BREAKING SURF
| Gallery of User Desktops |
| Debuggery |
| Geoffrey Hiller Photographs the World |
| Hiking along the Great Lake States |
| Vancouver to Moscow by Pedal, Ski, and Oar |
| A Triumphant Type of Art |
| Arty Mazes |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Best Practices of News Layout and Design |
| Journalists' Research Toolbox |
| Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About |
| Low-Carb News |
| The Math and Mathematicians of "Futurama" |
| When Are You Alert? |
| Mozilla 1.7 Released |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
The 9/11 Commission, more formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, has made available 17 staff reports that detail aspects of the investigation into the events of that horrific day in September 2001. We want to know exactly how it happened, how officials reacted as the events unfolded, what blunders occurred, and anything else that may shed light not only on what happened but on what we've learned from it. While none of the commission's material directly addresses how to prevent or reduce such attacks, just knowing what transpired seems a useful and necessary foundation to efforts to ward off future terrorism. The 17 reports cover many different aspects: the entry of the hijackers into the US; the performance of the intelligence community; crisis management; and, perhaps most grimly fascinating, the 20 pages of "Staff Statement No. 16" that detail the plot from the terrorists' perspective. The last report in the series is also worth reading - well, they all are, really - as it follows the harrowing efforts of officials to develop a defensive strategy under conditions they had never anticipated or trained for and for which existing protocols were useless. As we now know, their efforts failed woefully, continually lagging behind events as people struggled to figure out what was going on. Hindsight makes us all wise.http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements.htm
Wide media coverage has ensured that you've already heard about SpaceShipOne's historic flight to the edge of space. The project is part of an attempt to grab the $10-million X Prize. SpaceShipOne, engineered by the legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan, is funded entirely by private money from Paul Allen, formerly of Microsoft. The Web site of SpaceShipOne, formally called the Tier One project, is worth visiting, but don't expect to find much detail about the craft's design. Mostly, you get a bunch of brochures with glossy eye-candy of the major systems. Pity, because the hardcore technology is what's probably of most interest to space fans. A press release has news of the famous flight, which was not without its problems. New Scientist has more details, which really should have been at Tier One's site. The Tier One team knows how to build spaceships, but apparently has little interest in maintaining a compelling Web site, though some of that reticence is probably due to its desire to keep a few things secret.
Tier One: http://scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.htm
Press Release: http://scaled.com/projects/tierone/062104-2.htm
New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996052
AOL Employee Arrested for Stealing 92 Million E-Mail Addresses
A disgruntled employee can be the biggest danger to privacy on the Internet. Just think of all that data lying around in any company, data that unethical employees can easily steal. The US Secret Service (SS) has just arrested Jason Smathers, an AOL employee, for swiping a list of 92 million (!) AOL e-mail addresses and selling them to a spammer, who in turn sold it to other spammers. The sheer scale of the theft makes it notable. Imagine if somebody were to do this, and market the goods more efficiently or also manage to take away all associated credit card numbers, which the SS says Smathers did not do. CNN paints the story in broad strokes but you can get far more details from the actual SS complaint archived on the Smoking Gun site.CNN: http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/23/technology/aol_spam/
Smoking Gun: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0623042aol1.html
Doctorow Lectures Microsoft on DRM
Companies are scrambling to incorporate digital-rights management (DRM) into almost everything digital in the hope that DRM will let them continue to manage, i.e. control, the use by consumers of the intellectual property the companies own. Cory Doctorow has much to say about DRM and intellectual copyright issues. He's a successful author who has begun releasing his novels as free digital copies as well as in paper form. He recently lectured Microsoft on DRM. He presented his sane assessment in a style that brought grins to even our jaded faces. This is great stuff, presented in an incredibly approachable way. Doctorow also discusses what has become known as the Darknet, a catch-all term for Internet use devoted to sharing files and passwords. DRM will not survive the Darknet, and even if it could, it wouldn't be a advisable stance to take. DRM is an idea that has come and gone in roughly the time required to discharge the powder in the firing pan of an old muzzle-loading firearm. Doctorow's text is easier to follow than the MP3 of his talk, available at Waxy.org. We also send up a link to original paper that defined "Darknet", which came from Microsoft itself.Doctorow: http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
