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Thursday, August 30, 2001

The War Against Silence is

The War Against Silence is a weekly music review that's been running for nearly seven years now -- the prose is lyrical and the insights are terrific.

On the good nights, or at least, the reassuring nights, everybody knows her, and they gather in unnervingly intent arcs in front of her instruments, forming her words with their own mouths as she sings them, shouting requests in the breaks for songs she hasn't even finished writing yet. So the departure myths are easy enough to compose. She reaches the highway, once again, as if setting out on the next stage of a noble embassy, carrying some flickering torch from basin to basin. Gypsy tinkers would hang cups and plates off the outside of their carts so they'd rattle, informatively, as they pulled into town; maybe she should keep her guitar in an open tuning, bungeed to the roof rack, so that the interstate air could play it like an Aeolian harp, and as she came down off the exit ramps, and wove through these cities on the way to her tiny cafes and bookstores, people who need music would hear her pass, put down whatever they were doing, and bring their souls to her for renewal.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Fred!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:43:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here's my latest rant, a

Here's my latest rant, a piece aimed at exhorting writers to align themselves with people who break the encryption on e-books instead of the people who prosecute them.

How, then, do we earn our living off of our work? When publishing inevitably includes an electronic edition, when unprotected copies of our work circulate freely, how do we compel readers to pay for our time and so keep a roof over our heads?

There are a couple possibilities: The first, of course, is that we can't. The world doesn't owe us a living. This may even serve copyright's goal -- the production of lots of creative material. After all, the vast majority of science fiction writers *don't* earn a living writing, but they do it anyway. Demanding recompense for your work when no one is willing to pay for it is rarely a productive strategy -- just ask a squeegee kid. It's possible that eliminating recompense for writing will barely affect the volume of material available: the fact that science fiction magazines are still drowning in great story submissions while paying the same word rates they offered in the 1930s sure suggests this.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:13:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A followup to the Dilbert

A followup to the Dilbert Cubicle I posted a couple days back: A CNN interview with Fred Dust, the lead designer on the project. Link Discuss (Thanks, Scott!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:19:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney launches an Internet casino,

Disney launches an Internet casino, using a loophole in gaming regs that lets them run it Stateside. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:38:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Is this the next Dmitry?

Is this the next Dmitry? An anonymous programmer has cracked the Digital Rights Management on Microsoft's MS Reader ebooks. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:13:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here's a novel way to

Here's a novel way to commit felony harrassment: Kill an alligator, dress it up like a Federal Wildlife Marshall, put a Marshall's nametag on its jacket and leave it where it'll be discovered by tourists. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:56:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A Chinese paper is reporting

A Chinese paper is reporting that Disney is building a themepark in Beijing to coincide with the 2008 Olympics. Since I just sold a science fiction novel where one of the major plot points revolves around the construction of a Disney park in Beijing in 500 years or so, this kinda depresses me. Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan and Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:22:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Wombles of Wimbleton Common

The Wombles of Wimbleton Common were a terrific British kids' show (though I later read and fell in love with Michael DeLarabetti's Borribles books, and realized how terribly saccharine the Wombles really were). Here's a link to the Wombles' songs, which are funny and British as all get out. Link Discuss (Thanks, Suzanne!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:08:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, August 29, 2001

23 days later, I have

23 days later, I have a new iBook. The wrong iBook. One with a 10GB drive. My old iBook -- not so old! less than 60 days old when it broke! -- had a 20GB drive. Goddamn! What the hell does it take to get a repair or replacement out of Apple? Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:18:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chilling Salon story documents the

Chilling Salon story documents the plight of a hapless journo who wrote an article that documented the history of the Ringling Brothers' Circus and ended up the victim of a campaign of harassment orchestrated by an ex-CIA spook in the circus's employ.

Get dirt on her, he said. Ruin her professionally ... and why not personally, too? Perhaps they could recruit "a bodybuilder type" to seduce her and wreck her marriage, he told his sidekick, vice-president Charles Smith, according to depositions that would later be filed in court. Nothing's out of bounds. Spread rumors. Throw dirt. Report back to me personally on your progress right away, Feld was reported as saying. And for as long as it takes.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:01:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

This amazing and disturbing map

This amazing and disturbing map shows graphs the worldwide signs of global climate change from early spring arrivals to riding sealevels to disease outbreaks. Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:26:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The military applications for P2P

The military applications for P2P are stunning. O'Reilly Networks' Richard Koman interviews the Chief Scientist and Technical Director for the U.S. Army Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command, and gets an earful.

Koman: Back to peer to peer -- does it seem ironic at all that you're applying some of the concepts that come from some of these services that are fairly subversive at least as far as the recording industry is concerned. You know, Napster-style ideas applied to military technology.

Macedonia: I don't think it's subversive. The only interesting thing about Napster was that they came up with a really good scheme for sharing music. I mean this subversive thing is just in terms of the way that the RIAA or the MPAA looks at this technology and sees it as a threat to IP rights.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:22:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boyoboyboy is this cool. By

Boyoboyboy is this cool. By sending malformed packets to random computers on the Internet, you can distribute a large (think SET@home, distributed.net) problem and get solutions in the checksums that the computers send back. The implications of this are mind-croggling: You can use a Denial of Service attack to do protein folding to discover a cure for AIDS. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:12:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Now this is Reality TV

Now this is Reality TV -- eBay is working on a TV series that'll be a cross between "Antiques Roadshow" and "Real People." Link Discuss (via Blather)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:40:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazing corporate history of Lego,

Amazing corporate history of Lego, and the turbulent times it finds itself in ever since it started licensing Star Wars characters and settings and moved from free-form play to kits. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:59:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

There's a Smoking Gun book

There's a Smoking Gun book coming out! These guys are more consistently funny than The Onion, if you ask me. Link Discuss (via kottke.org)

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

The world's governments are legislating

The world's governments are legislating the use of Open Source software in state agencies and corporations. Link Discuss (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:56:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney World attendance is slumping,

Disney World attendance is slumping, and they're betting on the "100 Years of Disney" celebration to bring out-of-state guests down to the park. Wish they'd just build more rides. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:45:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ray Bradbury's stuff is being

Ray Bradbury's stuff is being optioned up by Hollyweird at speed, so Salon did an interview with him. He comes off as old and somewhat irrelevant unfortunately, having nothing of note to say about the tremendous changes wrought by the Internet in the popcult, social and economic landscape. It's kinda sad that the author of "Sound of Thunder" can't distinguish between a pinball machine and an immersive massively multiplayer videogame. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:09:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"We don't want a lot

"We don't want a lot of toothless astronauts returning to Earth" -- a government dentist predicts that a round-trip to Mars would seriously eff with your smile. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:58:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, August 28, 2001

Now, this is one distopian

Now, this is one distopian technology! Eyeblaster is an advertising product that turns your ads into floating animations that roam the window, obscuring text, making obnoxious noise, etc. The Space Merchants, anyone? Link Discuss (Thanks, Dennis!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:42:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chicago is cementing its position

Chicago is cementing its position as literary rainmaker. First there was Oprah's book-club, which can turn writers into millionaires overnight. Now the city fathers are asking every man, woman and teenager to read To Kill a Mockingbird simultaneously, and so encourage Chicagoans to talk about something besides Internet porn and the life and times of Friends. Harper Lee's estate is in for some big bucks. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:32:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My iBook is somewhere in

My iBook is somewhere in San Francisco. You can bet that I'll be reloading this FedEx tracking page obsessively every five minutes from now until my doorbell rings. Three weeks! Three weeks! Jesus. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:59:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The rise and fall of

The rise and fall of Boo.com, the archetype of dotcom excess, is being made into a Hollywood blockbuster, potentially starring Ed Norton and Cameron Diaz. Link Discuss (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:57:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

If you get a parking

If you get a parking ticket in Lewiston, Maine, you can get amnesty on the $5 fine by writing a letter of apology to the police. Here are seven apologias from seven different parking violators. Link Discuss (via Megosteve)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:07:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A tale of two copyright

A tale of two copyright laws. The first, proposed by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., would require electronics manufacturers to build copy-protection tools into their gear (!).The second, sponsored by Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Chris Cannon, R-Utah, would require copy-protection schemes to provide for the capability of home backup and copies for personal use. Can you guess which one I'm rooting for? Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:00:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dumbass NYT story on the

Dumbass NYT story on the failure of the ebook market to materialize. Paragraph after paragraph, and not a whisper about the enormous, grassroots ebook-filetrading network centered around #bookwarez, alt.binaries.e-books and Gnutella. The reporter doesn't even stop to wonder if the problem is the limited selection and the limited freedom that commercial ebook ventures afford -- i.e., I can't get what I'm looking for, and if I can, I can't read it on my Visor or my Mac or whatever because of the dumbass DRM. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:07:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hey, if anyone's keeping track:

Hey, if anyone's keeping track: my replacement iBook still isn't here, 21 days after Apple received my defective, 45-day-old machine for repair or exchange. Aw, crap. Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:46:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dmitry's boss is going to

Dmitry's boss is going to Amsterdam to deliver the infamous e-book-security presentation, far from the barbaric DMCA. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:21:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Further reports from Burning Man

Further reports from Burning Man by Paul Boutin. Today, Paul writes in about the makeshift powergrid on the Playa. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:17:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, August 27, 2001

This is one of the

This is one of the coolest things I've ever come across! Dialtones is a cellular symphony -- in advance of the concert, the composer collects the ring-tones and phone numbers of the audience, and plays his tunes by calling them singly and bunches. The music is weird and haunting and lovely, and utterly unlike anything I've ever heard.

Dialtones is a large-scale concert performance whose sounds are wholly produced through the carefully choreographed ringing of the audience’s own mobile phones. Because the exact location and tone of each participant’s mobile phone can be known in advance, the Dialtones Telesymphony will be able to present a diverse range of unprecedented sonic phenomena and musically interesting structures

Link Discuss (One Thousand Thanks for Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:54:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brazilian cops seize cocaine that's

Brazilian cops seize cocaine that's bagged with barcodes and pricetags.

Police said on Friday they had confiscated 260 packets of cocaine in a shanty-town near Rio, each with a sticker identifying the product by code 0001 and bearing the name of the merchants and a slogan -- ``Now, it's us.''

Link Discuss (via The Null Device)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:37:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I am a-tremble with desire

I am a-tremble with desire -- for a cubicle. The folks at IDEO (the award-winningest industrial design firm in the world) have teamed up with Scott Adams to create this Concept Cubicle, a human-factors tour-de-force that makes me want to redecorate my entire home with its components. I am drooling. Link Discuss (Thanks, Scott!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Soviet Science Fiction in hilarious

Soviet Science Fiction in hilarious summary.

Rocket-airships, radio-controlled tanks, and Death Rays. Evil Americans try to destroy the socialist paradise of the future, but the Soviets counterattack and win. Remnant capitalists flee to an underground base near Antartica, planning to escape into outer space. Socialism on one planet!

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:11:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

This is easily the most

This is easily the most hypnotic screensaver I've ever seen. In breveWalker, a creature with four, articulated legs uses a genetic algorithm to learn how to walk across an infinite chessboard. It scrambles for purchase, collapses. It get up on two legs and drags itself one square -- collapses. Slowly but surely, it begins to learn to walk. I'm completely mesmerized. Good enough reason to upgrade to OS X. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:05:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Leaked advance notice of the

Leaked advance notice of the new Handspring Prism II color Visor. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:17:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A guy has taught his

A guy has taught his dog to launch model-rockets.

