More Signal, Less Noise
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
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NETSURFER DIGEST
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 11, Issue 27 Tuesday, July 12, 2005
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NETSURFER LINKS
 BREAKING SURF
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BREAKING SURF A series of four bombs exploded in London during the height of the July 7 rush hour. Three of the bombs went off on London Underground trains and one exploded in the rear of a doubledecker bus. At press time, the death toll was still inching upward past 50, with hundreds injured. The story is extensively covered online, of course, but perhaps the best coverage is found in what some might consider an unlikely place. Wikipedia's entry on the bombings concisely summarizes what's known so far, and provides many details. The BBC and the Guardian both have deep coverage, in particular eyewitness accounts. Finally, the very wired British public captured the aftermath of the bombs through many lenses. Many photos, over 800 at press time, wound up on Flickr. The pages there are numbered in reverse chronological order.Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_London_transport_explosions BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2005/london_explosions/default.stm Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/ Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/bomb/pool/ Controversy over Milk Terrorism Paper Does suppressing the publication of research results ever serve the public interest? That's the question asked after publication of a bioterror scenario involving the US milk supply. The article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) describes what a mathematical model revealed would happen if bad guys deliberately released botulinum toxin at a milk processing plant. The model predicted that the action could poison several hundred thousand people. PNAS delayed publication until the US Department of Health could comment but put the paper out despite the department's objections. The authors argue that much of the information is already available online and that many other bioterror scenarios have already been described. They also believe that this kind of hypothetical modeling allows the development of robust defenses to counter the risks identified in the studies. For example, they point out that testing to prevent the botulism scenario is possible at very low cost. They also criticize the food industry's preoccupation with safety and lack of concern over security. Nature analyzes the debate over publication of the PNAS paper.PNAS: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0408526102v1 Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050627/full/050627-10.html "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" Coming from a Kenyan economist, that headline statement almost sounds like something you'd see in the Onion. Actually, that headline led off an interview with Kenyan economist James Shikwati in Spiegel recently. Shikwati says publicly what many western politicians dare not mention in public: it's possible that massive financial aid is part of the problem in Africa since it fosters corruption and dependence. For example, Shikwati suggests that the UN's World Food Program undercuts Africa's own grain farmers and drives them out of business. This in turn means there is no viable agricultural sector to fall back on in the event of a famine. Shikwati's comments are all the more relevant in light of the recently concluded G8 summit and its decisions on aid to Africa, a central focus. Take a look at the G8 Africa page. The G8 summary notes that the G8 members agreed to increase aid to the continent.Spiegel: http://tinyurl.com/as7vw G8 Africa: http://tinyurl.com/cq5lk G8 summary: http://tinyurl.com/ctudo Leap Second to Be Added Dec. 31 The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) recently announced that a leap second will be added to the international time standard at the end of 2005. The IERS is the international body charged with monitoring variation in Earth's rotation, which speeds up and slows down based on the distribution of mass in the planet. Changes in the distribution of mass can be caused by anything from large earthquakes to weather to the inexorable flow of mass deep in the Earth's depths. To account for all these changes, the IERS must periodically adjust the length of the year relative to the atomic-clock standard. It does the job, adding or subtracting leap seconds as needed to keep things in sync. Live Science has non-technical background, while the IERS site has a great deal of technical information about what they do and how they do it.IERS: http://www.iers.org/ IERS Leap Second Announcement: http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eoppc/bul/bulc/bulletinc.dat Live Science: http://www.livescience.com/technology/050705_leap_second.html 2005 Industrial Design Excellence Awards This year's Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) went to many ingenious products, but some are so awesome, they make you gasp at the sheer cleverness or audacity of their design. Among our favorites is the Asus Vento desktop computer, a silver winner in computer equipment, with a bold aggressive look emphasized by its glossy paint and radical cooling. We also like the Kohler Purist Hatbox Toilet, a gold winner in the furniture category and not what you're used to in the way of loos, for sure. The GMP LifeSync Wireless ECG Monitor eliminates those cumbersome and intimidating cables between patient and