Flux
Exon You: Proving once again that the Net will outmaneuver any censorship it confronts, a PC-based program making the rounds strips out words considered indecent by the Exon Amendment and replaces them with names of prominent politicians. Called HexOn Exon, the program also reverses the process, so that when you get a senator-laden missive from someone, you can run it through the interpreter and the dirty words will reappear. To get your copy, send e-mail to iics@netcom.com with the subject: send HEXON.
Where's the Talent?: Which high-profile interactive entertainment companies could tank in the near future? Take a look at the want ads. Rumor has it both Rocket Science and DreamWorks SKG, heralded as the studio-based future of multimedia, are having a devil of a time hiring (or in the case of Rocket Science, retaining) the kind of talent they desperately need. Why? Seems the companies can't give the talented ones what they really want: creative independence.
Netscapegoat: By now you've probably heard about Netscape's Bugs Bounty program, announced in October amid the heat and smoke of various security flaws found in the beta of Navigator 2.0 (which includes Java, see "The Java Saga," page 166). It works like this: You find a major security flaw, you get an unspecified cash prize. You find a smaller one, you get some nifty merchandise. Oh boy! Now, if you were smart enough to find a security flaw, what would you do? Give it up to Netscape for some small-time cash, or wait till the beta goes golden and really put your knowledge to work? The fear of precisely that appeared to drive a myopic front-page article in The New York Times the week Netscape put up its beta for downloading. The article warned readers that Netscape was, at the time, architecturally impossible to secure (because of a flaw that allows intruders inside during the downloading of the beta). But the story did not once mention strong encryption as a solution; nor did it raise the issue of why encryption is not, as of now, commercially feasible (thanks to the US government). Helloooooo?
Speaking of Which: Remember that T-shirt we told you about, the one bearing machine-readable encryption in the form of a bar code and therefore qualifying, in theory, as something that cannot be exported outside the US? Well, the "publisher" of the T-shirt, Joel Furr, has applied for an export license from the NSA and the State Department, thus forcing the government to rule on whether wearing such a T-shirt on an international flight is a criminal offense. Furr's application, while following all government guidelines, manages to keep its tongue firmly in cheek. Describing the shirt, Furr writes: "The source code of the implementation is featured both as four lines of text and also as a bar code, making the T-shirt machine readable as well as machine washable." Want one? List price is US$12.36, including shipping and handling. See www.danger.com/ad-perl.html.
Edgar Lives: Contrary to previous reports, the Securities and Exchange Commission has decided to continue the Edgar service: it's now at www.sec.gov/.
Microsoft versus Usenet: Veteran posters on Usenet have taken to supplementing their post with a copyright notice that prohibits reposting of their words on The Microsoft Network. Something like: "The Microsoft Network is prohibited from redistributing this work in any form, in whole or in part. Copyright (c) NameHere, 1995. License to distribute this post is available to Microsoft for $800. Appearance without permission constitutes agreement to these terms."
