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| Kuro5hin Going Broke |
| Meetup in Meatspace with Like-Minded People |
| Gates/Jobs and What that Innocent Slash Really Means |
| The Mikvah Project |
| The Osbournes |
| "Trading Spaces" |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| The (No Longer) Missing Link |
| Bitter Tomato |
| Trivial Bathroom Readers |
| Extrasolar System Not Quite Like Home |
| The Gould Files |
| A Pocket Guide to the Universe |
| Creature Comforts |
| Alligator Dome Pressure Receptor Movies! |
| Apache Update Fixes Security Bug |
| Cg, NVIDIA's New Graphics Programming Language |
| AOL Releases New Messaging Client, AIM 4.8 |
| FreeBSD 4.6 |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
The Webby Awards announced the winners of its 2002 awards this week. It's a long list because there are many categories. Many of the Web's most popular sites won awards - for example: Yahoo (Top Global Property), AOL (Top US Property), BBC (News), Salon (Print + Zines). There were also plenty of offbeat winners, especially of People's Voice awards, for which a popular vote determines the winner. As usual, there's lots of good browsing here and we won't try to name them all, but you can expect us to mine the list for some upcoming NSDs. You can also peruse the traditional five-word acceptance speeches from the winners. Can we make the Oscars adopt this tradition?Awards: http://www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/nominees.html
Speeches: http://www.webbyawards.com/main/press/speeches.html
Is Abdullah al-Muhajir Linked to the Oklahoma City Bombing?
Conspiracy theories do what the FBI and CIA may have failed to do before Sept. 11: connect the dots. One particular story finding purchase on the Net connects a great many dots. Follow close, and don't get lost. The US government has accused Abdullah al-Muhajir (ne Jose Padilla) of being an al Qaeda operative who was involved in a plot to set off a radioactive bomb in the US. Al-Muhajir bears a striking resemblance to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing's never-found John Doe number two. The hypothesis, first expressed online, that al-Muhajir is John Doe number two is slowly emerging in the mainstream media. A recently arrested associate of al-Muhajir, Adham Amin Hassoun, was a registered agent of the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), an organization that the government believes is an al Qaeda front and one with which Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols is alleged to have met. The last part hasn't been proved, but the implications are disturbing. The site below is the nerve center of the story.http://www.whoisjohndoe2.com/
We might as well quote the FAQ: "Blogathon is an event for charity that lasts 24 hours. Each participant finds sponsors who can either donate a flat amount for the entire event, or an amount per hour. Once you sign up, you blog for 24 hours on the day of the event and raise money for charity." The only rule is that participants update their personal blogs every 30 minutes during that 24 hours - no sleeping allowed. Big deal. Now, a 72-hour Blogathon would really be worth tuning into for the inevitable hours' worth of hallucinatory blog entries. Maybe next year. Meanwhile, this year's participants can pick a charity of their choice or use one of the ones suggested on the site. The event kicks off July 27.
http://www.blogathon.org/
NATO Surveillance - Film at 11
Imagine being able to watch airborne intelligence video as it happens! If you have a satellite dish and live in Western Europe, you can watch live NATO surveillance of the Balkans. The massive amount of data generated by intelligence operations in Afghanistan is soaking up all encrypted bandwidth and forcing the NATO to transmit its Balkans surveillance video over open satellite channels. The US and NATO claim that since the material is not classified, the interception of the video doesn't matter, but the author of this BBC analysis points out that the video reveals an immense amount about NATO technological capabilities.http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/programmes/newsnight/newsid_2041000/2041754.stm
While the world's eyes are on the soccer teams in the World's Cup, another vaguely related major competition is taking place in Japan. You've probably already guessed what the RoboCup is all about - robots playing soccer. The point of the competition "is to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be examined and integrated." The ultimate goal is to develop a team of autonomous humanoid robots which can beat a human world champion soccer team by 2050. Seriously. For now, teams of small wheeled robots square off in a small arena and try to drop the ball into the goal of the other side. The technologies are already quite sophisticated, with the teams of autonomous robots using swarm intelligence and custom ball-passing strategies to contend for the prize. There's lots of information and streaming video on the Web site. The event runs June 19-25.
