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| Early History of Data Networks |
| About Internet Security |
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| Film (and TV) Monthly |
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| The Not Lurid SexNews Daily |
| Josie and the Pussycats' Twin Peaks |
| Jon-Jon Looks at Jon-Jon |
| Fun with Particle Physics |
| The Addictive Java Spring Toy |
| Riding a Rubber Band into the Sky |
| Web Browser for Not Yet Ex-Parrots |
| ZooTV |
| ORBS/MAPS Article Move |
| Womanlinks - Uh, Wimynlynx - Uh, Womynlynks |
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BREAKING SURF
Napster Sucked Back from the Brink, Usage Skyrockets
An old saying holds that whether you receive good or bad publicity doesn't matter as long as they spell your name right. Nothing could be truer for Napster. About a day after we went to press last week with the news that Napster was under injunction to shut down (such are the hazards of being a weekly e-zine), the courts granted a reprieve to the service, allowing it to keep operating. Just after the original injunction was announced, traffic at Napster went way, way up. Nielson/NetRatings has the numbers, which show that the number of Napster software downloads doubled following the injunction, while between July 25 and 28, the number of unique visitors to their site jumped from 443,070 to 849,196 per day.Napster: http://www.napster.com/
Nielson-NetRatings: http://63.140.238.20/press_releases/pr_000731.htm
Injunction: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-2426706-0.html
US Postal Service Thinking About Offering E-Mail Services
It's a bit vaporous for now - no specific timeline, they're just thinking about it, yadda, yadda, yadda - but the US Postal Service (USPS) has clearly launched a trial balloon to get some feedback on the concept. The USPS hinted it would like to offer free e-mail accounts linked to residential street addresses. It's also considering an e-mail forwarding service for people without Net connections. The big concern? Spam. Should some uniform standard for addressing e-mail to a household develop, spammers will salivate with delight as 120 million new and easily determined e-mail addresses become available. As long as you're visiting the USPS Web site, here's a trivium: The USPS sponsored champion Lance Armstrong's team in the Tour de France.USPS: http://new.usps.com/cgi-bin/uspsbv/scripts/front.jsp
USPS Cycling: http://www.uspsprocycling.com/
Apple Sues Unknown Posters for Leaking Insider Info
The media has jumped all over reports that Apple wants to sue employees and others who leaked news of its recent product announcements - specifically the dual processor G4 - on the Net. The company is serious enough that it has served subpoenas on Yahoo, on whose GeoCities Web page hosting service the news appeared. Watch this story, as it features the juicy themes of recent Internet culture battles - anonymity, privacy, corporate control of information, free speech, and lawsuits - always lawsuits. CNet has the developing story.http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-2427944.html
Perhaps understandably, eBay doesn't like automated webcrawlers pulling information from its site and aggregating it with results from other auction sites. Last December, eBay sued Bidder's Edge to stop its doing so, and recently won an injunction against the practice. Bidder's Edge still searches eBay's site, but now it displays those results in a separate window. The legal battles haven't all gone eBay's way, as it failed to persuade a judge to dismiss Bidder's Edge's antitrust countersuit. As well, 28 legal experts have filed a joint statement in defense of Bidder's Edge, claiming that enforcing "no trespass" rules at Web sites clearly and indisputably opposes the public interest. Notably, they claim, "The Constitution has built into it a balance between the public interest and intellectual property protections," a notion we've harped on a couple of times. Wired has the story in full, and the comments about this legal tiff on the Bidder's Edge site are worth reading. too.
eBay: http://www.ebay.com/
Bidder's Edge: http://www.biddersedge.com/home.jsp
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37643,00.html
The sharing revolution spreads from music to needlepoint patterns, and perhaps soon to knitting and crocheting. As the LA Times reports, the folks who sell needlepoint patterns at fancy prices aren't happy about the rising numbers of users who share said patterns over the Internet. Industry spokespeople claim that sales and revenue have dropped as outright theft and copyright violation run rampant. The needlepoint pirates see it merely as sharing with friends. Many stitchers claim to live in rural areas that lack stores with a decent selection of patterns and say sharing is the only way to get patterns they like. Predictably, there's talk of lawsuits, the depressingly familiar knee-jerk reaction to any threat of user-driven change. And the industry is poisoning the air with talk of spies and insiders tattling on file-sharers. This looks likes stale business practices bumping against users who want a better system - and it's just going to get worse. Isn't it time someone listened, really listened, to users and innovated instead of calling the lawyers?
http://www.latimes.com/news/front/20000801/t000072072.html
Just How Indestructible Is the Internet?
