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Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Disney asks Gizmodo to clarify that jewel box is not intended for pot stashing

Gizmodo's Joel Johnson blogged about Disney Electronics's fairly clever "Disney Princess" jewel box/CD player, noting that its secret compartment is "perfect for your child's first marijuana stash."

Disney wrote to Joel and asked him to clarify "that marijuana stashing is not an intended or authorized use of this product." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:57:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Powerbook battery tracker

A new beta app for tracking your Powerbook's battery health just got posted to VersionTracker. The release version promises network-awareness so that you can compare you battery's health to others'.

iBatt is a new PowerBook battery tool which can diagnose your battery's health, and generate graphs showing battery utilization trends. Whereas the system only provides you with current charge level, iBatt tells you total battery capacity, rate of charge/discharge, current battery voltage, and battery state. The release version will have network support to compare your battery's health with other batteries in your PowerBook model.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:47:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Feds crank up heat on P2P, new House bill promises prison for "pirates"

I just filed a story for Wired News on a new House bill that proposes prison time for file-swappers -- and on today's Justice Department announcement of a new intellectual-property task force to analyze how the department addresses issues like the unauthorized sharing of digital software, music and movies.

Justice spokesman John Nowacki declined to disclose further details on the membership of the [Intellectual Property Task Force], or what specific activities it will pursue.

The task force was created in the wake of criticism by some members of Congress that the Justice Department has not done enough to crack down on digital piracy. The announcement took place on the same day that a House judiciary subcommittee unanimously approved a bill that would punish file swappers with up to three years in jail for first offenses, and up to six for repeat offenses.

Sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman (D-California) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the bill targets heavy users of peer-to-peer networks and those who pirate copies of feature films. The bill outlines a new piracy deterrence program for the FBI, and calls for the Justice Department to create an antipiracy "Internet Use Education Program." If signed into law, Justice would receive $15 million for investigation and prosecution of copyright-related crimes in 2005.

If signed into law, H.R. 4077 -- the "Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004" -- would be the first to punish file sharing with jail time. The bill also takes aim at camcorder copiers who sneak into film screenings. Anyone who "knowingly uses or attempts to use an audiovisual recording device in a motion picture theater" to copy a movie could face up to six years in jail.

Link to Wired News story.
Text version of PDEA should be available through Thomas shortly, here: Link. Update: PDF version (63Kb) of the PDEA is now available here: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:31:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Music industry relies on data from pirate nets to hone strategy

Record labels are using data gleaned from pirate P2P networks to refine their sales-strategies, to excelletn effect. Nevertheless, they still repudiate the networks themselves, and vow to go on individually suing every participating music fan until they have all learned to respect the music industry.

The online data revealed that despite Story of the Year's lunar rotation, its single ``Until the Day I Die'' ranked among the top 20 most popular downloads, alongside tracks from Blink-182, Audioslave and Hoobastank that received significantly more airplay. And when the band performed in a city, ``we didn't necessarily see the phones blowing up at radio, but we saw download requests for the song skyrocket as they went through,'' said Jeremy Welt, Maverick's head of new media.

Armed with this data, Maverick fought for more airtime at radio, which translated into more CD sales. Story of the Year's album, ``Page Avenue,'' just went gold, selling more than half a million copies.

``I definitely don't like to spin it that piracy is OK because we get to look at the data. It's too bad that people are stealing so much music,'' said Welt. ``That said, we would be very foolish if we didn't look and pay attention to what's going on.''

Link (via Copyfight)

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

Katana controller for PS2 game

This wireless motion-sensitive sword is the controller for a character in Onimusha 3, forthcoming for the PS2. The game itself is apparently recursive: you are asked to direct the motions of an avatar who is playing a videogame of his own controlled by a motion-sensitive sword, and swinging the physical sword-controller causes the virtual sword-controller to move, which, in turn, directs the swordsmanship of your avatar's character in an in-game game. Zany.

