] jim nieken^H^H^H^H^H^Htantalo, our fearless leader, doesn't
] want to put forth the effort to throw the [Rubi]con anymore.
 
] however, he also apparently considers the con his fanatical pet
] project, and won't pass off leadership to any other competent
] interested parties. funny, being that rubicon is the only con
] in the last few years whose figurehead has absolutely _no_
] tenure or acumen with the tech-security/underground community.
 
] jim's facetious little fairytale about the imaginary litigious
] feud between vegas/seattle and detroit is completely unwarranted,
] not to mention somewhat immature. there would have been numerous
] better ways to handle this.

Okay, I got sucked into the Bambi hoax. But this one I called accurately, the instant I saw it.

Rubi-Con Hoax

] Though Webster publishes a slang dictionary, it could
] potentially take years for a new word or phrase to enter
] its pages. Now, with the power of the Internet, it can be
] in a dictionary in a matter of hours. This page depends
] entirely on your contributions. Click on the "Submit" tab
] to submit slang words or phrases you've heard.

It looks like all submissions are edited by hand, and it hasn't been updated since January 2003, but still, it's a fun resource.

Online Slang Dictionary

] Rubi-Con Defaced?
]
] 7-22-03
]
] So there I am, 11:25 at night,when I get a call.
]
] "Have you see www.rubi-con.org?" they ask.
]
] "No, not recently" I say.
]
] In a letter on Rubi-Con's home page there is a claim that
] Rubi-Con and myself have been in some sort of legal
] battle, and that I have somehow forced Rubi-Con of
] business.
]
] Seeing how this is the first I have heard of it, I am
] going to assume that Rubi-Con got their web site rooted
] and defaced by someone trying to stir up trouble in the
] underground. If they had spent any time looking at
] defcon.org they would have realized that we have been
] listing Rubi-Con in our Upcoming Conventions calendar
] since their first show, and that some of the DEF CON
] organizers help with Rubi-Con as well as with ToorCon.
]
] We support the community, not divide it.
]
] To summarize: There has never been any litigation between
] us. If there had been, it would be public record, etc.
]
] Nice hack.
]
] Jeff Moss

See http://www.rubi-con.org for their "legal battle" letter. My guess is that they weren't hacked, but posted it themselves, as a way of getting attention. They claim "very public legal battles" with Defcon, but there's never been any such thing (google it yourself).

For more info about RubiCon claims, check here (but keep in mind that much of this may be false as well):
http://rubi-con.org/2002/aftermath/rijilv.txt

Def Con v. Rubi-Con

] Automatically searching 10864 news sources every 5
] minutes

Google News v. NewsNow comparison:

Google:
- Indexes 4500 sources
- Only indexes English language sources
- Does full-text searches

Newsnow:
- Indexes 10,000 sources
- Indexes multiple languages
- Only does headline searches (unless you subscribe to business services)

For example, I searched on both sites with a search term of "Tuwaitha":

- Google returned 310 hits

- NewsNow returned 4 hits, 3 of them in German-language sources.

So, the (free) NewsNow site looks to be not as useful as Google because of the "headline only" search. Then again, the access to multiple language sources is kinda keen.

YMMV

NewsNow: U.K. News Portal

] Executives at Amazon.com are negotiating with several
] large book publishers about an ambitious and expensive
] plan to assemble a searchable online archive with the
] texts of tens of thousands of nonfiction books

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think it could be really useful to find out if a particular piece of information that I'm looking for is in a book somewhere (especially if I can't find it elsewhere online). On the other hand, one of the most frustrating things in the world is to get a search engine hit on some info I need, only to find out that I'm then expected to buy an entire book in order to see the one page I'm interested in (which may or may not even have exactly what I was looking for in the first place!). It sounds like Amazon is considering some sort of limited "context" searching though, so it might still be useful.

Something else that doesn't get mentioned in the article, is how libraries fit into the mix. I haven't yet found a good "all libraries in the country" database yet, but there are a few good starts out there, where I can type in the title of a book, and get a listing of every library in a certain area that has that book available. A natural next step, would be for libraries to offer the full text of all of their books online to their local communities... Are Amazon and Google and book publishers going to protest that when it happens? I dunno . . .

New York Times: Amazon plans to allow full book searches

] Some people who are persistently wired say it is not
] uncommon for them to be sitting in a meeting and using a
] hand-held device to exchange instant messages
] surreptitiously -- with someone in the same meeting.
] Others may be sitting at a desk and engaging in
] conversation on two phones, one at each ear. At social
] events, or in the grandstand at their children's soccer
] games, they read news feeds on mobile devices instead of
] chatting with actual human beings.

"Hi, my name is Elonka, and I'm an info-junkie..."

NY Times: The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive?

] BlogThis! - "Blog" stands for web log, your own online
] journal for publishing information on the web. To use
] this feature you must set up a free account with Google's
] Blogger service. If you have an existing Blogger account
] already, you can use that as well. When you use
] BlogThis!, you create a blog post that points to the web
] page you're visiting. If you highlight text on the web
] page, that text will also appear in your blog post.

In the new beta version of the Google toolbar, there's a "blog this" button that looks like it'll work very similarly to how Memestreams works...

Google Toolbar Blogger

] On each level you will be presented a form asking you to
] authenticate. You do not know the user and the password,
] the goal is to bypass the authentication mechanism.

The goal of the game is to bypass all 10 levels of Web Authentication security. From the stats page, over 20,000 people have tried it since May 2002, with about 750 getting through all the levels.

Security Technologies Game

] Welcome to N2H2's URL Checker. This web-based tool will
] allow you to easily identify how a specific Web site is
] categorized within N2H2's Internet Categorization
] Database.

Evidently my personal site, http://elonka.com , has somehow gotten into the filter databases as a site which contains nudity (which it doesn't). So, for example, anyone trying to access my site from the Tennessee School System is blocked and told that elonka.com is a pornographic site!

I have no idea how my site got on the list, and I didn't find out about it until a couple people contacted me and told me about the block. If you're interested in checking your own domain, here's a database where you can type in the URL to see how it's listed.

N2H2 Filtering Categories Database

Good collection of DNS tools. Want to learn more about a particular domain? Just type it into the top box on the page and click on the button that says, "Do Stuff". :)

SamSpade.org - Learn more about any internet domain