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BREAKING SURF
Microsoft and Justice Settle out of Court
As we were putting this issue to bed, word came in that Microsoft and the US Department of Justice have reached an out-of-court settlement in the federal government's anti-trust suit against the company. Alleged terms seem to amount to a slap on the wrist: Microsoft agrees to eliminate restrictive contracts with computer builders and agrees not to do anything naughty for five years in a consent decree (essentially the same provision in a 1995 settlement between the parties didn't prevent this case), while a three-person committee makes sure the company follows the new rules. A handful of state attorneys general are looking over the deal. The states in the case have in the past suggested they would continue their suit against Microsoft if they thought a federal deal yielded too much. The settlement comes two days before a judge-imposed deadline for a settlement to be reached and a week after Microsoft released Windows XP. The New York Times and the Associated Press (through CNN) have the most lucid accounts of the deal and Slashdot hosts the usual spirited discussion.Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/technology/01SOFT.html
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/11/01/microsoft.ap/index.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/01/11/01/0415221.shtml
Windows XP is out. and everyone by now has probably read at least one article about the cons, and maybe the pros, of upgrading. CNet reports that Microsoft has already released 20 MB of updates that fix bugs, plug security gaps, and add new features. It also reveals that there's more to a decision to upgrade than deciding whether a less crash-prone OS is worth the cash. Windows XP takes Microsoft and its customers down a road that may make the latter extremely nervous. Some folk, with reason, view XP as a bid by Microsoft to own their desktop and railroad them into surfing Microsoft's way. With tricks such as automatic upgrades, preferential and hard-to-remove links to its business partners, and irritating reminders about its Passport service, XP offers much to stoke Microsoft paranoia. The Product Activation feature might not match everyone's taste, either. CNet's important seven-part series on Microsoft's XP strategy is revealing and thorough. All potential users should read it so that they can approach the new operating system with their eyes open. Linux anyone? OS X?
XP: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/launch/
Updates: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-7661667.html
Series: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-7540650-0.html
...And It's Already Been Cracked
One of Windows XP's big "features" is the product activation system that allows Microsoft to control to some degree how and where you install the operating system. A substantial subset of hackers detests such attempts at control and at least one has produced a software tool that lets Windows XP users deactivate the product activation feature. Newsbytes reports that both pre-hacked versions of XP and the software to hack your own copy of the operating system can be found online if you look hard enough. Faced with unassailable evidence, Microsoft denies that such a feat is possible.http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171651.html
Microsoft Copyright Protection Broken
Beale Screamer (a pseudonym) has cracked Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) and has published a DOS utility - and its source code - that can strip off such copy protection from audio files. Beale's zipped file contains a message in which he explains his actions ably and passionately. He's particularly incensed by how DRM prevents him from buying music and using it with any playback device he owns, and that the DRM represents another anti-competitive Microsoft scheme. He also says the fine balance between the rights of the public and those of content providers has been ignored in the current anti-pirating paranoia of publishers and artists, as companies use technology to assault the public side of this equation, aided and abetted by the DMCA. He predicts a proliferation of public protests like his unless the courts and politicians wake up to the erosion of consumer rights. We paraphrase - read Beale's own comments for the full richness of his interesting viewpoints. The Register has the news.Beale: http://cryptome.org/ms-drm.htm
Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22354.html
In what cannot fail to be interpreted by many as a self-serving move by Microsoft, company security officer Scott Culp has called for an end to "information anarchy" in an essay demanding that the security community cease publishing example code of software security exploits. CNet reports that Microsoft plans to force the issue, and that some non-Microserf security experts agree with the stance. Not surprisingly, the posters over at Slashdot, among other sites, have different ideas. Slashdotters argue that while source code exploits will always be accessible by malicious hackers and script kiddies, self-censoring by white-hat hackers would only result in reduced sysadmin awareness of the exploits they must fix, less motivation for software companies to provide fixes, and less information for legitimate coders to work with.
