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BREAKING SURF
Music Industry Admits Spoofing P2P File-Sharing Networks
Two weeks ago (NSD 8.23), we reported that bogus Eminem MP3s were showing up on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks. The RIAA has admitted that it has started spoofing, meaning supplying bogus tracks to such networks. The RIAA has wised up, finally realizing that it can't fight fire with firewood and instead it has launched a guerrilla-style offensive. Spoofing has hit the mainstream; major record labels have admitted that they're dumping bogus tracks into the networks. Already, P2P clients have begun to enact countermeasures - observed objectively, it's an amazing evolutionary race. Whether this is the correct approach for the RIAA is debatable in light of research that shows music-sharing at the very least doesn't harm CD sales and may actually increase sales. The music companies might do better to emulate the Microsoft "embrace and extend" approach, but hey, it's their megamillions. The San Jose Mercury News has a story, but an attributed quote would have been nice.NSD 8.23: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v08/nsd.08.23.html#BS3
Merc: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3560365.htm
ICANN Kicks Out Elected Board Members
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has peremptorily decided to exclude elected, at-large members from its board. In this move to a less democratic selection process, ICANN board members will be selected from representatives of the business, technical, government, and nonprofit communities. Critics argue that this will cement the view of the mainstream on the 19-member board, which has the ultimate authority over the domain name system that governs the Internet. Wired has more. Bret Fausett, although he did not attend the ICANN meetings in Bucharest, blogged and commented on the proceedings he could follow online. Fausett also supplies the text of the ICANN resolution that eliminated at-large memberships.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53546,00.html
Fausett: http://icann.blog.us/categories/bucharest/
Resolution: http://icann.blog.us/stories/2002/06/28/textOfErcResolution.html
Criticism of ICANN's recent vote to restructure its board shows no signs of slowing. Net legend John Gilmore makes his views known in this Salon interview. Gilmore is an old-timer who founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was involved in the creation of the alt Usenet newsgroups, and was one of the founders of Cygnus Systems. Gilmore's interest in the ICANN debate goes beyond the theoretical. He's funding a lawsuit that's trying to force ICANN to open its books. Gilmore talks about his split with Vint Cerf over the lawsuit and his perception that ICANN's strings are being pulled by SAIC, a secretive company known for extensive classified government contracts with an ownership stake in VeriSign, maintainer of the .com and .net top-level domains. He also touches on trademarks and the prospects of alternative root servers. Worth reading.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/07/02/gilmore/index.html
Suspicious Mid-East Interest in US Municipal Workings
Several American municipal Web sites have been recording unusually high numbers of hits from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates. Laura Wigod, Web site coordinator for Mountain View, Calif., first noticed the pattern last August. At first she thought it was neat to have visitors from such places, but her innocence died Sept. 11 and she alerted local police. Acting on the advice of the FBI, the town removed some of the more infrastructurally sensitive content from the site. Many other Bay Area municipalities, including Redwood City, San Mateo, and Santa Clara, also recorded suspicious-looking traffic. The sites contain mostly humdrum stuff like the workings of municipal water systems and other utilities and police force info. Prudence dictated removing some of the material, but much of the info is pretty generic. Still, it poses dilemmas for Web site managers. The challenge is to balance caution with the avoidance of falling into the quagmire of relentless fear and paranoia which - all together now - is a victory for terrorism. The San Jose Mercury news has two articles.Wigod: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3554398.htm
Traffic: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3560320.htm
Spanked one of your children lately? These days that's not an innocent question, or one a parent should answer lightly. Spanking used to be pretty much taken for granted but lately it has come under increasing scrutiny and disapproval. Conventional wisdom now feels it's wrong. To support this thesis, Psychological Bulletin has a series of articles and comments about corporal punishment and its effect on children. Elizabeth Gershoff analyzed 60 years of research on the subject and concluded that it is harmful, period. However, three other psychologists adopt a more common sense approach, and suggest that while severe and frequent corporal punishment is clearly wrong, mild to moderate spanking can be effective discipline for young children. Like most subjects, the matter is far more complicated than simple headlines suggest, so it's worth digesting all the nuances and spread of opinion by checking out the original articles. Or you can skim over CNN's take on the story for a quick and easy overview.
