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BREAKING SURF
Online Merchant Hit with Blackmail, Credit Card Numbers Exposed
A hacker who tried to blackmail an online music merchant instead revealed some 25,000 valid credit card numbers to the public. The unknown extortionist, said to be somewhere in Eastern Europe, claimed to have stolen 300,000 credit card numbers from CD Universe and demanded $100,000 or he'd release them. CD Universe refused to pay and the hacker carried out his threat, posting some of the allegedly stolen credit card numbers online. The hacker's page has since been shut down. There's not much you can do other than carefully check your credit card statement if you've ever bought anything from CD Universe. The New York Times broke the story and Wired has additional details.Times: http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/biztech/articles/10hack.html
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33539,00.html
Astronaut Jim Lovell and Team Seek Martian Meteorites in Antarctica
Fox News is covering this private non-profit expedition that seeks Martian meteorites preserved in Antarctic snow. The explorers want to find rocks ejected from Mars that can be tested for the presence of life. The ultimate objective is to hunt for evidence of life in Martian rocks, like the inconclusive traces found in the famous Martian meteorite that made news in 1998. One of the expedition members is Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell. The site has background material and a dozen dispatches already filed. There are also several QuickTime, Shockwave and interactive areas to play with if you have the bandwidth. A fun jaunt for a good cause.http://www.foxnews.com/science/antarctica/introduction.sml
Source Forge: Repository for Open Source Projects
VA Linux, fresh from a record-setting IPO, has officially launched its Source Forge Web site. They've built an infrastructure where software authors can cache their source code, run discussions, track bugs, and collaborate on projects. It's all free, supported by ads, and at last count hosts over 900 projects and 4800 members. Some of the more popular projects hosted here include Licq, an ICQ clone written fully in C++, the Unreal Tournament open-source project to port the game to Linux, and RipperX, a program to rip CD audio and encode MP3s. While many of the projects here are Linux specific, the site is not restricted to Linux code and serves as a good resource for anybody who needs a collaborative home for their pet programming project.http://sourceforge.com/
We know that eToys doesn't like Etoy, but it seems to dislike more the bad press about its harassment of the smaller art outfit that got there first. It also seems really confused, judging by the hapless way it backed away from the lawsuit. Now it wants Etoy to move "objectionable" stuff to other sites so that eToys customers who mistakenly end up at Etoy won't be offended by what they find at the art site. Meanwhile, Etoy wonders about the Nazi dolls eToys sells online. Slashdot, CNet, and Wired offer several perspectives on this story. Grow up, eToys - it's a sophisticated real world you're playing in here, not toyland.
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/30/1159249&mode=thread
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-1509522.html
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33351,00.html
Distributed Denial of Service Attack Tools Revealed
As we reported last year, new variants of denial of service attack (DOS) tools have been spotted on the Internet. Typically, a DOS attack involves flooding the target Net site with traffic, rendering it unreachable. The new tools let the attacker install multiple clients on numerous hacked systems. The distributed attack clients work in concert to attack the target site, making the attack that much harder to counter. In other words, your computer could be part of a DOS attack and you wouldn't necessarily know it. To learn about the new hacker tools, read this CERT advisory. It has links to detailed technical analyses of the new tools, called Trinoo, Tribe Flood Network, and Stacheldraht, and tells you how to detect them on your machines.http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2000-01.html
Everybody's favorite geek news source will divide $100,000 among deserving souls. While only Slashdot members qualify to nominate recipients (registration is free), it's still an impressive outpouring of monetary largesse. The 26 award categories begin with the $30,000 Most Improved Open Source Project prize and move on to the laudable Best Newbie Helper, to the technical Best Designed Interface in a Graphical App, and to the whimsical Cluestick Award for FUD in Journalism. Also, if you're a Slashdot fan, don't miss the recent interview with Slashdot creators Hemos and CmdrTaco, who, fresh from their post-IPO gag period, answer questions posed by readers.
