BREAKING SURF
| Sinulator: Teledildonics Comes of Age |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Geographic Spam and Virus Maps |
| The 8,500-Calorie Manwich |
| Mechanical Pong |
| Must... Not... Play... |
| Cuddling Parties |
| Election Erection 2004 |
| Gaim 1.0: One IM Client to Rule Them All |
| SpamAssassin 3.0 |
| Asterisk 1.0.0: Your Own Private Phone Exchange |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Two stories question Google's News bias. First, New Scientist notes that Google alters the results it presents for searches that originate in China. Google claims that it filters out all those sites that a Chinese surfer wouldn't be able to access anyway because of China's national Internet censorship. (DIT offers an example.) This is not new; Google has often acknowledged that it tailors search results in order to comply with local laws. Second, an article in Online Journalism Review (OJR) records a specific political bias in Google News results. Search for "John Kerry" and you get an unusual number of "second tier" and generally conservative news sites in the results; search for "George Bush" and the site provides far more balanced results. OJR attributes the bias to the search algorithm and the quirks of how anti-Kerry sites use language - for example, by including his full name in headlines and posting long anti-Kerry rants. OJR also wonders about the potential for politically biased groups to game the system, by optimizing quasi-news sites for Google News search results. Its excellent article also compares Google's automated approach to Yahoo's human-based editorial approach.New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=3Dns99996426
DIT: http://www.dit-inc.us/report/google200409/google.htm
OJR: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/technology/1095977436.php
Poker Bots, Dire Threats to Gambling Humanity
The growth of huge jackpots in competitive poker tournaments - it's the "sport" with the largest purses in the world at the moment - has been matched by the growth in popularity of the game. Many online venues invite poker players to test their mettle against others, and real money is at risk. The nightmare scenario for poker players is that somebody invents an online poker bot capable of siphoning money from more fallible human players. MSNBC has an article that outlines the poker players' and poker-site operators' fears - and that also reveals that such bots are already in use in, and are blocked from, online play. Fortunately, it seems difficult to code a really skillful poker program, more difficult, even, than creating an expert chess program. Given the huge jackpot that a fine-tuned poker bot could rake in from the online gambling crowd, however, it's only a matter of time before somebody will come up with software that works.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6002298/
Hurricane Ivan, Before and After
A series of hurricanes this season has battered the northern Caribbean, Florida, and the Gulf Coast, causing huge amounts of damage and deaths in the four figures. Just how much these events can affect the environment is apparent from the US Geological Survey's (USGS) photos of the barrier islands along the coast of Florida and Alabama from before and after Hurricane Ivan. The islands are host to numerous vacation houses and resorts in what is often called the Redneck Riviera. The USGS made an aerial survey of the islands after Ivan and compared the destruction to earlier images of the intact landscape. Ivan drove the waters of Gulf of Mexico right over and through the islands, shifting massive amounts of sand, undermining constructions and scouring new channels. The photos tell the tale boldly. Journalist Jim Keeble offers a brief account of his trip to the Redneck Riviera around the time of Hurricane George, last year.USGS: http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/ivan/photos/index.html
Keeble: http://www.travelintelligence.net/wsd/articles/art_113.html
Running a Remote Telescope in the Antarctic
Good seeing is the holy grail of observational astronomers. Having still, clear air improves the quality and sharpness of telescope imagery. One group of scientists suspected that the seeing in Antarctica was exceptional but to prove it they had to overcome some challenges. The location they chose as a test site is occupied only in the summer, and polar astronomy is of course best suited to the dark winter. To overcome this problem, the scientists set up an automated telescope that they could control via phone. Designing a telescope to run remotely in an unforgiving winter with ambient temperatures that can plummet to -85 degrees Celsius was no easy task. The vivid, well illustrated account of the experiment clearly shows what it's like to do this kind of imaginative work. The results of the tests exceeded even optimistic predictions. In the astonomers' view, a large-aperture telescope built in Antarctica could obtain results that would at times rival those of the Hubble Space Telescope. They believe it's only a matter of time before the Antarctic hosts a major observatory.http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/nature/
