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BREAKING SURF
Large Kuiper Belt Object Discovered Beyond Pluto
The BBC is reporting that scientists at Lowell Observatory have discovered a large object orbiting beyond the orbit of Pluto, in what is known as the Kuiper Belt. The object, dubbed 2001 KX76, is estimated to be up to 1,270 km in diameter, about the size of Pluto's moon, Charon. The object's orbit is not yet precisely known. Astronomers' next step will be to refine the orbital observations and to try to get a spectrum that would reveal the object's composition. The discovery was made as part of the Deep Ecliptic Survey (DES), a study of Kuiper Belt objects orbiting in the outer reaches of the Solar System.Story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1419000/1419508.stm
DES: http://www.noao.edu/noao/noaonews/jun00/node2.html
The discovery of cosmic background radiation stunned the scientific world in 1965 and astronomers have been investigating the slight variations in its properties ever since. On June 30, a new probe was launched to examine these variations in unprecedented detail. The Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) lifted off from Kennedy Space port aboard a Delta II rocket and all systems are go, as they say. Why all the fuss about the inescapable background buzz? Variations in its density and temperature reveal details about conditions in the very early universe, long before stars and galaxies formed. NASA's MAP site goes off on a long tangential discussion of cosmology that provides an overview of current ideas about the formation and evolution of the universe and really puts the MAP mission in context. As well, the site offers great pictures of the spacecraft itself - sized to suit your connection speed - and an educational resources section built around the mission. Of course, you can keep tabs on the progress of the mission here, too. NASA provides its usual excellent Web resource focused on an important mission about the fundamental nature of our universe.
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Kubrick and Spielberg Dream Team for "AI"
Stanley Kubrick had long wanted to make a movie out of Brian Aldiss's short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" but died before he could. He'd told Steven Spielberg about it, however, and Spielberg carried on Kubrick's dream and made the movie "AI", now out in theaters. SF generally translates poorly to the screen, but the blurring of the line between artificial and real intelligence is a theme that has triggered much great SF and is a real challenge, one perhaps closer than we realize. "AI" has David, a robot boy programmed to love, illustrate the emotionally wrenching questions. Early reviews suggest the movie veers between Kubrick's typically disturbing vision and the more upbeat optimism of Spielberg. Overall, it's reputed to be considerably darker and a lot more disturbing than the movie ads suggest. We think that's good, not bad. The official Web site will feed your "AI" frenzy with trailers and TV ads to download, pictures, interviews, an opportunity to chat up a chatbot, and more lore about the movie.http://aimovie.warnerbros.com/
Corruption in public service and government seems almost an inevitable fact of the human condition. In some nations, corruption is simply the normal method of operation, in others it's either rare or so subtle it skirts the very edge of what corruption means. Transparency International, "a civil society organisation dedicated to curbing both international and national corruption", publishes an index of perceived corruption around the world. The index draws on 14 surveys from seven independent institutions and ranks 91 countries by how their citizens perceive corruption in their homelands. This ranking is not based on actual corruption, just the perception thereof. Finns feel their government is least corrupt, citizens of Bangladesh and Nigeria are most distressed. The US ties with Israel at number 16 on the list.
http://www.transparency.org/documents/cpi/2001/cpi2001.html
Much early press postured that this decision was a big win for Microsoft in its anti-trust trial. It's easy to get the impression from all this coverage that the company is out of the woods. That's not quite the case. If you read carefully - you are a legal masochist, aren't you? - you'll find that the decision continues the case, and only transfers it to another court. Yes, the order to break up the company is vacated, and frankly we're not sure if such an order can come back again from the continuing case, but this was most certainly not a Microsoft win no matter what Bill Gates says, and says often. The fundamental findings still stand. It's a legal crapshoot, in our learned legal opinion (ahem!).
