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BREAKING SURF
Star Wars: The Movie, Bootlegs, Crop Tops, and ASCII
Despite strenuous efforts by George Lucas and company, bootleg copies of "Attack of the Clones" are already, inevitably, circulating online. Don't rush to download the 150-MB file on the various file-sharing networks, though, since the bootleg is reportedly a camcorder-pointed-at-the-screen copy, hardly worthy of displaying the film's cinematic scope and hotshot special effects. Reviews of the theater release imply that the story and, with a few exceptions, acting are not that worthy of release, either. Regardless, this latest Star Wars installement is a movie-going experience and will be fodder for creative drinking games once the DVD is out. Another "Attack of the Clones" plus is that at press time the official Star Wars Web site had a hot picture of Queen Amidala heading into battle in a croptop. How can you go wrong? VCDQuality has a large discussion thread about the Star Wars bootlegs in its forums. Just for grins, Star Wars Asciimation has most of Episode IV - the original "Star Wars" - animated in ASCII text. You have to see it to believe it.Star Wars: http://www.starwars.com/
VCDQuality: http://www.vcdquality.com/
Star Wars Asciimation: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/
Given the media hysteria that typically accompanies anything to do with kids and sex, it's surprising that this National Research Council report on kids and Net porn has received so little publicity. This may be at least partly because the report treats the complex subject in a complex manner, and lacks simplistic and headline-grabbing conclusions. The report points out that dealing with kids' exposure to online porn is a multifaceted problem - and sometimes is not even a problem. Ultimately, the report concludes that there is no single or simple approach to the issue, hardly a conclusion that supports the partisan political name-calling that passes for social debate about sex and kids. This is a well researched, thoughtful, and comprehensive study of the issue prepared by a non-partisan branch of the National Academy of Sciences that's chartered with providing research to the US government. The report is long (400+ pages), and if you don't want to wade through all of it, read the "Findings, Conclusions, and Future Needs" chapter.
Report: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309082749/html/
The Chase Cringely Project Picks Up Steam
Last week, we reported on Robert X. Cringely's resolve to do something about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which claimed the life of his young son. In a follow-up column, Cringely announces, in essence, that his idea to monitor infants just might happen. Skilled professionals have volunteered time and technology to build baby monitors, and Cringely seems confident that that part of the project will be completed. He has turned to thinking of distribution of the monitors, and this is where the story gets weird, and wonderful. Cringely wants to embed the monitors in baby pyjamas so that one million babies wear the monitoring jammies, which would upload data through a wireless Net link. Since the monitoring would not stress the monitors' CPUs, he hopes to pay for the scheme by marketing the extra CPU cycles to clients, forming a JammieNet distributed supercomputer. Imagine your newborn, asleep and drooling, while his onesie helps analyze global climate patterns. The project Web site will go live soon.NSD: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v08/nsd.08.17.html#BS3
Cringely: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020502.html
Project: http://www.chasecringely.org/
Sonicblue Ordered to Collect ReplayTV User Data
There are no laws against recording a TV program onto videotape, but recording the same program onto a hard drive seems to be a different matter. Apparently subscribing to the view of Jamie Kellner, head of Turner Broadcasting, that TV viewers are bound by contract to watch commercials (although it's OK to break contract to pee), a federal judge has ordered Sonicblue, maker of the ReplayTV digital video recorders (DVRs), to monitor and record all data associated with use of the machines and to provide those data to film studios and TV networks. In other words, if you have such a device and you use it to record, your activity will itself be recorded, once the judge's order goes into effect. The order gives Sonicblue two months to write and deploy software to record every click from every ReplayTV console, and to keep acquired data linked to personal accounts. Likely to be in legal limbo for some time to come, the ruling has appalled privacy advocates. The San Jose Mercury News has the story.http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3186191.htm
Reaction to Content Providers' Contempt for Consumers