I got the idea when I saw how exited he got when I launched my rockets.  I could just start counting down and he would go crazy.  So I thought, why not teach him to launch rockets.  People did not think it was possible, but as you can see here, it is.

Link Discuss (Thanks Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:08:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Smith (of Jay and

Kevin Smith (of Jay and Silent Bob, etc.) has written a lovely online comic at the NYT that tells the story of how he and his wife met. Link Discuss (Thanks, Steve!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:03:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A group of nerds proposes

A group of nerds proposes a religious order whose devotions (copying files) would nullify the DMCA.

"Rock beats scissors. And Free Exercise of Religion beats Digital Millennium Copyright Act(tm). Ha ha, suckers!" said the church's High Priest.

Link Discuss (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:41:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New jargon: Neal Stephenson's "bespoke"

New jargon: Neal Stephenson's "bespoke" engineers in The Diamond Age (code-craftspeople of the first water) are becoming a reality -- software shops have started to affect the Britishism to distinguish themselves from their peers. Link Discuss (Thanks, emilyg!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:00:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Illiterate Indian streetchildren teach themselves

Illiterate Indian streetchildren teach themselves to use a computer in a few weeks. Link Discuss (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, August 26, 2001

Science fiction great Lucius Shepard

Science fiction great Lucius Shepard is the film-reviewer in residence for ElectricStory!

These are the end times. The days when humanity will be visited by the stupefactions of the Beast, when the dregs of wisdom will be drained, when fools will deliver sermons to the masses, and yea verily, man and animal will feed from the same trough.

Proof of this is playing at your local multiplex.

This proof is best exemplified by the fact that two of the most inane, ineptly crafted, and relentlessly imbecilic movies of all time are currently playing to packed houses. I'm speaking of Jurassic Park III and Planet of the Apes.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Lisa!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:59:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Metacrap! Here's a rant I

Metacrap! Here's a rant I wrote a while back on the subject of metadata. I think that projects like the Semantic Web are cool ideas but full of hopelessly wishful thinking. This essay explains why.

People are lazy

You and me are engaged in the incredibly serious business of creating information. Here in the Info-Ivory-Tower, we understand the importance of creating and maintaining excellent metadata for our information.

But info-civilians are remarkably cavalier about their information. Your clueless aunt sends you email with no subject line, half the pages on Geocities are called "Please title this page" and your boss stores all of his files on his desktop with helpful titles like "UNTITLED.DOC."

This laziness is bottomless. No amount of ease-of-use will end it. To understand the true depths of meta-laziness, download ten random MP3 files from Napster. Chances are, at least one will have no title, artist or track information -- this despite the fact that adding in this info merely requires clicking the "Fetch Track Info from CDDB" button on every MP3-ripping application.

Short of breaking fingers or sending out squads of vengeful info-ninjas to add metadata to the average user's files, we're never gonna get there.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:55:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

If you haven't read Eliot

If you haven't read Eliot Fintushel yet, you really should. His Izzy stories are a great place to start. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:29:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gonzo short science fiction: Paul

Gonzo short science fiction: Paul Di Filippo's Neutrino Drag tells the story of the Cosmic Chicken game that screwed up the Sun for good. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:27:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I finally got out to

I finally got out to the movies yesterday, after a month+ dry spell. I got to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and I'm still giggling. The critics universally loathed this movie, with one exception: Slashdot's Jon Katz wrote a nice piece explaining just why this movie kicks so much ass. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:20:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Niels Fergusen is a cryptographer

Niels Fergusen is a cryptographer who has found serious vulnerabilities in HDCP, an Intel-developed protocol for copy-protecting broadband video transmissions -- something that the entire film industry intends on depending on to protect their inventory of video. Fergusen claims that an experienced engineer could burte-force the "master key" to the entire system, rendering it utterly useless, in a matter of weeks. Of course, he can't say how this vulnerability works or even publish a patch that fixes the vulnerability, because then the DoJ would send him to jail. Isn't it great how the DMCA is protecting rights-holders' interests? Link Discuss (Thanks, Lisa!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:15:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, August 25, 2001

Hooboy, is RAM ever getting

Hooboy, is RAM ever getting cheap. The wholesale cost for a 128MB SDRAM chip is down to $2.39 -- 90% less than just one year ago. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:24:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Internet is boring, according

The Internet is boring, according to the NYT. People have stopped looking for eclectica online and are now only interested in dull, stodgy facts. Guess it's time to shut down the blog, huh? Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:19:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sex.com's CEO is suing Yahoo

Sex.com's CEO is suing Yahoo for harassment over their nastygram accusing sex.com of trademark infringement over their use of wildcard DNS. Sex.com argues that Yahoo -- which still makes a bundle on adult content -- is a competitor, using their in-house counsel to intimidate the competition. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

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

A Kiwi hacker who systematically

A Kiwi hacker who systematically attacked systems hooked up to an ISP that dicked him over has been sentenced to helping old people understand computers. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:15:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great piece on open 802.11

Great piece on open 802.11 networks, with a cool bit of new jargon to describe them: "The Parasitic Grid." Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:10:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John Cleese says American television

John Cleese says American television is funnier than British television.

"There are few sights in life more nauseating than that of a pampered British celebrity scuttling off to America, slagging off their homeland as they go," sniffed the Daily Mail.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:00:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paul Boutin reports in from

Paul Boutin reports in from Burning Man 2001.

But the bulk of Burning Man's art and energy comes from participants, many of whom spend small personal fortunes to build and transport original works to the desert for a week. This year's participant artworks range from "large-scale sound art" (read: big stereos) to a set of 14 green neon towers ranging to 50 feet high, based on the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz. But the Burning Man ethos is best captured by theme camp Illumination Village: "Creating World Class Art and Lighting It on Fire."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:54:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, August 24, 2001

FanTASTIC Cringely column explains how

FanTASTIC Cringely column explains how to make your own T1-speed, symmetrical DSL connection with an obscure, $30/month telco service and an Internet connection (say, at your biz, your ISP's wiring closet, or your school). He's also got a pointer to an O'Reilly Network story explaining how to build low-cost WiFi relays for less than $400, so you can take an existing WiFi connection and rebroadcast it with another base-station -- good for getting a connection running in the garage when your base-station's in the house. Given that rotten, customer-service-nightmare DSL providers like Covad are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, this seems like a pretty good alternative. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:03:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The RoadTools guys sent me

The RoadTools guys sent me a couple Podium CoolPads to play with a few weeks ago, and I gotta say, I'm in love. The CoolPad is just a tilted stand for your laptop, with risers to provide an ergonomic keyboard tilt (and to allow the machine to cool itself by passing air beneath the exhaust) and a hinge to allow the laptop to be easily swivelled. After just a couple weeks, this thing has become indispensible to me. The cool air keeps the fan from switching on, which preserves battery life, and the swivel makes it easy to shift in my chair and keep the keyboard pointed at me. My wrists are thanking me, too. This is a really clever little idea. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:56:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A public library is raising

A public library is raising funds by selling square bricks that are engraved with any message you like and installed on an outside wall. Some guy didn't like the fact that one of the tiles read "Christ Died for Our Sins," and he tried to have it removed. The Library wouldn't do it. So instead, he bought tiles that say things like "God Kills Babies: Read 1 Samuel 15:3. And God is Love??" And the library is installing them. Now other people are submitting things like "Socialize Microsoft" and "'There should be limits to free speech' -- GW Bush." Link Discuss (Thanks, Owen!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:07:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dogs are wonderful animals. I

Dogs are wonderful animals. I like them a lot. I just don't like to touch them, smell them, hear them bark, get their fur or slobber on my clothes, see their crap on my lawn, or let them get near my daughter when we are walking in the neighborhood. Dogs belong on a farm or in a nice zoo. I guess the religious leaders of Iran share my sentiments.

"The dead from the war against Iraq should consider themselves blessed, he intoned, because they did not live to behold such an affront to Islamic values. "Happy are those who became martyrs and did not witness the playing with dogs! Now in our society women wear hats and men hold dogs!"

"Dog owners say confiscations have been up sharply for months, and special television programs roll out experts to discuss diseases spread by dogs. In a general crackdown announced last week against what they termed moral depravity, the police said dog sellers would be arrested along with women wearing heavy makeup and store owners displaying provocative mannequins."

"Sellers of stolen dogs work out of their car trunks. They deploy much like drug dealers in Western cities, sidling up to pedestrians to whisper, "Dog, got a dog." One spotting a foreigner got more specific. "Got a German shepherd," he whispered."

Link Discuss (Thanks, ichimunki!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:54:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here's a Salon article by

Here's a Salon article by a woman whose Internet access was shut off because the MPAA told her ISP that someone using her IP address had posted copyrighted material to Usenet. I swear, the entertainment companies are taking over the world. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:37:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Karma Ghost is a terrific

Karma Ghost is a terrific shockwave cartoon. Link Discuss (Thanks, mcexample!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:29:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photo of the world's smallest

Photo of the world's smallest animal sculpture. This plastic resin bull is the size of a red blood cell. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:03:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scifi.com is running an interview

Scifi.com is running an interview with me about my forthcoming novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

OK, my long, high-concept, jam-everything-into-one-sentence description is: It's about reputation economies in a far-future, post-scarcity world where ad-hocracies run the only scarce thing left, which is location-based amusements

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:37:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Has anyone been to the

Has anyone been to the Fuk Mi sushi and seafood buffet? Where is it? Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:31:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

IBook2 Finale: They're shipping me

IBook2 Finale: They're shipping me my old machine and a new machine, ETA Monday or Tuesday. I'm going to have to do the data-transfer myself. Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:25:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iBook2 deathwatch update: Apple will

iBook2 deathwatch update: Apple will send me a replacement unit. We are currently negotiating the data-transfer from my old comptuer: I want them to send me my old machine and let me do a drive-swap. Watch this space. Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:35:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

First prize at the Minnesota

First prize at the Minnesota State Fair's butter-sculpture contest goes to Gearworks for a superdetailed Palm VIIx made out of butter. Butter. Yes, butter. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:33:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Max Payne's a new videogame

Max Payne's a new videogame with supercool, Hong Kong/John Woo-style ultraviolence -- and a twist. As you prowl the streets of Manhattan, taking out bad guys, the voicetrack plays Max Payne's internal monologue, his angst at the violent turn his life has taken, and the conflict he feels over his immoral acts. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:28:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Mitnick, a hacker who

Kevin Mitnick, a hacker who spent nearly five years in jail -- eight months in solitary because the prosecutor told the judge he could "start a nuclear war by whistling into a cellphone; four years without a bail hearing or a trial -- is out, and doing interviews. Here's a transcript of part one of an interview Kevin did with TechTV.

Laporte: You also told me that, uh, that the teacher at one point, because you were logging into the USC system, locked the phone...

Mitnick: Yeah, he bought one of these, you know, locks with a dial phone that you could lock the phone...

Laporte: Right.

Mitnick: ...and he was really braggadocios in front of class, and says, 'Well, I found the one thing that's going to stop Kevin.' And he put it on the phone and I proceeded to show him how you can pulse out a number with the switch on, and dial anywhere in the world. And he was so upset, he took the phone, ripped it out of the wall and threw it across the room. So much no sense of humor, what can I say?

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:15:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

High-tech companies need high-tech lawyers.

