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Saturday, June 30, 2001

Messy Chestnut is a funny

Messy Chestnut is a funny blog.

"...I’ve been flying a lot lately, and I have some recommendations for you for replacement taglines.
Southwest Airlines: We’re goofy, you’re cattle.
American Airlines: We removed a row so you can pay twice as much.
United Airlines Damn good at striking.
Delta Airlines: We crash a lot.
Continental Airlines: Where pilots learn to fly.
America West: Come sit on our fart-saturated seats.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:43:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Memoir of a woman cleaning

Memoir of a woman cleaning out the amazingly filthy, poorly maintained house she's just bought.

I also cleaned out the light fixture above the oven, which hadn't been working heretofore. It was full of DEAD GRASSHOPPERS. I kid you not. I put together a Visible Grasshopper model when I was a girl, and I know what one looks like!

Roaches of every size, and some of them even had wings! Bishop got a shovel and started helping me excavate. There was a layer of foam rubber, a layer of carpet, and layers and layers of bubble wrap (all crawling with cockroaches), and then a very large Mylar bag sealed up with duct tape and containing Something.

Link Discuss (via Camworld)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:40:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I spend 15-25 days/month on

I spend 15-25 days/month on the road (if you don't see me post to Boing Boing for a day, it's likely I spent that day on an airplane) and when I get to my destination, there're only two things I want from my hotel: an ashtray and a highspeed, in-room Internet connection. Geektools' "Geektels" directory is a collaborative project to list every hotel thus equipped in the world. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:54:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Queer Trek: the long, long

Queer Trek: the long, long struggle to get a gay Trek character on-screen (awesome photoshopping, too).

Roddenberry's lawyer, Leonard Maizlish, even went so far as to write story memos and rewrite scripts. And Maizlish was hardly sensitive to the gay issue. "The last time I saw [Maizlish] I was helping Herb Wright pack up his office," says Gerrold. "The lawyer came to make sure we weren't stealing anything. To my face, he called me 'an AIDS-infected cocksucker. A fucking faggot.'"

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:43:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ted Chiang is a brilliant

Ted Chiang is a brilliant sf writer who doesn't write nearly enough (OTOH, he keeps beating me out on awards, so maybe that's a good thing). His magnificent story "72 Letters" is available online. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:25:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My new personal calling cards:

My new personal calling cards: one for Toronto, one for SF, and one for both. Collect the whole set! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:10:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 29, 2001

Koko the Gorilla needs a

Koko the Gorilla needs a caregiver/sysadmin. No, really. Link Discuss (Thanks, Dennis!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:29:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pat sez: "Furby now had

Pat sez: "Furby now had a girlfriend--a bearded clam (no, I'm not kidding)." Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:58:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kiss My Freckled Ass Goodbye:

Kiss My Freckled Ass Goodbye: resources for disgruntled employees. Link Discuss (Thanks, Sandra!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:55:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"The psychology of the eyelids."

"The psychology of the eyelids." This is why I love Jorn Barger. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:24:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cardiff City footballer's contract guarantees

Cardiff City footballer's contract guarantees him "physical relations with a sheep." Link Discuss (Thanks, mattrose!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:16:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Breaking news! The film option

Breaking news! The film option on Richard Kadrey's excellent Wired cover story, "New You" (a fictional news account of the first human clone) has been exercised! Go Richard! Bring home the major Hollyweird kwan! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:06:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fear! Famous Scientologists (Garrett, Travolta,

Fear! Famous Scientologists (Garrett, Travolta, et al) perform the music of L. Ron Hubbard. Link Discuss (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:56:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Melt a penny in 30

Melt a penny in 30 seconds using the power of sunlight and the wonder of fresnel lenses. Don't watch too closely,though -- "Looking at the melting penny is similar to looking directly into the sun. Eye damage can occur without any pain. Instruct everyone to look only for a second at a time and to then look away." Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:53:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Another tasty bit from Salon

Another tasty bit from Salon on the MS verdict: Andrew Leonard in streaming MP3, discussing the case. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:47:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Elian one year later, via

Elian one year later, via the BBC. Summary: he's doing real good. You know, what I'd really like to see is a world in which every media report on conditions in Cuba contained a comparison to US-friendly "democracies" in the region (i.e. "Fidel Castro continues his deplorable policy of quaranting HIV positive individuals, while in nearby Haiti, such people die in the streets, unfed and in constant danger of physical violence"). I've spent a fair bit of time in Cuba, and while it's got some undeniable problems, they pale in comparison to the Domincan Republic, Haiti, and other "free" lands. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:43:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

When Salon is good, it's

When Salon is good, it's very, very good. This morning, they've assembled commentary on the MS decision from the likes of Lessig, O'Reilly and Raymond. Thoughtful, revealing stuff.

I think hackers in general have always suspected that what the government did would turn out to be irrelevant (Eric S Raymond)

I guess they still do have a monopoly on desktop clients -- and as a result, it would be great to see some restrictions on their ability to use that monopoly in anticompetitive ways -- but we have to remember that the desktop is less of a power base than it was a few years ago. (Tim O'Reilly)

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:38:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ow ow ow! A Saskatchewan

Ow ow ow! A Saskatchewan farmboy-turned-chef "helps" a man who wishes to become a woman, by castrating him, using skills acquired castrating farm-animals. The operation is not successful. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:32:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mouth-watering new vaporware gadgets "reviewed."

Mouth-watering new vaporware gadgets "reviewed." Why vaporware? Well, they rely on things like 3G cellular and Bluetooth, wireless infrasctructure that appears to be dying a-borning. Link (via /.) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:21:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 28, 2001

My friend, Marc Weingarten, wrote

My friend, Marc Weingarten, wrote this terrific piece about Ghost World cartoonist and screenwriter Dan Clowes.

Clowes still finds it hard to believe that next month, two actresses playing his comic-book heroines will appear, larger than life, in megaplexes everywhere. "I had this feeling of, ‘Hey, I was sitting in my underpants when I drew this comic, and now someone is spending thousands of dollars building a set for it?’"

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:20:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New jargon: "Spim." Instant Message

New jargon: "Spim." Instant Message spam. Various startups are contracting with companies to send you AIM/MSN Messenger/ICQ messages that say things like "Hey, FAOschwartz.com is having a sale!" Discuss (Thanks, ronks!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:43:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Holy moly! The appeals court

Holy moly! The appeals court has overturned the Microsoft Antitrust rulin and removed Judge Jackson from the case.

The court vacated all of the restrictions that Judge Jackson had placed on Microsoft's business practices and ruled that the government had failed to prove many of its contentions involving the company's Internet browser

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:04:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My impending Orlando trip is

My impending Orlando trip is getting scarier and scarier every day -- the gators are attacking the nudists! Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:40:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 27, 2001

The master sex-toy sculptors behind

The master sex-toy sculptors behind the infamous Realdoll are now offering an apparently long-awaited male version! Only 6,999 dollars! Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:59:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blogger recently announced their 200,000th

Blogger recently announced their 200,000th user. And as Sturgeon predicted, 180,000 of them are crap. Take a look at the "10 most recently updated blogs" on the blogger home page. The first one I looked at had this engrossing entry: "The sight of food has been making me ill. But, I have to eat cuz hunger sucks. I guess I'm just going through a food backlash after oinking out big time, which reminds me that I should go get something to eat now. My tummy is growling. Arghh." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:53:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ViciousCargo sez: "Hilariously defensive and

ViciousCargo sez: "Hilariously defensive and pathetic email responses from the CEO of Blur.com (who designed the annoying 'Simon' character for MySimon.com) to an email sent criticizing the Simon character." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:49:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More Haunted Mansion! Photos of

More Haunted Mansion! Photos of the backstage, castmember-only areas of the Haunted Mansion. The design flourishes, even in this offstage area, are mind-blowing. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:15:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video of the Disneyland, Disney

Video of the Disneyland, Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland (!) Haunted Mansions, shot with nightvision camcorders. I'm in heaven. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:11:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dan Gillmore is as astute

Dan Gillmore is as astute as ever in his column about the NYT's reaction to a Supreme Court decision that it ripped off freelance writers. Best quote: "The publication that considers itself the nation's newspaper of record would rather destroy the record than pay a few dollars to the people who created it in the first place." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:00:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clean, stylized Japanese cartoon characters

Clean, stylized Japanese cartoon characters (text in Japanese). Link Discuss (via gmt+9)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:41:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese graffiti hall of fame.

