BREAKING SURF
| Man Sues Penis-Enlargement Firms |
| Orkut: the Backlash |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Breakfast to Soap |
| Just You and Me, Car-Stuck Girl |
| Fuhrer or Faker? |
| Apple Parody |
| Movie Critic Consensus |
| Yeti Spring Training |
| Brush Up for Formula 1 |
| Classic Arcade Games - in Flash |
| Mozilla Project Releases Firefox 0.8, Thunderbird 0.5 |
| KDE 3.2: Latest Linux Desktop Environment |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
A love's not supposed to ask why Valentine's Day exists, but should curiosity get the better of you, you can get the facts at the History Channel. The true origin of the saint in whose name so many flowers give their all is murky. According to one legend, Valentine was a priest who defied Claudius II to marry young men whom the emperor thought would make better Roman soldiers if single. Another romantic story suggests that while awaiting execution, he may have written the jailer's daughter a letter signed "from your Valentine". Some think Feb. 14 marks his actual execution, while others believe it was a date of convenience, like so many others in the Catholic Church co-opted from another tradition. Pope Gelasius named Feb. 14 St. Valentine's Day in 498 CE, so the date at least has solid roots. In Great Britain, serious Valentine's Day celebrations began by the 17th century. By the end of the 18th century, printed cards conveyed sentimental messages between friends and lovers. Today, about a billion cards are purchased each year, a number second only to Christmas. Women buy the vast majority of cards. A Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day, Qi Qiao Jie, falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month in the Chinese calendar. On that day, young Chinese girls are supposed to demonstrate domestic arts and wish for a good husband: you know, the kind who won't forget the flowers and stuff come Feb. 14.History Channel: http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/valentine/main.html
Qi Qiao Jie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_Qiao_Jie
Well, OK, not everyone is enamored of Valentine's Day. There's the usual holiday argument that it's all about consumerism. Or the ever-popular curmudgeonly "single is good" sentiment. Or even the pragmatic "Here's the candy and the flowers, now get on your knees" approach. Whatever your anti-Valentine's sensibilities may be, you'll find the appropriate e-card here. Try not to traumatize too many people.
http://www.meish.org/vd/
It's been a long time since anybody thought of NASCAR as just a bunch of rednecks turning left - 15 minutes, at least. NASCAR is the most watched sport in North America, and the Daytona 500 is its biggest event. The Daytona 500 is often compared to the Super Bowl, though it kicks off the season rather than end it as the Super Bowl does for the NFL. Nevertheless, this is a huge event with huge amounts of money at stake, both in the purse and in the marketing of the race itself. High technology offers sophisticated data feeds for NASCAR junkies on the Net. Subscribe to NASCAR TrackPass and you can get real-time GPS car telemetry on your Windows PC, listen to audio from inside the cars, receive live leader-board scores, and watch tons of online video. ESPN has more conventional coverage.
NASCAR: http://www.nascar.com/
Daytona 500: http://www.daytona500.com/
ESPN: http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/index
The 2004 campaign for US president has been a watershed for the Internet's political influence. Even though Howard Dean's campaign is now sinking, he achieved his early prominence as much through online support as through traditional channels. This year a new kind of person is redefining American politics, a subset of the online community a new report calls the "online political citizens" (OPCs). Marketers call those who influence the purchasing or voting decisions of others "influentials". Everyone knows an influential - he or she is the person you bother about what kind of computer to buy. About 10% of Americans are influentials, but an astounding 69% of OPCs - a largely male, wealthy, and highly educated group - fit the category. The report goes into great detail, but the executive summary is all you need to read. Pay attention to what is left unsaid: the influentials in online politics are identical to those marketers want to meet and persuade. If there was any need to wonder whether or not we are citizens or consumers, this report should lay the distinction to rest.
