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BREAKING SURF
Perhaps the most often cited motivation ascribed to the Bush administration in its push for war with Iraq is oil. This is wrong. The true motivation has its roots in the administration of the first President Bush, when a small group of hawkish advisors proposed a radical new geopolitical strategy based on the US's status as sole superpower. In a word, the strategy is all about pre-emption. The US would get involved in world trouble spots and actively go after regimes and organizations it had deemed a danger to the world order, whether or not they posed an imminent danger to the US. Now, this same group of advisors to the first Bush - Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - are pushing the administration of the second Bush to make Iraq the first test case of the new national strategy. The PBS series Frontline has a first rate explanation of this new policy and its history. You can watch the entire program and dive into the extensive supporting material on the Web. Quite simply, you cannot pretend to be an informed participant in the war debate without understanding this material.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/
The Feds' New Policy of Confiscating Offender Domain Names
The drug paraphernalia busts we write about below, and another case in which the US Justice Department shut down a Web site selling game-console mod chips under the DMCA, reveal a new policy on the part of US law enforcement to take over the domain names of offenders' Web sites. In both cases, the Justice Department has essentially taken control of the domains, hosting them on its own servers with messages to netsurfers that say that the department now has the domains on hold. As you may imagine, the tactic raises all sorts of legal issues, not least because the department obtains access to the logs of visitors to such sites. The logs can obviously reveal the customers who purchase what the authorities deem to be illegal merchandise. It's a sure bet that we can expect some monumental legal battles over this issue. CNET has the story.http://news.com.com/2100-1023-986225.html
Drug Paraphernalia Busts Shut Down Web Sites
The US Justice Department announced this week that it has charged 55 people with selling drug paraphernalia online. A little known federal law prohibits the sale of products mainly intended for use with illegal drugs. This includes such things as bongs, marijuana pipes, roach clips, miniature spoons, and scales. The Justice Department said it is obtaining court orders to shut down 11 Web sites that sell these items. Criticism is already flying thick and heavy as people question why the Justice Department is spending resources going after such comparatively minor targets when there are so many more pressing issues to deal with. Yahoo has the story.http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20030225/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/drug_paraphernalia
Willingly, eBay Spreads for Law Enforcement
Last week, Joseph Sullivan, director of eBay's enforcement and compliance department, spoke to law enforcement officers gathered at Cyber Crime 2003 and practically begged them to ask the company for information about any of its users. We'll tell you anything you want to know, he told them, and without any need for formal requests or court orders. Although the conference was closed to the press, Haaretz obtained a tape of the lecture and prepared this story based on its contents. eBay receives about 200 requests for personal information each month. The extent of the information it provides at the drop of an officer's hat is breathtaking, amounting to a complete record of everything a user has ever done at the site, dating back to 1995. Nimrod Kozlovski, of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, heard the presentation and says that eBay's stance far exceeds anything necessary or appropriate. We can understand eBay's drive to banish hot goods and illegal practices but the company's willingness to ride roughshod over users' privacy concerns without due process is disgusting and enough to make us swear off auction sites - well, eBay's at least.http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=264863
The Dirt Behind the Loebner Prize
The Loebner Prize is a notorious modern instantiation of the famous Turing Test for artificial intelligence (AI). Hugh Loebner himself is a bon vivant, a lover of wine, women, and song, and by all accounts a weird guy who is utterly impossible to work with. Therein lies the story behind the prize and the many people who would like to see it go away, or at least away from them. For example, Loebner's rather fast and loose play with the rules of his competition has raised the hackles of the AI academic community, which seems to regard the prize as not only irrelevant to their field but in some instances even dangerous. This Salon story - the first part of two - is generally critical of academicians, arguing that AI research hasn't produced much in the way of results. A silly feud between the acknowledged dean of modern AI, Marvin Minsky, and Loebner only adds fuel to the fire. If anything can be called an entertaining academic soap opera, this is surely it.Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/26/loebner_part_one/index.html