The previous item is an example of the ways in which content providers have chosen to meet technological change: with laws and lawsuits. Unfortunately for us consumers and citizens, industry and government feed off each other in a symbiosis of financial rewards and power. In truth, the content industries - primarily Hollywood and the music industry - have failed to adapt. Jamie Kellner, head of Turner Broadcasting, recently claimed that TV watchers who don't watch commercials are "actually stealing the programming." While copyright holders certainly have a legal right to crack down on file sharing, the technological means of reproducing content have exploded beyond any morally legal confines. Soon, it will be trivial to turn your own computer into a DVR, and then what happens? The content industries must change, must learn new ways of doing business. Many pundits properly view recent trends with alarm. Stanford University law professor and consumer advocate Lawrence Lessig, in a BusinessWeek Online interview, fears that corporations are taking control of the Internet. Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News is eloquent but not quite as rage-filled as he could be in a related column. Lastly, the New York Times and CNET report that consumer research indicates that those who download free music tend to spend more on music. How about that?Lessig: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_19/b3782610.htm
Gillmor: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/3200101.htm
NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/06/technology/06MUSI.html
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-898813.html
Another Stake in Microsoft's Heart
We're not feeling very charitable toward corporate giants right now, so it is with a measure of glee that we report on Microsoft's recent legal stumbles in its ongoing antitrust suit. Microsoft executive Linda Averett admits that Windows overrides a user's preference to use some other media player in favor of Windows Media Player, and calls the fact that Windows XP's search feature fails to find RealNetworks files "a mistake". A Microsoft e-mail reveals that the company's plans for its media player to swallow the formats of other players was still in discussion in June 2000, after Microsoft was already found guilty of violating antitrust provisions in similar actions. Yahoo News has that. The judge in the case, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, has also agreed to allow a prosecution witness to demonstrate a modular version of Windows XP, which Microsoft claims would be impossible to offer. Ironically - or should that be pathetically? - the modular Windows XP to be exhibited in court will be based on Windows XP Embedded, which Microsoft sells already and markets as "the componentized version of the leading desktop operating system". ZDNet has the scoop.Yahoo: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?u=/ap/20020507/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_antitrust_571
Windows XP Embedded: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/xp/evaluation/overview/default.asp
ZDNet: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-901661.html
Last December, three entertainment giants, AOL Time Warner, EMI, and Bertelsmann AG, started MusicNet as a corporate alternative to the crippled Napster. Not all that surprisingly, MusicNet turned out to be, as this MSNBC article succinctly puts it, "a service that lacked just about everything that makes online music downloads appealing." It is a textbook case of how large corporate projects can find themselves woefully out of touch with actual consumer desires. Even AOL CEO Richard Parsons called it "too clunky and too consumer unfriendly to hold much hope for its success." The article states that only 40,000 people subscribed to MusicNet, and that there's little prospect of more. This story explains the birth and lack of growth of what so far seems a resounding online music biz failure.
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/748564.asp
MusicNet: http://www.musicnet.com/
Draft Sequence of Mouse Genome Assembled and Released
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has announced that 96% of the mouse genome has been mapped, with each base having been sequenced an average of seven times for greater accuracy. The mouse genome appears to be 2.7 billion base pairs in size, or about 15% smaller than the human genome, although it contains about the same number of genes as ours. The sequence has been placed in the public domain and is available on various Web sites, such as the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) genome site. The press release points out the significance of the announcement. It notes the great advances in technology that made the sequencing possible so swiftly. It also notes that this information is of huge significance for medical research, which uses the mouse as an indispensable tool for studying human disease. So, are we men or are we mice? Put some cheese on the floor and we'll find out....NHGRI: http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/NEWS/mouseFinal.html
UCSC: http://genome.ucsc.edu/
Although penguins naturally inhabit only Earth's southern hemisphere, one has now been planted at the North Pole. Installed Apr. 28, the Linux (the mascot of which is a penguin) set-up features a webcam that captures four images daily. The pictures will be used to track polar weather conditions and the status of instruments deployed there. It was sunny at the North Pole as we wrote this, and a balmy 15 degrees Fahrenheit. The system, run via solar-charged batteries, spends most of its time asleep. Four times a day, it wakes up, snaps a photo, and calls home through a 2400-baud modem and the Iridium satellite system. The webcam is a self-contained unit with, appropriately, a Motorola Coldfire 54-MHz microprocessor with uClinux. LinuxDevices.com has the story and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has pics.