http://www.ipdi.org/Influentials/Report.pdf
For Writing, Online Beats Schools
Learning by doing beats any other form of education, so it shouldn't surprise us that writing online fan fiction can help students acquire writing skills better than a conventional classroom. Technology Review's story of Heather Lawver shows how online fan communities provide safe havens for self-expression, places to find mentors, and appreciative audiences. Inspired by the wildly popular Harry Potter stories, Lawver now runs an e-zine, the Daily Prophet, which carries fan-fictional Hogwarts news from over 100 teenaged columnists. Fan sites maintain enthusiastic participation well beyond high school. Some teachers complain about the power of popular culture, but rules based in political correctness have often driven a stake through the heart of creativity and individuality. Children who don't want to be little conformists fare better in the more open environment of the Internet. While purists might wish for inspiration more literary than Harry Potter, its popularity makes it ideal for this kind of interaction. The problem for educators is that teens engrossed in the online community tend to give less in classrooms that seem stodgy and unrewarding by comparison. We have a lot to learn from this story, for educators, parents, school officials and kids themselves.http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_jenkins020604.asp
James A C Joyce has skewered bloggers big-time in a poisonous tirade on Kuro5hin. His rant accuses them of being pretentious twats who spew moronic twaddle and swarm in vast numbers after the same few boring topics, offering nothing new whatsoever about them. Through the widespread use of weblog features such as TrackBack, they have become the zebra mussels of the Internet, clogging Google's page rankings with their babbling and destroying the search engine's ability to deliver useful, blog-free results on any topic that bloggers have discussed. That's more or less the vituperative gist of it. Not surprisingly, Joyce's fulminations have provoked a vigorous response. Some rebuttals are the immature dismissals you'd expect, but a few stand out as thoughtful and entertaining. One of these is a considerate and informative point-by-point response that ends up clarifying things nicely. Another consists of clever and amusing lyrics modeled after Gilbert and Sullivan's "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General". Overall, the debate reflects well on this online forum and shows why places like it are so robust and lively.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/2/171117/8823
Parasites Exploiting MyDoom Infections
Every good worm deserves a parasite (we'll have to put that on a T-shirt). In a neat biological analogy, it appears that computers that have been infected by the now mostly contained MyDoom worm are being targeted by parasitic programs called Doomjuice and Deadhat. Doomjuice in particular is novel because in addition to directing a denial-of-service attack at Microsoft, it also deposits the source code of MyDoom on the victim's computer. There's some speculation that this is an attempt by the worm writer to either hide in a crowd or encourage the creation of other MyDoom variants. CNET has the story, while Symantec has details about Doomjuice.CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-7349-5156836.html
Symantec: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.hllw.doomjuice.b.html
Who writes all those worms and viruses that slither around the Net? We may not know the exact identities of a specific virus's author, but the culture of virus writers is not all that impenetrable. The New York Times has a major feature about the young men - and it is mostly young men - who make a hobby of writing clever code that can infect computers. Interestingly, most of the profiled virus writers have little desire to release their creations into the wild. They love getting credit for writing the programs but, on the whole, they don't want to damage the Internet they so love. It is the script kiddies and the occasional criminal, relatively unsophisticated users of automated virus-building kits, who take the blame for most of the egregious online infections. Take the time to browse this in-depth look at the motivations and methods of virus authors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/08/magazine/08WORMS.html
If you were to nominate 15 hackers for the Hacker Hall of Fame, who would you choose? Maybe you don't really know that many hackers, but some names are reasonably famous (Linus Torvalds, Steve Wozniak) or infamous (Kevin Mitnick). Then there are people who are famous in coder circles, but probably not that well known to the outside world (Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson), and others who are famous in very narrow niches indeed (John Draper). Then there are the guys who don't really belong on this list at all. But we'll let the Slashdot crowd clue you in to that angle. All in all, TLC has put together a decent gallery of historical hackers.
TLC: http://tlc.discovery.com/convergence/hackers/bio/bio.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/10/1451257
Who Pays for Denial-of-Service Bandwidth?
