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BREAKING SURF
The Failure of Tech Journalism
Steve Gilliard's glorious rant about journalism exposes some strong idealism that hasn't been much applied in the real world, more's the pity. Steve thinks too much of what passes for journalism has been mere sucking up, toadying to the rich, the powerful, and the advertisers. Instead of independent reader-focused commentary, we get parroting of conventional wisdom and sycophantic tripe and twaddle. His diatribe is a searing put-down of the profession, with sharp verbal barbs and savage disdain, aimed mostly at IT journalism, and implicating such stalwarts as Salon and now-bankrupt Industry Standard. Steve's scathing critique is timely and right on the button. Journalists and the businesses that publish them, he insists, are there to serve their readers first and foremost, not their advertisers or corporate owners. Whatever your views of the field and the business, Steve's piece is wonderfully inflammatory and satisfying reading. If you've ever felt despair at the pale pap and dreary, dumb reporting served up by most media you'll want to pump your fist and shout "Yes!" after reading this.http://www.netslaves.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=005&action=display&num=998801687
An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists
Engineer Nick Tredennick has lots of experience with start-ups and the folks who fund them. As he sees it, venture capitalists (VCs) know engineers inside-out while engineers know squat about VCs. This usually results in a screwed over engineer entrepreneur and a filthy rich VC - the model of the engineer's idea and work supporting the VC's company gives the innovative part of the equation a raw deal. To educate engineers, Nick shatters common myths about the acumen of VCs. Close up, they're not so impressive, he says. They don't take risks, they collude, they follow fads, their experts aren't very smart, and they don't understand anything really new. Although this IEEE Spectrum online article targets primarily engineers, VCs interested in making new businesses work better would also profit from perusing it. Nick wants to see wealthy engineers act as angel investors for early phase start-ups and collaborate to form venture funds. He'd also like at least one engineer-led IPO to raise $100 million to invest in new engineering-based companies.http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep01/speak.html
Would AOL Uphold Human Rights in China?
AOL Time Warner, after sealing a deal with a major Chinese PC manufacturer to introduce its service in Hong Kong, is casting a hungry eye on the rest of the online Chinese, a group expected to total 60 million by 2005. Negotiating such a mega-coup is delicate business, and this worries some who are asking how AOL would respond in the event of governmental demands to reveal user information on political dissidents. AOL, which likes to boast that it looks beyond the bottom line and strives to "contribute to the common good", is non-committal. The Washington Post reports on the status of AOL efforts to warm up China and the heat coming from human rights groups pressuring the company to put its mouth where its money is and promise to uphold basic freedoms.http://www.washtech.com/news/regulation/12180-1.html
Scientific Organization Files Legal Brief in Felten Case
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a prestigious US scientific organization that supports research in computer science. It is the primary scientific body concerned with computer science in the United States, so its opinion carries weight. It has filed this legal brief in Edward Felten's lawsuit against the RIAA, a suit launched to resolve his right to publish encryption research in violation of DMCA legislation. The ACM is concerned that the current law will have a chilling effect on scientific analysis, research, and publication. It also cites concerns about driving away researchers from US conferences, creating "a negative impact on this country's leadership in research". It concludes that "the application of any law to limit the freedom to publish research on computer technology will impose a cost not only on ACM's members, but also on the academic community, the process of scientific discourse, and society in general."http://www.acm.org/usacm/copyright/felten_declaration.html
Dmitry Sklyarov's case is going to make history. He was arrested after giving a conference talk about software he developed that cracked the encryption of Adobe eBook Reader - but you know that already. Dmitry developed a software tool that allowed users to copy eBooks for printing, to have the computer read them aloud, or for other purposes, including making illegal copies for others. It looks like Dmitry and his Russian employer, ElcomSoft, are going to face the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in court, against Adobe's wishes. Although Sklyarov's work was perfectly legal in Russia, the DMCA makes any such software illegal in the US. The big question is whether the US can impose its copyright law on foreign nationals working abroad. Wired and Planet eBook have further details, including info on a defense fund, and digitalMASS (dM) has an interview with the accused.
