The stink emanating from the storm sewers has plagued the area around the Fremont Street pedestrian mall for a decade, and every time the city has thrown time, effort and deodorizer at the problem, the "sewer-type" aroma has just returned.

On Wednesday, City Council is to consider a $100,000 US consulting contract aimed at finding the source of the olfactory offence.

A tiny closed-circuit television system would be used to examine the downtown storm drains, smoke would be pumped into the system to identify outlets and dye would be used to follow water flows.

We're looking for several different types of programming. On the Geek side we have "Heavy technical", which includes topics like programming, system administration, and security, and "Light technical", which is about using computers rather than programming them (Digital art, electronic publishing, online communities, Linux on the Desktop, Open source in business, video games, etc). On the Fandom side, our main themes this year include literary topics (for authors, editors, publishers, and readers), Anime (and Manga), gaming, costuming... There are also "crossover" topics (like online comics and computer animation) that appeal to both sides.

It is past due that Dr. Rosalind Franklin received credit for actually being the scientist who demonstrated the helical nature of DNA. Her crystallography was crucial to the subsequent elucidation of DNA structure and replication. Her research was used without her knowledge or permission.

Update: Alex sez: "According to the NY Times there were no hard feelings between her and her colleagues."

One of the problems caused by the book was Dr. Watson's implication that the pair of them had obtained Dr. Franklin's data on DNA surreptitiously and hence had deprived her of due credit for the DNA discovery. Dr. Crick believed he obtained the data fairly since she had presented it at a public lecture, to which he had been invited. Though Dr. Watson had misreported a vital figure from the lecture, a correct version reached Dr. Crick through the Medical Research Council report. If Dr. Franklin felt Dr. Crick had treated her unfairly, she never gave any sign of it. She became friends with both Dr. Crick and Dr. Watson, and spent her last remission from cancer in Dr. Crick's house.

Dr. Franklin likely would have shared the Nobel Prize had she not died from cancer in 1958, the prize was not awarded till 1962. Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously.

UPDATE Jeremy sez: The "Syd Mead-like golfing station" is actually a helicopter pad attached to the Burj al Arab, a luxury hotel. Tiger Woods was invited to hit balls into the Gulf as a publicity stunt. It's not the opening shot of the world's most difficult hole. See this Sports Illustrated article for more details.

"Evolution is cleverer than you are." -Francis Crick

Update: A number of BB readers who are non-LAT-subscribers have written in to say that the "unclenched" content is "re-clenched," and that they can't access without paid subscription. Others have written in to say that registration, but not paid subscription, is still required. This could be a temporary tech glitch, but I'm still confused, and so are the rest of the LAT's online readers, so AFAIK it's still broken. Why do some publications insist on getting in the way of readers who just want to read basic content like this? I'll be looking for that new Koreatown barbecue/karaoke hotspot on their mercifully reg- and sub-free competitor LA.com.

"Ultrasonic alarm calls might be beneficial because many of the birds-of-prey that catch and eat squirrels cannot hear them. Conveniently, ultrasound also has a shorter range than audible sound.

'It may be used to secretly warn others without alerting a more distant predator,' says (researcher David) Wilson.

Microsoft is developing what it calls Bonded Sender, a program that would supposedly separate "legitimate" Internet marketers and bulk mailers from spammers. Working with a California company called IronPort, Microsoft will create a white list of Internet marketers who have paid a fee and demonstrated that they have no record of spamming. Companies participating in the Bonded Sender program will be allowed to send their email ads to HotMail and MSN users.

Given Microsoft's investment in the Bonded Sender program, it seems they may soon be in the business of serving as middlemen between emailer marketers and their webmail users. In other words, it sounds like the software megacorp is about to start competing with Richter. Of course, Microsoft could always call off its suit if Richter claims to have been rehabilitated -- and he pays his Bonded Sender fees!

In the spam wars, sometimes it's hard to tell the spammers from the antispammers.

The situation gets even more complicated when you consider the fact that Microsoft will do more than pick and choose winners in the junk email business. Bonded Sender will punish most the people who aren't even sending advertisements -- groups like Internet activists MoveOn.org, who send out millions of emails to alert their members to upcoming political events and issues. If these groups don't pay their Bonded Sender fees, HotMail simply won't deliver their email -- regardless of whether users have specifically opted in to receive it.

“Sequencing the whole genome has revealed that the bacterium can actively degrade human skin tissue because of the massive presence of these enzymes, and also that there are specific immunogenic proteins which are present in this bacterium which trigger the immune response,” Brüggemann told New Scientist....

Severe acne is usually treated with common antibiotics, but many strains are becoming resistant to these. “With the genome sequence it’s now quite easy to generate specific drugs against this bacterium,” says Brüggemann. “That’s the next task.”

Update: Daniel Klein sez, "The picture is of a fixed-head disk, very similar to a Borroughs unit I had the pleasure of disassembling (in 1975) after a catastrophic head crash (I got authorization from Gordon Bell himself to do it). It took me 3 days to whittle it down to nuts and bolts, and the platter weighed 18 pounds. The hub upon which the platter was mounted was phosphor bronze, and weighed an additional 17 pounds. So imagine the inertia of 35 pounds spinning at 3600 RPM. It had electric brakes, because if you just switched off the power, it would spin for a loooong time. There is an (apocryphal) story of movers just hitting the circuit breaker (not the off switch that engaged the brakes), and after waiting the requisite 5 minutes for spindown, loaded the drive into a truck. All the moves and hallways were right angles, of course. Since brakes had not been engaged, it was still spinning at 2000 RPM or so by the time it was loaded. When the truck turned a corner, the drive precessed right out through the side of the truck. It held a few megabytes at most, if I recall correctly (a similar unit was used as a swap disk on the PDP-10, so it would have held 256K or so). "

I'd like to take a moment to recognise Boing Boing's volunteer sysadmin, the incomparable Mr Ken Snider, whose indispensible work is the reason that Boing Boing has such killer availability and uptime.

I'd also like to thank Chris Smith, who runs our submit-a-link form, instituting countermeasures against formspammers and catching the bounces.

Also due for appreciation is Carl Steadman, the long-time host of Boing Boing, whose donated services and connectivity made this all possible.