As you may have guessed, frequently it is the victims of a denial-of-service attack who get stuck with the bandwidth bill. Take, for example, the recent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks mentioned on Kuro5hin by a poster called "simul". He says DDoS attacks have cost him $17,000 in bandwidth costs over the past three years. His experience is not unique, we learn as we read the ensuing discussion. Other sysadmins and ISPs have also had to deal with this problem. While simul's financial woes earned him some sympathy, his cold response to the FBI, which is investigating the attacks, was more critically received. He told the FBI, "If you need any more information, we will provide it as required by law". This raised another important issue for the mostly laissez-faire sysadmins: just how much cooperation with law enforcement is appropriate? This is a thought-provoking discussion of interest to all Web site owners.http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/4/101948/6201
Two Seas, Two Feet, One Huge Software Company
Do you have too many digital photos? Microsoft has a research project that might just help you find that one picture you need. The company is sponsoring Andy Skurka's 7,700-mile hike across the US. Skurka plans to take a great many digital photos and record with GPS the location of each shot. He will then upload them to Microsoft's World Wide Media Exchange (WWMX) project for all of us to view. Microsoft's interest is in testing a new metadata file system that may appear in the next version of Windows, Longhorn. No digital cameras are currently equipped with GPS capability, so Skurka has to log locations on his own, adding about an hour to an already tiring day. You can play with the software, but remember it is an alpha project and still buggy. Speaking of which, Skurka will be hiking through Minnesota during the height of mosquito season this summer. Whether he is going to have time to shoot pictures will depend on how much DEET he can carry. ExtremeTech has the details; whether Microsoft will pay for Skurka's repellant is unknown.Skurka: http://www.c2c-route.org/
WWMX: http://www.wwmx.org/
ExtremeTech: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1518543,00.asp
Nebula Award Pre-Nominees, and Notable SF of 2003
The Nebula Awards go to the authors of the best of the SF genre, and this year's ballot is packed with the great, the good, and the whatever. If you're into the genre, you may turn up some tantalizing material here since there are links to the full text of nominated stories. If SF isn't your usual bag - well, you might consider browsing through the available material just to see if it still lives down to your expectations. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), which hands out the awards, offers links to excerpts of nominated books as well as links for buying them. Locus offers a related but not identical recommended reading list focusing on the best in SF and Fantasy from 2003.SFWA: http://sfwa.org/awards/2004/nebprelim2003.html
Locus: http://www.locusmag.com/2004/Issues/02RecommendedReading.html
Despite the name, Fall Fashion Week takes place in February. This is the time of year when the top fashion designers in the world unveil their fall collections. Similar events will be taking place in Paris, Milan, London, and other fashion centers of the world. Meanwhile, New York City is beset with anorexic models sashaying their bony hips at ultra-hip runway shows. The next best thing to being there is to surf the Net, where not only do you get the eye candy in sharp digital photos but you can read up on some of the philosophy behind the fashion. Aside from Fall Fashion Week Web site - this year sponsored by Olympus - there is coverage from the New York Times, whose fashion editor, Cathy Horyn, narrates a decent Flash presentation of the latest creations. New York Metro has a busy Web site with plenty of reporting and photos, and Azcentral.com (of all places) has a nice selection of runway-show slide presentations, including many from last year.
Fall Fashion Week: http://www.olympusfashionweek.com/fall2004/intro.html
Times: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/fashion/shows/index.html
Metro: http://www.newyorkmetro.com/fashion/fashionshows/index.htm
Azcentral.com: http://www.azcentral.com/style/articles/slideshows-CR.html
Congress Testing Digital Postal-Mail System
Well publicized anthrax and ricin scares have spurred the US government to work on an all-digital postal-mail delivery system. Right now, all physical mail sent to Congress is irradiated to kill any potential biological contaminants before it is delivered. In a pilot project, mail is then digitally scanned and either burned to CD-ROMs for delivery to the Congressional offices or placed on a server so that it can be accessed via the Net. The offices of only 10 members of Congress were involved in the first trial phase of the program, and some dropped out, complaining about the awkwardness of reading the documents on a monitor. Given the vast expense of cleaning up a contaminated mailroom, estimated to be more than $60 million, the project will continue. It has so far only cost about $2 million. Internet News has more details.http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3311251
The Boobie That Ate the Super Bowl, Again
Nobody is letting Janet Jackson's Super Bowl expose lie flat. We're a bit tired of the whole titillating ordeal, but things continue to pop out all over the Web. There are blogs that tell you how to bake Janet Jackson cupcakes. You just knew there'd be a lawsuit somewhere, and the first one's been filed - a bank employee in Knoxville, Tenn. claims that Jackson's conduct caused viewers to suffer, among other ailments, "serious injury". Presumably, this involves the guys who, taken in by the erection ads, somehow impaled themselves, but details are sketchy. The Smoking Gun has the legal documents. Randy Cassingham of This Is True tosses his hat onto the nipple-ring with a Flash analysis of the event.Cupcakes: http://www.amateurgourmet.com/the_amateur_gourmet/2004/02/janet_jackson_b.html
Smoking Gun: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/janetsuit1.html
Cassingham: http://www.janetjacksonflash.com/
If any game has given first-person shooters like Doom or Quake a run for their money, it is the Unreal series. Ever since it arrived on the scene, the game has been one of the fan favorites on the frag circuit, pushing the boundaries of graphic technology no less than its more famous brethren. This demo is the latest iteration in the Unreal series; the actual Unreal Tournament 2004 is slated for release late this year. The demo is 209 MB in size and (re-)introduces a couple of new types of gameplay: onslaught mode and assault mode which has not been seen since the original Unreal Tournament.