High-tech companies need high-tech lawyers. The fixers at Yahoo sent a nastygram to sex.com, because going to yahoo.sex.com takes you to www.sex.com. That's not because sex.com has explicitly set up a DNS record for yahoo.sex.com -- they're using "wildcard" DNS, which means that going to <anything>.sex.com will redirect you to www.sex.com (I guess that's 'cause they figure that their audience is too dumb to type three doubleyous before the word "sex"). You'd think Yahoo would have more sense that this -- honestly! Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:08:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The National Post, Canada's upstart,

The National Post, Canada's upstart, right-wing newspaper is in trouble. Publisher Conrad Black (a pipsqueak Canuck version of Rupert Murdoch) is stepping down and walking away from hundreds of millions in red ink. The Post is like a cross between the Wall Street Journal and USA Today: Glossy, with good, glossy reportage on tech and culture, but with a sometimes vicious right-wing editorial slant (they wooed and won Christie Blatchford, a thug of an ultra-right-wing columnist, away from the fishwrap rag The Toronto Sun). Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bully pulpit. We interrupt your

Bully pulpit. We interrupt your regular blog-reading pleasure for this special announcement. My iBook2, which I spent thousands of dollars on less than two months ago, died on August 8th. Apple no longer permits their service-centers to repair notebook computers, so I had to sent it to Texas, where it has languished, ever since. The part required (a new logic-board) is back-ordered from their supplier with no ETA. On Tuesday, I spoke to a customer-care rep at Apple who told me that if my machine wasn't repaired by today, they would replace the machine, transfer my drive, and send it back to me. I just got off the phone with Apple. The customer-care rep has changed his mind. They want me to wait until the 31st -- twenty four days after the machine went in for service -- before they're willing to replace it.

I'm afraid I went a little postal. The rep I spoke to said he'd do what he can, and to contact him at noon, Pacific Time, to find out if they'll replace it after all. Meanwhile, I'm using a stand-in unit, and 90% of my data, everything I've ever written, programmed or downloaded since 1979, when I bought my first Apple ][+, is sitting in Texas. The machine I'm using doesn't have a FireWire interface, so I can't recover my files off my backup drive. I am: so screwed. I can't believe that Apple is being this rotten -- especially since I paid an additional $275 for the extended, premium-care warranty (for $8 more per year, Dell's extended-care warranty includes on-site, next day service).

Watch this space: I'll post the deathwatch updates. God, I hope Apple does the right thing here. I really, really need my machine back. Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:30:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Your tax dollars at work:

Your tax dollars at work: the US government has launched an agressive campaign to track down US citizens who travel to Cuba via Mexico and Canada as tourists, circumventing the embargo. If you're caught, you face a fine of up to $50,000. Ah, freedom. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, August 23, 2001

So much for Google Help.Hello

So much for Google Help.

Hello from Google!

Yesterday, you asked us the following question: [snip]

Unfortunately, based on the information you provided, we were unable to answer your question. Your credit card will not be charged.

Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:12:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stefan found these nifty gif

Stefan found these nifty gif animations of uncuddly Cambrian critters. He sez: "The one for Anomalocaris canadensis is oddly disturbing. Lovecraft on a plate of acid-soaked mushrooms couldn't come up with that." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:32:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazing pictures of a guy

Amazing pictures of a guy trying to land a paraglider on the torch of the Statue of Liberty. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:28:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Bee comic episodes. I

New Bee comic episodes. I really like Jason Little's work. When I was the comics editor of the ill-fated bigwords.com, I hired Jason to do this weekly episodic comic. I'm happy to see that Bee will be a full-color book published by Doubleday next year. (By the way, Jason's wife is the author of the novel "Bee Season." They must have an apiary in their backyard.) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:08:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dead on Windows parody. Link

Dead on Windows parody. Link Discuss (Thanks, doowahditty!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:02:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Penn State researchers demo a

Penn State researchers demo a two gigabit/second infrared-based wireless network. IR is cheap, unregulated, low-risk and low-interference, and this is an order of magnitude faster than even 802.11a, the new "high-speed" WiFi. Want. Link Discuss (Thanks, ronks!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:51:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Null Device pointed out

The Null Device pointed out this article on fan-remixes of pop-music, and made the point that this kind of activity is very much like fan fiction, where fans of a book "remix" the action and characters to create their own stories. Link Discuss

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

Well, Google's pay-for-answer service sure

Well, Google's pay-for-answer service sure didn't last long. Less than a day after we posted it here, they've shut it down:

Thank you for your interest in Google Questions and Answers!

We are not accepting questions at this time, although we may do so again in the future. If you would like to contact us, please send email to answers@google.com.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:27:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

For six bucks (or two

For six bucks (or two googlequeries^TM), this website will sell you a Lunar citizenship, guaranteeing you the right to vote in Lunar elections, should such a thing ever come to pass. Let's see, $6 for a Lunar Citizenship, $5 for a Universal Life Church ministry, $25 for a ULC Doctor of Divinity, and $3 to ask Google how to turn that into a moneymaking prospect. Link Discuss (Thanks, Margot!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:11:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The maddening buzzing! An entire

The maddening buzzing! An entire region of Germany has been plagued by a low-pitched buzzing which has been driving them mad for the past two years. It's gotten so bad that the German government has launched an official investigation. The theories proffered for the buzz include: high-energy beam-weapon research in Alaska, wind over chimneytops creating a giant pipe-organ, and out-of-control refrigerator motors. Link Discuss (Thanks, Margot!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:04:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Another stupidity tax! A California-based

Another stupidity tax! A California-based company will, for a mere $1500, "copyright your DNA" so that others can't clone you without your permission. Their target audience is celebrities, who are, presumably worried that their rabid fans will clone them and raise their gene-twins as their children. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:58:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Brazilian government has decided

The Brazilian government has decided that Roche is charging too much money for their AIDS-fighting drug nelfinavir, and since Roche wouldn't knock the price down, the Brazilian government has decided to simply clone the drug, essentially asserting that human lives are more important that patent-treaties. I wonder if sub-Saharan African nations will follow suit? I betcha Roche is wondering the same thing. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:43:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

High-larious comic strip has Pooh

High-larious comic strip has Pooh Classic confronting the new, improved Pooh! Link Discuss (Thanks, boingboingaddict!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:37:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, August 22, 2001

Carl Hiaassen's writing a new

Carl Hiaassen's writing a new TV series! Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:27:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AA Milne's family claims Disney

AA Milne's family claims Disney owes them US$35 million in undelivered licensing fees. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:24:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zaidie Smith on the American

Zaidie Smith on the American Book Tour.

Four things come out of an American book tour:

1. The writer gains 15 pounds.

2. The writer can find a minibar within five seconds of opening a door, irrespective of wood-paneling camouflage.

3. Any original thought the writer ever had – every pretty black mark she ever made on a piece of white paper – is replaced by the endlessly reoccurring phenomena of the writer’s own name rising up at them in embossed font on the front of a book they have come to despise.

4. The writer is reduced to embracing the only creative subject she has left: writing about writing and writers. And, if she is lucky, hair.

Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:20:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I'm really hard on my

I'm really hard on my gear. I've gone through two milspec Motorola i700 phones, I'm on my second Colibri cig lighter (rated for 500' drops!), and I've been known to carry my PDA in a Rhinoskin titanium case (and still I break my PDAs about once a year). This is a mouth-watering review of some really kick-ass ruggedized laptops -- spillproof, shockproof, and priced to move. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:43:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pesco tipped me off to

Pesco tipped me off to this photo-tour of the new Tokyo DisneySea park -- 500+ amazing photos of the park, posted in weekly installments. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:19:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mighty fine collection of '20s

Mighty fine collection of '20s music in Real Audio format. (Anyone know how to convert Real Audio streams to MP3s on a Mac?) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:23:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

For $3, a trained Google

For $3, a trained Google researcher will answer almost any question. Yes, it's a tax on net-illiteracy. What would be super-cool is if they not only gave you the answer, but the procedure they used to arrive at it. Here's my inaugural question, something I was pondering this morning as I worked on a scene in a novel that hinges on the answer:

I'm looking for information on the regulatory hurdles that Virgin and Deutsche-Telekomm would face if they attempted to merge in order to bid on a Massachusetts state government contract to do rights-society (ASCAP, BMI)-like activities on behalf of rightsholders whose media is being shared over subscription-based filesharing services.

Link Discuss (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:17:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Neal Stephenson's novel Interface (co-written

Neal Stephenson's novel Interface (co-written with his uncle and published under the name "Stephen Bury") revolves around a group of demographers and their particular demographic jargon: Midwestern Can-Stacker, Stone-Faced Urban Homeboy, and so on. With "You Are Where You Live," now you can discover what your pigeonhole is called -- just enter your ZIP code and the service will cough up your most likely demographic info (I'm either a Successful Single, a Mover And Shaker, a Mid-Life Success, a Great Beginning or an Urban Up And Comer). Creepy. Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:11:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hogdex: a service that spiders

Hogdex: a service that spiders zillions of Toronto-based newssites and creates a "spatter-map" of the 100 most prominently featured terms in today's news. Link Discuss (Thanks, Owen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:45:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ThisToThat: a Web site that

ThisToThat: a Web site that tells you how to glue, say, leather to ceramic. I've never successfully glued anything before in my life. Link Discuss (Thanks, Owen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:28:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The latest auction-catalog from Toronto's

The latest auction-catalog from Toronto's Fort York Auctions -- home of totally insane bargoons. I am so homesick. Just reading this list is a kind of pornographic experience. I'm getting a junk-on. If you're in Toronto, be sure and stop in, if only to hear Mark, the auctioneer, spin his amazing motormouth patter.

2 exc. 50s night tables; pianoforte table, massively carved legs; stylish deco French armoire; 1920s side-by-side wardrobe; nice ash mantlepiece, complete; oak library desk, rattan panels; 5 a&c style school chairs; massive blond Belgian carved sideboard; nicely refinished ash Eastlake buffet; oak china cabinet on trestle table base; lg. impressive over mantle beveled mirror, mahog.; mahog. sideboard; clean waterfall dresser; lg. U. of T. wooden lab table, 2 drawers;double brass bed; sm. occasional tables, walnut, etc.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:17:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

There's been a bit of

There's been a bit of a tempest in a teapot lately over the fact that the latest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer doesn't support the old QuickTime plugin from Apple. Of course, it took all of a week for Apple to ship a new plugin that works. Link Discuss (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:12:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MAME is an arcade-game emulator

MAME is an arcade-game emulator that allows you to play thousands of old arcade and cartridge game on your PC. Now it's been ported to Microsoft's forthcoming XBox console game, which is pretty damn cool news. I wonder if anyone will port it to the TiVo? Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:36:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A gallery of eerie photographs

A gallery of eerie photographs of derelict buildings taken by a Belgian pilot. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:17:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, August 21, 2001

Christian Metal Band or Star

Christian Metal Band or Star Trek Episode? Take the quiz (I got 5 out of 12) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:37:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tempus Fugit Dept: Sophie Crumb

Tempus Fugit Dept: Sophie Crumb (Robert's daughter) is 19 years old. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:58:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Has anybody seen Sugar Booger?

