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| Welcome to AOL, Here's a Pink Slip |
| Pipe Dreams of the Wired and Bored |
| Littleton: The Sad State of Being a Teenager |
| Textile Art |
| Modern Mixed Media |
| Mexican Muralist Diego Rivera |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Columns from a 16-Year-Old Idiot Savant |
| Intimate Exhibitionism |
| Joyce to the World |
| Ode to a Sonnet - and Dissonnet |
| The Book of Bitterness |
| Is That a Singularity, or Are You Just Happy to See Me? |
| Darwin Explains It All |
| Engaging and Entertaining Intellectual Fodder |
| We Have Seen the Future, and It Is Copper |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
Lucasfilm attorneys have sent ISPs a form letter intended to serve as notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that illegal copying of copyrighted material relating to "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" will not be tolerated. Most interpret the DMCA to hold that such letters of notice should come after, not before, a copyright infringement. Lucasfilm attorneys disagree and defend their pre-emptive letter. Meanwhile, the new Star Wars movie boosts Net traffic and clogs servers as movie-related items go on sale online and Apple enjoys a powerful cross-marketing deal that has four new Phantom Menace commercials posted on the Web, in QuickTime only. CNet has more sentences.Notice: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,35967,00.html
Lucasfilm: http://www.lucasfilm.com/
Merchandise: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,36033,00.html
Commercials: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,36019,00.html
Let's see if we have this right. It's OK for GeoCities to sell keyword ad space to porno sites, but not for anyone to have salacious content on a GeoCities Web page. Hmmm. We suspect this may be more traffic management than moral scruples. Meanwhile, a shadowy group called Seven Words wants domain name registrars to allow domain names with rude words in them, and has gone to court to assert its constitutional rights to free speech. Are we supposed to take this seriously? We say naked, stripped bare hucksterism, pure and simple.
GeoCities: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,35922,00.html
Seven Words: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,36003,00.html
The Noble Prizes of Internet Marketing
The Fifth Annual Tenagra Awards for Internet Marketing Excellence have been announced and there are no surprise winners. eBay, Lego Mindstorms RoboTour, Broadcast.com, the Industry Standard, and Danny Sullivan have all won for achievements in 1998 that made a fundamental impact on the way marketing, public relations, and advertising are done on the Internet.http://awards.tenagra.com/
Reported to have caused damage mostly in Asia, the Chernobyl virus came from the desk of a Taiwanese university student. According to CNet, police in Taiwan questioned 24-year-old Chen Ing-hau but won't charge him unless someone comes forward to make a formal complaint. Chen, now in military service, has expressed remorse and offered to help victims remove the virus from their computers, cold comfort to anyone who has lost data as a result of his work. Data Fellows has the Chernobyl virus details.
CNet: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,35849,00.html
Virus: http://www.datafellows.com/v-descs/cih.htm
Need a team of engineers? Wired reports that a group of 16 Silicon Valley Internet service engineers put itself up for auction on eBay at just over $3 million, then got cold feet and pulled the plug. Perhaps because of nasty e-mails? The folks at eBay claim they don't know. Another four-man team from San Francisco tried it for $400,000, but didn't sell in a one-day auction. We can't help wondering what's next.
http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/19420.html
There may be a lot of folk vying for Web advertising revenue, but it's sure not loose change any more! That's the conclusion of the latest report on Internet advertising released by New Media Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Internet Advertising Bureau. Online advertising revenue in 1998 totaled $1.92 billion, 112 percent more than 1997, easily beating outdoor advertising revenue of $1.58 billion. Consumer, computing, financial services, telecom, and new media categories led the field. Considering the youth of the medium, the growth is heady indeed.
http://www.iab.net/news/content/1998results.html
Chuck D and Public Enemy are finally getting their wish - their music will be available free for download. RealJukebox, available from you know who as a free beta download for Windows, allows users to retrieve, play, and manage personal music collections. A number of the larger music and distribution companies have promised to support RealJukebox by making music available. Public Enemy's single "Do You Wanna Go Our Way???" from their new album is available now, as is music from about 60 other artists.
