[Next: Feb 1998 waning]

Robot Wisdom WebLog for February 1998 (waxing)

Hey, Bill Clinton!

A survey of content-visualization apps: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,1725,00.html

In a fine interview, Noel Godin admits a MS traitor gave him Bill's itinerary: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,1733,00.html

"This man told us he really loved Bill Gates in the past, saying that he was very cool and passionate. But little by little he considered that his power had tainted him, and that he was becoming more and more haughty with his own collaborators."

Netscape's free-source-code faq (Mac/Win/Linux versions due March 31): http://developer.netscape.com/source/devfaq.html

A nasty British spy-scheme for detecting pirated software: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-02/07/060l-020798-idx.html

How small ISPs can compete by adding value: http://www.starkrealities.com/@inet041.html

The winner of Salon's haiku-error-message contest: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/chal/1998/02/10chal2.html

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

Quite a nice interview with Martin Amis: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/books/int/1998/02/cov_si_10int.html

Writing light is very difficult. It's been said that happiness writes white. It doesn't show up on the page.

and

Suicide is a much greater crime than murder. Murder kills only one or two or a handful of people, but the suicide kills everyone on the planet.

Gary Oldman on moviemaking: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/film/7brunette.shtml

Or you take a subject like alcoholism and make Leaving Las Vegas! No drunk--and I was one, I am a f___ing drunk, a recovering drunk--is that charming. You stink, and you bleed from your arsehole. That's alcoholism, that's the reality of booze.

We're all Drudges (even the Wall St. Journal): http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/news/7ledbetter.shtml

"The Wedding Singer" ushers in '80s nostalgia: http://search.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=323770366

Recycled real estate (UPI):

Efforts are under way to lease the site of a defunct nuclear power plant in Sacramento County, California -- to a solar energy service provider. Officials say they are looking to lease the Rancho Seco Technical Center building to Energy Photovoltaics and CalSolar Manufacturing.

Text Machine's approach to grep-for-dummies: http://www.seyboldseminars.com/News/columns/97/ec_0124971.html

A turningpoint in net history-- IBM re-aligns: http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_1756.html

The message is this: If your company has not taken steps to integrate ecommerce into its business, it may be left to play catch up -- to your competitors.

Frontier is not the only platform trying to automate "workflow". Seybold favors this one: http://www.dalim.com/products/twist.htm

Oooh! http://www.macosrumors.com/

According to well-placed sources in education and at resellers worldwide, there have been fascinating rumors as to the possibility that Apple has elected to halt development of HyperCard not out of cost-cutting, but because it has a much better technology in mid-development.

(Sounds like NeXTStep, actually...)

One of the very best writers on the net: Peter Dyson of Seybold, offers a stunningly well-written glance at the Netscape/Linux strategy: http://www.seyboldseminars.com/News/columns/98/ec_012698.html

Are there lessons here for other struggling software companies? Could Apple use this technique to transform the MacOS, or Sun to finally make Java a world-beater? I think they could.

Another, about publishing trends: http://www.seyboldseminars.com/News/columns/98/ec_013098.html

Nevertheless, there's something intrinsically klunky with fax: You create a page digitally, convert it to analog by printing it, digitize it in the fax's scanner, convert the bits to analog audio, reconvert the tones to bits and finally convert to analog again in the remote machine's printer-all in order to achieve a rather ugly presentation.

and

Ink-jet printers. ...major performance benchmarks (ink drop size asymptotically approaching the visual limit of 2 picoliters, while droplet firing rates are doubling every 10 months or so)...

