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| Lack of Phones Means Cybercafe Success in Latin America |
| Real Life Sims - Run the Lives of Five Brits |
| The Official Star Wars Parodies |
| Archived Children's Art |
| Canada from C(BC) to Z(eD) |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Periodic Science Fiction |
| Valley of the Geeks |
| The Jet City Orange Photo Blog |
| Hollywood Property Ned Vizzini |
| The Cat Detector Cam |
| The Ultimate Basement Lab Do-It-Yourself Project |
| The Audubon Seafood Diet |
| PBS's "Misunderstood Minds" Looks at the Learning Process |
| A Tron-Like Peek at the Internet |
| PHP 4.2.0 Released |
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| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
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BREAKING SURF
Fourteen Billion Years and Counting
Recent Hubble Space Telescope observations place the age of the universe (big, isn't it?) at about 13 to 14 billion years old. The data come from observations of ancient burned-out stellar remains in a nearby globular star cluster. The burned-out stars, made mostly of carbon, display a well understood cooling rate that's coupled to their luminosity. This enabled scientists to estimate their age. Separate Hubble observations had already established that star formation began about a billion years after the big bang. This, coupled with the age of the ancient stars, led to the new estimate. The new data agree quite well with previous age estimates derived from galactic red shift observations and provide independent confirmation of this age estimate. Both the NASA and Hubble Web sites have copies of the press release.NASA: ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2002/02-073.txt
Hubble: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2002/10/pr.html
A massive new library has opened in Alexandria, Egypt to little notice but large hope. The $200-million project was to have had a grand opening this week but the celebrations have been cancelled due to the unpleasantries in neighboring Israel. The Bibliotheca Alexandria is the cultural successor to the famous ancient Library of Alexandria, said to have been destroyed during the time of Julius Caesar, but probably ravaged several more times after that. The modern library begins with a large collection of copyright-free digital works, including contributions from the Internet Archive and other sources, amounting to more than 10 billion Web pages and numerous films and videos. In time, the library also plans to house some 8 million books. It aims to be a regional center of learning specializing in Egyptian scholarship, environmental science, history of Mediterranean civilizations, and women's studies (Egypt's First Lady, Suzanne Mubarak, is a main backer of the project). This is a vast, first-rate resource and a worthy successor. Check out the Web site, then treat yourself to a history of the ancient original.
Bibliotheca Alexandria: http://www.unesco.org/webworld/alexandria_new/
Ancient Library of Alexandria: http://www.slis.uwm.edu/SLIS/Bibliotheca%20book.htm
Free Content Leads to More Sales - A Study
Can giving away intellectual content increase your profits? If the Baen Free Library is any indication, free, unencrypted information leads to dollars, lots of dollars. Jim Baen is a science fiction publisher. One of his authors, Eric Flint, challenged him to put texts of books up on the Web for free download. Baen agreed, as long as Flint's books would be the ones to go online, and so it happened (see NSD 7.01). Other authors, including Harlan Ellison, claim that pirated texts on the Web cost them royalties - and all of us know about the battles over online music. In this little experiment, Baen and Flint discovered that sales of Flint's titles increased dramatically once they appeared online, sometimes by over 200%. Flint analyzed the numbers and came up with this essay, linked below. While primarily anecdotal in nature, it provides some healthy support for the notion that free electronic content promotes hard-copy sales. Toward the end of his essay, Flint throws out a bit about textbook publishing - when college presses post free e-textbooks, sales of the hardcover books rise for this genre as well. Information may not only want to be free, it might want to make you money....NSD 7.01: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v07/nsd.07.01.html#BS9#BS9
Flint: http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm
Does the fate of the Internet depend on a little known court case in Denmark? We hope not, but the legal shenanigans in Copenhagen bear watching just the same. The Danish Newspaper Publishers Association (DNPA) has objected to the deep hyperlinks to newspaper articles that Newsbooster, a news feed service, deploys. The DNPA is seeking an injunction against the practice, and, if successful, intends to sue. The association had already acquired a first injunction over the same issue against another Internet company that has since gone bankrupt. Other Internet outfits think the DNPA is acting like an anti-Internet Luddite. The DNPA claims to object to the commercial exploitation of content, not the deep linking itself. It seems to us that all a link, deep or shallow, does is point toward content, not steal it - like a citation or bibliography - but then we've always been rabid idealists who are completely objective about this sort of thing. Let's hope the trial, if it comes to that, is heard by a savvy judge who understands that the Web is more than a commercial playground for content owners. Wired has all the worrying details.