Awards: http://www.slashdot.org/index.pl?section=awards
Interview: http://slashdot.org/interviews/00/01/06/1116215.shtml
It seems funny from afar, but we know better. November 10, seven US Customs Service officers spent over five hours raiding the offices and plant of Ramsey Electronics, a well-known provider of electronic hobby kits, including the FM-5 wireless mike. Supposedly, the feds thought the company guilty of selling "electronic surreptitious intercept devices". Company president John Ramsey offered a blow-by-blow account at Slashdot. Joel Violanti, the case prosecutor, comes off as less than convincing. Sure, protecting privacy is important, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Ramsey Electronics did anything wrong. Why not crack down, then, on parents who surreptitiously tape suspect babysitters? Looks like more laws, more criminals to us.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/04/2316228&mode=thread
The US supersleuth fraternity temporarily lost access to their favorite high resolution satellite pictures owing to a Y2K glitch at the ground station that processes photo and radar data from the Keyhole and Lacrosse spy satellites operated by the National Reconnaissance Office. Fear not: national security was never compromised. Just thought you should know.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33401,00.html
Hotmail Briefly Chokes: Bill, You Owe Michael $35
Microsoft, awash in cash, forgot to pay a $35 bill (or the payment was lost...) and Network Solutions shut down one of its domains, rendering Hotmail inoperable. Michael Chaney, a Linux programmer wondering why he couldn't get his Hotmail e-mail, found out what went wrong and paid Microsoft's bill with his personal MasterCard. Microsoft says it's grateful - how grateful, we wonder. So does Michael, although he says he's in this purely for the entertainment value.http://www.doublewide.net/
We clean out our mailbag for the new year, thus living up to the only resolution we made. Excuse the smell.
http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/letters/letter.06.01.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, has written this entertaining essay about the early beginnings and evolution of the ubiquitous programming language. He expounds on the tradeoffs he had to make when designing Perl and where he got some of his ideas. Along the way, he muses on philosophical issues in computer programming: "I think cathedrals have gotten a bum rap lately"; "Theory is good, in moderation"; "Moderation is good, in theory". There's even a non-gratuitous reference to Kibo, which makes this an educational experience for readers not familiar with the mythos of Usenet. Needless to say, there are also camels. This is a good read for any Perl user, and indeed, anybody interested in the philosophy of programming.Wall: http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-10/uncultured_01.html
Kibo: http://www.kibo.com/
"We have a new economy, but we have no new intelligentsia." So asserts Bruce Sterling, best selling SF author and lingering cyberpunk, in this meandering manifesto perhaps written in order to define himself as one of the aforementioned intelligentsia. The piece starts off well, talking about a need for "a sense of revived possibility, of genuine creative potential, of unfeigned joie de vivre" in this time of prosperity and possibility. Sterling ponders the supremacy of technology over philosophy, and the joys of worshipping the disposable gizmo, but then falls into an incoherent collection of paragraphs that haphazardly use post-modern pop-culture buzzwords but don't build to any comprehensible point. Having said that, we can't help but admire his last sentence, which neatly contrasts the possibilities of the new century with the ominous portents near the beginning of the last.
http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/print.asp?t=140
Top 10 Games You'll Never See, Redux
A goofy bit of humor from the folks at CNet's Gamecenter was such a hit last summer that they reposted it recently. Their list of "Top 10 Games You'll Never See" included such gems as SimSweatShop, Seal Clubber, and Geriatric Racer. The editorial staff of Gamecenter was surprised, and perhaps a bit appalled, that their profoundly politically incorrect humor received such an overwhelmingly positive response - which prompted a sequel entitled "The Readers' Top 10 Games You'll Never See". We're too busy laughing at these violently funny bits to bother deciphering what it all says about online culture.Original: http://www.gamecenter.com/Features/Exclusives/Notseen/index.html
Sequel: http://www.gamecenter.com/Features/Exclusives/Suggests/
SURFING SITES
When the vowels hit the social scene, "E" gets all the attention, connecting with practically everyone just like that floozy of the periodic chart, fluorine. And why is that? To be hip, you have to have E. E-Commerce, E-Business, E-Tailers. Persistence Software has had e-nough. They've created the Society for the Preservation of the Other 25 Letters of the Alphabet, "a campaign aimed against the desecration of the English language and proliferation of artificial words starting with 'e-.'" Check out their list of e-gregious e-xamples or see who e-lse is on their side in archived articles. "E" may have been first, but "I" is next. Or is that "I" am next?http://www.persistence.com/e-nough/
So You Wanna, but You Dunno How
