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BREAKING SURF
There's only one story to lead with right now. Four aircraft were hijacked on the morning of Sept. 11. Controlled by hijackers with obvious death wishes, two crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York City, one into the Pentagon, and one went down in southern Pennsylvania. The subsequent fall of the Towers registered on seismographs with the force of a minor earthquake, comparable to the 2.4 magnitude tremor which hit New York in January. We can't possibly do justice to the enormity of this story, which is exhaustively covered by the major media sites. At press time, CNN seems to have the most complete coverage of the developing situation, including dramatic video. For the international reaction, keep an eye on the BBC. The Lamont-Doherty Cooperative Seismographic Network (LCSN) has a GMT graph of seismographic data - subtract five hours for New York time and you can see the ground bouncing from the fall of the towers.CNN: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_depth/americas/2001/america_attacked/
LCSN: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/LCSN/WebSeis/24hr_heli.pl?id=&year=2001&jday=254
Poignant Pictures, and a Great Blog
WNBC, NBC's New York affiliate, has webcams focused on New York City. Here are two that aim where the World Trade Center used to tower over the skyline. The Aircraft Owner and Pilot Association (AOPA) has posted two animated GIFs depicting the paths of three of the four doomed flights. The moments of hijack are painfully clear. Meanwhile, SiliconValley.com is maintaining a superb blog of Web sites. Wondering if that bull(cough) Nostradamus quatrain is true? Or what new rules the FAA will enact? Or anything else? You'll probably find links to it here.WNBC 1: http://209.186.105.66/skycam/cam6.jpg
WNBC 2: http://209.186.105.66/skycam/cam12.jpg
AOPA 1: http://www.aopa.org/images/homepage/ual175_aal11.gif
AOPA 2: http://www.aopa.org/images/homepage/ual93.gif
Blog: http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/special/attack/blog.html
The Effect on Internet Traffic
Two stories cover the effect of the attack on the Net. Wired and CNet have stories discussing the initial load on the networks, and the strain on the major news sites, many of which were forced offline for a time because of it. The sites of United Airlines and American Airlines were also affected. Eventually, things stabilized and Net traffic went down to more normal levels. The CNet story also has numerous links to useful Web sites involved in the story, such as local and national media, as well as government sites.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46706,00.html
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7129241.html
Immediately after the planes rammed the New York City towers, local phone networks became saturated. The destruction of major telecommunications facilities atop the towers - the two large antennas and associated broadcast equipment - hampered survivors who wanted to talk to their loved ones. In several cases, the only way to send messages was either e-mail or instant messaging. Both Wired and CNet offer eyewitness accounts of how the Net was used during the crisis. Of the two, CNet's is the longer and more informative article. A group at the University of California, Berkeley has set up a Web site where survivors can register and where those who seek them can do so.
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46715,00.html
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7132246.html
Berkeley: http://safe.millennium.berkeley.edu/
The organic ability of the Net to quickly spread information was evident in how numerous online sites rallied to quickly provide news and data. As the major media sites were straining under the load, alternative Net news sites such as Slashdot started providing links to all sorts of information. At the same time, numerous private individuals were also setting up sites with information for local residents. There were even efforts to set up online radio stations to broadcast eyewitness accounts. Wired has more.
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/index.pl?issue=20010911
Online Journalism: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46716,00.html
If the World Trade Center symbolizes anything it is the might of capitalism. The buildings and their neighborhood house a number of major US and international financial firms. The attack has closed all Wall Street trading for at least two days, and led to declines in market indexes across the world. Some analysts have tossed around the idea that the event may spark a recession in the already weak American economy. We recommend two sites to keep up with the financial news. Bloomberg has a free Web site that follows the reverberations in world markets. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is arguably the definitive source for financial information, but you'll have to pay to play. Incidentally, Mike Bloomberg is running for mayor of New York City, which was scheduled to hold a primary election on the eve of the attack. The elections have been postponed.
Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/
WSJ: http://public.wsj.com/home.html
Mike: http://www.mikeformayor.org/
The attacks hinged on the ability of the terrorists to hijack multiple airplanes on a busy morning. To understand how that may have happened, you have to know a bit about airport security and how it works. How Stuff Works (HSW) has a nice write-up, complete with a good selection of related links near the end. Now that you know how it works, read the note written by David Wagner about some problems with the system, specifically how easily it can be theoretically bypassed. In retrospect, the post is prescient, though the terrorists in this week's attack evidently did not try to smuggle contraband such as guns or explosives.