Per-minute pricing on telephony: http://www.seyboldseminars.com/News/columns/97/ec_021297.html

The new classes of website-management problem: http://www.seyboldseminars.com/News/columns/97/ec_071897.html

Could the devastating flu epidemic of 1918 (30 million deaths worldwide) have originated in burning manure??? http://www.swdtimes.com/liberal/times/daily/tuesday/dec02/flu.html

Sam Smith contrasts the Post's handling of Clinton's scandals and Marion Barry's: http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/indexup.htm

Nerve's forum continues at breakneck pace: [multi, multipage] http://www.nervemag.com/voicebox/WomenOnSex/Friday_Question2.html

When I called a woman editor and asked if Ms. would be interested in excerpting a section of My Secret Garden, I was informed, "Ms. will decide what women's sexual fantasies are" -- and that is a direct quote.

And elsewhere:

If someone kicks off their heels and dares to show a bit of honesty or imagination, I feel like applauding them, even if they're a bit a of klutz about it, or don't handle the results in a perfectly charming way. It's a miracle anybody rebels in the first place.

And:

In spite of all the dilemmas and remaining difficulties, I know that my daughter's life is dramatically different from mine in many positive ways, and from my mother's and grandmother's in ways they could not have imagined. We're doing okay!

The author of my second-favorite piece of writing on the net (Eric Raymond's Cathedral and Bazaar) flames Dave Winer: http://www.scripting.com/98/02/stories/ericRaymondResponds.html

An interesting look at the free-email-account biz: http://www.iw.com/daily/trends/1998/02/0501-free.html

Corporate e-mail-monitoring systems work only on HTTP-based e-mail that resides on mail servers. Web-based e-mail never passes through those servers, and therefore cannot be censored.

The war games (computer and not) of 1997, in review: [temp url?] http://wargames.miningco.com/library/weekly/mcurrent.htm

YAY! PBS's Nature finally told the bonobo-story straight: their only sexual taboo is mother with grown son: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/monkeymirror/html/intro.html

Combinations of words that [Kanzi the bonobo] has never heard before, such as "Put some soap on the ball," or "Take the vacuum cleaner outdoors," make perfect sense to him, just as they would to a human.

(They showed him following these, and even more arbitrary spoken instructions. MINDBLOWING!)

The philosophy of sex in the 17th century: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980223/0223EAKI.HTM

Both [Swammerdam and Leibniz] were preformationists, who believed that "all living things existed preformed inside their forebears in the manner of the Russian doll, put there by God at the beginning of Creation."

The best-maintained ISPs: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/0204/282378.html

Sharon Stone, in Playboy:

"When I was fifteen, I went to high school half a day and college the other half . . . The classes were very helpful to me, but it soon became clear that I could take a course overload AND drugs and still be bored."

...but a.s.g's Susan Vaughn spoilsports:

Too bad one of the tabloids recently acquired Sharon's college report card, which showed that she received "C's" and "B's" in all her classes, and even flunked out of acting class.

"Starshrink" on alt.showbiz.gossip:

The White House's spin this week is big, strong, powerful Ken Starr is abusing weak, defenseless Bill Clinton -- otherwise known as the leader of the free world.

Cardiofunk!

Novel technologies at Demo '98: http://www.sjmercury.com/compute/center/demo020898.htm

"People come up and ask what do you do with it. I don't care what you do with it, it's just bloody cool."

This Day in Joyce History: In 1889, just after his seventh birthday, Joyce at Clongowes received two slaps with a pandybat as punishment (inspiring the famous scene in Portrait).

A passionate debate is arising between Frontier's Dave Winer and the Linux-folk. Here's a nice overview of Linux GUI projects: http://www.scripting.com/mail/mail980207.html

80k Goofin'-with-GifBuilder version

Salacious gossip about Nelson Rockefeller's death: [server problems] http://www.ishipress.com/marshak.htm

This Day in Joyce History: In 1923, James wrote to Harriet Weaver that he was re-sorting his Ulysses notes for what would become Finnegans Wake.

@AnaCam

Sam Smith's new Progressive Review page for daily updates looks good: http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/indexup.htm

The Rainbow Coalition has announced its opposition to the planned MCI/Worldcom merger that would put 75% of the long distance telephone market and 60% of the Internet infrastructure under the control of one company. The Rainbow Coalition also points out that Worldcom is a non-union company governed by a board of fifteen white males -- the only one-race, one-sex board of a major telecommunications company.