Loebner Prize: http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html
Turing Test: http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html
Peppercoin Gambles on Micropayments
The problem of micropayments has thwarted many an online entrepreneur's dream. Because the financial institutions that issue credit cards charge a minimum fee per transaction, small payments are losing propositions for merchants. Charging 50 cents for a music download doesn't make sense if the merchant has to pay a 25-cent fee to process the payment, and netsurfers don't like buying monthly or annual subscriptions. MIT professors Ron Rivest and Silvio Micali have formed Peppercoin, a company with a clever statistical way around the micropayment dilemma. Under the scheme, consumers and merchants use e-payment tokens to settle low-value transactions. Peppercoin computers use statistical algorithms to clump merchant payments, thus reducing transaction costs to a bearable relative level. This isn't the first time someone has tried to scale the micropayment mountain, but maybe it will work. The Boston Globe and red Herring have more.PepperCoin: http://www.peppercoin.com/
Globe: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/048/business/Solving_the_problem_of_micropayments+.shtml
Red Herring: http://www.redherring.com/investor/2002/11/micropayments-110502.html
Bank ATM Security Questionable at Best
And you thought remembering your PIN was the only problem you'd have with your bank card.... Cryptographic researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered how bank customer PINs can be easily revealed to a bank insider. The researchers are defense witnesses for a couple who are being sued by Citibank in South Africa. Citibank acquired a court order that requires the witnesses, in the UK, to keep quiet about all of this, even though the group has already published research papers on it. Ross Anderson, one of those researchers, says on his Web page, "I hope that no English court would go so far as to censor already published material. However, one just can't tell these days...." Well, it turns out the court did go that far. Anderson has the published vulnerabilities at his Web site, as well as PDFs of the relevant legal documents. Anderson suspects that thievery by this method is more prevalent than banks admit. CNET has more.Anderson: http://cryptome.org/pacc.htm
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-985545.html
Social Hack Compromises AOL Customer Info
Merlin, AOL's latest greatest customer database application, has been cracked even though it is restricted to AOL's internal network and is not accessible from the Net. Wired reports that hackers sent Trojan horse apps to AOL employees through AIM or uploaded them to an AOL file library. Once in place, a Trojan horse app allowed a hacker to reach the Merlin database via Internet relay chat, but a hacker still needed a combination of four IDs and passwords to get in. It seems that pretending to have had jaw surgery can get you pretty far.... Wired has a short article describing this and other exploits effectively deployed against AOL. Have you priced ISPs lately?http://wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57753,00.html
Dutch Site Set to Aid P2P File-Sharing
With Napster's demise, many predicted the eventual death of file-sharing services. Indeed, many of the peer-to-peer (P2P) successors, such as Morpheus and Kazaa, are being zealously pursued through legal avenues. P2P seems destined to survive, however - and certainly will if Pieter Plass has anything to say about it. He has set up the Honest Thief to help P2P companies set up shop in his native Netherlands, where courts have ruled that file-sharing services like Kazaa have a legal right to exist. File-sharing enablers and ISPs cannot be held responsible in the Netherlands for any copyright violations incurred by their users. Plass compares P2P software to photocopiers and other legal recording devices, the fruits of which may also be illegally distributed copyrighted material. His aptly named Web site provides a brief discussion of his view, links to a good number of file-sharing services, and, of course, a page that shows how P2P companies can benefit by working with him. Yahoo cribs a story on this from the Wall Street Journal.Honest Thief: http://www.thehonestthief.com/
Yahoo: http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/030221/72/382au.html
Universities Taking Steps to Block File-Sharing
