildcowpublishing.com/paranormal/reverse.html Check out Meldrum Home Page for UK TV trivia. One section concentrates on test card and tuning signals. Another features continuity: i.e. the announcements and captions that networks broadcast when the shows don't show. Particularly amusing when not everything goes as planned.... http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/ First you had e-mail at college but then you graduated. You got a new e-mail address at your first job but then got laid off and so you got a private e-mail account. Etc. You can register all your old and new e-mail accounts here, so old friends and colleagues can find you with the search feature. http://www.e-mail.nu/ If you haven't gotten enough use out of your DVD, drop by DVD Talk. It has all the news on the DVD world, from what's new to what's discontinued. The listed DVDs come with exhaustive cross-references and ratings. http://www.dvdtalk.com/ SOFTWARE Good games, some say, never die. Remember Intellivision? If so, this game nostalgia site is for you. The Blue Sky Rangers, programmers of the original Intellivision video games by Mattel Electronics, boast an official home page where you can spend even more time learning about the creators, their hardware and software, and attendant hype. Download free emulator samples (PCs or Macs) of Astrosmash (a "million-seller from 1981"), Sports Network games such as Auto Racing and PGA Golf, and Utopia, which, we are told, is "considered by many computer game afficianados (sic) to be the father of all sim games" (we sure loved it). We would have liked some Java or Shockwave applet-updates of these and other classics featured here, but apparently consumers will have to settle for non-Internet versions. Armor Battle, Frog Bog, or Night Stalker, anyone?http://www.intellivisionlives.com/
TIFNY Newsreader Looks at Images Aficionados of Usenet's binaries newsgroups will want to take a gander at the TIFNY Web site. You can use the TIFNY newsreader to browse Usenet with a focus on pictures. The software functions essentially as any other newsreader but includes the ability to download, display, and catalogue images and thumbnails of the same. You can download TIFNY, for Windows only, for free, but you'll have to put up with banner advertisements.http://www.tifny2.com/ Yet Another Burrito Metaphor - the OSI Seven-Layer Burrito Have an ax to grind with the seven layer OSI network model? Us neither, but some people apparently still don't appreciate the earnest efforts of European standards committees to make sure that we're all not only on the same page, but on the same semicolon. Hence the OSI Seven Layer Burrito, the product of someone still enraged by the theory-trumps-praxis attitude of those stolid eurocrats. The Burrito, however, has its own praxis problems, having forgotten the tortilla (pure Physical Layer if ever you've seen it), leaving it for a lame addendum.http://www.europa.com/~dogman/osi/ CORRECTIONS Rooting around for Another Correction Much to the great delight of our Australian friends, when in last week's issue we corrected their native phrase from "Don't play the raw prawn with me" to the proper "Don't come the raw prawn with me", we also tagged one, thankfully anonymous, Netsurfer as an "excellently rooted" citizen of that country. Much to their amusement and our surprise, well, uh - let us quote Aussie subscriber Jenny Bay: "'Rooted' in the Australian vernacular means - to be polite, the receiver of satisfying sexual intercourse." Now, we don't claim to know the truth about that, but we do know that's not exactly what we meant.ADMINISTRIVIA If This NSD Is Blank, Read It at Our Web Site The Hotmail saga continues. Blank NSDs continue to show up sporadically with other set-ups as well. Fortunately, we've discovered the root of the problem. Our ads have a Javascript component that seems to be messing up Hotmail. Hotmail, and presumably other e-mail set-ups, may be filtering Javascript, possibly for security reasons. We're looking at solutions - one of which is carrying on as before. If you're one of our 1,600 Hotmail subscribers, perhaps it's time to try a new e-mail service. |
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