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BREAKING SURF
The ILOVEYOU virus and how quickly it spread hogged the Net headlines this week. The e-mail conduit through which the virus spread was not original, but the ILOVEYOU name compelled many people to open the attached Visual Basic script, thus infecting their machines. Like it or not, you have to admire the social hack. Once opened, the virus e-mails itself to everybody in the victims' Windows Address Book and spreads. Copycat viruses showed up within a day. At press time, police had nabbed a suspect in the Philippines who may have authored the virus. Wired has ongoing press coverage while SecurityFocus has a technical analysis of the virus and information on how to deal with it.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,36161,00.html
SecurityFocus: http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/article.html?id=30
First Coherent Look at Scope of Free Software Projects
Until now, basic statistics describing the free software movement were hard to come by. The new Orbiten Free Software Survey seeks to fill this vacuum. The survey found 3,149 projects, amounting to about 25 million lines of code written by 12,706 different authors. "Author" may or may not mean a specific individual: for example, the top three authors were the Free Software Foundation, Sun Microsystems, and the University of California. The first identifiable person shows up in the number four spot - Gordon Matzigkeit wrote 1.2% of the surveyed code. The top 10% (1,271) of authors accounted for 72.3% of the code. In fact, the top ten authors alone accounted for almost a fifth of the code. It looks like the whole free software edifice is built on the shoulders of a relatively small number of prolific coders and organizations. More stats at the site.http://orbiten.org/ofss/01.html
A judge has ruled that Napster does not qualify for an exemption from liability for copyright violation, removing one of its avenues of defense in a lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America. US law grants such exemptions to ISPs that shut down copyright infringers when notified of such infractions. It's a first blow in what's likely to be a long legal fight, though not the only fight Napster is embroiled in, as the next article indicates. CNet has the legal story.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1839039.html
Metallica Names Napsters, Sounds off in Online Chat
Metallica has delivered a monster bundle of some 60,000 pages of names to Napster's front door. The names are those of over 335,000 users who, the heavy metal band claims, share Metallica MP3 files over the Internet. According to CNet, Napster intends to review the names and promises to take "appropriate actions" if the lists meet legal specifications. Metallica - flush with victory after staring down several universities into compliance with its wishes - has sued Napster and while the band says it won't sue the named file traders, it's obviously calling Napster's bluff over its statement that it "supports the rights of artists and copyright holders and seeks to comply with applicable laws and regulations governing copyright." CNet points out that Napster does seem to have some legal wiggle room. Metallica members recently participated in an online chat and explained why they're against Napster. Artistdirect has a transcript.News: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1810391.html
Napster: http://www.napster.com/
Metallica: http://www.elektra.com/retro/metallica/index.html
Chat: http://artistdirect.com/metallica/
Study Details Online News Reading Habits
This Stanford University study looked at how people read online content, specifically news. In addition to examining newsreading habits in general, investigators used eye tracking technology to study how people view Web pages. It seems the number of news junkies is dropping, but those that do continue to read news increasingly rely on online sources. News readers also read wide, but shallow - they visit many news sites, but don't go deep into any one site. As we at Netsurfer have known for years, people prefer skimming briefs before choosing to investigate items in depth. The eye-tracking analysis found that people gaze first at the text on a Web site, and that banner ads do get noticed. Online content providers will find lots of other interesting results here, too.http://www.poynter.org/eyetrack2000/index.htm
GEnie once shared practically the whole proprietary online market with Compuserve, but in December 1999, IDT - which acquired and respelled Genie in the mid 1990s - killed the sickly service, promising to migrate its features to the Web. However, Genie now faces the world with only a third-rate Web page behind which, we (not having a Genie account) are told, there's nothing of value. Mitch Wagner, a computer journalist you can read in InternetWeek, tried to cancel his Genie account in January. Genie's phone reps hung up on him four times. He disputed Genie's charges to his credit card, only to find Genie had begun billing another of his cards. Even after canceling his Genie account and disputing billing, Mitch has found new Genie charges popping up on his credit card bills like mushrooms on spring lawns. While you may get your schadenfreudian jollies from this story, we're really only presenting this as a warning: if you've used Genie, check your credit card statements.
