[an error occurred while processing this directive] Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

Monday, September 30, 2002

2000+ year old Greek computer reinterpreted

The Antikythera mechanism, recovered off a sunken ship in Greece in 1900, is thought to be a clockwork device to calculate the orbits of the celestial bodies. New analysis of the remaining fragments shows that it was wicked-cool:
The Greeks believed in an earth-centric universe and accounted for celestial bodies' motions using elaborate models based on epicycles, in which each body describes a circle (the epicycle) around a point that itself moves in a circle around the earth. Mr Wright found evidence that the Antikythera mechanism would have been able to reproduce the motions of the sun and moon accurately, using an epicyclic model devised by Hipparchus, and of the planets Mercury and Venus, using an epicyclic model derived by Apollonius of Perga. (These models, which predate the mechanism, were subsequently incorporated into the work of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD.)

A device that just modelled the motions of the sun, moon, Mercury and Venus does not make much sense. But if an upper layer of mechanism had been built, and lost, these extra gears could have modelled the motions of the three other planets known at the time—Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. In other words, the device may have been able to predict the positions of the known celestial bodies for any given date with a respectable degree of accuracy, using bronze pointers on a circular dial with the constellations of the zodiac running round its edge.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:06:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dan Gillmor responds to Jack Valenti

Dan Gillmor interviewed Jack Valenti last week in his column and did the impartial thing, representing Valenti's beliefs as fairly as possible. This week, Dan takes Valenti's arguments apart, looking at what Hollywood's agenda really entails:
So the movie and music companies are going back to Congress for another helping. They are asking for laws that would force technology innovators to restrict the capabilities of devices -- cripple PCs and other machines that communicate so they can't make copies the copyright holders don't explicitly allow. Amazingly, the entertainment industry also wants permission to hack into networks and machines they believe are being used to violate copyrights.

Here is what it all means. To protect a business model and thwart even the possibility of infringement, the cartel wants technology companies to ask permission before they can innovate. The media giants want to keep information flow centralized, to control the new medium as if it's nothing but a jazzed-up television. Instead of accepting, as they do today, that a certain amount of penny-ante infringement will occur and then going after the major-league pirates, they call every act of infringement -- and some things that aren't infringement at all -- an act of piracy or stealing. Saying it doesn't make it so.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:51:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Automotive software Easter Egg discovered

Slashdot's reporting that according to the current ish of Popular Science, an Easter Egg has been discovered in the transmission control software for the BMW M3:
...the proper combination of commands to the electronically controlled manual transmission will cause the car to rev up to 4000rpm and drop the clutch...
Are we sure that this is a feature and not a bug? Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:22:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney's no-good Park-Czar replaced

Disney has named a new president of Walt Disney Parks, replacing Paul Pressler, the exec who did his damnedest to ruin Disneyland, slashing spending (at the expense of safety and employee satisfaction), building the craptastical California Adventure, reducing the number of SKUs available for sale in the Park stores, and so on. The new president, James Rasulo, used to be head of Euro Disney. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:47:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, September 29, 2002

Turkey City Lexicon

After the talk at UT Austin, I spent Saturday at the Turkey City science fiction writers' workshop at Bruce Sterling's place. Turkey City is a venerable science fiction workshop that has spawned many good writers and a lexicon of science fiction critical terms that is the de facto standard for understanding what works and what doesn't in a work of science fiction:
Squid on the Mantelpiece

Chekhov said that if there are dueling pistols over the mantelpiece in the first act, they should be fired in the third. In other words, a plot element should be deployed in a timely fashion and with proper dramatic emphasis. However, in SF plotting the MacGuffins are often so overwhelming that they cause conventional plot structures to collapse. It's hard to properly dramatize, say, the domestic effects of Dad's bank overdraft when a giant writhing kraken is levelling the city. This mismatch between the conventional dramatic proprieties and SF's extreme, grotesque, or visionary thematics is known as the "squid on the mantelpiece."

Card Tricks in the Dark

Elaborately contrived plot which arrives at (a) the punchline of a private joke no reader will get or (b) the display of some bit of learned trivia relevant only to the author. This stunt may be intensely ingenious, and very gratifying to the author, but it serves no visible fictional purpose. (Attr. Tim Powers)

I had the cold from hell all weekend and I'm jetlagged, but I wanted to get some links up before I hit the sack. Until tomorrow! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:07:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My talk at UT Austin

I've been in Austin all weekend. On Friday, I spoke at the University of Texas about EFF issues. Jon Lebkowsky was there -- hell, he organized it -- and he blogged the hell out of the talk:
Entertainment industry has tradition of attacking technology: the piano roll, the radio (sued by vaudeville), television (would destroy cinema!), "the Betamax affair"... the latter being the first consumer VCR. In Betamax case, argued that the ability to make a full copy of a broadcast work would not be a fair use (in terms of copyright). It was illegal enough that the VCR should be kept off the market, they argued. The Supreme Court got the case, and the thing that shook out of it was the Betamax principle: a technology is legal so long as it has substantial non-infringeing uses. This principle is under attack.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998. Illegal to defeat a copyright measure. Regionalization system for DVDs. This is a control that limits distribution. John Johansen in Norway figured out how to break the content scrambling system and allows you to move from one region to another, override copy protection. It was called DeCSS - Johansen is facing trial for creating a piece of code.

Link (Wes blogged it, too) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:04:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Underwater high-voltage photography

Stefan sez: "My brother's friend Sue plays with high voltage. The linked-to page shows the gadget she used to photograph high voltage discharges in *water*." Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:47:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, September 27, 2002

Nostalgia for analog cameras

Minox has just shipped a teensy digital camera that looks like "a miniaturized Leica M3 classic camera of the fifties with digital interior." Link Discuss (Thanks, Jef!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:41:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom reviewed on Blog Critics

Kevin Marks reviews my novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," on blogcritics.org:
About once every ten years, a Science Fiction novel appears that redefines the art form. One that describes a world different from our own, but recognisably ours - extrapolated from current trends, but richly evocative of its difference, adding words to the language that needed to be coined. Books like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy,Snow Crash and now Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

What these books have in common are worlds that draw you in and make you believe in the technological underpinnings, accepting them implicitly and learning their terminology (TANSTAAFL, frood, Metaverse, Whuffie) as you go, while you follow the adventures of characters you come to care about.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Kevin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:27:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Turd-harvested coffee in the news

Another one of those end-of-history headlines: "Marsupial-manure coffee is flying off the shelves." This isnt' a very new story; turd-java (where the partially digested beans are harvested from the feces of an animal that eats 'em in the wild) has been a weird-ass coffee-fetish that's been creeping into the mainstream for a couple years. And what coul dbe more mainstream than a conservative cattle-country burg like Edmonton?
Coffee fanatics in Vancouver and Edmonton are paying $150 per quarter-pound for the privilege of taking home coffee that came from the poo of an odd marsupial...

The result is worth $600 a pound and has a chocolatey taste.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dave!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:25:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Software Defined Radio defined

Eric Blossom, the developer behind GNU Radio, is interviewed on Slashdot today. GNU Radio is a free-software Software Defined Radio project, wherein an oatmeal PC and some commodity radio hardware are combined to make a device that can tune and demodulate a wide range of signals, from 802.11b to FM radio to cellular; in other words, it's a recipe for turning your computer into a universal radio. It will also be illegal under the Braodcast Flag initiatives working their way through Congress, the FCC and WIPO right now. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:16:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My interview with Howard Rheingold

I interviewed Howard Rheingold about his new book, Smart Mobs, for TheFeature. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:19:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, September 26, 2002

Haunted Mansion movie inches forward

Disney's put up a little brochureware site about its forthcoming (and very exciting!) film based on the Haunted Mansion ride, a followup to the Country Bears movie (I may be the only adult in the world who enjoyed that one). All that's there now is a downlaodable poster, which is pretty keen, except for this supercillious bit of legal crapola you have to click through to get at it.
Disney Pictures hereby grants you a limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable, one-year royalty free license to use and display the Images on your site in accordance with the terms below. Nothing herein by implication or otherwise, shall grant you any rights other than as explicitly set forth below.

You shall receive HTML code and GIF file (the "Files") from Disney Pictures to incorporate the Images into your site. You agree not to modify the Files in any way. Acceptance and use of the Files indicates acceptance of these terms of use. If you do not accept these terms of use, you must not use or display the Files. This license will commence when you receive the Files and will terminate automatically, one year later, or immediately upon any violation of these terms of use. Also, we reserve the right to terminate this license at any time, in our sole discretion, upon notice to you.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:04:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Notes from infamous Guards/Prisoners experiment

Alena sez: "Details of the infamous 1971 Prison Experiment at Stanford University (these types of experiments are today banned due to the psychological harm inflicted on the subjects). In the study, ordinary college students, who responded to an ad for paid subjects of an experiment, were randomly assigned to one of two groups, prisoners or guards, in a simulated prison environment. The ensuing startlingly rapid transformation of ordinary young people (and of Psychology professors!) into sadistic prison guards and fearful, hopeless, and identity-stripped prisoners is astounding."
Prisoner #8612 began suffering from acute emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, uncontrollable crying, and rage. In spite of all of this, we had already come to think so much like prison authorities that we thought he was trying to "con" us -- to fool us into releasing him... [A] colleague had heard we were doing an experiment, and he came to see what was going on. I briefly described what we were up to, and Gordon asked: "Say, what's the independent variable in this study?" I got really angry at him. Here I had a prison break on my hands. The security of my men and the stability of my prison was at stake, and now, I had to deal with this bleeding-heart, liberal, academic, effete dingdong who was concerned about the independent variable!
Link Discuss (Thanks, Alena!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:56:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rats' intestines and pigs' teeth

This is the headline of the month, possibly the year: "Doctors Grow Pig Teeth in Rat Intestines." Do we even need to read the story to understand it? It's like a freaking haiku of near-singularity, future-shocky wonderment!
U.S. doctors said on Thursday they have managed to grow living pig teeth in rats, a feat of biotechnology that experts said could spark a dental revolution.

Researchers at Boston's Forsyth Institute said their successful experiment suggests the existence of dental stem cells, which could one day allow a person to replace a lost tooth with an identical one grown from his or her own cells.

"The ability to identify, isolate and propagate dental stem cells to use in biological replacement tooth therapy has the potential to revolutionize dentistry," said Dominick DePaola, president and CEO of the institute that focuses on oral and facial science.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dave!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:53:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thank the dove, stymie the hawk

Here's a site where you can get a sample letter to your congresscritter, asking her/him to support Rep Barbara Lee's Bill, HR 473 that asks Congress to consider peaceful alternatives to resolving the (non-)situation in Iraq, and asking them to vote down the Shrub's war-bill. Link Discuss

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

Sir Greenspan's Madrigal

The Queen has knighted Alan Greenspan
"It's a very unusual day for an economist," he said, as he received the honorary knighthood in the softly lit library of Balmoral Castle, which looks out onto the royal rose garden and the valley of the River Dee.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:46:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Duct-tapers -- suspension and bondage fetish goes mainstream

Duct-tapers are mainstream bondage fetishists who tape each other up to walls and ceilings "just to see if it will hold." Pervs. Link Discuss (Thanks Steve!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:27:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gearheads and bunnyhuggers in the OED

Some of the words in the new shorter Oxford English Dictionary:
Asylum seeker, economic migrant, bed-blocking, and stakeholder pension reflect the serious side of life; bunny-hugger (a conservationist or animal lover), chick flick (a film appealing to women), gearhead (a car enthusiast), and Grinch (a spoilsport or killjoy) are entries in a more light-hearted vein. Several entries are testaments to the popularity of science fiction, among them Tardis from the TV series Doctor Who, Jedi from Star Wars, and Klingon from Star Trek.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:23:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dabba Wallahs: India's meal-delivery FedEx

Amazing story about the "dabba wallahs" -- India's 112-year-old meal-delivery system that outdoes FedEx using pictograms, bicycles, and largely illiterate (but well-compensated) deliverypeople:
As part of the tiffin distribution process, every day the meals are picked up from commuters' homes in Mumbai long after the commuters have left for work, delivered to them on time, then picked up and delivered home before the commuters return.

Each tiffin carrier has, painted on its top, a number of symbols that identify where the carrier was picked up, the originating and destination stations and the address to which it is to be delivered.

After the tiffin carriers are picked up, they are taken to the nearest railway station, where they are sorted according to the destination station.

At the destination station they are unloaded by other dabba wallahs and re-sorted, this time according to street address and floor.

The 80 kg crates of carriers, carried on dabba wallahs' heads, hand-wagons and cycles are delivered at 12.30 p.m., picked up at 1.30 p.m., and returned when they came.

The system relies on multiple relays of dabba wallahs, and a single tiffin box may change hands up to three times during its journey from home to office.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Tom!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:53:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

Labels shoot selves in foot by focusing on stopping P2P

A new KPMG study concludes that the RIAA and its member companies are hurting themselves by focusing on cracking down on P2P sharing instead of figuring out ways to earn a living with it.
Media companies must put less emphasis on protecting digital content and instead find ways to make money from digital music and movies if they hope to beat back copyright pirates who threaten their businesses, according to a study released on Wednesday from KPMG...

"They complain about the Napsters," she said, referring to the bankrupt music swap site that was found to violate U.S. copyright laws. "But why do the Napsters exist, because the marketplace wants them."

Steel said that if the issue "is not on boardroom table ... then that boardroom has problems."

Link Discuss (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:01:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Speaking in Texas this Friday

Just a reminder: I'm speaking at the University of Texas at Austin at 7PM this Friday -- giving a talk on Hollywood's legislative agenda, sponsored by EFF-Austin, ACTLab, and ACLU-Texas. Love to see you there! Link Discuss

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

Public domain superheroes reborn in Tom Strong

Great piece on the pulp comic characters that appear in the new series of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Tom Strong (thanks, Zed) funnybook. These characters, like The Terror and The Fighting Yank, are in the public domain because their original publishers didn't register (or renew, it's unclear) their copyright, which means that they've been granted a new lease on life in Tom Strong. The article segues into a very good discussion of the public domain. This was just Slashdotted, so it might be a little slow, but it's worth the wait. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi Trek badges

Brian sez: Vocera Communications has developed what is essentially a Star Trek: TNG-style lapel communicator device that uses WiFi to transmit voice across networks.
The Vocera Communications System consists of Vocera Server Software, residing on a customer premise server, and Vocera Communications Badges, which operate over a wireless LAN (802.11b). The badge - which weighs less than 2 ounces - includes a microphone and speaker, LCD readout to display text messages, and an 802.11b wireless radio. It can be clipped to a shirt pocket or collar, or worn on a lanyard.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Brian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:43:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Bond-Barbie

Barbie has been made over as a Bond girl:
As James Bond, Ken has matured nicely with rooted hair, with slight silvering at his temples, wearing a midnight blue tuxedo, and authentic recreation of the classic tux by Brioni, the famed clothier. Linda Hemming, the award winning costume designer in charge of this year's James Bond film, outfits Barbie doll. She wears a blood red gown with a glittering gold lace overlay and a gauzy red shawl with a gold filigree design. Her gown is cut up the side to reveal lots of leg as well as not so discreet hip strap that anchors Barbie's cell phone. The set is slated for release in November, to coincide with the premiere of "Die Another Day," the new James Bond film. Bond, James Bond, meet Barbie, just Barbie...
Link Discuss (Thanks Derek!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lovely Tokyo rant

Tokyopia is a lovely Japanese gaming site, and it features long, autobiographical, non-gaming-related rants by some of its correspondants, like this one, called "The State of Tokyo Hygiene."
I was halfway up the stairs, in the midst of a people-wave, when the punks made their move. The short one clipped me in the middle of the back with his shoulder. The tall one got me in the back of the head with the side of his elbow. I snapped forward, brushing the top of my long hair into the back of a hurrying salaryman. My toes caught on the bumpy surface of a yellow tile designed to aid the cane-carrying blind, and my chin slammed into the stair at the salaryman's feet. My CD player fell out of my hands, and was neatly impaled by my knee as my leg twisted. Somehow, I managed to slide down one stair, twisting my ankle. When I opened my eyes, I was on my back. Two upside-down Yakuza punks were stepping up onto the platform. My foot hurt like hell -- I must have chipped a bone. It looked like I was going to miss the train.