Japanese graffiti hall of fame. Amazing stuff. Link (via gmt+9) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:38:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dan Gillmor's guide for PR

Dan Gillmor's guide for PR flacks is both humorous and useful. I'm especially fond of the "No faxes, no snailmail, no packing kernels, no html mail, no attachments" rule. I'm on the organizing committee for a conference, and all proposals were supposed to come in as text in a message. Of course, while I was at a conference in England, paying a buck a minute to connect to the Internet, some jackass company's jackass PR agency submitted a bunch of proposals (Four proposals, submitted by the PR agency! How lame is that?) as 500k+ Word attachments. Those four proposals cost me twenty bucks to read! And they would have been only about 10k each as text in a message! Link Discuss (via kottke.org)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:46:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent story in the New

Excellent story in the New York Observer about a pissed off freelancer who was owed money by Gear magazine.

Bob Guccione Jr. should have known something was amiss when he saw some strange guy assembling a tent in the hallway outside his Gear magazine offices. But Mr. Guccione simply gave the guy a strange look and walked past. The strange guy was Brett Forrest, a freelance writer who believed that Gear owed him nearly $4,000, part for a story that had been killed around a year ago and part for a feature on the XFL that ran in the magazine's February issue.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:32:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The O'Reilly Network (and the

The O'Reilly Network (and the entire O'Reilly Nerd Empire) kicks all kinds of ass. Today, they're running an interview where Tim O'Reilly (the guy who wrote the first-ever user manual for Unix -- kind of Moses for technical documentation), Rael Dornfest (whose bizcard says "Maven" and who invented a cool content-syndication tool called Meercat), David Sims (an amazing editor at the network) and David Stutz (just about the coolest Microsofty you'd ever hope to meet, one of the super-genii behind Visual Basic, and the owner of a truly impressive Unix-grade beard) have a freewheeling discussion about Microsoft's announcement that they're licensing some of the code necessary for implementing .NET under the FreeBSD open source license. Both sides get good licks in, and the result is balanced and awfully entertaining. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:16:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hot buzzword action in Biz

Hot buzzword action in Biz 2.0 today! "The Outernet is Coming." Turns out, "Outernet" means "advertising on LCDs on cash-registers, ATMs, and billboards." This is the dumbest jargon since "e-commerce platform" (which means "shopping basket cgi") Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:06:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Swanky private school orders all

Swanky private school orders all the students to get PalmOS handhelds (cool!) and specs out the color IIIc (bad, bad bad). The clueless wonder at the school who picked out the spec sez "the color is a nice addition and it's a relatively rugged design which is particularly suited for schools." Damned crackhead. First of all, the Visor is way more rugged, easier to back up in the field when away from a PC, and cheaper. Color screens on PDAs are ass. Monochrome PDAs are reflective -- the brighter the ambient light, the sharper the screen (when the ambient light is insufficient, you can turn on the backlight, but it stays off most of the time -- a good thing in a battery-powered device!). The color PalmOS devices use a backlit screen -- legibility is therefore a function of how much brighter the backlight is than the ambient light. That means that in order to be legible at high noon, your battery-powered device needs to put out more lumens than the sun. Since dead batteries in a PDA mean total, catastrophic data-loss, this is such a plainly bad idea that it makes my tripe writhe in outrage. It'd be cool if someone could invent a screen that could toggle between both modes, though no doubt there's an Electrical Engineering techo-latin explanation as to why this is impossible. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A Jesus theme park in

A Jesus theme park in Orlando isn't a church or a museum, or at least that's what the tax man sez. Pay those taxes and turn the other cheek before we send you north for reeducation! Link Discuss (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:23:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The World Court rules that

The World Court rules that Arizona and the US violated the Vienna Convention when the state executed two Germans without telling them that they were entitled to consular assistance. The World Court ordered a stay of execution, but AZ wen ahead and killed 'em anyway. The Germans want reparations. Link Discuss (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Conservative Utah Olypmpic Committee plans

Conservative Utah Olypmpic Committee plans to bowlderize the music used in the snowboarding competition, removing "offensive" hiphop and grunge lyrics. I hope that they do Rage Against the Machine: "No way I won't do what you told me!" Link Discuss (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:14:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, June 26, 2001

Isn't this a nifty pencil

Isn't this a nifty pencil sharper? Too bad the designer, Raymond Loewy, never put it into production. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:35:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark's done all these amazing

Mark's done all these amazing Mad Magazine-style illustrated taxonomies of different kinds of online people -- this isn't his, but it's still tee-riffic. An illustratated, exhaustive encyclopedia of flame-warriors. Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:02:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google's new image search engine

Google's new image search engine really acutally works! It found pictures of me (why am I talking in every picture anyone's ever taken of me?), pictures of Mark, even a picture of a tow-truck (inside joke for those of you who were at the Post-Spider World panel at the O'Reilly P2P con). Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:58:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Diesel Sweeties weighs in on

Diesel Sweeties weighs in on the Scott McCloud flamewar with an hilarious strip. Link Discuss (Thanks, Joey!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:54:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scott McCloud responds to the

Scott McCloud responds to the backlash against his latest micropayments missive. It's amazing to watch artists squabble among themselves over perceived sleights and the impression that one of their number is getting too big for his britches. Make art. Fight for art. Don't fight against one another. Jeez.

Goddamn it, Tycho -- why the fuck do we have to be enemies? Neither of us is making a living at this. Both of us need "day jobs." Maybe both of us have families (I don't know anything about you personally and unlike you I'm ready to admit that). I'm offering one solution to the exact problem you describe and your only response is to kick me in the teeth for it in front of thousands of people! Well I'm not kicking back. In this whole response, you'll notice I haven't once attacked you personally. Why? Because the idea of a feud between online comics artists over something like this is beyond pointless -- it's suicide. You want a debate. Fine. Any idea that comes along should be subjected to every test we have. But this isn't how ideas get tested, Tycho. This is how ideas get buried.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Joey!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:50:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I hate the Bay Area

I hate the Bay Area -- you knew that, right? I tell people this and they boggle. San Francisco is beautiful! It's lovely! It's friendly and exciting! Whatever. Here's the problem: it really can be beautiful. Check out JimWich's photos of yesterday's rainbow over Shallow Alto. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:12:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Indescribably fabulous roundtable debate on

Indescribably fabulous roundtable debate on Open Source and Microsoft, featuring everyone from Bruce Perens to Craig Mundie. Perens, in particular, is getting some good licks in. I wish Mundie would respond to him more directly and more frequently -- I've had this debate with Mundie, and he makes some excellent points (I've been chewing some of them over for months now). It would be good to see he and Perens getting into it hottenheavy. Link (via /. Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

July 17th is my 30th

July 17th is my 30th birthday, and I'm going to Disney World! I'd hoped that by my 30th, I'd have a spare ten grand lying around, with which to rent out the Haunted Mansion for a private dinner party (the really do rent it out, and that really is the cost). Unfortunately, the ten grand never materialised. That's OK. WDW is fun any way you slice it. And since my mom just got her faulty hip-replacement replaced, she'll be in a wheelchair, which means no lines! Cloud --> Silver Lining. Now, all we have to worry about is the recent rash of gator attacks. Link (via MeFi) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:39:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More material for people who