University networks often bear heavy file-sharing traffic since students are often the most savvy users of peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, and the universities are understandably not all that fond of their role for reasons of law and bandwidth. Congress has begun urging schools to crack down on the problem. The besieged schools are looking for help, and the University of Wyoming has hired a company called Audible Magic as a mercenary sheriff. Audible Magic's technology monitors the files shared in P2P networks and can identify copyrighted materials. So far, the university is simply monitoring traffic, but blocking files is the ultimate goal. The privacy implications are vast and not really either Audible Magic's or the university's concern, but the ability to examine every bit may be a lawyer's dream and a user's nightmare. Check it out at CNET.CNET 1: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-985027.html
CNET 2: http://news.com.com/2100-1028-986143.html
How Piracy in China Alters the Music Industry
Piracy has turned the music business in China upside down. In what may hint at the future of the music industry, Chinese music companies and performers no longer receive the bulk of their income from album sales. Piracy, whether through cheap CDs or free downloads, means that music itself generates little income for either performers or music labels. Instead of promoting albums with concerts, advertising, etc., Chinese pop stars are using songs to promote themselves. The music companies find themselves adopting the role of agent and now manage the talent and share in the revenue that performers bring in through endorsements and paid events. The performer becomes the brand or product that people are willing to pay for, not the music. If these consequences hold outside of China, it looks like piracy, ironically, will expand the culture of celebrity. Talk about the unexpected consequences of file sharing.... The International Herald Tribune has the story.http://www.iht.com/articles/87521.html
Google Lawyers Don't Like the Verbing of Google
Paul McFedries runs the Word Spy, a neat site "devoted to recently coined words and phrases, old words that are being used in new ways, and existing words that have enjoyed a recent renaissance" (see NSD 7.21 for our review). One such word is "google" as a verb, a term that is increasingly used to mean "to search for information on the Web". McFedries wrote up this definition of "google" based on such common usage. Shortly thereafter, Paul got a letter from Google's lawyers, who assert that the definition violates Google's trademark. Paul gets some advice about this from Frank Abate, who used to edit the "New Oxford American Dictionary". The moral of the story? If you're successful enough, you'll be co-opted by the language. Still, to keep a trademark, a company must by law defend it. Just ask Bayer (Aspirin), Xerox, and Kimberly-Clark (Kleenex).Word Spy: http://www.wordspy.com/words/google.asp
NSD 7.21: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v07/nsd.07.21.html#BEZ4
McFedries: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0302D&L=ads-l&P=R2450
Abate: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0302D&L=ads-l&P=R2823
Battling the Web Spiders and Bots
Mark Pilgrim has declared war on Web-crawling spiders and bots, which he says waste his bandwidth and pay no attention to the so-called Robot Exclusion Protocol. Pilgrim describes the anti-bot crusade in his popular "dive into mark" blog. He makes a good case for cutting off access to programs and organizations that do not follow bot standards and provides examples of such egregious behavior. His blog entry is filled with examples of how he specifically blocks bots, and also contains numerous links to modern anti-bot resources. Anybody who runs a Web site and is concerned about bandwidth will find this an indispensable resource.Pilgrim: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/02/26/
Robot Exclusion Protocol: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html
Man vs. machine, again? In a very interesting Opinion Journal piece, Garry Kasparov writes of his recent match with Deep Junior, which ended in a 3-3 tie. What makes the piece worth reading is Kasparov's attack on IBM and its failure to allow anyone access to Deep Blue, its legendary computer chess champion. You get the feeling that Kasparov plays computers for the research value. You also get the feeling he's a little peeved at losing to Deep Blue. Kasparov turns chess and computers into an area of inquiry that might reveal much about how people think; it makes you want to play a game against your own computer.
Opinion Journal: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003081
Kasparov: http://www.kasparov.com/
We all know that the Nigerian 419 scam spam is annoying, but in at least one instance it has led to murder. Nope, it wasn't some hapless victim who was killed, it was a Nigerian diplomat in the Czech Republic. Apparently, a 72-year-old man fell victim to the scam and had his bank account drained after he gave his account details to a huckster (there's a word you don't see often anymore) posing as a Nigerian official. After a year of unsuccessful attempts to get his money back through the Nigerian embassy in Prague, the Czech man apparently lost it. At the embassy, he shot and killed a diplomat and wounded a receptionist. Wired has a short story. If you ever feel the need to reply to those Nigerian scam e-mails, try the automated Business Proposal Reply Generator (BPRG).