Update: Joel "Deadpan" Johnson writes, "The recursive stuff on that post was just a joke. There is only one layer of abstraction; you swing the sword and your character swings his, end of story. I'm obviously TOO FUNNY for my own good." Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:56:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Batmobile built like a tank

The Batmobile for the next Batman movie has monster-truck wheels and looks like a fighter-tank from the Car Wars universe. Link (Thanks, Numlok!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:50:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Memos in Starbucks detail Bushies' Richard Clarke strategy

Memos on letterhead from "Office of the Secretary of Defense, The Special Assistant," have been retreived from a DC Starbucks. They detail what appears to be Bushie spin-strategy to deal with Richard Clarke's damning WMD testimony.

The notes say: "Took threat v seriously and then segue to wh we have been doing. Rise above [ Richard A.] Clarke.

"Emphasize importance of 9/11 commission and come back to what we have been doing.

"[Commission member Jamie] Gorelick pitting Condi [ Condoleezza Rice] v. [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage

"Our plan had military plans to attack Al Q -- called on def to draw up targets in Afg -- develop mil options."

There's an underlined notation "DR" in the margin and a quotation, apparently from DR, perhaps Rumsfeld, to "Stay inside the line -- we dont need 2 ruff [or puff] this at all. we need 2b careful as hell about it. This thing will go away soon and what will keep it alive will be one of us going over the line."

Reg Required Link Non-registration American Progress Link (Thanks, LVX23!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:47:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google's free gigabyte

Google announced a free email service, promising a Gigabyte of storage to each user.

"The idea is that your mail can stay in there forever," said Wayne Rosing, vice president of engineering at Google. "You can always index it, always search it, and always find things from the past."

That's a neat idea, but I wonder if you can store attachments, and how big those attachments can be? That makes all the difference. Link

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

Mid Century Lampshades

Meteor Lights sells really nice retro lampshades and other mid-century lighting stuff. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:28:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot-themed handbags, animal-shaped cellphone cozies

Handbags and other accessories filled with esprit de geek. Handmade by genuine humans. High cuteness factor. Chuckles Central makes stuff like Robot handbags, iPod/digital camera/mobilephone Cozies, Laptop Magnet, and Robot Magnets.
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:57:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Canada's RIAA can't prove infringement by P2P uploaders, says court

Canada's Federal Court has ruled that the Canadian Recording Industry Association was not able to prove copyright infringement by the uploaders it sued. The judge also said that under that country's copyright law, downloading is not illegal. Link

Chris Hoofnagle, Assoc. Director of EPIC, The Electronic Privacy Information Center, tells BoingBoing: "We have the decision online here (~670kb PDF). It's remarkable. The judge says that keeping a file in a p2p system is no different than installing a photocopy machine in a library." And BoingBoing reader Chris suggests this alternate link to a leaner PDF from the Federal Court of Canada: Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:58:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mephisto morphed art-pr0n

Our pals at Fleshbot say:

Sure, any hack with a copy of Photoshop and a few hours can turn women into barnyard animals, but if you want to see beautiful models transformed into slugs, chocolate bars, or five-and-a-half foot tall anthropomorphic cigarettes, you'll have to consult the work of a master. (Anyone curious to see how Britney looks as a pig, cow, or dog should check this out as well.)

Mephisto Gallery (photomanipulations @ doc.furvect.com)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:38:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Keanu stars in A Scanner Darkly

Boing Boing pal Dave Gill points us to news that Keanu Reeves will star in the Hollywoodization of A Scanner Darkly, based on Philip K. Dick's masterpiece SF novel about drugs and schizophrenia. As Dave says, "uh-oh."

According to Variety, Richard Linklater may direct the film, employing the same live action-to-animation technique seen in Waking Life. I suppose it's no surprise that Keanu was chosen for the role. After all, The Matrix was the ultimate PKD rip-off. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:14:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Left-handed phone

Sony Ericsson's LH-Z200 cellphone now comes in a left-handed model. Link (via Engadget)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:35:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Homeless Hacker profile in Wired

Great Wired profile of Adrian Lamo, the Homeless Hacker who got busted for using the NYT's Lexis-Nexus account.