More material for people who call Napster users pirates. Here's a story about no-fooling music pirates -- bootleggers who sell duplicated CDs for profit. When I was in Costa Rica last month, I stopped into a copy shop in San Jose. It was full of hepster teenagers holding onto CD liner-notes, getting them color photocopied. These kids bought one copy of several top-selling CDs, burned duplicates (cheap), then copied the liner-notes (expensive) whenever they sold a dupe and put together another jewel-case/dupe/liner-note set. It was the ultimate just-in-time inventory system. Link Discuss (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:23:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Terrific fictional history of the

Terrific fictional history of the MacHack con, beginning with the 1818 "McHack:"

It all began in 1818, when the Scottish scientist and inventor James Watt visited the United States. A visit by this pioneer in steam power attracted attention from a number of American notables, among them Thomas Jefferson. To mark the occasion, Jefferson organized a conference to celebrate development and innovation. Watt was asked to give the keynote address at the conference, which was called McHack in honour of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Link Discuss (Thanks, xowie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, June 25, 2001

Fabulous paeon to Cameron Diaz's

Fabulous paeon to Cameron Diaz's hindquarters, courtesy of Ain't It Cool News. When I grow up, I wanna be Ms. Diaz's Ass Stylist. Is that asking so much?

There are moments in film history of pure unadulterated joy of cinema. Where we see things on screen that reach into your chest and makes your heart grow two sizes too large. Cameron Diaz’s Swirling Ass is one such creation.

Link (Thanks Ken!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:13:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MPG video of John Cleese's

MPG video of John Cleese's eulogy for Graham Chapman. Hilarious, touching, irreverent. Someone should speak such words over my urn.

Graham Chapman, coauthor of the "Parrot Sketch," is no more. He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He's kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky...

Link (Thanks, Scott!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:54:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Owen points out that not

Owen points out that not all gun sites suck. Presenting the the Hello Kitty .45 caliber pistol. Link Discuss (Thanks, Owen!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:35:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Another ambiguous day in the

Another ambiguous day in the life of a fair-use advocate. The Supremes have ruled on the Tasini case, wherein a group of freelancers sued their publishers over unauthorized use of their material on the publishers' websites. On the one hand, I think it's important to get material out of the realm of oxidizing vegetable matter and into the pure holiness of bytes-on-substrate. On the other hand, The NYT and company are making these archives available for business reasons -- even if the archives lose money, they preserve their origin's credibility and cachet (the Times could hardly hope to be the paper of record if its records were offline). If they're making archives available for commercial reasons, then why shouldn't the articles' authors derive commercial benefit from the archives as well? It's interesting: writers organizations like to call the denizens of alt.binaries.e-books (who scan, OCR and post entire novels to Usenet) "pirates," despite the fact that these pirates are engaged in a totally noncommercial activity, yet writers side with their publishers in attempting to sue the pants off of a bunch of Usenet geeks. Meanwhile, publishers are really ripping off writers -- taking work to which they do not own the electronic rights and putting it online with the expectation of earning money from it. Nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds them, even if the other hand is holding an anal-probe.

"We want our work out there. We simply want to have our permission asked and to get paid a fair amount," said Jonathan Tasini of the National Writers' Union...

..."That is a loss for free-lance writers because their articles will be removed from the historical record. Historians, scholars and the public lose because of the holes in history created by the removal of these articles," [the publisher of the NYT] said.

Link (Thanks, Pat!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:21:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The new Boing Boing T-shirt

The new Boing Boing T-shirt featuring "Jackhammer Jill." Link Discuss tshirt

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:36:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Allan H. Sez: "[Here's] a

Allan H. Sez: "[Here's] a speakerphone that holds a replica of a .45 pistol. From their print ad in Soldier of Fortune: 'To use speaker phone as a handset telephone: Remove gun from base, remove clip from gun and use clip as handset.' This site reeks in so many ways--the photo is blown up in an amateurish fashion, the writing is awful, and the phone itself costs hundreds of dollars. And, you can't just buy it--one must bid on it. Huh? Is there a rule somewhere that requires gun-related websites to really, really suck?" Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:34:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I've disabled Smart Tags (an

I've disabled Smart Tags (an obnoxious feature created by Microsoft that adds unwanted links to every web page on the planet) from Boing Boing. If you want to disable them on your blog, here's how. (It just takes one line of HTML). Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:55:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clifford Pickover is a scientist

Clifford Pickover is a scientist and prolific author. He's written a bunch of books about fractal art, math, strange science, and logic. He started a group on Yahoo and there are some good discussions going on there. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:43:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fort York Auctions, the world's

Fort York Auctions, the world's greatest auction house, is back in biz in Toronto! Proprietor and auctioneer Mark Taaffe does a genuine, old-time, manic patter that's more like a sermon on the virtues of great old crap and the sins of underbidding than a sales-pitch. Someone should get some audio of Mark up on the net... You know, something like half the furnishings in my apartment in Toronto came from Mark's auction-block, and cheap, too! Like the octagonal, pine dining room table I got for CDN$15. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:27:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Let me begin with a

Let me begin with a confession: I hate Mel Lastman, Toronto's Mayor. He started out as Mayor of North York, a suburb I grew up in, where he bulldozed a vital, 1950s-era strip (which included the only rep theatre in the city) in order to put up a largely fictitious "downtown" built out of nasty, modernist glass-and-steel towers, destroying the character of the old, pedestrian-friendly downtown. I moved away from North York when I was 17, and it was only another decade or so before I was living under the hairy fist of Mayor Mel -- the Ontario premier Mike Harris amalgamated Toronto with its suburbs, and in the ensuing confusion, they elected Mel the mayor of the new "Megacity." He's done a frankly terrible job. He's a clown, someone whose personal life is as sordid as it is public, someone whose malapropisms and idiocies plumb the depths of ignorance daily. Now, on the other hand, Toronto's current Olympic bid would be a disaster for me, as the plans for the Olympic Village call for bulldozing my fabulous apartment to make way for a new roadway. Thus, I can hardly claim to be wholly enraged by Megamayor's latest "witticism," which promises to really piss off the IOC:

"Why the hell would I want to go to a place like Mombassa," Mayor Mel Lastman said to a freelance journalist before leaving for a trip to Kenya to pitch the Toronto Olympic bid. " I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me."

Link (Thanks, Amanda!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:05:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, June 24, 2001

Amazing shot of Akihabara, the

Amazing shot of Akihabara, the Japanese computers and electronics Mecca. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:11:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent Salon first-person account of

Excellent Salon first-person account of a high-school student's quest to bypass his school's Internet censorware, an app that blocked access to sites like GLAAD while permitting sites like the Christian Coalition. The student was a network admin who set up an offsite proxy through which all requests could be passed, and then emailed the entire staff and administration with instructions for its use. After much administrative chest-thumping, they discovered that they couldn't charge the poor kid with anything. Link (via Jewish Buddha) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:06:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

There's a widespread belief that

There's a widespread belief that Microsoft (and other software giants, i.e., Adobe) turns a blind eye to a certain amount of unlicensed use of its software, on the grounds that the company's long-term future is tied to ubiquity, not collecting every possible license dollar coming to it. I guess Microsoft's not buying into that -- their lawyers are nastygramming some of their biggest corporate customers, demanding a contractually guaranteed audit of installed software.

The letter, using language no less intimidating than the Internal Revenue Service might use, also includes a form that spells out the audit process. Customers must report the number of installs, documented licenses, license upgrades and unlicensed software. Covered in the process are operating systems, Office suites, individual applications, BackOffice products and the Visio product line.

Link (Thanks, Drew!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:24:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The San Francisco Pride parade

The San Francisco Pride parade ended mere hours ago, and Jef Pozkanzer's already managed to get back to Berkeley and post his pix from the event. Nice shots! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:12:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hilarious comic-strip response to Scott

Hilarious comic-strip response to Scott McCloud's onlince-comic micropayments proposal (blogged here a couple days back) Link (Thanks, Joey!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:35:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazing obit for Francisco Varela,

Amazing obit for Francisco Varela, a ground-breaking cognition researcher.