HSW: http://www.howstuffworks.com/airport-security.htm
David: http://cryptome.unicast.org/cryptome022401/faa-seccrit.htm
FBI Installing Online Eavesdropping Software at Major ISPs
This Wired story reports that in the wake of the hijackings, the FBI has been visiting major ISPs and asking to install their Carnivore network monitoring tools. The FBI is also reportedly investigating certain accounts at the free e-mail providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo. The article goes on to say that several anonymous remailer operators have pulled the plug on their operations, afraid of being caught in the aftermath. Needless to say, there is quite a bit of concern in various online discussion areas about the impact of this attack on civil liberties.http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46747,00.html
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Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center
Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind
Rogue Regimes: Terrorism and Proliferation
Holy Terror: Armageddon in Tokyo
Wireless Networks: Widely Available and Wide Open
The folks over at ExtremeTech did a little experiment in detecting wireless networks based on widely available and inexpensive 802.11b hardware. They picked up a couple of sensitive antennas, a laptop with a wireless network card, and some recently released network-sniffing software, then drove around in a car seeing how many networks they could casually detect. The results are shocking. After sampling some random areas in New York and Silicon Valley, they determined that at least 40% of all easily publicly detectable wireless networks are insecure and wide-open to hacking. The story is a bit technical but should be read by anybody who contemplates running a wireless 802.11b network at work or at home. Tips on securing your set-up are included.http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,s%253D1024%2526a%253D13880,00.asp
Windows XP Not on the Shelves, But on the Net
The issue of Windows Product Activation (WPA) has stirred up a firestorm, and Microsoft's Windows XP hasn't even hit the streets yet. In an effort to head off piracy, Microsoft plans to make it difficult to use their new operating system on anything other than the specific computer on which it has been registered. The outcry is unsurprising, as some folks change hardware as often as others change socks. It may not even matter, as warez newsgroups are already claiming to have found hacks to bypass WPA altogether, and there are spoofs popping up like mushrooms after a rain. Illegal copies of the corporate, WPA-free versions of Win XP are already circulating on the Net. It looks like Microsoft has only found a way to make things tougher on the average consumer, rather than the more technically-savvy pirating crowd. Wired and the Register have more information on the hacks and cracks; Microsoft keeps mum, but offers a breathy view of the new OS.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,46531,00.html
Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21434.html
Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/
Another Microsoft Hammer Slams the Nail of Fair Competition
Error 404: File Not Found. The page cannot be displayed. These are familiar messages to just about anybody who's ever surfed the Web, but Microsoft doesn't like them. As a result, they've "updated" Internet Explorer to quit showing them. Instead of seeing these pages, you're redirected to MSN Search. Microsoft says that the change makes browsing less disruptive to novices; critics counter that it's just another monopolistic effort to manipulate the consumer away from the variety of search engines and other useful resources and toward a Microsoft product. ZDNet has the story; you be the judge.http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5096572,00.html
Napster May Have Passed Out, but File Sharing Parties On!
The college students are back in school now, and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) clients should once again rise. Students are the most intensive users of P2P, primarily for downloading and exchanging music files. In fact, more material is being moved across the Net today with P2P clients such as FastTrack and Gnutella than Napster ever laid claim to. Of course, users are employing a wider variety of clients, rather than the formerly nearly universal Napster. In any case, it's bad news for the RIAA, the recording industry association that planned to plug the pipe by shutting Napster down. Clearly, that's not happening. A WebNoize press release gives the numbers; Wired and Reuters team up to pump it up a bit.WebNoize: http://www.webnoize.com/item.rs?ID=14102
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46596,00.html
A powerful X-ray flare at the center of the Milky Way provides compelling evidence that a black hole, gripping 2.6 million times the mass of our sun within a diameter of only 93 million miles, exists at the galactic core. The flare, observed by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, was caused by material being pulled inside the black hole's event horizon. "This signal comes from closer to the event horizon of our galaxy's supermassive black hole than any that we have ever received before. It's as if the material there sent us a postcard before it fell in," said Frederick Baganoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MSNBC has coverage, along with a NASA black hole animation, complete with "black hole sounds".