You're on your own for the first time. Having fled the family nest, the last thing you want to do is go back for help. But you need some guidance with your resume. And then, of course, you need a new suit for when the interviews come flooding in but you don't know what to shop for. But who can help you through this minefield? Let Soyouwanna.com help - it isn't condescending and it doesn't expect you to cut the grass when you drop in for a chat. Simple yet thorough explanations guide you through a wide range of topics from buying a suit to performing a breast self-examination to avoiding traffic tickets. The site could have been called Wiseparents.com, but would you have been seen dead visiting it? It probably knows more than your parents anyway.http://www.soyouwanna.com/
Bizarre Stuff You Can Make in Your Kitchen
The problem with learning about science in school is the structured, regimented, and curriculumized way experiments have to be done in order to follow safety rules. Back in the '30s, you picked up your copy of "The Boys' Own Book of Science" and headed for the kitchen. There, you'd construct a telescope, grow mold, generate electricity from a lemon, and generally find things out for yourself. Now you can do all those things again plus hundreds more using the nicely-illustrated instructions available here.http://freeweb.pdq.net/headstrong/Default.htm
Big Stars in Cheesy Japanese Commercials
Even multi-million dollar salaries may need a supplement now and then, so many of the more famous faces from stage and screen head to the Land of the Rising Sun to pick up a few bucks making often incomprehensible TV ads. Using the QuickTime movies provided you can view Arnie, Sean Connery and a host of other stars getting some Oriental exposure they probably thought you'd never see.http://www.zeroonedesign.com/gogo/main.html
Soup, Soup, Soup, Soup, Wonderful Soup
This is another one of those "everything you wanted to know" sites, this time about soup. Incredibly extensive, Soup of the Evening dives into the humble bowl of soup - from soup in art (hands up if you can think of any examples other than Warhol) to a cautionary soup poem. Devotees will most appreciate the recipes galore. Everything from clam chowder to Icelandic halibut soup. And, by golly, there are even non-seafood recipes! Next time you look out onto a miserable day, get your bouillon ready and warm yourself with a hearty offering from the tureen. And don't try and escape the lure of soup in the summer. There should always be a gazpacho waiting in the fridge. Mmmmm... soup.http://www.soupsong.com/
Perfecting online translation is proving tough, and the free T-Mail service works as well as anything. It translates e-mail among English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. English to French produced a good translation, but Alta Vista's Babelfish translated the message back to English somewhat better. T-Mail could be used to book holidays via foreign language e-mail without misunderstandings. The recipient receives the original text beneath the translation. Until you turn polyglot, make use of T-Mail while it still feels generous enough to give it away for free.
http://www.t-mail.com/
Chronology of Slavery and Racism
Although it may seem that slavery arrived on American shores in a full-blown tidal wave, we learn here that "the forerunner of slavery in English colonies begins in Jamestown, Virginia with the arrival of 20 black indentured servants aboard a Dutch vessel" in 1619. Most were released after serving their term, usually seven years, and were also allowed to own property. The first public slave auction of 23 individuals took place in Jamestown in 1638. The rest, as they say, is history. This site is filled with tales of grief and injustice, and we highly recommend it.http://innercity.org/holt/slavechron.html
For a site that'll really get you thinking, visit The Window: Philosophy on the Internet. Envisioned as a clearinghouse for information on philosophical movements, it includes a listing of some of the major contributors to modern and ancient thought, a timeline, and - once it's working - an interactive section where you can discover how your own beliefs fit into the grand scheme of things. The particularly thorough outbound links are arranged in collections by type, such as scholarly journals, research resources, and online texts.
http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/index.html
Vote.com gives "Internet users a voice on important public issues and other topics." It was created by Dick Morris, the man-behind-the-man in President Clinton's 1996 campaign. He also wrote a book called Vote.com, in which he expresses the opinion that the Internet is taking over politics. It is difficult to say how voting on questions such as "Should Homosexuals be Allowed to Serve Openly in the U.S. Military?" might help to achieve this end, but you never know.
http://vote.com/
We've gotta like a site that told us how to make an ice cream sandwich on the front page. (The front page changes, so you might see something else.) The G-rated Funology.com site offers safe and fun information for kids of all ages. The bright design will keep even the most active child's attention. From science experiments to snacks to crafts, the site contains lots of great ideas to occupy rainy days - or any day. It also includes a list of games (refreshingly not influenced by partnership with an e-commerce site) reviewed by both children and their parents.
http://www.funology.com/
These are the other kind of surfers, the original ones, the salt-water variety popularized by Beach Boy Brian Wilson and beach party movies. Malcolm Gault-Williams has created a wonderful tribute to the history of surfing, its culture, and the legendary surfers. You'll find plenty of biographies on the greats of the sport, as well as detailed history on various board prototypes. The entire database is fully searchable.
