NETSURFER DIGEST
More Signal, Less Noise
Volume 06, Issue 24
Tuesday, July 11, 2000

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BREAKING SURF
Diablo II
Pinging the Entire Net
NASA Rescues Deep Space 1
Latest Update on UK's Draconian Net Surveillance Law
FBI's Carnivore ISP Bugging System
Latest Netcraft Web Survey, and an Opposing Opinion
Net Bill of Lost Rights
Sealand's HavenCo CTO Answers Questions
Run, Chicken, Run
Blade Runner: Deckard Was a Replicant
Tour de France 2000
ONLINE CULTURE
Cheating Pay-to-Surf Sites
SURFING SITES
The CIA and Vietnam
If Walls Could Remember
Development of the English Castle
Castles of Japan
Korean History More Than 50 Years Old
The Best of TV: Commercials, Trailers, and More
Pain, Domination, and Pleasure in "I Dream of Jeannie"
eHow
And the Geek Shall Make Fun of the Church
Spice World
Chess with the Grandmasters
The Planet of Abhijit
Mei-Ling's Cup of Web Sugar
Online Consumer Reports (but Not THAT Consumer Reports)
Odd Socks
Online Albums
Formosa Free Translation Service
Netsurfer Recommendations
ONLINE TRAVEL
Coney Island Memories
Climbing above the Earth...
...And Below It
Historical Maps and Images from the Library of Congress
Saving Wales
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Korean War Remembered
Non-Stop Be Bop
Have a Laugh Over Lunch
Legal Briefs
All Your Web Site's Stats, All the Time
Domain Names for Sale
SOFTWARE
Copernic Us
Online Schedule Parser
CORRECTIONS
Don't Hold a Grudge, Vote on One
Cracked! Complete
OTHER LINKS
BOOK REVIEWS
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Contact and Subscription Information
Credits


BREAKING SURF

Diablo II

Predictably, the load on Battle.net, the online platform for Diablo II game play, made it difficult to log on and stay connected last week after the game finally shipped to stores - and flew off the shelves. Diablo II is the long anticipated sophisticated sword-and-sorcery computer game from Blizzard Software, the hit-maker behind StarCraft and WarCraft. Only a week after release, the game has already had two patches and stands at version 1.02. None of this has fazed the rabid fans who flock to Battle.net to slay monsters, and occasionally each other. Gamespot has the game review.
Diablo II: http://www.blizzard.com/diablo2/
Patch: http://www.blizzard.com/support/diablo2/information/patch.shtml
Gamespot: http://www.zdnet.com/gamespot/stories/reviews/0,10867,2600303,00.html

Pinging the Entire Net

Quova, a rather mysterious Silicon Valley company, seems to be scanning the whole Internet with network pings, setting off firewall tripwires all over the place. While this kind of network probing is not illegal and is entirely harmless, many sysadmins oppose becoming part of some large database on principle and are locking out Quova's IP addresses from their networks. Quova isn't revealing why it's doing this, saying only that it is trying to correlate Net performance with geographical location. Analysts speculate that the data will be somehow used for ad targeting. This SecurityFocus article has more, and notes that while such scanning would not even have been noticed several years ago, in today's paranoid environment it's "raising hackles".
SecurityFocus: http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/article.html?id=56&_ref=148119423
Quova: http://www.quova.com/

NASA Rescues Deep Space 1

Deep Space 1 (DS1), a technology demonstration craft, lost its star tracker last November and had been flying navigationally blind. In January, mission scientists first cleverly used the oscillating strength of DS1's radio beacon to help it orient toward Earth and regain reliable communications. The scientists uploaded to the craft a fix that uses the onboard camera to take pictures of reference stars while some nifty new software points the craft in the desired direction - essentially, a star tracker from scratch. The craft has been under way in this manner for about a week and should manage to make a rendezvous with a comet later this September. Make no mistake, there's some fairly spectacular engineering here, and we're doing our part to make the public aware that NASA still actually has quite a bit of the right stuff.
http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/

Latest Update on UK's Draconian Net Surveillance Law

Dan Gilmore of the San Jose Mercury News summarizes the latest on the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill (RIP), which gives unprecedented powers to police to intercept online communications and force the disclosure of encryption keys. The article notes that while the British business and ISP communities have organized opposition to the bill, the public at large remains generally unaware of the civil liberties implications of this legislation. At press time, parliamentary maneuvering in the House of Lords aimed at scuttling the bill.
http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/indepth/docs/dg071100.htm

