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Thursday, October 31, 2002

Spooky Web Zen: 10 urls for Halloween heebiejeebies

Put down the kandy korn, fool, and hold on to your Aeron. Ten stupid, silly urls guaranteed to induce Web Zen satori long after that sugar high you're nursing wears off. Click 'em and cringe. Boo.

1. pumpkin music
2. candy dildos?
3. creepy eye game
4. satan's little helpers
5. satan's little helpers, part two
6. scary cats do japanese dress-up
7. pelorian cats
8. cat in a shell
9. i love you more than kittens
10. angry, scary, rock-n-roll kittens

Discuss Thanks, Frank !

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:53:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coin-op unit limits TV use

Strange device hooks up to your TV set, allows 30 minutes of viewing time per token. Would probably work with a computer, too. Check out the other odd devices on this site.Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:12:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zombie celebrity photoshopping contest

Talented photoshoppers turn celebrity photos into zombie portraits. Nice job on the Dixie Chix. Link Discuss (via MeFi)

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

Googlism

Funny site uses Google to find one sentence descriptions about people, places, events. My favorite: "Mark Frauenfelder is a babe." Bless their hearts. Link Discuss (Thanks, Jim!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:49:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Best con-game blog-entry ever

Teresa Nielsen Hayden, queen-hell blogger, has posted a wonderful, lengthy, linked-up discourse on confidence games. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, and Teresa's light and witty touch makes the subject pop off the screen. Don't miss it. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:45:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fantastically clever games inside of buttons

The gamebutton arcade features a bunch of fiendishly clever arcade games implemented with JavaScript inside of form-buttons. Dashteroids, included herein, is a button-sized version of asteroids; use mouseclicks to move your cursor up and down to avoid incoming debris. This is just about the coolest goddamned webthing, ever. Link Discuss (Thanks, Eli the Bearded!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:24:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MooMoo decoder

New smart-collars can interpret dog-barks and cow-moos:

In Braunschweig, Germany, for example, researchers at the Institute of Technology and Biosystems Engineering have recently been able to decipher, with about 90 percent accuracy, what cows mean when they moo: hunger, thirst, need for milking and so on.

Dr. Gerhard Jahns, a control engineer who helped devise the project, said that about 700 "vocalizations" were recorded from about 20 cows, a process he described as "extremely time-consuming." Cows can go for hours without making a sound, Dr. Jahns said, "and it's hard to get them to speak into the microphone

Link Discuss (Thanks, Steve!)

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

Dan Gillmor on Slashdot

Dan Gillmor's Slashdot interview is up today, and it's terrific. Dan's at the head of the pack of tech journalists, and he's worth taking seriously.

People who've been here for more than a couple of downturns say this one's as bad as they've seen, maybe the worst. We got so far ahead of rationality in the bubble that it's probably going to take more time than usual to restore robust growth. There's plenty of innovation going on, but we now have a huge overhand of public mistrust of markets -- and people are absolutely right to hold the financial community, some VCs and others who helped inflate the bubble in contempt.

I doubt we'll see another boom like the one that just crashed. But we'll come out of this mess. It'll happen when people trust the markets again, because there's lots of innovation going on. Problem: I fear that anyone who trusts the markets right now -- especially when Bush and his crowd are doing everything they can to torpedo essential reform -- is misguided.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:20:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless security to get new "standard"

The WiFi Alliance -- the certification body that blesses 802.11 devices -- has announced a plan to replace the broken and crumbling WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) "security" system with something called "Wi-Fi Protected Access" (WPA). The press-release links to a couple of feel-good PDFs about WPA. It seems like there's some behind-the-scenes politicking going on at the standards body (WPA isn't a standard yet, but WiFi Alliance will roll out a version that's "forward compatible" with a "proposed standard"). Anyone know where the security wonks are duking it over over whether or not WPA works?

In enterprise mode, a network server and sophisticated authentication mechanisms are utilized and automatically distribute special encryption keys, called master keys.

In a home environment, where there are no network servers, Wi-Fi Protected Access runs in a special mode, which allows the use of manually entered keys or passwords instead. This mode, also called Pre-Shared Key (PSK), is designed to be easy to set up for the home user. All the home user needs to do is enter a password (also called a master key) into their access point or home wireless gateway and each PC that is on the Wi-Fi wireless network. After entering the password, Wi-Fi Protected Access automatically takes over. First, it keeps out eavesdroppers and other unauthorized users by requiring all devices to have the matching password. Second, the password kicks off the encryption process, which in Wi-Fi Protected Access is called Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP).

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:55:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Judge amends decision after reading correction on blog

A former law clerk noted an error in a Fifth Circuit decision on his blog. The judge who wrote the decision turns out to be a regular reader of said blog, and he immediately amended the decision and wrote to the blogger with the news. Judges read blogs. Judges correct Federal court rulings based on blogs. Wow. Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

20 Things auction needs art for EFF!

The 20 Things, 20 People, 20 Days mail-art project ("20 people make 20 things in 20 days and mail their 20 things with a SASE. in return, each gets that SASE back, filled with one of each thing made in the group.") is holding a charity auction to raise money for ten worthy causes, including EFF. They're looking for original art to auction off:

We are currently accepting donations of original artwork for the benefit auction (deadline is 11/15). Email for details if you're interested in contributing. The auction is scheduled to begin in early December.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Judith!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:21:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Airport security leads to topless checkpoint

A French tourist got so fed up with having her chest wanded by airport security in the USA that she took off her shirt and bra to demonstrate her bomb-and-boxcutter-free chestular region. The airport was closed for 10 minutes. Under the USAPATRIOT Act, she faces up to three years in jail. Link (German-English translation here: Link) Discuss (Thanks, Boris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:15:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

Reed on USA Today on Powell

David "Cognitive Radio" Reed takes USA Today's coverage of Powell's promise to open more spectrum apart:

From the article: "Academics have long argued that more bands should be set aside for unlicensed services and that they could even share certain frequencies with licensed services without interfering."

I love this use of the word "academics". Where did that come from? The Open Spectrum advocacy has some folks from "academy" (Benkler, Lessig, Lippman, Shepard). But most of us have been doing business in the "real world" (me, Dewayne, Werbach, Hughes, ...). And the wider support of unlicensed radio is doing quite well as a business, thank you. Better competitive business people there than at the top of the ILEC, cable, and broadcaster megacorps. Even Intel and Microsoft support unlicensed bands where industry works together to set standards.

Academic, as in "purely academic", I suppose. Just like Szilard (the holder of the patent on the atomic bomb) was an academic. Or like the people who invented the Internet because AT&T could not bring itself to imagine a world where they weren't in control were academics.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:40:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nintendo's strongarm tactics

With Nintendo facing fines of 149 million Euros from the European Parliament for anti-competitive practices, it's interesting to take a look back at just how bad their practices were. This 1997 article on Nintendo's strongarm tactics is a great overview of how the company got into 149 million Euros' worth of trouble:

Nintendo's next atrocity would be to use the considerable monopoly they had to control the consumer. Because of the game shortages, consumers would be more concerned about getting a particular title than the price. And because of Nintendo's domineering stance with the retailers, they were able to dictate the expected prices for their games.

In the electronics and computer industry, you can expect equipment to reduce in price over time. When new devices are created that make older ones obsolete, the older devices are reduced in price to compete with the newer ones. This is clearly evident if one simply peruses the want-ads in their local paper and notes the prices of computer systems that were considered state of the art a year previous. This logic applies to all aspects of the computer and electronics industry, including video games. Why then between 1985 and 1989 did the Nintendo Entertainment System only lower $10 in its price?

This was exactly what Attorney Generals from all fifty states were wondering when they began investigating the activities of Nintendo of America in 1989. They found that Nintendo had been fixing the price of systems and games in the stores, using intimidation to influence retailers to abide by their wishes, and were making astronomical profits. Nintendo had been doing this since they first brought out the NES in 1985. They had strived to construct the system inexpensively, however, it was being sold at the same price as the competing systems. An antitrust action was brought up against Nintendo by these same Attorney Generals, and on October 17, 1991, District Court Judge Sweet granted approval of settlement agreements. [775 F.Supp. 676 (S.D.N.Y. 1991)]

Link Discuss (via Hack the Planet)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:33:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FCC calls for more open spectrum

Chairman Michael "Colin's Son" Powell of the FCC today called for the opening up more spectrum for unlicensed activity. The last time the FCC opened up some spectrum, we got WiFi. Now, open spectrum advocates say that further opening of the airwaves could deliver Cognitive Radio, a technology and philosophy that will allow nearly infinite communications through the airwaves and knock the long-haul wire-carriers on their asses. Link Discuss (via Werblog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:11:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PalmOS 6 to be based on BeOS

Version 6 of PalmOS will be built on BeOS and include .NET support. Wow. As the Reg notes, that's as big a changeover as Windows to WinNT or MacOS to OS X. Wow. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:11:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

William Gibson rarity at The Infinite Matrix

William Gibson has donated the "blue line masters" (photographic printing proofs) from his 1996 novel "Idoru" to the fundraising auction for The Inifinite Matrix, an unspeakably swell science fiction ezine. For a $500 donation, you can own this rare collectible, sure to be worth big bucks in the coming years, and help keep Infinite Matrix afloat. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:36:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toronto's BamBoo Club to close

Joey reports that the vererable BamBoo Club, a Toronto institution for live music, spoken word events, and great hybrid Jamaican cuisine, is closing tomorrow. The BamBoo weathered the great changes on the Queen St. W strip with hardly a blink, and it's hard to imagine that corner of Toronto without a BamBoo Club and its fantastic mural. If you're in Toronto tomorrow and find youself at the BamBoo, have a roti and a Red Stripe for me, OK? Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:11:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Privatized schools sell off textbooks, force students to engage in unpaid labor

A snake-oil-selling privatized education broker called "Edison Schools" had a high-flying IPO based on its contracts to take over the operation of public schools across America. The stock-market crash has turned it cannibalistic, and it is now selling off textbooks and proposing to force students to work for free in school administration offices. Ah, the efficiencies of the private sector.

Days before classes were to begin in September, trucks arrived to take away most of the textbooks, computers, lab supplies and musical instruments the company had provided -- Edison had to sell them off for cash. Many students were left with decades-old books and no equipment.

A few weeks later, some of the company's executives moved into offices inside the schools so Edison could avoid paying the $8,750 monthly rent on its Philadelphia headquarters. They stayed only a few days, until the school board ordered them out.

As a final humiliation, Chris Whittle, the company's charismatic chief executive and founder, recently told a meeting of school principals that he'd thought up an ingenious solution to the company's financial woes: Take advantage of the free supply of child labor, and force each student to work an hour a day, presumably without pay, in the school offices.

"We could have less adult staff," Mr. Whittle reportedly said at a summit for employees and principals in Colorado Springs. "I think it's an important concept for education and economics." In a school with 600 students, he said, this unpaid work would be the equivalent of "75 adults" on salary.

Link Discuss (via Ambiguous)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:56:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Be a crooked CEO for Hallowe'en

Why go as wolfman this Hallowe'en when you could be really scary in one of these DIY disgraced-CEO masks. Pictured here: Bernard J. Ebbers, crooked chief of WorldCom. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:15:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Buddhist iPods -- HOAX!

The Buddha Gates monastery has ordered 1,000 custom iPods engraved with the image of the Buddha. Leander sez: "The Buddhist iPods is a great story but it's an old April Fool's joke. The original story was written by Bryan Chang and posted on "FrostyPlace" a Chinese-language IT news site, on April 1 earlier this year. The image was photoshopped using Apple's product shots and a stock image found on the Web." Link (Chinese-English translation here) Discuss (Thanks, Leander!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:11:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Home-made news footage from Saturday's antiwar marches

The mainstream press may be downplaying the giant anti-war demonstrations that took place around the country and around the world last weekend, but net.activists made their own news. Here are videos of the march and Rob Kovic and Barbara Lee's speeches from Saturday's demonstration in San Francisco. From Ron Kovic's speech:

Never underestimate who you are! Never underestimate the power of what you represent. Your beauty and your dignity. Your honesty and your integrity. You are going to change this nation. Think about it. This is your moment. Your destiny is to change this nation.

Years from now many of you will be able to tell your children that we lived through an extraordinary turning point in American History. And we have the courage to step over that line with dignity, with non-violence and with great determination, and make this is a country that we can all love again and can all be proud of. Thank you so very much. Thank you!

Link Discuss (Thanks, Lisa!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:06:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hacker license plate gallery

Great gallery of nerdy license plates. Link Discuss (Thanks, Jeff!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:01:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mac-o-lanterns

Mac fanatics have carved a series of amazing, "high-resolution" pumpkins on a Mac theme, including this Steve Ballmer pumpkin (don't miss Ellen Feiss, Woz, David Pogue, and the beloved happy Mac). Link Discuss (Thanks, Lawrence!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:50:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Software archaeology reveals Chandler's roadmap

Yoz is digging into some software archaeology, exploring the characterstics of the Ur-PIM, Lotus Agenda. Mitch Kapor was the inventor of Agenda. which allowed users to enter free-form notes, such as "Call Mom on Wednesday about Neil's birthday," and would figure out what "Mom," "Neil," "Wednesday" and "Call" all meant and assign to-do items and so on accodringly. Now, Mitch is working on an app called "Chandler," an open source, non-profit PIM (personal information manager) that's being billed as an Outlook-killer, with lots of features that are reminiscent of Agenda. Yoz's history of Agenda's strengths, weaknesses and lessons learned really make me slather for Chandler. Can't wait can't wait can't wait.

Also interesting are the reviews of Agenda, which are written by reviewers who need not only to explain what makes it a good PIM, but what a PIM is. Brings me back to the heady days of new software categories, when hundreds of column-inches in Byte were devoted to explaining what a spreadsheet is and why anyone would use it. Link Discuss (via Doc)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:22:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Liverpool's "Winchester Mystery" tunnels

Liverpudlians have begun to excavate the tunnels of Joseph Williamson, a local 19th-Cen tycoon who hired thousands of men to honeycomb the city with labyrnthine tunnels that dead-end, circle back and stack atop one another (think of a subterranean Winchester Mystery House). It's unclear whether he did this because he was nuts, or because he wanted to give the laboring classes "productive" labor, or because he was remotely controlled by the Mole People (my pet theory).

"We still don't know where each one leads, and we are finding new tunnels all the time," she says.

"There is a triple-decker tunnel under the carpark here and a completely different section has just been found up the road."

Back within the barrel-shaped chamber, the tunnel twists, turns, narrows and changes level.

Smaller tunnels and chimneys head off into the darkness.

Mapping the maze has not been easy. Williamson was notoriously secretive about his creation and no contemporary plan of the whole network survives.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Kurt!)

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

Warren Ellis in Mindjack

Mindjack has an interview with Warren "Transmetropolitan" Ellis in the new ish:

There are moments of pure, heart stopping beauty in the most tragic and broken environments. And the loveliest community on earth will not be able to eliminate the dog turd. I have attempted to reflect this in TRANSMET: the understanding that the world can be neither perfect nor doomed. But that it can be better. And the people who get to decide if it's going to be better or not are the people who show up and raise their voices.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:03:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aging is not inevitable!

Great Washington Post overview of the spectrum of life-extension enthusiasts and businesses, from sober starvation advocates to rip-snortin', head-freezin' extropians. I love this quote from Stewart Brand, who is taking anti-aging "nurtritional supplements" called Junvenon: "This is great stuff. I'm beginning to remember the '60s,"

"Flat-Earthers" is how Ronald Klatz, 47, describes his detractors. Klatz is president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, or A4M, an organization that boasts 11,500 practitioners in 65 countries whose official slogan is: "Aging is not inevitable! The war on aging has begun!"

"Remember 'Animal Story' by Orson Welles?" asks Klatz.

You mean "Animal Farm" by George Orwell?

"Maybe," he replies. "But it's four legs good, two legs bad."

He sees the science and medical establishments as out to get him.

"The guys in the bow ties and suspenders are right and anybody who says otherwise is wrong," he says sarcastically. He lists Science, Scientific American and the Journal of the American Medical Association as publications that "sandbagged anti-aging medicine without justification and without science. They rubber-stamped all those supposed scientists" from such noted institutions as the University of Chicago and the University of California San Francisco.

Klatz believes that within 10 years, we will begin to achieve "the technology necessary to accomplish mankind's oldest wish: practical immortality -- life-spans of 200 years and beyond," as he wrote in a recent article in the magazine the Futurist. "Humankind will evolve toward an Ageless Society, in which we all experience boundless physical and mental vitality

Link Discuss (Thanks, Alex!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:59:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ninth Lemony Snicket book out, and rocks

The ninth book in the "Lemony Snicket/Series of Unforntunate Events" kids-lit series is out. It's called The Carnivorous Carnival, and the folks at my corner sf bookstore called me last night when they unboxed it, and even stayed open late so that I could pick it up.

It's fantastic (yes, I read the whole thing last night -- that's why there wasn't any blogging from my corner). I'm told that there are to be ten books in the entire series, and it certainly feels like this is the penultimate installment. The nine volumes (plus one "unauthorized autobiography") of hints about the VFD, the Baudelaire parents, and the poor Baudelaire orphans' plight have reached near-critical mass, and I can almost picture the ending. Can't wait for book ten!

If you're mystified by this enthusiasm, pick up book one somewhere. It's a little $10 hardcover, delightfully illustrated and written in a witty, arch style that cracks me right the hell up. The series tells the stories of three orphans ("the Baudelaire orphans") who are dredged through one misery after another, continually jumping from frying pans into ever-hotter fires. There's a bunch of Roald Dahl in this mix, and some Clement Freud, and Kelly Link, and some Daniel Pinkwater. If you haven't turned the wee ones in your life onto these books yet, you're doing them a disservice. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:51:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Will Saruman be Dumbledore?

Scurrilous rumor has it that Christopher "Saruman the White" Lee will play Albus Dumbledore in future Harry Potter movies, replacing Irish great Richard Harris, who recently died. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:44:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1GHz Commodore 64

A case-mod hobbyist has rebuilt a >1GHz Pentium system into an old Commodore 64 case (including installing a DVD drive in the 5.25" floppy drive). Link Discuss (via The Inquirer)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:27:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gandalf willing to star in Hobbit

The actor who plays Gandalf in the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings flick is willing to reprise his role in a film adaptation of The Hobbit.

McKellen wrote, "I recently asked about the film rights to The Hobbit, which seem to be somewhat controlled by Peter Jackson, as far as I can tell. I hope that's the case, because obviously he should have first refusal at translating the novel into a movie."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:20:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eagle Scout to be booted for athiesm

A 19-year-old Eagle Scout with 37 merit badges has been ordered to renounce athiesm or face expulsion from the Scouts. He didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

He doesn't believe in smoking or taking illegal drugs. His mom offered to take him out for a drink when he turns 21. But he doesn't believe in drinking alcohol...

And he doesn't believe in God — not since the ninth grade. And even before then he was unsure.

His mom, who is Scoutmaster, and his dad stood by his side. He told the parents that the troop could watch him get kicked out, which he said he would regret because "I couldn't teach merit badges, which is something I absolutely love to do." Or, he said, they could stand up to the Boy Scout Council and say, "It's wrong."

But, he told them, the troop's charter could be at stake...

One parent said, "He's willing to take care of our boys, our land, he goes and rescues our people. What more could the Boy Scouts want."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:18:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

90% of Time readers want legal pot

The current results of this Time.com poll show that out of more than 40,000 Time readers, over 90 percent favor legalizing marijuana. Have you voted yet? Link Discuss (Thanks, Brenda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:11:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Muppet lore repository

The Muppet FAQ is full of amazing Hensonania and Muppet lore:

Why are Muppets left handed?

You may have noticed that Muppets, particularly Muppet musicians, tend to do everything with their left arms. This is because most Muppet performers are right handed and use their primary hand to control the head and face of the Muppet. (Louise Gold is one of the few left-handed performer, and her Muppets are right handed.) This leaves them their left hand to control the Muppet's arms. Muppets like the Swedish Chef, which are controlled by two performers, are of course an exception....

Answers to some particularly frequent ID requests:

* The guy who throws fish: Lew Zealand
* The guy who blows things up: Crazy Harry
* The scary-looking blue monster: Uncle Deadly
* The piano-playing dog: Rowlf
* The guy who hits his head on the piano on SS: Don Music
* The yip-yip aliens: Bob and Joe Martian

What's the best ever Muppet sketch?

Mahna Mahna, with Mahna Mahna and the two Snowths. Even now, you sing "doo doo do doo doo" under your breath every time someone says "phenomena," don't you? You know you do.

Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:56:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

America, dialect by dialect

The Dialect Survey -- which asked people how they pronounced words and what they called things -- has released results, showing US national distribution of various regionalisms:

60. What do you call the area of grass between the sidewalk and the road?

a. berm (3.65%)
b. parking (1.28%)
c. tree lawn (1.96%)
d. terrace (0.46%)
e. curb strip (8.24%)
f. beltway (0.15%)
g. verge (2.99%)
h. I have no word for this (69.07%)
i. other (12.20%)
(3919 respondents)

Link Discuss (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:51:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Three year sandwich on front burner

Army food-scientists are on a quest to develop a three-year-shelf-life sandwich. The Scots abandoned this after it was discovered that three-year chip butties developed scentience and demanded the right to vote.

Darsch said his sandwiches are designed to be as resilient as the troops they feed. "This bad boy will last a minimum of three years at 80 degrees, six months at 100 degrees. They will travel to the swampiest swamp, the highest mountain, the most arid desert."

Some of the stabilizing agents are manufactured, others are intrinsic to the sandwiches - the bread in the pepperoni sandwich is more or less left alone by the sausage, which lacks moisture; in the barbecue chicken sandwich, acids in the sauce's tomato, vinegar and lemon naturally bind moisture in place.

Still, soldiers aren't likely to take a bite until 2006 because more research is needed - principally, the researchers confessed, on PB&J, the sandwich most demanded by troops in focus groups. Other sandwiches in the works include pizza-flavored and ham and cheese.

Food science takes time, Darsch said - "I don't even want to tell you how long it took to develop the McNugget."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:39:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plane-spotter "spy" can't visit Disneyland

A British plane-spotter who was busted in Greece for "abetting espionage" is desperate to clear his name so that he can get a US tourist-visa and take his kid to Disneyland. Damn -- someone tell this guy about Disneyland Paris. Link Discuss (via Exciting Monkey Bum Stories for Boys & Girls)

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

True stories of true geek names

Geek.org has created an anthology of login-stories; tales of how various geeks chose their online handles.

But I'm seriously off track. Why man-bridge? Why such an absurd login? On this particular sunny day at the lovely Camp and Son's in Willits, we were floating NUDE in the pond. enola and thrusty were sharing a floating raft thingy, holding on to each end, facing each other. At one point, thrusty reached his legs out and put them around enola's waist and said, "Look! I'm forming a Land Bridge."

enola misheard, and was convinced he said Man Bridge. And so a login was born. Nice!! It was an inside joke for the rest of the weekend. And an absurd one (I like absurd ones). Several weeks later, Tammy finally badgered me into trying icb. I discovered that my cloudfactory shell account had an icb client. So, I fired the thing up and kicked the tires. Surprise! Nearly identical to IRC, which I had wasted many, many hours on in the early 90s.

