BREAKING SURF
| The Kuro5hin Way of Dealing with Disruptive Users |
| Survey of Bloggers |
| History of Apple's Operating Systems |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Loaf: Sharing Your Address Book to Fight Spam |
| Exploring Urban Montreal URL |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
James Gleick, an able author of books on science and scientists, has written an article about problems in namespace for the New York Times. In a gentler age, global brands were few and fights over place and product names were rare. In today's global e-village, however, everything jostles together under the one virtual roof of a bustling bazaar. Making matters worse are folks like Jeff Burgar, who squats on scads of domains named after famous people. Corporations that want to own every possible combination and permutation of their brand names don't help either. When a dispute arises over domain names, the parties go to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which handles such disagreements on behalf of ICANN in a convoluted relationship we'll leave to Gleick to explain. Gleick vividly illustrates domain-name conflicts and the challenge regulators face in sorting them out. Basically, a complainant must pass three tests: they must have commercial rights to the name; the defendant must have no legitimate rights to it; and the defendant must also use the disputed domain in bad faith (such as trying to get money for it). Gleick thinks WIPO may have the legal stuff reasonably well sorted out, but thinks it is short on wisdom and common sense. He wants WIPO to lighten up a bit.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/magazine/21NAMES.html
The Business of News, Online and Off
A new report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) is not going to improve the battered reputation and outlook of the news media. The report looks at a variety of media - although we here at NSD were drawn to the section on online journalism. Online journalism is second-hand: most online content arrives on Web pages only after appearing in print or on television. Few sites take advantage of the Web's multimedia capability; most rely largely on text alone. The report finds that while the Net is one of the few growth areas for news, there is still no viable economic model for online journalism. Unless sites can generate revenue, they are going to continue to exist on the margins. Although more news sites are adopting a subscription model, cannibalization - the reposting of news outside its native site - is not a real problem. The key to the lack of cash, at least in the corporate setting, is that management doesn't view online operations as sufficiently profitable for investment and instead cuts resources. MSNBC is the posterchild for this approach. Online news sites need more investment and imaginative leadership to survive. The report also confirms the anecdotal evidence that those who surf for news watch less TV news, but maintain their newspaper reading. Go figure. Online Journalism Review (OJR) offers some analysis.PEJ: http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/
OJR: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/business/1079553393.php
His politics aside, Noam Chomsky is one of those overachieving intellectuals who has made his mark in such disparate fields as linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, and international affairs. Now, he's ready to take on the blogosphere with a new weblog entitled Turning the Tide. His blog is still young but seems to consist of a random sampling of his recent writings at other venues. It's too early to say whether he will rise to the status of blog god - though many other bloggers did link to his new blog upon its creation. For the moment, it's likely to be mostly of interest to Chomsky's philosophical fans.
http://blog.zmag.org/ttt/
Troubled Accountant Sues Google, Probably Needs Cash
What the heck? You've probably heard about this lawsuit already, but we'll bring it up anyway. Mark Maughan, a chartered public accountant, ran a Google search on his name. The search returned a hit from the California State Board of Accountancy (CSBA) about Maughan's breaking of regulations, failure to pay a fine, and suspension of his license. The result? Maughan has sued Google (and past and present users of Google technology) for libel and related accusations. The CSBA says the information is all true; Maughan claims that Google, through its PageRank algorithm, presents the information out of context, leading to "false, misleading, and injurious" results, according to the lawsuit. In addition to Google, AOL Time Warner, and Yahoo (all users of Google technology), we advise Maughan to sue power companies for providing the electrons that power the Internet. WebCPA and Local6.com have more.CSBA: http://www.dca.ca.gov/cba/discipline/bi-bz.htm#brow_cor
WebCPA: http://tinyurl.com/24kw4
Local6.com: http://www.local6.com/technology/2937335/detail.html
High Profile Lawsuit Seeks to Overturn Rewritten US Copyright Law
A new effort is underway to overturn a US law that has lengthened the period of copyright protection and extended the way in which copyright is automatically applied to works. A famous recent challenge to the extension of copyright terms, Eldred v. Ashcroft, lost in the US Supreme Court. This new suit has been brought by representatives of two archives: the Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle and the Prelinger Film Archive's Richard Prelinger. The two want to change the law so that copyright extension is not automatic, which would allow them to archive so-called "orphaned works" that have been abandoned by their owners. The change they seek would allow much more material to enter the public domain without the specter of a lawsuit hanging over users of such material. Cyberlaw has a detailed FAQ about the legal and philosophical details of the case.http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/kahle_v_ashcroft.shtml
The purpose of the Banned Music site is simple: "When record labels send legal threats to musicians, record stores, or Web sites, we will post the music here for download and publicize the censorship attempt." Banned Music provides the BitTorrent file-sharing software and a Torrent file with a listing of its current offerings, which admittedly are rather sparse given that they just went online. You can find DJ Danger Mouse's Gray Album, which makes sense since the Banned Music project grew out of the success of the Grey Tuesday protest which spread the album over the Net in a protest against music industry censorship. People passionate about sharing music and about industry efforts to sue music sharers into submission will want to bookmark the site.
