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| Entertainers Get Stock Options for Promoting Web Sites |
| Jam Echelon Day Comes/Goes |
| Edifying Stuff |
| The Contents of Rodin's Skull, Revealed |
| The Oldest Profession, Still Going Strong |
| Bonsai |
| Talk about Hatch Music |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Great Books Online |
| We All Scream for MeZine |
| Spike |
| Color Commentary |
| Build It |
| News for the Cutting Edge Medical Pro |
| Eat It, or Not |
| Sendmail 8.10.0.Beta6 Publicly Released |
| Distributed Computing Climate Simulation Project - Maybe |
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| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
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BREAKING SURF
We told you about the contest between world champion Garry Kasparov and the world way back in NSD 5.19. Here's how it's playing out. Many of the 6,000-10,000 participants take this seriously and have made the match a real contest. Game-host Microsoft enters the mid game a few pawns down, however, accused of ignoring a popular vote to prevent a deliberate losing move. Yes, you read right. The world, so to speak, voted for a purposefully poor move as a protest against a technical delay in posting a favored coach's advice on a key move. (Man, this chess stuff gets complicated!). All the hullabaloo comes to nothing in the end - the world conceded defeat after a long end game as more than half the participants voted to resign, handing the win to Kasparov.Challenge: http://www.zone.com/kasparov/home.asp
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/features/99/10/18/087247.shtml
Defeat: http://news.lycos.com/stories/Technology/Internet/19991022RTNET-CHESS-MICROSOFT.asp
When it comes to encyclopedias, really big ones, the kind that could kill a cow, one stands above the others - the Encyclopedia Britannica. What once cost lotsa paper bills for a hard copy then hundreds for electronic copies can now be had for nothing - the encyclopedia is available free online. Sorta. It is free and it is online, but there's a little problem with the available part. The launch of free Web access has hit the company's servers hard, and for now you just get a polite little note advising you that demand exceeds capacity but that "we are working hard to make the site available as quickly as possible." We suggest you bookmark the place but give it a chance to sort out the technical stuff before starting that heavy duty research project.
http://www.britannica.com/
The site, basically a pretty searchable interface for posting and reading Usenet technical newsgroups, comes courtesy of our friends at CNet. For the benefit of novice users, the designers have completely hidden the site's Usenet functionality. Help.com looks like a typical portal, with top categories such as Hardware, Internet, and Software with sub-categories (such as ICQ, Browsers, palmtops, etc.) presented as Web message boards. When you post a technical question here, the site sends the message to all relevant Usenet newsgroups. The back-end software keeps track of responses and presents them in the appropriate sections. Original posters must register, and the software keeps track of responses to their posts. All messages that originate at Help.com contain the e-mail address of the registered user. Does it work? On the whole, yes - most of the questions have useful replies but the occasional spam does slip past the CNet filters. Good concept, decent execution - keep an eye on this one.
http://help.com/
He's frozen, he's furry, he's cuddly - well, frozen and furry anyway. Probably not very cuddly considering that parts of his body have rotted. Still, Zharkov the Mammoth made news all over the world. Everybody's talking cloning, and we're not taking any bets against. Odds are good that someday a cloned mammoth will stride the Earth again - after all, the last ones died out only some 3,500 years ago. Yahoo has the story, a bunch of links, and RealVideo of Zharkov being helicoptered out of Siberia. We love the tusks' placement for dramatic effect.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991020/sc/russia_mammoth_2.html
Who'da thunk? Orthodoxy has long held that the earliest dinosaurs would have most resembled early theropods - carnivorous dinosaurs you probably know best as Tyrannosaurus or Velociraptor. A recent find in Madagascar, of prosauropods (long-necked, long-tailed plant eaters that would later evolve into the sauropods, the largest animals ever to walk the earth), that at about 230 million years old may be the oldest dinosaurs ever found, indicates that dinosaur lineages split even earlier and that even older dinosaurs still hide in the rocks. Yahoo has the news, and the Field Museum has more.