Has anybody seen Sugar Booger? If so, what do you think? I love the cover art. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:57:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clueless commentary from the Red

Clueless commentary from the Red Herring, predicting the death of public 802.11 networks because "no one owns them" and "when your connection goes down, who are you gonna call to fix it?" Jesus! Has this guy ever tried to get support from an ISP? I don't care if you're a corporation with a T3 or a user with home DSL -- when your network connection goes down, you're screwed until they fix it. Presumably the person operating the open 802.11 connection is also relying on it, and s/he'll take whatever (inffectual) steps are available to alert the ISP of the problem. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:32:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

An amazingly clever hack creates

An amazingly clever hack creates a vulnerability in ssh, an encrypted protocol for communicating over the Internet. You see, ssh encrypts and sends each keystroke randomly. By monitoring the time between keystrokes, an eavesdropper can use statistical analysis to make guesses at which keys you're typing (based on how long it takes the average person to go from "a" to "b" on a QWERTY keyboard). Mind-boggling! Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:21:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funny editorial about AIBO, Sony's

Funny editorial about AIBO, Sony's emotionally needy robot-dog.

I took AIBO home and turned him on, worried because I was now alone with this thing. I thought I had better get to know him, so I made small talk.

"How old are you?" I asked.

AIBO lit up five times. Which means, I guess, AIBO is five something, months or days or years.

"Let's talk!" I demanded.

"I'm not a mother," I told him. "Can you tell?"

AIBO mimicked me, opening his mouth and speaking in, I suppose, AIBO talk. He wouldn't stop. "Settle down," didn't work. "'Nuf already, mister!" didn't shut him up either. But "Be Quiet" worked.

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:17:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, August 20, 2001

Dumpster-diving is such a cool

Dumpster-diving is such a cool hobby. It's amazing to furnish your apartment, fill your fridge and earn your living on perfectly good stuff that's destined for a landfill. Here's a great story on a bunch of divers who're really cleaning up.

"My kids were so fired up when I came home with these squirt guns," Dan says of the top-of-the-line Super Soaker squirt guns that retail for $30 to 40.

A few days before his son's birthday, he found a dumpster full of Hallmark cards, party hats, and "three giant boxes full of party invitations. Everything was sealed and unopened."

Link Discuss (via RandomWalks)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:36:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wisconsin to provide free voxmail

Wisconsin to provide free voxmail to homeless people, if the reactionary yahoos don't shut it down. Link Discuss (via RandomWalks)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Associated Press is threatening

The Associated Press is threatening to sue About.com for excerpting a single sentence from their stories. Fair use? What fair use? Link Discuss (via Pigs and Fishes)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:21:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The market for baseball bats

The market for baseball bats the world 'round is booming. Not baseball -- just baseball bats. Why? They're really, really good for beating the tar out of people. Link Discuss (via The Null Device)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:14:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool wind-up automata. Link

Cool wind-up automata. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:47:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are pernicious -- maybe intractable -- problems on the Internet. The attacker starts by compromising vulnerable computers all over the Internet (on many different backbones and subnets), then directs them all in a coordinated attack against the target, flooding it with traffic. Since the attack comes from all over the Internet, you can't just simply filter out a few addresses. The traditional solution is to identify all the compromised computers (zombies), one at a time, figure out who their ISP is, find someone at the ISP who can give you a phone number for the zombie's owner, call them up and ask them to shut down and di-virify their computers. This is pretty time-consuming, and an attacker can usually make new zombies faster than you can kill them. Now a collection of security companies is trying a new solution: a piece of software for ISPs that watches the traffic their users are sending, automatically identifying and shutting down zombies as they appear. This is the DDoS equivalent of the "best-practice" for ISPs' mailservers, where they block open mail-relays, which makes spamming much, much harder. Of course, spam persists, and presumably, so will DDoS attacks. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:59:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless isn't so buzzword-compliant anymore,

Wireless isn't so buzzword-compliant anymore, and wireless companies are racing to roll out services that'll make them market-darlings again. It looked like the Federal E911 plan -- which would make wireless phones capable of transmitting their location -- would save their asses by allowing a range of location-sensitive "services" (think annoy-vertisements when you walk past a store). Now wireless companies are dragging their heels, insisting that implementing E911 will be too expensive and complicated to implement. Needless to say, this is pissing off the Feds. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:59:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The coolest thing about shopping

The coolest thing about shopping at auctions is all the strange, random crap you find inside your lots. The modern equivalent of buying a filing cabinet from a bankrupt company only to discover that it's full of confidential memos and breathy mash-notes is buying a laptop from a dot-bomb and finding the hard-drive full of personnel records, customer-lists, business plans, source code, etc. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:53:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Simson Garfinkel has a new

Simson Garfinkel has a new essay up, about wireless connections, security and privacy. I nodded my way through the first third of the essay before coming to the bit about 802.11 networks (the real meat of the article), when I found myself vigorously shaking my head. Garfinkel thinks that longer keys are the answer to securing wireless transports, and I think that's way off base. To my mind, Internet connectivity is getting a lot more promiscuous: from cablemodems to wireless connections to Internet cafes, we find ourselves connected to a lot of random networks these days. The answer isn't securing the transport -- which is hard, since a new security implementation is inevitably flawed and needs many iterations to patch all of its problems (the problem with WEP wasn't the short key, it was implementation) -- but rather, the protocols themselves. Ssh tunnelling scripts are getting easier and easier to implement, and they don't care what kind of network connection you have. Look down to the blog entry when I used ssh tunnelling to circumvent Earthlink's dumbass mail-restrictions with a single line. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:41:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Infinite Matrix is/was a

The Infinite Matrix is/was a spectacular online sf zine that has only -- sadly -- done one issue, and has been cancelled. Must-see work from Swanwick, Sterling and others. Kudos to editor Eileen Gunn on a job well done! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:32:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

This Page Cannot Be Displayed.

This Page Cannot Be Displayed. Stefan Jones sez: "Of course, this will only be funny to those who've used Internet Explorer." Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:04:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Last month, we told you

Last month, we told you about Coca Cola's H2NO program, which was bent on teaching Olive Garden servers how to convince their customers to drink Coke instead of water -- now, it neems that they're willing to allow as how water may be good for you, so long as it's bottled by Our Friends in Atlanta. Link Discuss (Thanks, JimWICH!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:31:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to Become a Victim

How to Become a Victim of Identity Theft.

So you want to become a victim of identity theft? Congratulations! It's never been easier. Last year, approximately 500,000 people had their identity stolen. This year, that number will increase to 750,000 cases -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:05:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wonder what Slacker director Richard

Wonder what Slacker director Richard Linklater has been up to? From the look of this trailer for his upcoming movie, Waking Life, it looks like he's been abusing too many Photoshop filters.Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:02:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Judith has started an ambitious

Judith has started an ambitious project to list every book she's ever read. I own something like 20,000 books, and I must've read thousands that I don't own. I don't know where I'd start. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:16:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photoshop tennis! What a sport!

Photoshop tennis! What a sport! One Photoshopper emails the other an image with one layer; the second returns the serve by adding another layer, and so on. Link Discuss (via EvHead)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:09:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Talk about schadenfreude: a new

Talk about schadenfreude: a new printed toiletpaper lets you wipe your ass with stocktickers from dot-bomb companies. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Penguin books is releasing 200

Penguin books is releasing 200 front-list titles as ebooks this fall.Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:54:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Two of Neal Stephenson's best

Two of Neal Stephenson's best novels, Snow Crash and the Hugo-award winning Diamond Age are available as unabridged audiobooks. I bought both in July, and I've just finished Snow Crash -- excellent production values, a terrific reader, really topnotch. Even the interminable and confusing detail on Sumerian mythology isn't so bad when it's being read aloud while you're driving a rental car around a strange city or unpacking in your hotel. Salon is running a streaming MP3 excerpt from the book -- check it out! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:46:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, August 19, 2001

Thoughtful roundtable discussion on the

Thoughtful roundtable discussion on the role of intellectual proerty wehn applied to scientific journals. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:56:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

OK, it's almost certainly a

OK, it's almost certainly a hoax, but how goddamn cool are these crop-circles? Link Discuss (Thanks, Xowie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:12:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ian McDonald's Desolation Road is

Ian McDonald's Desolation Road is one of the books that has influenced me the most as a writer. Funny and sad and wildly imaginative, it characterizes the heyday of Bantam Spectra's groundbreaking work in the 80s. McDonald's just published a sequel, Ares Express and Earthlight, the sequel's publisher, has reprinted Desolation Road to accompany it. What a book! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:06:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plotz, The Zine for Happy

Plotz, The Zine for Happy Jews! One of my favorite print-zines, ever. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:00:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, August 18, 2001

A sysadmin at an ISP

A sysadmin at an ISP discovered a bug in a newspaper's website configuration, hosted by a rival ISP. The admin contacted the newspaper's editor and explained how this simple error would allow anyone to change any page on the site without supplying a password. The newspaper had the FBI arrest the sysadmin. So much for good citizenship. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:49:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Slashdot makes a major upgrade

Slashdot makes a major upgrade to its back-end, the most successful Web-based conferencing system, ever. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:39:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Danny Goodman, the inventor of

Danny Goodman, the inventor of Hypercard, kisses-and-tells, giving the sordid past of the dearly departed programming environment (the first one I ever really loved!) and speculating on its future. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:29:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Incredible NYT story details the

Incredible NYT story details the fallout from mining coltan (a mud used in the manufacture of consumer electronics) in Congo -- from the underground mud economy in the camps to the dot-bomb's effect on endangered gorillas. Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, August 17, 2001

Stefan Jones wrote in with

Stefan Jones wrote in with this story, which bemoans the sorry state of Turkey's formerly booming Circumcision Palace, in which a civil servant could spend two months' wages on a lavish party for his newly circumcised offspring. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:28:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Apparently, the sacred text "Cream

Apparently, the sacred text "Cream of Wheat Advertising Art" is one of Amazon's "Bottom 10" sellers! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:07:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The sell-off of Prince Jefri

The sell-off of Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunai's assets sounds much more fun than a dot-com auction: "...mounds of baubles from the London jeweler Aspreys, gold-plated toilet brushes, a 12-foot-high bronze rocking horse, two antique cannons, fine china bearing the royal seal, the machinery to operate a bowling alley and an inventory of grand pianos," etc. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:59:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ursula K. LeGuin will be

Ursula K. LeGuin will be publishing seven of her books as PalmOS ebooks. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:42:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The US military takes out

The US military takes out a patent on onion-routing, a technology for disguising a packet's origin that cypherpunks have been routinely using for a decade. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:04:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Forget X10 cameras! These guys

Forget X10 cameras! These guys are planning on shipping sub $100 "smart dust" -- dustbunny-sized computer/sensor arrays. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:52:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A new, GM food-fish grows

A new, GM food-fish grows at three times the normal rate, and produces human-ready blood-clotting factors at the same time. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:46:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Researchers at the hacker-driven security

Researchers at the hacker-driven security firm @stake predict a boom in Palm (and other PDA) hacking and cracking. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:22:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A gladiator school in Rome

A gladiator school in Rome is plagued with annoying rings from its students cellphones. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:20:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A strange day in the

A strange day in the biztech world: The Industry Standard is shutting its doors, and Be, Inc., just got bought out by Palm. Condolences to the readers of (and especially the writers of!) the Standard. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:56:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, August 16, 2001

Problem: solved! Thanks to (theek),

Problem: solved! Thanks to (theek), who came through with this little beauty: sudo ssh -L 25:smtp.well.com:25 well.com -l doctorow Works like a charm!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:38:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I find myself in Germany,

I find myself in Germany, dialling up through Earthlink's international roaming service. They've got smtp config issues. The international smtp host (ismtp.earthlink.net) won't relay to any address except those @earthlink.net. Further, any outbound packets on Port 25 that aren't going to *.earthlink.net are blackholed.

