BREAKING SURF
| The Iraq Transitional Constitution |
| Hubble Ultra Deep Field Images |
| Web Site Design Theft |
| Anti-Spam Solutions and Security |
| Read Article |
| The Social Networks in Shakespeare's Plays |
| How News Travels on the Internet |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| AIDS around the World |
| Quest for the Crown Online Adventure |
| Robot Arm Game |
| The Power of Bunny Love |
| The Libertarian Purity Test |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
|
|
BREAKING SURF
The Iraq Transitional Constitution
This past week the Iraqi Ruling Council, under the watchful eye of the Coalition Provisional Authority (i.e. the US), signed what is in effect an interim constitution. This document will "govern the affairs of Iraq during the transitional period until a duly elected government, operating under a permanent and legitimate constitution achieving full democracy, shall come into being." Calling this a constitution is a bit of a stretch, because the major purpose of the document is to give some legitimacy to the current Iraqi government organs until something more democratic takes their place. In fact, the document names itself the "Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period". Naturally, the full text of the document is available online, and is certainly worth reading.http://www.cpa-iraq.org/government/TAL.html
Hubble Ultra Deep Field Images
The Hubble Space Telescope has finished taking the deepest photograph of our universe, which reaches back to only several hundred million years after the Big Bang. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) photo is a composite of two imaging efforts using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), and a total exposure time measured in days. The HUDF photo is a follow-up to an earlier Hubble Deep Field project that imaged a small patch of sky back in 1995 and 1998, which produced a wealth of scientific data about the early universe. The new image required 400 Hubble orbits of exposure with the phone-booth-sized Hubble camera. The imaging team has counted some 10,000 galaxies in this image, reaching all the way back to the early days of galaxy formation in the universe. Astrobiology Magazine has a good synopsis. Neat.HUDF: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/07/
Hubble Deep Field: http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/hdf.html
Astrobiology Magazine: http://www.astrobio.net/news/print.php?sid=870
Last issue, we tacked on a throwaway URL about Web site style theft to an article about refurbished restaurant franchises ("New Restaurants in Old Guises", NSD 10.09). Stealing online content is not new nor is it particularly original. People have been borrowing or outright stealing graphics and other design elements from Web sites almost since the dawn of the Web. Silicon.com reports on a couple of recent examples that are notable only for the ruthless completeness of the theft. Somebody stole the entire design, HTML, and content of two car enthusiast sites, right down to the copyright notices. The fake Web sites are hosted in Taiwan, putting them out of legal reach for the typical small Web site operator. The phenomenon is far from rare, as evidenced by the many "me too" posts in the attached discussion that complain about their own sites getting ripped off.
NSD 10.09: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.09.html#OT2
Silicon.com: http://www.silicon.com/networks/webwatch/0,39024667,39119015,00.htm
Anti-Spam Solutions and Security
A number of existing and proposed technical solutions aim to combat spam and all of them have implications for security. In this-two part series at SecurityFocus, spam expert Neal Krawetz provides a roundup of several major anti-spam mechanisms and analyzes their plusses and minuses. Krawetz specifically looks at filters, reverse DNS lookup proposals, challenge-based systems, and cryptographic solutions to the spam problem. It's worth reading as an overview of the serious conceptual weapons in the ongoing spam wars.Part I: http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1763
Part II: http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1766
According to 1UP, a magazine about computer gaming, there's been a resurgence of interactive fiction the last few years. This makes those of us who thought it was eaten by a grue with the passing of Infocom very happy. 1UP's article, "Magic Words: Interactive Fiction in the 21st Century", has interviews with some of this second generation of interactive wordslingers and points out useful companion sites for newbies and old hands alike.