Psychological Bulletin: http://www.apa.org/journals/bul/press_releases/july_2002/
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/parenting/06/25/spanking.study.ap/index.html
The Comet Nucleus Tour Spacecraft
The Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) spacecraft blasted off this week on a mission to study comets. The mission plan calls for a close flyby of at least two comets, Encke in November 2003 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 in June 2006. The probe will close within 100 kilometers of the comet nuclei at the height of the comets' active periods, when their orbits take them close to the sun. The flexible mission is designed to allow CONTOUR to attempt to intercept any other as yet unobserved comets that may appear during its flight. You'll find details about the craft, the mission, and comets in general at the CONTOUR Web site.http://www.contour2002.org/
Hunter Thompson's Ire with Jerry Seinfeld - Is It Real?
The original gonzo journalist seems to have been out-gonzoed, and by some accounts is really ticked at having been tricked by comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Ted L. Nancy is a pseudonymous letter-writer/author whose books have forewards written by Seinfeld. Seinfeld is set to host a TV show based on Nancy's crank letters and many suspect Seinfeld is Nancy (see the review by Jim Slotek and the Boston Herald), but no one has proof. Hunter S. Thompson wrote a series of letters to Nancy and is angry as he feels he was mined for free material. People associated with the TV show deny that Seinfeld ever solicited material from Thompson. It's not really breaking news. but it's a fun - and salty - ride. An unofficial Thompson Web site has a fax the outraged Thompson apparently sent to his agent. In the interest of fairness (to you, not them), we also provide a link to an unofficial Seinfeld site.Slotek: http://www.canoe.ca/JamBooksReviewsL/letters_nancy.html
Herald: http://www2.bostonherald.com/entertainment/television/hot105312002.htm
Fax: http://www.gonzo.org/pix/HunterDuped.jpg
Unofficial Thompson: http://www.gonzo.org/
Unofficial Seinfeld: http://www.jerryseinfeld.com/
Spam Wars: One Spammer, One Spam Fighter
The Hartford Courant site is running two articles that provide a snapshot of the spam wars. The first and better article gives a glimpse into the mind and business of an actual spammer, one Ronnie Scelson who runs a mass spam business from Louisiana. Scelson is an unusual spammer if only because he's open about what he does and he's willing to be quoted. He's so open, he's suing Qwest Communications for cutting off his Internet connection - this after numerous other ISPs have dropped him in the past. A second article, a counterpoint to the first, profiles Martin Roth, a spam fighter based in Long Island, N.Y. He's the anchor for a quick and rather shallow tour through various spam fighting organizations and quotes from the people who run them. Worth reading, especially the first article.Scelson: http://www.ctnow.com/news/specials/hc-sp1scelsonjun30.story
Roth: http://www.ctnow.com/news/specials/hc-2sp1rothjul01.story
Business Plans of the Dotcom World
The dotcom boom really is history. Not only are resulting recriminations and scandals the daily topic of your newspaper's business/crime section, our new police blotter, but historians are interested in saving the boom's most notable detritus - business plans. If you have a plan, or if someone you know has a plan, it can be submitted to the newly formed Business Plan Archive at the University of Maryland for preservation. The university's archive will hold the plans for study by future generations of business students, if you allow it. Donors have the right to set access to any materials they submit. Who knows, when the John Kenneth Galbraith of the Internet bubble writes his or her magisterial work on the subject you might figure in it.http://www.businessplanarchive.org/
PayPal Cashing in on Online Gambling, For Now
Stick with the plastic for now. In most cases, if a deal falls through on a credit card transaction, you'll only get nicked for $50. PayPal, an online payment service, is a different can of worms entirely and one that has begun drawing interest from state and federal regulators in the US. If you're into online gambling, however, PayPal may be your only recourse. Most of the big credit card suppliers have implemented rules to forbid use of the cards to place online bets. PayPal plans to fill this vacuum, and hopes to earn $16 million that way this year - assuming that no anti-gambling enforcement actions are taken against them. If that were to happen, PayPal concedes that penalties and fines might harm the business. Seriously. Unfortunately for the company, the legal status of facilitating gambling is questionable at best. Interestingly, PayPal users generally use credit cards to manage their PayPal accounts, meaning that all the gamblers among them essentially do is pay PayPal a fee to circumvent the restrictions on their plastic and pile up debt. What fun! Wired has the story.PayPal: http://www.paypal.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53533,00.html