Link Discuss (via Memepool)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:15:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Charging without cradles

Splashpower is a UK startup building a device called a "Splashpad." This is a flat surface that you set on your desk, which provides power on contact with electronic devices that are equipped with a "SplashModule." The upshot is that you could have a corner of your desk that charged your Visor, SideKick, phone, iPod, and iBook, eliminating the need for custom cradles, dongles and cables -- God, I want one of these. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:11:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fold-away home

Popular Science documents a proposed "storable summer home:"

ost people pack up the summer house come fall, but designer Michael Jantzen foresees a time when they'll pack it away instead. Jantzen's concept Hide Away house, made predominantly of fabric, folds up for storage. Yet it features all the comforts of home, including hot water, electricity, a bathroom, and heat. During the off-season, hard shells store the water-gathering devices, solar panels, sewage treatment tanks, and other off-the-grid necessities, as well as the fabric walls and ceilings. Everything fits into the back of a pickup truck...

1. Windows would be clear vinyl
2. Nylon or canvas fabric ceilings would be supported by baby-buggy-style framing
3. The shells would be made out of a plywood subtrate covered by a metal laminate

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:07:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anime mice

The artists behind anime classics Ghost in the Shell and Gundam have designed a line of limited-edition designer mice with groovy futuristic styling, to be released in November. Link Discuss (via /.)

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

Pix from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen flick

Check out these amazing photos from the set of the film adaptation of "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," Alan Moore's fantastic alternate-Victorian funnybook. Pictured here is Jason Fleyming in his Mr Hyde body-suit, which is eerily true to the book. Link Discuss (via Ain't It Cool News)

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

Netheads versus Bellheads

Netheads versus Bellheads is a classic manifesto of the packet-switched world, written by François Ménard and David Isenberg. The amazing thing about it is how well it predicts that the perceived need for predictable Quality of Service (QoS) from the phone companies and their ideological fellow-travellers will clash with the needs of the Internet.

It is the authors’ view that, in the PSTN [public switched telephone networks], there is only one application, setting up or tearing down 64 kilobits channels. Since there is, in essence, only one application in the PSTN, it is impossible not to bundle service quality with transmission quality. End-user experience is a direct function of how well the PSTN performs this single application.

So what does QoS mean in an Internet environment, then? The difficulty with the concept of quality of service in an Internet is that it derives from ideas that really have no place there, like driving a 64,000 wagon train down the highway. For example, packet loss is not a degradation of service, it is rather a mechanism to make it possible for multiple applications to share the same finite bandwidth. On a highway, when there is more traffic than the road can handle, cars slow down and sometimes crashes happen. This is usually not a problem as cars simply route around the accident. By contrast, on railways, crashes and derailings are catastrophic.

If all we ever wanted to do was to talk on the telephone (one application), the PSTN would have remained fully adequate. However, as soon as computer to computer communications became important, the rigidities and expense of circuit switched voice networks became apparent. Since every projection of bandwidth requirements shows that data traffic will expand at a minimum of two orders of magnitude faster than voice, the assumptions of best effort engineering currently embedded in the Internet are likely to hold true indefinitely.

Link Discuss (via Jon's Radio)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:39:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, October 28, 2002

Add MSG to the list of things said to make you go blind.

Eating too much of the flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG) may cause blindness, according to a new report issued by researchers in Japan.

MSG binds to receptors on retinal cells, destroying them and causing secondary reactions that reduce the ability of the remaining cells to relay electrical signals. Ohguro acknowledges that large amounts of MSG were used, 20 per cent of the total diet in the highest group. "Lesser amounts should be OK," he says. "But the precise borderline amount is still unknown." (...) The findings might explain why, in eastern Asia, there is a high rate of normal-tension glaucoma, a form of the eye disease that leads to blindness without the usual increase in pressure inside the eyeball.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:44:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nigerian letters fuel Lagos's Internet Cafe boom

Nigeria's Internet boom is being driven by 419 fraudsters.

Heartless as it may sound, there's a silver lining to the digitization of 419. The proliferation of cybercafes in Nigeria can be linked directly to the demand supplied by 419ers, who form the establishments' core clientele. Walk into an Internet cafe in Lagos, and chances are that a good percentage of the terminals are occupied by men masquerading as Laurent Kabila's long-lost son or as a rogue official at the Central Bank of Nigeria. The wiring of Nigeria is being propelled by 419--much as America's appetite for porn helped shepherd the commercial Internet through its infancy. AOL made it through its lean, early years only because of adult chat rooms and spicy picture downloads (which kept the meter running during the era of per-hour access fees).

Link Discuss (Thanks, Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hercules stickerbook

Heather "Former Guestblogger" Champ recently came by this wonderful vintage stickerbook from the Canadian cheese-toon "The Mighty Hercules." There's something eerie and cool about the partially completed stickerbook turned into sharp digital images. Link Discuss (Thanks, Heather!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:17:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Micros from MasterCard co-creator

The co-creator of MasterCard has created a micropayment system that support amounts down to $0.02.

1. You put money in your Cashets account from your online account such as PayPal or Yahoo!PayDirect. Then you can buy anything from a penny to $5.00 with Cashets.

2. Fill in our short sign-up form with your email and password and tell us the source of your funds.

3. Your account is immediately opened.

4. There are no minimum fees, no transfer fees... no fees for a Cashets account.

5. To purchase online, simply click on the Cashets logo, enter your email and password. The money is transferred immediately from your account to the seller's. You can dispute any transaction if you are dissatisfied. To see a sample purchase, click here for a demonstration.

6. You can be a seller. If you have a webpage, put Cashets logos on your page and sell. Sellers pay a transaction fee of 1%, with a one penny minumum.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Howard!)

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

Dia de los Muertos, Hollywood: a web photologue

John Parres (music industry veteran and co-founder of technology listservs including pho, strangelove, and unwired) just posted a vivid photologue and first-person account of a very L.A. Day of the Dead celebration here. Exerpt:

An exquisite Aztec tradition was celebrated among the carved granite vestiges of first-generation Hollywood at Hollywood Forever cemetery for the third annual Dia de los Muertos celebration last Saturday.

Mariachi bands, art exhibits within a mausoleum, tamale vendors, puppet shows, performance artists, candles, incense, altars, and political statements... Hollywood Forever Memorial Park was founded in 1899 and eternal residents Cecil B. De Mille, Tyrone Power, Marion Davies, Jayne Mansfield, Rudolph Valentino, Mel Blanc, Nelson Eddy, Peter Lorre, Woody Herman, Bugsy Siegel, and Elmo Lincoln (the first Tarzan) were all summoned to join the celebration among the offerings on display.

All stripes and colors of LA showed up but primarily familias. Strolling down the lane revealed altar after altar, some of which were constructed for the $1000 'best altar' prize while others were solely heartfelt tributes to love ones passed.

First up was a guy who honored all those killed by American bombs funded by his tax dollars. The tin-missile-and-tv-screen art installation wasn't very well received by some in the crowd, though it surely would have received an award in a Melrose gallery or more Geffen MOCA-like quarters. Another was more understated and had no caretakers but effused solemn peace in and of itself: a buddha, some candles and a sign "Para los victimos de Bali." One particular altar was more of a boat in a sea of candles and appeared be the collective work of art school friends who kicked back in skeletal masks watching the parade of passersby. Yet another was a montage of black-and-white photos of famous Hollywood starlets punctuated by a colorful book about Rock Hudson. It was built by two hairdressers from Divas salon on Santa Monica and Western (they gave me their card).

For me the most profound and real were those altars built out of tragedy. One was from a fatherless Guatemalan family who asked, "?hablas espanol?"

"un poquito."

"?hablas ingles?"

"un poquito."

Eventually we were able to communicate through their young daughter who was able to translate. Apparently they only arrived in America within this past year. Theirs was the only altar with an American flag. The mujeres understood "Internet" right away, and their daughter wrote down her netzero email address so I send them the link to the pictures shot. It was one of those moments. They created an altar with love and candles for relatives left back home in Central America while the kids ran about giggling with fluorescent raver glow sticks. The mothers wanted to know if I had a relative buried there. The kids wanted to see themselves on my camera's "TV screen."...

The result towards the end of this photo safari is the people who built sacred altars para la familia... Across the way at a fresh grave covered with astroturf and lit by tiki torches (I didn't dare photograph) where stunned friends truly mourning but no doubt taking comfort in the circus procession unfolding around them.

The icing on the cake, tho, had to be the purposeful sideshow of a theatrical wailing mourner at a well flowered and decorated grave. I don't know how best to describe it other than to take in the equal parts of performance art, kitsch, drag, and humor all en espanol. S/he drew smiles and laughter from the children and families, and it epitomized the joy of la Dia de Los Muertos...

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:39:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, October 27, 2002

Web Zen: Four sites, four things to do with stuff you buy at Office Depot.

Dude. It's Monday. Again. You're gonna need some fresh urls to help you blow off work while looking all diligent and worky, hunched over your monitor. Furrow your brows, squint a little for added effect--then log on to these four time-waster destinations offering unauthorized and inspired uses for common office supplies. Some sites are newer, some aren't. All are guaranteed to reduce productivity. Warning: rated "F" for gratuitous Flash.

1. bubble wrap therapy
2. paper airplane flight simulator
3. what to do with plastic cups when you're jacked up on espresso
4. prevent assholes from touching your monitor and making it smudgy

Discuss (Thanks, Frank, mack daddy of Web Zen!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:09:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scary stories from the fray: "A Little Black Death"

Fray.com just published a new, super-spooky story clearly intended to scare the living bejeezus out of you. Excerpt:

Everyone grew up with a scary family in their neighborhood. I suppose nowadays that definition might include the people who voided their condo agreement by painting their garage door in an unacceptable color. On the other end of the spectrum, there's probably the house that always has those annoying drive-by shootings.

But when I was a kid you had to go quite a bit out of the everyday to be The Scary Family, and the winner on my block, hands down, was the abnormal Addamses known as The Jenkins Family.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Derek!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:51:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Glow in the Dark Cakes

Lucky Taiwanese get to eat bioluminescent birthday cake.

According to Cheng Chun-ming, a biotechnology scientist from National Taiwan University who started his own business several years ago and maker of the cakes, the phosphorescent protein extracted from the red algae helps increase a cake's attractiveness but is not a health concern to consumers as it is completely natural and edible.

Link Discuss (Thanks, )

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:25:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, October 26, 2002

Watch QuickTime movies as ASCIImation

Apple has released a Quicktime-to-ASCII-mation converter for OS X. Open a movie with this app in your Terminal and you can watch any arbitrary Quicktime video in glorious text-based artwork. Take that, pewling smiley-mongers! Bow before my superior ASCIImation! Link Discuss (Thanks, Wiley!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:19:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, October 25, 2002

Fruit label art archive

Wonderful, extensive collection of fruit sticker graphics from around the world. Not to be confused with larger fruit box labels, these are the little stickers affixed to the fruits and veggies themselves.

Link Discuss (Thanks, idogcow!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:51:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blogger's back

Blogger is back and Ev has explained what happened:

Blogger has suffered a security intrusion by a "haX0r." We have all the data that was changed backed up within a couple hours of the attack, so we can have things pretty much back to normal soon. Of course, we're assessing the situation as thoroughly as possible to make sure it doesn't happen again. Also, if you store your FTP login information in Blogger, it wouldn't hurt to change that on your server—though it is unlikely that information was accessed. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update: We have found the cause of the vulnerability and have patched it. Everything is back restored and back online with the exception of the API server and bSTATS.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Danny!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:03:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Malware marketing: e-greeting as worm

An email greeting-card company has released what Slashdot describes as a "worm with a EULA" (End-User License Agreement -- the legal click-through agreement you see when you install new software). When you install the software to view your e-greeting, you agree to allow them to spam every contact in your address book with more copies of itself. Forget viral marketing: this is malware marketing. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:00:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hilary Rosen debates file-sharing at Oxford

Hilary Rosen and others held a debate on downloading music last night at Oxford University. This first-person account is very tasty.

* Hilary Rosen asks "Put up your hand if you download and burn music" (most hands go up). She then asks "Keep you hand up if you buy more music because of it" (many stay up). She gets worried and immediately asks some different and confusing set of people to put their hands up, causing everyone to look miffed, and everyone putting their hand down)

* One of the proposition giving figures on the Linkin Park album (sales, downloads etc), the leader of the opposition saying he'd personally downloaded it and then gone out and bought it, asking for the figures of how many people who'd downloaded it had bought it, and being told "I have no figures, and nor do you" by the proposition, nicely ignoring the fact that they both then had a figure showing that 100% of people surveyed there who'd downloaded had also bought...

Link Discuss (via NTK)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:00:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web-to-Braille gateway

HotBraille is a webform-to-Braille gateway. Enter a message and a postal address, and HotBraille will convert your message to Braille and send it to your recipient. Link Discuss (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:59:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Head of CEA will answer your questions on Lawmeme

Ernest sez: "Gary Shapiro is the president of the Consumer Electronics Association, chairman of the Home Recording Rights Coalition and is no fan of the RIAA's attempt to maintain control over distribution channels. LawMeme is currently conducting a Slashdot-style interview with Mr. Shapiro. The top 10 questions will be sent to him, but as of the time of this writing, there are only three questions. So chances to ask Mr. Shapiro his thoughts on, well, anything are pretty high." Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernest!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:59:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Irony-impaired Big Brother posters from London

Check out this amazingly creepy poster from the London police, which aims to put people at their ease at the notion of living in the most-surveilled country in the world. It's like the cover of an old Ace Double paperback about watchful, tyrannical aliens. Link Discuss (Thanks, Bruce!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:59:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A Faraday cage in a bag

Always-on radio devices -- RFID tags, two-way pagers, EZ-passes -- are really cool, except when they end up compromising your privacy, beeping at an importune moment, or disrupting your electronics. Enter the Mobile Cloak, a Faraday-cage-bag. Drop your wireless devices into the bag and biff-bam, they're off the grid. Link Discuss (Thanks, Stephen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:58:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

In the valley are monsters

Great whitepaper explaining the visceral reaction we have to certain automata and movie monsters. The thesis is that things that look a little human aren't creepy, and things that look exactly human aren't creepy, but things that look close to human are really, really eerie -- think of shambling zombies versus gorillas.

The uncanny valley itself is where dwell monsters, in the classic sense of the word. Frankenstein’s creation, the undead, the ingeniously twisted demons of anime and their inspirations from legend and myth, and indeed all the walking terrors and horrors of man’s imagining belong here. In essence, they tend to be warped funhouse-mirror images of humanity, and many if not most share one or both of a pair of common traits.

The more obvious of these is overt, intimidating superhuman power, whether physical or paranormal, but the other is far subtler. Recent research suggests that the human idea of beauty may rest on a surprisingly simple foundation: symmetry. According to the study, symmetry of face and body suggests health and vigor — and therefore genetic fitness — while asymmetry implies the opposite.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dave!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:58:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dry ice and airplane toilets don't mix

Funny and overwrought story of what happened when an airline pilot emptied his drinks cooler into the toilet without realizing that it contained dry ice, not water-ice.

And it's now that the noise begins. As he steps away, the pilot hears a deep and powerful burble, which immediately repeats itself and seems to emanate from somewhere in the bowels of the plane. How to describe it? It's similar to the sound your own innards might make if you've eaten an entire pizza or, perhaps, swallowed Drano, amplified a thousand times over. The pilot stops and a quick shot of adrenaline pulses into his veins. What was that? It grows louder. Then there's a rumble, a vibration passes up through his feet, and from behind him comes a loud swishing noise.

He turns and looks at the toilet. But it has, for all practical purposes, disappeared, and where it once rested he now finds what he will later describe only as a vision. In place of the commode roars a fluorescent blue waterfall, a huge, heaving cascade of toilet fluid thrust waist-high into the air and splashing into all four corners of the lavatory. Pouring from the top of this volcano, like smoke out of a factory chimney, is a rapidly spreading pall of what looks like steam. He closes his eyes tight for a second, then reopens them. He does this not for the benefit of unwitnessed theatrics, or even to create an embellishing detail for eventual use in a story. He does so because, for the first time in his life, he truly does not believe what has cast itself before him.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:58:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ancient patent drawings online

Edison's Ark: scanned vintage patent drawings. Link Discuss (via The Schism Matrix)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:52:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Listen to the sound of space plasma.

Sounds converted from plasma waves in outer space will form the basis of a musical performance in Iowa this Saturday. A physicist at the University of Iowa has been recording the waveforms for over 40 years with instruments on NASA's Voyagers, Galileo, Cassini, and over 24 additional spacecraft. Data was captured near Jupiter, Venus, and other planets, then transformed into sound patterns. The resulting tones became the conceptual basis of a musical composition called "Sun Rings," which the Kronos Quartet will debut October 26 at the University of Iowa's Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City. Excerpt from the NASA JPL press release:

"Samples of the type of sounds converted from plasma wave instruments are available online here.
One from Galileo's studies of Ganymede's magnetosphere is here.
One from Voyager's passage through the bow shock of the solar wind against Jupiter's magnetosphere is here.
One from Cassini, also of the interaction between the solar wind and Jupiter's magnetosphere, is here." Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:20:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, October 24, 2002

Curious Yellow: Internet-killing superworm

Great whitepaper on the coming "superworm" -- something I've been predicting for a year or two -- from Brandon "Freenet" Wiley. We did a panel last year at SXSW about the near-inevitability of a superworm -- a worm that coordinates it actions among infected hosts and launches a massive distributed denial of service attack on any hosts it can't infect using those it can -- and the doomsday scenario ended up frightening even us. Brandon's whitepaper explains just how such a worm -- dubbed "Curious Yellow" -- could operate.

Interestingly, the problem of efficiently organizing worm instances into a network which can act globally but which has reasonable coordination costs for each node is very similar to problems found in peer-to-peer networks. The particular task of the division of the task space among all of the currently active worms is very similar to the problem addressed in distributed hash tables (DHT) designs. One popular contemporary DHT design is called Chord. In Chord, each node is assigned a portion of the task space such that the space is divided evenly and randomly among all nodes. Chord has some useful properties. First, each node in the network is reachable from each other node in the network with a maximum of O(log N) intervening nodes. Additionally, each node only needs to maintain knowledge of O(log N) other nodes, thus keeping coordination costs down to a reasonable level. What this means in simple terms is that in a network of one million nodes each node only has to keep track of approximately 20 other nodes and for one node to send a message to another node in the most distant part of the network it would take at most 20 intervening nodes. Similarly, for a network of ten million nodes, each node has to keep track of approximately 23 other nodes and it will take at most 23 intervening nodes to reach from one side of the network to the other. There are advanced variants of the Chord architecture which layer additional properties on top of the guarantees provided by the basic Chord design. Anonymous Chord (Achord) adds the property that it is very difficult for any node to find out the identities of all of the other nodes in the network. This makes it more difficult for an attacker to disable the network by discovering the identities of nodes. By having worms form an Achord network, a global framework for division of the space to be attacked can be created with reasonable coordination costs.

Link Discuss (via Aaron Swartz)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:14:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fractals inspire design of antennas for new mobile devices

A group of UCLA researchers are designing antennas for next-generation wireless devices using fractals -- "mathematical models of mountains, trees and coastlines". Future antennas must be smaller than ever, and they'll need to function at different frequencies at the same time. The researchers believe that mathematical principles behind these repetitive geometric forms could help solve that problem.

"Manufacturers of wireless equipment, and particularly those in the automotive industry, are interested in developing a single, compact antenna that can perform all the functions necessary to operate AM and FM radios, cellular communications and navigation systems," said [UCLA scientist] Yahya Rahmat-Samii.

Fractals, short for "fractional dimension," are mathematical models originally used to measure jagged contours such as coastlines. Like a mountain range whose profile appears equally craggy when observed from both far and near, fractals are used to define curves and surfaces, independent of their scale. Any portion of the curve, when enlarged, appears identical to the whole curve -- a property known as "self-symmetry."

Because fractal designs are self-symmetrical (repeat themselves), they are effective in developing antennas that operate at several different frequencies. "One portion of the antenna can resonate at one frequency while another portion resonates at another frequency," Rahmat-Samii said.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:39:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Texting the TV

Interesting piece in the Economist about the booming convergence of interactive TV and mobile devices in Europe. According to Gartner research cited in the story, one of the fastest-growing uses of SMS in Europe is interacting with television.

Gartner's figures show that 20% of teenagers in France, 11% in Britain and 9% in Germany have sent messages in response to TV shows... This has much to do with the boom in “reality TV” shows, such as “Big Brother”, in which viewers' votes decide the outcome. Most reality shows now allow text-message voting, and in some cases, such as the most recent series of “Big Brother” in Norway, the majority of votes are cast in this way.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:51:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Media wars in space: China plans anti-jamming TV satellite to thwart Falungong "hijacks"

China Daily Newspaper reports that the Chinese government will launch an "anti-jamming" TV satellite to prevent another round of "malicious interruptions" of state-run media by the outlawed Falungong spiritual organization.

The "technical reinforcement" was decided on after Falungong followers based in Taiwan hijacked a series of mainland television broadcasts, instead beaming propaganda by the group into people's homes, the report said. China complained angrily last month that its SINOSAT system had been regularly cut into over previous weeks by television signals coming from Taiwan...Broadcasting officials said that the latest satellite, made by Alcatel Space and due to be launched aboard a Chinese Long March IIIB rocket, would be immune to such interference. "The satellite will be reinforced by state-of-the-art technology to make acts of sabotage technically impossible," said Liu Zhixiong of China Great Wall Industry Corp., which makes the Long March rockets.

The Chinese government banned Falungong in 1999 as an "evil cult"; since then, the group's followers have faced brutal repression. Hundreds of its members are said to have died in state custody.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:44:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google excludes controversial web sites

Declan McCullagh reports that the world's most popular search engine has deleted over 100 controversial web sites from some search results.

Absent from Google's French and German listings are Web sites that are anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, or related to white supremacy, according to a new report from Harvard University's Berkman Center. Also banned is Jesus-is-lord.com, a fundamentalist Christian site that is adamantly opposed to abortion.

Google confirmed on Wednesday that the sites had been removed from listings available at Google.fr and Google.de. The removed sites continue to appear in listings on the main Google.com site.

