Jun 1, 1995 12:00 PM

Electric Word

Electric Word

No Compromise I don't buy the belief that the only way to be effective in Washington is to cut deals," says Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. His stance led to EPIC's refusal last year to negotiate over the Digital Wiretap Bill and has caused some privacy advocates to label EPIC officials as hopeless idealists. But according to one Electronic Frontier Foundation insider, EPIC's hard-line position helped negotiations because "they made everybody else at the table look moderate. It's the old good-cop-bad-cop routine."

Even those who accuse EPIC of being politically ineffective praise its work on publicizing privacy issues and aggressively ferreting out government secrets via the Freedom of Information Act. EPIC is now fighting to cut the funding required to implement the wiretap bill. As Rotenberg points out, "Everyone is talking about cutting the budget, and I can't think of a better place to start." EPIC: +1 (202) 544 9240, e-mail: info@epic.org.

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Raising Satan Writing a program that finds ways to break into computers across the Internet won't gain you friends in corporate America. It cost Dan Farmer his job. Farmer, a well-known security guru, worked at Silicon Graphics Inc. while developing Satan (System Administrative Tool for Analyzing Networks) in his free time. The purpose of Satan, says Farmer, is to help system administrators check for security holes so they can plug them before the bad guys move in. But SGI fired Farmer after it got wind of his plans to give away the program – it said Satan would be used by hac](undefined)](undefined)

break into systems.<a name="satan" id="satan"> While Farmer admits that "Satan is probably going to increase the number of attacks in the short term," he's adamant that the tool will ev

aarchive/3.06/ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pet/SATAN/">ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/net/SATAN/</a>. Gabriel, a free Satan detector from Los Altos Technologies Inc., was released days after Satan was unleashed om ftp.lat.com.<" id="yahoo"> Yippee for Yahoo Ten million hits a week is a lot f

n swarm through the <a href="http://www.yahoo.">Yahoo Internet directory (http://www.yahoo.com/)</a>, says Jerry Yang, a Stanford PhD candidate in electrical engineering. Yang and fellow grad student David Filo created the popular directory a year ago. A nifty search engine and comprehensive listiof sites on the Web made Yahoo instantly popular. The directory didn't really take off until it caught the eye of Netscape exec and Mosaic creator Marc Andreessen. Early this year, Netscape linked its "Net Directory" button to the Yahoo server, increasing the weekly hits by 40 percent, says Yang. Yahoo reached warp speed in April when venture capitalist Sequoia Capital began backing the service. Yang and Filo are taking lea

of absence to work full time on their n  <a name="outerspace"e"> Cyberspace for Outer Space Not that you've ever had to think about it, but somebody has to play traffic cop in space. Until recently, the job meant tortuous hours staring at text and numbers onscreen to determine a spacecraft's precise status. Now space-flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, monitor a glorious 3-D color environment using easy-on-the-eye icons. These icons, part of the new Cyberspace Data Monitoring System, display the subsystem status (such as power and temperature) of craft ranging from the far-flung Magellan and V

e to more pedestrian Earth-orbiting satellites. The monitoring system gives controllers the "ability to obtain a thorough and intuitive status assessment of numerous spacecraft without reading any text," says Ursula Schwuttke, the task

g at JPL's Advance

f <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/c.htp://www.jpl.nasa.

ses/cyber.html</a>. – Ca ark <a name="romer"> Romper Room for Grown-Ups Last year, Blockbuster conducted a series of focus groups with adults. The question: What's missing from your entertainment options? The answer: A place to hang out with other adults, play high-tech games, and act like kids again. The solution: Block Party amusement center, featuring videogames, VR simulators, and a huge techno-fueled maze of chutes, ladders, and passageways called the Power Grid. It's a sort of Habitrail for humans – adults crawl around on their hands and knees and occasionally

g hrough dark holes into pools of plastic balls. Block Party targets adults 18 to 45 years old; no one under 18 is allowed in without, ahem, a parent. If my experience offers anything to go by, Block Party may have just become the hottest college frosh pickup joint in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A second Block Party has opened in Indianapolis. If these two test centers take

