posted by David Pescovitz at 10:42:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UC Berkeley Lab Notes

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:35:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ISO elegance in self-modifying systems

But think for a moment how windmills work. The wind blows and turns the blades, sure. But if the wind shifts direction, then the tail of the windmill brings the blades back into alignment. Let's deconstruct that in autonomic terms: the windmill adapted its state to the new environment, using the external change as both the power and the alignment for the internal change.

That is, the windmill used the wind to respond to the wind. The two things--the external force and the internal response--are actually the same.

Now how do IBM-style autonomic systems work? They've got a separate monitor process, and if it sees its sub-process misbehaving, runs an algorithm and decides what to do, then does it. So a flood of traffic to a web server sets a trigger, which in turn starts computation, and eventually the system is reconfigured. Not hardly as elegant.

I want a word, and eventually software, that captures the way windmills work.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:04:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Website of "White cloth blocks electro-waves" Japanese sci/religious sect

"Pana Wave Laboratory is a Japanese cult that has recently come to the attention of the media here. They dress in white, block country roads, claim to be 'protecting their leader from electromagnetic waves', and used to claim that there would be a gigantic earthquake around Tokyo on May 15th. (Not sure what they say now.)

On a less humorous tip, the police say that they are also acting like Aum 'sarin gas in the subway' Supreme Truth did in its early days. There's a bunch of English information here."

The end of the world is near -- let's wrap it in a blanket. Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:43:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LA event: Mai Ueda digital pr0n/neen/art retrospective tonight

Link, Discuss, view photos I took of Mai showing her digital works at a private event in NYC here (including the snapshot at left).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:47:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report from the Copyright Office hearings

The Internet Archive archives software and games (amongst other things) by copying the data onto hard drives and then running emulation programs to recreate the original operating environment. Mr. Kahle gave a cool slideshow while contemporaneously showing off actual disks and game boxes from many software and game titles we all grew up on. At one point he broke out a Ziplock bag containing an original 5 1/4" floppy disk from an Apple II. Mr. Kahle's cool exhibits, quirky personality, and energy breathed refreshing life into the proceedings.

Steve Metalitz responded to Mr. Kahle's requests for the exemption by repeatedly urging that since many software publishers from the early 80s, such as Microsoft, Lotus, etc., are still "being actively traded on NASDAQ everyday" that Mr. Kahle should simply ask for permission to circumvent the archaic anti-access and copying devices used back then (such as dongles and the like) rather than have the Copyright Office grant an exemption for this purpose. Amongst George Ziemann's intermittent interruptions, Mr. Kahle responded to Mr. Metalitz's comments by saying "you know, when we visit a company like Lotus and show them our copy of their software from 1984 to ask if they can help us decrypt its access control mechanisms, most of the time these guys are like WOW!, COOL!, WE HAVEN'T SEEN THAT THING IN AGES! CAN WE HAVE THAT?" Mr. Kahle then stated that these companies no longer maintain the hardware and software devices necessary to decrypt the aging software, and stated that software companies are in the business of releasing software not preserving antiquated versions, and that asking a software company for permission or help to decrypt their software is not an option.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:57:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Help Lessig rescue the Public Domain!

The need for even this tiny compromise is becoming clearer each day. Stanford’s library, for example, has announced a digitization project to digitize books. They have technology that can scan 1,000 pages an hour. They are chafing for the opportunity to scan books that are no longer commercially available, but that under current law remain under copyright. If this proposal passed, 98% of books just 50 years old could be scanned and posted for free on the Internet.

Stanford is not alone. This has long been a passion of Brewster Kahle and his Internet Archive, as well as many others. Yet because of current copyright regulation, these projects — that would lower the cost of libraries dramatically, and spread knowledge broadly — cannot go forward. The costs of clearing the rights to makes these works available is extraordinarily high.

Yet the lobbyists are fighting even this tiny compromise. The public domain is competition for them. They will fight this competition. And so long as they have the lobbyists, and the rest of the world remains silent, they will win.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:42:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rucker's students do Wolfram simulations

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:09:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CSPAN "Washington Journal" covers blogs today, watch webcast here

CSPAN devoted their Friday morning Washington Journal call-in show to the use of blogs. View it here. I thought it was pretty good. The webcast should be available for 3 days.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:01:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DIY infrared goggles

At one point I started wondering just how much IR light a human eye could see. After all, if the infrared light was EXTREMELY BRIGHT, such as the IR of a sunny day, human eyes might still detect it. (And remember, if 30KHz ultrasonic sound is loud enough, you will hear it. Same basic idea.) I got some of the black IR filter plastic and cut it into oblong disks to fit the eye-depressions in my skull. I taped them onto my face with black electrical tape. Yes, I looked odd, but it worked! After I became used to the darkness inside the filters, I could see through them. Going outside on a sunny day was stunning. The sky was almost black, while the trees and shrubs where all frosty pink. The grass looked like fluorescent red cherry Koolaid powder. Different colors of human skin were always the same light grey, people's eyes looked very black, and certain dark clothing looked white. I was afraid that I might damage my eyes, since the IR sunlight was very bright, and my pupils were wide open. (After years of playing with these, I still haven't hurt my eyes, so they're PROBABLY somewhat safe to use.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:04:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reverse Cowgirl's blog "Bad Man" book fundraiser reaches goal in 48 hours

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:17:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Time kill Zen

Link, Discuss (Thanks, Frank!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:06:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Folkloric history of those "Calvin peeing" car stickers

My favorite part: the "generate-a-Calvin-peeing" engine, where you select who he hates (la Migra? The Navy? Ford trucks? "Fat chicks"?), whether it's the real Calvin or not, then generates a sticker for you on the fly. At left, the variant I probably see most often when I'm tooling down the freeway between L.A. and the border. OK, that and the "praying to Jesus" one, which actually does not involve peeing, rather, praying. Link, Discuss, (Thanks, Steve)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:50:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mob rigging Italian elections with camera-phones

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:12:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fizzer worm control-system compromised

A coalition of IRC operators who've banded together to fight the worm have hijacked the Geocities webpage that Fizzer uses to update itself and they've posted a poison-pill to it. The next time the worm checks for its update, it will download a set of instructions that tell it to uninstall itself.

This is eerily akin to the deus-ex climaxes to movies like Independence Day, in which a semi-autonomous, broad-reaching hunk of malware is tricked into self-destructing.

Just a quick note to say that we (we as in Fizzer Task Force/IRC Unity) now control the update page, and have posted a mirror of the http://www.debugoutput.com/fizzer.php site on the geocities website that fizzer uses to update itself.

We have also postted a fizzer cleaner to the actual URL that the bot downloads its updates from, as a self extracting and running executable. We're crossing our fingers that the bots are looking for an executable to update themselves...

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:50:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chicago retail district to become Diagon Alley

Starting about 9 p.m., the Magic Tree children's bookstore will become Flourish & Blott's bookstore, Cafe Winberie morphs into the Leaky Cauldron, and C. Foster Toys will take on the appearance of Quality Quidditch Supplies...

Even US Bank will become Gringott's Wizarding Bank, with goblin-led tours to its basement vault.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:37:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Natalie Jeremijenko's "One Tree Project"

For those of you in the Bay area, an opening reception with introductory remarks by Natalie takes place from 7-10 pm tonight, Friday May 16th, at Pond gallery on 14th street in San Francisco. Link to opening event information, Link to One Trees website, Discuss (thanks, Alex)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:03:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nigerian scam e-mails get a blog of their own

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:55:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Homeland Security dogs sicced on Texas Dems

According to the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the department's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that one of its agencies - the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center based in Riverside, Calif. - had assisted Texas law enforcers in trying to locate a small plane owned by Rep. Peter Laney, the former Democratic speaker of the state House of Representatives.

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

Star Wars Kid Found, geeks launch online fundraiser to buy him an iPod

Andy Baio and Jish Mukherji of waxy.org and jish.nu, respectively, found the kid whose video of him performing martial arts in front of a camera had special effects added to it and made the rounds all over the world.

In addition to pushing about 3 terabytes of traffic from Andy's server hosting the video, and taking Jish's server down after his interview with the boy was posted and Farked, the video has caught the eye of every one of us who ever had a lightsaber battle with a broomstick.

So, though it was cruel of the kids at his school to put the video on the web without his permission, we web geeks take care of our own, and we're getting him an iPod. Go to Andy's site and read the story, go to Jish's site and read the interview, re-watch the videos, and then click on the Paypal link to help hook a geek-in-training up with a nice gift for his efforts.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:33:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Please don't puree the goldfish: Art curators gone wild, on trial.

Visitors were given the possibility of pressing the button to transform the fish into a runny liquid. Artist Marco Evaristti, the Chilean-born bad boy of the Danish art scene, said at the time that he wanted to force people to "do battle with their conscience".

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:43:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scary furniture

"Our Exorcist Bed thrashes on a solid steel 360-degree simulator chassis. Your Actors can ride it or you may choose to add the Levitator option which safely and comfortably floats an Actor to a height of 5' 0" up and down over the bed as it thrashes around. Unit includes solid steel chassis & bed frame, walnut stained four poster bed, pneumatic package, SFX01 computer controller, footpad. Levitator option includes padded steel cradle, pneumatic package & grip switch."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:32:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lunar eclipse tonight -- watch it in the skies or online.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:20:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BBC to transform website into TV show with 3D robot death-battles

The concept is to ask visitors to the website to create their own virtual warriors from a combination of over 500 constituent parts. These creations can then be trained and tested, with the 60 best rendered in 3D and invited to slug it out in front of the TV cameras.... The "Cinderella" website-turned-TV-show transformation has previously been accomplished by Celebdaq, a fantasy stock-exchange on the web where users can trade shares in celebrities. That utility has been deemed to merit a regular entertainment programme on BBC 3, featuring irreverent analysis of the latest rises and collapses in the market. The BBC evidently has high hopes for its new format, intending to run the website for 6 months before launching a series of 20 TV programmes.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:57:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tech and sustainable development in Ghana

There were two very real reasons for Net connectivity in Ghana. One was communication with the diaspora. So many Ghanaians live in Europe and the U.S. that email is a very effective way of bridging that gap. The other thing was the notion that there could be a market for Ghanian goods and services worldwide, and that market was going to be a lot more reachable online than it would be from any other medium.

