Microsoft Train Simulator Six highly-detailed train routes from around the world with over 600 total miles of rail, carefully recreated with accurate elevation and terrain data, to mirror the real-world scenery, industry, and towns along the routes. Routes include both historic and contemporary rail operations(they say it'll ship in "Spring 2001").

www.oreilly.com -- Predictions for 2001 Daylight hours are getting short, and it's time for technology predictions for the year 2001. Most analysts will bore you with pedantic articles about new businesses, consumer spending, investment, groundbreaking products, and connectivity speeds. Not this writer! I write about things we all really care about.

CNET.com - News - E-Business - Big Brother knocked in 2000 For privacy experts, 2000 looked more like 1984. Workplace surveillance was the leading privacy concern in 2000, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Privacy Foundation, a Denver-based nonprofit that performs research and educates the public on privacy issues.

Why Iraq's buying up Sony PlayStation 2s Both the U.S. Customs Service and the FBI are investigating the apparent transfer of large numbers of Sony PlayStation 2s to Iraq, according to military intelligence sources.

Disturbing Search Requests Ahhh yes. What do "daycare duct tape", "katie curic", and "Wallpaper Underware" all have in common? Are you sure you really want to know?

Language As A Network Protocol The internet is creating an American version of the British Empire, with the English language playing the role of the Royal Navy. In an information economy the vital protocol is language, written and spoken language.

xmloperator : an XML editor xmloperator is an XML editor. You can read and modify XML documents. xmloperator is a freeware. It can be downloaded freely and used without time limit. xmloperator is writen in Java. It runs (should be able to run) on any machine which supports the Java 2 platform. xmloperator includes an XML parser which has been developped by the Apache Software Fondation.

Scripting News: Dave's - "My Editorial" Dave Winer's take on the recent election circus. He describes it just the way I've been mumbling to myself about it, "While the Democrats mouthed the platitude "All votes must count," the Big Lie of this contest, of course they were working furiously to get Republican votes to not count. They must think we're stupid, or have no minds, or just like to vent or whatever. It worked, up to a point. However, when I heard anyone mouthe that particular homily I made a note. "There's someone who's not using their mind."

Florida Bumper Stickers:

[Order yours now--we've no idea how many are left.]

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FLORIDA: If you think we can't vote, wait till you see us drive.

FLORIDA: Home of electile dysfunction.

FLORIDA: We count more than you do.

FLORIDA: If you don't like the way we count then take I-95 and visit one of the other 56 states.

FLORIDA: We've been Gored by the bull of politics and we're Bushed.

FLORIDA: Relax, Retire, ReVote.

FLORIDA: Viagra voters do it again!

FLORIDA: What comes after 17,311?

FLORIDA: Where your vote counts and counts and counts.

FLORIDA: This is what you get for taking Elian away from us.

FLORIDA: We don't just cheat in football.

FLORIDA: We're number one! Wait! Recount!

Palm Beach County: So nice, we let you vote twice.

Palm Beach County: We put the "duh" in Florida.

Sign on I-95: Florida this way, no that way, 5 miles, wait 10 miles.

And finally:

In the spirit of biapartisanship perhaps President-elect Bush could appoint Vice-President Gore to be the Ambassador to Chad?

Foolproof Ballot for Palm Beach County Yep! This will solve all the voting problems in Palm Beach. Just ask the DNC!

The First Thanksgiving: (The Pilgrims Missed It) On April 30th four centuries ago, our ancestors, led by Don Juan de Oñate, reached the banks of El Rio Bravo (Rio Grande). The first recorded act of thanksgiving by colonizing Europeans on this continent occurred on that April day in 1598 in Nuevo Mexico, about 25 miles south of what is now El Paso, Texas. After having begun their northward trek in March of that same year, the entire caravan was gathered at this point. The 400 person expedition included soldiers, families, servants, personal belongings, and livestock . . . virtually a living village. Two thirds of the colonizers were from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal, and the Canary Islands). There was even one Greek and a man from Flanders! The rest were Mexican Indians and mestizos (mixed bloods).

EarthWeb.com Phil Zimmermann: Programmer as Celebrity Meet Phil Zimmermann, creator of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption suite and one of the world's best-known cryptographers.. Zimmermann is probably the world's best-known cryptographer. He created the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption suite in 1991. Since then, it has come to dominate the market for programming protection of online confidentiality. PGP has been heralded for its role in protecting numerous political dissidents around the world, and earned Zimmermann the prestigious Norbert Wiener Award for responsible use of technology in 1996, as well as the 1995 Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, and a 1998 Lifetime Achievement Award from Secure Computing Magazine, along with at least a dozen other distinctions. It also brought him into highly public patent disputes with RSA Data Security Inc., and a nightmarish multi-year criminal investigation by the United States government.

U.S. Constitution in hypertext We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Presidential Election Law JURIST: The Legal Education Network presents this Guide as a public resource for voters, citizens, and observers of the US electoral process.

Fact Sheet-By One Vote! What difference is my one vote going to make?

Privacy Weblog It's a way to keep people informed about privacy issues. It's also a way for us - the ConsentCache team - to keep track of all the articles we like to point people to!

BookNotes News No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow. Alice Walker

Speech without AccountabilityNew software makes it nearly impossible to remove illegal material from the Web--or to find out who put it there.Scientific American: October 2000

GEEK PRIDE FESTIVAL A 2 Day Celebration of the Geek Way of Life. Speakers, Quake, Music, Bouncy room, Movies, Nerf Battles for real this time, screeching violins, and a whole lot more!