It goes without saying that:

• Earthlink email support hasn't gotten back to me
• Earthlink chat support is busied out
• Earthlink phone support is available only through a North-America-only 800 number

I think I can do some kind of mojo where I tunnel my smtp connection to well.com on a port other than 25, then redirect to smtp.well.com:25, using ssh.

I am, however, an ssh idiot. I've been trying to decipher the ssh man for the past hour, without any luck.

Would some savvy Unix-head please take pity on me and give me step-by-step instructions for making this work? Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:47:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The grand list of Science

The grand list of Science Fiction cliches! Mea maxima culpa. Link Discuss (Thanks, Denise!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:42:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Tim O'Reilly addresses the middle

Tim O'Reilly addresses the middle ground between Open Source jihad and IP-clutching hysteria.

But I believe that Bradley goes too far when he identifies any proprietary software as "harming users by denying their freedom." It's ironic that in defending the GPL against Microsoft's distorted claims that the GPL will "infect" other software, free software advocates point out that you are only bound by the GPL if you choose to use the software. Well, you are only bound by proprietary software if you choose to use it.

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

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

Two new midrange PDAs from

Two new midrange PDAs from Handspring. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:14:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More why-bother-with-science-fiction stuff. This high-paid

More why-bother-with-science-fiction stuff. This high-paid coder has shelled out hundreds of thousands to get his teeth filed down to points, his fingernails replaced with talons, and his entire body tattooed with tiger stripes. Now he's getting an old tiger-pelt surgically implanted. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:17:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Former game-show contestants remember the

Former game-show contestants remember the hosts.

"I was a contestant on Jeopardy! in November 1998. Everyone always asks me how was Alex Trebek. He was a pompous ass."

Link Discuss (via Scrubbles)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:49:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The forthcoming two-disc DVD edition

The forthcoming two-disc DVD edition of Snow White has a laundry-list of mouth-watering features. Link Discuss (via Scrubbles)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:46:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I rediscovered this nice paper

I rediscovered this nice paper called "Delusion by Design: Architecture and Manipulation at Walt Disney World."

In terms of psychological-uncrowdedness, the use of a color very close to Miller-Baker pink throughout WDW cannot be ignored either. Miller-Baker pink is a color developed by two psychologists to relieve overcrowded conditions in prisons and jails. Thus, the juxtaposition of crowded and uncrowded conditions is an important development that will be discussed in the last section of this paper as well.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:29:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Cambridge University "Trojan Room"

The Cambridge University "Trojan Room" coffee machine, one of the first experiments in online telepresence, went for $4,771 on eBay! The buyer? German news magazine Spiegel Online. Link (Thanks, Eric!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:03:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Graphic map shows relative unemployment

Graphic map shows relative unemployment across the US -- all the places that I want to live are necrotic black. What's wrong with me? Link Discuss (Thanks, Laura!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:19:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clear, step-by-step instructions explain how

Clear, step-by-step instructions explain how to configure your OSX machine incapable of loading banner ads. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:00:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style is a hell of a stylebook, a really great reference for all the finicky punctuation in your life. This page collects all the frequently (and infrequently) asked style questions the editors receive by email. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:43:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crazy cellular growth in China!

Crazy cellular growth in China! Rising 40% per annum! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:33:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I've seen two systems for

I've seen two systems for adding blog entries via email this week -- one from Dave Winer (Frontier), and the other from Rael Dornfest (Meerkat) -- but Jogger goes one better. With Jogger, you can add a blog entry by sending an instant message via Jabber. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:31:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Porn and blogging: two great

Porn and blogging: two great tastes that taste great together? Hey, your buzzword got in my peanutbutter!

Our target audiences are wife swappers, exhibitionists, whores, people who need to hide their favourite prOn from their boss. It's Cluetrainish, but possibly not what Doc Searls and Chris Locke had in mind - we'll see.

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:52:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Berkeley Breathed, creator of Bloom

Berkeley Breathed, creator of Bloom Country, comes out of Salinger-esque retirement to deliver a Dangerfield-esque bitter, funny interview in this week's Onion.

The most daring humor that could be found was Garfield screaming for lasagna..If I could have drawn a cat yelling for lasagna every day for 15 years and have them pay me $30 million to do so, I would have. But for a guy with physically, a rather small mouth, I just have too big a mouth. I can't help myself. The truth: The blander you are, the richer you'll be. I tried, truly I did..

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:42:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Awesome story on free WiFi

Awesome story on free WiFi collectives in NYC, from the Village Voice.

Call it a marriage of the Web and pirate radio, forged even as big telecom interests bicker over the rights to wireless-spectrum licenses. Last week, the White House announced it would ask the Supreme Court to uphold the seizure of licenses from Next-Wave, which bought them at auction but failed to make payments. ...

In any case, Schmidt says he spends lots of time attempting to explain that this is not some new dotcom business idea, that there is no commercial hook beneath the giveaway lure. At a recent tech convention in Las Vegas, he tried again. "They would ask, 'What's the business model?' " he recalls, "and we'd say, 'There is no business model. It's free.'

Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:19:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

South Korean nerds who author

South Korean nerds who author a gnutella-like service get busted. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:15:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mactivist parents raise hell at

Mactivist parents raise hell at a North Carolina schoolboard that's decided to switch to Windows. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:10:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The English break or lose

The English break or lose 10,000 cellphones a week. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:06:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, August 14, 2001

Scootergirl needs a new accessory:

Scootergirl needs a new accessory: A briefcase that turns into a bicycle! She's not the only one. Not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of you still owe me a 30th birthday present. Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:29:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SETI@Home fanatics write a virus

SETI@Home fanatics write a virus that infects vulnerable computers, installs the SETI@Home cruncher, and hijacks the computers' idle cycles in the service of improving the hackers' SETI stats. Honestly, I don't know why anyone bothers writing science fiction anymore. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:34:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Russian Mob is recruiting

The Russian Mob is recruiting hackers to raid e-commerce sites for credit-card numbers.

Security experts said the Russian Mafia hacking rings are often run by former KGB agents who recruit hackers in their 20s to do the dirty work. The young hackers typically answer Internet advertisements for computer programmers, planted by organized crime outfits in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Murmansk.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:31:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Neilsen ratings for average

The Neilsen ratings for average Web use are in for July. I am way, way the hell at the right sight of the bell-curve. Average pageviews/month: 1,170? I have my browser history set to go back 999 links, and it's typically less than two days deep. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:07:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The EFF wins again! They've

The EFF wins again! They've scored a victory on behalf of a bunch of anonymous posters to a Yahoo! message board, whose identities were the subject of a lawsuit from a company that felt it had been maligned. Go you Huskies! Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:00:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More reasons to hate those

More reasons to hate those annoying X10 camera ads: the cameras suck. The video is crap, the cameras are bulky and obtrusive, and if you post the pictures to the Net with the supplied software, X10 logs it and violates the hell out of your privacy. Further proof that unscrupulous business practices mean crappy products.Link Discuss (Thanks, Steve!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:16:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

QA Confidential: a long, nihilistic

QA Confidential: a long, nihilistic rant on working in the QA department at a software company, accomanied by some of the most amazing photo-illustrations I've ever seen (and copy that was hilarious and indecipherable by turns). My brain hurts. Link Discuss (Thanks, Joey!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:08:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mind-bogglingly orange cheese-doodle installation sculpture.

Mind-bogglingly orange cheese-doodle installation sculpture. I am hungry. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:09:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A new open-source, peer-to-peer spamfighter.

A new open-source, peer-to-peer spamfighter. When you tell your mailer that a message is spam, it tells its peers about it -- that way, spam can be automatically identified and deleted.Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:50:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent NYT story about the

Excellent NYT story about the internal contradictions of the DMCA, and the struggle for fair use.

The law also makes it illegal for individuals to use such a program — even to make a back-up copy of a book or movie or song for themselves, the type of copies traditionally allowed under copyright law. That is where the double bind comes in. Actually making such copies for personal use is not illegal. But it is against the law to break through the copy-protection measure to make the legal copies.

...Many libraries and other educational institutions want an exception that would let individuals circumvent a copy- control technology in order to copy portions of a work for use in parody, scholarship or criticism — purposes protected under the "fair use" doctrine of traditional copyright law.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:44:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Journalist goes to hacker conference.

Journalist goes to hacker conference. Journalist makes snide, facile remarks about hackers lacking social skills. Journal hears one disparaging remark and builds story around it.

Social skills are irrelevant to hackers, which is fine when you're alone in a dark room building and breaking code. However, when it comes to assuming leadership of a frequently maligned and misunderstood subculture, chewing with your mouth closed has its upside.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:26:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, August 13, 2001

A guide to the material

A guide to the material that Warner Bros and other studios have cut from their classic cartoons because of "inappropriate" content: racial, sexual and violent. Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:55:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hilarious "state-of-the-industry" letter from the

Hilarious "state-of-the-industry" letter from the year 2021, a la futurefeedforward.

Apple Computer continues to do well, but not for its stockholders. The company gained tax-exempt status as a religion in 2015.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:52:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Two weeks before the new

Two weeks before the new GameBoy's release, the hardware- and software-based copy-protection schemes have been compromised. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:47:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Underage webcam girls use their

Underage webcam girls use their Amazon wish-lists to solicit goodies from their viewers in exchange for a little peek or two of skin. This is a crogglingly weird use of Amazon wish lists. It's going into my next novel, I swear. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:44:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Talking Moose (Mac shareware-cum-phenom

The Talking Moose (Mac shareware-cum-phenom from the Old Skool) is back for OSX! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:38:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, August 12, 2001

How do you tell a

How do you tell a cosmonaut on Mir that his mother has died? Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:59:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Warhol Worm: A theoretical

The Warhol Worm: A theoretical piece of malware that could infect all the vulnerable servers on the Internet in 15 minutes.

But with 1 million vulnerable machines, any given scan and probe has a .025% chance of being a vulnerable machine. Thus, with the 1.2 million scans per second the initial worms send out, 300 will reveal new targets. By the second minute after release, the worm will have infected a total of 30,000 machines. After the third minute, there will be over 70,000 infected machines. It becomes quite obvious that complete infection will be achieved within the 15 minute timeframe.

Normally, once a worm which uses random probes infects about 1/2 of the available hosts, the rate of new infections slows down considerably. A fully coordinated worm, where the tasks of scanning the internet are perfectly divided, will only slow down once every target is infected. The pseudo random/random combination is a compromise, allowing the worm to do a comprehensive scan of the internet without relying on transmitting information between worms, just the ability to check to see if a potential target is already infected.

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:57:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wonderfully thorough backgrounder on DeCSS,

Wonderfully thorough backgrounder on DeCSS, the DMCA, WIPO, and the whole acronym stew of shamefully bad copyright law and litigation. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:46:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

At last! Doc Searls has

At last! Doc Searls has posted the entire text of the inspirational polemic and international best-seller, "The Cluetrain Manifesto" on the Web.

Professionalism goes far beyond acting according to a canon of ethics. Professionals dress like other professionals (one eccentricity per person is permitted -- a garish tie, perhaps, or a funky necklace), decorate their cubicles with nothing more disturbing than a Dilbert (formerly Far Side) cartoon, sit up straight at committee meetings, tell carefully calibrated jokes, don’t undermine the authority of (that is, show they’re smarter than) their superiors, make idle chatter only about a narrow range of "safe" topics, don’t swear, don’t mention God, make absolutely no reference to being sexual (exceptions made for male executives after the hot new hire has left the room), and successfully "manage" their home life so that it never intrudes unexpectedly into their business life.

