Robot Wisdom WebLog for March 1998 (waxing)

This Day in Joyce History: In 1889, Nora's twin sisters Annie and Margaret Barnacle were born.

"But before we continue here's a message from a gentleman who has designs on your purse..."

Kibological pinup-grrrl Lisa Rea has been far too scarce lately: [Deja URL]

I can see your soul from here. It is tiny and meticulous.

A lost fragment of Pride and Prejudice, critiquing slavery? [Deja URL]

"Pray Charlotte", said she, "what think you of the slave-trade? Shall the young ladies of England wear ribbons and fine muslin, knowing of the misery occasioned in their production?"

Apocalypse preview: Auckland struggles in darkness: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/wlust/feature/1998/03/12feature.html

Within days, Queen Street, the main drag that anchors this city of a million people, resembled a Third World capital.

Overheard: Bing Crosby freely acknowledged that his singing style was an attempt to sound like Louis Armstrong!!?

I finally saw Clueless and tracked down this list of Austen-parallels: http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/clueless.html#parallels

Jamestown, Virginia archeological breakthru: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/048988.htm

One piece, a signet ring adorned with a bird crest, belonged to William Strachey, whose account of his sea voyage is believed to be the basis for Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

A small bookstore's Internet success story: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/076836.htm

Even Pat Conroy's "The Boo," a first-edition novel from 1970 that Briscoe never thought he'd sell. It went for $2,500.

Asg's master of dry wit, Matt Lupo asks:

I missed the last few moments of Titanic. Did they find some way to patch up the boat?

More splendid stuff in the Progressive Review

Evans-Pritchard also quotes the widow of mysteriously slain security operative Jerry Parks as saying that her husband delivered large sums of money from Mena airport to Vince Foster at a K-Mart parking lot. Mrs. Parks said the issue came up after she opened their car trunk one day and found so much cash in it that she had to sit on the trunk to close it again.

Looking for a pic of Lloyd Bridges flossing his ear-canals, I find instead the 'jive' transcripts from "Airplane": http://web.aureate.com/~hawkins/jive/airplane.html

Attendant: Would you tell him to just relax and I'll be back as soon as I can with some medicine.
Barbara Billingsley: Jus' hang loose blooood. She goonna catch up on the'rebound a de medcide.

New Scientific American has features on using lasers to manipulate cells' organelles, and how females choose mates: http://www.sciam.com/1998/0498issue/0498dugatkin.html

That females often flock to the most ostentatious males is not a phenomenon unique to humans.

Prepare for the Mickey Mac? Disney sniffing after Apple: http://www.sjmercury.com/columnists/nolan/docs/cn030998.htm [MacNN]

Evelyn Leeper on rec.arts.books (amidst an ambitious group reading of Moby Dick):

Last week's "Sound and Spirit" talked about Joan of Arc. One thing about her story that modern students/readers/whatever may not appreciate is how shocking it was back then for women to wear men's clothing. This was one of the major charges against her (and possibly what they ultimately condemned her on, though I'm not clear on that).

Talk about merchandising! Karen Finley, the brilliant performance artist, has an implausible 900 number: http://www.salonmagazine.com/media/1998/03/11media.html

"To order your 1-900-ALL-KAREN baseball cap, press 4."

A feminist discovers Italian catcalls are fun: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/wlust/feature/1998/03/11feature.html

A spy in the Church of Filofax (Jr): [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/reviews/1998/03/11review.html

"Make sure that elements that denote success surface regularly in your Planner!" I think this was the Franklinite way of saying "Have fun!"

Old news? Reagan sent Saddam 70 shipments of bio-bugs to use on Iran: http://search.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=326024319

The nonprofit Rockville, Md., company made 70 government-approved shipments of anthrax and other disease-causing pathogens to Iraqi scientists between 1985 and 1989, according to congressional records.

The smartest commentary I've seen yet on MSIE/Win95: http://www.msnbc.com/news/148765.asp [SB, YMMV]

A decent look at the DejaNews/privacy question: http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/10780.html [SB]

"When you're using them, these digital media seem like Post-Its," he observes. "Actually, they're chiseled stone tablets that will never wear away."

Kibo deconstructs a snuff story about Posh Spice (way beyond xxx, but well-bowdlerized here): http://search.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=332427780

HELLO KITTY: meow meow meow mmmbop.
HANSON: Waah! We nailed our eyeballs together! OW-EE OW-EE OW-EE!

A welcome computer-repair expose: [multi, multi, multi-page (are they serious?!?)] http://www.pcworld.com/current_issue/article/0,1212,3764,00.html [YMMV]

Stores from every chain wanted to sell us a new hard drive or motherboard (or both) to fix a problem caused by a faulty $7 cable.