In theory, it's easy to see Lamo as a good guy. Unlike many hackers - even whitehats - he never uses a pseudonym and makes no effort to hide his identity. If the company he notifies appears grateful, he will often offer to help plug the hole he's discovered for free. Poulsen, for one, believes that Lamo "practices a style of hacking - open, brash, illegal, but carefully observant of an unwritten code of ethics - that went out of style a decade ago."

Indeed, Lamo's hacks are uncommonly witty and at times almost inspiring. Once, after tunneling into Excite@Home's customer service database, Lamo pulled the email and phone number of a customer whose complaint had gone unanswered for a year. Lamo called him up, chatted briefly, then offered to forward him all the company's internal correspondence pertaining to the original complaint.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:32:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Complimentary iPods in the Virgin lounge

Virgin Airlines is giving the high-rollers in its departure lounges complimentary iPods to listen to while they wait for their flights. This begs three questions, though:

1. What's the use of 40GB of someone else's idea of what kind of music a generic, notional traveller would like to hear?
2. How do you sterlize the earbuds between use? Ever notice the wiry masses of ear-hair spilling out of the first class cabin? Squick.
3. How do you hear your flight being called if you're wearing an iPod?

Link (via Engadget)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Nielsen's new "people-meter" ignores Black and Hispanic programming

Nielsen's new "people-meter" television-viewing measurators are being deployed to replace the traditional viewing journals and set-top boxen that the media metric firm uses to figure out who watches what. For poorly understood reasons, though, these new measurators generate viewing stats that report 60 percent less viewership for Black and Hispanic-oriented programming than previous measurating technologies. This has prompted Hillary Clinton and others to call on Nielsen to reevaluate its design decisions.

"It is impossible to overstate the potential impact of undercounting minority viewers," Senator Burns said in his own letter to Nielsen. "After years of work to make the entertainment industry more diverse and more reflective of the rich makeup of our country, this system could endanger all the progress that's been made."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:10:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Black" day of P2P protest on April 1?

Rumors are circulating in geek circles that some peer-to-peer technology companies (and/or supporters) plan to paint their websites black on Thursday, April 1 -- protesting recent efforts by state and federal lawmakers to crack down on filesharing. Lest anyone forget that Thursday is also April Fool's Day, some of the participants are said to be planning to blame the "outage" on this gag website for a fictitious "Copyright Enforcement Agency" of the US government.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:01:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Sites dispatch from Iraq: Omar's Arm

MSNBC combat correspondent Kevin Sites returns to Iraq this week, after a brief respite back home. Here is his latest dispatch, about Omar, a freelance cameraman in Baghdad for ABC News.

While we wait for our flight--he gives me a disk to download some pictures that a friend had taken in the aftermath of his shooting. It included the emergency room, x-rays and his first surgery.

The pictures are painful to look at, much more so than the contraption that now surround Omar's arm. But they are, I know, the ugly reality of what happens when bullets meet bodies.

These days it's difficult to show casualties of war on evening newscasts or in any American media outlets. The images become politically charged; take on meaning beyond their face value. But more often than not, the violence is just too grim, too hard to stomach at dinnertime.

So the question becomes this; how can those who haven't seen it--begin to understand the truth of Omar's arm?

Link (Warning: post contains graphic images of gunshot wounds, and is not intended for viewing by children.)

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:44:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony's QRIO in action

The first time I saw a video clip of QRIO, I thought it was neat, but not a big improvement over Honda's ASIMO. However, this video clip of four dancing QRIO robots is mind blowing. Link (Thanks, Kirby!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:21:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chapter 6 of Gillmor's "Making the News" online

Dan Gillmor has just posted a draft of Chapter 6 of his upcoming book, "Making the News." Readers are invited to contribute to the process by way of his weblog. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:40:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Newsmap: visualizing the media tree through Google News

BoingBoing reader paul says:

newsmap is an application that visualizes the totality of the GoogleNews aggregator -- an amazing piece of software which not only aggregates almost every single online newspaper, but combines news stories into clusters so that when the same story is repeated among several news sites, it files and displays only one to you - no mater how different the actual text that makes the article is.