In a 1998 study published in Nature, Francisco and his colleagues in Paris showed for the first time that the human perception of meaningful complex forms (high contrast faces or "Mooney figures") is accompanied by phase-locked, synchronous oscillations in distinct brain regions (Rodriguez et al. 1998). In an important review article published one month before his death, in the April 2001 issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Francisco and his colleagues presented a new viewpoint on what they call the "brainweb": the emergence of a unified cognitive moment depends on large-scale brain integration, whose most plausible mechanism is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands

Link (Thanks, Dad!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:32:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AI is officially topical --

AI is officially topical -- I thought it might be, when I got a call from a reporter who wanted to ask me about AI for a theme ish of a magazine that would come out around the same time as the Spielberg movie. The flood of links to AI science stories in the mainstream press that I'm coming across confirms it. I've got a love-hate relationship with AI: the promise is amazing, and AI makes a great McGuffin for a science-fiction plot, but the results have been pretty unspectacular to date. At the same time, the power of real "I" has been largely overlooked -- despite the power of Google and other large-scale collaborative filters (really just programs that aggregrate large numbers of human decisions and draw conclusions from them) people are still dissing collaborative filtering as a trivial app. Anyway, this is a great story on Cyc, a huge AI project that promises to eliminate some of the crappier quotidian human-fired jobs (like sifting a database to spot erroneous entries on the basis of common-sense -- an engieneer who's been in your employ for 30 years can't have been born in 1988...).

...The project already has consumed an estimated 500 person-years and $50 million in investments...

...The system today encompasses more than 1.4 million assertions--hundreds of thousands of root words, names, descriptions, abstract concepts, and a method of making inferences that allows the system to understand that, for example, a piece of wood can be smashed into smaller pieces of wood, but a table can't be smashed into a pile of smaller tables....

Link (Thanks, Dad!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:24:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I loved Cowboys International, an

I loved Cowboys International, an 80s new wave band that had Terry Chimes (forst clash drummer) and Leith Levine (Public Image Ltd). I forgot all about them until recently. here's a page about them with a link to their "hit" song, Thrash. Anybody else remember them? Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:09:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

On Saturday, Carla and I

On Saturday, Carla and I accidentally stumbled into Garage Sale Heaven. Here are pictures of the booty we plundered and brought back home. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:38:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I'm all for enthusiasm in

I'm all for enthusiasm in reportage, especially when the reporter is covering new gadgets, a subject near and dear to my heart. That being said, Farhad Manjoo's Wired News story of IBM's research-center open house reads more like a press-release than a news story.

...Those may sound like elementary ideas, but they're consumer-friendly and they make life easier.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:24:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 22, 2001

The Pulp Zone: covers, stories,

The Pulp Zone: covers, stories, and letters -- as well as background -- on the pulps. Once, over 1,000 pulp magazines of every genre filled the newsstands. Because the pulps were considered nonessentail trash by the Canadian war department during WWII, they were not imported from the US. As a result, the war was a golden age for Canadian genre writers, who found themselves with a sellers market of hundreds of made-in-Canada pulps with names like "Exciting Monkey Bum Stories for Boys" (well, maybe not exactly like that), hungry for their work. One thing a diligent reader of pulps will notice is all the ads for trusses. Here's what I wonder: were there more hernias back then, or fewer hernia surgeries? Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:28:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mixed reviews -- raves and

Mixed reviews -- raves and pans -- for bOING!bOING! from the folks at Blog You!

Boing Boing is one hell of a blog... Boing Boing is Robot Wisdom at its peak (circa late 1999/early 2000), but with that pivotal contextual commentary that is both snappy and enticing.

Links. Lots of links there. Don't tell me, I'll tell you, happy crappy. The entries seem to be about everything and

(the deadlights)

nothing.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:31:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ISPs suck all kinds of

ISPs suck all kinds of ass, and Rogers -- Canada's biggest cablemodem provider -- is no exception. When Rogers screwed with an Ontario judge, they went too far. If Beverley Reade doesn't get an apology from CEO Ted Rogers, she's gonna try'n get CDN$5,800 in damages from a small-claims suit. As Nelson Munce says, "Ha ha!" Link (via /. Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:31:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

From our pals at Tiki

From our pals at Tiki Farm -- a link to Tikimania! Tikimania is your primary source for light-switch covers, dashboard nodders, and tiki miscellania. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:24:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Short but interesting list of

Short but interesting list of early books that paved the way for the psychedelic sixties. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:32:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 21, 2001

Brendan Wiley's a supergenius dude

Brendan Wiley's a supergenius dude who works with the Freenet project. His latest article describes how to build a secure, anonymous, decentralized game out of Freenet's pieces. Link (via /.) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:55:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amy's skinning and taxidermy: a

Amy's skinning and taxidermy: a page all about Amy, a 14-year-old, homeschooled girl, and her hobby, skinning things and stuffing them. Link (Thanks, Jimwich!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:50:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Roswell29 sez: HotRodsToHell.com is "a

Roswell29 sez: HotRodsToHell.com is "a site dedicated to the 1967 cult movie classic about what happens when evil teenagers get a hold of a couple of fast cars and terrorize a nuclear family driving through the California desert. Cool video clips and a "where are they now" section about each member of the cast. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:09:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Seriously mixed review of WWII

Seriously mixed review of WWII Online, a massively multiplayer game set in the 1940 Blitzkreig.

Perhaps the most engaging aspect of WWII Online is how it absolutely forces cooperation. Other massively multiplayer games allow for cooperation, which enhances gameplay but isn't necessarily essential. WWII Online completely demands it. If you spawn as an infantryman, you'll have to find a ride to the battlefield, or you'll find yourself walking. And that's not a trivial matter. If you spawn as an antitank gun, you'll need a tow, or you'll simply be stuck. In light of all this, the potential for team building is enormous--and not just for that one particular engagement, either. In WWII Online, a victory is a tangible contribution to a strategic situation that will persist for many months. Once you achieve a significant rank in one army, you'll probably stick to it, and the participants will become familiar to you. This unifying factor of the strategic element makes all the difference. Unfortunately, so do the technical problems and missing features.

Link (Thanks, George!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:05:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

miniGolf is fun. Link Discuss

miniGolf is fun. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:06:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jef at Acme's latest obsession:

Jef at Acme's latest obsession: using a GPS and a digital camera to compile a photo/geo database of every stream in Berkeley. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:57:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A guy is accused of

A guy is accused of kicking and punching another guy in a Cookie Monster suit at a Sesame St. theme park, because the guy wouldn't pose for a pic with the puncher's son. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:44:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blood-quickening, well-researched Wash Post story

Blood-quickening, well-researched Wash Post story about high-seas piracy. Required reading for anyone who describes file-traders as "pirates."

Modern pirates are terrorizing cargo vessels for many of the same reasons as their rum-chugging, peg-legged predecessors: financial desperation and a sense of impunity. Most Asian countries have not fully recovered from the economic crash that began four years ago. Armed insurgencies, particularly in Indonesia and the Philippines, have distracted naval and coast guard units. And despite a raft of maritime treaties, international waters still are the no man's land of the global economy.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:07:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 20, 2001

Inc. magazine's got an interview

Inc. magazine's got an interview with me about the relationship of science fiction to new technology. They cut out most of the interesting bits, but it's still OK. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:34:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The movie archive -- over

The movie archive -- over 1,000 MPEG reels of public domain movies, from home movies of the 1939 World's Fair to old commercials. Wow! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:01:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Na Na is a Russky

Na Na is a Russky version of 'N Sync, and now the Russian culture minister wants to enroll them in the space program, since "[t]heir healthy optimism, stability and sense of tradition could be a symbol for young Russians". Link (Thanks, Amanda!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:50:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chinese mynah bird tips wife

Chinese mynah bird tips wife off to husband's cheating through frequent repetitions of phrases like "divorce" and "be patient." Link (Thanks, Amanda!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:45:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nice fansite for the late

Nice fansite for the late and vastly underappreciated cartoonist, Vaughn Bode. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:36:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jack Boulware's sordid psychedelic history

Jack Boulware's sordid psychedelic history of Mondo 2000 that appeared in the SF Weekly in 1995 is available online! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:51:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Movie Review Query Engine

The Movie Review Query Engine is the Google of movie review search engines. I love this site! Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:30:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My mom, the high-tech queen.