Danny Yee offers a typically concise summary of "The Ovary of Eve" about the 18th C philosophies of preformation: http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny/book-reviews/h/Ovary_Eve.html

One advantage for ovism lay in the shape of the egg. The sphere represented perfection and was therefore highly favoured -- as can be seen from the history of theories of planetary motion. But a countering disadvantage was that eggs came from the female of the species, consistently considered inferior in the West, along with the left side.

The Nation reviewed this book last month: (8 Feb below) http://www.thenation.com/issue/980223/0223EAKI.HTM

There's a database in Arkansas that's tracking down every detail it can on you: [excellent, three unlinked (!?) pages] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WParch/1998-03/08/164f-030898-idx.html [YMMV, having a rather good day]

Discreet offers a "disguised free gift packaged" phone card that can be given to individuals a customer wants to track. The card secretly generates a report of telephone numbers the user dials.

The company does allow people to opt out of its databases, but fewer than 300 people had done so by the end of last year...

After more than two decades of gathering facts, it has 350 trillion characters of consumer data in its computer library.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-03/09/051l-030998-idx.html

Privacy advocates say the Bork law highlights inconsistencies in privacy legislation because it gives video rental records more protection than health records

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-03/10/070l-031098-idx.html

...he and his associates used an electronic link to the files of Experian Inc. to engage in "identity theft," a crime in which thieves use assumed identities to run up bills or drain bank accounts.

The three largest credit bureaus... also signed a pledge... to limit access to some sensitive information gathered from private sources. That includes Social Security numbers, mother's maiden names and dates of birth.

"These are New Age crimes."

(The snowstorm here knocked out my phone since yesterday noon!)
(Delicious white icing on everything afterwards, though...)

On this great day in 1923, Joyce wrote the first sketch for the midpoint of Finnegans Wake:

So anyhow to wind up after the whole beanfeast was all over poor old King Roderick O'Conor the last king of all Ireland who was anything you like between fiftyfour and fiftyfive years of age at the time after the socalled last supper he gave or at least he wasn't actually the last king of all Ireland for the time being because he was still such as he was the king of all Ireland after the last king of all Ireland Art MacMurrough Kavanagh who was king of all Ireland before he was anyhow what did he do King Roderick O'Conor the respected King of all Ireland at the time after they were all of them gone when he was all by himself but he just went heeltapping round his own right royal round rollicking table and faith he sucked up sure enough like a Trojan in some particular cases with the assistance of his venerated tongue one after the other in strict order of rotation whatever happened to be left in the different bottoms of the various drinking utensils left there behind them by the departed honourable guests such as it was either Guinesses or Phoenix Brewery Stout or John Jameson and Sons or for that matter O'Connell's Dublin ale as a fallback of several different quantities amounting in all to I should say considerably more than the better part of a gill or naggin of imperial dry and liquid measure.

(This midpoint is also the lowpoint, as in Dante's Inferno, but ROC maintains an attitude of charity, faith, and hope.)

Pascal's Header-Echo: Scary direct feedback about what others can see when you surf: http://echo.znet.de:8888/

(Admit it! She can act!)

This time of year my St Patrick's autobiography page starts getting mongo hits.

They brought up against me after thirty years an occurrence I had confessed before becoming a deacon. On account of the anxiety in my sorrowful mind, I laid before my close friend what I had perpetrated on a day-- nay, rather in one hour-- in my boyhood because I was not yet proof against sin.

The phrase, "the great spam engines in Hong Kong" inspired this reverie from Joseph Michael Bay: [Messy Deja URL]

In a few years, he said, there would be a toad-in-the-hole Engine, a bangers-and-mash-Engine, a kidney-pie-engine, and all the refinements you could imagine.

Bible scholars are early-adopters of XML! http://www.housesofworship.net/how/help/scrmain.htm [SN]

Sam Smith is really catching his stride in the Progressive Review site, both for content and readability: http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/

Just for the record, issues that have been raised by special prosecutors, members of Congress and/or investigative reporters include, but are not limited to, alleged bank and mail fraud, violations of campaign finance laws, illegal foreign campaign funding, improper exports of sensitive technology, physical violence and threats of violence, solicitation of perjury, intimidation of witnesses, bribery of witnesses, attempted intimidation of prosecutors, perjury before congressional committees, lying in statements to federal investigators and regulatory officials, flight of witnesses, obstruction of justice, bribery of cabinet members, real estate fraud, tax fraud, drug trafficking, failure to investigate drug trafficking, bribery of state officials, use of state police for personal purposes, exchange of promotions or benefits for sexual favors, using state police to provide false court testimony, laundering of drug money through a state agency, false reports by medical examiners and others investigating suspicious deaths, the firing of the RTC and FBI director when these agencies were investigating Clinton and his associates, failure to conduct autopsies in suspicious deaths, providing jobs in return for silence by witnesses, drug abuse, illegal acquisition and use of 900 FBI files, illegal futures trading, murder, sexual abuse of employees, false testimony before a federal judge, shredding of documents, withholding and concealment of subpoenaed documents, fabricated charges against (and improper firing of) White House employees, as well as providing access to the White House to drug traffickers, foreign agents and participants in organized crime. Then and only then is also about a 20-year-old land deal and who had sex with whom.