Finally, my appreciation to the sysadmins at EFF, past and present: Matt Peterson, Chris Palmer, Marc Perkel, Christopher Davis and Dan Brown. Thanks for keeping the Internet working (oh, and lest I forget, the OpenCola sysadmins: Helen, Michael, Karl, and Ken [again!]). Link

If you record a cover version of a song, (meaning your performance of a song that has been released in the U.S. with consent of the copyright owner), you are entitled by law to release your recording commercially, and the owner of the copyright to the song cannot prevent you from doing so.

The Copyright Act provides for what is called a "Compulsory License", which means that if you follow the steps set forth by statute, you can distribute your recording of that song on a CD or over the internet.

The following details the procedure for individuals to obtain a compulsory license to digitally distribute cover songs over the Internet to end users in the United States.

The ISART technical program committee is soliciting papers for the 7th annual International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies (ISART) to be held in Boulder, Colorado March 1-3, 2005. These papers will discuss new technologies, research and development, innovative ideas, enabling technologies, standards, protocols, business practices and policies, and government regulation for the purpose of forecasting the future development and application of radio frequency technologies into the next decade.

Today I also had a very unpleasant phone call from a lawyer working with Katie Tarbox, the author of the book. She tried to convince me that I should donate the domain name to them. Somehow this would resolve my problem. OK so not only do I get walked all over, my life invaded by this book, treated badly by the publisher/author who refuse to acknowledge that they've done the wrong thing, but then I get to hand it over to them on a silver plate and I not only have suffered all this aggravation but ultimately have lost the thing that I care about. Exactly HOW does this resolve anything other than give them the thing they want which they have done everything to hijack without any care and consideration for what is right and just?

Secondly, she tells me that they're planning on launching some school curriculum thing to teach kids about online safety - and they're calling it Katie.com. Are they insane? No wonder they want me to hand it over.

Download a copy of the hearings for yourself, participate in the democratic process, and in so doing, prove that their conclusions were utterly bogus. Torrent Link

"Incidentally, the translation of the London map into German was part of a project that started with a translation of the underground map of Vienna, Austria into English, which might be of more entertainment value as most of your readers can actually read it. Link (Thanks, Horst!)

Make will have 5-minute tips you can use to improve your gadgets, networks, and computers, as well as much longer projects that might take several days (or weeks) to complete. The first issue is coming out in January. If you're interested, visit the web site and sign up for the newsletter. I'll also be running the Make blog on that page. I hope that a lot of BB readers become Make contributors, too. Please send me your ideas for hacks, tips, tricks, workarounds, neat things to build, useful tools, etc. Link

And if I'm not mistaken, John Kerry's mid-speech invitation to voters moments ago to go online for platform details was the first time in America's history that any presidential candidate plugged a campaign website during his acceptance speech. Snip:

"I've told you about our plans for the economy, for education, for health care, for energy independence. I want you to know more about them. So now I'm going to say something that Franklin Roosevelt could never have said in his acceptance speech: go to johnkerry.com."

Their usefulness depends on your needs and networking style. LinkedIn, for example allows you to search histories and CVs in your network -- it's great for finding people who work in a particular company, or who have worked with someone you know. It's also an interesting way to find references for people or companies you're getting to know.

I think email is broken in a serious way, and SNS is trying to address some of the issues associated with that breakdown. These networks may get it right and really change the way we do business, but we're still at the beginning of the development and evolution curve.

I want to build site that will link up average joe web and graphic designer, database guy and anyone else that can help with Peace Corps volunteers around the world. We do some partnering in Peace Corps but we don't tap the huge potential that exists with folks at home. We need to do this. It will help get more done in the tiny timeframe that we are here in country.

You should be aware that copyright in a work is infringed by a person, who, without the licence or consent of the copyright owner, does or authorises another to do any of the acts restricted by the copyright.

We are therefore writing to you to request that you remove or block access to the website identified above. This may be accomplished most effectively by blocking access to the particular URL listed above.

So we looked on with enthusiasm at the new pressurized personal coffee makers. They push hot water through a sealed “pod” filled with a precise measure of coffee. It was neat, slick, well-designed, and promised a strong, good, dependable dose. It’s the same technology that supplies those surprisingly good coffee available from coin machines in public spaces in Europe.

After a half-hour of debating the pros and cons of such a radical “format shift,” we left without one of these cool new machines. We opted out because these specialized “pods” are essentially “tethered” to this brand of coffee maker.

What if we hate the coffee that the company supplies for the maker? What if the company goes out of business? What if they raise the prices of pods? We would no longer order pounds of unpadded coffee from Peet’s in Berkeley or run across the street to the deli for an emergency brick of cheap coffee. And my favorite New York coffee supplier, Oren’s on Waverly Place, would no longer get my business.

* Traffic monitoring technology to ease the gridlock
* Nanoscience for energy applications
* New materials for safer nuclear reactors

What makes this particular piece of string so special is, in part, the fact that it has traveled to Israel, to the ancient tomb of Rachel the Matriarch, and returned, imbued with the essence of protection... The string draws upon the connection to and awareness of Rachel and must be tied on by a loved one and sealed with Rachel's protective energy by reciting the Ben Porat prayer (included on a card).

"No muzzle, no tail. Just boing, boing, boing."

"This chair, constructed of oak and with foot pedals and straps, was essentially a forerunner of our exercise bycycles, but the manufacturer in the late Victorian era claimed marvelous benefits if this chair was used with electrical currents and mild shock."

"In this case, the American Civil Liberties Union ('ACLU') invites us to add a new right to the current catalogue of fundamental rights under the Constitution: a right to sexual privacy. It further asks us to declare Alabama's statute prohibiting the sale of 'sex toys' to be an impermissible burden on this right. Alabama responds that the statute exercises a time-honored use of state police power -- restricting the sale of sex. We are compelled to agree with Alabama and must decline the ACLU's invitation. (...)

"Alabama's Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act prohibits, among other things, the commercial distribution of 'any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs for any thing of pecuniary value.'"

Update: Fleshbot has just issued this fatwa playful tease to readers who oppose the Alabama ban:

three $50 gift certificates from Eros Boutique to the three readers who come up with the best sex-toy related protest items, either by way of a vibemod prototype or Photoshopped creation. Confederate Flag Ticklers? Birmingham Ben-Wa Balls? Crimson Tide Cock Rings? Send your ideas and photos here.

In your July 23 letter, you contend that "This Land" offers no "satirical comment" on the Guthrie original. You are mistaken.