Genie: http://www.genie.com/
Mitch: http://www.sff.net/people/mitchw/
InternetWeek: http://www.internetwk.com/
Military users of Global Positioning System (GPS) data once held an advantage over civilians in obtaining more accurate position, elevation, and time information. But May 1, the US stopped degrading civilian GPS signals and now provides all users with the level of precision that the military always enjoyed. President Clinton's announcement heartens the more than four million GPS users around the world, and should stimulate the rapidly growing GPS application market. Should national security make it necessary, the military can apparently selectively deny access to the high accuracy signal without disrupting bystanding users in other parts of the world. As usual, we've scoured the Web to bring you the sites with all the information you need, including the presidential announcement, a transcript of the press briefing, and the White House backgrounder. As well, How Stuff Works (HSW) has a fairly simple explanation of GPS, and the University of Texas (UT) more detailed information.
President: http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/urires/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/5/2/7.text.1
Briefing: http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/5/2/1.text.1
Backgrounder: http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/5/2/8.text.1
HSW: http://www.howstuffworks.com/gps.htm
UT: http://www.utexas.edu/depts/grg/gcraft/notes/gps/gps.html
TerraServer.com has posted online more than 12,000 square miles of high-resolution satellite imagery covering Nevada's Area 51. Unless you work on USAF black projects, you probably haven't seen the alleged American UFO testing ground. (Of course, if you do believe that alien craft are hidden here, you'll probably also think the innocent pics have been faked. Oh, well.) The Russian Kometa satellite captured the two-meter resolution images March 15, 1998. Six hours after TerraServer.com posted the images, which are also for sale, hackers (government agents? aliens?) struck and shut down the site for over 36 hours. The FBI is investigating (hmmm...). TerraServer.com has the site up and running sporadically and the images are truly impressive. Captivating, even.
http://terraserver.com/area51.asp
Mstream and Distributed Denial of Service Resources
The techies among our readers will be interested in David Dittrich's dissection of the latest DDoS tool, called Mstream. It's a representative example of how to analyze such cracking tools. The copy of Mstream that David analyzed is still in early development, but it's only a matter of time before an improved version is released into the wild. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to protect against DDoS attacks by tools like Mstream. A Net-wide collaborative strategy may mitigate those attacks, but there's no quick technical fix. We encourage anybody interested in the theory and practice of DDoS to bookmark David's comprehensive DDoS Web page. It's filled with numerous high quality technical resources.Mstream: http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/misc/mstream.analysis.txt
Dittrich: http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/misc/ddos/
Rampage, Joust, and Other Midway Games Online
Our editor spent many an undergraduate night pretending to be a monster on the loose, just a-whackin' buildings to rubble and a-eatin' people to bits. Of course, we mean virtually, in a senselessly fun arcade game called Rampage. Since then, Midway Games has introduced versions for computers and consoles, but now the original has returned, and for free. Rampage, along with other Midway classics such as Joust, Defender (I and II), and a few more, has found an online home at Shockwave.com. The Shockwave versions derive directly from the original arcade ROMs, so you get no fancy graphics - just urban mayhem fun. Mac users can't partake - yet, according to the message.http://www.shockwave.com/
ONLINE CULTURE
The New York Times ran this long and thoughtful piece last week revealing the Net has torn down the wall between our public and private personas. Author Jeffery Rosen convincingly argues that the trails you leave as your words and actions navigate the Net - in chat rooms, e-mails, Web sites - build a picture of you that you may not wish to present to the world. Our carefully cultivated public personas, designed to smooth the friction of social intercourse, are undermined by the revealing data with which we've littered the Net. Anybody armed with a good search engine - or, worse, a subpoena - can sketch a distorted picture of you based on information you may have thought was private. We're building a culture of transparency, whether we like it or not, for better or for worse. The sobering article will make you think hard about the consequences of what you do and where you go online.http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000430mag-internetprivacy.html
Fake Child Porn Lures Gnutella Users
Gnutella, an open-source file exchange program, resembles Napster but without the central search servers. People use it to exchange all sorts of files, including a healthy dose of porn pictures. The owners of the Zeropaid Web site decided to take advantage of the lack of anonymity inherent in how the program works to fight child porn. They dangled suggestively named files on their site and waited for Gnutella users to download them, then posted the IP addresses of the machines downloading the file on their Wall of Shame page. Unfortunately, this method of fighting objectionable content is not only ineffective - IP addresses are not always linked to identity - but may also accuse innocent people who would never have downloaded such porn. ZDNet has the story, while Slashdot has discussion forums which cover many of the practical and philosophical implications of this practice.Wall of Shame: http://www.zeropaid.com/busted/
ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2561681,00.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/1130215&mode=thread
SURFING SITES
In an age of instant wealth and frivolous consumer goods, you can easily achieve true reckless spending. But often the value of what you buy decreases as soon as you drive it off the e-lot. No longer! Who can argue that the planet Jupiter will depreciate over time? Or the tiny, unique two-way radio that comes with four antennas (and six legs, and probably pheromones). Things you've seen in encyclopedias or on vacation trips are now within your reach, thanks to a friendly mental patient with boundless generosity. Be careful, though - you'll spend so much time laughing at the descriptions and bidding prices that you may get suckered into owning the Loch Ness Monster, a vicious clown-shaped beast that "recently surfaced in the game-room of our Mental Institution!".http://www.total.net/~fishnet/
The Rocket Car Really Did Fly - Sorta
We're talking about a particular rocket car here. It isn't the one from "Back to the Future" (or any other movie), nor is it the car that broke the land speed record. Nope, this is the vehicle whispered about late at night or at the end of family gatherings when you're tired of discussing why cousin Bill wasn't there and the chat turns to urban legends. This easy-reading but text-heavy site is very possibly the nugget of truth behind an American legend - the mythical car that propelled its mythical designer-pilot to the mythical Darwin Award and real fame. Once you start reading, it's hard to stop before you reach the end. And the next time the subject comes up at the water cooler, as it surely will, you'll have the real dope. Don't forget to follow the important link at the end regarding HMS Beagle. It's vital.http://www.wagoneers.com/pages/RocketCar/rockit.html
Mike the Headless Wonder Chicken
As you read the story, you have to wonder. Maybe the editors of Life were bribed. Why else would they publish in 1945 a story, with photos, about what some might call a fowl event (some might - not us, though). Lloyd Olsen, endeavoring to impress his mother-in-law one September day, took extra care in beheading a rooster destined for dinner on their farm. (You see, mom-in-law had an appetite for chicken necks.) Somehow, as Lloyd chopped the rooster's head off, he left enough circuitry in the creature's brain stem to allow it to go on functioning only slightly impaired. Said rooster, named Mike, lived another 18 months and only died because he choked to death. More than 50 years later, people are flocking to Fruita, Colo. for the May 19-20 symbolic salute to Mike and his brethren. In preparation, or perhaps in lieu of attending, Mike's fans can peruse his site for some (good!) chicken recipes and pictures of past festivals, and even learn a little about our feathery fowl friends.http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/
We have it on good authority that May is some sort of National Masturbation Month. (Those card companies will do just about anything to create another holiday.) At any rate, masturbation - like that rock 'n' roll the kids all listen to - is here to stay, so maybe it's time we packed up all our hang-ups in the old kit bag and moseyed on over to the "ultimate masturbation resource". You'll find lots of tips here, a question of the day, a few links for her (it's a him-centered site, as if you didn't know) and all the latest news in the world of masturbation. Bet you didn't even know there was such a thing. By the way, the site's hiring freelancers and one person for its staff. Get your resumes ready.
http://www.jackinworld.com/
Lifestyles of the Dumb and Felonious
The Bozo Criminal of the Day site is a monument to criminal idiocy. The tales are all true, although that's sometimes very hard to believe. Just when you think you've read of the ultimate in criminal stupidity, you scroll down a few days and discover an even more astounding tale. Be aware of the dangers in reading this site: you can laugh so hard that you fall off your chair, and you can shake your head in disbelief so hard that you can injure your neck. The Web site is a compilation of radio reports started by Dave Moreland and broadcast weekday mornings on radio station KOOI in Tyler, Tex. Sources for the Bozo Criminal report are the daily news wire and Bozo News Hawks - fans who scour various reputable news sources.http://www.electricferret.com/bozo/
Anne Frank and Oscar Schindler
They never met, but in their own way both Anne Frank and Oscar Schindler changed the face of history. Although Anne did not live to see her 16th birthday, her memory stands today as a compelling symbol of the 11 million murdered by Hitler and his faithful followers. And Oscar Schindler, the imperfect man, the womanizer and alcoholic, somehow managed to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. To read their stories side-by-side tells us more about humankind than we may want to hear.http://home8.inet.tele.dk/aaaa/Annefrank.htm
Plenty of sites on the Web let you watch someone's parakeet play on its little swing, but Kodak has established a different sort of birdcam, one through which you can watch the hatching and development of young peregrine falcons. This year marks the third season Cabot-Sirocco and Mariah have chosen to grace the Kodak Tower in Rochester, N.Y. with their family. Although at the time of this writing, Mariah was still incubating her little ones, four camera angles inside the nest promise to capture the early life stages of these fascinating creatures. You'll want Flash and 20/20 vision to view this site, since some of the typography is rather challenging for those of us without, ahem, an eagle eye.