http://www.1up.com/article2/0,4364,1539681,00.asp
ONLINE CULTURE
The Social Networks in Shakespeare's Plays
So Cleopatra knows Mark Anthony, who knows Octavian, who in turn is cozy with Agrippa. And so it goes, as the characters in "The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra" journey onwards to their fates. The bonds between them strengthen, weaken, and fade as the social network within the play changes through time. Paul Mutton had the bright idea of applying a social networking tool called PieSpy, usually used to graph relationships between IRC users, to the plays of Shakespeare. The result is a series of animations that show the relationships between the characters as they evolve through several of the Bard's plays. Mutton notes that this is an excellent way to get a handle on what's really going on in the plays. As soon as news of this cool analysis got out, Mutton's Web site got Slashdotted, but fortunately several mirror sites now host the animations. The key question now is who will be the first one to apply the tool to the Star Wars saga?http://www.jibble.org/shakespeare/
How News Travels on the Internet
Initial sources reveal news, which then travels through e-mail - the "dark matter" of the Net - and to metanews sites like Fark and Slashdot and the greater and lesser blogospheres. From there, it finds its way to blog indexes, the traditional big online media, and out the bottom-feeding offline media. Diagram and comments courtesy of Stephen VanDyke.http://stephenvandyke.com/2004/03/08/how-news-travels-on-the-internet/
|
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/ |
Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time
Broken Angels
The Well of Lost Plots: A Thursday Next Novel
Wicked Cool Shell ScriptsSURFING SITES
Library of Congress Remembers Sept. 11
Twenty years from now, we will still be asking each other "Where were you when...?" For those of us for whom the wounds of the terrorist attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon still ache, Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress vividly recalls those terrible hours. The online exhibition includes aerial and satellite imagery, a photo gallery, hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, video and audio presentations, and much more. The Area Studies/Overseas Offices section displays pamphlets and other materials from around the world published in reaction to the attacks - including material praising the terrorists - while Library Services links an online collaboration called the September 11 Web Archive, with over 30,000 Web pages. We've come to expect good things from the Library of Congress but it has outdone itself with this virtual memorial. All in all, it's a fine resource for researchers and teachers, and a somber reminder of the day.http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/911-home.html
Eric Fensler's Altered GI Joe PSAs
Eric Fensler is a prolific rejigger of public service announcements (PSAs). Kids - OK, boys of the '80s will remember the "GI Joe" cartoons on TV and possibly the GI Joe PSAs that were tacked onto the end of each episode. Fensler remixes those announcements and adds new voiceovers. The result is hilarious, bizarre, and nostalgic all at the same time. The plot twists, to use the phrase loosely, can best be described as derived from an imaginary and random O. Henry machine on acid. In addition to his valued public service animations, Fensler's got live-action videos and non-hilarious and rather geometric still photography to his credit. You can view Fensler's altered animations at his site, though we're sure he'd appreciate your buying a T-shirt.http://www.fenslerfilm.com/
Hilarious Take on the Rock Biz
Brett Meisner is the Rock and Roll Bad Boy of this eponymous site's name, and it refers to his activities as a rock critic in Hollywood. If that strikes you as ever so slightly oddly off-kilter, welcome to Meisner's world. The site rides hard and fast close to the line of reality, but it's not. It is parody - high parody, granted, and so well done that only a few "facts" tip the balance toward detecting its purposeful (as opposed to accidental) comedy. The Grateful Dead did the score for "The Twilight Zone" TV series? John Popper wears a fat suit? Regardless, it remains comedy. The mock critic writes it like he sees it and takes few prisoners in the process. His hints on how to survive the Hollywood rat race include advising the reader to always hang up first in phone calls as losers finish last and to take sexual harassment as a sign that the person likes you. He has his name-dropping Hollywood Diaries but his best, most outspoken opinions are on the music industry itself. The punch line to all of this is the rabid defense of his authenticity. Check out the "Why the 'Velvet Rope' Website Blows!" link in Meisner 101.http://www.rockandrollbadboy.com/
When we first heard of the Pasta Log Project, we had visions of giant durum-wheat tortigli or penne the size of tree trunks. The truth is more bizarre. A 22-year-old Italian computer-science student named Stefano is photoblogging every pasta meal he eats, and being the healthy Roman boy that he is, he eats a heck of a lot of them. He started this photo project just over a year ago, and today he has around 370 pictures on the site. This is not one to check out if you're chewing a dry sandwich at your desk or trying out a low-carb diet as most of these meals look absolutely delicious. The only complaint we had is that there are no recipes in this A-Z (or should that be alfabeto to ziti?) of pasta, so we cannot try our hand at recreating some of these mouth-watering dishes.