All the way to work on the morning I met Mami, I thought about the day before, on the Keihin-Tohoku platform, waiting for the train. My CD had been cracked right down the middle. The first five tracks played; the sixth one skipped, and the last ten didn't work at all. I sat there, wondering how my CD player had survived the fall. I had made up my mind: tonight I'm going to beat Metal Gear Solid 2. It isn't released in Japan for seven more days. I got my friend to send it to me for a reason. I'm going to beat it, and then spoil it for the game-loving salaryman who spoiled Final Fantasy X for me. He has a lesson every day. It's payback time.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Marc!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:16:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

12 Reasons to Pre-Order my Novel

I've put up a page called "12 Reasons to Pre-Order Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," with blurbs by twelve people telling you why they think you should buy it. Here're the blurbers:
  1. Bruce Sterling
  2. Lawrence Lessig
  3. Kelly Link
  4. Mark Frauenfelder
  5. Karl Schroeder
  6. Rudy Rucker
  7. Howard Rheingold
  8. Douglas Rushkoff
  9. Tim O'Reilly
  10. Bruce Schneier
  11. Gardner Dozois
  12. Mitch Kapor
And the blurbs are great, like this one:
Wow! Disney imagineering meets nanotechnology, the reputation economy, and Ray Kurzweil's transhuman future. As much fun as Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and as packed with mind bending ideas about social changes cascading from the frontiers of science.

Tim O'Reilly
Publisher and Founder, O'Reilly and Associates

(NB: This used to be 13 reasons, but I just realized that I somehow ended up with a phantom entry from Dan GIllmor, who, on closer examination, it appears I failed to deliver a copy to, like a total idiot. My apologies, Dan) Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:15:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Laura Bush's 419 letter

A new addition to the parodical genre of 419 ("Nigerian Money Laundry Scam") letters from members of the Shrub establishment, following up on Cheney's letter.
I am the widow of the late President George W. Bush of the United States of America. I am writing you this letter in confidence regarding my current circumstances.

I escaped the United States ahead of death squads with my husband and two children Jenna and Frank, moving first to England and then, when my husband's political enemies took power there, to Austria. All of our wealth, obtained legitimately through baseball, oil drilling and insider trading, was seized by the new government of the USA under the despotic regime of (Dr.) Noam Chomsky, except for the contents of a few Swiss bank accounts. These bank accounts, which contain social security lock-box funds and the bulk of the 2001 budget surplus, could not be accessed by me or my children, due to agreements made between the socialist government of the USA and Swiss bank regulators. They seized our ranch in Crawford, Texas and now use it to teach homosexualist propaganda to schoolchildren.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:52:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Buy the Enron "E"

Gregor sez:
ENRON Corp material assets go on the block 7 AM CT TOMORROW, Wednesday, 9/25. First on the list is the giant, steel, Enron "E" (Lot "E"), followed by tons of cool tech. 50 inch plasma panels, desktop LC Displays, boxes of Palm PDAs or Nokia cell phones, network stuff, wireless stuff, desktop computers, servers, monitors, printers, plotters, in both massive lots, and individually! Oh yeah, Enron trade-show trinkets too, by the cartload.

The catch: You have to either go to Texas to pick up the stuff, or arrange with an approved 3rd party vendor (list provided on the web site) to have it picked, packed and shipped for you.

Go! Register! Bid! Consume!

Link Discuss (Thanks, Gregor!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:41:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Horror writers against illiteracy

The Horror Writers of America are hosting a charity auction on eBay to raise money for American literacy charities.
Among the items up for auction: a rare softcover advance copy (bound galley) of Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs issued by St. Martin's Press in 1988; the first U.S. hardcover edition of Clive Barker's The Damnation Game; and a bundle of limited-edition prints depicting scenes from Stephen King novels such as Carrie and The Shining.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:42:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Roman chariots responsible for Space Shuttle design constraints

Ben Hammersley posts a parable about design specifications, showing the link between Roman Chariots and the Space Shuttle. It has the ring of something apocraphyl to me, but it's a good read, nevertheless.
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That is an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them that way? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

So why did the wagons have that particular odd spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that was the spacing of the wheel ruts...

Snopes says it's false, but from their notes, it appears that it's actually largely true, albeit subject to interpretation. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:16:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Britain puts records execs in charge of copyright enforcement

The British government has invited the local equivalent of the RIAA to fund an "anti-piracy" post. As Charlie puts it, "Mr Fox, here's the new set of hen-house keys you ordered."
The UK music industry is to co-fund a new post at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to act as a link with the government in the struggle with music piracy.
Link Discuss (via Charlie's Diary)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:59:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flying cars here, jetpacks next?

Moller, a public company in Davis, California, has developed a flying car.
Moller International has developed the first and only feasible, personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle the world has ever seen.

You've always known it was just a matter of time before the world demanded some kind of flying machine which would replace the automobile. Of course, this machine would have to be capable of VTOL, be easy to maintain, cost effective and reliable. Well, we at Moller International believe we have come up with the solution. That solution is the volantor named M400 Skycar.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Energy gamers screwed California economy

Stefan sez:
A federal judge has determined that gas pipline manager El Paso did indeed limit natural gas supplies to California, resulting in ruinous prices, rolling blackouts, and smug Cato Institute flaks wagging their fingers at hot-tubbers and environmentalists.

California was sitting on a juicy dotcom-era tax windfall before it all got sucked away by this phony crisis.

If I were Gov. Davis, I'd sieze every private pipeline, powerline, and power plant and hold them hostage until the energy industry pays back every dime they extorted from the state.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:47:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fake News Headlines: Basque Explosion Chases Ends In Arm-wrestling Event

NewZoid generates fake news-headlines:
1- Miss Universe Calling For Isidore
2- Rumsfeld Suggests Aspirin Reduces Alzheimer's Risk
3- Editorial Attacks Computer System
4- Stressed Out? Just Call For New TV Show
5- Gore To Hear About It
6- Nurses To Be Given Their Own Passports On Iraq Action
7- US Arraigned In Fighting Slavery
8- Lisa Riley Lines Below Chaos Above
Link Discuss (Thanks, Daniel!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:45:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Von Neumann's Best Friend, a bio-pet

Matt "Warchalking" Jones has come up with a bio-dog for the latest Viridian Design Contest, called Von Neumann's Best Friend. Link Discuss (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:42:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Get your own genome, feed your hypochondria

For UK#400,000, a bioresearcher will map your personal genome for you. As geneticists discover more markers for congenital diseases, you can compare them to your genome and learn what you're in for in your lifetime -- heart disease, cancer, baldness, compulsive hand-washing... Link Discuss (Thanks, Alan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:36:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DVD capture: Unbreaking the Mac

DVD Capture is an AppleScript for OS X that captures screen-grabs from DVDs. OS X normally disables screen-capture while the DVD player is running (even if it isn't visible!). I have some home movies on DVD that I'd love to get stills from, but I can't -- the DVD licensing board has forced Apple to break my hardware in such a way as to prevent me from doing something completely lawful, to make sure that I never, ever grab a frame out of Police Academy n - 1. Nice to see that independent software authors are willing to un-break my gear for me. Link Discuss (Thanks, Patrick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:33:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Science fiction writers help the CIA

Wil McCarthy reports on his experiences consulting with the CIA on scenario building in his capacity as a science fiction writer in the new Wired:
My mission, should I choose to accept it: sit in a room full of fellow sci-fi writers and help imagine, shall we say, things that might someday go bump. But first there was a definite moment of double take, and then a scramble to confirm that this wasn’t some elaborate hoax. Because, like, the CIA needs my advice on scariness?

Let’s face it: The FBI, the NSA, and even Israel’s Mossad are second-rate bogeymen. When it comes to the paranoid fantasies of hit lists and ESP drugs, gigabuck dope deals, and orbiting mind-control lasers, the Agency rules. Then again, it’s not entirely unprecedented for bureaucrats to draw inspiration from science fiction. Fed techies are as likely to read the stuff as any other geeks, and a few at NASA and the DOD even write it.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:26:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

P2P slogans for EFF

EFF is looking for a few good slogans! We're getting some banners made up to place on P2P network clients, with slogans like, "P2P Has a Posse." We need more. Mail your suggestions to kevin@eff.org or post to the discuss link. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:03:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, September 23, 2002

I'm on TV tonight

Tonight on the Style Network's TV show "Area," my house will be featured undergoing a Hawaiiana makeover. Watch it and meet Carla, my daughter, and me. It'll play Monday at 9:30 pm ET. (If someone can tape it for me, I'd appreciate it, because my cable service doesn't get the Style channel. I'll send you a new T-shirt iron on of a girl and her pet slug. Email mark@well.com.) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:59:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Was child beating mom an enraged con artist?

Article about a scam expert who belives the mom who beat her child is a grifter belonging to the Irish Travelers. The reason she beat up her little girl, he thinks, is becasue she was pissed that the kid blew her con at a toy store.
Wright believes the beating happened for one of two reasons. "The little girl gave away the scam to an employee or the mom was so ticked off at not getting refunds she took it out on the little girl."
I don't know anything about the Irish Travelers, but I'm wondering if they are getting a bad rap about being con-artists. This Irish Traveler FAQ says "some Travellers are con men, but, just like other Americans, most are not." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:05:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Goats with enormous testicles, and a life-sized cow sculpted from butter

Jeff writes: "Goats with enormous testicles, and a life-sized cow sculpted from butter. Pictures from Massachusett's Eastern States Expo this weekend. Anyone know the purpose of those overgrown goat gonads?" Link Discuss (Thanks, Jeff!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:15:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Real life Jordanian Wonder Woman Whallops Creeps

After being verbally harrassed by three men in the street, a Jordanian woman took off her cloak, revealing her dress underneath, and proceded to beat the holy crap out of the men. It's suspected she was trained in martial arts.
The three men were too shocked to react at first and ended up knocked to the ground, screaming in pain. They then scrambled up and fled.
Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:21:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Homeland Alert for the paranoid in you

Homeland Alert is an OS X app that puts a little beacon in your menubar, telling you what the current nationwide alert status is -- just in case you don't have enough free-floating anxiety in your life. Link Discuss (Thanks, Jon!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:26:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIP, Robert L Forward

Robert L Forward, a giant of hard science fiction, has died at 70 of brain cancer. Link Discuss (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:21:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Janis Ian interviewed on Slashdot

Janis Ian, a brave and talented recording artist (and budding and talented science fiction writer) has done a terrific interview with the Slashdot groupmind about her views on the music industry.
Seriously, diversity is something record companies can't afford anymore - not the majors, at any rate. I'd go to this article, posted at Linux Journal, which quotes a Newsweet article (July 15,2002) by Steven Levy saying "So why are the record labels taking such a hard line? My guess is that it's all about protecting their Internet-challenged business model. Their profit comes from blockbuster artists. If the industry moved to a more varied ecology, independent labels and artists would thrive--to the detriment of the labels, which would have trouble rustling up the rubes to root for the next Britney. The smoking gun comes from testimony of an RIAA-backed economist who told the government fee panel that a dramatic shakeout in Webcasting is "inevitable and desirable because it will bring about market consolidation." That's really it in a nutshell. "Market consolidation" means the less artists they have to promote, the less ultimate dollars they'll spend. The smaller the playlist, the greater the chance that audiences will buy something from that playlist alone - because that's all you'll be able to find out there.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:56:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Google News

Google has seriously revamped Google News -- the system automatically gathers today's top stories and finds all the various coverage of them. It's really excellent. Link Discuss (Thanks, Nate!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:14:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

San Francisco caffeine tour

Javawalk is a coffee-oriented walking-tour of San Francisco.
Javawalk is a two-hour walk in the city center. We start at Union Square and wind through Chinatown, Jackson Square and North Beach, the city's Italian district. While we cover the city's coffee roots (much more significant than Seattle's!) and coffeehouse culture (think beatnik), we also spend some time on San Francisco's history, interesting and arcane trivia and stories the Javagirl has collected from many years of living in the city. Truly, some things could only happen in SF! Javawalk also makes a couple of stops at North Beach cafes for a quick java jolt. Since cool weather prevails here, we need coffee year-round in the city by the Bay. Lucky us!
Link Discuss (Thanks, Paul!)

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

Great DVD interaction tool, probably illegal

DVDSynth is an open source project that allows you to splice in your own footage, alternate audio, subtitles, etc, to any DVD. This means that you can insert your own non-sucky subtitles, make and circulate edit-lists that make highlight reels for your favorite movies, etc, etc. It all amounts to a sweet tool for making the audience into the former audience, participants in entertainment. Of course, it's also illegal under the DMCA, since the tool also necessarily circumvents the copy-prevention in pre-recorded DVDs to accomplish its ends. Link Discuss (via NTK)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:07:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Turning junk computers into activist gold

Great article on a group of East Bay activists who rehab junk computers, using semi-skilled volunteers who train other semi-skilled volunteers. The resulting computers are sent to the developing world for activist use.
For the Amazonian villages where there's no electricity or where phone lines are scarce, the activists plan to set up free computer labs in the nearby cities. Many cities already have commercial Internet cafes, but they cost about a dollar per hour of use, Henshaw-Plath says, which is about a day's wage for most of the population.

The IMC activists plan to ship off these computers to Guayaquil, Ecuador's main port city, by the end of September. Because none of the computers are being sold in Ecuador, and because they're being transferred from an American nonprofit to an Ecuadorian one, the activists won't be charged any international shipping duties on the computers. "It's what you call real free trade," says Eddie Nix.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Markoffcharney!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:52:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google Domain Suffix Census

The good folks at ResearchBuzz have released a groovy Google API tool, "The Suffix Census." Enter your search terms, and the census will tell you how many of the results are in .NET, .COM, .ORG, and other top-level domains. Link Discuss (via ResearchBuzz)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:45:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Deep-fried Twinkies take America by goo

Carny concessionaires have taken to selling deep-friend Twinkies, doing big business with artery-clogging horripilations:
In what may be the biggest setback for the war on fat since supersize fries, Americans are scarfing down thousands of the gooey, calorie-laden snack cakes at county fairs and restaurants across the country.

"We sold 26,000 Twinkies in 18 days. People drove for hours just to taste our Twinkie," said Rocky Mullen, who sells the deep-fried, cream-filled treats for $3 (U.S.) each at the Payallup Fair, 50 kilometres south of Seattle.