While your view of Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" as being predominantly about "the beauty of the American landscape" and "the disenfranchisement of the underclass" is interesting, most Americans think of the song as an iconic expression of the ideal of national unity. Jib Jab's parody addresses, among other things, the lack of national unity that characterizes our current political climate (ending with the optimistic hope that unity might be rediscovered). In short, "This Land" explores exactly the same themes as the Guthrie original, using the parodic device of contrast and juxtaposition to comment on the original. See Abilene Music v. Sony Music Entertainment, 320 F .Supp.2d 84, 90-91 (S.D.N.Y. 2003) (emphasizing the role of contrast and juxtaposition as parodic devices). The parodic comment takes on an additional dimension of irony when viewed in light of the often omitted closing stanzas of Guthrie's original.

Update: Turns out that Woody got the melody from the Carter Family

When CERT and other security agencies said to stop using IE, I wasn't too concerned as I use Firefox. However, it was quickly brought to my attention that due to shell calls and all Microsoft products being able to ignore your default browser, this still made your system vulnerable through IE. So I took the long painful journey of finding a simple way to remove IE.

Now, I'm getting emails from tons of satisfied people who have followed my instructions and have even their default Microsoft aps (including Windows update) using whatever browser they told it to. Even Microsoft has called me to see how I did it. Unfortunately, they blatantly told me that they won't be including it in their knowledge base 'for obvious reasons'.

Blogging will not replace traditional journalism, but it presents a threat to the normative press culture and an opportunity for radical reporting. Bloggers do place the issue of professionalism under attack, not by being unprofessional, but by exposing the ways in which the media operates. As blogging reaches the masses, people are introduced to information that was not reported because it did not suit the party line. Bloggers will happily document the power games that they witness in the press room and will expose future Jayson Blairs. Bloggers also capture information that the mainstream press does not yet realize is valuable, which means that ambitious and digitally minded journalists are constantly scanning the blogs for information. More and more, journalists are thanking bloggers for new slants. The competition between journalists and bloggers for readers' attention results in more diverse and compelling coverage.

Guthrie may be right that Pete Seeger was the first to coin the term "folk process", but the process of oral song-transmission through through variation and selection was being analyzed even before Pete Seeger's birth in 1919. And the process itself has been operating as long as there have been songs. The folk process was described, though not so named, by Cecil Sharp in 1907: "[Development of a folk song] involves the three principles of continuity, variation, and selection."

Stumbling into the Perl Lightning Talks now. Randal Schwartz (looks like Randal. Certainly wearing Randal-like clothes. He's the Hooter's guy, right? I always get him and Tom Phoenix confused. Okay, definitely Randal.) Anyway, he's written a CGI replacement that uses Class::Prototype to create a proper MVC-style object interface for Web applications. The stub class implements a default Web app, and you just stick in your own methods which customise it. I wonder if this is how WebObjects works? They worked out how to structure it by looking at oodles of existing CGI apps.

I don't know what the name of this class is (for I am an idiot), but it'lll be out on CPAN soonest. Look for the Hooters guy.

Take DRM. The author asserts on the one hand that DRM can work, and that it won't be so invasive that it turns off readers (whom the author insists on calling "consumers," an odious buzzword that invokes Gibson's description in Idoru, "...a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed").

This despite the actual marketplace fact that all DRM becomes invasive (ask any copyright policy maker in a country that allows parallel importing how he feels about the "lightweight" region-coding DRM on DVDs that reverses the laws he was elected to enact).

This despite the actual marketplace fact that DRM is generally broken within a few days of engagement with the public, often by teenagers, grad students, or people with ready acccess to sophisticated DRM-cracking tools like Google and the sinister Shift key (for more on DRM, see my DRM talk)

But the author goes further and asserts that without DRM, there will be no market for entertainment product ever again ("If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period.") despite the fact that the software industry got bigger when it abandoned DRM, and despite the fact that no new medium has ever succeeded by appealing to the virtues of the medium before it (there're very few ideas more goofy than the idea that people will start buying ebooks just as soon as they have fewer features and more restrictions, provided that the ebooks can be played back on special-purpose devices with sharp screens). He cites Sony as proof of this ("Sony may be nuts, but they're not that nuts."), despite the fact that Sony was forced out of the walkman market by its failure to deliver the DRM-free devices that its customers demanded. Yes, Sony is that nuts.

He doesn't even touch on the marketplace experience of every published writer who's tried giving away DRM-free ebooks -- me, Lessig, Jim Munroe, the Baen authors, Orson Scott Card -- universally, the experience is that we sell more books (Lessig's latest just went into its third hardcover printing, for chrissakes). This of course echoes the experiences from elsewhere: the movie studios' box office revenues appear to be increasing as a function of the amount of movies being shared on P2P nets and the only empirical study of music downloading and music sales concluded that the effect was usually negligible, rarely negative, and sometimes positive.

He does, however, take time out to snidely dismiss blanket licensing schemes -- like the ones that enable cable television, radio, photocopying, exam papers, live performance, covers, lending, coursepacks, jukeboxes, rentals, etc etc etc all over the world -- as a kind of pipe dream ("When the visionary of all visionaries develops a model for all-you-can-eat media consumption that provides for the artists to actually eat, perhaps I'll change my mind; until then, we are what we are, and we'll have to play nice within the confines of the present system.") despite the fact that these systems have been employed to universal good effect whenever new technology makes exclusion too costly to work effectively. It's like he's totally missed the fact that billions of dollars go right into the pockets of creators and rights-holders through these schemes.

Bizarrely, he asserts that people might buy periodicals that expire off their players in 60 days -- despite the fact that every one of us has a friend or relative with a giant stack of old computer mags, or National Geographics, or colorful Wireds, sitting on a shelf.

Really, it's as though he sat down and called an ebook startup's PR guy, then reasoned out all of his conclusions a priori, without reference to any of the activity in the field.

I believe fiercely and passionately in ebooks -- that's why I give talks like this one -- but articles like this do nothing to advance the discussion. They're echoes of the dotcom snakeoil that dominated the ebook discussion five or ten years ago, and it's a disappointment to see this kind of editorial-in-defiance-of-facts on a hip net-zine like Gizmodo. Link

One thing is certain: IANALDU (I am not a love doll user), but even more tempting than the off-the-shelf model would be a haxxored version. She could speak everything from Shakespeare to software user manuals, for the man with the right set of tools. And, no, I actually mean tools. Dollmodding, anyone?
Link to Fleshbot post. Figure out a way to install Elizabot on the damn thing for extra credit.