http://www.stefo.net/
The Marvelous Museum of Drafting Pencils
One of the great things about the Web is that you can find yourself absorbed in something you would never come across in real life. In fact, we are fairly confident in postulating that there is almost certainly no such thing as a drafting pencil museum outside cyberspace - though do e-mail us if you know otherwise. This site really does have all you need to know about drafting pencils, porte-crayons, leadholders, chalk and pastel holders, photo retouching tools, and a great deal besides. You don't have to be an artist or a draftsman to enjoy it, either; buying supplies has always been an effective way of kidding ourselves that we are in actual fact doing some work, and looking at it is the next best thing.http://www.leadholder.com/
What to Do with Winning iTunes Pepsi Caps
So, you've won one of the 100 million free iTunes Music Store downloads in Pepsi's promotion, but you don't do iTunes. Tune Recycler lets you do something with your unused winner. Go to the site, fill in your winning code, and you can support independent music. The site will use your code to buy a song from an independent artist. Whether or not you agree with the site's activist stance against the major music labels, you have to admit that it's a good thing to give some up-and-coming folks some spare change, generated by something you were going to throw in the trash anyhow.http://www.tunerecycler.com/
Who was the first American president? George Washington? Wrong! Fourteen men preceded him. Peyton Randolph, a friend of Washington's, was the first. In fact, "10 men served as President of the United States in Congress Assembled before George Washington", according to Stanley Klos, who preserves historic buildings and who is "trying not to re-write history but right it." His Web site, Presidents of the United States, contains biographies of Randolph, John Hancock, and other patriots who presided over both the Continental Congress and Congress Assembled between 1774 and 1789. Klos explains the math in chapter one. Many may find his prose overly detailed and dry. To correct generations of misimpressions, though, you have to spill a lot of ink and make an extensive case. The navigation is spotty if not confusing. History teachers can mine this site for nuggets, though, to impress students and spark discussion.
http://www.uspresidency.com/
Mention slavery in California, and some might envision starlets on a casting couch or a variety of wealthy musicians who bemoan their beholdenness to record labels (Prince and Courtney Love come to mind). The library of California State University, Sacramento has assembled a digital archive with lots of proof that slavery went on in the Golden State long before the rise of United Artists. The site, the California Underground Railroad, is a collection of source materials such as newspaper articles, legal documents and legislative reports on black slavery, primarily slavery in gold mines. Apparently, native Americans were also held as slaves there, but we find no background on that here. Many of the newspaper articles cover the case of Archy Lee, a black man arrested in San Francisco in 1858 on grounds that he was a slave escaped from Mississippi. Lee went free when the court determined that he had legally earned his freedom. This site needs a summary to guide non-historians and seems to assume that you'll reach your own conclusions after reading all the evidence. Our guess is that many visitors will give up after a few articles for lack of a contemporary overview or any summary more detailed than About the Archive.