http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/Fed-Ct/Circuit/dc/opinions/00-5212a.html
Google comes in two flavors now. There's the usual, excellent text-based retrieval whiz and, now, one that concentrates on images, 150 million of them. Naughty and nice, they are all here. And the ever-popular "I'm feeling lucky" option is available, too. The image search is a beta facility with a mature content filter that you can toggle on and off. Google uses an inherently fuzzy retrieval system that works by matching search terms to the titles of image files or to adjacent text. In other words, it doesn't really matter what the image is about - it's the label that counts. You can dig into the gory details yourself with the FAQ. Instead of lines of textual search output, you get pages of thumbnail images. When you click on a thumbnail, Google isolates the picture from its original site so you can look at it without confusing, lurid distraction, although, if you wish, you can also click on down into the site it came from.
http://images.google.com/
Napster Upgrade Shuts out Clones
Ripples continue to spread from the impact of legal action against Napster. Intent on complying with the court order to stop the sharing of copyrighted material, the company has introduced a new version of its file-swapping software. CNet reports that the software upgrade has not only decreased Napster's own level of activity, but that it ended the party for Napster clones such as OpenNap, a popular alternative that lets users point their Napster software at other, independent hubs to trade files. They don't work any more, but we suspect it won't be long before someone finds a way around Napster's tighter control. Meanwhile, many users undoubtedly are moving to other, unrestricted alternatives that have sprung up in the wake of Napster's legal woes. We can't help wondering if the Recording Industry Association of America remembers the Hydra of Greek mythology, a multi-headed monster that grew back two heads for every one struck off.http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6416843.html
At press time, Napster has suspended service for a couple of days - ostensibly to fix problems with its database. Some are speculating that Napster has shut down to debug its file filters, which are supposed to prevent unauthorized file trading. Napster is also under a new legal assault. A company that publishes meditation music contends that having its music appear on Napster is dangerous because those copies lack the normally-supplied warning label that warns operators of heavy machinery that they could fall asleep listening to the tunes. Only in America....
Suspension: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6443598.html
Danger: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6404496.html
Anti-Spam Database ORBS Moves on
Alan Brown ran the Open Relay Behavior-Modification System (ORBS) from servers in New Zealand. ORBS is a database of mail servers that allow third parties to send e-mail through them, so called open-relay servers that are open to abuse by spammers. ISPs around the world use the ORBS database to blackhole e-mail going to those servers as a way to force their closure or modification and discourage spam. Brown inherited the system from its originator, Alan Hodgson, after Hodgson got into a dispute with his ISP over how it was run. Now, Brown has been forced to give up running the system after two New Zealand companies won an injunction against it. Fortunately, ORBS's spirit lives on in the services of at least three other similar systems: Arizona's Open Relay Black List (ORBL); England's Open Relay Block Zone (ORBZ); and Denmark's Open Relay Database (ORDB). Wired's got the goods.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,44876,00.html
ORBS: http://www.orbs.org/
ORBL: http://www.orbl.org/
ORBZ: http://www.orbz.gst-group.co.uk/
ORDB: http://www.ordb.org/
MSNBC is running a feature on Slashdot, arguably the most important geek culture site around, with a quoted viewership of about 1.2 million page views per day. The story speculates heavily about the future of Slashdot in view of the troubles at VA Linux, its parent company. VA Linux recently decided to abandon its main line of business, which was building pretty neat though expensive Linux machines. VA Linux's network of online sites accounted for $3.3 million, or 16.2 percent of net revenue during the last quarter. Obviously, after getting out of the hardware business, VA Linux depends on the sites as important to its cash flow. The story provides some background on the business end of a great Net resource.
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/595556.asp
Slashdot: http://www.slashdot.com/
VA Linux: http://www.valinux.com/
Online job search site Monster.com will buy out its leading rival, HotJobs. The deal is reportedly worth in excess of $460 million in stock. Monster has been on a buying binge lately, acquiring a number of rival online job companies. Now's the time to do it, we guess.