http://www.unrealtournament.com/index.php
Voice over IP (VoIP) is gaining ground, and the unlikely testbed for this technology is the gaming community. Xbox and PlayStation 2 game consoles have sparked a new wave of VoIP, as gamers talk trash to one another. It's a big leap from this technology to widespread penetration of the home telephony market, but some analysts view it as a back-door approach to marketshare. In theory, as the seeds take root, VoIP can make the transition from niche to full-market player. At present, quality is the chokepoint, but that's not as big a deal for gamers, who are used to low-quality comms through software like TeamSpeak. VoIP already has a presence in the corporate market for internal phone systems, but as the technology matures, it seems likely to grow further. CNET has a great report.
TeamSpeak: http://www.teamspeak.org/
http://news.com.com/2100-7352_3-5154140.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Man Sues Penis-Enlargement Firms
It's about time. A lawsuit filed by Jeffery Horton seeks class-action status on behalf of about 1 million angst-ridden men (and possibly women) who bought penis-enlarging products and got no results. The lawsuit targets a suite of companies but alleges that one, TechniPak, is the center of a fraudulent penis-enlarging business. The TechniPak Web site reveals the company to be basically an order-fulfillment firm, one apparently used by an outfit called Leading Edge Marketing of British Columbia. You may have seen the Leading Edge TV infomercial hosted by none other than legendary porn star Ron Jeremy. According to the moribund AllAdvert Web site, Leading Edge apparently offered a 30% commission to sellers. Horton claims he ordered $160 worth of Leading Edge rub-on oil (that would work for us...) after learning about it in a spam e-mail. Understandably, he felt hosed when the promised benefit did not blossom. Legal experts will no doubt closely watch the lawsuit for signs of growth. The Denver Post broke the story.TechniPak: http://www.technipak.com/
Ron Jeremy: http://www.ronjeremy.com/
AllAdvert: http://www.alladvert.com/programs/leading-edge-marketing.html
Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~1938412,00.html
When Google released Orkut, the online social networking site created by one of their engineers in his spare time, the Net went a little nuts. In half a week, the site became the 772nd most visited site on the Net, far outperforming other social networking sites such as Friendster and Tribes. There's nothing like elitism to boost cachet. Despite Orkut's success, not everybody fell in love with it. Users who managed to wrangle invitations found a somewhat limited set of features, security problems, and draconian terms of service. Danah Boyd in her Apophenia weblog gives her take on the Orkut phenomenon, and more to the point, collects a large number of links to similar Orkut criticism across the Net. Worth reading. Wired adds a link-filled story on social network sites in general. Finally, you'll never be able to think of Orkut with a straight face after you find out about the tragic problem of orking.
Orkut: http://www.orkut.com/
Apophenia: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2004/01/index.html
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62070,00.html
Orking: http://www.monkeon.co.uk/orking/
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The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
Digital Code of Life: How Bioinformatics is Revolutionizing Science, Medicine and Business
Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier
The Wreck of the River of StarsSURFING SITES
UK Releases World War II Aerial Recon Photos
We have a fascination for seeing things the way birds see them. The military also knows that aerial photos reveal things hidden from even the closest and best ground observers. Airplane reconnaissance photography started in World War I and has been a staple of military intelligence ever since. The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University has over 5.5 million photographs taken over occupied Western Europe by the Allies during World War II. TARA recently released the photo collection for public viewing on the Web and was overwhelmed by the response. The Web site is still trying to recover, but has a tiny sample of the collection online now. In some cases, you can order highly enhanced prints for your den or next coup-plotting strategy session. Judging by screen quality alone, there are some fascinating photos here. You can even get some of the 3-D photos that were tried out. These will come with the necessary goggles.http://www.evidenceincamera.co.uk/
Archaeology Magazine's InteractiveDig is giving visitors the inside story and pictures of an ongoing archeological dig at Hierakonpolis, Egypt. The ancient city, nearly 400 miles south of Cairo, was once known as the City of the Hawk. Now, through the digs at the city's cemeteries and King Narmar's temple of Horus, the archeological team hopes to discover more about this vast site's role in the development of Egyptian culture. You can check out the finds, unusual techniques such as using workers as human windbreaks in bad weather, and even pick up the recipe for the lentil soup that keeps the workers ready for anything. There is clearly much more digging to be done and hopefully more artifacts to be discovered and analyzed, so it might be worthwhile checking back to the Web site regularly to follow progress.