Most of us don’t mind doing this. In fact, we actually sort of enjoy it. It’s like playing grownup. And having extremist political banners hung in cubicles or having to listen to someone talk about his spiritual commitments or sex life would simply be distracting. Disturbing, actually.

And yet... we feel resentment. Find someone who likes being managed, who feels fully at home in his or her professional self. Our longing for the Web is rooted in the deep resentment we feel towards being managed.

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:42:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, August 11, 2001

The Southern Baptists have produced

The Southern Baptists have produced a video with the truth about Harry Potter.

"This is just an itty-bitty video going up against a multimillion-dollar deal," said Robert McGee, associate pastor at the First Baptist Church of Merritt Island, who helped create the film. "But we want to educate parents. We want them to see the truth about these books."

The truth, according to the video, is that "children as young as kindergarten are being introduced to human sacrifice, the sucking of blood from dead animals and possession by spirit beings."

"I've read the Potter books and they are wonderfully written," McGee said. "But we're not talking about the Smurfs here. Children are learning the elements of witchcraft in the context of being told it's the greatest thing since sliced bread."

Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:30:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Highway 127 Corridor Sale

The Highway 127 Corridor Sale is a gargantuan yard-sale that stretches from Kentucky to Alabama!

He has Depression-era primitive tables and funky '50s lamps in his living room. He has a hoard of antique Christmas ornaments and handmade bluebird houses on his deck. He has a dozen rare Ballerina Ware (think poor man's Fiesta) tumblers he got for 10 cents a piece. This is the stuff they used as props on I Love Lucy — and now they're worth at least $100 for the bunch.

"I've practically furnished my house," Hood says. "Someone told me it's a cross between Pee-wee's Playhouse and the Great Depression."

Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:24:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great, techie article explains what

Great, techie article explains what happens when you boot your computer up. My dad was a PDP-11 programmer in the old days, and he's got great stories about booting the machine up with a "bootstrap" -- a strip of punched cardboard that you whipped through the computer like the strip on a Hot Wheels car, so that it could find all the gunk it needed to start up properly. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:07:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Leaked story details the specs

Leaked story details the specs of the new Palm PDA, the m125. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:04:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, August 10, 2001

Here's the Project Gutenberg edition

Here's the Project Gutenberg edition of Three Men in a Boat, which Cory mentioned in a post below.

Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We turned out everything in the hamper. We turned out the bags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of the boat. We took everything out on to the bank and shook it. There was no tin-opener to be found. Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup. Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down. It was George's straw hat that saved his life that day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter's evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time. Harris got off with merely a flesh wound. After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand. We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every form known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it. There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:07:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Historical artwork and UFOs. Bruce

Historical artwork and UFOs. Bruce Sterling sez: "I don't normally go for lame van Daniken crap, but that stuff's plenty weird..."Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:50:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More underappreciated novelty tunes. Slim

More underappreciated novelty tunes. Slim Gaillard (immortalized as the "O-Roony" guy in On the Road) was a jazzman with a flair for nonsense and hot licks. This streaming radio station is 100 percent Slim. All reet! Link Discuss

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

Beliefrevision.org. The site's front page

Beliefrevision.org. The site's front page says it all:

Intelligent agents, like robots and infobots, have to manage beliefs about the world in order to achieve their design goals.

We all know that beliefs can sometimes be wrong, so intelligent agents need to be able to revise beliefs when they acquire new information that contradicts their old beliefs.

Belief Revision capabilities are crucially important for sound decision making and effective communication. In fact, belief revision is fundamental to an intelligent agent's being!

Link Discuss (via Meerkat

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:29:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jef at Acme's built a

Jef at Acme's built a kick-ass satellite-image browser, one that lets you zoom around, switch to topo, and generally play around with the planet. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:57:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

25 Rules for Columnists. Theoretically,

25 Rules for Columnists. Theoretically, this applies to bloggers, but I tend to think that doing a daily column (instead of a several-times-daily blog entry) shortens the horizon quite a bit. For example, he cautions you not to repeat your hobbyhorses more than once every six months. For me, the rule is more like six hours.

13) I is 106 years since Jerome K Jerome related his difficulties in trying to open a tin of pineapple in Three Men In A Boat. Unless you can improve this classic account, keep your problems with packaging to yourself.

Link Discuss (via kottke.org)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:12:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The grossest of extreme sports:

The grossest of extreme sports: cricket-spitting. Eww. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:34:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, August 9, 2001

More FilePile goodness: The Last

More FilePile goodness: The Last Supper, featuring Mickey Mouse and pals. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:59:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Liquid sun: researchers invent a

Liquid sun: researchers invent a liquid solution that leaves behind solar panels made of self-organizing crystals when it evaporates. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:39:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

It's all in your head.

It's all in your head. Parkinson's Disease is brought on by an absence of dopamine in the brain. Researchers doing a double-blind test with a dopamine precursor and a placebo discovered that the placebo stimulated the production of nearly as much dopamine as the drug. Weird.

The researchers found that in every patient, the placebo alone caused a substantial amount of dopamine to be released. "The interesting thing is, we are seeing a magnitude comparable to medication," says Stoessl.

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:36:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The organizing committee for the

The organizing committee for the O'Reilly P2P+Web Services conference is being interviewed, en masse, on the Decentralization list on Yahoo Groups this week. Check out my first post:

Another example, in the service of explaining the consequences of Metcalfe-driven tech. Say you're working on a little indie CGI movie, something funny and cool like the Princess-Bride-starring-all-rubber-sharks thing that made the rounds a couple weeks ago, except all computer-rendered. An adaptation of Lord of the Rings starring CGI pro-wrestlers and porn stars, maybe. You've been at it for a year, and there are, oh, 40,000 CPUs that fetch down your polygon and texture data whenever they're idle and render it out for you.

Along comes the competition: another indie CGI movie. This one is an adaptation of Snow Crash, starring CGI Transformers, with funny voices that your basso-profundo friend who can induce bowel-seizures with his lowest James Earl Jones impression is doing. Users: 7.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:22:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

You can rent banner-carrying protestors

You can rent banner-carrying protestors to demonstrate in front of the White House for $100 an hour. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:33:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fascinating news story about Australian

Fascinating news story about Australian teenagers' cellular use:

"'My mobile is my life, I'd be lost without it' - this is the theme that comes through, this identification of your mobile with your life, with your social life, with your personal life, with your leisure."

Today's youth store birthdays, phone numbers, bank account details and tax file numbers in their phones.

"If they lose their phone, they've lost that essential connection to so many people in their lives,"

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:33:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

It's raining corn in Wichita.

It's raining corn in Wichita. Seriously. Link Discuss (via Ribbit! News?)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:23:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here's a new printer that

Here's a new printer that can print edible inks directly onto cookie and cake icing. The company's inexplicable motto is "Turning memories into profits." Why not "A picture is worth a thousand calories?"

All flat surfaced, pre-iced cake or cookie products using most scratch and traditional icings including butter cream, sugar icing, fondant and most non-dairy(lite) icings, provided they are smooth and without excessive surface moisture. Pictures can also be done on light-colored cheesecakes and white chocolate.

Link Discuss (Thanks, ronks!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:37:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"A Brief History of Hacking"

"A Brief History of Hacking" in four panels of an online comic. Link Discuss (Thanks, Joey!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:30:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The latest Cardhouse art-project is

The latest Cardhouse art-project is a gem: pictures and notes on nearly every candy cigarette in the world, from "Winstun" to the Japanese "Little Bob-Dog." Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:37:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funny online comic at FilePile:

Funny online comic at FilePile: Safety tips from Anubis! I don't know why I find this so highly amusing, but I keep thinking about it and chuckling. I think it's panel four that really kills me. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:27:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, August 8, 2001

Terrific Salon story on the

Terrific Salon story on the old guard of snotty comix people versus hep Web comix people, including juicy material from the creators of e-sheep and When I Am King. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:41:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AI researchers unveil a software

AI researchers unveil a software robot that they claim can write news stories. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:10:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yet another Dan Clowes profile,

Yet another Dan Clowes profile, this time from The SF Examiner. Link Discuss (Thanx, Stefan!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:16:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ookworld's gallerty of fabulous old

Ookworld's gallerty of fabulous old magazine covers. (make sure to look at the comic books, too.) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:40:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ookworld presents a gallery of

Ookworld presents a gallery of automobiles from an era when people knew how to design them. We are just the Barbarians marveling at the Roman's superior skill and intellect. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:36:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The official Ghost World site

The official Ghost World site is great. Lots of little Clowes animations and song samples from the movie. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:32:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Just outside of Moscow, there's

Just outside of Moscow, there's a market where you can buy pirate music and video of any description -- that's illegal in Russia, but don't worry about it, the cops don't care. At least, they didn't, until the hawkers started including pirate databases cracked from government computers (CDs with the home address and phone number of every government employee, for example). Since buying and selling databases -- regardless of source -- is legal in Russia, the cops are using the bootleg music as an excuse to get the databases off the street. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, August 7, 2001

Thorough debunking of the hysterical,

Thorough debunking of the hysterical, anti-medicare myths about Canada's health-care system. Link Discuss (via Mooselessness)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:02:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funny commentary-in-doggerel about the new

Funny commentary-in-doggerel about the new Star Wars movie title. Link Discuss (Thanks, Joey!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

O'Reilly's Richard Koman interviews Lawrence

O'Reilly's Richard Koman interviews Lawrence Lessig, and gets a preview of Lessig's forthcoming address to the O'Reilly P2P/Web Services conference: "Preserving the Innovation Commons." Good, meaty talk about the DMCA, Dmitry, SDMI und zo weiter. This conference is going to kick: So. Much. Ass.

Now the problem with this technique for protecting copyright law is that copyright law itself is a very subtle and balanced legal regulation. It doesn't guarantee authors perfect control over copyrighted material. What it does is balance a certain incentive that is given to authors against certain public rights of access, and those are typically enforced through a fair-use doctrine but also through requirements that copyright be for limited times. Now those balances are typically enforced through court decisions that refuse to find infringement except when there is no fair use or except when it's legitimate copyright. When it's technology that's being used to protect copyright, however, that technology doesn't have to be as subtle or as balanced as copyright law is. So if you have a trusted system that is protecting certain content, there's no reason that trusted system would have to free that content for purposes of fair use or protect that content for just a limited time.

Now that means that technology is actually granting copyright holders more control over content than copyright law itself would require. And that means that when provisions like the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are used to protect technology that's protecting copyright interests, the law is actually protecting a stronger copyright interest than copyright law itself would protect, because when you crack a technological protection system, even if it's for the purposes of fair use, the tools used to crack it are criminal under the anti-circumvention provisions. So the effect of fair use in a digital rights management world can shrink quite dramatically, and what this essentially means is that the power to develop technologies that enable the distribution and research into the technologies for encryption is essentially centralized into the hands of those digital rights management companies that are supporting mainly traditional Hollywood or media interests.

Link Discuss (Disclaimer: I'm on the organizing committee for the conference -- but it really will kick ass)

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

The Onion interviews Samuel R.

The Onion interviews Samuel R. Delany.