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,51887,00.html
Carnivore, the FBI's infamous Internet surveillance technology, may be tamed courtesy of a Dartmouth graduate student. Alex Iliev has designed a software package that would make it impossible for Carnivore to suck up a constant stream of data. Instead, Iliev's Linux-based electronic "armored data vault" would store streaming data and would only release specific information on the order of a judge. The FBI would no longer have the temptation to use Carnivore for more than its intended purpose. The IBM encryption coprocessor upon which Iliev's concept is based has some fascinating properties, including a self-destruct sequence activated when it detects an intrusion. A Wired article provides a link to Iliev's source code.
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,51917,00.html
IBM: http://www-3.ibm.com/security/cryptocards/html/overproduct.shtml
Lavasoft's Ad-aware software scans your PC for spyware and removes it. RadLight, a separate application, is ostensibly a media playback program but it comes bundled with a couple of spyware apps that are somewhat problematic where your privacy is concerned. But it goes a step farther. When you install the latest version of RadLight, it goes on the offensive and automatically removes Ad-aware from your PC. This seems to be the first time a commercial program has acted so offensively, and it's causing quite an uproar. Depending on how you look at it, it's either simply sleazy or legally actionable. Newsbytes has the story, and Slashdot has discussion.
Ad-aware: http://www.lavasoft.de/
RadLight: http://www.radlight.net/
Newsbytes: http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176075.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/24/1946204
Ignore User Consent Agreements at Your Peril
Saying no to a terms of use agreement is easier said than done, but CNET's story will have your click-finger pausing when confronted with that "I Agree" button. Most of us have better things to do with our lives than read the impenetrable babble of which most user agreements consist; we just trust the company to respect our rights and click away. Sadly, in some cases that trust is badly misplaced. As we reported in NSD 8.13, the popular Kazaa file-sharing software, for example, is bundled with a Brilliant Digital peer-to-peer network app. Anyone who agreed to Kazaa's 2,644-word contract, also agreed to let Brilliant use "unused computing power and storage space" on their computer. Of course, the meat of the issue was clouded by legalese more complex than an IRS tax form. It's no wonder that so few people read the contracts, and that a few software companies seem to feel that gives them a carte blanche. Clearly, the presence of electronic parasites is good reason to take care over which software you invite onto your hard drive.CNET: http://news.com.com/2009-1023-885144.html
NSD 8.13: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v08/nsd.08.13.html#BS1#BS1
Speaking of Which, Kazaa Lite Lacks Spyware
When the Kazaa-Brilliant debacle came to light, it seeded projects in the minds of file-sharing coders who were disgusted with Kazaa's bundled Brilliant spyware. One such project, Kazaa Lite, has now been released. Its creator, a Russian known only as "Yuri", designed Kazaa Lite to access the same FastTrack file-sharing network as Kazaa, without displaying banner ads or installing any spyware. Sharman Networks, Kazaa's corporate parent, is hopping mad over this development, and this week promised to vigorously defend its rights. It asked CNET to remove Kazaa Lite from that site's download pages. Wired has a short story about the issue, and don't forget to check out how Sharman Networks defines privacy and spyware at the Kazaa site. Want to look at Kazaa Lite? Oh, all right... we'll link to that as well. Curiously, that site features a ton of ads.Kazaa: http://www.kazaa.com/en/kmdstart.htm
Kazaa Lite: http://kazaalite.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,51916,00.html
Interview with Kazaa CEO Nicola Hemming
Nicola Hemming is CEO of Sharman Networks, the company that purchased file-trading software Kazaa earlier this year. Since then, she's been communicating with the world via press releases, but this week CNET finally managed to land an interview with her. Her company, originally in Australia, has since incorporated in the tax haven of Vanuatu, a move not likely to inspire confidence, particularly after the debacle of their association with Brilliant Digital and their stealth P2P network. Those still interested in Kazaa can read the interview as well as a piece from Wired that updates the story.CNET: http://news.com.com/2008-1082-890072.html
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,52062,00.html
Competition and Diversity on the Internet
The distribution of links and traffic between Web sites has long fascinated researchers. In overall terms, the Web is governed by the rich-get-richer dominance of the few, but the situation remains complicated enough to justify ongoing investigation. Investigators at the NEC Research Institute have released their latest findings. The readable summary on the home page includes a link to examples, but the full, technical article has all the nuances and, if you step carefully over the equations, you can ferret out the gleaming qualitative nuggets. These researchers indeed found that in many areas, a relative handful of key sites are tightly woven into the fabric of the Web and compared to those bright stars, most related Web sites are doomed to obscurity as dull brown dwarfs. Such tight clustering doesn't apply in all domains, however. Publishing and entertainment are highly concentrated, but areas such as photography much less so. The findings have important implications for competition and diversity on the Web.http://modelingtheweb.com/
