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| A Peek at Internet Peering Policies |
| Modern Media Art |
| Ascension Gallery Award a Higher Goal Than Most |
| Nice Art, Ugly Page, Neato Text |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Short Attention Span Tales |
| How to Write |
| How to Write Online |
| Do It Yerself Black Holes |
| Look Spot, See Space Station! |
| The Universal Index |
| Frame Rate and Human Perception: A Scientific Look |
| Fitness for Women, Mostly |
| Building Technology |
| Linux 2.4 Kernel Released |
| Mozilla 0.7 Released |
| Deserving Recipients Deserves More |
| Anyone Remember Tinker to Evers to Chance in NSD? |
| Jumping the Gun on Rings |
| Movies.com |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
Undernet IRC Network under Attack
A virulent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is threatening to shut down one of the largest and most popular Internet relay chat (IRC) networks. The assailants, almost certainly regular IRC users themselves, have victimized numerous Undernet IRC network servers since late last week. Independent operators run the computers that make up the network and the bandwidth costs of dealing with the attack have hit these operators hard. While many have shut down their IRC servers, their domains remain under DDoS attacks which use great swaths of bandwidth, thus costing the operators money. Apparently, the large ISPs which provide connectivity have been less than helpful in tracking down the sources of the attacks. Wired covers the unfolding story and the Undernet Web site itself has a lengthy statement about the seemingly motiveless attacks.Undernet: http://www.undernet.org/
Wired 1: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,41077,00.html
Wired 2: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,41167,00.html
US DOJ Guidelines for Searching and Seizing Computers
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has just released an updated set of guidelines on how to search and seize computers. Unlike the previous revision, which the EFF needed to pry from the clutches of the DOJ by filing a Freedom of Information Act request, this version is openly available online. If you don't feel like reading the whole 500kB document, read Wired's summary of what are likely to be some of the more controversial aspects of the guidelines, such as "no knock" and secret searches.Guidelines: http://www.cybercrime.gov/searchmanual.htm
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41133,00.html
In the greatest vaporware story of 2001 (so far), media people trying to look "with it" have brought your attention to IT, or at least they have tried. IT, also known as Ginger, is an invention whose secret existence only came to light as a result of a book deal and which, if the buzz is to be believed, will change the world. (We don't really believe the buzz.) Tech heavyweights such as Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos have oohed, ahhed, and honked over the machine. But what is IT? Why is IT spelled that way? No one knows, and we're not supposed to find out until next year. Most analysts believe IT is some sort of transportation device (whence IT in which T stands for transportation) and as the parts fit in two duffle bags, it's probably only going to carry one person. The Smoking Gun did a little investigation and discovered that lead inventor Dean Kamen and his DEKA Research team filed an illustrated patent application back in December. Inside, a media watching Web site, broke the story and continues to follow it up, as does TheITquestion.com.
DEKA: http://www.dekaresearch.com/
Inside: http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?article_id=20704
Smoking Gun: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/doc_o_day/kamen1.shtml
TheITquestion: http://www.theitquestion.com/
China Tests Manned Spacecraft Capability
China this week launched a spacecraft into orbit to test it for use as a manned mission vehicle. The craft, named Shenzhou, is maneuvering in orbit and has "life science" experiments onboard, though probably not large animals. When China finally gets astronauts into orbit, it will become only the third country with that capability, following Russia and the US. It's just like playing Civilization sometimes, isn't it? This is the second unmanned test of this design and China apparently is planning a third unmanned test before it launches people. While China seems to be chasing the capability to put up a manned space station, some people speculate that China may be secretly going after the mega coup of the first manned Mars landing. Space.com has more information on the recent launch.http://www.space.com/news/spaceagencies/shenzhou_update_010112.html
Scientists announced the discovery of two new and rather odd planetary systems orbiting around nearby stars last week. The star HD 168443, 123 light-years away, has two giant planets orbiting it, one of them at least 17 times the mass of Jupiter. That's really big. So big, in fact, that it poses problems for the current theory of planet formation. The other star, Gliese 876, a piddling 12 light-years from Earth, has a pair of giant planets locked in harmonic orbit - not that odd, but still intriguing. CNN looks at the discoveries, while the excellent Extrasolar Planet Search site has details about all the extrasolar planets discovered so far.