Culp: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/columns/security/noarch.asp
CNet: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-7560391.htm
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/17/2130223&mode=thread
The Anti-Terror Bill - More Than Meets the Eye
The passage of the new US anti-terror bill came and went with about a day's worth of media coverage - maybe because it's official name is the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT Act) Act of 2001". This is highly unfortunate because the bill contains a huge amount of new law, much of it the kind of stuff you find in the law books of police states and dictatorships. The bill is not all bad - it's hard to argue against aid for victims of terrorism, strengthening border controls, or trade sanctions for states which harbor terrorists. But the 160-plus sections of the bill contain something to offend just about everyone no matter where they stand in the political spectrum. The bill is a mass of mind-numbing legalese, but do yourself a favor and read at least the table of contents - seriously, take a few minutes. This will give you a taste of the powers that the US government has given itself, many of which should have the country's founders spinning in their graves at 10,000 RPM. Some will surely be challenged in court but many will undoubtedly stick. What should give you pause is not how this bill will affect the current terrorism problem - it may or may not help - but what an unscrupulous future political party in power can do with it.http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
Constitution and Law in Wartime
The 2000 Presidential election provided ample evidence that your individual vote does indeed count (unless maybe you can't see well or you've been confused with a felon) and the current political climate seems to spotlight another dusty axiom: individual liberties must be jealously guarded. Law and government scholar Sanford Levinson calmly reminds us of this in a FindLaw editorial citing numerous historical instances in which constitutional rights have been punted for reasons of "compelling state interests", beginning with an early assault on that pesky old Constitution by Lincoln himself, in the Emancipation Proclamation. "Nobody pretends this act is constitutional, and nobody cares whether it is or not," declared a newspaper of the day. Levinson points out why we should care today, and what we should do about it.http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20011017_levinson.html
PDAs Join Navy in Anti-Terrorism Fight
The destroyer USS McFaul, which has launched attacks against the Taliban regime, is currently a test platform for the use of PDAs aboard US Navy ships. The ubiquitous handhelds are part of a broad, determined effort to achieve information dominance in the modern battlefield. Almost half the ship's complement carry Palm V handhelds, both personal and Navy-supplied units. The more rugged military units provide increased durability and should operate in more demanding environments. The USS McFaul maintains 32 infrared ports distributed throughout the vessel through which the Palm units can download messages. Uses vary from personal e-mail to reviewing the ship's Plan of the Day. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center continues to develop software for the Navy's handheld devices, so far with nine applications to its credit. MSNBC offers a Wall Street Journal report.http://www.msnbc.com/news/646394.asp
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Online
In the 21st century, even the terrorists have Web sites. Groups such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Jihad Troopers all have sites. And all of these groups are on the State Department's Terrorist Watch list. This Wired article has links to the State Department as well as some of the Web sites operated by the terrorists. That these groups with the stated goals of eradicating Western influence so eagerly use Western technology strikes us as ironic. Especially disturbing is the Hamas site's Glory Record, a page dedicated to suicide bombers.http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47616,00.html
Take two of the top technology entrepreneurs and inventors in America today, feed them an array of SF movies, then ask them how credible some of these scenarios are. Chances are, you'd expect to hear laughter. You'd be very, very wrong. A computer capable of operating at fully human levels of intelligence, such as HAL (featured in "2001: A Space Odyssey") can't be possible, can it? Peter Cochrane and Ray Kurzweil think we might see it in 20 to 30 years. Prepare for other surprises as you peruse this two-part Silicon.com article.