http://www.robocup2002.org/
Robot Escapes, Won't Be Taking Over Just Yet
Scientists at the Magna Science Adventure Centre running a competition among intelligent robots were surprised to discover that one enterprising subject escaped. The robot, Gaak, had been removed from competition and placed in a pen, where it was ignored. Like any unsupervised, combat-trained toddler, it chose that moment to make a run for it. Gaak made it to the parking lot, where it almost met an untimely end. In a masterful quote, researcher Noel Sharkey comforted the world: ""But there's no need to worry, as although they can escape, they are perfectly harmless and won't be taking over just yet." Thank goodness! The Age has the story.Magna: http://www.magnatrust.org.uk/
Age: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/20/1023864460978.html
SpamNet Beta Available to Fight Spam for Outlook Users
A company called Cloudmark has released SpamNet, an add-on to Microsoft Outlook that will use the power of peer-to-peer networking to help users cope with spam. The system is based on a concept already in use in the Unix world called Vipul's Razor. Vipul's Razor is a collaborative open-source tool built by Cloudmark co-founder Vipul Ved Prakash. When you see a piece of spam in your inbox, you click a single "block" button. Message-identifying information is sent off to the SpamNet network and shared with all other users, whose software in turn can then block that message from their inboxes. The system has some sophisticated algorithms to make sure that attempts to block legitimate e-mail would not work. There's a press release from Cloudmark and a story at Yahoo which gives some good background and quotes from Cloudmark founders.Cloudmark: http://www.cloudmark.com/company/press/releases/2002-06-19.php
SpamNet: http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/download/
Vipul's Razor: http://razor.sourceforge.net/
Yahoo: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cn/20020619/tc_cn/937300
File Sharing Doesn't Hurt CD Sales - but It Should
Stan Liebowitz, a professor of managerial economics at the University of Texas at Dallas, earlier helped debunk the idea that network effects provide dominant suppliers with insurmountable supremacy even in the face of superior alternatives. Now Liebowitz has turned his attention to file sharing and claims that although in theory it ought to lower demand for CDs, the effect cannot be demonstrated. "Policing Pirates in the Networked Age" is the title of his 28-page review of the recording industry's struggle with technology and piracy. One key finding is that previous copying technologies have not hurt copyright owners. He thinks digital rights management allow what he considers a reasonable degree of fair use but regards government attempts to outlaw copying technology as misguided. Salon has an interview with the professor, who's frankly a little hard to pin down but does have important things to say.Review: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-438es.html
Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/06/13/liebowitz/index.html
The Ethics of Credit Card Leaks
If you suspect your database of secure credit card numbers has been breached, should you tell the card owners they might have a problem, or should you just keep quiet about it? A network administrator identified only as Dana in this MSNBC article thought the answer to that one was easy - you fess up. His employer didn't see it that way and ordered him not to publicize the probable compromise of company data. This issue - apparently more common than we think - gets batted around at MSNBC, with ideas about what's right and what's not. Some companies take a perverse Millsian approach and consider that even if they leak credit card numbers, its the merchants who sell goods to holders of fraudulent numbers who suffer and not their own customers although it is a nuisance for them. They also factor in the possibility that their cardnumber databases are and always were safe, and they risk alarming customers unnecessarily and undermining confidence in their companies. Some think that people like Dana who uncover signs of theft should post the information anonymously. Others say that it's none of his business - his job is merely to bring the matter to the attention of company officials and nothing more. Is it an issue worth risking your job over? That's the real question and that's a tough call for anyone to make.http://www.msnbc.com/news/766474.asp
EarthLink Exposes Your Password to Their Support Reps
It is standard industry practice on the Web to encrypt user passwords so that even employees of a given Web site don't know what they are. This practice protects your passwords from potential hackers and, more significantly, from corrupt employees. Apparently, EarthLink does not conform to this practice, as Wired reveals. EarthLink says it allows tech support employees to see user passwords because so many users forget their passwords and the practice just makes things faster and easier. EarthLink specifically tells its users not to give out their password to anyone "with one exception... EarthLink Sprint Technical/Customer Support may ask for it when you call EarthLink Sprint for assistance." This opens their customers up to one of the oldest computer scams in existence, impersonating a customer rep and asking for the password to fix some non-existent problem. The Wired story has a good overview of the situation. Meanwhile, make sure you don't use your EarthLink password anywhere else on the Web.http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,53208,00.html
If You Put Software in the Public Domain, Will Anyone Use It?
