BREAKING SURF
| The Demise of Webmonkey |
| Internet in the News, 11 Years Ago |
| Mac Folklore and Origin Stories |
| Warspying San Francisco |
| TekMom Teaches Tech Buzzwords |
| Stolen SCO Code in Linux Cannot Be Displayed |
| Montreal's Metro |
| The Mushroom House |
| Inner-City Churches of Houston and LA |
| U-Haul Art |
| Stories of Hollywood Sound |
| MacBandWidth |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| How Jackson Deviated from Tolkien |
| "A New Kind of Science" Goes Online |
| Can You Tell a Fake Smile from a Real One |
| Herbal Grid Computing |
| Ornithological Worldwide Literature |
| Abhijit Lands on a New URL |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
The big news in the search engine world is that Yahoo has dumped Google as its search engine and is going with its own in-house search engine, backed up with ad-serving technology from Overture. As expected by most, Yahoo is leveraging a string of recent corporate acquisitions to power its search engine. Its spare search Web site resembles Google's with links to searching news items, images, phone listings, and inevitably, products for sale. At press time, Google was still powering Yahoo's image search, however. How do Yahoo's own search results compare to Google's? According to a Search Engine Watch article, Yahoo's results for popular queries match Google's fairly well. In more obscure searches, the two engines diverge noticeably. Check out a discussion thread at the I Help You forums.Yahoo Search: http://search.yahoo.com/
Search Engine Watch: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3314171
I Help You: http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=13580
Stolen Microsoft Code: Cursed Morons and Hacks
A significant chunk of Microsoft source code leaked out to the Net last week. The files are circulating on various peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and Web sites, and they contain source code for most of Windows NT and one of the service packs for Windows 2000. The hacker community has descended on this manna like a pack of piranhas on a foundering elephant in hopes of finding - well, just about anything. Sure enough, they are finding things. One of the first detailed analyses of the code showed up on Kuro5hin in a post that focuses on the comments, which we so cleverly referenced in our headline. After studying the code, others have found a security hole in Internet Explorer 5 - you're not running that anymore, right? SecurityTracker has that story. Meanwhile, Broadband Reports reports that Microsoft is warning people who may have downloaded the leaked code and is also working with P2P networks to warn users who search for the code.Kuro5hin: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795
SecurityTracker: http://www.securitytracker.com/alerts/2004/Feb/1009067.html
Warnings: http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/39113
A group of 60 prominent scientists has charged that "the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels." The signatories of this statement include 20 Nobel Prize winners, numerous National Medal of Science recipients, and other esteemed scientists, doctors, and former federal-agency administrators. An accompanying report, coordinated by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), details the accusations against the Bush administration. Wired has a short piece.
UCS: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/rsirelease.html
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62339,00.html
Conventional wisdom, in the board room at least, is that electronic versions of standard media mean pirating, loss of sales, and an inability for creators and the guys in suits to make a living. But it's not like that at all, according to Cory Doctorow. The SF author, member of Electronic Frontier Foundation, and co-editor of the tech-culture site Boing Boing blows the lid off the cozy assumption that e-books are a failure and a threat in a paper he's just released. We noted Doctorow's experiments in e-publishing in NSD 10.05. He has discovered that freely available e-books boost sales of paper books and have many other advantages. Conventional books quickly go out of print and are hard to share. Electronic texts can be indexed and provide longevity, communicability, and of course affordability. Too much copyright protection is stultifying, serves neither authors nor readers, and is in the best interests of no one except maybe Disney. Doctorow's growing understanding of how tree and computer intersect in the propagation and preservation of literature is presented in lively fashion, challenging the myths that govern our approaches to protecting intellectual property.