Part I: http://www.silicon.com/bin/bladerunner?30REQEVENT=&REQAUTH=21046&14001REQSUB=REQINT1=48345
Part II: http://www.silicon.com/bin/bladerunner?30REQEVENT=&REQAUTH=21046&14001REQSUB=REQINT1=48351
Physics and astronomy might seem like unlikely bedfellows for archeology, but archaeologists are increasingly borrowing techniques from physics and geophysics to accurately date fragile fragments of Earth's distant past. In addition to the well known technique of radiocarbon dating, a host of new techniques have been developed to accurately date remains over a huge span of time. This fascinating Physics Today article offers readers a well informed guided tour of the new methods that allow us our most exciting form of time travel.
http://physicstoday.org/pt/vol-54/iss-10/p32.html
Since the early days of computing, the field has overwhelmingly based itself on the binary arithmetic system. Using just 0s and 1s makes for simple circuits and gets you up close and personal to the fundamental units of information theory. It turns out, however, that computing using base 3 arithmetic, the so-called ternary system, offers some unique advantages. Computers that operate on the ternary system have been constructed, though they never caught on. Brian Hayes makes the point that base 3 offers the most economical way of representing numbers, gives you one of three possible useful outcomes (less than, equal to, and more than) in one step, and can represent negative numbers without an extra sign digit. There's more ternary fun in Brian's American Scientist paper, and also in James Allwright's link-filled Web page on balanced ternary systems.
Brian: http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/amsci/issues/comsci01/compsci2001-11.html
James: http://perun.hscs.wmin.ac.uk/~jra/ternary/
NASA Releases Its FORTRAN Programs - for a Fee
Those crackerjack FORTRAN programmers at NASA are now celebrating, sort of. They've been allowed to release a number of their favorite programs for public use - except that they have to charge a fee for the software. We'll skip past the fact that this was all developed on the taxpayers' dime for now and instead note that people are trying hard to get NASA to free the software for individual use. We can't wait to put the three Crack Growth and Fatigue Analysis apps to use around the old homestead. Have problems flying with a limited number of carry-on bags? No problem: NASA's got a couple of cargo and packing logistics programs right here, guaranteed to make tight packing a snap. These apps were designed for real-world engineering problems - hence the effort to port them to the commercial environments of medicine, aerodynamics, and other disciplines. Open Channel Software will be marketing over 200 titles in which the underlying FORTRAN code can be linked to C and C++ languages. The fact that the software has gone through extensive debugging makes it especially attractive to commercial endeavors. Note, however, that some programs are still purely FORTRAN code.http://www.openchannelsoftware.com/NASA_1.html
New Web Ratings Service Tries to Take Off
In another attempt to avoid government regulation of Web content, some of the biggest Web companies, including AOL Time Warner, MSN, and Yahoo, are backing a new voluntary form of Web filtering. The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) hopes to become the Motion Picture Association of America - the movie-rating organization - of the Internet. The ICRA will distribute free filtering software so that parents might control their offspring's Internet travel. Although participation is voluntary, like movie ratings, the service might become a de facto necessity for all sites if the ICRA takes off. Parents will have the option to block all unrated sites. We assume that this attempt, like past efforts to regulate Web content, will fail, but who knows? Salon has more.ICRA: http://www.icra.org/
Salon: http://www.salon.com/mwt/wire/2001/10/23/internet_ratings/index.html
Billboard Magazine Hurts the RIAA's Feelings
In a petulant letter to the editors of Billboard magazine, the RIAA claims it wasn't really trying to gain the right to hack with impunity into personal computers by lobbying the Senate to add language that might have allowed it to do exactly that. The RIAA says that nothing could be further from the truth; it was simply trying to ensure that all legal avenues presently available to holders of copyright remain open and uninfringed. That's all, it says, and Billboard, which tried to make the RIAA look underhanded and unpatriotic, owes it an apology. Somehow, we don't expect that one will be forthcoming, as similar allegations have been printed in a range of media, such as ZDNet - and these articles came out well before the Billboard piece.RIAA: http://www.riaa.org/PR_Story.cfm?id=462
ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2818064,00.html
AltaVista Search Engine Not Fully Updated Since July