monitor, and 1-2 Paint combines a practical plastic container with a built-in paint tray that means there's no clean up needed, except for the paint roller. The Moen Revolution Showerhead provides a twisty shower experience. The JBL Onstage iPod docking station docks, charges, has a speaker system and a pass through cable for computer use. And then there's... - oh, just go see them in the BusinessWeek slideshow. There's not one that isn't admirable in some way.IDEA: http://www.idsa.org/idea/idea2005/idea2005.htm BusinessWeek: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/05/06/idea2005/source/1.htm This trio of Tour de France sites provides good coverage of this year's race, which will be hyperchampion Lance Armstrong's swan song. The official Tour de France site, accessible in several languages, lets you spend your francs on official souvenirs, apparel, DVDs, and so forth. Cyclingnews.com provides excellent coverage of all aspects of the tour, while the Outdoor Life Network (OLN) is best for video highlights. Already in a class of his own thanks to his unprecedented six wins, Armstrong is bidding to make it seven. If you want to root for someone else to win for a change, the challenge to Armstrong's supremacy is most likely to come from the T-Mobile or CSC teams. T-Mobile includes archrival Jan Ullrich, last year's runner-up Andreas Kloden, and 2003 third-place finisher Alexander Vinokourov. Riding for CSC are rival Ivan Basso and many other big names, including Bobby Julich and Dave Zabriskie. This year, Armstrong is wearing the colors of a new sponsor, Discovery Channel, but his team looks as crack and polished as ever. Perhaps a dark horse will show unexpected form this year and come through in the mountains where Armstrong usually rides his best. Anything is possible, but barring accident, the most likely outcome is another Armstrong win and a collective sigh of relief from all the other contenders that next year they won't have the indomitable Texan to worry about. Tour de France: http://www.letour.fr/ Cyclingnews.com: http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2005/tour05 OLN: http://www.olntv.com/tdf/ Sasser Worm's Author Gets Suspended Sentence At his trial, Sven Jaschan admitted to unleashing the destructive Sasser Worm in May 2004. He was 17 years old at the time and was tried as a minor. He received a lenient 21-month suspended sentence from the German court that heard the case. The Sasser worm was extremely virulent and spread without human intervention as it exploited a Windows security hole for which a patch existed. Jaschan's case is significant because he was nabbed through a tip that Microsoft's $250,000 reward program attracted. The BBC has more on the trial and Wikipedia has more on the Sasser worm.BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4659329.stm Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasser_worm Yahoo Hotjobs has released a new search engine for jobs. Hotjobs now provides search results from a wide variety of other employment Web sites, some well known, some more obscure. You can search by keyword, location, and a variety of job categories. Yahoo Hotjobs has all the usual career services, such as resume posting for job seekers, tools for job networking, and a salary calculator. http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/ Internet Users Fed up with Malware No matter how hard you try, it's almost impossible to avoid spyware and adware if you're online and you use Windows. The ubiquity of this malware garbage is changing how people use the Net. According to a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, nine out of ten Internet users have altered online behavior to avoid the threat of malware. A quarter have abandoned file-sharing networks because of bad experiences with malware. In the most amazing statistic, 43% of all netsurfers say they know they have been infected with malware and don't want to have that experience again - but another 25% complain about symptoms that indicate infection. We wonder why only 18% have abandoned Internet Explorer for less vulnerable Web browsers. Still, the report makes it clear that malware, like spam, is a problem that renders the Net unappetizing. The Pew Foundation has no quick or easy solutions to the problem - and, as eWeek reports, Microsoft's recent talks with Claria, a notorious spyware company, tell us that malware isn't going away anytime soon.Pew: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/160/report_display.asp eWeek: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1834607,00.asp Everyone has a great contextual ad story - you're reading about how the police have raided massage parlors and Google AdSense provides ads to the very type of day spas that the cops have busted. This Online Journalism Review article about contextual ads lays out the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of this particular revenue stream. For bloggers, who often use Google AdSense to garner some revenue, this article is a must, if only because it clarifies how the process works. For the rest of us, it opens up another window on how advertising continues to colonize the Web. http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050706glaser/ Next Generation Broadband in the US If everything works out as expected, within a couple of years many US residents can look forward to broadband data rates in excess of 10 Mbps, possibly all the way up to 100 Mbps. This according to Dave Burstein, a reporter who covers the broadband industry on his DSL Prime site (check out his great Editorial Integrity Policy, under the About us link). Burstein lays