Google news aggregates stories in several languages and customizes its content for 10 particular countries. I've loved googlenews for this particular reason since the first day, and it was then when I started thinking about visualizing the totality of it, since it could be a very close approach to getting a picture on how news media attention differs from country to country.

Newsmap utilizes a treemap algorithm to dynamically create each view, and the size of each cell is determined by the amount of related articles that exist inside each news cluster.

Link, created by the same fellow behind Social Circles.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:37:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Job listings via RSS

In an item about RSS for the current issue of Wired Magazine, I wrote:

Job seekers anxious about seeing the freshest Craigslist posts can subscribe to a feed instead of hitting Reload for hours in a paranoid funk.

Responding to this, Steve Rose of RSSJobs writes, "FYI, RSSJobs has been providing personalized job feeds in RSS format since last year! Check it out!" Link.

Total non-sequitur: read this hilarious Craigslist position-wanted post, "I Need A New Fucking Job," which sounds as if it were penned by my ex-boyfriend Jim Anchower.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:22:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Feedster + Share Your OPML

Dude! You got your Feedster in my OPML! No, dude, you got your OPML in my Feedster! Whatever -- but this helpful little app allows you to search for what fellow RSS junkies might have read about a certain topic via their OPML file. Link (thanks, Sean!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:13:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Massive Kodak photomontage sets Guinness world record

A gigantic photomontage created by Kodak scored an entry in the Guinness book of world records, and took home gold at the Effie Hellas 2004 Awards. The photomontage - titled "The Whole of Greece in One Smile" -- is comprised of 16,609 photos of Greek citizens, and covers a surface area of over 5,000 square feet.
Link (Thanks, Jean-Luc)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:09:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DARPA Grand Challenge Video clips

Video excerpts from DARPA Grand Challenge 2004, downloaded from satellite feed on Saturday March 13th, 2004 .

This video was transfered from the satellite feed provided by DARPA on the day of the race. It is provided as is. The video lasts about 19 minutes.
Low bandwidth - 28.2 Kbps - wmf format - 8.8 MB
High Bandwidth - 512 Kbps - wmf format - 31 MB

The final results of the race can be found here (PDF).

Hosting kindly provided by the Spacecraft Technology Center at Texas A&M University.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:59:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NES lookenfeel comes to GBA

Nintedo's shipping a Game Boy Advance skinned to look like a first-generation Nintendo Entertainment System controller, with a suite of classic NES games. Link (via Engadget)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:19:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lessons to be learnt from Disney's Pop Century Resort

The authors of Learning from Las Vegas (a hymn to the urban planning positives of the Vegas Strip) have written a good analytical piece in the current ish of Metropolis, analyzing Disney World's new Pop Century resort.

We see the Pop Century Resort as a third evolution of Pop Urbanism--beyond that engaging the symbolic-surface makeup of the first Las Vegas, evolving from the Strip; beyond that engaging the scenographic formal makeup of the second Las Vegas, evolving from Disneyland. Here is a vivid urban complex that is beginning to embrace symbolic content by combining surface and form, graphic signage, and sculptural symbolism--both the "decorated shed" and the "duck" (i.e., the loft whose surfaces are ornamented with signs, and the building as sculptural symbol).

What is to come next? The urban complex that is a city rather than a resort--a vivid multifaceted place that pragmatically juxtaposes decorated sheds and ducks through signage and sculpture, civic and commercial content--all in the service of enhanced communication, the vital community-building tool of our multicultural era. This is what the Las Vegases and Pop Century Resorts are leading up to and what the Tokyo of today has essentially achieved.