Wired: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,57760,00.html
BPRG: http://www.flooble.com/fun/reply.php
Amazon Obtains Patent on Discussion Boards Linked to Merchandise
The mind boggles. Amazon has just obtained a patent on a method of providing an online discussion associated with an item for sale. Amazon applied for the patent back in 1999, a date by which there should be plenty of prior art to invalidate any such application. The issue of software patents has been controversial for years as many companies obtain patents on seemingly trivial and obvious methods, methods which often do have prior art. To many people, this shows that the software patent process in the US is quite broken. Slashdot has the story, a link to the actual patent, and the broadly incredulous reaction of the tech community.http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/26/1314255.shtml
Microsoft Releases New Interactive Chatware for XP
Coming soon, to a computer near you - if it runs Windows XP, that is - is new instant messaging software from Microsoft. The software, Three Degrees, is aimed squarely at 13-24-year-olds and will allow up to ten users to form a peer-to-peer social group to chat, play music, and share pictures. There's no actual file swapping involved, so it neatly sidesteps piracy concerns, but it will be interesting to see whether and how this Net-savvy generation adopts the application. Although Microsoft seems to be playing up the fun aspect of this software, CNET points out that a logical next step is to market it for collaborations within corporate work groups.Three Degrees: http://www.threedegrees.com/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-984816.html
In last week's NSD 9.07, we had news of Overture's planned purchase of AltaVista. This week, we can tell that Overture has also acquired the online business concerns of the Norwegian firm of Fast - mainly its outstanding search technology, which we've always considered a bona fide rival of Google. (Fast's search engine is called All the Web.) Where is Overture going with all this? Well, it seems obvious that the company plans to steam into the search engine business as an expansion from its search engine placement business, but nobody is saying exactly what's up. CNET and Search Engine Watch take a stab at analysis,
NSD 9.07: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.07.html#BS15
All The Web: http://www.alltheweb.com/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1024-986178.html
Search Engine Watch: http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/03/02-fast.html
ONLINE CULTURE
With success and market domination comes a healthy dose of paranoia. With the possible exception of Microsoft, Google is clearly the most powerful entity on the Internet. While Google's benevolent dominance has so far brought numerous benefits to the Net community as a whole, it places the company under increased scrutiny. Great power can be greatly abused. So it is that Google Watch has put together this nine-point list of reasons why you should actually fear Google. Some of these points are silly, but others do give one pause. Google's data retention policy (everything, forever) and its control over channeling Web traffic are genuine causes for concern. Consider this list fodder for a healthy sense of mild paranoia.http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html
Code HTML as We Say, Not as We Do
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) sets HTML standards for the world to follow, at least in principle. Few browsers and Web page authoring apps bother to mind them. Failure to adhere to standards is the primary reason why your browser sometimes displays atrociously rendered Web pages or illegible fonts within them. Marko Karppinen, a Finnish Web designer, has tested the Web sites of W3C members, and has put a positive spin on the results: compliance with standards is up 76% from last year. Note, however, that that gain is reflected in an increase in percentage of member sites in compliance from 4.6% to 6.5%. Up like a rocket, indeed! CNET has a few more details.Karppinen: http://www.markokarppinen.com/20030224.html
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1032-985941.html
The Visual Neighborhood of Blogs
A number of Web sites seek to measure and display the relationships between blogs. None of them does it quite as elegantly as Visual Neighborhood, a site that produces dynamic graphs of blog social networks. Enter the URL of a blog and in short order you'll get a diagram showing that blog in the center of a universe of related blogs. Simple, elegant, and a great tool to explore the blogosphere.http://blogstreet.com/visualneighborhood.html
Word Bursts Track the Blog Collective Mind