out what he knows about telco and cable-company plans for faster broadband in an acronym-laced interview at BroadbandReports.com. He plays out some informed speculation on when the major US players will deploy various broadband services. The alphabet stew of acronyms - ADSL2+, VDSL2, DOCSIS, etc. - is hard to keep straight, but you'll get the idea from the context. According to Burstein, the factor that drives the deployment of fast broadband is the desire to provide high-definition TV to consumers, which all companies think is the real moneymaker. Burstein provides a broad overview of the US broadband business for anybody who's seriously interested in the big picture.DSL Prime: http://dslprime.com/ BroadbandReports.com: http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/65298 Ubuntu Foundation Created to Support Ubuntu Linux Ubuntu is a relatively young Linux distribution backed by South African millionaire and space tourist Mark Shuttleworth. The distribution has had good press and an enthusiastic reception from users as a stable, fully featured, and easy-to-use Linux desktop release. Shuttleworth has helped create the Ubuntu Foundation to ensure that Ubuntu will remain supported for a while. The Ubuntu Foundation will receive initial funding of $10 million. To start things off, the foundation also announced that Ubuntu v. 6.04, due for release next April, will be supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ Ubuntu Foundation press release: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/UbuntuFoundation Is programming an art? If this question makes you think, you should read this brief but provocative piece at O'Reilly's ONLamp.com site. We won't give away the answer, but do read the comments that follow the brief essay. It is amazing how such a basic question can elicit such an array of responses. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/30/artofprog.html Salon Announces Winners of Free-Music Playlist Contest Salon's Audiophile column held a Summer Soundtrack Contest, for playlists of free music set to accentuate your summer. Audiophile has published the top five, several of which are arranged in a story. Our favorite is the number-two finisher, for its narration on a goth girl and graveyards. The music we sampled - for it is all available free, remember - seems to fall mainly in the head-banging genre, which we're sure your teenager will love. To most of the rest of us, it sounds like somebody just got a finger bit off by a rhino, yet still is gamely trying to play on. One warning: once you get a free Salon day pass, you'll need to scroll down to find the contest winners. Oh, and here's a free second warning: always pay attention around a rhino. Our intrepid reviewer really did lose part of a hand to a rhino and really is gamely trying to NSD on.http://www.salon.com/ent/audiofile/index.html?item=/ent/audiofile/2005/07/04/contest/index.html AOL Music Live 8 Concert Videos Why there were nine Live 8 concerts, we don't know. We just report. AOL Music has made available some photos and highlights from the concerts on its Live 8 Highlights page, but you may need to disable pop-up blockers to catch the content. Enjoy the concert videos on-demand, though they play in a small window. If the cost in bandwidth and the music are worth it to you, download away. McCartney's drummer is obscenely good. AOL Music also has a more general Live 8 page.Live 8 Highlights: http://music.channel.aol.com/live_8_concert/highlights/turbo.adp AOL Music Live 8: http://music.channel.aol.com/live_8_concert/home ONLINE CULTURE Second Life's Second Anniversary Giveaway Second Life, the innovative virtual world, is giving away free basic accounts as a second-anniversary promotion. In some ways, Second Life compares to massive multiplayer games like World of Warcraft or Everquest. Members have access to a large, persistent world they can explore and socialize within. But Second Life is not, strictly speaking, a game. Thanks to a robust scripting language, users create much of the world content themselves. They build elaborate houses, clubs, and landscapes to suit their tastes. Avatars are completely customizable, which sometimes leads to amusing sights like a skimpily dressed goth dancing to streaming music with a small teddy bear in one of the world's many night clubs. The most significant feature of Second Life is that it aims at adults. The virtual world is refreshingly free of immature kid gamers and full of creative individuals. Given its adult focus, Second Life is also rife with virtual sex, explicitly depicted by sexy avatars in many gated adult areas. You'll need broadband and some hefty graphics hardware, but Second Life is unusual enough that a free account makes it worth trying out. The free accounts are available through July 13.http://secondlife.com/ Sweatshop Workers Harvest Treasure in MMOGs Massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) sound harmless enough, and, once upon a time, they were. But once people started to make real money by the resale of virtual loot, trouble was afoot. When the market for second-party booty grosses over $500 million a year, it's not unrealistic to suspect that some folks might look for an edge. The potential gain has led to the creation of sweatshops - employees earn pennies garnering resources in online games for their bosses, who wholesale the goods for a very real profit. 