RealJukebox: http://www.real.com/products/realjukebox/index.html
Press: http://www.real.com/company/pressroom/pr/99/rj_debut.html
Court Settles Trademark Scuffle
Can you use the trademark of a competitor in a meta tag? Not if it might divert potential customers of the trademark owner to your site, a US Court of Appeals has ruled. West Coast Video wanted to hide the term "moviebuff" in the HTML code of its Web site, but Brookfield Communications, which owns the trademark, objected. In siding with Brookfield, the Court set down rules which should help keep the Web useful as an information tool. The New York Times has the story, and we wonder about "buffmovie".Ruling: http://www.vcilp.org/Fed-Ct/Circuit/9th/opinions/9856918.htm
Times: http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/04/cyber/cyberlaw/30law.html
Pssst! Wanna buy an infringed patent?
Patent Enforcement and Royalties Limited (PEARL), listed on the Alberta Stock Exchange (not exactly the world's most conservative), offers you the chance to buy into a portfolio of infringed patents. Why buy damaged goods? Well, these guys appear sober and serious, and the business concept is intriguing - they acquire stakes in infringed patents and then use their "Patent Enforcement, Litigation Management, and Negotiating Acumen" to obtain financial settlement, which they share with the patent owner. Read all about it at their site, then dust off that infringed patent and call them.http://www.pearlltd.com/
A long time ago in an era far, far away, NSD readers would periodically receive a publication called Netsurfer Focus in their e-mailboxes. Written in the entertaining and informative Netsurfer style, Focus nevertheless pushed a couple of envelopes (especially the one on length) by delving into pithy topics in detail. But in the last few years, we have only been repackaging existing material. No more. We've been hard at work on a trilogy focusing on online trading/investing. Coming soon to a computer screen near you, this is neither spam nor menace, but our own small contribution to your summer entertainment. In the meantime, you can find reruns at:
http://www.netsurf.com/nsf/index.html
Since the first financial Web sites crawled out of the primordial Internet, online trading has become a national sport. Although the number of accounts has rocketed, the empire of the future has yet to evolve. To bring customers into the fold, online brokers are mounting advertising campaigns with hundred million dollar war chests. Netsurfer Focus brings our own twist to the broker derby by rating the big guys - by their television ads. See where your broker ranks on the Fear-Greed Scale and discover the winner of the First Netsurfer Focus Eyeballs Award for Best Television Advertising by an Online Brokerage.
http://www.netsurf.com/nsf/v04/01/index.html
In which we take you on a tour of Linux vs. NT and sundry other items, some sweet, some sour.
http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/letters/letter.05.14.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Welcome to AOL, Here's a Pink Slip
Everybody knows Marc Andreesen. Fewer know Dave Titus, or that he designed Mozilla, the little animated lizard that used to appear where the comets now fly in Netscape Navigator. Dave's page tells what he's been up to since penning the green critter. Drop into the pages of some of the other quiet legends in the history of Netscape, like Jamie Zawinski's personal spot. Well, he may not be so quiet. He's got his own Usenet fan-group, alt.fan.jwz. and you'll learn why at his pages. We featured a tidbit of his in our last Halloween issue. Former Netscape employees, and voyeurs, will enjoy Ex-Mozilla.org, which includes a guestbook that reads like a graduating high-school senior's yearbook: I'll miss it, be sure to keep in touch. See what life's like for the brilliant and burned-out.Dave: http://www.davetitus.com/
Jamie: http://www.jwz.org/
Ex-Mozilla: http://www.ex-mozilla.org/
Pipe Dreams of the Wired and Bored
The 2600 (that's a place, not a number) people who designed Hacked Sites of the Future took the source code of some major Web sites and have hacked them privately, on their own site. Set up by wannabes to show off what they'd do with popular sites if they could hack them, it's the Mad magazine of the Internet, with none of the Secret Service and NSA intervention that would occur if they actually had cracked the sites. The "hacked" sites run the intellectual gamut from scatological humor to the subtly hilarious slogan on the Microsoft hacked page: "Where did you want to go again?"http://www.2600.com/hacked_pages/prop/index.html
THREAD WATCH
Littleton: The Sad State of Being a Teenager
Most of the high-profile reputable sites that dealt with the Littleton massacre chronicled just the facts or ventured into thinly disguised editorializing on the blameworthiness of violent movies and television, video games, trenchcoats, and/or Marilyn Manson. Jon Katz's "Voices from the Hellmouth" column/thread at Slashdot took a different tack. Here, correspondents examined the emotional and physical violence done to outsiders in homogenized high schools. Take a long hard look at the first-hand stories from victims of the latest variation of the witch hunt. You'll find some smart observations and some sad chronicles, although the posters themselves may be largely unaware of just how sad. Several of the reports come from teenagers so enervated by being teenagers that they don't even have the wherewithal to be angry. On a brighter note, Katz's "Hope in the Hellmouth: Looking Ahead" does hold - well, hope that situations can improve.Voices: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/25/1438249
Hope: http://slashdot.org/features/99/05/03/0518209.shtml
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Looking for a carpet for the study? Don't look here. If, however, you want to buy an exquisite wall hanging or tapestry from the 17th century, this is the site for you. The Textile Gallery, in the posh Mayfair region of London, has mounted an online exhibition of beauty and grace in textile form. You can browse the gallery, enjoy the exhibition, and explore the thumbnail images for lavish details and more pictures of any piece that takes your fancy. Mayfair includes the most expensive and exclusive real estate in London and everything on show is an original one-off piece of work - you know the saying: if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.http://www.textile-art.com/index.html
The Smithsonian Institution, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and Kodak, among others, have permanent installations of highly detailed, immersive 3-D wall-mounted images called PHSColograms. (Art)n Laboratory, a collective of artists reaching for the future of photography, pioneered the format. The new medium combines photography, 3-D rendering, painting, and sculpture to create virtual photographs that require 3-D glasses for proper appreciation. The site clearly and concisely explains each step of the complicated process and provides images of finished examples.