BYTE Column - What The Heck Is SOAP, Anyway?, David S. Platt Given the heterogeneity of the Internet environment, our new programming strategy needs to separate the representation of the function call from the protocol used to transport the call from one box to another. For encoding this information, we'll have to find the lowest common denominator that everyone on the Internet supports. As international air-traffic control uses English (even in France), the lowest common denominator for data encoding on the Internet is XML, and this is what we'll use for representing our function calls.

FEED | RE: Ian Clarke talking about FREENET At first, the world at large ignored the Internet, missed its significance, scoffed, then jumped in with both feet, thinking it was a bandwagon, asked the wrong questions about how to make money with it, got too excited when it seemed to be something it wasn't, got too depressed when it turned out to be what it is. Mirrored fractal nets within nets: the collective intelligence of the human race unfolding in real time -- and for the first time, on its own terms. The Internet routes around obstacles; the bigger the obstacle, the more joyous the detour. The humorless power of the state, the iron-fisted control demanded by the corporation, the sexless desire insinuated by broadcast advertising -- all are falling to networked imagination.

National Fire News - Large Wildland Fires If you live in the west and smell smoke, this site will show you why. It will also tell how you can help.

Computer Randomly Plays Classical Music Microsoft: "During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play Fur Elise or It's a Small, Small World seemingly at random...This is a design feature..."

Claudia Schiffer is my Pilot!The supermodel's special-edition Palm PDA inspires aisles full of celebrity gadgets at K-mart.By Janelle Brown

I Bet You Thought The Record Companies Had It Bad? Taking a cue from music-bootlegging teenagers, sewing enthusiasts have discovered that they too can steal copyrighted material over the Internet, thanks to anonymous file-sharing techniques. Like the record industry, the sewing world has been unable to come up with any practical alternative to innovative file-swapping communities that proliferate online. Some of the same entertainment conglomerates whose music divisions are fighting Napster--such as Time Warner--are also feeling the pinch from the pattern-swapping.

IBM offers free tool for writing Linux software The tool, called "Sash Weblications," allows Web developers who don't have extensive programming experience to write software that runs on the increasingly popular Linux operating system. Big Blue has taken a keen interest in Linux in recent months. The company is attempting to position itself as a leader in the Linux market, should it develop into a sizable business, by offering the operating system on all of its computer systems. Last month, IBM sweetened pricing for Linux on its mainframe systems in an effort to remove some of the obstacles of running the operating system on large computers.

BetaNews - Stephen King Novel Downloads Break Records Internet distribution of The Plant, the new novel by Stephen King, topped 100,000 completed downloads in its first two days of online sales, Conxion, the Internet operator handling the e-book, announced. The download, the firm said, was a record for King's work, and a respectable figure for the digital delivery of books. Antonio Salerno, Conxion's CEO, said that King has become a pioneering author in digitally delivering his books directly to readers.

Fortune 2000 Retirement Guide: Introduction: Retire Rich None of it makes sense--the frantic saving, those grueling 18-hour workdays--without keeping the fantasy firmly in mind. The empty beach, soft as talcum under your toes. The breathtaking mountain retreat that's actually home, not a two-week hideaway. Retirement, on your terms. Yes, that's the goal. The task, however, is getting there in one piece.

Hey PDA! There's a penguin nipping at your ankles! I just bought a Handspring Visor Deluxe for my wife and while we're generally happy with it the screen takes some getting used to. That's hardware. This link points to an article concerning attempts to put Linux on Windows CE PDAs.

NASA Historical Archive for Manned Missions Want to know the what and why of the US space program? This NASA site has a wealth of information.

Edgar Governo, Historian of Things That Never Were A collection links to (mostly) other sites containing alternate timelines of fictional history. You might think that was a limited field, but he's collected 188 examples by now. Dune, Heinlein, Asimov, H2G2, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, Highlander, Wing Commander, anime…the range is amazing

Add a little spice to your life Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages will tell you everything you evr wanted to know (and maybe didn't want to know) about spices from around the world.

Applause for IE's Cookie Catcher "Microsoft has started an important correction ... (in) its decision to make its Web browser stop and ask users before reporting data about them," said Richard Smith, a prominent security expert who has exposed several Internet privacy bugs.

Can light travel faster than light? For weeks, scientific circles have been buzzing about an experiment that pulsed light through a special chamber so fast that it left the apparatus before it fully entered it. The answer is no, light can't travel faster than light. It's a matter of interpretation of the theory of relativity. In other words, it's all relative. &;^)

Stephen King to post book on Web, sell it directly, bypassing publishers Stephen King plans to begin an experiment in direct publishing Monday by posting the first installment of a new novel online and asking readers to pay through the honor system. Installment one of "The Plant" will be posted on King's Web site on July 24 and installment two on Aug. 21. Part three will appear in September if "pay-through" equals or exceeds 75 percent, according to a message on his Web site dated July 11. Readers will be asked to send King a check or money order for $1 per installment in a direct transaction that King describes as a way to thumb your nose at the publishing industry.

The Constitution of the United States The work of many minds, the Constitution stands as a model of cooperative statesmanship and the art of compromise.

Why Encrypt Your Email? Like a mile-long drift net that snatches up dolphins, corpses and fifty-five gallon drums of toxic waste along with tuna, the FBI’s new "data sniffer" equipment, Carnivore, doesn’t care whose email it snags and scrutinizes. The FBI demonstrated the technology weeks ago, which can examine millions of email messages in a short period of time, but admitted that it was in use for over a year before being publicly acknowledged."