1Up.com takes a look at these loot farms and the people who work in them.http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815 Sex Games Unlocked by Modders in GTA: San Andreas The violent and bestselling video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA:SA) has some steamy content under its hood. Members of the game-modding community uncovered hidden explicit sex content in the game, in which the player character gets to enjoy the charms of his many girlfriends. In the standard game, the player character dates girls and merely takes them out for coffee. Deep within the game's code, modders discovered, the action gets far more explicit - and they produced the Hot Coffee mod to unlock it for anyone with the game. California Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Leland Yee decries the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which rates video games, for not catching this and branding the game with an Adults Only rating. Yee's strange logic fails to account for the fact that GTA:SA shipped with the explicit content deliberately disabled. GamesAreFun.com has the full story and many reader comments. You can find screenshots and video of the adult action at the GTA San Andreas site, while the software mods and instructions for modifying the game are at GTA Garage.GamesAreFun.com: http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=5271 GTA San Andreas: http://www.gtasanandreas.net/news/single.php?id=1469 GTA Garage: http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=28 ONLINE TRAVEL Geophotography of the British Isles Many people love community projects that use the power of the Web to spread and gain participants. A classic example is the Geograph project. The core idea is deceptively simple. The project wants to gather a representative photograph for each square kilometer of the British Isles. The hard part is getting all those images, by volunteer, and then making them available via a map on the Web site. It's a geography project (useful for geography students and teachers), a photography project, and definitely a great way to persuade the public to get out into their surroundings. The project encourages contributors by ranking them on the basis of images submitted. The images come with short descriptions, co-ordinates, and links to nearby geocaches. The Geograph map is pleasantly quick and easy to drill down through - there's even an RSS feed. It's a perfect site for anybody intrigued by their landscape environment, be they local or prospective tourist.http://www.geograph.co.uk/ Visual Encyclopedia of Chicago History In 2004, the Newberry Library published a thick book full of information and imagery of Chicago. The book was an instant hit in Chicago, of course, but it also did well elsewhere. Meticulously edited, the book introduced many people to a ton of information on one of the greatest American cities. Whether you wanted to know more about Al Capone and Prohibition, or the Haymarket Riots, this was the place to go. The book was pricy at more than $60, but worth it for Chicago-philes. Now, in a surprising turn, the Newberry Library, in conjunction with The Chicago Historical Society, has put the entire book online. And it appears that not only is it all here, but it's being updated and expanded. The layout is intuitive, but with quirks, such as having to look up "Al Capone" instead of "Capone, Al" in the alphabetical index. Unless you know that Al Capone's brothel-owning brother's name was Ralph, it might be tough to find him in the index. Fortunately, the search function will work just fine. The authored entries are reason enough to visit, but the graphics, including many maps, make this a fascinating resource for researchers and casual readers alike.http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/ Canadians Narrate Their Cities The stories of any city are too large for the back of a postcard or even a guidebook. Those stories are best told by the residents themselves, the people with the passion for the place in all its glory as well as its less salubrious side. Hence, the Murmur Project. Available for Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal (in French only, it seems), this innovative media exploration asks locals to record a story about a part of the city that they love, or loathe: perhaps where they fell in love; an historic episode that shouldn't be forgotten; or anything meaningful to them. At all such spots, the Murmur project posts a sign with a phone number. Anyone curious enough to dial up accesses a recording that explains the site's significance. It's simple but brilliant. We think it should spread internationally. Let the locals have a voice, and record those tales for future generations.http://murmurtoronto.ca/ If there were ever a Web site that failed in its stated purpose, this is it. Camera/Iraq, a project of Carleton College's Cinema and Media Studies Department, wants to be "a clearing house for thoughtful discussion rather than a locus of invective." Nice try. First of all, this collection of photographic essays on the current war in Iraq has collected the usual foul-mouthed commentary in the comments section that, unfortunately, is so typical of the level of political discourse in the US. Secondly, while the site has sections on beheadings, Abu Ghraib, and American coffins, etc., it offers no images of US or coalition forces successfully carrying out their difficult and dangerous missions in Iraq. Everyone is entitled to a point of view, of course, but when you have an agenda, be honest. If a picture is worth a thousand words, your selection of pictures controls your vocabulary. That said, for what it is, rather than claims to be, it's first rate. The pictures come with links to news releases and blog entries about them and their content. http://www.camerairaq.com/ Knead the Dough? Wok this Way to Suite Success