As if Twinkies are not sweet enough already, vendors such as Mr. Mullen add chocolate or berry sauce and sprinkle powdered sugar on top...

Hearing about Mr. Sell's invention, Hostess, the company that makes the 71-year-old snack, started promoting deep-fried Twinkies to state and county fairs, where a captive population of junk-food addicts began gobbling them up between pig races and tractor-pull competitions.

How bad are they for your health? After deep-frying, a Twinkie packs an estimated 400 calories and 28 grams of fat.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:39:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warchalking FAQ

Aaron Swartz has written up a warchalking FAQ that addresses the shibboleths and paranoia about discovering, marking and using wireless connectivity.
Is that illegal?

Although I am not a lawyer, I don't think it's illegal to make chalk marks on the sidewalk. I know a lot of hopscotch players who'd be worried if it was...

Well, is it immoral?

Not at all! Warchalking is a helpful service to assist people in finding something they need (an Internet connection).

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:10:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, September 22, 2002

Writing "Muggles" is not a crime

JK Rowling has won a trademark-infringement suit over her use of the word "Muggles," which she invented independent of another kids' book author who used the word. Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:17:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Type-design by hive-mind

TypoPhile is a collaborative project to design a typeface. You start with a grid of randomly distributed black and white pixels, then each successive visitor to the site is given the option of switching one random pixel to black or white, in order to form a given letter. Cycle through the entire face and join the type-design hive-mind. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:12:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Goofy kids names are abuse

The New Zealand Children's Commissioner is asking parents to stop giving their kids dorky names.
Triple M Rogue, short for Mighty Mongrel Mob, Rogue chapter, was not an acceptable name for a child, Mr McClay said.

"I think it's unfair and undermines the right of children to be taken seriously and valued. In some ways it's kind of emotional abuse."

Link Discuss

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

Fuel cells by 2004

Good write-up of MTI Micro Fuel Cells, a tech start-up that is promising to ship a commercial fuel cell for personal electronics by 2004. I so want this technology -- laptops that run for days, PDAs that run for months. Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:05:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brewster's Public Domain Bookmobile roadshow

Nice Techsploitation column on Brewster "Internet Archive" Kahle's virtual bookmobile: a minivan with a satellite connection, a highspeed printer, and access to the Internet's store of public domain books. Brewster's driving the van cross-country, stopping at libraries and printing out kids' books on demand. I got to play with the bookmobile today and walked away with a still-warm, bakery-fresh copy of Alice in Wonderland, the first book I ever read on my own.
...The bookmobile plans to motor into Washington, D.C., Oct. 8, the day before the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft, a crucial copyright case that Gelman says will decide how many books are part of the bookmobile's digital library...

The fate of the bookmobile's collection reminds us that people in the United States still need to fight to preserve the public domain, where anyone can access ideas for free. "Copyright should last long enough that authors are compensated and people's creativity is encouraged," Gelman says. "But with current copyright laws, ideas are too easily locked down." The public domain is a place for artists, writers, and other copyright holders to give back to the public after the public has compensated them for their work. If you don't catch the bookmobile, you can download the books from the Internet Archive or from other public domain book sites such as Project Gutenberg (www.promo.net/pg) or the English Server (www.eserver.org).

Link Discuss (via On Lisa Rein's Radar)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:40:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, September 21, 2002

Kids' lit renaissance, don't miss Koja!

Great Salon piece evaluating the recent trend for literary and genre authors like Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Carl Hiaasen and Isabel Allende to turn their hands to kids literature. I've recently read Coraline, Neil Gaiman's wicked-creepy kids' novel, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm a little disappointed that the author missed out on literary-horror giant Kathe Koja's kids' book, Straydog, which should absolutely be at the top of your (and your kids') to-read list. Koja is nothing less than a genius, and it was a bright day for kids' literature when she turned her prodigous talents to kids' books.
It's partly the memory of the potency of their childhood reading that prompts many adult authors to try their hand at the form. Handler says, "You never love a book the way you love a book when you're 10. No matter how much I admire the work of Nabokov or Murakami, I'm not going to reread 'Lolita' or 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' nearly as many times as I reread 'Harriet the Spy' in third grade." (It might be interesting to see what part "Harriet the Spy," a book about the pleasures of voyeurism if ever there was one, played in the development of future film critics. I know of at least three who worshipped it as kids.)

Chabon feels similarly: "You never forget the delight that the books you loved as a child brought you; it's all still there, you remember it. It's fairly inevitable, I'd say, to want to try and get some of that for your own kids; but in the past, in this country at least, it was not necessarily feasible and perhaps not quite taken seriously enough."

As Chabon notes, the appearance of these books does seem, for some of the writers at least, tied to the children in their lives. Isabel Allende says that her new "City of the Beasts" was inspired by reading to her grandchildren. The household of Clive Barker, whose "Abarat" is the first in a new fantasy series, includes the teenage daughter of his partner. Michael Chabon is only partly joking when he says that he always thought he was going to write kids books because he was a kid when he first wanted to become a writer.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:20:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Smart Mobs is live!

Howard Rheingold's new book, "Smart Mobs," is coming out next November. It's a hell of a book, about the ways that technology enable groups of people to spontaneously form and coordinate in response to current events -- from SMS-enabled Filipiino demonstrations over official censorship to ubiquitous Japanese kids who photograph everything with their DoCoMo phones and post them online all the time.

Howard's site, SmartMobs.com, is a blog that talks about technology and events that show smart mobs in action.

Interoperability Has Arrived for SMS {Shibuya Epiphany}

What if they had pounded the golden spike into the continental railroad and nobody noticed? That is essentially what happened in the United States cellular telephone world last spring. Since April it has been possible for the customers of any of the major United States cellular carriers to send one another short text messages, but most customers still have no idea the service exists.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Howard!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:58:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Talking appliances take India by storm

Great India Times ad for the Washy-Talky, a talking washing-machine. Link Discuss (Thanks, Ray!)

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

Fetish map

Check out this amazing map of fetishes, which attempts to relate all fetishes to one another. Link Discuss (via Making Light)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:23:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Catalog of RPG plots

The big list of RPG campaign plots.
Better Late Than Never

Some bad guys have arrived and done some bad guy things. The PCs were none the wiser. The bad guys have now made good their escape, and the PCs have caught wind of it in time to chase them down before they make it back to their lair, their home nation, behind enemy lines, etc.

Common Twists & Themes: The bad guys escaped by stealing a conveyance that the PCs know better than they do. The bad guys duck down a metaphorical (or literal) side-road, trying to hide or blend into an environment (often one hostile to the PCs). If the bad guys cross the adventure's "finish line" (cross the county line, make the warp jump, etc.) there's no way to pursue them beyond it.

Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:20:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fictional billionaires compared

Forbes rounds up the fifteen richest fictional characters of all time:
1. Santa Claus $ ∞
2. Richie Rich 24.7 billion
3. Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks 10 billion
4. Scrooge McDuck 8.2 billion
Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

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

Russians painting billboards on stray dogs

Russian entrepreneurs are spraypainting logoed advertisements for their products and services on stray dogs and releasing them as walking, starving billboards.
Logos include not only the name of the shop but also the goods they stock, including Sony and Camel.

The newspaper says workers of rival stores often catch each other's dogs and repaint them in their own colours.

Link Discuss (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:43:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pre-order the Get Your War On book!

Pre-order the Get Your War On book The Get Your War On Book is close enough to shipping that you can pre-order it now -- just a reminder, royalties from the book are go to a mine-sweeping crew in Afghanistan. Get Your War On gets the prize for best use of profanity in a political cartoon, ever. Link Discuss (Thanks, Richard!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:38:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, September 20, 2002

18 hours of 64 World's Fair audio!

18 hours of amateur recordings of the 1964 NY World's Fair as MP3 on a CD for $17.50!
In my many trips to the Worlds Fair, I taped nearly every major attraction with a professional reel-to-reel tape recorder. Today, the original quality of these tapes remains and now my many hours of New York World's Fair audio preservation is available on one CD-ROM, "VAULT II"...

Opening Narrative By Ray Dashner, PepsiCola (UNICEF), General Electric, Tower Of Light, Africa Pavilion, United States Pavilion, Illinois, Montana, Barker (Les Poupees de Paris), GM (Futurama II), New York State (Theaterama), Fourth of July 1965 Fireworks & Patriotic Program, DuPont, Bell System, Equitable Life, Mexico, IBM, Spanish Pavilion, Belgian Village (Les Gilles de Belgique), Vatican Pavilion (Chapel and Arrival of Pope Paul VI), Ford (Magic Skyway), Chrysler (Show-Go-Round), the voices of Robert Moses, Guy Lombardo, Jayne Mansfield, and Sammy Davis, Jr., Travelers Insurance (Triumph of Man), Exit Music (GE Theme), Lowell Thomas (World's Fair Report), New York World's Fair Entertainment Spectacular, A Ballad For The Fair, Dupont Jingles, Fireside Chat, Albert Fisher Radio Spots, dozens of interviews, and Robert Moses Documentary By Cleveland Rogers,

The events of the final day of the N.Y. World's Fair (Oct. 17, 1965) is also included. Hear Florida, Hawaii, American Express, Johnson Wax (To Be Alive), Polynesia, Sweden, LIRR, Hall of Science, Cities Service Band of America, CINERAMA (To the Moon and Beyond), Better Living Pavilion, Kodak's "The Searching Eye", Les Poupees de Paris, World's Fair Suite, Bells in Toyland with John Klein at the carillon (Winamp MP3 Player Software is included), and much more.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jon!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:10:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Groucho to Warner Bros: Get Bent

Great note from Groucho Marx to Warner Brothers' lawyers, in response to a dunning notice threating him over the Marx Brothers' film, "A Night in Casablanca," which Warner believed would infringe upon its film, "Casablanca."
It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.

I just don"t understand your attitude. Even if you plan or releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don"t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about "Warner Brothers"? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor"s eye, and even before there had been other brothers--the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" (This was originally "Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?" but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other one, and whittled it down to "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?")

Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well it"s not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks--Jack of "Jack and the Beanstalk," and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:04:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New bill will make analog VCRs and TVs illegal in 2006

Rep. Billy Tauzin has released a "discussion draft" of a bill to be introduced this session that will ensure that the Broadcast Flag mandate will come to pass. The Broadcast Flag is a ridiculous bit of anti-freedom policy that allows a video signal to tell receivers, "Don't let me be copied." The bill will require every device that can be used as a receiver -- including general-purpose PCs -- to employ only "approved" technologies. Moreover, this particular bill goes even farther, requiring that all analog-outputting TV devices be discontinued by 2006: that's right, your TV, VCR, camcorder, DVD player, and TiVo will all be obsolete in 2006. Hello, landfill! Here's a link to Digital Consumer's one-pager on the bill. Link Discuss (Thanks, Joe!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:59:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Levy on Lessig

Great, long Steven "Hackers" Levy story about Larry Lessig and the upcoming Eldred case:
The Softie lawyers recast Lessig's various writings about "code" as an anti-Redmond rant. (In one passage, Lessig compared the relatively open Internet Engineering Task Force to the "absolutely closed Microsoft Corporation." Microsoft claimed this was equivalent to calling the company "a threat to political freedom.") Then they introduced what seemed like a smoking gun: an old email Lessig had sent then-Netscape executive Peter Harter, asking if his copy of Internet Explorer was messing up the bookmarks on his Mac. Lessig had made a joke about installing the software, putting a quote in parentheses: "Sold my soul and nothing happened."

"So Microsoft winds up saying I should be kicked off because I use a Macintosh," explains Lessig. "But they're also talking about how my language about code is political -- code has values -- and they would fill their briefs with this, as if I was some lunatic crazy."

Because Lessig was bound by confidentiality, he couldn't speak out. "This was his professional reputation at stake, and he couldn't respond," says Harvard Law's Zittrain. When Judge Jackson ruled on Microsoft's challenge, he predictably dismissed the company's objections, making it a point to call their attacks on Lessig "defamatory." Microsoft appealed. Lessig filed an affidavit explaining that the "sold my soul" line was actually a riff on a Jill Sobule song. "Its meaning in context was not the confession of some profound 'Faustian bargain,'" he wrote. "It was instead a facetious response to an anticipated tease in an email between friends." Lessig also insisted that the passages in his writings about Microsoft in relation to his theories of "code" were similarly neutral.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:53:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Self-cleaning glass hits Europe

A new coated glass, available retail in Europe, cleans itself.
The coating, which is based on titanium dioxide, works by combining the two beneficial effects. First, the ultraviolet wavelengths in sunlight react with a photocatalyst to break down organic debris on the glass. "The second feature is that the coating is hydrophilic," says Webb. "This means that when rain hits the glass, it doesn't form droplets. Rain water flows down the glass in a sheet and washes the dirt away." Alternatively, a hose can be used to clean the glass when there is little or no rainfall.
Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:50:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scientology silences critics at Internet Archive's Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has been forced to censor its collection of anti-Scientology pages by the legal bullies at the CoS, who are blanketing the Internet's search-engines and mirrors with notices that use the hateful DMCA to stifle their critics. The site most frequently targetted is Xenu.net, Link Discuss (Thanks, H. Humbert!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:48:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nokia lies about warchalking, BBC reports as fact

In case you missed this on Slashdot, Nokia has released a bunch of made-up fairy tales about warchalking and the BBC faithfully reported on it as fact. Some choice shibboleths from the Finnish boot-maker-turned-cellular-giant:
  • "This is theft, plain and simple," wrote Nokia in its advisory.
  • The company said that anyone using a company's bandwidth without permission is reducing the amount of a valuable resource available to the workers in that organisation
  • Nokia warned that if too many warchalkers log on together, the whole network inside a company could slow down.
  • It also said that unscrupulous spammers could use a network as a proxy to despatch millions of unwanted e-mail messages with no danger of being traced.
Followup: here's another good response from some Danish wireless enthusiasts. Ah, the sweet smell of FUD in the morning. Link Discuss (Thanks, Higgins!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:43:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vecro mittens for babies

Babies are developmentally staggered -- their brains often develop ahead of their muscular coordination. That's why babies can get a headstart on language by learning to sign before they learn to talk -- they have the manual dexterity and the mental capacity for language, but not the tongue/mouth coordination. Now you can buy your baby Velcro-mittens and Velcro-patched toys so that wee ones who are still too small to use their fingers can get the brain-development available from playing with blocks, etc. Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:40:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pre-spyware software archive

OldVersion.com hosts installers for old versions of apps like Acrobat Reader and LimeWire, so you can install pre-spyware versions of the apps you use every day. Link Discuss (Thanks, Alena!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:36:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great review for my story

SFSite's got a great review of the current ish of The Black Gate, including a rave for my story, "Beat My Daddy (Eight to the Bar)."
Cory Doctorow is building a reputation as a writer who consistently delivers unpredictable stories in supple, evocative prose.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Theresa!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:33:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kavalier & Clay & Spiderman

Michael Chabon, Pulitzer-winning author of the brilliant "Kavalier & Clay," has been tapped to write the sequel to the Spiderman movie. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:27:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, September 19, 2002

Antihydrogen created at CERN

a Boing Boing reader sez: "The CERN lab in Europe has created REAL antimatter (antihydrogen atoms).The controlled production of antihydrogen observed in ATHENA is a great technological and scientific event. Even more so because ATHENA has produced antihydrogen in unexpectedly abundant quantities. Wow. Who wants a ride on the Enterprise?" Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:48:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The decline of magazine design

Wonderful article about how great old magazine covers were compared to today. With plenty of side by side comparisons. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:52:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Pre-order Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom at a 30% discount!