Waxy.org: http://waxy.org/random/audio/Cory_Doctorow_Microsoft_Research_DRM_talk.mp3
Darknet: http://msl1.mit.edu/ESD10/docs/darknet5.pdf
You're familiar with Nigerian money scams and their ilk (right?), and most likely, you, or your ISP, have a filter set to remove these things - else, you manually delete these e-mail messages and move on. Oddly, though, some people do fall for these come-ons, and that's one reason why spam is so inescapable. While only a small number fall for the scam offerings, the few who do give up big money. Most victims lose only $3,000 or so but others are parted from much more, and the scams reap an estimated $100 million a year. Several groups have sprung up to scam the scammers. A recent New York Times article discusses the scams, the scammers, and the counter-scammers - the ones who out-scam the scammers and document their exploits. Good reading.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/technology/circuits/17hoax.html
Big Six ISPs Put Forth Anti-Spam Policy
The Anti-Spam Technology Alliance (ASTA) is a coalition of the six biggest ISPs: AOL, British Telecom, Comcast, EarthLink, Microsoft, and Yahoo. If you think you have it bad with spam, imagine what it's like for these companies. That's why they've banded together to produce a best-practices policy which they hope will be adopted by everybody else. Many of the best practices are well known and widely adopted already - closing open relays, policing offending CGI mail scripts, etc. - while others are currently under debate among various Internet standards bodies. The ASTA document should be required reading for anybody who runs a mail server, filled as it is with good advice and many links to serious anti-spam technical resources.ASTA: http://corp.aol.com/press/ASTA_Statement_of_Intent.pdf
The other Asta: http://freespace.virgin.net/donna.moore/Asta.htm
Spam Wars: Description of Small-Time Spammer Operation and Economics
Rejo Zenger, a well known Dutch anti-spam activist, has interviewed a former small-time spammer and has gained for all of us insight into how exactly a spammer runs such a business. The anonymous spammer noticed a classic capitalist opportunity to sell a product, which also remains anonymous, at a decent mark-up. He decided to advertise with spam, first with his dial-up and university broadband accounts, to e-mail addresses he harvested himself. Later, he graduated to a dedicated spam service and bought a CD of e-mail addresses - a rip-off at 300 Euros, since only about 30% of the addresses worked. Over the course of six months, the spammer earned nearly 3,000 Euros. In one typical spam five-day run near the end, he sent out about 250,000 non-bouncing spam messages and, after expenses, realized a profit of more than 500 Euros. Zenger's write-up has more details and makes worthwhile reading.http://rejo.zenger.nl/abuse/1085493870.php
The Value of Social Networking
Who you know, rather than what you know, makes social-networking sites such as Friendster and Orkut work. But just what is it that these sites do for users? After all, how can anybody keep up with 500 "friends"? In this great two-parter in Salon, Andrew Leonard lays out the intellectual and commercial raisons d'etre for social networking. These sites are a sociologist's dream come true, allowing them to examine interpersonal relationships in real time and with little effort. The most interesting finding is a commercial one: online social networkers don't have concerns about privacy, which allows social-networking sites to become marketing petri dishes that let a marketer tightly target a specific audience. The flip side of that is that some use an approach based in social networking to allay the spam problem - you are more likely to want to read a message from someone you have designated as a contact than from someone you have never heard from before - and many e-mail clients compare incoming e-mail to address books. One of Leonard's most fundamental points is that social-networking sites add little actual value to users' daily lives - in which case, social networking sites truly are academic.http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/06/15/social_software_one/
It's probably only a matter of time before Google adds a programming interface to Gmail. The demand is certainly there, as evidenced by the number of projects that are already hacking Gmail in all sorts of useful and trivial ways. There are programs to import your existing address book and mail into Gmail, others that export Gmail content, several that notify you when you get new mail in your Gmail account, and any number that retrieve Gmail messages in various ways - Gmail's one glaring deficiency being a lack of a POP interface. Justin Blanton has compiled a listing of such programs, along with links to other Gmail resources, in his weblog. If you're a Gmail user, it's worth a look.