The Shop Horror site is an ad for a book with that title. The subject matter is punny British shop names. The selectees are honored with very nice, very British High St. photographs. The Gallery page on the site shows 30 examples, all of which are too punny for words. Did we say you need to like puns? The site is a memorial to the sort of people who have not caved to the wave of big-name, franchise clones, named by MBAs clustered in marketing committees to eke out every last coin of profit, which try to make Great Britain and the US and everywhere else look exactly alike.http://www.shophorror.co.uk/ This is a dangerous site, to be avoided by those prone to addiction. As we've let you know, plenty of times, Google Maps contains a huge amount of satellite imagery. Enter a location or just click on a map and you can view that location as seen from a satellite (rumors that Google has a fleet of orbital spacecraft ready to conquer the known universe remain unconfirmed at press time), in at least moderate detail. To save you time, the Google Sightseeing site has found and categorized many interesting images. Some are really weird. Some can only be viewed via this sort of imagery. Some are badly put together multiple images - these can be very funny. The linked images are just a starting point to this wonderful technology. Go ahead, check out your childhood home or Disneyland. http://www.googlesightseeing.com/ ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT This Ain't Your Grandpa's ASCII Art Making pictures out of text is nothing new - the modern caveman crawled out of his Fortran to bang out the first smiley emoticon - but TypeDrawing has taken it to a new level. Using Flash, TypeDrawing lets visitors "draw" with their own phrases. Those too shy to participate can find some magnificent creations to browse. Although the Best of the Month collection unfortunately seems to have petered out in February 2005, you can still view the amazing, and sometimes not so amazing, creations being made every day. This site has the potential to be a huge time-suck.http://www.storyabout.net/typedrawing/ The Art of Manholes and Their Covers The unfortunately titled ManHole.ca has nothing to do with Goatse. It offers the latest word on just about anything related to manhole covers. The bulk of the site is dedicated to the design and images of manhole covers from all over the world. Other enticements include a blog, contests, and, should one wish to talk a walk on the truly peripheral side of life, manhole-related trivia. As an added bonus, visitors are encouraged to vote for the most and least beautiful manhole covers stashed within the archives. Japanese manhole covers pretty much blow away the entire competition in the esthetic department. Nice to see that at least some cultures continue to emphasize an element of beauty over pure form and function.http://www.manhole.ca/index.php Bathtub Postcards and Other Bath Art Postcards are public. Bathing is usually private. Where these dichotomies meet is what fascinates Carye Bye, who has collected postcards featuring paintings of bathtubs for years. She shares her collection online at the Bathtub Art Museum. It may be an odd enthusiasm but the folks who take part in the International Bathtub Race in Nanaimo, B.C. each year might not consider it all that strange. Bye's collection ranges from vintage postcards of cherubically cheeky babies at bathtime to photos of actual baths in historic homes and reproductions of art with baths. Extra features include a photo-essay about the hidden Japanese bathhouse of Seattle's Panama Hotel and a section devoted to modern artists who use bathtubs as integral parts of their work, particularly for installation art. Go on, dip your toe.http://www.bathtubmuseum.org/ If, while you're working a cocktail party, somebody asks you about a cinematic genre and the films that define it, you'll probably wish that you'd read Green Cine's Primers Directory, an online collection of pithy essays that describe 35 of the best known and not-so-well-known genres of film. Anime and film noir are categories we've all tossed about, but when was the last time you've been able to hold forth on Iranian new wave, Hong Kong horror comedies, or the symbolism of Godzilla movies? Well? Each genre essay links to illustrated pages on selected films, directors, actors, etc., so there's plenty of material for the cinema lover to digest before hitting the martini circuit. Green Cine provides a series of handy drop-down menus on every page to help you search for a particular film or genre. http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/index.jsp BOOKS & E-ZINES
http://www.library.unt.edu/rarebooks/exhibits/popup2/default.htm A Lexicon of Upside-Down Calculator Words Ordinary folks, or at least those who know what they are, think of seven-segment displays as useful but old tech. A seven-segment display is the style of numbers that have appeared in handheld calculator displays since they were first invented 30 or so years ago. It was immediately obvious to some users that certain numbers on a seven-segment display resemble letters if you happen to look at the display upside down. Of course, not all letters appear and not all words can be created. There's no T, a most useful letter, for example. Booze is an easy word to get, however: 32008. This LangMaker page is devoted to O(th)blgshezi, the upside-down alphabet of a seven-segment display. The (th) is the archaic Anglo-Saxon letter eth, which the site transliterates as TH. The lexicon is 362 words long, with more added as they are discovered. It's appealing in a geeky sort of