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BREAKING SURF
That sounds like the title of a mediocre summer SF movie, but it isn't. It's what NASA calls the Web page covering one of its latest efforts, the Genesis mission. Launched Aug. 8, the Genesis spacecraft has begun a three-year mission to gather samples of the solar winds. It will orbit L1, a point between Earth and the sun where the gravity of both bodies is balanced. Once in position, it will trap particles of solar wind in highly pure wafers that will probably lack a delicious, creamy filling. The whole thing returns to Earth for years, perhaps decades, of scrutiny. Why is this important? Genesis should reveal exactly what the sun and the planets in the solar system are made of, and when they formed. You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been. Teachers, the site has modules available that can replace traditional secondary-level science modules. Cool photos, movies, and more are available at Space.com.Genesis: http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/
Space.com: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/delta_genesis_launch_010808.html
Looking for the Milky Way? If you live in the eastern United States, Western Europe, or Japan, don't bother. All you're going to see is a haze of light pollution. In a fascinating paper with powerful illustrations, astronomers have produced the first atlas of night sky darkness. The results are revealing. Assuming average vision, one-fifth of Earth's population - including two-thirds of Americans and half of Europe - can no longer see the Milky Way unaided from their homes. Check out the striking maps that accompany this article. Look at how Oceania or Africa differ from the brightly colored maps of the industrial world. The authors conclude that the loss of the night sky is not a problem for astronomers alone, but for all of us. The night sky, they argue, has been a source of human creativity and invention for millennia. What will become of us when we can only see the heavens inside? The World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness has the same information.
Paper: http://debora.pd.astro.it/cinzano/download/0108052.pdf
Atlas: http://www.lightpollution.it/worldatlas/pages/fig1.htm
The Learning Machine Challenge
Ai, a small artificial intelligence research company based in Boston and Tel Aviv, has issued an intriguing challenge: design software that can learn to play a game well without knowing the rules in advance. There's no entry fee, anyone can enter as often as they wish, and there's no transfer of copyright involved. You don't even need to deliver code - executable binaries that run under Windows or Linux are fine. The contest will be run on an 800-MHz Pentium III with 256 MB of RAM. Three finalists get an all-expenses-paid trip to an artificial intelligence workshop at Ai's research headquarters in Israel; the winner receives $2,000 (or more, if the program goes commercial). The Web site links to detailed contest rules, a registration form, example games, and a downloadable test suite. The deadline is Oct. 30 - you weren't really planning to do anything else in the next couple of months, were you?http://www.a-i.com/show_tree.asp?id=75&level=1&root=75
The Aeron Chair Index of Dotcom Hubris
Who really made money during the Internet bubble? Investment bankers? Venture capitalists? Herman Miller? If you answered Herman Miller, the manufacturer of classic modern furniture, then you, like dotcom veteran Jack Lewis, have been paying attention to the auctions of failed dotcoms. One of the signature items of the dotcom era was the Aeron chair, Herman Miller's sleek, ergonomically correct office chair. Even in gone-out-of-business auctions, the chair is expensive, though a used one still costs less than its original $700 price tag. Firms ever in the red sometimes purchased 100 chairs at a time, causing Herman Miller to revamp its production line several times. Jack makes much of the chairs in the dotcom universe, but they have metastasized throughout the US -Peter Jennings sits in one, and the rest of the ABC newsroom is stuffed with the chairs. The chairs, made of a lightweight, nearly transparent mesh, may yet turn out to be the most powerful metaphor of the bubble economy that embraced them.http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/07/aeron/index.html
Following the introduction of its premium subscription service, Salon is converting its popular Table Talk (TT) community forum to a $10-per-month service, because, it says, TT is a money drain that advertisers are reluctant to support. Wired reports on an organized drive within one of the most active discussion groups, the White House forum, to opt out by switching over to forums run by the liberal-leaning American Prospect Online. Refugee TTers object to the "privilege of paying to provide content" and fear subscription membership will lead to elitism. But don't assume that they're just cheap: one ex-TTer thread at the American Prospect Online advocates subscribing to the non-profit paper magazine as a way to support and thank the new host. It remains to be seen how well the band of refugees will adjust to a forum not molded by themselves, and how TT will fare as a pay-to-say discussion area.