For a readable and intensely interesting paper on the robustness of the Internet, invest 15 minutes in the Nature article "Error and attack tolerance of complex networks". The brief abstract and accompanying article give excellent definitions of various network topologies and draw some interesting parallels between natural networks and the human-made kind. Any malicious hacker scheming to take down the global communications network will definitely want to brush up on the theory behind why scale-free networks exhibit such high error tolerance. Similarly, you might also want to know that with only four percent of the highly connected nodes on the Internet disabled, a wholesale loss of integrity renders the Internet a series of fractured and isolated domains.Abstract: http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v406/n6794/full/406378a0_fs.html
Paper: http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v406/n6794/full/406353a0_fs.html
All about Power (Not Electrical) in Silicon Valley
The San Jose Mercury News, the newspaper of Silicon Valley, is running a series of stories about power and the people who wield it. Once every ten years, the newspaper interviews leaders in politics, business, labor, academia, and philanthropy in an attempt to determine who holds power and how it manifests itself. Not surprisingly, tech CEOs crop up again and again. Surprisingly, however, the Merc contends that while there was clear consensus on who the powerful were, they do not form any kind of cohesive group. Excellent insight into the valley with a tempered historical perspective.http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/special/power/
There may not have been a Sgt. Pepper, but there sure were military guys named Bader, Johnson, and Galland having at it. This summer marks the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and in recognition of the fight, the RAF is reliving it day by day. Every day, the RAF posts fairly comprehensive daily summaries of the weather, raids, victories and losses that occurred on the same day in 1940. In addition to the reports, the RAF provides aircraft specs, info on its units and stations, and plenty of photographs. As a certain Prime Minister said on Aug. 20, 1940: Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/bobhome.html
It's the Story of Nine Survivors...
Take "Survivor". Take "The Brady Bunch". Slam 'em together and release the white-hot light of creative Webitude. The first character voted out of Palau Suburbia was little Cindy Brady, helped along by campaigning by actress Susan Olsen, who played her. Any site that manages to accurately tweak both "Survivor" and "The Brady Bunch" is worth a look. Meanwhile, back at SurvivorSucks.com (see last issue), the humble programmers admit that "Survivor" producer Mark Burnett has played them like a fiddle, leading them on with false clues and planted images and thoroughly confusing them: "So what's up for next week? Obviously, we haven't a clue."Brady: http://tv.zap2it.com/shows/features/bradybunch/
SurvivorSucks.com http://survivorsucks.com/
ONLINE CULTURE
Potemkin Businesses: The Saga of Furniture.com
Everybody's heard stories of e-commerce businesses getting sucked under by the rip tide of the reversing online economy. CNet has one particular story, that of online retailer Furniture.com. The opening image of the story is particularly memorable: workers pretending to be busy in their call center while venture capitalists tour the company. The amazing thing is it worked. Furniture.com scored $27 million in capital, but even with that in the bank, the future of the company seems somewhat bleak. The story unfolds, of a company that had no control over its business, whose IPO went bust, and whose employees and management slowly succumbed to creeping paranoia. A good article, and almost a business school case study in the making. What's a Potemkin business, you ask? Check out the link, and no - it has nothing to do with the battleship.Story: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-201-2295320-0.html
Potemkin: http://wilson.ctstateu.edu/lib/news/f1997/10fall97.html
DeCSS Trial: Source Code T-Shirts and the Futility of Censorship
Some compelling testimony in the DeCSS trial illustrates the difficulty of controlling speech even in such esoteric forms as computer programs. As you may recall, the trial is about a piece of software that can decode DVD encryption. The movie industry is suing the coders and Web sites which linked to the app, saying they violated copyrights and other laws. Testimony from Carnegie Mellon professor David Touretzky graphically illustrated for the judge the difficulty of banning a program like DeCSS. Slashdot has the transcript of the relevant passages, which basically points out that source code can be posted on a T-shirt and is therefore speech and so subject to free speech protection. Banning such code would ultimately also ban people from wearing certain T-shirts in public. The T-shirt with the source code of DeCSS in question came from an outfit called CopyLeft.Transcript: http://slashdot.org/yro/00/08/01/129205.shtml
T-shirt: http://www.copyleft.net/item.phtml?dynamic=1&referer=%2F&page=product_276_back.phtml
Early History of Data Networks
Gerard Holzmann and Bjorn Pehrson have composed an imaginative and alternative explanation for today's communications technologies. To most people, the Internet in its many forms has evolved from nothing more than some neat computer tricks developed in the last 30 years or so. Little do they know.... Even technically primitive cultures took advantage of the innovations of their times to overcome the physical barriers of location - look at smoke signals or carrier pigeons, or even Phidippides. The authors have posted a grand overview of the history of data transport and the trends within it that still manifest themselves. Packets of information, whether carried by an out-of-breath courier or flying down a fiber optic cable, retain an uncommon similarity.http://www.it.kth.se/docs/early_net/toc.html
Hideaway.net, a Net security content and service provider, would like to sell you their services. To entice you into buying, it offers a useful site on Windows 98 security (a subject big enough to warrant its own section), server security, anti-virus software and issues, and all manner of privacy software and issues. The up-to-date content lets you find relevant material easily. As broadband Net access proliferates, security issues increase dramatically in importance. Drop in here, educate yourself, and just maybe save yourself a great deal of grief down the road.
