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| Fun and Games with Anthrax |
| Wacky Patents |
| The British Museum |
| Mozilla 0.6, in Answer to Netscape 6.0 |
| New Opera 5 Browser for Windows |
| Capturing the Soul |
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BREAKING SURF
Well, it's over. We haven't directly covered the Florida election imbroglio for a few good reasons: it moved faster than we do; you certainly couldn't have lacked any info you wanted; and whatever we'd have said, we'd have annoyed half our readers - not that that has ever stopped us in the past. But let us now present to you the final aria. This historic US Supreme Court opinion effectively ended Al Gore's bid for the Presidency. The Justices ruled on two important constitutional points. First, Amendment XIV of the US Constitution grants each citizen "equal protection of the laws", in this case implying the right to count each vote on equal terms. The Justices held by a robust 7-2 majority that the Florida recount violated this in lacking a uniform manual recount standard. Secondly, the Justices less robustly with a slim 5-4 majority concluded that the only possible remedy - a constitutionally valid recount - could not be completed in time to meet legal deadlines. As an aside it's worth noting the little appreciated fact that the US Supreme Court has no enforcement power - no control over police or army, they can't even arrest anyone. They simply render an opinion and this vast powerful country abides by their judgment. Pretty amazing when you think about it. Here's the ruling, in two formats.HTML: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/decision2000/ap_scotustext001212.htm
PDF: http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/decisions/00-949.pdf
Parents Could Be Legally Responsible for Kid's Use of Net
The New York Times (registration required) reports on a case in which a father may be sued for damages resulting from the online activities of his high-school student son. Apparently, the student grafted a female classmate's face on a pornographic picture and displayed it on a Web page. An Illinois judge has ruled that the charge of negligence against the father can proceed to trial. The subject of the prank seeks damages of $50,000 and claims the father is guilty of negligence: negligent supervision of a child and negligent entrustment to a child of a dangerous article. The "dangerous article" definition usually applies to things like lawnmowers, dynamite, and guns, and adding computers to the list has inflamed passions. Many commentators compare a computer with a pencil; as one lawyer said, "The pen is mightier than the sword, but we have never regulated the pen." This is a rather egregious expansion of the definition of "dangerous" if allowed to stand. The case has provoked a great deal of controversy in having made it even this far in the legal system.http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/08/technology/08CYBERLAW.html
Nicodemo Scarfo probably thought he was pretty smart, using PGP encryption software on his computer to foil nosy feds, but he overlooked the most traditional intelligence ploy of all: in-office surveillance, given a clever new twist. Unknown to Nicodemo, the son of a former Philadelphia mob boss, a federal judge allowed the FBI to enter his office and plant a keystroke recording device that registered his PGP encryption key and everything else he typed on the computer. The FBI's not yet telling exactly what they got and how they did it, but they have charged Nicodemo with running a bookmaking and loan-sharking operation. The case displays some nifty spook gadgetry - and raises legal questions. The story's so juicy, we give it to you twice, from Wired and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Since you've been so good this year, you can also have a review of the handy dandy KeyGhost keyboard stroke recorder.
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40541,00.html
Inquirer: http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/12/04/front_page/JMOB04.htm
KeyGhost: http://www.keyghost.com/
Review: http://www.dansdata.com/keyghost2.htm
If you've been holding your breath, you can let it out now that Salon in partnership with elegant erotica e-zine Nerve has online personal ads. Salon says the whole thing is about letting their visitors meet like-minded people, not to mention energizing online dating. For the moment, the service is free - in fact, you can accumulate credits to offset future charges. Don't count on the freebie lasting long, however, as Salon has already posted prices for various levels of service. To find out how to create ads, answer them, search them, and meet online in real time, consult Personals 101. To actually do any of that, you have to register separately from the normal Salon registration process. We don't know if it's representative of what you can expect, but the main page currently features someone looking for that certain person who appreciates fine grilled cheese sandwiches. (The secret lies in fine-controlling the temperature.)