FBI's Carnivore ISP Bugging System

MSNBC has this article on a network sniffing system called Carnivore that the FBI uses to tap traffic at ISPs. When the FBI obtains a court order for a wiretap on somebody's network traffic, it goes to that person's ISP and installs a PC with sniffer software in a secure cage. The system then can record e-mail and other network traffic. According to the article, the FBI has so far used these taps in "infrastructure protection" cases, to combat terrorism and drug-trafficking, and to hunt hackers. However, the way typical Ethernet networks operate, Carnivore can access all traffic through a target's ISP. It can investigate much more than just the target's traffic. Naturally this has privacy advocates up in arms. At least one ISP fought the installation of the Carnivore system in court and lost.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/431355.asp?0nm=B16M

Latest Netcraft Web Survey, and an Opposing Opinion

Netcraft has been surveying Web servers since 1995, providing statistics about which servers command what market share. This week, it noted that Apache has passed the 10-million threshold in its survey of more than 17 million sites. A Windows-oriented e-zine takes issue with the significance of that number in the commercial marketplace. According to WinInfo, among Fortune 500 companies Windows IIS webserver has 41% market share, Netscape/iPlanet 35%, and Apache only 15%. An interesting statistic, to be sure. Meanwhile, Netcraft has other interesting statistics, and notes that some countries apparently feature strong encryption Web servers and operating systems in spite of US export restrictions against them and that a number of Mac and Windows sites actually run Unix.
Netcraft: http://www.netcraft.com/survey/
WinInfo: http://www.wininformant.com/display.asp?ID=2817

Net Bill of Lost Rights

CNet has an insightful article which point by point demolishes your expectation of any civil liberties in cyberspace. They give examples of laws which allow people to legally snoop your e-mail, restrict your freedom of speech via civil lawsuits, allow your health records to be disclosed, and allow your employers to monitor your websurfing. Not only is your online privacy almost non-existent from a technical point of view, but it is also legally compromised. A must read for anybody online, if only to let you know where you stand when you hook up.
http://home.cnet.com/techtrends/0-1544321-7-2181834.html

Sealand's HavenCo CTO Answers Questions

Slashdot has this interview with Ryan Lackey, Chief Technical Officer for HavenCo, the company hosting a secure internet hosting site from Sealand, a would-be mini-nation situated on a platform in the North Sea (NSD 6.20). Lackey talks about the company's security, its policy on hosting controversial content, plans for expansion, and even gives some tips on how to build a data center in the middle of nowhere. Of interest to people who want their content offshore - in more ways than one.
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/02/160253&mode=thread
Sealand: http://www.sealandgov.com/
NSD 6.20: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/nsd.06.20.html#BS10#BS10

Run, Chicken, Run

With Aardman Animations' "Chicken Run" running around collecting critical acclaim and box office receipts like a chicken with its head cut off, somebody in charge approved the brilliant idea of posting the first seven minutes of the movie. This is, as they say, a limited time offer with the clip disappearing on July 14. You need Quicktime 4 to watch. While the clip downloads, check out Aardman's site for links to official sites, "The Making of", and various other nuggets.
Aardman: http://www.aardman.com/
Clip: http://www.apple.com/trailers/dreamworks/chicken_run/

Blade Runner: Deckard Was a Replicant

While it never broke any box office records upon its theatrical release in 1982, Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" has since acquired a devout cult following. The stylish SF thriller has Rick Deckard, a hunter of human clones, come out of retirement to track down some escapees in a cyberpunk LA of the future. Fans learned even more of the film's subtle and profound details in a 1992 release of the director's cut. Many clues led fans to wonder if Deckard himself was an oblivious clone. Now, Scott has revealed the answer: Yes, he was.
Scott: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid_825000/825641.stm
Blade Runner: http://www.bladezone.com/

Tour de France 2000

At press time, Lance Armstrong pulled off an epic climb over the Pyrenees to gain the coveted yellow jersey midway through the annual bicycling extravaganza. The coverage, as usual, is extensive in the sports press. The latest standings are best found on the official Web page, while the always reliable ESPN and CNNSi have the latest news and features.
Tour: http://www.letour.fr/2000/us/
ESPN: http://espn.go.com/moresports/tdf00/index.html
CNNSi: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/cycling/index.html