I'm still on my vacation, but I thought I'd jot down a few links that I'd come across lately. And I was also bustin' out with the news that you can pre-order my novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, from Amazon, at a 30 percent discount. Link Discuss (Thanks, Patricio!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:31:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney's company town

Celebration, Florida, the planned community built by Disney on the outskirts of Walt Disney World, has a website for prospective home-buyers.
Take the best ideas from the most successful towns of yesterday and the technology of the new millennium, and synthesize them into a close-knit community that meets the needs of today's families. The founders of CELEBRATION started down a path of research, study, discovery, and enlightenment that resulted in one of the most innovative communities of the 20th century.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:27:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fog-guns!

Great new toy guns shoot fog-rings!
The Zero Launcher and the Zero Blaster launch 2 to 6 inch diameter non-toxic fog rings that sail up to fourteen feet. Easy to use, they are great stress busters and with practice you'll be able to create bigger and better rings.
Link Discuss (via Wired)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:26:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Product unsafety hotline

If one of your material possessions injures you, you can rat out the manufacturer to the feds, using the Consumer Product Safety Commission's hotline:
By filling out the form below and then submitting it, you can report any injury or death involving consumer products to us, or report an unsafe product to us. We may contact you by mail, phone or Internet email for further details. In addition, you will be contacted to confirm the information you sent. Please provide as much information as possible. Your name, address, and telephone number are optional, but we can't contact you without that information. You can also report an incident or unsafe product by calling toll-free at 1-800-638-2772.
Link Discuss

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

Granola infosec

The Association for Progressive Communications has put together a briefing on information security for lefty organizations. My experience has been that these organizations are enthusiastic adopters of technology for their activist work, but they're totally clueless and/or uselessly paranoid about infosec. This briefing includes good notes on:
* Backing-up Information

* Passwords and Access Controls

* Using Encryption and Digital Signatures

* Computer Viruses

* Using the Internet Securely

* Living Under Surveillance

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:25:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Get your minesweeper on

David Rees, the author of the Get Your War On strips has a book coming out, all proceeds donated to a mine-sweeping team in Afghanistan.
All the author royalties from "Get Your War On" will be donated to Mine Detection & Dog Center Team #5. MDC Team #5 clears landmines and unexploded ordnance in Afghanistan. Here are some photographs to give you an idea of the work they do...
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:25:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Computational Complexity blog

Great blog featuring a series of tutorials on complexity in computation, the theoretical limits of the Turing Machine, and other bits of required knowledge for the 21st Century. I wish that'd we'd studied this stuff in some of the math classes I took through high-school and college.
In Lesson 1 we described the Turing machine model to answer the question, "What is a computer?" The next question is "What can we compute?"
Link Discuss (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:25:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Theme-park fatallities superlist

Great, detailed roundup of serious injuries and fatalities on theme-park rides:
8/29/2002 - Space Mountain (Disneyland)

During a routine Cascade Ride Stop one rocket (#8) blew through the brake zones at the final sections of the ride. Another rocket had been brought to a stop just past the "Re-entry Tunnel" before the station, and the out of control rocket slammed into the back of the stopped rocket. Basically a rocket rear-ended another rocket just before the station. Four Guests were taken to the hospital, and later released. The incident happened on Thursday afternoon, and the attraction has been closed ever since. The word we are getting from our managers is that Space will likely remain closed for the entire weekend, and possibly for the rest of next week as well. We are supposed to tell Guests that it is closed for an "unscheduled refurbishment", which isn't exactly untrue since they are now working intensely on the attraction to try and figure out what could have gone so horribly wrong to allow a rocket to careen through brake zones and slam into the back of another rocket.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:24:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Product placement comes to The Sims

Intel and McDonald's have paid millions to have their products appear in the next version of The Sims.
Detailed terms of EA's multimillion-dollar deal were not available but it will allow Intel's familiar jingle, its product logo, and computers using its Pentium 4 processor to appear in the game.

Players in the game also will be able to buy a McDonald's kiosk and sell the company's branded food products, earning "simoleans," the game's currency. Eating that food will also improve their standing within the game.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:24:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Superman blames Bush, Pope for stalling anti-Kryptonite procedure

Christopher Reeve swore he'd walk again by his 50th birthday, which is next week. But even though he's had a remarkable recovery from his spinal injury, he's not even close to walking. The former Superman blames the President and the Church for undermining stem-cell research.
"If we'd had full government support, full government funding for aggressive research using embryonic stem cells from the moment they were first isolated, at the University of Wisconsin in the winter of 1998 -- I don't think it unreasonable to speculate that we might be in human trials by now..."

"I think we could have been much further along with scientific research than we actually are," he said.

The actor said President Bush had paid too much heed to the Catholic church.

"There are religious groups -- the Jehovah's Witness, I believe -- who think it's a sin to have a blood transfusion. Well, what if the president for some reason decided to listen to them, instead of to the Catholics, which is the group he really listens to in making his decisions about embryonic stem cell research?" Reeve was quoted as saying.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:23:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Seattle: America's pigpen

A study commissioned by a clothes-iron vendor concludes that Seattle has America's biggest slobs:
* We're more likely to wear a wrinkled shirt to work -- 23 percent would in Seattle, compared with the national average of 17.8 percent.

* Almost all the cities surveyed are doing more ironing, up an average 8.8 percent nationally. Seattle residents showed a 1 percent decrease.

* Only 8.9 percent of us think jeans are inappropriate for work, compared with 15.9 percent nationally.

* Only 7.4 percent of us think tight or revealing clothing is wrong for work, compared with 12.5 percent nationally.

* Just 1.5 percent of us find unkempt/dirty clothing uncool at work, compared with 5.3 percent nationally.

* Conversely (and this makes sense): Only 10.1 percent of us were spoken to in the workplace about inappropriate attire, compared with 12.7 percent nationally.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:23:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Artists to labels: Get bent

The Recording Artists' Coalition are in open rebellion against the labels. The group, which includes Bruce Springsteen, Sting, R.E.M., Bonnie Raitt, Madonna, Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews, Billy Joel, Elton John, Linkin Park, Aimee Mann, No Doubt, Puddle of Mudd, Staind and Static-X are fighting for regulation of the music industry. They demand reform of:
  • Contract lengths
  • Accounting practices
  • Health and pension benefits
  • Copyright and ownership
  • Payola
"The record companies are like cartels, like countries, for God's sake," singer/songwriter Tom Waits says. "It's a nightmare to be trapped in one. I'm on a good label (Epitaph) now that's not part of the plantation system. But all the old records I did for Island have been swallowed up and spit out in whatever form they choose. These corporations don't have feelings, and they don't see themselves as the stewards of the work. They are making shoes, and then they want to go to the Bahamas and get a suntan."

He advises new artists to "get a good lawyer and don't ever sign away your publishing rights. Most people are so anxious to record, they'll sign anything. It's like going across the river on the back of an alligator..."

"Artists really do need to communicate and organize," he says. "Don Henley is willing to get a haircut and go to Washington. I'm all for that."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:23:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIP, Biggle

Science fiction giant Lloyd Biggle, Jr. has died.
Biggle combined an interest in music with his work, which began with the short story "Gypped" in 1956. His notable short works included "Monument" (1961), a Hugo nominee later expanded into a novel, and "The Tunesmith" (1957), recently selected by Orson Scott Card for the anthology Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century, Locus reported.

Biggle's novels, which began with The Angry Espers in 1961, were mostly space operas on social and ecological themes and included the Jan Darzek sequence, beginning with All the Colors of Darkness in 1963, and novels about the Cultural Survey, including The World Menders (1971) and The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets (1968). In recent years Biggle wrote mystery stories and novels. He was founding secretary treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America and edited Nebula Award Stories Seven in 1972, Locus reported.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:23:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pianas for Havana

Send a Piana to Havana is a nonprofit that arranges to have used pianos and parts shipped from the US to Cuba:
There's an aspect of the U.S. embargo on Cuba that we don't consider: Countless young musicians struggle on antique American pianos with strings long since rusted through, or on bad Russian pianos half-eaten by termites. Cuba's reknowned music pedagogy produces famous results, but as few new pianos are imported to Cuba, and replacement parts are unavailable, Cuba's musical community suffers.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ray Harryhausen's Village People

A tribute to Ray Harryhausen: The Village People's "YMCA" performed by dancing skeletons intercut with scenes from "Masters of the Universe," which sure look like they borrowed heavily from Famous Ray's skeletons! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:21:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jet's Jetmobile

My pal Jet has been working on a jet-powered dune-buggy to take to Burning Man all year. Unfortunately, he had serious issues this year, so the jetbuggy didn't travel at all under its own power, but damn, it looks cool and made a great noise! Link Discuss (Thanks, Jet!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:20:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Glueing shut your discman to spite your reviewers

Epic Music has started distributing its review copies of forthcoming CDs to reviewers in glued-shut discmen, with glued-in headphones. The idea is to prevent reviewers from ripping the discs to MP3 and distributing them online.

What a dumb-ass idea. Leaving aside the wastefulness of distributing thousands of "disposable" discmen, imagine the reviewer's logistics -- trying to manage a workspace where you get several hundred of these things a month, attempting to stack them up on your desk, trying to file them for future reference...

Worst of all, though, is the total contempt for a reviewer's workflow. Reviewers need material in a format that is convenient and malleable so that they can choose to listen to them under controlled conditions, as this reviewer notes:

"I'm a pretty big Pearl Jam fan," said Bart Blasengame, a staff writer at Details magazine who was sent one of the contraptions with "Riot Act" inside. "I brought this discman home with me, and I found a way you could go in the back of the CD and, like, pop it open. So I got the actual disc out." Mr. Blasengame said he had no intention of making MP3's . "At the same time, if I want to give it a proper review, I'm going to listen to it how I want to listen to it -- and in my stereo is where it sounds best," he said.
Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:19:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Mapquest is not the territory

Good Wired News piece about the rampant innaccuracy and weird glitches of GIS systems like Mapquest. I wish they'd explored some of the technical reasons for the wonkiness, though. As someone without any sense of direction, I really rely on these things, especially GPSes in rental cars, and yes, I do get lost all the time, but I find it nerdily comforting to know that I'm getting lost due to a computer's inability to solve the Travelling Salesman Problem.
"I have never once -- seriously, not ever once -- gotten the right directions from MapQuest," said Naomi Graychase. "I don't know what sense of twisted optimism makes me continue to use the fucking service -- somehow it's the only real option, you know?"

Graychase, who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, recently got lost looking for Webster Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut (about 40 miles away). MapQuest estimated the trip would take about 48 minutes. But after a half-hour drive and a series of wrong turns -- including bearing left on a one-way street going the opposite direction -- Graychase spent an additional 30 minutes trying to find the theater, which was located just five minutes from the offramp.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:18:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Censorware's suckitude quantified

My co-worker, Will Doherty, has just completed an exhaustive survey of Internet censorware tools used by schools in the USA, identifying which keywords and sites are off-limits to America's kids ("pogo sticks!") Link Discuss (Thanks, Will!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:15:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless comes to Tokyo McD's

Fast-food chains are blanketing Tokyo with wireless.
When wireless LANs first made their appearance, they could be found only in a few hotels or coffee shops, but this year many businesses have been installing wireless LANs for the convenience of their customers. One after another, such chains as McDonald's, MOS Burger, Mister Donut, Starbucks Coffee, and Denny's have been creating hot spots in certain model outlets. In addition, rail companies like the East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) have been creating hot spots inside of stations, and some districts and cities are now working to make their entire area a hot spot.
Link Discuss (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:14:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

Article about Memri, publisher of "Why We Fight America"

A couple of days ago I posted an entry about an article called "Why We Fight America," which was translated into English and published online by Memri. A reporter for the Guardian looked into Memri and learned some interesting things about the organization. It's run by a former Israeli military intelligence official who served as a counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:43:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Flying Pinto

Eli the Bearded sez: "The flying car of some past's future. A Pinto with some street legal modifications and a set of detachable airplane parts made up this 1975 flying car. (The linking on the pages is broken, though. Page one links to page two, but neither of those link to page three and four. Edit the URL by hand.)" Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:27:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush's new science committees members

Washington Post: "The Bush administration has begun a broad restructuring of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy in areas such as patients' rights and public health, eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with handpicked choices. ...A third committee, which had been assessing the effects of environmental chemicals on human health, has been told that nearly all of its members will be replaced -- in several instances by people with links to the industries that make those chemicals. One new member is a California scientist who helped defend Pacific Gas and Electric Co. against the real-life Erin Brockovich." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:24:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TV Commercial Degrades Ducks

"Please contact AFLAC Incorporated (a supplemental medical insurance company) and urge them to stop running TV commercials that represent ducks in dangerous, unnatural, and degrading situations." -- United Poultry Concerns Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:57:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beverly Hills Rat Infestation

Rats have invaded Beverly Hills, dining on dog food and drinking from swimming pools. How did rodents end up in the lap of luxury? After four consecutive mild winters, their population has multiplied, though no study has been undertaken to determine exactly how many rats there are in Los Angeles County. The rule of thumb is one rat for every human, Mr. Honda said. Add in the severe drought and you have rats commuting to the neighborhoods with low-hanging fruit, exotic gardens and patios, with their outdoor parties and exquisite crumbs. Link Discuss (Thanks, Steve!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:53:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

E.P.A. Pollution Report Omits Global Warming Section

Stefan sez: "Out of sight, out of mind: The latest EPA report doesn't have a section on Global Warming." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:49:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool concept car

Snow Crash). Link Discuss (Thanks, Scott!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:59:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nigerian mother to be stoned to death

A Nigerian woman who had a baby out of wedlock has been sentenced to death by a religious court. She'll be buried up to her chest and and smashed with rocks. She lives in a village "governed by Sharia, a radical interpretation if Islamic law." Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has the authority to commute the sentence, but the only thing he's said about the case so far is "Nigeria will weep," if the woman is executed. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:20:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, September 16, 2002

Epileptic ordered to pay Ł3,500 for contorted face

"A man who suffers from epilepsy has been ordered to pay compensation to a student who was upset by his contorted face during a seizure." According to Epilepsy Action Scotland's correction, "The effect of witnessing an epileptic seizure was a subsidiary issue in the case." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:40:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Airborne copulators break diaper tables on Virgin jets

Virgin is going to retrofit the diaper tables in its jet lavatories because people use them to have sex on and then break them. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:57:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired 10.10: Caught in the Kid Porn Crusade

Derek sez: "A stunning story in the new Wired: "Caught in the Kid Porn Crusade." The United States of America v. Adam Vaughn He was a stand-up Marine, a beloved cop, and a local hero -- until the government branded him part of the largest kid porn ring in history. Inside Operation Candyman, the FBI's crusade to sweep the Net clean of child abuse. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:13:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cellular Jesus

eBay auction for a photomosaic portrait of President Bush made out Jesus-image pixels. Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:09:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comic Books by Mail

Warren Ellis (writer of Transmetropolitan) has a service that lets you order selected comic books and have them shipped to you. The great thing about Ordering Comics is how you can download PDF samples of the books. I forgot all about Johnny Nemo! Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:02:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, September 14, 2002

I'm outtahere!