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46411,00.html
Planet eBook: http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=219
dM: http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/2001/08/31/russian_programmer.html
Oh, how nasty! Got your attention, though, didn't it? While the concept hasn't entered mainstream computing yet, this interesting loophole in the TCP/IP protocol appears to force servers to act as unwitting hosts to a distributed modeling effort. Don't panic just yet, however - the authors note that their foray merely demonstrates proof of concept, but is inefficient at present for any practical use, as presently-implemented TCP requires too many comparisons and machine cycles to make the paradigm widely exploitable. This is readable by all, and worth the effort for those who wish to maintain system integrity.
http://www.nd.edu/~parasite/
Pentagon Goes Ballistic over Letters
Theodore Postol, a professor at MIT, has a nasty habit of criticizing and sometimes embarrassing the Pentagon, and the Pentagon doesn't like it one little bit. The latest skirmish concerns letters from Postol to then-president Bill Clinton, and more recently to Congress, detailing suspicious flaws in a government report on a missile defense flight test. In response, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization classified the correspondence as secret, and the Defense Department has now ordered MIT to seize all of Postol's materials related to those letters, or lose US funding for defense-related research. The International Herald Tribune has the story.http://www.iht.com/articles/31090.html
"If you wait around long enough, things happen," says Ray Bradbury in a Salon interview, "at least in my case." In Bradbury's case, things indeed are happening. At age 81, the author is watching several new films and TV projects based on his work enter production, and all around us the "things" that Bradbury predicted decades ago are "happening". Cultural manifestations of Bradbury's vision include sensationalist media, political correctness, infotainment, and omnipresent advertising. Products of his fiction such as cell phones, Walkmans, and interactive television are now common items. Salon's James Hibberd talks to Bradbury about his work, technology, the movies, politics and what's on the author's mind these days.
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2001/08/29/bradbury/index.html
Those wacky kids at MIT have come up with yet another indispensable application of networking technology. They've wired up the bathrooms in one of their dorm halls with sensors and route the info to a Web page that reports on whether or not the bathroom stalls are occupied. It's just the thing you need to surf with legs crossed and mouth clamped shut after a night of early-semester binge drinking. Slashdot has amusing and predictably bathroom-humor-filled commentary about the technology. An older MIT laundry server reports on which washing and drying machines are currently in use.
Bathroom Server: http://bathroom.mit.edu/
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/02/0320223&mode=thread
Laundry Server: http://laundry.mit.edu/
Scott Adams (if you don't know who he is, you're a lost cause) and the Ideo design company have designed the perfect office cubicle. It has lighting panels that follow the sun, storage that sinks into the floor, and a sensor in the guest chair that rings your phone once a guest has overstayed his welcome. Hey, we are not making this up. If even this can't refresh your own dreary cubicle life, check out Cubicle Hell Blues.
Adams: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/cube/index.html
Ideo: http://www.ideo.com/dilbert/
Cubicle Hell Blues: http://www.gingicat.org/jacob/cubiclehell.html
On Aug. 31, the White House unveiled its new, Bush-approved Web site. The new site is crisply laid out, if somewhat cluttered, with links right, left, and above. A new search engine fills a need, and the site designers have shown some consideration to people with various handicaps, including easing the use of voice synthesizers and adding captions to the newest videos of Presidential events. Some of the content can be read in Spanish, and a children's section tries to attract the elementary scholars. You don't come to a place like this for trenchant analysis and objective insights, of course, but for the official White House spin on things. It's a site with the usual froth and glitter as well as considerable substance, in statements, transcripts, lists of nominees, and pictures galore.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010831-8.html
Earthlink/Mindspring Billing Support Hell
Dante introduced us to the idea of concentric regions of Hell. Obviously, he was on to something. How else do you explain this circular correspondence between Salon writer Peter Sussman and the billing support people - and there's some doubt about those "support" and "people" classifications - of the world's second largest ISP, Earthlink? Tragically funny.Salon: http://salon.com/tech/feature/2001/09/04/earthlink/index.html
Hell: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/dante/images/magnifier2.html
By, now, you've probably caught wind of the Gator fiasco. What can we say? It's not like we haven't warned you about adware in the past. Gator's been pushing the envelope, however, by coding stuff that plasters their ads over the top of other ads. Not surprisingly, this has ticked off the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which claims that this approach is akin to stealing your newspaper before you wake up, and sticking new ads over the spaces for which businesses paid good money. Gator basically claims that that model is outdated. Wired is staying on top of the issues.
