BREAKING SURF
| That Ol' "Microsoft Will Pay You for E-Mail" Hoax |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Site Guesses the Dictator or Sitcom Character |
| Dog Toy or Marital Aid? |
| Fireworks Injury Stats |
| Enron Traders Have Got the Power |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
For the first time ever, humans have placed an object in Saturn orbit. The Cassini spacecraft has already returned fabulous pictures of Saturn's rings and a decent picture of the surface of Titan, one of Saturn's moons. The Huygens probe will attempt to land on Titan early next year. Anything we write will be out of date by the time you get this, so the best we can do is point you at some Web sites. The Cassini-Huygens mission has its own home page, separate from NASA pages on the mission. Space.com has an independent look at the science. If it's just photos you're after, don't miss the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS), although this site also has a decent layman's explanation of the mission and its goals. Click on the Imaging Diary button for the snaps.Cassini-Huygens: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html
Space.com: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/cassini_rings_040701.html
CICLOPS: http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/
US Government: Internet Explorer Is Too Dangerous to Use
The US Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), once part of the Department of Energy and now part of the Department of Homeland Security, has released a Vulnerability Note that takes Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) to task. CERT recommends either a slew of modifications to IE's default settings or just dumping the thing in favor of another browser. You'd be advised to completely remove IE from your hard drive, too, since the vulnerabilities may exploit the software even if you don't open it yourself - oh, but isn't the browser embedded in Windows? C'est la vie. There are reasons we keep posting links to the Mozilla project's open-source products, and this is one of them. Give Firefox a spin. It's true that a sprinkling of Web sites require IE to display correctly, but a mass exodus away from that proprietary format may pressure them to change. It's time - long past time, actually - to abandon security through obscurity. In our experience, nearly all Web sites function fine with other browsers. Wired and eWeek have more, and the Washington Post details one of IE's vulnerabilities.CERT: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878
Mozilla: http://mozilla.org/
eWeek: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1617931,00.asp
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,64065,00.html
Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6746-2004Jun25.html
EFF Decides on Patents to Test
In NSD 10.24, we told you about the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) resolve to find ridiculous patents to challenge. The EFF has settled on a list of ten, which it announced at its Web site. Wired covers the list in more depth; targeted patents come from patent-holders small and big, including Nintendo and Clear Channel. Of course, the holders of the patents to be challenged disagree with the EFF. The EFF provides further info on each target - click the name to get there. In addition to the info, on each page, the EFF also asks for help specific to each case.NSD 10.24: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.24.html#BS7
EFF: http://www.eff.org/patent/wanted/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64038,00.html
As a business plan, suing the bejeezus out of everybody might seem questionable, but the approach has a decent track record. The list of companies to have tried it even includes IBM. SCO's Darl McBride has bet his company's farm on the technique, however, and in the process has become the most hated man in the Linux community. Is SCO's plan just a giant scam, an indication of how sick the intellectual-property business has become, or is there more to it? Wired fills in some blanks in a detailed story on the man who wants to toll the open-source freeways and why he thinks he has a case. McBride comes to the high-stakes lawsuit game with considerable experience, although he's never tackled so many high-powered opponents before. Whether or not you consider him a patent vulture who wishes to feed on the work of countless others who have selflessly toiled to make Linux the growing success it is today, the man is certainly earnest and determined.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/linux.html
Warren Lieberfarb didn't invent the DVD, so he's not really its father, as some call him. Heck, he's not even an inventor. Lieberfarb is more of a marketer, and as head of Warner Home Video he championed the DVD format through sheer force of will until the film industry decided to gamble on his beloved little disks. The rest, as they say, is financial history. DVD sales to consumers and rental outlets now account for 52% of the Hollywood-based industry's revenue, a sum of almost $10 billion. MSNBC has repackaged a Newsweek feature on Lieberfarb, his accomplishments, and his often self-imposed obstructions. People who champion causes need to be headstrong and willful, and those traits don't usually win friends. Lieberfarb has won awards for his work - he has an Emmy in his closet - but he decided to take his financial reward as Time Warner stock options rather than $25 million cash. Hindsight is 20/20 vision, but don't weep for Lieberfarb's now worthless AOL Time Warner options - he took a $10 million payout when the company fired him last December. MSNBC's article is a fascinating look at the nexus of tech, marketing, and personality.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5305710/site/newsweek/
The Onion's Guide to Celebrity Weblogs