Deal: http://www.tmp.com/pressarchives/20010629.htm
Monster.com: http://www.monster.com/
HotJobs: http://www.hotjobs.com/
ONLINE CULTURE
Running Usenet is a thankless job - it can actually be dangerous. And yet, dedicated individuals continue to hold the creaky global discussion and file trading network together in the face of constant underappreciation. Why do they do it? We give you two eloquent voices from behind the scenes. First, Stephen Gielda tells us what its like to run Cotse, a free, privacy-shielded webmail and Usenet service. He's been harassed, threatened, visited by the FBI, and generally abused. "Usenet is a battleground," he says. "We found out that if you allow someone to speak an unpopular opinion, you will become the focus of malicious attacks. We have also found that every opinion is an unpopular one to someone." But he keeps the service running on a shoestring because he passionately believes in free speech. Russ Allberry, in an archived 1998 message to net.subculture.usenet , talks about what it's like to run the Stanford University Usenet servers in the face of user abuse and mechanical exploitation of bandwidth. Usenet may look like it's dead, but with people like these behind the scenes it's only a flesh wound.Stephen: http://www.cotse.com/runningcotse.html
Russ: http://www.usenet2.org/rant.txt
Tribulations of Being a Gorgeous Guy
It all started with a posting on Craigslist, San Francisco's famous local networking Web site. The posting was in the Missed Connection section, where somebody extolled the virtues of an anonymous San Franciscan soon dubbed GorgeousGuy. The posting became viral, drawing more and more comments until one day GorgeousGuy, Dan Baca, heard total strangers talking about him at a bus stop. Eventually the story become a media meme, picked up by the likes of CNN, Leno, and Letterman. At first, Dan was a bit miffed by all the attention, but he has decided to roll with the punches and go along with the fad, happily giving interviews left and right in the hopes of landing - yep, you guessed it - acting or modeling work. We'd be remiss if we didn't note the hazard here, which is that this kind of thing could easily lead to a stalker on somebody's tail. Fortunately, this story seems to have a happy ending. Accordingly, we predict a flood of actor/models spoofing postings on Missed Connection sites describing themselves as the "FabulousCreature". Meanwhile, be nice and don't, repeat, don't abuse the wonderful Craigslist.Craigslist: http://www.craigslist.org/
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/07/03/internet.fame/index.html
Philip Brandes, 26, did the whole dotcom thing. He worked at a startup, the startup went belly up. He bummed around a bit then finally decided to give porn a try. No, he's not starring in the latest thigh moistener from LA, he's teaching webmasters how to get into the online porn business, at $140 a pop. Salon has an interview with Philip, who talks about how he got into the porn instruction business, how thumbnail galleries work behind the scenes, and his overall philosophy of avoiding the Dilbertian cubicle trap.
Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/03/webmaster/index.html
School: http://www.adultwebmasterschool.com/
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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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Iron Chef: The Official Book
Robot Builder's Bonanza
The Grand Tour: The European Adventures of a Continental Drifter
Diablo 2 Expansion: Lord of DestructionSURFING SITES
We've all been in this situation. You're on an almost full plane, and somehow, miraculously, you end up with two empty seats beside you. As the attendants request that you ensure your seatbelts are fastened and that your tray tables are in their full upright and locked positions, you sigh blissfully in the knowledge that within an instant the forward boarding door will be closed and the glorious cushion of space will be all yours. Your hopes are pierced by a bloodcurdling squeal, one which could only be made by... a lap child. That's right. There's a mother barreling down the aisle with a screaming infant in one arm and a mewling toddler close behind, sure to make your three-hour tour seem more like the length of Gilligan's stay. Go vent at Brats, a site dedicated to the rantings of the child-free. It's a marvelous way to relieve your frustrations in zeros and ones instead of in person.http://www.fred.net/turtle/kids/kidrants.shtml
"The NCAA is up to its old greedy tricks again." If this kind of intro ignites your interest, check out College Charlie. Recent rants focus mostly on football, certainly the most popular collegiate sport in America, and money. This site states up front that "The most violent element in our society is ignorance." Ouch! The "About this site" page states, "We are not great fans of the NCAA so we will punch it up some. We detest arrogant athletes so we will go after them as well." Coaches, players, and administrators, you are forewarned. The site has much to say about the demise of the true student-athlete, and laments the commercialization of college sports that has led many college basketball and football programs to become de facto minor league teams. Graduation has become the object of lip service. Don't get College Charlie wrong, the site is not a knee-jerk reaction against all college sports. It is not, however, afraid to blow whistles.