LinuxDevices.com: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT4739871225.html
NOAA: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html
Aqua Satellite to Study - You Guessed It, Earth's Water Cycle
NASA has just launched a new satellite devoted to studying the environment. The Aqua mission will collect information about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover. Other variables Aqua will look at include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures. There's quite a load of science being done here using state of the art instrumentation. Check out the Aqua Top Story for an overview of the cool hardware.Aqua: http://aqua.nasa.gov/
Aqua Top Story: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020418aqua.html
The Honeynet Project's Decoding Challenge
Your job is to decode and examine a hacker's tool. In order to do this, you need to identify the network data encoding process used, then reverse-engineer a decoder. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Most of us would opt in just for the joy of the challenge, but the Honeynet Project is upping the ante: the 20 best submissions get an autographed copy of the popular book, "Know Your Enemy". Honeynet is actually a linked set of honeypots - systems that are interlinked and deliberately left vulnerable to attack by hackers. The idea is to let the black-hat bad guys do their thing, while the white hats observe, preserve, and ultimately circumvent the methods that the black hats employ to compromise systems. This is some interesting reading, and if you have skills, you might win a book. It's well worth your time, regardless of your talent or degree of competitiveness.http://project.honeynet.org/reverse/
Palestinian Web Sites Also Casualties in Conflict
One of the casualties of the recent Middle East fighting has been the Palestinian Internet infrastructure. The BBC has a short article which describes some of the damage, and also mentions the invisible cyber war reflected in hacking attempts against Israeli sites. The BBC reports the destruction of the headquarters of Palestinian telecom company PalTel, and the temporary migration of many Web sites to US-based hosting locations. There isn't a lot of solid information here, but it reminds us how modern war affects modern communications.http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1966000/1966335.stm
A recent syndicated article on smart tags made us go exploring for more information about the technology. The so-called radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are basically tiny transponders. When hit with a radio signal, they send back a small amount of information, typically some sort of ID code. The technology may become as prevalent as bar codes, with various items embedded with tiny, extremely cheap chips storing information about the item. The chips can be embedded anywhere, in soup cans, shipping containers, or your family pet. It's great technology for the networked world, but as usual with these things, there is vast potential for abuse and privacy invasion if not done right. The Gannett Online story has a nice non-tech overview. Auto-ID is home to one RFID variant, and we found two technical studies of how RFID tags can and are being used.
Gannett Online: http://www.gannettonline.com/e/trends/15000677.html
Auto-ID: http://www.autoidcenter.org/index.asp
Singapore Study: http://www.itsc.org.sg/doc/synthesis/2000/itsc-synthesis2000-jinsoon-rfid-tag-study.pdf
Human-Computer Interaction: http://www.teco.edu/~albrecht/publication/iswc00/wearable-rfid-tag-reader.pdf
Id's back! At long last, Id Software has officially announced that Doom III is bubbling on the burner. If you've already spent much of your life virtually killing stuff with bazookas, flamethrowers, and rocket launchers, look out for the next iteration of the most popular first-person shooter ever. Id has partnered with Activision for Doom III and promises a revolution in the gaming experience. If the past is any predictor, it may not be hype. Slashdot slavers in anticipation.
Press release: http://www.idsoftware.com/business/home/press/index.php?date=20020503083127
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/05/04/027211.shtml
ONLINE CULTURE
So what exactly is a community network? Typically, it starts with a group of people united by some common trait, usually geographical, but frequently also some abstract mutual interest. Toss in a Web site with information and active discussion forums, and you have a community network. Slashdot is a good example of a Web site serving an abstract community network - "News for nerds" - and it is here that a query seeking examples of such networks sparks a discussion of what they are and what it takes to make them work. Those of you who either are interested in setting up such networks or are involved in running them already will want to read these threads in which people talk about their experiences with a wide variety of these online communities.http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/06/0139258
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
A Thousand Words Is Worth a Picture
When you were first introduced to fractals, it reshaped your concept of math. Now, prepare for the same paradigm shift in text. TextArc writes a whole work, line by line, clockwise around the screen, and then proceeds to map all the words (without banal words like "the") inside it. Those which appear most often are brighter; words with multiple occurrences are placed at their average location in the text. If you let the program work on its own, it will proceed to read the story to you, basically completing a connect-the-words as it goes along. "Hamlet" and "Alice in Wonderland" are the two demo pieces, but the program can read any and all the free literature in Project Gutenberg. Remember: the ESC key will stop the script in mid-run if you can't remember how to get out.http://textarc.org/
The next time you don't make eye contact with the person sitting across the subway from you, think twice. It might be Antonio Jorge Goncalves, who's going to subway systems across the world to capture in his sketches the life of the city's transportation. Tokyo, London, Moscow, Stockholm - so many of the passengers, no matter their location, have the same empty stare, as if they just wish they weren't sitting there. The fact that some stranger keeps staring at them and then sketching something in a notebook probably doesn't help. It takes a bit of time to load the interface, but it's well worth it. Make sure you have Flash, because you're going to need it.