It's hard not to seem pretentious, self-righteous, or just plain silly when in your blog you write up the most mundane things as if they were deeply significant. It's even worse when you're famous, and your brain has absolutely nothing do with it, yet you can't afford to or don't want to accept your mental mediocrity. Of course, pretension garners mockery - the Onion has risen to the bait to skewer the bloggery of celebrities medium and small. The celebs' blogs do seem off kilter. Billy Corgan doesn't like President Bush. Melanie Griffith gets defensive about tabloid stories. Gillian Anderson tells a story about a cancer patient who got better watching "The X Files". Lisa Whelchel mentions an embarrassing reason for calling the doctor, but more embarrassing is calling her son's penis a "toot-toot". Fred Durst babbles about the demons of doubt. Al Roker talks about his periodontal work. While there is a famous saying about fools and silence, we have to hand it to celebs who are brave enough to blog and who do so rather than hide behind a faceless commercial fan-club site.http://www.theonionavclub.com/feature/index.php?issue=4025&f=2
2004 Industrial Design Excellence Awards
Good design is functional above all else, but it doesn't hurt to have a form that provides pleasure with a compelling aesthetic coolness. The Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) jury presents gold, silver, and bronze awards - often multiples in each of the 12 categories - to what it considers the best in industrial design. The 2004 winners range from the iPod Mini to the ingenious Ensalada salad-serving set to a clever and practical human-powered irrigation pump. Also claiming top spots are the Power Mac G5, dissolvable packaging for underwear, the clever Mohawk Paper Mills Web site (which sells paper), Disney's awesome Mission Space exhibit, and the Contessa chair that looks like an escapee from Herman Miller - but which topped a Herman Miller chair in the Furniture category. Set aside some time to browse through the 130 award-winners and associated links.IDEA: http://www.idsa.org/idea/idea2004/idea2004.htm
Mohawk Paper Mills: http://www.mohawkpaper.com/index_content.htm
How Microsoft Manages Software Development
Do you want to know how Microsoft makes software? Really? Sausage-making is a lot easier to take - trust us. If you must, read this incredible blog entry that purports to come from a member of Microsoft's C++ team, entitled the "21 Rules of Thumb for Shipping Great Software on Time". Some folks argue in their comments on the article that Microsoft has never done this and so this is more an exercise in hypothetical fantasy than a description of an actual process, but the piece is worth reading for insight into how Microsoft develops software. The article is a mass of managerial nostrums and cliches, and has little actual value for coders. The discussion and comments are far more enlightening than anything in the article itself.http://blogs.msdn.com/David_Gristwood/archive/2004/06/24/164849.aspx
We've covered RoboCup before - it's a soccer tournament for robots. The tournament has a lofty goal: the deployment of a team of fully autonomous robot soccer players against a team of human World Cup winners. And the robot designers plan to come out on top. They have a long way to go, but they're not worried. Their plan is for victory in 2050, which is a long time away. The key to these competitions isn't the ultimate goal, it's the potential technological offshoots from the steps to get there.
http://www.robocup2004.pt/
Multiplayer Diplomacy and the Folks Who Live It
If the very idea of "diplomacy on crack" makes you curious rather than anxious, we have a game for you: Civilization III, the multiplayer edition. A Kuro5hin article looks at the game, its players, and its problems. You probably remember the original Civilization computer game, by Sid Meier, or its two sequels, but we doubt you've ever taken the game this seriously. The article cites one person who claims that, next to sleep, playing Civilization has occupied the most hours of their life. The multiplayer game has evolved to encompass multiplayer countries, which compete with other multiplayer countries. This mode of play involves mock democracies that allow governance by a group. The discussion that follows the article illuminates the nature of the game's multiplayer culture. Go play anthropologist!http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/6/18/81827/3874
Quality of Streaming Video Steadily Improving
Online video feeds have improved in the last couple of years - at least if you have broadband access, they have. If you don't have broadband Net access, visit your local library, as many offer at least DSL speed. If you have access to a library and you're not too lazy to actually use it, the Digital Divide may not be the schism it's so often portrayed as. That noted, Online Journalism Review (OJR) attempts to pull together the current state of online video, and some of the conclusions are encouraging. OJR unfortunately focuses strictly on RealPlayer and Windows Media Player offerings; we'd prefer to see a more balanced review that includes multiple platforms. Nonetheless, OJR does review the major feeds, and you can see its take on CNN, FOX, ABC, and several other news sources. OJR singles out the BBC for its particularly poor stream quality - but when you're near the Thames, stream quality is all relative.http://ojr.org/ojr/technology/1087947933.php
Iraq is now a sovereign nation, nominally at least. We suspect that should the new Iraqi government ask all coalition troops to leave, the coalition would ignore the request, so how sovereign can Iraq be? Our focus, of course, is the online world, and even there Iraq lacks a national presence. Its national top-level domain, .iq, is entangled in a legal and bureaucratic mess. Salon details the problem, especially the domain's chaotic political history. Paul Bremer, the former administrator of Iraq, may have hot-footed it out of Baghdad, but ICANN is mighty slow about resolving domain disputes.