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/01/10/planet.systems.reut/index.html
Extrasolar: http://exoplanets.org/
Direct Evidence of Black Holes from Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope has detected telltale signs of matter being sucked into a black hole and disappearing behind the event horizon. The telescope observed pulses of ultraviolet light emmited by matter as it fell in. The light faded and disappeared, the predicted behavior for gas being sucked into a black hole beyond the event horizon, from which nothing can escape. Astronomers consider this observation the first direct evidence ever obtained of black holes. The Hubble Web site has a neat animation of the process.http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2001/03/pr.html
A New York judge has granted a preliminary injuction against Verio that prevents its Web robots from gathering information from Register.com's WHOIS domain registration database. The judge based his decision on the fact that the robots use up resources, minute though they may be, of the target systems. The court concluded that this use of resources can be classified as "trespass to chattels", or "an intentional and unauthorized interference with the personal property of another that causes the victim to suffer a degree of harm". If applying this doctrine to Web bots stands up to legal scrutiny, Web sites will have another legal weapon for denying certain parties access to what may legally be publically accessible data. And what of search engine spiders?
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/12/technology/12CYBERLAW.html
Liability for Entering Web Sites under Assumed Names
A disgruntled employee of Hawaiian Airlines (HA) set up a Web site criticizing the company and enacted a policy which forbade managers to log into his site. A HA vice president found out about the site and entered using the names of a couple of employees, with their permission. When the site owner found out about the deception, he filed a lawsuit that alleged that the VP violated the Wiretap Act, a US law which protects electronic communications from being illegally intercepted. Recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the Web site operator, saying in effect that impersonating a party who does not have permission to log into a site opens you up to legal liability. The Ninth Circuit Court also covers matters in Silicon Valley, and the Supreme Court tends to listen to it in matters of computer law. The Online Journalism Review has details.http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=522
Baen Free Library Offers Free Books
One day SF author Eric Flint got into a virtual brawl with a number of his peers over online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it. One school of thought holds that the problem is best handled with the "handcuffs and brass knucks" of tougher law enforcement and technological fixes. Eric, on the other hand, feels that online piracy is at most a nuisance, and that any losses it causes are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which free book copies usually engender. His publisher, the extremely experienced Jim Baen, told Eric to put his money where his mouth is and make his own books available for free. Eric obliged, and after some reflection so did a number of other prominent authors in the Baen Books stable. And so we are blessed with the Baen Free Library, where Eric Flint, David Drake, David Weber, and other top selling SF authors offer some of their books for free: unabridged, no strings attached, and with the full blessing of their publisher. Visit the library if for no other reason than to read Eric's lucid take on the whole issue of content piracy. While you're there, download the books in several popular electronic formats. A brave experiment.http://www.baen.com/library/
The Future of Internet Explorer
What's next for Microsoft's Internet Explorer? CNet's Mary Jo Foley tries to pick through the mess for some tidbits concerning Microsoft's plans for its much abused software. Not only did the Netscape wars lead to the state and US anti-trust cases against Microsoft, but IE is also a perennial target of hackers and crackers. It seems that the software giant is working on the next generation browser strategy, which will consist of a dumbed-down consumer model tied to its MSN Web service, and a presumably better protected and heavily licensed business model.http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-4448595-0.html
An interesting new computer worm is wiggling its way around the world, and the fact that it reproduces slowly seems to have given it unusual longevity. The Hybris worm has been appearing on charts of computer infection for the last three months at least partly because of its cleverly stealthy design. The worm spreads through a slow but steady trickle of infected outgoing e-mail. The worm also uses a relatively new technology that lets it automatically pick up plug-in modules of malicious code from the Net. These modules could provide a backdoor into a PC or could corrupt or transmit sensitive data. Hybris picks up modules from the alt.comp.virus Usenet newsgroup, ironically a group all about hunting viruses and worms. At present, at least eight plug-ins are known. A notable development in PC infection technology which only Windows users need worry about.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-201-4448139-0.html
Attrition.org has released an extensive set of statistics and graphs showing the incidence of Web site defacements over the last year. Keep in mind that each defacement is a computer break-in and can easily lead to much more serious problems. The site has a boatload of statistics analyzed in a number of ways. Read the notes at the bottom of the page carefully because the stats may not mean exactly what you think they do. Of great interest to sysadmins and Net security types.