http://www.bannedmusic.org/
TypeKey: One Login to Rule them All?
One of the longstanding issues of Net life has been the need to keep track of multiple logins for multiple Web sites, each with a seemingly different set of restrictions on what you can or can't use as a login name or password. Many big Net businesses have tried to come up with a universal solution, with Microsoft's Passport the best known. Nobody trusts Microsoft, however, so Passport is pretty much limited to Hotmail sign-ups, as noted in CNET. Six Apart, the company behind the popular Movable Type blog software, is jumping into the fray with TypeKey, another single login service. The problem TypeKey will address is the issue of spamming in blog comments. TypeKey will allow you a single login to authenticate your comments in a wide variety of blogs, which in theory will eliminate anonymous spam posts on blogs that use the technology. The service has generated buzz in the blogosphere, and MetaFilter has a thread with representative community reactions.CNet: http://news.com.com/2100-7345_3-5177192.html
TypeKey: http://typekey.sixapart.com/
MetaFilter: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/31910
Interesting Uses of Trusted Computing
Whenever the subject of Trusted Computing (TC) rears its ugly head, a legion of people come out of the woodwork to argue that it's a bad thing. In Microsoft's and the music industry's utopian vision of licensed content, TC essentially means that every computer would by law have to ship with cryptographic chips which would prevent certain programs from running unless the owner of the program allowed it. A lot is wrong with this approach - see the anti-TC Trusted Computing FAQ for some arguments - but a post at the Unlimited Freedom blog suggests some of TC's seldom mentioned benefits. For example, the mechanisms of TC could be used in such disparate applications as secure online elections, cheat-proof multi-player games, and anonymous remailers. Read the two-part post for the full list and supporting arguments.Trusted Computing FAQ: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
Unlimited Freedom: http://tinyurl.com/2zl4h
Vigilantes Reel in and Reveal Online Pedophiles
Is taking the law into your own hands ever justified? Pedophiles will not win any popularity contests, but is it appropriate for private citizens to attract and out pedophiles by posing as minors? Wired has a two-parter on Perverted Justice, a group of vigilantes who pose as minors in online chats, arrange meetings with alleged pedophiles, then berate and photograph them when they show up. Perverted Justice posts transcripts of the chats its members have with their targets along with personal info and photos. The group often notifies its targets' employers and people have lost jobs as a result. No one argues that crimes against children are not wrong, but is this the best way to prevent them? In Wired, you learn about Perverted Justice and its agenda, and also that while law enforcement believes these people have their hearts in the right place, the means they use are potentially illegal. Lawyers are going to have a field day with this.Wired, part 1: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62650,00.html
Wired, part 2: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62676,00.html
eBay's own sheriffs aren't too keen on the vigilantes who have taken it upon themselves to fight online auction fraud. eBay claims the number of fraudulent auctions it hosts is a tiny drop in a huge ocean of legitimate transactions. Critics claim eBay underestimates the problem and some busy vigilantes claim to spot hundreds of bogus offerings every day. Many customers are fed up with the extent of fraud and what they see as eBay's lax enforcement and reluctance to discuss the issue. CNET covers the debate and includes tips on avoiding fraud. Possible signs include demanding payment via Western Union, offering to close a deal offline for less, and a lack of customer feedback. Sometimes, fraudsters steal the accounts of legitimate traders, the tip-off being a sudden change in the kind of item sold. eBay prefers that its users let it know when they spot a bogus offer, but the vigilantes prefer to warn other users privately. Some vigilantes aggressively post ridiculously high bids for what they think are come-ons to protect legit bidders. While eBay may not like it, eager volunteers in the trading community can do a lot to help keep online trading safe.