But it was a very weird time because you'd find a cyber-cafe and there would be computers and staff but no electrical power, or computers and power but no telephone lines, or everything you needed but no one to plug things in and make them all work together. And across the board I felt you had an abundance of entrepreneurs who were willing to try things but they had a real lack of skill sets. So that was the problem I was interested in: Could we find a way to do skill transfers between people in the IT industries in the U.S. and Ghana?

Obviously, the project expanded from there. While Ghana continues to be a flagship presence for us, we also have a large presence in Mongolia. We have smaller programs in Rwanda and Jordan, and we're doing some work in Armenia and Bulgaria. At this point we work in a dozen nations in total.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:40:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Breaking news: Pieinajar is really a pie in a jar.

Don't miss the e-commerce-imitates-the-Onion moments of web zen on the pieinajar.com "testimonials" page. Caption, at left: "My boyfriend got me this as a gift... boy, am I going to be good to him!"

Discuss (Thanks, Hal)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:49:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rock-paper-scissors-Spock-lizard

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:21:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

White-collar crime pays: Jon Stewart

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:11:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Is Communion Atkins-compliant?

I offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass twice on Sunday, 3 or 4 times during the weekdays. It is the only time wheat enters my system and alcohol too (I have been in recovery 14 years). Being an Episcopalian (World-wide Anglican Communion, with the Church of England as our 'mother church') we believe the bread and wine really become Body and Blood (we call it the Doctrine of the Real Presence). And if Jesus commands it (John 6:50 and following) then he will not use it to harm me but rather to my greater sanctification.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:59:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

eBay with middlemen

AuctionDrop applies its sales-process expertise to write compelling descriptions (the key, Adams says, is to be honest about each item's defects) and to professionally photograph and pack everything. More important, AuctionDrop employees don't accept every item for sale. Adams says items that are in bad shape or crawling with bugs are turned away (a good policy), as are oversize goods like furniture. And he won't take items likely to fetch less than $50. Adams is aware that AuctionDrop could make a nice fence for stolen goods, so he has several methods, some secret, to ensure that "if a thief uses our service, we will catch them."

The company pays 20 to 40 percent of the selling price to the original owner. Items that don't sell are either held for pickup by the owner or donated to charity, at the owner's option.

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

Does media concentration matter if we have the Internet?

At the same time that media concentration restrictions are being removed, such that 3 companies will own everything, so too are neutrality restrictions for the network being eliminated, so that those same three companies -- who will also control broadband access -- are totally free to architect broadband however they wish. "The Internet" that is to be the savior is a dying breed. The end-to-end architecture that gave us its power will. in effect, be inverted. And so the games networks play to benefit their own will bleed to this space too.

And then Dr. Pangloss says, "but what about spectrum. Won't unlicensed spectrum guarantee our freedom?" And it is true: Here at least there was some hope from this FCC. But the latest from DC is that a tiny chunk of new unlicensed spectrum will be released. And then after that, no more. Spectrum too will be sold -- to the same companies, no doubt.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Media concentration: a simple pie-chart

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:44:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Firewall Enhancement Protocol

Our methodology is to layer any application layer Transmission Control Protocol/User Datagram Protocol (TCP/UDP) packets over the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) protocol, since HTTP packets are typically able to transit Firewalls. This scheme does not violate the actual security usefulness of a Firewall, since Firewalls are designed to thwart attacks from the outside and to ignore threats from within. The use of FEP is compatible with the current Firewall security model because it requires cooperation from a host inside the Firewall. FEP allows the best of both worlds: the security of a firewall, and transparent tunneling thought the firewall.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:35:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

If you're named David Nelson, you're tuttlebuttled

David Nelson of Gresham says he was searched and screened three times at the Portland airport, then again at the gates of Dallas and Atlanta airports before arriving in Savannah, Ga., last month. "It's as if they think you've been transformed into a terrorist en route. You'd think one screening was enough, when you haven't left a secure area the entire trip."

"What really concerned me," says David Nelson of Northwest Portland, who recently was delayed trying to fly to Juneau, Alaska, to take care of his mother, "was even when they determined I wasn't the one on the list, it's like I had a label on my forehead that says, 'One must frisk this person at every opportunity and go through his luggage.' It's as if I were a pariah." David had no idea why he was being singled out; no one mentioned a list. "My son is a pilot for Continental; I thought maybe that had something to do with it."

Oregon state Sen. David Nelson, from Pendleton, also had no idea why he was being delayed at airports. "Then we flew into the Medford airport on Horizon, and one of the agents said, 'Your name is on the list. You're going to be checked every place you go.' That was a shock."

Remember Ozzie and Harriet's son, David Nelson? "I got stopped at the John Wayne Airport" in Orange County, Calif., he said by phone from Los Angeles this week. "Two police officers knew who I was and tried to explain to the guy behind the security desk. It didn't faze him at all." Even as another officer was saying he had once met David's mother, Harriet, David was being instructed to remove his shoes, he says. "I asked, 'Does the guy on the list have a middle name of Ozzie?' He said, 'It just says David Nelson.' "

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

Shrub's resume

Accomplishments as president:

* Attacked and took over two countries.
* Spent the surplus and bankrupted the treasury.
* Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.
* Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.
* Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
* First president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
* First president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.
* First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.
* After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, presided over the worst security failure in US history.
* Set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in US history.
* In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their job.
* Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in US history.
* Set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12 month period.
* Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.
* Set the record for the least amount of press conferences than any president since the advent of television.
* Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any president in US history.
* Presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.

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

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Matrix: Reviewed

Early on in the film, Morpheus whips the inhabitants of Zion, the underground city where the last band of human rebels have their stronghold, into a frenzy. The agents of the Matrix have finally located Zion, and a dreadful army of 250,000 Sentinels -- those scary, dreadlocked killing machines from the first film -- is burrowing down through the earth, on its way to destroy the city and annihilate the free survivors of the human race. But Morpheus does not rouse the citizens of Zion for battle, although a final battle is close at hand. He wants them to party. The machines have been trying to kill them for years, decades, he reminds them, longer than anyone living can remember: "But we are still alive!"

What follows is a thunderously exciting all-night multicultural rave, an ecstatic dance party the likes of which I've never seen on film before -- intercut with a hot 'n' sweaty interlude between Neo and Trinity, who've been struggling to find some Q.T. together amid the impending apocalypse and hordes of strangers who want Neo to bless their babies. One of the marks of genuine genius in the Matrix films, I think, is the way the Wachowskis manage to have it both ways so much of the time: They can make a box-office-busting action spectacular that is also an explicit critique of media-age capitalism and a lefty-Christian parable. They can turn a sex scene between two movie stars with fabulous bodies into a celebration of the sheer sensuous delight we all share (or should share, anyway) just at being alive, experiencing the world with our own bodies and our own minds.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:57:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Securing online games

I've lost count of the number of developers I've encountered who thought that because something they designed was complicated and nobody else had the documentation, it was secure from prying eyes and hands. This is not true, as I learned the hard way. If you are skeptical, I invite you to look at the custom graphics file format used in Age of Empires. Last year, I received a demanding e-mail from a kid who wanted the file format for a utility he was writing. I told him to go away. Three days later he sent me the file format documentation that he reverse-engineered, and asked if he missed anything. He hadn't. Thus, this is a perfect example of rule number five. Yes, I've borrowed it from cryptography, but it applies equally well here.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:55:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Medical photographer's fotolog

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

Rat brains drive robots

In Dr. Potter's hybrid system, the layer of rat neurons is grown over an array of electrodes that pick up the neurons' electrical activity. A computer analyzes the activity of the several thousand brain cells in real time to detect spikes produced by neurons firing near an electrode.

A silver three-wheeled model of the robot is commercially available through the Swiss robotics maker K-Team (www.k-team.com) for about $3,000 and is about the size of a hockey puck. It trundles along at a top speed of one meter per second.

"We assign a direction of movement, say, a step forward, that is automatically triggered by a pattern of spikes," said Thomas DeMarse, a former member of Dr. Potter's group who is an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida. "Twenty of these patterns, for instance, means 20 rotations of the wheel."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:24:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Preview of new Stephenson novel

Enoch rounds the corner just as the executioner raises the noose above the woman's head. The crowd on the Common stop praying and sobbing for just as long as Jack Ketch stands there, elbows locked, for all the world like a carpenter heaving a ridge-beam into place. The rope clutches a disk of blue New England sky. The Puritans gaze at it and, to all appearances, think. Enoch the Red reins in his borrowed horse as it nears the edge of the crowd, and sees that the executioner's purpose is not to let them inspect his knotwork, but to give them all a narrow -- and, to a Puritan, tantalizing -- glimpse of the portal through which they all must pass one day.

Boston's a dollop of hills in a spoon of marshes. The road up the spoon-handle is barred by a wall, with the usual gallows outside of it, and victims, or parts of them, strung up or nailed to the city gates. Enoch has just come that way, and reckoned he had seen the last of such things -- that thenceforth it would all be churches and taverns. But the dead men outside the gate were common robbers, killed for earthly crimes. What is happening now in the Common is of a more Sacramental nature.

The noose lies on the woman's grey head like a crown. The executioner pushes it down. Her head forces it open like an infant's dilating the birth canal. When it finds the widest part it drops suddenly onto her shoulders. Her knees pimple the front of her apron and her skirts telescope into the platform as she makes to collapse. The executioner hugs her with one arm, like a dancing-master, to keep her upright, and adjusts the knot while an official reads the death warrant. This is as bland as a lease. The crowd scratches and shuffles. There are none of the diversions of a London hanging: no catcalls, jugglers, or pickpockets. Down at the other end of the Common, a squadron of lobsterbacks drills and marches round the base of a hummock with a stone powder-house planted in its top. An Irish sergeant bellows -- bored but indignant -- in a voice that carries forever on the wind, like the smell of smoke.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:17:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi nightlight

One of our first concerns was practical rather than technical. Obviously, if you're going to replace a light bulb with an access point, the room will likely get darker. That is, unless the AP can also provide light as well. After fooling with a couple of lighting ideas, we finally soldered some copper romex onto a fluorescent bulb as a prototype. The romex is rigid enough to hold the lamp steady, and easy to solder to. The fluorescent bulb would obviously be dimmer than a 300 watt spot lamp, but it would be better than nothing. And as a flourescent runs much cooler, it probably wouldn't turn the guts of the access point to liquid. This solved the light issue well enough for the moment, but how could we connect the whole thing to a standard light bulb socket?