Daypop, a blog search engine, defines word bursts as the "heightened usage of certain words in blogs within the last couple days." Daypop is offering a list of these word bursts. The bursts indicate what bloggers are occupied and pre-occupied with at the moment. Several sites track what bloggers are linking to, but only Daypop has this clever statistical method of tracking what they are writing about. Daypop does not disclose the algorithm it uses to generate its list, but it could use a little tweaking. The top phrases make sense, but the listing also includes some innocuous words that bloggers just like to use frequently, but which don't indicate any specific popular topic.http://www.daypop.com/burst/
Spam Wars: Paying People to Relay Spam
An alarming report from Tufts University says that spammers are now paying students for access to their Net connections, through which the spammers send their spam. It seems there are people out there - we'll charitably call them ignorant - who are willing to take a measly $20 per month from spammers and in return install a mail-relay program on their computer. The spammers then route their mail through that program, taking advantage of the school's high-bandwidth connections and ruining its good name online. Needless to say, Tufts is spending serious resources to stop the practice and educate its users. The story notes that the students themselves found the pay-to-relay offer from spammers. This payola is a relatively new phenomenon in the US, but it apparently has been seen in Israel before. Any bets on how long it will take for more spammers to exploit this pay-to-relay idea? Network World has more.http://www.idg.net/ic_1186045_9677_1-5041.html
Stu Sjouwerman coins the term "spam driving" in this brief Network World article about spammers' tricks. The term is a take-off on "war driving", which is driving around trying to find wireless networks to connect to. In spam driving, a spammer does the same thing, but when he finds an unsecured wireless network - not hard to do - he blasts millions of spam messages through the hapless Net connection. The article also talks about spammers who bribe ISPs to gain Net access for a few minutes in order to send out spam, in one instance by running a cable directly out the ISP's back door into a computer-equipped van. Almost a cinematic image, isn't it?
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0224spammerside.html
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Lost in a Good Book: A Thursday Next Novel
The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1
Linux Server HacksSURFING SITES
A family in Nacogdoches, Tex. has put online a photo gallery of debris from the recent Space Shuttle accident. If "tiles" brings up images of linoleum in your head, this is the place to get straightened out. There are a couple of striking things about the photos. The sheer magnitude of the debris is overwhelming. Many of the pictures have people in them, probably for their own posterity, but the folks in question provide admirable scale. Once you get over how large the splayed wreckage is, the number of paparazzi is amazing. In many of the photos of even debris only a foot across, you can see two or three other eager photogs snapping away in the background.http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=6&uid=904355
Every day brings new and, sometimes, maybe even most times, either useless or genuinely dangerous security measures. There seem to be no limits to how ridiculous some people are willing to be as they pretend to protect us. Privacy International, a UK-based organization, is soliciting entries for its Stupidest Security Competition: "Nominations should be as specific as possible, mentioning the name of the guilty parties, and wherever possible, including evidence and references. Any government or private sector initiative or action can be nominated. Legislation and technology can also be nominated. The judges welcome nominations in the form of narratives and anecdotes. The competition is open to anyone." If you wish to enter, submit your evidence by Mar. 15. Privacy International will announce the "winners" at the 13th Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in New York, April 3.
http://www.privacyinternational.org/activities/stupidsecurity/
The Library of Congress, renowned for its oral history archives, is making a special effort to collect the oral histories of people, both military and civilian, who have fought in the US's wars in the 20th century. The library seeks ordinary people, the kind much professional history has ignored until recently. These are the folks who paid with blood and pain, and hearing them lets us, today, make far more intelligent choices about conflict. Their stories are as important as those of the leaders, maybe more so. The site has some clips from about a dozen already collected histories (the full interviews can run up to 90 minutes) plus directions on doing oral histories for donation to the Library of Congress or a local archive affiliated with the Veteran History Project. The forms are all available at this Web page, as are comprehensive instructions. The sample histories are inspiring. One tip: The QuickTime video clips can be huge, over 75 MB; stick to the RealPlayer versions if they work on your machine. Students: we bet you can wrangle an A from a teacher for doing one of these.