http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5176525.html
Dogging: the Next British Invasion
The term "dogging" elicits images of blissful walks in the park with a faithful canine companion. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the frisbees are flying. Lovely image, that - and you can dispense with it. "Dogging", in the UK, has an entirely different connotation, one in which the only canine content might be "doggie-style". Dogging as a hobby has become popular among Brits, particularly male Brits, combining as it does flash mobs and sex. Through mobile phones or Internet posts, couples notify others of their intention to get it on at a specific time and place. The invitation attracts voyeurs and sometimes other participants to the site, often a parking lot or park. How popular is it? One estimate has dogging going on in 60% of all UK parks. How do these folks pull it off? Using tech. Wired has the story on a trend just taking hold in North America.http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62718,00.html
Dealing with False AOL Spam Reports
Recent changes in AOL's mail user interface are contributing to a rash of false spam reports for legitimate e-mail. The sysadmin of a mailing list with many AOL subscribers describes the problem in a post at Slashdot. Basically, the new user interface in AOL 9.0 makes it all too easy to accidentally mark e-mail as spam. This sends a spam report back to the sender of the e-mail - in this case, a legitimate mailing list - which warns of the risk of being blacklisted if any more e-mail is sent from that address. This causes havoc for automated mailing-list software and for businesses that now have the burden of dealing with the many users who accidentally hit the spam button. Posters who discuss this on Slashdot confirm that AOL does have channels for getting listed on its whitelist, although you have to find and contact the right person there if this affects you.Slashdot: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/25/0340228
ICANN Again Considers Porn TLDs
ICANN is brewing a plan to create a top-level domain suffix for pornography, such as .xxx or .adult. Superficially, this might appear to be a good idea, but before you start programming your firewall and spam filters, read RFC 3675. The document effectively argues that the creation of such a domain would not define access to pornography. Problems with the scheme abound morally, technically, and legally. What, for example, will count as adult content? As the author observes, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous articulation of obscenity - "I know it when I see it" - points out the difficulty in establishing a single, simple definition. CNET has a brief article.RFC 3675: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-5176438.html
Google Experimenting with Voice Search
At press time, Google had turned off this demo, but previously Google was certainly experimenting with voice-driven search. You call a special phone number, speak your search phrase, and then click on a designated Web link to get your results. Useful? Not immediately, but this can clearly lead to technologies for handicapped users or, after some tweaks, for users who are not in front of a Web browser if the results could be read to them.http://labs1.google.com/gvs.html
Wonderful. If scent-spritzing salespeople patrolling the entrances to their mall stores bother you, hold on to your virtual hat - a similar phenomenon is about to take hold in cyberspace. Rackspace Managed Hosting has implemented live-chat salespeople. And you thought banner ads were bad. Forbes reports that live-chat marketing is the latest thing, although Rackspace turns it up to 11. What's next? Salescams?
Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/ebusiness/2004/03/17/cx_ld_0317marketing.html
Rackspace: http://www.rackspace.com/index.php
Microsoft Unveils New Game Development Framework
In what is a big deal in game circles, Microsoft has made public its next-generation game-development environment, called XNA. With XNA, Microsoft gives game developers a single set of programming interfaces to develop games that can then be played on all next-generation platforms such as the Xbox, Windows PCs, and various mobile devices. Developers will be able to use XNA to provide common functionality for such features as online billing, security, common controllers, and player matchmaking. A new XNA website is available.http://www.microsoft.com/xna/
ONLINE CULTURE
The Kuro5hin Way of Dealing with Disruptive Users
Rusty Foster, the head cheese at Kuro5hin, has a long fuse, but it ran out when somebody posted a picture of his wife Photoshopped into porn. That, coupled with users who posted spam in Kuro5hin forums, tried to hack the site, and generally caused trouble, finally drove Foster to adopt a radical approach to user accounts. From now on, if you want to enjoy the fine privileges of Kuro5hin membership, you'll need to be sponsored by an existing member. If you misbehave, both you and your sponsor get banned. It's a novel idea and a creative one, but it may be too draconian to work in practice. Given that disruptive users are a major problem on just about any site that allows comments, Foster's experiment will be watched by the Net community. He explains it all, and his users give feedback at the following link.http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/24/0502/96199
Here's a useful survey of bloggers, although not a truly random one because of the way it was conducted. Responses from 486 respondents show that blogging has largely evolved from showing links to spouting off, and that bloggers are growing increasingly concerned about matters of privacy and liability. As a result of the increasingly opinionated blogosphere, it's perhaps not surprising that 36% of the surveyed bloggers report getting into trouble with friends, family, or employers over their online comments. Many bloggers use real names of people and products without asking permission, unless they are discussing the company they work for. Most do think about the consequences of what they write but the majority make no attempt to limit who can read their stuff. The survey's demographic information and data are nicely tabulated, and indicate a survey population of overwhelmingly white, college-educated, American males under 40 years old.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~fviegas/survey/blog/results.htm