http://www.clik.to/ccharlie/
If you enjoy wearing thong underwear and pick your teeth with a credit card you are not normal. On the other hand, if you find eyeglasses sexy and your workplace has an ugly floor, you can color yourself typical - at least according to Aminormal.com, a voter-driven engine for assessing the average person. The site poses weekly questions in five categories, with a new question each weekday, and after submitting your answer and optional comments, you can view last week's results or check out the archives. You won't find a lot of surprises here, but the comments will often yield a giggle or two. Hey, eating peanuts isn't exactly revelatory either, but it's awful hard to stop once you get started.
http://www.aminormal.com/
Literature, art, and film abound with stories of hookers who made a difference or even changed the world. In recognition of contributions by the hoary profession, Hooker Heroes touches upon prostitutes famous and not so famous, including the Great Whore of Babylon, Rhodopis of Egypt, and models who posed for Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, and photographer E.J. Bellocq. Unfortunately, we learn little about the mostly anonymous women themselves. Other short pieces here cover - or uncover - the influence of prostitution on American music and the tango, and on the lives of historical figures such as Lord Byron, John F. Kennedy, and Charlie Sheen. The site creator, Blake Wilfong, a former NASA consultant, admits to being a "longtime customer of the legal Nevada brothels." "My goal in creating this Web site," he states, "is to change your thinking about prostitution." It came as no surprise that the only banner ads we found here were those from Amazon.com.
http://wondersmith.com/heroes/index.htm
And So Shines a Good Deed, in a Weary World...
For everlasting gobstopper's sakes, will somebody please go keep SarahMK company at the Willy Wonka forum? It's such a little thing, and it will make Sarah so scrumdiddly-happy. The forum is a public service provided by Chris Kreuter's Wonka Shrine, a site dedicated to - what else? - "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". In addition to the forum, the Shrine offers Willy worshippers song lyrics, quotes, audio files, personal retrospectives, and, allegedly, photographs, though the photos seem to have disappeared lately. The Shrine even includes Chris's own short thesis on Roald Dahl, author of the book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", on which the movie was based. If you love the Candyman, consider this your golden ticket.http://www.wonka.cjb.net/
Before the Net, many went to the public library to start hunting for a job. JobStar has grown from a federally funded project at Alameda County Library in northern California to an online resource for both California (Bay area, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego) and New Jersey (Jersey City). Like many public libraries, most of its resources are wide but not deep. You'll find similar stuff - resume guidelines, career guides, and tips on finding "hidden jobs" - at other sites, including the Wall Street Journal, which provides support for JobStar through Careerjournal.com. The best JobStar resource is probably Profession-Specific Salary Surveys, a directory to external surveys in 50 professions (from accounting to "wood and paper"). The brain behind JobStar belongs to Mary-Ellen Mort, a Bay Area librarian, teacher, and writer who maintains a section of her own, Ask Electra. Netsurfers outside California and New Jersey may also benefit from JobStar. Bookmark it if you have to negotiate your salary.
http://jobstar.org/
If you're one of those people who consider cooking work and grilling fun, grab your tongs and skedaddle over to the Sonoran Grill, a site brought to you from the desert of Cave Creek, Ariz., where somebody called Mad Coyote Joe will show you how to grill virtually anything, including Kahlua cheesecake! The Mad Coyote offers up a truly appetizing menu of searchable recipes for grilled items and side dishes like margarita salad (oh, yes) plus an archived webcast of his weekly show on Phoenix's KNXV-TV. Don't worry if you experience blackouts while viewing the video though; your pleasure receptors aren't being overloaded - these are spaces where the commercial breaks were originally scheduled.