ONLINE CULTURE

Cheating Pay-to-Surf Sites

Wired has an article about a thriving hacker subculture whose goal is to cheat various pay-to-surf sites. Typically such sites let you earn money and gifts in return for enduring a certain amount of forced ad exposure under their control. Numerous hacking sites cater to cheaters, who automate their computing environment in order to get the cash without having to look at the ads. The article quotes one such hacker as earning "hundreds" of dollars per month. On the flip side, the pay-to-surf companies seek out cheaters and put in place sophisticated anti-fraud devices in a software arms race, with hackers and companies competing to see who can outwit who in the cheating game.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,37329,00.html

SURFING SITES

The CIA and Vietnam

The Vietnam War might never have happened had Presidents Kennedy and Johnson understood the CIA's pessimistic assessment of chances for victory. Revisionism, you say? Former CIA Indochina analyst Harold Ford documents his conclusion using recently declassified internal memos and reports. His analysis of the CIA's complicated relationship with Washington policy-makers hinges on three key points in the conflict: late 1962-63, when gung-ho military, State Department and senior CIA administrators distorted intelligence fed to the Kennedy administration; 1963-65, when Johnson overrode the CIA director's advice and went big; and 1967-68, when the Tet offensive clobbered US positions and morale. The report is not a CIA bouquet, exactly. It includes admissions of errors, and provides fascinating documentation to the growing body of historic materials.
http://www.odci.gov/csi/books/vietnam/index.html

If Walls Could Remember

Have you ever passed by an old edifice being torn down and wondered who once lived there? What sort of work went on inside those walls? The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) have set out to record that sort of information for future generations. A National Park Service agency with archives at the Library of Congress, HABS/HAER uses its Web presence as an online complement to the massive undertaking of documenting these sites. Some of the links don't work as well as they should, and you'll need to reload when you get the "an error occurred on the server when processing the URL" message. For a challenge, try your hand at "Recognize This?" a game created to single out some of the unique structures the HABS/HAER program is trying to memorialize. Here's a hint: the crew adds pictures in alphabetical order by state.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/habshaer/

Development of the English Castle

The walls of Medieval English castles have a million tales to tell, of battles lost and maidens won, of majestic kingdoms reclaimed. Britannia, a guide to the British Isles, published a three-part series that provided the reader with a glimpse of the development and major features of those castles. Instead of examples from mythical tales, the series cites specific castles throughout England to support its descriptions. A successful mining operation can be seen at a castle in Kent, the addition of 13 flanking towers took place around 1200 at one in Suffolk, and a beautiful picture of Arundel Castle in Sussex depicts a prototypical shell keep. David Dawson, the author of the series, has created an excellent summary of the history of the castles, and how events far from England, like the Crusades, also contributed directly to their amazing form.
http://www.britannia.com/history/david1.html

Castles of Japan

When you think of castles, your mind probably wanders to Neuschwanstein in Germany, Windsor in England, Edinburgh in Scotland, or Elsinore in Denmark. Your mind is probably not getting its passport stamped for a visit to Japan, but Takashi Toyooka may just change that. With pictures, maps, links, and a brief on the historical significance of the place, his Web site, Castles in Japan, is a feast for both the eyes and the mind. It's a simple page that has been winning awards since 1996. Go rent "Ran" after you're done.
http://www.magi.com/~ttoyooka/oshiro/

Korean History More Than 50 Years Old

For most people, Korean history starts with a certain police action in the 1950s. In fact, while Western written knowledge of the Kingdom of Korea begins only in 1666 when the Dutch landed on the peninsula, Korea's mythic beginnings date as far back as 2000 BCE. The Ancient Korean History site sketches the cultural and chronological past of a country that has been squeezed between China and Japan for millennia. The Web site originated as a project for a UC Berkeley history seminar and reveals its ancestry in presenting only outlines of dates and brief descriptions of probably majestic historical artifacts, but without pictures it's hard to tell. On the whole, the site will serve up an appetizer into that other nation in northeast Asia.
http://violet.berkeley.edu/~korea/ancient.html