BoingBoing noted yesterday that JibJab, the creators of the hilarious Bush/Kerry/Guthrie parody were facing threat of a copyright lawsuit by the current copyright holders for "This Land is Your Land." Now, the Home Recording Rights Coalition has issued a press release pointing out that when the television news broadcasts promoted the flash animation they were likely "inducing" people to violate copyright, assuming that the animation isn't fair use. Under the INDUCE Act, that could make the broadcasters liable for literally millions of copyright violations. Heh.

Cassidy Curtis sez: "I hate to break it to your readers, but that piece of playground equipment is not really a Moebius strip. It has two twists, not one, which means it's an orientable surface (having two unique sides), topologically equivalent to an ordinary circular strip. A kid on one side of the strip could crawl around forever and not meet any kids on the other side. Real Moebius strips have an odd number of twists, and thus have only one side."

Kevin McCarty sez:That's not quite right either. A two-twist strip is not topologically equivalent to a no-twist strip, nor to a one-twist strip (the Moebius strip). They're all topologically inequivalent. The two circular edges of the 2-twist strip are linked, while with the 0-twist strip they're not. For all integers n, the n-twist strips are inequivalent to each other. The ones with even number of twists are orientable with two circular edges with varying linking number, and the odd-numbered twists are non-orientable with a single circular edge that links (knots) itself a varying number of times. Welcome to the wonderful world of homotopy equivalence classes.

Tim sez: I should add that Kevin McCarty's comment is only true for strips nested in euclidean space. Without such an embedding, there's no way to distinguish strips differing in an even number of twists. See: on homotopy, where the space Y is in fact euclidean 3-space. Without such a reference space we can only say whether our strips are homeomorphic or not, which they indeed are whenever they differ in an even number of twists.

I believe that any confusion here originates from the use of homotopy in knot theory where an ignorance of the space in which the knot is embedded would result in every knot being equivalent to the trivial knot.

Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near. The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.

This is even worse than it seems. The notion of an audit trail in this case is ludicrous to begin with. Even with a digital backup there's still no way you can trust that the votes cast were the votes recorded. That's the big problem with touch-screen voting machines that lack a voter-verifiable paper trail -- paper that can be used to check the machines' accuracy and be the actual ballot in a recount. And this is only the latest strange incident in Florida's sordid elections record. You have to conclude that the people running elections in Florida are buffoons at best. At worst? The thought is frightening.

Kate says: "Texting is quick and has [largely] replaced the act of sending a card -- Happy Birthday images for example. If something is stitched by hand by the message sender, there is a lot of emotion attached... someone has stitched feelings there, using up much time and patience. Texting is flippant... however we may be more likely to send texts to people who we may not send cards to! There are other ideas within the work about the role of the female image in technology and the correlation between pixel art and traditional cross-stitch."
Link to Kate's "endfile" geek-art website.

I'm watching CNN's Headline News, and they run a story on security preparations for this week's Democratic Convention in Boston. They go on, at great length, about the extensive network of cameras--approximately 75 of them, scattered around various Federal buildings and convention sites--and make it a point to illustrate how the security force, with their wireless networks and handheld devices, can grab the feed from any of these cameras at the tap of a stylus.

So, they show one such device - with it's 802.11b card clearly identifiable - and show another agent viewing a webcam of the Boston Harbor shoreline - with the URL of the hosting site clearly readable. When talking about the cameras, they show several different cameras on different buildings, some of which seem fairly unusual in their architecture.

I now know that they're using 802.11b, and I know the name at least one system handling the webcam feeds, and (with a bit of reconaissance) I can probably determine the position of at least one camera. So much for cybersecurity; I can't believe that the Feds even let that stuff on the air, much less that they did so without obfuscating critical information. *sigh* What were they thinking?

"Each robot is assembled, ages through youth, comes into a reproductive stage, and eventually dies of fatigue. If a robot is lucky enough to find a mate during it's reproductive stage, baby robots may be assembled.

Visually, the Offspring image is a historic graph of robot colony size and distribution. Males of the population are represented by single horizontal lines while Females are shown as double lines. (...) Robots can only mate with robots near them in both space in age. To encourage dissimilar permutations, robots are not allowed to mate with siblings."

Update: BoingBoing reader Prion adds, "I was marveling at the mating robots and had in my mind that the work was similar to the magic found at levitated.net. Looking at the credits in the source code I discovered that flash master j.tarbell was the author, one of the levitated.net contributors. For glorious nonlinear flash animation, visit the site."

Update 2: BoingBoing reader David says, "The code for the robot pair-bonding is written using Processing, a Java-based language and environment. It's a fun system, with instant gratification."

And BoingBoing reader Darren says, "When i saw this i was reminded of a current exhibition on in the modern art museum kiasma. its by a scottish artist charles sandison. he used something similar in that he had words "food" "man "woman" "child" "mother" "father" "old" and they all interacted with each other. the "man" would go to get "food" the children and mothers and woman would stay huddled together in the "village" area. groups of men would go and fight each other now and then. fascinating stuff. More info about the artist here. "living rooms" is the name of the exhibtion in kiasma.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin ruled Monday that Cablevision, which provides broadband Internet access in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, can be required to divulge the identities of its subscribers sued over copyright violations.

This ruling is the latest decision to clarify what legal methods copyright holders may use when hunting down people who are trading files on peer-to-peer networks. Courts have spent the last few years grappling with how to reconcile Americans' right to be anonymous with the entertainment industry's own right to sue people who violate copyright law. Chin, in Manhattan, said that the implicit guarantee of anonymity in the Bill of Rights is an insufficient shield in this case: "Such a person's identity is not protected from disclosure by the First Amendment."

The protesters are also coordinating actions outside the free-speech zone by sending text messages on their wireless phones. Some protesters for a short time Monday converted the zone into a mock prison camp by donning hoods and marching in the cage with their hands behind their backs. The protest zone, which most people here simply call "the cage," is beneath an elevated section of disused subway tracks near a newly paved bus parking lot.

Activists say the zone resembles the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The zone, surrounded by two layers of chain link fences mounted on Jersey barriers, draped with black mesh and topped with razor wire, violates the protesters' free-speech rights, said a legal observer for the Boston chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

"You can't have free speech inside a prison," said the observer, Tony Naro, a recent college graduate who plans to start law school this fall.