My mom, the high-tech queen. My mother's doing all the educator materials (including the copy on this site) for VitalSpace -- a pretty cool startup doing neat graphic explorations of human anatomy. Unfortunately, the site's a totally overblown Flash thing, and makes it really hard to figure out what the company actually does. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:28:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent Salon piece on the

Excellent Salon piece on the tightrope that TiVo walks over the twin pits of alienating its fans and getting sued. The current quandry revolves around a group of hackers who've figured out how to network a TiVo to a PC, create their own alternative directories (including a TV directory for Australia, where TiVo doesn't operate) and to decode the video files so as to create a library of movies their desktops. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:25:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyright? What copyright? Some 100

Copyright? What copyright? Some 100 issues of Transformers comics, scanned in and posted to the net. Link (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:21:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Worldwide Retro. The supersite devoted

Worldwide Retro. The supersite devoted to

Hot Rods and Kustoms, Low Brow Artists, Retro Pop Kulture, Swing & Rockabilly Music, Pin Up Art, Tiki Art & Lounge items, Retro Clothiers & Gear suppliers, and information on the preservation of Classic Neon Signage and Googie Architecture

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:24:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

eBay's new email "feature" --

eBay's new email "feature" -- in which bidders are automatically notified of items similar to the ones they're bidding on -- angers its sellers. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:21:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BookCrossing is neat. You get

BookCrossing is neat. You get unique ID numbers to write in books you no longer want, and then leave the books on park benches, airplane seat pockets, etc. Then people can take the book and go to the BookCrossing web site and review the book, then re-release it. The goal is to turn the world into a big public library. Probably won't work due to hoarders and people who will rip the labels out and sell the books, but I love the idea of it. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:41:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Good Scott McCloud piece on

Good Scott McCloud piece on Napster, "piracy" and the case for Micropayments. He beats that drum nicely. Link (Thanks, Joey!) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:51:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Esther Dyson publishes a newsletter

Esther Dyson publishes a newsletter called Release 1.0. It comes out monthly and costs 800 dollars for a one-year subscription. Occasionally, she run articles from the newsletter on her website. Here's one about weblogs.

"What makes a Weblog a Weblog is that it’s organized chronologically and designed for short, frequent updates. In other words, Weblogs represent the online intersection of people and time. The high frequency of Weblogs means more emphasis on the content, says Bricklin: “You don’t worry about the way the thing looks, you only worry about what you are going to say.” It also means more frequent viewing, as readers learn to check often for new material. Finally, because Weblogs are not static but follow their authors through time as they live their lives, they reek of personality and individuality.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:24:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yet another reason to hope

Yet another reason to hope that Salon outlasts the current online-magazine apocalypse. They've got Bill Bryson -- a dry, witty travel writer -- reading from his book on Australia (In a Sunburned Country) in streaming MP3 today. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:15:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Usually, I find Salon's bios

Usually, I find Salon's bios a little overlong and overwrought, but this week's is a nice piece on Mel Brooks, who made the funniest damned movie ever --- Blazing Saddles -- and on whose behalf no amount of verbiage is excessive. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:04:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Salon follows up on the

Salon follows up on the wire story about homeless tech workers in the Valley. Turns out that one of the guys quoted was a big flake, or so says his "friends." Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:00:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

For over a year, I've

For over a year, I've had a foot-pump battery charger for my iBook on order from Aladdin Power. I guess I can cancel my order now -- a guy in Toronto has pulled awaprt one of those hand-cranked flashlights and connected it to a low-power Linux-on-a-chip wafer, and created the world's first hand-powered server. Link (via Slashdot) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clueless managers at the Tenessee

Clueless managers at the Tenessee Valley Authority decide that SETI(at)Home is a threat to their systems and come down like a ton of shit on the practice of running distributed computation apps and other "unauthorized" programs. It's funny --- in the old days, the lab-coated Priesthood of the Mainframe controlled the computation in the organization by giving their users nothing but dumb glass teletype terminals. After years of guerrilla computation, where employees, students and researchers literally snuck in their PCs and did the computation they needed to be more productive, comfortable and happy, the priesthood finally allowed their users the freedom to undertake whatever computation they wanted, opting instead to put a fence around the network -- the firewall. Now that P2P apps have demonstrated that tunneling through firewalls over http and port 80 is trivial, the priests are scrambling to lock down the machines again. Lotsa luck. Link (via Slashdot) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:45:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, June 18, 2001

Cnet says, "The [Michael] Jordan

Cnet says, "The [Michael] Jordan Palm software includes 'inspirational quotes' from Jordan, a trivia game on the basketball star, fitness tips from his personal trainer, basketball scoring software, a pinball game, blackjack, a guide to locate Michael Jordan restaurants and software for tracking car maintenance." Oooh! Neato! And get a load of this bullshit soundbite from the president of the company licensing this piece of junk: "At the end of the day Michael Jordan will do almost as much for the Palm economy as Jeff Hawkins." Actually he might be right. Hawkins helped drive the price of Palm's stock down by launching the much-cooler Handspring. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:18:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool article (with pictures) about

Cool article (with pictures) about an elaborate treehouse built by a famous bank robber. (via JIMWICh)Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:30:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

First, there was the fungus

First, there was the fungus that ate Mir. Now there's a fungus that eats CDs. Mold -- it's what's for evolution. Link (via Slashdot)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:29:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Can't sleep? There's always tomorrow

Can't sleep? There's always tomorrow night! Unless you're a victim of Fatal Familial Insomnia, a very Philip K. Dickian/Rod Serling-esque disease that keeps you awake until you close your eyes forever. Based on his New York Times article on the genetic condition, D.T. Max is now penning a book on the subject. I can't wait for The Dark Eye to hit the shelves! Perfect bedside reading material.... Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:28:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Davenetics is simultaneously funny and

Davenetics is simultaneously funny and informative -- it's a blog devoted to biz and tech issues, and irreverent without being cheezy.

TO HEALTH AND BACK: The Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration are joining forces in an effort to crack down on internet sites that market fraudulent health products. But I swear, it's getting bigger!

Link (Thanks, Sierotko!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:16:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Steelcase Leap chair is

The Steelcase Leap chair is the most comfortable, best-designed seat I've ever had -- like getting wet, slurpy kisses on the ole lumbar. The sequel is a Leap recliner (way cooler than the craptacular WebTV Barcalounger). Anyone wanna loan me a couple grand?

Designed to support an extended range of alternative work postures, the Leap WorkLounge allows the sitter to work while upright, relaxed, or reclined. Its companion ottoman acts as a footstool or as an auxiliary seat for visitors; with a simple movement, the ottoman also rotates up to provide a small worktable for reading, writing, or laptop computing.

Link (Thanks, Scott!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:35:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here's an review of DVDs

Here's an review of DVDs I wrote for The Industry Standard called "Hairy Beasts and Malevolent Aliens," about pre-computer science fiction movies. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:54:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I love this photo gallery

I love this photo gallery of 20th centrury dinosaurs, compiled by an organization called Creation Science Evangelism. I would pay good money for the 31-inch stuffed dinosaur "found on the shore of Lake Erie and mounted by taxidermist Pete Peterson. It is currently at the Creation Evidences Museum in Glen Rose, Texas." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:25:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photo of monkey drinking stolen

Photo of monkey drinking stolen yogurt as woeful child victim watches. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:41:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funny Blue Screen Of Death

Funny Blue Screen Of Death gallery. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:27:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here's a story I wrote

Here's a story I wrote about ukuleles for Business 2.0 magazine. I had a lot of fun writing this one. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:11:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ultimately unsatisfying Salon piece about

Ultimately unsatisfying Salon piece about the quest of a bunch of PLUR raverkids to convice Disneyland to permit them to hold a rave at the Carnation Plaza.