The Best of TV: Commercials, Trailers, and More

The AdCritic.com Web site is totally addictive (ha!). You'll return again and again, you'll hum or sing the jingles all day long, and you'll tell everyone you know about the site. As the quality of TV content sinks to the levels of the misanthropic "Survivor" (although we must admit that some of us like it) or the once-pioneering "Real World", the quality of commercials seems to improve. The best of the best, seen here, surpass much programming content. Here you'll find spectacular commercials (best keywords: boys; gerbils; Tabasco), the best film trailers, and some mind-boggling spoofs. Look for the hilarious Bill Clinton in "President Clinton: Final Days". The well designed site allows excellent internal searching. You need QuickTime, but that's free. AdCritic.com ranks as our reviewer's personal best Web site of 2000.
http://www.adcritic.com/

Pain, Domination, and Pleasure in "I Dream of Jeannie"

"By uniting the realms of ancient civilization and modern military society, the writers and creators of this series effectively trap the hapless Major Nelson into an environment rife with sadistic possibilities." This exploration of the brutality inherent in "I Dream of Jeannie" makes a hearty read. Whether due to constant threats of foreign assignments from his commanding officer, Jeannie's vindictiveness, or just banal kooky magical misadventures, Tony Nelson lived in a chaos that threatened his life as a matter of course. Here, Bruce Bernstein examines these sexual and apparently often pathological storylines in detail. We want to see "Jeannie and the Wild Pipchicks" in which Jeannie's mother (also Barbara Eden) causes Major Nelson some awkward trouble with hallucinogenic candy. Jeannie's sister (again Eden - bonus points if you can remember the sister's name) is most exquisitely cruel in her efforts to make Nelson her love slave. And to think we used to watch it just for the harem outfit....
http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/beahistory/jeannie.html

eHow

Can your new ferret eat the tasty cat food offered by your mom up in Maine? eHow knows. Has your daughter appeared with a glorious deposit of bubble gum stuck in her hair? eHow will help you get it out. The source of a vast array of real-world knowledge, eHow has put together a notable collection of responses to life's more common, and uncommon, questions. You can also participate in communities to continue the development of these answers. Asking friends and family has always worked as a stop-gap measure for figuring something out. You've now got a strong initial source for that information, before you have to call anyone else.
http://www.ehow.com/home/

And the Geek Shall Make Fun of the Church

The Landover Baptist Web site is a parody with nothing subtle at all. However, it's brilliantly executed and many will find it hilarious. Many others will find it the height of offensiveness. It is truly a site for all, both the saved and the unsaved. Under the guise of lampooning Baptists, this "church" knows few sacred cows and has much to say. Its bias is very liberal, and many current political figures will not like their coverage at all. This is a large, active Web site with many levels of humor. Be sure to check the movie reviews, the many amazing disclaimers, and all the details. This is clearly a work of love and art, sort of like the Onion with a religious bent.
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/

Spice World

Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages provide the ultimate reference for serious spice users. If bland doesn't suit your palate, learn what you can use to enhance your meals. The site centers around 113 (at press time) spices covered in the fullest detail, from characteristics to uses to history to cultural importance. A cross-index in numerous languages lists over 4,200 terms and words relating to the 113. No matter how exotic a spice's name in a recipe, you can find its English or German equivalent quickly and easily. This tasty Web site is easy to navigate and attractive, and will only improve, we suppose, when Digiscents goes gold.
Spices: http://www-ang.kfunigraz.ac.at/~katzer/engl/index.html
DigiScents: http://www.digiscents.com/

Chess with the Grandmasters

Learn from champions. That's the thinking behind GrandMaster Chess, the ESPN of the world's most popular war game. Match fans can get standings in local, national, and international tournaments. Beginners and other enthusiasts can go to School, a section with text-only lectures and an analytical service that welcomes submission of game notes and returns analyses and advice from top players (not free). In the Game-Bases section, you can download zipped collections of games by current and past grandmasters and tournaments (free). Position of the Day is a neat, interactive, step-by-step tutorial in a pop-up window that did not always load properly for us. You'll find plenty of opportunities to shop for books, software, and equipment, and a forum in which experts answer questions by e-mail. Europeans dominate this chess portal - it's a product of the Grandmaster Chess School in St. Petersburg (or is that Leningrad, or Petrograd, or something else this year?), Russia.
http://www.gmchess.com/