WORD                   Sound Of           Source

AAAAGH! EEEEEOOOW ACK! Removal Of A Deep  MAD #66, October 
UGH UGH MMP AGH! AEEK  Rooted Tooth       1961, Page 20

AAAK AAK               Busy City People   MAD #164, 
                       Coughing           Jan 1974, Page 33
                                                        
AAEEFWOFAAEE           One Of Tarzan's    MAD #245 
                       Special Animal     March 1984 Page 42
                       Calls
                        
AAGH                   Indians Getting    MAD #121 September 
                       Shot               1968, Page 15
                                                        
AAHT AAHHT BLOOOOT     Busy City Horns    MAD #164, Jan 
                                          1974, Page 33
                                                        
ACK                    Indians Getting    MAD #121 September
                       Shot               1968, Page 15
                                                        
ACK                    Man choking        MAD #268 January 
                                          1987 Page 42

The event kicks off at the London School of Economics Student Union at 6:30PM, near the Aldwych and Holborn tube. The entrance to the Quad is through the Claire Market Building (Building C) on the right of Houghton Street (Directions, Map)

On July 28th 2004, Privacy International will stage the 6th annual UK Big Brother Awards to recognise the people and organisations that have done the most to devastate privacy & civil liberties in the UK.

Now an annual event in seventeen countries, Privacy International's Big Brother Awards bring together a rich and unique mix of all ideologies and backgrounds. This year, for the first time, the award night will be open to the general public. A space for a thousand people has been reserved at the London School of Economics, which is hosting the event on the night.

Once applied, the material will degrade or impair the adversary's ability to move. For Interior applications it can be applied to flat, smooth, non-porous surfaces such as linoleum, tile, wood floors or staircases. Exterior applications include sloped, rough, porous surfaces such as concrete, asphalt, and grassy areas.

10 Worst Casting Choices
10. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine
9. Dolph Lungren as Punisher
8. Ben Affleck as Daredevil
7. Matt Salinger as Captain America
6. Tommy Lee Jones as Two Face
5. Shaq as Steel
4. Val Kilmer as Batman
3. Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin
T1. Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl
T1. The Governator as Mr. Freeze

Therefore, it is a stupendous honour to be able to announce that I will be returning to Clarion next year, as part of the 2005 roster of instructors. My co-instructors will be Joan Vinge, Charles Coleman Finlay, Gwyneth Jones, Walter Jon Williams and Leslie What.

Clarion is in transition this year, as funding cuts at MSU will require a change of venue. Here are some details:

Among the options being considered are moving the workshop to another university or becoming an independent non-profit organization, along the lines of Clarion West. In either event, Clarion is likely to leave its long-time home in East Lansing and is actively soliciting suggestions for new location(s) and offers from organizations or groups willing to host the workshop. “I think it’s past time for Clarion to make a transition to a new venue and a new structure,” said Board Member James Patrick Kelly. The Clarion Board is calling on alumni and friends of the workshop to volunteer to help with the transition. “We need to work on fundraising, communications, and administration,” said Kelly. “We’re encouraging people who believe in Clarion to get involved with everything from putting together our newsletter to helping choose the instructors and lots in between.” To that end, the Clarion Board of Directors, which currently consists of Matheson, Kelly, Kate Wilhelm, Maureen McHugh, Karen Joy Fowler, Tim Powers, and former Clarion director Tess Tavormina will be looking to reconstitute itself and expand its membership.

The potential dancers have to prove they can dance in the nude, immigration lawyer Mendel Green said Monday.

"They can't be partially nude," he said. "If they don't have pictures in the nude, they are not going to wiggle their bottoms in Canada."

It turns out that Bush's speechwriters found the quote in an undergraduate paper for Dartmouth, and they plagiarised it out of context:

Three days after Bush's remarks, the Los Angeles Times reported that the White House found the comments in a Dartmouth undergraduate paper posted on the Internet and lifted them out of context. "It shows they didn't read much of the article," commented Charlie Trumbull, the author.

If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief-I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper-that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America-there's the United States of America.

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Update: Here's a Link you can paste into RealPlayer or a Real-compatible app like MPlayer or VLC for video of the speech (Thanks, Quentin!)

Restaurant Empire gives you a good sense of managing a restaurant. You hire and fire staff, construct a menu, place tables, decor, and kitchen equipment, and open the doors. Over the course of a day, people wander in and order. As is typical in games of this type, each customer's desires, wants, and reactions are tracked in detail, and you can click on any guest to see what he or she is thinking about (often, about the rudeness of staff or delays in their order). You can also see what peoples' main complaints are, general level of satisfaction, and so on. You try to increase the popularity of your restaurant by upgrading the menu and decor (as profits permit), adding new recipes and deleting less popular ones, learning about businesses that can provide premium ingredients, and so on.

The main game is a series of well-planned, linked 'levels,' each requring you to reach some benchmark within a period of time to 'win' (e.g., make $15,000 in profit in a single month). The level system provides a 'programmed learning' approach--that is, you're introduced to the details of game management over time--as well as a sort of backstory that provides a degree of motivation, and some characters (like your uncle, a retired restauranteur) who provide advice.

* Fully textured outer case
* Necronomicon Glyph window, with 114 cuts...
* ...Lit by two 12" CCFL tubes
* Elder Sign & Cthulhu Runes etched window, lit by...
* ...8 superbright green & 8 superbright yellow LEDs attached to...
* ...Hard Drive activity flasher circuit.
* Power button in monster mouth
* Reset button in right eye
* Light switch in left eye
* Sculpted tentacles set on left side around window.
* Textured fan cowling inside
* Front bezel eyes lit with 2 superbright LEDs
* Front lower part lit with two 4" CCFL tubes
* Fully textured CD & floppy bezels
* Decorated semi-clear pull-down front cover
* Two extra Stealth Fans
* Glow-in-the-dark rounded IDE cables
* Split sleeve & mesh wire covers
Link (Thanks, George!)

Economists searching for reasons why some nations are richer than others have found that those with a wide belief in hell are less corrupt and more prosperous, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Update: BoingBoing reader jeffk says, "This is the actual article referenced by the Yahoo "Hell & Economics" And, well.... Jesus Fucking Christ are their statistics fucked up! This is yet another example of conclusions not being supported by the facts of their own frippin' study!"

