|
Home Subscriptions Netsurfer Science E-Zine Netsurfer Books E-Zine |
| Purchasing Power to the People |
| Look, Ma - No Film! |
| "In My Day, the Internet Was Only Used for Porn" |
| Anyone Need More Movie Reviews? |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Christopher Hitchens |
| Crooked Creek Observer |
| Online Surgery |
| The Weather Hub |
| Water Science for Schools |
| The OSI Burrito Fails, Burger's Next |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
The Millennium's Last Total Solar Eclipse
A total eclipse presents the eyewitness with an eerie, almost mystical experience, a short-lived but stunning encounter with nature. Sky and Telescope has all the info on your last chance to view one this millennium, August 11. The path of the eclipse starts in the Atlantic, bisects Europe, and ends in Asia, with declining lengths of totality. NASA, meanwhile, plans to re-examine some strange observations Nobel laureate Maurice Allais made during the eclipses of June 30, 1954 and October 22, 1959. He claimed he detected "a remarkable disturbance" in the path of a Foucault pendulum when the Earth, Moon, and Sun lined up at totality. Although the observations make no known sense and physicists typically dismiss them, such strange, unexpected observations sometimes give birth to new science. NASA will use high-precision gravitometers at the Marshall Space Flight Center and hopes to gain the help of other scientists with access to Foucault pendula to reproduce Allais's experiments on August 11.Sky: http://www.skypub.com/sights/eclipses/solar/9908solarpreview.html
Experiment: http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast17jun99_1.htm
AOL Spams Microsoft Messenger Users, Microsoft Vows to Destroy AOL
In what may be the first example of Instant Spam (trademark pending), AOL fired a big-gun salvo in the ongoing instant messenger wars. As we reported last week, AOL and Microsoft have been locked in a technical arms race since Microsoft gave its Messenger software users access to the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) network. AOL retaliated by locking out Messenger, Microsoft patched around the lock, and so on for several rounds. AOL's latest tactic took the form of an instant message to all Messenger users that told them they were using unauthorized software and that urged them to download a free copy of AIM (see Wired). Sure, the spam sucks, but you've got to give them points for marketing audacity and the willingness to take a breathtaking risk. In return, Microsoft has essentially declared war on AOL with a promise to introduce low-cost or free Internet service (see ZDNet). Grab some popcorn, kiddies, this is gonna be fun.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/21119.html
ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/special/instantmess.html
Microsoft Dared You to Crack this Site - So You (Possibly) Did
Microsoft set up a Web site containing a test version of Windows 2000 and dared the Net community to crack the machine, accepting every attack except a denial-of-service pocket flood. (Flood attacks are too easily implemented and impossible to stop without good firewalls, and the test machine was intentionally not protected by a firewall.) Postings on Slashdot imply that the site was cracked within hours of the challenge, and indeed on August 3, we couldn't reach the site. On the other hand, ZDNet reports that the server seems to be doing a pretty good job of crashing itself without outside help. There's one other neat twist - as if the story needs another - to the story. Allegedly, Microsoft coded the Web pages in JavaScript that would not display correctly in Netscape browsers. Slashdot has the discussion about whether or not this was intentional.Crack Me Site: http://www.windows2000test.com/
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/03/1532217.shtml
ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2309474,00.html
What's Good Enough for Microsoft Is Good Enough for Linux
Barely a day after Microsoft issued their challenge to crack Windows 2000, a Linux group issued a challenge of their own - but this time with a prize. Anybody that cracks the LinuxPPC (for Power PC) system gets to keep it. The default install seems to be a bit too difficult to crack - has anybody ever said that about Microsoft products? - so the penguinheads have added Telnet to the mix, and if that doesn't work, they'll install Sendmail - both programs with a history of security holes. Slashdot, as usual, has the discussion.Crack Me Site: http://crack.linuxppc.org/
LinuxPPC: http://www.linuxppc.org/
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/04/205226.shtml
Linux aficionados will want to read this lucid account of the upcoming features slated for the next major revision of the Linux kernel. Joe Pranevich, who did such a great job summarizing the contents of the last upgrade, does it again for 2.4. While not as drastic an upgrade as the last release, which was notable for multi-processor support, version 2.4 will nevertheless provide a variety of performance and functionality improvements. We'll save space here and instead just direct you to the site.
http://features.linuxtoday.com/stories/8191.html
On the surface, this site looks like a fresh, honest pitch by Web designers who want to start a new business and need investors. Still, the innocent air and self-bashing looks suspiciously like insidious self-promotion. Here they are in all their nakedness, desperate for money, hopeless at explaining what they want to do. Are they really looking for help or just building a future customer base - or are we too cynical? They supposedly explain what they want to do in "the plan", although we're still scratching our heads, as it communicates more by hint and innuendo than in clear, concrete concepts. Summing it up, some is porn and some isn't. They want to go on ZDTV, but it looks like they'll have to settle for NSD. Is this a joke, a scam, or a grand experiment in Web business building happening right before our eyes? Who knows? Better yet, who cares?
http://www.thirty-days.com/
Message to Space: Clever or Scam?