AltaVista is either losing its audience because its listings are not up to date, or it's failing to keep up because its lack of visitors means it hasn't enough revenue to do so. CNet points out that the company last fully updated its index last July. The story details the problem and notes that Google has been gaining search engine market share in almost exact inverse proportion to AltaVista's decline. AltaVista used to be the most popular search engine and was widely regarded as the most useful in its day, but once it went all portalish, it lost our interest.http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7630946.html
Slashdot Looks at Pay Subscription Model
Rob Malda, a.k.a Slashdot's CmdrTaco, writes a bit about how hard it is to make money with ads these days. He notes that although Slashdot traffic has risen 10% in the last few months, advertising revenue has become more difficult to obtain. Malda warns readers that Slashdot will try larger ads and eventually will look into implementing some sort of subscription system. Not surprisingly, the story has sparked a vigorous debate about the best way for Slashdot to go about raising revenue, a debate which may be of interest to other Web sites thinking about making the subscription leap. Like us.http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/22/1814211&mode=flat
Bankrupt Dotcoms Politely Ask to Sell Customer Data
When a company goes bankrupt, it is forced to get as much money as it can for every possible asset in order to repay creditors. Nothing escapes the eagle eyes of the asset peddlers, certainly not the valuable customer data. The archetypal case of this trend is Toysmart, which after going under ran into all sorts of legal trouble when it tried to sell its customer data. With lessons learned, these days companies like Webvan, eToys, Wine.com, and Garden.com send out polite e-mails asking customers for permission to unload their data as part of a bankruptcy sale. The San Jose Merc has the story.http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/depth/list102901.htm
The proliferation of consumer DSL hardware has brought with it security problems. This SecurityFocus article talks about how at least one popular model, the Cayman Systems 3220-H DSL router, is falling victim to password-stealing hackers. The device is widely used by DSL subscribers of Pacific Bell, Southwestern Bell, and Ameritech. When initially deployed, the device allowed access to its configuration interface and password from the Internet end of the connection, leaving it vulnerable to savvy hackers. Cayman Systems and DSL providers have since changed the set-up procedure to fix this problem, but thousands of older routers are still vulnerable.
http://securityfocus.com/news/268
ABC Poll: Internet News Readers Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise
If you're a wealthy, educated male under 35, you're most likely to use the Internet as a source for news. According to an ABC News poll, younger, wealthier people with at least some college experience go to the Internet for news more often than others, and people with annual incomes exceeding $100,000 tap the Internet for news daily at a rate greater than anyone else (but we think they're just obsessively checking their stock prices). The survey also shows that the number of Americans using the Net for news consumption has risen by some 22 million since 1999, with substantial growth since Sept. 11, especially in the eastern US. The extrapolation derives from a random sampling of 1,023 people, but we won't quibble - we'll just ask what precisely qualifies as Internet news, and wonder why we aren't making $100,000 per year.http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/onlinenews_poll011017.html
If you don't know what "maiesiophile" means, then you're probably not one of the drooling fanboys that Wired says are getting their jollies from visiting pregnancy, childbirth, and maternity sites. Pregnancy and lactation fetishists have forced some such sites to remove certain images, and links to graphic childbirth videos are hot items on sites like Expecting Sex ("Lactating Ladies with Big Boobs and Bulging Bellies"). Not drooling, but just mortified that you didn't know the word "maiesiophilia"? Well, if you're an asthenolagniac, that's a good thing, according to the the "World's Most Bored Guy". Said guy has posted an amazing list of fetish-related words, including: musophilia, not an attraction to poetry, but to mice; metrophilia, which is arousal via poetry; and, our favorite, "pantophilia", or arousal stemming from just about everything.
Wired: http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,47881,00.html
Guy: http://netrunners.mur.csu.edu.au:1999/valley/wwwboard/messages/379.html
What better publication than Byte to publish this obituary to MS-DOS? The history of Byte is inexorably intertwined with the DOS operating system, as the magazine grew up with the PC revolution. MS-DOS died Oct. 25 when Bill Gates symbolically typed "exit" at the DOS prompt when launching Windows XP. RIP MS-DOS.