TT: http://tabletalk.salon.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45943,00.html
The American Prospect: http://www.prospect.org/
The Myth of the Placeless Datasphere
The Internet is laden with its own stubborn mythology, and perhaps the most sacred notion is its image as what the Economist calls the "placeless datasphere" - a cyber-utopian ether free of the demands and constraints of geography. The reality, however, is that in addition to geo-specific legal challenges such as the French ruling banning the online sale of Nazi memorabilia in France, such prosaic shapers as Internet structure, usage, and demand are rendering the geographical locations of servers and users ever more important. In a special report, the Economist examines the changing topography of the Net, the rise of geolocation technology, and in an accompanying editorial, what it all means for Net regulation and standardization efforts.Report: http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=729808
Editorial: http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?Story_ID=730089
Gamespy has stuck its neck out and boldly ranked the top 50 computer games of all time. Other than an inordinate fondness for Ultima spawn, a hole in its retina for adventure games, and complete memory loss when it comes to sports games and military simulations, it's an interesting compilation. Some of our favorite games aren't on it, but there's no accounting for taste. Are we going to spoil the surprise and suspense and tell you which games made the list? Nope, not even if you ask really nicely. It's for your own good - the site provides an entertaining summary of each game, tells why it ranked where it does, and supplies comments from industry professionals about its significance. You wouldn't want to miss that, would you? Some of the games have been picked for their historical significance. Others, though, are straight off the bestseller shelves. See how your top choices stack up against Gamespy's.
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/july01/top50index/
We've gone from "What if they had a war and nobody came?" to "What if you invested and nothing was there?" It happens, folks. Here's a little cautionary tale of how one financier pushed the stock of a company called Xcelera from mere pennies to over $100 per share on the Amex, reaping an estimated $400 million for himself while hanging investors out to dry. It's an ugly little story that documents the machinations underlying a record 70,000 percent increase in share "value" in some 15 months. You've heard of vaporware? This is an entire vapor-business, and we don't find it funny. The New York Observer has the full story. Invest with caution, folks, or face the prospect of asking "You want fries with that?" in your 80s.
http://www.observer.com/pages/envelope.asp
Statistics can be slippery things, but taking things in hand is NetValue, a market research group that has released some surprising figures on the popularity of Internet porn. According to NetValue, pornographic sites represent 41.2 percent of all UK sites with a significant audience, and Germans constitute the largest European audience for online pornography, with more than 5.3 million Germans visiting an adult site in June. NetValue's measurement system is based on representative "consumer panels" and, considering the often devious methods porn sites use to attract and sometimes highjack visitors, we wonder how accurate these figures can be. The BBC takes NetValue's stats at face value as it reports the new figures and questions just how easy it is to turn these numbers into profit.
NetValue: http://www.netvalue.com/corp/presse/index_frame.htm?fichier=cp0034.htm
BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1484000/1484003.stm
If you've followed the twists and turns of the Napster case, you've likely figured out that the ramifications affect not only music lovers, but people who want to swap any sort of files in a peer-to-peer (P2P) environment. Think direct infringement, material contribution, and other copyright terms - if you're into P2P development or use, you'd better, and become acquainted with other related legal issues. There's no place better to start boning up than this Electronic Frontier Foundation summary. Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer and tech law specialist, concisely presents the relevant issues including potential legal defenses and some guidelines for developers. The full white paper, available through a link, goes into further detail and provides a look at how file sharing may conflict with copyright law in the USA. The paper makes for some especially interesting reading.