And I think we tend to forget that the media is a huge business. As such, it functions in the larger society as big businesses do. It promotes the ideas that are useful to big businesses, and by extension, are deleterious to small businesses. "Bigger is better." It's very hard for the media not to say that, even when it's trying to. And I think a lot of those ideas do come from the media. Within the circle of the media, I don't think there's any way to get around that.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:27:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flexify is a new Photoshop

Flexify is a new Photoshop filter that bends images and distorts my perception of reality. I haven't been a rasterbater in years, but this makes me want to fire up Photoshop and make some roundness. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:15:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Female Hong Kong pickpockets strip

Female Hong Kong pickpockets strip naked while fleeing police, which causes the cops, who are apparently pathologically afeared of sexual-harassment accusations, to give up the chase. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:06:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Check out this amazing Dutch

Check out this amazing Dutch hacker conference, where the opening ceremonies consist of digging trenches through town, laying conduit and pulling fiber. Infrastructurefest! Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:56:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great, insightful piece on Bluetooth's

Great, insightful piece on Bluetooth's coming downfall. The author's thesis is that Bluetooth is designed so that it enjoys no "network effects" -- that is, Bluetooth users don't get a better experience when other Bluetooth users get on board -- contrast this to other networking gear, like fax machines and modems, and you'll see that Bluetooth is fighting an uphill battle. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:55:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I recently made an important

I recently made an important connection between my vocation and my ethnicity: Jewish grandmothers are the original science-fiction writers. You see, the business of being a science fiction writer is (for me) all about imagining the snowballing consequences of one or two otherwise unremarkable events or artifacts -- sf writers ponder three problems: "What if?" "If this goes on..." and "If only..."

Now, take my grandmother. She's a worrier. Last time I was in Toronto, I was picked up by my folks and driven up to York University, to attend my brother's graduation. We were meeting my grandparents there. My mom -- who taught for years at York and has a couple of degrees from that august institution (whence I dropped out of after one semester) -- just had a hip replacement and was on crutches. My grandmother called her cellphone and mine, three times, to make sure that we knew which lot was closest to the tent where the convocation was being held. Each call was more angst-ridden than the last, and it was clear that she was working herself up into quite a lather. You see, she'd asked the three critical sfnal questions: what if they park in a distant lot and my daughter has to crutch half a mile to the tent? If only they knew about this other lot! If they do park in the distant lot, surely my daughter will critically injure herself en route to the tent. I have no doubt that my grandmother vividly imagined a plethora of horrible outcomes, each scarier than the last. She seized upon a tiny detail and extrapolated to a distopian outcome that made Orwell's worst nightmare seem like a Teletubbies episode. Never mind that my mother knows every inch of the York campus, and that my grandmother has been there maybe half a dozen times in her life -- it was vital that she communicate this message, otherwise the worst would certainly come to pass.

And here I am, a pathological worrier in the guise of an sf writer. For me, the worry revolves around backup. I fear the coming infopocalypse, the day that my place is burgled and my half-dozen-or-so computers are stolen, the big quake, the fire, the flood. My fiction lost forever. My financials, so painstakingly spreadsheeted, gone. Likewise, my e-text collection, 60,000 archived emails going back to the early 90s, and 10GB of MP3s. I take backup seriously.

My network is backed up to a 70GB tape every night, and once a week, I swap the tape into a safe-deposit box, along with a backup of my Visor on a backup cartridge. But that's not really good enough -- what if the hemisphere is destroyed? That's why I also encrypt my data -- my entire body of written work, my financials, and an image of my Visor's ROM -- and upload it to a server in Australia once a month. Just in case.

I'm highly opinionated on the subject of backup. In order to be a proper backup, you must:

• Copy every byte on every drive on your network (otherwise, you're relying on busy, distracted human beings to identify all of their critical files)
• Yes, every byte. Rebuilding all your preferences, your bookmarks, your serial numbers -- that's a giant pain in the ass
• Take your backup offsite. An onsite backup is an archive. The infopocalype will destroy your home. Be prepared

Backup is tricky. Used to be, I could back up a 10-computer network on an 8GB tape. Every computer I've bought in the last 18 months has shipped with at least 10GB of hard-drive. It's getting harder and harder to fit a whole network onto one tape (and putting it onto two tapes is a non-starter, since you'll have to remember to swap the tapes once cassette one is filled). Not to mention getting that whole backup accomplished overnight, when you're not actually attempting to use your computers. That's why I'm so excited by this, LaCie's screamingly fast new 70GB FireWire tape drive. You can back up 7.2GB of data per hour with this thing. Overnight backups for the whole network!

OK, I admit it, I have a problem. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:44:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Frank Gehry's lovely, ethereal Disney

Frank Gehry's lovely, ethereal Disney Concert Hall in LA is a pain-in-the-ass to build. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:11:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazing (and amusing) Flash movie

Amazing (and amusing) Flash movie about a Canadian's adventures in trying to get a cheque in US funds deposited at his local Royal Bank, where he'd been banking for 13 years. I went through a similar adventure with Canada Trust a couple years ago, trying to cash a cheque from Wired, but I eventually got it sorted out by going to my home branch and having a nice chat with the manager. No such luck wtih Royal apparently. Link Discuss (via Mooselessness)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:03:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Conan O'Brien's spectacularily funny commencement

Conan O'Brien's spectacularily funny commencement address to last year's Harvard class.

I remember well the great uncertainty of this day. Many of you are justifiably nervous about leaving the safe, comfortable world of Harvard Yard and hurling yourself headlong into the cold, harsh world of Harvard Grad School, a plum job at your father's firm, or a year abroad with a gold Amex card and then a plum job in your father's firm. But let me assure you that the knowledge you've gained here at Harvard is a precious gift that will never leave you. Take it from me, your education is yours to keep forever. Why, many of you have read the Merchant of Florence, and that will inspire you when you travel to the island of Spain. Your knowledge of that problem they had with those people in Russia, or that guy in South America-you know, that guy-will enrich you for the rest of your life.

Link Discuss (via Mooselessness, where incidentally, Tim has written an embarrasingly flattering blog entry about yerstruly)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:49:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Disgruntled Ex-Burger-King-Employee Manifesto. Especially

The Disgruntled Ex-Burger-King-Employee Manifesto. Especially amazing is the collection of "Evil Customer" stories, which goes on and on and on and on. Link Discuss (via Camworld)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:27:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Underappreciated novelty acts, part two:

Underappreciated novelty acts, part two: The Hoosier Hotshots (Photo). Charming country swing, with zither, slide-whistle, funny lyrics and a half-wit named Hezzie whose high comical laugh punctuates the intros and outros. Link Discuss

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

The definitive primer on search-engine

The definitive primer on search-engine optimization. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:39:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, August 6, 2001

Un-beee-leee-vable footage of Microsoft CEO

Un-beee-leee-vable footage of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a conference, behaving, well, excitedly. Very excitedly. OK, he's goin' nuts, Broadway-style. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:09:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A truly postmodern photograph of

A truly postmodern photograph of a sign in Barcelona's George Orwell Place. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:56:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The feds successfully guess at

The feds successfully guess at a mobster's encryption password and use his encrypted data against him. The genius was using his dad's prison ID number. Link Discuss (Thanks, ronks!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:44:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Megosteve tells the incredible story

Megosteve tells the incredible story of the humble Simpsons action-figure and the ensuing tulip-bulb mania.

About a year ago, Playmates Toys, who made their name in the toy collecting world with an extensive Star Trek line, acquired the Simpsons license and released their first wave of Simpsons action figures. For the first time in almost ten years, Simpsons action figures were available on toy shelves, and toy collectors soon discovered the line. In the past year, Simpsons has become, arguably, one of the most-collected, most-talked-about action figure lines, displacing Star Wars. ToyFare did an exclusive Glow In The Dark Homer figure, and, because ToyFare had slashed its production numbers after being stuck with thousands of unsold exclusives, it quickly became the most sought after ToyFare exclusive ever. Originally less than $15, it pretty easily sells in the $125-150 range on eBay. ToyFare knew it had a good thing on its hands, so it offered a second Simpsons exclusive just a few months ago... Pin Pal Burns.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:13:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Martha Stewart's erotic journal.The first

Martha Stewart's erotic journal.

The first spark of realization came last night, as I lay in my four-post antique bed next to a total stranger named Claude, atop my pastel blue down comforter, protected from the ravages of our bodily fluids by an attractive denim coverlet. The antique ceiling fan with brass fittings efficiently dried the sweat from our bodies; spot-cleaning was done with a discreetly concealed cannister of baby-wipes in the top drawer of the bedside table. Exhausted, Claude slept deeply and heavily, making it very difficult to move his limbs into an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. His proud manhood leaned decidedly and unfortunately to the left, ruining the symmetry of his repose. I solved this problem by covering it with an understated terracotta penis cozy.

Link Discuss (Thanks, kirstie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:56:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Super-cool robot receptionist/museum guide....a robot

Super-cool robot receptionist/museum guide.

...a robot capable of recognizing human voices even in a noisy, crowded room and suited for use as a receptionist or a guide at a convention site...

Link (via Robots.net by way of Meerkat) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:34:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Department-of-Underappreciated-Novelty-Tunes: Homer and Jethro, the

Department-of-Underappreciated-Novelty-Tunes: Homer and Jethro, the bluegrass duo who did Weird-Al-style covers of C&W tunes and nursery rhymes. Here are a bunch of their lyrics. My fave: "You know what a basketball nose is? It dribbles all over the place." Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:26:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Using 3D first-person-shooters to teach

Using 3D first-person-shooters to teach typing:

In THE TYPING OF THE DEAD you run through House of the Dead 2, but instead of firing a light-gun you type a word that is displayed onscreen in front of the creature attacking you. The faster and more accurately you type the words, the faster you'll kill the zombies and the higher you're score will be.

Link Discuss (via Apathy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:22:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A photographer exposes eleven people

A photographer exposes eleven people to drugs that they've never taken before (from hash to heroin) and takes their pictures, publishing them along with notes on the sessions. Link Discuss (via Cardhouse)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:45:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Deck O' Junk: Cardhouse's

The Deck O' Junk: Cardhouse's editor asks his readers to send him playing cards they've found on the street and assembles an astonishing deck. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:42:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Greenspun tells us why digital

Greenspun tells us why digital camera interfaces suck. Go, Phil! Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:52:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Two revelations: according to this

Two revelations: according to this page, BoingBoing is a "leading blog" but it draws on "colonialist and authoritarian models of 'discovery,' categorization and exhibition." Exhibitionism, maybe, but exhibition?

Seriously, though. It's a good, thoughtful essay, though perhaps blinded to the charm of the sideshow. Link (via Cardhouse) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:49:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Acme defined. Link Discuss

Acme defined. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:45:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Are you a left-wing wacko?