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:13:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cute virii stuffies

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:43:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warblogging panel from O'Reilly E-Tech event: video, audio now online

The video and audio are here: Link. Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:19:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Street Golf in San Francisco this weekend

Who needs Pebble Beach? What's a master, anyway? Where's my Bullhorn? That's right folks, golfing in North Beach. Nine Holes, Nine Bars, and not a Nine Iron in sight. Bring any club you can find (a 3 iron is handy, but a putter is great) as we golf through the streets of San Francisco. Each hole offers fun urban challenges, hazards, and yes - even danger! Why wait in annoying lines at Mini-putt course? Why suck up to 6AM tee times? The UGA offers you non-stop fun all day long, with plenty of watering holes for every putting hole.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:07:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Five perspectives on spectrum allocation

The reply comments deadline is tomorrow, and Eric Nguyen, an intern at EFF, has been digging through the initial comments in the docket. He's turned up some really interesting comments:

1. EFF (100k PDF): Eric and I wrote these comments, which argue that spectrum regulation is a form of speech regulation, and by allowing more people to speak, the FCC is serving the First Amendment
2. New America Foundation (272k PDF): raises a similar argument, with lots of juicy footnotes to support it
3. Intel (360k PDF): loves this, natch, since it's an opportunity to sell lots more semiconductors. What's more, they've done a mind-blowing study to show that these devices can be engineered to avoid all harmful interference with licensed spectrum users (i.e., TV stations)
4. AT&T (96k PDF): surprisingly, they love the idea, too! They've put a bunch of money into a "carrier-grade WiFi" company, but the benefit they cite for WiFi is that it provides a competitive mechanism for dethroning the Baby Bell telco monopolies. Oh, how the times have changed!
5. Cingular (48k PDF): well, about what you'd expect. These guys paid big bucks for spectrum they want to change the American public for the use of, and they're scared of the unmitigated success of WiFi, which typically provides unmetered connections, which are likely to kill their $0.0X/minute pricing model. The most astonishing thing in this filing, though, is Cingular's argument that WiFi and almost every other unlicensed spectrum use is illegal in the US and that the FCC was asleep at the switch when they approved it.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:48:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pie in a Jar: The new turducken/deep-fried-Mars-bar/kitschfood craze?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:35:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reverse Cowgirl: "You're a BAD man, aren't you?" blog book fundraiser

Future Tense Books is a wonderful, one-man publishing house in Portland, Oregon, helmed by the unstoppable one-man publishing crew of Kevin Sampsell. This summer, FTB is publishing a collection of my short stories. The title is You're A Bad Man, Aren't You? The contents feature a baker's dozen worth of my tawdry tales.

What does this have to do with you? Future Tense Books is very great, but it is also very small. To make a nice-looking book,The Reverse Cowgirl's Blog is attempting to raise $1,200 for it by the end of this month. Future Tense Books will be using this money to work with the insanely talented Pete McCracken at Crack Press to print a fiction collection worth of your fondling. In the spirit of respelling P-O-M-O as F-U-N, there are several interactive ways for you--yes, you!--to be excitedly involved with it.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:21:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paris cafe culture meets WiFi: c'est si bon.

Paris could soon be among the first cities to offer Internet all across town, allowing e-mailing and Web surfing from the Left Bank to La Defence. Two technology firms and the agency that runs Paris' subway have launched a test run that, if successful, could lead to Paris becoming one massive "hot spot." In the trial, a dozen antennas were erected last month outside Metro stations lining a major north-south bus route, allowing anyone nearby to go online with a computer equipped to receive the signals.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:04:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vonnegut on "Shock and Awe"

I note that construction has stopped of a Mark Twain Museum here in Hartford -- behind the carriage house of the Mark Twain House at 351 Farmington Avenue.

Work persons have been sent home from that site because American "conservatives," as they call themselves, on Wall Street and at the head of so many of our corporations, have stolen a major fraction of our private savings, have ruined investors and employees by means of fraud and outright piracy.

Shock and awe.

And now, having installed themselves as our federal government, or taken control of it from outside, they have squandered our public treasury and then some. They have created a public debt of such appalling magnitude that our descendants, for whom we had such high hopes, will come into this world as poor as church mice.

Shock and awe.

What are the conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? They are telling us to be absolutely terrified, and to run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. But they will save us. They are making us take off our shoes at airports. Can anybody here think of a more hilarious practical joke than that one?

Smile, America. You're on Candid Camera.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:32:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Karl Schroeder/Charlie /S/t/r/o/s/s/ Brown interview in Locus

"My hometown of Brandon had a population of about 45,000 and a university, so there was an interesting mix of people: intellectuals, farmers... (it also had one of the province's largest mental institutions). The one thing I can trade on in my background is that I came from a community that always considered itself to be outsiders. (The other SF writer to come from the Mennonites was A.E. van Vogt.) The favorite catch phrase of the Mennonites was, 'In the world, but not of the world.' Profoundly suspicious of politics, of the entire apparatus of civilization, even of organization on the level of cities, but very intellectual because of the Protestant requirement that each person be their own Bible scholar. You think for yourself, and you decide moral issues for yourself. So there was a tradition of being simultaneously isolationist and required to think which came out in my parents, both iconoclastic in their own way. I thought of myself as an outsider in a lot of ways as I was growing up. Not in a bad way; more as an observer. I often find myself thinking as an observer of science fiction rather than as a participant.

"My mother wrote a couple of romances when I was a kid, and I always saw books in our bookshelf with 'Schroeder' on the spine. (We pronounce the name 'Schrayder,' but I don't mind being called 'Schroder.') So I naturally assumed everyone wrote, and it was obviously easy if my mom could do it! I intended to be famous by the time I was 16, and rich by the time I was 20. Curiously, it didn't pan out!"

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

Hugo-nominated fiction online

Asimov's Link (Ian R. MacLeod -- Breathmoss; Charles Stross -- Halo; Gregory Frost -- Madonna of the Maquiladora; Ursula K. Le Guin -- The Wild Girls; Molly Gloss -- Lambing Season; Michael Swanwick -- The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport)

F&SF Link (Maureen F. McHugh -- Presence; Charles Coleman Finlay -- The Political Officer; Jeffrey Ford -- Creation; Richard Chwedyk -- Bronte's Egg) Discuss (via Futurismic)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:26:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Formula for a blockbuster

According to Clayton the blueprint for the perfect film is for it to have: 30 percent action, 17 percent comedy, 13 percent good versus evil, 12 percent sex/romance, 10 percent special effects, 10 percent plot and eight percent music.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:22:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Deck of Weasels

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:37:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Republican Chickenhawk Cards

What exactly is a "chickenhawk"? According to The New Hampshire Gazette, "a "chickenhawk" has three qualities: bellicosity (a warlike manner or temperament), public prominence, and a curious lack of wartime service when others their age had no trouble finding the fight."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:34:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My mailing list

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:50:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DRM is philosophically broken, too

If your lease stipulates that you can't paint without explicit permission from your landlord, you will nevertheless patch up the scratches made by your yappy little dog on the bottom of the front door. If the high-priced industry analyst's report warns you on every page against duplicating, you'll still hand out at your weekly sales meeting copies of a page with a relevant chart. You'd snicker at the very suggestion of doing otherwise.

But why? The analyst report is stamped 'DO NOT PHOTOCOPY', and the bit in your lease about not painting really couldn't be any clearer. We chuckle because we all understand that before the law there's leeway - the true bedrock of human relationships. Sure, we rely on rules to decide the hard cases, but the rest of the time we cut one another a whole lot of slack. We have to. That's the only way we humans can manage to share a world. Otherwise, we'd be at one another's throats all the time - or, more exactly, our lawyers would be at each other's throats.

Yet we're on the verge of instituting digital rights management. What do computers do best? Obey rules. What do they do worst? Allow latitude. Why? Because computers don't know when to look the other way.

We're screwed. Not because we MP3 cowboys and cowgirls will not have to pay for content we've been "stealing." No, we're screwed because we're undercutting the basis of our shared intellectual and creative lives. For us to talk, argue, try out ideas, tear down and build up thoughts, assimilate and appropriate concepts - heck, just to be together in public - we have to grant all sorts of leeway. That's how ideas breed, how cultures get built. If any public space needs plenty of light, air, and room to play, it's the marketplace of ideas.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:48:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Help ACLU secure your right to read

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:46:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Autopsy in short sentences and infographics

Here, one pathologist is preparing to open the skull, using a special vibrating saw that cuts bone but not soft tissue. This is an important safety feature.

Another pathologist is cutting the cartilages that join the ribs to the breastbone, in order to be able to enter the chest cavity. This can be done using a scalpel, a saw, or a special knife, depending on the pathologist's preferences and whether the cartilages have begun to turn into bone, as they often do in older folks.

The third pathologist is exploring the abdominal cavity. The first dissection in the abdomen is usually freeing up the large intestine. Some pathologists do this with a scalpel, while others use scissors.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:43:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New PageRank optimization may pave way for idiosyncratic Google

To speed up PageRank, the Stanford team developed a trio of techniques in numerical linear algebra. First, in the WWW2003 paper, they describe so-called "extrapolation" methods, which make some assumptions about the Web's link structure that aren't true, but permit a quick and easy computation of PageRank. Because the assumptions aren't true, the PageRank isn't exactly correct, but it's close and can be refined using the original PageRank algorithm. The Stanford researchers have shown that their extrapolation techniques can speed up PageRank by 50 percent in realistic conditions and by up to 300 percent under less realistic conditions.

A second paper describes an enhancement, called "BlockRank," which relies on a feature of the Web's link structure--a feature that the Stanford team is among the first to investigate and exploit. Namely, they show that approximately 80 percent of the pages on any given Web site point to other pages on the same site. As a result, they can compute many single-site PageRanks, glue them together in an appropriate manner and use that as a starting point for the original PageRank algorithm. With this technique, they can realistically speed up the PageRank computation by 300 percent.

Finally, the team notes in a third paper that the rankings for some pages are calculated early in the PageRank process, while the rankings of many highly rated pages take much longer to compute. In a method called "Adaptive PageRank," they eliminate redundant computations associated with those pages whose PageRanks finish early. This speeds up the PageRank computation by up to 50 percent.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:38:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Radio station uses iPod as transmitter backup

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:22:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Windows OS traps politician in limo, rescued by sledgehammer

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:38:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pedophilia and brain-tumors

"The most interesting part of this is getting into the hardwiring of morality and free will," Swerdlow said. "It raises the question, how free is free will?"

