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BREAKING SURF
Four and a half years in the making, the famous open source web browser finally makes to that magic 1.0 release. The mythology of the browser surely deserves dragging it out of our Software section to the head of our e-zine. In truth, this is much more then just a browser. The full download at Mozilla.org includes an impressive email client, and a competent chat client called - of course - Chatzilla. Even more important is what's under the hood. The mix of technologies which make up the Mozilla suite is a tremendous resource for developers. The whole thing is very modular and enables open source programmers to re-use many components in their own projects. Mozilla thus becomes not just a browser but also a development platform. Mozilla runs on at least 12 operating systems, including numerous variations of Windows and Mac OS. CNet has a brief first look review. Give it a try, it's free.Download: http://www.mozilla.org/releases/
PR: http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla1.0.html
A Guide to Mozilla 1.0: http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/guide/
Review: http://www.cnet.com/software/0-3227884-8-20005816-2.html
A New Look at the Invasion of Normandy
Fifty-eight years ago, while the Soviet Union was beating the bulk of Germany's war machine to a pulp, American, British, and Canadian soldiers in the largest mission fleet ever opened up a western front with the invasion of Normandy. The June 2002 issue of National Geographic has an article with a fresh angle on the story, which has been recounted countless times, and properly so. Author Tom Allen focuses on the preparation for the invasion and the secrecy that entailed. Online, the magazine excerpts the article and enriches the text with a voice-over by the author, typically wonderful National Geographic photos, and veteran memories. The online content will whet your appetite for the full magazine article, but we guess that's the point.http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0206/feature1/index.html
In a Chevy Avalanche SUV equipped with OnStar service and loaded with gadgets - including a Timex Internet messenger watch, digital camera, and Wi Fi-equipped laptop - Bill Syken set out to explore America wirelessly, not quite Jack Kerouac exactly. Part travelogue, part a series of product reviews, the account reveals the limitations of most wireless wonders when pitted against real-world adventuring. Over 12 days and 4,439 miles, traveling from San Diego to Detroit via San Francisco, Rawlins, Wyo., and Imperial, Neb., Bill found that none of the services or gadgets was entirely sufficient or complete. Prior preparation still pays and serendipity still rewards even the adventurous who ready themselves for the unexpected. Still, if the nirvana of the seamless, wireless world hasn't quite arrived yet, it's clear that progress is being made. Whether progress will go so far that in a hundred years or so you will be able to stay at home and experience travel virtually, as wireless guru Martin Cooper predicts, remains to be seen. Bill doesn't think that would be a good thing. ON magazine has the long, interesting tale.
http://www.onmagazine.com/on-mag/roadtrip/
You may remember Mafiaboy, the Montreal kid who launched hacking attacks against places like Yahoo, Amazon, and CNN. Mafiaboy planted software on systems around the world and used them to cause major upheaval in the dotcom world. And he was a boy. Still is, in fact. At the age of 14, which is how old Mafiaboy was when he started his attacks, hormones pretty much rule your life. He directed his energy toward computer systems. Not necessarily a bad thing, but victims of his efforts weren't laughing and the FBI and RCMP got involved. Here's a tip we gleaned from the story: if you're going to cripple some major Internet sites, don't use IRC channels to brag. An FBI agent moderating a hacker IRC channel helped nail the bragging Mafiaboy. While that lead shortened the investigation, everything Mafiaboy did left footprints. The National Post has a book excerpt that could really use a decent editor, but it's nonetheless of interest.