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1437/byt20011028s0001/1029_editor.html
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Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices
Black Adder - The Complete Collector's Set
Music Box
I, Toto: Autobiography of Terry, the Dog Who Was TotoSURFING SITES
It should not surprise you that this new art and culture site is superb, a Web destination already shaping up as one of the most important virtual museum/gallery experiences. True, the site is littered with many "coming soon" signs, but the quality of the two available main exhibits takes our breath away. The Art of the Motorcycle is a feast of motorized two-wheelers, with pictures, tech specs, and essays about some incredible motorcycle engineering. French Art, Russian Collectors focuses on 100 French masterpieces, dating from 1860-1950, from the Shchukin-Morozov collection at the Hermitage Museum in Moscow. The collection includes works by many well known names, including Picasso, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Monet. The site can be viewed in broadband and narrowband versions and is put together with as much artistry and engineering excellence as the two current exhibits themselves. On the whole, the navigation is creative and effective, although sometimes confusing. This isn't quite as much fun as exploring the real thing on a rainy afternoon with a coffee and pastry, but it's close.http://www.guggenheim.com/
The Web is simply superb at spreading information, but the jerks who think it's funny or cool to lie or libel others have equal access. Ultimately, you are responsible for checking the information and for that you need help. Hunches and intuition are not enough, although common sense usually helps. Purportal.com is an entry site that gives access to five of the Web's leading debunking sites: Snopes (our reviewer's fave); About.com's Urban Legends; CIAC; CERT; and Symantec's (Real) Virus Encyclopedia. There are also special reports and links to most of the better known scams and frauds. A quick check here before passing on the latest great story can save many a red face.
http://www.purportal.com/
This online museum probably would have seemed quaint a couple of months ago. Now, it seems in many ways less a Civil Defense (CD) museum than a primer. Fallout shelter supplies from the 1950s aren't really all that far removed from the sort of things that some are suggesting we assemble today: water barrels; food rations; medical and sanitation kits; etc. The site offers brief tours of a FEMA Regional Command Center, CD shelters, and a CD emergency hospital (now a County Courts center). Also included is a gallery of CD artwork and a selection of CD radio public service announcements. Take a little spin down Memory Lane.
http://members.home.net/cdmuseum/
Jerry Falwell's secret Hobbit name is Pimpernel Hardbottle, and Hobbit Agent 007's name would be Chubb, Fosco Chubb. We know this because we employ the Hobbit Name Generator to see what people would be called had they been fictionalized by JRR Tolkien, and because we feel it may yield some insight into their true character. Bill Gates's secret Hobbit name, for example, is Todo Grubb of Little Delving and Queen Elizabeth would be HRH Tigerlily Maggot. Our publisher Arthur Bebak's Hobbit name is Bulbo Proudfoot (and from now on, we'll just call him Bulbo 'round the office), and Ann Coulter's secret name is Orangeblossom Boggy-Hillocks (that would just be Ms. Boggy-Hillocks to you). Finally, and most poignantly, John Wayne Bobbitt's hobbit name is... Dimple Deepdelver. We kid you not.
http://www.chriswetherell.com/hobbit/
In this era of cookie-cutter cars and SUVs, one of the few places left for man to make his vehicle stick out and be admired by other men is where it meets the roads - the wheels and tires. Careful tire selection can improve performance and safety, but, hey, big flashy wheels and tires can do a lot more. The wheel and tire aftermarket is huge and confusing. The 1010Tires.com site catalogues just about every option, lets users easily find what fits on their vehicle, and even offers tire and wheel education in the form of two textbook-like glossaries. If your vehicle needs bigger, faster, and better, roll on in. We don't normally feature online storefronts in NSD, and when we do, there's a good reason. This one is exquisitely put together.