Update 2: BoingBoing reader Morgan Foust says the report conclusions aren't supported by the data, and the Reuters story appears to add up to sloppy journalism. "What is the correlation between 'fear of hell' and productivity?," asks Morgan, "According to this simple chart -- which took all of five minutes to generate in Microsoft Excel -- the correlation is negative. In other words, by the Fed's own data, the more a country believes in Hell, the lower their productivity. (For those paying attention, the correlation is a weak -.21.)" Link

Update umptybillion: BoingBoing reader Chris says, "Morgan Foust's feedback is off target. Productivity is a measure of outputs divided by inputs. GDP and per capita income are not measures of productivity. I'm not arguing the merits of the Fed's report, but Foust's feedback appears to be based on a flawed understanding of what is (and isn't) 'productivity'."

# Love at first Sight: Caribou meat on little sticks
# Dried Fried Seal
# Tired Fisherman's Soup: a pick-me-up soup of whale meat and six traditional Chinese herbal medicines to reinvigorate you.
# Fragrant and Crispy Greenland sea bird (eider duck or Bruennichfs Guillemot, depending on the season)
# Numbing Spicy Musk Ox
# Clay Pot Walrus
# We are proud to serve not only a variety of Chinese teas, but also Kaffi Tunnulik (coffee and caribou fat).

Misigisaq ApS is looking for partners interested in franchising our unique concept of Greenlandic ingredients and top quality Chinese cooking. We are able to support any such partnership with training, franchise documentation, and full logistic support. We believe there are many international sites with great potential for Misigisaq Restaurants. We can outline the prerequisites for a successful Misigisaq branch with any interested parties.

Most cellular carriers are augmenting their coverage in Boston to make sure the surge in traffic does not lead to a rash of busy signals and disconnected calls. Nextel, the official mobile provider to both conventions, is deploying its iDEN network with encryption codes used by the National Security Agency to make sure no one eavesdrops on all the deal making.

The company is supplying modified BlackBerry devices that allow conventioneers to access the Internet wirelessly at high speeds. It has also helped connect the many public safety agencies, which typically communicate over different frequencies. Nextel expects its customers to log millions of minutes on its DirectConnect service, which turns cellphones into walkie-talkies.

"It's like organizing a wedding on steroids," said Matt Foosaner, senior director of Nextel's emergency response team, referring to the arrangements his company is making for the conventioneers. "They are not going to stay tied down to a landline."

When Eisner did show up at that particular cafeteria in a pitiful attempt to rub elbows with the masses, he only really succeeded in proving how out-of-touch he is and how little about the Parks he actually knows. As the cafeteria took notice of Eisner's arrival, which was hard to miss due to the big entourage accompanying him, Eisner put forth his best political skills and tried to make friends. He marched right up to two college aged guys wearing Adventureland costumes waiting for their cheeseburgers and said "Hi fellas, where do you guys work?" The two Cast Members dutifully replied "We work at the Jungle Cruise, sir." Eisner broke into a broad and forced smile and said "Hey, that must be a lot of fun! I'd love to be able to drive that boat around all day, making those jokes and shooting at the hippo's like you do!" And without missing a beat, one of the Jungle Cruise Skippers said "We don't get to shoot at the hippo's anymore sir. They took the guns away three years ago." Eisner could only stammer, "Oh, they did? I didn't know that..." before he moved on down the line for the next forced smile and handshake. (By the way, the plan is still on to reverse Paul Pressler's silly and overly PC decision and bring back the guns to Jungle Cruise that we'd told you about in a previous update.)

[JD]: The legality of gay marriage sent out powerful shockwaves of destructive gay energy throughout hetereosexuality. Without an amendment to the constitution specifically barring homosexuals from obtaining marriage rights, this destructive Gay Force rampaged throughout the Traditional Family Nexus, corrupting it and turning thousands of upright, decent, missionary-position-loving straight couples into deranged, out-of-control mutant gay perverts.

FB: This is horrible! What in your scientific opinion as a doctor can we do to stop this?

JD: Well, humanity's only hope at this point lies in the Marriage Protection Act, which would strip federal courts of the ability to review the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. That way if the draconian anti-gay laws we need turn out to be unconstitutional, we'll never know, because the courts won't be able to stop them.

"This is a big surprise," says Ahmed Hassan Kadhim, standing in the doorway with a gap-toothed grin. "What can I say?"

"We've brought you a whole set of furniture!" says Ms. Zubair. "We're trying to compensate you for what you lost!"

"Labor and Materials" is Iraq's answer to "Extreme Home Makeover" and the country's first reality TV show. In 15-minute episodes, broken windows are made whole again. Blasted walls slowly rise again. Fancy furniture and luxurious carpets appear without warning in the living rooms of poor families. Over six weeks, houses blasted by US bombs regenerate in a home-improvement show for a war-torn country.

Pity they forgot to register www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk , really.

I managed to grab it, and hastily cobbled together a parody. (The original's under Crown Copyright, and the parody is so ridiculous as to have no chance of misleading those looking for the genuine info. It includes information on coping with a zombie attack, for crying out loud.) I got a few pleasant emails, including one saying that the site had done the rounds of the top emergency planning civil servants. And then, not twelve hours after the original site went up, I got a rather different one from the UK .gov ...

I considered giving up, but heck -- it's a parody, it's obviously a parody, and I'm damned if I'm going to be strongarmed into taking it down. As a concession, I added a conspicuous "this is a parody" notice to the bottom of the home page. Link

How did we do this? Basically, we “recorded” the “sounds” an infrared remote makes on a PC and then put them on an iPod as songs. Adding a special sound-to-IR converter then turns those sounds back to IR and allows you to use your iPod as a remote control. As an added bonus, it works up to 100 feet. It’s a slick all-in-one unit and we’re never going back to 6 remotes ever again.

During the Simpsons panel at San Diego's Comic Con International, executive producer and longtime Simpsons contributor Al Jean announced the news that many fans have been waiting for: "There will be a movie," putting enough "English" on the word "will" to leave no doubt among the faithful that they will be able to see the yellow-hued denizens of Springfield on the big screen. Jean did not provide a release date, saying only that the show's producers were taking the time to get it right.

On a darkened sound stage, executives from Disney, Microsoft, Paramount and an array of Hollywood entertainment companies listen to the whispering voices of ghosts.

This Studio City lot isn't haunted. They're here for a private demonstration of IOSONO, a new immersive sound technology developed by Karlheinz Brandenburg -- the German inventor considered responsible for much of the development and commercialization of the MP3 codec in the 1980s and '90s.