http://www.legendarysurfers.com/
Silk and How to Avoid Fashion Suicide
In unskilled hands, the elegant oblong silk scarf is a noose, the triangulated square not an emblem of style but a Camp Fire Girl demerit badge. Learn ten good tying techniques from the pros at Marc Rozier of Lyons, fourth generation family producers of the finest silk scarves. What truly sets this commercial site apart is its history of sericulture, or silk production. Find out how the European silk industry was spun from a few moth eggs smuggled in a hollow bamboo cane; how a silk worm plague helped Louis Pasteur develop germ theory; and how 4,000 years ago a Chinese Empress untangled gummy, shriveled moth cocoon filaments to make the softest, warmest, most beautiful fiber known to man.http://members.aol.com/modefrance/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Oh, to be young and roam the earth with an iBook in your hand and pain in your heart. Will young Jeff escape the overpriced youth hostel in the armpit of Sydney, where the German tourists never bathe? Will young Jeff have sex for free, or will he have to pay? Read the charming, funny letters home from some guy trying to work his way through Oz. The spelling and grammar are not perfect, largely because these missives were edited by the guy's brother, our esteemed Netsurfer Digest editor (AB, time to activate this writer's implant - LN). Shameless nepotism aside, the adventures of Jeff do tend to bring out that tourist-in-your-own-hometown feeling that makes life more fun.http://pages.infinit.net/nyveen/Jeff_in_Oz/index.html
Want to pay homage to your favorite dead celebrity, such as Rudolph Valentino or Cecil B. DeMille, on your next trip to LA? The Los Angeles Grim Society is right up your dark alley. Formed in 1994 by a group of friends who shared the morbid hobby of visiting local graves, the Grim Society has been an Internet presence ever since. With annotated maps of local cemeteries, photos of the celebrities' final resting places, and a live chat room, it's not hard to see why. Be sure to check out the section on Angelyne, a case of LA metafame. Everyone knows her because she's plastered all over advertising in the city, but nobody really knows who she is. The Grim Society provides you with an updated list of Angelyne Sightings, sort of like Bigfoot, only in sunglasses.
http://www.grimsociety.com/
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The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding
Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It
QuickBooks 2000 for Win95/98/NT ($69 after rebate)FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Leon's Political Almanac is one of the best we've seen, offering an extremely wide array of what happened on this day in politics. There's always something happening.http://www.magnolia.net/~leonf/cgi/hypercal.cgi/
Using collaborative filtering, Trabble decides based on your likes and dislikes which of the 284,908 restaurants currently in its database you might enjoy. The more people who visit and rate restaurants, the more accurate its predictions.
http://www.trabble.com/
Type in some words, set some parameters, watch the results come in. Pretty straightforward but still fun. Netsurfer Digest can be scrambled into Deer Fur Testings. Netsurfer Online becomes Teen Slur Inferno. We're very proud.
http://www.anagramfun.com/
Show us someone who doesn't have a complaint and we'll show you someone who's about to go postal. The Complaint Book is, as you'd expect, an online repository for complaints which you can search and contribute to. Got a problem? Don't tell us.
http://www.complaintbook.com/
Fed up with surfing and fancy something a little more adventurous? This site has ads for around 200 aircraft for sale, from single-seaters to business jets. Why not drop in and dream?
http://www.bestaircraft.com/
AssociationCentral.com benefits two groups of users: association/organization reps, and consumers. There's good reason to consolidate news and information about jobs, events, and practices of the thousands of professional, non-profit, and special-interest organizations around the world.
http://www.associationcentral.com/
Who says you can't get something for nothing? Check out Search 4 Free and you can get lots of things for nothing, from ad space to zebras. OK, we lied about the zebras.
http://www.search4free.com/
SOFTWARE
'Tis the season when creative netsurfers in the vanguard wonder how four-part Cornish Christmas carols might sound with a phat electric rhythm section skanking under the vocals. Since we're not in the vanguard, the thought hadn't occurred to us until we visited RHIME's site. Here you can download a free interactive music mixing application that lets you pick apart different tracks, or recorded parts of a song such as vocals and drums, and synchronize them to other parts in completely different styles. You can't take a stereo song off a CD and pick apart the mix; it has to be a RHIME song. It's a lot of fun, but the software is a cumbersome 12 MB; you may want to request a CD in the mail.http://www.rhime.com/
Ever wanted to test a Web page or site with an old, obscure, or special browser? Every browser since Mosaic has had its own quirks, causing headaches for developers who are supposed to make sites look and interact the same across browsers, hardware, and the operating systems. Evolt.org, a "world community for web developers," maintains an extensive browser archive of dated browser binaries. In addition to familiar names - Mosaic, Communicator, Internet Explorer, Opera - you'll find BrownIE, Galahad, NetSentry, and other browsers that you've never used. We doubt that such a variety of browsers would all co-exist peacefully on the same computer, so choose wisely before you install.
http://browsers.evolt.org/