Link (Thanks, Bruce!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:06:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of confusing signs and designs

"This is Broken" showcases confusing/dumb signs, buttons, user interfaces, and products. Link (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:26:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Declan: Should the UN run the Internet?

In his News.com column this week, Declan McCullagh explores recent debate around proposed expansion of United Nations involvement in managing 'Net architecture.

The United Nations wants to expand its influence over the Internet, but would it be wise to let that happen? That question follows the conclusion of a two-day U.N. summit last week, in which delegates from sundry countries such as Cuba, Ghana, Bolivia and Venezula lectured North American, Asian and European countries about how best to run the Internet. Their demands varied, but the bottom line was the same: They want a piece of the action in just about every way. The event's agenda was breathtakingly broad, taking in everything from spam and privacy to intellectual property, network security and the operation of root domain name servers.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:35:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

E-voting expose on Wired News

If you haven't yet read the extensive report on e-voting's flaws from my Wired News colleague Kim Zetter -- you should. Managing editor David Miller explains why:

The story, which she has been working on for the past month, is an in-depth look at the controversy surrounding electronic voting in the United States. In this election year, electronic voting machines have been touted as the solution to the Florida debacle that marred the 2000 presidential race. But Zetter, who has been following the topic closely for nearly a year, shows in a magazine-length piece why no one should be confident that these machines are safe for use. She details numerous security flaws and vulnerabilities with e-voting as well as issues surrounding potential conflict of interest among the voting machine vendors.

How E-Voting Threatens Democracy: Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:30:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Starcade returns: Retro 80s video game show

Super-bitchin' '80s videogame memories. Starcade was a game show that launched around 1983, played on Saturday mornings, and now replays on G4 Network (the all-gaming TV channel that Comcast is merging with TechTV). T-shirts and DVDs are coming out in April, and I want them most badly.

Show contestants played videogames to win fabulous prizes -- everything from video arcade games to the infamous "Mister Disc," as well as swank Wrangler jean jackets and my favorite -- "a trip to Hawaii and a roll of quarters."
Watch the original promo, Link to Starcade home. (Thanks, Mara -- who says, "All I want out of life is a Stargate weepul.")

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:06:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Power-driver for Powerbook trackpads

Sidetrack is a beta, open source replacement driver for the MacOS X trackpad drivers that adds a lot of cool power-user features to your trackpad:

* Vertical scrolling at left or right edge of pad.
* Horizontal scrolling at top or bottom edge of pad.
* Map hardware button to left or right click.
* Map trackpad taps to no action, left click, left click drag (with or without drag lock), or right click...

Link (Thanks, Joel!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:03:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot camel-jockeys replace kidnapped children in Qatar

The United Arab Emirates Qatar, responding to complaints from human rights groups that the jockeys in its camel races are often kidnapped children, has switched to using robot jockeys.

ROBOTS have been used as jockeys in Qatar for camel races, a favourite sport in the Gulf which has faced widespread criticism over the use of young children from the Indian sub-continent in such races...

The children, mostly from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Pakistan, are then smuggled into the Gulf states.

They are often starved by employers to keep them light and maximise their racing potential. Mounting camels three times their height, the children - some as young as six - face the risk of being thrown off or trampled.

Wish I could find a pic of this! Link (via Engadget)

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

QuickSilver, better than OS X LaunchBar

The most useful OS X utility on my machine has been LaunchBar, an application launcher that makes switching between apps and launching new apps very fast and convenient.

That's changed. Today, I downloaded QuickSilver, a beta app that does everything that LaunchBar does -- but more stylishly, faster and more intuitively -- and also includes a clipboard manager that lets me store the contents of the last 9 copy operations. It's also savvy to your iPhoto albums, your iTunes playlists, your addresss book and your Documents folder. I'm in love. Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:37:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gates's vision -- and failure thereof

Bill Gates just gave a talk at a Gartner symposium where he predicted that hardware would get so cheap as to be essentially free. This is a pretty visionary idea -- and, I think, plausible enough; you can buy a $0.99 singing greeting card today with more computing power than all the world's digital computers at the launch of Sputnik (multiple Soviet space-programs' worth of cycles for under a buck!), so the idea of powerful, useful hardware going ubiquitous and cheap is pretty nifty and pretty credible.

