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BREAKING SURF
French Credit Card System Cracked
Last year, a hacker managed to profoundly penetrate the security of a French bank-card credit system. Serge Humpich, a French engineer, reportedly took four years to decipher the 640-bit RSA key used in encrypting the card transactions. Serge contacted the relevant credit card consortium (GIE) and offered to let it in on the secret for about $400,000 in so-called consulting fees. The GIE didn't believe him, and so, apparently at its request, Serge used one of his hacked cards to buy some subway tickets as proof. You can probably anticipate the ending: the GIE sued Serge and tried to keep the story quiet. As part of the fallout, Serge has lost his job. Parodie has lots of related links, and the Irish Times summarizes the story in English.Parodie: http://www.parodie.com/english/smartcard.htm
Irish Times: http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2000/0122/wor3.htm
DVD Encryption Legal Developments
As we've told you, various DVD business groups are trying to ban the spread of DeCSS, the DVD decryption software, through legal means. In California, sympathizers of the accused hackers have passed out T-shirts with the source code of the DeCSS program on the way to the courtroom. It didn't do them any good: the California judge issued an injunction calling for various Web sites to remove the program from their pages. New York courts ruled similarly. There's word from Norway that the original poster of DeCSS and his father have been raided and charged. Ironically, the very program which DVD businesses are trying to ban is now publicly available as source code in official public legal documents. An emergency hearing was scheduled at press time to seal the code from prying eyes. Besides the Wired fare, the EFF also has good ongoing coverage.T-Shirt: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33828,00.html
California: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33816,00.html
New York: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33816,00.html
Norway: http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/d121152.htm
EFF: http://www.eff.org/
Windows Magazine has this article which details numerous problems with the latest America Online software. The article, catchily titled "AOL 5.0: The Upgrade of Death", talks about the problems users have when upgrading to the new software and goes on to discuss all sorts of operational issues such as messing up your existing ISP connections, overwriting files, changing network settings, and more. It's a mess folks, and the article strongly suggests you don't install AOL 5.0, or, if you did, that you get rid of it and go back to AOL 4.0.
http://windowsmagazine.com/columns/explorer/2000/02.htm
Salon broke the story that the popular AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) system was vulnerable to identity hijacking. A hacker can open a new AOL account with the name of any AIM user he wants to mimic. The bad guy then uses the new AOL account to change the AIM password of the unwitting user. Only people who use AIM but don't yet have an AOL account are vulnerable to this hack. AOL says it is aware of the problem and is working on a fix. On the other hand, AOL has so far failed to put any notice of the security problem on the AIM home page. Probably too busy putting together plans to buy Coke and Disney.
Bug: http://salon.com/tech/log/2000/01/25/aol_hack/index.html
AIM: http://www.aol.com/aim/
RIAA Attacks Part I: MP3.com Sued over Online Music Sharing Service
MP3.com offers a nifty service called My.MP3.com which lets users upload their CDs and listen to them over the Web. Of course, unhappy record distributors have filed a lawsuit. Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), charged that "it is not legal to compile a vast database of our members sound recordings with no permission and no license." This boils down to a legal position that prevents anyone from compiling songs without permission - interesting in how that applies to making tapes of the albums you've bought or to making party tapes. We suggest you visit these sites to follow the story. First check the Q&A about the My.MP3.com service, and the Web site itself for a tour. The RIAA letter notifying MP3.com of the lawsuit was quickly followed by MP3.com's response. Finally, the masochistic can read the text of the lawsuit itself.My.MP3.com: http://my.mp3.com/
Q&A: http://bboard.mp3.com/mp3/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000050.html
RIAA Letter: http://www.mp3.com/response2.html
MP3 Response: http://www.mp3.com/response.html
Lawsuit Text: http://www.mp3.com/news/533.html?hparticle0
RIAA Attacks Part II: Napster Music File Sharing Software in Trouble
The Napster program lets you share music files with other users. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) hates that idea because it makes sharing copyrighted music painless - the inevitable lawsuit was filed last month. Universities have recently begun to ban Napster because the bandwidth taken up by users sharing files is tying up their networks. It seems that Napster itself is running afoul of copyright issues as users all over reverse-engineer the program. And Napster is just the tip of the iceberg - it's only a matter of time before some Napster-like application allows simple, totally anonymous, and invisible trading of any file possible, making copyright enforcement even more difficult.Napster: http://www.napster.com/
Lawsuit: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1485841.html
University ban: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1527930.html
Reverse engineering: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1531752.html
Moore's Law and Computational Slacking
When does it pay to slack off? Apparently when you need to do a large computation. Moore's Law states that the computational power available at a given price doubles every 18 months. Applying this to the rarified field of lengthy computations, a math-heavy paper notes that in certain cases you'll get your result much faster if you wait to start your computation. Why? Because by the time you start, computer equipment will have improved so much that you'll get your result much more quickly. "You could start a computation now, calculate for 40 months, and get a certain amount of work done. Alternately, you could go to the beach for 2 years, then come back and buy a new computer and compute for a year, and get the same amount of work done." The authors make their case with neat graphs and relatively simple equations.http://agave.as.arizona.edu/~chrisg/mooreslaw.html