(Not even mentioning the NAFTA-railroad, or the Waco coverup...)

Reuters:

Nearly 80 percent of high-level annual income ($100,000 and above) households have a PC, compared with data showing only about one-quarter of households with annual income under $30,000 have a PC.

The winners of the Webby awards for best website: http://www.webbyawards.com/winners.shtml

New Risks Digest offers sysadmins a clever toolkit for outsmarting hackers: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.62.html#subj11

In the case of the Deception Tool Kit, the deception is intended to make it appear to attackers as if the system running DTK has a large number of widely known vulnerabilities.

New Village Voice has an utterly frivolous look at the Time magazine bash: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/news/11trebay.shtml

And some net-notes on AOL-vs-NYC-citysites, and unamerican.com: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/cyber/11bunn.shtml

Kumar has been living off the profits of unamerican.com since he lost his job last year, selling some $2000 a month in merchandise.... "It's backbreaking to support the advertising model [like content sites do]," he says. "But the merchandising model just kicks butt."

Salon has an okay piece on the new release of Pynchon letters: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/media/1998/03/10media.html

And PalmPilot fever continues to build: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/reviews/1998/03/10review.html

The Pilot's secret is that it just plain works. And it works for the simplest of reasons: There's nothing seriously wrong with it.

CheeseLover on alt.fan.ana-voog:

Ana, I have a confession to make. For the past several months I have been using my hypnotic powers to transmit a very powerful sleep message through your webcam to you. It seems to be working very well between the hours of 9 am and 5pm daily. I feel very guilty about this and will stop now. I am truly sorry, although a good nap is a very nice gift to give somebody. I will begin to transmit my clean up your damn house message very shortly.

"Fortune" has a long look at AOL. This page has the most interesting financial details: http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1998/980330/aol.b.html [SB]

Salon looks at the underground economy of password-theft: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/03/09feature.html

Don't miss one of Jakob Nielsen's best columns ever, on playing to the Web's strengths: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980308.html

Spend the available bandwidth on high-fidelity audio supplemented with slowly changing high-resolution photos of the speaker, the audience, and (most important) the visuals used in the talk. Even better: deliver something that can't be done in the physical world by indexing the talk and allowing the user to jump directly to segments of interest while reading short abstracts of the other parts.

Brand new Lingua Franca offers a long, fascinating look at pro-pirate revisionism: http://www.linguafranca.com/9803/osborne.html

Instead of being the biker gangs of the eighteenth century, were they in fact nascent democrats and socialists who shared their spoils, practiced free love, offered women exciting job opportunities, and treated blacks with dignity?

(This one goes on my best-reads shortlist!)

Smart movie! "The New Age"

According to Variety: (agc)

VERY HOT: Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Jim Carrey, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts, Robin Williams, Will Smith
HOT: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Helen Hunt, Kate Winslet, Mira Sorvino
WARM: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Neve Campbell
COOL: Eddie Murphy, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme
FRRREEEZZING!!!! Steven Seagal, Michael J. Fox, Geena Davis, Cher

I'm appalled: (agc)

Action star Jean-Claude Van Damme has fallen head over heels for rock goddess Jewel. The oddball duo met recently at Hollywood's trendy Sky Bar - and it was love at first sight. Beautiful Jewel, 23, has had a secret crush on the 36-year old Muscles from Brussels and she was thrilled to be introduced to him.

Caffeine and sugarfizz, 50 cents the pint. Bestsellers: (agc)

1. Coke Classic
2. Pepsi Cola
3. Diet Coke
4. Mountain Dew
5. Sprite
6. Dr. Pepper
7. Diet Pepsi
8. 7UP
9. Caffeine Free Diet Coke
10. Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi

This Day in Joyce History: In 1890, WB Yeats joined the occult Order of the Golden Dawn. In 1907, the Joyces left Rome for Trieste.

Golden Dawn FAQ: http://www.ccse.net/~mhenson/cranmer_gdfaq.html

Authoritative teen-DoD-hacker site, with fascinating IRC interviews: [multipage] http://www.antionline.com/PentagonHacker/ [McRn]

        Analyzer - right now i am over friends house
        Analyzer - cos my HD is unuseble
        Analyzer - its encrypted in 4096 bit encryption

What happens when you hold a folk festival in a nudist colony? http://www.hidwater.com/fmd/1997/aug/081297.html (midpage, no pix)

It was absolutely the most open and enthusiastic group of people that I have ever encountered. Anybody and everybody will greet you, speak with you, invite you in.

Negativland found-audio bite (off the Jack Benny radio show?):

"You know what he's doing when he goes off the air for 15 seconds? He's throwing up!"

