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| Orion Nebula Virtual Fly-through |
| MESSENGER to Mercury |
| The Face |
| Natural Resources Defense Council's Obfuscated Screenshots |
| Yahoo Messenger Now Supports Webcams |
| Latest Release of Open Source Compiler GCC 3.0 |
| Popping Ads, Irony, and Annoyance |
| Steve Gibson on DDoS |
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| An EGGcellent Response |
| CyberRebate.gone |
| No More Internet News Network |
| You Say Bimmers, We Say Beemers... |
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BREAKING SURF
The Ultimate Limits of Computers
A fairly readable article at Ars Technica discusses the physical limits of computer capability. The piece is based on several scientific papers published last year that looked at what physics permits computers to do. The primary reference was published by Seth Lloyd in Nature and looks at just how much computing can be done by an "ultimate laptop" - a one-kilogram computer occupying a volume of one liter. The article also discusses another paper by Y. Jack Ng that postulates the limitations of computers composed of black holes. The Ars Technica article contains links to the actual scientific papers at the end for those who want to delve into the source literature. Great fun if you can handle the mathematics of college physics.http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/01q2/limits/limits-1.html
Despite dizzying plummets in market valuations and profit warnings coming thick and fast, billionaires still exist. Yes, the latest version of Forbes's eagerly anticipated annual list of the world's richest people is here at last. It's no surprise to find William H. Gates III firmly ensconced at the summit of the list of 538, pretty much in a wealth class all his own, with Warren Buffet leading Paul Allen by a mere two billion for the number two spot. Forbes presents its usual nicely organized compilation, an invaluable and fascinating database to doodle with. You can sort the list by wealth or by country and there's a competent search tool, making it easy to check for long-lost friends and overlooked relatives. This year, the Forbes list is enriched with all sorts of goodies, including interactive maps: one showing the global distribution of billionaires; another billionaires vs. GDP (these need Flash); and a people or company tracker. Once you exhaust this year's treasure chest of rich people, you can always take a retrospective tour of previous years back to 1996 and plot the rise and fall of riches over time.
http://www.forbes.com/2001/06/21/billionairesindex.html
Gold used to be the foundation of paper currency, but it has now found new life as an international cyber-currency, eliminating currency conversion hassles and fees for cross-border electronic shopping. To get into the online action, you purchase gold using a conventional bank draft or wired funds through companies such as E-gold and GoldMoney. These outfits hold the real gold for you and set up an online bullion account that you use to purchase real goods through special Web sites that handle metal-based transactions. It's a private form of money, free of government control - and you get to call yourself a bullionaire. Salon's article not only describes what's going on in this glittery business but also provides intriguing stories of the history of private money of the paper kind. Of course, tax authorities and crime fighters are sniffing around eager to spot wrongdoing and tax evasion. The Salon story is complete with links to the gold places named.
http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2001/06/17/gold/index.html
The challenges and trade-offs of information retrieval - to find the relevant stuff but exclude the chaff - are as old as the hills, but somehow Google has an uncanny ability to eliminate dross and cut to the chase where other search engines falter. Google's deserved popularity is reason enough to pay attention to this Salon interview with Google's director of research, 35-year-old Monika Henzinger. You won't find anything terribly startling here, or any precious trade secrets, just a good overview of the challenges and methodology of search and retrieval from Web sites, enriched with news about Google's interest in voice searching and searching across multiple languages. As well, it's refreshing to find a successful dotcom company that retains the kind of unconventional work environment that new economy companies pioneered back when investors routinely showered them with cash - not that Google isn't considering an IPO.
Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/21/google_henziger/print.html
IPO: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1405000/1405322.stm
Long ago, sports fans flocked to megasites for news about playoffs or a tournament. Now, real-time sites rule. The Championships: Wimbledon 2001 is a prime example. This official site of the annual tennis marathon in England is powered by IBM, which, you may recall, has covered the Olympics. An interactive section includes a real-time scorecard, Radio Wimbledon, SlamCam (robotic video cameras you can aim with your browser), Virtual Tour (available through July 8), and photos for desktop wallpaper. More photos appear in the News section. For statistics, check the Score section. Of course, tennis fans will also want to explore the Players section, which contains a neat "Top 20" collection along with interviews, more statistics and photos, and the complete "Gentlemen's and Ladies' Listings". This site will no doubt be at its most impressive during and immediately after the tournament, when content is fresh and abundant, so check it out before the courts cool. What a showcase!