This philosophical question is being investigated by doctors across the country. And the answers they find through their research could have serious implications - not just for individual treatment but for the criminal justice system as well.

Brain scans conducted on murderers, for example, show that there is sometimes damage or poor function of the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that lies just behind the forehead and eyes.

Such scans and other scientific studies of the mind may one day be widely used in courts as evidence for the defense, as it was for Swerdlow's patient.

"This guy was going to go to prison and what he needed was an operation, not incarceration," Swerdlow said.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:06:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 12, 2003

Amazon wishlists for libraries

Burlingame Public Library's Wish List
Location: Burlingame, California

About me: All books on this list were destroyed in the Presidents' Day Flood of 2003. Thank you for your help!

Ellison Public Library's Wish List
Location: Scandinavia, WI

About me: Our little library serves its community well, but would appreciate donations of any of the selected material. We have a very limited budget for collection development and a very diverse and interested patronage for all sorts of items. Thank you.

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

Where's Robert Carr?

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:36:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tufte shreds PowerPoint

In corporate and government bureaucracies, the standard method for making a presentation is to talk about a list of points organized onto slides projected up on the wall. For many years, overhead projectors lit up transparencies, and slide projectors showed high-resolution 35mm slides. Now "slideware" computer programs for presentations are nearly everywhere. Early in the 21st century, several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint were turning out trillions of slides each year.

Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis. What is the problem with PowerPoint? And how can we improve our presentations?

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wil Wheaton's book is out!

Houses in Motion - Memories fill the emptiness left within a childhood home, and saying goodbye brings them to life.

Ready Or Not Here I Come - A game of hide-n-seek with the kids works as a time machine, taking Wil on a tour of the hiding and seeking of years gone by.

Inferno - Two 15-year-olds pass in the night leaving behind pleasant memories and a perfumed Car Wars Deluxe Edition Box Set.

We Close Our Eyes - A few beautiful moments spent dancing in the rain.

The Saga of SpongeBob VegasPants - A story of love, hate, laughter and the acceptance of all things Trek.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:25:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pynchon on Orwell

Prophecy and prediction are not quite the same, and it would ill serve writer and reader alike to confuse them in Orwell's case. There is a game some critics like to play in which one makes lists of what Orwell did and didn't "get right". Looking around us at the present moment in the US, for example, we note the popularity of helicopters as a resource of "law enforcement," familiar to us from countless televised "crime dramas," themselves forms of social control - and for that matter at the ubiquity of television itself. The two-way telescreen bears a close enough resemblance to flat plasma screens linked to "interactive" cable systems, circa 2003. News is whatever the government says it is, surveillance of ordinary citizens has entered the mainstream of police activity, reasonable search and seizure is a joke. And so forth. "Wow, the government has turned into Big Brother, just like Orwell predicted! Something, huh?" "Orwellian, dude!"

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

FAA: We're fatter and we have more crap

The government on Monday increased its estimates of how much passengers and their luggage weigh, prompted by last winter's crash that killed all 21 people aboard a commuter plane in Charlotte, N.C. The Federal Aviation Administration is adding 10 pounds to its estimate for passengers and five pounds to luggage. The weights are used to gauge whether a plane is overloaded.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:01:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Signing/reading from Witpunk this weekend in San Francisco

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:55:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Is cyberspace a place?

Cyberspace was once thought to be the modern equivalent of the Western Frontier, a place, where land was free for the taking, where explorers could roam, and communities could form with their own rules. It was an endless expanse of space: open, free, replete with possibility. This is true no longer. This Article argues that we are enclosing cyberspace, and imposing private property conceptions upon it. As a result, we are creating a digital anti-commons where sub-optimal uses of Internet resources is going to be the norm.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

99 bottles and 515 languages

Programming language: Algol 68
  	
# 99 Bottles of Beer                         #
# by Otto Stolz  #
( PROC width = (INT x) INT: (x>9 | 2 | 1)
; FOR i FROM 99 BY -1 TO 1
  DO  printf ( ( $ 2l n(width(i))d
                 , x "bottle" b("","s") x "of beer on the wall,"
                 , x n(width(i))d
                 , x "bottle" b("","s") x "of beer."
                 , l "Take one down, pass it around,"
                 , x n(width(i-1))d
                 , x "bottle" b("","s") x "of beer."
                 $
               , i  , i=1
               , i  , i=1
               , i-1, i=2
             ) )
  OD

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:15:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Selling Oreos to kids is criminal

The suit, the first of its kind in the country, asks for an injunction ordering Kraft Foods to desist from selling Nabisco Oreo Cookies to children in California, because the cookies are made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, also called trans fat...

In particular, he mentions a school-based program called the Oreo On-line Project, which involves stacking Oreos as high as possible without toppling the tower. In 2002, more than 326 schools and classes around the country participated, according to the Oreo Web site.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:12:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Last call for OSXCON talk-proposals!

The conference begins with one day of in-depth tutorials, followed by three days of sessions covering the landscape of Mac OS X development: technologies, methodologies, techniques, and just plain useful and cool stuff. We're looking for talks oriented to two principal audiences:

* System administrators, especially those in a design environment. This might include traditional Mac admins who are now getting up to speed on Unix, as well as Unix admins who now have to support applications like Quark and Photoshop. We'd like to have a heavy emphasis on scripting (whether with AppleScript or your open source scripting language of choice), because that's where the power of Unix meets the power of the Mac.

* Developers who want to understand and leverage the new paradigms at the heart of Mac OS X, from Rendezvous to Web services, from Cocoa to Quartz Extreme.

However, we're hoping also to have a substantial number of talks aimed at power users. Everyone who has a Mac loves to learn cool tricks that save time, increase functionality, and make a computer fun to use. AppleScript in particular seems to us like a rich trove for sessions that will make both developers and administrators sit up and take notice.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:09:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I'll be at BayCon, Memorial Day weekend

• Copyright in the Internet Age: Cory Doctorow gores his own ox (Friday, 5:30)
• Reading (Saturday, 1:30PM)
• Vote for the Hugo Awards (Saturday, 2:30PM)
• Yes, I did just have my first novel published (Saturday, 5:30PM)

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

Online art: "The Nudemen show," and DB-DB.com.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:17:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Deepest deep-space photo ever taken

"The 3.5-day (84-hour) exposure captures stars as faint as 31st magnitude, according to Tom M. Brown (Space Telescope Science Institute), who headed the eight-person team that took the picture. This is a little more than 1 magnitude (2.5 times) fainter than the epochal Hubble Deep Fields, which were made with the Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. It is 6 billion times fainter than what can be seen with the naked eye."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:20:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

QTVR fun: Easter parade in Toronto

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:02:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CSS is a beautiful thing

Littering a dark and dreary road lay the past relics of browser-specific tags, incompatible DOMs, and broken CSS support. Today, we must clear the mind of past practices. Web enlightenment has been achieved thanks to the tireless efforts of folk like the W3C, WASP and the major browser creators. The css Zen Garden invites you to relax and meditate on the important lessons of the masters. Begin to see with clarity. Learn to use the (yet to be) time-honored techniques in new and invigorating fashion. Become one with the web.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:54:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robodex 2003 guidebook now online in glorious technicolor

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:29:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CIA hiring multimedia geek

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:00:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stop the FCC with MoveOn.org

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission intends to lift restrictions on media ownership that could allow your local newspaper, cable provider, radio stations, and TV channels all to be owned by one company. The result could be the disappearance of the checks and balances provided by a competitive media marketplace -- and huge cutbacks in local news and reporting. Good, balanced information is the basis for our democracy. That's why we're asking that:

"Congress and the FCC should stop media deregulation and work to make the media diverse, competitive, balanced, and fair."

Please join us below. We'll send your comments to your Representative and your Senators. If you choose, they'll also be posted to the FCC's public comments website. And we'll keep you posted about what more you can do to support this campaign. This petition is an initiative of MoveOn.org, Media Alliance, CodePink, United for Peace and Justice, and Global Exchange.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:54:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

British Telecom's payphone catch-22

For three years, residents and traders have pushed BT to repair or replace a derelict phone box in Worsley, Leeds.

But when records of the booth mysteriously disappeared when vandals ripped out the phone (a former favourite with drug dealers) at the turn of the century.

Without a phone number to go on, residents can only give a location...

BT's records no longer show a phone at this location, the Yorkshire Evening Post reports, so technicians are repeatedly sent to another phone box, half a mile down the road.

Every time this happens the instruction to remove the derelict booth is erased from work orders.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FCC planning to destroy diversity in news

"We're going to have a handful of people providing the news for the entire country," Woolsey said. "We will be losing the diversity of intellect and ideas and opinions. We'll be cutting off minority opinions and dissent, and it's not our founding fathers intended."

The FCC takes a critical step this week, when commissioners receive specific proposals for deregulation. The proposals, which are not to be released, will come up for a vote June 2.

In a phone interview last week, Copps said that of roughly 18,000 public comments on the proposed changes -- not counting the hundred or so from media companies or organized coalitions -- "I haven't seen any that say, 'Let's relax the rules further.' "

"In the media landscape we have now, if a new Ted Turner sprang from the earth with a new idea for CNN, I don't know that he could go very far," Copps said.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:17:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney vacations getting cheaper as economy tanks

VISITORS TO Disney World were down 7 percent in the last quarter. That may seem like a dwarf-sized downsizing to you and I, but in financial terms it translates into a 2.6 percent drop in revenues from the previous year and a whopping 45 percent quarterly drop in operating income.

Translation: Disney desperately need warm bodies filling its resort hotel rooms and roaming its parks, and it figures this "Fairytale Vacation Package" is just the thing to lure them down to Orlando for a week of frivolous spending on mouse eared-caps and other souvenirs. That's why Eisner and Co. are willing to give away three nights and three park passes essentially for free. (Either that or someone been at the Tinkerbell dust again.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:06:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Radio Shack selling off private subway cars

Inside height 79". Seating capacity 44 extending down both walls of car. Maximum capacity 100 including leather hand strips suspended from sealing for standing passengers. Seats are 18" deep, covered in a Red plush fabric with buttons on the back. The seats have a rolled pleat in them for an added richness. The walls and ceiling are covered in heavy textured Red vinyl. Flooring covered with thick black rubber tile with white marbling. 30 modern interior light fixtures using a 600 Volt Circuit. The mechanical end has most of the control switches for the interior of the trolley car. The trolley car has two sets of pedals on each end. The mechanical end has an accelerator pedal that is manually linked directly to the controller, for a smoother controlling start; a break pedal is mechanical linked to a cam controller that operators the air breaks, and a dead man pedal. A hand break is under the dash for parking break. The air end brake and dead man pedals are connected to the mechanical end with air pedals. The accelerator pedal is connected to the mechanical end by a shielded cable. Both ends have door switches, voltage gages, air gage and an emergency switch.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:04:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Technorati API is live

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Costikyan's free dot-bomb game

Dot Boom is a satirical card game of the Dot Com era. Each of up to five players takes the role of a major venture capital firm (like Eine Kleine Perkins or noidealab!), investing in dubious companies like iPotemkinVillage and Thiefster, and trying to take them public. The game is over when the "dotCrash" card comes up, at which time the player with the most money wins.