You can understand a company not wanting its own communication channels used to publicize the views of dissatisfied customers, but when the comments and opinions of customers are part and parcel of the carefully nurtured allure of the company's services, its not necessarily something a company should want to control. Don't try telling that to eBay, though. Under new rules eBay posted recently, people who use the company's popular community discussion boards are forbidden to complain about a buyer or seller, ask where to find an item, bypass eBay's anonymity screens, and discuss items removed from the board or mention members banned as a result of violating any of these rules. It kinda takes the edge and honesty out of the whole thing. Legally, eBay can pretty much do what it wants. The company protests that it has put these new rules in place in the interests of a fairly regulated and ethical market place. Reaction to the new rules seems overwhelmingly negative. The real question is whether most customers care enough about the issue to do something about it. ZDNet tells us all about it.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-885783.html
Using the Back Button in IE Is Dangerous
Another security hole in the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) browser has been discovered. Due to how IE implements security zones - i.e. badly - the back button can be used to read files on your machine and to execute any code the attacker wants. The brief BugTraq post announcing the discovery has some JavaScript that convincingly demonstrates the problem. Microsoft was notified of the exploit in November, but so far there is no fix available. The BugTraq entry has a concise technical description of the bug.http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/1/267561
"Using the Back Button in IE Is Dangerous" Is Dangerous
In an amusing postscript to the above BugTraq post about the IE back button security flaw, the author of the original post notes that many e-mail virus scanners are rejecting his e-mail about the bug. The scanners look at the enclosed JavaScript code and classify it as dangerous. The example is, of course, benign. Still, the incidents do point out the ironic situation that software which is supposed to protect you from malicious exploits can prevent you from finding out about such exploits in the first place. It's complicated business this security stuff.http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/1/267791/2002-04-15/2002-04-21/1
HTTP Security Hole in PayPal Transactions
At a grocery store recently, we saw a guy dumping whole-bean Seattle's Best coffee into a Millstone bag. People make mistakes sometimes, but we suspect this had something to do with the fact that Millstone was on sale and the guy was helping himself to savings of $4 a pound. Similarly, a few enterprising folks have found a way to change price tags at sites that use PayPal's payment system, using just a text editor and a Web browser. While some have complained that PayPal has been overzealous in its anti-fraud tactics, others now complain that the company isn't doing enough to protect merchants from cybershoplifters. As Steven Wright once noted, "Some days, it's just not worth chewing through the restraints." Wired has some of the details behind this sorry saga.http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51977,00.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Lack of Phones Means Cybercafe Success in Latin America
In the US and Canada, the cybercafe industry hasn't really ever boomed after an initial spurtlet. We guess so many Americans and Canadians have such easy access to their own computers and cell phones that cybercafes generally just have the cyber getting in the way of a decent cafe. A recent survey of one of the US's most wired cities, for example, unearthed exactly one such business in the entire metropolitan area of Portland, Ore. However, it's another story entirely in Latin America, where, depending upon the country, as few as one in 20 people owns a telephone and the cost of service is often prohibitively high. While individual ownership of telephones may be limited, technology has proven empowering. Internet cafes have become immensely popular as an inexpensive means of talking with others, bypassing the need for personal telephones. The Washington Post has a look at the trend.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4969-2002Apr17.html
Real Life Sims - Run the Lives of Five Brits
As if the Net doesn't run our lives sufficiently already, an MSN-sponsored project is pushing an even more intrusive model apparently based on the relative success of so-called reality television shows. For 15 days, three women and two men are allowing internet users to make trivial daily choices for them. At the end of the run, the contestant who's deemed to have allowed the netizens the greatest degree of influence over his or her life will be awarded roughly $20,000, which could go a few steps toward allowing the "winner" to put life to rights again. Oh, and every voter gets a chance to win an Xbox. The BBC has a blessedly brief story; The UK flavor of MSN has the whole kipper enchilada.BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1937000/1937079.stm
MSN: http://www.msn.co.uk/liveyourlife/Default.asp
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
The Official Star Wars Parodies
What would a Star Wars film be without a rash of parodies? This time, George Lucas himself has decided to get involved; he's one of the judges for the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards. The awards are hosted by Atom Films, which narrowed down 250 parody films to 44 finalists. Multiple winners will be announced May 3 and will receive a trophy and a trip to Star Wars Celebration II in Indianapolis. A few lucky filmmakers will be able to watch their work as it's aired on a May 12 Sci-Fi Channel show about the contest. All 44 films are available online for viewing and voting on the Atom Films site.http://starwars.atomfilms.com/
What did Rembrandt paint as a child? Did Calder play with a mobile above his crib? It's sad that we don't know, but you can help put an end to this gap in our records. The theory behind PapaInk is that children's art is largely undervalued, that it's important to humanity, and that creating an archive adds to its intrinsic value. You probably have a masterpiece on your fridge right now. You can help out this non-profit venture by volunteering to serve as a curator of a themed exhibit. Some of the existing themed exhibits focus on topics like kids in Africa or sitting in buildings. Those of us without little ones in our lives might enjoy just browsing through the collection to see how children from across the globe see the world.