A reader tipped us off to this goofy idea. For about $10, Bentspace will take your 1000-word message - and presumably a picture instead - and beam it into space. Who knows, your words of wisdom might eventually reach an alien itching to decode it who, depending on the message, will either hail you as an advanced form of intelligence or launch relativistic bombs at our puny planet. The Sacramento Bee notes that the e-mail radio signal will only have about a half-watt of power, which physics tells us will barely be detectable at the orbit of Pluto. You get what you pay for, we guess - SETI's Frank Drake estimates a proper emission would cost $40 million - but we still like the idea. Perhaps we can initiate an Open Vacuum project that would buy some time on a big radio dish and send the source code for Linux to the stars. One dollar per Linux user/SETI fan would probably do the trick. Do credit NSD when you make fun of the idea with your friends, OK?Space-mail: http://www.bentspace.com/
Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/news/news/local02_19990730.html
Network Solutions Threatened with Spam Blacklist
Lawyers circling, threats flying - what would life be without such excitement! Domain registrar Network Solutions (NSI) doesn't want to stop sending bulk commercials to its domain name customers, but Mail Abuse Prevention Systems (MAPS) thinks NSI is simply spamming and has threatening to add the company to its Realtime Blackhole List, a filter that companies can use to block e-mail from listed organizations. NSI in return threatened massive legal retaliation, although one commentator, at least, rates its chances of legal success as poor. More bluster than bite, he suggests. Maybe NSI needs to be taken down a peg and learn a little Web humility? Who'll blink first? And when will NSD stop publishing articles that end in rhetorical questions?http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,40025,00.html
Web Snapshots: Free Global Web Statistics Site
An interesting new Web site claims to gather statistics from "millions of daily visitors to more than 100,000 Internet sites" in order to display a variety of statistics free for your perusal. Web Snapshot gathers the info from users of a popular site statistics service called SuperStats, and purports to offer stats for browser usage, plug-in popularity, top ISPs, languages, search engines used, and even screen size and color depth. We're skeptical. According to the site, 94% of Web surfers use Windows, less than 3% use the Mac OS, and 0.3% use Linux. Yeah, sure. Nevertheless, designers and marketers will probably find some of the information of use, while site owners will be interested in the SuperStats package.Global Web Stats: http://www.websnapshot.com/
SuperStats: http://v2.superstats.com/
ONLINE CULTURE
Purchasing Power to the People
Fancy a new gadget but not its price? If it's available on one of two reverse auction sites, Accompany and Mercata, you can help bring the price down yourself. Reverse auctions, a new phenomenon, work as follows: as more people bid on a product, its price falls, and everyone buys it at the final bid price. Basically, consumers aggregate their purchasing power to lower prices. Great. The success of such operations clearly depends on reaching critical consumer mass, and this may be too hard to achieve. We'll see. Accompany currently focuses on electronic goods and golf clubs, while Mercata - founded by Paul Allen - offers a greater range of goods. Discounts vary from around 5% to 40%. The two sites operate with slightly different business models, but the end result is much the same. Accompany is only available for US residents while Mercata copes with Canada and Mexico.Accompany: http://www.accompany.com/
Mercata: http://www.mercata.com/
Allen: http://www.paulallen.com/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Lousy resolution and weird color problems have been enough to keep most professional photographers off digital cameras, but Rick Doble saw the new medium as an opportunity to experiment. Rick's art gallery shows how very different from analogue digital still effects can be, and how to animate sequences of stills frames. But don't go to this site for how-to instructions; digital cameras are changing by the nanosecond, anyway. Go read Rick's essay s and see his stuff to soak up his creative, adventurous excitement about seeing the world in a fresh way each time he clicks the shutter.http://www.clis.com/savvynews/digi_art/
"In My Day, the Internet Was Only Used for Porn"
That's a quote from what we think will be last TV season's enduring classic: Futurama. When our reviewer watched the first episode of Futurama, she found it rather uninspired; upon returning to the series more recently she discovered it had blossomed into a clever meta-cartoon, commenting on itself and society in the way we came to expect from its predecessor, The Simpsons. The Web site has this same self-reflexive humor; the news includes a fake Make Money Fast ad and a television listing for the 22,343rd episode of The Simpsons. The Futurama site also includes QuickTime videos, a set of message boards, and the obligatory information about the characters and the voices and team which make them come alive.http://www.foxworld.com/futurama/
Anyone Need More Movie Reviews?
