BREAKING SURF
| Proposed Humanitarian Software License |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| New Turkey Technique |
| Seeing Isn't Believing |
| Blogwise |
| Your Educational Ticket to Roadside Crafts and Slasher Films |
| Chinglish 101 |
| Worldwide Newspaper Index |
| Mod Your Flatulence |
| Mozilla 1.2.1 Browser |
| PGP 8.0 Encryption Software |
| PostgresSQL 7.3 Database |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
Bust of al Qaeda Counterfeiters Just Tip of the Iceberg
Quietly, inconspicuously, while working at a steakhouse in Chicago, Mark Madrane was undermining the country that had given him refuge. Madrane, originally from Morocco, swiped patrons' credit cards twice, once for the restaurant and again for his colleague Youssef Hmimssa, a skilled counterfeiter who produced bogus credit cards, passports, and other documents for al Qaeda operatives in Chicago, Detroit, and Iowa City, Iowa. The counterfeited credit cards were used to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the terrorist cells. Unfortunately, Madrane and Hmimssa are not alone. Counterterrorist agencies everywhere see mounting evidence that terrorists are using forgery as a potent weapon to support operations. Using skimmers, scanners, spy cameras, data-card printers, and digital presses, counterfeiters can produce high-quality bogus currency and documents of all kinds in large quantities. The most feared machine is the fast but pricey Xerox DocuColor 100, a plateless, magazine-quality, high-speed publishing system. Business 2.0's expose of the dangerous face of counterfeiting will make you worry and there's nothing ersatz about that.http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,45486,FF.html
Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China
As part of its ongoing studies of censorship around the world, the Berkman Center at Harvard has released this study of Chinese Internet censorship. It collected data from May through November 2002. Of 204,012 distinct Web sites, the center found more than 50,000 to be inaccessible from at least one point in China on at least one occasion. Of those, about 19,000 were consistently blocked on multiple occasions. The Berkman Center Web site has a complete list of those sites along with numerous details about how the filtering is done, its targets, and how effective it is. The study concluded that the Chinese government uses several overlapping methods to censor Internet access with spotty success, but that its efforts are growing more sophisticated and effective over time. The Web site has many more details, both about the technical aspects of the blocking and about the specific types of content which are blocked.http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/
Once upon a time, citizens of an unnamed country wanted to cross a vast desert that separated them from the far distant shores of an ocean they could see through their most powerful telescope. They established the National Agricultural Frontier Administration, NAFA, to guide the attempts at crossing. NAFA built desert-wagons, crewed them with wagonauts, and sent mission after mission to conquer this new frontier. At first, the public was fascinated, but interest soon waned as not much seemed to happen and costs soared. Years passed and some clever folk thought they might be able to cross that desert faster and cheaper than NAFA. But their ideas were not welcome, and so they applied them elsewhere - which is why, today, the inexpensive vehicles they developed scoot along the coast taking folk from hotel to hotel, while NAFA's lumbering desert-wagons still struggle to navigate the seas of sand. Is the author of this modern fable getting at anything here? Nah, surely not. Still, folks fond of bloated bureaucracies might not want to read this. On the other hand, those not amused by self-serving, government-funded monsters will find the tongue-in-cheek Space Future piece amusing and wry. Read it and ponder what might have been.