File-Sharers Seek Value, Not Freebies
Jonathan Zdziarski has wrapped up the File Sharing Experiment at his Nuclear Elephant site. He concludes that file-sharing might be a potent marketing and sales tool - if the studios could get their heads around the concept. Zdziarski's data indicate that rather than reveling in nefarious, free-wheeling piracy, consumers are ethical enough to purchase material if they believe it's worth the price, and file-sharing simply is a tool they use to determine value. The same premise goes for software: the "try before you buy" concept is consumer-friendly; even bed-sellers routinely let potential customers sleep on their products for a month or so. Software, television, movie, and music industries have long histories of consumer-unfriendliness, and file-sharing has let savvy consumers sidestep the assaults. The message these industries have yet to grasp can be summarized in one hyphenated word: pro-consumerism. We mentioned the study earlier this year, but now that results are out, it's time to mention it again.NSD 10.31: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.31.html#BS11
Nuclear Elephant: http://www.nuclearelephant.com/papers/sharing.html
The Creative Commons Sampling License
The Creative Commons has just released another innovative license, this one designed to let you share pieces of your work with the community. Wired has taken a bold step and plans to release a music CD under the new sampling license with its November issue. Readers are encouraged to grab the music and cut, paste, and transform it any way they wish. The CD isn't just a melody here and there; it features a plethora of well known artists like the Beastie Boys and David Byrne. Negativeland, guys best known for their sampling exploits, helped create the license and can also be found on the CD. The license comes in several flavors, the variety of which lets you choose how much of your content you will free for sampling and how the results can be commercially exploited.http://creativecommons.org/wired/
Blogger Jason Kottke has put together several pieces of evidence that hint that Google is preparing to release its own branded Web browser. The company has recently hired several former Microsoft employees who worked on Internet Explorer. It has also registered the domain name Gbrowser.com, and Google folk hobnobbed with Mozilla browser developers recently. The BBC has an article based on Kottke's blog, which incidentally shows you how big media can take a couple of paragraphs worth of news - well, speculation really - and turn it into an overpadded article. Kind of the reverse of what we're doing with this item, come to think of it.
Kottke: http://www.kottke.org/04/09/more-google-browser/
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3680942.stm
Graphics Represent Growing Bulk of Spam and Virus E-Mail
Whew! Just looking at this makes your eyes tear. Having kept every spam and virus e-mail sent to him since mid-1997, Raymond Chen has graphed the total "mass" (really kilobytes) of those e-mails over time to build a set of graphs that clearly shows the explosion of same in 2002. The graphs vividly illustrate the dire straits in which most e-mail users find themselves. The graphs start things up nicely, but the subsequent comments make up the bulk of the material. It appears as though many people don't particularly care for spam.... Cloudmark's SpamNet gets a nice review in the comments section, and PC World recently gave it top marks for stopping spam as well.Chen: http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/archive/2004/09/16/230388.aspx
SpamNet: http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/download/
This could be subtitled "Someone always spoils the party." Spammers flood comment pages, guestbooks, and online forums with comment spam, an avalanche of posts filled with links to whatever they want to flog. The practice is driving some bloggers to abandon allowing comments altogether. Many bloggers are fighting mad about the problem and are convinced that they are smart enough and determined enough collectively to find ways to neutralize the poisoning effect of comment spam. Others aren't too sure, and figure the commercial lure of spam is just too strong a motive and will always ensure that bloggers surrender before the spammers do. The fighters have found various clever ways to defeat comment spam, but there's always an undesirable side effect or vulnerability for spammers to exploit. Although the war continues, more and more bloggers are abandoning comments altogether or filtering them, which is practical only for the less popular weblogs. That it's a big shame, and reduces the bite and verve of sites that had been developing into lively interactive places for debate is, alas, beside the point. The Online Journalism Review article provides an excellent overview of what's been happening and the various approaches that are being taken to deal with the comment spam menace.
