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| Internet Coffee Pot Going, Going, Gone |
| Bonehead Advertising Stunt of the Year |
| Himalayan Art Project Does It Right |
| Hands-on Art Education |
| Crime Comics of an Earlier Age |
| Sniveling Goat Wants to Punch You in the Face |
| The Art of Communist Propaganda |
| Living in LA |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| True, Weird News |
| Chortle at Chortler |
| Atlas Rediscovered |
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| Brains |
| The Genomic Revolution |
| When Galaxies Collide |
| AirSnort and WEPCrack |
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BREAKING SURF
Post-Crash Valuation of Big Dotcoms
Despite the dotbomb, some dotcoms keep bubbling along, relatively speaking. Notably, Yahoo, RealNetworks, and eBay shares, while selling far below glory-day prices, still trade at more than 100 times their projected earnings for 2001, a sharp contrast to the average multiple of 24.5 times earnings in Standard & Poor's 500 Index. Yahoo, especially, seems to have created its own market biosphere, trading at 308 times projected earnings, a valuation that some analysts find significantly overpriced. Others disagree. CNet has the story, including a couple of tips on Internet companies "with solid business models but relatively cheap stock prices."http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-6882482.html
Felten Team Reveals SDMI Watermark Details
Princeton grad student Scott Craver has finally revealed how professor Edward Felten's research team broke the encrypted watermarking schemes developed by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). Publication had been delayed because of a threat, now withdrawn, by the music industry to sue for violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Craver says systems that companies present as secure are usually relatively easy to compromise; some think the entertainment industry's approach to security may result merely in customer inconvenience and diminished commercial markets. Meanwhile, SecurityFocus.com reports that Niels Ferguson, a well known Dutch cryptographer, has discovered how to circumvent Intel's High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection scheme but he's decided not to publish for fear of running afoul of the Act. The potential extra-territorial reach of the DMCA unsettles many researchers. We think it's clear the DMCA inhibits research into secure systems and strays too far from the public good side of the intellectual property equation. We give you four sites to air thoroughly the continuing fallout from bad legislation.Newsforge: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/08/16/1618247
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46091,00.html
SecurityFocus.com: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/236
Would You Trust This Man with Your Family Jewels?
Here's a simple question: why should you entrust your financial information to a company which can't secure its online services? Microsoft has experienced many problems with the security of its IIS Web server, Outlook e-mail client, Hotmail e-mail service, and MSN Messenger chat service. In fact, Hotmail just got hit with a new hack which exposes private e-mails. Significantly, at least one hacker insurance company already charges more for sites which run Microsoft products. An article in Salon points out yet another alarming glitch: a Hotmail user accidentally made his account a more restricted children's account and Microsoft claims they can't change it back. And you're supposed to trust them with sensitive info? What if a number goes astray? The article points out that the company's less-than-stellar security and reliability record does not bode well for the trustworthiness of its future technology. In the near future, Microsoft will ask us to trust them with our financial information and other consumer profile info as part of their .NET and HailStorm initiatives. There are alternatives.Insurance: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2805929,00.html
Hotmail Hack: http://www.techtv.com/news/hackingandsecurity/story/0,24195,3343347,00.html
HailStorm: http://www.microsoft.com/net/hailstorm.asp
Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/21/hotmail/index.html
You Will Eventually Buy Pox, So Why Not from Us Now?