way.http://www.langmaker.com/calculatorwords.htm SURFING SCIENCE Those wacky folks over at Scripps Research Institute's Molecular Graphics Laboratory have come up with a way to layer plastic such that they can translate computer models of molecular structures into large-scale, 3-D representations that can be held and manipulated. The solid objects are created by printing thousands of layers of plastic and building up manipulable models. Why's this a big deal? Incorporating the molecular models into "augmented reality" software lets the models interact with a virtual environment and allows scientists to better understand the molecules under study. In the future, similar printers may be able to construct tissues for transplantation. Even at this early stage, this is cool science, as you'll see when you get a look at some of the complex molecules they've printed up already. The QuickTime movies show you how magical this new technology really is.http://www.scripps.edu/mb/olson/ Math in the... World of Tomorrow!!! Sarah Greenwald is a geekboy's dream. She loves "The Simpsons". She loves "Futurama". Don't imagine, however, that she sits around doing nothing but watching TV. You can't do that and write a dissertation entitled "Diameters of Spherical Alexandrov Spaces and Constant Curvature One Orbifolds" (we got as far a "spherical"). She slams her interests together and produces articles for scholarly journals and speeches for conferences on the hidden math and science embedded in each episode of "Futurama". She was even asked by show runner David X. Cohen himself to address a math club that included "Futurama" writers on how she integrates pop culture math into her teaching. Her Web page features links to her relevant papers and talks, as well as to a conversation on math with Cohen.http://www.mathsci.appstate.edu/~sjg/futurama/ Home-Built Air-Conditioning for $25 Geoff Milburn is not your average impoverished college student. Sure, he studies civil engineering and he lives in a cheap house without air conditioning like other students, but Milburn has actually found a new way to chill in his hot room - and it can get surprisingly hot in central Canada. Using common household items and a few parts from a hardware store, Milburn has created a home-built air conditioner for less than $25 - and that's in weak Canadian dollars. Of course, he thoroughly documents his design and construction with step-by-step instructions and photos so that everyone can benefit from his frugal engineering. The hardest part is bending the copper piping and filling the trash can with cold water. After discussing his system's performance, he tosses off a few ideas to improve its efficiency in your home. (We're thinking about twist ties.) Watch his site to see how he's going to heat his room during the winter. By the way, Milburn is looking for an internship in early 2006.http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~gmilburn/ac/ Dryden Flight Research Center Videos NASA runs its own TV channel, available on DirecTV, as a cable access channel in Florida (the one that's not run by the strip clubs), and possibly elsewhere. All day long, when there isn't a launch or something smashing into or roaming on something much larger, NASA shows short video clips from their archives. Some of those archives are available online to all. This collection comes from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. It's heavier on aviation and related research than it is on space, but it has intriguing video of Apollo Lunar Module (remember that?) test flights. The quality and duration of the clips can be frustrating, occasionally like watching a friend's vacation videos from topless beaches in Europe (Wait a minute! Hit rewind. What was that?). All the media is offered copyright-free, so now you know where to come to integrate streaming video into your PowerPoint presentation on "The History of Commercial Aviation" or use the clips to make your own version of "405".NASA: http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Movie/index.html "405": http://www.405themovie.com/Home.asp SOFTWARE Opera Browser Integrates BitTorrent Opera Software released a preview of its well regarded Web browser that incorporates support for the BitTorrent protocol. According to its press release, the company was prompted to integrate BitTorrent into its browser when the demand for Opera 8 in April swamped its servers, just the sort of thing BitTorrent can prevent. The company notes that this is still a "preview release", so expect bugs. The Opera browser is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Opera's BitTorrent Resource Page, where you can download the preview versions or the torrents for the software, dutifully notes: "Opera does not encourage the use of BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP protocols for downloading illegal, copyright infringing material."Opera press releases: http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2005/07/07/ BitTorrent Resource Page: http://www.opera.com/bittorrent/ Google Releases Toolbar for Firefox Until this week, the Google Toolbar was only available for users of Internet Explorer. Google has now released a version for Firefox. The toolbar has several useful functions, such as automatically filling forms, checking spelling, word translation, and AutoLink. AutoLink turns addresses into Google Maps links, turns package-tracking numbers into links to delivery-status pages, and so on. The Web site has the full feature list. Google Toolbar for Firefox is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/index.html |
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