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/index.html
This site from the US Library of Congress lets the visitor sit at the virtual feet of 23 former slaves as they describe their lives. The interviews were conducted between 1932 and 1975 in nine southern states. Several of the people interviewed were centenarians, the oldest allegedly 130. The former slaves discuss how they feel about slavery and slaveholders, their families, and freedom. They have much to say about the changes they observed from the 1860s to the 1930s. As part of their testimony, several of the former slaves sing songs they learned during their enslavement. Sadly, technical problems with the original recordings mean not all of the interviews are clearly audible but, with online transcriptions to assist the listener, they still provide a stunning witness to an important and influential period of American history.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vfshtml/vfshome.html
PBS's Tribute to Martin Luther King
The online companion to the PBS documentary "Citizen King" explores the life and influence of civil-rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. Visitors can read a transcript of the film and find out about further readings and the film's primary sources. In addition to production information, the site presents polls and solicits comments on one of the most debated figures in American history. You can watch video footage from a 1963 production entitled "The Negro and the American Promise", which includes comment by figures such as Malcolm X. Delve further into the making of "Citizen King" with an interview of filmmaker Orlando Bagwell as he describes his work on this production. Other useful features of this site include timelines related to King's life and a map of civil-rights hot spots. This map will take visitors on a historical journey through some of civil rights' most turbulent years. Finally, a teacher's guide offers educators suggestions on class projects and assignments designed to encourage discussion of American history.http://www.pbs.org/amex/mlk/
Smoking Ads from the 1940s and '50s
Dorothy Van Nuys "is typically modern in her zest for life," according to a Camel cigarette ad from the 1940s. She's "typically modern, too, in wanting to know the scientific facts about the cigarettes she smokes." What scientific facts are these? That they will give her emphysema, lung cancer, or heart disease? That they will turn the skin on her face into baseball-mitt leather and kill her before she's 60? Heck no. "In choosing Camels, Dorothy Van Nuys enjoys the scientific assurance of a slower-burning cigarette." This is one of around 50 quite frankly jaw-dropping cigarette ads from the '40s and '50s in this neat little online gallery. We already knew that back then the tobacco companies sold their goods by endowing them with a sense of debonaire sophistication, but we were quite unprepared for some of the pseudo-scientific claims that were being made. Maureen O'Hara smiles out from an ad from the '50s that proclaims "the psychological fact is: pleasure helps the disposition" - which, in the context of the ad, is pretty darned close to saying that smoking is good for you. Amazing stuff.http://www.chickenhead.com/truth/
In 1995, Jeremy Selwyn began a quest to try every potato chip in the world. Five years later, he set up Taquitos.net to share his passion, and few would dispute his claim that he runs "the crunchiest site on the Interweb." He has reviews, by a panel of self-appointed experts, of almost 2,000 different crispy snacks in major snack groups: potato chips; popcorn; pretzels; cheese puffs; and corn chips. In addition to reviews, you'll find links to snack-related news, "Chip Talk" where snackers can ask questions and share their experiences, and an online shop where you can buy your Taquitos.net merchandise, including a bib for the seriously messy chip-eater. The site lists the best and worst chips ever, and while this can only ever be a subjective assessment, our reporter can vouch for the fact that Pickled Onion Flavor Monster Munch - rated the fourth-worst chips in the world - are genuinely repulsive.
http://www.taquitos.net/
Arguably the most famous serial killer in history has taken his plea of innocence to the Internet. The online version of the official pressroom of Jack the Ripper is a clever and twisted parody of the official pressroom Web site of Michael Jackson. Here Jacko the Ripper, as he dubs himself, disavows the charges of disemboweling women and serial murder that have tarnished his reputation for over a century. Read his satiric proclamation of innocence on the home page and then explore the various links to external Web sites. Although this site is in the interest of humor, we recommend caution before viewing some of the links provided. The sites linked in this parody are clearly not recommended for children or adults who lack a sense of humor regarding sexual deviations on the Internet.