In the same breath, though, Gates predicts that software won't be free -- though he has no good explanation for this (presumably, it's because universal free software would be bad for his buiness, so he can't bring himself to contemplate the possibility). This kind of blinkered thinking does Microsoft -- which could be capable of pursuing lots of profitable strategies that don't involve fighting the future tooth and nail -- no credit. If the senior management at Microsoft is this head-in-sand over production trends in software, maybe it's time for the Board of Directors to think about hiring a new chief architect and CEO.

I suspect that it was this kind of thinking that led Microsoft superstar David Stutz to write his blazing resignation when he quit the company last year.

Digging in against open source commoditization won't work - it would be like digging in against the Internet, which Microsoft tried for a while before getting wise. Any move towards cutting off alternatives by limiting interoperability or integration options would be fraught with danger, since it would enrage customers, accelerate the divergence of the open source platform, and have other undesirable results. Despite this, Microsoft is at risk of following this path, due to the corporate delusion that goes by many names: "better together," "unified platform," and "integrated software." There is false hope in Redmond that these outmoded approaches to software integration will attract and keep international markets, governments, academics, and most importantly, innovators, safely within the Microsoft sphere of influence. But they won't .

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:19:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Downloadable audio rarities from Disney's 1964 World's Fair attractions

Andy Baio has posted a .torrent of an unreleased, 4-CD set of the audio from Disney's 1964 New York World's Fair attractions (Small World, Magic Skyway, Progressland AKA Carousel of Progress, and Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln). It's been floating around on Usenet ever since a deal to publish it fell through, and now it's available in one convenient place.

General Electric Progressland
01. There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow Progressland Spectacular
02. Welcome
03. Walt and the Sherman Brothers
04. Carousel of Progress Early Script Reading
05. Carousel of Progress Alternate Universe Version
06. The Skydome Spectacular
07. Toucan and Parrot The Electronic Utility Show
08. Music to Buy Toasters By
09. Mirror Maze
10. Carousel of Music Kaleidophonic Opening
11. Carousel of Music 1890s
12. Carousel of Music Dixieland Gramophone
13. Carousel of Music 1920s
14. Carousel of Music 1940s
15. Carousel of Music Radio and Record Player
16. Horizons EPCOT

Link (Thanks, Andy!))

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:04:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Memory-wire-based headset

The Arriva headset uses memory-wire to coil securely around your head (Gizmodo compares it to an alien brain-sucker) and communicates with audio sources via wire, Bluetooth, or FM receiver. The "buy it" page is b0rked, so there's no way to tell what it costs.

Our patent pending headset is unique in design and functionality. No exposed wires increase durability. Flexibility allows for abusive use and storage without adverse damage. Best of all, the weave design fits any size head comfortably and securely. The "WRAP-RADIO" will NOT fall off. The design accommodates different "ear buds" and color specifications per your requirements. The headset can even be waterproof.

Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:57:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

GOP Sloganator highlights

The sloganator was a GOP-provided webtool that would generate custom Bush-Cheney posters. Pranksters used it to generate their own ironic slogans, until it was shut down. This Flash blog is a montage of some of the funniest. 1.7MB Flash link (Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:47:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AOL raffling spammer's Porsche

AOL is raffling off a spammer's Porsche, which it won in a court settlement.

Seizure of property is becoming a major tactic in these lawsuits, since guilty spammers often protest their inability to pay large fines... The Porsche-owning spammer, whose identity remains confidential, was one of a group sued last year for having sent 1 billion junk messages to AOL members...