Link Discuss via News.com and politech.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:37:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mister Rogers out of context

Not as interactive as the Shrub speech maker, but I still got a chuckle out of it. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:31:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Atom bomb barware from the National Atomic Museum

I have to admit these drink glasses with images and pewter models of atom bombs and explosions look pretty neat. Will cocktail shakers with pictures of the twin towers in flames be fashionable in 2050? Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:03:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Anti-PC rant left on answering machine

MP3 file of an answering machine message by a guy who can't fathom that someone would use Windows to design websites. Link Discuss (Thanks, Raymond!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:54:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush Speech Generator

Drag and drop sound snippets from prior Shrub speeches to make a brand new one. Link Discuss (Thanks, harmacy!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:24:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Squatter village built for Tolkien fanatics on line in Norway

The Norweigan distrbutors of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers have built a temporary village of cabins and tents for the obsessive line-sitters who are braving Norweigan fall with nothing more to protect them from the elements but for their hobbit- and elf-costumes. In the filmgeek squat, Tolkienites stage sword-battles and shiver and resolutely don't download bootlegs of the movie from the Internet. Link Discuss (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:44:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot vac = Feline Terminator

Danny "Guestblogger" O'Brien reports on the process of owning a robot vacuum cleaner:

Still, we did our final moving cash splurge today, and bought a Roomba. And, what do you know, it's actually pretty good: both at cleaning and removing the bejesus out of nearby cats. It backed Dyson into the corner of our living room within minutes - she kept tottering backwards for about ten yards, like she was facing the Feline Terminator.

I feel somehow safer knowing that as I sit here, surrounded by crap, writing crap, somewhere else in town my new home is being cleaned by a small beeping robot.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:17:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Public domain books, for part of the world

Here's a list of downloadable books whose authors died fifty years or more ago. In much of the world (Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Fiji, Ghana, Iceland, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, (South) Korea, Lebanon, Malawi, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Qatar, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, and Ukraine. Bolivia), that puts these books in the public domain, so if you're logging in from one of those countries, download away. Americans and Euros have another 25 years or so before they're legal clickers, though.

The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, The Great Gatsby, H. Rider Haggard's "Allen and the Ice Gods," 1984, Finngegans Wake, and others.

Link Discuss (via Aaron Swartz)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:14:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What Americans think Europeans think of each other

From The eXile, an American-expat-in-Europe magazine: a guide to the hateful stereotypes each European nation embraces about each other European nation. Belgium cracks me up.

What Belgians think about:

Germany: bad beer
France: bad beer
Spain: bad beer
Portugal: bad beer
Italy: bad beer
Switzerland: bad beer
Holland: bad beer

Link Discuss (via The Adventures of Accordion Guy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:57:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free Lion, Witch, Wardrobe audio

Free MP3 audio of Michael York reading from C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" on Salon. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:44:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Canada's virtual supercomputer misses the distcomp bus

Researchers at the University of Alberta are trying to set up the country's largest supercomputer by hooking up all the research computers at Canadian universities into a gigantic, virtual supercomputer. Though the tech is easy, there's tons of social engineering to be done in order to convince other institutions to let the U of A people use their machines at a given time.

It's funny that these folks haven't yet twigged to the fact that there is enough computing power on campus to accomplish the same end, in dorm rooms, in labs and in libraries, and with a higher-speed network, too. It's a disconnect in the thinking of adminstrators and academics, who are accustomed to a top-down, grown-up approach to their work: how can they trust their precious computation to "unmanaged" computers in dorms and libraries? Nevermind that the ratio of administrators-to-CPU-cycles in the unwashed computational skid-row dormnets is higher than any lab's, allowing for massive redundancy to account for drop-offs, malice and other unpredictable elements -- instead, these folks are intent on building one, big-ass, deterministic supercomputer. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:42:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

$400 PalmOS laptopling

A company called "AlphaSmart" has released "Dana," this PalmOS-based laptop-like device, for $399. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:22:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Americanization classes for Indian call-centers

Indian call-center workers get extensive "American" training so that callers from the States won't suspect that they're talking to a sleepdepped worker in Mumbai:

Some were told that comprehending Sylvester Stallone was the final frontier in understanding American diction. Others were asked to watch Titanic and Ally McBeal, so they could mimic an acceptable American accent...

Mandakini Pradhan, 21, once dialed an American home in an attempt to sell a caller ID system. The man told her, "Aren't you the girl who lives next door? Can you see me? I am naked."

So overpowering is her strange work routine that Mandakini, who goes by the name Mandy when she's on duty, finds that her work persona often invades her personal life.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ms. X-Man's Wild Ride

A star from X-Men II claims that when she said that she and her husband had "had sex at Disneyland," that she meant that they got it on at the hotel, not on a ride:

I want to make it very clear that when we're in Disneyland, John and I ride the rides next to each other and not on top of each other.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:00:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Klingons, USAF, Boeing collaborate on stealth fighter

Boeing has revealed the "Bird of Prey," a black-ops klingonesque stealth-jet. Check out the wild-ass video clips.

The unconventional configuration of the Bird of Prey suggests it has been designed to be highly agile and stealthy. But even though the aircraft itself has been revealed to the public, the stealth systems designed to suppress acoustic, infra-red, radar and even visual signatures are likely to be as highly classified as ever.

Sources suggest they may include active camouflage systems to reduce visibility by using panels or coatings that change colour or luminosity. This could allow safe combat missions in daylight, rather than being restricted to night flying. "And that would represent a revolutionary milestone in aerial warfare," says Cook.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:53:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DRM newspeak

Seth Finkelstein has noted an eerie similarity between DRM and Orwell's Newspeak.

That is, for Newspeak, we have:

Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods.

Don't we have, exactly, for Digital-Rights-Management:

Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every business model that a content industry member could properly wish to sell access, while excluding all other access and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernest!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:34:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Google's secret GUI sauce, revealed

Google product manager Marissa Mayer shares insights on the search engine's lean, unintimidating, and highly successful interface design in this interview with Mark Hurst on GoodExperience.com:

"When you see a knife with all 681 functions opened up, you're terrified. That's how other sites are — you're scared to use them. Google has that same level of complexity, but we have a simple and functional interface on it, like the Swiss Army knife closed."

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:55:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Space Aliens Signed the Moon Over to Me... and I Have the Contract to Prove It!"

You know that concerns over the ethics of space commercialization have become a bona fide meme when the Weekly World News covers 'em.

"[Mr.] Stanford claims the 8- by 10-inch document, which is written in a language not known on Earth, entitles him to full ownership of the moon and all materials within a 500-mile radius of the orb’s surface... [he] insists that he is owed royalties on any television, film, or printed material bearing the likeness of his property or songs using the word moon in their title, including the movie Man in the Moon, and popular songs like Moon River.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:54:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Send your stuff to the moon for $2500

This article by Nick Mamatas in the Village Voice explores TransOrbital's plans to send consumers' stuff to the moon, for a fee. Some interesting commentary on the legal and ethical issues surrounding the commercialization of space. Excerpt:

The moon remained a vacant lot in a bad neighborhood—until last month, when TransOrbital Incorporated became the first private company granted government permission to explore, photograph, and land there. What's fueling this moon rush is not just a juicy balance sheet, but a pulp fantasy version of the frontier. Rather than belonging to the world, lunar soil would belong to whoever staked a claim and had the best business model.

"It is necessary for humankind to move off-planet, and in the near future, if we are not to stagnate," TransOrbital executive Paul Blase says. And if the moon isn't turned into a commercial space, "then we are limiting ourselves to an observational presence only. . . . This will be only signing a suicide pact."

TransOrbital's Trailblazer mission, slated to launch in the next nine to 12 months from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, seems to lack the cachet to save industrial civilization from imminent collapse. You can send a lock of your hair up on the ship, or a business card, for $2500. The launch vehicle has room for corporate logos on the side (think NASCAR, but faster) for $25,000 and up. TransOrbital will license high-definition footage of the moon and daily Earthrise to the movies. Baldly commercial and on a shoestring, Trailblazer replaces the old NASA goals of scientific research and military advantage with a new one of profit-seeking and, over the long term, homesteading on lunar soil.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jed!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:17:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beans in Space

As the Space Shuttle landed last Friday, the first-ever soy crop in space also returned to earth. During the Atlantis mission, soybeans planted and tended by DuPont scientists germinated, developed, flowered and created new seedpods; the 97-day initiative was the first major crop growth cycle ever completed in orbit. By proving that space crop production is possible, new potential for long-term human space travel becomes a closer possibility.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:01:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

(DIY Decor, Part 3) pr0n, Gideon's bibles, and coathangers: hotel-klepto ambience exposed.

Towel-snatchers, take heed. The Independent (UK) published this court transcript from the trial of a man charged with stealing over 40,000 coat hangers from hotels. Fact or fiction? Reads like vintage Monty Python or Fawlty Towers... though it's presumably being published as real (wink, wink). Part one is here, Part two is here--and includes this counsel/defendant repartee on the seedy, secretive subculture of hotel-klepto interior design obsessives:

Counsel: And people come to you, do they, asking you to make special wardrobes so that they can use stolen clothes hangers?

Chrysler: It isn't so much the fact that they are stolen that makes them attractive. You have to remember that many top businessmen spend more of their time in hotels than in their own home. They become used to hotel life. They think of hotels as home. Therefore they become used to hotel hangers and think of them as normal, and on the rare occasions when they spend some time at home they can't stand these fiddly things with hooks which you and I may think of as normal but which the business traveller thinks of as loose-fitting and badly designed. So they come to me and get me to make a hotel-style wardrobe.

Counsel: Are you seriously suggesting that there are people who prefer hotel life to home life?

Chrysler: Certainly. A lot of businessmen would never go home if they had the chance. So when they get home they like to recreate the hotel experience in their own house. Many of my clients have their own mini-bars in their bedrooms. They have TV sets at the end of the bed on a raised shelf, often with an adult sex channel on it. All their bathroom products come in wrappers and are thrown away each day. I have even known people in their own home put out "Do Not Disturb" notices on the door of their own bedroom.

Counsel: Stolen, presumably, from some hapless hotel.

Link Discuss (Thanks Jed; via kith.org)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:48:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DIY Decor, Continued: Make your own lava lamp!

You're a starving student with more interior design flava than interior design budget? Here are detailed how-to instructions for building your own lava lamp with cheap materials. Of note: the highly coveted "White Trash" lava lamp formula, shown at left.

Link Discuss Thanks, Eli the Bearded!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:35:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Exploding Meme: Teen DIY Interior Decorating

Suddenly, teen decorinis are big biz. New TV shows like "Trading Spaces" on Learning Channel, and MTV's "Crib Crashers" (shown at left; hosted by my friend and design mentor, the über-hot Jaime Laurella!), point to a sizable trend in youth spending habits. Excerpt from today's WSJ story:

"In all, the young-decorator set will spend about $17 billion this year on their rooms, double the amount less than a decade ago, according to The WonderGroup, a Cincinnati consulting company. They're getting tips from teen-apparel retailer Delia's, where housewares now account for 10% of catalog sales, up 50% from last year, and from Pier 1 Imports, which has started offering discounts to high-schoolers. " (...)

[The] fad shows no signs of slowing, especially with more housewares makers and retailers jumping into the fray. Stanely Furniture Co. recently unveiled a line dubbed "U R Gr8," with wood accented with colored translucent plastic that evokes the look of an Apple iMac. On the Home & Garden Television cable network, meanwhile, a new show called "Love by Design" juices up the decorating theme with another idea likely to appeal to teens: dating. (Contestants choose blind dates by sizing up their abodes.)

FWIW, girls, sizing up hotties by the condition of their bachelor pads never worked for me. The boys I always end up falling for inevitably have robot guts, nests of cables, or deconstructed routers strewn all over their Red Bull-stained carpets. But then, I'm not a teenage interior decorator... and I wouldn't be caught dead buying emoticon-covered Bed Pajamas.

Link to WSJ article (subscription required) Discuss Thanks, Numair!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:52:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ambient computation makes medical breakthrough

Folding@Home is a "cause computing" project. It's a process that grabs idle cycles on your computer and uses them to help compute massive scientific problems. The grandaddy of these is distributed.net, which used idle computers to brute-force very large ciphers, but this kind of ad-hoc distributed computation really came into its own with SETI@Home, which did 250,000 CPU-years of computation in its first year of operation, and quickly exhausted the radio telescope data available to the extra-terrestrial intelligence researchers who set up the program.

Adam Beberg, one of the founders of distributed.net, wrote a distcomp manifesto, where he summed up the distributed computation ethic neatly:

You got a new system today didn't you, lots of megahertz and gigabytes with all the toys, top of the line everything. Now what are you gonna do with it? Type email? Play some games for a couple hours a day?

In the time you read that your computer did a few billion nothings.

What a waste.

*click click click*

Meanwhile, all over the world, people are desperate for somethings. A graduate student trying to figure out protein folding, and an artist is trying to render a short film. Alone it will take them months, maybe years to complete their projects.

The net could do it in a few minutes.

You wouldn't even know it's running. You can't tell a nothing from a something, only the computer knows and it doesn't care.

When you're lost in the desert, you can get water by digging a shallow pit, putting a bowl in the middle of it and throwing a tarp over it. The sun turns the moisture in the soil into vapor and it condenses on the tarp, then drips into the bowl. It's free water in a water-scarce zone, available to anyone with a tarp and some patience. CPU cycles are the same kind of resource -- all around us, powerful, solid-state Turing Machines are sitting idle, doing nothing. These machines don't wear appreciably with use, and their idle cycles can't be banked -- turning your computer off today won't give you a machine that's twice as fast tomorrow (though, as Bruce Sterling reminds us, they do consume electricity).

Folding@Home aimed to solve one of the fundamental problems of technology-assisted medicine:

"The process of protein folding remains a mystery," said Pande, assistant professor of chemistry and of structural biology at Stanford. "When proteins misfold, they sometimes clump together, forming aggregates in the brain that have been observed in patients with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other diseases."

How proteins fold into their ideal conformation is a question that has tantalized scientists for decades. To solve the problem, researchers have turned to computer simulation – a process that requires an enormous amount of computing power.

"One reason that protein folding is so difficult to simulate is that it occurs amazingly fast," Pande explained. "Small proteins have been shown to fold in a timescale of microseconds [millionths of a second], but it takes the average computer one day just to do a one-nanosecond [billionth-of-a-second] folding simulation."

Simulating protein folding is often considered a "holy grail" of computational biology, he added. "This is an area of hot competition that includes a number of heavy weights, such as IBM's $100-million, million-processor Blue Gene supercomputer project."

able to perform 32,500 folding simulations and accumulate 700 microseconds of folding data. These simulations tested the folding rate of the protein on a 5-, 10- and 20-nanosecond timescale under different temperatures. Using these data, the scientists were able to predict the folding rate and trajectory of the "average" molecule.

The machines ranged from consumer off-the-shelf machines to wickedly overclocked custom jobs. In two short years, they advanced medical science, without supercomputers, without gargantuan budgets. Distcomp startups have focused on dull applications like crunching actuarial tables or working out mineral exploration problems, but the basic science stuff is what compels the popular imagination, convinces us each and all to throw a tarp over our computers and change the world. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:19:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Evil patent stops BC breast-cancer patients from being diagnosed

British Columbia will no longer use an effective, low-cost breast-cancer test because of the threat of a patent infringement suit.

Utah-based Myriad Genetics Inc. has put a patent on two genes that can signal whether a woman may develop hereditary breast cancer...

Myriad now wants $3,500 US for the blood test, three times what it used to cost the province...

Myriad also holds monopoly gene patents for ovarian, colon and prostate cancers, among the 99 it currently holds...

Health Services Minister Colin Hansen said the genetic tests were stopped here on legal advice.

Link Discuss (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:54:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Potterflick reviewed, new titles leaked

Ain't It Cool News has a spoiler-ridden rave for the new (much darker) Harry Potter movie, which opens on Nov 15. Most interesting is this tidbit:

Yes, a Reuters search of the UK Patent Office trademark database confirmed that Warner Bros. had registered several titles, including HARRY POTTER & THE ALCHEMIST’S CELL, HARRY POTTER & THE CHARIOTS OF LIGHT, and HARRY POTTER & THE PYRAMIDS OF FURMAT. They also registered HARRY POTTER & THE GOBLET OF FIRE at the same time.

Link Discuss

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

Jesus Action figure is recession-proof

Archie McPhee's Jesus Action Figure is selling by the truckload. The McPhee people have stumbled upon a new recession-proof business: plastic holy objets. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:01:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

High-larious notes from the National Association of Convenience Stores show in Orlando:

Think 33 football fields. Every product you have encountered in a convenience store -- sodas, beer, candy, bandannas -- is blown into a full-size booth. The top 10 in-store product categories are 1) cigarettes, 2) food service, 3) packaged beverages, 4) beer, 5) candy, 6) salty snacks, 7) fluid milk products, 8) general merchandise, 9) packaged sweet snacks, and 10) "other tobacco." Slurpees, Chilly Willies, Miller Lite, single-dose packets of Tylenol, Durex condoms, microwave burritos -- they're all here. And there are abundant free samples for everyone...

Like most other industries, the convenience-store business boasts its own esoteric trade magazines, with names like Professional Candy Buyer and Convenience Store News. In its latest issue, Professional Candy Buyer names Cassondra Melton of Wal-Mart "Buyer of the Year." One of her suppliers provides a testimonial: "Cassondra has a passion for the growth of confectionary and its total consumption."

Convenience Store News' lineup of columns includes Petro View, Security Beat, and Smoking Section, along with featured "shopper panel" research on the "salty snacks" category: 41 percent of salty snack purchases by teens are "planned" and 59 percent are "impulse." Slightly less impulsive adults clock in at 51 percent and 47 percent, respectively. Of those demographics most likely to purchase a meal at a convenience store, teen males lead the way at 53 percent, followed by 13- to 14-year-olds (52 percent), and both adults and teens in the Northeast (36 and 62 percent, respectively). I am suddenly feeling a bit more reflective about my own consumption habits -- my desire for a bag of chips at 1 a.m. has been quantified and analyzed...

I leave the show floor, but not before a pack of caffeinated Jolt gum is thrust at me by a hyperactive girl screaming, "Chew more! Do more!" The American will to consume more and produce more personified in a stick of gum. I grab it.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:44:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gotham Geek-Art alert: "Networked Event on World Conflict" at Location One Gallery.

Heads up, New York media-art-junkies. On Wednesday, October 30 at 8 PM, Location One Gallery at 26 Greene Street in SoHo is presenting a free art event called "Part Two: a networked event on world conflict." This will be the second in a series of events at the gallery that employ a collaborative video-jamming software through which artists and remote participants create a live, improvisational digital video mix.

"Four artists will experiment with this new medium to explore alternative ways of thinking about heavily mediated world events. Using excerpts from a previously recorded television news broadcast of America's first war with Iraq, Part Two (a networked event on world conflict) will center on the media spectacle of war. The recorded broadcast of this event will serve as the backbone for a live session where the video artists will mix previously compiled images and sounds from different sources. A live feed from a current television news channel will also be incorporated into the performance. Every participant will prepare material in accordance with a script synthesized from the transcript of the 1991 broadcast. The experiment seeks to resist the prevailing media discourse by breaking its present structures and creating alternative audiovisual configurations that challenge the mechanisms for "manufacture of consent."

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:20:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vietnam: publish a website, go to jail for three years.

The Vietnamese government recently issued a new set of regulations that require businesses and organizations to get government permission before publishing a new website. The Ministry of Culture and Information didn't disclose penalties for those who publish without government go-ahead, but the country's existing 'Net offense laws mandate fines of up to $3250, or up to three years in jail.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:05:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, October 21, 2002

Mac driven by manual typewriter

Check out this amazing, functional Mac classic retrofitted to be driven by a 1923 Underwood manual typewriter:

Most of the computer keys are in roughly the same place as the corresponding typewriter keys, so connecting them was a fairly straightforward process. But a 1923 Underwood typewriter has no "enter" key, no "option" key, etc., so some connections were harder to make. The silver rod running along the top of the typewriter runs from the chrome return lever on the left to a cam on the right, which rotates and pushes down on another rod which is connected to the computer "return" key hidden beneath the console.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Justin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:16:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coasters can't cause brain-damage

Rollercoasters aren't nearly as deadly as we thought. New research suggests that even the fastest, tallest coasters don't pull enough gees to cause brain-damage.

On Oct. 1, New Jersey became the first state to limit the G-forces of amusement-park rides. Proposed legislation would subject roller-coasters to federal oversight.

Smith and colleague David Meaney examined data from three rides with high G-forces: the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Fla.; Speed - The Ride at the NASCAR Cafe in Las Vegas; and Face/Off at Paramount's Kings Island near Cincinnati.

They found the coasters produced accelerations to the head that were one-ninth the force required to cause torn blood vessels in the brain and one-eighteenth the force required to cause brain swelling.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:10:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Finger length proportional to penis length

"According to Greek scientists, the length of a man's index finger can accurately predict the length of his penis. The findings are published in the September issue of the journal Urology." Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:37:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

George Bush: a Dry Drunk?

Counterpunch article speculates that the President might be a "dry drunk" -- that is, a non-drinking alcoholic who behaves like a drunk person.

"Dry drunk" traits consist of:

• Exaggerated self-importance and pomposity
• Grandiose behavior
• A rigid, judgmental outlook
• Impatience
• Childish behavior
• Irresponsible behavior
• Irrational rationalization
• Projection
• Overreaction

Clearly, George W. Bush has all thesetraits except exaggerated self importance. He may be pompous, especially with regard to international dealings, but his actual importance hardly can be exaggerated. His power, in fact, is such that if he collapses into paranoia, a large part of the world will collapse with him.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Deborah!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:08:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Suing Google over fixing its algorithm

"SearchKing," a company that charges money for artificially inflating its customers' Google rankings, is suing Google for having fixed its algorithm such that SearchKing's googlebombing doesn't work anymore. SearchKing claims that Google purposefully reduced "SearchKing and its related web sites' rankings has damaged the company's reputation and diminished its value." On a similar note, Nigerian 419 scammers are planning a class-action suit against the FTC for telling people how their scam works. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:19:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-gravity UFOs ate my brain

Great article about a Russian anti-gravity snake-oil salesman who ended up working for NASA, spending squillions trying to re-create an apparatus that allegedly accomplished working anti-gravity in the former Soviet Union.

...he claims that the Nazis built an antigravity device during World War II. Its absence from present-day science, Cook says, implies a vast "black" world of secret antigravity aircraft that might explain the UFOs people see over Area 51. He's a careful investigative reporter, but once you start talking about UFOs and Nazi antigravity you're not far from hidden tunnels under the White House full of lizard-men disguised as Freemasons.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Grad!)