http://www.kodak.com/go/birdcam1/
Metabrowsing the Search Engines
Metabrowsing stitches together information from multiple Web sites and presents it as one source. A great example is Quickbrowse, a search-engine portal that combines information from Yahoo, AltaVista, Deja.com, Google, WebCrawler, MetaCrawler, and NewsIndex into one page of bookmarkable search results. We searched Quickbrowse for "technology stocks" at Google and got 20 pages of results organized as one continuous page. You can bet major search engines will pay attention to this nifty, Perl-based tool. The home page consists of one textbox, two pulldown lists, and a button - so simple it's ultra-retro. For researchers it could be ultra-useful. Quickbrowse has a patent pending, help from venture capitalists, and kudos. Like many great ideas, it started at a beach - to wit, South Beach in Miami. Marc Fest wrote the original utility to make his work as a freelance writer go faster. To quote another reviewer, "Simple but ingenious." Indeed.http://www.quickbrowse.com/qbsearch/
For many users, downloading and installing more software is their downfall. Couple that with the prospects of using computers at libraries, Net cafes, and airport kiosks, and you have the worst of both worlds: you don't like to download stuff and you don't even have that choice. ICQ is a common online chat app (see NSD 5.06) that, until now, required you to download a software client. Freeing everyone from ICQ downloads, Thomas Lundgren's WebICQ project site lets you chat with ICQ-active friends old or new - and you can access the Web page anywhere, even from your cramped airport Internet terminal at 20 "tokens" for five-minute blocks. What the heck, you're on vacation! Complete with configuration options and the ability to search for folks you know, WebICQ is in remarkable condition for a package tagged as "open for beta testing".
NSD 5.06: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/v05/nsd.05.06.html#SW1#SW1
WebICQ: http://come.to/webicq/
Ironically, as our lives become more and more intertwined in one gigantic electronic database, our concerns over privacy issues have greatly diminished. There's no accounting for this paradox, except to note, as they say at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that our liberties are indeed at risk. This Web campaign provides information on many aspects of our endangered civil liberties, including free speech, privacy, and due process of law - and even threats from the so-called war on drugs. The personal stories are compelling and the ACLU has made it easy for visitors to take action.
http://www.aclu.org/liberties/index.html
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Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets and Solutions
The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10
The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street As a World Power, 1653-2000
Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell: A User Friendly Guide to World DominationONLINE TRAVEL
Violent weather never ceases to fascinate, unless you're caught in it. And then, perhaps, you pray. This site will help you appreciate the devastation wrought by Cyclone Hudah across the northeastern portion of Madagascar on the night of April 2. Wind speeds reached 320 km/h. Aerial photographs show the grim aftermath - flooding everywhere. It could hardly have come at a worse time: a month after Madagascar was hit by Cyclone Eline and tropical storm Gloria, which occurred within three weeks of each other. In the photos we viewed, including a decimated hospital, schools, church, airport, river, countryside, and a beached tugboat, we saw not a single person. We found no stark shots of victims in despair, grief, bewilderment. No unforgettable human face for news media to broadcast. In the developed world, this lack of pathos that says it all may blunt the impact of this site but won't obscure the intent - a plea for help, assembled with a sense of urgency most of us cannot imagine.http://www.lk-oi.com/hudah/en/index.htm
When CARE's Balkans Coordinator Mike Godfrey traveled to Kosovo recently to assess the impact of recent conflicts on the land, he saw what most of us have by now forgotten: a land and a people ravaged by war. We may have moved on to a new story, but as Godfrey recounts here, the 820,000 refugees have returned to a land that barely exists. He makes his photos and journal entries available here as a Virtual Field Trip through the capital city Pristina and the war-torn villages of Mitrovica and Chabra.