Yahoo: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991021/sc/science_dinosaurs_2.html
Field: http://www.fmnh.org/research_collections/geology/flynn.htm
Official US Atomic Clock Display Available Online
Two US agencies charged with maintaining this country's atomic clocks have created this sublimely straightforward Web site that displays the current time. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its military counterpart, the US Naval Observatory (USNO) joined forces to get the time online. Their atomic clocks contribute to the worldwide standard of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The online clock is a Java applet with a nifty day/night map of the world shown below. It's accurate within 0.2 seconds. For simplicity, only time zones in the US can be selected. Apparently, the agencies find the global time zone situation too complicated to deal with here, and we say that without sarcasm - it really is complicated and occasionally even political.http://www.time.gov/
FEC Says Running Partisan Web Site Counts as Political Contribution
A bizarre ruling by the US Federal Election Comission (FEC) says that anyone who expresses their political opinion on a Web site which runs on a computer worth over $250 may be violating federal election law. The law requires that people who spend over $250 donating cash or expressing their political views must disclose their identity and register their contact information. The law is designed to prevent fraud, which it does reasonably well, but this case seems to lead it onto a collision course with the First Amendment. By this logic, anyone who waxes political on a computer worth over $1000 will have to register as a political action committee. The victim of the ruling basically told the FEC to stick it where the sun don't shine and dared them to prosecute him. The story also has prompted the introduction of a bill in Congress exempting such expressions of political opinions from the reporting requirements.http://www.aclu.org/news/1999/n101399b.html
Doom as SysAdmin User Interface
This item comes under the heading of "Geeks with Way Too Much Time on Their Hands Produce Entertaining Hack". In this case, Dennis Chao, inspired by Unix jargon ("daemons spawning processes and sysadmins killing them"), thought that the game of Doom would make a great system administration interface. Surely the idea of running around with a BFG (big, uh, freaking gun) blowing away processes which manifest as soldiers is a lot more entertaining then the tired desktop/folder metaphor. So Dennis grabbed the publicly released source code of Doom and made a few alterations. This is the result, along with some user interface philosophy: "Important processes can be instantiated as more powerful monsters. They can then defend themselves against inexperienced sysadmins." Incidentally, the National Science Foundation funded the project, though entirely without its knowledge. Our tax money well spent, indeed.http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/
Sendmail Users' Community Site Launched
Sendmail handles an estimated 75% of all Internet e-mail traffic. The commercial sendmail company Sendmail.com decided that such a popular tool deserved its own community site. Thus Sendmail.net was born, "to better connect the users of Open Source sendmail". The result is kind of a melange of sendmail and open source news articles punctuated with message boards. The news items are interesting, but not anything you can't find at other major open source portals. At press time, the only board which had any serious traffic was the one specifically devoted to using sendmail. The site would probably benefit from dropping all extraneous content and building around that specific message board. Moderate the board and you've got something which would be of great use to the sendmail community. The rest is just fluff. Incidentally, does it strike anybody else that having three semi-official sendmail sites - sendmail.org, sendmail.com and now sendmail.net - is a trifle confusing?http://sendmail.net/
New Issue of Netsurfer Education
Some of you are still not aware that we also publish a monthly e-zine devoted to school and educaton resources online. We know that many students and teachers read the Digest, all of whom will find something of interest in Netsurfer Education. Check out the latest issue, and feel free to subscribe.NSE 01.03: http://www.netsurf.com/nse/nse.01.03.html
Subscribe: http://www.netsurf.com/nse/subscribe.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Entertainers Get Stock Options for Promoting Web Sites
An article in Wired discloses a new way in which prominent entertainers are cashing in on their fame. It seems that prominent musicians such as Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos got substantial stock options from online music sites in return for endorsing those sites. After MP3.com's IPO, Morissette's options reached a reported value of about $24 million. Not bad for agreeing to do concerts for the Web site and plastering a URL all over tour merchandise. Other companies give the artists options in return for exclusive marketing rights to their merchandise. All this clearly threatens the traditional recording labels and their generally less-than-generous royalty contracts.http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,32025,00.html
October 21 was Jam Echelon Day, a clever PR stunt instigated by a coalition of privacy advocates. We've reported on Echelon several times in the past. It is believed to be a large multinational surveillance network which monitors electronic and computer communications across the world. There is compelling evidence that the network is real and not just another paranoid myth, though its exact capabilities are not widely known. Participants in Jam Echelon Day were asked to add provocative keywords such as "revolution", or "bomb" to their e-mail in hopes of jamming up the Echelon computers. The ostensible purpose of "jamming Echelon computers" was utter nonsense, but the real purpose of spreading the word about Echelon and what it implies for privacy seems to have been largely successful. Several major media outlets picked up on the story. The event site has an extensive list of related links, and Wired has a good post-mortem of the event.