Media Sites Embrace User Registration
Online Journalism Review (OJR) has an in-depth article about how formerly freely accessed media Web sites are adopting registration as a prerequisite for access. The story lists several high-profile newspaper sites which now mandate registration and details their experiences with the conversion. Executives of the companies cite "the need to form a closer relationship with their readers, and the potential for added revenue" as the driving forces behind this trend. The problem is that this practice, though it may be great for the Web sites, detracts from the usefulness of links to those sites. We at Netsurfer are familiar with the pros and cons of the issue, since it affects us from both sides. Slashdot, quoted in the story, has discussion.OJR: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/lasica/1025227718.php
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/30/0259218
Project Entropia Online Game: Raid, Hype, and Scam?
Project Entropia is a networked computer game in which you buy your stake in the game's virtual universe with real, hard currency. You play the role of virtual venture capitalist and the object of the game is to bankroll and create ventures in cyberspace that make money. Well, we fibbed by using present tense - the game is no longer available after Swedish authorities, spurred by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), raided the offices of MindArk, the game producer. The BSA claims that MindArk had been using pirated software. MindArk argues that Microsoft, a BSA member, planned the raid because it feared that Project Entropia was going to draw consumers away from its online game, Asheron's Call. The circumstances surrounding the raid are drowning in hype, but there's much more to gossip about. Some players claim that Project Entropia was more of a scam than a game. The concept of a game demanding the players use real money to buy virtual virtual property (i.e. imaginary property in an online game, and not just single-virtual property, which might be a Web site) also piques our interest, although private sales of virtual goods in other games are commonplace on eBay. Wired has the juicy details.Project Entropia: http://www.project-entropia.com/
MindArk: http://www.mindark.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53534,00.html
The arcane topic of TCP sequence analysis is not only a sophisticated security issue but may also create pretty pictures. Whenever two machines initiate a TCP/IP connection, they use a randomly generated sequence number to keep track of all those data packets flying back and forth. By analyzing those easily captured sequence numbers, an attacker can hijack data streams and exploit them for security breaches. This technical paper analyzes how these sequence numbers are generated under various operating systems and quantifies just how predictable the sequences are - the more predictable, the lower the security. The result is a series of neat graphs which identify families of operating systems and their vulnerabilities to sequence hijacking. Although it is sophisticated, it's understandable to anybody who has even a passing familiarity with TCP/IP.
http://razor.bindview.com/publish/papers/tcpseq.html
Run a spyware detector program on your computer. If you use Windows, you'll probably discover that you've downloaded Gator, a software program that tracks your online movements, saves your passwords and log-on info, and, most appallingly to sellers of online ads, triggers pop-up ads when you visit certain sites. Gator will, to make up an example, deliver a Microsoft ad when a websurfer visits a Linux Web site. Arguing that Gator is a parasite feeding on the hard work of online publishers and vendors, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Dow Jones, and seven other publishers have filed suit. The plaintiffs want to stop Gator from popping ads as surfers visit their sites and want to collect revenues they believe Gator gained by serving ads on their sites. It is unclear what the outcome of this suit is going to be, but Gator's lawyers are getting well acquainted with this sort of thing, as CNET reports.