You'll need to download the rules and the card document. Print out the cards and cut them apart; I usually print them out onto un-diecut label stock, cut them apart, peel off the backing, and stick them onto index cards. But in a pinch, you can just print on paper--not too sturdy, but good enough. You'll also need Monopoly money, and some "stock counters"--I generally just scrounge pieces from another game--as well as a six-sided die and an opaque cup (like a coffee mug).

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:00:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Book-scanning robot can do 1,000 pages/hour

Inside the room a Swiss-designed robot about the size of a sport utility vehicle was rapidly turning the pages of an old book and scanning the text. The machine can turn the pages of both small and large books as well as bound newspaper volumes and scan at speeds of more than 1,000 pages an hour.

Occasionally the robot will stumble, turning more than a single page. When that happens, the machine will pause briefly and send out a puff of compressed air to separate the sticking pages.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:55:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bryson's history of science

"We live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws we don't truly understand," he writes.

"A Short History" is basically organized by science subject, starting with the cosmology of the Big Bang and ending with theories of human origins. As it scrambles across geology, particle physics, cellular biology, evolution, and so on, it weaves in stories of great scientists, the weirder the better. Bryson is an Anglophile who revels in the nuttiness of British icons of science. He also loves to champion discoverers who never got proper credit for their work.

I was impressed by the author's command of so many complicated subjects and his skill at making them simple. The book is crammed (perhaps too crammed) with information. I'd never heard, for example, that if the mass of my body were converted to energy it would equal 30 large hydrogen bombs, or that Einstein was turned down for a job teaching high school after publishing his special theory of relativity, or that relativity means a hurled baseball picks up .000000000002 grams of matter on its way to home plate.

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

Fair-deal music service

We are an Internet record label which sells and licenses music by encouraging MP3 file trading and Internet Radio.

When you find an artist you like, pay what you can afford to show your support, starting at $5 for an entire online album. Companies can sublicense our music for commercial use using our no haggling, easy online forms. All money from your purchases is split 50/50 with our artists.

No major label connections.

We are not evil.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:46:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, May 11, 2003

Qapla'! Hospital seeks Klingon speaker PORTLAND, Oregon (AP)

Position Available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon.

The language created for the "Star Trek" TV series and movies is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County.

"We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 mental health clients.

Although created for works of fiction, Klingon was designed to have a consistent grammar, syntax and vocabulary.

And now Multnomah County research has found that many people -- and not just fans -- consider it a complete language.

"There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak," said the county's purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway.

County officials said that obligates them to respond with a Klingon-English interpreter, putting the language of starship Enterprise officer Worf and other Klingon characters on a par with common languages such as Russian and Vietnamese, and less common tongues including Dari and Tongan.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:41:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Live in LA? Want a nice pet bunnny? Email Mark.

Frisky Lucille is an affection 8-month female dwarf rabbit. We need to find a home for her because we are moving and can't take her with us.

Frisky has been spayed and is very friendly to children and adults. She is playful and likes gentle attention. Best of all, she is completely housebroken and uses a litterbox 100% of the time. Since we litter trained her 7 months ago, she has never had an accident.

Also included is a cage, feeding dish, sleeping hut, and water bottle.

She likes to run around the house, so if you have a cat or dog, it is probably not a good idea to take Frisky unless your animals are friendly to rabbits.

mark@well.com Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:09:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

COGECO's Terms of Service: Assholes or idiots?

IMPORTANT NOTE: COGECO Cable Canada Inc. reserves the right to revise the Residential High-Speed Internet Service Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy attached as Schedule A to this Agreement at any time, effective upon posting of the new or revised version on the COGECO website at http://www.cogeco.com.

The Service may not be used to breach the security of another user or to attempt to gain access to any other person's computer, software or data, without the knowledge and written consent of such person...

Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to:

* Accessing data without express authorization of the owner;
* Logging into or making use of a server or account you are not expressly authorized to access;
* Probing the security of other computers/networks;
* Forging any part of the TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in an e-mail or a newsgroup posting...

Forging headers is forbidden? What if you're doing it to remain anonymous, say in order to participate in a secure protocol or to post to alt.anonymous? But wait, there's more!

Use or distribution of tools designed for compromising security, such as password guessing programs, cracking tools, packet sniffers or network probing tools, is prohibited. The Service may not be used to collect, or attempt to collect, personal information about third parties without their knowledge or written consent.

Again, they probably mean that the illegal use of these tools is forbidden, but they've already said that using their service to break the law is forbidden (duh), so again, we're left to wonder: is this malice or cluelessness?

The transmission or dissemination of any information or software that contains a virus or other harmful feature also is prohibited.

The Service may not be used to violate the rules, regulations, or policies applicable to any network, server, computer database, or web site that the customer accesses or to violate another internet Service provider's acceptable use policy and/or terms of service.

Sending unsolicited E-mail without identifying in the E-mail a clear and easy means to be excluded from receiving additional E-mail from the originator of the E-mail.

Using automated programs, such as "bots" or "clones" when the Customer is not physically present at the device.

COGECO may cooperate with law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected violations to any applicable law, regulation, public policy or order of a public authority having juristication. Such cooperation may include COGECO providing the customer's username, IP address, or other identifying information based on reasonable evidence, receipt of warrant or order.

ISP terms-of-service seem to be getting worse and worse. I advised my pal, the new COGECO customer, to quit the service and tell them why, but he says that they're the only broadband service provider available where he's at. No wonder they're acting so badly -- they're the only game in town.

How bad are the ToS at your ISP? Post to the Discuss link. Link Discuss (Thanks, Kernel Santos!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:34:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Worship the bean

The day started for me with a close watch on the ongoing Barista championships. The Worlds were in full swing, and let me tell you, if anyone thought the US Barista Competition was full bore, the Worlds was hyper intensive yet perfectly calm at times. I saw the Italian competitor (Andrea Lattuada) and he was amazingly casual. He talked for almost five minutes into his 15 minutes, addressing the crowd, talking about how the scene in Italy is for cafe espresso, then eventually clapped his hands, and said "Okay! Let's make drinks!". He pounded out four espresso with such nonchalance, but the crema was dripping thick, and the shots looked amazing. I noted that he tamped extremely well and used the piston tamp, that is, the arm straight up and bent at the elbow. No knock that I could see - but a variation on the Staub tamp, which is a four quadrant tamp.

The cappuccinos were also spectacular. He seemed to be going slow, but as he was prepping and building his drinks, I realised what he was doing - his timing was so spot on, he had his last of the signature drinks built and served as the clock ran down to zero. Amazing stuff!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:58:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Case Western SWAT foiled by Frank Gehry building

The distinctive structure of the Frank Gehry-designed Case Western business school building, with hallways that dip and swerve, complicated the job for police.

"As the SWAT team entered the building, they were constantly under fire," Lohn said. "They couldn't return fire because of the design of the building. They didn't have a clear shot."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:53:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Awesome geeky comic strip

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:51:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lying, plagiarising NYT writer outed, ousted

The reporter, Jayson Blair, 27, misled readers and Times colleagues with dispatches that purported to be from Maryland, Texas and other states, when often he was far away, in New York. He fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not.

And he used these techniques to write falsely about emotionally charged moments in recent history, from the deadly sniper attacks in suburban Washington to the anguish of families grieving for loved ones killed in Iraq.

In an inquiry focused on correcting the record and explaining how such fraud could have been sustained within the ranks of The Times, the Times journalists have so far uncovered new problems in at least 36 of the 73 articles Mr. Blair wrote since he started getting national reporting assignments late last October. In the final months the audacity of the deceptions grew by the week, suggesting the work of a troubled young man veering toward professional self-destruction.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:43:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, May 10, 2003

Ben Hammersley hacks the blog

For starters, every post has its own RSS feed, whence the comments for that post are syndicated. Add to that a "contemporania" block of text associated with each post that records the top British headlines, the weather in various cities, the top single on the UK charts, and the number of inbound links to Ben at the moment that his post was saved.

Now he's added a preview of the kind of functionality you can get with the as-yet-private API for Technorati, David Sifry's brilliant blogmining tool. In Ben's experimental implementation (the first such ever), when he links to another blog, it creates "mouseover text" (a little bar of text that pops up if you hover your cursor over the link) with the current number of inbound blogs connected to the blog he's just linked to. All of this stuff will be in Ben's book -- but I want it for Boing Boing now! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:52:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 9, 2003

DIY HERF gun

This project is a continuation of the HERF003 project. It will be just like the HERF001 but many times more compact and efficient due to optimization and better calculated design. The actual device (excluding the horn antenna) will be about 50 times smaller in volume than HERF001 while having the same output power yet even better antenna efficiency and low VSWR. I hope to get much more detailed tests done on the effects and range of this device. Results and test images/videos will be posted allong with data sheets, radiation patterns and videos of test shots on dummy PC's.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:25:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pac Man: Extreme! Multiplayer, networked, multiplatform

So what is it? It's a bit hard to explain. Insiders allege that, unbeknownst to Namco, designer Shigeru Miyamoto and a team at EAD began work on a Pac-Man demo for Game Boy Advance. After 30 days or so on the project, the team had created a full remake of the title, at which point it was shown to amazed employees at Namco. Afterward, it was decided that making a GameCube version, which could be linked to the GBA build could heighten the experience further. So one was created.

What's the big idea? Once the GBA title is linked with the GCN version, all sorts of unique things start to happen, say sources. First, the experience has been designed with four players in mind: one player -- with the GBA, controls Pac-Man, while three GameCube players control three separate ghosts. The person playing with the GBA can see the action on the handheld's screen in classic Pac-Man form. However, the GameCube players can't. Instead, the action on the television screen is split into three play circles -- each showing an isometric 3D view of the Pac arena; no GameCube player can see the full maze. Because GCN gamers can't see the whole maze, the search for Pac-Man is made all the more difficult and entertaining.