http://www.spacefuture.com/vehicles/how_the_west_wasnt_won_nafa.shtml
Grading One's Predictions of Life in 2002
Ten years ago, Mike Langberg, a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, offered a set of predictions of life in the next decade. He has reviewed the results, finding that some of the predictions were right-on, that others were dismal failures, and that some were sort of correct. The paths that technology take to integrate into our lives are convoluted and hard to predict, as this brief article convincingly demonstrates.http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/4600181.htm
Lord of the Rings: Inside the Battle Effects
The Lord of the Rings site has a first-rate section that explains exactly how the massive battle scenes were created in the films. No, the filmmakers did not use 10,000 New Zealanders running around in fields but used computers to animate the scenes. In fact, the process was much more than a simple case of computer rendering predesigned picture sequences. The special effects wizards created a computer system called Massive, which simulates each and every single one of those thousands of warriors as an independent agent, much like the bots in first-person shooters. The battles are set up and the agents are let loose to fight each other, generating highly realistic battle scenes. The Web site has a well done Flash presentation about the whole process, which is probably best enjoyed with broadband. Fascinating and highly recommended.http://www.lordoftherings.net/effects/index.html
Hard Lessons from Boston Hospital Network Outage
On Nov. 13, the entire computer network of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston crashed. Four days passed before service was restored, forcing the hospital to revert to paperwork on a massive scale in order to keep operating. The story of this outage and the $3 million it will cost to replace the network sent shock waves through the hospital and insurance industries, which learned a lesson about the dependence of modern health care on computer networks. Beth Israel did all the right things - it backed up data and had redundant servers in place - but the networking protocols in use choked on the sheer amount of data being pushed through the pipes. The Boston Globe and Network World Fusion have a non-technical story, but alas we could not find any sources for the technical details - although the Slashdot discussion gets you halfway there.Globe: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/330/science/Got_paper_+.shtml
Network World: http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/1125bethisrael.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/27/1411250
Economic Predictions from Netsurfing Data
Data about your netsurfing habits may have some predictive power about the economy. A company called ComScore Networks gathers netsurfing data from millions of users by distributing software that purports to increase your security and internet access speed, but which also reports your netsurfing habits to the company. The data so gathered can be compared to economic trends such as employment levels and consumer spending and can be used to forecast future trends. Slashdot has the discussion, based on an original article from the Chicago Tribune (which requires a login). Not surprisingly, much of the discussion focuses on the ethical issues of using spyware to gather this data. The concept of gathering and analyzing such data is sound, but the methods employed by ComScore, which charges $50,000 per year for access to this information, may not be entirely acceptable to informed consumers.http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/02/1219220.shtml
User Interaction Design for Secure Systems
Much research has looked at various technical means to achieve better computer security, but human factors are underrepresented in this kind of research, other than perhaps the social engineering scams thoroughly explored by motivated hackers. Ka-Ping Yee, a computer student at UC-Berkeley, decided to investigate how the design of work flow and user interfaces can minimize user interaction problems in secure systems. Based on his research, he proposes a number of principles for secure interactive design. The work described in his paper is technically complex and abstract, but serves as a starting point for exploring this human-centric aspect of security design. The paper also includes an extensive bibliography and case studies which provide a good entry to the whole subject for those who are interested.http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~ping/sid
Is There Gold in Google's User Search Data Stuffing?
If search engines could only talk. Google is the most popular search engine and the log of its queries is a mine of information about trends, particularly shopping, politics, and sex. What people are searching for on Google is an amazingly context-dependent phenomenon. In 2001, when Regis Philbin asked a contestant on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" to provide Carol Brady's maiden name, Google researchers saw multiple spikes on that query separated by roughly an hour. People in each time zone, and later Hawaii, visited Google to find the answer to the million-dollar question. A New York Times article offers insight into the potential to be found in Google's private logs. It also makes a compelling point: whoever can sucessfully mine this vein of information might yet strike it rich. Google Zeitgeist offers you a somewhat belated opportunity to view the most searched for information in the course of a given month. Check it out, as we have in past NSDs.Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/technology/circuits/28goog.html
Zeitgeist: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
The Sims Online is expected before Christmas, and here's a timely look at the game, its history, and its creator, Will Wright. Wright, and others, hope that the game will provide legions of players with the same kind of absorbing fun and mostly innocent enjoyment that makes The Sims game so appealing to such a wide range of people. Electronic Arts green-lighted the game's development way back in 2000, although Wright had been thinking about something like it since 1993. Since, the project has experienced a roller coaster of technical challenges, tight schedules, and unexpected snafus. Early on, the game ran into major engineering problems that required refactoring, a process in which the code is basically broken apart and put back together again. Wright didn't want the game to take over his life but he's beginning to realize it might. Gamespot's story provides an absorbing and thorough look at the real-world sweat needed to make a virtual world work.