http://ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1095201311.php
Study Looks at Cyber-Extortion
Cyber-extortion is one of the Net's dirty secrets. Your business gets an e-mail that threatens to knock your Web site offline unless you pay up. According to a recent study, the practice is remarkably widespread: of 100 firms surveyed, 17 had been threatened, with varying degrees of success. Many of the surveyed companies don't have clear policies on how to respond to such threats and many lack the in-house skills to successfully defeat a denial-of-service attack. Once again, it turns out that good cybersecurity is an investment that pays for itself.InformationWeek: http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=3D47204212
Study: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/whatsnew/InformationWeek-CMU_Cyber_Extortion_Study.pdf
Bic Bites Kryptonite Bike Locks
Inspired, you just bought a replica version of Lance Armstrong's bicycle and a new Kryptonite U-Lock to protect your investment. You may want to rethink that insurance policy. Word has spread that pretty much anyone can pick a Kryptonite tubular cylinder locks with the plastic body of a Bic pen. Just take the top off, stick the open end into the lock, and twist - the lock opens. We tried it here after watching one of the many online videos of the process and immediately brought our bikes into the bedroom. If the lock won't work, our snoring is going to scare off the thieves. Kryptonite is going to fix the problem, but did the company already know that its locks were as easy to open as a screen door? BikeForums has a page with links to info and several video clips, but the best comments are in its forums. The Neistat brothers, who gained a measure of fame for their "iPod's Dirty Secret" video on the iPod battery controversy last year, have a video of their bike thievery in New York City. Almost no one bats an eye.BikeForums: http://video.bikeforums.net/
Neistats: http://neistat.com/pages/video_holding/bikethief_holding.htm
The king of the giant-boob movie is dead. Russ Meyer is one of the icons of underground cinema, having made such legendary movies as "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" (screenplay by Roger Ebert), "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens", the truly great "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!", and others featuring Meyer's trademark hypermammaried beauties. His films, in the 1970s tradition of cheesy sexploitation, brought Meyer underground fame, and in due time many honors as a great filmmaker. Meyer learned his craft in the US Army during World War II, filming stories of General George Patton and the real Dirty Dozen (who parachuted into France and disappeared), among others. He went on to photograph many of the early Playboy Playmates, which inspired him to try making campy big-boob films. His friend and admirer Roger Ebert has a brief eulogy, ending with a quintessential Russ Meyer quote. The INternet Movie Database (IMDb) has a filmography.
Ebert: http://www.suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/cst-ftr-xmeyer22.html
IMDb: http://imdb.com/name/nm0000540/
It's about time! A mere 27 years after the first film's release, the most famous trilogy in film history is finally out on DVD (and surprise, surprise, we recommend it our Recommendations section below). We'll let others pontificate about the importance - or lack thereof - of the Star Wars films. More to our point, Bill Hunt, editor of the Digital Bits, has an extensive review of the four-disc boxed set, including the bonus material. He certainly made our mouths water with his description of the sound and video qualities - over 100 bits of debris were digitally removed from each frame - and while some may quibble over whether the "Birth of the Light Saber" feature is worth the money, the whole project seems to make him happy. The review pages themselves offer extras such as screen shots, analysis of the major changes George Lucas made for the DVD release, and an Easter-egg guide.
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews3/starwarstrilogy.html
Fantagraphics Earns Peanuts, Profits
Cartooning just may be the literary form of the present. Whether it's a comic book or "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" (essentially a filmed comic book), the graphical medium is hot. The Seattle Weekly writes about Fantagraphics, a small comic-book publisher that survived a brush with bankruptcy to snatch the rights to reprint the entire Peanuts collection. Their "The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952" made the New York Times bestseller list, and that's not all they publish, as their catalogue attests. Reading the article and browsing the fantastic Fantagraphics catalogue may lead you to read more of their work, especially given that they publish some of the best graphic novels being printed today.Seattle Weekly: http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0437/040915_arts_fantagraphics.php
Fantagraphics: http://fantagraphics.com/
The Sims 2 game is out, and since the entire franchise has already sold over 40 million units, which is big money no matter how you look at it, we feel it's worth bringing it up. GameSpot and GameSpy offer rave reviews, though for slightly different reasons. Still, 40 million gamers can't be wrong, can they? Or is it just the appeal of running somebody else's life which is so appealing? The game is historic on many levels and while long time fans will certainly want to check out the newest edition, the new update may just hook all those who didn't swoon over the Sims the first time around.
