news, etc:
Arts & Letters Daily
Drudge Report
EDGE
HackerNewsNetwork
SalonHerringWiredFool
Slashdot
Salon
Solar Data
USGS Quake Info
Wired
Yahoo! Top Stories

webcams:
my cam
BC's Cam
Popocatepetl
S.F. Bay
UCLA Solar Tower
Vegas Wedding Cam

trans-
humanism
realism

weblogs:
abuddha's memes
alamut
Barbelith
Blogthis
Bubble Chamber
Camworld
FactoVision
GirlHacker
KeithBrown.com
kottke.org
linkwatcher
memepool
metafilter
metascene
pith and vinegar
Robot Wisdom
Scripting News
stating the obvious
Subterranean
usr/bin/girl
Weblog Monitor
wetlog
xblog (visual thinking)

02.16.2000

net:
[another] study finds heavy internet users are isolated

In its negative implications, the study seemed to echo a much smaller one conducted in 1998 by the Carnegie-Mellon University Human-Computer Interaction Institute, which found "small but reliable declines in social and psychological well-being" among heavy Net users. That study came in for a barrage of criticism, with some arguing that part of the reason for the depression might have had to do with the fact that those surveyed all lived in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh (where I am) is pretty depressing, at least in the winter. Socially there's little to do here in the first place, other than drink. We have no urban center (downtown is deserted after 5pm), more 80 year olds than 25 year olds in the population, and a pathetic cultural scene. The best things about da' Burg ... cheap rent, and lots of cool bridges and architecture.

almost pure evil:
Fat Chicks in Party Hats
exactly what it says it is

Curious George and the High-Tension Power Line
"Don't worry, children!" he said. "We'll have him stuffed in a funny monkey pose!"

Don't Overload Your Tow Unit
"I hope this picture comes to mind the next time you tow that overweight vehicle"

the Crazy Midi Man, Mr. George Foster

"NO BABIES! We have to STOP it TOTALLY. Mr. Foster Supports Reversible STERILIZATION, from BIRTH. And not turned around until after 30 years of AGE! If I were RULER OF PLANET EARTH, IT WOULD BE MANDATORY STERILIZATION BY LAW!"

Hubble Space Telescope Evidence of God
another isolated net whacko

02.15.2000

The 11-minute, digital video recorded title was made by Joshua Backer, a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design's Film, Animation, and Video Department. It's the first hacker documentary to be posted at Kelly's site, and its Enemy of the Statestyle animations, sped-up footage, and scenes of San Francisco's electric bus lines are mixed with brief interviews with members of the Cult of the Dead Cow, the hacker group most famous for creating the Windows-piercing Back Orifice program.

If you take the name of a certain former vice president, Spiro Agnew, and scramble the letters around, you can rearrange it to spell out Grow A Penis. Such appropriateness can give your boundaries of coincidence permanent stretch marks....

02.14.2000

The Net is also changing society - in ways that concern some of the new millionaires. The new gold rush in the San Francisco Bay Area, where many of the Net rich live, has driven up the median price of a condo to $410,000, a 40 percent hike since last year. The middle class is fleeing into the suburban netherlands to find a place they can afford, and the homeless population shows no signs of shrinking. Traffic congestion - as well as overcrowded stores and restaurants and buses - only adds to everyone's frustration at the deteriorating quality of life in San Francisco.

02.13.2000

In the "Tractates," [Phillip K.] Dick maintains that our universe is a space of information, and the phenomenal world a hologram, "a hypostasis of information" that we, as nodes in the true Mind, process. But humans have lost the ability to read this divine language, and both ourselves and our world are occluded. For Dick, the ancient demiurge is recast as the irrational "Empire:" Rome, the Nixon administration, the State as such. Dick did not emphasize the material or Satanic aspect of demiurgic powers, but rather their ability to create false worlds. In the introduction to I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, a collection of late short stories, he wrote that "we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups - and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener." As demonstrated by the illusory and demonic nature of his constantly imploding fictional worlds, Dick transforms Gnostic pessimism into a skeptical weapon wielded from within the fathomless simulations of Baudrillardian hyperreality.

02.12.2000

Now, if you're anything like the waves of Web invaders that have gone before you, you may be unsure of what it is you do, besides sit in front of a computer. This is perfectly normal!

02.11.2000

For people with chronically low serotonin, in fact, life tends to be unusually sexy. According to studies by Hamer at NCI and his colleagues, men with a "short" version of the serotonin transporter gene, which results in reduced serotonin, tend to be both more anxious and more sexually active than those with a longer version of the gene. While these easy lovers keep the gene pool going, they also litter it with neuroses, Hamer notes. "Genes don't care how crazy you are."

02.10.2000

Newly elected Northern White Trash Queen Tonya Harding quickly accepted her new role as queen. She will make her home in a dumpster behind a convenience store until the palace is constructed. Newly elected King Jesse Ventura said he would not take up residence with Queen Tonya until he's had all of his rabies shots.

02.09.2000

Stung by charges of ethnic stereotyping in The Phantom Menace, Lucasfilm is seeking a more culturally diverse cast for the next Star Wars episode. Although George Lucas' script is far from finished, Lucasfilm casting director Robin Gurland has met with major talent agencies to outline several new roles. These include a Native American character, said to have a forceful, spiritual nature; an Indian or Hispanic character; and an Asian character, possibly trained in martial arts.

$$$:
camworld's links to new media salary surveys, job descriptions, etc. I should be making waymore money than I do, according to this interactive survey

werd:
the rap dictionary, in case you don't know wazzup

phlooded:
yahoo.com, buy.com, ebay.com, amazon.com, and cnn.com were shut down for several hours each on Tuesday, zdnet and e*trade today, by denial of service (DoS) attacks.

recent CERT advisory on DoS attacks

analysis of stacheldraht,a DoS attack tool. (stacheldraht - german for barbed wire, fun to say)

02.08.2000

02.05.2000

Alternate ways of accessing the Internet are constantly being introduced. Some estimates indicate that by the year 2002, 75% of Internet document viewing will be carried out on these alternate platforms. The XHTML family is designed with general user agent interoperability in mind. Through a new user agent and document profiling mechanism, servers, proxies, and user agents will be able to perform best effort content transformation. Ultimately, it will be possible to develop XHTML-conforming content that is usable by any XHTML-conforming user agent.

02.04.2000

ad crit:
superbowl ad reviews

4-stars given for E-Trade's dancing monkey