DoubleClick Cookies Tie Your Name, Home Address to Your Netsurfing Habits
The merger of DoubleClick, the online advertising company, with Abacus Direct, a catalogue data company, has created a major threat to your online privacy, thanks to the humble cookie and a couple of gigantic databases. DoubleClick builds a database of sites you've surfed through tracking cookies generated by your browser whenever you visit one of their sites. Abacus Direct maintains a database of consumers' paper catalogue purchases. If DoubleClick can match your address with their cookie at any of their client e-commerce sites, they will automatically have specific information about who you are, where you've been online, and about everything you ever bought through a catalogue. Full disclosure: our own ad service Flycast also uses cookies to track which ads you see how often, but they are not (as far as we know) associated with any identifying information like your name and address. Check the press sites.USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth211.htm
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1531929.html
Autobytel.com Now Sells Cars, Dealers Running Scared
Autobytel.com, a popular car buying information and dealer referral site, has begun to sell cars over the Internet. It has opened a new Web site called AutobytelDIRECT where you can choose your make and model and order a car directly through Autobytel. Apparently, the idea is so attractive that customers overwhelmed the site with hits on launch day and rendered it unavailable. This also gives us an excuse to point you to this NY Times article which discusses how traditional auto dealers are fighting tooth and nail against direct online car sales in the face of increasing consumer demand (free login required).AutobytelDIRECT: http://autobyteldirect.com/
NY Times: http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+site+19370+1+wAAA+car
Crypto Posting Floodgates Open in Face of Vague Rules
The US Internet community is testing the boundaries of new rules governing the release of cryptographic software. Since the rules are somewhat vague on several points, it's not clear whether or not these people are breaking the law. For example, John Young, author of the Cryptonome Web site, has posted the full source of the PGP program on his site. Other cryptographers have also started posting material such as the Crypto++ encryption library and the full text of EFF's "Cracking DES" book. Wired has a good summary of the legal situation.PGP: http://jya.com/cryptout.htm#PGP
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,33672,00.html
Crypto++: http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/cryptlib.html
Cracking DES: http://www.shmoo.com/crypto/Cracking_DES/cracking-des.htm
Hubble Telescope Back in Business
In case you haven't heard, NASA has the repaired Hubble space telescope back in business. They chose to publicize the event with two new spectacular images, one showing an exploding star and the other a fine example of gravitational lensing. Not only is it great eye candy, but it kind of puts all the other petty details of our Earthly existence into perspective.Star: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2000/07/
Lensing: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2000/08/pr-photos.html
In this one we have a bit about the history of celibacy, whispers of memory, idiots and debt, taut bellies, and never getting lied to again. Kind of a New Year's resolutions issue, sort of.
http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/nsb.02.01.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Leave it to Women.com to come up with this list of eligible bachelors in Silicon Valley. It's not like there's a shortage - for years the men have outnumbered women around here. Who are these guys? According to the editors, they are not "yesterday's dot-com CEOs" but rather "a diverse and unpredictable list of entrepreneurs, marketers, deal-makers and engineers", mostly in their 20s and 30s. Good looking, and with decent disposable incomes. No wonder women are leaving their e-mail addresses begging these guys to get in touch.http://www.women.com/sex/dating/svmen/
SURFING SITES
Poor indeed is the person never fascinated by the life of someone famous or infamous. Curiosity is a form of wealth, and you'll be rolling in riches at Lives, an index of thousands of historical, cultural, and scientific figures. This site points to, and in some cases briefly reviews, online biographies. It should be bookmarked in every library. You can easily search the list by last name or browse categories such as Canadians, US Civil War, Eras, and Regions. For example, the Professions category includes dance, law, and exploration. Paradoxically, this site may increase rather than reduce your research time because it expands your reach as soon as you enter it. We agree with the many kudos in site creator Ken Lanxner's guestbook. Bravo!http://members.home.net/klanxner/lives/
Medical school is tough. The third year, when med students start to work in a hospital, can be a killer. A recent med school graduate, Michael Greger, MD, has written a diary of his third-year hell called "Heart Failure - Diary of a Third Year Medical Student". It's a series of flashbacks, snippets, and ruminations, flavored with observations culled from his research of medical literature. Michael's initial idealism withers as he confronts the rigors of chain of command, bureaucracy, confusion, apathy, and exhaustion. His prose is down to earth: "I lost six pounds in the first eight days.... I realize today that I have not been outside for six days.... I talk to classmates who just finished surgery. One cried every night for two weeks." Compelling and for some, no doubt, controversial, this material is not for the faint of heart. If you've ever been treated by a doctor or nurse who seemed dehumanized, Dr. Michael's views may well help you understand why.