http://www.sonorangrill.com/
Wrestling with More Than Your Conscience
If you've checked out your television schedule recently, you know that you cannot escape wrestling, especially on the weekends. Different shows, all contributing to the story lines, come on at various hours of the day, forcing wrestling fans to resign themselves to the lives of recluses. Wrestling Web sites come to the rescue. WrestleBoard and WrestleLine are filled with all the latest headlines from the WWF, the WCW, and even the ECW. WrestleBoard includes gossip, pay-per-view event rundowns, and recent match results, plus it adds a great feature called "Before They Were Stars". WrestleLine, from CBS Sportsline and the World of Wrestling Magazine, includes news on the independents, plus it has audio interviews. Both include the requisite scantily-clad women, although they're more in-your-face at WrestleBoard. Heck, it's only fair to dedicate a section to the bombshells. After all, the guys are in tights.WrestleBoard: http://www.wrestleboard.com/index.shtml
WrestleLine: http://www.wrestleline.com/
There is a janitor in Topeka, Kans. (maybe, maybe not) who may be among the first to announce your demise to the online world - if you are one of the famous or near-famous. His Web identity is Rory Borealus and his You're Outta Here site commemorates the passing of such notables as Anthony Quinn, a US Navy mine-sniffing dolphin, and Henry Kissinger's barber. The site, which features the author's own oddly touching brand of obituaries, dates back to 1996. If you read a few of Rory's entries, it is likely that you will begin to find yourself learning as much about the curator of this peculiar museum as you do about the departed notables he eulogizes. He also has a page that tips its hat to episodes of death by stupidity, and a links page containing such morbid jewels as Celebrity Wills, Autopsies & Divorces.
http://www.youreouttahere.com/
Sometime in the future we'll all have our own personal flying machine. Aircraft Shopper Online is where you can start looking for yours today. Planes are organized by category, year, model and features, just like any good used car listing. Searching is easy and the wealth of detail about particular planes and copters is impressive. For example, you can pick up a nice 1970 Boeing B-747-122 with five galleys and only 84,000 hours. This baby carries 393 friends and family members, 18 in first class. Don't wait too long. It's a steal at only $3 million! Hangaring, maintenance, and crew are not included, however. If you want something smaller or with rotary wings, check out the constantly changing choices. Tire-kickers as well as serious buyers will find a lot here.
http://www.aso.com/
Want to hear about the latest Internet start-ups before they land in the dead pool with a resounding splash? StartUp City focuses on companies that have recently secured venture capital funding and the issues that face them. The site is a subset of ITPapers.com, a search engine/portal for white papers on the IT industry. Its parent company, the Applied Technologies Group, unsurprisingly provides services for companies who need help writing white papers. The site should work with IE or Netscape 4.x and up, except Netscape 6. It claims that "Serious decision makers read White Papers first," which could be bad news for the makers of Sominex, if that news ever gets airplay.
http://www.itpapers.com/supercategory/startup.html
ONLINE TRAVEL
Urban spelunking, the concept of exploring enclosed man-made areas, often illegally, is the focus of an archived NewsPort feature, one we missed when it came out. It chronicles the journey of three adventurers to gain new perspective on the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The Urban Explorers Network (UEN) has all sorts of good tips for safety and the most recent intel on the hot places to check out in your area. This may not be a good time to try this sort of thing in the DC area, what with the manhole covers blowing off in Georgetown, but most major cities probably have an outlet for you if you get bitten by the bug. After you check out the urban spelunking information, go check out the most recent edition of NewsPort, which is produced by a San Francisco State University journalism class.Urban Spelunking: http://www.newsport.org/archive/s98/spelunk/
UEN: http://www.urbanexplorers.net/
NewsPort: http://www.newsport.org/
When a Montrealer with impressive multimedia skills decides to forsake the cold Canadian winter for the warmth of the Serengeti and Kilimanjaro, the results are a spectacular traveler's diary. Hippnotika.com requires Flash, a decent sound card, and 1024 x 768 screen resolution (you can cheat a bit on the last). Any Mac will be fine as will most recent Windows PCs. The photos are simply spectacular, the music superb, and the text a cut above ordinary. The spare prose aspires to be by turns wistful and mysterious. After a hot day in transit, the narrator recalls a hotel shower near Kilimanjaro: "I close my eyes and become a hawk that glides motionlessly across a slate sky." Most of the landscapes in the Ngorongoro gallery are more evocative, as are the disappointingly few in the Kilimanjaro. Everyone with the slightest interest in this ancient part of the world will enjoy traveling along with Mickey Bhuiyan.