DaveNet: Tom Matrullo on Napster "...Mozart once heard a piece of music so piercingly beautiful that he was moved to write it down from memory after hearing it performed in a church. He had no choice. The church believed it "owned" the music, and forbade anyone to copy it. So, Mozart pulled a Napster. The piece has been in the public domain ever since, for all to enjoy...." Just one small paragraph from an excellent essay.

Mp3 Discman MPTrip Discman. Now you can record the MP3 files to a 650 megabyte CD-R or CD-RW and play them directly on an MP3 player. Each CD-R or CD-RW can hold more or less 160 songs, which can be arranged in different directories in the order that you want. Of course it plays regular audio cds too.

The U.S. women's water polo team made it clear to the world that it is a gold medal threat come Sydney. The Americans went 6-0 in the 2000 Holiday Cup and defeated world powers in the process.

The Future of Energy What is needed is a system that generates electrical power locally, uses resources that almost everybody has in their backyard, and operates with minimal emissions of pollutants. And, while we're at it, let's say it should be as quiet as a household air conditioner.

Figure This One Out Two triangles formed using the same "puzzle" pieces, but in different positions. The triangles have the same dimensions but one has a "bite" taken out of it.

Speech recognition leaders aim to give PDAs a voice and ears "Excuse me - are you talking to me or your PDA?" Coming soon from the technology world: another inanimate object to talk with. Two leaders in speech recognition, IBM and Belgian speech technology giant Lernout & Hauspie, have each built speech-enabled prototypes of handheld devices that could be commercially available as early as next year.

UC Santa Cruz Puts Human Genome Online/Programming wizard does job in 4 weeks The human genome has been called the Book of Life, but it's one tome few have ever seen. That started to change yesterday, after the University of California at Santa Cruz unveiled a Web site -- http://genome.ucsc.edu/ -- where people can download the only completely assembled version of the human genetic code for free.

Dave’s Page of Bogus Science Many of us now use this time to whine about the very things that made it possible. Sadly, the typical American acquires most of his or her “science” knowledge from TV and movie stars, politicians, and cartoon characters. The result is a lot of bad, dangerous, and sometimes funny science.

How Fireworks Really Work As you ooh and aah at the dazzling explosions of a fireworks display, there are three things going on that you probably wouldn’t guess: The chemists who made those pyrotechnics designed most of them so they wouldn’t explode, you’re actually seeing nature conserving energy, and most peculiar of all, when things are at their flashiest, you’re actually seeing the fireworks as they’re cooling down.

The Victorian Internet It's a familiar story: A new high-tech "web" materializes seemingly out of nowhere and takes the entire world by storm. Barriers to communication are obliterated as city after city becomes wired, allowing people to send nearly instant messages to one another—even to "chat" online. Vast fortunes are created and destroyed as entrepreneurs wage fierce competitive battles, and scam artists fleece gullible investors. Subcultures form their own communities, with private codes and customs. Buying and selling of goods online becomes commonplace, and governments try—and fail—to control the new network, as it proves a hotbed for criminal activity and other forms of "subversion."

GO NAPSTER! Embattled online music-swapping company Napster has a simple message for the courts and for the record industry: Downloading songs online without paying for them is legal.

Adding an IE Favorites Icon Every Web browser has unique characteristics that distinguish it from the others. One of the interesting features of Internet Explorer 5 is that it will add a custom icon to the favorites of readers who bookmark your site.

Giant Fish Net Snags Gamma Ray Bursts Jul 02, 2000 — A virtual net cast from here to beyond the sun and over to the asteroids is now harvesting its first fish, gamma-ray bursts big enough for keepers.

The Ten Commandments for HMOs If you're thinking of joining an HMO, or of changing from one HMO to another, send out the "TEN COMMANDMENTS for HMOs" . Ask the HMO to respond with answers. If they don't answer, or if you don't like the answers, DON'T JOIN that HMO. Do the same with another HMO until you find one that answers your consumer concerns.

Does your fridge know how much you weigh today? (2/26/2000) Dave Barry essay on "smart" appliances. ROTFL

Senate Passes New Patients' Rights Bill Excerpt: "The legislation passed yesterday contains the Ashcroft external review provisions ensuring that patients get care when they need it, and that medical decisions are made by independent physicians of the appropriate specialty, not by insurance claims adjusters. His provisions would also mandate that HMOs abide by strict timetables and face penalties for non-compliance with findings by independent physician reviewers." (Sen. John Ashcroft's Office, via US Newswire)

Extra fat means more happiness, better sex - One of the world's most revered scientists has developed a theory that fat people are happier than thin ones. James Watson, the Nobel prize-winning geneticist who was jointly responsible for discovering the structure of DNA, believes that plumper women are also likely to enjoy a better sex life than their thin counterparts. Watson, who directed the successful human genome project, has moved into the controversial science of body image. He recently told an audience at University College London that his research suggested extra pounds had the biological effect of making a woman well-rounded in character and better in bed.

Eye-Trek Product Overview Eye-Trek opens up a whole new world of entertainment to you. Although only the size of a pair of sunglasses, Eye-Trek presents video and TV-films impressively large, as if you were watching a 52" screen from 2m distance. Now you can see films, videos or concerts in cinema format. Accompanied by full-bodied stereo sound that you receive via the integrated headphones, you have the sensation of being part of the action. No matter where you may be at the time - lying on the sofa or sitting in the garden.

The History of the Web circa 1994. "The World-Wide Web (W3) is a way of viewing all the on-line information available on the Internet as a seamless, browsable continuum. Using hypertext jumps and searches, the user navigates through an information world partly hand-authored, partly computer-generated from existing databases and information systems. The Web today incorporates all information from information systems such as Gopher as WAIS, as well as sophisticated multimedia and hypertext information from many organizations.", Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Ari Luotonen, Henrik Nielsen, Arthur Secret, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland.Here's a screenshot of TBL's browser editor.