Inside the dimly lit demo space, a ring of over 300 speakers hangs roughly 10 feet above the ground. Using a digital pen and a touch-sensitive tablet, a sound engineer drags individual sound elements from one point to another to direct the position of sound elements. Samples of phantasmic voices whisper, hiss and appear to be darting and sliding invisibly from one spot to another throughout the room.

This is a plot element in Bruce Sterling's brilliant "RU486?" a short story collected in Globalhead -- feminist hackers finance their RU486-running operation with a phone-sex line staffed by automated chatterbots.

It turns out that pornbots are among the class of Eliza-derivatives that can pass a Turing Test (or rather, horny sex-chat boys are among the class of human beings that can't tell a chatterbot from a person -- other groups include psychotherapists, who, in one experiment, couldn't distinguish actual transcripts of therapy sessions with schizophrenics from simulated therapy with schizophrenic chatterbots; and the university student who mistook a chatterbot for his prof in the middle of the night when he IMed same for permission to extend deadline on a late paper).

'eliza' is a program that talks to you, pretending to be a psychologist. its script of possible responses is super tiny, so it doesn't fool anyone. or so i thought.

IRC is a network full of chat rooms (or "channels") where a lot of scary internet people (or "perverts") hang out. my friend reduz found a version of 'eliza' that could go on IRC. he put it on IRC. a lot of people from other countries thought it was a real woman, so naturally they tried to have sex with it. they got frustrated quickly. reduz is a bad man...

so i replaced eliza's tiny, boring script with a massive dumb blonde script that has like 3,800 responses on all sorts of topics, but mostly sex. jenny18 is very horny and she loves talking to horny guys. and everyone knows the best place to talk to horny guys is on dalnet irc sex channels.

By framing bloggers as diarists, the NYTimes is demanding that the reader see blogs as petty, childish and self-absorbed. They further perpetuate this view by pasting a picture of a youth on the front of the article to suggest that bloggers are all inexperienced and naive, further implying that their reports will not have the value of the more "adult" perspective of "real" journalists.

The entire spin of the article focuses on how bloggers are like children in a candy store - naive, inexperienced and overwhelmed by what is now available to them. The article focuses on the minutia of blogging, emphasizing that bloggers won't really cover the real issues, but provide the "low-brow" gossip. (I somehow suspect that the NYTimes is far more likely to cover what various attendees are wearing than the bloggers.) The article does proceed to share its stance on bloggers through the voice of one subject: "I think that bloggers have put the issue of professionalism under attack." (Not Jason Blair?)

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

Link to Thai kickboxer portraits (free to browse, and totally work-safe), and Link to Siege's new blog (paid Nerve.com subscribers only, and is the very definition of not-work-safe).

Plenty of handsets today are capable of playing mp3s, but presumably none do it with the ease and grace -- or inherent coolness -- of Apple's products. It's an interesting move for Apple, which has said in the past the iTunes music store is a loss leader designed to help sell iPods. Presumably, they want to take new Moto phone users and turn them into iPod buyers... That, or this is just the first step towards the much-clamored-for wireless iPod.

from Ginsberg's "America":
"America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. Vote Kerry."
"America stop pushing me I know what I am doing. Vote Kerry."
"America why are your libraries full of tears? Vote Kerry."

from e.e. cummings:
"a politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man. vote kerry, his arse is fresher than Bush's."

from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "I am Waiting":
"Are you waiting for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right? Vote Kerry."
"I am waiting for the lost music to sound again in the Lost Continent in a new rebirth of wonder. Vote Kerry."

okay i'm ridiculous but do you see how ridiculous the Hughes thing is?

Adam was first tipped off about the investigation when the FBI raided his and his fiancee's apartment in May of 2002 and seized thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment. Adam later received a copy of the affidavit filed in support of the search warrant, and was shocked to discover that this document, prepared by the FBI, contained significant amounts of erroneous and misleading information. For example, two social security numbers were listed for Adam, one of which is not his. References were made to a cease and desist letter sent by the MPAA to an email address that did not exist. His online friendship with other Stargate fans across the globe was portrayed as an international conspiracy against the MPAA. And perhaps most disturbing of all, it was later revealed that the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. The FBI's abuse of its powers did not stop there. When they seized Adam's computer equipment, he was given written documentation stating that it would be returned within 60 days. The equipment that they did return did not arrive until more than 8 months later, and only then after much prodding from his lawyer. Much of it was damaged beyond repair - one laptop had a shattered LCD screen, an empty tape backup drive was ripped apart for no apparent reason, his fiancee's iBook was badly damaged when it was pried apart with a screwdriver. The FBI's computer crimes staff is either incompetent (at least when it comes to Macintosh computer equipment) or else they just don't give a damn.

Update: Matthew sez, "There's a press release on the US DOJ site from April 2004 describing the charges. From this, you can learn the guy's name: "Adam Clark McGaughey".

The funny thing is that after searching google groups for "Adam McGaughey", you find a bunch of people that seemed to have been ripped off by him around 2002 on some SG-1 sites (as well as ebay) (make sure you sort by date to get more recent stuff).

I won't comment on any of the stuff here, but it's some interesting extra information that adds to the story.

"He prefers to work with gum that is past the expiration date. It takes him about three hours of chewing to get a piece of gum the right consistency for art. Once he's done that, it takes him only 30 second to make a turtle, 20 seconds for a pig, and over a minute for something complicated like a UFO. Unless he's out and about handing the sculptures to unsuspecting kids, he submerges the tiny artifacts in water to harden them. When he's really on his game he can do as many as 20 an hour."

Spencer Cross sez: "[T]he Annie Jacobsen article that you mentioned today has become quite a big deal, and the debate is far wider than just Snopes. Salon has an excellent followup to it that I thought you might want to read. The article has also been picked up and embellished by a number of "fair and balanced" media outlets. Likewise, "in an effort to provide the most up-to-date information," WWWS is now linking to several articles that support Jacobsen's relentless and unapologetic alarmism, but has failed to link anything on the other side of the debate. I would encourage people to e-mail the editors at WomensWallStreet.com and let them know what they think about their journalistic integrity: editors@womenswallstreet.com.

First hand report from a writer for Women's Wall Street about her experience on a flight from Detroit to LA. Apparently a group of 14 men on the plane kept going into the restrooms and signaling each other. Hard to say what really happened, and it could have been perfectly innocent, but it makes for interesting reading.