http://www.artn.com/
This is a fan site. Don't expect art criticism or even a gallery of Diego Rivera's paintings. Expect the sort of charming exuberance you get from those who are in love with beauty and passion. Nineteen-year-old fan Kimberly Masters has posted excerpts from Rivera's surreal autobiography - stories about how he made friends in the forest with wild animals at the age of four, became a man at nine by making love to an 18-year-old woman, became a cannibal at 18 by consuming the flesh of dead women - stuff like that. Quotes about Rivera from his wife, artist Frieda Kahlo, complete this small homage to a great artist.
http://members.aol.com/fkahlofan/rivera.htm
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliates Amazon.com and Beyond.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
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Cryptonomicon
A Deepness in the Sky
Who Else!
Sai-So: The Remix Project
Software: The Joy of Cooking for Win95/98Columns from a 16-Year-Old Idiot Savant
Self-described "16-year-old idiot savant" Marty Beckerman isn't Dave Barry, but the fledgling humor columnist doesn't mind the comparison. Of course, Dave Barry was never fired from his hometown newspaper for misrepresenting himself as a "real" journalist and asking punk rocker Henry Rollins if he "would do another nude scene right now". Temporarily deprived of his print outlet, Beckerman has cultivated a faithful and growing cadre of e-mail subscribers. Although coming from a decidedly high-school perspective, Marty's wit is surprisingly incisive, his youthful mirth infectious. Still, he can at times get repetitive or immature. You'll either like the package or you won't.http://www.alaska.net/~beckerma/
Gone are the days when diaries were strictly personal affairs, when our fears and passions were penned surreptitiously and stored under lock and key. Members of Illumine's small community of diarists have chosen to share their observations, from the intimate to the banal, with the entire world. Tony alternately lauds and condemns news makers in his Heroes and Half-Wits column. Nita contemplates whether any body part is "so vital and so maligned" as the feet. Bryon opines, "I was taught to fear sex, alcohol, and cigarettes. I should have been taught to respect them." Each author engages the reader uniquely; the journals vary widely in format, content, and frequency of entries.
http://illumine.cx/
Faith and begorra, it's a bloomin' James Joyce Web site! And it's a site to soothe the soul of all Joyce admirers. Online versions of the man's key works, his biography, essays, a discussion board... you can even search the site for specific topics. Here's a test - if you can't identify the source of this quote, you need to study this site ASAP: "The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful."
http://www.jough.com/joyce/
Ode to a Sonnet - and Dissonnet
The Face of Love site features both sonnets and what the author calls "dissonnets". He defines the latter as somewhat of "a deliberate burlesque of the sonnet as to form and/or content, usually both." Love in all its forms - careless, carefree, careful, cruel - is the multi-faceted topic. Not for those who prefer pictures to words.http://www.skyhouse.org/sonnets/
"Unflinching accounts of a world that doesn't work" - this summarizes the whole of this depressingly unhappy Web site. The sheer unfair way of the world, the way justice so often fails to emerge, and the miserable lives some people lead -such are the subjects of this collection of essays. Ranging from self-pitying whining to acidly brilliant social comment, the works either hit or miss - you may select a wonderful, emotive piece of writing that has you nodding furiously at the screen in agreement, or some dour piece of work that finds 37 ways to say "but that's not fair". If you get the latter - well, life isn't always fair, is it?