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:41:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hilarious Ze Frank sendup of YASNSes

Ze Frank takes a look at social networking -- Orkut, Friendster, and the lot -- and totally nails it. Link to QuickTime video (via Joi)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:59:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom makes the preliminary Nebula ballot!

I've just gotten word that Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has qualified for the Preliminary Ballot for the 2004 Nebula Awards. That's still a ways off -- the book still has to make the final ballot in spring 2005, and then the award will be announced in April 2005. But this is a hell of a mitzvah, I gotta say. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:10:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, March 29, 2004

Underwater motorcycle shipping soon

The Scubadoo is an AUS$17,500 "underwater motorcycle" that looks like something off of Space: 1999's aquatic habitat ship, shipping soon. It does 2.5 knots and carries an hour's worth of air. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:56:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Action Comics #1 scanned and posted

Someone's posted the whole of June, 1938's Action Comics #1 (including the first funnybook appearance of Superman) to the web as a series of medium-resolution scans. Link (Thanks, Eyes Spies and Lies!))

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:13:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moment of zen: Arm-wrestling photo series

Award-winning photographer and BoingBoing pal Clayton Cubitt says:

To get the most from this series recently shot in NYC, smear your upper lip with Ben-Gay and play "Eye of the Tiger" at full volume. "The Big Apple Grapple" International Arm Wrestling Championships, held on board the aircraft carrier Intrepid, shot for The Fader. The ref giving the "thumbs up" in this series is Bobby Buttafuoco, big brother of the infamous Joey. He's evidently the best arm-wrestler in New York City for like 13 years running. He was real nice, but I didn't ask him about Joey because I was worried he'd beat me to a pulp if I did.

Link to Clayton's photo series, Link to the list of contest winners (beware: MIDI soundtrack)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:27:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plural Animals

BoingBoing pal Mike Outmesguine says:

"This site lists the names given for groups of animals. But I see it's missing seagulls. Some examples: A shrewdness of apes, cete of badgers, army of caterpillars, knot of toads, unkindness of ravens, or a clowder of cats."

link

Update: Simon Gatrall points to more collective critter noun fun here, here, and here!

And toothpastefordinner says, "I illustrated some of the groups not shown on your links here (small version, big version)."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:30:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web design guide for kids?

My 9-year-old niece is interested in setting up her own Web site. The Dummies people sell a book from 1997 called "Creating Web Pages for Kids & Parents." I also glanced at Webmonkey For Kids. Does anyone have experience with either of these or recommend any other really good web design tutorials for kids? Your pointers would be appreciated!

UPDATE: Thanks for the multiple pointers to Lissa Explains It All!

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:25:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Empirical data on file-sharing's effect on album sales

Koleman Strumpf, a conservative, Cato-affiliated economist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has just co-authored a paper on the effects of file-sharing on album sales, based on the first-ever empirical data analysis in the field. Koleman watched the file requests on OpenNap servers (to get numbers on which albums' tracks are being downloaded) and compared them to the sales-figures for each album, correlating file-sharing popularity against sales data. His conclusion: file-sharing isn't killing record sales.

We analyze a large file sharing dataset which includes 0.01% of the world’s downloads from the last third of 2002. We focus on users located in the U.S. Their audio downloads are matched to the album they were released on, for which we have concurrent U.S. weekly sales data. This allows us to consider the relationship between downloads and sales. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using technical features related to file sharing (such as network congestion or song length) and international school holidays, both of which are plausibly exogenous to sales. We are able to obtain relatively precise estimates because the data contain over ten thousand album-weeks...

Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale...high selling albums actually benefit from file sharing.

369K PDF Link (Thanks, Koleman!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:24:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ernest Miller responds to "Congress moves to Criminalize P2P"

The ever-astute Ernest Miller of Lawmeme and Copyfight responds to "Congress Moves to Criminalize P2P," a story I filed for Wired News on Friday. Snip from his post "PIRATE Act Reveals Sen. Hatch as Strange Ally of Pornography Industry":

"Public health and safety are also directly threatened by business models that tempt children toward piracy and pornography and then use them as "human shields" against law enforcement."