Back near the dawn of time (between the years 1976 and 1988), copyright laws were significantly altered. Prior to this time, authors had to actually register their works and dutifully renew the registrations with copyright offices; else, the material fell into public domain. Changes in the laws made copyright protection automatic for nearly 100 years. As the new laws have come under increasing interpretive scrutiny, one trend has emerged: the revisions have had the unintended effect of making it darned hard to place anything into the public domain, even if you're the author and you want to do that. For example, software coders who place software in the public domain often see potential users act like minks "liberated" by the Animal Liberation Front. They don't know what do nor where to go, as this Seattle Times report makes apparent. Open source has suddenly become a liability, likely because so many folks have become so used to clicking right through the legalese in license agreements that accompany most software today that if it's not there, something's wrong. A few folks in the Redmond, Wash. area must be enjoying the irony. The story is worth a read if only because it comes from Seattle, a bastion of copyright aficianados if ever there was one.http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134471290_digitalrights10.html
How Google Institutionalizes Innovation
This brief Fast Company article gives a glimpse into Google's process for floating good research ideas to the top. The company has some tools which enable any employee to post a new idea on an internal Web site. Somebody combs the site daily and evaluates the ideas for feasibility and interest. Once per week, a meeting is held in which the idea originators get ten minutes to pitch their concept. The best ideas culled from that discussion are slated for further development. It's a clever use of community collaboration tools and an excellent way to institutionalize research and development.http://www.fastcompany.com/online/60/google.html
Andreesen Pragmatic over MSIE Victory, Sees Divergence as Key
Browser war? What war? Marc Andreesen, Netscape founder, doesn't seem to think there's any war worth fighting anymore, as Microsoft controls 93% of the market share. Browsers are a done deal, he thinks, and while it may seem unfortunate that Microsoft now dominates the niche, the good news from his perspective is that the paradigm of distributed networks - like the Web - has taken undeniable root and has rendered passe the old single server-multiple client centralized database format. Andreesen is banking on this being a permanent swing of the pendulum, and Loudcloud, his most recent company, is predicated upon that assumption. With the emergence of new and novel networked products, such as cell phones and Blackberry pagers, Andreesen bets that divergence, rather than convergence, will guide the progress of interfaces. Interestingly, Loudcloud is working with Microsoft on these issues. MacCentral has the interview.http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0206/14.browser.php
Social engineering has long been a favored tool of the hacker trade. Software tools have been developed to map social networks in workplace environments, and have been extended to provide insight into other networks as well - such as terrorist organizations. Such tools may permit organizations to delineate affinities, and possibly help them to adjust their social networks as a result of the findings. If that doesn't set your mind at ease, this link to an O'Reilly Network article that examines how social networks can be studied probably won't help.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/webservices/2002/06/04/udell.html
South Africa Wants Control of .Za Domain
We're not sure why it's doing it - misguided pride, a tax grab, and opportunities for censorship or patronage all come to mind as possibilities - but the South African government has passed legislation that gives the state control of its native .za domain registry. That's at odds with Internet governing body ICANN's rules, which require it and the Internet community to be consulted about any change of control. Evidently, the current .za domain name administrator, a volunteer South African named Mike Lawrie, doesn't trust the politicians and has announced that he's hidden the 200-line primary zone file for the domain somewhere safe. It's a brave action, applauded by some members of South Africa's Parliamentary opposition, but even so, his action is probably not going to stop the hobnailed boots of the state from trampling all over the thing for long. MSNBC has the tale, fewer than 200 lines and none of them hidden.http://msnbc.com/news/766560.asp
The latest issue of Netsurfer Books is out, with a nifty summer reading list and the usual payload of cool book recommendations. Give it a try - you're sure to find a few interesting books you would not otherwise have known about.