Fans of contemporary film review, take note. One of your number has fashioned Rotten Tomatoes. Although smartly designed, it's lean in original content - but original content isn't the point. Instead, it's a compendium of links to scads of reviews for current and upcoming fare in North American theaters, and to the celebrity interviews and profiles that accompany the usual promotional blitz. We particularly like the meta-review scale called the tomatometer.http://www.rotten-tomatoes.com/
|
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.
|
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping
Weber's Art of the Grill: Recipes for Outdoor Living
Norton AntiVirus V5.0 for Windows 95/98BOOKS & E-ZINES
Christopher Hitchens has been The Nation's resident bad boy for years and his take on life is never less than decisive. Not content to rattle small cages, Hitchens has also set his sights on larger-than-life targets - witness his books "No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton" and the ever popular "The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice". Talk about sticking it to both ends of the quasi-political spectrum. Hitchens's commentaries also show up on a regular basis in publications such as Salon, the New York Review of Books, and Harper's, and many samples are available online. A few online interviews (culled from The Berkeley Monthly and The Progressive) allow readers an even better taste of Hitchens's acid wit.http://www.enteract.com/~peterk/
One could be forgiven for assuming that regional presses have all but disappeared, but of course many have just found a new home on the Internet. It is a blessing, really; for decades readers have come to rely on regional writers to fill in the gaps left in the national press. The region, in the case of the Crooked Creek Observer, is the North Woods of Minnesota and editors/writers Judi Schiller and Richard Schiller have a sharp eye for their various subjects. The e-zine attempts and achieves a cozy feeling with friendly writing, ("unless we're mad about something") and offers an appealing selection of prose, including wonderful pieces on travel, nature, and society.
http://www.emily.net/~schiller/ccobserv.html
SURFING SCIENCE
For folks who can't get enough surgery on cable channel TLC, there's Online Surgery: "always on the cutting edge". The procedure videos, from brain surgery to breast implants, require RealPlayer. An accompanying page lists the practices of the "star" surgeons, with photos. But we didn't feel comfortable at a surgery site filled with credit applications and blinking ads for a "free cosmetic procedure". Looking a little deeper into a site that essentially caters to the voyeur, we found out that Online Surgery is run by the Internet Entertainment Group. Ring any bells? IEG knows voyeurs - it runs Clublove, among other sites, which boasts that it's the "smuttiest, wettest, nastiest, hottest, hardest" sex site out there. And, we'll add, one of the most successful, too. Just think - if they could get a hold of a case like John Wayne Bobbitt, they could cross-market.http://www.onlinesurgery.com/
At first glance, WxUSA Weather Hub may look like any other standard weather site, with a convenient map up front to quickly fill your insatiable need for weather reports. But check out a city or two of the more than 1,500 cities covered here and you'll get a great meteorological smorgasbord: forecasts, severe weather, weather news, "Kid's Weather", maps and images galore, weather cams, aviation conditions, the latest on earthquakes and volcanoes, hurricanes and tornadoes, gardening, pollen and spore counts, and calculators (such as a tide predictor). Want more? News, sports, skiing, Java games, and a nice selection of travel links round out this great collection of research and recreational resources.
http://www.wxusa.com/
For a watery view of the world, visit the US Geological Survey's massive siteful of information about good old H2O. Aimed at schools but interesting enough for anyone to explore, the site will tell you everything from how much water it takes to grow a hamburger to how the water cycle works. There's a lot of interactivity - you can, among other things, vote for your favourite water body. (Our Netsurfer went for Brad Pitt in a swimsuit but the entry was disallowed). A fascinating, information rich site that's a must for children of all ages.
http://wwwga.usgs.gov/edu/
CORRECTIONS
The OSI Burrito Fails, Burger's Next
In NSD 5.07, we brought to your attention the OSI Seven-Layer Burrito. We sadly report that the burrito paradigm has failed, and in fact, we might have caused its collapse. We wrote that "the Burrito, however, has its own praxis problems, having forgotten the tortilla...." Kent, the OSI Seven-Layer Burrito site creator now admits "this is flawed. I spaced that there is an eighth layer; the flour tortilla." A certain famous burger is up for the next analogy, and the page will soon be moving to a new URL from the old (which still works for now).Old: http://www.europa.com/~dogman/osi/
Future: http://cadcadia.net/~dogman/osi/