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/Napster/20010227_P2P_Copyright_White_Paper.html
Judges Don't Like Net Monitoring - of Them
What do you do if you don't like your workplace's rules on Internet use? Most of us can choose only to quit or comply, but federal US judges are apparently quite different. Instead of accepting software that monitors individual users' activities on their computers, the judges of the Ninth Circuit Court declared that such software represented an unwarranted invasion of their privacy and had their staff disable the monitoring package. William Rehnquist, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, will decide whether or not judges are immune from monitoring in early September. Root for the judges. Wired has more.http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45936,00.html
Ah, the Pentagon. The only place on the planet that would spend $6.2 million to let 84 soldiers vote via the Internet. That's $74,000 per voter. To be fair, this was a test of concept that grappled with security problems to make sure not one of those votes was tainted. Still, $6.2 million for a test which "wasn't meant to guard against every possible security threat" seems a bit excessive. Right now, an estimated six million overseas soldiers must rely on snail mail to send in their ballots. Letting them vote online would theoretically make the process more reliable and cheaper. Well, maybe only more reliable. Maybe if they don't use their insecure home computers. Maybe. $6.2 million. Ouch.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6840757.html
Survey on Consumer Satisfaction with ISPs
Consumer Reports surveyed 1,640 dial-up users and rated various ISPs on how they stack up in consumer satisfaction. The big news, though perhaps predictable, is that the largest ISPs, AOL and MSN, had the lowest customer satisfaction scores. AT&T WorldNet, Bell South, and Earthlink got the highest ratings. To read the report, you'll have to buy the magazine's September issue or subscribe to the Web site ($3.95/month), but CNet summarizes the results.Consumer Reports: http://www.consumerreports.org/main/home.jsp
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6833144.html
Top Level Domain .Info Whois Database Now Online
The headline says it all. If you're interested in finding out who owns what .info domain, this database will give you the answer. You can also check which .info domains are still available.http://www.afilias.info/whois/
ONLINE CULTURE
Slithery Tale of Code Red Hype
You can read this and be amused, look down your nose at the gullible hoi polloi, or worry that the media do such a bad job of distinguishing between hype and substance. Whatever stance you adopt, the Register skewers the media, babbling pundits, and expert agencies such as the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT) and the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) for the uninformed hysteria surrounding the Cod Red worms. This insightful piece offers no end of slimy scuttlebutt about the worms and the supposed Internet meltdown some (but not Rob Rosenberg and his gang) said it would precipitate. It also asks why CERT and NIPC didn't stress the most worrying aspect of Code Red, its ability to provide unauthorized system level access. It also questions why journalists ignore the conflict of interest of companies that profit from fixing the security problems their spokesfolk aggressively publicize. For more on the topic visit the Register, Rob's virus myths page, and CNet's saturation coverage, crawling with articles on Code Red, including a supposedly extra-virulent Korean version.Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/20908.html
Rob: http://www.vmyths.com/
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-6741564-0.html
The PrivacyRightsNow site was created by Ralph Nader and Remar Sutton. They aim to bring together as much Internet information and as many links as possible. The site encourages you to act. It provides forms so you can opt out of the egregious financial privacy violations now being perpetrated by banks and credit card companies. The site also suggests certain letters you can send to legislators pertaining to the current state of privacy law and legislation in work. Along with the action areas, there are links to many major privacy Web sites, and information to enable users to find the sites that will be most helpful. Naturally enough, this site is free and collects no data about its visitors. The privacy of your personal information is in serious jeopardy and this site is a great place to start protecting your data.
http://www.privacyrightsnow.com/
The word "whores" may be a bit harsh this side of South Park, but let's face it, many of those teen divas (of both sexes) do drop their panties for material gain. A link-filled feature in Salon documents a busy underground webcam scene which is apparently not without its tangible rewards. It seems that enterprising teen girls - and it is mostly girls - have discovered that their webcam admirers are willing to buy them gifts. We're not talking about porn webcams mind you, but free Web sites set up by teens who just like to live on cam. Yes, some of them do strip for gifts, as evidenced by some random flipping at a webcam database site like Hush Hush. Perhaps surprisingly, however, many who don't still get fans to buy them items off their Amazon wish lists. A perfect example of a new technology breeding a new social phenomenon. Good story.
Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/13/cam_girls/index.html
Hush Hush: http://www.hush-hush.com/1stflirt/index.htm
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Dr. Johnson's London: Coffee-Houses and Climbing Boys, Medicine, Toothpaste and Gin, Poverty and Press-Gangs, Freakshows and Female EducationSURFING SITES
Asian Americans are members of one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the US. This site intends to educate those who'd like to know more about the communities and it offers a lot of material. However, it seems to perpetuate the American cultural divide by continuing to portray Americans of Asian heritage as hyphenated Americans, and this is an issue that seems to be left by the wayside of this otherwise comprehensive site. On the other hand, there's amazing depth here - a quick click on the left sidebar puts you in touch with the latest in Asian and Asian American news, or you can jump straight into culture or history links. The site nods to the range of religions and cultures found within the broad spectrum that is the Asian community. The site's design is exceptionally clean, but there's so much stuff (including some cool images) that load times can drag. You'll find it worth the wait. This site hits all historical, sociocultural, and other elements of life challenging Americans of Asian heritage. In a particularly nice touch, the author makes it clear that there may be a touch of bias in the material presented. That's refreshing and rare candor.http://www.asian-nation.org/
You should mirror this long-overdue parody, before the unamused Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises actually succeeds in doing it harm. That's about as bullet-proof an endorsement as we can think of. Face it: you can't even go to the grocery store without running into "Chicken Soup for the Soul" and its subsequent installments lining the bookracks. If you're like us, you're just about Chickened out. As if the constant presence isn't enough, you probably have one or two folks who apparently think you never visit a grocery store, e-mailing you touching Chicken stories. You can't get away from the stuff, no matter where you turn. A place like this, then, is both refreshing and needed. Parodies provide an excellent antidote for those who've accidentally, through no fault of their own, experienced far more Chicken Soup than is really good for them. And it's funny, too (to add an obligatory quotable review blurb for the site's kudos page, if it has one).
http://www.brothersgrinn.com/soulless/main.asp
Long-time Internet users fondly recall the first versions of Yahoo. You got lots of arranged, useful links, not ads pretending to be anything but ads and pointers to the latest Britney Spears video. Back then, Yahoo was the power tool of Net choice. Digital-librarian.com, which really is the work of librarians, is a large site of links that resembles the admirable Yahoo of old. The categories are diverse but not all-inclusive. The links within the categories are well-chosen and up to date. If any of the categories meet your needs or interests, you won't find a better starting point for your surfing.
http://www.digital-librarian.com/
Useless Information at Your Fingertips
The tagline of this site is as apt as it gets. Select among features such as humor, stupid quotes, the world's dumbest, and more. Whether or not you trust all the trivia here to be true, the site makes it easy to search for additional information on the useless fact you've just fixated upon. That's a good thing -- a quick perusal on the subject of elephants revealed the useless fact that they can be pregnant for up to two years. Actually, the gestation period is 630 to 660 days - not the 730 days that make up two years. Yes, we do have our own pachyderm expert on staff - thanks for asking - and much of the material presented in the elephant category is in error; the error rate is far lower for other species. Don't base your useless knowledge entirely upon what you see here, use the ubiquitous links to search options for the real poop. The quotes section is a must-visit part of this site; you'll likely be copying and pasting some of these memorable bloopers. A pop-under ad loads during the first part of your visit, but it's easily dispatched.http://www.uselessfacts.net/
It's Not Just a Good Idea, It's Some Bad Ones, Too
Spray-on paper towels, light-saber steak knives and Burger King incense: what do they have in common? All are imaginary products of the nicely demented user group over at Halfbakery, the communal database of original, fictitious inventions. One can browse this extensive idea bank anonymously, search by keyword or category, or by recent, random, or "best" entries, and/or register to contribute your own half-baked ideas and rate the ideas of other users. But don't go off half-cocked; ignore Halfbakery's strict recipe for cooking up acceptable innovations (no "magic wand" blanket solutions, no rants or puns, for example) and you might just get burned.http://www.halfbakery.com/
Really Not Quite Immortal Stick Figures
This starts off with some head-banging drumming by a stick figure pounding on a beer keg. It gets worse from there. Stick figures die in bizarre and bloody ways here. It's loud. It's graphic. It's heavy on the Shockwave, which sometimes makes for slow loading. But it's worth a visit for a bit of quick entertainment, assuming you're not easily offended. You may want to turn down the speaker volume. On the other hand, you may want to turn it up. The author gets some interesting hate mail, by the way. It's curious that so many can get so worked up over stick-figure violence. Maybe they ignore real issues.http://www.stickdeath.com/
Myboringlife.com is anything but boring. This site has something for just about everyone. Its strengths are many, but a few stick way out. Webcam fans, even those who've already visited almost every active webcam, will likely find new cams to spend time watching things just happen. The suicide (no, the author isn't pro-suicide) and death sections are well done and deserve wide readership. The PC wallpaper page is the slowest loading page we've seen in the last few years, but a must-visit for teenage males and anyone who shares their tastes.