http://www.hideaway.net/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Picasso, Matisse, Braque and other Western European artists inspire the canvases of Richard Baumgart. His Whiteoyster Art gallery reflects a set of personal influences, along with diversions from those more common artistic sources. Still life, landscapes, and scenes of people hint at how he is able to extend a single idea to encompass the variety of objects around it. The creative art of Baumgart, both imaginative and colorful, is a novel way to usher the human psyche into a new century. A wide range of the work is available for viewing at the Whiteoyster Art site, and most pieces can be purchased.http://www.whiteoyster1111.com/
True to the spirit of other online projects, the Centro di Ricerca e Archiviazione della Fotografia (Center for the Research and Recording of Photography; CRAF) endeavors to bring photographic artwork to the general public. The site offers simple access to work both old and new, allowing users to peruse a variety of art from the comfort of their own computer screens. In addition to its archived displays, CRAF provides a home to the Spilimbergo Photography 2000 exhibits until September 17. Spilimbergo, a small town in Italy, began in the 1950s an initiative with a group of young and enthusiastic photographers that continues to issue a remarkable collection of works. The CRAF site exhibits a large number of photographs from some of those artists, past and present.
http://www.agemont.it/CRAF/
We expect a brief site description at the top of a home page. Film Monthly acquiesces: "Reviews, commentary, and regurgitations on film, video, television, and popular culture." If you like mainstream, you'll probably like Film Monthly. We do. We went straight to the Now Playing section, where we found 39 reviews including those of "Gladiator", "But I'm a Cheerleader", and "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle". The reviewers have various backgrounds - Robin Effron, for instance, is a graduate student of philosophy and political science in Manhattan; Jon Bastian (one of the three site publishers), a playwright and screenwriter in Los Angeles. Their well-rounded reviews, usually six or eight meaty paragraphs enriched with small still shots, are reflective and engaging. You finish each review with the pleasant thought that the reviewer has no axe to grind or attitude to strut, even if he or she has strong opinions. In addition to the film commentaries, we also recommend the TV, film noir, silent-cinema, and horror pages.
http://www.filmmonthly.com/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
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Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters, 4th Edition
Flashman and the Tiger
Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain
Ranhttp://www.sexnewsdaily.com/
Josie and the Pussycats' Twin Peaks
The designers of "Regeneration, Now!" liken it to "Twin Peaks" meets "Josie and the Pussycats". This multi-part MPEG/slideshow noir has a mysterious blonde, a secret conspiracy, a tricycle, and an innocent bystander - or is he? - named Joe with a knack for getting shot. It's told in seven acts of black-and-white, with the occasional sound effect and MPEG commercial thrown in, ending in a musical, technicolor (by comparison) Monkee-romp of a finale - or is it? Call it an interactive videogame of a college film course final project version of a '50s beach movie, or bring your own pop culture references and see it for yourself.http://www.cyberserial.com/
The Jon-Jon Diaries is the daily journal of a 30-year-old gay writer/designer living in Milwaukee who writes his life for all to see, even the gloomy bits - in fact, especially the gloomy bits. We were so cheered by learning that others have eaten dodgy food from their fridge and suffered the consequences that we kept reading. That's how we found that Jon-Jon admits to pee stains on his pants and being bitter about other people's flashy lifestyles. He grows on you, not unlike a goiter, despite his justified claims of self-indulgence which are curiously the best bits.