Ouch! http://www.salonmagazine.com/letters/1998/02/06letters.html

Generation Xers throughout the country are finding that their elders -- baby boomers -- have no interest in mentoring them. In fact, boomers go out of their way to do precisely the opposite.

Alarming statistics about computer security: http://www.sjmercury.com/business/center/shipley020698.htm

Of the more than 20,000 computers Shipley's laptops have reached, roughly 75 percent respond with enough information to allow a determined attacker to break in, he says. About 1 percent of the systems have no security at all.

(If you read this carefully, though, those 75% just gave their company name on the login screen.)

This Day in Joyce History: In 1882, Mary E. Cleary ("Emma Clery") was born, and James was baptised. In 1891, Jack Joyce made his last payment to Clongowes for James's education.

The Unabomber's jail ID: 3165854

In a new Voice, Nat Hentoff repeats the non-Monica charges against Clinton: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/news/6hentoff.shtml

Elsewhere in the issue, Susie Bright attacks him for reasons other than adultery: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/news/6bright.shtml

Clinton will never tell everyone to f___ off and mind their own business because he does think it's everybody's business--he's criticized and censured the sexual behavior and opinions of others for his entire political career.

The most depressing albums of all time, per readers of PA News (UK):

1. Leonard Cohen - Greatest Hits
2. Lou Reed - Berlin
3. Nick Drake - Way To Blue
4. Joy Division - Closer
5. Tindersticks - Second Album
6. Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible
7. Red House Painters - Double Album
8. Baby Bird - Dying Happy
9. Tricky - Pre-Millennium Tension
10. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
11. American Music Club - Mercury
12. Pink Floyd - The Wall
13. The Cure - Disintegration
14. Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
15. Japan - Tin Drum
16. Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
17. Depeche Mode - Black Celebration
18. R.E.M. - Automatic For The People
19. Nirvana - Unplugged
20. David Bowie - Low

(For a healing dose of Leonard Cohen, rent Altman's brilliant western, "McCabe and Mrs Miller")

Beautiful weirdness from Ana Voog

The Progressive Review has a redesign and a new issue: http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/

Just wondering . . . If Clinton were a master sergeant instead of commander-in-chief what the charges would be.

A new sort of interactive art, Artificial Changelings: http://www.feedmag.com/html/feeddaily/98.02.04feeddaily_master.html

Described as a "romance thriller about shopping," the work oscillates between two protagonists: Arathusa, a Parisian madamoiselle with a soft spot for the ultimate in impulse buying, and Zilith, a 21st-century hacker who appears repeatedly in Arathusa's dreams.

An archive-page for InfoWorld's features: http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?/features/features.htm
including an example of data-mining, detecting healthcare fraud: http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?/features/970901fraud.htm
and how the original weblog-- Reader's Digest-- moved onto the Web: http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?/features/980105mentors.htm

A hilarious profile of the pie-thrower, the truly heroic Noel Godin: http://www.cinenet.net/users/jaybab/observer.html

"Tell them to expect me," he said, "when they see a cream-coloured shooting star traverse their cheerless skies."

A much shorter, less hilarious profile: http://www.cinenet.net/users/jaybab/times.html

A multimedia-heavy site for America's own Pieman, Aron Kay: http://www.queenbee.net/members/pieman/

Other assorted hits in 1977 included G. Gordon Liddy and the assassin of JFK, E.Howard Hunt at a taping of NBC's Tomorrow Show, who yelled "Go to hell, asshole!" I shouted back, "Where were you November 22?"

An update on Woz: http://www.austin360.com/tech/stories/02feb/04/4woz.htm

He says he'll never go back to computer engineering. The constancy of numbers and designs that engulf the mind and leave time for little else -- that part of his life is over. He lives now for his family, he says, and for the fun of exploring and playing with the new technologies, not creating them.