http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/stats.html
It's been a while since our last issue, we know, but we're still merrily piping away. Don't worry your pretty li'l heads. It's just the Netsurfers from the south went north and Netsurfers from the north went south and, well, it took a while for the twain to get back on the same twack. Predicted hotspot of the year? Central Asia, as the increasingly bold fundamentalist Islamic movements attempt to spread into a region of the world that's teetering on the edge of a power vacuum. But what do we know? We're still waiting for Greece to shoot at somebody.
ONLINE CULTURE
A Peek at Internet Peering Policies
One of the dirty little secrets of the Internet is that the core group of Tier 1 Internet transit providers is an insular and secretive club. In an ideal world, anybody who wanted to would be able to hook up at public Internet peering points around the globe and freely exchange traffic with every other peer. Unfortunately, the big guys won't let just anybody peer with them. Until recently, you couldn't even find out what it would take to peer with a giant like UUNET unless you signed a non-disclosure agreement. So UUNET's recent decision to publicly announce its peering policy has made waves in network operator circles. The complex issue has many implications for who controls what bits of the Net. If you want more, read the discussions on Slashdot and on the North American Network Operators (NANOG) mailing list archives. A recent paper commissioned by the FCC examines the issue from a regulatory perspective.UUNET Policy: http://www.uu.net/peering/
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/01/09/131243&mode=thread
NANOG: http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/current/maillist.html#00681#00681
FCC: http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/OPP/News_Releases/2000/nrop0002.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Mediaphiles are likely to enjoy WebFlicks, a showcase for the non-profit 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle. It wants to educate users and provide a non-commercial, non-competitive environment for digital video artists. The "flicks" are brief montages, music videos, animated cartoons, documentaries, narratives, and impressionistic works. You won't find trailers for Hollywood movies here. In effect, this collection of works is a streaming media portal for those who want to explore the potential of media art rather than merely produce or experience entertainment, although the cartoons have offbeat humor. A good introduction is "Cirque De Flambe", a circus celebration of fire found in the documentary section. You may wait a while for downloads even on an ISDN line; the 28.8 kbps modem speed isn't even supported. You'll need Flash 4 for navigation. Most of these shorts are available for Windows Media Player, QuickTime, and RealPlayer.http://www.webflicks.org/
Ascension Gallery Award a Higher Goal Than Most
The Ascension Gallery of Fine Art appears to give away an online award that actually means something, a rare quality indeed. To qualify for the award, artists must submit two examples of their work which display some range of their abilities. Submissions are judged by committee, which hands out the award only once a month. Photographers, sculptors and other artists whose interest has been piqued, take note: "For the purposes of this award, 'art' covers only original drawn or painted work (this may be computer rendered). It does not include photography." The Hall of Fame has links to the Web sites of past winners.http://www.loadstar.prometeus.net/nexus/
Nice Art, Ugly Page, Neato Text
The creation of art is a highly personal process. The images you see are the result of one person's thoughts, desires, and impressions of his subject. In a tangential form, the collection of disparate works of art is equally subjective. Menahem Erez created a virtual gallery of art from around the world. Exhibitions offer the visitor both the images themselves and accompanying texts that help enrich the experience. A little history often brings the subject into focus for the occasional art critic. The arts presented frequently come from artists or physical galleries in Israel, yet the material is also distributed with works from around the world.http://erez.net/virtual.html
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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Network Programming with Perl
Crypto: When the Code Rebels Beat the Government - Saving Privacy in the Digital Age
The Sibley Guide to Birdshttp://www.his.com/~pshapiro/crossingpanama.html
Write101.com contains over 200 pages of articles on writing and is designed to help everyone improve their writing and editing skills. The process involves looking at grammar, punctuation, and structure in a way that allows you to re-evaluate your writing style and improve the way you communicate in text. Jennifer Stewart, an ex-teacher, decided to use the Net to circulate the knowledge and resources she accumulated during her teaching years. If you crave more, you can buy a six-part home study writing course that covers everything about developing your writing style, writing and documenting essays, and preparing business reports and letters. Accessing the online articles and resources for writers remains free. While there are plenty of writing related sites on the Web, this one earns its mention by focusing specifically on professional and creative writing skills.