http://digital.lib.csus.edu/curr/
Things You Probably Didn't Know
Too many sites fail to challenge the brain of the netsurfer, but not this site. There's no text menu, just a series of images. The White Rabbit Room even challenges you to choose the correct white rabbit from a page of lookalikes in order to access a gallery of illustrations (there is a big hint, however). Each graphic on the main page links to an unlikely story or hero. One considers the odd career path of Little Steven: once a rock star leading a crusade against apartheid in South Africa with "Sun City" and now playing Silvio Dante on "The Sopranos". Others tell the tragic tale of a doomed Russian cosmonaut and detail polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's lackluster leadership techniques. There's even a rather worrying photograph of what happens when a bullfighter has a bad day at the office. The best of this eclectic selection is a fascinating series of portraits done by an artist under the influence of LSD during a scientific experiment. The freedom of the work makes them incredibly expressive.http://www.cowboybooks.com.au/html/AllThingsCowboy.html
Guinness-Sanctioned Biggest Collection of Navel Lint
Some people collect stamps, others collect antique plates, and there are even those who gather first editions of obscure comic books, but can there be many who collect their own navel lint? Thanks to the power of the Internet, possibly the greatest communication invention in history, we now know that there is at least one such collector. Graham Barker has been collecting since January 1984 and the quantities in his proudly displayed jars is a testament to his dedicated harvesting techniques. He has even calculated that he gathers an average of 3.03 milligrams each day. If you are wondering why he does this, he answers, "Why not?" The curator's proudest moment, apart from the success of his online survey on the topic, is that the well known Guinness World Records cabal recognized his collection in 2000. One theory on navel lint is that it is the answer to the age-old question of where socks go when they disappear.http://www.feargod.net/fluff.html
In an age in which road rage is an ever-increasing blight on society and "going postal" means more than a trip to the mailbox, one man seeks to encourage the masses with some much needed therapy. Meet Adam Scott, the last angry young man. Using anger as a productive tool to vent his frustrations with society and just about anything else that irks him, the last angry young man is turning his anger into action. No, he's not causing willful and destructive harm to those that infuriate him; instead, he has taken to writing letters and creating his Big List of things that make him angry. Caution is advised for those who have a larger-than-life affinity for Oprah Winfrey. Perhaps his most ambitious initiatives are his letter-writing campaigns, Anger in Action, which target big corporations with useful insight into business practices and product quality. Of particular curiosity is Scott's rating of success. This site is updated regularly, so be sure to check back on the ever-growing Big List and on the status of the Anger in Action projects.
http://www.angryman.ca/
Play Games on a Virtual Apple II
Although a depressing number of folks reading this little note have probably never seen or even heard of an Apple II (pipe down, ya little whippersnappers!), there are still a few of us wheezing along who not only remember the machines, but remember them with considerable fondness. If you happen to be in that select and august body of cognoscenti and happen to be running Windows, you'll want to slide on over to Virtual Apple for a bit. With over 1100 archived disk images ready to be downloaded and run, the site lets you play old Apple II games through Internet Explorer. The games look and sound just as you remember them. It's all bug-free, and even better - it's expense-free! You hypertrophied rugrats ought to trot on over as well, so that you can experience for yourself the state of the art in computing as it was when you were in diapers.http://www.virtualapple.com/
igniteAsmile is not the original source of those funny, short movies you get from your e-mail friends. It's really just a distribution center, and a new one at that. It has a novel twist, however. igniteAsmile invites you to submit your films and will award $100 to the best film each month. People more interested in watching than filmmaking have to register with an e-mail address. The site will e-mail the winner to subscribers each month. The distribution system strikes us as odd, but the monthly contests will at least promote the creation of new clips. There's only so many times we can watch that guy smack around that monitor in "Bad Day". For the current monthly competition, igniteAsmile will accept entries until Mar. 15.
igniteAsmile: http://www.igniteasmile.com/
"Bad Day": http://www.web42.com/badday/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Positive Lives is an international project devoted to documenting the global impact of HIV and AIDS with an eye toward the positive responses to this challenge. Nonetheless, a visit here is less than pleasant. The crisis has spread around the world, a fraction of which is represented here in photos and accompanying text.http://www.positivelives.org/index.html
Quest for the Crown Online Adventure
For those of you who like fantasy and adventure, Quest for the Crown is the next big thing. It's got everything: a hero you can identify with, a clear goal, and the obstacles in his way. If the suspense gets too nerve-wracking, try the tips from the official strategy guide. We can't wait for the next installment.Quest for the Crown: http://www.lanceandeskimo.com/flash/quest.html
Strategy guide: http://www.lanceandeskimo.com/questwood/questforthecrown.php
What you have to do in this deceptively simple and occasionally infuriating game is manipulate a series of robotic arms to lift a spring. Use your arrow keys to chose and rotate each of the arm's joints. Sounds easy, right?
http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/robootik_e.html
Cat meets bunny. Bunny loves cat. Cat society and bunny society disapprove. So does protagonist cat. Will cat and society succumb to bunny determination? Will bunny ever get cat to eat carrots? Will you ever get that song out of your head?
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/ddautta.php
Would you call yourself an "anarcho-capitalist"? Are taxes too high? Should national governments abolish welfare? Is all government inherently evil? What does Ayn Rand look like naked? Er... - wait, scratch that.
http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi/purity.cgi