Gator: http://www.gator.com/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-940072.html
Yahoo Pulls Most European Auction Sites
Yahoo has yanked most of its European auction sites, forcing sellers to use eBay or Europe-based auction Web sites, which is pretty much what they were doing anyway - hence the yankage. In Europe, Yahoo continues to maintain auction sites in Scandinavian countries. If you have an urge to bid on fish memorabilia, you know where to go.... CNET has a brief.Yahoo auctions: http://auctions.yahoo.com/
Fish: http://dk.auctions.yahoo.com/dk/auction/1008044410
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1017-940580.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Old-Timey, Blinky-Lighted IMSAI Computers, New for $995
What goes around most surely comes around. For just under twice the price of a low-end, modern personal computer, you can get a working version of one of the very first classic computers. The product, an IMSAI Series Two, is complete, down to flashing red LED output and toggle switch programming. Indeed, it was the real thing 25 years or so ago. The IMSAI site brings together fans and builders of the IMSAI Altair, which, if memory serves, is an 8080-powered, S-100 bus personal computer. The originals still work, and a new edition IMSAI is promised for this month. This site offers emulators, 8080 programs, and far more. If you're looking for a chance to relive history, head right on over.http://www.imsai.net/
Online Book Reviews and Those Who Write Them
All those people who write book reviews at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and elsewhere mostly do it for love (or humor, q.v.), not money. There is a hardcore group of reviewers who write huge numbers of reviews and at times reach larger audiences than mainstream media reviewers. This Wired story glosses over the phenomenon and slips off to look not only at book review sites, but also at the people who volunteer their expertise at non-book sites. For example, people not only write reviews for AllReaders.com, but also freely answer questions at AllExperts.com. The article has numerous links, not only to places where you can read free - and be paid for - book reviews, but also some of the more prominent amateur expert advice sites.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53488,00.html
AllReaders.com: http://allreaders.com/
AllExperts.com: http://allexperts.com/
Dotcom Noir: The Story of Website Results
Salon does what it does best as it tells the story of an unscrupulous dotcom that went on a rampage in the search-engine placement business. It's the story of a company called Website Results, which at one time during the dotcom bubble was the leader in the business of getting Web sites to the top of search-engine results lists. How it got there is a story of ego, intimidation, and outright fraud. The unscrupulous founders got the boot after the company was bought out by 24/7 Real Media. This is how it all went down, and is a good look at this particular sleazy corner of the search-engine placement industry.http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/07/01/spyware_inc/index.html
O'Reilly's Meg Hourihan reacts to the spate of media articles which try to examine the blogging phenomenon, frequently written by people who don't do blogs. Hourihan, a blogger herself, takes the opportunity to talk about the evolution of blogging. Unfortunately, her analysis is confined to the blogging format. She barely touches on the evolution of the blogging philosophy, focusing instead on the tools. Granted, there's some insight to be mined from examining the tools of the trade, but surely blogging is more about self-expression than about the HTML code. On the whole, yes, it's another bit of introspection from an endeavor that some would say is nothing but introspection, but it's worth reading nevertheless. You can also check out Hourihan's own Megnut blog. ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
O'Reilly: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/06/13/megnut.html
Megnut: http://www.megnut.com/
Book Arts: The Guild of Book Workers
The Guild of Book Workers is a national nonprofit organization for book arts, which include bookbinding, printing, conservation, marbling, calligraphy, and papermaking. The site is serious and somewhat academic. However, the book arts are highly creative, as a quick visit to any of the many linked exhibits demonstrates. If you still cherish non-virtual books, this site is heaven. This isn't a reader's site, but a serious fine art site.http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/gbw/
Panoguide.com is a small but useful stop for anybody with an interest in panoramic photography. If you have a computer, it's easy to create panoramic photos even with a cheap disposable camera. Step-by-step instructions guide you through the process of composing, shooting, stitching, saving, and presenting your panoramic masterpiece. Putting together an object movie or a virtual tour is much easier than you may have thought, and this guide to the tools and techniques will be indispensable to the newbie. Also likely to help is the extensive list of recommended tools that the author thoughtfully provides. Refreshingly, this is not a Windows-centric site; instructions for creating QuickTime movies are available for both Windows and Mac platforms, and when software works with the Linux platform, the fact is noted. The instruction set even details a couple of ways to approach protecting the intellectual content of your production - something most sites never think of mentioning. Start your visit with a trip to the Gallery. Do visit quickly; it appears that the site will soon be moving.