Doctorow: http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt
NSD 10.05: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.05.html#BS5
Journalists Eye the Watchblogs
Bloggers are mostly amateur writers while journalists, by definition, are professionals. A trend of bloggers watching the pros has grown in prominence over the last year, and Online Journalism Review reports on how it's going and what the journalists think. The so-called watchblogs supposedly aim to ensure accuracy and fairness in political reporting, although some obviously attempt to support a particular candidate or counter the perceived bias of specific reporters. The press itself has mixed views about this development. Some think it provides a positive interaction that should help keep journalists on their toes. Others worry that watchblogs may deteriorate into rhetorical rants and diatribes aimed at certain writers. Bloggers, on the other hand, score points at the expense of the fourth estate. Journalism, they say, is weak in terms of context and follow-up and too often sticks to easy narratives. One blogger injects a healthy dose of reality though, pointing out that most blogs have such small audiences, they're not likely to change journalism single-handedly. Still, anything that might help improve accuracy and decrease bias seems like a good thing to us.http://ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1076465317.php
Sucking Political Money Through Blog Ads
Remember this equation, because you'll see it cited all over the blogosphere: $2,000 = $80,000. These numbers represent the money invested and raised by the successful political campaign of Kentucky congressman Ben Chandler through advertising on political blogs. That's a healthy return on investment by any stretch of the imagination, and especially so in politics. Chandler and other politicians are latching on to the idea that their local races are of interest to a national audience of political junkies who read political blogs. It appears that, for now at least, those blog readers are willing to donate money for ideologically compatible candidates far from their home turf. Wired has the story and some speculation about the imminent tidal wave of online campaign advertising.http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,62325,00.html
White Album Plus Black Album Equals Grey Album
What happens when you mix the music from the Beatles' classic White Album with the words from rapper Jay-Z's Black Album? Duh! You get Grey Album. DJ Danger Mouse did exactly that and created what many people have called an instant masterpiece. Unfortunately for the intrepid Danger Mouse, EMI decided to call it copyright infringement. EMI owns the rights to the White Album and sent cease and desist orders to Danger Mouse and others who had posted the remix online. The dispute cuts to the heart of the issues of remixing, sampling, and intellectual property rights. Wired gives a fine rundown of the issues involved, but the real test is in the tunes, which Rolling Stone has mentioned. You can still get Grey Album at Illegal Art. It's definitely worth a listen.DJ Danger Mouse: http://djdangermouse.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62276,00.html
Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=19292
Illegal Art: http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/grey.html
Amazon.com Anonymous Reviewers Uncovered
Amazon.com lets visitors post reviews of books, anonymously or otherwise. You might think that this could let authors or other interested parties boost their own work without anyone knowing. You'd be partly right. We now know. Amazon.ca, the company's Canadian site, unintentionally revealed the true identities of reviewers, even those who posted on the American Amazon.com pages. Amazon.com has corrected the problem, and is assuring all that it will never happen again. Frankly, we don't see a problem. Where else are reviews anonymous? Wouldn't you trust an attributed review more? Amazon.com's policy of anonymous review opens the door to deception, and a lot of folks have taken advantage of that. Authors use anonymity to promote their work while others with axes to grind get to work. It renders - should render - the review no more informative than an ad, even before this practice was revealed. The exposure really only brings an already questionable practice into the spotlight. CNET has the original New York Times story.http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5159461.html
Whitehouse.com is not the gateway to the power and majesty of the executive branch of the US government but is rather a famous porn site. After spending years quietly embarrassing the American political establishment, the Whitehouse.com Web site is finally for sale. According to its recent press release, the site gets 2 million visitors per month and generates an annual income in the seven figures. The site's owner, Dan Parisi, says, "Since launching the site, I've become a father, and no longer care to be involved in the adult content world." Consequently, he says he will not sell the site to anybody involved in the sex industry. The sale also includes about 100 other domain names with some relationship to the Whitehouse name. Parisi also owns over 600 domains of the Sucks.com type. Read the press release for info on sending serious purchase inquiries.
http://whitehouse.com/pr.html
Who is Adam Curry? Oh, you poor young things. Curry was once the king of MTV VJs, back in the day when the channel actually played music videos. Europeans remember him as the host of many popular radio and television music programs. These days, Curry is travelling in Iraq and reporting in Dutch media about his experiences. Naturally, he maintains a weblog that chronicles his daily experiences as he travels around the country. So far, he's had an insulated trip, in that he's pretty much stayed under the protection and care of US troops and his interaction with average Iraqis is limited and controlled. Nevertheless, there's a lot of interest in his online reporting, and he brings a uniquely trans-Atlantic perspective to the whole thing.