http://salon.com/tech/wire/2004/06/26/iraq_web/index.html
Playing catch-up but playing it well, Republicans are starting to take advantage of Internet connectivity, Wired reports. Republicans generally still haven't accepted that whole blogging concept, but they have implemented other forms of Internet access and they're plugging away on all cylinders. The Bush-Cheney re-election campaign has signed up more than 6 million subscribers to its e-mail list, and the meatspace Party for the President get-togethers the campaign plans and organizes online led to more than 5,200 meetings among all 50 states. More are in the works. Even people who live to hate the President are wowed.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63942,00.html
ONLINE CULTURE
That Ol' "Microsoft Will Pay You for E-Mail" Hoax
Almost certainly, you've at some point seen an e-mail that informs you that Microsoft, as part of a project to track the Internet e-mail system, will pay you to forward that very e-mail. It is a hoax, of course, and technically a computer virus that takes advantage of the user to propagate rather than software. In this day of maleficent worms and Trojans, the e-mail hoax looks downright innocent, but in one guise or another, the hoax lives on. Jonathon Keats became intrigued by this particular chain e-mail and decided to trace its origin. In the Wired article he wrote, he describes contacting various individuals who through no fault of their own became associated with the hoax. Amazingly, Keats did manage to find the guy who sent the very first e-mail - as you might expect, as a joke to some friends. Sometimes, even the littlest lies blow up into something we can no longer control.http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/hoax.html
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Bound for Glory : America in Color 1939-43
Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments
Diary of a Viagra Fiend
Survival (Species Imperative, 1)SURFING SITES
From its rise at the beginning of the 14th century until its dissolution in 1923, the empire of the Ottoman Turks was the major political unit in the Middle East, extending from Egypt to Russia and from Austria to India at its zenith. No real understanding of Middle Eastern history and culture is possible without reference to the Ottoman Empire. Just who were the Ottomans, we hear you ask? A fine introduction to the dynasty and its empire is TheOttomans.org. This well designed and lavishly illustrated site tells us it aims to be "the leading information portal regarding the history, military, culture, and arts of the Ottoman Empire", and it succeeds in spades. Large multi-page sections examine the history of the dynasty, family life (including a fascinating look at the harem), and Ottoman art and culture. The enlargeable maps and a bibliography are both helpful. Our only complaint is that the illustrations are too small. Other than that, all history Web sites should be this good.http://www.theottomans.org/english/index.asp
Mountain Dew's Genius Spy vs. Spy Ads
Tickle your funny bone with this revitalized look at a phenomenon taken from the pages of Mad magazine. Spy vs. Spy was always one of the easier comics to read, but its lack of dialogue hid profound meaning. The cartoonist, Antonio Prohias, had fled Communist Cuba, and his strips ridiculed the Cold War mentality. Mountain Dew has unleashed Prohias's protagonist and antagonist spies in a new ad campaign. Bringing to life the zany antics of the duo from Spy vs. Spy, the TV ads undoubtedly target Baby Boomers, but also boldly introduce the classic characters to a demographic still in diapers at the height of Mad magazine mania. Technology has allowed the ads to give the spies three-dimensional makeovers, yet the effect does not discard Prohias's flat, uncompromising lines. The macabre tricks and double-crosses of the arch-enemies remain ardently the same. Method Studios, one of the ad collaborators, offers the two commercial spots in QuickTime format, and they are sure to be an entertaining and nostalgic break in your day. There are two more on the way.http://www.methodstudios.com/mox653
A perfect world wouldn't need a protocol describing the perfect refugee camp. Our very imperfect world needs lots of refugee camps, sadly. The best follow the standards outlined in UN refugee guidelines. CBC News has created an easily understood Flash view of an idealized refugee camp. As you scroll about the camp with your mouse, you learn about all the parts of the camp, including the number of people each can support and exactly what each area is designed to provide. Taking this tour is sobering, considering the number of people currently living in camps that don't always meet the standards shown here and the number of people who need be in such camps (think Darfur, Sudan). The easily bored can take advantage of the text menu at the top.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/iraq/presentations/refugees/refugee.html
American Experience Remembers Reagan
There's nothing like a Presidential funeral to draw the talking heads out of their holes. Love him or loathe him, Ronald Reagan's presidency will be grist for the historians' mill for many years to come. No matter how you feel about the man's politics, his rise from poverty and obscurity to Hollywood, thence to the governorship of California, thence to the White House is a great American story. His wit and charm were admired by all who met him, even his political adversaries. If you're unfamiliar with the bare bones of his biography, PBS fills in the gaps with the online companion to the American Experience broadcast of "Reagan". Aimed primarily at pupils, the site features quotes, biographical info, and a virtual tour of his Presidential Library.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reagan/timeline/index.html
The Modern Language Association, that guardian of the English language, has a Web site that uses 2000 US Census data to let viewers see the distribution of all the languages spoken in the country, including many languages with only a few speakers. Keeping in mind that this is census data, and thus relies on the truthfulness of the respondents, the site nevertheless answers those bizarre linguistic trivia questions guaranteed to win you bar bets. How many Navajo speakers do you think live in Washington, D.C.? And where do the bulk of Yiddish speakers in Hawaii congregate? The answers are four, and Kauai, respectively. Users can easily customize maps and create comparison maps between two languages. Given the size of the database, response is speedy and navigation makes the site even more useful.