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20020525/337557.html
Journal of Biology Challenges Traditional Science Publication
Scientific journals are a big business in which private publishers such as Elsevier and Kluwer charge subscribers exorbitant fees to read about research paid for with public and private funds. Following a call for freely distributable peer-reviewed scientific journals, the online Journal of Biology plans to bring online refereed biology research papers at no or little cost to readers. Just like in a paper scientific journal, each article in the Journal of Biology will have undergone rigorous review by experts in their respective fields. If the enterprise succeeds, there will be a fundamental change in the organization and distribution of biological knowledge. Hold on to your papers! Wired has more.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52632,00.html
Journal of Biology: http://www.jbiol.com/
Some Right-Wing Thoughts on the Outer Space Treaty
David Kopel and Glenn Reynolds, two columnists writing for the conservative National Review, have produced a link-filled think piece on the limitations of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The gist of their argument is that Article 2 of the treaty, which holds that no nation can lay claim to any celestial body, should be overturned. They specifically seem to worry about anybody other than the US getting their hands on any bit of extra-atmospheric soil. The politics of the article lean obviously right and the situation is somewhat hypothetical at this point since nobody except possibly the Chinese is paying any serious attention to further manned space exploration. Nevertheless, the article serves up a good collection of links about space law and serves as a decent jumping-off point for thinking about private property in space.National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel060402.asp
Space Treaty: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/peace/docs/treatyouterspace.html
Fifty Ways to Just Get Things Done
There must be 50 ways to leave your lover. Oops, sorry. That's what listening to those MP3s will do. This Fast Company piece is about 50 ways to get things done. More to the point, it's about turning companies around. It's about turning ideas around. It's about helping people prosper or even live longer. Meet people like Dr. Ernie Bodai, who came up with the idea of producing a postage stamp to raise funds to fight disease. Faced with resistance from Congress and the US Postal Service, among others, he persevered - and in the past four years, the program has raised over $25 million for breast cancer research. Think your idea can never get off the ground? Look here. Think again.http://www.fastcompany.com/fast50/
Remember when we told you about a programming contest Google was holding? The search engine has announced the winner. Have you ever wanted to find a pizza place while you're on the road? Or even one near your house? Apparently Daniel Egnor, the winner of the 2002 Google Programming Contest, felt such a need. His winning program takes addresses from Web pages and converts them to latitude-longitude data. having done that, Egnor provides an interface that lets users search for sites by proximity to a specified location. Dan has released the source code on his website. Google also has a list of the runners up which didn't quite make the cut, but are interesting nontheless.
NSD 8.05: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v08/nsd.08.05.html#BS2#BS2
Google: http://www.google.com/programming-contest/winner.html
Winning Code: http://ofb.net/~egnor/google.html
Its called Kartoo and the question is, is it eye candy or does it offer an improved way to parse search output? Kartoo is a meta search engine that sends queries to the usual search engines but instead of listing search results, it presents them as a colorful network diagram in which the size of a node indicates its degree of relevance. An impressive set of controls hints at an ability to tweak and nudge the results web to ferret out the neat stuff and avoid the dross and dreck, although we suspect it's mostly show. As well, a network presentation suggests significance and connections beyond the obvious, but this may also be illusory. Users can increase or decrease the emphasis of certain topics within each search and can turn on or off specific search engines. There's a definite visual appeal to getting results this way but in the sample searches we did, Kartoo never fared better than Google and often produced fewer highly relevant hits. Still, there's enough novelty here to merit a whirl.
http://www.kartoo.com/
A Crack in the Xbox: Keeping Secrets in Hardware
It's difficult to keep hardware-related secrets these days, especially when you're Microsoft and your hardware in question is the high-profile Xbox game console. Sure enough, just months after the console's release, Andrew "bunnie" Huang has written a paper deconstructing some of the box's hardware secrets. The hacking community is keen to decode the Xbox's boot-up sequence in order to use it as an inexpensive but powerful computer. Microsoft has made this difficult but Andrew's work - apparently legal reverse engineering - takes the hacking community closer to that goal. This is all quite technical stuff, and no, it won't get you any closer to pirating Halo. The paper has scholarly details of Huang's explorations, his home page has plenty of Xbox hacking links, and Slashdot has a good geeky discussion of the engineering, ethical, and entertaining issues.Paper: http://web.mit.edu/bunnie/www/proj/anatak/AIM-2002-008.pdf
Huang: http://web.mit.edu/bunnie/www/proj/anatak/xboxmod.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/01/1656228.shtml
Children's Internet Protection Act Violates First Amendment
Should children have unfettered access to the Internet in public libraries? Two years ago, Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which mandated that public libraries had to install filtering software on their computers to prevent children from seeing smut. Librarians and civil libertarians responded with a lawsuit that argued such software would also block access to many non-pornographic sites, including those related to politics and healthcare. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has agreed that CIPA violates the First Amendment because of the inadequacies of filtering software. Commercial filtering software, the court found, does block legitimate Web pages and so is unconstitutional. This decision while important, won't end the debate; the government will soon announce whether they will take the matter to the Supreme Court. Stay posted. CNET has the news.http://news.com.com/2100-1023-929577.html
Speak Up Fast! Don't Let Them Pass! CBDTPA!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) would like your help in killing the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), which it believes will give free reign to major media providers under the guise of protecting copyright interests. They have a hilarious little Flash video that's pure propaganda, but really well done. You'll probably find it most enjoyable viewing; we did, anyway. You won't get both sides of the story, here - but then, you wouldn't expect to. You can check out the proposed CBDTPA at Politech, if you have an open mind and want to risk having your brains fall out. Ugly, and messy.EFF: http://action.eff.org/tinseltown/
Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/
EU's New Communications Data Protection Directive Passes
The European Parliament has passed the Communications Data Protection Directive (CDPD), a measure that will allow police agencies to snoop electronic communications. Under the directive, police can force telecommunications companies to keep detailed records of all customer activity. This has generated a fair degree of consternation and some confusion with respect to how this EU legislation interacts with established national privacy laws, as might be expected. On average, however, it takes several years for EU directives to be implemented, leaving plenty of time for challenge. Wired has a story.CDPD: http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexplus!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=en&numdoc=52000PC0385 Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52882,00.html
The US federal court system has produced its annual wiretap report. According to the report, federal and state police intercepted approximately 2.3 million voice and page communications during 2001 at a cost of about $72 million. The figures underestimate the true totals since they do not include wiretaps by the US Customs Service, bugging under the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act used in secret intelligence investigations, and the occasional deliberate underreporting of wiretaps by police - see the lawsuit link below. Notably, no requested wiretap was ever denied by any judge in the US. Most wiretaps, 78% of them, were drug related, and the number of wiretaps jumped by 25% from 2000. Only 16 wiretaps encountered encryption - and in each of these the police managed to get the text anyway. Criminals seem to need to bone up on their encryption skills.