,a Block Party to

g your way soon. </pws" id="news"> News by Numbers Andrew Tyndall has a very modern career: he's a professional news junkie. The New York-based English expatriate watches all three TV network newscasts daily, noting to the second how much play each story receives. After feeding the numbers into his database, he faxes his one-sheet Tyndall Weekly nationwide to 100 subscribers, including universities, trade associations, networks, and amateur news junkies hungry for a microfix. Each issue offers a quantitative top-10 story list for the prior week, along with an analysis that lies somewhere between barbed commentary and stupid anchor tricks. During the eight heaviest weeks of Tonyamania, notes Tyndall, the networks gave the skater 263 minutes of air time, while in their respective eight-week spans, the Berlin Wall's demise got 252 minutes and San Francisco's '89 earthquake

t ed a meager 213. ADT Research: +1 [913. <a name="motorola" id="

Motorola Rolls Over Human Rights Play by our rules or don't play at all, was the Pakistani government's message when it shut down the cellular services of Motorola-owned MobilLink early this year. Seems the authorities were worried that the phone system could be used by militant radicals to plan attacks. Only when MobilLink bowed to government demands](undefined)

p ide monitoring equipment was service restored. Unlike other cellular operations in Pakistan, the MobilLink system is not easily monitored with a radio scanner. It uses a technique called frequency hop

squeeze more channels into the radio spectrum. When asked about the company's position on providing monitoring equipment, a Motorola spokesman replied, "Our policy is to obey the laws of the country we are doing business in." In countries that lack even the most basic privacy rights, Motorola is in the

n viable position of suppl of oppressioe="sip" id="sip"> Sip and Surf Harvard Square's Cybersmith is the latest creation of the man who started the Paperback Booksmith, Videosmith, and Learningsmith retail chain – Marshall Smith. Designed by Seitz Architects with some techno-help from Art Technology Group (which had a hand in creating Chiat/Day's workplace of the future), Cybersmith is a mixture of retail store, caf�, and online-access hangout replete with 50 computers, Internet connections, CD-ROM games, virtual reality toys, cappuccino cheesecake, and great coffee. For US$10, you'll get a card for about an hour's worth of computer access – pick a machine, order a sandwich through the Web form, and log on to the Net or any of seven online services. Cybersmit

6 red.com/wired/arch3.06/mailto:jed@cybersmith.com">j th.com</abibop" id="lebibop"> Le Bi-Bop From the land of Minitel comes another interesting turn on telephonic technology – the Bi-Bop. Costing about the same as the average portable cellular phone (�990 or US$200), the Bi-Bop is a tiny (6-ounce) phone for use within the confines of Strasbourg, Lille, and Paris. Thanks to France T�l�com, which installed a network of Bi-Bop terminals in dense

l on centers, the Bi-Bop is the craze du moment. Billed as the cabine de poche, or pay phone in your pocket, a call on the Bi-Bop costs about one-fourth that of a cellular call in France (about 30 cents per minute). Not content to have the stylish Bi-Bop unadorned, haute couture princes Karl Lagerfeld (for Chanel), Louis Vuitton, and Didier Lamarthe have designed Bi-Bop cases t

r etail for more than twice the pr phone. <a name="prodigy"> Prodigy, No. Net, Yes Here's the choice: stay in your current job as second in command at Prodigy, the much-ridiculed joint venture between Sears and IBM, or jump ship to le

C charge into the future. Which would you take? This spring, Scott Kurnit, former executive vice president at Prodigy, chose MCI. As president of MCI Information Services Co., the media-savvy Kurnit (he used to work at Warner Communications and Viacom) will guide MCI's stampede into the Internet. While at Prodigy, Kurnit was responsible for steering the visually impaired service toward the World Wide Web. But insiders say his at-tempts to wean Prodigy off its creatively crippl

r tecture were stymied by institutional malaise. "The future of this business is in being wide open with no restrictions on technology," Kurnit told Reuters. "The issues of product and market

a ding start to b

success factors." – Joh /em> <a name="toonking" id=p>Toon King and the Online Coolie Want to know what's happening in Asian cyberspace? Go ask Wong Toon King and his partner Hoo Shao Pin (Online Coolie), two consciously hip Singaporeans who run SilkRoute

t s, Asia's first commercial Internet publisher. SilkRoute operates out of Arab Street in the Lion City's boho quarter. Out of the office window, you get a great view of the mosque where the Sultans of Johore used to worship, and the now broken-down palace where they once lived. Since Wong and Hoo set up

t ptember, they've been working round-the-clock. With a mission "to strike strategic alliances between key content providers and business partners in the travel, convention, property and investment, publishing, and gifts industries," SilkRoute has already built up a comprehensive

b d.com/wired/archive//mailto:coolie@silkroute.com">coolie@silkroute.com</a>.