http://www.mla.org/census_main
Oh My God! There's an "Axe in My Head" Page
Back in 1993, the Iron Warrior, an engineering-student newsletter at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, featured some photos of faculty members with crudely drawn axes in their heads. In each case, the accompanying caption read "Oh my God! There's an axe in my head." A Waterloo student, Johann Junginger, wondered how you'd say that in French, and a few years later found himself perusing Usenet. Deciding that Usenet was perfect for wasting time, he posted the phrase in English, French, and his poor Latin and asked for other translations. Things sort of took off from there, completely out of Junginger's control. The phrase has been translated into 102 dead, alive, and artificial languages, all lovingly collected at the "Oh my God! There's an axe in my head" Web site, which claims to be "The Web's #1 Axe In My Head Page". The list runs from Afrikaans to Zulu - "O God! Daar's 'n byl in my kop," and "Awu nkosi yami kunembhazo ekh," respectively, for those who didn't know already. Yes, there's a Klingon translation as well.http://www.yamara.com/junk/xl970512.html
There are songs that have a part so cool that you find yourself telling anyone around you to shut up so you can listen to just those sublime few seconds. The songs these parts belong to aren't necessarily even good songs as a whole, but they nonetheless have that memorable redeeming feature. RetroCrush invited nominations for the 50 Coolest Song Parts and, as if to illustrate how even crap can have its highlights, found that the part where the drums kick in on "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins topped the list. You'll probably disagree with most of the list, but you might find yourself nodding your head to some of the choices as you listen to the supplied sound file. That bass lick in Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" is kind of funky and has a fascinating explanation as well. Some of the selections may outrage you - you can head to the RetroCrush forums to make someone pay for the heresy.
http://www.retrocrush.com/archive2004/coolsongs/
We're Gonna Party Like It's 1989
The '80s drew to a close almost 15 years ago, but watch how the dance floor fills up when "Tainted Love" or "Walking on Sunshine" is played at a wedding party and you could be forgiven for thinking it was just yesterday. The 80s Exchange was set up in the dying weeks of the '90s for fans of the '80s to get together online and reminisce about their favorite decade. The site has biographies of '80s musical stars, '80s pop charts, and '80s music and movie reviews, but the hub of the site is the Message Board. Occasionally, the community discusses events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Falklands War, or the rise of AIDS, but basically they take part in a feel-good nostalgia-fest and keep most of the discussion on music, TV, and movies. This is the place to come if you want to know the setlist of the first concert of the Judas Priest reunion tour, vote on the three best slasher flicks of the '80s, or simply have your say on the worst mullets of the decade. In one thread, a member summed up the decade perfectly: "We embraced the cheese and there was nothing 'ironic' about it." Sincere or ironic, go to the 80s Exchange and embrace the cheese.http://www.80sxchange.com/index.shtml
Analysis of the Objects of Everyday Life
Have you ever considered creating an online gallery of your most mundane belongings as a humorous commentary on everyday life? No? No worry, it's already been done, and with some style, by Alison Hladkjy. She's already reached object number 195 (a plastic toy from a fast-food outlet) and is showing no sign of stopping. Hladkjy is an inveterate collector of stuff like cookie tins, erasers, and bad habits, so she has plenty of fuel for her urge to catalogue her possessions and provide them with some background. Each entry comes with a side of commentary. Hladkjy's unusual compulsion challenges us to see the beauty in the ordinary and to accept that what may be a crumpled, discarded wrapper to someone may be a subtle blend of colors and textures to another, to paraphrase her.http://www.myurbandig.com/
If you had to condense your profession into just two things, what would they be? The Two Things site holds that any profession or concept can be reduced to two things or application of those two things. The two things about the Two Things proposal are first that people love to play the game but rarely agree on the results and second that this goes doubly for those who work with computers. You'll enjoy the entries, from Accounting right through to Writing - although the site is not organized alphabetically. (See the pain we go through for you?) Some listings are wonderfully compact, such as the two things about life: "Beauty is truth," and "Truth is beauty." Others reflect intrinsic difficulties, such as medicine's two things of "Do no harm," and "To do any good, you must risk doing harm."