Are you a left-wing wacko? A simple quiz, courtesy of This Modern World. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:36:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Turns out that falling into

Turns out that falling into the crater of an active volcano isn't necessarily fatal. Who knew? Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Deutsche Telekom launches a porn

Deutsche Telekom launches a porn service. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:20:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Very weirdly reported puff-piece on

Very weirdly reported puff-piece on the airline industry from CNN. They're reporting that delays and customer complaints are both down, and attributing it to greater competence on the part of the airline. There's hardly a suggestion that the reduction in customer complaints could be ascribed to the fact that with the dot-bomb, no one can afford to fly anymore (fewer passengers, fewer complaints), and that the reduction in delays might be because the airlines have dropped so many of their routes (fewer planes to manage, better odds of an on-time departure). The closest they come is a speculation from one guy who mentions a slight drop in business in the first two quarters of 2001, and says that passengers must've gotten so disgusted that they stopped flying (!). How did this reporter manage to find half a dozen sources who hadn't heard that commercial aviation is in big, big trouble? (It's worth mentioning that in my experience, the el crappo airlines -- Frontier, Continental, America West -- are doing a brisk trade with business travellers with tightened belts, while the bigs -- United, etc -- are flying nearly empty jets around). Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:56:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, August 5, 2001

We have a tomato garden

We have a tomato garden in our backyard that produces this many tomatoes every two days. I've been making pasta sauce all month. (click on link for bigger image.) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:53:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What's Tommy Chong doing now?

What's Tommy Chong doing now? Marketing "Urine Luck" -- a urine additive that helps you pass your drug test.Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:56:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

An e-commerce idea whose time

An e-commerce idea whose time has come: customized bowling shirts online! Link Discuss (Thanks, Lori)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:52:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Well, the reason that the

Well, the reason that the Bill-Gates-breeding-child-prodigies story sounded so weird and incredible is that is was an April Fool's hoax. D'oh. Link Discuss (Thanks, jonl!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:36:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brad: the game. A funny,

Brad: the game. A funny, raunchy, slacker-oriented choose-your-own-adventure game.

You wake up in a pool of sweat, still shouting.  At least it looks like sweat.  Pretty much.  Well, creamy sweat.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Joey!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:31:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Porn-star/geek Asia Carrera's makeup tips.

Porn-star/geek Asia Carrera's makeup tips. Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:02:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, August 4, 2001

Hacksploitation: a guide to hackers

Hacksploitation: a guide to hackers in films. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:47:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A company claims to have

A company claims to have invented a powder that can be dumped into storm clouds and make them go away. Link (via MeFi) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:44:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bizarre conspiracy theory du jour:

Bizarre conspiracy theory du jour: Microsoft is identifying child prodigies and moving them to Redmond and getting them under contract, in order to own any inventions they come up with in the future. The piece is so National Enquirer, I'm having a hard time taking it seriously. Link Discuss (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:40:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Good Village Voice roundup of

Good Village Voice roundup of nonlethal crowd control devices and high-tech protesting, and the hidden dangers thereof. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:32:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Latest collectibles craze: AOL CDs.

Latest collectibles craze: AOL CDs. Get the whole set! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:23:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, August 3, 2001

Cell phone guns. Do you

Cell phone guns. Do you think this is a hoax? Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:48:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiki King has a great

Tiki King has a great database about different ukulele manufacturers. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:06:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Here's a page that shows

Here's a page that shows how Nokia swiped a Shag scooter illustration. I seriously doubt that Shag saw this drawing I did in '96 or '97 for Cincinnati CityBeat, but it is kind of similar. Discuss (thanx, Tim!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:37:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jenny sez: "Crad Kilodney sold

Jenny sez: "Crad Kilodney sold his self-published books on the streets of Toronto for 15 years. He would stand on Bloor, Yongue and Queen streets with a placard around his neck with various messages like 'Sewer Terror Burgers' or 'Degenerate Literature for the walking dead of Canada' with sales pitches like: 'I have no arms and legs (he's fully appended), won't you please buy my books?' He was always wired with a hidden microphone to record his encounters on the street, and would later compile cassettes of the most interesting encounters, and sell them along with his books. Virtually unknown and completely disregarded in Toronto, a visiting Robert Crumb once devoted his entire interview to talking about Crad. Now retired, Crad contributes monthly to jagular.com, (where you can read some other interesting diatribes by the site's host). Sorry this reads like a fucking ad. Crad has been a dear friend of mine for the last 12 years, and he loves getting mail from anyone. His autobiographies (Excrement and Putrid Scum) are hilarious and painful to read. I just wish more people knew about dear old Crad."Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:12:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The coolest Ethernet cable, ever.

The coolest Ethernet cable, ever. RoadWired gear kicks ass, and this self-retracting cable, which doubles as a phone-wire, looks tee-riffic. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:45:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Linda Barry's Doggy Summer Bingo

Linda Barry's Doggy Summer Bingo is hilarious. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:18:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, August 2, 2001

David Byrne's "Like Humans Do"

David Byrne's "Like Humans Do" will be bundled with Windows XP. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

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

The music industry's anti-piracy technology

The music industry's anti-piracy technology called the Cactus Data Shield could possibly damage equipment that plays illegally copied music. I'd rather have them do this than destroy the intent of the original copyright law by using the DCMA to squelch sharing and copying. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:03:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dan wrote to tell me

Dan wrote to tell me about XinHua, the Chinese official governmental newswire, which features slightly sinister sounding newsbites like this:

In order to create a more friendly environment for HIV/AIDS patients, and for the purpose of better prevention, China plans to make relevant knowledge accessible to 75 percent of the urba population, 45 percent of rural residents, and 80 percent of high risk people such as drug users.

Mass media across the country have been encouraged to carry and broadcast reports and non-commercial advertisements on a weekly basis to promote the spread of correct information.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:07:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Salon profiles Matt Besser. Besser's

Salon profiles Matt Besser. Besser's a comedian whose NYC home number was similar to a Houston-based free ISP's tech-support number -- if you were clueless enough to forget to dial 1 before calling out. The ISP refused to put the 1 on their homepage, hence Besser was plagued by hundreds of tech-support calls at weird hours. Instead of switching his number, Besser built his act around it: he played with the minds of his callers, recorded them, and played them back, with commentary, on stage. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:44:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bruce Perens explains why e-book

Bruce Perens explains why e-book publishers should thank Skylarov, links to Dmitry's controversial slideshow. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:00:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vernor Vinge profiled in today's

Vernor Vinge profiled in today's New York Times Discuss Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:54:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, August 1, 2001

Two weeks after copy-protected CDs

Two weeks after copy-protected CDs were announced, they have been cracked. Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:19:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

From McSweeney's: An essay detailing

From McSweeney's: An essay detailing the strange and obsessive things the author did as a child.

Age 10:
Made up my own superheroes and comic books, as many young comic book fans do. I didn't stop there, however, and went on to create my own imaginary comic book company, complete with a unifying corporate design and advertising campaigns, mimicking the business models of Marvel and DC Comics.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:41:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

X-Ray Goggles that "really" work!?!

X-Ray Goggles that "really" work!?! The technology is the same as the "Niteshot" infrared feature on that now-discontinued Sony camcorder that kinda sorta maybe sometimes let you see through clothing. The X-Ray effect worked as long as the fabric was light-colored and thin enough to enable the infrared light to penetrate even though visible light couldn't. You can still buy Sony camcorders with Niteshot and order after-market IR filters from places like this! Or you can just use your imagination--that's free and far higher quality.

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:14:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MacOS 10.1 beta has leaked

MacOS 10.1 beta has leaked onto the Internet, and C|Net says it's fast as hell. Link Discuss (Thanks, biscuit!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:25:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great AskTog column on how

Great AskTog column on how lawyer-mandated disclaimers make everything suck.

Work come to a standstill while we look for the button to vanish the tiny box with the even tinier type. Leisure comes to a standstill while we learn that the FBI is going to take time out of their busy schedule to break into our house and arrest us if we dare make a copy of some third-rate DVD.

Link Discuss (via Meerkat)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:36:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I spoke on a totally

I spoke on a totally hilarious panel about P2P at Esther Dyson's PC Forum last spring. They've posted the transcript. Boy, that was a lot of fun.

The fact that peer-to-peer has stepped in to fill the void that was left by the lag of IPv6 illustrates what happens when you get industry consortia pursing their own interests in the guise of a standards body versus people actually just going out and doing it. As David said, it will be the base of the next Internet. But that base should belong to us.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:32:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stefan recommends this especially wonderful

Stefan recommends this especially wonderful gallery of vintage motel postcards, from the collection of the amazing Mr. James Lileks. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:24:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great Onion man-on-the-street poll about

Great Onion man-on-the-street poll about Bush's space-based missile-defense system. My favorites:

I've got a missile-defense idea: We genetically engineer a race of bird-men to fly up and defuse the missiles with their beaks. That'd be cheaper and just as effective.

As Kenny Rogers says, you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em; know when to walk away, know when to use humanity as a bargaining chip in a game of nuclear brinksmanship

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:18:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Proof that great minds think

Proof that great minds think alike and, further, that good news travels fast.. Mark and I both posted the Coca-Cola/H2O/Olive Garden story within minutes of each other (see below). This is such a weird coincidence, I'm going to leave both listings up. Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:08:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coca-Cola's website is carrying this

Coca-Cola's website is carrying this inspirational story describing the Olive Garden's struggle to switch their customers from tap water to booze and/or pop. This is corporate back-patting of the first water, cheerful amorality at its finest. I especially like the phrase "tap-water incidents."

H2NO is a crew education kit containing information about beverage suggestive selling techniques (a technique used when a server suggests a profitable beverage in place of water to the customer during the ordering process). It matched perfectly with what Olive Garden had envisioned. Restaurant managers and servers use the kit to emphasize the wide range of beverage selections available, including soft drinks, non-carbonated beverages and alcohol. As a side effect, overall check averages should increase, and remember, increased check averages mean higher profits for the restaurant and more cash in servers' pockets.

Link Discuss (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:03:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Have you ever been to

Have you ever been to an Olive Garden restaurant. In a word, it sucks. Phony atmosphere, bland platers of greasy junk. I lost a tremendous amount of respect for Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey when I read that he ate there. Now, a boingboing reader named Magnadub tells me, "The Olive Garden doesn't want you drinking water with your 'Tour of Italy'...and neither does Coke. The two dark forces apparently went in on an anti-water campaign called H2NO (hyuk!) that trains OG staff with recommending alternative beverages to water 'with the goal of increasing overall guest satisfaction.' This is the official line from Coke, and as usual, it reeks of disdain for anything remotely anti-Coke, even when the villian is the source of all life, the universal solvent itself." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:57:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

There are some funny photoshopped

There are some funny photoshopped pictures in this fark.com thread. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:32:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIP, Poul Anderson, Science Fiction

RIP, Poul Anderson, Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master, 1926-2001. Link  Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:16:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIP, Frank Willison, editor-in-chief of

RIP, Frank Willison, editor-in-chief of O'Reilly. This memorial page has gobs of terrific quotes from a real sharp individual.

On Suburbs

"How do these people know what's going on in their homes and neighborhoods all day? For all they know, their houses are being used by drug dealers, spies, or clever urban raccoons. Delivery men might notice such unauthorized activity I would support legislation requiring some percentage of the residents of a neighborhood to stay home. People might remember why they have homes in the first place."

Link Discuss (via EvHead)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:09:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tanzanian Boy-Scouts skip out on

Tanzanian Boy-Scouts skip out on the International Scout Jamboree and present themselves at the INS, seeking asylum. Remember the Flintstones episode where Fred ends up leading the International Jamboree in a rousing chorous of "Old McDonald?" This would be a really cool alternate ending. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkeybum Stories for Boys and Girls)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:59:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"When LP's Roamed the Earth"

"When LP's Roamed the Earth" is a nice gallery of old record covers. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:53:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Distributed virtual fishtank! A new

Distributed virtual fishtank! A new peer-to-peer screensaver lets fish swim off of your screen and onto any another screen in the network. God-DAMN, that's cool. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:42:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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