Jack the Ripper: http://jrnews.us/
Jackson: http://www.mjnews.us
Dogs definitely can speak, as any dog owner will tell you. It's understanding what they are trying to say that's the problem. Scientists at the Japan Acoustic Laboratory have apparently cracked dog language, and the Bow-Lingual dog translation device is now on the market. A transmitter attaches to your dog's collar and digitizes the dog's bark, then sends a signal to your handset. The handset analyzes the data using a system developed through years of research by veterinarians, animal behaviorists, and voiceprint experts, and translates it into one of 200 programmed phrases which it displays on an LCD monitor. A few of these sample phrases are on the wonderful Bow-Lingual Web site - phrases like "I love you", "I want some fun", and "Timmy's trapped in the disused mine at the western edge of the ridge - come quick, and bring a rope!" (just kidding on that last one). One thing not to be missed on the site is the video clip of the hilarious "Graduate" spoof TV commercial. It'll almost makes you want to buy one, even if you don't have a dog.
http://www.takara-usa.com/bowlingual.html
Imagine a place where older dogs can spend their later lives frolicking in the surf or where dogs deemed unadoptable could roam free and be themselves without worrying about reprisals when they tear up the furniture. Sound too good to be true? It is. Called Dog Island, it's a hoax going strong right now. Yes, there is a Dog Island off the coast of Florida, but it's not one that houses 2,500 feral former pets. The concept is so inspired that finding out it was a hoax disappointed us. Dogologist researchers named "Jane Goodale" and "Richard Dawkins" raised our suspicion, and the Urban Legends Reference Pages (ULRP) confirmed it. However, places like this do exist, only without quite so much surf. The largest of these, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, home to over 1,500 animals at any given time, is a 33,000-acre ranch in southern Utah. Unlike the promises of the imaginary Dog Island, felines are welcome here, too, as well as horses, birds, rabbits, and other homeless critters. The folks there welcome visitors, allow adoptions of their animals, and work toward a goal of zero homeless pets. Best Friends Animal Sanctuary: https://www.bestfriends.org/
Dog Island: http://www.thedogisland.com/
ULRP: http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/dogisland.asp
Free Site Registration Commune
As anybody who's been once around the block on the Internet can tell you, many free sites ask you for personal information before they let you access their content. A prime example is the New York Times, which requires free registration to read articles. BugMeNot.com has a solution. The site asks visitors to provide usernames and passwords for sites that demand registration but otherwise offer free information. Anyone can access and use the usernames and passwords for free. In its FAQ, BugMeNot.com sidesteps the issue of ethics in favor of a rationale, but it does pledge to never offer login data for pay sites. A decision to use the site we'll leave up to you. We'll just give you the URL. You can do whatever you want with it.http://www.bugmenot.com/
Fox News new political site, You Decide 2004, is packed with the information you'd expect. When we dropped by, the top box featured Democrat frontrunner John Kerry - and three out of the five stories, all gleaned from Associated Press wire reports, had a negative slant. At the same time, the link to their Poll indicates that Kerry is perceived as the candidate with the best chance of success in a toe-to-toe dance with President Bush. And where else are you going to find a tabulation that stacks up Bush's popularity against that of the Clintons, John Kerry, and Martha Stewart? Ouch! Martha takes a hit, here! The Eye on the Issues pop-up features quotes from each of the candidates on major issues of the day. The Democracy 101 link provides good insight for the 20-somethings who have yet to vote, as it explains how the process works in one short page. The site features video clips as well, but when we visited perhaps a third were related to American politics. This isn't exactly one-stop shopping, but it works as a jumping-off point for informing your political perspective.
http://www.foxnews.com/youdecide2004/
We Salute You, Mr. Bud Light Commercial Collector
Netsurfer Digest presents real men of genius. (Real men of genius)Today we salute you, Mr. Bud Light commercial collector. (Mr. Bud Light commercial collector)
You've provided us with an example of the Puritan work ethic:
a link we can send our co-workers so they, too, can goof off. (Somebody hit the "boss" key)
Stretching the limits of copyright infringement,
you offer a convenient way to check out beer commercials from your school's server. (Let's go, Tigers)
You record it. You encode it. And you take those HTML skills you've honed from hours of dateless evenings
to provide us with some quality entertainment. (Cathode-ray tan line)
So crack open an ice-cold Bud Light, commercial fanboy.