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

Newton iSync

nSync: an iSync conduit for the Newton. If only it were written in HyperCard, it would be the perfect early-90s nostalgiaware. I just love the idea that even with sub-$100 PalmOS PDAs out there in the market, there are still people running around making cool apps for the Newton (like the Newton iPod app). Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:53:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mitch Kapor's blog

Mitch Kapor -- co-founder of EFF, founder of Lotus, open source application developer -- has a blog, where he's discussing the future of the open source uber-PIM he's working on. Link Discuss (via Hack the Planet)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:20:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brits can't name own leader, intimate with EastEnders

A new Britsh poll concludes that one in ten Brits can't name a single world leader (including Tony Blair), but half can name five characters from the EastEnders soap. I wonder how Americans would fare? Instinctively, I find it unlikely that you could find any appreciable number of Americans who couldn't name the President, but I have a feeling that they'd do even more poorly on foreign leaders (except, perhaps, Saddam Hussein). Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:44:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New York primer

Tips for newcomers and visitors to NYC by my pal Reive:

What to wear? New York is not like the rest of the universe in several small regards:

* Yes, we wear black all the time, even to weddings. Don't ask us about it and feel free to do it yourselves.

* We do not wear shorts. If you wear shorts you are a tourist. We do wear capri pants (women) and khaki-knee length shorts (guys and dykes), but we absolutely do not wear what they call shorts in the rest of America.

* White is the current fashion, all white, everywhere, all the time, and it looks beautiful, but don't, because you'll be covered in visible bus soot within an hour.

* We do not wear socks with sandals here.

* Men, if you wear white socks with a suit, we will not sleep with you.

Link Discuss (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:35:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, October 20, 2002

"Piracy" fears are really about anti-competitiveness

An editorial in MP3 NewsWire proposes that the music industry's purported fears about "piracy" mask the real agenda: keeping the barriers to entry in the music industry high, and so keeping their businesses safe.

To start your own terrestrial radio station you first need a license from the FCC giving you permission to broadcast over a specific frequency. This in itself is a large barrier because the number of available frequencies are finite and the FCC has already parceled out that part of the spectrum devoted to commercial radio. The only way to get such a license is to purchase it from someone who has one to sell - at whatever the market demands. Hardly something within reach of most Net radio providers...

To start your own net radio station is much simpler as the technology is extremely cheap. The simplest way we tested took all of 10 minutes for any novice DJ thanks to a now defunct company called MyCaster. MyCaster worked by having you load a special WinAmp-styled MP3 player on your PC. As you listened to music from it, the MyCaster player sent a feed over the Internet to the MyCaster website. From that site the feed was taken and the the tunes you listened to were simultaneously broadcast over the Net, accessible to all.

Cost to the living room DJ to bring music to the world? Nothing, beyond the cost of his broadband connection to his house.

Here we have the old way of doing things, which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars just to operate in a given month, and the new way where the costs can be covered by a thirteen year old's allowance. If that type of scenario doesn't scare an oligopoly based on the old technology. I don't now what will.

Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:24:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Diptox: Botox for brain tumors

A new brain-tumor therapy uses diptheria toxin, bonded to iron, to kill brain-tumors -- cancer cells take up more iron than normal cells. Link Discuss (Thanks, Cheryl!)

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

New, non-sucky open source PIM

Dan Gillmor's Sunday column this week is all about Mitch Kapor's Open Source Application Foundation, a nonprofit that is building a standards-defined, free[speech|beer] personal information manager. It's gonna be a mailer, a calendar app, an address book, you get the picture: it's Outlook. Except it won't suck. It won't create gaping security holes in your machine. And it will be available for Linux, OS X and Win32. Did I mention free? Of course Mitch has got a great track-record setting up foundations, including my favorite, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Link Discuss (via Dan Gillmor)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:55:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Will demean self for baseball tickets

Kottke has tracked down whacky, desperate offers of goods and services available for trade on Craig's List in exchange for World Series tickets.

"Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll-What's a Girl Gotta Do to Get 2 WS Tickets? You know what I want. Please tell me what you'd like."

"I will trade fifteen minutes of my ass in exchange for two tickets to the World Series. For fifteen minutes, you may do whatever you wish to my ass--you may kick my ass, kiss my ass, beat my ass, or place my ass and some whoop in a can for subsequent opening. Perhaps you'd like to hear me talk out of my ass, or watch as I get up off my ass, blow it out my ass, get drunk off my ass, and then sit on my ass. You can fire my ass, dump my ass, or spank my ass 'till it shines like the hood of a Volkswagen. For fifteen minutes, my ass is yours, grass or otherwise. No reasonable request will be refused."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:34:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plane-size bird spotted in Alaska

There's a giant bird flying around Southwest Alaska, and no one knows what to make of it.

A pilot says he spotted the creature while flying passengers to Manokotak last week. He calculated that its wingspan matched the length of a wing on his Cessna 207 -- nearly five metres. Other people have put the wingspan in a similar range.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Scott!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:25:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, October 19, 2002

Media's revisionist history lessons about Iraq

Lots of examples of how the story about why weapons inspectors left Iraq has undergone a revision in the last four years:

The Iraq story boiled over last night when the chief U.N. weapons inspector, Richard Butler, said that Iraq had not fully cooperated with inspectors and--as they had promised to do. As a result, the U.N. ordered its inspectors to leave Iraq this morning

--Katie Couric, NBC's Today, 12/16/98/

As Washington debates when and how to attack Iraq, a surprise offer from Baghdad. It is ready to talk about re-admitting U.N. weapons inspectors after kicking them out four years ago. --Maurice DuBois, NBC's Saturday Today, 8/3/02

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:48:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jewish kung-fu

Notes from the production of "The Hebrew Hammer," the first Jewish kung-fu movie.

"We usually don't serve your kind," snarled a mealy-faced skinhead behind the bar. The Jewish fellow, adorned in a long leather coat, prayer shawl, gold Star of David and black fedora, ignored the comment and asked for a drink: "Manischewitz, straight up." As the bartender turned briefly away, the Jewish man grabbed the liquor bottle, smashed it across the skinhead's skull, and turned with a sneer to the roomful of customers.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:30:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Air-travellers still trying to bring weapons onboard

Air travellers keep showing up at American airports with banned weapons and try to carry them onto the plane. Not just Swiss Army Knives or multitools, either: nationwide, an average of four firearms are confiscated every days, many from "little old ladies who carried a gun in their purse for protection." Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:10:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Macarena II: Ketchup song

Las Ketchup -- a Spanish girl-group -- has recorded an international pop hit ("The Ketchup Song") that comes complete with an irritating group dance. CNN describes it as the next Macarena.

Their song, known in Spanish as "Asereje," bases its lyrics on snippets from the 1979 classic "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang, but transmogrifies them with a staccato twist from Las Ketchup's native Andalusia region.

The refrain goes like this: "Asereje ja de je de jebe tude jebere sebiunouba majabi an de bugui an de buididipi."

That's not Spanish, it's gibberish...

Teenagers in Kosovo love it. One Danish Internet portal offers the melody for downloading as a cell phone beep. And a version in Mandarin Chinese is planned for the world's most populous nation.

Link Discuss

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

Friday, October 18, 2002

The illusion of free will

Boston Globe article about a scientist who says your brain sends signals to perform actions before you consciously decide to do them.

What Libet did was to measure electrical changes in people's brains as they flicked their wrists. And what he found was that a subject's ''readiness potential'' - the brain signal that precedes voluntary actions - showed up about one-third of a second before the subject felt the conscious urge to act. The result was so surprising that it still had the power to elicit an exclamation point from him in a 1999 paper: ''The initiation of the freely voluntary act appears to begin in the brain unconsciously, well before the person consciously knows he wants to act!''

Then the experimenters would use magnetic stimulation in certain parts of the brain just at the moment when the subject was prompted to make the choice. They found that the magnets, which influence electrical activity in the brain, had an enormous effect: On average, subjects whose brains were stimulated on their right-hand side started choosing their left hands 80 percent of the time. And, in the spookiest aspect of the experiment, the subjects still felt as if they were choosing freely.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Higgins!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:47:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lost in Translation

This fun site runs English text through five different languages translations back to English. Result: "This place of the system of the recovery cuts to the English text with five translations several of the immovable speech in the English." Link Discuss (Thanks, David Grant!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:41:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tanya Huff talk at University of Toronto

Tanya Huff, a wonderful Canadian science fiction, fantasy and horror writer, is giving a talk at the University of Toronto on Oct 21:

MONDAY OCTOBER 21 at 11 am in Room 2135, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St.George Street, University of Toronto.

Tanya used work at Bakka, Toronto's wonderful science-fiction bookstore, which I haunted as a kid (and worked at in my early 20s). The first time I ever wrote a story that I thought would be good enough for someone other than my teachers or family to read, I jumped on a subway, rode down to Queen Station, walked to Bakka and handed her a printout. She'd just had her first novel published, and I really wanted to know what a real writer thought of it.

I was 13 at the time, and the story, while promising, had a lot of problems. Tanya read it while I hung around at the back of the shop, looking at the used books, and then, in between selling books to customers, gave me an afternoon-long lecture on what I was doing right and how to learn to do the stuff I didn't know how to do yet. It was the first time I ever got feedback from a writer on my work, and it changed my life.

Tanya's written twenty-some novels now (!), and it's fantastic to see her still teaching young writers how it's done. Link Discuss (Thanks, Mici!)

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

Whole-body photocopier

A Japanese firm has shipped a photocopier meant to xerox the entire human body at once. The article's in French, here's the Babelfish translation: Link Discuss (Thanks, Miladus!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:06:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dope in your ass -- not just for smugglers anymore

A company in Mississippi has developed a THC suppository that doesn't get you high but does stimulate the appetites of cancer and AIDS patients. The idea is to replace medical marijuana -- which the US's puritan heritage opposes on the principle that getting well shouldn't involve feeling good -- with a butt-plug of extracted, denatured THC. Link Discuss (Thanks, Chris!)

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

SimProtest

Download anti-war posters for your avatars in The Sims. Link Discuss (Thanks, Dai!)

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

Aromaphones from Scotland

A Scottish company is working on cellphones that can generate odors on demand, so that users can send each other smells, as well as getting stinky "ringtones" from their handsets.

Dr Dodd told the Glasgow Herald his plans include distilling and delivering aromatherapy products by phone.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Steve!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:10:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Transcript of the Eldred hearing online

Aaron Swartz has posted a transcript of the Eldred oral arguments that Larry Lessig and Theodore Olsen presented to the Supreme Court on October 9th. Only 50 members of the public got into the hearing, but now we can all read it.

Well, Mr. Chief Justice, it's absolutely true that this case is here because of a fundamentally important changed circumstance that makes the Framers' limitations on the Copyright Clause much more significant. This is the first time I can remember where this Court has been pointed to changed circumstances as a reason to reaffirm the Framers' values, because for most of this period, Mr. Chief Justice, the only people who were regulated by copyright law under the Copyright Act would have been [*4] commercial publishers, primarily, and now for the first time the scope of this exclusive right has expanded because of the changed technology of the Internet to reach an extraordinarily broad range of creativity that never would have been imagined before.

Link Discuss (via Aaron Swartz)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Audio from the Disney Parks

The Sounds of Magic is a fantastic fan-site collecting themes, incidental music and other recorded audio from the Disney theme parks, including Disneyland Paris. Pirates of the Carribbean in French rocks. Link Discuss (Thanks, Jonathan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:57:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burn CDs straight from your iPod

Check out this amazing collection of OS X iPod tools, including an app that lets you burn CDs directly from your iPod. The original page is in German, here's a Babelfish translation. Link Discuss (via iPod Hacks)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:49:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paul McCartney's band loves WiFi

Paul McCartney's band like to check into hotels with wireless access, since they're a bunch of 802.11b junkies. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, October 17, 2002

4 gigs on a 3-cm recordable, rewritable optical disc, retailing within 2 years

Philips is reportedly developing a miniature optical disc that will enable your mobile device to store five full-length movies, 25,000 digital images, or 48 hours of MP3 tunes. Known as Small Form Factor Optical (SFFO), the technology was developed at a UK research facility and demo'd last week in Japan. Article excerpt:

SFFO spun off from Philips's work on Blu-ray, the emerging standard for a system that will use blue lasers to record high-definition TV pictures on DVD-sized discs. Blu-ray is backed by a group of leading firms, including Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp and Sony... The three-centimetre disc will be the same thickness as a DVD, but the phase-change material that records the data will be a mere 0.1 millimetres thick, compared to 0.6 millimetres for DVDs. Philips says this should mean there is less risk of beam distortion if the disc tilts when the portable device gets jogged. Portable DVD players will not play smoothly if jogged.

(...) Philips says it was "just coincidence" that DataPlay of Colorado, US, a firm offering a rival micro disc technology, hit a cash crisis just as Philips decided to come clean about its SFFO technology. DataPlay is designed to record just 250 megabytes per side of a 3.2-centimetre disc, but so far without the option to erase and reuse the disc.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:57:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Buy a vacation, get a William Shatner Bobblehead

Priceline.com just launched a promo campaign in which customers who purchase vacations through the travel site before October 31 get a free William Shatner bobblehead doll.

"This sure-fire collectible is made of a durable ceramic composite and this is the only way to get it! So put Bobblin' Bill on your mantle, take him to work or sit him down on the couch and simply enjoy his company while you watch your favorite sci-fi show. It's up to you! "

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:45:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cute icons from Yip Yop

Several adorable icon sets from the creator of the Twink toy music CD. Don't miss the new werms set! Also, check out Yip Yop's weblog, where I learned that Cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch has a rock band! Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:13:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open spectrum explained -- REALLY well

Kevin Werbach has just posted a fantastic, lucid whitepaper on open spectrum, covering radical ideas like cognitive radio, ultrawideband, and software-defined radio in ways that are accessible to the laiety. Kevin's paper paints a compelling picture of a world of non-scarce spectrum where high-speed wireless data networks drive community activism, economic recovery and unparalleled innovation.

WiFi (IEEE 802.11) is a protocol for unlicensed wireless local area networks, allowing high-speed data connections anywhere within a few hundred feet of an access point. WiFi deployments are growing at fantastic rates, doubling in the last year. A market that did not exist three years ago now generates well over a billion dollars annually, continuing to expand despite a severe technology recession. There are thousands of public access points in the US, and hundreds of thousands more in homes and businesses. Several million laptops are equipped with WiFi cards, and most laptop vendors are building WiFi into their newer models. Investment and innovation run rampant. Venture-backed startups are springing up to improve WiFi technology and apply it to new markets, such as residential broadband access.

WiFi shows only a fraction of open spectrum's potential. If the US government took steps to facilitate the full realization of open spectrum, it would achieve several vitally important policy goals. Moreover, it would do so by moving away from heavy-handed regulation towards a free-market environment in which innovation and service quality matter more than government-granted privileges...

With today's technology, the better metaphor for wireless is not land, but oceans. Boats traverse the seas. There is a risk those boats will collide with one another. The oceans, however, are huge relative to the volume of shipping traffic, and the pilots of each boat will maneuver to avoid any impending collision (i.e., ships “look and listen” before setting course). To ensure safe navigation, we have general rules defining shipping lanes and a combination of laws and etiquette defining how boats should behave relative to one another. A regulatory regime that parceled out the oceans to different companies, so as to facilitate safe shipping, would be overkill. It would sharply reduce the number of boats that could use the seas simultaneously, raising prices in the process.

Link (148k PDF) Discuss (via Werblog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:51:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John Perry Barlow essay on the state of the nation: "Pox Americana"

John Perry Barlow just published an essay on "the present state of the American Experiment" to a mailing list of friends, fans, and assorted geeks. I've posted a copy online. Excerpt:

A lot of what's wrong may be the very sort of thing you're reading right now.

The Internet, has, as expected, provided a global podium to everyone with an opinion. Cyberspace has become an infinite set of street corners, each with its lonely pamphleteer, howling his rage to a multitude all too busy howling their own to listen.

All of our energy goes into things like this [e-mail], energies that might be better spent in creating traditional blocs like the NRA, or the AARP, or some large group capable of either buying Congress or scaring the shit out of them. This screed won't scare an elected official anywhere. And it wouldn't generate enough money to elect or defeat a dogcatcher.

As much as I loathe organizations, we need to organize.

And we'd better start doing it now before the Empire decides it's necessary to declare a National Emergency and make it lethally illegal to oppose it. It could get that bad.

Or it might get oddly worse than that. The Empire has discovered something important. The best way to deal with us is to ignore us altogether, as they did last Thursday. Our calls and letters had no effect whatever.

But those were the acts of citizens. In an Empire, there are no citizens, only subjects.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:44:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese Switch ads

Apple Japan has launched a bunch of Japanese Switch ads. Otaku, salarymen and ko-gals discuss their experiences migrating from Windows to the Mac: this is pretty whacky stuff. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:26:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free Mozilla cookbook online

O'Reilly's new kickass book, "Creating Applications with Mozilla" (which explains how to turn the world's coolest browser into just about anything) is available for free online at Mozdev.org. Check out yesterday's glowing Slashdot review:

On another level, this book is also one of the first finished documents that explains what the Mozilla group has really been up to for the past five years. Some have abandoned the project, and others have attacked it as fundamentally misguided. This book shows why it took so long by demonstrating all of the cool features added during the long march to a new, thoroughly extensible architecture.

Are the results enough to justify the time and the effort? Some note that the features may be a bit overhyped, because building your own browser with the Mozilla API is like making a pizza with $15 and a telephone. While there's a large part of the book devoted to the work you can do to change the look and feel of the buttons on your browser, the book and the project offer much more. The Mozilla project is one of the biggest threats to simple tools like Visual Basic to come down the pike in some time. The various layers offer many ways to provide good, customizable interfaces to databases, the web, and much more. I can see how many corporate development shops may want to start making Mozilla the platform for a license-free front-end, simply because it's a straightforward tool without extra costs or restrictions.

Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:34:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ben Hammersley offers to open his inbox to the world

Prompted by a thought-experiment from Ray Ozzie in which he imagines a company where all work-related inboxes are shared internally, and searchable with Google, Ben Hammersley is offering to make his journalism-related inbox available as an RSS feed, sharing all of his story notes, ideas and feedback with the world. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:25:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Do-it-yourself haunted mansion

A group of dark-ride enthusiasts are building a ride-through haunted house from scratch, building their own ride system, vehicles and track! The site documenting their work is down due to a vicious Slashdotting, but here's a mirror: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6, Page 7, Page 8, Page 9, Page 10 Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:15:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Developing world kept down by intellectual property

Good NYT piece about intellectual property regimes in the developing world. The author notes that developing countries usually provide for very weak intellectual property protection, scooping up foreign ideas at speed and implementing them locally to bootstrap local culture and industry -- that's what the USA did when it failed to honor foreign copyrights for the first century that this country existed.

But the USA has since been instrumental in pushing through international treaties (like "Trips") that force poor and developing countries to eschew this critical bootstrap, which has led to tremedous social harm, as when countries are forced to honor foreign pharmaceutical patents that price AIDS-fighting drugs out of their range.

The concern about Trips is that it is too much of a one-size-fits-all approach that works to the detriment of developing nations. "It would be fine if we lived in a world of all rich people," said Jeffrey D. Sachs, a development economist at Columbia University. "The danger with Trips is that it will mostly hurt the developing countries' access to ideas."

The report of the intellectual property rights commission, which was sponsored by the British government, includes a long list of recommendations, some of which would be anathema to American companies:

* Encourage developing nations to make greater use of compulsory licensing of drugs.

* Allow more "reverse engineering" of software programs — that is, copying a product by studying and making educated assumptions about the underlying code.

* Permit "cracking" of software used to protect copyrighted digital media, if the country determines that the copy-protection technology limits the fair use of digital text, video or music.

Link Discuss (via /.)

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

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Natural nukes

Nuclear reactors occur in nature -- don't miss the amazing pic!

The remnants of nuclear reactors nearly two billion years old were found in the 1970s in Africa. These reactors are thought to have occurred naturally. No natural reactors exist today, as the relative density of fissile uranium has now decayed below that needed for a sustainable reaction. Pictured above is Fossil Reactor 15, located in Oklo, Gabon. Uranium oxide remains are visible as the yellowish rock. Oklo by-products are being used today to probe the stability of the fundamental constants over cosmological time-scales and to develop more effective means for disposing of human-manufactured nuclear waste.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jed!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:58:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Novel ideology for hire

A book packager is selling product- and message-placement in novels:

There is now an entire business called Narration Ltd. that offers novelists to write fiction with heavy product placement and their company's message in the storyline. One book, Need to Know by Simon Gibson and Adam Lury, is pro-globalization, brought to you by the Foreign Policy Centre.

The story line, such as it is, concerns an antiglobalization activist who creates havoc over the Internet. The villain meets -- guess what? -- an unfortunate end. Sermon: Don't mess with globalization. =

Link Discuss (Thanks, Nat!)

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

Heavy metal in the sky

Bruce Dickinson, former lead singer of Iron Maiden, has found a new career as a commercial airline pilot. Link Discuss (Thanks, Oliver!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:53:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Making trusted computing safe for Democracy

EFF had another meeting with some trusted computing people yesterday -- this time, it was the crew from TCPA, and some Intel folks who briefed us on LaGrande. The trusted computing people maintain that trusted computing is like any other general-purpose technology: it has good uses and bad ones. Trusted computing can be a critical piece of end-to-end crypto in private communications, and (the supporters maintain), can be used to safeguard the public's privacy. Supporters of trusted computing also say that their invention was not built or optimized for DRM.

Of course, I don't buy this -- entirely. Trusted computing might be a useful component in end-to-end secrecy. It might be useful to build, for example, a Gnutellanet where badly written clients that jabber and break the network can't connect. But I don't think it will be a tool for helping the public to keep its private data private from the IRS or hospital administrators, since that supposes that the public can convince the IRS or hospital administrators to accept information in crypto wrappers that favor the public. All the people against whom I would like to protect my private data are people whom I can't compel to accept my data in my privacy wrapper. If I was in a position of power over those people, I wouldn't need trusted computing!

Moreover, the anti-competitive aspects of trusted computing must be stressed. Trusted computing can be used as a tool to eliminate unauthorized interoperability: in English, that means that trusted computing can be used by, say, your the company that sold you your word-processor to ensure that you can't open your own documents with their competitors' products.

One thing that the trusted computing folks we met asked us is how trusted computing could be redesigned to ensure that this tool is predominantly used to help users trust their computers, as opposed to Hollywood or Microsoft trusting you with their software and movies. Seth is noodling around with an idea for a trusted computing design that preserves the positive uses of trusted computing but breaks most of the negative ones. If vendors wanted to make a public-friendly trusted computing system, this is one way that they could:

I'm going to call this feature an Owner Override function, because it allows the owner of the computer to override certain policies the owner might consider disadvantageous (such as not allowing the owner to read some data which was saved using sealed storage). In the alternative, you can implement this in a technically different way and call it something like "owner-directed migration", a direct attack on Pd "migration disposition" in which a creator of a file or an application might have defined certain rules about migration.

We know that the basic technology for assuring that a function like this is never triggered from software is already implemented; it's a design requirement of TCPA and Palladium, ordinarily referred to as "physical presence indication". The system is required to be engineered in such a way that it can reliably determine whether you are there in front of it or not. (In particular, it needs to be able to reliably determine that a particular instruction was generated from hardware by a physical action, and not from software. This is meant to guarantee that malicious code can't impersonate an end-user in order to trick the system into undermining certain kinds of privacy or security protections.)