Serious sociobiology: Survival of the sweetest grandmothers: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980207/ngranny.html

Special free issue of the Consortium claims the CIA's report does not clear them of coke trafficking: [limited time] http://www.delve.com/consort/archive/consort2.html

     Username: consort
     Password: conb565

The CIA used Xerox copiers for 60s spying: http://www.parascope.com/articles/0197/xerox.htm

Judging by the number of parts ordered from Xerox, Zoppoth believes that spy cameras may have been installed in photocopiers all over the world, to keep an eye on U.S. allies as well as enemies.

Science News Online tours twenty general-interest science sites: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/12_20_97/bob1.htm

Dance-mix DJ review (sounds good): http://www.salonmagazine.com/music/sharps/1998/02/04sharps.html

A new age now begins!

Nerve is starting a GREAT forum on female sexuality: [multipage] http://www.nervemag.com/voicebox/WomenOnSex/Merkin_Question1.html

The furor of response which the piece [in The New Yorker, on spanking] generated has convinced me that the context is at least as important as the subject: i.e., you can say anything you want in an S/M publication or book that's specifically devoted to the subject of sexual fantasies, but to try and beam a psychological flashlight (which is what I hoped to do) on one's personal erotic map in a literary magazine was to step across unacknowledged but very tight boundaries in a way that aroused a lot of uneasy interest.

Zapatistas + Hackers = WebWars: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/040691.htm

Convene the Jesus Seminar!

CAIRO, Feb 4 (AFP) - Canadian archeologists have unearthed 2,000 pieces of papyrus from the Greco-Roman period in the ruins of a Roman city [including] rare and important Christian manuscripts.

An old, pretentious inquiry into the philosophical origins of Wired: [multipage] http://www.rewired.com/96/Fall/1118.html

In particular, the multi-national scenarios-planning company co-founded by Stewart Brand and previously London-based Royal-Dutch Shell futurist Peter Schwartz, the Global Business Network (GBN), has been decisive in shaping WIRED's "content."

This Day in Joyce History: In 1900, Joyce's review of an Ibsen play was accepted by the Fortnightly Review.

Karla Faye Tucker's
Life thread severed by flyboy
George W. Bush

IMDB offers a lovely page of quotes from the movie "Help!"

Fast Company's archives http://www.fastcompany.com/resources/backissues.html include this starry-eyed history of Kinko's: http://www.fastcompany.com/12/kinko.html and a long list of semi-random factoids: http://www.fastcompany.com/12/factoids.html

In 1751 Frederick Lewis, the Prince of Wales, died after being hit in the head by a cricket ball.

Does everyone experience the Web as a vast dark warehouse full of wonderful things you'll never find? Here's another handy little list of startingpoints: http://www.tstimpreso.com/hotsheet/

My favorite music videos are Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean", Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", and Daft Punk's "Around the World". A totally inadequate 2mb sample of this last is available from MTV: http://download.mtv.com/mtv/tubescan/vma97/video/worldp.mov

Two strikes against Peter Coyote's sixties-memoirs of the Diggers: his style is self-conscious, and the site can crash Netscape. But the content is pretty fascinating: http://www.diggers.org/freefall/forkeeps.html

The work was to "act-out" the life of your own hero; to live your life as you wanted to and refuse to be defeated by the myriad excuses that most people offered for their not being able to do that.

Sally Rand Nude Ranch: "A dude ranch a la 1939" [no nudity] http://www.best.com/~sfmuseum/bio/rand.html

Hackers peek under the hoods of various net-nanny programs: http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/Declan_McCullagh/cwd.keys.to.the.kingdom.0796.article

Dispatch asked Getgood why CyberPatrol blocks access to other seemingly unobjectionable web sites including the University of Newcastle's computer science department, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's censorship archive, and the League for Programming Freedom at MIT, a group that opposes software patents.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1585, Hamnet Shakespeare was born. In 1919, Joyce celebrated an adulterous 'black mass' with Marthe Fleischmann. In 1922, Ulysses was published. In 1932, daughter Lucia threw a chair at mother Nora.