Because without your site, we couldn't have remembered enough of these ads
to make fun of you in one. (Mr. Bud Light commercial collector)
http://www.mizzou.edu/~npvytc/Budlight/Budlight.html
Some people are obsessed with modifying, or ricing, their cars and some people are nuts about "Star Wars", but Shawn Crosby has merged these two passions in the oddest of ways. He is, according to his homepage, some 85% of the way through converting his 1995 Honda Civic del Sol into a droid-equipped A-Wing fighter, complete with lightsaber brake lever, superbly appointed cockpit, and door-mounted weapons system. Soon he plans on installing an R2 unit dome on the rear trunk/deck (real A-Wings don't have droids, of course - hence the H-Wing designation). Visit Crosby's homepage to see where obsession can take a man, and look at the pictures of his extraordinary car. He even reproduces the comments - good and bad - that people have been making about his car on message boards and newsgroups. On his hands too much time he has, as one Jedi master might put it.
http://www.shawnandcolleen.com/shawn/Pages/hwing/
Darth Vader - More Machine Than Man
In "Return of the Jedi", Obi-Wan Kenobi states that Darth Vader is "more machine now than man." Well, there's nothing a geek likes better than to gnaw on a technical bone, and this Web site is one "Star Wars" fan's quest to precisely nail down the nature and cause of the injuries that led to Vader's signature breathing apparatus and other cybernetic enhancements. George Lucas has offered precious little in the way of explanation but, undeterred, Curtis Saxton delves into the whole "Star Wars" oeuvre in search of clues. Most of these appear towards the end of "Return of the Jedi" when Lord Vader is lethally wounded in his encounter with the Emperor and subsequently unmasks himself to his son, though gaps are filled in by reference to canon "Star Wars" novels and interviews with George Lucas. If you like "Star Wars", you'll love this site; if you don't, come and marvel at the geek lifestyle.http://www.theforce.net/swtc/injuries.html
Whaddaya know - an Ivy League freebie! Kudos to Yale University for TkChess, which lets you play chess through your browser. There are two versions, Java and HTML- Java is faster. To be sure, this online game lacks the bells and whistles of commercial software. You get neither historical comparisons nor suggestions. Nor does TkChess let you match wits against human opponents across a network. You go one on one, in silence, against a Web server. In his FAQ, creator Jim Aspnes admits his program "has essentially no endgame heuristics and rarely manages to checkmate a careful player" but it "punishes mistakes ruthlessly." For us non-masters, that becomes obvious quickly. In the opening moves, the computer's response is almost instantaneous. This can become intimidating, especially when you spend a few minutes pondering your move only to have the server fire back a countermove in a few seconds. It seems as though the longer you wait for the computer to make its move the more desperate your situation appears when it's your turn. Our reviewer learned he's not as good at chess as he thought he was. This may save him embarrassment in company.... Unix gurus can compile and run the software on their own servers, without tech support, for free.
http://pine.cs.yale.edu:4201/java/chess.html
Bedtime Stories and Other Commie Stuff
Maybe it's just us, but it seems odd that an avowed and unapologetic socialist would employ a format generated by a illegally monopolistic corporation to place content on the Web. Still, Erik Wright, a Marxist professor of sociology, has uploaded several Windows Media audio files of children's stories to this site, together with a lecture on the subject of Real Utopias. Other content appears to be in the pipeline. One might think, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of China, that the concept of socialism has been proven nonviable, but Wright considers those manifestations of socialism simply flawed alternatives to capitalism. Remove the flaws and it is possible, in his view, to create utopian, egalitarian social systems. He advocates plausible, radical reconstruction, involving redistribution of income - referred to as universal basic income. One problem that crops up in this scheme is that it has been tried. It failed. And that spectacular trial and failure occurred during the earliest stages of American settlement. The lecture is worth listening to, if only because it illustrates the lack of success of this approach in the past. The kids' stories are kind of fun, however.http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Audiopage.html
If, when you knit your brow, people ask you where you got that wonderful headwarmer, you may be one of the few, the proud, the monobrowed. You'll find yourself honored on Monobrow.com, the home of and homage to those with one unbroken stretch of hair across their foreheads. We did notice, however, one monobrow conspicuous by his absence - evil Dr. Olaf of Lemony Snicket infamy was nowhere to be seen. Since he's usually sneaking around in disguise in the novels, that seems somehow appropriate.