http://www.justinblanton.com/archives/2004/06/20/getting_more_out_of_gmail/
Web Applications May Further Doom Microsoft
Some people claim that Microsoft is a dinosaur whose software products are bound to be displaced by open-source software. Joel Spolsky has a more precise take on Microsoft's key problem and the future of software development. Spolsky argues that Microsoft has abandoned the APIs, the software widgets that link the operating system to specific applications. Microsoft itself no longer cares about backwards compatibility as it forges new, incompatible code for Longhorn, the next generation of Windows. As Microsoft wipes out backward compatibility, it also wipes out developer desire to adopt new coding schemes, and coders start looking at open-source projects that remain backwards-compatible. Web programming can use this open-source advantage and make it platform-independent as well. Developers only need to get software working on their servers, and then anyone anywhere on the planet with a good Net connection can access it. And that might be a big problem for Microsoft.http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
Time-Based News Representation
The red and green rectangles at In the News look like dynamic abstract art, but they are actually code for newsworthy information - meaning information about newsworthiness. Red means a news topic is decreasing in popularity and green means increasing, in terms of appearances in Google's In the News sidebar. Size of the rectangle relates to number of appearances, which this site assesses every 15 minutes. The result is a novel, dynamic view over time of news topics that are popular and those that are fading from view. You can also look at previous weeks to compare and contrast. It's a data visualization novelty that gives a quick and easy way of seeing what's in the public eye.http://news.stamen.com/
Who would have thought that roads are among the most essential elements of urban life? Well, most people would. But would you guess that the same holds true at Burning Man? SF Gate has a fascinating account of the planning behind Black Rock City, the city that each year sprouts in the desert to hold Burning Man attendees. The article discovers how a rather anarchic social group uses space planning as a way to create both freedom and social order. Besides the essential nature of roads, Burning Man planners have come to realize that control, in a myriad of forms, is the foundation of safety in their annual re-invention of urban life.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/06/15/carollloyd.DTL
2004 Top 500 Supercomputer List
TOP500 has just released the 23rd edition of its list of the world's top 500 machines or agglomerations thereof. Perhaps the most notable thing about the list is the huge growth from last year in supercomputing power both per machine and collectively. The number of systems exceeding the 1 teraflop/second mark on the Linpack benchmark jumped from last year's 130 to 242 this year - almost half the list. The 500th system on the list, with 624 gigaflops/sec, ranked 242nd in the last TOP500 just six months ago. This marks a record turnover rate in the 11-year history of the TOP500. So who's on top? It's the Earth Simulator Center's supercomputer, built by NEC and installed in 2002 at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan, and it clocks in at 35.86 teraflops/second on Linpack. Its location is significant - another big trend is a rise in the number of top 500 systems in Asia. Asian systems are poised to pass Europe in coming years. TOP500 has a press release to accompany the raw numbers.TOP500: http://www.top500.org/
Press release: http://www.top500.org/news/articles/article_21.php
The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced its choice of the top movie songs of all time. Our immediate reaction was to swoon with shock upon noticing that "Rock and Roll High School" did not make the final cut while that appalling "Titanic" song did. Can you hum few bars? We think not. The names of the AFI jury members who picked the songs are quite correctly hidden in shame. In any event, apart from some minor quibbles, it's a pretty good list, especially if you're a movie junkie. Nearly every number is tragically infectious, so be warned, you'll wind up singing to yourself as you look over the list, so you may not want to be in range of your mocking friends when you do so. Top song? "Over the Rainbow", of course.
http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/songs.aspx
For some fans, it will seem like heresy - someone else playing Captain James T. Kirk, or an actor other than James Doohan as Scotty? What were they thinking? But the idea of continuing the original "Star Trek" mission is a natural one. This new miniseries is a labor of love for the producers, who are paying for it out of their own pockets. "Star Trek New Voyages" (STNV) has the support of the family of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, and intends to uphold the themes and premises of the original. STNV's FAQ will answer all your questions. If all goes well, STNV will release three episodes - and if all goes really, really well, STNV will produce additional episodes to mark year five of Enterprise's mission. One episode is available and a second is due in August. Watching the first episode is difficult at the moment, however. Demand has swamped the bandwidth, with 6 million downloads to date, so downloading it, even from the mirror sites, is hopelessly slow and at times impossible. If you want just an amuse-bouche, Starland hosts trailers for the series and first episode (look for New Voyages in the Features menu), and these give a fairly good idea of what to expect. Sounds like fun.