PR: http://www.salon.com/press/releases/
Salon Personals: http://www.personals.salon.com/personals/
Nerve Personals: http://www.nervecenter.com/
If you're like us, you just hit the "Agree" button and get it over with. Read it? Nah, what's the point? You've bought the game, and now you just want to play it. The last thing you want to do is first check with your lawyer. At the Adrenaline Vault site, Bruce Rolston explains all about those much ignored end-user license agreements (EULAs), what they do and don't allow, and why they so often seem to fail the common-sense test. You'll be surprised. Essentially, you never own software, you just license it. This lets companies restrict what you can do in bizarre ways. Some companies' straightforward EULAs cover three basic conditions: copyright protection; copying restrictions; and no reverse engineering - but not all are cut from this reasonable cloth. In fact some EULAs contain stipulations that are far from basic and which could cause trouble for users who seek redress if the game doesn't work. Worth reading - and waiting for the promised part 2.
http://www.avault.com/articles/getarticle.asp?name=eulapt1&page=1
Strong Numbers: The Blue Book for Everything
This new site has launched just in time for the holiday season. Strong Numbers aims to be a price guide to everything for sale on the Net. It gathers selling prices from over 5 million auctions each week and assembles a database to brief consumers on the going rate of just about anything. For example, Strong Numbers reports that a Sony Playstation 2 is worth about $557, with a high of $751 and a low of $365. In addition to the prices, a search for an item yields a neat scatter graph that shows the change in price over time. We wish the tiny menu fonts were more readable on large monitors and that there were more categories (hard drives? desktop computers?) but those are minor quibbles. This is probably going to become an indispensable addition to the retail arsenal for all online consumers and auction sellers.http://www.strongnumbers.com/
The Business End of Doing Business
There's a long list of casualties in the Internet revolution. Boo.com and Mortgage.com were two of the high-flyers now shot down. What have we learned in the aftermath of a frenzy of dotcom proliferation and venture financing? A business plan is a good idea, revenue is great, and an actual profit-generating dotcom is - well, a not-yet-failed dotcom. USA Today, which knows a thing or two about good old-fashioned profit, has an interesting article on dotcom failures and lessons learned. Some of the new rules of doing business on the Internet didn't quite make it into the rulebook, and the article does a good job of pointing out why they never will, complete with facts and figures.http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/invest/ina394.htm
Online Retailers Squeezed between Credit Card Fraud and Banks
Online Scrooges this holiday season will be looking to save money by ripping off online retailers. Estimated losses to online credit card fraud approach $200 million in the US. Fraud ranges from disputing credit card purchases (and keeping the goods) to using software that can generate valid card numbers and spoof expiry dates. And e-tailers can't expect much help from the banks which, they complain, hold them responsible for charge-backs on disputed purchases yet fail to provide modern and reliable methods of credit card verification. You might want to think twice before opening your next online commercial venture. ZDNet has more.http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2660192,00.html
NymIP Working Group Working to Keep You Anonymous
The ambitious NymIP wants to create "a set of standardized protocols for pseudonymity and anonymity at the IP layer, and a community of operators using those protocols." The stellar cast of characters makes this effort newsworthy. Participants come from Zero-Knowledge Systems, Anonymizer, AT&T Labs, US Naval Research Lab, and German state government, among others. Not exactly a bunch of script kiddies in a suburban bedroom. These serious engineers are seriously interested in the deep theory and practice of anonymity. You can judge the technical sophistication of the project with a related document, "Anonymity and Unobservability in the Internet", which lays out some of the theory behind any effort to anonymize the Net. The NymIP home page has mailing lists you can join to keep on top of what the group is doing.NymIP: http://nymip.sourceforge.net/
Participants: http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/12/10/4414/2948
Document: http://www.inf.tu-dresden.de/~hf2/publ/2000/BeFK2000cfp2000/index.html
Service Transforms Data into Visual Web Sites
The best way to introduce Antarcti.ca's Visual Net service is to browse their demo Web site. When you go to Map.net, you see an image of Antarctica overlaid with clickable areas which lead to collections of Web site categories much like in any general Web index. You are basically exploring the Net by clicking around in a visual representation of the Web sites. It's not a new idea, but reasonably well implemented and a decent showcase for Antarcti.ca's Visual Net technology. The company claims Visual Net is a simple way to build connections between databases and 2-D or 3-D visual renderings, making it easy to map data to images on the Web. Call it image maps on steroids. For the moment, the Map.net demo only works with Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 4.7 with a plug-in, but we figure Web developers might be interested in the technology which is based mostly on XML, HTML, Apache, and some proprietary protocols.Demo: http://maps.map.net/index.html