On reflection, I don't see anything in the physical presence indication concept which prevents it from being extended to include a broad mechanism for overriding policies. Already, there are things you can do with physical presence in these trusted computing system which you simply can't do otherwise; why is "override security" not one of them? (It is, de facto, in all existing PC hardware! What's more, I don't believe that any parts of ordinary PC hardware before 1995 were specifically designed to prevent users from altering any part of user-visible functionality. Maybe someone can find an interesting counterexample, because it seems very possible that there is one. Incidentally, the feature I'm proposing as an Owner Override is not really very different technically from existing suspend-to-disk functionality provided in many laptops.)

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:48:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reminder: LA area WarDriveIn tonight--Burgers, fries, and WiFi!

Reminder for Los Angeles area WiFi enthusiasts: the Southern California Wireless User Group's inaugural "WarDriveIn" takes place tonight! Wireless technology demos, tips on creating cool in-car wardriving setups, cameraderie, and cheeseburgers. Notes from the organizers:

1. We're meeting at a restaurant. Come hungry and eat with us. Lets be good guests and make it profitable for the locale.
2. If it rains, come anyway, we'll meet together indoors.
3. If it's too crowded, we'll overflow into the Jack In The Box across the street.
4. Eat at the restaurant.
5. Eat at the restaurant.

When: Tonight, Wednesday October 16th, 2002
Time: 8pm - 10pm, and later
Location: Everest Burgers, 2314 Lake Ave, Altadena, CA 91001-2417.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:58:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Surreal Urdu advert: US + Israel = babies on a bun

The "Download Beautiful Wallpaper" link on the Urdu-language online publication from Islamic organization Jama'at ud Da'awa takes you to this bizarre Photoshop collage of American and Israeli corporate logos. I can't read Urdu, but the ad appears to link these companies' activities to death and destruction in the Islamic world--and specifically, babies on a bun.

UPDATE: Urdu-to-English translation. (Thanks, YP!)

(Front side, Top) The cry of the injured Muslim community: The multinational companies who are advancing the cause of Muslim blood-sucking Jews and Christians. (yellow writing) Do not help the Jews in our massacre!

(Right column) KFC and McDonald's are not serving food, they serve the meat of martyred Palestinians. And Pepsi, Coke, you are not drinking soda, you drink the blood of martyred Palestinians. (Left column) Remember that the Jew-burger contains the bomb with which your religion is martyred, and financed with your own money.

(Back side, Top) to spend less on your family budget, buy national products. (columns, from right) 1: name of non-national product 2: national product 3: price of non-national product 4: price of national product (continued on next 4 columns)

(Bottom) Insist on buying national products, and ask your store to provide you with them. Dear brothers and sisters, please boycott the products of the other multinationals. The main reason being that they earn from us and then they spend this money killing us. May God be praised - this boycott has shown you that Lever Brothers has changed their name to Unilever, as they have seen the decline of the use of their products in different cities. God be praised, the mighty God is our helper and may God give us courage and help so that we can stand against the infidels.

Link Discuss (Thanks, cleetus x!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:35:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I'm too sexy for my SMS: Vodaphone's text-as-foreplay ads banned in the UK

Vodaphone has been advised by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to take a long, cold shower over the company's "explicit and gratuitous" ad campaign depicting couples in an erotic embrace. The banned ads promote text messaging as a prelude to sexual encounters: one shows a halfway-clad woman "pressed against a wall with a man kneeling between her legs," another shows a woman straddling a man over a car hood with the tagline "Get the flirting over with before you get home. Text".

The ITC said that, although the couples were dressed, it was "clear what the passionate kissing, embracing and rolling on the dining table was leading to".

Yes, isn't it always?

Vodafone defends the ads as reflecting real-world mobile culture of young people. Earlier TV ads from the campaign sparked previous bans by the media authority.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:51:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aibo skateboards

Sony will ship a $249 Aibo skateboard for their robot dogs in November.

The AIBO Speed Board allows AIBO to entertain you with dances and routines on its very own scooter. You can navigate AIBO's skating with voice commands such as 'turn left' and 'super slalom'. Create your own skate routines by moving AIBO to record the motions that can then be replayed later on.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:29:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mike Myers gets Toronto street

Mike Myers has had a street named after him in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, whence he hails. Will Doctorow Road ever come to Willowdale, the adjoining suburb where I was raised?

"When I first heard I'd have a street named after me, I was thrilled. Scarborough has helped to shape who I am, and I took it as a great honour," Mr. Myers said...

"Then I was told it doesn't mean I actually own the street. So even though I can't levy taxes or start my own army, it's still pretty cool."

Link Discuss

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

Greeks get exclusive right to say "feta"

Greece has secured a promise from the EU that only feta cheese that's manufactured in Greece will be lawfully described as "feta." I guess everything else will be "feta-style cheese."

"Everyone knows it's Greek — even foreigners call it Greek feta," said Stefanos Kazakos, who works at a restaurant in Athens' historic Plaka district, popular with tourists.

"It's fair. This should have happened long ago," adds Manolis Androulakis, owner of a store selling traditional Greek products. "Feta is made in parts of Greece. It cannot be reproduced using different methods, and different milk."

And in related news:

From The Economist's "Business This Week" e-mail newsletter, 10.10.02:

The Italian government announced a scheme to certify ITALIAN RESTAURANTS around the world, ensuring genuine Italian menus served by Italians -- complete, presumably, with oversized pepper mills and checked table cloths. Counterfeit Italian restaurants are thought to make profits of some EURO27 billion ($26.6 billion) a year. A pilot scheme will be launched in Belgium next year.

"Italian-style restaurants?" Link Discuss (Thanks, Bruce!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DMCA forces Red Hat to limit patch documentation to non-Americans

Open source hackers who've written a security patch for Red Hat Linux are requiring the company to limit disclosure of the documentation for the patch because of fears of DMCA prosecution. The DMCA makes it illegal to provide information that can be used to circumvent technical measures used in protecting copyrighted works, and so the patch's documentation -- which presumably describes a vulnerability in some security component -- might break US law. Before you may read these documentation, you have to aver that you are not an American or under American jurisdiction. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:47:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hackers fix TiBook's broken wireless

The perennial dilemma of wireless Mac junkies is whether to buy the sexy, powerful G4 Titanium PowerBook, or the slightly dinkier G3 iBook. The G4 can accomodate up to 1GB of RAM, runs wicked fast, and looks like a million bucks (the iBook takes 640MB of RAM and looks more like a million dollars -- Canadian).

But the iBook has a kick-ass wireless antenna built into the perimeter of its screen. The TiBook has no such amenity. That nets out to the iBooks being able to connect to wireless networks at two or three times the range of the pricier TiBook.

Paul Boutin's got a story in today's Wired News discussing the various ways that hackers are getting around this problem. The TiBook's PCMCIA (People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms) slot can accomodate an external wireless card, but none of the 802.11b vendors supply OSX drivers for their hardware -- and so open source hackers have put together a suite of drivers for various wireless cards based on the Prism chipset. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:30:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

Online comic series "Get Your War On" covers Iraq standoff

Fans of the brilliantly snarky "Get your War On" web comic series will be pleased to know that new episodes on Iraq have been published. Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:06:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saddam's campaign themesong is Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You"

According to this Washington Post article. Wonder if the Iraqi leader's campaign team bothered to take care of rights clearance for the song... if not, perhaps the United States should spare the missiles, prevent collateral damage, and just straight-up air-drop a posse of recording industry attorneys on him. Make lawyergrams, not war!

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:07:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SF writers against war in Iraq

Science fiction writers are circulating a petition to prevent a war in Iraq

Science fiction and fantasy writers are among more than 100 artists who have signed an online petition opposing military action in Iraq. Signatories include SCI FICTION editor Ellen Datlow and writers Karen Joy Fowler, Lisa Goldstein, John Kessel, Kelly Link and Michael Moorcock, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Web site reported.

"Science fiction writers have a special interest in the future, and the U.S. policy on Iraq is putting our future at risk," said Douglas Lain, the Portland, Ore., man who co-wrote the petition with New Zealand author Tim Jones, the SFWA site reported. "It's no wonder that so many fine writers in the genre are coming out in opposition to Bush and his war."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:12:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark's new book is on sale: Mad Professor

I wrote and illustrated a kids' science experiment book called THE MAD PROFESSOR. It went on sale today! Every page is in full color and loaded with illustrations, and it's printed on easy-to-clean laminated paper, so you can make your Goon Goo, hovercrafts, portal paper, spool-bots, and other experiments without fear of staining the book.

If you buy a copy and send me a self-addressed stamped envelope, I will send you a handsome sticker with an original drawing and my signature that you can stick on the front page of the book. (My address is 11288 Ventura Blvd #818, Studio City CA 91604) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:46:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Santa Claus: soldier of fortune

Christmas comes earlier and earlier every year. Strange Horizons, an online sf zine, is running this techno-thriller Santa Claus in the age of casual militarization:

"Am I dying?" she asks.

Santa says nothing.

"Yes," I say. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"No," she says. "But maybe Santa can."

"What can I do?" he asks.

"When I was a little girl," she says, "I sent you a letter and asked for world peace."

"I used to get a lot of those," he says. "Not so much anymore. Most kids want Playstations."

"I don't," she says. "I want world peace."

"Sometimes you've got to go along with what everyone else wants," Santa says. "That's the price of freedom. You kids don't get it, but maybe this war will change that. Had everything handed to you. You've got to fight or you get soft."

(For a fantastic and creepy take on Santa Claus, check out The Claus Effect, a novel by my pals Karl "Permanence" Schroeder and Dave "Edgar Award" Nickle) Link Discuss (Thanks, Susan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Redheads are inherent wimps

Redheads are more susceptible to pain than blondes and brunettes.

Ten red-haired women between 19 and 40 years of age and ten more with dark hair were given a commonly-used inhaled anaesthetic in the study. After each dose of the anaesthetic, the women were given a standard electric shock.

The process was repeated until the women said they felt no pain. Their reflexes were also monitored to assess the effectiveness of the painkiller. The researchers found that red heads required 20 per cent more aesthetic to dull the pain.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:25:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Self-serializing gun-barrel

The USPTO has granted a patent for a gun that stamps a serial-number on bullets as they're fired:

This invention relates to a method and system for marking the inner surface of the barrel of a firearm with an identifying indicia for transfer to a bullet passing therethrough, reading the indicia from the bullet and identifying the firearm and, in particular, to the modification of the inner surface of a firearm barrel using a laser for the purpose of producing one or more areas of permanent grooves, which impart firearm data onto rounds passing through the barrel in contact with the inner surface of the barrel to form a barcode-like pattern which may be read by a barcode scanner and matched to the firearm.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Clive!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:21:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rules for the RIAA

Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper weighs in on the music/copyright debate with a scathing column about the music industry's foolishness:

Be sanctimonious: Claim to be more concerned about the artists than about your profits. You are selfless; your only interest is paying the musicians, without whom you would be nothing. Pray that nobody remembers countless rockers who signed away their souls on recording contracts and were dumped the moment their sales started slipping.

Misunderstand your market: When you count the songs being swapped on peer-to-peer networks, do not notice that most are moldy oldies. It's still theft, you argue, even if you yourself stopped paying royalties for those songs in 1961. Blame piracy, not taste, for your inability to sell new songs that no radio station will play.

Lie: Go on Kazaa, count the MP3 versions of songs you produced, old and new, and multiply that number by the current retail price of a CD; howl that you are losing a fortune. Forget that a Buddy Holly album sold for $2.95 in 1958; you sell records for much more now, and that's the price you use when calculating your losses — it's more impressive.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Kevin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:16:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

eBay scam: Bid on the opportunity to buy me a stereo

This is a new wrinkle on eBay scams: the "seller" appears to be describing a car stereo for sale and goes into a lot of detail about the features and condition of the stereo, but snuck in, at the end of all that description, is this:

Caution: U r bidding on the oppritunity to buy me one of these players, not urself. so don't expect to recieve one.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dave!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:13:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Russian cyberpunk: news or fiction?

The Moscow Times is running a strange little cyberpunk techno-thriller vignette -- it's not clear to me whether this is news, a serialized novel, or a columnist with heavy sleepdep, but the prose is great:

Chrome was telling us how some bug hacker got into the helmet frequency one day and flooded their gourds with Donny Osmond songs. Four hours of it. What could you do? You couldn't take the helmet off or you'd over-geiger like the morons. Nearly drove them crazy. "And they call it puppy love." Chrome was crooning, laughing, riding high. He'd just bagged Laila, the one who used to be on TV here -- half a week's pay, but they said get her now because some wheel at CentComm was about to privatize her. Then he stepped outside with Dietrich and was gone.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:06:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lessig explains the Supreme Court

Lawrence Lessig has taken some time to explain the nuances of his arguments in the Eldred Supreme Court case and of the judges' reaction. For many followers of the case, Eldred was an introduction to the workings of the Supreme Court, and we've been scratching our heads and speculating wildly as to what Larry said and what the judges said and what the opposing counsel said and what it all meant. Larry's primer on judge-counting and Supreme shenanigans is just what we needed to make sense of it all:

The government then helped us immensely by simply confirming what we had said: under their theory of the case, there was no constitutional limit on Congress's power to extend terms; it was always a matter of Congress's discretion. Congress could perpetually extend existing terms; it could even extend a copyright to works within the public domain.

The Court clearly did not like this answer. They had bought the idea that the Constitution intended there to be a limit; the government's interpretation meant that this was a limit that was solely a matter of legislative grace. (Compare: "Under our written Constitution the limitation of congressional authority is not solely a matter of legislative grace.") They were not comfortable with the idea that they would simply say that though the constitution expressly limits Congress's power, it is Congress that gets to say what that limit is.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:59:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Help Blog

Gordon Meyer, one of the founders of the old-school cyberculture hax0r zine "Computer Underground Digest" is working for Apple these days, on the built-in help system. He's got a blog devoted to documentation and help systems -- a great peek into the world of the context-sensitive.

A thread on the always-excellent TidBITS-Talk mailing list discusses a "report card" for Mac OS X. Editor Adam Engst gives the documentation a "C" grade, and in the process brings up an interesting point.

"I think I'd give Mac OS X a C for documentation and help. A D, in my mind, would imply it was actually wrong in a lot of cases, rather than just being overly simplified. Plus, I bump it up a bit because there is a lot of good information out there from third parties, if you can find it." [Full Message]

This never occurred to me before, but if we're objectively evaluating how well documented a product might be, should the universe of third-party documentation be excluded? From the customer's perspective, how much does it really matter if the bulk of the documentation is not "official?"

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:52:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warcarving

This Hallowe'en, why not warcarve your pumpkin and let your neighbors know about your open wireless network? Link Discuss (via Warchalking)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:47:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Werbach's new conference

Kevin Werbach, the impressario of the fantastic PC Forum conference, is starting a new conference in Palo Alto, called Supernova. I'll be giving a talk about DRM and EFF issues. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:28:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Turing-complete is not a crime

Ed "Tinkerer" Felten went to a conference in DC and heard a Hill-rat characterize the current technology law climate like so: "The political dialog today is that the general purpose computer is a threat, not only to copyright but to our entire future." Felten understands that to eliminate the general-purpose computer is to eliminate the engine that moves our world:

If I could take just one concept from computer science and magically implant it into the heads of everybody in Washington -- I mean really implant it, so that they understood the idea and its importance in the same way that computer scientists do -- it would be the role of the general-purpose computer. I would want them to understand, most of all, why there is no such thing as an almost-general-purpose computer.

If you're designing a computer, you have two choices. Either you make a general-purpose computer that can do everything that every other computer can do; or you make a special-purpose device that can do only an infinitesimally small fraction of all the interesting computations one might want to do. There's no in-between

Link Discuss (via Seth)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:20:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Wallace and Grommit short online

The BBC have posted the first of ten short Wallace and Grommit short films in a series called "Cracking Contraptions." This one is called "Soccamatic," and it's classic Wallace and Grommit action. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:03:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burroughs on mind-control

Great William S. Burroughs rant on electronic mind-control: I occassionally get a tinfoil-beanie email from someone who wants to let me know about the voices in his or her head -- Burroughs' version of this is dead on. Danny "Guestblogger" O'Brien has a great rant about how these delusions reflect the zeitgeist of the day, and how early Bedlam inmates used to send out notes about Jacobians using mind-control technology to influence the King. Maybe, like Chomskyian "Deep Grammar," there's a hardwired "Deep Paranoia" in the human brain, a collective propensity to believe that sinister forces are exercising remote control over our brains.

Now anyone who has lived for any time in countries like Morocco where magic is widely practiced has probably seen a curse work. I have. However, the curses tend to be hit or miss, depending on the skill and power of the operator and the susceptibility of the victim. And that isn't good enough for the CIA or similar organization: "Bring us the ones that work not sometimes but every time." So what is the logical step forward? TO DEVISE MACHINES THAT CAN CONCENTRATE AND DIRECT PSYCHIC FORCE WITH PREDICTABLE EFFECTS. (See the chapter in the Iron Curtain book on PSYCHIC GENERATORS.) I suggest that what the CIA is or was working on at the top secret Nevada installation may be described as COMPUTERIZED black magic. If curse A doesn't make it, Curse Program B automatically goes into operation and so on.

Link Discuss (via New World Disorder)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:58:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Games within games

Hackers have ported Tetris and other classic games to Diablo II, so that your characters in the game can stumble upon the Tetris set and pause for some block-stacking. Recursion rocks. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:44:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, October 14, 2002

Lab Notes

White LEDs in lieu of incandescent bulbs? Using computer vision and natural language processing to browse and summarize massive art collections? Self-contained "nuclear batteries" with 20-year lifespans for next-generation power plants? All this and more in my latest issue of Lab Notes from UC Berkeley's College of Engineering! Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:56:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Surrealiste!

While in D.C., we visited the Hirshhorn Museum and were blown away by a special exhibit of Ron Mueck's hyperreal fiberglass resine figures. A former special effects artist, Mueck makes photorealistic sculptures of bizarrely sized humans. Exquisitely unsettling. Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:39:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing's David Pescovitz wins Foresight award!

Our own David traveled to DC to accept the Foresight award for outstanding journalism in the field of nanotechnology. Way to go, Pesco!

David Pescovitz, writer-in-residence at the University of California-Berkeley's College of Engineering and a columnist with Small Times, a magazine covering nanotech developments, won the Foresight Institute Communication Award for his writing.

"At the intersection (of computers and nanotech) lies our ability to engineer our world from the bottom up, and that pretty much blows my mind every time I think about it," Pescovitz said in accepting the award. Nanotech's ability to shape the future to meet society's future needs goes beyond altering physical properties and creating new ones, Pescovitz told United Press International after the ceremony.

"In many ways, nanotechnology is attracting young people to the sciences in ways we haven't seen, really, since the space race," Pescovitz said. "The understanding of pure science is necessary for this field, and it is amazing that it can excite a new generation, whether they're scientists already, turn out to be scientists or just want to know more about how our world works."

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:22:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

T-Mobile does WiFi deal with Borders

Deutsche Telekom-owned T-Mobile USA just announced a deal with Borders through which it will install 802.11b networks in over 400 of the book and music chain's US locations. T-Mobile is the company whose "HotSpot" service pumps wireless bandwidth into over 1,200 Starbucks locations (projected to increase to 2,000 stores by 2003).

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:42:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

3D Kite Aerial Photography

Stunning QuickTime VR photos taken with cameras attached to kites. Link Discuss (Thanks, Morgan!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:34:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Government website's "Consent Log-on Banner"

This Department of Defense site wins a double award. One, for the logo of a combat knife piercing the planet, and two, for the scary warning on the main page, which warns, "Use of this DoD computer system, authorized or unauthorized, constitutes consent to monitoring of this system. Unauthorized use may subject you to criminal prosecution. Evidence of unauthorized use collected during monitoring may be used for administrative, criminal, or other adverse action." I came across this site while researching an article. I wonder whether that constitutes "unauthorized use"? Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:35:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool online game from French digital artfest recognized by French Ministry of Culture

Villette Numerique is a new biennial digital art festival in France; I covered the event for WIRED News here. The festival itself is now over, but they've just posted a cool new online Flash art-game called "Society." Festival producer and digital artist Bruno Samper writes: "It's organic, it's [like a little] online universe, and it's the first videogame-like creation in the collection of the French Ministry of Culture."

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:00:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYT covers Slashdot's underdog success

The secret to /. success is revealed in this New York Times article. Basically: goofiness, guarana drinks, great content, low overhead, suburban basement offices, and revenue from affiliated sites like the ThinkGeek store, if I'm reading it correctly. If they can succeed where the glossies failed--and so far, they have--more power to 'em.

Link (registration required) Discuss (Thanks, Kirin! Thanks, Steve!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:25:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New, funky, retro, techno-chic watches

Obligatory BoingBoing fashion moment--crank up the plastic, and get ta shoppin'. Check out the new collection of retro-techno-chic watches from DIESEL on the "dieseltimeframes.com" site just launched this week.

The funkiest and freshest, IMHO, is this series IV model, shown here, imbued with '70s mojo and Pac-Man ennui.

Spotted in Lee Carter's Hintmag.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:04:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Because tiny devices need tiny batteries.

A University of Florida research team is developing nano-batteries that could enable smaller, smarter, feature-packed mobile devices, as well as truly tiny power sources for "microelectromechanical" devices (aka MEMS):

"In the first year of a five-year collaborative effort with three other institutions funded by a $5 million grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the research is showing progress toward its goal of creating a three- dimensional, millimeter-sized battery – considerably smaller than the centimeter-sized hearing aid batteries that are the smallest batteries on the market today.

The new technology could improve cell phones and other portable electronics, which use lithium-ion batteries. These batteries are made of composites of small particles. Their ability to produce power depends on lithium ions diffusing throughout these particles. While microscopic, the particles are large enough to be measured in microns, or millionths of a meter. The nano-battery approach seeks to replace these particles with particles measured in billionths of a meter, which would enhance power storage and production because the lithium ions would have less distance to travel as they diffuse."

Image: synthetic membranes containing a parallel collection of nanotubes, with inside diameters of molecular dimension greater than 1 nanometer. Photo (c) Department of Chemistry, U of FL.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:37:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, October 12, 2002

Kevin Kelly in NYT: Let the Fans Do it

Great op-ed piece by Kevin Kelly on why copyright extension is a bad idea for everyone.

Owners of an about-to-expire copyright have several favorite arguments for extending it. One is that it spurs creativity by making original works more valuable. But an extension actually restricts creativity by narrowing the shared universe of works artists can build upon. Another is that they need an extension as an incentive to convert old material into new media. As Jack Valenti, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, has pointed out, digitizing films is expensive. "Who is going to digitize these public domain movies?" he asks.