Chandra: http://chandra.nasa.gov/
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/624377.asp
If you're on Fortune magazine's 40 under 40 list, you're probably not having a mid-life crisis. Instead, you're a multi-millionaire, most likely a male in the tech industries or the entertainment business. Tiger Woods brings up the rear of the list with a mere $160 million. Michael Dell, worth about 100 times more, leads off. Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll had really great years, rising to take second and third place. The chairman and vice-president of eBay have watched their eBay stock appreciate by 26% over the last 12 months. If you want to be on the list next year, forget about that graduate degree; only three of the 40 had any post-college formal education and quite a few didn't even pick up any sheepskin. The graphs alone are worth the visit.
http://www.fortune.com/sitelets/40under40/intro.html
Remember the good ol' high-school and junior-high days? Remember the fun, the fights, the cliques, a time when being cool was one of life's great goals? For teenagers, that sense of coolness often comes at the expense of someone else, and today's teens are taking it to the Web. They're employing that sense of anonymity that some believe is inherent to the Internet, and using it as a venue by which to tease and harass other students and teachers. It can get incredibly nasty. Parents and targeted students are enraged by the proliferation of such sites, but legal experts make it clear that in the absence of outright threats of physical harm these student-run sites are perfectly legal. Wired has more detail and links to a sample of the grisly material available at a site run by Diamond Ranch High School (Pomona, Calif.) kids.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,46359,00.html
Who Says There's No Psychology in Computer Chess?
An upcoming chess match in Bahrain will pit current world champion Vladimir Kramnik against the computer program Deep Fritz, a multiprocessor version of the popular Fritz chess program. The winner gets a cool $1 million. Kasparov Chess wants to know if the match is really legitimate. Unlike in Gary Kasparov's losing tussle with IBM's Deep Blue, it appears that this human has been allowed to familiarize himself with the program and play practice games against it. This tarnishes the contest, as far as the Kasparov Chess site is concerned. To clear up some uncertainty, the site has ten good questions it wants ChessBase, the software company that publishes Fritz, to answer. BGN, the match organizer, has stepped up to answer the questions as best it can. It's understandable why Kasparov might wish to discredit the contest, but even so, the questions are ones we think all chess lovers need answers to.Questions: http://www.kasparovchess.com/serve/templates/folders/show.asp?p_docID=17571
Answers: http://www.kasparovchess.com/serve/templates/folders/show.asp?p_docID=17600
Match: http://www.brainsinbahrain.com/
Hawking Forecasts "Terminator" Scenario
Ananova has a thumbnail report on a recent interview with Stephen Hawking in which he warns that unless humans employ genetic engineering to improve intelligence, the computers of the future will overtake us. "In contrast with our intellect, computers double their performance every 18 months," he told the German magazine Focus. "So the danger is real that they could develop intelligence and take over the world." The Register takes a less-than-reverent view of the renowned physicist's alarming prediction.Ananova: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_387951.html
Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/21414.html
A Wired report on organized protests against video surveillance by 22 groups in seven countries includes video footage of a guerrilla theatre group protesting police cams in Nottingham, England. The Nottingham activists, who took an eye-for-an-eye approach by satirically spying on the spy cams, joined other groups in creatively expressing their disgust with the recent global proliferation of surveillance cameras, a development they consider an invasion of privacy, crass voyeurism, and a violation of civil rights.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46634,00.html
Georgia State Representative Dorothy Pelote addressed a bemused Georgia legislature last week. "I want you to know that I can prophesy. I can communicate with the dead," she informed them, and went on to explain that missing US government intern Chandra Levy had appeared to her in a vision. "When I saw her, she was lying in a ditch and her eyes was closed. She was in a wooded area in a ditch." When asked to comment on this startling revelation, House Speaker Tom Murphy demurred, explaining that he hadn't heard Pelote's remarks very clearly and didn't have an opinion about them. The Macon Telegraph reports.
http://www.macontel.com/content/macon/2001/09/05/local/psychic_lawmaker_0905.htm
ONLINE CULTURE
Adventures of a Gaming Pioneer: Do What to the Bear?