http://www.panoguide.com/
Best Photos of 2001, as this site calls itself, may sound like a selection from the news media, but it's a seven-page collection of strange and funny snapshots. It's unclear where most were originally published and we wish there were some site background info. Still, you'll get a hoot. Show these photos to co-workers who like weirdness, but don't be surprised if they rat you out to the thought police afterward. Surely, some of these photos have been altered - the surreal shot of a deer and hunter clinging to the same tree while they stare in opposite directions, and the snail on a scooter leaving a dinner plate kinda clued us in to that. Some of these photos may remind you of Gary Larson's comics, like the rabbit on page two or the boy hanging from a clothesline on page four. Bring your sense of humor. We hope there will be a Best Photos of 2002 companion site next year.
http://home.pacbell.net/rds33/best_photos/index.html
A Horse of a Different RGB Value
If you have a particular equine who holds a spot in your heart, David Magnes may be able to capture it forever in pastels. His horse portraits are gorgeous, although the Flash on his site is a bit nauseating. Now that we mention it the annoying animated GIFs violate the feel of the rest of the page and it's only complicated by hard-to-read fonts. But the horses are gorgeous. Did we mention that? Our advice? Davi, if you did the Web design, stick to the horses. If not, maybe give a try. BOOKS & E-ZINEShttp://www.promaestro.com/magnes/
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Sultry Climates
Spaceland
Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy, 1900-1945
MySQL Reference Manual
Henry Raddick's Hilarious Amazon Reviews
We're in pain from laughing so hard. This is easily the funniest thing we've read all year. Sometimes you'll see a book titled something like "Guide to Bovine Clinics" and think, "Who wrote that?" or - more importantly, since it implies mass delusion - "Who bought that?" Henry Raddick tries to tackle that question in his faux reviews for Amazon. Some sample fare, for the "My Potty Activity Book": "An excellent activity/colouring book, though my twins always seem to work out a way of making toilet training even more fun." Read all 265 Raddick reviews, as we did, and you'll come to know and love Raddick's dysfunctional family and dogs. Most of the off-color jokes are so eruditely cracked that you don't have to worry about your young ones understanding. If they do, it's not Raddick's fault, and Amazon probably has a book to help with that, anyway. And, if so, we imagine Raddick's reviewed it. The REgister interviewed the master a few weeks ago.Raddick: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/AA9IP6AYACFK5/104-1029549-1500743
Register: http://www.theregus.com/content/28/25219.html
Practical Technology Newsletter
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' new Web-based weekly subscription newsletter is called Practical Technology and aims at both mangers and hands-on techies. Steve is a well known writer on a wide range of computer-related topics. He has a gift for readable, useful writing that is much in evidence here. The issues on the site when we checked in leaned towards networking and JavaScript issues, but the tables of contents of back issues promise a wide range of tech-based subject matter. There are plenty of samples and material from back issues, enough to help you make a subscription decision. While the $50 yearly price will be high for casual readers, those heavily involved in the technology covered will find Practical Technology a bargain.http://www.practical-tech.com/index.htm
Advocating establishment of a well-stocked National Digital Library system, TeleRead works to bring the e-books home. Citing the use of e-books in advancing literacy in Chicago's South Side among other data, TeleRead proposes to popularize e-document reading machines by using libraries as a primary market for portable reader development and deployment. The portable readers would be small, high-resolution tablet machines. MIT has already designed one that looks more or less like a book, complete with flippable, programmable pages. Sounds weird, doesn't it? Under the scheme, folks would borrow an e-reader, familiarize themselves with the device, and then rush out to buy one of their own - at a price-point of $50 or less at the local discount center. Heck, even at a cost of $100, many folks would buy one - particularly if it could display not only books, but newspapers, magazines, and perhaps a bit of the old ultramedia. Does the concept have wings? Well, yeah, but then so does the featherless chicken that was all over the news a few weeks back. Doesn't mean it can fly - or can't, for that matter. Still, it's an interesting idea, and well worth digging into.
