BREAKING SURF
| A Net Look at the Net |
| Demographic Results of Blogads Reader Survey |
| Ruins of Old England |
| Ruins of New England |
| Biking to Ballparks for Cancer |
| Paris Metro Panoramas |
| Archive of Jewish Historical Films |
| Masters of Cinema |
| UK Graffiti Art |
| To B or Not to B |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Short Crime Fiction and Interviews |
| Your Choice of 170 Newspapers for $10 a Month |
| An Homage to Pineapple - and a Blog |
| Spelling with the Periodic Table |
| War Tech |
| NASA Finds More Evidence of Global Warming |
| Build Your Own Steady-Cam for $14 |
| Weblog Software Comparison |
| FreeBSD 4.10 Released |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Indy 500: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines
The Indianapolis 500 dates back to 1911, and as the venerable event is due to occur again May 30, we felt it timely to add some historical perspective. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built for automotive research in 1906, as the Indianapolis Star notes. Even if you aren't into racing, the paper provides some fascinating history. The city of Indianapolis helpfully provides a page of race trivia at its IndyGov site. IndyCars accelerate from 0 to 100 mph in four seconds. The fastest drivers attain speeds of 240 mph along the straightaways - a speed at which the race cars cover 350 feet of track per second and if a driver blinks his eyes, he misses 50 feet of track. A lot can happen in 50 feet, though, which is probably why so many people tune in.Indianapolis 500: http://www.indy500.com/
Star: http://www.indystar.com/library/factfiles/sports/autoracing/indy500.html
IndyGov: http://www6.indygov.org/features/trivia.htm
Do they eat you or do you eat them? That's this week's entomological puzzle. It's not such a trivial question either, as the first of trillions of Brood X cicadas emerge from 17 years of underground life and get noisy. You'd be noisy, too, if you spent your first 17 years as a grub, slurping sap from plant roots, then climbed above ground complete with new wings and sex organs. The Cicadamania size proudly trumpets the cicada as the most amazing insect in the world and its wild excitement about the emerging periodic cicadas is almost palpable. Cicadaville has a distinctly different view and tries very hard to misinform people, warning that cicadas prey on children and pets, harbor venom and flesh-eating bacteria, and masquerade as Ryan Seacrest. The satirical site isn't big, but it's certainly funny. National Geographic looks at the cicada bounty as a harvest, with recipes for the crunchy, nutritious larvae and comments about the cicada's high-protein, low-fat wholesomeness. The site also reminds us that cicadas belong to the same phylum as lobsters, crabs, and shrimp, and are delicious raw or boiled.
Cicadamania: http://www.cicadamania.net/
Cicadaville: http://www.cicadaville.com/
National Geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0503_040503_cicadafeast.html
Those plucky rovers are still awake on Mars and still doing good work, although not without glitches. Spirit had a software problem that forced it to stop and take some navigational fixes. Apparently, the rover software has a 3-microsecond timing hole and it may mistakenly attempt to change a write-protected area of memory when it tries to write data to RAM. Both rovers have this bug, but it's a low probability, low-impact occurrence and the software team will not try to fix it. On the bright side, the bug allowed Spirit to charge its batteries for its record-length journey toward the Columbia Hills. Meanwhile, Opportunity is circumnavigating and photographing the Endurance crater, but is suffering from power problems due to a faulty power-sapping thermostat switch, which limits the amount of activity it can do during the day. Opportunity will be put into "deep sleep" power-saving mode during nights to deal with this, but the procedure risks damaging the miniature thermal-emission spectrometer due to the nightly freeze.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
We covered ex-AP reporter Christopher Allbritton's quest for donations to find his way to Iraq in NSD 9.30. He succeeded. More than once. Allbritton's Back to Iraq blog provides additional insight into the Iraq conflict. His reports are worth following, as independent reports are in short supply these days. This is reporting that you likely won't see elsewhere.