http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/
ONLINE CULTURE
We occasionally point you to a good story on the tech and culture site Kuro5hin, a frequently fascinating compendium of stories and self-moderated community commentary. It's one of the bright gems among such Web sites, though one which is in danger of losing its luster. The site is a labor of love on the part of its owner, Rusty. This week, Rusty laid out the economics of the site for his readers, noting the failure of his ventures into online advertising and the insufficient revenue from subscriptions. Kuro5hin is out of money, Rusty announced, and he's soliciting ideas from his community on how to deal with this sad economic reality. The response has been overwhelming, as readers of the popular site weigh in with advice on how Rusty can keep the site going. It's an excellent read, especially for owners of small sites who are looking for ideas to boost business, ideas provided in abundance by Kuro5hin's readers. Highly recommended discussion.http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/6/17/23933/5831;sid=2002/6/17/23933/5831
Meetup in Meatspace with Like-Minded People
Meetup is apparently not only a Web site, but now also a noun. The site defines a "meetup" as "a local gathering of a group of people brought together by a common interest." Surprisingly, in many cases the common interest is not beer or loneliness or both. The new site is quite well executed. You can create an interest group, or join an existing one on the site. The range of interest groups is as diverse as any set of online clubs: fans of ferrets, lovers of quilting, devotees of Burning Man, vampires, vegetarians, expatriates. The group can then vote on where to meet in person - i.e. Meatspace - using as a starting point a convenient pre-compiled list of suitable places provided by Meetup. Everybody then gets together at an agreed-upon time to interact in egalitarian utopia of real time camaraderie. OK, so it's a long winded way to say that the site is basically a calendar application for shcheduling real meetings with real people in the real world. Fairly neat, but since it's new, still rather sparsely populated.http://www.meetup.com/
Gates/Jobs and What that Innocent Slash Really Means
One line says it all: Who do you want to slash today? "Slash" is pretty short slang for "pair up in an invented sexual fantasy, usually of fictional characters and often homoerotic". That's quite a mouthful. Well, having made that point, it seems that the only other worth noting is that such fantasies, however twisted, are readily available on the Web. Well, yeah, big surprise there. This isn't your usual horny old man seeking hot teen thing, though - it's generally written by and for women. Two favorite pairs of slash targets seem to be Bill Gates/Steve Jobs and Captain Kirk/Mr. Spock (see, there's the slash in action). At Jezebel Slade's Infamy site, spotlighted in this Wired article, it's easy to tell the writer's a woman: in her Gates/Jobs stories, Jobs uses hand lotion. If a guy had been writing, there'd be sandpaper or maybe power tools involved.Infamy: http://www.femgeeks.net/infamy/index.htm
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53071,00.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
The mikvah is a ritual Jewish bath all about cleansing and rebirth that has been observed for more than 3,000 years. The Mikvah Project is a touring exhibit of interviews and photos that affords an intimate look, immersed in beauty, at this long-held tradition. The tour itself is presently in Chicago, but a taste of the impact it delivers can be had right in your home or office just by clicking on the link below. The photos are sharp and clear; it's hard to believe that they were taken underwater. They're not in any way revealing; that's not what it's about. This is a celebration of experience. You may come away renewed.http://www.mikvahproject.com/index.html
You've seen the infamous ham-chucking incident on MTV. Now see the Web site. Get the screensaver. All your friends are doing it. Or, well, somebody's doing it, presumably. The site to accompany the unexpected TV hit includes family photos that are actually fun to look through. Remember Ozzy back in the black mascara and blonde hair days? Tour their house online without the constant annoyance of having to try to figure out what the censor beeped out of a sentence in which you could only make out the first word. It's all in good fun, and the site even just won a Webby for best TV-inspired Web site.