Forget Pokemon. Forget Gameboy. Hasbro's new Pox is going to be the next Big Thing. With a hokey backstory of alien viruses to which little attention need be paid, these little handheld games will be the next thing banned from your local elementary school, but they'll flourish in high schools, universities, and cubicles as well. Each little Pox console contains a warrior character that the console owner designs and manages. When two or more of these consoles come within 30 feet of each other, they automatically hot-synch and the programmed warriors in each do battle without direct human control. Winners get to keep the body parts of losers. A recent New York Times Magazine (NYTM) article on the game makes it seem like a fantastically varied, intellectual, anonymous pursuit. Losers suffer electronically, but in real life there is no sign of defeat. There's a nice irony in the Pox marketing strategy, which takes a hint from the virus backstory and tries to infect schoolchildren through "alpha pups". This is a fantastic idea at a reasonable price ($25), and one we can't wait to try out ourselves. If you're gonna buy one, why not throw a bit of cash NSD's way and buy it with our Amazon affiliation?Pox: http://www.p-o-x.com/
NYTM: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/05/magazine/05POX.html
Pox Green: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NWQ3/netsurferdigest
Pox Blue: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NWQ4/netsurferdigest
Pox Red: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NWQ5/netsurferdigest
Medical Second Opinions via the Web
CNet tells us that doctors in Boston, a city with more than its fair share of internationally renowned healthcare professionals, have started a service that provides medical second opinions via the Internet. Legal restrictions currently limit the service to 27 states and 40 countries. The eConsults operation, run by Partners Health Care System, makes available some 3,000 specialists for a fee of $600 per case. While this online practice has barely started, the previous success of a similar service using other communications technologies suggests that patients will use convenient, affordable access to services of this type. Partners Health Care System says that in the past, its second opinions led to a change of diagnosis 15% of the time and a change in treatment 71% of the time. eConsults: https://econsults.partners.org/CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-6896226.html
Technology to Hide Net Traffic Patented
Onion routing is a clever name for a technology which allows users to hide the source and destination of their network traffic. Ordinarily, any router that forwards packets knows where the packet is coming from and where it is going. Using this technology, the routers are arranged like layers of an onion and routers in one layer do not know where the packet will go in the other layers. A patent for this technology was just granted to the US government, which finds it useful in intelligence operations. They basically want to hide their traffic sources when accessing sites maintained by organizations such as terrorist groups or other foreign intelligence targets. You can search for patent number 6,266,704 at the US Patent Office site, or read more about the technology on the Onion Router web page.Patent: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
Onion Router: http://www.onion-router.net/
It's easy to find the best-selling books at Amazon.com, but the Associated Press had to request information regarding the worst-sellers. The bottom book, according to Amazon, was written in the mid-1990s and presently ranks at number 2,196,969. We did a little snooping on our own, but were unable to descend that far into the netherworld of print. Our best result yielded "Political Psychology of Appeasement : Finlandization and Other Unpopular Essays", a 1980 item that came in at number 1,604,326. Heck, an out-of-print book about Irritable Bowel Syndrome ranked higher, at 989,898. Why are rankings important? The AP notes that although Amazon generates less than 10 percent of total book sales, publishing people follow its rankings closely - even hourly. In that respect, it's like the Wall Street of the writers' world.
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-6896037.html
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/
The Industry Standard Ceases Publishing
It was the bellwether of the industry, the flagship publication of the new technology business scene, and its award winning coverage was often incisive and clear-eyed, skewering some of the extravagances and excesses of the new biz scene - while feeding at the trough itself. At the height of the dotcom euphoria, its advertising revenues soared and it made a profit in only its third year, a heady feat for a new publication. But as the NASDAQ frenzy died, so did its own hopes for an IPO, and its revenues crash-dived. Now, alas, it is no more. Only its Web site and a skeleton crew remain as it seeks refuge in Chapter 11. What will emerge from these ashes remains to be seen. CNet has the story, but the Guardian has some trenchant observations of its own about some of the excesses of the weekly and its lack of sound management and sober cost control.Industry Standard: http://www.thestandard.com/
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6895482.html
Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,538445,00.html
The Misty Future of Internet Advertising
Reading tea leaves to see the future of Internet advertising wasn't much of an issue, a year or so ago. Everybody knew revenues were headed up. Now, however, things have gotten a bit dicier, and it appears that nobody knows which way is up. Forbes notes that the two leading forecasters have put forth wildly different estimates, separated by a factor of three. Although they suggest that the divergence is an artifact of differing survey methods, the divide simply illustrates the fact that no de facto standard analogous to television's Nielsen ratings has yet emerged. Forbes suggests ignoring the hype; flip a coin, if you must.http://www.forbes.com/2001/08/15/0815simons.html
Using Keystroke Timing to Decrypt SSH Data
SSH is a suite of protocols that allows encrypted connections between computers. It's widely used on the Internet whenever people want to access or transfer files between machines. Even though all the data is encrypted by strong algorithms, SSH as currently implemented may still be vulnerable to a sophisticated analysis of keystroke timings. This technical paper gives the details while the story has the layman's version. Users of SSH and programmers of SSH client/servers should pay attention to this.Paper: http://paris.cs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/ssh-timing.html
Story: http://www.securitynewsportal.com/article.php?sid=1574
Total Cost of Ownership for PDAs
In a somewhat different take on the hand-to-hand combat between Palm and Pocket PC PDAs, ZDNet Australia compares the two based on total cost of ownership and finds that at least in terms of corporate expenditure, Pocket PC wins, hands down. Citing the cost of third-party software for increased e-mail functionality, the price of OS maintenance, the cost of peripherals when upgrading, and the possibility of volume discounts across Pocket PC OS product lines, ZDNet concludes that for business, Pocket PC is a better value. At least one ZDNet reader, however, questions one aspect of the comparison - ZDNet's assumption that future releases of the Pocket PC platform will feature backward OS compatibility.http://www.zdnet.com.au/biztech/networking/story/0,2000010453,20253512,00.htm
In a report addressing oft-voiced concerns over PDA security, CNet offers a general summary of recent statements by atStake digital security consultants culminating in warnings that PDAs "are not equipped for the threat of viruses or other malicious code components," and that the current Palm OS "should not be trusted to store any critical or confidential information." A more eye-opening version of atStake's work is its older advisory on the vulnerabilities of Palm password encryption and retrieval, providing the gory details on just exactly how the OS can be compromised.