NSD 9.30: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.11.html#BS2
Back to Iraq: http://www.back-to-iraq.com/
Online Games Hold Lessons for Economists
Conventional economists disdain the economies of online games, but if Edward Castronova's discoveries are anything to go by, that's a big mistake. Castronova has parlayed a keen fascination in game economics into a tenured professorship. The Walrus recounts his story and many others in fascinating detail as it examines the economies of online computer games. Castronova's journey of discovery began with EverQuest, which to his amazement powered a real economy larger than that of China or India. Edward Chamberlain said of economics that its fatal flaw is the lack of a lab in which to test its theories. The dismal science may have found its lab in online games, which provide intriguing insights into how the real world works. In one game or another, virtually every economic theory ever developed has had a moment to shine before it reveals its flaws. Players trade game currencies, swag, and characters for real money. Wealthy players outsource the tedious job of gaining levels to offshore workers. Slick traders make six-figure salaries buying and selling game property, aided by hundreds of players paid to look for bargains. There's nothing virtual about any of that. Mainstream economists will ignore this data at their peril.http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/06/1929205
Microsoft Jumps Aboard Antispam E-Mail Standard
It's been apparent for some time that the current e-mail system needs some way to validate that the e-mail your server receives actually comes from the server that is authorized to send it. A great deal of spam arrives from spoofed e-mail addresses, as anyone who studies spam header fields knows. Folks have developed several proposals to deal with this problem. One of the most popular is Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which uses the DNS system to publish information that can be used to validate sending mail servers. Microsoft recently published a competing proposal - of course - but this week CNET had word that Microsoft will work with SPF architect Meng Wong to make their standards compatible. AOL, Earthlink, and Google are also backing SPF, with the Sendmail team and Yahoo offering a separate proposal called DomainKeys. DomainKeys may turn out to be the long-term solution to the problem of forged e-mail, but SPF offers an immediate and easily implemented palliative.SPF: http://spf.pobox.com/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5220253.html
DomainKeys: http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
Bill Gates wants information delivered seamlessly. That was the gist of his speech at the recent Microsoft CEO Summit. You can read the speech and even download the Powerpoint slides, but here's a quick summary. Rather than talk about Windows per se, Gates discussed how the next decade of computing will revolve around Web services, especially those services that make use of Microsoft's Infopath software, its version of XML. You can argue that none of this is new; every year Gates tells us that the future is going to be better, faster, and have speech recognition. And every year, we have problems with our Windows applications. Gates mentions that a Microsoft research group examined how salespeople used their machines, or not. As a result of the field work, Microsoft built an application that the subject salespeople said captured the messiness of their work practices. We would be delighted to sit down with Microsoft coders and tell them how we use our machines and why we still stick lots of notes to our monitors.
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/05-20CEOSummit.asp
Statistics on Wireless-Network Attacks at Las Vegas Convention
The recent Networld+InterOp convention in Las Vegas featured what is becoming a common feature at trade shows, a free wireless network. A company called AirDefense was monitoring the radio waves as part of a security study. What it found is eye-opening. As the network became congested, participants started to set up their own less secure, ad hoc connections. At the same time, attendees were actively hacking the networks. AirDefense noticed some 189 attacks against the network in one day. MAC spoofing and denial-of-service attacks made up the bulk of the hacking activity, with a smattering of authentication and traffic-redirection attacks. Granted, the participants were more tech-savvy than your average convention crowd, but the numbers are still staggering. The data comes in the form of a press release from AirDefense, so some caution is in order, but clearly public wireless networks at conventions are hotbeds of hacking activity. If you're hooking up to such a network, be very, very careful to lock down your laptop.http://www.airdefense.net/newsandpress/05_13_04.shtm
Creative Commons License, Version 2.0
Creative Commons, the organization that promotes the release of content into the public domain, has announced updates to its various licenses based on extensive feedback and usage patterns gleaned from users of its original license versions. The changes simplify and improve the licenses, which are used to publicly license everything from software to books, music, and other types of content. Among the major changes is the inclusion of the Attribution clause as a standard part of every license, clarifications to provisions for hyperlinking back to the licensor's work, clarification of the rather complicated music-licensing provisions, dropping of the warranty clauses, and some provisions for compatibility with future versions of the Creative Commons licenses. The weblog announcement explains it all nicely.Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/
Weblog: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4216
After its recent launch in England, Napster continues to expand into the Commonwealth with the launch of a Canadian version. Can the Maldives be far behind? The cost of music at Napster,ca is somewhat more reasonable than the British version. Songs cost, in Canuck bucks, $1.19 and albums $9.95. The site also offers a music-streaming service that will set you back $9.95 per month, although we assume it will have a hard time competing with the many free audio streams already available online. Napster.ca will only take your business if you use Windows XP or 2000.
http://napster.ca/
Ex-Python Eric Idle's latest contribution to his already legendary musical canon is a catchy little ditty that examines the difficult political issues involved in regulating US broadcast airwaves. We suggest you use your headphones if you want to listen to it at work. The lyrics use lots of the letters "F" and "C", and not just in "FCC" - nudge nudge, wink, wink, say no more!