The Sims 2: http://thesims2.ea.com/
GameSpot: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/thesims2/review.html
GameSpy: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-sims-2/546697p1.html?fromint=3D1
ONLINE CULTURE
Sinulator: Teledildonics Comes of Age
The old dream of having physical sex through the virtual Internet is much closer to reality than you may think. You can already buy sex toys that you can operate remotely by computer, but remotely operated gadgets alone do not teledildonics make. Naturally, there are Web sites where you can hook up with like-minded folks and virtually operate your very real sex toys in mutually pleasurable ways. One such line of devices goes under the trade name of Sinulator. The toys consist of the typical assortment of dildos and fleshy penile sleeves with a USB connection. Software lets you control them remotely. You can find partners on the Sinulator Web site and once you know their toy's name - nice touch that, naming your toys - you can send commands to it via the system. There's also a separate SinulatorCams site where you can hook up with users who have webcams. Frankly, with its emphasis on Sinulator affiliate programs the whole enterprise seems more geared to the neads of sex site operators then casually horny users. Wired's new sex columnist Gina Lynn writes about her experience with one of the Sinulator gizmos, which you can buy at reasonable prices at the Sinulator site.Sinulator: http://www.sinulator.com/
SinulatorCams: http://www.sinulatorcams.com/
Wired: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65064,00.html
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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/ |
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
Star Wars Trilogy (Widescreen Edition)
Giraffes? Giraffes!
Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from Vauban to the RevolutionSURFING SITES
Iraq Coalition Casualties Count
The Iraqi Coalition Casualty Count is a grim but necessary Web site. Dedicated to publicizing casualty news often buried or ignored, the site keeps track of and makes clear the human losses among the non-Iraqis now fighting and rebuilding in Iraq. The news area is updated for all new losses, while the statistical area breaks down the losses in every possible way. The level of detail is amazingly complete. For many, the totals are enough, or too much, but if you believe the devil is in the details, the devil is most certainly here. This site is where you can find out what your newspaper or TV station doesn't bother with. It has the power to change people's views on the war in Iraq.http://icasualties.org/oif/
Best known to most Americans as the face on the $10 bill and to history buffs because of his fatal duel with Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton was perhaps the most important of the US's non-Presidential founding fathers. An important officer in the revolution and George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton wrote most of the Federalist Papers, founded the Bank of the United States, and laid the groundwork for the country's future economic and political might. He is, or should be, best known for his accurate vision of what the US would become: a centralized polity with an activist and powerful central government, a professional military, and a diversified economy. The New York Historical Society's online version of its current Hamilton exhibition, suitably subtitled "The Man Who Made Modern America", has a number of features that will educate you about this important figure. The site offers views and transcripts of important documents from his political career, a virtual tour of his adopted hometown of New York City as it was back then, a bibliographical timeline, and plenty more. If you'll be nearby before February, you should certainly consider a visit to the real exhibit.
http://www.alexanderhamiltonexhibition.org/
The Online Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Twenty-five years is the blink of an eye in cosmological terms, but that's how long it's been since "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (HHGG), Douglas Adams's humorous SF masterpiece, was first broadcast by BBC radio to a bemused, amused, and utterly captivated audience. It became an instant cult classic and was soon adapted for television where it gained armies of fans worldwide. The great news for HHGG fans is that - as we've already told you - the BBC has created two new radio series from the last three books of Adams's "trilogy in five parts", with substantially the same cast as the original and which are being broadcast through September and October and posted online shortly after transmission. Before tuning in, you may want to refresh your memory, or even introduce yourselves to the delights of Adams's comic genius by browsing the BBC's online version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, i.e. the guide in the books. You can read about Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, Babelfish, Marvin the Paranoid Android, and much more, as well as watching video clips and listening to audio clips from the series.http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/
Tired of investing in boring old stocks and bonds? Why not put some cash into your future? F6or a mere $10, you can join a unique investment group, the Time Travel Fund. The concept is simple. You deposit those greenbacks with the fund managers and they buy extremely long-term investments that will earn a ridiculous amount of compound interest. All you have to do is keep your address current on the membership database. Once all time-travel's scientific and social details are worked out in the future, the Time Travel Fund will use your accumulated wealth to pay for someone to go back in time and collect you just before your imminent death. The find will even provide you with any required housing and education in the future so that you're not too time-lagged. The organizers point out that they can't guarantee that the plan will work but, hey - it's a chance and it's fun. It would certainly diversify your investment portfolio.