Event: http://www.echelon.wiretapped.net/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,32039,00.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Whether you're a budding architect or just an armchair traveler, the University of Washington's Cities/Buildings database is worth a look. One of the two versions has an enhanced search facility, although if you're after a picture and some information on any particular building, take the other. Once found, each building is presented with an info sheet that includes the architect's name, date of construction, materials used, and so on. The site covers an impressive number of countries so you can afford to be bold and look at some of the Czech Republic's or Kenya's most inspiring constructions.http://www.washington.edu/ark2/
The Contents of Rodin's Skull, Revealed
If you take an American one-dollar bill, crease it at the level of George's eyebrows and then fold that over onto his shirt, the result looks like a mushroom. No kidding. Now that you've warmed up with that, you're ready for the secret of Rodin's Thinker, which is that he looks like the human brain. Well, without the frontal lobes, but you don't use those much, do you? The statue's base is the cerebellum, etc. Well, don't take NSD's word for it. Check out this site - but quit checking out his occipital lobe, thank you. He needs that to sit on.http://www.rodinsthinker.com/
The Oldest Profession, Still Going Strong
Young women primp in a dressing room of a brothel in Bangkok. Impoverished eastern European women in short skirts wait for German businessmen on a highway in Toplice, on the Czech-German border. A drugged-out young woman lies collapsed on the street in Managua. Young men sit with middle-aged women wearing bikini underwear at a gold-mining camp in the Andes. Piet den Blanken shows a collection of simple black-and-white photographs of prostitution from around the globe. Not sexy, just provocative.http://www.xs4all.nl/~ae4811/bordello/bordello.html
For people with a passion for very small trees, Bonsai Web contains a very large selection of information, advice, articles, and pictures. The site features an attractive collection of photographs of members' treasured trees, three thriving forums, and a useful collection of links to suppliers. In case you've ever wondered what bonsai was all about, or what it takes to grow one of your own, the site also offers a well-written set of beginner's guides.
http://www.bonsaiweb.com/
We've heard Bill Clinton play sax, but it probably didn't win him many votes. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (Utah) won't win votes on the strength of his music either, but this presidential hopeful and one-time poet has been writing songs since college. His Web site, the Music of Senator Orrin Hatch, salutes his seven CDs, which you can sample here with RealPlayer and order online. As you might guess, his clean lyrics celebrate Americana, patriotism, family, and faith. Critics will likely deride Senator Hatch for vanity and corniness, but we found three important underlying messages here: Don't quit your day job, e-commerce can supplement fundraising, and it's OK nowadays for a political candidate to reveal creativity. Since we're talking tributes, how about a site with video clips of Bill Bradley's greatest moments on the basketball court?