STNV: http://www.5yearmission.com/
Starland: http://www.starland.com/
"Firefly" Movie Web Site Opens
"Firefly" was on the air for only 11 episodes, yet it achieved significant cult status among SF fans. The series is self-consciously a SF western, complete with twangy music and drawling characters who hang out in grungy saloons on dirt-covered planets. The magnitude of fan reaction after the series was cancelled ensured that a movie would be made, and one is in production. It's called "Serenity" and it is slated for release next April. The Web site for the movie has just opened its swinging doors. On tap is material that will entice mostly hardcore fans - a blog, a discussion forum (registration required), and some cheesy merchandising. We enjoyed the off-beat series and we encourage you to buy the DVD bundle on Amazon if you're not familiar with it."Serenity": http://www.serenitymovie.com/
"Firefly" DVD: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000AQS0F/netsurferdigest
piPod: New York Pizza on Your iPod
We have two good reasons to point you to the Slice Web site. The self-proclaimed "no. 1 pizza weblog" offers the first, piPod, a guide to New York City pizza joints designed for the iPod's built-in Note Reader software. This may be, and probably is, the vanguard of much more text content specifically designed to be read on the cultish iPod. One Slice visitor comments that the piPod name "sounds like an iPod guide to local toilets," which we're sure somebody is racing to produce even as we write. The second reason to point you at this site is because Slice is just a great example of a targeted local webblog. It's fun, informative, and actually useful if you're in New York and need a pizza fix. Very cool.http://www.sliceny.com/archives/000379.php
Following Mass Zombification, How Long Will Power Hold out?
You've doubtless found yourself pondering this sort of question from time to time: when the zombies take over, how long do you have before the power fails? Studies indicate that at least 30% of your co-workers, and an astounding 98.9997% of all managers, are in fact zombies - yet we're holding up well for the most part. The critical test will come when zombie levels start to rise, we assume due to spiritual or alien influence. The key to answering the question is the zombification process itself. If the population zombifies gradually, power will last longer than if we all zombify at once, but exactly when your power goes out depends in large part upon the nature of the power supplier and your position in the overall distribution system. The Straight Dope cuts to the heart of the matter with its typical no-nonsense approach.http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mzombiepower.html
ONLINE CULTURE
DesktopProject [upload yourself] is something we can all relate to, a gallery of users' computer desktops. You may find yourself wondering whether your own desktop cries dullard in light of the variegated imaginations on display. The home page takes a while to load the hundreds of thumbnails linked to screenshots of desktops from all over the world. While you're waiting, pity the corporate and institutional users who can't customize their desktops and must forever resign themselves to a standard look and feel. This site has everything from naked babies to naked babes, cars to naked babes, nearly naked babe anime characters to naked babes. We even found a composite photo of Condoleezza Rice's head on the body that was flashing the camera. Someone in the Netherlands is having fun. The "What's This?" page describes the site as "both an informatic and sociological experiment." Whether you call it eye candy or pop art, you're likely to spend a while here. Andy Warhol would love it. As more people submit desktops, the gallery grows and the home page changes. The site could use better organization, but who couldn't?http://www.desktoproject.net/full.php
Bugged by software issues? Get used to it. The Buggin' My Life Away blog gives you a bit of insight into the issues affecting coders - for example, just the first three steps in a Microsoft Word codepath provide a programmer with more than 500 million possible code combinations. Imagine trying to discover and quash all the possible bugs in a framework thousands or million of steps long. No matter how large the team, it's going to be impossible. Rick Schaut writes the blog; he's a Mac coder at Microsoft, working primarily on Microsoft Word. His blog provides a cool look at issues facing Word coders on both Windows and Mac platforms. It's clear and concise, and even logical. Do yourself a favor. Stop popping those antacids and check this out. With understanding comes decreased stomach acid flow.