http://upalumni.org/medschool/
In the days of yore, young law students might drink themselves silly or run buck-naked through the courtyard on a dare, but times have changed. When Tucker Max's instigators bet him that he wouldn't have the nerve to put up a Web page asking girls out on a date, they seriously underestimated his self-confessed capacity for embarrassing himself. The bet having been met, Tucker decided to create a real page. Well, as real as anyone could expect from someone working hard at hardly working at his law degree. So you'll also find a funny collection of pickup lines, quotes from Tucker's college life, and lots of personal info. Just be aware of what you will be delving into - one acquaintance called him "the most egotistical, manipulative, pessimistic, hard-nosed, vulgar, piece of (crap) that I ever had the pleasure of being friends with."
http://tuckermax.tripod.com/
Imagine playing Quake without a sound card - a lack of grunts, groans, or ricochets would make for a dull death-fest. Now, instead of subtracting sound, try adding a new dimension, the stink of swamp gas, the heady scent of gun-oil, the stench of a large angry lizard. How? With the iSmell hardware and scent packs, DigiScents is poised to produce a gizmo that will deliver smell as efficiently as sound cards deliver sound. Visit their new "Snortal" to investigate this astounding new technology. Unless it's the greatest hoax in the history of the Internet - we don't have the resources to send someone to Oakland to check it out in person.
http://www.digiscents.com/
Rally against Omnipresent Network Logos
Cable and satellite channels think the people who watch them are not very bright, so they emblazon their logo in the corner of the screen to remind viewers which channel they're watching. This is intensely irritating, and a campaign has been started to ban the "bugs" (the generic term for the logos). Although doomed to failure - since when do networks listen to anyone but advertisers? - the campaign is nevertheless a valiant David-esque attempt to take on the Goliaths of the media, and deserves support for that alone.http://www.illumina.net/
Fantasy Stock Market Helps real Investors
Fancy a flutter with the bulls and bears? For a free account at a well-built site packed with features of interest to both the real and the budding investor, try this site. It gives you $100,000 in virtual money to play with, but that's all that's not real. All the stock information, company reports, trends and charts are real, and the site uses the real jargon and systems of the stock market. The site offers newbies some help with the meaning of symbols and words, but this site is really aimed at the genuine investors who know the financial markets but just want to play awhile.http://www.fantasystockmarket.com/
Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology has started to compete with cable for the dollars of consumers who want a fast, reliable, reasonably priced Net connection. Many sources of DSL info can only be appreciated by those with technical savvy. DSL Life aims to bring typical home-computer users up to speed with a FAQ and tutorial, background articles, news, and other introductory resources. DSL Forum, which represents "nearly 300 of the world's leading companies from all sectors of the global communication and computer industry", sponsors the site. You can find out here whether DSL is available in your area, but you have to fill out a short marketing form to do so. Bummer. Still, this is easy to overlook if you agree, as we do, with the site's assertion that DSL is "More than just a phone line... it's a lifestyle."
http://www.dsllife.com/
On the Internet, They Know Your Favorite Brand of Dogfood
And PrivacyPlace would like you to understand that. This is a wonderful clearing house of up-to-the-minute privacy information. Every week, a raft of new articles and links to information appears. Find out the various privacy consequences of the AOL/Time Warner merger - or of just about anything else. And read some interesting personal accounts about the balance between privacy and openness. We know we're scared, and we also know we like that 20 percent off coupon for Science Diet. You can't figure out where to draw the line unless you're informed.http://www.privacyplace.com/
Hiding Copyright in Plain Sight
The most secure sort of coded message is the kind no one but the recipient knows exists. Steganography is the art of hiding messages, most often in images. Extremely long messages can be concealed in the least-significant bit of the pixels in a JPEG image, and no one merely viewing the image will ever know. More sophisticated analysis might, however, find variations in the image's Fourier signature, thus revealing that a message is being sent. Outguess claims to have licked that particular problem. If you have some UNIX savvy, and want to hide your financial data in a photo of Aunt Millie's birthday party, check it out.http://www.outguess.org/
If you like wordplay, don't miss Business Anagram of the Day. It's fluffy, flip, and just the thing to amuse friends of the same bent. A few samples: "British Petroleum = Pure Mobile Thirst." "Bell Atlantic = In Battle Call." "New York Stock Exchange = Now Exchange Skyrocket." "America Online = Re: Mail in Ocean." "Windows Two Thousand = Shutdowns. Now do wait." "Dodge Ram = Do drag me." "Nissan Altima = Snail stamina." "New York Times = Monkeys Write." Ah, maybe that's where our reviewers used to sweat before we took them all under our wing!