XML for Beginners Have you wondered why everyone is talking about XML but been afraid to ask? Dick Baldwin provides a gentle introduction with his series of articles. First up, a discussion of structured documents, rendering, and why you should care about XML.

Banned Books On-Line Welcome to this special exhibit of books that have been the objects of censorship or censorship attempts. The books featured here, ranging from Ulysses to Little Red Riding Hood, have been selected from the indexes of the On-line Books Page. (See that page for over 10,000 more on-line books!)

Another day, another DoubleClick privacy PR disaster DoubleClick has been caught mucking around with personal privacy - again. The world's biggest online ad sales house has been caught gleaning email addresses and other personal information from Web site customers - without the knowledge of Web sites.

Fool.com: Planet Hollywood Will Change When Shaq Replaces Schwarzenegger (Top 5 List) June 29, 2000

Giving Amazon the Finger and othe technological tidbits from the New York PC Expo.

How does a yacht sail upwind? It's easy to understand how a yacht sails downwind, with the wind whistling from behind. The breeze pushes against the sails and the yacht surges ahead. But how is it that wind from abeam (the side), or off the bow, can propel a boat forward? You may never have seen it presented as simply as this.

Ananova - Da Vinci parachute design holds up in test A British daredevil has proved that a parachute designed by Leonardo da Vinci actually works by using it from a height of 10,000ft.

A List Apart: Rated XHTML Being a web developer is a tough job. Not only do you have to steer clear of the traps and pitfalls the popular browsers think up for you on a daily basis, you also have to keep at least half an eye on all kinds of developments that may (or may not) have an impact on your job. Having hardly mastered style sheets and DHTML, new techniques clamor for attention. Which ones are important right away? Which ones can you dismiss for now?

It's Not Your Father's IBM It goes without saying that this is not your father's IBM hosting this event. But the Geek Spa party, which is slated to cap IBM's relaunch of its WebSphere commerce development platform, is definitely a Big Blue event.

International Rectifier Interesting interview with the CEO of my current employer.

Interactive Genome Guide... COOL! As you are reading these words with the cells in your eyes, please pause and lift your right index finger and touch the tip of your nose. Notice the smoothness of operation. Millions of cells in your body participated smoothly in that motion. Each of us is an electrochemical machine -- animal -- being -- composed of cells. What gives life to our cells?

CNN.com - Health - Milestone in human genetics to be announced Monday - June 23, 2000 (CNN) -- In a major step toward a new era of gene-based medicine and disease treatment, two research centers are expected to announce on Monday that they separately have sketched a map detailing the secrets of human genetic structure.

CNET.com - News - Personal Technology - IBM thinks small with 1GB hard drive for handhelds For perspective, that means the difference between a maximum of 16 high-resolution images on a 16MB CompactFlash card and almost 400 for the Microdrive. The Microdrive is also cheaper than the CompactFlash: A 128MB CompactFlash card costs about the same as--or more than--the 340MB Microdrive. The new drive also can serve as a data-exchange accessory to notebook computers, desktop computers and printers, the company said. IBM claims future applications may include wearable computers, electronic books, Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers used to guide automobile drivers, smart phones and electronic wallets.

CLICK 'N HELP You've probably seen the The Hunger Site. You click on the button, and they donate food. Now there is the The RainForest Site. Click the button, and you save 12 sq. feet of Rain Forest. There is also Clear Land Mines which allows you to help pay for the removal of landmines from around the world.

Microsoft Internet Explorer High Encryption Pack Microsoft has released a new version of IE, v5.01 SP1. According to the website, provides the latest updates and security fixes to the Internet Explorer technology. Internet Explorer 5.01 SP1 can be installed as an upgrade to existing versions of Internet Explorer, or on computers with no previous Internet Explorer installation. If you are running Windows 9x or Windows NT 4.0, installing Internet Explorer 5.01 SP1 will upgrade your computer to 128-bit encryption. If you are running Windows 2000, installing Internet Explorer 5.01 SP1 will not change the current level of encryption on your computer.

Fortune: 6.26.2000 The Hot Idea of the Year Shuttering Napster won't save anyone's bacon. Tons of music already trade free via Gnutella, and since Gnutella is a technology, not a company, it can't be sued and it can't be closed down. Even if it could be, similar services are popping up. This stuff is irrepressible....A peer-to-peer network can move faster than the Web because users search for data on countless numbers of hard drives simultaneously. The information can be much more timely, too, since it comes straight from a computer that might have been updated only a few seconds before you launched your search. And peer-to-peer services can even anticipate precisely where to find what you're looking for on the basis of your past pattern of requests, making for faster and more efficient searches and downloads.

Who ever said that mousing shouldn't be comfortable? This company makes MouseRug - woven "mouse pads" that look like classic Persian, Navajo, and other style rugs. They use a specially treated micro fibre. A friend claims he hasn't had to clean the ball and rollers in his mouse since he started using a MouseRug. Of course I haven't had to clean a mouse ball or rollers either since switching to a Microsoft IntelliEye mouse. It doesn't have a ball or rollers. I may still get a MouseRug, they look interesting.

I Spy With My Super Eye Now, if you only could fly, your comic book fantasies would be complete: The University of Rochester has introduced a shortcut to superhuman vision. Using technology developed by astronomers who wanted a better look at the stars, researcher David Williams has developed an optical system that dramatically improves the vision of people with even 20/20 eyesight.