AOL's ten-most-wanted spammers (collect them all!):

-- The "Notoriously Nasty" Spammer -- pornography.
-- The LoseWeight Center -- dieting.
-- Lovetoys Productions -- pornography.
-- CN Productions -- pornography.
-- Internext -- pornography.
-- AMV Inc. -- pornography.
-- Softcell Marketing Inc. -- pornography.
-- Paragon Marketing -- pornography.
-- American Eagle/PMA -- bulk e-mailing software.
-- Springdale Publications -- anti-airline Web site.

(Doesn't look anti- to me: http://www.springdalepub.com/ )

Lord-of-the-Dance gossip: [Messy Deja URL]

Fleet-footed Flatley recently stunned fans by announcing that he plans to quit the wildly successful stage show during a final tour of London in July to pursue a Hollywood movie career. Lord of the Dance has already earned over $90 million worldwide. Four Las Vegas casinos have also offered him millions to set up Lord of the Dance-style reviews for them.

In a new PC Magazine, Dvorak gushes about hardware innovations on the horizon: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/inside_track/it_p.htm

But the kicker is a soon-to-be-announced thumbnail-size camera with a lens no bigger than an asterisk that produces an astonishing image by any standard. Ide expects to blow open the market with this $50 gem.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1907, Joyce loses his last month's pay to thieves in Rome.

New The Nation ponders the drug war: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980323/0323edt1.htm

Kibo on a.r.k:

Bob Hope kissed a frog and the frog got liver spots.

Elvis Costello praises Dylan's latest: [Messy Deja URL] (rmd)

Blues don't make you feel bad. And the more I listen, the more humour and uplift I draw from it, rather than somebody blithely saying everything's gonna be all right. One of the saddest songs that ever used it was that Marley song No Woman, No Cry, because the music completely contradicted the way he was singing it. You'd struggle to believe it.

A James Joyce chat board (other authors available): http://killdevilhill.com/jamesjoycechat/wwwboard.html

Brand new newsgroup: alt.books.james-joyce

In the Progressive Review, Hugh Sprunt wonders if the Starr investigation isn't a lot like professional wrestling: http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/

What rec.arts.books wants to know:

      >'Do the boogie woogie in the South American way'
      >                   Hank Snow, THE RHUMBA BOOGIE

Did Hank really fire Chubby Wise on-stage for lifting his (Hank's) wig with his (Chubby's) violin bow?

Inside Disneyland Paris: http://tokyo.to/9608/dispatch.html

"But how do you feel about being dressed like that?" I persisted. They conferred briefly before responding. "We can't tell you about our feelings. That's a secret."

Japanese surfer slang: http://tokyo.to/9608/feat1box.html

Ore wa guufii desu = I surf goofy-footed

A nicely-done online sort-of-goth art exhibit called Belladonna: http://filament.illumin.co.uk/ica/Bulletin/exhibitions/belladonna/INTRODUCTION.html

I like this too, by Amanda Thesiger: http://www.sbc.org.uk/hayward/acc/gallery3.htm

Pseud of the Week: (asg)

Sarah Jessica Parker Posey (oxford@olemiss.net)

A smart newsletter design: BootWire: http://www.bootnet.com/bootwire.html

Bestselling game in January: a deerhunting sim!?!? http://www.wizworks.com/deerhunt.htm [Boot]

(Gorgeous art!)

Another lively Deer Hunter page: http://www.allaboutgames.com/deerhunter

"We're going to go after all the animals," Paige Carlson-Winch, published product and affiliate sales manager for WizardWorks, told Computer Retail Week.

The gaming host-site has a pretty radical design: http://www.allaboutgames.com/

Fun idea: Star-Wars Monopoly: http://www.allaboutgames.com/x/x/lnch/objinfo/3257724533

No Boardwalk or Marvin Gardens here; instead you can buy (and pay rent on) places like Hoth, Cloud City, the Death Star, and Dagobah.

3Com's strategic plans for the PalmPilot: http://www.businessweek.com/premium/11/b3569109.htm [OS]

A nice ethical poser: do animals deserve protection from hate-speech? http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/065518.htm

"Off the Pigs" comes home to roost: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/046186.htm

Vietnam-era radical Katherine Ann Power wept, apologized and withdrew her parole request in the killing of a Boston police officer after his survivors recounted their grief, his daughter said.

Overheard in rec.arts.books:

The name of the novel is Moby-Dick (with hyphen). The name of the whale is Moby Dick (without hyphen).

This Day in Joyce History: In 1907, after sticking it out for seven months (a lifetime record), Joyce quit his job as a bank clerk in Rome.