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,46392,00.html
Gator: http://www.gator.com/
British Business Fears Online Commerce
Companies in the UK are skittish about doing business on the Internet, according to a survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). The BBC reports that two-thirds of the companies surveyed had experienced a "serious incident" in the past year and only 32% thought the Internet was a secure way to sell to consumers. The figures cited by the BBC suggest that there may be a gap between fact and perception: of criminal activity reported, viruses constituted 43%; credit card fraud represented 3.8%; and, to muddy the waters a bit, "hackers" constituted 16.2%. If you wonder, like we do, what this means exactly, and want to have a look at the full text of the survey, you'll have to fork out a wad of cash to do so. The CBI is selling copies of the survey - via fax or snail mail only, of course - from its Web site. Hewlett-Packard Buys Compaq Computer The deal is valued at a record setting $25 billion in stock. The combined company will have revenues just below those of the number one computer company, IBM. There's little we can add that won't get hashed out in the press. CNet and Forbes have extensive coverage.BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1514000/1514215.stm
CBI: http://www.cbi.org.uk/
Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2001/09/04/0904hppackage.html
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-7046992-0.html
HP: http://www.hp.com/
Compaq: http://www.compaq.com/
ICANN's At Large Membership Recommendations
ICANN, the agency responsible for Internet domain name issues, has just released a report that recommends changes to its at large membership. Anyone who wants to sign up and vote on ICANN issues and elect representatives to the ICANN governing board can currently sign up to become an at large member. The report is a long, boring, bureaucratic piece of work that basically concludes that at large members should pay a fee and be registered domain holders. Like any good bureaucracy, ICANN is trying to protect its turf by making entry to its club more difficult.http://www.atlargestudy.org/draft_final.shtml
ONLINE CULTURE
The Infamous Dead Kitten Video
An online video shows a kitten being killed, butchered, and stir-fried in Korea. That such a video exists and shows up online is not news. The Net offers far worse, which was partly the point of the original post on the Webby Award-winning Stile Project site (warning: weird content and porn). The video, apparently broadcast on TV years ago, was submitted by a Stile Project reader. Publicity took off when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) got hold of the story and predictably went nuts, threatening to take this to the Justice Department for prosecution. Media coverage followed, and the reaction to this storm of PETA-driven publicity is the real story here. Read the links below in order to track the story from Stile Project webmaster Jonathan Biderman's point of view. He notes: "Out of the 1000 e-mails that I got about the Korean cat eating video, only 5 were negative. The people that read this site believe in freedom of speech, which is an absolute right. It's not something you can just have a little of, or some of. You either have it, or you don't." Regardless, Jonathan is so fed up, he's apparently sold the Stile Project site.Stile Project: http://www.stileproject.com/
Video: http://www.stileproject.com/kitty.html
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46315,00.html
Reaction 1: http://www.stileproject.com/wired.html
Reaction 2: http://www.stileproject.com/whocares.html
Electronic Frontiers Australia is speaking out against a Parliamentary report that recommends that law enforcement authorities force Australian ISPs to keep records of their customers' online activities. It's part of the ongoing Down Under battle between civil rights groups and law enforcement over online surveillance, no different from similar battles elsewhere in the world. The phrase "Orwellian creep" in the story caught our eye. George Orwell in his book "1984" wrote the famous quote "Imagine the future as a boot stamping on a person's face." He was referring to totalitarianism, defined as the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority. In the book, that authority was backed up by ubiquitous surveillance. We think "Orwellian creep" is worth propagating as a useful meme, so here you go. Feel free to use it in a sentence every now and again.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/internet/story/0,2000020814,20257583,00.htm
THREAD WATCH