http://www.papaink.org/
What is ZeD? By all accounts, it's an amalgam created by the folks at CBC that relies on public input to put together a 60-minute venue for independent artists and other folks. The last of the pilot episodes aired on Apr. 12; a six-night-a-week schedule is slated to begin airing across Canada in September. It's a radical concept: TV and Web content made by people, for people. Not your usual schlicktcom drivel. Some folks are getting down with the concept, but will it be enough to keep the rest of us from using our TVs as snack trays? You're likely best suited for visiting the site if you have a high-speed connection. You can pick up content at v.90, though - you'll just miss the goodies. That and the lack of 24-hour-per-day hockey is likely why the network has put together the TV version. There's enough material in already for a series, that's certain. Oh, yeah: Go Habs!
http://zed.cbc.ca/
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.
 For more selections, check out the Netsurfer Library at http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
Indira Gandhi: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi
Demons
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
Hong Kong Comics: A History of Manhuahttp://www.scifi.com/scifiction/periodictable.html
It's natural for geeks to bite the hand that frustrates them. Valley of the Geeks has appropriately biting, iconoclastic humor. We enjoyed its Q&A with Steve Ballmer, a spoof on Microsoft and its CEO. Wittier yet is Zack Urlocker's Mar. 1 piece, "The BS Report", which takes funny shots at Oracle, Sun, Microsoft, and Wall Street in their rush to develop or promote the Internet Business Server, a jump-on-the-bandwagon technology. For a quick introduction to the site, check out "Overture Sues Google" in the News section or "Banner Ads We'd Like to See" and "More Banner Ads" in What's New. You'll also enjoy "MS PR Machine", in which Urlocker claims Microsoft has built "a software program that completely automates the creation of new press releases."
http://www.valleyofthegeeks.com/
The Jet City Orange Photo Blog
By day, Jerry Whiting of Seattle runs a barcode software company. By night, he runs Jet City Orange, a photocentric blog-like thing where his photos attest to a variety of interests such as beer (he lists ten reasons why visitors should buy him beer or send him money), vanilla yogurt, and graffiti. Whiting calls plants his "absolute passion", and he offers photos of orchids and other flowers as free wallpaper. If you like the sort of museum art that prompts people to question the nature of art, you might like his shots of food packages or architectural curiosities of New York City. The common theme seems to be Whiting's passion for photography. He says Jet City Orange gives him balance "between screen and print, silly and serious, pop and art." He likes to write, too, as evidenced by "An Ode to Librarians Everywhere" and "word poem theatre", which at this point consists only of the "Top 10 Things You Don't Want to Hear on a First Date". You'll also find screensavers (mostly flowers) and a page about his wallet, made of duct tape. We like his site but will continue to use conventional wallets.http://www.jetcityorange.com/
Hollywood Property Ned Vizzini
Lucky Ned Vizzini. As a teenager in Brooklyn, he wrote "Teen Angst? Naaah: A Quasi-Autobiography", a collection of quirky stories about life as a high-school student - "29 tales of dorky backpacks, prom limos, and Magic cards," as the now-21-year-old Hunter College junior puts it. Random House will mass-market the book in September. A production house in New York City bought film and TV rights to it and has a project in the works. Vizzini provides details, including a press kit, at NedVizzini.com, where he has posted a sample of his prose, which covers an evening with his family at a demolition derby at a county fair in eastern Pennsylvania. Vizzini uses his site mostly to market himself: "Teachers! Administrators! Get Ned to speak at your school!" Better grab him before his aura is diluted into sitcoms or he runs out of original material. He's a Web designer and programmer now. He writes a column "about parties and concerts going on in NYC every week" and has posted his resume. Sigh.http://www.nedvizzini.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