The man in the yellow T-shirt got out of his seat and went to the lavatory at the front of coach -- taking his full McDonald's bag with him. When he came out of the lavatory he still had the McDonald's bag, but it was now almost empty. He walked down the aisle to the back of the plane, still holding the bag. When he passed two of the men sitting mid-cabin, he gave a thumbs-up sign. When he returned to his seat, he no longer had the McDonald's bag... ...Then another man from the group stood up and took something from his carry-on in the overhead bin. It was about a foot long and was rolled in cloth. He headed toward the back of the cabin with the object... ... The last man came out of the bathroom, and as he passed the man in the yellow shirt he ran his forefinger across his neck and mouthed the word 'No.'

The wedding of Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae Yokem was such big news it made the cover of Life Magazine. Newspapers reported it. In the late Seventies, the hoopla was commemerated in an episode of M*A*S*H when, during heavy shelling, radio reports kept coming in to the 4077th on whether or not the pair finally got married. It was the kind of plot resolution (and cultural impact) modern comic artists only dream of.

Well, Comics.com is diligently reprinting Li'l Abner, day by day, and reminding readers of how utterly politically incorrect... and hilariously funny... Kickapoo Joy Juice, Fearless Fosdick (a parody of Dick Tracy that was so brilliant it was turned into a television show. A puppet so, no less), Jubulation T. Cornpone and all the rest of Li'l Abner's work and world were. And we have finally reached March of 1952 in the reprints... which means that we are in the process of watching Li'l Abner be inexorably cornered into marriage.

Want to help fight terrorism? Want to be able to stop and detain suspicious characters? Or do you just want to ride your horse on ten miles of trails normally closed to the public? Then you might want to join the George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) Airport Rangers program. That's right. Just fill out a form and undergo a background check, and you too can become a front-line fighter as Houston's airport tries to keep our nation safe and secure. No experience necessary. You don't even have to be a US citizen.

"What a great idea. Not only do they use existing visual real estate (avoiding the need for other street-level maps), but it's a really cheap, low-tech solution to graffiti. As a guy who spent two sweltering summers across the street from the pictured box, at the busiest Tourism Information Centre in the country, I appreciate any non-human assistance for tourists." Link (Thanks, Darren!)

"The indigenous Eskimos believe there is a hole in the Arctic Ocean. Observations of several Arctic explorers of mirages of land in the Arctic indicate that the most plausible location for a north polar opening that leads into the interior of the earth is located at 84.4 N Latitude, 141 E Longitude.... Don't miss this chance to personally visit that paradise within our earth via the North Polar Opening and meet the highly advanced, friendly people who live there. We are of the opinion that they are the legendary Lost Tribes of Israel who migrated into the North Country over 2,500 years ago and literally became lost to the knowledge of mankind."

"By joining Our Hollow Earth Expedition, expedition members agree that there are NO GUARANTEES that this expedition will reach Inner earth. The expedition will make a good faith effort to locate the North Polar Opening and enter therein, but worst case scenario is that we visit the geographic North Pole, explore the region, and continue on to the New Siberian Islands."

"Within a generation, radio emissions from enough stars will be observed and analysed to find the first alien civilisation, Shostak estimates. But because they will probably be between 200 and 1000 light years away, sending a radio message back will take centuries."

Registration at thestar.com
We are introducing registration on thestar.com. At first, registration will be voluntary. Later in July we will move to mandatory signups. Readers will have to answer several questions to access stories. Section fronts and some other areas will remain open to everyone for now.

Since the collapses of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq, the United States has been purchasing or arranging the transfer of thousands of knockoffs of Kalashnikovs commonly referred to as AK-47's, to outfit new military and security forces in Kabul and Baghdad.

These rifles have not been made in Russia, where the arms industry holds patents for the weapon in several nations. Instead they have originated in weapons plants controlled by Eastern European states, each of which was a partner of Moscow's in Soviet days.

In this, I am referring to the Cyberathlete Professional League's one time decision to switch from the Quake series, which they had been using since the start of their foundation, to a newer (and more popular) game at the time, the infamous Counter-Strike.

Now for most of the 'professional gamers' who have lived off their earnings from past CPL tournaments, this meant the end of their career unless they made the jump from Quake to Counter-Strike. Unfortunately, switching games is not as simple because both games have different sets of physics and gameplay; in Quake you battled one another one on one while Counter-Strike is a team-based game, the players usually in numbers of five.

Now, even more recently, the CPL has announced for their World Tour that they would be switching games once again, this time back to a duel based game. There will still be a Counter-Strike tournament during the event, but this leaves many to wonder how much more air time does Counter-Strike have before it finally gets shelved as well.

Probably 99 times out of 100 when he asks that question all the hands go up, right? Well first there was a pause and then a giggle and then a whoop of laughter as the audience looked around and realized that NO ONE had raised a hand. The presenter was thrown off his mark, but he recovered and said, "Wow! Okay how many of you wish we'd fix IE so you could use it?"

Still no hands....

Informal survey afterwards said the Windows users in the crowd were all using the latest Firefox. Wouldn't it be amazing if Mozilla ended up winning in the end?

I'm cautiously glad about this. It's the right idea: tech vendors should be writing tools that allow anyone to play anything on anything: it's insane to own an Apple "record player" that only plays Apple "records" -- meaning that if you buy your records from Real, you need to buy another record player.

My only disappointment is that Real is engaged in the same behaviour: Real's records only play on players licensed by Real: it would be much more customer-friendly if Real went into the business of providing us with music in a patent-free, open standard that could be implemented by anyone. Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

Update: Ernie Miller's posted a lengthy analysis of this on his blog:

Note, however, what Real is not doing (and strangely, the news reports don't seem to mention either). You can convert Real files into FairPlay files, but you can't convert FairPlay files into Real files. Real is not allowing people to copy their iTunes into Real's DRM'd format. Why? Because it would likely be a clear violation of the DMCA. You may be able to play Real's DRM'd music on an iPod, but you still won't be able to play iTunes on a portable music player other than an iPod.

So, this isn't quite the breakthrough the analysts and whatnot seem to be claiming. If you buy anything from iTunes, you're still locked into Apple. If you buy an iPod, you can buy from Real's music store, but what real advantage does that provide? A DRM connoisseur might say that you will have the option of using other players in the future, but so what? Anyone who knows anything about DRM knows that you can't trust any of these competing formats. Perhaps in a few years one might want to buy another brand of portable music player, but what happens if Real's DRM fails in the marketplace and is squeezed out? What good did the flexibility do?