http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Geoffrey Hiller Photographs the World
Veteran photographer and world traveler Geoffrey Hiller is fascinated by street life and the everyday lives of ordinary people. His online portfolio is a collection of mood pieces, slideshows with music, and narrations that are part documentary, part impressionism. His most engaging section, Canto do Brasil (I Sing of Brazil), consists of mood pieces perhaps enjoyed best with a glass of wine and time for reflection. Over pleasant background music, Hiller's acquaintances annotate his excellent photography with voiceovers. Along the way we learned surprising facts like that the economy of Sao Paulo state exceeds that of Argentina or Colombia. We were less impressed by Hiller's New York City: After the Fall section, a slideshow with music and bits of prose that have no story line or culmination. The photos themselves have no connection to 9/11 except through the staccato musings of Tom Vandel. Hiller is apparently working on sections about James Baldwin, Laos and Cambodia, and Portland, Ore. His Portland Portraits page has 12 photos so far. Hiller's archive lists 25 countries in Asia, but we found nothing posted there, much to our disappointment.http://www.hillerphoto.com/
Hiking along the Great Lake States
As long as people have been walking for pleasure, they've wanted longer trails. Short loop walks are great for day trips but there's a sense of adventure to be found only on more lengthy journeys. Any such desire for exploration should be well fulfilled, between New York and North Dakota, by the North Country Trail. It crosses seven states and 4,000 miles, about half of which is off-road. The trail's informative Web site includes the expected maps and guides to the sections of the trail, but also tempts the prospective walker with current trail conditions and links to news items of interest to the walkers, such as wildlife to watch out for or the science of mosquito bites. The site offers stories from trail-hikers, invitations to volunteer on the trail, events listings for the areas the trail runs through, and an honor roll for those who've walked 1,000 or more miles along the route. After 1,000 miles, they deserve it - and a foot spa, too.http://www.northcountrytrail.org/
Vancouver to Moscow by Pedal, Ski, and Oar
Two intrepid Canadians and one intrepid Russian recently set out from Vancouver for Moscow, documenting their trek along the way. The three travelers aren't using motors, but will cover the distance on bicycle, ski, and boat. The voyage is sort of like the way everyone traveled a century or so ago - just not really. Unlike travelers of ages past, these boys have high-tech bikes, paved roads, accurate maps, and a host of other conveniences. Not to demean their journey, mind you - this is still going to be a tough slog, and the cause is excellent, as it partners with Canadian schools to inspire excellence in the classroom. As of June 9, the travelers have averaged 120 km per day on their bikes, and have arrived at Iskut, B.C., so insignificant that even the mighty MapQuest can't find it. The expedition provides maps, but nothing so detailed that it includes Iskut.http://www.vancouvertomoscow.com/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Paul Smith was born in 1921 in Philadelphia. Afflicted with cerebral palsy, Smith never had a formal education, but he taught himself to unleash his artistic talent with an unlikely tool: the manual typewriter. The ancients among us who learned to type on this mechanical precursor of the IBM Selectric (including our stub-fingered reviewer) can perhaps best appreciate the patience, ingenuity, and verisimilitude behind Smith's 300-plus graphics, 15 of which you can view at the online gallery of the Paul Smith Foundation. Have you ever tried to draw a dog, fishermen at sea, or Mona Lisa? With a typewriter? To get an idea of Smith's laborious devotion to representational art, check out the time-lapse demo of his portrait of John Davidson (John Davidson???). Done with that, you can marvel at Smith's portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, titled "Agony in the Garden", and other works. You do what you can, but in spite of lifelong adversity, Smith has done more.http://www.paulsmithfoundation.org/index.html
Get lost with Christopher Berg as he explores the mythical wonder of mazes. His Amazeing Art Mazes site is really just a fancy ad for his "Amazeing Art" book, but it's heavy on the fancy and light on the ad. You can learn about the history of mazes, including ancient folklore that popularized them. Discover some of the world's best kept secrets as Berg guides you on an exploration of these ancient wonders that are found in cultures as diverse as Egyptian, Scandinavian, and Hindu. Berg's obsession with mazes tells here. He even provides free, arty maze downloads. Of course, several links point visitors to a plethora of maze goods for sale.