http://live.curry.com/
The CIA will provide big bucks for the right kind of information about Iraq, if you can summon the nerve to reveal exactly who you are to these guys. The CIA Web site shows they want info about imminent attacks, weapons of mass destruction (haven't yet given up on that one, it seems - we guess there's always hope in the bureaucratic mind), and Baathist leaders, including $10 million for tips leading to the capture of Izzat Ibrahim Al-Duri, former chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council. The spooks also want any inside dope on insurgency, terrorism, and missing coalition personnel. If you've got relevant tips, you might want to take a look-see and get in touch. You can fill in an online form if you want to send the agency a message.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm
How to Hack the Pepsi iTunes Giveaway
Pepsi and Apple have teamed up to give away 100 million iTunes songs, as just about any TV watcher knows by now. You buy a bottle of Pepsi, open it, and check the bottlecap - one out of three will win you a free iTune. Tremendously clever hackers have expended hundreds of hours of mental and physical effort to come up with a way to insure that you always buy a winning Pepsi bottle. The secret? Tilt the bottle roughly 25 degrees and look at the cap through the transparent plastic to determine if you have a winner. There's a diagram at MacMerc.com and hack code at Dragos. There's no reaction so far from either Pepsi or Apple, but using our highly developed psychic powers we can paraphrase the upcoming corporate statement: "Doh!"Giveaway: http://www.apple.com/itunes/pepsi/
MacMerc.com: http://www.macmerc.com/news/archives/1270
Dragos: http://dragos.com/pepsi.txt
The Sim projects have caught gamers' eyes since the 1989 release of SimCity for the Amiga and the Mac. They show no signs of slowing down. The best-selling game title of all time is still going strong. The latest development is a fascinating plug-in that puts Sims to work creating environments for Sims. It creates a Sim world within a Sim world, a game within a game, a meta-masterpiece of Escheresque proportion. You thought being mayor of SimCity was tough? It can get a lot harder. Slice City is the plug-in and Wired has its story, with a title that's right on. If this news makes you nostalgic for the original SimCity, fret not - Electronic Arts offers free SimCity Classic play to anyone who registers.
The Sims: http://thesims.ea.com/us/
Slice City: http://www.simslice.com/Slicecity.htm
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,62287,00.html
SimCity Classic: http://simcity.ea.com/play/simcity_classic.php
Alphaville Reporter Banned from Sims Online
Do Americans have First Amendment rights while they play in a massively multiplayer online game? If you are playing the Sims Online, you don't. In what will probably be the first of many such incidents, Peter Ludlow had his avatar and all his activities erased from the Sims Online. Ludlow's crime - he published a newspaper, the Alphaville Herald, about in-game goings-on in Alphaville, the online city of Sims. Like any good journalist, he wrote about his virtual city's seamy underside: robbery and teenage prostitution. As the International herald tribune (IHT) makes clear, the Sims Online has issues with underage players who have virtual sex through chat. But does the game's owner, Electronic Arts, have the right to eliminate a player because his actions bring to light activities that it would rather not have discussed? If kids having sex chats in the Sims Online disturbs you, what about when they kill each other in Everquest?Alphaville Herald: http://www.alphavilleherald.com/
IHT: http://www.iht.com/articles/125753.html
Looking for Mr. Extremely Right
The online matchmaking scene, once just a free-for-all, has become specialized. Really specialized. Salon has a review of the online meeting/dating scene and opens its piece with an anecdote about EquestrianSingles.com. Talk about your niches. Specialty online dating sites have been popping up like mushrooms after a hard rain in a dairy pasture. Whatever your passion, you can almost certainly find someone who shares it. The online personal ad market is the biggest moneymaker on the Web - believe it or not, it has handcuffed the porn industry and beaten it into submission.http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/02/13/niche_sites/