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-6894699.html
PDA security: http://www.atstake.com/research/reports/security_analysis_palm_os.pdf
Password retrieval: http://www.atstake.com/research/advisories/2000/a092600-1.txt
It's been a few months, but we've finally managed to produce a new Netsurfer Books issue (long story, other priorities, yadda, yadda...). We have an odd theme: books about and related to dead authors. Kind of a stream of consciousness thing, as it were. Give it a look, subscribe if you like it.
NSB: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/
ONLINE CULTURE
Internet Coffee Pot Going, Going, Gone
The famous Trojan Room coffee pot, focus of the first ever webcam, sold on eBay. Spiegel Online (Germany) tendered the successful bid of approximately $4,750 for the pot. The cam was fired up in 1991 as a way for programmers to determine, before hiking downstairs, whether or not any coffee remained in the pot. Over time, it migrated to the Web, where hundreds of thousands of other folks looked in, if only for the historic vibe. Nowadays, there are cams everywhere - you can watch corn grow in Iowa, black rhinos in Oregon, live taxi rides in Germany, and far more. A brief, readable history can be found in the first link presented below. The transaction site can still be viewed at eBay, while Earthcam presents a taste of what's out there webcam-wise today.Pot: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/qsf/coffee.html
eBay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1260882480
EarthCam: http://www.earthcam.com/
Bonehead Advertising Stunt of the Year
The e-mailed ad warned you that you have been accused of accessing "material of a violent, sexually explicit or immoral nature" and said the cops were informed. To appeal the charges, you could click on an enclosed link - which led to a Web site for, of all things, a car show. Some brilliant ad flak figured that the 18-to-25-year-old male target demographic would get the joke.http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,536977,00.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Himalayan Art Project Does It Right
This huge site, featuring over 1,500 artworks from Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, India, China and Mongolia, offers something only the Internet can - a standing, evolving, interactive exhibit of works collected from private sources and museums all over the world - and it does it just about perfectly. The project provides extensive documentation on every work, is searchable in a dozen different ways, provides links for further reference, and even contains an audio pronunciation glossary of common terms in Tibetan and Sanskrit. The images are fast-loading, high quality, and can be viewed and enlarged via a choice of options, including a simple text-and-image HTML page suitable for printing. Altogether, a most impressive effort, and a model for how to do it right.http://www.himalayanart.org/
This interactive art site has some really cool stuff for kids and adults. And there's a lot of it: try The Land That Design Forgot - redesign a playground from an industrial architect's perspective, so that it plays well and looks cool. Or look at line, shape, color, and other elements of art. Teacher resources, including lesson plans, demonstrations, and activities are available throughout. In most cases, you'll find a complete lesson plan, national standards, and downloadable resources. Homeschoolers, in particular, will want to bookmark this site. For comprehensive coverage, this is a keeper. Kids will enjoy the interactive portions, as well. We checked.