History of Apple's Operating Systems
Amit Singh's brilliant Web site touches on many aspects of his life in Silicon Valley. His page on the evolution of the Macintosh operating systems is equal to anything else on the subject. It's detailed but not obsessively so, complete, and, to our reviewer's knowledge, accurate. Best of all, it's highly readable. If you have any interest, either pro or con, in the developments that have led to Mac OS X, this page will make your arguments sharper and better. Singh is no Apple fanatic, nor is he an amateur. He brings his extremely wide-ranging computer experience to bear on the subject. And he only just got his first Mac a couple of years ago. The Apple operating systems pages are a must, but browse the rest of Singh's fascinating site through the links on the right as well.http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/
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For more selections, check out: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
The Success of Open Source
Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks
Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix
Dante's InfernoSURFING SITES
78s from the '20s, '30s, and '40s
Lovers of the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack take note! Here is a real treasure trove: over 700 vintage 78-rpm records from the collection of famous banjo expert Jim Bollman, sold at auction in the 1980s and faithfully rendered in Realaudio format for your listening pleasure. The music was recorded in the '20s, '30s and '40s and includes country music, string bands, skits, ballads, and much more. The sound quality is surprisingly good, and you can browse the collection by title, artist, year and even by subject. We particularly liked the Covered by Bob Dylan category. If you've been looking for that elusive Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers track, this is the place to go. It's a superlative museum of old-time American music.http://www.honkingduck.com/BAZ/baz_one.php?req=info
Flying Corsairs in the Solomons, 1943
Lt. Charles Winnea started out a typical American fighting man in World War II, but he was skilled enough to become a Marine Corps fighter pilot and drive one of their deadly Corsairs. His diary, recently found and published online with the permission of his heirs, is a mixture of the mundane and the moving. His 1943 journey begins in training in Hawaii and moves to regular combat against the Japanese in the Solomon Islands, which were up for grabs during the period covered by his diary. The intensity of the fighting is clear, as are the shortness of the actual fights and the length of the waits between actions.http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/winnia.html
Smoking Ads of the '40s and '50s
Harkening back to days of yore when smoking was not only cool but positively good for you, this collection of vintage cigarette advertisements reminds us of a more innocent age. Today, the advertised product comes with a plethora of warnings, exact ingredients, and stupefying disclaimers; it's somehow refreshing to see how cigarette smoking can clean your breath, add muscle mass, prevent sore throats and generally make you sexier and healthier. Of course, the ads from the '40s emphasize how cigarettes help keep up the morale of the boys fighting overseas - there's something to that, actually - while ads from the '50s tend more towards hedonism and promote a sophisticated lifestyle. All of the people in the ads are young and beautiful - aside from the occasional Santa Claus - and there's never an oxygen mask to be seen. Enjoy the non-sequiturs on the home page for some further not-so-politically-correct ads from that era.http://www.chickenhead.com/truth/index.html
Archeology of Commercial Graphic Design
NoRelevance is an eclectic and entertaining gallery of graphical ephemera: musings on and images of vintage advertisements, labels, signs, and portents of the modern and not-so-modern age. Appreciators of cultural nostalgia will enjoy the 45-rpm singles labels and logos, while those with darker tastes may want to delve into the (tenuous) connection between the labels of bock beers and Satanic practice. Probably the best part of the site is the gallery of original hand-painted and hand-crafted signs, which are true one-of-a-kind finds and genuine nuggets of forgotten beauty. It's all pretty retro-cool; if original graphic design is your passion, the obsession of the site's creator is your reward.http://www.norelevance.com/index.shtml
Strindberg, Philosophy, and a Helium Balloon
August Strindberg may be one of the greatest writers Sweden has ever produced, but this misogynist radical with the king-sized persecution complex was not noted for his sunny disposition. In short, he's a perfect character for some madcap cartoon adventures with a cheeky helium balloon with a high-pitched voice. You can view four exquisite short films here, all beautifully animated, with dialogue from actual works of Strindberg punctuated with irreverent nonsense from the playful balloon. The filmmakers only really have one joke here, but it's hilarious, not least because they don't overplay their hand.http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/
With members' rooms in both Edinburgh and London, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society offers a perfectly valid reason to live in either of those two delightful cities. Failing that, a visit to the society's Web site will arouse your tastebuds and fill any gaps in your Scotch whisky knowledge. If you're fortunate enough to live in the UK or can have items mailed to someone there, you can even purchase many of the select small-lot whiskies so lovingly described on the site. Scotch whisky is more a passion than just an alcoholic beverage and this site is a safe place to imbibe, without the worries of the drive home.