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

Operation Strangelove: stop cowboy diplomacy

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:41:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Airplane sleep aid or skyjacker tool?

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:30:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beyond cat's cradle - amusing yourself with a loop of string

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:15:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More web-zen-like fun with balloons

Inflatable museum
Mister Peanut
Gigantic hotdog
Gigantic bullfrog
Big honkin' chain in the sky
Natalie's big legs
Balloon fetishes (not work safe)
Big Boys' Balloons (balloons for balloon fetishists, site is worksafe)
Balloon fetish ASCII tales from alt.sex.stories (not work safe)

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:18:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warren Ellis's Slashdot interview

I couldn't care less what other creators "should" consider, and if you ever say something like that within my physical reach I will slap the life clean out of your little body.

Yes. The Yellow Peril characters -- Fu Manchu, Wu Fang, etc - were disgusting. Part of the extended joke that was THE AUTHORITY was in seeing people really not react to Fu Manchu sending out thousands of his inscrutable Oriental menaces to divebomb major white world cities. (For those who need the cheat sheet, THE AUTHORITY was a twelve-episode superhero fiction series where the eponymous team fight Fu Manchu, Ming the Merciless and God (dressed up as Cthulhu).)

PLANETARY's intent was different. As the last half of the serial goes into publication, you'll see some examination of the underpinnings of these characters. In fact, you've already seen some questioning of the Oriental Genius type. I don't want to "exonerate" these characters from their pasts, or even exonerate those who created them. It's easy to say, well, it was a different time back then, of course they were racist. Or that, yeah, these archetypes exist in every culture. But while Tarzan is the "feral child" legend writ large, Fu Manchu is not the "evil genius". He is specifically the Evil Chinee. And that's something to be explored from many angles.

If I get too far into this, I'm going to be writing the actual comic, so I'll drop this one here

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:21:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with fired LA Times photographer

"I hurt my reputation and the LA Times' reputation, and that's something I feel really bad about. And the Internet thing, that's hard to deal with. I did a Google search on my name, and it comes up in about 25 languages. Every photographer wants to be known for a picture he's taken. I'll be known for this."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:21:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Profile of SAIC -- former internet domain monopoly is the invisible spook WalMart

About a third of SAIC's business is systems integration for other companies, such as Pfizer (PFE) and BP (BP), but its heart and soul is spy tech. Intelligence agencies don't list or rank their contractors. Intelligence sources, however, say SAIC was the NSA's top supplier last year and in the top five at the CIA. In addition to the high-powered data-mining software that helped nail Mohammed, SAIC makes undersea thermal imaging sensors for tracking submarines. It produces software that spy satellites use to map the earth and feed target data to precision munitions, including those that have been pounding Iraq. It's also a leader in the booming homeland security business: It builds gear that uses gamma rays to peer inside cargo containers and truck trailers.

Adding to SAIC's covert aura, Beyster has hired an unusual number of former spies, law enforcement chiefs, and secret warriors. Some 5,000 employees -- roughly one-seventh of the workforce -- have security clearances. Beyster himself has one of the highest arrays of top-secret clearances of any civilian in the country. "We are a stealth company," says Keith Nightingale, a former Army special ops officer. "We're everywhere, but almost never seen."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:08:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Finite monkeys can't produce Shakespeare

The six monkeys - Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan - produced five pages of text which consisted mainly of the letter "s".

But towards the end of the experiment, their output slightly improved, with the letters A, J, L and M also appearing.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:29:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

P2P stats as market research

It's the job of program director Sean Demery to figure out what people want to hear. One new way is by monitoring what file swappers are searching for and sharing most. And he does it with the help of a market-data software company called Big Champagne.

"It basically gives me pretty much what's happening in the mass culture," Demery said. "It tells me what's popular."...

"When you really boil it down to what's hot on the downloads," Demery said, "it's the same stuff people are buying, the same stuff people are requesting, the same stuff the radio stations are playing."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Oh my dear sweet Buddha

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

Crazy kids and their hep lingo

This teen lingo represents today's culture and many of the problems that go along with it. Although much of it is humorous, a good portion of it is very offensive. Many of the words are terms for sexual activity and drug use. Many of the examples given are common quotes from youth today- these quotes, although somewhat edited, can be foul or vile (sadly, all the below phrases can be said in a PG movie). I believe this dictionary has educational value in helping youth workers understand teen mentality and culture, but please do use discretion.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:40:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

India planning moon-shot

India's lunar mission, which is awaiting the Government's nod, will launch a 400 kilogram satellite into orbit within the next five years using a locally built polar satellite launch vehicle.

"It will go around the polar orbit about 100 kilometres above the moon," Mr Kasturirangan said.

He said the satellite will probe the physical characteristics of the lunar surface, certain aspects of physical, chemical and "geochronological aspects" of the moon.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:38:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Junkyard power tool drag racing in SF, this Sunday May 11

Competitors race for cash and other "mystery prizes" for categories including Most spectacular crash, Most impressive engineering, Most pathetic engineering, Most dangerous machine, and Machine most likely to get its maker laid.

Sunday, May 11th, 12:00 noon, Ace Junkyard, 2255 McKinnon Street, San Francisco. Admission: $10, but $1.00 off at the door (or $2 off pre-registration) if you tell 'em Xeni at BoingBoing sent you. Link, Discuss (thanks, David)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:05:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web zen: synthesized zen

(1) vintage
(2) stylophone
(3) bpoem
(4) ss7x7
(5) speak 'n' spell
(6) speak 'n' spell mod
(7) theremin
Bonus: Erik points us to the Optigan.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:56:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Super-cool undersea creatures: red jellyfish discovered

"T. granrojo is not just a new species and genus. It is so different from other jellies that it had to be assigned to a new subfamily (Tiburoniinae). Its large size and deep red color are distinctive. But what really sets T. granrojo apart is that, unlike most jellies, it has no tentacles. Instead, it uses its four to seven fleshy arms to capture food. Researchers were particularly surprised to find that the number of arms varies from individual to individual, because this is generally a diagnostic feature for determining different jelly species."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:47:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interactive urban oral history project seeks interviewers

On this recording, Mr. Isay is making an oral history of his own family, but he is also using the interview as a trial run for a much broader project: to democratize the craft of oral history and simultaneously capture a chronicle of ordinary life in our times comparable to the body of work produced by the Works Progress Administration two generations ago.This will turn on his ability to persuade ordinary people, starting with New Yorkers, to speak of raw workaday joy and anguish, outside their homes or neighborhood bars, in the presence of a microphone, a recording device, a friend and a stranger. It also turns on his ability to teach untrained interviewers the techniques that can elicit candid stories and unvarnished emotions.

"This is our beachhead against 'The Bachelor' " Mr. Isay said, referring to the reality television show. "It's about reminding America what kind of stories are interesting and meaningful and important."

Starting in October, in Vanderbilt Hall inside Grand Central Terminal, Mr. Isay plans to build something of a quiet public confessional in the center of the motion and tumult -- and ordinariness -- of daily commuting. People rushing from train to street will move past a six-by-eight-foot box of gray sheet metal wrapped in a translucent skin with a honeycomb pattern. Stopping to inspect the booth, they may push a button activating a speaker and playing aloud an edited sample oral history interview.

"If you see it from a distance, you'll see this glowing box with these car speakers," said Eric A. Liftin, an architect with Mesh Architectures in New York who was involved in designing the box. "Once you go inside, it's going to be a wood environment, totally different, what you would call warm."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:39:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYC art event: Performance artist makes balloons sing like birds, May 15

"Musicians play within an environment of rainforest and jungle sounds distilled from field recordings by ornithologist Mauricio Alvarez from a natural reserve in the Colombian Amazon."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:32:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Telematics and safety: do windshield speakers make cars safer?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:27:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 8, 2003

A (dangerous) primer on hardware hacking

This hands-on guide to hacking was cancelled by the original publisher, Wiley, out of fear of DMCA-related lawsuits. Now, "Hacking the Xbox" is brought to you directly by the author, a hacker named "bunnie". The book begins with a few step-by-step tutorials on hardware modifications that teaches basic hacking techniques as well as essential reverse engineering skills. The book progresses into a discussion of the Xbox security mechanisms and other advanced hacking topics, with an emphasis on educating the readers on the important subjects of computer security and reverse engineering. Hacking the Xbox includes numerous practical guides, such as where to get hacking gear, soldering techniques, debugging tips and an Xbox hardware reference guide.

"Hacking the Xbox" confronts the social and political issues facing today's hacker. The book introduces readers to the humans behind the hacks through several interviews with master hackers.

"Hacking the Xbox" looks forward and discusses the impact of today's legal challenges on legitimate reverse engineering activities. The book includes a chapter written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) about the rights and responsibilities of hackers, and concludes by discussing the latest trends and vulnerabilities in secure PC platforms.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:58:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great online environmental journalism

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:38:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF/ACLU Benefit, May 24, San Francisco

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:45:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Introduce yourself in Kiss Machine

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:39:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

24h of US air traffic

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:34:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aliens using crypto and galactic mixmasters?

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:28:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Henson's family buying back Muppets

Munich-based EM.TV bought the company, and the rights to characters such as Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, in February 2000 for $680 million in cash and stock. But in May 2001, it said it was considering selling the Los Angeles-based firm. It has since sold some Henson assets, including the ''Sesame Street'' rights, for about $200 million.

Yesterday, it said it was selling the rest of Henson for $78 million in cash and was keeping the $11 million that the Henson operation had on hand.

''The family has been watching on the sidelines, sadly watching as EM.TV collapsed and never even started the plan they were going to do, and then painfully watching as the company was put back on the market,'' Henson said yesterday in an interview. ''Both out of concern for where the company might end up and the legacy of Jim Henson ... we decided to come back in to run the company.''

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:26:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jim Carrey to star in Lemony Snicket movie

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:25:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Best Buy and MSFT ripping off the public with "free" MSN disks

Some time afterwards he discovered that money was being debited from his bank account. It was going to MSN. Best Buy had passed Kim's debit card details to the Microsoft division and it had activated an account for him.