http://www.subway-life.com/
Let's face it. Those "Hello My Name Is" tags you have to wear at events are mostly useless. After all, reading "Sue" on the tag doesn't give you any insight into the individual. It gives you some insight into his or her parents (especially "his", in this particular case), but that's about it. Wouldn't it be more useful if the tag had a poem on it to represent the wearer? Wearing a tag like that would express who you are and folks would know to avoid you or flock to you according to their personal tastes. It would be like having an airport scanner for psychological baggage. Of course, a roomful of these might send you screaming. This site is the memebase.
http://www.prionix.com/poemtag/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Naked in Cyberspace: How to Find Personal Information Online
Kids' Letters to Harry Potter: An Unauthorized Collection
Spacecraft Systems Engineering, 2nd EditionAn Old Encyclopedia Britannica for a New Century
Remember encyclopedias? Remember the mother of them all, the Encyclopedia Britannica? Its 1911 edition is available online - you get over 44 million words in 29 volumes written by more than 1,500 authors, as the home page states with justifiable pride. An "about" page establishes the context: "The age was Edwardian, but Victorian mores prevailed. The man was the undisputed head of the home.... The sanctity of home and hearth was ingrained deeply in every person. And nearly everyone belonged to some sort of church." Chances are, most users won't get that far into the intro because they'll have already started to explore one of those 29 glorious volumes through the easy alphabetical navigation. Students of history, in particular, will find this a good research resource even though some of the content will certainly be out of date. A few shortcomings are noteworthy. For example, when you follow the link to "Gladiators," you get a page that starts in the middle of "Gladden, Washington," so you have to scroll down the page. Thanks to necessary reformatting of the original through scanning with optical character recognition, special characters are rendered, confusingly, with tildes, and here and there white space intrudes. Click your back button and you get an annoying popup ad. For most readers, these will be but minor irritations. The text loads quickly, it's hard to get lost here, and free is free. Potential plagiarists should read the "Legal" page.http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/
The Journal of Foreign Correspondents
The European Press Network (EPN) has launched EPN World Reporter, an online journal that celebrates the profession of freelance journalism in remote areas and those who send dispatches that trigger coverage by mainstream media. Ostensibly, this site is devoted to international correspondents, but it will no doubt attract students and teachers, news photographers, political buffs, and others interested in events beyond their immediate horizon. We enjoyed a short article entitled "Fashion Is Hell", which describes how war correspondent Anthony Lloyd endured a tight schedule of glamor in Paris. In comparing the world of fashion to society in general, Lloyd concluded, "War is an easier environment to work in: Its people are generally more overt in their perversion and accountable for their cruelty." We also enjoyed a short profile of wildlife specialist Louise Murray, who states, "I was attacked by a polar bear, and then charged underwater by a bull walrus. Even going out for a pee you take a rifle...." This is the stuff that excites future reporters (or should). Other short essays in the current issue cover video and backpack journalism, self-publishing (weblogs), and Newsplex, "The Newsroom of the Future". You're likely to get views of the world here that you can't get from your local newspaper or radio.http://www.epnworldreporter.com/
The E-Zine for Oppressed Sysadmins
Pity network administrators. Among other things, they have to worry about security, hardware compatibility and stability, and users who get themselves and others into trouble through experimentation or accident - and, they have to deal with phone companies. The Network Administrator e-zine covers these challenges with insight and humor. When the home page has loaded, a "Geek Test" pops up to help you decide whether this is your kind of site. Even if you aren't drawn to articles such as "Are you choosing software for your company by what will look best on your resume?", you'll find something amusing in one of the Just for Laughs or Just for Fun links. Most of the articles are written by Doug Chick, a veteran network admin who knows his audience. Chick will catch your eye with headlines such as "They Say that your Operating system Sucks!" (sic) and "Has Monitoring your Network Given you a God Complex?" (sic, again.) Sadly, many network admins are too busy to enjoy this site. If yours are not aware of it, you might earn a brownie point or two by pointing it out to them.http://www.thenetworkadministrator.com/
Unofficial Sequel to "The Devil's Dictionary"
Around the same thime that the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica came out, Ambrose Bierce published a collection of scathing definitions in "The Devil's Dictionary" (such as: Lawyer, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law). Building from "The Devil's Dictionary", siteholder Matt Schutt hopes to develop a useful adjunct, which he calls the "Encyclopedia Satanica". The idea's good, and some of the brief essays are amusingly thoughtful, but it hasn't quite the scope required of a true encyclopedia. This is clearly a fledgling effort, with a long way to go before it has any hope of achieving encyclopedic stature. Both content and organization require substantial upgrading. And while the original dictionary could be read and understood by any child, you may want to keep the kids out of this sequel.http://www.encyclopediasatanica.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