"You're in a forest. You can also see: trees. Obvious exits are north, south, east, west." If this rings a bell, then you probably know we are talking about Adventureland, the classic text-based computer game by Scott "No, not THAT Scott Adams" Adams. Fans of the gaming innovator will want to read the transcripts and listen to audio files of Scott's remarks at a recent panel on storytelling and computer games. XYZZYnews has the goods, including fascinating insights on how the programmer created his original game on a TRS-80 with 16 kB of memory, and a hilarious story about the bear on the ledge. You'll also get the scoop on what games Scott plays these days, and what he thinks about them. (Avoid the busted links in the box.)http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.20c.html
SURFING SITES
The Victoria Cross is the UK's highest medal for military valor. It's the equivalent to the US's Congressional Medal of Honor. The VC (as it's known) can be given to anyone, British or otherwise, serving with the British military. Browsing this engrossing site you'll discover that three World War I VC winners lived on Pine Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Five civilians have been awarded VCs. Tales of incredible courage are the norm here. Each awardee has his own page, and the internal database allows users to search in almost every way. The basic data about the award is apparently from the official citations and sometimes tends to be sanitized and overly brief. Still, this site is enormously valuable.http://www.chapter-one.com/vc/default.asp
Lots of people claim to be scared of clowns; maybe that's not the figure in the circus they should be scared of. The owner, the guy who has all the money, can do some pretty creepy things, too, according to Jeff Stein's Salon article, "The Greatest Vendetta on Earth", about Kenneth Feld, head of Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey, and Janice Pottker, an upstart reporter with the tenacity of a lioness. The article shows the tangled web a large corporation with the right relationships can weave between the entertainment and broadcast industries, individuals, and even CIA officials. This is a fascinating and chilling tale, marred only by the jarring PETA tangent. Presumably, Salon included the information about animal and worker mistreatment because that's what its readers are interested in. They fit the tale rather like Lou Jacobs's hat. Their incongruity detracts from the persuasiveness of the rest of the article.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/08/30/circus/index.html
Web designers despise them, marketing people ignore them, and this Web site glorifies and supports them. Yes, it's those old, slow 56-kbps modems. They're the modems that most dial-up users have, the modems that are still used for the majority of all Internet connections. Unfortunately, the designers and marketers use fast connections and seem to think everyone else does too. There is nothing as frustrating (in the world of surfing) as using a 56-kbps modem on a site deliberately designed not for you. This site offers pro-56 kbps banners and lists sites designed for optimal performance at 56 kbps.
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/56k/
And Now For Something Completely Different...
....A rabbit wearing things on its head. We don't read Japanese, but a rabbit wearing things on its head is just too good to pass up. You have no idea how bummed we are that the front page image links are broken, but just keep clicking on the links below the broken image (of the rabbit wearing a pancake - you have no idea) for the goods. Apparently, some visitors have accused the site of animal abuse. There are some odd shots on the site, like the bunny, whose name is Oolong, trying to hang itself - but we wouldn't judge it cruel. If you put your mouse over the photos in Internet Explorer, the alt text will pop up in English to help clarify. If you want to buy things for your own personal cottontail to wear on its head, check out the Rabbit Visor from eco-artware.com.Oolong: http://www.fsinet.or.jp/~sokaisha/rabbit/rabbit.htm
Visor: http://www.eco-artware.com/ctlg_html/sewphisticated.shtml
You probably have at least passing familiarity with the reality TV shows that feature a bunch of folks in a houseful of cameras. The participants meet once a week or so to vote someone out of the house, and the last one left gets a boatload of cash. Same idea, here, but with a twist: this roofless abode is full of mice, and you get to vote on who gets tossed to the cat each week. Other than that, it really is a cute little place. With RealPlayer, you can watch the mice scamper through the sitting room, the kitchen, and elsewhere. The site also features a quick game that involves eating little mice before the big one eats you, and much more. Ever played an optigan? Neither had we. If you have Flash enabled, you can tickle the ivories on this 1970s-vintage machine, virtually. Don't visit during your morning break, unless you're planning to take the rest of the day off.