http://www.timetravelfund.com/index.html
Most of us purport to dislike cliches. We hear so many, though, we become inured to them. The same thing happens with visual cliches. What's a visual cliche? A light bulb is one, for example, used to represent an idea, or a body double that stands for a double meaning. A Primer of Visual Cliche evokes the history of such widespread standbys in 20th-century media, and it teaches by example. Cartoonists understand the appeal and (over)rely on visual cliche, so it's no surprise to find cartoons on the Desert Island and Trying on a Hat pages. Much as we like witty desert-island cartoons, we agree with the spirit of the primer's lessons and wish it had more, and more recent, examples. It's hard to glean much from National Personifications, for example, because it's sorely underpopulated. The examples here include visual representations of verbal cliches, such as those on the Parts of Speech page, but the "I'll Eat My..." sample is a scan of a decades-old ad. You get the feeling that much of the course material is, well, old hat. Screenshots and video clips might make deeper impressions on the next generation of market rebels and cliche recyclers.
http://www.adh.brighton.ac.uk/schoolofdesign/MA.COURSE/09/LCliche01.html
The Pretty Side of Plastic Surgery
Plastic surgery has a bad rep, thanks in large part to Michael Jackson (poor choices), Cher (frequent choices), and porn starlets (questionable choices). Lest you believe all plastic surgeons are sons of Frankenstein or inept, greedy butchers, remember that Hollywood (and the Valley) depends on them. Indeed, there's nothing more convincing than before-and-after photographs that show improvement. Want proof? Good Plastic Surgery is a showcase for the brighter side of nose jobs, lip augmentation and many other profitable cosmetic procedures intended to improve self-esteem, social life, and maybe marketability. The well known faces here include Jennifer Aniston, Nicky Hilton, and Jessica Simpson (her new cleavage says it all). You don't have to be Kobe Bryant's wife or Chelsea Clinton to make it to the site. No, sirree, Bob. Men as well as women get the treatment here. The site welcomes photos of your own plastic surgery in the community area. Funny, the forums have little activity - at our last visit, even the liposuctionforum seemed sucked dry of content. http://www.goodplasticsurgery.com/
Actual river steamboats, propelled by enormous paddle wheels at their stern, still ply some of their old haunts on American rivers. Most are concentrated on the huge highways of the Mississippi and Ohio. Steamboats.org is dedicated to these modern vessels, which are not replicas but superb examples of the art of steamboating. The site steers toward the many faithful, with its use of special jargon and acronyms, but manages to remain quite rewarding to the casual visitor. Along with everything you might want to know about today's passenger steamboats, there's a wealth of historical data on the site. It's certainly worth a call when you're cruising the Web.
http://www.steamboats.org/
Thomas Schmid's 3DHistory site is devoted to bringing the warships of World War II back to life through computer graphics. The ships now on the site are mostly German, the HMS Hood being the sole exception. The wrecks of all the ships (except Hood) have been explored and documented, and at least one, the Admiral Graf Spee, may be brought back to the surface in the coming years. Schmid's renderings and animations detail each of the ships. All are excellent; some are special. Schmidt shows details on the HMS Hood known to exist but rarely, if ever, illustrated in detail. We've never seen a better recreation of the 4" HA guns whose ready-use ammo is often cited as the site of the beginning of the ship's fatal explosion. As expected for art of this quality, a broadband connection is helpful.
http://gagottfried.bei.t-online.de/index-frameset_e.htm
The Short Sunderland aircraft was a very large flying boat used by the RAF during World War II (and up until 1959) to make life truly miserable for U-boats trying to operate anywhere near the UK. There's still at least one Sunderland flying, in Australia of all places, but this one is a large and detailed radio-controlled (RC) model. The photo sequence of it attacking a model submarine looks exactly like real wartime photos, except these are in color. The model is huge, 1:10 scale, which gives it a wingspan of just over 11 feet. The host RCWarbirds.com site offers links to dozens of other large recreations of warplanes. They're real planes. Their gear retracts, and many can drop (fake - we hope) bombs. Whoever imagined there were all these large flying creatures out there? And how do these folks move these beauties from place to place?
http://www.rcwarbirds.com/inaction.html
When you're rude to a waiter or waitress, that food-service worker presumes that you will reward his or her Dalai Lama-like patience with an equitable recompense a.k.a. a tip. When stiffed in days of yore, the waitperson's only recompense was griping to co-workers and friends. With the newfangled Internet come innovations like the Shitty Tipper Database (STD), a miracle of global communication and a place where waitpersons everywhere can register disgust - although without needing to provide proof, which probably explains the proliferation of maligned celebrities. If we're to believe the annals of the STD, John Kerry seems to be more honest in his aim to provide relief to the working class, providing an average tip of 3% compared to the President Bush's 1%. Tightwads the whole lot of them.