http://www.smws.com/about/index.html
The production of aged Scotch whisky offers an excellent look at capital theory involving the economic yield curve of time versus production. Whisky is a great example since there's no (legal) way to cut corners when creating, say, a 25-year-old malt. All you can do is start with a 24-year malt and wait a year. All else being equal, your capital is tied up for the year and the possible interest is foregone. The parameters are locked. The Malt Whisky Yield Curve page of the Crooked Timber site explores just such a situation in a way that makes the economics clear. By the time the last conclusion is drawn (some prior statistical knowledge is useful, but not mandatory), you'll better understand how aged Scotch whisky commands the price it does and even understand why. It's a marvelous introduction to economics in general.
http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000927.html
When the Lego folks themselves call someone "one of the most prolific and enthusiastic adult fans of Lego", you can be sure that the praisee knows how to use a brick or two thousand. When you build large models of New York City's landmark buildings and even a representation of Greenwich Village, that praise is well earned. Sean Kenney's cityscape and its level of detail is particularly breathtaking. Kenney has built the entire thing, with an underlying subway and street vendors. He includes small details such as turnstiles for the subways, working electric lights, and graffiti on the cargo trucks. His other reproductions include a five-foot-high Empire State Building and a collection of New York vehicles like delivery vans, fire trucks, and the classic yellow taxicabs. For a more modern twist, Kenney has even built Hummers and SUVs. Amazing.
http://www.brickapple.com/
Computer bugs is what this site is all about - not misbehaving software, but many-legged creepy crawlies of all colors, sizes, and speeds. And you, dear visitor, get to be bugmeister. Adrian Lafond has created a series of great animated critters that wander Web pages. If none of the presented bugs meet with your approval, just build your own in the Insect Shop. Scroll down to get your bugs as screensavers or applications to place on your Web pages. If the mood strikes you, play Battle Bug and play to survive. This site is creative coding at its wackiest. There's nary a real bug in sight.
http://www.adrianlafond.com/
The White House got its first telephone in 1879. In those days, phones weren't networked, they were hard-wired to one another. Even though this meant that the only place President Rutherford B. Hayes could call was the Treasury Department, he marveled at it. Less than 100 years later, phones were not only networked, but the White House system incorporated secretive recording technology, thanks to President John F. Kennedy. Burned by the Bay of Pigs invasion, when advisors who had urged invasion claimed they hadn't done anything of the sort, Kennedy ordered hidden microphones and phone-tapping technology deployed. One result: thousands of recordings produced by Kennedy and succeeding Presidents, yielding an unprecedented window into the minds of each as they approached the difficult issues of their day. Listen to the hour-long NPR documentary, or read the transcript of the production. You'll need RealPlayer to listen, but your basic Eyes 1.0 does a fine job when perusing the transcript.