NASA 'Robonaut' prepares for spacewalking duties The next generation of spacewalkers could fix faulty satellites and space stations without breaking a sweat, needing a meal or expecting a paycheck. Already the first one, a metal humanoid known as Robonaut, has developed an impressive level of dexterity.

The baby eagle story Once upon a time There was a baby eagle living in a nest perched on a cliff overlooking a beautiful valley with waterfalls and streams, trees and lots of little animals, scurrying about enjoying their lives.

Earth and Sky "Each day's segment is designed to guide your eye to something you can see that night, or the next morning before dawn. It might be a constellation, a star, or a planet. Or it might be a celestial event, such as an eclipse. Or, just for fun, on some days Deborah might take you (in your imagination) on a trip to another planet, to give you the view from there. And the best thing is, you don't need any special equipment to enjoy Tonight's Sky. You just need to look up..."

How Stuff Works! Have you ever wondered how the engine in your car works or what makes the inside of your refrigerator cold? Then How Stuff Works is the place for you! Click on the categories below to see hundreds of cool articles!

The best article yet on the Microsfot breakup - a well deserved satire . January 2001--U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who made the ruling last June that the Microsoft Corp. be split into separate companies, has created further controversy by ordering Kleenex, Jell-O and Scotch tape to make everybody stop asking for a Kleenex, some Jell-O and a roll of Scotch tape "and start asking for a tissue, some gelatin or a roll of that clear sticky tape," to keep things fair. Industry analysts expressed concern as Kleenex stock blew sky-high, Jell-O wavered and Scotch tape held firm.

Feds Urged to Beef Up Spying Congress must give federal police more eavesdropping abilities and increase the budgets of spy agencies, members of a federal commission are recommending. The Justice Department is "overly cautious" when forwarding requests for wiretaps and electronic surveillance to a secret court established in 1978 for that purpose, Paul Bremer, the National Commission on Terrorism chairman, said Thursday.

Company to Fly First Web Server in Space A startup satellite company announced Saturday it is partnering with one of the world's leading computer companies to put what it claims to be the first Web server in orbit.

Top Ten Algorithms "Great algorithms are the poetry of computation," says Francis Sullivan of the Institute for Defense Analyses' Center for Computing Sciences in Bowie, Maryland. He and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have put together a sampling that might have made Robert Frost beam with pride--had the poet been a computer jock. Their list of 10 algorithms having "the greatest influence on the development and practice of science and engineering in the 20th century" appears in the January/February issue of Computing in Science & Engineering. If you use a computer, some of these algorithms are no doubt crunching your data as you read this.

Water found in meteorite The space rock was recovered by a group of boys in a small Texas town who saw it fall out of the sky in 1998.

Pet Paintings! Here's how it works: You send a photo of your pet, and get a cartoonie painting back! Two sizes are available, 3"x5" on a 2" thick block of pine, OR a 9"x12" canvas board. They cost $75 each, but YOU DON'T PAY The ARTIST! You make a $70 check out to your choice of registered non-profit animal shelter, and a $5 check out to the artist (to cover materials and postage).

Embedded Linux Imsys (Sweden) used the occasion of JavaOne 2000 in San Francisco to unveil an unusual new system-on-chip microprocessor that supports native on-chip Java bytecode execution -- but also runs embedded Linux. The device, called the Cjip, achieves a high degree of on-chip functionality via an unusual approach: dynamically alterable microcode.

CRN BREAKING NEWS IBM Corp., looking to spread its arms ever wider to embrace Linux across its entire server line, is preparing to move the operating system to the supercomputer realm via superclusters of Netfinity servers.

Missouri Foxtrotter Megan just read about these in Horses USA. Of course she wants one.

AWS WeatherBugThe ONLY SOURCE for LIVE neighborhood weather on your PC desktop direct from AWS Worldwide School WeatherNet™, part of the world's largest automated real-time weather network.

A New Computer Virus? Scientists have discovered that tiny protein-like strands on the surface of common viruses--the sort of molecules that enable germs to identify and grasp their target cells--also bind tightly and very selectively to materials widely used in high-tech electronics, such as silicon and gallium arsenide.

My Children Don't Eat Dogfood A remarkable book of healing and life extending recipes and herbs for dogs and cats. A down to earth, to the point, easy to follow dialog for the average dog and cat lover. It suggests life saving foods to replace bagged and canned commercial dog food. Many wonderful natural recipes. Eye opening information about unnecessary vaccines, toxic flea killing chemicals, how to use natural remedies to kill fleas. Airline snafoos which can kill your pets. How to cure yeast infections. Mold & mildew cures. Much, much more.

Identity swapping makes privacy relative Think privacy is a battle waged only in the courts? Think again. It's guerrilla warfare, consumers against the companies, and the consumers hold more cards than they know.

Lawyers Volunteer to Help Consumers Challenge Their Health Insurers When Alice Elliot, a homemaker from Danielson, Conn., discovered she had breast cancer three years ago, her doctor said she needed a bone marrow transplant to combat the disease, but her insurance company, Central States Health and Life of Omaha, refused to pay for the treatment, calling it "experimental." However, the Elliots did not sit back and take the financial hit. They took action in the same way other Americans are beginning to fight Goliath-sized health care organizations. They turned to a public interest law firm with a specialty in health care that provides free legal counsel.

SpaceViews Scientists have found that a particular class of meteorite is not made of the same material from which the Earth and Moon formed.

Welcome to HavenCo.com HavenCo Limited is exploiting a unique opportunity to set up the world's first real data haven. The initial showcase datacenter is the Principality of Sealand, the world's smallest sovereign territory. It was founded over thirty years ago and has obtained a unique legal status as the only sovereign man-made island. Its claim to sovereignty has been tested and supported in several legal challenges.