I'm off on a week-long vacation, and won't be blogging much (possibly not at all!) until September 23. I leave you in Mark and Pesco's capable hands (and implore you to take it easy with favors, requests, idle email, etc, while I'm on a much-needed break). Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:56:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BNL endorse Jack Layton

Barenaked Ladies have endorsed Jack Layton, an unapologetically left-wing politician, for the leadership of Canada's nominally social-democratic New Democratic Party. Getting Jack in the leadership of the NDP would be a major return to the party's roots, reversing its slide to the right over the last decade-plus.
Barenaked Ladies singer Steven Page said the band decided to endorse a candidate because "it was time to start getting involved. I'm getting very nervous about the upcoming face of Canadian politics and its drift to the right," he said.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:53:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DeNiro calls for science scripts

Robert DeNiro is looking to make the next Good Will Hunting.
"What we're doing here is really looking for the next A Beautiful Mind, Memento or Good Will Hunting," said Doron Weber, program director of the Sloan Foundation... The scripts must have a leading character that is a scientist, mathematician or engineer.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:51:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage men's wigs

Vintage men's wigs (including a Pulp Fiction Samuel Jackson number) for sale. Link Discuss (Thanks, Lucas!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:49:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

This year's Saturday morning toons reviewed

Good roundup of this season's Saturday morning cartoons. Before I had TiVo, this woulda been irrelevant, since I would have already discovered these on my own, but with TiVo, I find myself really needing these guides. The lifecycle of a Saturday morning cartoon for me now is that I ask my TiVo to capture all the episodes of some show that I'm already familiar with, then watch as the number of episodes captured per week dwindles as the networks start to phase out the show, until it disappears altogether for a year, reappearing then in rerun. If we all end up using PVRs, recommendation systems like this are going to be increasingly important.
"What's New Scooby-Doo?" (8:30 a.m.). Do we really need to describe this show? Honestly?

"Ozzy & Drix" (9:30 a.m.). A hungry mosquito ensures the continuing adventures of "Osmosis Jones" when it takes the white blood cell and his cold-pill partner Drix out of the disgusting, aged body of Frank and puts them into a healthy boy named Hector. There they, and the Farrelly brothers (who produce the show) find new action and gross-out jokes. Where the movie failed, the show succeeds: funny, fresh and vaguely educational.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:45:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Born In the USA snack-cookies: keep the home carbs burning.

Gallery of patriotic biscuits. Discuss Link (Thanks, Jack!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:51:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cuban website refutes terrorism claims

Cuba's launched a website to refute claims that it has anything to do with terrorism.
Answering questions on the Web site, the head of the National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, said Cuba was cooperating with its longtime foe, the United States, on countering international terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"We are doing everything we can," he said, citing the opening of Cuban airspace to diverted air traffic the day of the attacks and accepting without protest the use of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay as a detention camp for prisoners from Afghanistan.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:47:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, September 13, 2002

"We Have the Right to Kill 4 Million Americans"

Essay from Al-Qa'ida spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith explaining why they're fighting the U.S.
We have not reached parity with them. We have the right to kill 4 million Americans - 2 million of them children - and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of the [Americans'] chemical and biological weapons.
Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:34:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Illustration art auction

Great original art from paperback books, magazines, pulp covers, etc., up for auction at Illustration house. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:51:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Even older emoticons

Here's a gallery of even older emoticons from the 1970s-era PLATO system: Link Discuss (Thanks, Brian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:07:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fire-escape gallery

EscapeRail, a gallery of arty photos of fire-escapes, is soliciting submissions. Link Discuss (Thanks, Dave!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:56:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cthuugle

An HP Lovecraft search-engine! Link Discuss (Thanks, Jamais!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:01:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sci-fi giants donate arts-and-crafts projects to Infinite Matrix fundraiser

Eileen Gunn, Editor & Publisher of The Infinite Matrix (an amazing online sf zine) writes:
Infinite Matrix is trying to jumpstart its bank account, which is way past empty. Nisi Shawl has masterminded a fundraising festival in which major SF writers have contributed their personal artwork and handicrafts as rewards for donors to the site. Howard Waldrop's flyingsaucer and Ursula Le Guin's embroidered lunchbag are especially cool. It's sort of a first-come-first-served auction.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Eileen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:52:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Computer archaelogists untar first emoticon

Microsoft researchers have recovered the first post to use a "smiley" from elderly backups.
Many people were involved in this computing archaeology success story. I (Mike Jones) kicked off the effort in February 2002 by looking through some old bboard program (Bags) sources, figuring out the filename that the post would likely be found under (/usr/cmu/lib/bb/general.bb), and asking Howard Wactlar, the former CMU SCS facilities director, whether the file could still be restored. Scott Fahlman provided data narrowing the probable span of time during which the post was made. Howard and Bob Cosgrove, the current director, determined that backup tapes from that period (1981-1983) still existed and asked Jeff Baird of the facilities staff to try to find and restore the post. Dave Livingston of facilities located a working 9- track tape drive and a machine to use it on. Kirk Berthold and Michael Riley in CS operations managed retrieving tapes from off-site archival storage. Grad student Dan Pelleg's FreeBSD machine was used to read the 4.1BSD dump format tapes using a compatibility mode in the restore program. (Later in the effort a NetBSD machine was used to do the same thing.) Dale Moore looked for the post on Tops-20 backup tapes from CMU-20C. But by all accounts, Jeff Baird should get most of the credit for doing the hard work of locating and retrieving the data. He kept asking for more tapes, reading those that could still be read, narrowing the date range, and sticking with it until the post was found. Thanks all for your efforts to restore this part of computing history, and especially, thanks Jeff!
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:45:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Porn company wants to buy Napster

A public net-porn company has offered to buy Napster for $2.4 million. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:43:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, September 12, 2002

Lots of Robots Two: Amazing web short-film

Lots of Robots Two is the best science fiction video I've ever downloaded from the Internet -- an hallucinogenic short film tracing life in a world of mythopoeic, robotic splendour. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:48:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google will make the Web blind-accessible

Great quote on how Google makes blind-user accessibility crucial:
"Google is, for all intents, a blind user. A billionaire blind user with tens of millions of friends, all of whom hang on his every word. I suspect Google will have a stronger impact than [laws] in building accessible websites.

"In a world where Google likely has a valuation several orders of magnitude higher than any chrome such as flash, graphics, audio, interactivity, or "personalization", I see a heady revision."

Link Discuss (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:37:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

Three more great reasons to join EFF

Join EFF today and take your pick of our leet new stickers! Link Discuss (Thanks, Patrick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:19:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

If hax0rs 0wned

If hax0rs ruled the earth -- images from an alternate reality. Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:17:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

God lashes out

Aggravated with banal roadsigns that purport to represent His PoV like these:
Let's meet at my house Sunday before the game. -God

C'mon over and bring the kids. -God

What part of "Thou Shalt Not..." didn't you understand? -God

We need to talk. -God

Keep using my name in vain, I'll make rush hour longer. -God

God has created a site with his own responses:
I never said, "Thou shalt not think." —God

Okay, you've got multiplying down. Now let's try replenishing for a while. —God

I don't care who started it. Just stop it. —God

If you seek to know my ways, read a damn science book. —God

Link Discuss (Thanks, Bill!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:11:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

Expanded 629.2 Dewey?

I'm looking for a good directory of the subject headings, at very great depth, for Dewey 629.2 (Motorized Land Vehicles). It seems that the only Web references with expanded Dewey listings cost money to look at, and I'm on a slow hotel dialup that costs money per minute (god, I hate hotel dialup). Hey, library wonks -- where can I find this? Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:00:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Private moonlanding green-lighted

Private moon-landings ahoy! They're planning a three-month exploration of the big ole rock!
TransOrbital of California has become the first private company in the history of spaceflight to gain approval from the US authorities to explore, photograph and land on the moon.

The US State Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have granted it permission to send its TrailBlazer spacecraft into lunar orbit.

The launch is set for June 2003 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Link Discuss (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:15:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF Share-In this Saturday

Looking for a way to party, eat ice-cream, get a tan and defend fair use this Saturday? Don't miss the EFF Share-In!
Artists participating in this event will permit recording of their performances by those in attendance in support of EFFs Open Audio License (OAL). Musicians performing at the event include: the Box Set Duo - clown princes of folk-rock, the classic funk band Funkmonsters, celtic world-fusion group Hy Brassyl, harmony based folk-pop band Atticus Scout, and Berkeley-based party band Shady Lady. Please see EFF's webpage at www.eff.org/events/share-in for more information.

In addition to music, the Share-In will feature performers including Ashley Foster the One Wheeled Wonder, the Existential Circus, Frantastic Hands, the Metronome Dancers, Willy Bologna and his Sideshow Circus, and juggler Cat Hare. Bring your family and friends!

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:11:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent multi-tabs for Mozilla

Multizilla is a Mozilla update with multiple rows of tabs -- it's the browser of my dreams! Link Discuss (Thanks, Zed!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Miltary code-name generator

Random military operation codename generator: A fine use for madlibs scripting.
Operation Plunging Defense Industry

Operation Nail-biting Dragon

Operation Unpleasant Venom

Operation Expansive Sucker Punch

Operation Steel Oilfield

Operation Underwear-staining Demon

Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:50:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Universal MacOS Classic wireless card driver

Here's an Mac OS 8+ driver for most "PC-only" wireless cards.
The AeroCard Universal Mac Driver is a universal driver that is compatible with over 30 of the most popular 802.11b wireless LAN cards on the PC market today. Now, you can turn any PC-only wireless card into a Mac-compatible card.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Higgins!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:48:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aldrin punches out lunar conspiracist

Stefan sez:
"Authorities are investigating a complaint that retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin punched a man in the face, because he was asked to swear on a Bible that he had been on the moon."

You the man, Buzz.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:35:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Explosion organ!

Computer-controlled music played on explosion organs.
The Large Hot Pipe Organ is the world's only MIDI controlled, propane powered explosion organ. The LHPO's pyro-acoustic explodo-rhythmations will throbbatize your earholes and dance-ify your booty and make you realize what "Industrial Music" REALLY means!
Link Discuss (Thanks, Charlie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:45:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

First-hand account of Portland protests

Stewart Brand's son Noah, whom I know from the WELL, has posted this very cogent report of an anti-Bush protest in Portland where he was gassed sprayed and shot with rubber bullets, without provocation. This hasn't gotten much mainstream press-attention, though I've seen a number of home-movies of this floating around on the Internet, including a particularily troubling one where a stationary mother with an infant in her arms and her back to the cops is hosed down with pepperspray. Link Discuss Thanks, Michael!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:33:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Naked Networks are not (necessarily) insecure

Slashdot has a story about a research report form a Toronto-based consulting firm called IPEverywhere, which maps out "naked" access points in Toronto, implying that these nodes are all accidentally left open and are security risks. Here's my Slashdot post on the subject:
I just spoke with the COO of the IPEverywhere about this study, and confirmed that the methodology only established whether a node was running WEP (a "security measure" of dubious value).

That means that many of the "unsecured" nodes in this report may have had other means of securing themselves, from switch- or AP-based MAC filtering to captive portals such as NoCat. Moreover, the protocol for this study did not establish whether the open APs in question were handing out DHCP leases (or, indeed, whether they were connected to the Internet at all).

Finally, this study did not investigate in any depth whether the open APs were deliberately or accidentally left open. Many of us run open "community" networks around the world (I operate one in Toronto at King and Niagara, and three in San Francisco, two at 19th and Shotwell, and one on Sycamore near 17th and Mission). These networks are deliberately "unsecured" and are provided out of public-spiritedness, or even out of a political commitment to providing tools for anonymous speech on the Internet -- anonymous speech being fundamental to democratic discourse.

Since WEP is such a poor "security" measure, the best practice for wireless users is to use SSH and/or SSL tunnels to secure sensitive traffic to a proxy (either remote or on your own network). In fact, if you're a promiscuous user of any network -- conference centers, airport lounges, hotel rooms, schools, etc -- you should assume that unless your messages are encrypted, they will be sniffed on the wire.

The primary "security" concern about open wireless seems to be that a "rogue" AP will be installed behind a firewall. The firewall, of course, is hardly sufficient in and of itself for securing a network. It's based on the presumption that everyone on one side of the firewall is trustworthy, and everyone on the other side is untrustworthy. We know, though, that this is a fallacy. Getting inside the firewall -- either through physical intrusion (think of visitors to your office plugging into the the network to check mail) or virtually, by 0wning a box on the network with a trojan -- is not difficult for a determined intruder. Meanwhile, the legitimate users of your network resources are often outside your firewall (mobile execs at a client site, for example) and thus not only walled off from the rest of the network, but also vulnerable to attack, since their machines' first line of defense is the firewall, which they are suddenly out of.

Security is hard. The proper place to draw your network perimiter isn't around your office, but around each machine. Personal firewalls, regular applications of security patches, good passwords and user education provide genuine security. Firewalls (and FUD about open APs) don't.

Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:21:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lem's doodles

Wonderful galley of the doodles of Stanislaw Lem. Link Discuss (via Schism Matrix)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:22:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, September 9, 2002

Czech republic secedes from telcos with WiFi

Great article on a grassroots Czech movement to secede from the corrupt telco monopoly by putting wireless access-points on roofs across Prague.
"The connection is already built, and it's real broadband, guaranteed connection, so the issue of Internet connection is solved," Janda said.

TransgasNet's head of product management Radek Majer said that the company has a commercial contract with one of CZFree.net's members on the connectivity supply. The contract doesn't include the access route fee because the connection to TransgasNet's node is wireless. He said that although CZFree.net's connectivity comes from TransgasNet, the company doesn't provide the services directly to customers of CZFree.net because the network is independent from the company. However, CZFree.net can indirectly raise the number of customers who will be able to connect to TransgasNet's backbone access, Majer said.

"The good side of the project is that it can connect a lot of people, and the [backbone] connectivity is relatively cheap," Janda said. The price of the connectivity is then shared between the users, with no extra fees.

There are currently around 15 to 20 functioning nodes in Prague, and the actual number of users is still probably fewer than 100, although an exact count is impossible. However, the nature of the network makes it very easy to connect to (especially for users with laptops and Wi-Fi cards), and another 320 users are in line to put up their own nodes.

Link Discuss (via 802.11b Network News)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:59:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crank FBI letters about MAD Magazine


Amazing archive of crank letters to the FBI complaining that MAD Magazine is corrupting the morals of America's youth. Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:51:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Revolting school lunch gallery

Dozens of photos of horrible cafeteria food. Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:44:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nations no more

Footnotes to history: nations that no longer exist, including the land of my ancestors:
Belorussian Democratic Republic- After the October Revolution, many Russian political parties opposed to the Bolsheviks were forced into exile or into areas controlled by White forces. The Social Revolutionary Party managed to hold onto control in Belorussia (now Belarus). On March 25, 1918, after the Social Revolutionaries broke with the Bolsheviks, Belorussia was declared independent. Unfortunately, the SR government had little army support, and the region was quickly overrun by Communist forces.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:36:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

eMoo: carbonated sugared milk-beverage

eMoo: Carbonated milk-like kids-beverage, aimed at kids who love the mucous they get from dairy but yearn for sugar and carbonation. Link Discuss (Thanks, Buzz!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:33:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thailand's musical elephants

Preservationists at a Thai elephant reserve decided to provide the pachyderms with outsized, hephalump-friendly instruments, including a harmonica and a drum-kit. The elephants not only play with the instruments, they play together on them, jamming in what is clearly recognizable as music. Link Discuss (Thanks, Fred!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:31:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Can the digital hub survive DRM?