http://www.wimbledon.org/
Every few years, some self-appointed guardians of morality decide to beat up on a commercial entity for failing to meet some Victorian standards of probity. A few years ago, Calvin Klein suffered for its depiction of junkie-thin half-dressed teenagers on New York buses. Today, it's Abercrombie & Fitch, an upscale retailer of sporty clothing and lifestyle. Some people object to the preternaturally healthy youth gracing the A&F catalogue in various stages of artfully draped and shape-revealing clothing. Naturally, in the interest of journalistic research, we had to investigate the Web site. Yep, there are some photos there, but nothing you wouldn't see on the cover of, say, Esquire. Surprisingly, it's the non-retail content that's most worth a visit. A&F is deploying "lifestyle" marketing and is doing a pretty good job of it - in a predictable, commercial kind of way. Check out the Web site, click around on their TV, Music, and Lifestyle sections for a respectable 15 minutes of slick market-driven netsurfing.
http://www.abercrombie.com/
Most Popular .Biz and .Info Names
Pssst! Wanna buy a .biz name? If so, you'll have to wait. And don't even think about sex.biz. VeriSign has released a list of the most requested names in the .biz and .info top-level domains (TLDs), two of the seven new TLDs approved last winter. Travel, sex, music, business, real estate and computer are among the most popular with both suffixes, Wired tells us. Show is hot with .biz but a no-show in the .info top ten. None of these names will be assigned until later this year, but you can pre-register now. Multiple claims on a single domain name get thrown into a drum for a draw. To discourage domain squatting, any trademark issues must be settled before any of the new names can go online.http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,44534,00.html
During the go-go years of the Net revolution, telecom companies built large amounts of long-haul fiber cable in order to meet the anticipated bandwidth demands. These days, demand is way down and consequently the amount of so-called dark cable - cable that is not carrying traffic - is way up. This good backgrounder compares the situation to the railroad capacity glut in the US after the Civil War. The situation is quite similar, an initial boom, a glut, and a period lasting almost a decade before the industry turned around again. The article also notes that despite a large surplus of long-haul fiber, there is still a shortage of high bandwidth to the home. This is not likely to change in the short term because nobody is investing in wiring the last mile.
http://thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=993426090377
Microsoft Warns about Serious Web Server Security Flaw
This advisory was about a week old at press time, so if you haven't fixed it chances are good you've already been compromised. The problem hits the default install of Microsoft's Web server on NT and Win 2000 machines. It's basically a buffer overflow in one of the DLLs that gets installed by default. Crackers can run pretty much any code they want if they hit this flaw on your machine. If you're a sysadmin or an individual running this software, you need to fix this as soon as possible. Here is the Microsoft security bulletin which has information about the problem and the patch.http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-033.asp
Microsoft Decommissions ListBot, Migrates Users to List Builder
ListBot is a typical mailing list management site, one which Microsoft acquired when it bought LinkExchange. The basic service was free and hosted a large number of mailing lists. These days, Microsoft prefers your hard cash to your good will, so it has decided to shut down ListBot and encourage users to migrate to their more expensive and business-oriented List Builder service. Basic List Builder service costs $269.95 per year and allows up to 10,000 e-mails per month. The more you pay, the more e-mail you can send.ListBot: http://www.listbot.com/
List Builder: http://www.bcentral.com/services/lb/default.asp
Size and Development Cost of Linux
The Linux operating system is famously free of charge. It is also famously ever growing. David Wheeler studied code size in the Red Hat Linux distribution and came up with some numbers about both the nominal cost for developing Linux and its rate of growth. The analysis implies that it would have cost over $1 billion to develop Linux to its present state were it created in a commercial environment. That number includes not only the core kernel but all the myriad tools and programs that make up the Red Hat distribution. He also estimates that it took about 8,000 person-years of development time to create the latest distribution. This extensive study includes many other interesting statistics as well.http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc/redhat71-v1/redhat71sloc.html
Crypto fans will be interested in this study of the PGP keyrings available on public servers. M. Drew Streib set out to analyze the "web of trust" which lies behind the PGP keyring structure. Basically, the keyring servers contain individuals' key signatures, which are in turn affirmed - or signed - by other users. This web of trust is based on who signs whose key, i.e. who indicates who is trustworthy. Drew's study provides various statistics about the keys and how they connect. The numbers are of interest both from a statistical point of view and for what they indicate about the social structure and connections between people who use PGP.
http://dtype.org/keyanalyze/
The Future of Military Biotechnology
The US Army wants to stay on top of the biotech revolution, and so has commissioned this scientific report on how it could benefit from research in biotechnology. The report discusses such diverse applications as biosensors, self-healing armor, performance enhancements for the soldiers, advances in wound healing, and more. Good future-of-war type reading.http://books.nap.edu/books/0309075556/html/index.html
Flight simmers who still haven't tried the top air combat flight sim ever get another chance to sample it for free in July. All the arenas will be free, including a special Battle for North America event, which pits jets against foo fighters in a retro "Independence Day" set-up. The biplane-inclined can tool around Dawn of Aces as well. The open house starts 9 a.m. EDT, July 6 and runs three days.