http://namix.com/anagram.html
Self Instruction on the Ukulele
Long before the late Tiny Tim gave the ukulele a bad name, the instrument was a mainstay of Hawaii. It arrived in the archipelago in 1879 and transformed the music of the island before finding popularity on the mainland. Not only does the ukulele produce what has been called a charming and gleeful sound, but it is also relatively easy to play. This site contains a scanned version of a ukulele self-instruction manual first published in 1914 and covers everything from how to string the uke to tuning and chords.http://www.snowcrest.net/motman/uke.html
The hills are alive with the sound of yodeling. For decades, the yodel has remained fodder for comedy, but what is generally forgotten is that talents from Jimmie Rodgers to Hank Williams Sr. to Julie Andrews have engaged in this age-old art. The Hills Are Alive offers a fascinating history, as well as tips on how to yodel. There's also a section on yodeling fashion, just in case you're looking for an excuse to wear lederhosen or a string tie.
http://www.charged.com/issue_2/leisure/stories/yodel/
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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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Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing
Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity
Architects of Emortality
The SimsONLINE TRAVEL
A Big White Stranger in a Strange Land
Meet Randall van der Woning, a self-proclaimed big white guy in Hong Kong. You could call his home on the Web self-aggrandizing, but it's certainly worth the visit. Enjoy frequent updates to his witty banter, check out the photos, learn all about albinos, rats, and chocolate popcorn via the annals of his tales about his new life in Hong Kong. His feel for layout and some excellent table cell coloring contribute to making this a site to visit for folks interested in Hong Kong or anyone ever displaced.http://vanderwoning.com/
The gathering of news and information has indeed become a global affair, which is not to say that the big news organizations report on every little detail from every little corner of the world. A case in point is ElectricNews.Net, a site dedicated to covering business, technology, and arts news in Ireland. The emphasis is on Internet-related subjects, of course, such as the new Who's Who, featuring the names of all of Ireland's top tech players.
http://www.electricnews.net/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Popcorn Gets Stuck in Your Head
Even if the name Popcorn doesn't ring a bell, you've probably heard this song before in one of its myriad versions, including in the movie, "Dick". This site has many versions of the tune available as downloadable MP3, MOD, and MIDI files, as well as a handful of others.http://www.popcornsong.com/
What do Penn Jillette, David Bowie, and Billy Ray Cyrus all have in common? They've all had a mullet, the hairstyle of the gods, according to Mark Larson and Barney Hoskyns. Their tongue-in-cheek Web site investigates the fashion phenomenon and provides ample opportunities for you to buy their related book.
http://www.mulletgods.com/
Getting the Best Price at Auction
OverBid.com improves online auction shopping in two ways: it crawls through a slew of auction databases to find who's got what you're looking for, and it links you to the bidding using real-time streaming. You catch the action as it happens, without pausing to refresh a page.http://overbid.com/
SOFTWARE
SETI@home Version 2.0 Released
The major changes in this version include increased security designed to deal with modifications to program files, better proxy support, network protocol updates, some communications improvements, and various graphics upgrades. If you haven't yet joined the biggest distributed computing project of all time, do so, and join the NSD team.Upgrade: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/known_bugs.html
NSD team: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?cmd=team_lookup&name=Netsurfer+Digest
Apache Web Server 1.3.11 Released
This is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary release. A bunch of bug fixes, some security fixes, and a myriad of small improvements make up the bulk of this version. The announcement has more info.http://www.apache.org/dist/Announcement.html
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Click a Ribbit, Donate to Charity
Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin founded LinkExchange with a mountain of hard work and not much else. When they sold it to Microsoft, they made more than $200 million dollars, some of which they want to give to charity, and as natural-born Internet denizens they have designed a Web site through which to do it. Go to the site, click on the Ribbit button and they will donate one dollar. Once a million people have clicked, the Red Cross gets a million dollars. Feeling charitable? Then go click a frog and give away some of Tony and Alfred's money - they want you to. You can click once a day.http://www.charityfrogs.org/