http://www.amazeingart.com/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World
Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme, the First Celebrity Chef
Physique: Classic Photographs of Naked Athletes
The Atrocity ArchivesBest Practices of News Layout and Design
News Page Designer is a gathering place for the people who shape the look of our newspapers. It offers examples and commentary on the best practices of newspaper layout. Particularly fascinating are the Feature slideshows, which focus on how different newspapers covered the same story. While the onscreen quality precludes fine details, layout always was and still is how the various elements relate within the page area, and that massing is caught perfectly in the slide shows. There are also opinion columns (in many languages). The Sun Journal of Lewiston, Me. hosts the site.http://www.newspagedesigner.com/
Traditional journalists rely on many sources as they produce accurate and eye-catching output. Unfortunately, the current trend, fostered by scoop-driven journalism, owe more to eye-catching, with accurate following, if there's time. Fact-checking is one of the dying arts. It needn't be so. The Internet has crunched deadlines from the merely unreasonable of, say, 10 years ago to the downright insane of today. On the other hand, the Internet has also made finding the facts and getting them right much easier and orders of magnitude cheaper (think Net versus long-distance phone). The American Press Institute's Journalist's Toolbox has well organized links to more than 20,000 Web resources. The listed organizations concern themselves mostly with hot topics, although basic journalism resources are also well represented. No story should be considered finished without a visit here.
http://www.journaliststoolbox.com/newswriting/onlineindex.html
Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About
The UN has decided that there are ten stories that we need to hear more about, and so it has put links to these stories online for your perusal. Most of the stories tend to involve humanitarian and human rights crises. The stories are varied, and in many cases compelling. Concerns such as children forced into military service in Uganda, AIDS orphans in much of Africa, and the consequences of overfishing are brought to the forefront here. It's an excellent start, and the site's accessible.http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/
If you're one of the countless people who have jumped on the low-carb bandwagon, the Carbwire site is for you. Carbwire provides up-to-the-minute low-carb news to anyone who wants to learn more about the diet fad. The site posts the latest news, and even includes a page devoted to celebrities who favor low-carb diets. The rest of the site is fairly practical, with reviews of some of the newest products to hit the market and succulent recipes to satisfy even the strictest low-carb dieter. The site presents a short overview of the two most popular low-carb diets, Atkins and the South Beach Diet. You can also purchase materials to get you started (of course). This site is the horn of plenty for low-carb news and views.
http://www.carbwire.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
The Math and Mathematicians of "Futurama"
"Futurama" can be described as subtle, wickedly funny, and Simpsonsesque. The last is simply explained: both "Futurama" and "The Simpsons" sprang from the mind of Matt Groening, and many of the talents working on "Futurama" cut their teeth on the earlier show. What you may not know - or you may know, if you listen to the fantastic commentary tracks on "Futurama" DVDs - is just how many of the "Futurama" writers and producers have advanced science degrees, and just how much of that background they add to the shows. The Futurama πk site touches on that, and goes a bit deeper in the "Mathematical Backgrounds of Futurama Writers" PDF. As entertaining as the mathematical in-jokes are the stories of how all these advanced geeks came to write for cartoons rather than for grants. If you have the least bit of math or physics interest, the Web site, and the show, are totally addictive. Welcome to the world of tomorrow!http://www.mathsci.appstate.edu/~sjg/simpsonsmath/futuramamath/
Most people will categorize themselves either a morning person or a night owl. The aptly named Knackerfactor site has devised a simple assessment of your energy levels. With a short survey and an algorithm, the site tries to predict when your energy will dip or soar on a typical day. It looks at circadian rhythms (the natural biological rhythms of each 24 hours which are influenced by daylight), chronotype (an individual's circadian rhythm), and the effects of everyday factors on tiredness. Examples of the last include how good a night's sleep you got last night, how long your sleep was, and how much alcohol you consumed in the last few hours before bedtime. The result is an hourly chart of how awake you will feel today. It seems accurate to us. Now all we need is to get bosses everywhere to accept these analyses as fact and install comfy beds with fluffy duvets and pillows for tired employees.
http://www.knackerfactor.co.uk/
SOFTWARE
Mozilla 1.7's new features include an option to prevent sites from using JavaScript to block the browser's context menu, more flexible and effective pop-up blocking, and new icons for associated files. The project has improved the dialogues it uses for cookie-handling and for setting wallpaper. The new version also has a variety of fixes. If you're running Mozilla, you should be running this.http://mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/