On October 1, I'm going to be on a panel at the O'Reilly OS X con, talking about the way that Apple's digital hub strategy is being dramatically undermined by Hollywood's legislative agenda. Are a digital hub and a DRM operating system mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, no one from Apple would do the panel, but the attendees are very good nevertheless:
  • Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News
  • Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • J.D. Lasica, Online Journalism Review
  • Victor Nemechek, El Gato Software LLC
  • Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:29:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nerdiest theology ever

Larry Wall, the inventor of Perl, is being interviewed on Slashdot. One of the questions from the peanut gallery asked him if he really believed in God, and how he reconciled faith and science. His answer is the nerdiest expression of theology I've ever encountered -- and I mean that in a good way.
You can't please God the way Enoch did without some faith, because those who come to God must (minimally) believe that:

A) God exists, and
B) God is good to people who really look for him.

That's it. The "good news" is so simple that a child can understand it, and so deep that a philosopher can't.

Now, it appears that you're willing to admit the possibility of bit A being a 1, so you're almost halfway there. Or maybe you're a quarter way there on average, if it's a qubit that's still flopping around like Shoedinger's Cat. You're the observer there, not me--unless of course you're dead. :-)

A lot of folks get hung up at point B for various reasons, some logical and some moral, but mostly because of Shroedinger again. People are almost afraid to observe the B qubit because they don't want the wave function to collapse either to a 0 or a 1, since both choices are deemed unpalatable. A lot of people who claim to be agnostics don't take the position so much because they don't know, but because they don't want to know, sometimes desperately so.

Because if it turns out to be a 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism.

And because if it turns out to be a 1, then you have swallow a whole bunch of flim-flam that goes with it. Or do you?

Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:32:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gay wrestlers come out of the closet

Billy and Chuck, the closeted gay wrestling tag-team of the WWE, came out last week, with Chuck asking Billy to marry him in the ring at Thursday's match. Sure, it's all a scripted soap-opera aimed at teenage boys, but hell, that's a pretty forward-thinking plot-twist!
I'm sure this wasn't a cynical attempt to cash in on the few hundred thousand (or more) gay viewers tuning in for the first time this week as a result of the Times article... But then again, if it was, WHO CARES? It's a pretty stunning development, and a right-minded step into modern times for a "sport" that isn't renowned for its forward-thinking.

Contrast this development to "Smackdown's" fellow UPN flagship show, "Enterprise," where the craven creative minds of Paramount continue a decades-long homophobia. Jesus Christ! If the WWE can have gay tag team champions, why can't the freaking 24th century have a gay ensign, or a gay anybody? A gay guest alien of the week! Something! What excuse can you possibly make for such cowardice? Especially in the face of Billy and Chuck.

Link Discuss (Thanks, John!)

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

Edward Gorey's house converted to a museum

An eventful day for the houses of macabria collectors.
Gorey's famed artwork, clutter and vast library are carefully culled into exhibits chronicling his life. The four walls of the 200-year-old cedar shingle home can barely contain the bulging legacy of the artist idolized for his morbid depictions of domestic life, prim murders, Edwardian intrigue and fantastic characters.
Link (Registration required) Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:02:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fray Day this Saturday in SF

Derek sez: "Hey Bay Area Boing Boingers! Got plans for Saturday night? Come to Fray Day for true stories and live music! Fray Day is an annual festival of true, personal stories, where everyone is invited to tell their story." I'm gonna be out of town, but you-all have a good time, OK? Link Discuss (Thanks, Derek!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:15:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ackermansion for sale

Forry Ackerman, a legendary fan and collector, is selling off the Ackermansion, his home-cum-museum in Los Angeles.
Ackerman, the former literary agent for such authors as Ray Bradbury and founding editor of the cult magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, is selling the house, which was listed for $1.3 million and is now in escrow, the Times reported. In addition, Ackerman, 85, said he is liquidating his memorabilia collection to raise money to pay for an expensive legal fight against his onetime business associate, Ray Ferry.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shape of human body changing -- again

Two hundred years ago, the human race got, on average, 30cm taller. Now, on average, the human race is obese. A researcher from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine claims that the obesity pandemic is a new fundamental shift in the shape of human bodies, brought on by the same kinds of technological changes that made us taller.
"Pandemic" obesity was the result of an abundance of high-energy, aggressively marketed foods, and sedentary lifestyles induced by television and computers, said Professor Prentice.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ten things the Net got right

Dan Gillmor's new column -- it's hard to pick a quote from this, the whole thing's just so right on.
1) Make it all work on top of existing networks. Designers deliberately didn't try to build a single, new über-data network -- it was about ``networks, not a network,'' Bradner observes. This meant supporting multiple network types by putting a simple set of rules, now called the Internet protocols, on top. This added layer was wide open for innovation, not controlled by a few players.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:58:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, September 8, 2002

GayDay2 at Disneyland coming up


GayDay, the annual homo-hop at Disneyland, is coming up October 4-6, including "the first-ever private, gay dance party INSIDE Disneyland." If you're not gay and want to be a part of the festivities, just get yourself a red shirt that says "Straight but not narrow" or similar, and you'll fit right in. Link Discuss (Thanks, Louis!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:12:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tacky Treasures

Great annotated collection of thrifted, new and yard-sale-found treasures. Link Discuss (Thanks, Julie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:55:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iPod clone made unusable by "security"

Toshiba's new digital music player shows us more evidence that (consumer electronics) + (digital rights management) = ass. The DRM vendor's mantra is, "DRM needs to be invisible, it needs to get out of the way of legitimate activity and only crop up when the user tries to infringe on copyright." A good sentiment, but it's more wishful thinking than design specification, as the new Tosh Mobilphone demonstrates.

The Mobilphone is an iPod clone with a 5GB drive and a USB 2.0 interface. The iPod, of course, rules for a number of reasons, but one of the biggies is that by using FireWire to synch MP3s with your computer, the iPod is capable of filling itself up with music in a matter of minutes. USB 2.0 leapfrogs FireWire and delivers even greater speed. So far, so good.

But for "security" reasons, the Mobilphone will only play music that has been encrypted with Toshiba's proprietary cipher. The encryption happens when you use Toshiba's software to synch your Mobilphone with your PC. Now, leave aside for the moment that this means that without (illegally, under the DMCA) reverse-engineering the crypto, no vendor except Toshiba and its licensees will ever be able to deliver a client for the Mobilphone (so forget about Linux, BSD, Mac or device-to-device apps), and that if Toshiba's fly-sized attention-span wanders away from the device, you'll be stuck holding a 5GB boat anchor.

Yes, leave that aside, because there's an immediate, non-hypothetical reason that Toshiba's brainless crypto-scheme is a stupid, anti-customer idea. The encryption of your music happens on the fly, as you synch your Mobilphone with your PC. That encryption process is CPU-intensive, so much so that it slows the USB 2.0 interface to USB 1.1 speeds. In other words, despite the presence of some truly azz-kicking, bleeding-edge interface technology, the Mobilphone synchs no faster than it would have if it had a poky old 1.1 bus.

Pracitically speaking this means that synching ten albums takes eight minutes instead of fifty seconds. I have an iTunes "Advanced Playlist" that grabs 5GB of random, high-rated music from my pool of 20GB of MP3s and synchs them every time I plug my iPod in -- it takes a minute or two. With the Mobilphone, it'd take all afternoon. Rip. Mix. Wait. Link Discuss (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:15:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How should copyright be enforced online?

Spiked Online, a UK tech site, is hosting a debate about the appropriate way for copyright infringement to be dealt with online. On one side is David Stoll, board director at British Music Rights, who argues that ISPs should have to adhere to a code of ethics, taking down any material that is alleged to infringe upon receiving notice of that material. On the other side is Sandy Starr, coordinator, spiked-IT, who argues that takedown regimes substitute that which is expedient for that which is just -- yes, suing to have infringing material removed is a slow process, but the sloth of the courts is a feature, not a bug. Courts are slow because they gather the facts before acting, and err on the side of caution. There's a live component of the debate that kicks off on Sept 10, and you can participate. Link Discuss (Thanks, Farrah!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:49:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scooby Doo/Cthulhu crossover fan fiction

A fanfic crossover made in the nether-hells:
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Our careers began in the late sixties and early seventies when one of Fred's fraternity brothers tried to sacrifice the entire fraternity and its guests to Shub-Niggurath during a fraternity party. The four of us were forced to lock the doors and burn down the building. It killed a few frat boys, but even Fred agreed that frat boys were easily replacable.
Link Discuss (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:32:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Logic with Beavis and Butthead

Beavis and Butthead used to demonstrate logical fallacies:
Circular causation

A chicken and egg situation. Not always the result of faulty logic, of course - life is often like that, as Butthead demonstrates here....

Beavis : How come Tom Petty's on TV?
Butthead: Coz he's famous, dumbass.
Beavis : Yeah, but how come he's famous?
Butthead: Coz he's on TV, buttmunch!
Beavis : Yeah, but how come he's on TV?

and so on....

Link Discuss (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:30:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

School becomes surveillance state

A California high-school has turned itself into a surveillance state, tracking students moment-by-moment. Presumably, this is so that they will be better prepared to live in a surveillance state by the time they graduate.
As Mike Brooder pulls into the student parking lot outside West Hills High School, wireless cameras record his face and license plate--doing the same to every car that follows.

The cameras then track the 17-year-old senior as he walks up a concrete path, studies his schedule, scratches his chin, waves to friends and then wanders to class...

Each bathroom door is monitored. Sensors that detect the smoke of a single match send alerts to campus security.

By Christmas, four more cameras will be installed, and hall monitors will carry wireless computers that can pull up a student's school picture and class schedule.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:28:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

100% transparency leads to loss of speech

Good rant from Rich Persaud about the speech-chilling effects of enforced identity online. Some people think that the way to build reputation systems is to put measures in place that ensure that you can reliably identify people across different systems -- i.e., the Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing is the doctorow of eBay is the mouthbeef of Slashdot and the mouthbEFF of #infoanarchy -- and so drain the bottomless reservoir of identities we can assume in different online contexts. Rich sez:
100% transparency does not lead to loss of privacy. 100% transparency leads to loss of speech. All speech and action becomes part of a continuous game of posturing, creative writing and mediocre (not even amateur) performance art.

Community boundaries segment risk, define topology and vary feedback. They are necessary for evolution, learning and behavior change (historical role of reputation systems).

Link Discuss (via Hack the Planet)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:00:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kids' toys graded on the Cain-and-Abel scale

Leander Kahney reviews high-tech kids' toys in Wired News, using his kids as a yardstick. The more they kids fight over who gets to play with the toys, the higher the score. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:44:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

An Auschwitz Alphabet

Jonathan Blumen Wallace (Thanks, Seth) has assembled "An Auschwitz Alphabet," twenty-six alphabetical ruminations on Auschwitz, interspersed with first-hand accounts and documentary photographs. To say it is horrifying is to understate by several orders of magnitude. It is a catalogue of shocks and twisted transgressions, a litany, a series of harsh notes that ring dischord on the mind's ear.

I visited Dachau with my parents when I was twelve, in the winter of 1984. Nineteen years later, that two-hour visit is still vivid in my mind.

Why do the Nazi horrors so fundamentally discomfit us? I think it's their infantile banality. If you gave a psychopathic seven-year-old a box of crayons, a pad of construction paper and a month's time, he would recreate each of these horrors: "I'll chop them and starve them and rape them and tear their teeth out of their heads and starve them some more and x-ray their pensises until they fall off and make them eat shit and drink piss and I'll shoot them in the face and hang them and stab them and burn them alive --"

The Tom of Finland Nazi chic is about the refined, intellectual spirit of the Third Reich: The swooping Romanesques, the futuristic deco streamlining of the double-lightning-bolt SS insignia, the arch piss-elegance of the gentleman fascist with his swagger-stick and his precise little pistol in its gleaming leather holster.

But the reality is that the Nazi aesthetic was arrested at a second-grade level. It was the shock-for-shock's-sake naughtiness of a seven-year-old with his first swear-word, "You're a big fuckety fuck fucker!" It wasn't clean and simple and elegant. It was baroque and childish, the horrors of a schlock B-movie monster with tentacles that end with claws that end with guns that shoot flaming radioactive bullets that explode on impact and spread black death.

And that's why it's so horrifying, so primal. Auschwitz wasn't a series of individually tailored Room 101s devised by hyper-intelligent fiends to pry apart your psyche. It was a Child's Garden of Terror, a pull-the-wings-off-flies playset built by intellectual infants to terrorize their victims, a lame Star Trek episode where it turns out that the kidnapped hu-mans were in the power of an alien eight-year-old whose parents didn't adequately supervise his playtime.

To be at the mercy not of monsters, but of children of monstrous strength and disposition, that is the true horror.

If you want to communicate a message to the great mass of people, you are told to simplify it and simplify it again. Reduce it to a mission statement, then a vision statement, then a slogan. You can't get 300,000,000 people to understand a 500 word-blog entry, but boil it down to "Things go better with Coke," and you've got a socko-boffo hit you can take to the bank.

Childish messages and childish horrors are the stock-in-trade of demagogues. It's a demagogue's willingness to shave the corners off the truth and elide nuance and reduce the program to a single bullet point in words of one syllable that gives him the ability to command a mob.

From "Hope:"

For purposes of defense, reality can be distorted not only in memory but in the very act of taking place. Throughout the year of my imprisonment in Auschwitz I had Alberto D. as a fraternal friend: he was a robust, courageous young man, more clearsighted than the average and therefore very critical of the many who fabricated for themselves, and reciprocally administered to each other, consolatory illusions ("The war will be over in two weeks", "There will be no more selections", "The English have landed in Greece", "The Polish Partisans are about to liberate the camp," and so on, rumors heard nearly every day and punctually given the lie by reality). Alberto had been deported together with his forty-five year old father. In the imminence of the great selection of October 1944, Alberto and I had commented on this event with fright, impotent rage, rebellion, resignation, but without seeking refuge in comforting truths. The selection came, Alberto's "old" father was chosen for the gas, and in the space of a few hours, Alberto changed. He had heard rumors that seemed to him worthy of belief: the Russians are close by, the Germans would no longer dare persist in this slaughter, that was not a selection like the others, it was not for the gas chamber, but had been made to choose the weakened but salvageable prisoners, in fact like his father, who was very tired but not ill; indeed, he even knew where they would be sent, to Jaworzno, not far away, to a special camp for convalescents fit only for light labor.

Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:41:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, September 7, 2002

Wil's Barney-boxing gloves on eBay

EFF is auctioning off the gloves that Wil "Wesley" Wheaton used to beat the tar out of Barney the Purple Dinosaur at our benefit event at the DNA lounge. Bid early, bid often, own a piece of history! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:15:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Testical Festical coming soon

Only days remain before the Montana Testicle Festival, a celebration of the culinary delights of bull nads. Link Discuss (Thanks, Kevin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:07:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless FUD: Spammers *could* use WiFi

ZDNet ran a story earlier this week about wireless spammers who drive up to open APs and send "millions of emails." They cited an expert, Adrian Wright.

Well, Danny did some research on this (i.e., he asked Adrian), and he discovered that Adrian had said no such thing -- rather, he'd said that spammers could send spam this way.

My guess is that as long as you can send spam from home without having to put on pants, there's no reason why you'd go through this stupid business of wardriving open wireless nodes to use as a spam launchpad.

It's amazing how many people really want to believe that open wireless is/will be a scourge on the Internet, an enabler for terrorists and child pornographers and spammers -- yet these same people utter nary a peep about the idea of libraries, Internet cafes, and kiosks in airports and conference centers that offer anonymous wireless access. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:51:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, September 6, 2002

Atomic-scale memory

Nice techy piece on the theory and practice of atomic-scale memory.
A two-dimensional version of Feynman's atomic memory is formed on the surface of silicon by a small amount of gold (below on the right). It looks similar to the CD-ROM on the left, but the scale is in nanometers instead of micrometers. That means the storage density is a million times higher. Extra silicon atoms (white) sit on top of self-assembled tracks that are formed by the gold. Each track is exactly five atoms wide. It is suggestive to assign an extra silicon atom to a 1 and a vacancy to a 0. The minimum empty area required around each bit is 5x4=20 atoms, 4 atoms along the track and 5 atoms from one track to the next. Feynman's 1959 suggestion of spacing the bits 5 atoms apart was right on the mark.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Bruce!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:17:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A GUI for Blosxom

Rael's kvelling because someone's written a GUI front-end for Blosxom, the blogging engine in 30 lines of perl. Stick Blapp on your OSX box and you've got a lovely, graphic front-end to Blosxom with an interface to the NetNewsWire RSS aggregator. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:12:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New condoms come with speed applicators

A South African insurance company has funded the creation of new condoms that come with a "speed applicator" to ensure that the rubbers go on correctly. Link Discuss (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Group filmmaking project

MemeFeeder, a collaborative short-film-making project:
Each 1-minute scene is to be created by a different director, who is in complete creative control based a storyboard. Submitted scenes will be spliced together and released on MemeFeeder.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Carol!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:59:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazing cup-stacking video

Mind-croggling video of a champeen cup-stacker -- this girl stacks cups so quickly, she appears to be in a speeded up, demented Little Rascals clip. As Higgins sez, it's "mesmerizing." Link Discuss (Thanks, Higgins!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:56:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Archive of answering machine greetings

There are some funny ones in here.
"Hi. I am probably home, I'm just avoiding someone I don't like. Leave me a message, and if I don't call back, it's you."
Link Discuss (Thanks, Kevin!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:11:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Ukulele Magazine!

The first issue of the highly-anticipated Ukulele Occasional is out, and it's every bit as wonderful as I hoped it would be. There are some great articles in there about ukuleles and ukulele players, both old and new. It looks more like a high quality paperback book than a magazine. Overall, a wonderful job. Congrats to the publisher, Jason Verlinde! Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:55:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Turn your bonsai into a tragic diorama

Crash Bonsai sells highly detailed miniature wrecked cars, with the notion that you'll use them to adorn your bonsai tree, staging a teeny car-crash in your pot-o-mini-serenity. Link Discuss (Thanks, Meryl!)

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

RSS inching towards convergence

RSS is a standard means of summarizing the contents of web pages and send them around to other people so that you can, e.g., build news readers that aggregate headlines from across the Internet. The RSS standards-definition saga appears to be coming to a dramatic conclusion. The various camps are all coming around to the same place, and Rael's written up his treatise on the RSS future here. Worth a read, even if you're not in the RSS priesthood or laity. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:48:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, September 5, 2002

What's it like to be a netizen?

The Amateur Computerist zine is looking for articles about what it means to be a "netizen" in 2002:
It is now 10 years later. We would like to document the further development and application of the concept of netizen (and of the vision of the future of the net) that developed since Michael's research in 1992/1993. Also we want to project into the future about what the emergence of the netizen can mean to the further development of the Internet and of our society in general.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Sarah!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:38:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Digitize records with an optical scanner

If you scan a vinyl phono-record at high-enough resolution, you can get highly detailed pictures of the grooves and use software to decode them into music. Or you might be able to, once the decoder's improved -- the current proof-of-concept takes a lot of wishful thinking to get worked up about. Nevertheless, I am: worked up. Imagine the speed and error-correction you could bring to bear if you could perfect this system (in fact, you could do nifty stuff like OCRing the label on the LP to get the artist and track names, and insert them into the digital file's metadata)! Imagine libraries of TIFFs of phono-records available through the Internet Archive, available for downloading and processing into Ogg or MP3 files. Keep the TIFFs handy and you can re-rip them into new formats as they emerge. Imagine bulk-feeding phono-scanners that automatically feed stacks of wax through and turn them into digital music, rescuing and restoring entire libraries of music... Gosh, this is cool stuff. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:35:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I got my book cover!

My editor just sent me a JPEG of the front cover for my first novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," which Tor will publish next February. I got a hardcopy at the WorldCon, and it's even more beautiful in real life, lovely neon ink on coated stock. Link Discuss (Thanks, Patrick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:40:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ukulele Girl print

I've just made a limited edition print of my Ukulele Girl illustration. It's printed on 500 lb textured stock using the Giclee printing process and it looks fabulous, if I do say so myself. It measure 18 inches by 17 inches and it is limited to 30 prints. A signed and number copy costs $75. You can buy them directly from me (I'll pay postage), or from the Roq la Rue Gallery in Seattle. Email me if you're interested. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:26:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eastern Standard Tribe proposed NOT for real

My second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, which Tor will be publishing in either late 2003 or sometime in 2004, is about quasi-Masonic societies of people whose primary alliegance to one another is that they all adhere to the same time-zone for sleeping and waking. Of course, fact follows fiction, and it was only a matter of time until jingoistic kooks seriously humorously proposed moving the Greenwich Mean to NYC:
Wars have been fought over religious calendars and millions of people have been killed. We need a bona fide secular calendar, devoid of all religious impulses. We need to bring an antiquated world into real time. We need to bury much of the chronological past that really is no more than a celebration of mayhem. We need modern measures and tools. We need a concept of time that is no longer subjective. We need an American time. After all, America is the center of the universe. We hold the power. Why not put the world on the American clock.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Greg!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:21:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BBEdit updated for OS X.2

Barebones Software have released a maintainence update for BBEdit, the Mac text-editor most likely to be used by a supreme being to write the requirements docs for Heaven. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:24:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TI knocks 90% off WiFi power-consumption

Texas Instruments is shipping a new WiFi chipset that runs at 10 percent of the power consumption of this year's models: battery life ahoy! Discuss Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:08:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Junko Mizuno's bizarre dolls

Here's a collection of toy dolls designed by Junko Mizuno, a young comic book artist from Japan. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:04:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flying toilets: NIMBY waste-disposal

In Ghetto, a sprawling, hyperdense slum in Kenya, the absence of toilets and/or outhouses has yeilded a truly 21st Century solution: the flying toilet. To make a flying toilet, you:

1. Crap in a plastic bag

2. Throw the bag as far away as possible, over the rooftops of the nearby shacks.

Man, talk about NIMBY. Link Discuss (via New World Disorder)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:58:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report from Reclaim the Streets

Joey's written up a wonderful description of his accordion-fuelled adventures at Toronto's Reclaim the Streets rally:
Man: Not my scene. I'm a Buddhist.

Me: That doesn't rule out reading the Bible. Buddhists consider the teachings of many other religions valid. They consider Christ to have been enlightened.

Man: No shit?

Me: Ever read Living Buddha, Living Christ?

Man: Um...never even heard of it.

Of course not. I decided to adminsiter the "Are you really a Buddhist, or are you doing the religion-as-fashion-statement thing" test.

Discuss Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:54:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blogging in Doonesbury

Blogging gets a mention in today's Doonesbury. Nous sommes arrives. Link Discuss (Thanks Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:37:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dubious "Benefits" of Entertainment PC

Lawmeme evaluates the Top Ten Benefits of Microsoft and HP's Christmastime "Entertainment PC," which is chock full o' Hollywood-centric "features" that undermine Fair Use.
4. Enjoy the convenience of a single remote control to access your entertainment

This is convenient, until you realize that this means Microsoft controls the ways you can access your entertainment. Prefer to access your entertainment in a way that Microsoft (or Hollywood) doesn't like? Too bad. Access has come to take on some very strange meanings. According to the DMCA, you are not permitted to circumvent access control devices. Hollywood defines "access" as "using." If you watch a DVD, you are "accessing" the content on the DVD. Thus, if you watch a DVD in a way that Hollywood has not explicitly permitted, you are in violation of the DMCA.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernest!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:33:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

H2Cocoa: Chocolate water in shops soon

A British softdrinks vendor will ship H2Cocoa -- chocolate-flavored water -- in Q4 this year.
Trying to make water tasty and more interesting is always going to be a bit of a challenge, but now a company have come up with chocolate-flavoured water.

H2Cocoa will be clear and low-calorie and will taste like chocolate milk.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Feorag!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:20:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Invisibility cloak patented

From "this week's hottest patent applications in the world of photonics" -- a sheet you drape over physical objects that both captures and emits light, making it appear as though the object was not preset. Aw, call it what it is: a cloak of invisibility, or, as I like to call it: instaninja!
The idea hinges on carefully mimicking background lighting conditions to help render an object invisible, similar to how a chameleon blends in with its surroundings. The rear and front surfaces of an object are covered with a material containing an array of photodetectors and light emitters respectively.

The photodetectors on the rear surface are used to record the intensity and color of a source of illumination behind the object. The light emitters on the front surface then generate light beams that exactly mimic the same measured intensity, color and trajectory. The result is that an observer looking at the front of the object appears to see straight through it.

Discuss (Thanks, Ren!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:16:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wal-Mart gets rich off dead employees

Wal-Mart is cashing in on its dead employees, via an elaborate tax-dodge that involves taking out life-insurance on employees (no word on whether so-insured employees are put on extra-deadly restocking assignments in the poison aisle).
Wal-Mart took out about 350,000 life insurance policies on the lives of its employees payable to the company, according to the lawsuit filed by Sims and other family members of deceased Wal-Mart employees. Hartford Life Insurance Co. and AIG Life Insurance Co. sold the policies to Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart borrowed money from the insurers to pay the premiums, which the company was able to write off as a business expense on its federal taxes.

Link Discuss

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

Victor Moscosco Interview

The new issue of The Comics Journal has an interview with Victor Moscosco, one of the early Zap cartoonists. The CJ has undergone a massive redesign, by the way. It looks more like a coffee table art book than a magazine. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:04:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, September 4, 2002

20th Century Eightball

Of all the comics I buy, Dan Clowe's Eightball is my favorite. He's best known for his multi-issue stories, such as "Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron" and "Ghost World," but I really love the short misanthropic humor stories that he draws. Twentieth Century Eightball is a new anthology of these stories, published by Fantagraphics. The 100-page book is loaded with Clowe's deliciously snarky attacks on sports, love, art, sex, hipsters, and music. Like R. Crumb, Clowes has a hair-trigger bullshit detector, which he uses on himself as frequently as everyone and everything else. Amazon is selling it for just $13.30, which is a great deal. (And if you buy it by clicking on this link, Boing Boing gets a cut.) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:56:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Melancholy Elephants: a copyright parable

Spider Robinson's "Melancholy Elephants," a prescient sf story about copyright, is online for free. This is a hell of a story about the possibility that we will run out of works that are not in copyright, a kind of proto-parable about the demise of the commons brought on by the infinite extension of copyright. Link Discuss (Thanks, Adam!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:57:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tropical paradise made from recycled bottles

If you can't afford beachfront real-estate, why not make your own?
A British carpenter who dreamed of living on a private sunshine isle built himself one using 250,000 plastic bottles.

Richie Sowa spent four years making the floating Spiral Island, which measures 66ft by 54ft, weighs 60 tons and has three sandy beaches.

The mangrove-covered paradise, which is anchored off the coast of Mexico, includes a two-bedroom house with a large living room and kitchen.

The walls are made from palm trees and the roof is plastic sheeting.

Richie hopes to make the island totally self-sustainable and is growing food including tomatoes.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jed!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:50:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bridge player stripped of medal for refusing drug test

The World Federation of Bridge is attempting to get bridge recognized as an Olympic Sport, so it is requiring that bridge "atheletes" be drug-tested. This year's silver medalist has been stripped of her title for refusing to pee in a cup. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:43:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Seattle espresso tax worries city council

Seattle is considering a ten-cent-a-cup espresso tax, but the City Council is understandably nervous about it -- taxing frou frou West Coast caffeine delivery systems is a dangerous business. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:40:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, September 3, 2002

Even teenagers like the Harry Potter vibrating broomstick

Amazon is selling a Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 Vibrating Broomstick, and the reviews are overwhelmingly positive!
When my 12 year old daughter asked for this for her birthday, I kind of wondered if she was too old for it, but she seems to LOVE it. Her friends love it too! They play for hours in her bedroom with this great toy. They really seem to like the special effects it offers (the sound effects and vibrating). My oldest daughter (17) really likes it too! I reccomend this for all children.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Jim!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:08:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Design a robot-pet, win an Aibo

Stefan sez: "The latest Viridian Design contest: Imagine a futuristiquoid pet dog substitute and win a Sony Aibo!" Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:22:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Greek government bans solitaire, mindsweeper, Quake, et al

The Greek government has banned all computer games -- from solitaire to Quake -- in an effort to crack down on Internet gambling. Good to see that Hollings-grade technophobia isn't just an American phenomenon. Link Discuss (Thanks, Two of Four!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:20:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Verisign might lose .COM

ICANN's General Counsel has sent a stiff note to the grifters at Verisign, putting them on notice that their neglect of their WHOIS data has endangered their .COM registrar status. If Verisign can't muster some competence, it looks like they could lose their privilege of registering .COM addresses -- hey, ICANN, let's put Verisign to death! Link Discuss (Thanks, Paul!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:17:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Microsoft's new "entertainment" PC isn't

Microsoft and HP are shipping a holiday-season "entertainment" PC with all kinds of severely restrictive copy-prevention technology built in. It's ironic: MSFT is attempting to leap into the "convergence" world by providing people with machines that are engineered to be as easy to use as a VCR or CD-player, on the grounds that PCs are too tricky for everyday entertainment uses. But the "entertainment" PC takes all the flexibility that's possible in a general-purpose computer and locks it away from Microsoft's customers -- it's less entertaining than a cheaper commodity PC. We keep hearing theories explaining why the convergence revolution has fizzled, but doesn't building devices that lack the features your customers demand seem to be the obvious culprit?
But Microsoft has included copy-protection with the operating system that uses encryption to lock recorded TV shows to the PC. Already, consumers can legally record television programs to VHS tapes for personal use and view them on another VCR in the household. Microsoft has taken a more conservative approach by thwarting the sharing of programs recorded digitally. That strategy might make sense as Microsoft attempts to attract Hollywood movie studios with its digital rights management and anti-copying technologies. But consumers may not react favorably to the copy protection, say analysts.

