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| On Moderation |
| Semantic Attacks (and a Cake Recipe) |
| Burn, Baby, Burn |
| Wine Travel |
| Edinburgh Festivals - Internet and Otherwise |
| In Budapest, You Stoop and Scoop |
| Consumer Complaints |
| IOU Tracker |
| Netscape 6, Preview 3, Shopping XXX |
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BREAKING SURF
At press time, this was clearly the most important developing story in the world. Yugoslavia may have entered the throes of revolution against the Milosevic regime. As a weekly (more or less) publication, we can't do much about breaking coverage, but we can point you to the American perspective of CNN, which archives the unfolding news. The BBC is as usual also on top of the storye. News junkies who want journalism closer to the action would do well to start at the Yuguide Web site, which has extensive links to European and Yugoslavian news sources.CNN: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/yugo.crisis/
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_depth/europe/2000/yugoslav_elections/default.stm
Yuguide: http://www.yuguide.com/
The story of space station Mir's fungal infection has been making the rounds of the major media outlets, mostly because of its high icky-yet-comfortably-remote horror factor. Nevertheless, it vividly illustrates how little we really understand about living in space even after 40 years of strapping people to large amounts of explosives and sending them up there. Mold is seriously eroding Mir, and scientist are trying to find out why. This Boston Globe article takes a good look at the situation and examines why the problem is worthy of all the attention. We'd be seriously remiss if we didn't also point out MykoWeb, a Web site devoted to the science of mycology. While heavily mushroom-centric (check out the recipe for huitlacoche soup), it also makes a fine starting point for learning about smaller fungi. Great links, too.
Boston Globe: http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/275/nation/Astronauts_vs_fungus+.shtml
MykoWeb: http://www.mykoweb.com/
New Top Level Domain Applications List
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has just released the list of applicants who'd like to sponsor new top level domains (TLDs). Along with a list of applicants, another list indicates which TLDs each applicant would like to offer. Of course, several want to sell .biz, .web, .kids, and .sex domain names. More esoteric but quite applicable TLDs include .air from the Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques, .dir by Novell, .geo by SRI International, .health by the World Health Organization, and .mobile by Nokia. Only one company, NeuStar, had the audacity to ask for the .dot TLD.http://www.icann.org/tlds/tld-applications-lodged-02oct00.htm
While ICANN is dealing with new top level domains (TLDs), it is also in the midst of an election campaign. A number of candidates vying for election to North America's Internet governing body gathered for a town-meeting-style debate. This being the Internet, you can find the transcripts and video of the gathering online. If you're interested in some of the hot topics in Internet governance - new TLDs, domain name dispute resolution, undue big business influence on the Net - then this archive of candidates' views will interest you. These are the people who will have a large voice in how the Net evolves.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/candidateforum/archive.asp
The imminent release of Playstation 2 (late October, last we heard) is prompting lust among the techies, and not only for its impressive hardware. This speculative article looks at the very real possibility of porn on the Playstation. After all, the box does play DVDs - and X-rated material drives a decent chunk of DVD sales. Let's not forget all those adult computer games, either. It's only a matter of time before someone ports an adult game or video to the box. Predictably, pondering the ported porn possibilities and the age of potential Playstation players, the usual suspects have worked themselves into the usual tizzy. Oh, did somebody mention force feedback joysticks? We sure didn't. Nope, not us. Wouldn't bring it up at all.
http://www.foxnews.com/vtech/092700/playstation.sml
Computer science and security mavens will be interested in this interview with Robert Watson, one of the developers of TrustedBSD, an effort to create an open-source operating system that meets the stringent security standards demanded by the likes of national security agencies. The interview touches on licensing, differences between TrustedBSD and OpenBSD (known for its high-security approach to development), integration with other Unix flavors, and the trade-offs inherent in choosing high-security operating systems over something more liberal. It's a good overview of the project and what it means.