The Planet of Abhijit

Abhijit Dharmadhikari has a spiritual mission - to explain the link between the cosmos, nature, Gandhi, Bruce Lee, and All-India Sales and Marketing Manager Mrs. Divya Balgi, who has a page called If Tomorrow Never Comes (on the WOW Planet) devoted to her sayings. Each section is a "planet" (Health Planet, Masters Planet, etc.) and Abhijit talks about everything from cosmology (with a surprisingly thorough rundown of Big Bang theory) to Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore to horoscopes. The site is sweetly sincere and dedicated to his grandparents, and he's a Star Trek fan, so how bad can he be?
http://www.asdimpex.com/personal/

Mei-Ling's Cup of Web Sugar

If you need your daily dose of sugar, visit this site. It's about as saccharine as you can get, yet it's so innocent and cute, it's like the guilty pleasure you get from enjoying the bubble-gum pop on the radio. Welcome to Mei-Ling's Little Japanese Inn where sumo wrestlers mix effortlessly with Hello Kitty. Pastel colors and falling flowers shower the pages. Perhaps the best part is Mei-Ling with Famous Celebrities, in which our heroine poses with world leaders from Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, as well as artists, journalists, sumo stars, and movie and television actors. We want to know how she gets into all these opening receptions and cocktail parties involving Cameron Mackintosh and Jerry Seinfeld. Actually, we don't wonder. She's cute, innocent, and intelligent, a particularly effective combination that shines through her site.
http://www.hellokitty.au2.com/

Online Consumer Reports (but Not THAT Consumer Reports)

ConsumerSearch.com seeks out every review of a consumer product that it can track down. Then, its writers analyze and rank the hundreds of reviews to offer lucid and useful reports for each category. Experts write the category reports; yes, the site presents their credentials. When the experts disagree, they clearly cover all points of view. The recommendations appear reasonable, and the site can be used as a search engine to locate the original reviews of virtually any product. This is great place to start every major purchase you plan.
http://www.consumersearch.com/

Odd Socks

These folks have taken the most mundane of all possible things - socks - and turned them into a site that's actually rather enjoyable. Sure, you can look through a catalogue anywhere - although you won't easily find another this extensive. But where else are you going to find a history of socks? That's more than different, it's a little weird. It's not on our Encarta disk, that's for sure. Speaking of weird, click the Ask Aunt Tootsie link, an offering that could use some expansion. Aunt Tootsie even tackles a question regarding the meaning of life - tying it, of course, to the benefits of purchasing a good pair of socks. In some ways, she reminds us of Mom, always admonishing us to wear clean underwear, just in case you were in an accident. Except that Tootsie's more entertaining.
http://www.amazingsocks.com/

Online Albums

OK, you've shot your masterpieces. Now, where do you put them so that you can share them with friends (or at least recover them when the candles you lit for last night's ambiance burn your house to the ground)? This place has information on nearly three dozen online image storage sites, some useful, others not. (Why waste your time with a site that allows you to store a maximum of six images?) Many of the sites listed cost nothing; Kodak and Sony are cited as notable exceptions (despite some contradicting notation). If you're looking for a place to back up your photos before you pack them and the negatives inadequately together in a single box and send them across the world, here's a good starting point for comparison shopping, although it'd be greatly improved if it were better organized. Worth a long look, in any case.
http://www.andromeda.com/people/ddyer/photo/albums.html

Formosa Free Translation Service

A site straight from Taiwan, the Free Translation Service will take your poetry, baby name, or any phrase you send them and translate it into Chinese Bi-hu writing. You don't get an instant online translation; you have to e-mail your selection in, but the work is done by people so the Chinese actually says what you asked for, unlike occasionally dodgy machine translation. Your words come back as a GIF file, and judging by the posted quotes requested by other visitors - "you look like a frog", "I drink too much", "sexual chocolate" - they'll translate anything. Submitted poetry and a list of translated baby names complete the site. Wonder what the Taiwanese think of names like Bubba and LaWanda?
http://www.formosa-kingdom.com/tns/


Netsurfer Recommendations

Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
J. K. Rowling
Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine; ISBN: 0439139597

The latest and possibly the best in the runaway best-seller series about the teenaged wizard Harry. Word is that over half a million books were pre-printed in anticipation of heavy demand, with Amazon.com pre-orders accounting for about half of those. Fans need no incentive to pick up this latest installment, a slightly darker and more moody addition to the Harry Potter corpus. If you haven't yet fallen under the spell of this amusing and well written series of books you should give the first one - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, at least in the US - a try.