http://www.dr.dk/bigmouse/uk/uk_index.html
Rather Good, a.k.a. "The Lair of the Crab of Ineffable Wisdom", is the Monty Python of blogs. Populated by cranky crabs, bounding bunnies, woe kittens, gibbons with ribbons, hoary marmots, and sinister things that fall from the sky, Rather Good offers silly Shockwave movies; even sillier games, such as Kill Your Friends and Monkey Invaders; mad poetry and inventions; and - did we mention? - crabs. Look for advice from the Guru in the daily blog, or check out the archives, and be privy to wisdom such as the following: Q. Dear enlightened one, Why are the children still screaming? A. Dear Peter, Have you removed the electrodes? That should do it. I hope this helps. Regards, The Guru.
http://www.rathergood.com/
"People are strange" is the attractive undercurrent at In Passing, where bits of overheard conversation are collected to give you an instant mental picture of telling moments in the lives of passersby in momentary encounter with eavesdroppers or happenstance listeners unable, apparently, to resist the temptation to tattle. Most of these tidbits have but brief context. You may want to suspend disbelief, as when you listen to a joke. You can read and add comments to the quotations, which are grouped in categories such as Funny, Bizarre, and Beautiful. Some of these reports in miniature are no doubt tainted by presumption, marinated with annoyance, or slanted by wit on the part of the anonymous source. Read but a few of these quick takes and you realize that you, too, carry around conversational fragments in memory that might embarrass or astonish were you to make them public. If there's a lesson here, it may be this: Watch your mouth.
http://www.inpassing.org/
The Real Truth about the Microsoft Ruling
Last week's stunning Department of Justice decision to punish Microsoft with a feather may have surprised many folks, but the leaders of Microsoft clearly knew it was coming. Two recent videos featuring Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer make that clear. Taken alone, the two videos send a mixed message about Microsoft (although not about Ballmer, except maybe that he could use a StairMaster). However, an observant Mac user, using iMovie, discerned the truth. This careful reconstruction makes everything crystal clear. You need QuickTime, and you might have to watch the film more than once. Certainly you'll dissolve in laughter long before the end of your first viewing. Don't miss the original dancemonkeyboy.mpg on NTK's video page.iMovie: http://homepage.mac.com/jcarusone/iMovieTheater2.html
NTK: http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html
Bad Managers is a collection of often humorous tales of woe in information technology - coding projects gone awry under the misdirection or other adverse influence of bosses. The victims, the programmers, here expose their experiences for public revelation. The site's subtitle is apt: "True Stories of Disastrous Projects and Cowboy Managers." Not all the sarcasm of London-based site author Matt Stephens is aimed at individuals. Recently, the Rumour Mill section pilloried Windows XP, as well as a certain extremely excited Microsoft executive. Grizzled programmers should check out the forums. Join the Bad Managers e-mail list if you're a glutton for punishment or you're afraid your cubicle is the world.
http://www.bad-managers.com/
This WindowsRG Build 207 parody is cleverly done, presenting a number of screens near and dear to our hearts. It's an interactive piece that generates more or less realistic Shockwave versions of Windows screens filled with the kinds of messages we're pretty sure Microsoft had in mind in the first place. A word of warning, however: this entertainment comes at a price, as the site that hosts it goes over the top with ads. Don't get us wrong - we really understand the importance of ad revenue. It pays for the bandwidth, keeps the potato chips in the keyboard, and fills other important needs. But there's a right way and a wrong way to approach it. The host site employs a titillating range of pop-up and pop-under ads, and a casino tried to surreptitiously load a program on our system when we visited. That's just ill-mannered.
http://www.newgrounds.com/frames.php?location=/portal/view.php?id=27549
In a clearly American take on the TV-migrates-to-the-Web trend, we ran across a place that offers five virtual courtrooms of public opinion. If you have a beef with somebody, you can take them to court here, maybe. You'll need to register, then file your complaint, after which the site will send a Subpe-mail to your opponent. If your perp chooses to reply, the site post your case in one of the aforementioned courtrooms. Lurkers and busybodies get to vote on the merits of the arguments presented. Obviously, the results carry no legal weight, but they just might provide you with the leverage you need to wangle an abject apology from the dastardly person who dissed you. Be sure to drop by the Bailiff Boutique; you won't find a lot of these items in your local gift shop.