Overheard: "You gotta get up to get down..."

False alarm: Scientific American is not requiring registration.

Wipe your feet: SciAm looks at indoor, household pollution: http://www.sciam.com/1998/0298issue/0298ott.html

Wiping one's feet on a commercial-grade doormat appears to reduce the amount of lead in a typical carpet by a factor of six. Because lead exposure is thought to affect more than 900,000 children in the U.S., the use of good doormats would translate into a significant boost to public health.

Dvorak looks at (G-rated) webcams: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/dvorak/jd980202.htm

An okay look at why Drudge will win: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/02/02feature.html

Drudge has spotlighted a new niche in the mass-media ecology: the one-man operation that can break a national story whenever it wants to.

An anonymous Mac-fan shows how Microsoft corrupted NASA: [long] http://www.ghg.net/madmacs/Takeover.html

This Day in Joyce History: In 1898, Alfred Hunter wed Margaret Cummins (happy 100th!). In 1922, Joyce experienced a dreadful omen that became the basis for Finnegans Wake.

Pollution: "Just a question of degree" http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/009512.htm

Lazy Sunday

The new month brings a new Boardwatch, with this exciting, knowing, technical look at backbones, caching, and a new satellite proposal called SkyCache: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/feb/bwm1.html

Four or five years out end users might even have it - the entire web on your own hard drive (ok, maybe 7 years out).

The Unabomber political defense that could have been: http://www.pathfinder.com/time/reports/unabomber/980127_jackson.html

". . .But recall that this guy is a genius. He sees things we can't see and understands things we can't understand. Maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt."

Populous: The Third Coming is a forthcoming videogame/ theology-simulation: http://cgw.gamespot.com/preview/2cbe.html

Outwardly, Populous: The Third Coming skirts the issue of religion, but you can bet your pagan deity it's there, and it's not shown in the most favorable light. The game's basic premise follows the fundamental nature of the human species: Join us or die. Believe what we believe or die. Convert to our way of life or die. Not much of a choice.

Shamanism in NYC: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/supplement/5asantewaa.shtml

"This city is a symbol of how out of balance our culture is," Hellerer asserts. "Ever since I moved here, I've felt the need to empower other women to lift up the energy of the feminine and female. Even the trees don't know what season it is here. . ."

Heh. There's a subculture specializing in hacking AOL: http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/9932.html

In a new issue of the Nation, there's a vivid review of a book about Martin Luther King in the sixties: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980216/0216wien.htm

Only six Republican senators voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, while twenty-one Democrats did.

And Christopher Hitchens puts MonicaGate in bleak perspective: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980216/0216hitc.htm

There may be some right-wing creeps behind Paula Jones and even Linda Tripp, but they can't be as right-wing or as creepy as Dick Morris.

We also have the Clinton who cut great chunks out of habeas corpus and the appeals process with his panicky "tough" new laws on terrorism and capital punishment. And his apologists squeal that Kenneth Starr is acting like Beria.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1889, WB Yeats met Maud Gonne. In ?1898, Bloom was commissioned by Michael Gunn to write a panto song. In 1904, Stannie quit his job at the Apothecaries' Hall.

On alt.folklore.computers, people are wondering why your computer crashes more when it's new: (Deja thread)

Chris Crawford's short biography of Erasmus is quite enjoyable: [multipage] http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/Erasmus_the_Hero/Erasmus_the_Hero_Contents.html

"Tell me, Eutrapelus, which is the weaker person, he that yields to another, or he that is yielded to?"

Elsewhere, in an essay on clutter, Crawford writes:

What's particularly odd to me is the pride some people take in their mastery of clutter. It's especially true of techies -- they love to indulge in the memorization of mountains of meaningless minutiae. Indeed, I suspect that the pride they take in this pap influences the design: software tools are most successful when they create a priesthood knowledgeable in the arcane incantations required.