From Dawn to Decadence - 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to Present
Jacques Barzun
Harpercollins; ISBN: 0060175869

Take a whirlwind tour of the last 500 years of culture and civilization and wind up in what Barzun calls the decadent present. The dictionary defines "decadent" as "marked by decay or decline". Truth be told, pundits have been decrying the decay and decline of culture at least as far back as the ancient Greeks. Barzun does not entirely condemn modern culture, making the point that there is much in our cultural tradition which deserves strenuous efforts at preservation. This is an amazingly readable work for an 800-page book - don't be put off by its length or subject matter. Even if you don't care a whit about history we're fairly sure you'll still find this an entertaining read.



Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech
Paulina Borsook
Public Affairs; ISBN: 1891620789

Slightly leftist liberal Paulina Borsook takes a look at the slightly-to-the-left-of-Bakunin libertarian culture of the digerati and finds it wanting. Yes, she did write for Wired, but did not necessarily shave her political legs with Wired's razor edge. Wit, passion, and flashy glimpses into shards of techie lives make this a fun ride, and a good read for culture geeks.



Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings

Microsoft

Whatever Microsoft's faults may be, one must give the company credit for turning out some fine game software. This sequel to the generally well received Age of Empires is a top notch entry in the real time strategy game category. Beautiful graphics, improved game play, and an engrossing series of campaigns make it a well deserved best seller. This is a high-quality game of surprising depth and complexity, something not always associated with Microsoft. Highly recommended.



ONLINE TRAVEL

Coney Island Memories

Nathan's, Steeplechase Park, the Parachute - Coney Island was the nation's premier amusement area for many decades. From the turn of the century (1900, that is) until after World War II, New Yorkers went to Coney Island by the millions for pleasure and to cool off in the Atlantic in those pre-air-conditioning summers. This Web site uses historical documents to recreate as much of that past as it can. It works to a surprising degree. While the atmosphere and aroma (oh, that aroma of franks and sea air) are missing, anyone who was there in its heyday can look at this site for a while, close their eyes and be transported back.
http://naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/coneyisland/index.html

Climbing above the Earth...

Some born-again rock climbers would say scaling Tammy Faye Bakker's Face is pure heaven. Less evangelistic rockers might prefer Gimme Shelter or Kings of Rap for an afternoon of punishing entertainment. Find precise maps and photos of these and other climbing trails on Morning Glory Wall in Oregon's Smith Rock State Park. This is one of the best climbing parks in the country, offering more than 1,000 trails on a 3,000-foot desert plateau surrounded by spectacular scenery. And all for three bucks a day. The site gives the kind of thorough, interesting, useful information which can only be provided by true believers.
http://www.smithrock.com/

...And Below It

Ever want to just go crawl into a cave somewhere? Here's a great way to learn about cave exploration before you get down and dirty. You'll find good info here, including a state-by-state guide to caves open for public exploration. The guide is by no means all-inclusive; it omits a number of accessible caves. It does, however, cover many of the high points such as Utah's Timpanogos Cave National Monument (helpful voice of experience: don't do that one with toddlers) and the Oregon Caves National Monument. In many cases, the site explores both below-ground and ground-level options. It correctly notes that the US has some of the most spectacular caves for the casual visitor to be found on the planet. The site offers excellent information for first-timers and family visits, with material that more experienced spelunkers will find useful, as well. Speleothem? Say what? This place will tell you. They even offer some solid photo tips.
http://www.goodearthgraphics.com/virtcave.html

Historical Maps and Images from the Library of Congress

Leave it to the Library of Congress to team up with a computer graphics company to turn a cache of rare historic maps into beautiful objects of art available to anyone with an Internet connection. These maps of North America include panoramic views of scores of cities dating from 1847 through 1929, battlefields from several wars, and topographical and environmental representations. A high-resolution scanning method that allows close-up zooms and minute detail results in top-notch images. Although you can use it as a reference resource, the site is actually a commercial outlet for the company Historical Art, which sells two sizes of printed maps - 36-inch-tall and 54-inch-tall - in various widths. Prices vary from just below $100 to about $250.
http://www.historicalart.net/

Saving Wales

Wales has been occupied by the Romans, Saxons, Jutes, Mercians, Angles, and Normans. Wales has needed a lot of castles. Brits are quite matter-of-fact about living in 400-year-old homes or having an 11th century ruin just down the road from the pub, even if visiting North Americans are often amazed by how old things are. The Castles of Wales page lovingly presents 400 castles in Wales, with histories and beautiful, if smallish, photographs. Series of pictures let you take virtual tours of Raglan Castle in South Wales and 13th century Dolwyddelan in the north. There's even a version of the site in Welsh. Croeso!
http://www.castlewales.com/home.html