http://www.ispworld.com/bw/sep/Unix_Flavor.htm
A Short History and the Murky Future of Gnutella
The vast majority of NSD readers probably know about Gnutella, if not from use then at least from hearing so much about it in the Napster battles. This in-depth Salon article thoughtfully summarizes Gnutella, how it came to be, and where it is heading. Even if you think you know the history of Gnutella, this article will probably be useful. It offers insights into the file sharing program's particular place in the broader context of the intellectual property wars. The article also delves into technical, legal, and cultural problems faced by the entire Gnutella file sharing system. Good, thoughtful journalism.http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/09/29/gnutella_paradox/index.html
Pew Internet Music Trading Study
We've written before about the Pew Internet Project reports on various aspects of online life. The latest research tackles the hot issue of music sharing and what Internet users think about it. The report is based on a survey of users who answered questions about their music-sharing habits and their views of the subject. It concludes, unsurprisingly, that most people don't think sharing music on the Net is stealing. The extensive report has information about music buying habits, new artist sampling through the Net, the kind of playlist people keep, and the appeal of Napster. As usual, read the report for more info, especially if you're a market researcher and cultural historian.http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=23
Background on SDMI and the Hacker Boycott
That's just what you'll find in this article. As we reported last issue, an industry consortium that's trying to come up with a new digital music tracking method decided to offer $10,000 to any enterprising hacker who could strip the watermark from the test music files. In response, numerous hackers and other organizations have called for a boycott of the challenge. This article has the background on the whole situation, particularly on the low morale of some of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) developers. It turns out they're hoping that somebody will break the watermark system. Read the convoluted story in Salon.http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/10/03/hacksdmi_fallout/index.html
Barenaked Trojan Horse on Napster
"You can never trust a Canadian." Talk about a great opening line for a NSD item! The quip comes from Barenaked Ladies drummer Tyler Stewart in a lighthearted jab at Napster users downloading his band's music. The aforementioned downloaders seeking the latest Barenaked Ladies songs are likely to run into a little Trojan horse when they search for the band on Napster. The band flooded the music trading service with files which look and sound like their songs - but only for the first few seconds. After that, the songs turn into tongue-in-cheek advertisements for the band's music. Clearly, it's one of the more original marketing gimmicks in the new connected world. CNN has the story.Story: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/09/18/trojan.music/index.html
Barenaked Ladies: http://www.bnlmusic.com/index.shtml
ONLINE CULTURE
What is the perfect way to moderate online forums? One of the great drawbacks of the modern Net is the high noise ratio in open discussion forums. A lot of idiots out there just want to be heard whether they provide useful debate or not, and often the posts of the demonstrable minority of non-idiots gets drowned out. How then to structure a fair moderation system that gives voice to high-quality posts without being either elitist or arbitrarily repressive? Slashdot worked over that discussion last week in the wake of a post about a new moderation system to be used by another popular discussion forum called Kuro5hin. A meta-discussion about a meta-discussion of a discussion forum is neat, as are some of the meta-moderation systems mentioned along the way (who will moderate the moderators?). In any event, you can read many good posts here on the possibilities of, and problems associated with, forum moderation systems.Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/10/02/0054203.shtml
Kuro5hin: http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2000/9/30/214129/356
Semantic Attacks (and a Cake Recipe)
Net security problems have evolved along a distinct path. First, traditional cracking attacked vulnerable pieces of computer systems or networks. Next, distributed attacks took over zombie machines and made them dance to the tune of a master controller and mount coordinated denial-of-service attacks. The third wave, at least according to this article, is something called semantic attacks. These attack meaning and content. The canonical example is a recent hoax press release that sent the stock of Emulex down about $2.5 billion in value. ZDNet's article brings to light similar examples of this intriguing new category of Net attack. Provocative, even if only for giving online security a new buzzword. Oh, and the cake recipe? You simply must try the Swedish lemon angels.http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2635895,00.html
SURFING SITES
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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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Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings
Done Deals: Venture Capitalists Tell Their Stories
Bluetooth Revealed
Dune-House HarkonnenKrays: http://www.thekrays.co.uk
Sketch: http://www.montypython.net/scripts/piranha.php3
It's unclear how often firefighters check the Web, especially those who battle wildfires for long stretches in the western US. Support teams need to prioritize resources, though, while trying to ensure public safety. Both the anti-blaze coalition and the general public can track wildfires with GeoMAC, a collection of digital maps and satellite images overseen by the US Geological Survey. You could hose down your roof in the time it takes to load the script-driven main map, "Wildfire Information", over an ISDN line, but you can see how such a wait would be negligible from the perspective of someone concerned about the battle zone. Layer controls let you turn on or turn off active fires, cities, roads, bodies of water, county lines, and so forth. We found no realtime images. Now that many of this past summer's fires are extinguished or under control, you may have to search a while for signs of activity. Just wait till next summer....