1959 Sinatra-Elvis special

A turnkey Linux box with an HTML interface, in a $999 Qube: http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/opinion/0223/23mach.html [YMMV]

The ValuJet crashed because the workers confused 'expended' with 'expired', according to a slow-paced, clearly written multipager in the March Atlantic. This third page explores the limits of complex-systems safety: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98mar/valujet3.htm

The Atlantic links to The Global Ideas Bank, a WorldWide suggestion box: http://newciv.org/GIB/

A thorough dolphin FAQ (including six places you can swim with them): http://www.ping.be/~ping1081/eghtm/egdolfaq.htm

Sounds do not alone account for communication between dolphins. Attitudes do also. Body talk (mammals we said) is evident in many ways, as when a perturbed mother will hold a misbehaving child on the bottom. The message is clearly "don't mess with me and get back in line".

Discover magazine seems to have one of the best archives on the net, but it's so horribly arranged (many layers of menus, no useful anchortext) that it can't be browsed. The current ToC is at: http://www.discover.com/current_issue/index.html

Here's one of the most useless web pages I've ever seen in a commercial site. I hope it's just a sign they're still under construction: http://www.discover.com/behavior/behbottom2.html

Brain deterioration turns a stock broker into a Van Gogh: http://www.discover.com/cover_story/9801-7.html

...as John's social skills and language abilities eroded, his visual senses became more acute.

A book review about the failing fishing industry: http://www.discover.com/cover_story/gthere.html?article=book.html

If ever there was a real limit to growth, it is the one that applies to fishing.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1814, Clongowes Wood College (where Joyce was pandied in 1889) was founded.

Nice simple ascii arts: http://search.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=330723962

Visual relief

Oops. My radar-system missed the last week's worth of updates (on Vernon Jordan, Sidney Blumenthal, et-splendid-al) at the Progressive Review, when it moved the daily updates back to the home page! http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/

LA has opened a $400 million, state of the art jail for inmates 92% of whom are functionally illiterate, 90% of whom are high school dropouts, and 80% of whom are in jail for non-violent drug offenses

and

Forgotten is the White House lawyer's own list of 40 intertwined scandals, any one of which might be on a list of impeachable offenses.

and

"[The Blumenthal inquiry] was an attempt by Mr. Starr to maintain the integrity of his investigation of the president and those involved in his charter. One has to hypothesize that lies were said about the prosecutors and that they were said and spread with the intent of affecting that grand jury inquiry, thereby having the prosecutors pull back, or not punch as hard as they should."

A clever analysis of Gates' body language: http://www.nypost.com/business/217.htm

At one point, Bill was making a fairly factual, accepted statement - "The rapid introduction of the Internet is the most exciting example of innovation in the march of progress." But as he was saying this very positive statement, his head was shaking "no," and he made this tight insincere smile.

The Village Voice has added more articles (!?) including a thoughtful appreciation of Scorsese and Sayles: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/film/10taubin.shtml

And a funny passionate critique of Madonna's latest: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/music/10dark.shtml

The problem is, she still has to compete in the marketplace--she can run from True Blue, but she can't hide from Celine Dion, whose cyborg bombast will crush Ray of Light like a bug.

Gossip from netnews:

The director of "Heavenly Creatures", Peter Jackson is reportedly is about to sign a $60m deal with Miramax to make "The Hobbit". (asg)

Jim Carrey has won the role of late comedian Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, Milos Forman's upcoming biopic... (agc)

A decent backgrounder about DejaNews (300 gigs, with 6 new gigs arriving daily?!): http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/018900.htm

High school is a REALLY dumb institution: http://www.salonmagazine.com/mwt/tisd/1998/03/04tisd.html

Almost all their natural strengths are weakened. The amazing ability of young people to become absorbed in a single task is undercut by the schedule of short periods. Their powerful idealism isn't valued in a system designed to teach them the values of another generation.

The magazines that worship money: http://www.salonmagazine.com/media/1998/03/04media.html

...no wonder so many people consider the average share price of 30 steel and cereal makers a better economic indicator than whether they've had a raise in the last five years.

Auckland's powerline-crisis deepens: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/013951.htm

Auckland's hopes of a return to full power have been dashed for weeks after two repaired main cables failed during testing . . . Gilbert said he hoped that supply line would be ready in six to seven weeks.

(Imagine your city's downtown going dark for two months!)

YAY! Hackers target Microsoft machines: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/056116.htm

...computers running Windows NT software crashed from coast to coast Monday night...

A nice short piece on business-taking-the-Web-seriously: http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_1837.html [AW]

Likewise, you can tell the difference between a passing business fad and a lasting change by measuring sustained corporate investments. If enough exceed $100,000 -- you are probably looking at a fundamental shift.

Rewired recognizes the obvious: http://www.rewired.com/98/0223.html

I am passing up the link to Slate and clicking on the link to Salon because of one thing: speed.

The teen DoD-hacker speaks out: http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/10666.html [CG]

Makaveli told the agents that he didn't know which machines or files were classified, but that he had "rooted" - or obtained administrator-level access to - hundreds of machines, including those at the Lawrence Livermore Lab.