Flickr's New Spin on Social Networking
There's a new twist available on the social-networking scene - Flickr. Flickr lets you share pictures and other media with a group of ever-changing friends in a dynamic network. The site has at least one incredibly enthusiastic reviewer, Mike Baker, who blogged his experience in detail. Flickr's innovative attraction is real-time Flash-based chat that lets you share image files with your fellow chatters.Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/
Baker: http://www.pixor.co.uk/2004/02/flickr_birth_of.html
Personal E-Mail Networks: Effective Anti-Spam Tool
Researchers at the University of California have come up with another arrow in the quiver of anti-spam solutions. Their insight is based on the analysis of social networks as revealed by e-mail addresses. The researchers show that an e-mail user may use his e-mail network, defined from sender and recipient information available in e-mail headers, to distinguish between spam and legit e-mail. It's not a new idea - any decent spam filter will let e-mail associated with your address book bypass filtering - but it is a novel empirical study. The researchers found that this algorithm could correctly classify about 50% of typical spam-laced e-mail with 100% accuracy. The other 50% was in the "I don't know" category and would have to be classified in some other way. The technical paper has details. Look for this to be implemented in even more spam filters soon.http://www.arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0402143
As best we can tell, nobody remembers when the last change was made to the Morse code character set. But this week, members of the International Telecommunications Union voted to add the "@" symbol to the character set, primarily in order to standardize the coding of e-mail addresses. The new symbol consists of the codes for the letters "A" and "C" run together: dot-dash-dash-dot-dash-dot. Morse code was the original language of the telecommunications revolution, created by Samuel Morse along with the telegraph in 1836. Even today, many radio licensing organizations around the world require ham-radio operators to pass a test on using Morse code. While the use of Morse is declining in these days of high-bandwidth wireless communications, it is far from dead and has many enthusiastic fans who routinely use it to communicate around the world. The Topeka Capital-Journal (TCJ) has the AP story, the White River Valley Museum (WRVM) has some Morse code history, and Ian Kluft can teach you how to use Morse.
TCJ: http://www.cjonline.com/stories/021704/pag_morsecode.shtml
WRVM: http://www.wrvmuseum.org/morsecode/morsecodehistory.htm
Kluft: http://www.kluft.com/~ikluft/ham/morse-intro.html
The motto of the annual Wired magazine awards is "People Changing Your Mind". Here are this year's candidates, thinkers and doers in 14 different categories. It's an eclectic mix of people in the arts, sciences, and business. Unfortunately, the list contains only the tersest of descriptions of nominees' achievements and says little about the nominees or why they are on the list. Shouldn't there be links to a paragraph with some background and why they are finalists? Granted, some of the people are famous enough that most readers will recognize them - the same can be said for the brain trust that nominated them - but it would be much nicer to have the information readily linked. It's also nice to see the Flaming LIps earn some recognition for their latest musical effort.
http://www.raveawards.com/nominees.html
Windows Home Computing Security Checklist
With all the hazards lurking in the wilds of cyberspace, it's good to know how to protect yourself. With this in mind, Scott Granneman has put together a basic security checklist for owners of Windows computers. It's an actual checklist, with actual little boxes you can check off, and every item has a convenient link to more information about the problem you are solving and how to solve it. This useful list should be required reading for every owner of a Windows box. Read the discussion at the bottom for some constructive critiques.http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/220
And You Thought Hockey Was Rough...