http://www.bitterwaitress.com/std/
Niff Actuals Products Have Little Actual Use
Niff Actuals is a range of products that "blurs the distinctions between 'high' art and commercially produced merchandise." The range includes a Non-Specific Tape Measure that doesn't deal in troublesome inches or centimeters, but accurately quantifies a hair's breadth, wafer-thin, and pocket-sized. This tape measure, along with the other nine products in the Niff Actuals range - such as the "It's my World" Globe, painted entirely from memory with no guarantee of geographical authenticity, can be bought online at the company site. The idea behind the products, and nothing exemplifies this better than the Blind Pugh Cut and Paste Jigsaw Puzzle that comes with scissors and glue "so that each jigsaw piece can be tailored to your needs", is that the products act "as a conduit for art to find its way back from the lonely isolation of the art gallery into the all-embracing bosom of the home."http://www.niffactuals.com/
Euro Banknotes That Never Were
Along with the creation of Europe's new Euro money came a golden design opportunity. The designs were to be picked after an open competition. The Admirable Design Web site features the losers of that competition. The site is mostly in French, but that's no drawback, as everyone knows money talks. Most of the designs are pretty clear in what they say, too. Many say "I'm really cool or beautiful," while some scream, "How could someone have made me this ugly?" The site offers insight into modern graphic design. The winning designs, by the way, can be viewed at the Euro Changeover Board of Ireland (ECBI) and almost certainly somewhere else as well.Admirable Design: http://www.admirabledesign.com/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=98
ECBI: http://www.irlgov.ie/ecbi-euro/notes.htm
As the American election fast approaches, talk around the dinner table will inevitably turn to anything but politics. In those freakish households where it doesn't, why not lighten the political banter with noteworthy presidential trivia? This Web site hosts an onslaught of facts that we suspect may have evaded the recall of many students taking American history quizzes. You'll learn about the life and death of just about every President, broken down into simple and tantalizing tidbits. Check out some basic demographic facts such as birthplace and religious affiliation. There's also a look at the Presidential family histories which links the likes of George Bush and Abraham Lincoln. If you're really looking for the juicy bits, you'll want to look into the Miscellaneous category. Here you'll find all the presidents' dirty little secrets.
http://www.heptune.com/preslist.html
The mundane process of physically voting is a subject few gave any thought to before it became the key to the 2000 Presidential election. Suddenly, how Americans vote became as much an issue as who they vote for and how secure the process is or isn't. Vote: The Machinery of Democracy, an exhibit at the National Museum of American History, runs until Jan. 30, 2005, by which time the 2004 election will hopefully be history. The exhibit can be viewed online as well as in person. Sections are devoted to mechanical, paper, and punch card (including butterfly-ballot) voting. The whole process is well covered, including what is to come. A special section is devoted to Florida 2000. This exhibit won't help you vote, but it might actually help you get your vote counted in 2004.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/vote/index.html
Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth
In 2004, the phrase "for Truth" has taken on an ironic meaning. Truth no longer seems to require evidence, facts, or, well, truth to be called Truth. Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth (PBCT) takes a satirical look at George W. Bush's younger days, using the techniques and rules of the more famous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT). Shockingly, the PBCT's findings are very similar with regard to Bush to those of the SBVT with regard to John Kerry. These Web sites offer an interesting lesson in what happens when the desire to debase overcomes the ability to look at the facts. Both are very funny - tragic, but funny.http://www.pleasurecaptains.com/
We're fairly confident that George Lucas never envisioned his Imperial Stormtroopers from his classic Star Wars films getting jiggy with a whitebread rap star. Available for download on the Lucas Files site is an animated dance video starring has-been rapper Vanilla Ice and several figures from the wildly popular Star Wars franchise. This video is so outrageously ridiculous that you just can't help but laugh - a lot. Who knew that stormtroopers could move like that and that R2-D2 could put on a stellar laser light show? You likely won't see this in the DVD extras on the recently released box set of the original Star Wars trilogy, but check it out while you can. And, yes - we're aware the setting is not Hoth but Tatooine. It's called poetic license.