Antarcti.ca: http://antarcti.ca/index.html
Peer-to-Peer Directory, Conference
Aside from "wireless", the currently most overhyped buzz phrase is "peer-to-peer", a.k.a. the faintly humorous P2P. Everybody and their brother wants to emulate Napster as a business/technology model. Never mind that Napster isn't making any money and is mired in legal troubles. You can see just how hyped the phrase has become on the O'Reilly P2P Directory at which the editors observe that many of the entries that call themselves P2P (snicker) are really distributed applications which use a central point to coordinate other PCs - it's more a distributed network than true peer-to-peer. Nevertheless, something's definitely in the air, something involving multitudes of PCs and the companies that want to harvest their power. In addition to hosting the directory, O'Reilly is also sponsoring a January P2P conference in San Francisco.Directory: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/10/20/directory.html
Conference: http://conferences.oreilly.com/p2p/
Philosophical and Practical Implications of End-to-End Network Design
Two philosophies compete in the field of network design. One school of thought holds that the best way to deliver network services is by means of smart central servers and dumb devices on the periphery of the network - the old host/terminal model. Proponents of the other school say all network intelligence should reside in the endpoint machines so the network itself can be kept as simple as possible. Stanford University recently held a seminar series entitled "The Policy Implications of End-to-End" that addressed the tradeoffs between the two. Slashdot is running an excellent series that summarizes the ideas presented at the seminars. The seemingly simple choice of where to put intelligence in a network leads to complex implications for finances, efficiency, and even the balance of power in a networked world. The seminars are dense with ideas and highly recommended for engineering types. You can also read the 1981 paper which introduced the end-to-end concept.Seminar I: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/06/1613233.shtml
Seminar II: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/07/1646200.shtml
Paper: http://www.law.stanford.edu/e2e/papers/Saltzer_Clark_Reed_Originale2e.pdf
Programmers will be interested in this interview with Dennis Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and co-creator of Unix. He talks about the future of C, the philosophy of programming, and the cool Plan 9 operating system which he's been working on for the last few years. A relatively brief but worthwhile interview.
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-12/lw-12-ritchie.html
E-Commerce Hacking Advisory from FBI
The FBI has noticed a recent increase in cracking attempts against e-commerce sites. The advisory states that most of the recent attempts have been against systems running Windows NT, though Unix systems are not exempt from danger. The crackers are exploiting relatively old and well known vulnerabilities, several of which are detailed here - along with fixes. Required reading for e-commerce sysadmins.http://www.nipc.gov/warnings/advisories/2000/00-060.htm
Remember Jeffrey Michael Ottem from NSD 6.39 ("$1 Million in a Year?")? He's spending a year making a million dollars, but halfway through, it ain't looking so good. That is it wasn't, until he hit upon a sure-fire scheme. He's decided to sell poems at $2 apiece, but, he warns, "the numbers suggest that if I write one poem every ten minutes for twelve hours a day it'll take me ten years to write 500,000 pieces. So your patience is required."
http://members.aol.com/foolpoems/poetry/home.html
ONLINE CULTURE
That's the simple question asked by Jon Orwant, CTO of everybody's favorite technical publisher, O'Reilly, and editor of "The Perl Journal". He installed the latest Freenet client and took an informal look at the material on the anonymous distributed communication network, trying to judge the content by the file name - not the most accurate way to categorize. Of 1,075 items, he guesses he found 38% text, 22% audio, and 14% images. Not surprisingly, 59% of the text was related to drugs, and 89% of the images were porn. Not all is lost, though; Jon found quite a bit of classic literature, software, and political content. After crunching the numbers - more of which can be found in the article - he summed it up nicely: "If we were to indulge ourselves and construct a demographic of the average Freenet user from Freenet content, he'd be a crypto-anarchist Perl hacker with a taste for the classics of literature, political screeds, 1980s pop music, Adobe software, and lots of porn."http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/11/21/freenetcontent.html
This perfect example shows how new technology enables new cultural developments. The advent of super-accurate global positioning satellite (GPS) technology has resulted in a game called geocaching. Someone puts a cache of goodies in a remote location, then publishes the GPS coordinates on the Net. Searchers then try to find the cache. If you find the cache, you keep an item you like and replace it with some other neat thing for the next searcher. Even with GPS coordinates, finding these hidden treasures can be challenging. GPS is only accurate to about 30 feet - that can be a lot of rough terrain to cover. An article in Salon offers background on how the game evolved and looks at the people who play it. As with most things these days, geocaching also has a home page. Neat.