http://www.hipnotika.com/
Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Museum
Noting that the benefits of today's torrents of information are countered by the unavoidable side effect of short memories, Yad Vashem seeks to preserve and enhance the collective world memory of this period of unspeakable barbarism. The online offerings here include Holocaust FAQs and chronological and bibliographic material. In addition, the site presents online exhibitions that are comprehensive and touching in their scope. As it notes, "Some of the most difficult photographs from the Holocaust are those taken by the Allied liberating forces upon entering the (Polish) camps." Should we ever make it over to the Jerusalem area, we'd make it a point to spend some time at the 45-acre complex. A visit to this online site is likely a poor substitute, but it'll have to suffice for now.http://www.yadvashem.org.il/
Going to Scotland sometime soon? This page - called the Loch Ness home page for very little reason - includes a few fascinating tours, including a clickable map which leads to pictures and history of the castles in the highlands, lowlands, and middlelands. Another clever set of tours, particularly for the single malt scotch whisky aficionado, are the Scottish Whisky Trail and the Malt Whisky Trail, each of which contains the phone number and hours of operation for at least a half a dozen distilleries. Just don't do all the tours on the same day. It wouldn't do at all to appreciate the local flavor a bit too much and then topple off the parapet of Caerlaverock Castle with a loud splash as you re-enact your favorite bits of "Braveheart". We have no idea why the two whisky trails are separate. If we knew more about single malt, we might be able to tell you.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/8287/
Contested Borders in the Caucasus
If you're interested - and who isn't - in the ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus over Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, and the conflict in the North Caucasus between the Ingush and the Ossetes, you'll love this site, which provides sample chapters and the full table of contents of a compilation volume examining these very subjects. This site is a rare opportunity to learn about these important events. Don't scoff - what happens in the Caucasus's can have a worldwide impact.http://poli.vub.ac.be/publi/ContBorders/eng/
Airport Delay Info from the Feds
Flight delays burn you? This notification system might be worth a try. Sign up and have the Feds - i.e. the Aviation Information System (part of the Federal Aviation Administration) - tell you the status of US airport operations by e-mail. It's easy to register and indicate which of the 40 largest American airports you're interested in. Remember to indicate your preference for short messages (for wireless devices, telephones, and pagers) or long ones - either way, you get real-time info. There's not much to see at the Web site, which cautions you not to sign up for a lot of airports unless you want a lot of e-mail. All together now: "Ours is not to fix or lie. Ours is but to notify." Regardless of airport conditions, of course, you'll still want to contact your airline.http://www.fly.faa.gov/Products/AIS/ais.html
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Alice and Bob and Cryptography
This is billed as a five-minute graduate course in coding theory. Sounds boring. And maybe it is, but the speech is well worth a read. Sprinkled with a liberal dose of humor, it seems designed to briefly address a complex subject without putting the minds connected to all of those full stomachs to sleep.http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html
Here's a compact site designed to butt into as many lives as possible. Basically, it's photos of bare backsides, each captioned, some cheery, some rude, some seasonal. Choose one, append a message, identify both the recipient and yourself, and the thing is off. Don't forget the online merchandise.
http://assgrams.com/
You'd never get one of those cute vanity license plates for yourself, but they amuse you. This site lists over 1,000 examples and translates them into English. If, after visiting, you find you can't resist any longer, vanity plates can now be ordered at most state online DMV sites.
http://www-chaos.umd.edu/misc/
SOFTWARE
Linux Standard Base Specification 1.0
A Linux standards organization has released a spec which should make it easier for various applications and distributions to work together. The standard covers such things as where files should go, the format for executable files, default libraries, the standard shell, and other system-related settings. The document mostly codifies current practices so there should be no surprises. Of interest to all Linux developers.http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/gLSB/gLSB/book1.html