http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3
ONLINE CULTURE
What better way to research the history of the Net than with the Net itself? Living Internet is a neat portal, with a top-level grid of 56 links and second-level menus of links to external sites. Ease of navigation is so obvious you'll wonder why other sites haven't adopted the upfront tabular scheme. So long, introductory clutter! This highly focused site was developed in the late '90s by Net guru Bill Stewart, who has amassed "more than 500 pages, 2,000 intra-site links, and 2,000 external links" to tell the story of the online world. That's a lot of footwork in the service of education. You'll find a gem or two here and there such as the Web Tricks pages (under Advanced Use/Web), which will appeal to casual Net users like couch potatoes who may not know how to find out about their favorite TV show in progress. Librarians and others who are supposed to know much of the material covered here should make it a point to visit. Living Internet claims to be updated regularly, and it is: the last update occurred May 5, 2004.http://www.livinginternet.com/
Demographic Results of Blogads Reader Survey
Blogads, a blog-based text-ad network, polled 17,159 weblog readers to get some demographic data about who exactly reads the things and, by extension, looks at the ads. The statistics indicate that weblog readers are generally over 30 (61%), overwhelmingly male (79%), and relatively affluent (71% earn over $45,000 per year). A fairly significant portion of them, 21%, also maintain their own weblogs. The readers are politically active: 50% say they have contributed money to a cause or candidate, and 5% have contributed at least $1,000. The survey produced many more results of interest to anybody who advertises online.http://www.blogads.com/survey/blog_reader_survey.html
ONLINE TRAVEL
Travel brochures, upbeat videos and glossy articles may draw you to London, but they create impressions unlike those made by Derelict London. Photographer and inveterate citywalker Paul Talling has amassed a personal collection of more than 600 photographs that depict a grim side of London known to many locals but understandably overlooked by tour guides. His Waterways section, for example, includes a household-appliance dump, debris by Thames Ironworks, and an abandoned jetty. Cheerful stuff! More attractive is Derelict London's People section, populated by boozers and bums, a few of whom appear likely to end up in the Hospitals gallery. Upscale tourists would likely be appalled by the many sights seen through Talling's camera - the odd toilet or trash cache, for instance, or outdoor swimming pools "now used as fishing ponds!" With the care of a dedicated journalist, Talling captions many of his photos with historical background. That adds depth, but he seldom describes individual shots. Overall, the site aims to document, reveal, and lament. Sadly, it keeps growing.http://www.derelictlondon.com/
Given that it's never been the site of a major war or large earthquake, New England probably isn't the first place you'd think of when it comes to ruined buildings. Nonetheless, one should remember that New England is home to the beginnings of North America's industrial revolution, and the wreckage of that first industrial age is still strewn upon the landscape. Photographer Rob Dobi sees beyond the eyesores: "whether it be industrial or institutional, each doorway within is another opening to the past,... each stairwell leads to another chapter." His photos of crumbling factories, decrepit office buildings, and rusting machinery are melancholy yet strangely beautiful. Light, shadow, and color all have their place here. While enjoying the images, you can almost sense the upheaval caused by the abandonment of these once busy places and, perhaps, try to come to terms with the relentless economic mutability of American life.
http://photos.dobi.nu/
Biking to Ballparks for Cancer
Charlie Hamilton must adore cycling. He certainly adores baseball. He's using his passion for both to power his tour of 30 Major League baseball ballparks, and to raise money for cancer treatment in the process. Hamilton happily admits that his trip is inspired by a mid-life crisis and perhaps one too many drinks, but as nutty ideas go, this is a great one. He's enjoying the country in between the bad roads, crazy camp-site owners, and bad directions, plus he gets to see a whole lot of baseball. The catch in this quest is that the tour of 30 ballparks (Hamilton has opted not to bike to Puerto Rico to catch the Montreal Expos there) covers 11,000 miles, which sounds like a long way even to truckers. Hamilton has sold his house to fund his trip - we hope his long-suffering wife is still there when he finishes. Thanks to GPS, you can track his progress and maybe offer him a roof for the night. He'll need it.http://home.earthlink.net/~charleeh/
A subway station is one of the few locations that can eloquently capture the beauty of a panoramic shot. Metrorama has capitalized on this and presents a new panoramic photograph of the Paris Metro subway system every month - and has 29 as of this review. The site is a testament to Panorama Factory, the software used to patch photos together into a seamless image, but would be even better had the author described why he chose the subway as a subject and whether he waits for certain conditions before snapping the requisite shots. Pictures are nice, but sometimes we need more than a thousand words' worth of description.