http://www.myboringlife.com/
What the heck is TVRO? If you don't know, you're not a dish-head, and this is not going to be your cup of tea (the acronym stands for TeleVision Receive Only). But for dish nuts, this one-page wonder of a Web site packs a lot of useful information for budding "birdwatchers". The author discusses recurring feeds and wild feeds, noting that TVRO resolution can be over 700 lines of vertical resolution under ideal conditions, and will in all cases far exceed the 350 lines mandated by the FCC for broadcast media. He describes how, for example, it is possible to capture in a recurring feed an upcoming (when this essay was written) "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episode, commercial-free, in full Dolby surround sound, and with eyeball-popping clarity. He even provides a link to scheduling information for recurring feeds. Ah, but it's the wild feeds wherein the chase is truly afoot. These are one-time events which may carry breaking news, concerts, or sports. Where to look and how-to suggestions are provided, along with some rough outlines of the costs and equipment needed to start planting your own dish farm.
http://www.nmia.com/~roberts/tvro-dx
ONLINE TRAVEL
Despite the sprawling megalopolis which girds the San Francisco Bay, the area is laced with numerous nature preserves and hiking trails. These ribbons of natural beauty do much to offset the usual maladies of urban life - traffic, pollution, Starbucks. The local choices for outdoor recreation are so profuse that it takes a site like Bay Area Hiker to make residents fully appreciate the variety of natural wonders at their feet. The site is a labor of love: surely, it took much effort to generate the vast amount of content. Just about every local park and preserve is listed here - and there are many - with extensive descriptions and numerous photos. Special sections give you advice on hiking with dogs and kids, on what to do before you go, on how to volunteer, and where to find easy hikes. There are Rants and Raves, and a recently introduced discussion board. And nary an ad in sight. This is a purely non-commercial site so far, and indeed should serve as an example for other regional nature sites. If you visit the Bay Area, make sure to bookmark this indispensable local resource.http://www.bahiker.com/
A Visual Guide to London Streets
The digiStreets site has expanded to the US somewhat - by somewhat we mean Chicago and Brookline, Mass. - but American coverage is pretty lame. The original digiStreets remains the meat of this site, that being a virtual stroll through London. Select a street and a postcode from the menus in one of the already mapped areas and you immediately see photos showing that street or address. The stroll bar (that's not a typo) lets you walk the street as though you were there. The quality of the photos is excellent. There are links to a map of the chosen street and, sometimes, data about the street. There's also a link to an off-site London property values site.http://www.digistreets.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Twenty years ago, IBM created the personal computer architecture that took the world by storm. Now, IBM is gloating a little with this tribute. The rah-rah intro leads to a timeline marking the major milestones in the development of the PC. It all leads to a "Future" all about ThinkPad laptops.http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/pcanniversary/
"The Weakest Link" is refined compared to this. You get to play all the contestants. The computer gets to destroy any characters who answer questions incorrectly. Since most of your answers will be blind guesses at first, you'll see much mayhem. It's funny in a sick, macabre way. You need Flash.
http://www.deathbyjargon.com/fun.html
SOFTWARE
The 6.0 release was notoriously buggy and awkward, helping prove the truism that you should never use software releases which end in "0". This latest generation Netscape browser is a little more mature. Many bugs have been fixed, and a few new features have been introduced. For example, this release starts up a bit faster, features an improved history feature in the sidebar, and has better integrated search through Google and Open Directory. You can download and learn more at the Netscape Web site.Netscape: http://browsers.netscape.com/browsers/main.tmpl
Features: http://home.netscape.com/browsers/6/revguide/revguide.pdf
Ogg Vorbis RC2 Music Software Released
As the Web site says, "Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source." It's also the up-and-coming alternative to the MP3 music format and the nexus of much developer activity. If you're interested in the online music scene, you need to know about Ogg Vorbis. More specifically, we note that a new version of the software is now available. The RC2 release for both Windows and Unix features more efficient compression and a bunch of other fairly technical improvements in addition to the usual bug fixes. Third-party players and encoders for the Mac can also be found at the site.http://www.vorbis.com/download.psp