I have an answer: movie buffs. Not only have fans moved almost all of music into the digital era, they have been busy moving hundreds of millions of documents onto the Web and are producing millions of pages of daily reporting and news in Weblogs. And without the help of paralyzed publishers, avid readers have already converted nearly 20,000 books in the public domain.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:20:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Viridian Robot-Dog contest winner announced

The winning entry in the Viridian Biofuture Robot Dog Design Contest was announced yesterday. The pick of the litter? SPOD, the Super-personalized Obedient Dawg, designed by Dawn Danby and Paul Waggoner. "As an objet de technologie, SPOD exists in the currently blank area where infotech meets industrial biotech processes (meets Lassie)." Check out the contest home page for a complete list of links to contestant project web sites... there are some killer entries here. Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:50:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Power to the Poop!

Brown is Green. A dung-fueled power station in the UK has won an environmental award from the Euro Solar educational charity. The £7M plant produces power for the national grid, and is capable of generating 1.4 megawatts of power at full tilt. Located in Devon, it runs on approximately 1.6 million tons of waste produced by local farmers. Apparently, this trend is pretty big in Germany and Denmark: both countries already have about 20 large-scale poo-poo-powered plants.

Link Discuss Thanks, Alena!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:37:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

$199 Lindows PCs at WalMart!

Let the holiday shopping commence: For US $199.86, you can buy an 800 MHz PC with LindowsOS at WalMart. Ten-gig hard drive, Integrated NIC and 4 USB ports. Pre-loaded apps include email, word processor, Web browser/file manager, CD and MP3 players, MSOffice viewers, etc. And more importantly, the box comes pre-loaded with games such as Tron, Minesweeper, and Potato Guy (WTF? "Potato Guy"?)

Link Discuss Thanks, Ralph!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:29:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, October 11, 2002

I will never do business with Expedia again

Expedia agents are slugging it out on an old Boing Boing QuickTopic. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:18:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Global warming = ice age

Oceanographers have noticed changes in the North Atlantic that could lead to a step-function ice age.

About 12,800 years ago, North Atlantic waters cooled dramatically and so did the North Atlantic region. It took only about a decade to move into a cold spell that lasted close to 1,300 years, Gagosian says. The most recent shutdown in the North Atlantic circulation is believed to have occurred 500 years ago, wiping out established Norse settlements and vineyards that once thrived in Greenland, he says. A recent U.S. National Academy of Sciences report, entitled "Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises," notes that climate changes have occurred with "startling speed" in the past. And next time, the report said, the cost to agriculture alone could be in the $100- to $250-billion range."

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:23:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Letterbombs dropped in Southern Iraq

Here's a leaflet reported to have been dropped by US and UK planes in Southern Iraq. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:14:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weapon of Mass Distraction

10/07/02 8:02 P.M. EDT. THE PRESIDENT: “Many Americans have raised legitimate questions: about the nature of the threat; about the urgency of action — why be concerned now; about the link between Iraq developing weapons of terror, and the wider war on terror. These are all issues we've discussed broadly and fully within my administration. And tonight, I want to share the answer with you: It’s the oil, stupid. And my one-man fatwah against daddy’s nemesis. After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad. And don’t forget the fall elections — nothing buoys public approval ratings, distracts the booboisie from a moribund economy, and puts steam in my slacks like a little carpet-bombing. Sure, the pricetag for this thing is going to be big —$200 billion, according to White House economist Lawrence Lindsey, a sum that will mandate savage cuts to school budgets and police forces across the nation. As for the coming war’s cost in American blood, well, there is no easy or risk-free course of action. War is hell — or at least it looked like hell on the nightly news during my toga-party tour of duty in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. Can you believe I squeaked through the pilot aptitude test with a 25 percent — the lowest acceptable grade — just when I was 12 days away from losing my student draft deferment, right when 350 Americans were dying in Vietnam at the rate of 350 a week? Is that dumb luck, or what?!? Then again, maybe the fact that daddy was a congressman from Houston had something to do with my admission... In any event, if the bodybags start coming home, I’ll show those cynics in the liberal media elite how easily we Bushes cry. Compassionate conservatism is more than just an empty slogan, as anyone knows who heard my lump-in-the-throat eulogy for the nine Israelis killed when a suicide bomber blew their bus to kingdom come. En route to the golf course with daddy, I paused, club in hand, for a solemn moment with the assembled press corps: ‘There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started, and we must not let them,’ I said. ‘I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.’ Anyhoo, by the time our doughboys hit Baghdad city limits, I’ll be feeling no pain, skimming across the sun-kissed waves of Kennebunkport in Poppy’s cigarette boat, high on the crack cocaine of power and privilege that comes with being the fortunate son of American royalty. I guess that about covers it, my fellow citizens. Any questions?”

© G®afted Media Devil, 2002. Discuss (Thanks, Mark!)

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

Depleted uranium: the other nuclear war

Helen Caldicott, the Australian pediatrician-turned-anti-nuclear-activist has a guest editorial in today's San Francisco Chronicle about the medical fallout from the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq. Caldicott's anti-nuclear-proliferation documentary, "If You Love This Planet" (produced by the Canadian National Film Board) was banned from import into the US in the 80s as "subversive material." She's been campaigning lately on the depleted-uranium weapons issue, talking about the long-term health effects on civilians and combatants on both sides resulting from their use:

Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the effects of radiation than adults. My fellow pediatricians in the Iraqi town of Basra, for example, are reporting an increase of 6 to 12 times in the incidence of childhood leukemia and cancer. Yet because of the sanctions imposed upon Iraq by the United States and United Nations, they have no access to drugs or effective radiation machines to treat their patients.

The incidence of congenital malformations has doubled in the exposed populations in Iraq where these weapons were used. Among them are babies born with only one eye or missing all or part of their brain.

The medical consequences of the use of uranium 238 almost certainly did not affect only Iraqis. Some U.S. veterans exposed to it are reported, by at least one medical researcher, to be excreting uranium in their urine a decade later. Other reports indicate it is being excreted in their semen. (The fact that almost one-third of the American tanks used in Desert Storm were themselves made of uranium 238 is another story, for their crews were thereby exposed to whole-body gamma radiation.)

Would these effects have surprised the U.S. authorities? No, for incredible as it may seem, the American military's own studies prior to Desert Storm warned that aerosol uranium exposure under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dai!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:01:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hilarious House of Frightenstein, downloadable

An entire episode of the Canadian classic craptastic hippie horror variety show, "The Hilarious House of Frightenstein" (featuring Vincent Price!), available for download in the spirit of the Hallowe'en season. Link Discuss (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:48:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Intelligent" software answers questions unintelligent you already know the answer to

Toolset's "Smart Engine" is a bot that answers multiple choice questions. Input a question like, "Who wrote The Hobbit?" and answers like "Tolkein," "Tolkien," "Lewis," and "Heinlein" and it will answer correctly. The site is very sparse on how the engine works, but based on answers, I'd we willing to believe that it's doing some comparison to the top ten rankings from Google or another search engine on the initial query. Link Discuss (Thanks, Linda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:42:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

National Organization to Shoot Bill O'Reilly Into the Sun

Group that proposes sending O'Reilly in a rocket aimed at the sun.

O'Reilly,

With your views on immigration, I figure that your ancestors must have come to America via the Bering Land Bridge or perhaps even the Mayflower. Maybe in the next "O'Reilly Family History" there will be a section on how you left America in a Sun-bound rocket ship.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Marc!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:40:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Evil Overmom: Parenting for the supervillain set

Our very pregnant guestblogger, Quinn Norton, just posted this link (on her own blog!) to "Evil Overmom," on the excellent Brunching Shuttlecocks site. This is definitely positive parenting in action. Link Discuss (via Ambiguous)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:58:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Camping out for Eldred

An enormous gang of people camped out overnight at the Supreme Court this week to get into the limited public seating available at the Eldred "Free the Mouse" hearing. Lisa Rein has posted a first-hand account from first in line:

The U.S. Supreme Court Federal Police Officers were consistently helpful and courteous over the course of the evening. Each time a new officer came on duty, he or she would walk over and ask what the case was about. They seemed really interested too -- and they all "got it" pretty quickly in terms of what the public was losing as a result of these multiple extensions to what what originally intented to be a "limited" copyright term of 14 years, renewable once to 28 years.

All of the Officers seemed rather impressed that we would feel so strongly about it to wait in line all night to see the Argument first hand. When the outdoor patrols stopped soon after midnite, one of the Officers gave us his card so we'd have his phone number if we needed anything over the course of the night. There was a police car and/or truck about 200 yards away kitty-corner to the Supreme Court for most of the evening too -- that made me feel a little safer as I attempted to close my eyes and get some sleep.

Good thing I brought extra blankets just in case -- some of the law students that showed up later that weren't in our weren't as well prepared, so I gave them a blanket and a cup of hot tea. I also had toe warmers if necessary but only Macki ended up needing them. I also had a couple extra pairs of gloves that we were rotating as needed.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:55:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

On the Internet, everyone can hear you joke

A Kiwi student took home a promotional CD from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and popped it into his wife's computer. The media player checked with one of the Internet CD databases, and, not finding a track listing, prompted him to enter track names. So he did. Funnny track names. Like "Wee on My Face," and "Maybe I Fart on Your Face." Of course, the software promptly sent this metadata to the server, so when all the elderly patrons of the symphony tried to listed to their copies of the disc, that's what they got. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:41:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

When trust and safety collide in CPUs

A guest editorial in Linux Devices explores the consequences of embedding "trusted computing" technology in the processors that drive everything from personal stereos to life-support systems in hospitals:

Heart patient Mr. Smith's life is in the hands of the sophisticated critical care life-support equipment that breaths for him, keeps his heart beating, delivers drugs in measured doses, and watches all his vital signs. A nurse plugs a digital thermometer into the life-support machine, not knowing that the thermometer was dropped and broken. The DRM agent in the core system tries to validate the passport on the new component, fails, declares that someone is stealing digital content, and shuts the main processor down. Too bad for Mr. Smith.

DRMP advocates will say that I'm an alarmist and that there will be ways to turn off the DRMP system or mitigate the effects. This is hard to credit. Try browsing the Internet without enabling cookies and Java to see how easy it is for pervasive options to become non-optional. DRMP only works if two conditions are both true (1) it is physically impossible to turn the agent off and (2) DRM agents are omnipresent, creating an inescapable web of DRM. If there is a way to turn the DRM agent off in a processor, some teenager will discover it and distribute disabling software over the network (see note 3) Let's figure out what would be needed to allow medical instrument makers to turn off DRMP.

Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:37:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, October 10, 2002

Burgers, Fries, 'n' WiFi: The first Los Angeles area Wardrive-in, Wed. Oct. 16

The Southern California Wireless Users Group (socalwug.org) will host an inaugural Wardrive-in next Wednesday evening in the parking lot of Everest Burgers, 2314 Lake Ave, in Altadena, CA. Sounds like one hell of a good time:

"Time for all interested in WiFi (and RF) to meet and have burger and fries...This is a great time to discuss automotive computer setups, Wardriving, wireless security, automotive cable management, antennas, inverters, RF amplifiers, two way radio, GPS tracking technology and navigation will be the hot topics of the evening.

Some attendees will have the latest in 3g data communication devices from the various mobile phone providers. This event is open to all that want to learn and demonstrate their automotive and PDA gadgets."

Note: This is not an event for loud stereo systems. There are plenty of other meets for this. Noise must be kept down."

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:15:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iMac and PC frolic peacefully in new MSFT ad campaign

A new ad campaign from Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit features shocking pics of iMacs and PCs engaging in random acts of friendship. Enjoying Chinese take-out. Fishing. Chilling by the pool. Launching October 12, the series of three print ads is intended to illustrate the need for cross-platform compatibility, and how Office X helps Macs and PCs communicate.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:55:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool home vacuum robot, egregiously terrible website

Roomba is a pretty cool little autonomous vacuum cleaner that tirelessly circulates through your home sucking up dirt. At $200, it's a nice piece of affordable Jetsonia. However! The Roomba website is like a morality play about what happens when web developers go horribly goddamned wrong:

• It spawns its own window,
• which spawns its own window,
• which has a cheezy music soundtrack you can't turn off,
• and a goofy animated intro,
• and is all built in Flash,
• even the scrollbars.

I barely made it out of there with my sanity intact. Holy crap. Link Discuss (Thanks, Benjamin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:07:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scenes from a twisters convention

Pictures from a balloon sculpture get together. (Beware of the vile balloon porn in one of the pictures.) Link Discuss (via waxy.org)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:18:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Your brain is defective

Look at this optical illusion. Squares A and B are the same shade of gray. Link Discuss (via waxy.org)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:05:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Illegal Art debuts in NYC, Chicago, and online. Read the fine print.

An art exhibit called "Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age" comes to NYC Nov. 13 - Dec. 6, and Chicago Jan. 25 - Feb. 21. According to a description on www.illegal-art.org, the show "will celebrate what is rapidly becoming the 'degenerate art' of a corporate age: art and ideas on the legal fringes of intellectual property. Some of the pieces in the show have eluded lawyers; others have had to appear in court."

Check out the witty disclaimer that pops up when you launch the show's web site. Excerpt:

"No Warranty. The Website is being delivered to you AS IS and we make no warranty as to its use or performance. WE DO NOT AND CANNOT WARRANT THE PERFORMANCE OR RESULTS YOU MAY OBTAIN BY USING THE WEBSITE. LOOK, WHEN THIS WEBSITE GOES ALL CRAZY AND DESTROYS YOUR COMPUTER, KILLS YOUR PET, SLEEPS WITH YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER, DIGS UP ALL YOUR OLD POETRY AND LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, THEN CALLS UP YOUR FRIENDS AND READS THEM ALL THOSE REALLY EMBARRASING PARTS OUT OF YOUR JOURNAL, LIKE WHEN YOU SAID YOU WERE "DESTINED FOR BEAUTY" OR SOME SHIT LIKE THAT, WE MAKE NO GUARANTEES AND WILL SIMPLY JOIN WITH EVERYONE AND LAUGH AT YOUR SORRY ASS, BECAUSE DAMN, THERE'S NO FREAKING WARRANTY HERE. GET IT? NO WARRANTY. NONE. AT ALL."

And check the audio page for 21 full-length, shamelessly illegit MP3 downloads. While you can.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Frank!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:08:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steal This Newspaper: Open Source Journalism in Spain

Poynter.org's Eva Domínguez posted an item today about a free newspaper in Spain called 20 Minutos, with editions in Madrid and Barcelona. The paper just launched its website yesterday with an unusual approach to copyright considerations: the site will be free to read and free to copy, but 20 Minutos has also created its own license (based in part on Michael Stutz's copyleft license) that allows free duplication, distribution, reproduction, or adaption of content. Would-be copiers don't have to ask permission, but they are required to mention the content's source and origin.

Link to license text (en español) Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:21:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aibo's new face-recognition and recharging powers are unstoppable

Sony announced Thursday that it is releasing new software that will provide the canine robot AIBO with face-recognition and self-recharging capabilities. The AIBO Recognition [ERF210-AW06E] application prompts the robot to automatically re-juice its own battery when depleted (as shown in the image here), and also enables AIBO to distinguish its owner's name, voice and face from other humans. The new software debuts in November at $99 retail, and will be released around the same time that Sony debuts two new holiday colors for the AI pet: red and white. From the Sony press release:

When AIBO senses “hunger” (i.e., the need for energy) or when the owner tells the robot, it will search for and locate the recharging markers on its Energy Station·, walk over to it and navigate its body onto the station’s cradle to recharge itself. Once charged, AIBO will then turn itself back on and walk away from its charger continuing its autonomous behavior (setting required). Additionally with AIBO Recognition, an owner can first register his or her name and voice through a series of prompts. Then the owner will be prompted to look into the robot’s camera to register a facial image... upon hearing its owner’s name and/ or voice and/ or seeing its face the robot will express affectionate emotions.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:36:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Emotional baggage for sale

A heartbroken woman is selling off the detritus of a disastrous relationship on eBay. She's looking for $4400 -- $1400 for the money he owes her and $3000 for the debt she incurred during the affair:

* Cds given to me by him or those that that I can no longer listen to because of the painful memories associated with them

* His mail that continues to be delivered to my house after my repeated requests for him to change his address

* Photographs that break my heart to view

* E-mail correspondence that fully captures how love can go bad…really bad

* Dried flowers from the many he sent trying to assuage his guilt and seek my forgiveness

* One hot pink Marilyn Monroe style dress given to me as a gift, but which holds too much meaning to continue to hang in my closet and depress my other clothes

* Miscellaneous memorabilia which includes travel stubs, holiday lights, ungiven gifts, walkie talkies, etc.

* NEW ADDITION: Personal testimony from friends and loved ones thanking you for your purchase. They too have grown weary from the weight of my emotional baggage and would like to relieve themselves of its burden as well.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Michael!)

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

Verizon encourages open WiFi

Verizon DSL customers can buy wireless gateways with their home Internet service, and provide free tech support for the wireless sharing, because "most people say they want this." Amazing to see a big biz that plans to give its customers what they want. AT&T Broadband has a similar service, but weirdly enough, their Acceptable Use Policy forbids you from using it:

(ix) resell the Service or otherwise make available to anyone outside the Premises the ability to use the Service (i.e. Wi-Fi, or other methods of networking). The Service is for recreational, residential, personal use only and Customer agrees not to use the Service for operation as an Internet Service Provider or for any other business purpose

Verizon's Terms of Service are ambiguous on the subject:

A. You may not resell the Service, use it for high volume purposes, or engage in similar activities that constitute resale (commercial or non-commercial), as determined solely by Verizon Online.

When I asked the press-contact on the press release for the service whether this forbade war-chalking your network, she didn't have an answer. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:14:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The acid test: scientist says lemons could help stop AIDS, unplanned pregnancy

Today at a conference in South Africa, an Australian scientist will present a report on how lemon or lime juice may help prevent the spread of HIV in developing countries. Roger Short, a University of Melbourne reproductive physiologist, told Australian TV he came up with the idea after chatting with some elderly women about lo-fi home contraceptive technologies of yesteryear. Field trials are reportedly planned in Thailand. Here's a snip from the program's transcript:

ROGER SHORT: When the lecture was over, 10 or 15 of these women came up to me, one by hand, put their hand on my shoulder and said, "(inaudible) my dear, I used half a lemon. It was all right for me".

NEWSCASTER: But it wasn't until late last year that Professor Short put two and two together. Not only is lemon juice a contraceptive, it's acidic and acids are known to kill the AIDS virus.

ROGER SHORT: I thought, my golly! Lemon juice. That would kill HIV. Why haven't I looked? So I dashed back to Melbourne and said to my PhD students, "Look, drop everything. This could be crazy, but it could be incredibly exciting".Put a cover on it....Well, this is the acid test. Here's some fresh human sperm and some fresh lemon juice, and we're going to look at it under the microscope.

NEWSCASTER: Seconds after adding the lemon juice, it's all over for the sperm.

ROGER SHORT: Have a look at that. God! It's a graveyard.

Link to transcript Link to audio (WinMedia) Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:44:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot hand and vision snatches objects from the air

This robot hand, coupled with a computer-vision system, is freaking eerie. Click through for a bunch of MPEG clips of the robot's master taunting the hand by waving objects before it, while it, and its vision-mount, chase them, eventually reaching out and snatching them out of the air. The hand-shaking demo is killer. Link Discuss (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:22:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Leftovers battery

English researchers have built a battery that runs on table-scraps.

Inside the battery, which is the size of a personal CD player, a colony of E.coli bacteria produce enzymes which break down carbohydrates and release hydrogen.

Chemical reactions inside the cell strip electrons from the hydrogen atoms to produce a voltage that can power a circuit.

Scientists say 50 grammes of sugar would keep a 40-watt light bulb lit for eight hours.

Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:54:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Date-rape coasters suck

"Anti-Date-Rape Coasters" -- drinks-coasters made from papper that changes color when exposed to drinks that have been spiked with a variety of date-rape drugs -- turn out not to work very well. No word on whether the date-rape swizzle-sticks are any better. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video from OSXCON digital rights management panel

O'Reilly has posted Nat's video and audio from the DRM panel we did at the O'Reilly OS X convention (look for the word "Multimedia" on the page). The panel was called "Mac OS X, A Digital Rights Management Operating System," and it was moderated by Dan Gillmor, with me, Victor Nemachek (from El Gato, makers of the eyeTV TiVo-like Mac device), Tim O'Reilly and JD Lasica (a journalist working on a book on DRM). This was a good, meaty panel, but what it really lacked was someone from the other side, someone who wanted to endorse DRM as a viable technology. We invited people from Hollywood, from Apple and from Microsoft, but no one would come. Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:11:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, October 9, 2002

Who Wants to Be a Space Tourist? New Contest/Reality TV show to launch in Russia

Russia's state-run TV network ORT is launching a televised contest in which the winner blasts off to the International Space Station (ISS) in October, 2003, according to a joint announcement yesterday with the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos. No word yet on whether or not rejected space-travel-contender Lance Bass will be eligible to audition. Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:44:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cellphone-controlled robot debuted by Fujitsu

Fujitsu announced today that it has developed a new house-bot and handy in-home surveillance aid called MARON-1, which is remote-controllable by cellphone.

"The ambulatory prototype robot is equipped with a wide range of functions, including telephone, camera, remote control, timer and surveillance equipment. With these features, for example, it is envisioned that MARON-1 could be used for monitoring homes or offices at night or for checking up on persons requiring special care and monitoring...

With remote operation by mobile phone, the robot can take pictures and relay them to the phone's screen, so that the owner can check conditions at home. The owner can give precise commands for moving the robot forward, backward or turning in a desired direction....

Images sent by the Maron-1 can also be used for specifying a destination. The robot's infrared remote control capability can be used to operate appliances such as air conditioners, televisions and VCRs.

By positioning the robot one or two meters from a spot the owner would like to monitor (for example, the front hall or a window) and turned appropriately, MARON-1 is able to detect anyone or anything entering its field of view. If it does detect an intrusion, it can sound an alarm and call a pre-set number.

The robot can also be scripted to take specific actions at specific times. For example, it can be used as an alarm clock or timer, or it can be programmed to take pictures around the house at pre-set times.

With its built-in PHS capability, the robot can be used as a hands-free telephone. Frequently dialed numbers can be stored in its memory for one-touch dialing."

Fujitsu will present more details on MARON-1 at the Japan Robot Conference, which starts Saturday, October 12, 2002 at Osaka University.

Link to Fujitsu press release | to Reuters story | Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:05:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Matt's Commons

Metafilter Matt's written a nice piece about what the Eldred case and the commons have come to mean to him:

The past 8 years of web development depended upon and blossomed due to sharing code with one another. In the beginning there were no books, only sparse documentation. Then there were a few books and a lot of pages to learn from. Eventually you had new media college programs and books on any aspect of web development imaginable, and they owe their existence largely to the view-source menu option. I've seen perfectly good web technologies die from atrophy, because viewing and sharing code was close to impossible. When viewing others' source isn't possible, code exchanges fill the gap, and without them, the technology would go nowhere.