Joyce Maynard's long biographical portrait of her dying mother: [multipage] http://www.joycemaynard.com/articles/daughter_idx.html

...what my mother had seen was her younger daughter alone on a frosty pond, skating in endless circles. "I took one look at you and knew something was wrong," she said last month, with utter clarity, despite the tumor pressing on her brain. And hearing her say that, I began to cry.

Women lead the way out of corporate soul-death: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/042736.htm

When asked what it would take to lure them back to corporate America, 58 percent of women answered "nothing"

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on the Today Show last week:

"If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future."

NEW: Search these weblogs via AltaVista (see bottom of page)

Cheaper than satellites for cellphone networks: blimps: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980228S0001 [YMMV]

QT Broadway-bound, first notices: (agc)

"I think Tarantino was almost comical in playing the killer," said Skye Drynan, a Boston-area theatergoer, who saw "Wait Until Dark" this past Saturday night.

New "Risks Digest" has details on a catastrophic power outage in a New Zealand city-center: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.61.html

At first the estimated time to repair was a week, now the official estimate being fed to the media is 1-3 weeks but the estimate from power company workers is a month at least (these figures change constantly, they seem to be getting worse).

New Village Voice includes a nice sentimental gush for "Titanic"

Salon looks at automatic translation: http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/reviews/1998/03/03review.html

A routine descriptive sentence from an alt.sex story becomes: "He entered easily, she was ready, virtually cooking to the steam inside."

Dvorak bashes Microsoft's latest scheme to network your home appliances: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/dvorak/jd980302.htm

Internet Weather Report neatly monitors packet-loss at various points: http://www.internetweather.com/

(Nice use of colored text.)

The most detailed piece yet on SOY BOMB: [temp url?] http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/editorial/story.cgi?storyid=300000024094

The economics behind Fox's sensationalist specials: [Messy URL] (asg)

New "Columbia Journalism Review" takes a net-outsider's look at Wired: http://www.cjr.org/html/98-03-04-wired.html

And a long look at immersion journalism: http://www.cjr.org/html/98-01-02-long.html

Tom Wolfe, in a 1972 essay, emphasized four devices: scene-by-scene construction, presenting each scene through the mind of a particular character, extended dialogue between characters, and inclusion of details (how they dress, how they furnish a home, how they treat superiors and subordinates) symbolic of the characters' status lives.

And they say the Freedom of Information Act isn't working very well: http://www.cjr.org/html/98-01-02-foi.html

Before filing requests, talk with FOIA officers in the relevant agency to get advice. If they ask for clarification, provide a quick response. Ravnitzky points out that the IRS denies about 85 percent of all requests because requesters didn't respond to an inquiry asking for additional information or clarification.

Great page-design in an okay look at game voice-acting: http://www.maximag.com/cgi-bin/maximag/frame.cgi?6.12

Nice page-design in an okay look at why girls worship starlets: http://www.maximag.com/cgi-bin/maximag/frame.cgi?6.11

Yet more nice page-design in a piece on a new tampon-substitute: http://www.maximag.com/cgi-bin/maximag/frame.cgi?4.7

Making your PC into a princess (or whatever): http://www.maximag.com/cgi-bin/maximag/frame.cgi?1.20

She may be artificial but we have a rapport.

Had to happen: http://www.playmatestoys.com/news/98amazingamy.htm [Maxi/Feed]

Combine the clock-driven play found in a Nano pet, the artificial intelligence of a computer, and the soft, cuddly body of a baby doll and you get Amazing Amy.

Newton-fans visualize MacOS Lite: http://www.walletware.com/FutureMessagePads.html [OS]

YIKES! Scary Y2k scenarios from a credible authority: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/books/1998/03/cov_02books.html

Even if the worst-case scenarios never come to pass, Yourdon argues, "It's better to be terrified now." He has acted on his own advice, trading in a New York City home for one in New Mexico -- on the theory that Manhattan will be the worst place in the world to be in the event that our economic infrastructure collapses.

One hundred and eight nuclear plants, and none of them are compliant -- not a one. Recent surveys indicate that a third of them still haven't started.

Childrearing experts are full of crap: http://www.salonmagazine.com/mwt/feature/1998/03/02feature.html

In the end, the advice that makes the most sense comes from the most obvious source: another mother who has been there.

Chris Hitchens gives the background of the Saddam-gassed-the-Kurds byte: http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/hitc/1998/03/nc_02hitc2.html

Netscape's timeline for documenting the free source: http://www.mozilla.org/docs.html

...provide a few tutorials that illustrate the interconnection of the modules. For example: trace the act of clicking on a link, and loading and displaying a web page with forms; trace the display of a page with images and plugins . . .

Netscape-upgrade wishlists:
http://www.jcinteractive.com/nswishlist/allClient.shtml
http://www.openscape.org/wish.html

Red Shoes successor due soon? http://www.clubi.ie/twomey/katenews.htm

Also they report rumours that the album uses "electronic" sounds and "heavy amazingly powerful industrial sounds" and that Kate was heard to say "the distortion is the key".