http://www.hatchmusic.com/
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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All Tomorrow's Parties
The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Robots
The Making of a Pastry Chef: Recipes and Inspirations from America's Best
Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist
Paint Shop pro V6.0 (a steal at $75)http://www.bartleby.com/
MeZine is such a cute little site, and we're just saying that cause we know it'll get up their nostrils. The meZine site is filled with snide, cutting-edge humor for intelligent adults. From Scrawl, the diary of a 29 year-old gay single mom living in Northern California, to Dear Id, an advice column run by everyone's favorite portion of the unconscious mind, meZine entertains, enlightens, and makes a fun way to spend your lunch hour. Don't miss SchoolhouseRock.com in the Ouch! archives, which addresses all those annoying Me Too individuals in everyone's life. Despite the title, meZine is also a little about you. You can post in the Vent message boards, or if you think you're really good, you can send in your own piece for publication in the I Candy column.
http://www.mezine.net/
This UK magazine covers literature, music, and popular culture, which makes a broad enough umbrella to allow it to print whatever it wants. Great interviews and reviews by freelance journalists and thought-provoking features pass the discriminating editorial bar. If you're bored of your weekend newspaper's culture section, this is probably where you want to be. From P.J. O'Rourke through David Bowie and on to a dissection of cinematic representations of Italian-American men, there's plenty here to sink your teeth into.
http://www.spikemagazine.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
We've all heard how certain colors make you calmer or make you want to buy things, but what colors create a sticky Web site? Color Matters gives you some ideas to work with. This huge site tries to be all things to all people. What it should do is focus on addressing the issue of color and computers more thoroughly, since that's the one thing everyone who visits the site has in common. It should be noted that the author also runs a color consultation business for Web sites and has a series of books, including one entitled "A Guide to Color Symbolism for Web Site Design", so perhaps she doesn't want to give away any of her secrets. Despite our whining, anyone interested in the clash of color and life will have a good time here.http://www.lava.net/~colorcom/
The Virtual Design-Build site's unvarnished Microsoft FrontPage theme conceals a wealth of specialized information about the work of manufacturing design engineers. The site offers a complete portal on the field, with links to information about pressure boilers, thermodynamics, power generation, and plant maintenance. This is the Web as source of solid up-to-date information. And not a Shockwave animation in site.
http://virtualdesignbuild.com/index.html
News for the Cutting Edge Medical Pro
Business portals have equivalents in medicine. MDLinx.com centers a startup network of 34 sites - two active (HeartLinx.com and InternalMDLinx.com) and others in development - for medical professionals who need to find information relevant to their fields and who want to exchange ideas with colleagues. News sources here vary from peer review (New England Journal of Medicine) to mainstream (Reuters, AP, and Time). Physicians may find the most useful features to be sub-specialty news within their own specialty and the ease of surfing from one specialty to others. A statement of purpose promises e-commerce in all MDLinx.com sites, but we couldn't tell who will sell what to whom. Stay tuned.http://www.mdlinx.com/
It's easy to be put off by New Century Nutrition's "Everything You Know Is Wrong" veggie-jock approach, at least if you're a gourmand of animal protein. But the site is worth sticking with. Even if you find the proposition that milk causes Type I diabetes somewhat dubious, you will be enlightened by articles about the environmental side effects of fishing, information about the negative side effects of excessive protein consumption, and toss-in notes about how storing a carrot and an apple next to each other in the refrigerator will make both turn bitter.
http://www.newcenturynutrition.com
SOFTWARE
Sendmail 8.10.0.Beta6 Publicly Released
The essential Internet mail tool has been released into public beta to shake out any bugs in the many new features. Obviously, you should not use this in a production environment. New features include support for IPv6, SMTP authentication, and improved anti-spam features. The PR has full details and download links.http://www.sendmail.org/8.10.html
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Distributed Computing Climate Simulation Project - Maybe
In the spirit of SETI@home, this project seeks to distribute the computing load of simulating the Earth's climate over thousands of Net-connected computers. The Casino-21 project, so named after the Monte Carlo mathematical simulation methods employed, will ask you to install a client modeling program on your computer. The software will run in the background and along with thousands of others will contribute to a large, long-term climate model. The scientists involved are still only considering such a project and they're looking for expressions of interest from people who want to contribute either computer time or technical expertise.http://www.climate-dynamics.rl.ac.uk/