Report: http://www.uscourts.gov/wiretap01/contents.html
Lawsuit: http://pd.co.la.ca.us/contempt.htm
VeriSign Enters Phone-Bugging Business
VeriSign, best known as a domain name registrar, has decided to try to become the telecom industry's phone-tapping agency of choice. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 mandates that by June 20, 2002, telecom companies must provide technical means for the police to easily wiretap phone calls. VeriSign wants to rope in any procrastinating telecoms. It recently acquired Illuminet, which controls a backbone network that routes US phone calls. The network presumably helps VeriSign easily establish wiretaps. A press release has details. VeriSign is involved in many security and cryptography businesses, as shown in its latest SEC 10-K filing. The company also seems to have connections in the intelligence and law enforcement communities - it's partly owned by the secretive spook science research company SAIC. Make of that what you will.VeriSign: http://corporate.verisign.com/news/2002/pr_20020603a.html
Illuminet: http://illuminet.com/
SEC 10-K: http://ccbn.tenkwizard.com/filing.php?repo=tenk&ipage=1680261&doc=1&total=109&TK=VRSN
SAIC: http://www.saic.com/
Yahoo Has World Cup Videos, Traffic Jams
Yahoo, producer of FIFA's official World Cup Web site, hopes to capitalize on the booming popularity of soccer by charging $20 for the right to view four-minute streaming video highlights of all 64 matches. The highlights, in Windows Media Player format, will be available several hours after match end. yahoo just might tap into a decent revenue stream; the sport is so popular, traffic surges have caused access problems at many sites, including the BBC's World Cup site, which had 8 million page views on opening day. Yahoo has warned subscribers they may have trouble logging on during periods of peak traffic, especially when hot teams play in hot games. The arrangement with FIFA is an interesting business move for Yahoo, and no doubt one whose success or failure will be eagerly watched by other companies trying to make money from online sports coverage. CNET has details of the Yahoo/FIFA deal and a story about the Net traffic jam.World Cup: http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/en/
Deal: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-929283.html
Traffic: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-929764.html
Blacklisted Spammer Sues Not-Entirely-Innocent Bystander
Spam isn't going away. SPEWS, an anti-spam Web site, added a direct-marketing company called T3 Direct to its database of IP addresses known to send spam. SPEWS lists no contact information and is registered by a man in central Russia, far out of the reach of Western court systems. To maintain its flow of spam, T3 Direct had to set up a new IP address. In a twist new to the spam/anti-spam war, the company has decided to sue Joe McNichol, who it believes is responsible for the listing, for the considerable costs incurred in making the IP address switch. From his Web page, we can tell that McNichol is certainly an anti-spam advocate and that he directs all of his energy against T3 Direct, but the company has no evidence that he is responsible for the SPEWS decision. McNichol's lawyers view this as a clear attempt to silence a critic through the legal system and hope to get the case dismissed. CNET has a summary, but don't miss McNichol's own site.SPEWS: http://www.spews.org/
T3 Direct: http://www.t3direct.com.au/
McNichol: http://www.vtgts.com/auspam.htm
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-929761.html
ICANN Proposes Reorganization Plan
Like any good bureaucracy, ICANN, the Internet governing body which controls IP addresses and the domain name system, is trying to preserve its existence by eliminating as many external checks and balances on its power as possible. A dispute over ICANN and its practices has been growing over the last few years; check out a few old NSDs for details. A new ICANN proposal seeks to disband the at-large board representatives who are supposed to be elected by the general Net population. Without at-large members, ICANN's governing board would be comprised of a mix of ex-officio members - those who are there only because of some significant position they already hold - and a few more members picked by a committee that is appointed by the board. You can see the almost Moebius strip-like structure of that arrangement, which would effectively remove all outside influences from the organization. The proposed plan is available on the ICANN site.ICANN: http://www.icann.org/committees/evol-reform/recommendations-31may02.htm
NSD 8.08: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v08/nsd.08.08.html#BS9
NSD 8.11: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/nsd.08.11.html#BS15
ONLINE CULTURE