http://wildfire.usgs.gov/html/geomacpublichome.html
Sick of pop music? You're not the only one. Meet Heavy.com. This little review can't do this site justice. Prepare a drink or six, sit back, relax, and watch. The Christina Aguilera entry in the Behind the Music That Sucks category, in which Christina and Britney Spears go at each other like two terminators, sealed this site's place in NSD. But that's just the tip of the irreverence iceberg. Their Heavy Games include Bitch Slap a Rock Star, Iron Stomach (Tetris gone horribly wrong), and Personal Death Plane, where you decide which rock stars get on a plane bound on a one-way journey. Contagious has a great video clip based on '80s video games, which investigates what happens when the Frogger, Pitfall, and Missile Command generation turns into the generation of "The Matrix". The whole enchilada requires Flash, Shockwave, QuickTime, and the Windows Media Player, but the "Slim" version of the site is still really quite spiff.
http://www.heavy.com/
Stinky Projects' Feet Meet Meat
When last we slithered into this site, we covered but one project, the experimental nurturing of athlete's foot on formerly pristine feet. The author had achieved some success in infecting himself before he bunched it after a mere 15 days, spent another 13 in search of a cure, and moved on to other equally offensive experiments. The site now features two more stinkfests: his original experiment with rotting meat, and another 18-day project featuring half-a-dozen meats in a variety of exotic locales. Well, maybe not that exotic. At least he's not using his neighbor's yard this time. Perhaps he likes his new neighbors better. Tons of photos lurk here, but it's the descriptions that worm their way into your unwilling consciousness. Traditional media is so - well, traditional, but we'll probably pass on any DigiScents plug-in should it ever become available at this site. Be forewarned: there is no redeeming value to be found here.http://www.thespark.com/science/stinkyhome.html
Bemoaning the recent nose-dive in automotive technology accompanying the advent of the SUV, these pages are aimed squarely at the folks who buy these monster gas-hogs with no intention of taking them off-road. These pages harbor some great stuff: a fantasy line of Kenworth SUVs (built on a semi chassis and boasting eight rear wheels for those grueling expeditions to the megamart); a little blurb on relative braking distances; and an intelligent comparison of SUVs with alternative vehicles. Solid information and humor combine to make this site the bane of image-conscious SUV owners, and fun for the rest of us. There's an obligatory selection of hate-mail, but it's obvious that these hateful SUV-lovers are reacting strictly with a knee-jerk directive from the primitive limbic system. When you delve into the details, it becomes apparent that this guy knows his automotive stuff.
http://poseur.4x4.org/
Gentlepeople, Start Your Mowers!
Our reviewer is a city boy (with a rotary reel mower) and was skeptical at first. Turns out that yes, people really do race lawn mowers. It's serious work and well organized. You can join the US Lawn Mower Racing Association at Letsmow.com or just get a list of upcoming meets. The site offers wonderful action photos of people who don't mind looking silly while enjoying themselves and all the tech specs and rules you'll need if you decide to join these fast movers. In case you're wondering, there's one thing a racing lawn mower can't do: cut grass. Cutting blades are too dangerous to be available in the heat of competition.http://www.letsmow.com/
Green Uses for Old Macs and a PC
Old PC and monitor shells have attracted aquarium builders for at least six or seven years. Jim Lower's site documents his adventures in converting a variety of all-in-one Macs and separate monitors into handsome, fully functional aquariums. If you are tempted to recycle your Macs and PC monitors, visit this site to benefit from Jim's leaks and tribulations - although a link to promised plans did not, alas, work at press time. Maybe the data had leaked. Jim also found that the original IBM PC case is perfectly sized to hold a standard cat litter tray. Cats seem to like it, based on the photographic evidence here. Do you think this is a coincidence or a design decision by IBM?http://www.members.home.com/jlower/
At some point, even the most reluctant homeowner has to become a do-it-yourselfer, and so there's a large potential audience for HomeProject.Com, which warns you on its splash page that it's optimized for fast connections. The FAQ provides a good overview for visitors who may wonder what the site wants to sell. Another good place to start is the First-Time Users area, which contains three 1.3-MB Windows applications for download: Garden Designer, Room Designer, and Room Layout. Constructive thinkers who register can save projects they create with these 3-D apps, collaborate with fellow home improvers, and use other HomeProject.Com services. The My Projects area lets you save projects and get advice. There are also home-safety articles, a How-To Library (which covers carpentry, electricity, painting, and other topics), and a tools library to help you identify common tools. As the Flash tour cleverly reminds you, ""We all have rooms for improvement."