http://www.1010tires.com/
Practical jokes aren't only the dominion of the young. Interviews with celebrities often include quips about stunts being pulled between the folks working on a film. At work, check before you sit in your seat. Even otherwise authoritative outlets find opportunities to confuse and mystify. The Request For Comment (RFC) is the standard method used to standardize the technology that powers the Internet. On Apr. 1 each year since 1989, along with two done in 1973 and 1978, a new RFC is issued that has all the semblance of the real thing. Readers soon realize that there certainly is no subliminal-message option to the Telnet command, no Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite, nor has anyone fully implemented the protocol for controlling coffee pots.
http://kludge.psc.edu/~ksulliva/rfc-april1/
Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Shape of... a Drunken Idiot!
Holy alcohol poisoning, Batman! There's a Super Friends Drinking Game? Childhood cartoons and alcohol - what a stellar combination. If you play by all the rules set forth, you'll probably quickly be incapacitated and vulnerable to a variety of evil overlords. You and your faithful sidekick Jack Daniels have only one chance to save civilization. Hop on your bat-computer to print out the directions, because you've got to visit this site... and fast. (Those playing along and reading this review are obligated to take seven drinks, with an optional chug.)http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/drink.htm
Carhops' Silly Online Diversions
If you find yourself waxing nostalgic for those silly little Javascript games and programs you used to waste so much time on in your early days of Web surfing, drop into Carhops where you'll find a mixed-bag collection of over 40 inane classic pastimes, including those weirdo message and graffiti boards, madlibs, biorhythms, love tests, meters, color meanings, moon phases, and lots of goofy games. We have to admit a guilty fondness for the Pass the Pigs porcine dice game, surely one of the most satisfyingly silly games ever: "snouter for 10... razorback for 5... pig out (that's just bad pigs)".http://carhops.com/
Living with Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Despite the wonders of medical research, we've entered the 21st century still facing elusive disorders galore. People are still battling Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), a miserable discomfort without a cure or even a real explanation. This great resource offers the reader a basic explanation about the aspects of IBS and a comprehensive collection of related links. Visitors can participate in forums open for discussion of topics like the symptoms of IBS, ways to deal with side-effects, and even how to do long-distance trips in a manageable way. The site adopts an encouraging tone and remains matter-of-fact about a subject that, as it mentions, is difficult to discuss and frustrating to live with.http://www.digestioninfo.com/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Headquartered in Paris, Maporama has created the next generation of online mapping services. Its cartographic databases contain 635,000 world cities, including comprehensive street-level maps for locations in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. Whereas the US and Canada were pretty much your only viable map-questing option in the past, now you have the ability to plan a trip seemingly anywhere. City maps available from Maporama detail the living space of a billion people inhabiting countries throughout the world. The possibilities boggle the imagination, almost. Our reviewer's next road trip: Dublin to Athens in 35 hours and 14 minutes, which even includes the 90-minute ferry ride to Wales.http://maporama.com/
Diamond Hunting on the Canadian Tundra
This site exists to promote a book, one we reviewed a couple of issues ago. That said, it's got some interesting stuff in it. Is a North American diamond lode in the upper reaches of Canada the answer to the De Beers cartel's long-held monopoly over the diamond industry? South Africa has long been synonymous with diamonds, but now Great White Northern mines have entered the picture. This is a $45 billion a year industry, closely held. It's easy to see why some folks might get themselves into a bit of a lather over this development. Suddenly, almost overnight, Canada has become a force to be reckoned with in the diamond industry. And there's gold in them thar Barrens, as well. There's a rush, now, to explore more of the northernmost part of the Western hemisphere. This brings with it potential economic reward and potential environmental disaster. The book, "Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic", won good reviews from us. It's like reading about the California gold rush, except that it's going on right now.http://members.fcc.net/krajick/
Hawaii Portal Features Hawaiian Names Translator
What's your name in Hawaiian? What's your pet's name? Does your pet care if you use his or her Hawaiian name? Even if you offer a treat? This Web site provides the Hawaiian versions of many common names and about 5,000 other words. No grammar, no context - just words. There's a lot of additional local flavor, including some distinctly local recipes, as you'd expect. A nice feature is the letter in the sand e-mail capability. The sand is awfully gray, but the concept is cute. This site also has the largest number of obtrusive pop-up ads ever seen. If there was ever an argument against pop-up ads this site is Exhibit A.http://www.hisurf.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Where Exactly Did Dogbert Come from, and Who the Heck Is Bingo?