Nostalgia for Pre-Internet Days
We remember doing purely ASCII information retrieval at 300 baud with a Hayes modem when it seemed gosh-gee-whiz-wonderful compared to the physical slog of looking things up in huge rows of massive Chemical Abstracts volumes. Salon offers more nostalgia about the days before the Internet, the purist days of the bulletin board when you had to know something or be brave or stupid enough to fool around with stuff and get away with it. Salon writer N.Z. Bear rhapsodizes about the good old days when Atari ruled, in a poetic hankering for the way things were and the wonders of the storyboard. Once upon a time, there was no Internet. And it was good. The related story links are pretty interesting, too.http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/05/31/back_in_the_day/index.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Installing Your Own Highway Signs
You may have already read about Rick Ankrom in a Los Angeles newspaper or seen him on CNN. His art will make you rethink the value of performance art. It isn't all ego with maybe a bit of art thrown in. The art in question is/was a modification of a particularly confusing California freeway sign. The artist created and mounted corrections, all the while documenting the action. The result is a fascinating video and a much-improved freeway sign. The critics applause was resounding. Ankrom's work was so exquisitely perfect that the California Department of Transportation thought that its own workers must have done it and has no plans to take down the "art". The video, while not specifically a tutorial, offers valuable tips others can use when creating their own improved highway signs.http://www.ankrom.org/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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The Perfect Store: Inside eBay
The Curse of Treasure Island
Ciao, America: An Italian Discovers the U.S.
604William Calvin's Latest: "A Brain for All Seasons"
Sudden changes in climate provide an evolutionary bottleneck for plants and animals. And humans, too. That, in a nutshell, is the latest focus of William H. Calvin, affiliate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. His new book, "A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change", is a scientific travelogue in which he reflects on evidence of climatic upheaval - ice ages, dust storms, forest fires - around the world and its implications for the future. Calvin may remind you of Carl Sagan or James Burke - he draws on many fields to make solid points with prose that develops momentum but you don't need to be a professor to enjoy his trains of thought. Will the Gulf Stream stop and Heathrow freeze over? Will your grandchildren need mittens in Miami? Are humans out of beta? You can read the book online or download it in Palm OS format. If you like the book, buy the hard copy. Do it for a guy who's honest enough to admit that "...I seem to teach the general public rather than undergraduates."http://www.williamcalvin.com/BrainForAllSeasons/
Contrary to what it might seem from Hollywood portrayals, the Web is not composed entirely of pages to skim before jumping on the first link. The Nthposition e-zine is a case in point. Its diverse articles offer readers an engaging trip through a broad range of subjects. When we visited, topics including corporeal memorabilia, the economics of a propaganda war in the Middle East, a history of feral children, and the art of noise. We couldn't quite figure out how often new articles get posted, but we only hope they do. Bring copies in your PDA or laptop on the train ride to work, or enjoy the mix of politics, poetry, and cultures while you relax on the weekend. Whatever your background, job, or interests you'll find an article here that will make you think.
http://www.nthposition.com/
That's how the Guardian describes the Brains Trust and with headlines such as "UK Railways Reclassified as 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'", you can see why. That May 17 news story is trenchant and, in light of Amtrak's spotty history, has international appeal. Its prose is superb. Comments submitted by readers are funny, too. A paragon of satire, the Brains Trust has an excellent directory called Unreliable Facts ("because everything you read on the internet is true"), where you can vote on scads of witty factoids in an impressive variety of categories. Articles exemplify the savage glee with which British humorists expose their heads of state. The Brains Trust scribblers love to lambaste the United States as well. This sophisticated site allows easy access to its archives which include "by Department" links such as London in Chaos and Religious Slaughter Special. You'll find many other nice touches, including an online article submission form. All in all, The Brains Trust is a cracker.