http://www.mtv.com/onair/osbournes/
"Trading Spaces" is going places. TLC's home makeover TV show, the US version of the BBC's popular "Changing Rooms", is gaining audience members quickly. In each show, two couples make over one room in the other's house, work with a budget of $1000, one of the show's designers, and the happy handyperson. It's a reason to stay home Saturday nights. The official TLC site lets the show's quirkyness shine through and provides some tasty behind-the-scenes tidbits. Episode guides for the first two seasons list the designers for each show and some of the inventive ideas that were used, if someone really wants to duplicate them. (Any takers for the moss wall?) Before and after photos are online as well for the true fan to debate which designer is better. You can find out more about the designers and the carpenters in the bio section, and an online application awaits you adventurous types. And if you've missed a few episodes, have no fear. The site mentions that a home video collection will be coming soon. Trading Spaces:
http://tlc.discovery.com/fansites/tradingspaces/tradingspaces.html
Changing Rooms: http://www.bbc.co.uk/changingrooms/
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.
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Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse
Build Your Own Combat Robothttp://www.alexa.com/
If you're looking for sweetness and light, just keep walking. If you're looking for biting sarcasm and revealing commentary, check out Tomato Nation, the brainplant of Sarah D. Bunting, a.k.a. Sars. The content changes often enough that we're not going to comment on it except to say that it pulls no punches. Go see what's roiling in Sarah's brain today.
http://www.tomatonation.com/
Flowing forth from Ashland, Ore., this site is designed with one thing in mind: to sell a line of bathroom readers. You'll find no intrusive pop-unders or pop-overs here; the entire site is one unabashedly commercial enterprise, one that delivers a great assortment of trivia. You can find out why Ford changed the name of its Caliente auto to the S-22, and who knew that sunsets can be green in Antarctica? Or that the odds of being injured by a toilet seat are about 1 in 6,500? Bet you wish those kinds of odds prevailed at the lottery. Face it, you can't really lug your laptop into the bathroom every time you need to set a spell, so you might as well pick up one or two or three of their little gems. Stop by for some free samples, maybe join the bathroom readers institute, and generally enjoy!
http://www.bathroomreader.com/throne.htm
SURFING SCIENCE
Extrasolar System Not Quite Like Home
The media worked themselves into a bit of a frenzy recently over the latest extrasolar planet discovery, a massive gas giant orbiting star 55 Cancri at about the same distance as Jupiter does in our solar system. Another huge planet had been discovered orbiting 55 Cancri in 1996, that one whirling madly round close to the star. NASA's headline mentions a hometown look and Space.com refers to the possibility of another Earth. Calculations show that an Earthlike planet could exist in a system with two gas giants like that, but we're skeptical and think the headlines are overblown. What the discovery really represents is another milestone in refining the wobble or Doppler method of planet discovery, as this is the first time a gas giant has been found orbiting at normal distances, i.e. as in our solar system. So far, 98 extrasolar planets have been discovered but the technique selects for big planets close to a star. Nevertheless, longer data collection periods are now beginning to reveal less massive planets and planets with larger orbits, although we are still probably incapable of discerning anything as small as the Earth.NASA: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_133.html
Space.com: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/planet_discovery_020613.html
You've probably heard of the "X-Files". Here are the G-Files. In both, the underlying theme is that "the truth is out there", but that's where the similarity ends. The G-Files is a subsite devoted to the debates and battles tackled by the late Stephen J. Gould and comes from a site called the World of Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, author of "The Selfish Gene" and myriad other works, is considered by some to be a digital unilateralist in his approach to evolutionary theory, and therefore greatly at odds with Gould the multidisciplinary theorist. As it happens, however, Dawkins and Gould were actually somewhat more in agreement than disagreement, as Dawkins makes clear in a letter to the Guardian, which is reprinted on the site. Think of this as a library brought to your home. It would take days or weeks to read through all of the content just here, let alone stored elsewhere at the myriad links. Read interviews with and writing by Gould, Dawkins, and one of Gould's most vituperative critics, Robert Wright, among others. Are we really at the top of the evolutionary heap, or just a happy coincidence along the way?