Kim says that he never asked for that account, never used the disk and certainly didn't want it. But he has been unable to get a full refund and has reached the end of his tether. He is also concerned that many others could have been caught in this trap

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:21:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Potter 5 discovery leads to four arrests

Two 16-year-old boys, an 18-year-old man, and a 44-year-old man, were arrested in connection with the theft of the books from a printworks, and on suspicion of obtaining property by deception.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:19:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Europeans turning out in rheumatism-curing cat-blankets

Cat blankets, so the aficionados say, are good for rheumatism.

Dog pelts are often labelled misleadingly and sold as the fur of some exotic, even mythical beast.

Cat and dog fur also used in hats, gloves, shoes, blankets, stuffed animals and toys Dog fur sometimes labelled as: Gae-wolf, sobaki, Asian jackal, goupee, loup d'Asie, Corsac fox, dogues du Chine, or simply fake or exotic fur

Cat fur sometimes labelled as: house cat, wild cat, katzenfelle, rabbit, goyangi, mountain cat

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:18:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Love Hotels: theme parks for the nads

Love hotels always seem to end up costing more than you expect. There is usually a mysterious 10% 'service charge' and also 10% surcharges if you are staying on a Friday or Saturday night or national holiday as well as 5% sales tax. Count on the final price being about 25% more than what is listed on the room board if you are staying on a weekend and be careful to check whether you're paying by the hour or not. You can save a lot of money by getting a member's card (just make sure you have a different one for each of your girlfriends or boyfriends) or by staying on weekdays or in the afternoon. If you pick up a magazine like Date Pia, it will have a lot of information and pictures of various hotels and they also offer a selection of discount coupons (usually about 10%).

There are still a few hotels where a grey, liver-spotted hand reaches out through the curtains to take your money when you enter, but most hotels have gone high-tech and have automated the payment system. After you choose your room at the display board in the lobby (just push the button of the room you want) you'll be given a paper card with the room number on it. When you're ready to leave, you put this card in the slot of the control panel near the door and push the total button. Your room charges will be automatically added up and you put your money into another slot in the panel. At hotels using this system, you are often locked into your room until you pay.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:15:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Frog and Mouse: two design sensibilities that taste great together

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:12:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web makes writing better

Writing is dead, they say. The internet killed it: kids r writing SA n txt, grown-ups rely on spell checkers and stylish grammar is punished by green squiggly lines. In fact, listen to the critics and you would be forgiven for thinking the internet is not so much a cultural wasteland, but a vacuum - sucking the very essence of civility and art out of its users...

Readers are getting a good deal. But why is this? Cost, mostly. Until now, a free press has been anything but: paper, printing, binding and distribution all cost money that niche publications would never be able to find or recoup. But with the internet, one can be read almost anywhere on the planet, contributed to by strangers and influenced by writers who, only a few years ago, you would have never had the chance to hear of.

The unveiling of good writing is one thing, but how do you become a good writer in the first place? The internet helps out there, too. Writers' communities, where people offer advice, encouragement and read and review each other's work, are becoming very popular. Sites such as Zoetrope, the Short Story Group and, while offering no critique, sites such as ABCTales, will publish anyone who wants to show their work to the world.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:07:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Future of Music coalition open letter on media consolidation

We believe the record demonstrates both the value of existing media ownership rules and the dangers in permitting widespread consolidation of ownership. We also believe the FCC has been negligent in listening to important stakeholder groups, like musicians, recording artists and radio professionals, to ensure their testimony is on the record. The de facto boycott of field hearings by you and Commissioners Abernathy and Martin makes us question how interested some commissioners are in understanding the public's interest in these matters. Finally, a refusal to allow Congress and the public to view and debate your specific proposal would be a tremendous disservice to the American public and the citizens who depend on these media structures for their livelihoods.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:04:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tim North, artist, father, and beloved friend, passes away.

When I last saw Tim, he was sitting on the desert dirt in his back yard underneath a perfect Southern California sky, playing the drum, jamming with visiting musician pals. He was a talented, insighful artist, and a gentle soul, beloved by many others beyond the crowd who'd gathered to wish him well. He seemed most at home in the world when he was in his art, as he was that afternoon.

His sense of compassion was humbling and inspiring. The rich creative legacy that was his life will endure, as will the profound impression he left on many lives, including my own.

Tim, we love you, and we miss you.

Tim North "Hoverdrum" website, "Sauce of the Future" (a band he created with his wife Susan Maunu), WIRED story on recent SRL benefit for Tim (which current BoingBoing guestblogger Karen Marcelo co-produced), Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:15:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, May 7, 2003

Neat gallery of tabloid photos

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:02:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Six small Roger Wood clocks

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:17:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Oblique Strategies application for OS X

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:19:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LinkedIn: Friendster without the gonad-centrism

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:47:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kozinski -- a Federal judge with style

"The sheer ponderousness of the panel's opinion--the mountain of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen short words of constitutional text--refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel's labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting on it--and is just as likely to succeed."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:47:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copying iTunes streams

Jobs says that users are not being treated like criminals, but iTunes 4 assumes that if I want to share my tracks with more than three computers, if I want to copy streamed track, if I want to burn more than 10 CDs with a "protected" track, that I am doing so illegitimately. I know they need to strike a balance with their partners, but that doesn't mean I am going to just ignore these facts.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:47:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 6, 2003

Why is a raven like a writing-desk?

* Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes. (Puzzle maven Sam Loyd, 1914)
* Because Poe wrote on both. (Loyd again)
* Because there is a B in both and an N in neither. (Get it? Aldous Huxley, 1928)
* Because it slopes with a flap. (Cyril Pearson, undated)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:00:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Techdirt Wireless

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:50:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BSA fights piracy with condescending mascots!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:48:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nanotech's top geeks and suits

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:47:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I'm giving a keynote at the FreeNetworks conference in Vegas!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:46:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Danger may get PIM-sync, but they wanna charge for it

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:42:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mexican wrestler b-movie lobby-cards

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:38:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why Bennett is lying about being "pretty close to even"

Over the long run, of course, the house always wins, thanks to a mathematical principle known as the Law of Large Numbers. Simply put, the larger the number of plays, the more likely that the fixed probability will catch up with the player. Bennett may have had a lucky night here or there, but after untold thousands of spins, the fixed nature of the slots likely caught up with him: Bennett almost certainly lost between 2 percent and 10 percent of the millions he bet.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:48:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Analysis of Netflix's DVD Allocation System

Put it another way, if customer X and Y are both in the 5 disc out plan and X rented 14 discs vs. Y's 11 discs in the previous month, Y would have priority over X when they are both competing for the same movie. A side effect of this is that trial and new customers will have far fewer problems getting movies, especially new releases, versus the majority of established customers. Essentially these new and low cost customers can "cut in line" ahead of other customers.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:17:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snoop Doggy Blog

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:20:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spam-fighting and the First Amendment

1. I'm here because EFF was approached by a subscriber to a large e-mail list, Moveon.org, who was having trouble receiving wanted e-mails from them. I asked Moveon.org about this and learned that it is an ongoing problem for them. Since it is also an ongoing problem for EFF with our newsletter, the EFFector, I decided to conduct an informal survey by sending a note to the EFFector asking if any other nonprofit e-mail lists recipients or senders had experienced any problems. I received a large number of responses, including lists as large as Moveon.org's 2 million members to those as small as a Berkeley High School parents' list.

I concluded that when e-mail becomes unavailable as a tool for broad political organizing and informal mailing lists, we've broken something fundamental and it's time to try to fix it.

2. At the same time, I'm sympathetic to what many in the anti-spam movement are trying to do. Most of them care deeply about the health of the Internet and are sincerely trying to do the right thing. EFF is very supportive of tools that give users the ability to filter and control their mail. We're supportive of tools used by ISPs that don't tread into censorship. Personally I care about this issue too. Before joining EFF I sued a spammer and won a $65,000 settlement based upon California and federal false advertising, anti-hacking and unfair business practices law, so I am supportive of litigation where appropriate (BTW, the spammer paid every penny). It seems that many of the problems arise when a third party, be it your ISP or some entity used by your ISP, tries to determine which of your mail you want to receive and which you do not.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:48:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney's in more Pooh

A court has now ruled that the AA Milne heirs don't own Pooh, which makes Disney's case even weaker.

It's hard to know who to root for in this one. On the one hand, it seems clear that Disney bought the Pooh rights in good faith from the Milne heirs, who sold them in equally good faith. And of course, there's no telling how many other rights-assignments from Milne are still kicking around -- maybe it was Milne's idea of a party trick, and he tipped the babysitter with cocktail napkins signed "The bearer is the sole owner of merchandise rights to Tigger."

But at the same time, this confusion is largely the result of the near-perpetual duration of copyright, which Disney itself is largely responsible for. And then there's the matter of the 20 boxes of documentation related to the case that Disney "accidentally" shredded just before they were subpoenaed. Link Discuss (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Harry Potter 5 found discarded in UK field

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:30:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Libraries with free WiFi

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

BBC bringing Internet democracy to the UK

The BBC's purpose is twofold. On the one hand, the iCan site will help keep the broadcaster's ear to the ground. By mining the iCan website for leads, the BBC will be better able to respond to issues pertinent to its viewers, or so it hopes.

On the other hand, the effort is intended to counteract what officials at the broadcasting network feel is widespread political apathy in the United Kingdom, marked by low voter turnout at elections and declining audiences for its political programming. As a state-financed institution operating under a royal charter to inform, educate and entertain, the BBC feels it is within its purview to help disenfranchised citizens engage in public life.

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

Mannequin casemod

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:20:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sorry for the broken image tags -- someone's DDOSing xeni.net.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:09:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Memory Hole

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:46:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 5, 2003

QTVR panorama: a fisherman on Romania's Danube Delta

"Hi, Xeni -- today I have not one but seven fullscreen QTVRs for BoingBoing readers. Making ends Meet is a project by London-based photographer Douglas Cape and the Natural Resources Institute, in collaboration with BBC World Service. Part of it is featured as the fullscreen this week in a virtual tour of seven interlinked panoramas through which you can visit the house of the Gherasim family in Romania's Danube Delta region."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:15:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photo gallery from Japan: Dogs wearing ridiculous hats

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:47:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Palm makes a pocket PC. Graffiti-hataz, rejoice.