On net.subculture.usenet, Simon Gray suggests:

i've found it quite cathartic to email a friend with the viciously insulting post following up some idiot that I might otherwise have posted to the group - thus getting the annoyance out of my system without drastically increasing the public nastiness.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1882, Frank Budgen was born. In 1889, Pigott the anti-Parnell forger committed suicide. In 1914, Ulysses was officially begun, to be finished 7 2/3 years later.

(Women are from Mars, too!)

"Those who do not archive the past are condemned to retype it." --Garfinkel & Spafford [SB]

Deep theory, cool tech: spintronics: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980228/features.html

"Spintronic devices would allow us to replace the redundancy and cost of having two memory systems-- RAM [random access memory] and hard discs-- by a single, fast spintronic device that does the work of both," says Johnson.

The new "Computer Gaming World" is a great issue for catching up on the 1998 state of the art, with detailed reviews of last year's best and worst in many categories. There's also a page of realistic strategy-tips for Close Combat: chess finally growing up.

Bashing DoJ's latest cyber-terrorism scam: http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/10605.html [McR]

Computer security experts suggested that the teen was a red herring designed to bolster public support for Reno's plan, which, while well-meaning, fails to get to the heart of the real problem facing the government.

Dylan's notorious 1991 Grammy speech: (rmd)

"Well, my daddy, he didn't leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this, he did say, 'Son,' he said, he say, 'you know it's possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you, and if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.'"

I'd like to believe this posting really is from Dylan (the path looks faked, though): http://search.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=329180301

While I am here, the soy dancer was ok, you get used to that. Some of the posters here though, you need prfessional help fast. Couldn'y you be nicer to each other?

New Boardwatch features a technical look at the 56k modem mess: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/98/mar/bwm24.html

The result was that US Robotics engineers could distribute a new version of code one day, and come in the next morning to see the results in large-scale printouts that indicated who got better, who got worse, and who the new version had broken entirely.

Gizmo fever: http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/97/dec/bwm7.html

(When they add handwriting recognition, I bet this form-factor will be the big winner. More so when it includes cellphone, pager, email, web browser, and tv!)

This Day in Joyce History: In 1848, James's paternal grandparents were married. In 1881, Nora's parents married.

Ana's real name is Rachel Olson: http://www.cakemagazine.com/archive/62/voog.htm

Olson sees the Net as having a new sort of intimacy. "The Net is a symbol for the collective unconscious, I think. . ."

You can see my house from here! http://www.city-scenes.com/ [maps limited to big US cities]

(It took me forever to find this in my featureless neighborhood. And then I resized my window and it lost its state! Realize there's a hidden set of controls if you scroll down. Because if I calculate right, the full map of Chicago is 50 feet tall!)

YAY! Blair magazine interviews the Funk Queen of the USA, Lynda J. Barry: [multipage, handwritten, images required] http://www.blairmag.com/blair5/lynda/index.html

You cannot fix Dracula by trying to convince him to just party in the sun with you. This is what I wish I knew earlier.

Hair is my fashion fetish . . . I like hairy anything.

And from the likeable Mayim Bialik: http://www.blairmag.com/sissy/blossom/mitzvah.html

I loathe getting philosophical, but I'm going to go ahead anyway. What strikes me most and perhaps what I learned most from this excursion is that the seniors are actual human beings. They all had parents. They all were naked, bald children a very long time ago. They all know the joys of chocolate milk, a rocking horse, not getting caught while playing tag, reading a good book, a great steak, falling desperately in love, and they all know about pain and tragedy and death.

Actually, this mag seems like one to read cover to cover (to cover) eg: http://www.blairmag.com/blair1/sassy/whatnow.html

Last month boy rock stars told us whether they'd date Winona. This month girl music luminaries answer the pointed question, "Would you go out with Dave Pirner?"

This Day in Joyce History: In 1932, Joyce published a baffling defense of tenor John Sullivan, "From a Banned Writer to a Banned Singer" written in the style of Finnegans Wake:

He strides, booted with anger, along the spurs of Monte Rossini, accompanied solely by Fidelion, his mastiff's voice. They quarrel consonantly about the vocality of the wind, calling each and its other clamant names . . .

New The Nation celebrates the Columbus town meeting: http://www.thenation.com/issue/980316/0316poll.htm

Now if Jon Strange and Rick Theis and their fellow protesters had been, say, first graders suspended for kissing classmates, they would have been on every talk show in the country the next day...

A good look at the teen DoD hackers: http://www.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/040094.htm

Zane said his analysts had noticed several different hacking "styles" or signatures in the system, which could indicate that more advanced experts were feeding hacking programs to the teen-agers.

