The morning talk was a wonderful lady from National Instruments talking
about their Labview product.
grace.lim@ni.com
http://ni.com/
With all the Dot Bombs going under, it's your chance to pick up cheap
computers, servers, and cubicles from Able Auctions. It is ironic, they have a
web site:
http://www.ableauctions.com/
The Capitol Steps produce four radio programs during the year. The July 4th
show will be on soon and if you don't catch it on radio it should soon be
posted on the web along with the 2000 show at:
http://www.capsteps.com/radio/
This month's theme is maps and some interesting data to display with them.
There is a web page which will tell you the current location and orbit track
of nearly any satellite in orbit (sorry, no Mir or Triana). CRRES, UARS, and
all the biggies! Off-line software is also available:
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/toc.asp?s=Tracking
The slick, on-line 3D tracker with which you can zoom and rotate the earth
is at:
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html
If you aren't interested in spacecraft, perhaps a loved one is flying
somewhere and you want to know where the plane is along with its heading,
airspeed and altitude. Have a look at:
http://www.trip.com/trs/trip/flighttracker/flight_tracker_home.xsl
Anyone who has spent time in a satellite ground station or other control
room of the sort has probably seen the wall clock map of the earth which has
the moving sunrise/sunset terminator illuminated on it by the clock's
mechanism. There is a Freeware clock program called 'Worldtime' which has time
calculation, alarms, and a map of the earth in your choice of Mercator,
Spherical, or Cartesian coordinates with the dawn and dusk terminator. You can
watch the sun come up on the South Pole. You can watch the tilt change with the
seasons. It'll ring ship's bells with the passing of the watch. It'll sync up
to one of a long list of atomic clocks over the Internet.
http://www.pawprint.net/wt/download.php
If the map in Worldtime isn't good enough for you, there is a map and atlas
program called Amiglobe 2001 which has a large database about the places on the
map. It plays the National Anthems of many of the countries! It does the
terminator also, and you can punch in an arbitrary time and date and step
though at assorted rates.
http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,000R63,.html
Another map, this time of Appert Lake. This is an example USGS map available
from a web vendor. Your tax dollars at work:
http://www.netstoreusa.com/maps/usg/nd/ndaappertl010.shtml
Want to draw your own maps, using the USGS database from Linux (and most
flavors of Unix):
http://www.ttc-cmc.net/~fme/drawmap.html
You remember we were talking about treaties and Hague Convention on
Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in particular? Really scary stuff! That was
the web scavenger hunt this month. Here's a Dan Gillmor collumn on it:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/opinion/columns/dg051701.htm
Also there was a little discussion about spyware. The guy I consider to be
THE authority on this is Steve Gibson and he has a freeware detector for
spyware:
http://grc.com/
Another good spyware site:
http://www.lavasoft.de/aaw/downloads.html
Skip Carter talked about network security. In particular, Linux and the book
"Real World Linux Security"
http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=19F4FWPLS1&
mscssid=3Q53A8WTUF0K8K0W9CRKBC06DKF22JDE&isbn=0130281875
We thought you might be interested in Skip's recent book review of RealWorld
Linux Security, Intrusion Prevention, Detection and Recovery, by Bob Toxen.
Skip's review, as a security expert representing Taygeta Scientific Inc., it
can be found at:
http://www.embedded-linux.org/bookreview.php3