Rebel Outpost on the Fringes of Cyberspace In the annals of Internet history, June 5, 2000, may be remembered as the date that a hardy band of true believers tried to establish the first independent colony in cyberspace. A small international group of computer rebels plans to introduce what they are calling a data haven, perched precariously on a World War II military fortress six miles off England's coast.

The Carmel Pine Cone THE DETERIORATING lantern room of the Pt. Sur Lighthouse needs a $340,000 restoration job, and to help raise the money the Central Coast Lighthouse Keepers is offering its big donors a unique incentive....The Lighthouse Keepers decided to build replacement prisms for the lantern room floor as part of the restoration project -- and offer one to any donor who ponies up $1000. They will also take home the replica prism on a small redwood stand salvaged from Pt. Sur buildings and carved by volunteers.

IBM "Solutions" conference focuses on XML Hands-on tutorial sessions include those on XML & Java, XSLT and VoiceXML. Eighteen other sessions feature XML, including diverse subjects from "AS/400 Application Integration" to "The Role of XSL Transformations in e-business Solutions".

The Good E-Book Literature's next big revolution will be digitized. What's so scary about that? By JACOB WEISBERG (free subscription to nytimes required)

John Perry Barlow: Napster.com and the Death of the Music Industry An editorial by Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Perry Barlow.

XHTML: A Bridge To The Future Hypertext Markup Language, an aging, inflexible formatting standard, has fueled the phenomenal growth of the Web. Now a new technology, a flexible data-markup standard called Extensible Markup Language, promises nearly complete flexibility.

"Truth in advertising" - vintage cigarette & tobacco ads This site is powered by the white-hot bitterness of long-term Nicotine withdrawal.

The Programmer's File Format Collection Wotsit's Format, the complete programmer's resource on the net. This site contains file format information on hundreds of different file types and all sorts of other useful programming information; algorithms, source code, specifications, etc.

Family Tree Research It's in Great Britain. They keep track of the graves and other info for soldiers killed in WW1 and WW2. There's a DB search of personnel and service records. Surname is required to search. Other info can help narrow it down.

Lee Iacoca's peddling an electric bicycle The new E-Bike is lighter, faster, and has much longer range than past generations of electric vehicles. With a top speed of 15mph and a range of about 20 mi., the E-Bike will get you where you need to go. Whether it’s to get you up and over those hills or simply to get you home after a long ride, The E-Bike’s remarkable Power on Demand drive train is always ready. No hassle. No stopping to make adjustments. Just a simple click of the “thumb throttle” and the reliable electric hubmotorengages, delivering all of the power needed to keep you moving.

From the people who created the Statue of Liberty? Web users in France who want to publish online will have to register their intent with the government, if a bill being considered by French Parliament this week is passed.

Micro Publishing "Micro Publishing" or publishing "Books on Demand" has been, up until now, only a dream. Most of the pieces were already in place, (Desktop Publishing Software, Laser Printers, Imposition Software, etc.). The last key ingredient was an inexpensive way to bind and cover the books into professional looking "Perfect Bound" books. The future just arrived.

Stalled in Paradise A quiet but profound revolution is taking place in suburban America, affecting the way people there think about government, taxes, property rights, the free market, and the idea of community itself, and it is being sparked by that most mundane of phenomena: the traffic jam.

The Alternate History Travel Guides From Larkfarm, "A strange mix of fiction, history, and perhaps even roleplaying. This site has travelogs and other articles covering a wild mix of alternative Earths. It's all presented in the form of travel guidebook entries on places like the Lawrencian Emirate in the mideast or the Three Papacies in Europe. Lots of fun "what-if" scenarios to think about here."

Virtual Dr - Drivers Here you can search for the latest drivers for your system and it's peripherals.

Transmeta's Crusoe, Friday is lost for words - Introduction Transmeta has developed a whole new approach to microprocessor design. Currently an entire processor with the accompanied instruction set is implemented in hardware (for example an x86 processor such as the Intel Pentium III), and then the software is written specifically to make use of that instruction set. Transmeta chose to do it differently; rather than implementing the entire x86 instruction set of the processor in hardware, the Crusoe processor consists of a compact hardware engine surrounded by a software layer.

Microsoft Issues Patch, Squashes Two Security Bugs

Microsoft has released a patch which corrects two securituy vulnerabilities in Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000.

The Anatomy of a Trivial Patent

Richard Stallman writes " The patent system's defenders can point to the complex description and say, 'How can anything this complex be obvious?' I will use an example to show you how."

PHP 4.0: Dynamic Content for the Web If you came late to the PHP Party, don't worry--there's plenty of reasons to celebrate. PHP is an open source server-side scripting language for creating dynamic web content, in place on some 1.5 million web sites worldwide--and growing. There's a new version of PHP out, version 4.0.

Giant turtle heading for shopping spree rescued by police Just when you think you've seen it all, here comes a 50-pound turtle waddling down the sidewalk.

Ingestible camera gives internal view Small device records journey through the digestive tract. Patients just swallow the capsule. They don’t know it is there. The other thing that is different is that they don’t have to be in a hospital environment,” Paul Swain, of the Royal London Hospital, said.

"Plowing the Dark" by Richard Powers "A novel that conjures up the bygone days of virtual reality and the promise of the unreal world that might have been". Hmmmm, I think I'm going to get this one to read next.

SpaceViews Article: Astronomers Peer Through Milky Way to Glimpse Distant Galaxies For most, the Milky Way is a picturesque band of gas and dust visible over large portions of the night sky. However, to astronomers the Milky Way has been an annoying object that, until now, has obstructed their view of more distant objects.