Sometimes, we come across articles that have us scratching our heads, asking "What the... ?" It's our duty to bring them to your attention. This story, from Sportal, relates that rugby league player John Hopoate has been suspended 12 weeks for three instances of conduct unbecoming a finger. What really has us perplexed is that a sport that condones wedgies and in which it is "reasonably common to be touched in the region of the testicles" would be so repulsed by a little anal gamesmanship.http://www.sportal.com.au/league.asp?i=news&id=9703
ONLINE CULTURE
When Wired launched Webmonkey in 1996, we said "Weird title, interesting concept" (NSD 2.27). This week, the distant descendent of that Web site was put to sleep by current owner Terra Lycos amid a round of staff layoffs. In its day, Webmonkey was known for hosting all sorts of Web-design-related content, from tutorials on how to use frames to information on browser incompatibilities. The site had its fans, but after the dotcom crash, ad revenue dried up and the site entered a death spiral as expenses and staff were cut. Wired has a nostalgic eulogy, while Webmonkey itself still flings quite a bit of content. Grab it while you can.Webmonkey: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/
NSD 2.27: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v02/nsd.96.08.29.html#BS2
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,62300,00.html
Internet in the News, 11 Years Ago
Travel back to a time when the Net was called "Internet". This TV report, originally broadcast Oct. 8, 1993 on CBC, has host Peter Mansbridge exploring the revolutionary technology that allows people to share information over a computer network. Some topics explored in this video include the use of emoticons to convey feelings in text and the ethical questions of sensitive and confidential information shared over a network. It's hard to imagine that in just over a decade the Internet has become a household commodity similar to a television set or radio, but this archival footage proves just how quickly this technology has advanced and become part of mainstream society. The video clip is just over six minutes long and requires Windows Media Player.http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-75-710-4205/science_technology/computers/#
Mac Folklore and Origin Stories
Folklore is a site devoted to collective historical storytelling. The current index page tells the story of the creation of the Macintosh. Most of the stories were created by Andy Herzfeld with contributions by others on the team. Herzfeld writes as well as he programs (he coded the original and many subsequent versions of the Mac Finder). Some of this material has appeared elsewhere, but this collection is quite complete. It starts when the Mac was simply an idea and runs into the first year or two of production. Pair these accounts with the dozen old photos and it quickly becomes clear why the Mac is the fascinating, wonderful, quirky platform it is. It simply reflects those who created it.http://www.folklore.org/
For geeks with a voyeur side, warspying is the hobby du jour. Hook up a receiver to monitor the unlicensed 2.4-GHz band, and not only can you find, for example, all the X10 cameras in the area but you can watch what they're broadcasting from the comfort of your personal setup. Kevin Poulsen's article follows some folks as they warspy through the San Francisco night and finds out that although they avoid the police as a matter of habit, folks indulging in this hobby don't even violate federal wiretap laws. Of course, there's only so much you can watch of other people's sleeping babies.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7931
Nowadays, all kids should have familiarity with basic computer terms such as "cursor" and "hardware". TekMom wants to bring the slackers up to speed with Technology Buzzwords for Students (TBS). TBS is a good teaching tool, mainly for elementary students but also for parents who have trouble explaining "database" while pretending to know everything. There are fewer than 50 clickable buzzwords on the home page, so neither kids nor adults should feel intimidated. Each buzzword leads to a definition page with huge, user-friendly fonts, a basic illustration, and a succinct explanation. A simple sentence helps make the meaning of each buzzword clear. Kids want more than a dictionary, of course, and TekMom responds with puzzles and a hangman. Unlike school, no registration is required.
http://www.tekmom.com/buzzwords/
Stolen SCO Code in Linux Cannot Be Displayed
The SCO Group has made few friends with its ludicrous claim to own vital parts of the Linux kernel and the attendant lawsuits that seek to empower its point of view. This site covers the controversy with only a slight bias. Just about any possible anti-SCO link can be accessed by this 404 page parody. The case made is strong and the presentation, if not novel, is fun. Our reviewer is now convinced SCO doesn't have much of a case (not that he ever believed they did).http://www.linuxstolescocode.com/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Montreal by Metro is an online tribute to the architectural and artistic distinctions of the transportation system that lies beneath the francophone capital of North America. Explore the various Metro stations that feature stunning artwork including sculptures, frescoes, and mosaics. In addition to the visual journey through this underground urban paradise, visitors to this unofficial site can find out more about the Metro, such as its history, fares, and planned extensions. A convenient list of all stations lets guests explore individual stations further. Photographs, with descriptions and trivia, provide in-depth details of each station. The purveyor of this site, Matt McLauchlin, expresses his opinion of each station with a customized rating system. Anyone visiting Montreal or locals who use the Metro daily will find this site to be a must, not only for the useful data that will help them navigate the system, but also for its sheer appreciation of the Metro.http://www.metrodemontreal.com/
Most houses are fairly similar in design - a few walls surround a number of rooms with a roof on top - but this house is unique. An artist named Zube conceived of this house in the late 1970s as an organic structure based on the design of a tree. After 30 years of "growth", and a devasting fire that delayed completion, you can now view the design and the rooms online. The exterior hints at the wooden delights within but to really understand the principles which drive its design you need to delve deeper into the structure. At the base is the sauna room, which waters the "roots" of the house and resembles deep forest. Nothing in the kitchen has any relaionship to a straight line and the result is warm and cozy. The bedroom transports you to the treetops with a huge window that allows a view of the surrounding countryside. This is a house to dream in, although it lacks badgers.