Link Discuss (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:27:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

GI Joe's dream house

JC Penney is marketing a modified Barbie Dream House as a GI Joe "Forward Command Post." Little boys can play house, so long as the house in question is part of an overall street-by-street urban combat scenario. Link Discuss (Thanks, Brandon!)

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

Understanding Comics: the lecture series

Scott "Understanding Comics" McCloud will give a five-part visual lecture series at UMaine Hutchinson. Student will write stories, make comics out of them, and finish them up online in collaboration with Scott! If I had one iota of visual-artistic talent and five days of vacation, I'd so be there. Link Discuss (Thanks, Howard!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:57:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mindjack's back!

Mindjack, a great cyberculture webzine that I've written for several times, has just relaunched. Donald, the editor, is including a lot of great civil liberties stuff -- including an interview with Larry Lessig and a blog featuring EFF-Austin co-founder Jon Lebkowsky. MindjackLink Discuss (Thanks, Donald!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:53:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Freelance Lego artiste

Eli the Bearded writes, "Henry Lim (the harpsichord guy) is good. Eric Harsbarger is on the same level, but a lot more prolific. Eric is one of the few people who builds Lego sculpture commercially but isn't a Lego employee. The working grandfather clock is one of my favorites." Link Discuss (Thanks, Eli!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:50:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Documentary from the future

The Future is Wild is a fictional documentary website about life on the Earth in 5, 100 and 200 million years. This is pretty cool stuff -- lots of geographic surveys and ecological supposition, including invented far-future critters like this one:

4m tall, weighing 8 tonnes, with tentacles that extend to 3m and rhino-like skin, the megasquid is a formidable creature. It roams the northern forests of the planet 200 million years hence. All eight of its arms have become legs and look like thick columns, each are a 1/3 of a metre in diameter.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jesse!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:45:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eldred hearing liveblogging

Editors of the Lawmeme blog who attended the Supreme Court Eldred hearing this morning have already blogged their first impressions of the arguments.

Justice Breyer was particularly hard on the government's position. He brought in a number of economic arguments. Basically, he made the point that the expected value of the extended copyright was so small as to be virtually zero. He also asked whether the governmen could recopyright Ben Johnson. The government did not say "no." Justice Stevens appeared skeptical of the government's arguments. The government made much of the inequities of not providing retroactive and prospective extension together. Scalia questioned whether the inequities argument could be turned around. J. Breyer, in essence, answered "yes" by claiming that existing copyright owners get all the benefit and, inequitably, prospective copyright owners get very little benefit.

I'm told that people started lining up for tickets to the Eldred hearing yesterday at suppertime; only 60 non-ticketed members of the public were admitted. Maybe they should move the Supreme Court to a football stadium. Link Discuss (Thanks, Donna!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:35:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google News -- too good to be free?

Google VP says his company is considering charging for its News service. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:45:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Taiwanese betel nut vendor girls told to put clothes back on

Betel nut is a popular stimulant in south Asia. (At least that's what they think. I chewed a bunch of the stuff when I was in Malaysia and I didn't feel a damn thing. At least it made my spit turn a neat red color). In Taiwan, betel nut is sold in the street by young women who dress in skimpy outfits in order to attract passing motorists. But the government is stepping in.

Taoyuan deputy magistrate Liao Cheng-ching was the prime mover behind the new rules which he says are needed not only for reasons of public decency.

"Even more important, hospital records show that many male drivers have been so distracted by the betel nut girls that they're run into telephone poles," comments Cheng-ching.

23-year-old Hsiao Lu has been selling betel nut for five years. She says the new rules could destroy her livelihood.

"It's very unfair," she says. "The economy is bad now. Dressing sexy makes a huge difference to our earnings. These regulations will make it very hard to go on."

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:55:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

On the road with the Internet Bookmobile

Richard Koman, who's travelling with Brewster Kahle's Internet Bookmobile, has written up a great travelogue detailing his journey for Salon. Brewster's Bookmobile is a van with a sat dish, a duplexing printer, and access to thousands of public-domain children's books. As a dramatic demonstration of the value of the public domain -- which Larry Lessig is arguing today before the Supreme Court -- Brewster is driving the Bookmobile across the country, stopping in working-class neighborhoods and printing books on demand for school libraries.

In a print-on-demand world, where the cost of creating a book runs about $1 and the capital costs run under $10K, libraries don't lend books, they give them away. Schools aren't dependent on the textbook readers the state board of education buys at a cost of millions of dollars -- every district, every school, every teacher can create their own reader at minimal cost.

"Wouldn't that be amazing?" says Seth Marshall, community education manager for the Newman School. "This presentation needs to be made to administrators. Our library is limited in terms of the number of books we can offer students."

"This is the coolest thing ever," says Paul Black, a sixth-grade teacher at Newman. "Where I taught in Chicago, the school library has hardly any space, hardly any shelves, and what shelves they do have, have hardly any books. You walk in the library and there's no there there. Having something like this could completely change kids' lives. My last job was in an adolescent lockdown facility. The resources are just pitiful. This would be such a great thing for them."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:35:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

It's a workout *and* it's a turn-on

Cardio Striptease is a new class being taught at Crunch gyms: instructors teach aerobic workouts in the form of lapdancing, pole-dancing and other forms of erotic movement:

Cardio Striptease offers a very stylized form of dance that embraces the physical body in terms of the sexual body. The dance movements will be choreographed to specific music designed to get the body pumping.

The show begins with a 10-minute warm up that introduces basic movements, isolations and techniques followed by static stretching. These exercises prepare the students for the movement and style of the class. The participants then learn the basic skills of strip dancing and how to utilize props before the workout really heats up!

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:16:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, October 8, 2002

$15,000 umbrella stand: nothing exceeds like excess

Teresa's written a wonderful blog post about the revelation that Tyco's crooked CEO spent "6,000 on a shower curtain, $15,000 for an umbrella stand, $2,900 on coat hangers, $5,960 on bedsheets and $2,200 for a wastebasket."

Naturally, they assured her that not only is it possible to pay $6,000 for your shower curtains and $2,200 for a wastebasket, it's a Good Thing to do so, practically essential. Then they explain how:

"Sometimes the wastebasket is exposed," said Joel Joves, a designer with offices in Rancho Santa Fe and Beverly Hills. "If you have a fabulous study or master bedroom, then maybe we need a pewter-finished basket with decorative pearl beadings or semiprecious stones to complete the look of a room."

That's Fool Money at work. If you can't find a sufficiently fabulous wastebasket for $200, $500 absolute tops, you're not half trying.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:00:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Working for the Mouse

Berkeley's Impact Theatre is running a one-man show called "Working for the Mouse," which details one man's experiences working at Disneyland. The story of the show's poster is pretty funny, too. Link Discuss (Thanks, Barry!)

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

Lego harpsichord: A for Obsessiveness, F for Tunefulness

Yet another Lego obsessive has built a working Lego harpsichord. Tons of points for style, but damn, it sounds like hell. Link Discuss (Thanks, Tim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:43:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japa-crappers get high-tech

Japanese toilet technology has developed creeping featuritis. New Tokyo toities sport speech-recognition, air-conditioning, and body-chemistry monitors:

Japan's toilet wars started in February, when Matsushita engineers here unveiled a toilet seat equipped with electrodes that send a mild electric charge through the user's buttocks, yielding a digital measurement of body-fat ratio.

Unimpressed, engineers from a rival company, Inax, counterattacked in April with a toilet that glows in the dark and whirs up its lid after an infrared sensor detects a human being. When in use, the toilet plays any of six soundtracks, including chirping birds, rushing water, tinkling wind chimes, or the strumming of a traditional Japanese harp.

Link Discuss (Thanks, May!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:40:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Palm-sized translators going to Iraq

The US Military is planning on equipping Gulf troops with two-way translators: Palm-sized devices with speech-recognition and automated translation. Tried speech-to-text lately? How about Babelfish? Boy, is this technology ever gonna suck: "Take he to that chemistry arm vegetable." Link Discuss (Thanks, Nat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:37:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Live forever or die trying

New Scientist is throwing a scavenger hunt with two prizes: "Live forever" and get a gift certificate good for cryonic freezing or "Live now" and take a luxury trip to Hawai'i. Link Discuss (Thanks, Jens!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:33:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ink is speech

Ken "Oral Fixation" Starr has a new cause: fighting in the Supreme Court for the First Amendment rights of Soth Carolinans to get and give tattoos. Link Discuss (Thanks, Jeremy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:30:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fun with Sodium -- KABOOM

What happens when you throw chunks of sodium in a lake? Watch these QuickTime clips to find out. Link Discuss (via Red Rock Eater News)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:12:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Skinny Acoustic Bass

I often carry my ukulele with me on planes. The case is so little it can fit in my suit case. I missed a great photo opportunity when I was in the airport a couple of weeks ago, and saw someone checking on a standup bass fiddle. It was in a huge plastic Darth Vader shipping case. The buckles on the thing were about the size of my uke. I should have taken a picture of my uke and the bass side-by-side. Anyway, here's a stand-up bass that looks much more portable: the Kona Walkingstick. You still need to carry around an amp, though. Link Discuss (Thanks, Prentiss!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:02:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent Tim Biskup card deck

Tim Biskup is an artist who does a lot of work for animation studios. His work is inspired by one of my favorite illustrators, Jim Flora. Tim's selling a deck of poker cards, each with a different illo, and they look terrific. Lots of whimsical monsters and happy monkeys and weird prehistoric plants. I pre-ordered my deck just now. Hurry, only 2500 decks will be printed! Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:33:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MC Escher in Lego

Lego enthusiasts have implemented three of Escher's optical illusion paintings (including "Ascending and Descending," pictured here), using Lego! Link Discuss (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:10:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, October 7, 2002

Curried radiation burns

Curcumin, the chemical that makes curry yellow, turns out to be a good compound for treating radiation burns resulting from cancer therapy. Link Discuss (Thanks, Cheryl!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:38:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man kills self with home booby-traps

Steve sez: "It's tragic when life imitates Wile E. Coyote cartoons. Guy boobytraps his house to get his family if they try to break in, and seemingly is killed himself by his own traps." Link Discuss (Thanks, Steve!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:35:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reclaiming privacy with laser-pointers

Here's a how-to explaining how to blind a surveillance camera a laser-pointer. Link Discuss (Thanks, Mike!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pint sized planet discovered: "Quaoar"

Astronomers announced the discovery of an 800-mile-wide planetoid in the solar system. It's the largest object anyone has found since the discovery of Pluto. It also has ther most inpronounceable name of any object since pharmaceutical companies started giving new drugs impossible-to-pronounce generic names in order to make their trade name more valuable. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:38:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1987 copy of Nintendo zine going for $700 on eBay

A Nintendo newsletter from 1987 is going for ober $700 on eBay. Link Discuss (Thanks, Billy Hayes!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:05:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Welcome, Danny and Quinn!

This time around, we have two, two, two Guestbloggers for the price of one. Quinn Norton and Danny O'Brien have agreed to fill the sidebar slot for a little while. Danny and Quinn and their rommie Gilbert are just about the most fun Bay Areans I've had the pleasure of hanging out with. Between the three of them, they're capable of being entertaining on the subjects of Python, copyright, pottery, usability (a conversation with Quinn about usability made it, almost verbatim, into my second novel "Eastern Standard Tribe"), load-balancing, free software, nerd culture, British cuisine, bodily ailments, pregnancy... Well, you name it. I can't wait to see what they post! Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:45:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

City Planning Funnies

At the OS X conference, Cory told me about a book called "The Life and Death of the Great American Cities," by Jane Jacobs. This Metropolis Magazine comic strip, by Ben Katchor, seems to resonate with what Cory told me about the book -- that cities die because mixed used areas are changed into single use areas. Link Discuss

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

My OS X Keynote

I spoke at the Mac OS X conference in Santa Clara last week. It was a really fun event, and it was great meeting a lot of people whom I previously knew only through email, like Rael Dornfest, Danny O'Brien, and Glenn Fleishman. Here's the talk I gave. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:59:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steven Levy's wireless neighbors

After discovering an open wireless net available from his sofa, Steven "Hackers" Levy interviewed lawmen, academics and WiFi activists about the legality and ethics of using open wireless access points.

I downloaded my mail and checked media news on the Web. When I confessed this to FBI agent Bill Shore, he spared the handcuffs. "The FBI wouldn't waste resources on that," he sniffed. Now I know that if it did, it would be hard to argue that I broke a law. What's more, I certainly didn't feel illegal. Because—and this is the point of all that war-driving and -chalking and node-stumbling—when you get used to wireless, the experience feels more and more like a God-given right. One day we may breathe bandwidth like oxygen—and arguing its illegality will be unthinkable.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Steven!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:43:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Seat-by-seat guide to the airlines

SeatGuru is a frequent flier's best pal: it breaks down every plane in the fleets of American, United, Continental, Delta and US Airways, and shows you which seats have the best width and the most legroom (did you know that on a United Airlines Boeing 777-200 seats C through G in rows 39 and 40 are narrower than others on the plane due to the curvature of the fuselage in the rear?). Link Discuss (Thanks, Static!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:44:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How the other half gives

The new Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog is out (in October!), including you-as-an-action-figure ($7,500), a bamboo hut ($15,000) and a leather frisbee ($30). Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:34:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Physics auction nets half-mil for Einstein

Last Friday's Christie's auction of original physics manuscripts included original works by Einstein, Curie, Newton and other physics rock-stars. The Einstein (which included an early attempt to prove relativity) went to an anonymous bidder for $500,000. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:30:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toy otaku heaven

SweatyFrog is a toy-review magazine/store, focusing on collectible toys with great, MegoSteve-style erudite toy-otaku commentary. Toy_Design_Guru, who suggested the link, recommends their occassional email newsletter as a must-read. Link Discuss (Thanks, Toy_Design_Guru!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:47:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A&L Daily to be auctioned in bankruptcy

Arts and Letters Daily, a wonderful and dense blog, has folded up its tent due to the bankruptcy of its parent company. A&L Daily will be auctioned off by the receivers. Link Discuss (Thanks, Misha!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:41:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

10Mb/s through skin

NTT DoCoMo have released a paper on the use of human flesh as a networking medium:

A device attached to a PDA can send and receive weak electrical signals through people, with human bodies as communications circuits, the paper said, citing sources close to the companies.

Apparel and handbags have their own conductivity, allowing an electrical connection to a PDA that can remain in one's pocket, the paper said.

In this way, people can exchange e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers while shaking hands, with the data automatically written into both their PDAs, the paper said.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Alan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:39:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Indie artist hits top-ten by engaging audience

Feorag writes from Scotland: "You probably haven't heard of John Otway, but he has a small and devoted following here. He did a limited issue CD and asked his fans to vote on which track they'd like to see as a single. The one they picked just entered the UK charts at number 9! Bet that'll piss off the major record labels, especially as the marketing budget was probably about zero. I might just watch Top of the Pops this week." Link Discuss (Thanks, Feorag!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:36:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Haunted Mansion Christmas "Scarols"

Disneyland's brought back the Nightmare Before Christmas refurbishment to the Haunted Mansion again this year. Where last year the musical accompaniment was the "scream along," where riders were encouraged to scream in time to the music, this year, Disney's whipped up a half-dozen cornball "Christmas Scarols" like "Wreck the Halls" and "We Wish You a Scary Christmas." MP3s of the songs and PDFs of the lyrics can be downloaded from Disney's site. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:23:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, October 6, 2002

1Mb/s through mud

The DoE has announced a high-speed data-transfer that runs on drillpipe, through "a 4-inch diameter steel pipe immersed in electrically conductive mud at pressures up to 1000 atmospheres, temperatures up to 150 deg C, and with vibrational accelerations of hundreds of g's:"

Now, with a high-speed, bi-directional communications link, a drilling system's azimuth, inclination, pressure, temperature, loads and vibration, along with information on rock characteristics near the drill bit, can be evaluated almost instantly. Also, because of the ability to send high-speed data through the drill pipe, technologies once thought unobtainable – such as collecting seismic data at the drill bit – may now be possible.

With high-resolution seismic data collected "ahead of the bit," operators could steer the drill bit more precisely toward oil- and gas-bearing sweet spots and away from less productive areas. This will enhance the efficiency of oil and gas wells and reduce the number of wells needed to produce a reservoir.

Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:01:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

9/11, war in Iraq threaten Disney parks

Disney's themepark business is in deep trouble in the post-9/11 world. A war with Iraq could really kill 'em:

While aggressively adding attractions, Disney boosted its profit by steadily raising admission prices. The strategy worked, helping deliver record profit for Disney year after year.

"The strategy was build, build, build. Every year there was something new," said David Koenig, a Disney historian and author. "It was an astounding growth period.... Now they're overexposed."...

Theme park operating income for Disney this year is expected to fall 27% to $1.16 billion, said Prudential Securities analyst Katherine Styponias. By 2003, she said, the business could climb to $1.49 billion, depending on whether the U.S. goes to war with Iraq.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:22:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Football players addicted to video football

Pro football players are addicted to football games, as a means of wish-fulfillment -- by "managing" the team, they can be free of the rule of their coaches and bosses. Maybe this explains the amazing success of The Sims, which, on the face of it, should be dull as hell: While away your free time away from the office by simulating an existence as a shlub with a day-job and a drive to acquire consumer goods on credit. You'd think it'd be the last thing you want to do. But it's not. When you're a Sim, you can tweak your existence a smidge, discover what life would be like if you took Path A instead of Path B, try the alternate universe on for size. The idea of football players playing themselves in licensed video games is neat and recursive, like the episode of the Simpsons when Mr. Burns runs into Krusty buying Krusty-O's at the supermarket and asks where he can find the "Burns-O's."

"It's always a trip," Carr says. "The first time I saw myself in a video game was in college (at Fresno State) when I walked into a Best Buy store and some kid was playing with me. That kind of trips you out a little bit."

For every 12-year-old kid who spends countless hours in front of a television playing video games, there's a group of 300-pound offensive linemen challenging each other at everything from Madden NFL 2003 to the action-packed "Halo: Combat Evolved."

Link Discuss (Thanks, Lawrence!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:18:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, October 5, 2002

Welcome, Xeni!

Xeni did such a fan-freakin-tastic job running the guestblog for the past couple weeks that we've decided to invite her to join the main Boing Boing team! We'll have a new guestblogger in a day or two, but in the meanwhile, welcome Xeni, to the main Boing Boing blog, now and forever! Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:59:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Law for geeks

Ernest Miller James Grimmelmann at Lawmeme has written up a two-part tutorial to help geeks understand the US legal system, using Lawrence Lessig's brief in the upcoming Eldred hearing. This is great stuff.

Cover Page: #!usr/bin/legal

Not unlike a fax cover sheet, the first page of a legal document typically contains only metadata, and the Eldred brief is no exception. There's a lot packed in here, so let's take it line by line.

No. 01-618: Those numbers at the top of the page are a docket number. Think of a docket number as the unique ID assigned by a court to each case it hears. Every document filed in a given case has the same docket number at the top. Since the enormous administrative apparatus of our legal system evolved long before modern database software, keeping track of thousands of cases required some clever filing techniques. Docket numbers are part of the solution.

Link (Part 2) Discuss (Thanks, Ernest!)

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

Blue people of the world unite!

Stan Jones isn't the only person to have turned himself blue with quack silver remedies. "Rosemary" took silver supplements in the 50s for her allergies and put up this site in 1998 to warn others off of the horror of blue skin for life. Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:54:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Curling videogame hits bigtime

An Alberta teenager has hit the bigtime with a curling videogame. Friends of mine who curl assure me that curling is way fun to play (it certainly isn't that fun to watch!) and, of course, you can (and should!) drink beer while playing. I believe that disqualifies it as a sport, no? Link Discuss (Thaanks, Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:42:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animated existentialism

Modern Living is a series of about 100 tiny Flash animations that use recursions, gloomy music and simple interactivity to make inarticulate yet compelling existentialist morality plays. This stuff is like Philip K Dick rendered as a series of five-second interactive animations. I've just killed an entire hour on this thing, and now I want to go watch a Pinter play. Link Discuss (Thanks, Rich!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:29:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Glennf responds to warchalking FUD

Glenn Fleishman's written an open letter to the Infoworld writer who published an hysterical ambivalent article about warchalking:

The only place I hear about these stories on warchalking that relate to stealing access from open, but not shared APs -- accidentally shared, I suppose is accurate -- is via law enforcement without any specific locations mentioned, arrests made, or even photos of the offending marks.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:00:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pix from Austin

Jon Lebkowsky has posted a little gallery of pictures from my EFF-Austin talk at ACTLab at the University of Texas (and a couple shots from the kick-ass BBQ we ate beforehand, note the Atkins-compliant lunch). I had a fantastic time there -- thanks to the organizers and especially to Jon for putting it together. It's was especially great to meeet the Boing Boing readers who came out to the talk! Link Discuss (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:53:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, October 4, 2002

Cellular doom

Doom has been ported to the Nokia 7650 handset! Link Discuss (via Ben Hammersley.com)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Phone companies compared

The WSJ has published a round-up of phone companies, wired and wireless, ranking them based on performance and price. They don't mention Nextel, whose hullking milspec i700 handset I've been carrying for years now, with incredible reception all over the US and Canada. Their front-line customer service sucks, but the prices and network can't be beat.

T-Mobile is in the midst of a massive makeover. In recent months, the company changed its name and launched an ad campaign featuring Ms. Zeta Jones.

The company has a history worth hiding. T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, is known for having a weak national network, and the FCC received 1,466 complaints about the company in the past year, giving it one of the worst complaint rates in the industry. T-Mobile says their complaint rate has tapered off and that they have made substantial network improvements.

But T-Mobile is the cheapest wireless provider, available, with an average cost of just 8.2 cents per minute. (Verizon, by contrast, costs 14.3 cents per minute.)

Link Discuss (via Camworld)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:35:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Homeless blog

"The Homeless Guy" is a blog written by a homeless man in Nashville, in which he records his daily experiences and his ruminations on what it all means.

On Being Homeless
I first became homeless in the Winter of 1982. I was 21 years old then, yet had no idea how to take care of myself in this world. The past 20 years have been a struggle, trying to get a grip on what most everyone else considers to be normal life. I've never been able to fit into "normal." And I've never been able to fit into our society, which I doubt is anywhere near normal, either. I have discovered recently some of the causes of my problems and am working to overcome them as best as I can.

Link Discuss (via Ev!)

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

For you, and you, and Timmy

Check out this weird easter-egg I found in MacOS 10.2.1's Sharing control panel! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:57:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weird museums of NYC

Great Village Voice story about oddball museums in New York. My favorite weird-ass museum is the Museo de Criminologia in San Jose, Costa Rica, which has bits of victims of famous crimes (machete-dented brain-pans, severed arms, etc) floating in formaldehyde jars.