http://www.imright.com/
Grades are often not the final word, as many graduates know. There's employment. Travel. Wealth. Revenge.... And for students at more than 2,800 American institutions of higher learning, there's MyProfessorSucks.com. At this eminently searchable site, where schools are identified and names are named, you can give your profs the grades - good, bad, indifferent - they so richly deserve, in anonymity, without fear of reprisal. Evaluation criteria include coolness, ease, and worth. Currently, the site has a contest with condoms and calling cards for prizes. You may derive satisfaction from the assumption that fellow students as well as innocents in your footsteps will benefit from your academic experience and insight. A few of your profs may, too.
http://www.myprofessorsucks.com/
They Don't Like Overlake Hospital
They, being the creators of this Web site, also believe in understatement. They really, really don't like Overlake Hospital, in Bellevue, Wash. Certainly, the treatment one of the site authors received appears less than, shall we say, good. The details are all here, and there are also reports from other patients who feel the hospital mistreated them. This is a very one-sided site that makes serious charges. They're worth checking if you or anyone you know is headed for a hospital. They'll help you be a more aware, and perhaps a healthier (in the long run) patient.http://www.overlakehospital.com/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Have you ever really loved a manhole cover? Probably not. How often do you look at one unless it's rolling toward you at high speed? The world is full of wonders, including manholes capped by all manner of design and craftsmanship, circular or polygonal, utilitarian or expressionist, drab or delightfully vivid. Thousands of photographs of manhole and assorted other access covers from around the world await your eyes at Exhibition, a frame-based image database of civil concealment best searched by country - including, we must note for readers with Heaven on their minds, the Vatican. Cast iron, wood, and stone are many-splendored things in the right hands, especially if you've ever worked in a sewer, attacked a flooded basement, or ridden a subway fit for the masses. Exhibition invites you to contribute to "a new Global Mail Art project entitled Sewers of the World, Unite!" Ah, our snapshooting friends and glory-bent globetrotters, so this is democracy in Russia.... You may never look at streets the same way again.http://projects.artinfo.ru/sewers/exhib-e.htm
Tired of busy signals or holding when you call an airline to find out the status of an arrival or departure? RLM Software sells an application called FlightView that feeds you up-to-the-minute information, but most consumers will prefer the simple and free Web-based Find-a-Flight search page. You can track a flight by airline and flight number, or by airport and time. The second option is handy if you're in a hurry to meet someone and don't have their flight number. On the search results page, click a flight number, and a point-to-point map is generated with local times in both cities and the jet's speed and altitude. Nifty.
http://www.flightview.com/
Summer is over, but if you're contemplating a vacation or business trip to California, you're probably wondering whether you'll have power there in any season. In light of financial difficulties encountered by major utilities in the news, the e-centric state seeks to reassure potential visitors through Enlighten, a subsection of its Find Yourself Here travel and tourism site. A FAQ addresses questions such as "Will it be safe to fly into a California airport if there is a planned outage?" and "What if I have a medical emergency?" Site visitors are reassured about wake-up calls, elevators, energy surcharges, and public safety. Most surfers will benefit most from the Tips, which suggest energy-conscious behaviors for those leaving home, on the road, or arriving at a California destination.
http://www.visitcalifornia.com/energy/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
What They Know about Your Computer
Visit the Privacy.net site to see exactly what information sites can easily collect about you and your computer. You're going to be very shocked. After you calm down, check the rest of this helpful site for information on protecting your privacy.http://privacy.net/analyze/
You can do anything, or nothing, at Zombo.Com. It's basically soothing music and a quasi-inspirational and not-so-quasi-repetitive message delivered in a quasi-Caribbean dialect - almost hypnotic, actually. You can, at the end of the loop and if you're really quick on the mouse, sign up to receive the NewZletter.
http://www.zombo.com/
Ever wanted to own Bill Gates's mansion complex? Now you can, sorta, with this paper model. At the Papertoys intro page, you can get a model of a PT Cruiser or DeLorean to park in the driveway. Now we only need a printer that will print this thing out in real scale....
Mansion: http://papertoys.com/gates.htm
Papertoys: http://papertoys.com/