Mushroom House: http://www.themushroomhouse.com/
Badgers: http://badgerbadgerbadger.com/
Inner-City Churches of Houston and LA
Claudette Goux has created an exhibition of vernacular churches in inner-city Houston and Los Angeles. For those unfamiliar with this use of "vernacular", it means "in the indigenous building style", as opposed to specifically religious architecture. The images show faith rising in unlikely scenarios, such as a safe haven for worship inside a building with iron bars across the windows. On one church, an archangel in spray paint rises up off the brickwork. It's fascinating stuff.http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/photography/goux/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Classic symbols of do-it-yourselfism, U-Haul trailers and trucks have crisscrossed North America for years. Some motorists prefer to ignore them, shuddering at visions of struggles with furniture, back pain, sweat. U-Haul would rather its rental vehicles make you think of art. Indeed, they bear colorful drawings, and have since 1988. U-Haul SuperGraphics is its Web compendium of its artistic salute to states, provinces, and one city. The art is divided into Classic SuperGraphics (1988-1997) and Modern SuperGraphics (1998 to the present) sections. The classic section is easier to browse. Representations of California surfing (no. 46) and Quebec explorers (no. 74) here are exemplary. The modern section, though with fewer representations, goes into detail with lots of text about the subjects of the art. The Ohio pages, for example, have a Flash presentation on the Great Serpent Mound, while the Hawaii pages look at flora and fauna alien to the islands. Much planning, ingenuity, and no doubt money have gone into U-Haul SuperGraphics. Our only warning is that once you've left the modern list, it's hard to get back. Try opening the art pages in a new window to solve that.http://www.uhaul.com/supergraphics/archive.html
If you like to know how movies are made, you'll appreciate Hollywood Lost and Found. The site focuses mainly on what goes on behind the microphone - sound effects production. The Stories page has most of the good stuff. We jumped into "Planet of the Apes" and "Robocop", but you might prefer "Buckaroo Banzai" or "2001: A Space Odyssey". In our view, Walt Lee's prescient "Scientist's Evaluation of 2001" is the most authoritative article here, even though it first appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1968. The site salutes creativity with tributes to Mary Kay Bergman (Snow White and many "South Park" characters; she committed suicide at age 38 in 1999) and James Macdonald (Disney sound-effects genius and voice of Mickey Mouse; died of heart failure at age 84). Perhaps the biggest celebrity feature here is a 1989 interview with sound editor Richard Anderson, winner of an Oscar for "Raiders of the Lost Ark". His explanation of his remastering of "Lawrence of Arabia" is a bit technical but worth a read.
http://hollywoodlostandfound.net/index.html
One of the better received announcements from this year's MacWorld convention was the one concerning the release of Apple's GarageBand software. GarageBand is a music-composing application that lets you to create your own tunes with an easy-to-use recording, mixing, and editing suite. The software has proven quite popular and has inflicted a great deal of mediocre music on the world. Which brings us to MacBand.com, a new Web site specifically designed to provide a directory of songs and loops made by artists using Apple's GarageBand software. As we wrote this, MacBand had some 270 GarageBand-created tunes available for free download in a wide variety of styles, most of them excruciatingly dull.