A stone's throw away is the singular Freakatorium, El Museo Loco, a classy treasure chest of curiosities belonging to sword swallower Johnny Fox, whose focus is the rich history of America's earliest museums, from P.T. Barnum's American Museum to the Bowery Dime Museums. The walrus penis bone (other penis bones on display: coyote, mink, fox, raccoon) is enough to make you feel you're getting your $5 worth. But then you spy the Jivaro Shrunken Head (it's real, it's the size of a tennis ball); conjoined piglets in a jar; an assload of taxidermy, including a gorgeous zebra head; giant's rings...

Link Discuss (Thanks, Gary!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:52:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gaiman kicks McFarlane's ass in court

Neil "Sandman" Gaiman has won his lawsuit against Todd "Spawn" McFarlane, vindicated in his assertion that McFarlane breached his contracts, stole his characters, and used his name.

McFarlane looked down somberly as the verdict was read. As the judge polled the individual jury members, he looked at their faces.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Gnat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:48:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Data-mine your hard-drive with SixDegrees

SixDegress is a $99 OS X app that data-mines your own hard-drive and tries to build links between people, files and folders. Laura Carpenter at the OS X con was talking it up yesterday and it looks way cool -- I've just downloaded the demo to play with.

* Locate files with similar names or file revisions, anywhere on your system.

* Show all email threads related to any file or person on your desktop.

* View all the files a person has sent you, regardless of where those files are stored on your computer.

* Create dynamic, self-updating projects.

* Find misfiles or attachments quickly without searching desktop folders.

* Navigate and open any message, file or person on your desktop in one click.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Laura!)

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

Sidekick's browser blows

Anil Dash discovers that the T-Mobile Sidekick's web-browser is pretty arbitrary in which pages it will load and which pages it will throw up its hands at:

So I decided I was going to modify my page to conform to your browser's idiocy. I went looking for technical docs on what you do to mangle web pages. None. I went looking for a desktop emulator that I could run to simulate your device on my computer. None. I went looking to see an acknowledgement of the shortcomings of your device, indicating that the situation would be improved. None.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Joe!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:39:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Times Square as it was

Wonderful gallery of historical advertising and postcard photos of Times Square at Lileks's site. Stefan urges us to "have some mercy on his bandwidth budget and consider using the tip jar." Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!))

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:36:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, October 3, 2002

Government plans to hand out free Valium

The President's niece will no longer have to forge prescriptions for Valium. All she'll have to do is participate in an unruly public demonstration to get a free dose. Unfortunately for her, the government has no plans to shoot rocks of cocaine at demonstrators, so she'll still have to depend on her drug dealer for that.

The U.S. military is exploring ways to use drugs such as Valium to calm people without killing them during riots or other crowd control situations where lethal weapons are inappropriate.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:21:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Permanent blue skin for silver drinking politician

In 1999, Montana's 63-old Libertarian candidate for Senator starting drinking a homebrew concoction of colloidal silver to prevent bacterial infecttion (he was afraid that conventional antibiotics wouldn't be available in the new millennium), and now his skin has turned blue for good. Link Discuss (Thanks for the image, Nelson!)

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

Robot census

A new census of the world's robot population reveals disturbing negative robot population growth, but still, our fleshless offspring's numbers point to a machinery future:

Some 20,000 domestic-help robots were sold worldwide last year, half designed to mow lawns. Vacuum-cleaning robots were introduced late in 2001 and a study in Sweden found that 5,000 were sold in the last two months of the year. Window-cleaning robots are set to boom, said the U.N. study.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Gatfishing!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:50:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why is it so hard to get a cab in San Francisco?

A San Francisco cabbie -- generally a well-educated and firm-opinion-holding class of person -- has an essay about a subject near and dear to my (non-car-owning) heart: Why is it so damned hard to get a cab in San Francisco?

In fact, no cab company ever tells a driver to pick up anyone. When you phone a cab firm in San Francisco, your call is treated not as an order, not as a binding oral contract, but simply as a request...

So, why don't cab companies ensure that we pick you up on time-or at all? In a nutshell, labor law states that if a cab company actually commands a driver to carry out a specific action, that constitutes an employer-employee relationship. But if a company farms its work out to independent contractors, it can rid itself of costly expenses such as disability and social security taxes. It also means that the contractor drivers can't unionize.

Link Discuss (via CamWorld)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:39:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steve's Rendezvous notes from OSXCON

My pal Steve Jenson took killer notes at yesterday's Rendezvous (zero-configuration networking) talk at the OS X con. Kevin Burton swears he's going to port this to Linux next week. Apple's first Rendezvous app, iChat, has been a central fixture at this convention. People set their status-lines in the chat interface to say things like "At the morning keynote" or "getting breakfast," speakers who mention interesting code send it to the audience by iChat, and during the talks, you can see a hundred iBooks, TiBooks and G3 Powerbooks with iChat up and running, talking about the events.

This isn't about the large network, it's not about buying books on amazon, looking up maps, etc. Those work pretty fine as is.

It's about the fact that Dan Moniz and I in the same room had a hard time getting our Lisp's talk to each other the other night. how miserable!

IPv4 Link-Local Availability

Addressing:
* Self-Assigned Link-Local Addressing
* Pick random address in 169.254/16 (that's why it does that. huh)
* ARP to see if anybody is using it.
* If someone else is using it, try again
* Ongoing conflict checking.

draft-ietf-zeroconf-ipv4-linklocal-07.txt

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:29:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, October 2, 2002

NYT discovers Linux in late 2002

NYT op-ed piece about this newfangled OS called Linux and how it is developed using something called the "open source" method. This is the paper to go to for breaking news, folks. Link Discuss (Thanks, Dave!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:45:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Catalog of Tomorrow released

Mark and I were two of many wonderful contributors to a new book from TechTV, called "The Catalog of Tomorrow." It's like a Whole Earth Catalog for futuristic technologies, with great illustrated spreads throughout -- you can get a peek inside at Amazon, and buy from Powell's or your other favorite indie store. Link Discuss (Thanks, Andrew!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:27:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blog de jeanpoole interviews Mark

Here's a brief interview with me.

Interviewer: If the Boing Boing zine and blog were TV characters, who'd they be, and how'd they get on?

Mark: The zine would be Jethro Bodine of "The Beverly Hillbillies" -- curious, neophilic, xenophilic, gleeful, and eager to adopt any new theory or conspiracy as the absolute truth. The Blog would be Sherman from "Peabody's Improbable History" -- a traveler of time and space in search of beauty, truth, and the outre. I think Jethro bOING bOING and Sherman Boing Boing would be great pals. Jethro would invite Sherman's dog, Mr. Peabody, to go raccoon hunting with him, and Sherman would send Jethro 40 years into the future to hang out at the Playboy Mansion.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:04:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comics Journal interviews Ted Rall

Interview with cartoonist Ted Rall, who has traveled to South Asia recently, and has tips on how to deal with bribe-hungry border guards and the like:

Rall: Now I realize that's just the way it is, and I know how to do it and get away without paying a bribe, or paying something very modest. You have to show them that you know the routine and that you know you don't have to give them anything, and just have a low-key demeanor. But if you get angry, that's just going to make things worse for you. You get out of your vehicle and you walk up to them -- you don't try to avoid these guys; you don't try to avoid their eyes -- you go up with a big smile, give them a big handshake and sort of rub their shoulders and say, "Hey, great to see you. You're my new best friend for the next five minutes."

GROTH: Basically act like a used car salesman.

RALL: It's exactly like that! You always carry cigarettes. You offer them a cigarette, and you say, "Hey, what's goin' on? How's it goin'? Great. Here's my documents. How's the road?" Just small talk, because these guys are bored. They're in the middle of nowhere, and you're sometimes the only vehicle they've seen for many hours. They're often very drunk, so you just have to be cool.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:51:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fight Piracy -- Regulate Potty Chairs!

From Ed Felten's "Freedom to Tinker" site, regarding the TinkleToonz Musical Potty.:

This handy toilet training aid offers a "magical, musical land of potty training," by playing a tune whenever liquid is deposited in it. Since it plays digital audio, it qualifies for regulation as a "digital media device" under the Hollings CBDTPA. If the CBDTPA passes, any newly manufactured TinkleToonz Musical Potties will have to incorporate government-approved copy protection technology.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:11:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mathematics film-festival in October in Berkeley

All through October, Berkeley's Mathematical Sciences Research Institute is hosting Cinemath, a mathematics film festival:

Permutations and Configurations: A Calculated Cinema

In this avant-garde subset of Cinemath, we explore films that have been constructed using mathematical concepts both simple and complex- geometric permutations, musical frameworks, even topography are among the strategies that have been employed to compose and sequence film frames. Filmmakers such as Oskar Fischinger and Walther Ruttmann created some of the earliest avant-garde films by multiplying, dividing, and otherwise transforming abstract images- including spirals, rectangles, and circles to produce dynamic rhythms and harmonies. Today such visual music and motion graphics are the currency of digital graphics. Anthony McCall's film performances such as Line Describing a Cone create 3-D geometric shapes into which the viewer can literally step. We also explore films by pioneers of machine-generated and computer-produced animation (Norman McLaren, James and John Whitney, Stan Vanderbeek) as well as works by contemporary animators who use the computer to either generate or pattern images (Larry Cuba, Paul Glabicki, James Otis). Peter Kubelka, Taka Iimura, and Standish Lawder use the frame as the unit with which they create editing patterns, while Kurt Kren and Paul Sharits reckon on arithmetic systems to variously calculate compositional or editing patterns. Bette Gordon, Hollis Frampton, and Bruce Elder figure in algorithms, group theory, and set theory to graphically enliven the frame or to structure their films. While no mathematical knowledge is required to enjoy these films, we count on you to try to calculate the mathematical systems employed!

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jef!)

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

Sidekick, your mobile blogging pal

The T-Mobile Sidekick and other instances of the Danger Hiptop PDA/Phone are being promoted as mobile blogging tools. Link Discuss (via Hack the Planet)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:16:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gillmor: Apple's fair-use friendly OS?

Dan Gillmor's column this week is all about Apple's burgeoning resistance to the Hollywood onslaught on general-purpose computing:

Intel's doing it. Advanced Micro Devices is doing it. Microsoft is doing it.

Apple Computer isn't.

What's Apple not doing? It's not -- at least so far -- moving toward an anti-customer embrace with Hollywood's movie studios and the other members of the powerful entertainment cartel.

Link Discuss

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

Notes from OSXCon's DRM and Digital Hub panel

We did a great panel on DRM and the Digital Hub yesterday here at OSXCon with Tim O'Reilly, Victor Nemachek (from El Gato, makers of the EyeTV digital TV recorder for the Mac), Dan Gillmor, and JD Lasica, who's working on a book on fair use and copyfights. Glenn "802.11b Networking News" Fleishman took great notes through the talk:

Dan: Tim, you're a "content or copyright holder…talk about these issues."

Obscurity can be a tool. Something like 100K books published in the US. Most books are forgotten after publication. Ravening copying theft is wrong: most aren't pirated. Publishers puts book that someone sweated over for years on shelves for three months, doesn't sell, that's it, and the author has no rights. Publishers keeps rights til out of print, etc.

Oblivion is fate of most books: "Piracy would be the best thing for those books." People wouldn't pirate them in general, because people generally like to respect the rights of creators. "Piracy is a marginal act; it takes away some of the cream."

Publishing won't go away, but it will change the idea of who is a publisher. Early on in the Web, the idea was that everyone could be a publisher. The way in which Web sites interact with publishers is often very much like the way that book publishers try to get placement and position in bookstores.

Publishing is aggregation. People will re-emerge as publishers. Will Hollywood be the publishers of the future or will someone else?

Users are voting by their use of programs like Kazaa. Eventually, media companies will adopt. But if the changes are hardcoded into law, then we're stuck for a long time with "some mistakes."

Link Discuss (via Dan Gillmor's eJournal)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:06:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage Music Archive

Dismuke has a 24 hour radio station and RealAudio archive of '20s and '30s music. Some nice stuff in here. (Also check out my favorite music archive, Red Hot Jazz.) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:22:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Don't do the brown WiFi, the brown WiFi is BAD

Rob "Pringles Can" Flickenger and others Cliff Skolnik at the O'Reilly OS X con has tracked down the cause of the annoying flakiness in the wireless network here -- every 20 or 30 seconds, you start getting "connection refused" messages from your browser and other net-utilities. Rob "Pringles Can" Flickenger wrote it up.

It turns out that running the great network-spy app Etherpeg (or other "promiscuous" network sniffers) and the built-in firewall in OS X at the same time causes your computer to begin intercepting every packet sent out on your segment of the wireless network and respond to it with a "rejected" message.

So today, Rob (and everyone else who knows about this) is going to run around and tell people running Etherpeg to turn off the firewall (and vice-versa). Ah, fickle networking, you are such a stern mistress! Link Discuss (Thanks, Rob!)

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

Tuesday, October 1, 2002

Clarion comes to Australia!

The legendary Clarion Writers' Workshop -- of which I am an alumnus, class of '92 -- has spun out another satellite branch (Clarion West, in Seattle, has been going for some years now). The new workshop, Clarion South, will be held in Queensland, Australia, in 2004, so that antipodeans can also attend science-fiction bootcamp without travelling to America. Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:13:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

International agreements

Eli the Bearded sez:

Ever wanted to see an international agreement? There are an awful lot of them here, and the ones I looked at were surprizingly readable. I was looking for the Balfour Declaration, the thing I saw cited as the start of Israel recently. Suprizingly this document is only four paragraphs. The Oslo Accords (Israel/PLO agreement of 1993) is another thing much shorter than I had imagined.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Eli!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:44:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bloodhag interviewed

The new ish of Strange Horizons in out, with an interview with Blöödhag, the most metal of the all the science fiction metal bands.

Soon, the spotlight comes up again. The lead singer grabs the microphone. "This is Frank Bellknap Long!" he yells, and, feverish, launches into a lecture on Long's oeuvre. There can't be more than a handful of people on this earth who could get a beer-sodden thrash crowd to listen to an English Lit lecture. Thirty seconds later, the audience is sufficiently educated, and the guys begin to wail. Jake the singer holds the microphone over his head and belts out the song in a growling voice that's monster-movie low. "No reason! No corners!" he shouts. Two minutes later, they're done with the pulps and ready to move on to the New Wave. "Our next song is about Harlan Ellison!" Jake bellows, and the geeks, the hipsters, the metalheads, and the drunks let out a howl of mutual joy.

Blöödhag -- note the dual umlauts -- hails from Seattle. Describing themselves as "edu-core," the band performs nothing but two-minute thrash tributes to science fiction writers. Between songs, the band pelts the audience with paperback books, quizzes them on book titles, and demands that the audience show their library cards. Their motto: "The Faster You Go Deaf, the More Time You Have to Read."

Link Discuss (Thanks, Zed!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:38:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

If it's too loud, you're too French

The French and the iPod aren't getting along -- the iPod outputs more decibels through its headphones than are legal in La Belle France. Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:33:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Record industry defends practices to Senate

The Joint Hearing of the Senate Committee and Senate Select Committee on the Entertainment Industry is underway in LA, investigating artists' claims that the labels engage in unfair and corrupt business-practices. The first day's findings at the hearings are really quite remarkable:

By contract, artists are prohibited from showing royalty statements to third parties. Normally this would not include their mangers, lawyers, consultants, or others who could aid them in getting paid, but apparently this is not necessarily the case. Senator Kevin Murray, leading the initiative for artists' rights, claimed the that Cary Sherman, Chief Counsel for the RIAA himself, said to him in an interview, that RIAA members (the major labels) would sue any artist that broke ranks and shared information with the Committee. This claim was rejected by Sherman but supported by others in the room. Don Henley, among them, outwardly dared his record company to sue him for bringing royalty statements to the hearing. He presented his most recent royalty statement for "Hell Freezes Over," which showed the panel that even though his contract called for a no more than a 10% "reserve" on sales of records shipped, Universal Music had held back more than that for eleven pay periods (roughly under three years) and that, even though his contract calls for no free goods in Europe, they had deducted $87,000 in free goods charges to Europe.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Paul!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:08:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Mitnick's laptop, signed by Woz, on eBay

Kevin "Free Kevin" Mitnick and Steve "Woz" Wozniak co-hosted an episode of The Screen Saver on Tech TV, where Woz autographed one of the laptops that Kevin got arrested for using. Now that machine, signed by both net-celebs, is up for sale on eBay.

This is the Toshiba Satellite T1960CS, 486 laptop computer seized by the FBI on February 15, 1995, in Raleigh, NC, during the arrest of the world's most celebrated computer hacker, Kevin Mitnick. The laptop is working and has been loaded with a fresh version of Windows 95. A shrink-wrapped version of Windows 95 on floppy, is included with the laptop. The laptop is a 486DX with a color LCD, detachable trackball mouse, AT&T 14.4 PCMCIA modem card, power adapter and documentation in FBI evidence bags. The laptop has been signed on the bottom by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, and says, "You've got the whole world in your hands. --Woz (Free Kevin!). It is also signed by Mitnick himself. The system was shown on the September 27, 2002 episode of The Screen Savers on TechTV, where the signatures on the bottom were authenticated in a special show hosted by Wozniak and Mitnick. A tape of the show will also be included.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jimbo!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:04:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yahoo! News - Records Show U.S. Sent Germs to Iraq

In 1983, back when when Donald Rumsfeld was buddy-buddy with Saddam, and the US was supporting Iraq in its war with Iran, the US sent Iraq "strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus." Neato! Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:46:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-war activists get "The Red S" treatment on flights

A reader sez: "If this isn't a coincidence, then we are betraying the very American values we claim we are fighting to preserve. So, I am hoping it is just a coincidence. For the stated purpose of thwarting terrorists, there exists a blacklist containing names of people who should be detained when they try to fly. The names on the blacklist is not public information, of course. Numerous federal agencies contribute to the list, but none are willing to say what criteria they use to put a person on the list. The criteria is secret, so law-abiding Americans who are flagged cannot know why their name is on the list or how to get it off. A Wisconsin group of Anti-war dissidents was flagged by the blacklist. The individuals of the group were detained, escorted by police while in the airport terminal, questioned, and searched. The group, which included a 74 year old nun, was eventually allowed to fly, with their tickets branded with a red 'S,' creating similar treatment at other airports, causing them to arrive a day late, and miss their scheduled meeting with lawmakers. The Transportation Security Administration said it occurred because the name of someone in the group resembled one of the names on the blacklist, and it it was all just a coincidence. The decision was made to stop the whole group." This appears to be a hoax (Thanks, Growler!) Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:22:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Big Five record companies guilty of price fixing

Hypocrites in the recording industry have been screaming about people stealing music. All the while, they've been robbing CD buyers.

...five of the largest U.S. distributors of pre-recorded music CDs and three large retailers agreed to pay millions of dollars in cash and free CDs as part of an agreement on price-fixing allegations.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:16:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Distributed.net cracks the RC5-64 cipher

The Distributed.net project -- a precursor to SETI@Home that used volunteer computer-time to attack giant, sophisticated ciphers -- has cracked RC564. I used to have half a dozen computers working on this.

On 14-Jul-2002, a relatively characterless PIII-450 in Tokyo returned the winning key to the distributed.net keyservers. The key 0x63DE7DC154F4D039 produces the plaintext output:

The unknown message is: some things are better left unread

Unfortunately, due to breakage in scripts (dbaker's fault, naturally) on the keymaster, this successful submission was not automatically detected. It sat undiscovered until 12-Aug-2002. The key was immediately submitted to RSA Labs and was verified as the winning key.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dave!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:13:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TrackBack for OSXCON

Mena sez: "We've set up a TrackBack ping repository for attendees of O'Reilly's Mac OS X Conference. If you're using Movable Type or a TrackBack-enabled tool, you can ping the category relating to your OSXCon-specific weblog post." Link Discuss (Thanks, Mena!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:03:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Danger Hiptop reviewed

The T-Mobile Sidekick -- the first commercial implementation of the wonderful Danger Hiptop PDA/phone -- is now onsale and the reviews are starting to appear. As soon as I'm in San Francisco for more than a couple days straight, I really think I'm going to pick this up.

That's partly because it costs less than half as much as its current competitors -- $199, compared with $450 and up for the others. In the same spirit, T-Mobile will offer unlimited data usage on its new, relatively high- speed "GPRS" network for $40 per month -- far below what a serious surfer would likely rack up under competing wireless-data plans. (Voice time is another story -- more on that later.)

Another reason I like the Sidekick's prospects: It was designed for, and will be pitched to, a very different market. While vendors of the competing hybrids focus on "enterprise" customers -- the big businesses that are supposed to have deep pockets for this sort of thing (even though most clearly don't at this point) -- Danger and T-Mobile are targeting, in their own words, "Internet-savvy, primarily urban, young adults in the 18- to 34-year-old demographic."

I am that demographic! Link Discuss (Thanks, Steve!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:02:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Is FBI wireless FUD a form of wish-fulfillment?

This is a couple days' stale (sorry, I'm still on the road, today at the O'Reilly OS X Convention, and so I'm going to be very sporadic), but it's a goodie: The FBI are wardriving Washington, DC, with a laptop and a Pringles-can antenna (I saw Rob Flickenger, inventor to the Pringles antenna blush to the tips of his ears yesterday when he heard this!). And, as usual, they're issuing scary warnings about the possibility that your network will be taken over by wardrivin', warchalkin' baddies.

You know that there are invaders on most coporate networks today, invaders who are wreaking real, non-hypthetical damage on these networks. They are email worms and viruses, like Klez, and they're spread because of real, containable security errors. Why aren't the FBI running around "warmailing" the Internet to see who's running Outlook and unpatched W2K/W95 machines?

Feds are obsessed with wireless and its romantic accoutrements for the same reason we are, of course. We love this stuff because it's cool. It's romantic. We run around with chalk and Pringles cans and we feel like women and men of mystery and moment. Whenever a filmmaker wants to show a hacker doing something daring, they are inevitably tempted to gussy up the screen with pirate jingles, 3D rotating holographic skulls, and so on. That's because real-hacking is cinematic death. Staring at a prompt for hours, and then getting a different prompt, is hardly cinematic gold. The camera loves warchalking and warwalking and war-whatevering, and moreover, it has that tactile, haptic brain-reward.

The I think that warchalking and wardriving strikes at the same deep chord in the soul of the Fed cop. Most cop work, is, of course, sitting at a desk. Imagine how fantastically dull it would be to be a Fed cop assigned to tracking down email worms -- getting long briefings from nerds on DLLs, ploughing through obfuscated VB script, looking at inscrutable email headers -- Zzzzzz.

Think about this for a sec: Fed cops want to believe that warchalking is going to lead to hacking and cracking and spamming and the whole quartet of the Horsemen of the Infocaplyse. They want to believe that they'll get to run around in the dark and dirty streets and chase down perps with high-tech antenna triangulation. They want to believe that they're going to get to be cops, not bureaucrats. Link Discuss (Thanks, John, and the other John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:53:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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