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/features/pc/simsonline/index.html
Buy at Amazon, Pick Up at Borders, and a Spending Survey
Amazon continues its march to world domination as the only online store you'll ever need. Last week, the company announced a new partnership with the Borders chain of book stores, whose online shop it already runs. You can buy your books, CDs, and DVDs online at Amazon and pick them up at your local Borders franchise, thus avoiding the shipping charges and delay. This is a boon to consumers who need something at the last minute for the holidays, or who just can't wait. CNET covers the announcement. In other Amazon news, the company has released the results of a survey of early customer holiday spending patterns. Top-selling categories include cell phones and DVDs, both players and films. Most buyers also stated the obvious: they're looking for bargains this year.CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1017-975592.html
Survey: http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=AMZN&script=410&item_id=360225
Giving to charity through Web sites may not be something you do often, but charities are beginning to notice that the Web is a way to attract funds from donors who aren't on their mailing lists or even on their radar. The reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks turned online giving into an integral aspect of philanthropy whose importance has only grown since. This Wired article gives the details on how much money is going to good causes through the Net.
http://wired.com/news/holidays/0,1882,56529,00.html
Scientific American's Top Gifts List
Time flies whether you're having fun or not, and the Season of Getting is upon us again. Scientific American offers a number of links to really great gifts. Does somebody in your life deserve a lump of coal? Cool, this list has you covered. A mere $22 buys you one dredged up from the Titanic. The power to control all televisions can be strapped to your wrist for a mere $40. If you'd like to open your wallet a bit wider, click on the link for a 16"-by-20" autographed copy of Neil Armstrong, reflected in Buzz Aldrin's faceplate on the moon. Yours for only $300 to $460, depending on whether or not you want it framed.http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?&articleID=00062C10-684A-1DDE-A838809EC588F2D7
When the Web exploded on the scene, many analysts and hopeful writers felt that hypertext was going to remake fiction, as well as business and everything else. However, no novel literary form of hypertext fiction has really affected many readers. In this thought-provoking fiction, Richard Powers imagines a new way of storytelling that takes full advantage of e-mail and the Net's non-stop activity. Your hand won't leave your scroll wheel. Read it quickly; it won't be at Salon forever.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/11/28/literary/index.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Proposed Humanitarian Software License
A new type of software license will legally prohibit programs distributed under its terms from censoring or spying on users. The license was devised by a hacking group called Hacktivismo, which is quite upfront about the political nature of its document. The Hacktivismo team wanted to create a license that would respect privacy, free expression, free association, and other human rights. Hacktivismo calls the new license "enhanced-source" to differentiate it from the more common open-source licenses. The Web page has extensive information about the license and its philosophical origins.http://www.hacktivismo.com/news/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=17
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Segway Human Transporter
Summerland
Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters
The Ultimate Cyberpunk
PHP CookbookSURFING SITES
Ever wanted to go just a little over the edge to catch a really brilliant photograph? If so, kite aerial photography may be for you. Charles Benton's Web site documents his growing fascination with the hobby and displays many of the photographs he's taken with his kites. You get a bird's eye view of the world and of the San Franciso Bay area in particular. The oldest aerial photograph is a view of Boston taken by James Wallace Black in 1860. Aerial photography, from balloons, was a reconnaissance technique used during the US Civil War. Benton's images are more civilian in nature and cover the University of California at Berkeley, parkland, lighthouses, Hawaii, and France. The overhead shots of chateaux surrounded by sunflower fields are especially arresting. Apart from the gallery you'll find discussion forums, detailed equipment information, and wind reports.http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/kaptoc.html
Obscure Video of Unusual Moments
What comes to mind when you think of Orson Welles? The classic cuckoo clock ad-lib in "The Third Man"? Or perhaps his masterly portrayal of the tortured Charles Foster Kane? Well, watch the outtakes from one commercial he did for Paul Masson wine and we guarantee that you'll never see the great man in the same light again. Who knows how many bottles of the stuff he put away before filming began, but he's completely wasted and can barely speak his lines. At least he can remember them, though, which is more than can be said for Anna Nicole Smith in the movie outtakes on offer; criminally talentless at the best of times, we see her here gibbering a "cavalcade of unintelligible stonedness" that would shame a porn star. As well as footage the celebrities would want buried, you can also watch videos of some hilarious also-rans. Don't miss Elton and Betty White. Elton is a young Isaac Hayes clone in a posing-pouch, and his rendition of "I'm in Love With Your Behind" - a touching tribute to his 70-year-old wife's gold-bikini-clad butt - is sheer genius.http://www.viceland.com/issues/v9n4/htdocs/touching.php
Remember What You Used to Believe?