http://www.monobrow.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Mmm, bacon.... Mmm, soap.... Mmm, mmm, soap from bacon.... Instructions on how to do it from "a bunch of crazy kids with three pounds of bacon and a dream". Who among us hasn't had this lovely reverie?http://blacktable.com/bacon030515.htm
Just You and Me, Car-Stuck Girl
They're cute girls. Their cars are stuck. They have a Web site and videos for their fans. It would make perfect sense if there was actual nudity involved, but in the profound absence of uncovered boobs we're frankly a bit puzzled.http://www.carstuckgirls.com/
This little quiz asks the reader to decide whether each of the 16 images is of Hitler or of an actor portraying him. Warning: Strong (but amusing) language. Identification of the fakers would make the whole experience even better.
http://ashen.purplepixie.org/ashen/cartoon/fof/fof.htm
Some of Apple's better ad campaigns have been honored by parodies. This one might have generated nasty mail from Apple legal. The look is just about right and the content, well, most of it is pretty rude. Fortunately, there's a good deal of humor mixed in.
http://www.lickmysweaty.com/truth/
Want to get a general consensus among the critics about how worthy a film is of your hard-earned cash? Try Metacritic, a site that converts the review scores from a number of prominent publications to numbers and then averages them to come up with a final score.
http://www.metacritic.com/
The more flash games we play, the more we realise that simpler means better. In this one, you are a yeti with a club and you have to hit penguins as far as you can. That's it. It's fantastic.
http://laget.kicks-ass.net/pingvin/
We really must waste more time. We found this incredibly straightforward racing game extremely difficult, but infuriatingly addictive.
http://www.miniclip.com/ruralracer.htm
Classic Arcade Games - in Flash
Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac Man, Hexxagon, Tetris, Snake, Sokoban, Simon, Tic Tac Toe. Hand-coded with amazing fidelity to the originals, courtesy of the talented Paul Neave.http://www.neave.com/games/
SOFTWARE
Mozilla Project Releases Firefox 0.8, Thunderbird 0.5
The Mozilla project has just released new versions of the stand-alone Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird e-mail client. You'll notice that the browser - formerly called Phoenix, then Firebird - has been renamed Firefox in order not to conflict with another open-source project. Along with the name change and a spiffy new logo comes an improved download manager, pop-up blocking, and support for small, modular, user-installable extensions. Already, users have created some 200 extensions, which range from Web site spiders to RSS readers to the inevitable games. Meanwhile, progress continues on the Thunderbird e-mail application, which now has Palm synchronization, improved spellchecker and dictionary, and a variety of improvements in standards support. A press release notes that the venerable Mozilla 1.6 suite has had almost 1 million downloads in the first 20 days of its release. Cool. Maybe people are finally realizing that Internet Explorer's (lack of) security through obscurity is a sham.Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
Extensions: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/
Press Release: http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-02-09.html
KDE 3.2: Latest Linux Desktop Environment
For the uninitiated, KDE is a popular desktop environment and application suite for Linux. One of the things that distinguishes KDE from its main rival, Gnome, is the professional polish and integration of its applications. In that sense, KDE increasingly rivals, and even surpasses, the commercial non-Linux offerings from Microsoft and Apple. This accounts for KDE's status as the most popular choice of desktop environment for people who migrate from Windows and Mac OS X to Linux. This latest major release of KDE is distinguished by an entirely new look and feel as well as enhancement in accessibility for those with disabilities. There is also the usual plethora of speed boosts and bug fixes. Linux users will want to check out this major new release.Announcement: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.2.php
KDE: http://www.kde.org/