http://www.sanford-artedventures.com/play/play.html
Crime Comics of an Earlier Age
Reinforcing the maxim that everything old is new again is Crimeboss, a site dedicated to crime comics of the '40s and '50s. You'll want to visit Crimeboss for the marvelously lurid and retro-chic collection of cover art from such publications as "Crimes By Women", "Murder Incorporated", and "Teen-Age Dope Slaves", but the most vivid story of seduction, bedevilment, and threat actually occurs in the history section, which explores the genesis of the self-imposed industry code that effectively put an end to the crime comics "spree" of the era. References here to the 1950s' US Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency investigation of the industry reveal that even good old Superman was accused of arousing sadistic fantasies in children. Hmmm, sound familiar?http://www.crimeboss.com/
Sniveling Goat Wants to Punch You in the Face
So says point eight of Sniveling Goat's 11-point manifesto. Even so, the home page subtitle promises that "There is no reason to cry." Then again, the splash page counters that "We Promise You Nothing". Art can be confusing. The computer collage works of Sniveling Goat are testament and sacrament to the chaos, serving well the author's paradigm of paradox. The creations of the Goaty One, a.k.a. Robert E. Brown, register a 7.5 on the mindquake scale, and can perhaps best be sloganized by the inscription on one of his own works: "beauty in vulgarity, passion in madness". If you are interested in indie art, and don't mind being punched in the face, have a look-see.http://www.snivelinggoat.com/
The Art of Communist Propaganda
Providing a fascinating look at the art of propaganda, literally, is The Chairman Smiles, an online collection of Communist propaganda posters from the former Soviet Union, Cuba, and China. Organized by the International Institute of Social History, the site also offers commentary on the changing styles and ideology behind the works and information on specific artists and poster conservation. The earliest work represented is a striking 1917 early-Bolshevik poster entitled "Women, Adhere to the Cooperation", depicting a woman holding aloft a sheaf of wheat, but the majority are Chinese posters that date from 1949 to a 1997 poster that celebrates the hand-over of Hong Kong. Some of the most vibrant images come from Cuba in the 1960s, whence derives the familiar Che Guevara iconograph.http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/chairman/
Rejoice, Hollywood junkies! Celebrate, young lovers of the Los Angeles entertainment lifestyle! ClickLA has everything you've dreamed of and more: Movie and TV reviews; music and fashion news; star-studded gossip; resources (lists of theaters) for struggling actors; lots of links; teasers; pleasers; where'd you get those peepers? Celebrity name-dropping throughout the newsy tidbits and regurgitated press releases must make People magazine, Entertainment Tonight, and Craig Kilborn envious in the extreme. Looking for a list of nominees for, say, the Emmy Awards? Park your bots here. Major mojo is had by all. Your keywords for today are bikini, publicity, banner ad, JPEG jammin', insider cool, prolific promo, glad glam, instant sex, delayed scoop, flick flacking, rumor romping, and role model. Love the bikini, hon. Can you say "slick glitz" fast ten times in a row? Click on, and presto! Every trick in the teaser's trade brings us closer to the dramatic truth. We love LA!
http://clickla.net/
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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The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion
Look to WindwardTrue: http://www.thisistrue.com/
Weird: http://www.newsoftheweird.com/
Want refreshment after the evening news and your local paper? Chortler.com has wonderfully sarcastic takeoffs on big-media coverage of current and recent events. "White House Digs for Oil on South Lawn" was a front-page story this August. We love Chortler headlines such as "Sports Announcer Runs Out of Synonyms at Home Run Derby", "Chortler Apologizes for Perception of Truth in Story", and "Nike Ad Wins British Open". We loved the scrolling marquee: Bush stumbles on globalization, proliferation and impoverishment. White House begins desperate search for smaller words. Don't miss the gems in the Recent Issues area. Even the Message from the Publisher has a tongue-in-cheek intro: "Loyal readers to this column will no doubt be aware of Chortler's ongoing efforts not just to build brand, but to keep that brand from crumbling apart." Let's hope Chortler.com survives.
http://www.chortler.com/
In Greek myth, Atlas was a Titan of great strength condemned to carry the weight of the Earth on his shoulders; the talented creators of Atlas Magazine must also feel doomed to forever support the burden of their achievement, Atlas issues one through six, ending in 1998. Back in the glory days of the mostly pre-Flash web, Atlas was a spectacular innovation, and it remains so (if not more so) today. Go there for the magnificent photography, the wonderfully witty comics, the innovative and entertaining story art, the design, the images, the presentation, but by all means, go there to remind yourself of what life was like before the ubiquitous Flash countdown greeting.