FLOTSAM & JETSAM

Korean War Remembered

Technically, it was a police action undertaken on behalf of the United Nations. This Web site welcomes all who fought and remembers those who died. It's not history in any traditional sense. You can search lists of casualties, discuss POWs and MIAs in forums, and view a growing collection of unit histories.
http://www.koreanwar.org/

Non-Stop Be Bop

Swing's had its fling, now be bop once again cops a spot in the non-stop pop parade. Hear jazz vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, the Boswell Sisters - the homepage promises contemporary jazz vocalists, although we didn't hear any. Be Bop Radio streams using Real Player 8 and Winamp.
http://www.bebopradio.com/

Have a Laugh Over Lunch

Need a break at work? Visit Modern Humorist for a satirical, irreverent look at practically everything. Visit Ask Jeez to get answers to all those burning questions before you reach the inner circle or get your copy of "J: The Jerry Magazine" before it hits the stands.
http://www.modernhumorist.com/

Legal Briefs

Each week, Brief Reporter features a previously litigated high profile case, such as the Hunter Tylo v. Aaron Spelling "Melrose Place" pregnancy discrimination suit. Good design makes it easy to search the site by keyword or law firm to track down briefs from just about any area of law.
http://www.briefreporter.com/

All Your Web Site's Stats, All the Time

This decent JavaScript counter applet will count your Web traffic and collect non-personal information (only, per their privacy policy) such as sending domain and browser used. You can easily access your stats via the Web. The downside? The company is data-mining the stats and may sell or use them.
http://thecounter.com/

Domain Names for Sale

We recently searched the Web for the best and cheapest domain registration we could find. We found BuyDomains.com, which charges a mere $17 per year. Bulk discounts are available as well. Thought you should know.
http://buydomains.com/

SOFTWARE

Copernic Us

Copernic consults multiple Internet search engines on the premise that since no engine currently indexes the entire Web, the odds of relevant data being uncovered will increase as the number of engines consulted grows. And you don't need to know anything about Boolean logic to use it. You can phrase your query in plain English (or five other languages), and Copernic attempts to find an answer. So far, pretty standard. But the software also validates the results and removes most dead links, and so presents a cleaner and leaner list of live, potentially relevant links. There's an interesting concept. Unlike some other search software, you have to download this product, and install it to your system. A fair number of users seem to feel that it's worth the time and trouble, so who are we to quibble? The base product is free, after all. The download weighs in at around 2.5 MB. Small price to pay, as we see it. PC and Mac versions are free; upgrades to various versions with added features start at about $30.
http://www.copernic.com/products/free/

Online Schedule Parser

Getting tired of trying to match up your dayplanner with everyone else's? This Web-based meeting scheduler/reminder service employs color and a scheduling matrix to compare your availability with those of your co-workers. When all participants have input their schedules, the software parses the information to generate a matrix showing the best times for all participants. The results easily update to reflect changes in any participant's schedule. A free version allows up to 10 participants to be scheduled per event; more participants and events can be scheduled by purchasing a one-year license, which adds other features as well. The format is easy to use, and seems ideal for setting up teleconferencing or videoconferencing among widely scattered participants.
http://www.jovialgenie.com/

CORRECTIONS

Don't Hold a Grudge, Vote on One

In the (incorrectly spelled like ye, because some people like to pretend there's still the letter "thorn" in English which was pronounced "th" but sort of superficially resembles a "y" and so which is sometimes imitated in the spelling "ye", but which should always be pronounced "the" and never ever "ye", unlike the old English "ye" for you, which has an actual "y" and is pronounced "ye") days of yore, i.e. NSD 4.21, we brought you the World Wide Web Fights, which moved a while back. It's now here.
http://www.thefunniest.com/grudge/

Cracked! Complete

In NSD 6.21, we told you about an ongoing story on Unix Web site RootPrompt.org that told the tale of one sysadmin dealing with a cracker invading his network. The story finally has all seven installments online. It's a great piece of storytelling, and a cautionary tale for anyone running a computer network.
http://www.rootprompt.org/article.php3?article=635

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