http://metrorama.free.fr/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Archive of Jewish Historical Films
The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive offers over 200 films to the public through this online project. The site promises to make 500 films available for online viewing at a rate of 100 new films added each year. The films are an amazing resource for anyone interested in 20th-century Jewish life or the history of the little slice of the Middle East now called Israel. The range of films documents Jewish life in pre-Holocaust Europe and around the world, includes Holocaust material, and contains footage of Palestine/Israel dating back to 1911. Exceptional design and navigation lend further polish to this brilliant Web site. The design elements invoke a theatre ambience for guests as they watch historical footage. This site is undeniably an invaluable resource for educators, historians, and students, and will remain so for many years to come.http://sites.huji.ac.il/jfa/kv/index.html
Still trying to find that elusive Fritz Lang DVD? If your interest in film goes beyond the usual Hollywood fare, try Masters of Cinema, an online gateway to news, history, and shopping for the discriminating cineaste. In addition to current and past articles on cinema news and views, the site features information on film festivals, DVD releases, and film reviews. Non-American films and filmmakers are heavily featured. Film students as well as aficionados will appreciate the links to sites of dozens of well known and unjustifiably obscure directors and their works. Even given the alarming range of backgrounds of the curators - see the About page - Masters of Cinema is wide, deep, and eclectic in its take on film and filmmakers. This is a must-bookmark for film lovers.
http://www.mastersofcinema.org/
Many people view graffiti as a destructive plague on the esthetics of larger cities. Few of those people realize that graffiti is a growing and increasingly legitimate art form. While you're not likely to see any of the designs at TheyMadeMeDoIt.com adorning the back alleys of London, you may see some of them adorning the walls of galleries and cafes. At the site, you can view graffiti projects by British graffiti artists. The projects they have undertaken have been sorted into specific galleries of works completed in 6 hours 42 minutes and 12 seconds, works completed in one space over the course of a weekend, and works that include an element of red. Each artist conveys a different interpretation of the assignments as evident from the varying pieces.
http://www.theymademedoit.com/
B movies get a bum rap. Many are best forgotten, yes, but others find salvation in critical and/or popular acclaim. Lovers of beasts, brides of Bela Legosi, and blood in the cinema can enjoy reviews, forums, and other creature features at B-Movie Central. The site seems to be having sporadic problems with server load, so you may have to wait a while for links to appear, but the wait is worth your while, even if it's just to check out BMC Cheese Blog, much of which is devoted to the news-inspired "Moron of the Day" posts. In his FAQ, site maitre d' Duane Martin states that he prefers to review classics because he enjoys their style and because there are plenty of sites that review recent flicks. Too bad if you're only interested in what's playing at local theaters. If titles such as "Bride of the Monster", "Reptilicus", and "Godzilla vs. Monster Zero" ring a bell, these bytes are for you, bud. Or buddess. Whatever. Bet your booty on it!
http://www.bmoviecentral.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/ |
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Absolution Gap
Birth of the Chess Queen: A History
Network Security HacksShort Crime Fiction and Interviews
Plots with Guns is a nice mystery story site. There are the requisite interviews with authors and news items, but the stories themselves are the stars. The current issue has seven stories, and if you're a fan of modern American hard-boiled mysteries, all are worth your time. The writers are not big names in mystery fiction, but all are published authors - this isn't Net dreck. The quality varies from merely acceptable to so good that you'll want to rush out and buy other work by the author. One warning: the stories tend to be hard-boiled and in some cases have a lot of explicit sexual content. And there's always a gun involved - hence the site name.http://www.plotswithguns.com/index.html
Your Choice of 170 Newspapers for $10 a Month
PressDisplay.com lands on your virtual porch 170 newspapers from 45 countries, published with the original layout and available before they ever hit the newsstand. Everything's here, right down to the ads, and the papers are searchable and bookmarkable, as well. For the $10 a month Economy Plan, you can access 25 newspapers - which beats the heck out of what you'd have to pay for a digital subscription to a single newspaper, in most cases. Additional papers cost less than additional dollar. PressDisplay.com offers a seven-day free trial, so there's no reason not to check it out.http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx
An Homage to Pineapple - and a Blog
There are plenty of odd domain names out there but Tiny Pineapple at least has a story behind it. Our host, Grettir Asmundarson (a pseudonym), relates the story but fails to explain all the other pineapple stuff on the site. Cruise the Gallery for historic and modern pineapple illustration and architecture. The reason we put this in our Books & E-Zines section, though, is the blog. The eclectic entries walk randomly from topic to topic - one moment, Asmundarson holds forth on sawdust-like bagels, the next, he's determining the real formula for Vanilla Coke. It should definitely raise a smile. Check out the retro e-postcards, too. Asmundarson's obsession with the pineapple, a traditional symbol of welcome let us not forget, has resulted in a place for all your pineapple trivia needs, tiny or not.http://www.tinypineapple.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