http://www.atlasmagazine.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
For many, CancerNet will be the first and most promising destination in their search for information about cancer. Maintained by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), this site is a prime resource for patients, caregivers, researchers, and others involved in cancer diagnosis, prevention, or treatment. It is, as the home page states, credible, current, and comprehensive. You can browse peer-reviewed summaries, a database of clinical trials (PDQ), a bibliographic database (CANCERLIT), a national directory of counselors and testers, a dictionary of cancer terms, and links to relevant sites. Treatment Options, for example, is a huge subsite that lets you drill down through a list of common cancers, an alphabetical list, a "Body Location/System" list, and general topics to reach introductory or involved material. CancerNet is a major accomplishment in public dissemination. Many will no doubt consider it the finest portal of the National Institutes of Health.http://www.cancernet.gov/
In view of how much we depend on our brains, it's amazing how little most of us know about them. Brain.com has a subsection called About My Brain that covers topics of interest to just about everyone, including regeneration, creativity, and sleep. It's a compendium of articles from general and scientific media that catch your eye with titles such as "Are men really brain damaged at birth?", "Bliss and the Brain", and "Study finds high level of stress hormone impairs memory." The site's sidebar menu of diseases and conditions resembles a litany of Hollywood plot devices. The site can make you glad you are who you are. Or not. You can take an IQ test here, and "You will be compared against the Web average and others your age, gender and dominant hand." Should you consider your intelligence below the genius level, you can always visit the Brain Store for products that will improve your brain power or simply take solace in the recent Reuters article entitled "A drink a day may keep mental decline away." Cheers!
http://www.brain.com/about/
The American Museum of Natural History isn't waiting for the genomic revolution to become history. Its Genomic Revolution exhibit intends to prepare us for staggering options we now face or soon will: designer food, designer bodies, designer pets. You've seen the movies. Now get more background. This educational site describes our genetic identity and the influence of environment. Along the way there are many illustrative points to ponder, such as the fact that children who begin music lessons after the age of nine almost never attain perfect pitch and that the oldest child in the family is at greater risk for asthma than younger siblings. This collection of brief overviews touches on hot-button issues such as embryo screening, testing for genetic predisposition to disease, and bioengineering, but doesn't take sides or present opposing views. In that sense, it lacks depth, but this is an online exhibit, not a textbook. It complements the museum's physical exhibit and probably helps to draw both teachers and students toward Central Park West.
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/genomics/0_home/index.html
When cars collide, there's heck to pay. When galaxies collide... who knows? Two astrophysicists, Lars Hernquist of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and John Dubinski of the University of Toronto, have created perhaps the largest simulation ever of a plausible collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies with IBM's Blue Horizon supercomputer, the most powerful number cruncher American academics can get their mitts on. Our galaxy is on a collision course with neighbor Andromeda. Of course, we won't be around to watch - the fun will start in 3 billion years and take another billion years to play out. At the moment, the news is the power of computation achieved. Dubinski states: "We are now a few orders of magnitude away from self-consistently calculating the orbit of every single star in the galaxy." That's a lot of stars, folks. A long-loading QuickTime movie provides a glimpse of our future cataclysm. Where will Federation captains Kirk, Picard, and Janeway be when our distant descendants need them?
http://www.npaci.edu/online/v4.9/galaxies2.html
SOFTWARE
Wireless networks based on the WEP/802.11b standard are well known to be thoroughly insecure. You can drive around Silicon Valley and easily tap into the unsecured wireless network traffic that leaks out of numerous buildings. Now that insecurity has been resoundingly underscored with the recent release of two open-source automated WEP cracking tools, AirSnort and WEPCrack. We certainly don't suggest that you go around cracking wireless networks for fun or profit, but ignoring the existence of tools such as these would be idiotic. If you are contemplating running an 802.11b wireless network either at work or at home, familiarize yourself with these programs and understand exactly what you're doing. The authors of AirSnort are quoted in Wired as saying that "AirSnort is all about opening people's eyes....Perhaps its release will prompt wireless vendors to significantly enhance the encryption of their products".AirSnort: http://airsnort.sourceforge.net/
WEPCrack: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wepcrack
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,46187,00.html