"You have to applaud their efforts (on copyright protection). But this is not a mainstream product, particularly if you're going to limit it where consumers are not going to be able to share that digital media between their DVD players and other devices," said ARS analyst Toni Duboise. "To take that (copying) flexibility away from consumers is a big mistake. There's no way consumers are going to like this proprietary way of doing business."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:39:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyright robs the future

My pal Ray Davis has written a great new rant about copyright:
William Blake didn't stop writing in 1818. It just looks that way because his antejerusalem manuscripts were destroyed after his death and before his most fervent admirers were born.

Our access to European pre-Christian culture depends largely on copyists' lack of judgment: wild-assed Christians, like wild-assed fundamentalists of other sacred-or-secular stripes, aren't shy about discarding the not-obviously-utilitarian.

A while ago, I picked up a "great young American poets" anthology from 1880 or so. I recognized only two or three names, and them not for their verse. Among the missing: Dickinson, Melville, and Whitman.

They might've stayed missing, too. Whitman developed a cult while he was living, but scandalized heirs could easily have snuffed posthumous printings. And under our current rules, Moby-Dick and The Confidence-Man wouldn't have entered the public domain until 1961, crimping the 1920s Melville revival.

I'm not worried about the Mouse or Gone with the Wind. Where there's money to be made and no insanity in the family, distribution will probably take place, with or without legal encouragement. And it's arguable, case by case, whether copyright hinders creation in the arts or promotes it or leaves it alone. But it inarguably supresses art (and embarrassing evidence) post-creation.

A reminder: there's about a month left until Lessig argues the Eldred case at the Supreme Court. If he wins, infinite extension of copyright will be declared unconstitutional and our world's intellectual future will be safeguarded. Link Discuss (Thanks, Ray!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:34:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Broadband: It's not the breadth, it's the availability

Matt Jones is working on a new meme, saying "Permanet" instead of "Broadband." The problem with "Broadband" is that it implies that the crucial thing about high-speed Internet access is its speed, but the real actual important thing is actually the fact that it's always on -- that it is always there with you. Of course, speed is important, but a dialup lag is a much higher transaction cost than network lag. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:29:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Landspeeder for sale

A street-legal Star Wars landspeeder kit-car up for auction on eBay. Only $12k right now! Link Discuss (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:24:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How much damage does a mountainside logo do?

An Indian court is assessing damages against Coke and Pepsi for painting fifty-foot-tall logos on a Himalayan mountain. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:17:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Are we live or are we simulated?

"Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?" A white-paper from a Yale philosophy professor who's working on a book-length version.
Abstract: This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the transhumanist dogma that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
I wonder, though (duh). Arguments that we're living in a simulation remind me of arguments about The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy -- if there is such a Conspiracy, how come I never got a check? Likewise, if I am a simulation of my pre-post-human self, then why wouldn't I simulate an environment for me that, generally speaking, kicked more ass? Link Discuss (Thanks, Pamela!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:14:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Random text given versimillitude by use of emoticons

BlogDrone uses a giant database of phrases from people's online journals to randomly generate meandering blog entries in either English or Polish, based on whatever keywords you specify. Here's an entry for "copyright" ("Internet" and "girlfriend" are also good):
All written material copyright bellis 2001 html is 60 cove design 40 me :* I think some kind of soundproofing material would be more effective in creating privacy :P Refrigerator an antique beauty which sits unplugged in my kitchen looking pretty and quietly mocking me like some kind of untamed gigolo. He watched her leave enjoying the simple motion of a perfect womans legs on concrete :> He watched her as she stalked back to the her table sat and began conversing. She heard him moving more in the chair a slight noise of skin on skin and she knew he was again stroking himself as he watched her. Shed try to stand and hed push her down into the chair and lean into her his forehead against hers pinning her there in the chair shouting listen to me. I got up on the chair and started fanning and thankfully the alarm stopped. When the distraction failed i got scared again and started crying? Would you wanna marry your best friend or the perfect lover? :P Forgive your best friend.

I made my supervisor at work cry. As he dashed off to the bank i made my way to a shoe outlet place where i tried on some ugly assed boots. So i made my way over to the suns dugout.

It's amazing: if a machine-generated text contains a discontinuity or nonsequitor, all you need to do to fix it is put a smiley after it. I never until now realized that the primary job of any emoticon is to say "excuse me, that didn't make any sense." ;-P

Lord, I loathe smileys. ;-) Link Discuss (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:47:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, September 2, 2002

Short story renaissance at this year's Hugos

The Hugos this year were full of moment and tension and wonder. The short-story categories, in particular, were chock-full-o-tough choices. Take the novelette category (which Ted Chiang won), where voters were asked to choose from Hell is the Absence of God by Ted Chiang and Lobsters by my sometime collaborator and soon-to-be-houseguest Charlie Stross, The Return of Spring, by my Campbell Award comptetitor Shane Tourtellotte, Undone, by my pal and mentor James Patrick Kelly, and The Days Between by Allen Steele.

And then there was Fast Times and Fairmont High by Vernor Vinge, which won in the Novella category.

Michael Swanwick, who won Best Short Story for The Dog Said Bow-Wow wins an additional Doctorow prize for best acceptance speech (as delivered by Eileen Gunn, since Swanwick couldn't make it), in which he called on the audience to applaud as loudly as possible for all the other short story writers who are kicking ass in the field.

These and many other of the stories on this year's ballot are available online for free reading. Don't miss 'em -- see the link below. Link Discuss (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:37:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

11 CDs worth of Dylan Thomas MP3s on Salon

Dylan Thomas MP3s available for download on Salon (you need to be a premium member):
In celebration of 50 years of spoken-word publishing, Caedmon released "Dylan Thomas: The Caedmon Collection," available as audiocassettes and a beautifully designed 11-CD set.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:09:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tattoos for diabetes maintenance

Researchers at Texas A&M have designed a tattoo that responds to blood-sugar levels, replacing pinprick tests for people with diabetes.
Once perfected, the tattoo will allow glucose levels to be monitored round the clock, and could allow an alarm system that would warn the diabetic if their glucose levels were to fall dangerously...

It is made of polyethylene glycol beads that are coated with fluorescent molecules.

Because glucose displaces the fluorescent molecules, the level of fluorescence is high when bodily glucose levels are low.

Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:07:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Firewalls suck

Simson Garfinkel blasts firewalls in his latest Technology Review editorial, nailing them right where they live:
...firewalls often provide a mere illusion of protection. They don’t make business systems significantly more secure. And by focusing attention on defending the perimeter, rather than on defending information assets within an organization, firewalls foster lax internal security practices that magnify the damage that insiders can inflict.

What firewalls do accomplish, however, is this: they make the Internet more cumbersome to use. I recently visited a friend’s firm in New York and wanted to check my e-mail, so I plugged my laptop into a network jack in an unused office. Access denied: my PC wasn’t set up to work with the company’s firewall. So instead of reading my e-mail, I occupied myself by sniffing the traffic on the office network and probing for a way out. (Had I been inclined, I could have read everybody else’s e-mail—or done real damage.)

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:03:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EarthViewer: Cyberspace meets meatspace

Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston are singing the praises of EarthViewer, a software version of Neal Stephenson's Earth from Snow Crash -- it's a browser for geoloc information whose interface is an Internet-updated 3D model of our beloved planet. I just had lunch today with Avi Bar-Zeev, a fine science fiction writer, an ex-Imagineer, and a programmer on EarthViewer. This is a remarkable piece of software, with a remarkable team of coders behind it.
What you get is a seamless, and I mean seamless, zooming and rotating of the world. As you zoom down to a resolution that lets you see individual houses and trees, a server streams the images from the Internet, with detail filling in (and being cached) in seconds. (One meter or better resolution in some cities, 15 meter for the entire USA, and at least 1 km for the rest of the world -- you'll more likely subscribe if you live in or frequently visit one of the 1-meter cities...) Click a checkbox and street names overlay the images of the streets. Another click and you can locate Italian restaurants on your view or see city borders or zip code boundaries. Click another box and, when you "tilt" the view, mountains and hills stick up, with the aerial images texture-mapped onto them. "Bookmark" places to return quickly, or compare "push-pin" locations.
Link Discuss

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

Preachy apocalyptic fundamentalist movies on the march

Nice Salon piece about the growing genre of Christian apocalypse movies:
In the "Apocalypse" movies, the rapture has come and gone, calling home the Christian right and leaving everyone else to suffer under the rule of the antichrist. While the gold-encrusted studios of the Trinity Broadcasting Network can be assumed to be silent as tombs, all is not lost. TBN footage has survived, offering words of advice for those "left behind," presented by neighborly doomsday advisors Jack Van Impe and his wife Rexella.

The Van Impes have, of course, personally ascended to heaven, but a ragtag band of fugitive evangelists, who include Mr. T, use a stolen news van to hack into Satan's satellite network and broadcast this pirate signal. It's enough to make the antichrist, Nick Macalusso (Nick Mancuso) lose his cool: "Why can't you idiots stop these treasonous transmissions?" he roars at his henchmen.

Scientologist John Travolta gave us "Battlefield Earth," which begins with a note to the effect that "humans are an endangered species." And a host of B-list Hollywood stars have given us "Apocalypse" and its three sequels -- "Revelation," "Tribulation" and "Judgment" -- in which fundamentalist Christians are the endangered species.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Alan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:51:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

China blocks Google, national collapse expected soon

The Great Firewall of China has started blocking Google -- ah well, there's a doomed civilization.
The ban is being widely debated on the web. On an online forum, a Chinese webmaster wrote: "Google is a very important tool for me and many other Chinese people."

"Please tell the world, that we need Google, or Yahoo or something else that's useful to do the research. We don't care about politics, but please help us to reach Google."

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:46:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Graphic to help put Verisign to death

Dug's made up this great badge for people to use on their sites after they've switched away from Verisign, the immoral, venal registrar who we should all be involved in putting to death, by telling our friends and families about their rotten business practices. Link Discuss (Thanks, Dug!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:43:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Missile silo for sale

A $2,000,000+ missile silo in the Adirondacks is up for auction on eBay -- as the seller sez, "This could be your weapon against growing world terrorism." Or, it could be the swinginest, loneliest bachelor pad you can imagine.
ATLAS-F MISSILE SILO HOME FEATURES (above ground house) Open floor plan home w/ kitchen, island fireplace and wrap around covered porch, a large garage which has a secret escape hatch to the underground. The surface home doubles as an entrance to the Launch Control Center (LCC) and Silo below. See photo of keypad entry locking steel doors.

LAUNCH CONTROL CENTER (LCC) (below ground living quarters) Two story 3ft. thick epoxy resin formulated concrete reinforced walls with stainless steel mesh. Structure is 42 ft. diameter containing 2300 sf luxury home with full kitchen, dinning, entertainment center, with two private suites and exquisite marble baths with Jacuzzi. Contemporary fiber optic effect lighting along with natural sunlight rendition back lighting. Has escape hatch leading directly to surface home garage above. High circulation venting (two 18" vent tubes.)

Link Discuss (Thanks, Steve!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:36:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dave's Book of Beings -- vintage nerd-obsessive AD&D monsters

Dave has scanned and uploaded the 300-odd Advanced Dungeons and Dragons monsters he created, called "Dave's Book of Beings." God, this takes me back to one of my great nerdish obsessions.
Ethriam makes his home in Nirvana as supreme ruler of the Polyhedroids. He and Primus are in constant heat over who is the true master of hte infinite discs of the plane. Primus is believed to have divided the discs into equal sectors, but Ethriam purports that any infinite space has a remaining infinity once it is thus divided. Hence, there are two gods in Nirvana who believe themselves "Masters of the Infinite," with two infinite "halves" of the plane irrevocably divided and Ethriam always at work at constructing his own form of energy to spin the discs of his half.

Ethriam appears as a gleaming, platinum dodecahedron floating above the ground, with each facial plane of his person showing a different emotion. As he speaks or acts, the representative plane of the emotion being acted on rotates to face his subject.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dave!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:32:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Love in the place of tapeworms

Young lovers in Tokyo have taken to hanging out at a parisitology museum, necking amongst the tapeworms and other bugs, and their admission tickets may be the thing that saves the museum from bankruptcy.
No amount of reading material, though, can outdo the museum's piece de resistance: an 8.8-meter-long (28.5 feet) tapeworm frozen for eternity in blue Lucite. The white worm is so long that it fits into the vertical case only by being draped up and down seven times. There's an equally long string nearby if you want to measure it yourself. (Warning to sushi lovers: The tapeworm was taken from the small intestine of a man who ate marinated trout.)

Professor Uchida is not sure how the museum, which for years was the province of scientists in lab coats, became a hot spot for starry-eyed pairs. A few years after teens started making their way there, several television variety shows featured the museum, helping solidify its popularity.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Gary!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:25:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Radio spontaneously invented by genetic algorithm

An experiment in self-evolving circuits spontaneously invented the radio:
To pick up a radio signal you need other elements such as an antenna. After exhaustive testing they found that a long track in the circuit board had functioned as the antenna. But how the circuit "figured out" that this would work is not known.

"There's probably one sudden key mutation that enabled radio frequencies to be picked up," says Bird.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:14:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My new madlibs technique is unstoppable

A perl madlibs script behind this page generates random -- and ass-kicking -- kung-fu moves every fifteen minutes or so.
inverted ghost lunge
explosive sage stance
burning rabbit cut
flying fairy twist
screaming cricket advance
seven butterfly hammer
valorous grasshopper hand
vulgar chopstick style
vulgar mustard-seed feet
splendid virgin breath
enlightened qi pose
Link Discuss (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:07:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless on the Rideau

A tourist-oriented ISP has set up wireless networks for sailors and other visitors on the Rideau Canal system. The Thousand Islands have IP!
Mr. Gary Clarke, owner of Sam Jakes Inn in Merrickville and President of realontario.ca, a tourism web portal, expressed his excitement about the creation of the Internet ‘hot spot’ in the Village. “A mobile connection capability to the Internet, at identified ‘hot spots’ will prove to be a great benefit to the traveling public and the growth of tourism in Eastern Ontario,” said Mr. Clarke, and he went on to say that, “Many of our visitors need to stay in touch while away on vacation. The evolution and spread of the UCNet experiment in the Village of Merrickville ranks as an important idea and represents an expanded convenience for travelers the world over.”
Now, where did I put my chalk? Link Discuss (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:03:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dinosaurs Against Fossil Fuels

Dinosaurs Against Fossil Fuels is a clan of culture-jamming bike activists who dress up like dinosaurs and protest car-culture. Nice video of their activities here. Link Discuss (Thanks, Porsupah!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:00:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hobo RPG -- retrochalking

There's a new role-playing game set in the Depression where you play hobos riding the rail and -- that's right -- chalking the presence of sherriffs and soft touches. The site includes a sample from the rulebook with a bunch of hobo-marks.
Knights of the Road, Knights of the Rail is a role-playing game set in the Great Depression. Players take on the characters of hoboes, those men and women of American folklore and myth, roaming the country in search of adventure. They travel across the United States and the mythical world of the Yonder, facing down railroad bulls, yeggs and mythical creatures. A different setting and a different kind of role-playing game.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Justin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:53:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

<< August 2002 | Main | October 2002 >>