http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/thetwothings.html
Frequently frantic but never dull, Today in Alternate History presents just what you already think it does - alternate historical events for each date. The entries arrive in blog format, which lends itself marvelously to daily updates. The material has some factual elements, but is mostly fantasy. The trick author Robbie Taylor accomplishes is not only blending the real and the made-up, but in the continuing alternate timelines that flow seamlessly. Step into different timeframes here, and expect a good jolt. Plan to spend some time winnowing out the fact from the fiction, and consider what the world might be like, had the fictitious actually occurred. Rather than bookmark the site, you can opt for RSS or Atom feeds.
http://althistory.blogspot.com/
Kyler Laird is a man who loves walking his dogs, but he had a problem. He had a fit young dog, Grazie, whom he had never taught to heel and who strained at the leash, and an older dog named Garbo who couldn't keep up, having lost a leg and a great deal of lung capacity to osteosarcoma. Laird came up with one of those incredibly obvious solutions that no one else would have thought of - he strapped a wagon to Grazie that allowed her to pull Garbo behind her. Laird tells his story, complete with charming photographs and video files, on this delightful little personal site. His first wagon, which helped ensure a good quality of life for Garbo in her final days, was essentially a child's toy bought from Toys R Us and modified with store-bought parts. Laird has since become more ambitious and has constructed a second dog wagon, and even plans to build a dog-guided, powered wheelchair. At the site, he also gives an entertaining account of how his site got Slashdotted.
http://lairds.us/Kyler/projects/dog_wagon/narration
Everything You Need to Know about Digital Mapping (on Windows)
If you're interested in digital mapping, you'll love Digital Grove. It offers a lot of mostly free tools to help you along - if you happen to run a Windows box. The resources the site provides are almost unbelievable. The 3D Maps page introduces the visitor to excellent, almost intuitive tools, techniques, and samples, but the site has much more to offer in the field of general-purpose georeferencing. Who knew all of this stuff was available? You can pick up graphical locators here - for the US, anyway. Click a point on a map, and get latitude/longitude, place name, elevation, and other facts. Want pictures? The site has you covered. This amazingly comprehensive site gives you access to radar topography, Landsat imagery, and just about anything else you can imagine, although it has no links to shots of J.Lo's latest marriage.http://www.digitalgrove.net/
Can You Pass a US Citizenship Test?
What were the original 13 American states? How has the Constitution changed? What color are the stars on the US flag? Do you care? If you're applying to become a US citizen, you should. Applicants for citizenship must pass a test administered by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, now a bureau of the Homeland Security Department. North Carolina's Herald-Sun has created an electronic version. See if you qualify, or if you were sleeping through civics class.http://www.herald-sun.com/votebook/citizenship/citstart.html
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Site Guesses the Dictator or Sitcom Character
In this online question game, you pick either a dictator or TV sitcom character and answer a series of yes/no questions as the site tries to guess your choice. We tried Basil Fawlty and David Brent, men who could fall into either camp, to try and fox the site, but it was having none of it.http://www.smalltime.com/dictator.html
This guessing game has you do the guessing. It really is a tough call, especially if you don't own a dog, or haven't visited a pet shop or sex emporium lately. Hmmm, this should be a snap for our readers...
http://www.dogtoyormaritalaid.com/
Fireworks mostly injure guys under 14 in the hands, fingers, and eyes. The Centers for Disease Control offer some statistics to keep in mind during upcoming Fourth of July celebrations.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/duip/spotlite/firework_spot.htm
Enron Traders Have Got the Power
This mash-up of the 1990 hit song "The Power" by Snap! and audiotapes of Enron traders gloating about screwing California power consumers is worth an entry on any party mix.http://www.tubafrenzy.org/weblog/DJTwombly_EnronsGotThePower.mp3