Geocaching: http://www.geocaching.com/
Salon: http://salon.com/tech/feature/2000/12/11/geocaching/index.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
All This - and Pictures of Christina Ricci Getting Tattooed
We almost dropped this site from the NSD review roster because it uses animated GIFs to simulate the evil blink tag. However, we soldiered on despite eye strain, because the page just looked so cool. Having thought up the idea to travel the world to find the last authentic tattoo, Thomas Lockhart set up the Vanishing Tattoo site to let us mere mortals in on his quest as it progresses. By the time you read this, he'll be home in Vancouver, but never you mind. It's still a fascinating site.http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/
From the spare, white splash page to the subsequent presentations of his work, artist Andy Mattern's pages are... spare and white. "Inside", his installation for the University of New Mexico, is a monochromatic cube with an equally pale chair within, where one can sit and listen to Satie (a rather atmospheric French composer). While it may be an interesting experience in person, it's not exactly the most riveting online exhibit we've seen. Mattern's use of color - which is to say, none - could be considered Zen-like, especially if Zen means pictures of white shirts on a white wall, or totally blank panels of canvas whose "smooth surface and colorless decor" are certainly peaceful and unchallenging. Turn down the contrast on your monitor before heading to the site. Don't get us wrong though - we do like this site, especially for the artist's statements and explanatory video.
http://www.mododesigns.com/art/
Ascension Gallery of Fine Art appears to give away an award that actually means something, a rare quality indeed in today's Internet. To qualify for the award, artists must submit two samples of their work which display some range of their abilities. A committee judges submissions and gives the award only once a month. Only artists who draw and paint (with or without electrons) will be considered for recognition; sculptors and photographers can hit the road. Winners get primo Web space for a month. The Hall of Fame has links to past winners.
http://www.loadstar.prometeus.net/nexus/
We could tell from the get-go that we had entered a Brit humor emporium. When flashing, puking, and making fun of the French make up so much of the photo gallery, it's not like we need a blinking neon sign to tell us where we are. This site seems largely visually-oriented. Photos and videos abound here; you can't click twice without hitting one, it seems. The site also features a sparse games and downloads area, and an utterly worthless message board. Best bet here would be to stick with the photos and videos - some are genuinely funny, in an American-parents-don't-let-your-pubescent-boys-here-before-checking-it-out kinda way. There's no point in admonishing folks on the other side of the pond, as apparently their males remain pubescent throughout life. We suspect females will find the site of interest for one, and only one, reason: that bullfighting shot. We gave you the site address. Your assignment is to find the photo.
http://www.aveit.com/
If you just can't get enough of wacky morning radio, take heart - Comedy World is just a click away. Listen to ex-MTV VJ Kennedy and Ahmet Zappa (the "Gummo" of the Zappa clan) have nutsy conversations about zany stuff. Watch on video while Ken Ober, former game-show host, puts a madcap twist on his celebrity interviews. Several well known touring comedians take part in this project, like Sandra Bernhard, Bobby Slayton, the great Taylor Negron, and the sublime Kids in The Hall. Unfortunately, like movies made from SNL skits, it's hard to translate good standup into two-hour talk shows. On the other hand, if you can survive the truly bad commercial parodies, every now and then it's crazy nutsy fun.
http://www.comedyworld.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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Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species
Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture
The Wall Street Journal Online: One-Year Online Subscription
American McGee's Alicehttp://www.playboyadvisor.com/
Pop Culture and the Stripmall Life
Talk about obsessed! Ape Culture brings us a veritable truckload of writers, many of whom still live at home or wish they did (judging by the staff photos), writing about celebrities. And not even the People Magazine flavor-of-the-month writing, but things like a section of Tom Jones reviews (the singer, not the movie), a rewrite of "The Amityville Horror" starring the cast of "Eight is Enough", and a personality test based on which Beatle you like, which for some reason doesn't allow for the Ringo fringe. Pieces such as the page of suggested material for the proposed Stephen King/John Mellencamp musical are pretty funny, and if we could figure out if Ape Culture is a noun or a verb, we'd be even happier.http://www.apeculture.com/
John "Gooch" Gallucci is a journalist/columnist. He uses his Web site as a forum for his daily rants and to archive almost all his published work. His discussion is lively, with some gossip and shameless slurring and the odd pitching of ideas such as his gay version of "Survivor" called "The Real Gay World". You can even hire him to get your band/event up and pumping. All things considered, the site is considerably more entertaining than you'd expect from someone who willingly uses the nickname "Gooch".