Spelling with the Periodic Table
Why on rare earth not? The Periodic Table, as most of us remember, lists all the elements that make up - well, everything. It is most typically studied in chemistry classes, and is a trial for most students. GalaxyGoo is a wealth of educational resources, one of which is a Flash game designed to make the Periodic Table friendlier and more accessible. The game is simple, and as challenging as you make it. Click on any of the 109 elements (there were a lot fewer when our reviewer was in school!) and the letters that are that element's symbol are placed in the word you are creating. Be careful, as letters can't be moved once placed. The goal is to create words. Once you get the hang of playing, you find a good game.http://www.galaxygoo.org/games/tabletoy/tabletoy.html
Nova asks whether the US military's high-tech weaponry can prevail against insurgents on its companion Web site for "Battle Plan Under Fire", its documentary that aired May 4 on PBS. At this point, no one knows. The use of technology in warfare has fascinated strategists and historians for centuries, and daily headlines make us wonder. NOVA doesn't take sides. Three sections focus on high tech itself: robotic drones; synthetic aperture radar; and stealth design. Another three consist of a book excerpt and two interviews with military experts. The interviews are provocative. In Transforming Warfare, the director of Force Transformation at the US Department of Defense argues that warfare is undergoing a fundamental change due to information technology and networking. In The Immutable Nature of War, Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, former president of the Marine Corps University, maintains that because the fundamental nature of war doesn't change, it's a mistake to ask technology to lead the military instead relying on the military thinking to lead the development of appropriate technology. Much of this material may seem antiseptic, given the evening news. One thing is clear. As the site mentions, "Technology may alter how wars are fought, but it will never change the fact that wars are conducted by human beings for political ends."
http://www.pbs.org/nova/wartech/
NASA Finds More Evidence of Global Warming
More evidence of global warming surfaced in April with publication of a NASA study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The study looks at satellite data on land surface temperatures around the world between 1981 and 1998. Until recently, studies on climate change were based on measurements taken at thousands of ground-based stations where temperature was measured a few meters above the surface. The satellites in this study, however, measure actual land temperatures with technology developed by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. With clouds and volcanoes factored out, the satellite data show that average global temperature increased 0.43 degrees C per decade, while ground-station data show a rise of 0.34 degrees C (0.61 degrees F). EurekAlert has a one-page article about the findings, along with a dead link to a NASA source which we update below.EurekAlert: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-04/nsfc-saa042204.php
NASA: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/0315skintemp.html
Build Your Own Steady-Cam for $14
Producing a broadcast-quality film with little or no budget can be an arduous if not impossible task. The $14 Steady-Cam site adds to the possible side of the ledger, and can be utilized by underfunded filmmakers to get a professional look. Johnny Chung Lee provides step-by-step instructions on how to create your own steadycam (a camera stabilizer) for, yes, about $14. Using a handful of tools and some fairly cheap materials, you, too, can build your own. By following Lee's instructions and with practice, users can reduce the shaky handheld look by about 80%.http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/
SOFTWARE
With blogging all the rage - still - there is a proliferation of weblog publishing software. But it's difficult to decide which package fits your needs because few folks have taken the time to write comparative reviews, especially in the wake of the recent changes wrought at Movable Type (see NSD 10.19). Owen Winkler's blog comparison chart is a good place to start. This is your basic feature comparison, spanning 11 weblog publishing packages and 60 different attributes. The chart does not cover weblog hosting services like Blogger or LiveJournal but only standalone software packages such as the aforementioned Movable Type or WordPress. It's a good place to start if you're looking for weblog software.NSD 10.19: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.19.html#BS6
Winkler: http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm
FreeBSD is a member of the vastly popular open-source Unix operating system triumvirate (Linux and OpenBSD are the other two). This latest version is mainly a bug-fix release with a slew of security fixes and many updates to the major packages, notably Bind, OpenSSL, GNOME, and sendmail. Several user tools have also received minor tweaks. The release notes have details, while the announcement has a list of mirrors where you can download the operating system.
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.10R/announce.html