ET Dust Bunnies The Galactic DUNE mission is a Dust Observatory for Galactic Dust Near Earth. Galactic dust is a significant constituent of the interstellar medium and, thereby, is part of the fundamental matter from which planetary systems form. Its study provides unique insights in the early stages of planet formation. Although the study of galactic dust is in the interest of both the astrophysics and planetary scientific communities, information on this important material is extremely sparse. Following the discovery by Ulysses and the most recent confirmation by Cassini that micron-sized interstellar dust grains pass through the planetary system a mission is proposed to characterize galactic dust at the Earth's distance by in-situ analysis.

Haggis Recipes Haggis "is typically served on Burns Night, January 25, when Scotland celebrates the birth of its greatest poet, Robert Burns, who was born in Ayrshire on that date in 1759. During the celebration, Burns poems are read, and the haggis is addressed by a member of the party, ceremonially, in the form of verses from Burns' poem, 'Address to a Haggis.' A typical meal for Burns Night would include Cock-a-Leekie, Haggis with Tatties-an'-Neeps, Roastit Beef, Tipsy Laird, and Dunlop Cheese."

Welcome to the latest front in the war for the First Amendment When Movie Moguls Wage War to Protect Copyright, the First Amendment Ends Up on the Cutting Room Floor.

More invasions of privacy on the way, this one via your ISPPicture a world where information about your every move on the Web, including the sites that you visit, the keywords that you enter into search engines, and so on, are all shipped off to a third party, with the willing cooperation of your Internet Service Provider (ISP). None of those pesky cookies to disable, no outside Web sites to put on block lists--just a direct flow of data from your ISP to the unseen folks with the dollar signs (or pound, yen, euro, or whatever signs) gleaming brightly in their eyes behind the scenes. You'll of course be told that your information is "anonymous" and that you can trust everyone involved, that you'll derive immense benefits from such tracking, and that you have an (at least theoretical) opt-in or opt-out choice. PRIVACY Forum Archive Document - (priv.09.13)

WinLinux 2000 We've started trying Linux at work for some projects so I wanted to have a Linux at home to experiment with. This sounds like a relatively painless way to get my feet wet at home. No partitioning, reformatting and rebooting. So I ordered it on CD. It can be downloaded from the website, but 200MB+ is a bit much unless you have DSL or a cable modem.

XML and scripting languages XML and scripting languages have had a natural relationship since the early days of XML's inception. One of the original goals of the XML design group was to enable a Perl hacker to write an XML parser in two weeks. Handling and manipulating XML has also been fertile ground for using scripting with XML: XML is designed to be human legible, and thus mainly text based. Scripting languages have historically been extremely adept at manipulating text. Scripting's flexibility and power make it a perfect complement to XML's descriptive abilities.

Ten best bets for XML applications Searching for a trial project for XML? While the XML specs and tools are still being developed, some applications are more suitable than others to start with. Find out which types of applications make sense to develop with XML now.

Converting Comma Delimited data to XML A very interesting article on extracting data from a data base to a .csv file and then to XML and HTML.

SPACE.com Downloads Space games, a Space Shuttle screen saver, skywatch tools, and dozens of other cool downloads from ZDNet and SPACE.com.

Scientists Map Dark Matter, Prove Einstein Right Eighty-four years after Albert Einstein introduced the world to his theory of general relativity, scientists are seeing that he was right all along about measuring what we now call dark matter.

Fielding's DangerFinder® A different kind of travel guide -- potentetially lethal places to visit.

Deep Video Imaging Tired of wearing silly glasses to get a headachy 3-D effect? Don't worry, Deep Video Imaging layers a number of LCD displays to provide depth of field. They aren't cheap ($10,000 or so) but they'll be available soon.

The Bard and the Bench: An Opinion Writer's Guide to Shakespeare A giant cross-reference of quotations from Shakespeare that have been used in legal decisions. Each quotation is referenced back to the play and to the appropriate decision

Prevent Current and Future E-Mail Worms From Mike's Weblog: "With the recent ILOVEYOU outbreak, this site is worth a visit. There is a middle ground to email security for Outlook users between Microsoft's simplistic "just don't open attachments" party line and the foaming-at-the-mouth SlashDot crowd's "don’t use Outlook or Windows, they're tools of the devil" stance. This page will help you work through the things you can do to increase the security of Microsoft Outlook, from settings you can make to patches Microsoft has out that you probably don't know about. Definitely worth a visit if you're concerned."

U.S. Surname Distribution - Hamrick Software They've got data for 1850, 1880, and 1920 from census sampling, and 1990 from phone book records. Enter a surname you're interested in, choose a year, press the button and you'll get a map showing where in the US that name was most prevalent in that year. "Yantis", is even there!.

Molecular Computing | The ultra-fast computer chips of the future will not be manufactured by Intel, but rather—Mother Nature? For the past few years, the speed of the world's computers has been limited by the capacity of the silicon chip, an electric circuit built from certain key materials. Now, researchers are investigating the potential use of simple molecules as the building blocks of complicated circuits and machinery.

What's Your True Color? Psychologists agree that colors have personalities all their own. Blue is calm, red is passionate, and yellow is inviting, just to name a few. What color is your personality? Take this Emode test to find out.

zapspot Do you like Solitaire? Admit it, you do. And what about Tetris? You’ve killed a few moments playing that, haven’t you? Now, how would you like to get a free life-long supply of games, which are as fun, simple and quick as Solitaire and Tetris?