http://www.americanradioworks.org/features/prestapes/
FBI Files of the Rich and Famous
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI is required to disclose records requested by individuals, subject to a few exceptions. At this FBI Web site, you can browse a plethora of documents the bureau has kept on numerous celebrities. Files are available as PDFs and cover a wide range of investigations, although the predominating theme in a majority of these cases appears to be unAmerican activities, i.e. suspected Communist activity. Although these reports have been released to the public, care has been taken to ensure confidentiality toward sensitive information through blacking out a great deal of the content. Visitors will be treated to files on a range of celebrities that includes Frank Sinatra (thought to socialize with organized crime figures), Marilyn Monroe (investigated after her death for appearing in a "French type" movie performing unnatural acts with an unknown male), and correspondence between John Wayne and J. Edgar Hoover.http://foia.fbi.gov/famous.htm
Just about anybody who uses chat software is familiar with chatbots. Andrew Baio has done one better and set up bots that let you play classic text-based adventure games. In the days before fancy video cards, text games like Infocom's Zork series were the hottest thing in computer entertainment. You typed commands and the game would describe your environment and options. The games grabbed you because so much of the action took place in your imagination. Thanks to Baio, you can now play those games with AOL Instant Messenger - well, at least you could before he got mentioned in Wired and MetaFilter, causing AOL to throttle the bandwidth to the games. When all this settles down, you should be able to play a whole suite of text games. Baio's blog has details and status.
http://www.waxy.org/archive/2004/03/21/infocomb.shtml
Mark your calendars: Friday, May 7 is No Pants Day. You can bet TV news anchors will have a ball with it. Of course, this is hardly an official holiday - yet. No Pants Day is a bit bush league, declared as it is by the little-known Knighthood of BUH, which describes itself as "a national organization of people determined to spread humor through any and every possible medium." The focus of pantless promotion seems to be Austin, Tex., but the Web site promises that radio stations across the US will soon receive a CD with songs devoted to the knighthood's day-long salute to immodesty. A Vancouver morning show is supposed to be planning special coverage on the tube. An image gallery contains photos from last year's bash (plenty of men's boxers, no porn). For tips on fashion and participation, you can get cracking in the No Pants Day forum. Who knows what revelations may come to light?
http://www.nopantsday.com/
Some people collect fonts the way others collect pennies or cats. Fonts let you create stunning documents and logos, but most people use specialty fonts maybe once every five years and are loath to pay for them. At the extraordinary font resource site called DaFont, you can browse and download thousands of fonts for free. Typefaces range from basic sans-serif to fancy decorative fonts and nearly all are free for non-commercial use. Available in multiplatform TrueType format, these fonts will add a new dimension to your repertoire. View fonts by theme or simply browse the top 100. There are loads of wild fonts such as Gutenbergs Ghostype and Aldo's Nova, as well as more subdued fonts such as Classica and Decker. Instructions are available here on how to install the fonts to your system and programs.
http://www.dafont.com/
Buy Drugs, Sell Drugs, Stay Alive
Grim subjects made fun can become hot potatoes. We won't be surprised if some public libraries and schools to block access to Dope Wars, a Java-based simulation of dope peddling. It's educational, all right, and cerebral (no graphics). Chances are you'll die long before you get rich. Choose your stomping grounds from three metropolitan areas in the US, two in England, Helsinki, or Sydney. The brief instructions are to the point: "You start with 2,000 in cash, and 5,500 in debt. Trade drugs by buying them from the available drug list, storing them in your trenchcoat and then riding the transportation system to another location and selling them there." Your goal is to stay alive and get rich. Our street-dumb Midwestern reviewer tried to make a living pushing virtual crack, hash, and other stuff in the Minneapolis area. No luck! He was already deep in debt when the cops took notice. From there, it was downhill even faster. You might get so busy making a profit you forget to pay your debt, which mounts and mounts. Perhaps this game is rigged? It sure seems addictive. Maybe that's the message: once you start you've lost.http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/iizuka/games/dopewars/
Paul Mison has indulged his love of tower cranes to the extent that Craneporn.org is probably the Web's finest and most extensive gallery of crane photographs. Why should you care? Because the images are beautiful, in a stark and industrial way. Tower cranes combine height, strength, grace and utility. Say what you will about this man's obsession, he's a fine photographer and the pictures themselves are a vibrant study of lines, color, and backgrounds. Mison has over 170 photos in the collection, which is searchable although it's more fun just to browse.
http://craneporn.org/
The baseball Yeti is back. This time it's branching out from the original penguin-batting we reported in NSD 10.06. Although you'd think that Seal Bounce and Orca Slap would imply that the Yeti was adding to its repertoire of marine-fauna abuse, it's not so. It just has a thing against penguins, as you'll see if you play either new incarnation at Yetisports. If you're trying this at work, don't forget the boss key. For those of you who need a bit more gore, try the adorableBunnies.com version.