http://www.johnkusch.com/jonjon/
SURFING SCIENCE
The Big Bang. Antimatter. Other dimensions. Huge scientific concepts such as these - and the entertainment media that exploit them - depend on knowledge of physics. How can parents and teachers explain such complicated subjects to children, one another, and us? The Particle Adventure walks you through the theories of fundamental particles and forces and experimental evidence. With short, illustrated pages designed to present chunks of information in a nonintimidating fashion, it answers questions such as "What is the world made of?" and "How do we know any of this?" You don't have to be Einstein to appreciate this site, which is sponsored by the Particle Data Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and supported with federal funds. Scientists will consider it simplistic in the extreme, since its focus is educational. What's a quark? A fermion? A lepton? A boson? For a quick search, try the site map or pop-up glossary. The Particle Adventure is multilingual with mirror sites in Switzerland, United Kingdom, Japan, Russia, and Brazil.http://www.particleadventure.org/
There ought to be a law against this site. It's addictive. Too interactive. It lets you customize stick figures in Java applets and move them around with your mouse. All in the name of math, or creativity, or something. Call that fun? Get furious! Where are the Net police when you need them to protect kids and impressionable souls from this insidious animated fluff? The Society to Stamp Out Creativity is going to hear about this, believe you me. Simulate? Construct? Gravity on? Gravity off? Dirkjiggler with free mass - what the heck's that? Is this what we want our kids to be doing the rest of their lives? This vector stuff may not be as innocent as you think. Someone may be tracking your every click and drag. Commie pinkos took good ol' American Playdoh and turned it into one computerized slithering daintywalker electronic alien moonwalking reptile hairycaterpillar pet pushbutton watersnake sodaconstructor flamingo after another, damn it! Next thing you know this puppy will have voice. Shrieks. Screams. Oh, yeah, this is how riots start!
http://sodaplay.com/index.htm
Riding a Rubber Band into the Sky
Remember when you were a kid and had a balsa wood airplane with a propeller powered by a rubber band? Check this out. It's a 33-foot-long, single-seat, rubber-band-powered airplane - yup, really. Ideally, it'll have more control than our little contraptions ever did. In any event, there is a plan afoot to launch the device. The Rubber Bandit Project (RBP) has spent half-a-million dollars on it so far, although at press time, the FAA had yet to approve the design and construction. The RBP hopes to fly this thing at around 30 mph to an altitude of about 100 feet for at least a minute. Well, hope can be a powerful thing. Overall, the site is fairly sparse, offering an opportunity for somebody to plunk down $2500 for a sponsorship and selling sure-to-be-collectible shirts, mousepads, and similar trinkets. The site also features about half-a-dozen photos of the project.http://www.rubberbandit.com/
Web Browser for Not Yet Ex-Parrots
Wart is a 20-month-old African grey parrot. At MIT, two projects - termed Pet Projects - are trying to help Wart out with his more bothersome psychological tendencies. The first project, Interpet Explorer, wants to build systems that can help relieve what the scientists call the social isolation and associated behavioral difficulties that affect many of the over one million pet parrots kept in the United States. In simpler words, it helps a pet browse the Net. The developers hope Wart will be able to interactively chat with humans, play video games, or change the color balance on an LCD monitor. We bet he's just going to end up surfing for pictures of parrots with beautiful plumage. Serial TrHacking, the second Pet Project, is trying to prove that parrots can transfer knowledge from one context to another. Some day, the scientists hope, Wart will be able to comprehend the use of a key on a keyboard, and maybe even do some rudimentary programming. Polly be a cracker....http://www.media.mit.edu/~benres/parrot/index.html
The National Zoo in Washington, DC is overseen by the Smithsonian Institute and is a large operation. Thus, this link runs you through the Smithsonian, which takes you via what they call ZooTV to a number of cams at the zoo. Some offer chat capability (though we didn't test that feature). We stopped by to look in on the elephants, flamingo, kiwi, komodo dragon, and naked mole rats. We found the latter two fascinating, with live video together with an informative sound track in the case of the dragon. The mole rat cam is placed at an apparently strategic intersection of three tunnels, so there's usually something going on there. Mole rats have been described as (ahem) "a penis with buck teeth", and looking at the images, we'd be the last to disagree. This cam presents nice views of the only mammal that lives like ants and bees, and can chew through cement. So much for the upside; now for the down: the other three cams we surveyed were either dead or in critical condition. James Herriot, where are you?
http://zootv1.si.edu/
CORRECTIONS
In an article containing way too many abbreviations ("Spam Fighter Wars: ORBS Accuses MAPS of Blackholing Traffic", NSD 6.25 - which can be confused with NSD 6.29, apparently), we referred y'all to an article in DirectMag, which has since been archived. It's at:http://www.directmag.com/content/newsline/2000/2000071701.htm.
Womanlinks - Uh, Wimynlynx - Uh, Womynlynks
In NSD 4.20, we rambled on about naked women in chocolate or something, and mentioned in passing a Web site named Womynlynks, which has since moved.http://www.geocities.com/womynlynks/