Dogbert is the Dilbert character most admired and beloved by serious Type-A personalities. Just how he managed to inject himself into the Dilbert universe is an unpublished (at least in the daily strip) tale. These never-before-seen strips explain the genesis of Dogbert.http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/scoop/dogbert_origin.html
This little bit of silly AOL bashing came to our attention this week. Written last January, it's a bit dated, but it's still a funny account of trying to take advantage of AOL's offer of 700 hours of free service.
http://www.cnet.com/insider/0-121949-7-4561013.html
SOFTWARE
Mozilla, the most famous open-source Web browser, might soon reach version 1.0 - i.e. a vague, kind-of final release. Mozilla is among the most ambitious of the open source projects and reading the 1.0 Manifesto is a lesson in understanding the complex interplay of egos, code, bugs, and management in producing a solid open-source application. Even if you've never written a line of code, read the manifesto. Something utterly new is being brought to life.http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap/mozilla-1.0.html
Scaling E-Commerce Sites with Open-Source Software
In 1999, eToys was a fast-growing start-up employing CGI scripts in conjunction with a MySQL database, with operations sharing resources on the same machines. Having run into trouble with this arrangement during the 1998 Christmas season, eToys was sure it could not handle the expected 1999 Christmas tidal wave with its prevailing setup. It had to scale up its architecture and add performance while minimizing additional hardware cost. Its solution involved primarily open-source software and inexpensive hardware. This article, of interest to any Web developers who expect to encounter scaling issues, tells how it was done. Concise, yet replete with excellent examples, this brief discussion describes construction of a system using Apache, Perl, and off-the-shelf hardware to create tremendous scalability with minimal cost.http://perl.com/pub/a/2001/10/17/etoys.html
The latest version of the Yahoo instant messenger software features just about the most useless bit of bloatware you could think of. It's called IMVironments, which are basically interactive themed backgrounds. Your messages show up in cartoon balloons served up by Dilbert, SuperMario, or Hello Kitty (oh, the horror!). Fortunately, IMVironments can be turned off. The new software has some other new features such as improved firewall support and "typing notification" which lets you know when your friends are in the process of typing you a message - just in case they change their minds, we guess.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/
The latest and greatest package from the leading Linux distribution arrives just in time for the holidays. Progress marches on with ever-improving device support, security enhancements, and new graphical tools. Among the more notable features are the new ext3 journaling file system that makes hard disk error recovery easier, the inclusion of the spiffy Nautilus file manager, and several easy-to-use configuration tools.
Red Hat: http://www.redhat.com/
Package List: http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/pl_rhl.html
There are two leading text editors on Unix, vi and Emacs. Religious wars rage between the worshippers of one and the other, but they generally agree that, of the two, Emacs leans more toward the kitchen sink school of software design. It does everything but trim your toenails (though there are rumors...) and many swear by it. Others, whose sanity is beyond reproach, will tell you that Emacs was surely designed by a mysterious tribe of programming octopi, since no human would come up with so many multi-keystroke commands. The latest version deepens and embiggens the kitchen sink.
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
CORRECTIONS
Normally, we're a pretty hip crowd, and so mistakes like this embarrass us. In NSD 7.35, we mistakenly implied that Afghanistan is part of the Arab world when in fact relatively few ethnic Arabs live there. We know better. Sorry.