http://www.teleread.org/index.html
SURFING SCIENCE
Brilliant. Compulsive. Tormented. A genius inventor, often ahead of his time, who was also a ditch-digger and pigeon-feeder who died in obscurity. Nikola Tesla. Ring a bell? For many, it doesn't. Often impractical and obsessive, the Serbian-American engineer and visionary (1856-1943) was one of the great minds of his era, but he lacked good public relations. We visited three sites that do him justice: Nikola Tesla, which has a short biography we recommend as a good introduction; Tesla, the Electric Magician, which describes this father of alternating current with perhaps the most fascinating details of these three sites; and a PBS site that covers his life, legacy, and major inventions. Tesla had over 700 patents but never patented many other inventions, preferring inspiration and quick development to tedious note-taking and experimentation. The PBS site has backgrounders on his triumphs, including the Tesla coil (the basis for wireless communication), remote control (he wowed Madison Square Garden with the first radio-controlled vessel), and improved lighting. Tesla also came up with the idea of radar, but couldn't sell it. He claimed to have invented a charged particle beam weapon, but that work is shrouded in mystery, as is the post mortem disappearance of his papers. Slowly, Tesla is gaining recognition. Who will play him in the movie?Nikola Tesla: http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/
Electric Magician: http://www.parascope.com/en/1096/tesindex.htm
PBS: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/
Public health depends on education. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the well-known agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that gets called in to investigate possible outbreaks of infectious disease, has an online tour for children called Global Health Odyssey. The tour introduces concepts of public health and describes what the CDC does to protect the public. This site is designed with short attention spans in mind. For example, the Field Investigation page has a few short paragraphs and links to fact sheets on childhood diseases and conditions (these are pages meant for adults, but many kids will understand them) and a Rabies Web Page expressly for kids. Health Promotion links to an environmental health site for kids, a chart of vaccines, and a physical activity page. Each of the four main pages has a photo with clickable pop-up links, although nothing seems clickable on the Field Investigation graphic. The home page has a prominent link to the Infection Detection Protection site of the American Museum of Natural History, as well as links to relevant HHS pages and a streaming video of CDC's history and mission.
http://www.cdc.gov/global/tour.htm
You may know Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico as the location for the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system. You might know it as the setting for most of the movie "Contact". Either way, this is its Web site. Most of the interesting information for outsiders and statistics about the massive radio telescope is located under the General Public link. With Arecibo's capabilities to focus on extraterrestrial life, you have to wonder why the directions to the observatory aren't a little more specific for those who might not be familiar with the area - the planet, specifically.
http://www.naic.edu/open.htm
SOFTWARE
The recently enacted royalty payments due from online radio stations in the US (see NSD 8.25) has naturally spurred efforts to get around this barrier to moving bits around. One of the first such efforts is this project to create a P2P network for streaming online radio. Streamer unabashedly calls itself "pirate radio for the digital age". In theory, such a distributed streaming network would resist attacks both legal and technical and would let just about anybody run their own anonymous radio station. This is still beta, maybe even alpha-level software, but the idea is so obviously attractive that we expect Streamer and similar projects to mushroom in features and popularity.NSD 8.25: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v08/nsd.08.25.html#BS4
Streamer: http://www.chaotica.u-net.com/page/streamer.htm
CORRECTIONS
Hours after we featured the comatose but worthwhile Horus history index last issue, its maintainer pulled the plug. Oh, well. Circle of life and all that.Obviously, We Didn't Play with Plastic Ponies
But reader Kristy Milland, who perhaps did, let us know that we goofed in NSD 8.23 when we wrote "Remember My Pretty Pony, that plastic equine rage from the '80s?" The toy line was actually called My Little Pony.