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/vets/
Tim Fay is a man on a mission. He's put a lot of time, money, and webspace into an effort to dilute and eventually overturn ethnic and sex-based affirmative action policies in the US. More to the point, he's an eloquent writer, as a visit to this site will attest. With slogans such as "Race has no place in America", and a stated goal to promote fair and equal treatment under the law without regard to race, sex, or other factors, Fay's broadsides against the systems presently in place are definitely worth a look. From his perspective, racial and sex discrimination is alive and thriving in the US, and it's likely that he's absolutely correct. If you "celebrate diversity" - a popular term these days - then you focus not upon your common humanity, but upon the differences like skin tone or preferred language. Rather than celebrating diversity, which allows us to push rewards toward some but not toward others, perhaps we should grow up. It may be time to celebrate commonality. If not now, when?
http://www.adversity.net/
Odd Groceries from Near and Far
Customer research consultant Steve Portigal has some extraordinary stuff in his virtual Foreign Groceries Museum. Japanese snacks and other products tend to feature heavily here, not only for their Engrish appeal (Hello Kitty douche, anyone?), but also for their sheer beauty. There's definitely a distinctive and slick anime aesthetic in some of the packaging. But what is probably best about this site is that it satisfies a curiosity you probably didn't know you had about what different products are available throughout the world, and how they are marketed and packaged. Did you know for example that the British could buy lollipops called Spice Girls Suckers? Or that some porn films are packaged less provocatively than said item? The only things missing here are a search engine and a warning that you'll spend way too much time browsing through.http://www.portigal.com/Museum.htm
The Best in Grand Flaming Marshmallow Balrogs
Ain't It Cool has anointed the winner of its Grand Flaming Marshmallow Balrog Contest! Those who've seen Gandalf's spectacular battle with this fiery demon in the mines of Moria must surely agree that it is a beast particularly suited to rendering in sugar confection and setting alight. Seventy-eight entrants worldwide answered this call, and Ain't It Cool has posted the top five on the site. The submissions were judged on three categories - presentation, sculpting, and flammability - and the five examples on display are well worthy of the shortlist. The winner is a genuine work of art and a testament to what can be achieved with chicken wire, assorted marshmallows, a vat of molten marshmallow stew, a bit of time, and a source of flame. We recommend you just enjoy the work of others rather than try it at home yourself.http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=14357
Engrish "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" Captions
The Engrish The Two Towers Captions site once displayed screen captures of Asian versions of "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers", subtitled in English. Why they would be subtitled in English is for greater minds to solve. The head of Warner Brothers' Anti-Piracy Internet Operations wrote to demand that the site remove copyrighted images from their site, so it did. The images are coffee-splutteringly hilarious. In one, Gimli the dwarf confronts a worg with the rallying cry of "Bring your pussy face to my ass," and in another an earnest Gollum states "No, I must do Sam." We remember neither line from the book or film. Why do we bring this up if Warner has pooped on this particular party and all you can see is their cease-and-desist letter? To tease? No. Thankfully and illegally, everything is preserved on a mirror site. Have a look before Warner gets there first.Engrish The Two Towers Captions: http://home.online.no/~gremmem/engrish_ttt_captions/
Mirror: http://public.www.planetmirror.com/pub/engrish/ttt_captions/
This site is a cop-out. It's way too easy to find wonderful candidates. The real challenge would be a "Best Manuals of 2002" site. It might not have any content at all, but that's just a simple user's opinion. Technical Standards, a documentation staffing and project company (its own description), started the Worst Manuals Contest last year. The current site has six full manuals in PDF format. The winner is an employee guide that should send every new hire screaming back out the door. To say it's illiterate is to insult the illiterate. It's nearly beyond belief. It has to be real, as someone trying to create a bad manual couldn't come anywhere close to this wonder. The site also offers two runners-up and three honorable mentions. Read 'em and weep.