http://www.write101.com/
Emily Vander Veer's writing site is relatively new, which means that Writing for the Web is one of the few newsletter sites for "real" writers that hasn't been purchased by an electronic publisher yet. Vander Veer, an accomplished freelancer, provides on her pages advice that comes from experience. For writers who write for a living, and who care about things like electronic rights, hers is an important voice. The site and accompanying free newsletter mark a path through the still confusing and new world of Internet publication. While the guides to paying e-markets, lists of writer's resources, and tips for online self-promotion can help a good freelancer get the job done, they also reinforce an underlying and pervasive message: a writer who gives away work devalues every writer's work.
http://www.emilyv.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
Hey kids, good news! Now you don't have to be God, Einstein, or even a rocket scientist to make a black hole. But it would help to be a computer scientist or an open source freak, at least. Of course, we speak of 3-D computer simulated black holes fashioned from Silicon Graphics API, OpenGL, and intended for scientific and artistic delight - not for sucking up wayward planets, asteroids, and/or dust bunnies from under the couch. Simulate thousands of types of particles and watch 'em squirm. Web site author Chris Halsall, President of Open Source Solutions, includes OpenGL tutorials and related articles, plus the program and makefile.http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/09/15/blackhole.html
Much of the great amount of hardware circling the earth is visible, even to naked eyes, if you just know where to look. The Heavens Above site uses data from the German Space Operations Center and generates in real time charts of visible orbital objects you can find in the night sky above you, customized for your location and time zone. You can enter your location manually if you know your exact latitude and longitude or you can place yourself with an easy-to-use database of over two million worldwide locations. The most useful graphics tell you when and where to look for many satellites, space stations, and space shuttles. This site is similar to the NASA's J-Track site, but it's a bit more user friendly and useful. However, J-Track, which allows location selection by US ZIP code, is also worth a visit.
Heavens Above: http://www.heavens-above.com/
J-Track: http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTime/JTrack/
The universe is more than enough to intimidate Web indexers. Edouard Reny, of whom we know nothing except for his evident curiosity, enthusiasm, and patience, took on the challenge, in English and French, and created a bilingual personal space portal called Galacticsurf. Where to start? Particle physics, exobiology, space exploration - Edouard has linked to resources on all of these and more. We found many excellent selections and no broken links. If an overdose of history or theory at academic sites starts to boggle you, try the links to space art, "Sites of the month", or photo galleries. Isaac Asimov would have loved it. You'll soon wish this portal had a search engine.... Quand meme, c'est magnifique. We might best describe Galactisurf with the words Reny uses to describe one general site: "Everything that has to do with space. To be seen absolutily!"