http://www.ient.com/warbirds/
ONLINE CULTURE
Dan Parisi owns the domain Sucks.com. Not only that, he also owns about 600 similar domains such as MichaelBloombergsucks.com, Pepsisucks.com and OprahWinfreysucks.com. You get the idea. This little sucky empire cost Dan about $100,000 to amass, not including occasional court costs to keep the domain names in the face of trademark and copyright lawsuits. Sucks.com itself is mostly a collection of links to the other sucks sites and a bulletin board where you can complain about just about everything under the sun. Dan says that he's not making any money from his empire but he also owns the notorious porn site Whitehouse.com, which funds his domain habit. Salon has an interview with Dan in which he discusses his court wins, his plans for the domains, and his general attitude to what he's doing.http://salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/25/sucks/index.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Pulitzer Prize-winning photos are the best of the best in news photos. The Newseum site offers 17 of the top winners since 1945. The are two very different versions of this site: a broadband version and a slow modem version. The photos are identical in both, but the broadband version adds Shockwave audio commentary by the prizewinning photographers. The slow version has nothing but the photos and bio data. The broadband version is wonderful; the slow version is ordinary.http://www.newseum.org/pulitzer/
The African Art Museum online reference is an ambitious site with a satisfying number of images and amount of information on the art and background of more than 100 African tribes, from the Ambete to the Zukuma. We learned, for instance, that, according to legend, the Ashanti empire was founded when "a golden stool descended from heaven into the lap of the first king, Osei Tutu. The stool is believed to house the spirit of the Ashanti people in the same way that an individual's stool houses his spirit after death." But seriously folks, this is an ambitious site with a lot of content, and although the impetus for its creation can be found in the accompanying online store, its execution is clearly a product of devotion. If you are interested in African art, it's well worth a look.
http://www.zyama.com/
Who's been in "National Lampoon's Vacation", "Weird Science", "The Breakfast Club", and many more film and television vehicles? It's okay - we didn't know, either. The answer is Anthony Michael Hall, whose range varies from lovesick teen loser in "Sixteen Candles" to aggressive teen bully in "Edward Scissorhands" to a combination of the above in "Pirates of Silicon Valley" (he played Bill Gates). The lad gets around, and he's got sort of a site going. We rather liked the music intro to the place, which is apparently under construction. The slideshow features some cool visual work, but the music links weren't working when we cruised through. Presumably, you'll need to check back later for more cool stuff. If you're really taken with old A.M., there are plenty of links to places to buy the films, so you can freeze-frame to your heart's content.
http://hallofmirrors.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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Spacefaring: The Human Dimension
American Gods
The Travel Detective: How to Get the Best Service and the Best Deals from Airlines, Hotels, Cruise Ships, and Car Rental Agencies
Half-Life: Blue Shifthttp://www.poynter.org/medianews/
How do you find out that your local public library is having a book sale? Probably, you drive by in the middle of a week, see a big sign posted in the grass, and curse the fact that you already have plans for that weekend. Plan ahead with Book Sale Finder, which lists, for free, book sales for non-profits across the US and Canada months in advance. They run a Sale Mail feature that e-mails you when a sale is added within your chosen driving distance. Some of us have too many things to do to check the site all the time.
http://www.booksalefinder.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
Orion Nebula Virtual Fly-through
The film clip is simply spectacular, sweeping our viewpoint into interstellar gas clouds, past stars and protoplanetary disks within the Orion Nebula. It took eight years of work by C. Robert O'Dell of Vanderbilt University and W. J. Henney of the National Autonomous University of Mexico to put together the animation using precise three-dimensional data from the Hubble space telescope and ground optical and radio observatories. The Orion Nebula has long been known as a birthplace of stars, and recent observations of dust shrouds around proto-stars have fueled speculation that it is also a breeding ground for planets. The latest observations shed doubt on just how effective planet formation can be in this harsh environment, where wind from energetic young stars disrupts the protoplanetary disks. Whatever may be going on in there, the fly-through is a must-see clip. Read the article for background and try the RealVideo streaming version. If you have the bandwidth you can download the full 200+ MB clip.Article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10693-2001Jun16.html
Streaming: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/nation/061801-3v.htm
Clip: http://realcontent.vanderbilt.edu/ramgen/explorer/orion_fly_through.rm
NASA has approved a mission to Mercury. The approval of any new planetary mission is always big news, and this one is long overdue. At the moment, we have very little detailed information about Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun. It's a difficult place to observe, and the last spacecraft to visit was Mariner 10 in 1974-75, which only imaged less then half the planet. The MESSENGER mission (it's an acronym) will launch in 2004 and will orbit the planet for one year in 2009. The spacecraft will explore Mercury's magnetic field and its geological composition, and will look for indications of ice at the planet's poles.