With Santas adorning every street corner, now seems an appropriate time to talk about childhood misbeliefs - things you stalwartly believed when you were little, but eventually discarded from your internal catalogue of facts. Here's an example that it seems many folks shared: when you swallow bubble gum, it sticks to your innards. The I Used to Believe site categorizes thousands of submitted childhood beliefs and solicits your own memories. Go and read over them to remember blissful innocence or contribute yours.http://www.iusedtobelieve.com/
The Transformation of Franke Stine
Viewed with the latest Mozilla build, this site loads really quickly - much faster than when viewed with Microsoft's browser. And it is one weird place. A lot of time and effort was clearly put into development of this satirical rendering of a transformed - by plastic surgery and otherwise - Indonesian woman. An entrancing tale of success is presented here, in which a hideous brown-skinned foreigner moves to the US, and after radical plastic surgery, blossoms within mere weeks into an international supermodel, recording artist, and George Bush's special confidante. Follow the links, and things get ever weirder. Many lead to everyday, garden-variety leftist anti-US policy stuff, but others lead to some really imaginative material. This is worth a visit for the photowork alone; Franke Stine is an interesting piece of work.http://www.frankestine.com/home.html
Vice Admiral Lord Nelson's Home Page
The 1805 Club is dedicated to memorials to and the memory of the Royal Navy's most famous admiral, Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson KB, the victor of Trafalgar in, appropriately, 1805. The club let Nelson "create" this site "in his own words." The vice admiral led an eventful and nearly unbelievably action-filled life, both at sea and ashore. "He" covers the outline here, sticking to the basic facts, and leaving the analysis to others (there are ample links). There's a section covering his wife Emma and daughter Horatia that includes their letters to each other. It also shows Nelson as a thoroughly modern guy well aware of e-mail.http://www.admiralnelson.org/
Encyclopedia Titanica won't settle any arguments about the Titanic tragedy, but its claim of factual comprehensiveness is hard to refute. Our reviewer couldn't find a set of original builder's plans, although they may be here but well hidden. The main emphasis is on the people, with biographies of passengers and crew, from the captain and the tycoons to the lowliest steerage passenger and stoker. Along with a mass of well organized and easy-to-access factual material, the site supports several active discussion boards, where you can argue your theories or ask and get answers to the most arcane Titanic-related questions. Links and discussion boards are also devoted to other maritime disasters of the era, including the Empress of Ireland collision.