http://www.lucasfiles.com/index.php?s=&action=file&id=676
The Omidyar Network Makes Things Happen
Pierre Omidyar founded eBay, but has since moved on. His latest venture is the Omidyar Network, geared to help individuals make a difference. In the recent few months, this foundation has funded ventures as diverse as open-source coding, social software, and microfinance. The list of folks helped so far by Omidyar Network reveals a special concern for getting folks to vote and for social software, which the foundation hopes can get individuals to work together from a bottom-up perspective, as opposed to the conventional top-down business model that rules the capitalist roost. Read the blog and follow the links.Omidyar: http://pierre.typepad.com/
Omidyar Network: http://www.omidyar.net/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Geographic Spam and Virus Maps
Where in the world does the bulk of spam and virus activity come from? Postini has top-ten numbers and some revealing geographic maps which are worth looking at. The site also has statistics based on the amount of e-mail they block for their clients.http://postini.com/stats/
This is what taking Comp Sci exams will do to you. This mega-sandwich contains an enchilada, four burgers, "assloads of cheese", and other assorted food items. More conscientious e-zines then us would have provided a link to the (lack of) food riots in Haiti.
http://myhighhorse.com/index2.html
The oldest arcade game of them all has been realized in wood and electrical relays with nary a transistor in sight. The game is truly a mechanical marvel, and the site has many pictures to inspire the inveterate mechanical hacker.
http://www.cyberniklas.de/pongmechanik/indexen.html
No time to write this review. Completely addicted to Character Disorder. Please send help.
http://homokaasu.org/gasgames/
Remember when a cuddle from your Mom would fix any woe? Well, if you're near New York City, you can now get a cuddle-hit at organized cuddle-parties. Just remember rule number seven: no dry humping. So what precisely is the point?
http://www.cuddleparty.com/
To vote for your favorite US Presidential candidate at CollegeHumor, decorate your naked female body with your choice of candidate and submit the picture. Proof positive that there are a lot of boobs in politics, and that the obligatory Bush/no Bush pubic hair jokes never get old.
http://www.collegehumor.com/election/
SOFTWARE
Gaim 1.0: One IM Client to Rule Them All
One of the frustrations with instant messaging (IM) is the large variety of commercial networks that don't play nice with each other. Thus, you can't agglomerate your buddy lists from Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), at least not without external help. Gaim is an open-source IM client that interoperates with more than a half dozen IM networks, including all the biggies like Yahoo, AIM, MSN, and Jabber. This one program lets you talk to a number of people on any network simultaneously. Gaim has been in development for a long time and even though this is a version 1.0 release, this is a stable and feature-packed piece of software. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Unix, and even on some handhelds. If you are a heavy user of IM, you should check it out.http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
SpamAssassin, probably the most popular spam filter in use on the Net, is now out as version 3.0, the first release under the banner of the Apache Software Foundation. The Foundation has taken over development of the software, a positive development since SpamAssassin is becoming a key piece of the Internet e-mail architecture. The latest version supports Sender Policy Framework (SPF), checks for Web links of known spam advertisers, and features a modular plug-in architecture, improved SQL database support for storing user data in server installations, and improved e-mail classification. Keep in mind that you don't have to be an ISP to use this, you can deploy it on your own mailbox, though you will need to take some time to read the documentation since this is an industrial-strength, very configurable piece of software.
http://spamassassin.apache.org/
Asterisk 1.0.0: Your Own Private Phone Exchange
Perhaps the best way to explain Asterisk is to describe it as the Apache of Internet telephony. This open-source server - it's been in development for some time - is already the most popular way to manage your own phone lines, whether you are a business or you just want flexibility in your home phone setup. In flexibility and price - it's free - Asterisk blows away any proprietary phone solution. It allows you, among other things, to set up calling centers, build private voice-mail systems, create call-forwarding plans, and build multi-handset systems tailored to your exact needs. Install it on a cheap Linux box and you can set up your own small-business calling system that fully integrates with the big-carrier phone networks but which is almost infinitely flexible. All this does come at a price - Asterisk is a royal pain to set up, precisely because it is so flexible. Nevertheless, the software has all the markings of another killer Internet application, doing for telephony what Apache did for the Web. It's definitely worth knowing about.http://www.asterisk.org/