A guy named Boris Schaefer has used some of his own common - er, uncommon sense to put together a one-page introduction to Usenet, which we'd recommend that all newbies read before they jump into the established culture of newsgroups. Unfortunately, since they don't listen when we tell them to read news.answers before they post, we probably can't get them to read this either. Basically, this summary is useful for folks curious about the evolution of Usenet. It includes the amusing "what is Usenet" posting by James "Kibo" Parry ("Usenet is a Mobius strand of spaghetti"), the Great Renaming FAQ that runs down the history of Usenet, and the net.legends FAQ, which talks about such phenomena as the Usenet Oracle and alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb.http://www.uncommon-sense.net/interests/usenet/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Putting on His Pants One Egg at a Time
We're just mad about Eggpants. Created by artist Chad Walker, Eggpants is the winsome, whimsical, ovoid star of the eponymous online comic strip subtitled "The Ongoing Story of an Egg and His Favorite Pair of Pants". Consisting, so far, of 66 frames in 22 panels, Eggpants draws one lightly but resolutely into the fetishistic world of an egg who has a magnificent obsession so innocent that it should strike a resonant chord in all of us. Brilliantly simple, deliciously subtle, sweetly hilarious, Walker's embryonic ovum opus compels us to succumb to the pun and declare it, finally, simply eggcellent.http://www.devotedbee.com/eggpants.html
Smokymonkeys' Neomythic, Eastern-Gothic Cyber Art
Occasionally, we come upon sites that inspire both awe and gratitude for the skill and generosity of the creators, sites whose pages we linger over and leave reluctantly. Smokeymonkeys is such a site. A showcase for the work of artist Koizumi Tota and programmer Nakano Sin, Smokeymonkeys features beautiful, unusual, and atmospheric images that we can only describe as neomythic, Eastern-gothic cyber art. You'll also find a couple of games, free desktop backgrounds, and a screensaver, all wrapped up in a lush, well designed, cohesive package. The site also includes updates concerning a project that looks to be the development of a sort of RPG featuring several of the characters (sorceress, knight, enchantress, templar) included in the site gallery. We'll be watching.http://www.hanuman.co.jp/monkeys/
Gerald Lively of Louisiana public radio station WRKF likes opera. He's created an online book that tells people who know little about opera what it's all about. The 13 chapters are well written, easy reads. They're also packed with information. You would have to be a pretty hard-core opera hater to (a) fail to get much from this production, and (b) still hate opera. As good as it is, it still disappoints in major ways. There are no musical clips (Hey, this is the Internet after all) and no links to further information. Gerald includes references, but incredibly fails to hyperlink them. Not one. At the end of the chapters is a simple opera-oriented crossword with instructions to print it out. No link to the answers either. In fact, no answers. Maybe the author thinks opera neophytes are Net-illiterate too?
http://www.wrkf.org/opera_hater_1.htm
How could we resist the official Web site for knuckleheads? It's not like we can't identify, after all. This is mostly a shopping site, but there are some other things to do here, as well - you can play a few short videos, for starters. The image quality of the still-shots is far better than we remembered from the good old days and, of course, the footage is the same old black-and-white. But funnier than we remembered. On the other hand, some of us don't remember Watergate, let alone anything before that. Take it in with broadband; lower speeds aren't worth the time and stomach lining. Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!
http://www.threestooges.com/
A new Japanese anime movie from the producers of fan favorite "Ghost in the Shell" has made its debut on the Web. The production company, a small outfit, is resorting to some creative marketing in order to get noticed and make some money. Specifically, during the debut, they streamed the entire movie online, something which would be anathema to Hollywood. The opening occurred Aug. 28 and we're sorry we didn't have a heads up for you earlier. Another innovation is selling DVD and VHS versions of the movie as it debuts in theatres. Again, this runs against the Hollywood tradition of delaying such sales until the movie peters out on the big screen. The Blood Web site has lots of cool artwork, Wired has background, and streamer Sputnik7 has a bunch of other cool video and audio content eminently worth visiting in and of itself.