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/
Office Politics, the online game, has addictive potential. It's like an ongoing Dilbert cartoon, except that it's interactive and you have an opportunity to shed the cubicle and become a pointy-haired manager. Play it right, and you could end up as CEO. You can even win prizes, as if the sheer exhilaration isn't enough - but you must be registered to win, and you must be of legal drinking age, whatever that means. Registered or not, you can still play. Among the interesting dilemmas presented: You overhear the PR lady refer to the boss as a "moron". Do you leak it? The site notes that the past two Office Politics CEOs have been women and suggests women have an inborn natural talent for this kind of thing. We'd agree. This is an interesting simulation of real-world life; particularly useful for teens, students, and anybody who has yet to experience being stabbed in the back or bit on the butt.
http://www.officepolitics.com/index1.html
If you know someone who has been arrested in Tulsa County, Okla., you'll be able to monitor his progress through the court and prison system. The county's Inmate Center lets you learn the name of his judge, details of his offense, his cell number, and his bail amount. You can even view his mug shot. Once you read the map with the location of the county clerk's office, you can show up with bail, but be sure you also peruse the intriguing visiting rules, which stipulate that visits may not be made to multiple family members and that visitors with infants may take two diapers with them but all items will be searched prior to admittance to the visitation area (you have to be sorry for the prison guard with that job). Most importantly, visitors need to avoid provocative clothing such as spandex, tank tops, body suits, mesh material, and dresses more than three inches above the knee. Fortunately, most of Britney Spears's relatives are in Louisiana.
http://www.inmatecenter.com/
Since Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908, American culture has been obsessed with the car. Can you imagine the US without Route 66, drive-in movies, and drive-through burger joints? International Signs Online takes advantage of the passion, grown global, and provides links to a variety of sources that catalogue the signs passed by drivers of cars in America, be they road signs, advertising, or commercial marquees. For example, the American Highway Project hosts images of Route 66 signs. In addition, you can browse related links to early American tavern signs, Time Square Signs, and the Museum of Neon Art (not surprisingly based in Los Angeles). You can also check out the checkered past of the famous white Hollywood sign and laugh over sign humor, which ranges from simple spelling mistakes to this trespass warning: "No trespassing, violators will be shot, survivors will be shot again."
http://www.intlsigns.com/world/history/
Car Paints, Modern and Historical
The AutoColorLibrary is a complete source of automotive color standards. There are thousands of original paint manufacturer's color chip cards and standards dating back to before 1920.The cards are only as good as the color accuracy of your monitor, but in most cases a selection should be possible. The all-important factory paint codes can then be cross-referenced to the paint specifications for most domestic and imported automobiles. Using the factory standards and formulas, any color in the AutoColorLibrary can be reproduced in modern PPG urethane automotive finishes as well as in acrylic lacquer. So don't worry about that ding your kid just put in the '66 Mustang. Find the color and formula here and repair it as good as new.http://www.autocolorlibrary.com/
Buy a Pizza for the Israeli Army
PizzaIDF.org is such a strange concept that this review began with an extensive search of myth and hoax databases. This site is for real. For a reasonable price, anyone can send a kosher pizza and a bottle of soda to an active service Israeli army unit. Donations are sized for patrols (five soldiers), sections (ten), platoons (30), and companies (90). A personal message can accompany your gift if you wish. There are also options for other treats, and a link to BurgerIDF.org where you can order burgers. Your reward is reading the thank you letters and viewing the delivery photos. Most soldiers appreciate the gift, but at least one company commander we know of tossed his gift burgers in the trash because of his pride in Israeli self-sufficiency.http://pizzaidf.org/
Soundboarded Celebrity Prank Phone Calls
At Celebrity Prank Phone Calls, you can listen in on prank calls, make up new pranks, maybe even earn money - though that's likely yet another prank. In any event, soundboards - collections of snippets of sounds take from real-time media - are jumping in popularity right now. You can download them, push the words and phrases around, and have almost anyone say almost anything. It's kind of eerie. A few of the possibilities of this technology are demonstrated here, wherein unsuspecting telephone callers meet programmed soundboarded voices. Not surprisingly, it's radio jocks who are pushing the tech out. Hey, everyone needs ratings.http://www.ebaumsworld.com/morepranks.shtml
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
We found this cooking technique too late to have you try it out on any US Thanksgiving turkeys, but maybe give it a go on Christmas or any other time you cook a bird. It'll work just fine on a run-of-the-mill roast chicken dinner, but you may prefer trying this out in a more formal setting.http://forums.egullet.com/ibf/index.php?act=ST&f=13&t=13189
The Museum of Hoaxes is a museum for our times. It's all too easy to make a photo in this digital era. Take the test and be surprised about how hard it is to reach the second level; some things that look like hoaxes are real and that's just the point. Great for messing with a friend's mind.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/tests/hoaxphototest.html
Are you a blog addict? Need another Web site that caters to your fetish? Just when you thought there couldn't possibly be any more blogger sites, along comes another claiming that "whatever your taste, interest and culture - there's bound to be a blog out there written by a person just like you." If that's appealing, Blogwise is worth a visit. Otherwise, start your own....