NSD 10.06: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.06.html#FJ6
Yetisports: http://yeti.e-medien.com/playonline.html
adorableBunnies.com: http://c.adorablebunnies.com/UPLOAD/pinguxtreme.swf
In 1997, the Cornell Costume Collection of Cornell's College of Textiles and Apparel created an exhibition of traditional Turkish clothing. The highlights live on on this Web page. The exhibit covers the mid 19th to early 20th century and was based on fieldwork. It emphasizes the brightly colored handwoven fabrics that are still a part of the lives of most Turks. The clothing shown represents a wide spectrum of Turkish ethnic groups, including Kurds. The photos can be clicked on to bring up enlargements showing the fine detail in the works.
http://char.txa.cornell.edu/treasures/turkey.html
Coin collectors and those who have a general fascination with ancient history will find the Celator a resourceful and appealing tour of the world of antiquated currency. The site is brought to you by the same-named journal of ancient-coin collecting and Wayne Sayles, its founder. It provides visitors with a look at some extraordinary currency of the distant past. Not only can guests to the site view these tiny pieces of history, these coins are also up for sale. Browse several coin categories, including Medieval and Islamic Coins, Judaean and Biblical Coins, and Roman Provincial Coins. Each category provides a price and image of each coin. For the serious coin collector, additional resources are available at the Celator Resource Center, including articles and dealer lists.
http://www.celator.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Steve has a traumatic encounter with our mammalian heritage. Alas, pictorial documentation is sadly lacking.http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000134.html
"Red Alert" is a short film that is allegedly an interview with the guy who designed the Homeland Security Color Alert System to better inform you about your chances of dying. It's not real, but it is hilarious.
http://www.zefrank.com/redalert/index_better.html
Linux, the Operating System for Supervillains
"Linux gives us the power we need to crush those who oppose us," says the narrator of yet another parody of Apple's commercials. Ironically, Chris Hill, the creator of this animated short and a fan of Linux, didn't make this animation in it because Macromedia doesn't make Flash MX for Linux.http://www.ubergeek.tv/switchlinux/
While the absolute number of swear words in the Linux kernel's comments has gone up, the count per line has steadily declined. Clearly, the Linux kernel is less shitty but more crappy than it used to be, as proved by these graphs.
http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/
One heck of a lot of fun can be had here, if you're as easily amused as we are. This virtual drum kit is a hoot to play. You can play some preset sequences with a click of the mouse, or loosen your fingers by playing on your numerical keypad. Crank up the speakers and rock the house!
http://www.buckle.com/text/content/games/2003fall_drum_set/drums.html
Your Neighbor's Political Contributions
Enter an address to get a list of your neighbors and how much they contributed to which US Presidential candidates. City and national contribution maps are also available.http://www.fundrace.org/
What do get when you give three nerds with experience in high-speed flash photography a 150-m/sec bolt gun? Some pretty darned cool pictures of exploding fruit, that's what. But why stop at fruit?...
http://web.mit.edu/Damonv/Public/Doombolt/
Operating without electricity or moving parts, the digital sundial updates its display every ten minutes - and displays the current time in digital form. Amaze and astonish your friends for a mere $90!
http://www.digitalsundial.com/
Test your virtual dart-playing ability with this nifty Flash version of the classic pub game. Play either alone or against a friend as one of the kooky characters such as Jacking Chin or Fisheye Sam.
http://www.miniclip.com/darts/mplayer.swf
SOFTWARE
Loaf: Sharing Your Address Book to Fight Spam
Loaf is yet another technological approach to fighting spam, based on using your e-mail address book as a social-networking anti-spam tool. Every time you send e-mail, Loaf will append an encrypted copy of your address book. The recipient of your e-mail can then check all incoming mail against those collected address books, sorting the e-mail into mail from known people, mail from people their correspondents know, and mail from complete strangers. The process makes it easier to categorize non-spam e-mail as such by noting that it comes from an acquaintance of a legitimate correspondent. The communicated address books are encrypted in such a way that addresses can be discerned but reconstructing the entire address book is difficult, thus providing good privacy. The Loaf site explains the details, including some limitations of the technique.http://loaf.cantbedone.org/
CORRECTIONS
The link from last issue's article on exploring Montreal seems to have taken the Metro to an earlier stop. Here it is again, in case you were waiting for it.http://uem.minimanga.com/