http://www.tecstandards.com/2002winner.htm
If you ever decide to travel back in time to the 1800s and work as a fur-trading voyageur in the North American Northwest, first come to Northwest Journal to prepare. It provides every scrap of information you could possibly need. It can almost help you to paddle your own canoe. Fur-trading was a hard life made harder by the rules of the Hudson Bay Company and the North West Company, which decided on the clothes and social mores of the traders who worked for them in Canada, Europe, and even Hawaii. Northwest Journal offers discussions of the role of native women and their unapproved marriages to traders as country-wives, comments on bead designs, and instructions on how to make a birch-bark canoe, how to smith tin, and how to weave a voyageur's ornate belt. There's plenty here for educational purposes or for period re-enactors.
http://www.northwestjournal.ca/
The quaintly named International Bone Rollers' Guild tells us that dice were used during the Trojan War to keep spirits up between battles, and seeks to explain that ancient appeal. It presents instructions for how to play games with ordinary dice for families, in casinos, and to aid drinking games. There are even strategies for winning at crap games although we doubt that they guarantee winnings. You can also review the role of 30-sided dice in role-playing games, marvel at the fact that there are right and left-handed dice, or find out how to use dice to predict the future. The most intriguing segment is the essay on the history of dice which includes the gem of information that for centuries it was believed that dice did not have to be perfectly square because "the gods" would force the dice to land as they saw fit, regardless of any variations. Many a Dungeons and Dragons player could tell you they felt the same way.
http://members.aol.com/dicetalk/
Matthew McClintock will never have to worry about remembering what was in his home if he ever has to make any property insurance claims. He has photographs and descriptions of everything in his house for the world to see. Apparently this site is a test for Apache server configurations that's somehow gotten way out of control and taken on a life of its own. It's quite bizarre, seeing all (well, almost all) of a human's possessions compartmentalized and tagged to be placed online. McClintock helpfully places a link directly to his underwear drawer right on the first page. It's not really voyeurism if the object of your curiosity intends you to see it, is it?
http://mc.clintock.com/
In the days (and nights) of the digital age, love is big business. Those of us who are single have at least glanced at online dating services, if not subscribed. A few lucky would-be lovers have even found a soulmate through the World Wide Web. Another site hoping to bring love to the lovelorn is a gal's smorgasbord, "where every single man comes with a woman's stamp of approval." The ingenious concept certainly provides a refreshing twist to the throng of dating sites presently online. Friends, ex-lovers, former spouses, and siblings recommend the favorite men in their lives to potential suitors and provide all the nitty-gritty details. Those seeking love can learn the real deal about a man who piques their curiosity from someone who knows. Registration is free, but if you want more info on one of the many guys adorning this site, you'll have to cough up $20 a month. Love is big business. Even if you're not ready to buy love, the site is worth the visit for its kitschy entertainment value alone.
http://www.greatboyfriends.com/
Hey, you wanna pizza? Then you got some learning to do. You wanna nice pizza, you gotta know where to go. First, you gotta make some good dough. They're good at that, here. They got good dough; they show you how to make it on your own. If that's not enough to respect them, go away. They don't need you. Once you've made some good dough, you're gonna want to know how to invest it, to put it to its best use. There's help here, as well. They've got tricks, tips, and more tips. And links, more links than you knew. Some of us ended up marking the front door to the joint, just so we could find our way back without running down a lot of blind alleys.