http://galacticsurf.free.fr/
Frame Rate and Human Perception: A Scientific Look
The eyes have it. Or do they? This article is being updated, but it already provides some darned interesting insights. When you go to a movie, you're generally looking at 24 frames per second (fps). Looks great, doesn't it? So why would 30 fps be better, and 60 fps (as the video card companies would like us to believe) better yet? According to this article, one answer lies in the afterimage effect, part of the human condition. Physical conditions differ, both with respect to the environment and between individuals. When you watch a movie, you're in a dark room, with bright light projected on a reflective screen. Refresh is instantaneous (i.e. each frame appears as a whole at once), and the afterimage effect allows you to see a seamless transition of imagery from frame to frame. Not the same for computer monitors, which draw one pixel line at a time and which don't take advantage of blurred motion the way film does. It all gets a bit murky, what with multiscan screen refreshes at a usual 72 Hz rate. Is 60 fps noticeably better than the same activity at 30 fps? This article addresses that issue. You decide.http://www.penstarsys.com/editor/30v60/30v60p1.htm
Having seen Australians on TV while watching the 2000 Olympics, we know that they are fanatical sport fans and outdoor enthusiasts. Endowed with similar passion for body awareness, Australian editor Kerryn Marlow has put together an ambitious, somewhat eclectic, and enjoyable health and lifestyle site for the world. BodytalkMagazine.com has an engaging assortment of news items, articles, and features without the smack of corporate slick - without, in her words, "fashion police". (Bucking an erstwhile trend, her dotcom "is funded privately and through advertising and is not actively seeking venture capital.") More than a few features, such as Cosmetics Cop and articles on eating disorders, slant toward women. But Marlow is no Lady eScrooge. There are logical links to external sites for men, and the positive feeling here is one of fitness in general.
http://www.bodytalkmagazine.com/
Anyone in the building trade will appreciate this resource, which offers a huge amount of trade-related information for the practical side of building, as well as advanced techniques for integrating technologies into various structures. Even outsiders can enjoy it. We learned more than we ever thought possible about water-loop heat pumps, got hopelessly lost in the not-as-exciting-as-it-sounds Earthquake Friction Dampers page, and hovered helplessly in the Wind Energy Systems section, entranced by the enormous horizantal axis wind turbines.
http://www.advancedbuildings.org/
SOFTWARE
The Linux 2.4 Kernel comes a bit later than promised but full of technological goodies for the discerning technophile. The new kernel is noteable mostly for its much improved multiprocessing support. You can run it on machines with up to 32 processors. Most mortal users will be more interested in its support of USB peripherals. If you know how to compile and install your own kernel, grab it from the Linux Kernel Archives. The rest of us can wait for the usual distributions to integrate it for us into a nice CD-ROM package. Wired has an overview of the new features.Archives: http://www.kernel.org/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,41034,00.html
The latest version of the open-source Web browser includes SSL and Personal Security manager, mouse wheel support, drag and drop attachments in e-mail, and a bunch of the usual fixes and enhancements.
Release Notes: http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla0.7/
Download: http://www.mozilla.org/releases/
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Deserving Recipients Deserves More
Phil Shapiro, who works as an instructional technology coordinator in the Arlington Public Schools system in Virginia - and who writes stories about canoeing across the Panama Canal, among others - has found a way to give back. He's created Deserving Recipients, a message board where individuals can describe the material needs of someone (or a whole organization) they know and wait to be matched up with individuals who can fulfill that need. This is especially useful in the Northern Virginia area, where used office and computer equipment is thrown out daily. Benefactors can peruse the boards to see what's needed before the next trash run. An individual may not post a message about his or her own needs. Someone else needs to post as an advocate. This is available for the DC metro area only, but it's certainly a valiant start.http://www.his.com/pshapiro/deservingrecipients/
Anyone Remember Tinker to Evers to Chance in NSD?
Glenn Rice remembers that some time ago we included in NSD a link to a transcript of the play-by-play of the famous Tinker to Evers to Chance double play in the 1907 World Series. Neither he nor we could find it with the NSD search engine but we were hoping someone reading this might be able to help him out. You can reach Glenn at the Web page below - his e-mail address is at the bottom of the Epiphyllum page. By the way, we can vouch for fried whole turkey. Best turkey we ever ate.http://web.missouri.edu/~extgrice/
CORRECTIONS
In our recommendation for the "The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Boxed Set" in NSD 6.43, we casually mentioned that the "Lord of the Rings" movie would be out next summer. We're wrong on two counts. It'll be out next December 19, and it is called "The Fellowship of the Ring". Each book of the trilogy will have its own film, or so the plan goes.Sloppy work on our part led to our asking "We wonder how much that domain name cost?", referring to movies.com in "Movie Gossip" (NSD 6.43). In fact, a simple WHOIS look-up tells us that Disney has owned Movies.com and Movie.com since February 1996, and they probably didn't have to pay a domain squatter anything at all.