Part of the C's sex appeal is sheer speed. Wi-Fi delivers screaming downloads, 10 times faster than Palm's previous wireless service. It's harder to find places to get online, but once you do, clocking a steady 600 kilobits per second is no problem. Manipulating all that data can be a struggle, though. Palm's e-mail client is fine, but the browser is just OK. Web sites often appear onscreen in a confusing jumble of overlapping text and graphics -- even on pages that pass the World Wide Web Consortium's standards tests. Many pages are presented wider than the screen, requiring awkward back-and-forth scrolling to read them. You wouldn't give up your laptop, but for catching up on BoingBoing while out of the office, the Tungsten C works fine. You can use it to download AOL Instant Messenger and a zillion Palm apps through VersionTracker. WiFinder has tools for finding Wi-Fi hotspots as you travel.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:32:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Neal Pollack, dot com slut. Wait, make that *war* slut.

When I began having affairs the state of affairs was far different than it is today. I had my first affair in 1997 at the dawn of the height of dot-com mania. Sex was a nebulous commodity to be had between deals, mostly in red-eye restrooms somewhere above Kansas City. I recall one affair conducted largely in Soho during which my paramour, while servicing me brilliantly, never stopped carrying on a conversation with her HTML programmer. Later that day, another woman agreed to sleep with me only after I secured her venture capital, while her personal video game designer liked three-ways with the Kozmo.com delivery person who brought us the condoms. Those were raw, sleepless days and nights, and eventually I turned to lonely housewives, the last refuge of the desperate and horny.

But as the market crashed and continues to crash, and the War On Terror manifests daily as both terror and war, affairs get easier and easier. In the week following September 11, alone, I started ten affairs all of which continue today, growing more and more intense with each successive announcement of a blanket terrorist threat. This war is just the crisis I've been waiting for!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:24:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bill Bennett gambling losses reach $8 million

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:51:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Guestblogger: Karen Marcelo, teleobliteration engineer and code diva

I'm very pleased to welcome her to BoingBoing now as our new guestblogger. When she's not coding wireless deathbots with Mark Pauline and the SRL crew, Karen's working on other cool projects. Earlier this year, she completed a three-dimensional, autonomously conversing Prosthetic Head for performance artist Stelarc. She also runs dorkbotSF, a Bay Area tech culture event series for "people who do strange things with electricity." Previously, she served as research staff member in the Distributed Systems Group of CSL at Xerox PARC, and her software engineering projects have earned industry accolades including recognition at the international Ars Electronica festival.

Recently, the SF Bay Guardian named her one of the Bay Area's Ten Sexiest People, because "As every red-blooded San Franciscan knows, there's nothing hotter than a woman who says, 'I like to blow shit up.'" She's the kind of woman who shows up to a 2AM junkyard machine war toting rocket fuel and Chanel no. 5 in the same purse. She's equal shots glam and raw power. Pure punk rock. Poetry in code. Living proof that fembots have already infiltrated our planet -- and that we're better off for it.

And as the guestbar torch is passed, we express special gratitude to first-time blogger Jim Griffin, whose terrific contributions to the guestbar included wireless blog-posts from Antarctica, Finland, and Austria. Thanks in part to the enthusiastic reader response he received here, Jim has decided to launch a blog of his own in the coming months at his 62chevy.com site. Many thanks, Jim. BoingBoing will miss you. See you soon in the blogosphere.
Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:24:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tomorrow's Cuisinarts

Cukit Kit Cart
Karen Scanlan, Dale Wunderlich, Lucas McCann, Iteem Yiting Hu and SuDong Cho, Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago To maximize space in tiny apartment kitchens, the designers went in the only direction possible: up. This high-tech rolling cart expands like a Swiss Army knife and is filled with swing-out units -- some refrigerated and some heated -- to hold ingredients and tools. Swing-out cutting boards and heating pads put everything within easy reach of the stove. The coup de grace? The computer screen on top, which you can use to display Iron Chef videos while you cook.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:49:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Expanding pills -- non-surgical stomach-stapling

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:43:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Was the Baghdad museum looted?

I don't know what to make of the report. The library and administrative offices were destroyed, right? So how are they able to take an accurate inventory? Link Discuss (Thanks, Dwight!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:39:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, May 3, 2003

Plants as architecture

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:29:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 2, 2003

Web app transforms blogs into poetry

The dopey sedative hangovers, and no children
this is for kids
iced pimp cups/fire girl fairies/not thinking anything/
violently vibrating vicissitudes/peep show stories/
XXX to Xeni
the work featuring sexy chicks andepic interludes, was is
Stuart Hughes. A breast.
He comparedthe feel of little women currently, looking for Anthrophophagy. currently, looking he described the next big thing for buying the Real Marquis De Sade
Doc Searls will be hosting a wild romp through various
childdeaths via the amputee devotee scene.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:16:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Roger Wood's latest clock

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:58:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Alan Kay presentation vids

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:11:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New iPods have hidden recording mode

Well, we couldn't wait so we went to the local Best Buy and picked up a new Gen 2 15GB. It's going to be taken apart soon, but we first ran Diagnostic Mode on it. It has a recording feature! There is also a test for LINEIN that does recording too. We don't have a mic to test with it at the moment but after "recording" when we listen to the headphones we hear the sound of nothing recorded (you know what we mean right?)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:10:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friendster: the addiction

That first weekend I literally locked myself in my room, sleepless and without eating. It was raining hard outside and I was hooked into this network. The stuff is hitting me like crack, fully addictive and I'm going psychotic. I must learn this thing, figure it out, understand its magic, fully understand all the people on it, more more more more more. I start messing around with my profile page constantly. All of a sudden my profile says "occupation: fiendster." For every prompt, I put in something fiendster. For favorite books, its 'Fiendster for Dummies.' Favorite TV Show: 'Fiendster, the Reality Show.' For interests, well, naturally, I put 'Fiendster.' Late into the weekend, sleepless and unfed, I had a headache. My eyes stung. My shoulders and neck burned. Back stiff. My feet and legs were always falling asleep. My butt ached from the chair. I kept on surfing.(...)

The first week I'm on, the site adds 15,000 users. Its a year old and I was user 83,000 or so. Do the math. This place is on fire and growing out of control. Started by Silicon Valley VC dorks before 9/11 and weakly launched to little fanfare in early 2002, it went largely unnoticed until it hit pockets of extremely wired young socialites- club kids, ravers, goths, burning man freaks and so on in early 2003. I figure out that the site had doubled in users in its past month. Wow, this is a scene. There is no revenue stream at all and the site is still in beta.

I'd settled into this bizarre new mode encouraged by my Friendster addiction, an unlikely trinity of Narcissism, Sycophancy and Voyeurism.... On the narcissistic front, I was a changed man. Rereading my own profile page, and refilling out the forms over and over again, I was seeing myself from every possible angle. I was getting a new testimonial from someone every day, some kind of random glowing praise that warmly fuels your ego. I was rereading my growing collection of these constantly. I cycled through almost every flattering photo I had of myself on my page. I planned to buy and quickly acquired a cheap digital camera to take Friendster pictures with. I started shaving regularly to look good in the pictures. I was learning what angles I photographed better in. I took more photographs of myself in one week than had ever been taken in any week of my entire life.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:15:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Notorious M.S.S.: Iraqi Information Minister to be remixed?

"It is set to be massive," one of the track's backers Les Molloy told The Sun newspaper on Friday. "There has already been a lot of interest from record stations and club DJs."

With his trademark beret and sly smile, Sahaf astonished Western television viewers by appearing each day behind a sea of microphones often to deny events viewers could see on their television screens. He regularly berated British and American troops as "infidels" and vowed "God will roast their stomachs in hell."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:11:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"America 24/7" digital photo contest wants your web-submitted entries

What does it mean to be American? What do we believe in? How are we perceived by the world? Does Hollywood tell your story? The media? The government? Here's a chance to tell your own story with digital photos...[this] all-digital event that will capture extraordinary pictures of an ordinary American week....Until now, only top pros could participate in Smolan/Cohen projects - and 1,000 of the best will shoot for America 24/7. But America 24/7 also offers amateurs and pros across America the opportunity to take digital photos and easily submit them via this website.

Your photos will be judged by photography directors from America's top magazines and newspapers. And 10,000 of the best images will be published in 53 large-format volumes by DK, known worldwide for its distinctive, highly visual books.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:51:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

QTVR Panorama: inside the museum of lost creatures.

Hi Xeni -- last week I had the rare opportunity to shoot a panorama inside a museum diorama animal display filled with stuffed animals large and small. These kinds of displays are becoming increasingly appreciated as valuable records of disappearing species. The tapir visible at the back of the elephant -for example - is now an extinct endangered species. And BTW, there was an interesting NYTimes article on these kinds of displays recently -- "Rescuing the diorama from the fate of the dodo".

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:40:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photo of the day, from Hollywood.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:29:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Pet Zen

(1) sme cam
(2) heads in bags
(3) cat
(4) dog
(5) squirrel
(6) sleepy kittens

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:24:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot Hall of Fame announced at Carnegie Mellon University

Inductees to the hall will be selected by a 10-member jury that includes noted roboticist Rodney Brooks, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, author of "2001: A Space Odyssey." [CMU Computer Science Dean James] Morris expects two to five robots will be inducted each year, including real robots that do actual work or research as well as fictional robots that have fired the public's imagination. The jury is still discussing the criteria, but some robots would seem to be shoo-ins.

"Arthur C. Clarke has mentioned HAL twice now," Morris noted, referring to the HAL 9000 computer that controlled a robotic spaceship and ultimately turned villainous in "2001." CMU could nominate a few of its own, such as the NavLab series of automated vehicles; Dante II, the walking robot that explored the inside of an active volcano; and Rover, the robot that retrieved sediment samples from the crippled Three Mile Island reactor. NASA's Sojourner robot, which captivated an international audience when it explored Mars in 1997, is another likely nominee, as could be any number of robotic spacecraft, such as the Voyagers.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:05:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yesterday's Tomorrows

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:52:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 1, 2003

'Bling Bling' May Be Added To Oxford English Dictionary

The next time you and your pals coin a slang term to describe your latest bejeweled accessories, don't bet on keeping it exclusive. The linguistics "gangstas" over at the Oxford English Dictionary aren't "new jacks" to the latest "def" lingo. The venerable definitions resource has already added other hip-hop-turned-mainstream terms like "jiggy," "breakbeat," "dope" and "phat" to the online updates of the 20-volume dictionary, and now it has started drafting an entry for the latest OED-approved term, "bling bling."

The term, which is used to describe diamonds, jewelry and all forms of showy style, was coined by New Orleans rap family Cash Money Millionaires back in the late '90s and started gaining national awareness with a