GarageBand: http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
MacBand: http://macband.com/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
For more selections, check out: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
Punk Rock Aerobics: 75 Killer Moves, 50 Punk Classics, and 25 Reasons to Get Off Your Ass and Exercise
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History
Lord Darcy
Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the GameHow Jackson Deviated from Tolkien
Diehard fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy will appreciate this comprehensive Web site dedicated to comparing the original text of the books to the blockbuster movies directed by Peter Jackson. The site includes a comparative analysis for each part of the trilogy, as well as overall complaints about the handling of certain aspects of the film compared to the original versions. While many moviegoers may not have noticed these deviations from the books, it's still interesting to note the differences from a purist's point of view. While some of Jackson's changes were minor, other alterations are more drastic. An excellent example of this is Arwen's role in the movie versus the books. In Tolkien's "Return of the King", Arwen says only one line; her role is dramatically expanded in the movie. Although no one could expect Jackson to adhere to the books verbatim, some changes may have been better left out. One thing that purists and general enthusiasts of the movies can agree on is that these films are in a class all their own - worthy of many years of discussions and entertainment.http://jackflannel.org/lotr/
"A New Kind of Science" Goes Online
Not everyone can claim to be like Galileo, but Stephen Wolfram is making an effort. Wolfram, creator of the incredible mathematical modeling software, Mathematica, published "A New Kind of Science" in 2002. This 800-plus-page tome was a manifesto and demonstration of a new way to think about nature. Put simply, Wolfram believed that everything might be explained through the study of cellular automata. To spread his message, he has made the entire book available online for free. Whether you want to read the whole thing is another question, but the first two chapters are well worth examining since few of us get to live through even a failed scientific revolution. If you want to get a sense of how Wolfram failed, check out the reviews on Amazon.com.Wolfram: http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/
"A New Kind of Science": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1579550088/netsurferdigest
SURFING SCIENCE
Can You Tell a Fake Smile from a Real One
How good are you at spotting a fake smile? That's not a frivolous question because the ability to spot the subtle signs of a fake smile can be important in daily human interaction. There's much to be said about smiles and how people perceive them, but we don't want to spoil the experiment for you. The BBC has a well executed psychological survey that tests your ability to spot real and fake smiles. You watch short films of smiling people and must rate them real or fake. It's a fun test to take and you'll be helping out researchers by participating. The smile survey is part of a larger collection of psychological tests available at the BBC site. You can test your memory, facial perception, sensitivity to disgust, and numerous other aspects of your personality, including the sexual characteristics of your brain.Smiles: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml
Tests: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/index_surveys.shtml
Grid computing in plants has been going on for a long time, or so this blog indicates. Recent evidence suggests that green plants engage in a form of computation that affords efficiency in uptake and outgassing of biologically relevant compounds. Indeed, one paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has described evidence of distributed computing in plants. In other words, plants think, or at least appear to. We can't imagine the effect that such a revelation carries for the denizens of the vegan world, as one of the big arguments has long been that meat-eaters are killing thinking organisms. Another paradigm that may have to be redefined, it seems.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2004/01/22.html
Ornithological Worldwide Literature
Ornithological Worldwide Literature (OWL) is a comprehensive database that emphasizes scientific material not indexed by major commercial scientific databases. With over 19,000 entries already on tap, OWL's plan is to penetrate the so-called gray literature as far back as half a century. It's searchable. Already a worthwhile resource for those seeking information on a range of topics involving wild birds, this resource, like a hung pheasant, is likely to improve with age.http://egizoosrv.zoo.ox.ac.uk/OWL/
CORRECTIONS
Back in the late Netaceous (NSD 6.24), we introduced y'all to Abhijit Dharmadhikari, whose spiritual mission is "to explain the link between the cosmos, nature, Gandhi, Bruce Lee, and All-India Sales and Marketing Manager Mrs. Divya Balgi, who has a page called If Tomorrow Never Comes (on the WOW Planet) devoted to her sayings." Lest ye be frightened off, we also remarked that "the site is sweetly sincere and dedicated to his grandparents, and he's a Star Trek fan, so how bad can he be?" His new URL follows.http://www.abhijitsplanet.com/