http://www.goochonline.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
In 1997, the Cassini probe, amid much protest over its plutonium dioxide power supply, left Cape Canaveral for space. This largest and heaviest of NASA probes carried 72 pounds of radioactive fuel and some feared that the craft might crash and shower the planet with radiation. That never happened, and now Cassini is sending back a crop of clear still and animated images of Jupiter, thanks to its slow speed and large data collection and downlinking capacity (it's all about bandwidth...). The Cassini is ultimately scheduled to enter orbit around Saturn in 2004.Cassini: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/
Fear: http://www.space.com/news/cassini_nowwhat.html
Images: http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ciclops/images_jupiter.html
Whatever your views of the military may be, suspend them and visit this site. You need to enter with your mind open, regardless of whether you're pro-, anti- or neutral on military issues. This is one cool set of pages. Oddly enough, these pages have nothing to do with stealth weapons or cruise missiles - this is about the anthrax vaccine immunization program. The Flash version is a multimedia extravaganza so well done, it had us rolling up our sleeves by the end. The booming bass and visceral graphics on the Flash version will have future recruits eating out of the palm of the military-industrial complex's hand. The content seems to be the most important component of the site, as it should be, but do note that the non-Flashy HTML version provides a lot more information, overall. Choose Flash if you want a show that will have you standing in a recruitment office before you know what hit you. Choose HTML if you actually want some information about anthrax as a bioweapon, the vaccine, the effects, the expected reactions.
http://www.anthrax.osd.mil/
In 1959, Bertha Dlugi invented diapers for canaries. Harry Houdini won a patent on a quick-escape deep-sea diver's suit in 1921. And in 1912, the patent office awarded a patent to a burglar alarm that sprays water in the face of the sleeping victims in case they can't hear a bell. This is the world of Wacky Patents of the Month, and the dozens of listings and pictures of motorized hat-tipping devices and eye protectors for chickens prove that Uncle Mike, who invented left-handed eyeglasses, was merely misunderstood. If you've got some time to kill, visit the 1790-present database of the US Patent Office (USPO), where there are even stranger things to be found. Wacky Patent of the Month Wacky:
http://colitz.com/site/wacky.htm
USPO: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
If you're in London or planning to visit soon and you're interested in history, the British Museum is a great place to visit. If you don't plan on being anywhere near London, visit virtually. The site offers a schedule of all upcoming lectures and conferences, a list of displays currently available to the public, plans for the future, and where and when the tours run. It also provides historical information for those sitting unremarkably in their office chairs wishing they could go to London for the culture, the museums, and one of those great Marks and Spencer chocolate mousses.
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/
SOFTWARE
Mozilla 0.6, in Answer to Netscape 6.0
AOL recently unleashed the first non-beta release of Netscape 6.0, built on open source technology developed by the Mozilla browser project. Not to be outdone, the Mozilla developers themselves have released Mozilla 0.6 with the express purpose of copying the look and feel - and the features - of the commercial Netscape. If you love netsurfing on the bleeding edge, give it a try. Compare and contrast with the latest Netscape and see which you like best.Mozilla 0.6: http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla0.6/
Netscape 6.0: http://www.netscape.com/browsers/
New Opera 5 Browser for Windows
Opera is a nice alternative browser noteable for its small size and zippy performance. If you're tired of the terminally bloated Netscape and Explorer, give Opera a try - you might be pleasantly surprised. The free version of Opera displays ads but you can get rid of the banners by paying the $39 registration. This latest version has an integrated search facility and an instant messaging client compatible with ICQ.http://www.opera.com/
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Visions of the Sacred contains an online auction of over 100 documentary photographs, many accompanied by moving stories. The proceeds from the auction, which continues until sometime in early 2001, help feed the homeless and assist the addicted at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen (named after the monks, not the monkeys) and Jefferson House in Detroit. Participating photographers, including Pulitzer Prize winners and nominees, contribute two of each print, one of which is auctioned off at the site while the other "will be framed and displayed in a Detroit area gallery showing of the entire collection." Eventually, the permanent collection will take up residence on the walls of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen and in Jefferson House itself.http://www.visionsacred.org/
We suspect there's a chance your home may soon be deluged by boxes and giftwrap. Just a hunch. Most people in those circumstances just throw the offending clutter in the recycling bin or garbage. But wait! Don't look at it as a mess to be dealt with, but as a potential bonanza of craft projects. The Creative Recycling site teaches you how to convert cardboard, paper, newspaper, and other materials into gift boxes, pencil caddies, model airplanes and other extremely useful items. What better way to while away a whiteout?
http://members.nbci.com/rchwong/