NC World seems to have good writers. Here's a deep review of a new history of Apple: http://www.ncworldmag.com/ncworld/ncw-02-1998/ncw-02-apple.html

Michael Spindler was an unintelligible, self-serving, crony-making, powermonger who was too blind to make the most obvious decisions.

A detailed demonstration that journalists shortchange NCs: http://www.ncworldmag.com/ncworld/ncw-02-1998/ncw-02-running.html

An absolutely incredible issue of Risks Digest, starting with this Win95-NASA tale: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.60.html#subj5

  Crew: You click the "Start" button to shut down? 
  JSC:  Yeah.  Isn't it obvious? 
  Crew: Somebody get me an aspirin.

Then, after 63 quadrillion guesses, the 56-bit DES-Challenge code-key proves to be: 76 9E 8C D9 F2 2F 5D EA (along with some good war stories): http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.60.html#subj7

(These #-links are actually misnumbered, so you may have to look ahead or back.)

Then a way to beat Tempest eavesdropping with anti-aliasing, and speculation about spying-by-virus: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.60.html#subj8

Then a $10M horror story about NT network maintenance: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.60.html#subj9

And then another about routine license-plate checks at a Baltimore tollbooth: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.60.html#subj10

A nice potential nail in Microsoft's coffin: Win95's roots in DOS: http://www.ncworldmag.com/ncworld/ncw-02-1998/ncw-02-caldera.html [YMMV]

As a result Caldera is documenting exactly how often and in what ways Windows 95 uses DOS during and after the Windows start-up process.

My favorite cartoon character of all time is the Simpsons' Ralph Wiggum. He's got a dedicated site: [heavy multimedia] http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/7772/sounds.html

"Miss Hoover, I glued my head to my shoulder."

A very short, very daring, very x-rated story: http://www.nervemag.com/Banner/traveler/

Overheard: If you need an alarm clock to get up, you're sleep-deprived.

Chicago does Harry proud

A thought-provoking comparison of Commodore and Apple, arguing that Commodore could have eaten WebTV's lunch: [Messy URL!] [OS]

The biggest problem with CDTV was money . . . for marketing

A deep compilation of thoughts on programming-language design: http://www.ericsson.se:800/cslab/~hakanm/okeefe.html [SB]

In looking at other people's Mercury code, I find that I can often ignore the code and just look at the type declarations and the comments. Then I know what the code is for, and only have to look at it if it doesn't work.

This Day in Joyce History: In 1903, a "big wind" flattened trees across Ireland (contributing a major prototype to many Joycean motifs).

A decent, popular update on net-security holes: http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/10459.html and an argument that the recent scare stories about the Pentagon getting hacked are just propaganda: http://www.wired.com/news/news/email/member/technology/story/10557.html [CG]

New Byte features XML

Lots of free legal advice from a reputable publisher: http://www.nolo.com/
(They have a section of lawyer jokes, too.)

You can't say it too often: program bloat sucks: http://www.zdnet.com/sr/columns/sjvn/index.html [YMMV]

Madonna goes spiritual, Drudge sez NYT sez: http://209.160.96.101/1.htm

Gone are Madonna's whips and chains and erotica, the color this spring on the dance floors is Sanskrit and cabala. And ginger tea after your daily yoga session if you really want to strike the pose. Talk about a remix.

Word has a nice gallery of pix of people in offices: http://www.word.com/place/officephotos/ [Feed]

(What I like about Patrick O'Brian's sea stories is the picture they show of men at work.)

Word's archive looks interesting . . . if overdesigned: http://www.word.com/dead_toc/

YAY! An exemplary geneology webpage for Bargers: http://members.tripod.com/~suzid/

An interesting chapter in the history of chastity: http://www.nervemag.com/JacksNaughtyBits/Kempe/

"Margery, if there came a man with a sword who would strike off my head unless I made love with you as I used to do before, tell me on your conscience whether you would allow my head to be cut off, or else allow me to make love with you again, as I did at one time?"

Emailing congresspeople is worthless unless you declare you reside in their districts: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,19480,00.html?owv [McR]

Willie Williams on rec.music.dylan:

But I love stories like the post of [Dylan] going out on the boat on the South Carolina lake, rolling up his pants and dangling his legs in the water; or going over to Frank Sinatra's house (with Springsteen) and, after he leaves, Sinatra tells his wife, "Those guys are great! Forget Steve and Eydie. Let's have them over again."

Here's the scoop on the Grammy's SOY BOMB dancer: http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/129.htm (agc)

(Or was it bad Spanish for "I am the bomb"?!) (rmd)

The SOY BOMB manifesto is new this afternoon: http://www.hiphopmusic.com/soybomb.html (rmd)

2 - Shawn Colvin, Sarah Maclachlan and Paula Cole will be forced to admit that they are actually the same person, and their appearance at the Grammys was a holographic trick.

(But an email correspondent says it's against Monsanto's biotech soybeans!?!)