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/the_g_files.htm
A Pocket Guide to the Universe
Unless you have Wesley Crusher or another luminary from Starfleet Academy to pilot your starship, the universe can be tough to navigate. Finding your way around is a little easier when you visit AbsoluteAstronomy.com. Up front, you can tell this site is designed for quick navigation, what with seven pull-down menus, eight browsable categories, and a smart ("Ask an astronomy question") search box. This is basic astronomy - encyclopedic, though not deep. Search on "moons of Jupiter" and you get links to 16 moon pages. Looking for a few details about stars such as Acrab or Maaz? Piece of cake. We wish there were more graphics and external links. There's probably no such thing as a comprehensive astronomy site, though, in view of the subject matter. Science teachers would do well to add AbsoluteAstronomy.com to their list of recommended sites. It's super.http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/
National Geographic has put together a great package with facts, videos, and supporting images that will help kids learn about animals. Left-brained kids, right-brained kids, adults who wish they were still kids - there's something for every learning style here. Past Creature Features are archived in the Site Index pull-down menu, under Kids. We failed to find anything from the Black Lagoon ecosystem, but we're sure National Geographic must have simply overlooked it.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/kids/creature_feature/
Alligator Dome Pressure Receptor Movies!
We hate to be the bearers of bad tidings, but the fact of the matter is that these four blessedly brief QuickTime movies are never going to be nominated for an Oscar. The first of the clips is kind of interesting, visually, but it's quite loud. Turn down the volume for this one. The movies show alligator babies, shot in the dark by infrared camera. The idea, here, was to show that with their ears plugged and in total darkness, the gators can home in on small disturbances such as water droplets striking their pool. The reason? Special pressure receptors. Ah! Raw science at its best! We couldn't see anything in a couple of films, but one provides some excellent footage of the removal of a plastic elastomer from a baby alligator in complete darkness. If you ever have a hankering to take on such a project, stop by here first for pointers.http://www.wam.umd.edu/~daph/DPR.html
SOFTWARE
Apache Update Fixes Security Bug
The Apache Web server has been in the news this week with the discovery of a potential denial-of-service/security vulnerability. Within a day of the news breaking, the Apache team has produced a fix - take that, commercial software vendors. The bug's severity varies depending on the server's operating system, but it's probably a good idea to upgrade anyway.Bug: httpd/Announcement.html
Downloads: httpd/
Cg, NVIDIA's New Graphics Programming Language
Traditionally, one of the problems with graphics cards has been that in order to squeeze out the most graphic performance, developers had to program them in awkward assembly language tailored to a specific card. To rectify this, NVIDIA, the leading graphics card manufacturer, has introduced a C-like language for programming graphics called Cg - C for graphics. The numerous benefits include ease of programming, longer-lived applications, and faster development time. NVIDIA has released a toolkit for programmers. The sites below have all the info you need. This is a significant development in the graphics community, and of interest to all programmers who work and play in that space.Cg: http://developer.nvidia.com/
Toolkit: http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=cg_toolkit
AOL Releases New Messaging Client, AIM 4.8
This new version has a number of enhancements, mostly aimed at providing new functionality to users. Users can now manipulate and add information to buddy lists, and can e-mail a buddy list to others. A new AIM Today Window presents a bunch of information and advertising on start-up - it's not clear from the feature list if you can turn this off. Finally, the new version supports HTTP proxies, making it easier to deploy AIM behind corporate firewalls.http://www.aim.com/index.adp
A major new release of FreeBSD Unix has been announced. In addition to the usual bug and security fixes, the most significant change is the migration to the latest X Windows System version 4.2.0. Many more details are available in the announcement.
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.6R/announce.html