The Statistics and Analysis of Conflict
Lewis Fry Richardson was a pioneer in the mathematical analysis of meteorology and all global climate models are in some sense his descendants. He also pioneered the statistical study of conflict, such as murder and war. These papers bring Richardson's long neglected work back to the forefront of analysis and make for some provocative reading. Are we more or less peaceful than before? Are war and murder really so similar? Computing Science looks at the "Statistics of Deadly Quarrels", American Scientist has an article "On the Nature of Violence", and the Correlates of War (COW) Project studies the conditions surrounding the outbreak of war.Computing Science: http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/amsci/issues/comsci02/Compsci2002-01.html
American Scientist: http://americanscientist.org/Issues/Macroscope/Macroscope2001-11.html
COW: http://www.umich.edu/~cowproj/
Hey, kids! Want glossy pictures of nuclear explosions? Adorn your bedroom! Send a message to your favorite bully! Warn your parents something serious is up by ordering one of these beauties on display at the US Department of Energy Nevada Photo Library. Nothing like sky-high fireballs to light your imagination.... We're kidding, of course. This gallery of nuclear blasts will sober you fast. Click a thumbnail, and kaboom! the full 8x10-inch monty. Most of the shots here record test explosions at sites in Nevada or South Sea atolls, and kind of ruin our dream of retirement on Bikini Atoll. Maybe the Department of Energy posted this gallery at the request of environmentalists, journalists, and teachers. Maybe stringing all these shots together is a tacit explanation of why the US doesn't blow off steam like it used to. Check out the "Survival Town" house - nice getaway for the weekend. You've got to wonder whether vacation and other civic boosters in Nevada and states downwind can browse this radiant site and still sleep at night.
http://www.nv.doe.gov/news&pubs/photos&films/atm.htm
A Comic-Book Tour of the Periodic Table
When you were a teenager, you got to enjoy the wondrous traits of the periodic table of elements. Memorizing lists, understanding atomic weight, and learning about isolation helped your thriving brain absorb volumes of information. Even though you certainly remember all of that, it never hurts to exercise your memory. The Periodic Table of Comic Books has copies of pages out of comics that make mention of a particular element. Some are found in only a few examples, while others - gold or oxygen, for instance - show up in more than a dozen comics each. Every set of images for a particular element is accompanied by a link into Mark Winter's WebElements site, which gives you all of the true technical details.http://www.uky.edu/Projects/Chemcomics/
WebElements: http://www.webelements.com/webelements.html
Simulating Dearly Departed Computers
Computers are too quickly outdated by new technology, both on the desks of consumers and in the labs of universities and large corporations. Casualties of Moore's Law, systems are retired and condemned to the dumpsters and recycling bins of history. The Computer History Simulation Project tries to maintain the souls of these discarded pieces of computer hardware and software by simulating them in a sort of software seance. The project is run by a loosely organized group of people all interested in creating simulators that are both portable to a lot of systems and developed to accurately mimic the inner workings of the older systems. The efforts of others is represented in a collection of software kits for legacy operating systems like CP/M, TOPS-10, and even paper-tape BASIC support.http://simh.trailing-edge.com/
Online Body Language Dictionary
David Givens, who founded the non-profit organization called the Center for Nonverbal Studies, researches nonverbal communication, as you might guess. His second book, "The Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs, and Body Language Cues", is available in parts online. Unfortunately, the entries are set up linearly, without consideration for multiple methods of entry. For instance, say that while giving you a performance review, your bosses always cross their arms. It would be great if you could look up a part of the body and see all the related terms and habits associated with it, but instead, here you have to figure out that the behavior you're describing is listed as "fold-arms". Determining the body morpheme you want isn't easy considering how expansive this dictionary is. It's a definite winner - once it is modified for online use.http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/diction1.htm
SOFTWARE
That this is not version number 8.0 tells you this is more of an evolutionary release than a dramatic update of the most popular Linux operating system. The vast majority of changes serve only to bring Red Hat up to par with the latest versions of the common Linux packages. The major new packages include the Evolution e-mail and contact manager, new firewall configuration software, Postgres SQL database, and KDE 3.0 and GNOME 1.4 desktops. You can either buy the boxed CD sets from Red Hat or download the CD images from the list of download mirrors.Press release: http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2002/press_seventhree.html
Features: http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/rhl_new_features.html
Download: http://www.redhat.com/download/mirror.html