Maybe if the ravers were here en masse their presence would be more conspicuous, but rolling around in a small group of eight, they blend in almost seamlessly with the rest of the families in the park, most of whom sport surreal Disney gear, including three-fingered giant Mickey Mouse gloves (a staple, coincidentally enough, at raves), fuzzy pink Mouseketeer ears and glow-in-the-dark necklaces and laser-light spinners that could easily be mistaken as the photon lights ravers use to give one another light shows when they're on E.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:49:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A lot of really smart

A lot of really smart people keep communicating their enthusiasm for digital cash schemes based on precious metals to me, but I've never really understood what all the excitement's about. This is a nice Salon roundup on a bunch of competing e-gold offerings, mostly based in Carribean tax-havens. I've done a little contract work for offshore high-tech companies, and my experience was that the infrastructure in the Islands (particularily Anguilla and the BVI) is not really up to snuff. Lots of power-outages, crappy bandwidth with crappy peering at the MAEs. Will the political and economic advantages of operating out of the Carribean outweight the technical downsides?

So instead of relying on credit cards -- the dominant online payment system -- people can opt for bullion-based cybermoney, which purveyors tout as a quick, cheap and private alternative.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:37:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wire-story (via Salon) on an

Wire-story (via Salon) on an IP summit where the head of Napster addressed the American Library Association. The Napstroid's chest-thumping (or at least the part the stringer decided to quote) is pretty predictable, but the interesting thing is the P2P filesharing system that's being proposed to augment interloan services.

Librarians have begun floating the idea of Docster, a Napster-like system wherein documents requested at separate branches could be scanned once and shared via a computer network.

The interlibrary loan system currently in place requires documents be re-scanned each time an individual requests to view them. This allows libraries an effective, but labor-intensive method of servicing the public.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:32:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired News is running a

Wired News is running a perfectly nice little story on Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics, a year-plus-old manifesto for an Internet publishing revolution. RC is brilliant, and Wired's guidelines used to call for submissions of "news that stays news" but this seems like a blip -- like the content server at Wired News hiccoughed and spat up a year-old story. I hope that Wired News does more of this kind of thing.

...[T]he Internet can serve as a container -- artists of all kinds will be able to circumvent the profit-driven systems that dictate which CDs, books and comics reach stores. "For music, art, movies, comics and the written word, our whole planet is about to become one giant jukebox," McCloud writes in Reinventing Comics.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:26:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, June 16, 2001

An oldie but a goodie:

An oldie but a goodie: the Bert Is Evil site takes you on a tour of the Shoot-Me-Up-Elmo Doll. Kick-ass photoslopping. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:00:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 15, 2001

Laid off sysadmins and other

Laid off sysadmins and other formerly in-demand tech workers crowd San Francisco's homeless shelters, and calls to crisis hotlines soar. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:55:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Michael Jordan Palm. There

The Michael Jordan Palm. There goes 3,500,000 dollars down the drain. I would have licensed a Boing Boing Palm for 300 dollars, and would have bought one, too. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:58:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Alleged drunken homophobic clown wins

Alleged drunken homophobic clown wins battle to keep his street performer permit. Police Chief Robert Anthony "had pulled Perri Rlickman's street performer permit after receiving complaints that he whistled inappropriately at young girls, made homophobic slurs and was frequently drunk, the Cape Cod Times reported. Perri is also known for a trademark whistle and skillful balloon-animal making." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:44:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CNN on the Japanese square-fruit

CNN on the Japanese square-fruit phenom:

Japanese farmers have solved this dilemma by forcing their watermelons to grow into a square shape. Farmers insert the melons into square, tempered glass cases while the fruit is still growing on the vine.

Link (Thanks, chet!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:23:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NY Times article about eBay

NY Times article about eBay zealots who make Amway distributors look sane. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:51:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bill O'Reilly calls for a

Bill O'Reilly calls for a Gulag in Alaska: "Killers, rapists, drug kingpins and terrorists should all be subjected to life in prison without parole in a federal work camp. This special prison system would be run military style and be located on federal land in Alaska. It would be in effect a gulag." How many months before non-violent drugs offenders would start to get sent to such a place? Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:43:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Damning evidence that Disney lifted

Damning evidence that Disney lifted plot, characters and visual elements for Atlantis from an anime movie:

Disney: Our hero, Milo, a nerdy yet sweet scholar who gets caught up in a quest to find Atlantis. Along the way he falls in love with a girl unlike anyone he's ever met before. Accessories: big round glasses, red bow tie, assorted charts and scientific equipment.

Anime: Our hero, Jean, a nerdy yet sweet inventor who gets caught up in a quest to find Atlantis. Along the way he falls in love with a girl unlike anyone he's ever met before. Accessories: big round glasses, red bow tie, assorted charts and scientific equipment.

Link (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:29:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Schneier's latest Crypto-Gram is out,

Schneier's latest Crypto-Gram is out, with the results of a provocative study:

A random computer on the Internet is scanned dozens of times a day. The life expectancy of a default installation of Red Hat 6.2 server, or the time before someone successfully hacks it, is less than 72 hours. A common home user setup, with Windows 98 and file sharing enabled, was hacked five times in four days. Systems are subjected to NetBIOS scans an average of 17 times a day. And the fastest time for a server being hacked: 15 minutes after plugging it into the network.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:56:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NASDAQ tanking -> Downsizing ->

NASDAQ tanking -> Downsizing -> Downsized Engineers -> Way, way more hacking. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:54:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 14, 2001

Good Wired News piece on

Good Wired News piece on e-cash, but Declan needs a better fact checker. He described e-gold as an offbeat scheme minting its own virtual currency, when, in fact, e-gold is anything but virtual (see earlier entry about e-gold's actual precious metal reserves). Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:41:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A jolly Briton tells the

A jolly Briton tells the story of his vasectomy -- complete with mentally scarifying photos and Reader's Digest humor.

Of course, it's not often that you let a big bloke with a wet-wipe at your wedding tackle, but thoughts of septicaemia (blood poisoning) outweigh the disadvantages.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:35:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Good -- if short --

Good -- if short -- review of an anothology of Carribean sf my friend Nalo edited. It includes a story called "My Grandmother's Tale of the Buried Treasure and How She Defeated the King of Chacachacari and the Entire American Army with Her Venus-Flytraps!" Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:08:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Holy crap! Account of a

Holy crap! Account of a Japanese game show that involved kidnapping an ignorant contestant, stripping him naked, and locking him in a room until he could win a bunch of money in cash and prizes by sending postcards into magazine contests. He was provided with no food other than what he won. The entire affair was netcast around the clock. It gets weirder. Link (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:27:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Good Salon piece on the

Good Salon piece on the demise of ORBS, a spam-fighting service whose owner may've been a tad too vigorous in pursuit of liberty. Link (via Camworld)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jakob Nielsen consisely summarizes all

Jakob Nielsen consisely summarizes all the reasons that reading PDFs on-screen sucks. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:19:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A MUD is allowing its

A MUD is allowing its players to anonymously purchase coin of the realm with real cash, via their e-gold accounts. This is a radically different approach from Ultima Online and Everquest, which have banned the practice of players selling characters, gold and artifacts on eBay. Also notable is that the MUD is using e-gold, a kind of Hushmail version of PayPal, providing strong anonymity and instant settlement. Also cool: e-gold is backed by actual precious metal, in vaults around the world, which can be extracted by e-gold users in metal (?) or cash. Link (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:45:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"D'oh!" makes it into the

"D'oh!" makes it into the Oxford English Dictionary. I am: having a cow. Man. Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:39:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The lastest in(s)anity from the

The lastest in(s)anity from the Ontario Government. Welfare recipients who can't solve math problems and refuse to take remedial math courses will be cut off, turned out into the street, and left to starve. Hey, I think math is important, too, but Jesus, why do so many raw goddamn sadists appear to value it (remember Heinlein's proposal that people who can't solve a quadratic equation shouldn' be allowed to vote?) Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:35:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The stars of a Big

The stars of a Big Brother knockoff prank the audience and producers, making them believe that they cooked a urine cake and fed it to a castmate. This prompts a bunch of pathetic chest-beating from the producers, who sound like real jackasses.