http://www.homeproject.com/
Token ring finals, browser compatibility relay, mouse pad gymnastics, bubble jet skiing - if such events exist, they probably exist only in Sydney, S.D., the home of the imaginary Information Technology Olympics 2000. This tight spoof site may provide a chuckle, especially if you're in that small cross-section of those who like computer technology and sports. Links across the top of the page and under Headlines provide amusing error messages which we feel are just as entertaining as the faux tech events. These parodies will ring bells with end-users and support staff annoyed and perplexed by real error messages from buggy systems. We clicked the search button and were told: "Something very bad just happened. Go back and do not do it again."
http://www.itolympics.org/
As most everyone realized during the recently concluded 27th Olympiad, Australia is a sports-crazed nation. This site, the home of an Australian comic, suggests 21 new Olympic sports, many of which would have been far more exciting to watch than much of the drivel NBC televised. Among the medal worthy sports worth your time are the 30-second toilet dash, synchronized bubble bath, and the always-popular laundry triathlon. Readers, invited to add their favorite sports, have already proposed some excellent ideas. Most sports here are strong on concept and weak on rules. All are drug-free, unlike some others we've watched recently. Look for many of these events in the 28th Olympiad, to be held in 2004 in Athens.
http://www.gorskys.com.au/articles/home-olympics.html
On one hand, animals, especially poultry, are treated less than kindly by the food industry. Go visit a chicken plant if you don't believe that. Unfortunately, people like animal activist Karen Davis and groups like United Poultry Concerns who protest that cruelty tend to sound like kooks. When they say, "A chicken is as sensitive as you or I. They make wonderful companions," call for protests against Danny Glover for hosting an art exhibit sponsored by Purdue, or run a chicken sanctuary in Virginia so that people can see "what a chicken can be when a chicken is free", they aren't doing themselves any favors. Davis's group seems to just cross the fence of rationality but on the other hand - er, wing - you gotta believe in something. (PS - Keep those cards and letters coming!)
http://www.upc-online.org/
You may not find the T-shirt you're looking for but you'll certainly find a few you haven't seen at Howard Besser's T-Shirt Database, built by Howard Besser and students of library science at UC Berkeley. You can search through 533 T-shirt graphics by keyword. For a quick look at site contents, hit the Display All Subjects link at the bottom of the home page. Anarchism, humor, "bearded man smoking marijuana" - each topic has thumbnail and full-size images of T-shirt art and, in many cases, a date and brief description. You won't find NFL or NBA knockoffs here. We found no FAQ or introduction, so we aren't sure how you're supposed to use these graphics, or whether you can legally reproduce and distribute them on T-shirts of your own. We guess the site is either a project in building a graphics database or a research tool for those who want to write a thesis about T-shirts.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/T-Shirts/
The Shallow End of the Memepool
Despite the sketchy descriptors, these links can be rather interesting. When we took a dive into the Memepool, the first topic under discussion was volcanism. Ten links in one paragraph led us to a hodgepodge of sites. Some were yawners but others had the potential to scare the peewads out of ya. This was followed by a bit of Mission Statement nonsense, a discussion of George Orwell's "Animal Farm", and a wide range of eclectic links touching upon everything from attack monkeys in France to ghost photos in Chicago. There's a lot in here, but it'd be nicer with a bit more guidance; with some additional work, this place can pull together and winnow out the chaff. Certainly, it's still worth a bookmark for now, but when you click on the link, you just can't be sure what you'll find - although eventually, you'll find something of interest.http://memepool.five-elements.com/
Improve Your Random Knowledge and Enjoy Doing It
BeastLair.com offers a wide range of features, games, fun, and polls. It emphasizes entertainment and will amuse you, we bet. Efficient design gets you to what you want to view quickly and easily, and also keeps you surfing within the site. The ratio of great pages to clunkers is high - you may never find a crap page except, perhaps, in the list of the day's top news stories. Anchoring the Features is an excellent Jokes section, a list of sites that offer users cash rewards for various actions (Cash Flow), good message boards, and free e-mail. There are also some attractive and properly attitudinal (i.e. rude) desktop images for Mac OS users.http://www.beastlair.com/
Usenet Replayer Releases Usenet Binaries
Can't find the Usenet binary you're looking for at Deja? Try Usenet Replayer, where searching for a particular file format - .wav, .jpeg, or .mpeg, for example - is as easy as clicking in a menu of radio buttons. Before you download a file from the search results page, F-Secure software checks for viruses. You may not want your kids to find this site, even though it claims to only allow access to certain adult newsgroups for five hours after midnight. Some users will like this site because it does not require registration and thus lets you remain anonymous as you scrounge for freebies in the somewhat nonstandard English. If you view one of the newsgroup albums of thumbnail images, be prepared to wait while a lot of thumbnails download.http://www.usenet-replayer.com/archive.html
Learning to improve English language skills seems to be a growing online practice. English has become the de-facto tool of commerce, air-traffic control, and other critical applications. This site's been around for a while, drawing students from all around the globe. They offer free tests of skills and several flavors of courses. The tests are fun, but it would be nice if they told you what you scored incorrectly on, rather than simply giving a percentage score (we placed as "advanced", but who's counting?). We'd have preferred knowing what question we missed, so that we could haggle with them. Opportunity lost. So it goes. If you're looking to brush up on your English skills, or just garner an idea as to where you stand in the great linguistic scheme of things, this place is worth your time.