http://www.pizzatherapy.com/
The Kentucky Horse Park and The International Museum of the Horse - which, oddly enough, doesn't seem to come in any language other than English - share a welcome page. However, there are quite a few interesting online exhibits available between them, including one at the museum's pages that focuses on the importance of the draft horse to early America and another on the Art of the Horse in Chinese History. If you're so inclined (and whipped on by a 12-year-old daughter), you can plan your next trip to the Kentucky Horse Park on
the site. http://www.imh.org/
Military.com's Obfuscated Information
In its three-year lifespan, Military.com has certainly grown. For the user, that means more resources. Unfortunately, the particular resource a visitor is looking for might not be readily apparent amid all of the chaos that is the variety of options now available on every page. The military-related news is up-to-date and prominently displayed, with a nice deployment ticker available on the front page. Around the fringes, however, it seems like Military.com's advertising opportunities may have taken priority over providing quality information. For example, the site's interest in partnerships seems to have prevented them from openly discussing either Shades of Green or Hale Koa on the Travel page. The Contact a Recruiter Now online form, however, is a good idea, capturing a potentially fleeting desire before the recruit has a chance to reload, as it were.Military.com: http://www.military.com/
Shades of Green: http://www.armymwr.com/shades/index.html
Hale Koa: http://www.halekoa.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
A chap named Scylla on the Straight Dope message board posted a story concerning a toy blimp he bought and played with at home. Sound simple? Nuh-uh. While the effluence of praise pouring over him is over the top, Scylla does tell a mean tale and is worth reading.http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=160851
It's not every year that a snowstorm dumps on Israel. This week, the country weathered a storm that even Canadians would call respectable. Jerusalem resident Jacob Richman spent a few hours taking pictures of the aftermath. Here they are.
http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/jerusalem/jer049.htm
Who Knows Michael Jackson's Nose?
The King of Pop and Master of Infamy has gone through some pretty radical changes over the years. Whether you believe it's plastic surgery gone horribly wrong or a bizarre skin condition, there's no disputing the changing face of Michael Jackson. But can you tell his nose from others?http://www.modestypanel.com/mjackson/
Write Your Own President Bush Speech
Just drag 'n' drop any of the 75 or so words and phrases into place and press play to hear Dubya deliver your speech. Grimly prophetic, pompously portentous, or complete gibberish - the choice is yours. We're not sure whether there's a serious point made here about sound-bite politics or whether it's just darned good fun.http://www.lemonbovril.co.uk/bushspeech/
"Oooh, you're so big and soft!" Is this an incredibly addictive meme, a conspiracy to wear out the space bar on your keyboard, or just a clever film advertisement?
http://www.tantricteddies.com/
It will soon be spring, when fantasy sports starts reeling in many sports fans' thoughts. Many are busy preparing for their drafts, researching cheat sheets and ranking players on the most esoteric scales. ESPN caters to this kind of fan, and offers the finest in fantasy sports.
http://games.espn.go.com/basschallenge/frontpage
Association of Professional Animal Waste Specialists is here to help. Members will scoop for you, and they even have a code of ethics, which means they won't drop a flaming paper bag of poop on your porch, ring your doorbell, and run away. Drop by and try the convenient Find-A-Scooper link.
http://www.apaws.org/
SOFTWARE
With the proliferation of blogs, webzines, and major media Web sites come tools for managing all those information feeds. NewsMonster is one such effort, an impressive and feature rich news aggregator and display manager. Basically, it lets you specify subscriptions to Web sites that support the now common RSS standards, and automatically updates and displays the content of all those news feeds. The program is platform-independent, relying on JavaScript and Java to do its job, though the developers recommend that you use it with the Mozilla browser for the best experience. If you find yourself reading numerous blogs and online zines, this may come in handy. The only ominous note is this bit of news in the documentation: "NewsMonster can't be fully uninstalled due to the limits of Java Web Start and Mozilla XPI installation technologies. It can however be disabled." If that doesn't put you off, NewsMonster is worth a try.http://www.newsmonster.org/
Honeyd is a flexible tool used to create virtual honeypots, computer systems designed to ensnare hackers in order to analyze their methods. The author of Honeyd is asking the computing community to help improve it by developing new features. You have until Mar. 14 to submit an entry; the best ones will win token prizes. The whole thing is mostly about getting the community to pitch in and improve an open-source system that contributes to understanding and protecting against hacker threats.
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/honeyd/challenge.html