http://www.thebrainstrust.co.uk/
You don't have to live in the UK, Ireland, or even anywhere near Europe to enjoy Need to Know (NTK). If you just have a propensity to gravitate toward geeky articles, you'll be pulled in. It's a confused tossed salad of geek news that grows on the palate. When we peeked, NTK's citation of errant Web sites with embarrassing blemishes for all to see struck us as pretty tasty. The item spotlighted links to products of the competition, typos that were more like Freudian slips, and companies with the Apache introductory document at the front of their main home page. Anyone within eyeshot of a TV screen that shows British stations can benefit from NTK's choices of great geek television - pointers to upcoming shows that are of interest to the more technically-focused of their readership. Current events of the online world round out enjoyable content in NTK, which is available by e-mail or at the Web site.
http://www.ntk.net/
Everyone Should Mind Their Grammar
English is tricky and dynamic language. What is pure to Jane is archaic to Joe. Disputes over usage are common and can fill entire books. Henry Churchyard is devoted to such issues and usually comes down on the side of traditional English. His page here uses the works of Jane Austen to explore the singular "their", as in the headline above. The material is detailed and not for the faint of heart. The writing, as expected, is excellent.http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html
The apostrophe is powerful punctuation. Depending on where it's placed it can denote possession, missing letters, the end of a subquote, and more. Wow! Limits to the power of the apostrophe are not currently known. Also unknown, for the most part, is correct apostrophe use. It's difficult punctuation. The Friends of the Apostrophe Web site, part of the superb Writer's Guide 101 Site, makes a valiant stab at helping the world (at least the American English writer's world) properly apostrophize. The site is useful both as a text and as a reference, and should be a mandatory visit for all writers and writer wannabes. Not "wannabe's"....
http://www.write101.com/fota.htm
SURFING SCIENCE
Explorers around the world continue to work on composing what may someday be described as a biography of the human race. National Geographic lets you share the joy of discovery felt recently by a team of researchers in Peru who uncovered thousands of Incan mummies. Find out how the researchers had to race to save hundreds of the mummies from those with less respectable intentions. A hidden Inca cemetery was only part of the amazing mystery that began to unravel as they continued to dig through the past. A short online documentary describes the excavation. The site brings the ancient Inca world to the present day in a fashion useful both to the casual visitor and to teachers looking for an example of early civilizations for eager classes.http://crater.nationalgeographic.com/inca/
As a concept, the future is pretty broad. So it's surprising a nonprofit organization such as the Academy for Future Science (AFS), based in California and South Africa, covers as much ground as it does with its programs and its Web site. As the mission statement indicates, the AFS is involved in education, training, and public awareness on several continents. In addition to essays on planetary science and space law (both of which a Trekker might expect), the AFS has posted papers on biomedicine, renewable resources, and other high-tech areas of interest to both academia and industry. In light of predictions made by futurists in the past - predictions that in recent years have given futurism a bad rep - this site reflects a conservative approach to subjects once considered wild, such as terraforming. We'd like to see more information about the AFS itself, such as you find in an annual report. However laudable its goals, the absence of specifics such as structure, membership, and finances makes one wonder whether it has something to hide.
http://www.affs.org/
SOFTWARE
OpenOffice 1.0, Free Alternative to Sun, Microsoft Office Suites
After our article about Sun's Star Office software, one of our readers reminded us that a free alternative does exist. OpenOffice has a version with most of the full functionality of Star Office. Version 1.0 is available for download with impressive stats and an equally impressive 50 MB download size. Like Star Office, it runs on Windows, Solaris, and Linux and is based on completely open source code. If you're contemplating an alternative to Microsoft Office, add this to the roster of software to try. The Washington Post has abrief review. OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org/
Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4246-2002May11.html
CORRECTIONS
Reader Mike King, from Ottawa, took strong exception to our recommendation of ESPN as a site for soccer news. "ESPN doesn't know anything about Association Football (as soccer is properly called)." King recommends the London Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Independent and says we "could also throw in the Mirror and the London Evening Standard for a 'livelier' perspective." Frankly, we stopped taking association football seriously when, 37 minutes into a scoreless Ireland-Cameroon match, the English announcer postulated that it would be a low-scoring game. Barring any Germany-Saudi Arabia laughers, what soccer game isn't? Anyway....Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,1202,00.html
Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml
Guardian: http://football.guardian.co.uk/
Independent: http://sport.independent.co.uk/world/
Mirror: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/
Standard: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/sport/worldcup/top.html