http://www.blogwise.com/
Your Educational Ticket to Roadside Crafts and Slasher Films
Ever wanted to do more to your Christmas tree with a chainsaw than cut it down? The Wisconsin School of Chainsaw Carving may be just the ticket. You will learn to bring your attempts at chainsaw carving from "crude art form to one of a refined piece of art" in that killing-a-fly-with-a-sledgehammer sort of way.http://www.chainsawcarvingschool.com/
Here we found 14 prime examples of Chinglish, a generic term for the instructions and ads that have made their way to English from our friends in the Far East.
http://www.silverladder.com/literature/chinglish/
Appropriately, OnlineNewspapers.com is subtitled "Thousands of world newspapers at your fingertips." That's exactly what you'll find in this resource provided by Australia's Web Wombat. Search for the smallest of community newspapers to the giant conglomerates.
http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/
This site allows you to create 1,152 different types of fart if we've done our math right. You can even e-mail them, perhaps to your spouse's boss; we did. Check out the really bad, embarrassingly long, death-like, wet fart.
http://www.createafart.com/
SOFTWARE
After an aborted 1.2.0 release - it had a serious security bug - Mozilla is back with 1.2.1. Major new features include Type Ahead Find, which lets you quickly find specific links or any text for that matter, on a page. Another new feature uses browser idle time to download or pre-fetch documents that the user might visit in the near future, speeding up the browsing experience. Web sites can give pre-fetching hints to the browser using the <link> tag. The Mail application has new, after-the-fact filtering capability. Finally, there are also improvements in tabbed browsing, keyboard navigation, and other user interface issues. Full details can be read in the release notes. If you're running Mozilla you should be running this.Release notes: http://mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.2.1/
Download: http://mozilla.org/releases/
PGP Corporation has released version 8.0 of the popular PGP commercial encryption software for Windows and Mac OS X. Most of our long-time readers are probably familiar with the storied history of this program, which gained new life under PGP Corp. after being abandoned by a previous owner. This major release provides a plethora of new interface and functionality enhancements, particularly in interfacing with various other technologies and standards. With this release, PGP Corp. has also announced that the PGP source code is available for perusal, although subject to pretty restrictive license terms. Users can inspect the code so that they trust it - no bugs or backdoors - but they can't resell it or rip it off. The personal version of PGP is only $39 through Jan. 15.
PGP 8.0 PR: http://www.pgp.com/display.php?pageID=84 Peer Review Peer Review
Code: http://www.pgp.com/display.php?pageID=76
While MySQL may be more popular among the inexpensive or free databases in use on the Web, PostgresSQL is rapidly gaining converts based on its price (free) and advanced feature set. The open source database boasts about its security, reliability, scalability, and support for numerous enterprise-class features. If you need to do something more sophisticated then a simple Web back end, something for which you might send thousands of dollars worth of licensing fees to Oracle, then you should consider PostgresSQL. The Web site has many details, including information about the latest changes in 7.3.
PostgresSQL: http://www.us.postgresql.org/
Download: http://advocacy.postgresql.org/download/