http://www.care.org/virtual_trip/kosovo/index.html
To many folks around the world, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) means London. BBC Online's London Live Web site does the city proud in quintessential BBC fashion as an efficient and reliable city portal. It's a neat, tight site for those in need of news, travel info, entertainment, and other civilized treats. You're unlikely to find a broken link here. We were quickly drawn to the London Web Cams page - our reviewer in Chicago received a daytime skyline of central London in six seconds on an ISDN line. (Perhaps there's a mirror site in North America.) There are a Speaker's Corner and other news forums, along with message boards for visitors interested in antiques, cult TV, the Radio 4 show "Home Truths", and other topics. Traffic updates are organized for convenience by section of town. Flying to London? You can get weather reports for Heathrow and Gatwick. These, too, arrive quickly. Our favorite feature is the slower but urbanely sly current-events quiz "So you think you can run London?" on the "Who Runs London?" page, which covers the election of London's mayor, "The second most powerful person in the country." Quite tony.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/londonlive/
Some of the biggest information junkies are map lovers. Many of them will appreciate the Color Landform Atlas of the United States, a no-glitz, no-frills site put up by the Applied Physics Laboratory, a research division of The Johns Hopkins University. Topographic and satellite maps of the states are ostensibly the main attractions - never knew there are natural hills in Florida, did you? -and historians and illustrators may want to download some of the large 100-year-old maps. Frankly, as inveterate surfers, we found the equally excellent External Links section for each state more useful. Through an external link to Roadside America, for example, we discovered that Illinois has the world's largest catsup bottle, and California, the world's tallest thermometer. We suspected as much and now have proof, thanks to guidance from physicists in search of nature's secrets. Aviators, backpackers, and other travelers link to maps at Color Landform Atlas of the United States to document their own sites.
http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/states/
They call it the "only encyclopaedia for North Africa and the Middle East," and whether that's true or not, the site is indeed a wonderful accomplishment. The main part is a simple alphabetical listing of people, places, and things in the region, but it is wonderfully broad and detailed. There is also a sampling of articles on the main page, all relating to the region.
http://www.i-cias.com/e.o/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
The Ask Jesus page lets users "Jesusfy" any Web page. In an example we tested, Jesusfication turned "David Mamet Information Page" to "David, the Servant of Solomon, Mamet Information Donkey", with pictures and the corny sounds of Viva (or is that Jesus) Las Vegas in the background.http://www.askjesus.org/
Stop by Kitsch Postcards for a French/English look into the '60s and '70s, complete with happy pastel housewives clad in aprons and families enjoying a picnic before their new Silver Streak trailer. Not all images are available as e-postcards, but they're all fun to browse.
http://www.kitschpostcards.com/
Find out if you've owned one of the ten worst cars of the millennium, as voted by listeners of CarTalk and officiated by Click and Clack themselves. Odds are that if you yourself didn't own one, you know someone who did.
http://cartalk.cars.com/About/Worst-Cars/results1.html
Have you ever wondered how past civilizations have dealt with vital matters too indelicate for formal histories? Find out exactly how the Babylonians (and many others) dealt with all matters involving plumbing. This is history as it should be written.
http://www.plumbingproducts.com/hisbabylon.html
No longer do you have to be subscribed to every commercial site's e-mail list to find out when they're having a sale that's not to be missed. Just visit iMegaDeals to get a rundown of the best deals currently circulating.
http://www.imegadeals.com/
SOFTWARE
New Stable Version of Nmap 2.51
Nmap is by far the most popular and versatile network scanning tool, used by both crackers and security pros to probe machines on the Net for security problems. We won't bother with the highly technical feature list here. Visit the Web site for details. The software is free and state of the art in network scanning.http://www.insecure.org/nmap/
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Choose a cause, shop, and a portion of your sale goes to the charitable cause of your choice: that's the concept behind GreaterGood.com. Feed the hungry, fund a scholarship, preserve a rainforest, or contribute to a number of causes while you shop at over 80 participating retailers.http://www.greatergood.com/