http://www.englishtown.com/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Burning Man may be over for this year, but for those jonesing for it from home and those of us who don't make it, Patrick Roddie posts galleries of the photographs he's taken there each year since 1998, which prove how visually striking the event is. Let us warn you that Burning Man, and photographs thereof, involves the occasional naked person. The bright colors of the tents, the bodies silhouetted against the desert by the flames, and other photoscapes are stunning in their vibrancy and movement, which must be just a fraction of the vibrancy and movement of the actual event.Burning Man: http://www.burningman.org/
Patrick: http://www.webbery.com/
Back when we were younger, there was a name for people who planned excursions around procuring alcohol: drunks. Now that we're more sophisticated, we know them as wine connaisseurs, and if you happen to be one of these mobile imbibers, there might be no better place for you than Travel Envoy's Wine Guide. A tart yet unassuming section of a travel guide to Australia and New Zealand, this is a remarkably exhaustive directory of wineries around the world, listing addresses, varieties, and special events for more than 5,000 vineyards. You can even hunt down non-alcoholic wine and beer producers and kosher wine makers, browse links to 58 breweries, and discover what cheeses go with which wines. We suggest opening the Web page and letting it breathe first.
http://www.travelenvoy.com/wine.htm
Edinburgh Festivals - Internet and Otherwise
August and September are a magical time in Scotland. Aside from being the brief moment when it's actually warm, the Edinburgh International Arts Festival and its younger, wilder cousin, the Festival Fringe, bring a concentration of theatre, music, and performing arts to this grand city that is a joy to behold. And now an Internet Festival joins the fray, both by showing bits of the goings-on around the High Street and presenting virtual galleries of Scottish and international artists online. From the 3-D Web site of Bulgarian Dimiter Dimitrov to Prof. Orgasmo's Amazing Masks to Scotland's own Iris Terris and her digitally manipulated watercolors, this massing of more than 400 pages is an event in itself. The 2000 project ran from August 14 to September 30, but the final gallery is up for viewing and the 2001 Festival is already taking submissions.Edinburgh Internet Festival: http://www.edinburghceltica.com/newpage63.htm
Edinburgh Festivals: http://www.edinburghfestivals.co.uk/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
In Budapest, You Stoop and Scoop
Walking in urban areas usually means looking down for dog doo, rather than up at the sights. Budapest has tackled the problem with laws and an eye-catching ad campaign. This site has all the details including the ads, but none of the smell or mess. In English or Hungarian, and better if Shockwave is installed.http://www.kutyakaki.com/
Got a problem with service or dud deals? Register a complaint at UGetHeard and it finds the company and organizes an official complaint (and hopefully, wrings out a sheepish apology along with tribute of baubles and trinkets). Its list of successes makes you want to get grumpy about something fast.
http://www.ugetheard.com/
Waiting for someone to pay you back for last week's concert ticket? IOU.com lets you keep a list of you know whats. Just start a registered group, and you're cooking. Keep a note of what you've paid, and when your friends do the same, the site makes sure you know who should foot the bill next time. Easy.
http://www.iou.com/
SOFTWARE
Netscape 6, Preview 3, Shopping XXX
The latest beta version of the next generation Netscape Web browser has just hit the Web. This version promises better stability and a redesigned user interface. Other tweaks include an improved What's Related feature and a couple of new Sidebar tabs - Shopping and Calendar. Our favorite quote from the product info page is "The new Shopping tab gives Internet Shoppers instant access to over 50 different shopping departments, ability to search from a list of over XXX products". Cool! Netscape 6 with a shopping tab for more-than-XXX-rated products. It's a typo, of course, but an amusing one, particularly since Netscape is owned by squeaky clean AOL.http://www.netscape.com/browsers/6/index.html?cp=dowpod6