Executive producer Fiorella Grossi appeared near tears upon learning that the tainted cake had been a ruse. And in a quavering voice she accused the cast of lying to the viewers.

''People who come in day in and day out to see you living your life. People that actually respect you guys, people that relate with you guys.''

Link (Thanks Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:32:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Salsa Lizano is the national

Salsa Lizano is the national flavor of Costa Rica. It's a brown sauce, you use it like ketchup, and it tastles like a slightly sweet curry with a hint of worstershire, some HP, and a breath of Tobasco. Once you've had the brown stuff, you won't go back to the red stuff. You can order it from this site, but ignore everything else it has to say (the sauce is Central American, not South American, it's not a hot sauce) Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

releases its guidelines for securing

releases its guidelines for securing Win2K boxen. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:09:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nerve interviews Samuel R. Delany,

Nerve interviews Samuel R. Delany, the genius sf/smut writer who changed the face of science fiction with savagely brilliant novels like Dhalgren. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:03:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Godzilla meat on sale in

Godzilla meat on sale in tins in Japan. Someone, please send me a tin -- I don't need the meat, just the tin. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:00:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 13, 2001

From Ananova: "Canadian teenage girls

From Ananova: "Canadian teenage girls have been taught about lesbianism and masturbation on a Women in Art course. Parents were angry after tutors on the University of Winnipeg course showed the 15-year-olds videos about how to attain sexual pleasure without men.John Carlyle, who runs the River East school division where the girls study, said: "People were shown fondling objects such as carrots and or cucumbers and saying you could use this, you don't need a man." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:42:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

OpenCola makes Fortune's list of

OpenCola makes Fortune's list of 25 Cool Companies! Link (Thanks, Joey!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:01:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

This is why a unionized

This is why a unionized workforce is a good thing: Disney World's costumed characters have won the right to wear their own underwear to work, after years of getting crabs and scabies from the Disney-provided articles. Link (Thanks, Bob!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:17:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The folks at Speedle got

The folks at Speedle got written up in the Red Herring today, and described Speedle as "dumber, easier-to-use take on OpenCola." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:55:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kiss fans are just dying

Kiss fans are just dying for these brand new "Kiss Kaskets!" Link (Thanks, Gil!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:36:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Verizon is suing the soon-to-be-bankrupt

Verizon is suing the soon-to-be-bankrupt Covad for launching a human denial-of-service attack against them -- Verizon says Covad forced its employees to place zillions of fake tech-support calls, opening trouble-tickets that kept Verizon's techs from being able to fix real problems. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:26:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazing, obsessive site kept by

Amazing, obsessive site kept by someone who sketches a pic of every meal she eats on the screen of her PalmOS device, then uploads the results to the Net. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:49:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

300-page "dictionary" of non-verbal cues

300-page "dictionary" of non-verbal cues and language. Link (via Robot Wisdom)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:42:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I've seen services that will

I've seen services that will show you how a given Web page will render on different computers -- smaller monitors, lower-color-depth, text-oly, braille-readers, etc. But Visicheck is pretty damned cool -- it'll render a Web-page as it would appear to someone who was color-blind. Link (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:39:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Duality is an amazingly cool

Duality is an amazingly cool fan-film set in the Star Wars universe. What's even cooler is that the filmmakers are two total novices, working with off-the-shelf MacOS gear. Link (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:35:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tons of spam arrives with

Tons of spam arrives with weird URLs, like http://djhfgsdkljhdf1234353464564/%23%22%22m. This FAQ explains how to generate and decode crazy-ass URLs at home. Link (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:34:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Carl Steadman launches the "Alpha"

Carl Steadman launches the "Alpha" version of Netmogul, a funny-as-hell manual for the dotcom boom-and-bust. Cool UI!

So do we call it risk, or opportunity? It's neither. Forget whether the hypothetical glass is half-empty or half-full... What are the chances that one day the glass will be yours to smash to smithereens, solving that puzzle once and for all? o Odds of job sodomy by the Internet economy: 1 in 90. o Odds of losing ye "secure" olde economie jobbie: About the same. o Odds of winning the lottery: Depends on what you mean by "winning." o Odds of being flattened by a Porsche Boxster while crossing the street: 1 in 8,071,901. o Odds of bringing an unnatural end to your own pathetic existence: 1 in 8772.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:12:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Buddy Ebsen's experiences with The

Buddy Ebsen's experiences with The Bridges of Madison County led the 93-year-old actor to believe that bestselling novels were pretty damned easy to pull together (an impression that was no doubt imparted to many). So Buddy wrote a book, but after nine rejections, decided to vanity publish, and not long thereafter found his book on the LA Times' bestseller list. Will wonders never cease? Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:32:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

JS Boggs is a "fine

JS Boggs is a "fine artist working in the realm of interactive-performance art" -- not a guy who draws money and then attempts to spend it, no matter what the treasury boys say. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:56:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, June 12, 2001

Wham-O! is trying to make

Wham-O! is trying to make a comeback. But will it be as great as it was in its heyday, coming up with stuff as wonderful as the Superball, and the Cricket House, and the Water Wiennie, and the Monster Magnet? Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:31:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Jenn is Bored": A freelancer's

"Jenn is Bored": A freelancer's lament. (Thanks, Jenn!) Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:46:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fabulous site devoted to the

Fabulous site devoted to the works and life of CS Lewis. Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:17:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CS Lewis' Narnia books are

CS Lewis' Narnia books are being published in a new edition by HarperCollins, sans any of the Christian allegory that defined the series. Harper's excited about having the next Harry Potter on their hands, but doesn't want to bring God into it or nothin'. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:16:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Peter Franklin, a garrulous NYC

Peter Franklin, a garrulous NYC cabbie, will let you ride in the front seat of his cab as he picks up fares and chats with them, for the low sum of 146 dollars/day. "You talkin' to me?" Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:53:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Embarassing gaffe in Microsoft's anti-Linux

Embarassing gaffe in Microsoft's anti-Linux campaign: MS representatives talk convention center management into evicting a group of Linux users who were passing out free CDs on a public sidewalk out front of a computer conference. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:48:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My Cat Hates You: pictures

My Cat Hates You: pictures and brief bios of felines that hate the world. Oddball variation on the usual "Here's my homepage, here's my cat, here's all the CDs I own" site. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:43:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Awesome illustrated instructions for rolling

Awesome illustrated instructions for rolling your own pink, Hello Kitty laptop. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:40:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

This is one of the

This is one of the saddest, scariest things I've ever read -- it's a first-person account by a woman whose paranoid delusions caused her to imagine that her husand and his pals were in possession of technologies that allowed them to control her mind and beam sounds and thoughts to her, in an effort to drive her mad. The weirdest thing is the site it's on, apparently a group effort by a collective of paranoids to track down and document the shadowy conspiracy that is attempting to control their minds by means of implants and beam-weapons. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:39:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Internet as "enabling" technology:

The Internet as "enabling" technology: Got a germ phobia? Scared of public phones? Get a Phone Condom!