Theater notes: A local (Chicago) theater company has recreated Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" on stage, with great success.

An ecstatic rave for the new "Great Expectations": [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/ent/movies/1998/01/cov_30great.html

Three generations of online game-promotions, briefly compared: http://www.businessweek.com/premium/06/b3564032.htm

This Day in Joyce History: In 1847, James Augustine Joyce (grandfather of the writer) married Ellen O'Connell. In 1927, Harriet Weaver voiced her doubts about Finnegans Wake.

Should work: if you find a URL you really like, go to AltaVista and type in "+link:the.url.you.like". This will return all the known pages that like that page, too...

A funny old Dvorak about computer 'lifestyle' magazines: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/95/jul/bwm63.htm

I expect to see a Vanity Fair meets Wired meets Redbook meets the Apple Annual Report to the Shareholders kind of magazine. All things to no people.

The New Scientist has the definitive special report on Mad Cow Disease: [multipage] http://madcow.newscientist.com/

Covert Action Quarterly (which watches the watchmen) has probably the best archive of political exposes (well-researched, well-written, fearless) at: http://caq.com/CAQBackIssues.html

An utterly horrifying long piece on the School-of-the-Americas' torture training (US-funded, US-hosted, US-designed). This one goes on my best-of-the-web list: http://caq.com/caq61/CAQ61manual.html

In the name of defending democracy, the manuals advocate profoundly undemocratic methods. Just as objectionable as the methods they advocate is the fundamental disregard for the differences between armed insurgencies and lawful political and civic opposition-- an attitude that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Latin American civilians.

A long, detailed history of US covert ops, especially in Central America, by Philip Agee: http://caq.com/CovOps.html

. . . the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Its origins go back to the early catastrophic scandal that erupted after Agency covert operations were revealed in 1967. I remember the gloom in the CIA when Ramparts magazine revealed the Agency's control and funding of the U.S. National Student Association's (NSA) foreign activities program.

The House Black Caucus/Progressive Caucus budget, providing for 50 percent reduction in military spending over four years, got a full day's debate last March on the House floor and won 77 votes, far more than Bush's budget-- stirring no mainstream reporting, non-news as it had to be.

PR strategies and tactics to defuse activism: [multipage, eye-popping] http://caq.com/Caq55.prwar.html

Activists, he explained, fall into four categories: radicals, opportunists, idealists, and realists. He follows a three-step strategy to neutralize them: 1) isolate the radicals; 2) cultivate the idealists and educate them into becoming realists; then 3) co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.

How the movie "Mississippi Burning" hides the FBI's racism: http://caq.com/FBI.html

Yes, one of their first acts was to prosecute the black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, because he was living with a white woman and they actually crossed a state line. One of the first heroic acts of the FBI.

New 'Red Squads' use police to spy on activists: http://caq.com/caq61/caq61spylocal.html

RAND found that local law enforcement agencies defined "terrorism" much more broadly than did their federal counterparts, often applying the label to environmentalist, animal rights, and union activities that affect large, powerful employers.

A detailed look at the Echelon system for mass-monitoring email and faxes: [multipage] http://caq.com/CAQ59GlobalSnoop.html

A scary animated gif from a page of bonobo links: http://www.blockbonobofoundation.org/blinks.htm

An okay Robert Stone interview: http://www.bookwire.com/bbr/bbrinterviews.article$4641

Kabbalah coincides so closely with everything I've always felt and thought that I find it really staggering. And Kabbalah comes very close to finding an evil side to God in the quality of din, and the invocation of the left side.

Searching for readables: This archive of recent essays by World Statesmen may not be as somniferous as it looks: http://www.kenpubs.co.uk/worldstatesman/Archive/archive.html

Creativity software for cartoonists: http://www.borg.com/~traxx/laugh/feature.html

Weird subcultures: Lost Treasure Online: http://www.losttreasure.com/ and Casino Journal http://www.casinocenter.com/journal/