Wordperhect Wordperhect is the first in a series of major new commissions from artists for the ch2 space. As word processing software becomes ever more advanced, with the ability to correct syntax and spelling errors, these familiar programmes begin to impose a standardised corporate language onto our writing - subtly altering its meaning. Working with the programmer Jon Pollard, Takahashi has produced a new and fully functioning online version of these platforms which undermines this dehumanising process. Reclaiming the initiative back from the software, Word Perhect presents an idiosyncratic hand drawn interface leading to a set of functioning but strangely altered tools.

Forest Fire Lookout Association Home Page The Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA), founded in 1990, is an organization involved in research of former forest fire lookout sites, ground cabins and early forest fire detection methods. Anecdotes of Lookout operators both past and present are documented. The organization encourages efforts of public groups and others in the restoration of forest fire lookouts.

The Mozart Projec t New this month: reviews of two easy-to-use guides to Mozart's music. They are A Listener's Guide to Mozart's Music and The Mozart Starter. Both are brief and personal, a perfect way to introduce yourself (or a friend) to the music of this composer. Upcoming: reviews of Robert Gutman's long-awaited Mozart: A Cultural Biography, just published, and Ruth Halliwell's The Mozart Family, out last year.

Universe proven flat A high-flying balloon which soared over Antarctica has answered one of cosmology's greatest questions by revealing that the fabric of the Universe is "flat".

Space Fact of the Day The moon is in a synchronous orbit around Earth: it rotates on its axis at the same rate that it orbits the planet. This is why we always see the same ("near") side of the moon from Earth - from SPACE.com's popular Space Facts collection.

Lighting Up the Small Magellanic Cloud A colorful new image produced by melding data from optical, radio and X-ray telescopes shows the high-powered shock waves that linger in the aftermath of supernova explosions -- the dramatic death throes of massive stars. The image, which was made possible by new pictures from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and ground-based telescopes, shows a relatively young remnant as it appeared just 1,000 years after it's parent star annihilated itself in a tremendous explosion.

SelfCare for...Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) is one of the most common occupational illnesses. Changes in the workplace, particularly the growing use of computers, have made this problem almost epidemic. You don't have to suffer with it. There are a number of things that you can do to help yourself avoid the problem, or to get relief if you currently suffer from it.

Prism Kites I just got the Prism Spark 2. I hope to get out and prctice with it today, if windows lets me. I havent been posting lately because my Windows OS is a mess. I got it partially running in maintenance mode. It won't boot up at all in normal mode. I can't get to my email. I'm going to wipe Windows off my drive and reinstall it as soon as I'm sure I have all the necessary backups. Then I intend to go fly a kite! At least practice with my new Spark 2. It's higher peformance and higher tech than my pervious "beginner's" stunt kite. The video they furnished with the kite shows how to do several neat moves and even shows one of their kites being flown in a 360 degree circle around the pilot! Check out their site

ACLU Feature: 03-09-00 -- ACLU Calls White House Report On Internet Crime Law Enforcement A Dangerous "Wish List" A White House report on blocking Internet crime contains dangerous recommendations that would strip away basic privacy, free speech and free press protections, the American Civil Liberties Union warned today.

Take Our Word For It, the weekly word-origin webzine Want to find the origin of a word or phrase? This site specializes in answering etymological questions. All in all a very entertaining read.

Take Our Word For It The only Weekly Word-origin Webzine. Need to find the origin of a word or phrase? This site answers etymological questions.

Free samples, trial issues, demos, coupons, catalogs, trial periods, and product information. They bill themselves as "your source for thousands of free and trial offers, stuff you actually want from brands you love".

Shields UP! -- Internet Connection Security Analysis Without your knowledge or explicit permission, the Windows networking technology which connects your computer to the Internet may be offering some or all of your computer's data to the entire world at this very moment! My friend Sabrina, who has a new weblog, told me about "Shields Up". You may be surprised at what "Shields Up" tells you.

Real hack victims weren't big name Web sites Who really got hacked this past week? Did I hear you say Yahoo? Amazon.com? eBay? CNN? They were all hit by Denial of Service attacks. But they weren't the ones who were hacked.

ACME Labelmaker You also might want to try the Acme Labelmaker. They have many different fonts, effects and colors to choose from. And its all FREE!

ACME License Maker Pretend you're in prison and make your very own automobile license! Try any state you want and in many cases, even different decades.

BLEEM! For those that don't know what bleem is, here's a short run-down. Bleem! is a software program for the windows 9x platform that allows you to play many Sony Playstation games on your computer, often with enhanced graphics than the original. That sounds great, but does bleem! deliver on its claims? Find out.

Kooks Museum WELCOME TO THE FREEZE-DRIED KOOKS MUSEUM. Open for all time and eternity, ceaseless, all-knowing and unchanging. The word "kook" was coined by the beatniks, as a pared-down version of "cuckoo," as in "going cuckoo." A kook is a person stigmatized by virtue of outlandish, extreme or socially unacceptable beliefs that underpin their entire existence. Kooks usually don't keep their beliefs to themselves; they either air them constantly or create lasting monuments to them.

Megalithic Mysteries - a photographic guide Need a picture of Stonehenge by night. Want to explore other mysterious megaliths from the comfort of your computer. This is the place to go.

Gallery of Regrettable Food 3.0 : 500 Snacks None of this stuff resembles contemporary definitions of a ”snack” - when people want something small and tasty to get them through the afternoon, they generally don’t want jellied tongue entrapped in quivering aspic. But this is what they had back then. This is a glimpse before the Frito enlightened us all, and premade French Onion dip brought savory snacking to the humblest home. Read on, and count your blessings you live today.