Safe-Tel helps relieve germ phobias by putting a clean, impermeable barrier between the telephone user and germs.  By using our phone condom, you can feel safe against mouth bacterium and germs.  Sufferers of mysophobia and other types of germ phobias can rest easier using our phone condoms.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:30:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Conelrad is an utterly spectacular

Conelrad is an utterly spectacular site devoted to the films of "Atomic America" -- everything from Roger Corman mutant stinkers to civil defense movies. Link (Thanks, Margot!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:27:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What's a poor ISP to

What's a poor ISP to do? On the one hand, the cost of attracting and signing up high-speed customers is a hard thing to flush down the toilet when a rights-holder demands account termination for people who engage in file-sharing, but on the other hand, those same customers sure eat a whole lot of their unlimited bandwidth. Link (Thanks, Fred!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:24:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why are Euros charged six

Why are Euros charged six bucks more for their DVDs than their Yankee counterparts? The EU thinks it's a conspiracy by the Studios, and what's more, the EU has the power to really kick 'em in the nuts if it turns out that the Studios have been up to backroom price-fixing shenanigans.

If it found concrete evidence that price fixing was taking place it has the power to fine companies a maximum of 10 % of their annual turnover and force them to change their ways.

Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:19:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The British government launches a

The British government launches a campaign to communicate Kindergarten-level hygeine information to the filthy British public.

...nearly one in three men and more than one in six women often do not wash their hands after going to the lavatory.

Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:15:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Irish round-robin novel authors gleefully

Irish round-robin novel authors gleefully murder one another's characters

"It's the first time 15 Irish writers have worked together without publicly saying something unpleasant about each other," says Roddy Doyle.

Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:12:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toronto is a cheap place

Toronto is a cheap place to film, but Torontonians are getting fed up with all the bullshit:

...last October a 52-year-old woman was handcuffed, strip-searched and jailed overnight for whistling on the street in Kensington Market and interrupting the filming of "Claire's Hat," with Juliette Lewis and Gina Gershon...

"It's sort of a Disney version of New York," said Mr. Gernon, of Alliance Atlantis, who lives in Los Angeles. "It's cleaner, it's more polite, it's better designed, and it's not overcrowded. What's not to like?"

Link(Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:06:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, June 11, 2001

"Woman has Nokia surgically removed

"Woman has Nokia surgically removed from bottom." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:52:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here's an article I wrote

Here's an article I wrote for the Industry Standard about the "deep web." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:49:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NY Times reports a new

NY Times reports a new virus that scans the target's hard drive for files names that sound like they might be pornography and emails a report to the police. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:38:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mr. Sharon Stone's big toe

Mr. Sharon Stone's big toe nearly bitten off in a komodo dragon attack at LA Zoo. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:44:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Name-spaces -- the DNS system,

Name-spaces -- the DNS system, the AIM, ICQ and Napster userlists -- are the site of all manner of oddball machinations and eddies in the technology continuum. Here's a new one for me -- a unified telephone number/IP address system that some of the folks at the IETF are working on. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, June 10, 2001

Kelly and I are remodeling

Kelly and I are remodeling the bathroom at our new house and, natch', vintage fixtures (original and repro) are far more interesting and, er, "inviting" than any of the new overpriced modern blob-design crap we've seen. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:05:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 8, 2001

Excellent quote from Dr. Seuss

Excellent quote from Dr. Seuss (short wav file) Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:51:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 7, 2001

Wow! "When Ginger inventor Dean

Wow! "When Ginger inventor Dean Kamen gets an idea, he relies on his father, Jack Kamen, to sketch the initial design. The elder Kamen, who redesigned irreverent Mad magazine in the 1950s, uses charcoal sketches to illustrate his son's inspiration." (From Reuters). Here's a link to some of the elder Kamen's comic book covers. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:38:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A couple of Burger King

A couple of Burger King employees testify in court that they "frequently laced sandwiches with cleaning products or spit on and 'skated' on frozen meat patties that were thrown to the kitchen floor before being flame-broiled. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:55:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Let's start a museum of

Let's start a museum of hideous cutesy animated GIFs. Call it the "Dancing Baloney Museum." (Please post the URLs of the image only, unless there's a page with a bunch of them blinking and morphing at once.) To get started, here's an "Email me" icon of a little envelope that has an address that morphs into a smiley face.Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:47:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Remember those pancake makers that

Remember those pancake makers that cook the dough in the shape of Mickey Mouse? Well this Java toaster burns the real-time weather forecast into your daily bread! Link (Thanks, Meri!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:46:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Inside article about those stupid

Inside article about those stupid "pop-under" X-10 wireless camera ads.

"Since the X10 ad campaign started in February, traffic to the site has increased drastically, so much so that the relatively unknown company entered the Media Metrix U.S. Top 50 Web properties in March at No. 30 (about 8.4 million unique visitors), and in April shot up to No. 14 (about 15.3 million unique visitors)."

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:17:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 6, 2001

Is the Kaycee hoaxster a

Is the Kaycee hoaxster a Munchausen Syndrome patient? Excellent Wired News article by our pal, Jenn Shreve. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:36:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Hello Kitty Vibrator. Does

The Hello Kitty Vibrator. Does anyoe know if this is real or not? Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:06:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with Chris Ware, creator

Interview with Chris Ware, creator of ACME Novelty LibraryLink

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:10:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pi, when converted to binary,

Pi, when converted to binary, contains every image, song, book, and program ever produced (or to be produced) by humankind. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:49:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vulgar and ostentatious medical sculptures.

Vulgar and ostentatious medical sculptures. (Thanks Stefan!) Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:37:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, June 5, 2001

Stefan sez: "For the Disturbing

Stefan sez: "For the Disturbing Things We Do to Animals Department: Keep pet fur off your furniture by sealing Fido into a lycra bodysuit!" Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:11:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

It's the Street Tech

It's the Street Tech Buzzword Saturation Detector! Find out the BS content of any site in seconds with this marvelous steampuck contraption. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:07:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

You're probably familiar with science

You're probably familiar with science fiction author Rudy Rucker. Here's an LA Times article about a web site called thefirsttwins.com, a news portal about the Bush daughters, which was created by Rudy Rucker, Jr. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:26:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, June 4, 2001

A catalog of beautiful antique

A catalog of beautiful antique scientific instruments! I dig the leech supply jars and tabletop pulley and cord planetaria.... Actually, I love *everything* on this site! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:28:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Last week, we started using

Last week, we started using QuickTopic to add discussions to Boing Boing. Steve Yost, the creator of Quick Topic, contacted me and asked me what he could do to make Quick Topic more useful to bloggers. I gave him a couple of suggestions and he incorporated them. QuickTopic is terrific, and if you maintain a weblog, I suggest you give it a try! Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:57:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 1, 2001

Here's a Googie roadtrip article

Here's a Googie roadtrip article I wrote for One magazine. Link [discuss]

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:20:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anyone know if these adorable

Anyone know if these adorable Planet of the Apes dolls are available in the US? Link [discuss]

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:05:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Register reports that Extropian

The Register reports that Extropian and L5 Society founder Keith Henson was arrested in Canada, after fleeing the United States after his conviction in the US for "posting to Usenet rude things about the Church of Scientology, and joking that CoS members should be nuked. He was convicted of interfering with a religion." Link [discuss]

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:58:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here's a close up picture

Here's a close up picture of the Face on Mars that had newagers all het up for years. (They'll probably say the shadow government bombed it.) Link [discuss]

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:09:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Virtual Activism: An upcoming video

Virtual Activism: An upcoming video game from Rockstar Games, called State of Emergency, "is an urban riot game set in the near future, where the opressive American Trade Organization (ATO) has declared a state of emergency. State authorities are clamping down on organized resistance and restricting movement across the city to counter the spread of revolt. It is up to you to smash up everything and everyone in order to destabilize the ATO. Use any item available to begin fighting, including pipes, bricks and benches, even dismembered body parts." Link [discuss]

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:56:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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