MESSENGER: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/
Mariner 10: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1973-085A.html
Human facial muscles allow more than 10,000 different expressions and communicate most of what we feel and who we are, but when it comes to detecting the "micro-expressions" that can unmask a liar, only secret service agents fare significantly better than the rest of us. The BBC Online reveals this bit of trivia and much more about what confronts us in the mirror every morning in their searching look at the human face, and addresses such maxillary issues as the reason animals have faces, face recognition, and the mathematics behind a beautiful face. The site even provides you with a beauty grid that lets you finally determine, scientifically, if you are hot or not.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/humanface/
Natural Resources Defense Council's Obfuscated Screenshots
We love the name. Who wouldn't? BioGems has a nice ring to it. We were hoping to find some actual information about the purported gems, like, maybe, how they were chosen and by whom. We found out the whom part quickly enough - this is a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Hardly known for its lack of bias, this stealth NRDC site reflects a specific agenda while providing little actual information. The site's littered with pleas for donations, pleas to alert your friends to the latest travesty, cute photos of wolf pups, and more pleas. If you're suffering from information overload and just want to see some inspiring photos, this is your place to visit. The shots are really nice, and make excellent wallpaper candidates (when did you last redecorate?). It's worth a few clicks just to check them out, if you're into nature photography.http://www.savebiogems.org/
SOFTWARE
Yahoo Messenger Now Supports Webcams
Yahoo has released a version of Messenger, its instant messenger product, that supports webcams. The support is quite seamless. If you have a webcam set up, you can just grant your buddies permission to see you. It's worth noting that this version of Messenger supports voice chat, including chatting to multiple people at the same time. The download is free.http://messenger.yahoo.com/
Latest Release of Open Source Compiler GCC 3.0
As most programmers know, GCC is the premier compiler in not just the open source community, but in many corporate environments. The compiler is maintained and developed by the GNU organization and used to develop not only GNU tools but also Linux, Apache, and many other widely used programs. GNU has just released version 3.0, a major revision. We're not going to go into the technical list of features - you can read that online. Let us just note that if you program in C, C++, or Java, you should be aware of this new version since chances are you'll be using it before too long.GCC 3.0: http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-3.0/gcc-3.0.html
Features: http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-3.0/features.html
CORRECTIONS
Popping Ads, Irony, and Annoyance
Figures. The week we state that "Netsurfer doesn't allow pop-up ads", Engage Media, our ad service, begins to feed us another pop-up type (a pop-under, if that means anything to you) without warning. Engage has an annoying habit of adding "features" without informing its members. When it first started allowing pop-up ads, we immediately turned that behavior off. After investigating, we have again turned off these annoying ads. Personally, we hate them and we try to not allow them in any of our publications. Ever. (Cue next version, Engage....)We received a lot of flak from readers for daring to contradict Steve Gibson in NSD 7.18 ("DDoS Victim: A Look from the Inside"): "For example, one of Steve's main points revolves around his statement that spoofing IP addresses is not possible from WinNT/95/98/Me machines. This is false and undermines some of his arguments and warnings." Fact is, he was wrong in his original online article and apparently fixed it based on feedback. We appreciate Steve's contributions to online society as much as anyone, but he occasionally displays questionable understanding of the technology. We were not the only people to notice this gaffe. See the Slashdot discussion of Steve's original post, for example the quote by Alien54 on Thursday May 31, 08:52AM EST (#24).
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/05/31/1330202.shtml
In NSD 1.38, after we reported on a future technology called JavaScript and a new e-zine called Suck, we covered an idea futures stock market. Basically, you bet on what you think might occur in the future. It has moved to a new URL, but it still "promises to become one of the most interesting spots on the Web."
http://www.ideosphere.com/
David McCarthy, a big cheese at Thirteen Online, took our criticism of EGG's bug to heart (NSD 7.15, "Which Came First, the Web Site or the EGG?") and fixed it.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/
In NSD 7.10, we extolled CyberRebate.com, but in mid-May, it tanked. Check out the site if you're worried about unpaid rebates.
http://cyberrebate.com/
We brought the Internet News Network to your attention in NSD 7.13 and a week later it died. C'est la vie sur ligne....
http://netnewsnet.tripod.com/NNN_farewell.htm
You Say Bimmers, We Say Beemers...
Who knew there was official BMW slang? In "Beemer Movies", NSD 7.17, we so gauchely called BMW automobiles "beemers" when every right-thinking German car aficionado knows that motorcycles are beemers and cars are bimmers. Sort of. The Boston Chapter of the BMW Car Club of America helps clear things up with a New England twist.http://www.boston-bmwcca.org/reference/bimmer-beemer.html
In NSD 7.18's "China's Web Evolution", we said that "...China has the majority of the world's population within its borders" and it doesn't. It has a plurality of the world's population, meaning the biggest single block of any country. Sorry.