http://www.sealander.com/Bitter_Book.html
SURFING SCIENCE
Is That a Singularity, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
Computers, among other miracles, allow nudniks like us to join vicariously in the visions of high-powered scientists. The International Numerical Relativity Group lets us see what would happen were we to approach a black hole. Complex gravitational lensing effects appear effortlessly on our screens. The site also provides much more sophisticated mathematical models and analysis tools to those capable of understanding them. Perhaps as a concession to the German scientists, the site is written in a sort of tortured Teutonic English. For example, at one point in the black hole distortion, a light source "enlightens the backside" of an object, letting you know there's a spiritual dimension to this whole thing. It lets us mortals know that these crazed mathematical physicists are only human after all.http://jean-luc.ncsa.uiuc.edu/
Works from E.O. Wilson's "Sociobiology" to Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal" examine the evolutionary substrate of our day-to-day brains. But simply understanding how things came to be is not enough for some people. They have to fervently believe it, and proselytize for it, and denounce those who do not believe. In the past, the Science That Compels Belief was anything from General Semantics to Catastrophe Theory. Now William Spriggs brings Trotskyite intensity to Evolutionary Psychology. Everything from adolescent criminality to the implications of spellcheckers gets filtered through Evolutionary Psychology on this site. Even the most Andy Rooneyish of Mr. Spriggs's observations has its roots in Evolutionary Psychology. Read it, and believe.
http://www.evoyage.com/
Engaging and Entertaining Intellectual Fodder
Gathering under the rubric that life can come with instructions, Serendip brings together forums and resources in an intellectual inquiry into life and how it is lived. Unlike some other sites with the same lofty goals, the accessible, readable Serendip offers depth and content. Several interactive sections take the user step by step through certain intellectual curiosities. Topic focuses include Brain and Behaviour, Complex Systems, and Guest Exhibitions. A great site to sit down and spend some serious time with.http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/
We Have Seen the Future, and It Is Copper
You have to admire someone who hitches his wagon to an element, even if it is as self-serving as the Copper Development Association. It's impossible to conceive of a passion more essential - elemental, if you will. At Copper Topics, you can examine everything from a rare 1921 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost made almost entirely out of copper to a gigantic copper shrimp that decorates a restaurant. Copper in industry, copper in commerce, copper in our daily lives: it is all here. It was in use before the Bronze Age, and will probably never go out of style.http://cutopics.copper.org/
SOFTWARE
The most popular and robust Linux release is available on CD-ROM or via Net download for from $40 to $80, depending your options. Major new features include Kernel 2.2, better support for multiprocessing, more hardware drivers, two user interfaces (KDE and GNOME), full RAID support, a jazzed up Red Hat Package Manager, and Glibc 2.1. Linux newbies will find this the best version to get started with, since the $80 version comes bundled with generous phone support.Release: http://www.redhat.com/corp/press/current_redhat60.html
Buy: http://store.redhat.com/commerce/
Free Antivirus Software for PCs
A big name firm, Computer Associates, has made a personal version of its InoculateIT software available for free on the Web, with no catch as far as we can tell Obviously, Computer Associates will want to move you up to its pro versions eventually, but for the moment, functional, easy-to-use free anti-virus software is yours for the taking.http://www.cai.com/antivirus/personal/
IBM's XML Web Site, C++ XML Parser, XML Search Engine
The more we look at XML, the more enamored we are of its capabilities. But XML needs more tools, and IBM is certainly doing its part to fill the void. Big Blue's new site has plenty of related technical content as well as two real jewels, freebie C++ and Java XML parsers. Look under Tools for this and other goodies. The other notable bit of content is the XML search engine that lets you find XML documents, document type declarations (DTDs), style sheets, press releases, tutorials, Web pages, and bulletin board postings anywhere on the Web.http://www.software.ibm.com/xml/
Unix GUI Controls SETI@Home Client
TkSeti makes searching for alien radio signals even easier. The interface software can monitor, start, and stop running SETI@Home clients and send you various notifications. A cool program for a cool project.TkSeti: http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~macdonal/tkseti/tkseti.html
SETI@Home: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Eddie 1.0 - Distributed Server Control, Monitoring, and Balancing
This impressive Open Source effort lets you control and monitor a distributed, multi-server Web site. If you're running a bunch of Web servers, this free product will help you do things like failover, load balancing, and monitoring of your servers. The software works on Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD (WinNT soon).http://www.eddieware.org/