Even if you don't have a pet door (or a pet, for that matter), if you enjoy gadgets and problem solving, this site is right up your alley cat. Someone with extensive knowledge of image recognition algorithms and too much free time has engineered the Flo Control Project. Flo (the cat) had a habit of coming in the house with live chew toys, which she would then release for hours of feline fun. The humans sharing her house did not find it as amusing as Flo did to have small armies of mice running around the house and have a longer attention span as well, so they decided to put a stop to the practice as only geeks can. They installed an intelligent door that can detect the outline of a cat trying to enter the house and that can refuse entry to one burdened by a "friend". Flo doesn't have anything in her mouth? Flo gets in, no problem. Flo has something in her mouth? She doesn't get in. Flo is being impersonated by a skunk? He doesn't get in, either. The system is so sensitive, it can detect which of the house's three cats is trying to come in. Don't miss the Flo Watch activity monitor to see the system in action.http://www.quantumpicture.com/index.htm
The Ultimate Basement Lab Do-It-Yourself Project
So, you want to be an atomic mechanic and manipulate materials at nanoscale, eh? You're going to need your very own scanning-tunneling-microscope to get anything done. This site offers rather detailed instructions and plans for building one. It's not simple and the cost of entry isn't cheap, but if you have the time, energy, and bank account, you can get to the cutting edge of home technology. Now, if they would only develop a home superconducting supercollider kit....http://sxm4.uni-muenster.de/introduction-en.html
To most of us, Audubon is synonymous with birds, but the National Audubon Society would also like you to have some familiarity with seafood. Its Seafood Lover's Guide declares, "The buying power of consumers can create a market environment that encourages sustainable seafood and abundance in the seas." If you seek recipes, look elsewhere. Here, you'll find lots of facts to foster public awareness and seagrassroots conservation. For example, stone and dungeness crabs are doing well - and make tasty, conservation approved eating - but snow crabs and Chesapeake Bay blue crabs are depleted and shouldn't be bought. Audubon also lets us know that "most wild salmon (except in Alaska) are in severe trouble." We find it strange (grammar aside) that, as the FAQ states, "American west coast markets label fish more precisely and extensively than they do on the east coast." This site has plenty of tidbits like this that make interesting chat at cocktail parties between bites of shrimp or tuna. The site provides the Audobon Fish Scale, which indicates the environmental impact of various kinds of seafood. You can carry it around with you on a free PDF Audobon Seafood Wallet Card.
http://www.audubon.org/campaign/lo/seafood/index.html
PBS's "Misunderstood Minds" Looks at the Learning Process
"Misunderstood Minds" aired on PBS in March 2002, and either PBS doesn't give too much press release lead time, we're lackadaisical, or both, but regardless, here's a pointer to the show's companion Web site, which is worthwhile even a month later. The site is worth a look for anybody with an interest in childhood learning differences and disabilities. Sections include discussion of attention, reading, writing, and math, with an emphasis upon the suite of skills and concepts required for mastery in each of these areas. An extensive set of resource links is provided as well. Many parents will find the site useful enough to warrant bookmarking.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds/
A Tron-Like Peek at the Internet
Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry has long been on the cutting edge of things; a visit is always a treat. Its online work here is hardly cutting edge, but only because this is really just a teaser for the actual virtual exhibition. In real life at the museum, visitors "digitize" themselves and take a walking tour of Internet technology. Virtual visitors have to settle for shots of the exhibit, which look pretty cool nonetheless. The Web site presents a brief tour, followed by the obligatory back-patting behind-the-scenes look. The routing and digital conversion animations are simple and easy to follow; many children will love them.http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/networld/networld.html
SOFTWARE
PHP is a popular open-source Web programming environment, used primarily to create dynamic database-driven Web sites. The new version has experimental Apache 2.0 support, significant change in the handling of external variables, performance improvements, and the usual crop of bug fixes and minor enhancements. Note that this version does not yet fully support Mac OS X - this support is scheduled to arrive in August. The announcement has details.http://www.php.net/release_4_2_0.php