Blood: http://www.bloodthemovie.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,46312,00.html
Sputnik7: http://www.sputnik7.com/
Ghost: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6304493681/netsurferdigest
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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Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony, Second Edition
Malicious Mobile Code: Virus Protection for Windows
Life Everywhere: The Maverick Science of Astrobiology
Flight: My Life in Mission ControlThe Mystery of the Metaphysician and the Manuscript
Who was the enigmatic A. M. Monius, and why was this individual offering shocking sums of money for scholarly reviews of a mysterious manuscript? Nearly a dozen puzzled philosophers were paid "astronomical" amounts by the shadowy A. M. Monius Institute to review a 60-page work of metaphysics entitled "Coming To Understanding" authored by the anonymous Monius. "Lingua Franca" editor James Ryerson decided to turn literary sleuth to solve the riddle; in the end he penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding the author, but found himself no closer to coming to understand A. M. Monius.http://www.linguafranca.com/print/0107/cover.html
ESPN's Page2 is designed to appeal to avid under-40 American male fans of professional sports who want more than news. The main body of this site is a collection of columns, mostly written by male journalists (including David Halberstam), that combine reminiscence, analysis, and commentary in the best tradition of sports writing. Despite the quality of the prose, there are perhaps unavoidable overtones of broadcaster fill-chatter ("Hey, remember when...?") during pauses in a football game or golf tournament. The home page has quickie sticky gimmicks such as a weekly Mystery Photo and news quiz, lists of "the most beloved football players" and "top 10 greatest sports wives", and instant polls such as "If you won the powerball jackpot of around $300 million, which sports franchise would you like to buy?" If you can't get enough ESPN on cable or the standard ESPN Web pages, or you're vying to be an office color commentator, drop by Page2. It's a guy thing - at least, it was at our most recent visit. Female sports fans will notice a male bias right off the bat.
http://espn.go.com/page2/index.html
SURFING SCIENCE
Are we about to see the dawn of careers in professional Internet gaming? Heavy stuff is going down at Roboforge, the New Zealand-based site for do-it-yourself online warriors. Download the construction kit ($20 at the moment) or buy the CD ($10 more), build 3-D robots offline, train them, then enter them in amateur or professional tournaments on the Net. An introduction states that "Roboforge is run like a professional sports circuit." Forget the XFL. Forethought in design and selection of components - sensor, joint, controller, energy generator, weapons, and shield - is but the first step. Training and testing your bots for combat is critical in how your e-brutes hold up against their fellow gladiators. On the pro circuit, first-place winners in class F (limited to 1,024 players) can win $1,000 per tournament. Even for a whiz, that's a lot of fighting to earn a living. If you prefer to fight offline, you can exchange robots with friends by e-mail. Online or off, you're probably going to need a hefty hard disk or two. Or three....http://www.roboforge.net/
Celebrities, Health Problems, and You
Spotlight Health marries the experiences of celebrities to many of today's most serious health problems. What could be a joke, a site that strokes celebrity egos in an attempt to gather ad revenue, is anything but. It's a model example of modern American celebrity-driven culture used to provide positive results. The multimedia examples (videos, audios, news clips and lots more) work well, provide excellent information, and get and keep your attention. Medical information is too often dry and forbidding. The personal stories here make the problems real while encouraging readers to get the best possible care for themselves.http://www.spotlighthealth.com/
Are you one of many who believe science will control the future? Want to find out if you're a geek - not that we'd hold it against you? In either case, you may want to check out Physics Forums. Many have. This August, the site had 330 members, who had made 12,007 posts on 1,154 topics in 12 forums. As you might guess, there's a lot to talk about in physics: astronomy and cosmology, mathematics, and theoretical physics, among other topics. You can also visit forums devoted to other sciences, religion and philosophy, and technology. There's even a Homework Help forum. That alone should be worth a lot of visits.
http://www.physicsforums.com/
SOFTWARE
Pippy: Python Programming Language for the Palm
Pippy is a port of the popular scripting language Python to the Palm handheld. This is a subset of Python, and still only bleeding edge software at version 0.7, but you can already write useful scripts with it. Aside from the Pippy home page, IBM has supplied a good article on working with Pippy. All we can say is shame on Perl for letting another scripting language beat it to the PalmOS.Pippy: http://www.endeavors.com/pippy/
IBM: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-pippy?lorn
Napster Is Dead, Long Live Morpheus?
Napster is dead as a forum for free music exchange. All previous versions have been disabled and the latest version operates in compliance with the various court orders that eliminated the free music bonanza. Several alternatives, including Gnutella, are trying to take Napster's place. Each avoids Napster's mistake of using a centralized server that can be ordered shut down. Morpheus is another attempt to develop a genuine peer-to-peer file-sharing network. Unlike Napster, Morpheus allows users to share a variety of files, not just MP3s. Although the system only runs under Windows, it is growing steadily and now has at least 1.3 million users. With a 1.4-MB download, you might be able to find all your favorites, again. Openp2p.com has an extensive technical review with some interesting statistics on the decline of Napster and the growth of Morpheus.Review: http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/07/02/morpheus.html
Morpheus: http://www.musiccity.com/