My first thought was, "I'm surprised Hatch didn't pull a Gen. Jack D. Ripper imitation and start calling for protecting the precious purity of our children's bodily fluids." My second thought was, "does Hatch know what he is saying?"

Perhaps Hatch doesn't realize this, but most pornography is copyrighted and, as Hatch notes, is frequently distributed via filesharing networks. Since Hatch wants to stop copyright infringement and also discourage the redistribution of pornography, there is only one logical conclusion. This new law is meant to encourage the DOJ to go after those infringing pornography copyrights through P2P filesharing. By suing those engaged in pornography piracy, the DOJ could accomplish two of Hatch's goals at once: reducing infringement and pornography redistribution.

Read "PIRATE Act Reveals Sen. Hatch as Strange Ally of Pornography Industry": Link. Read the original Wired report: Link

UPDATE: Ernest writes, "I've just written another piece on the PIRATE Act ... the feds can use wiretaps to enforce it, something the RIAA can't do." Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:13:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Judge throws out Pooh charges against Disney

The case that Milne's agent's heirs brought against Disney for marketing Winnie the Pooh merch has been dismissed "with prejudice," after 13 years in court. Milne's agent's heirs brought the suit against Disney -- who had acquired a Pooh license from Milne's own heirs -- after discovering the Milne had signed over the Pooh merch rights to his agent in the thirties. The liability overhang was stupendous: potentially enough to kill the company.

Stephen Slesinger Inc., the family firm with U.S. merchandising rights to the honey-loving bear, had argued that Disney reneged on promises to pay royalties on video cassettes and short-changed it on other items...

In a hearing last month, Disney asked Los Angeles Superior Court judge Charles McCoy, who took over last October, to throw out the case, accusing Slesinger of stealing evidence. Slesinger had denied those charges.

Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:47:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Artist plans to marry dead poet, seeks attention, gets it

New York artist Shishaldin is planning to marry a French poet. That wouldn't be newsworthy if the poet wasn't Comte De Lautreamont, who has been dead for 134 years. Apparently, an obscure French law allows the country's president to sanction weddings between the living and dead. No word yet on whether French President Jacques Chirac will give his seal-of-approval though.

Shishaldin, a 23-yeard-old student at the Pratt Institute and former Alaskan tennis champion, seems to be on a PR blitz. Earlier this month she bequeathed her remains to the Guggenheim Museum. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:13:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Replica Haunted Mansion segment on TechTV this Weds

Last December, I blogged about Mark Hurt, who built himself a replica of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. TechTV is doing a segment on him this Wednesday.

One-time Disney contractor Mark Hurt turned his Georgia home into a look-alike of the Haunted Mansion attraction found at Disney amusement parks. We'll find out how and why he did it, and we'll give you a blood-curdling tour of Hurt's haunting renovations, tonight on "Tech Live."

Link (Thanks, Walter!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:14:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to handicap fruit-fly combat

Horny fruit-flies fight with one another over mates. A Harvard researcher has posted videos of 75 fruit-fly fights, along with notes analyzing the techniques employed by these adorable little critters and produced a crib-sheet for setting odds on which fly will triumph in any given bout. Link (via Geisha Asobi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:30:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Berlin theme-hotel of great and magnificent weirdness

I've stayed in some pretty cool theme-hotels, like San Luis Obipso's magnificent and weird Madonna Inn, but now that I've had a virtual tour of Berlin's Propeller Island City Lodge (which styles itself an "art" hotel), I am quietly and determinedly obsessed to pay it a visit. The 40-some themed rooms have a couple of real standouts, like the Flying Bed and Grandma's. I'm moving to Europe in a week -- my first trip to Berlin (when it comes) is definitely going to include a night here. Link (via Geisha Asobi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:21:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Buckyballs are the new asbestos?

Buckyballs -- nanoscale new materials based on inspired by Buckminster Fuller's research geodesics -- are theoretically inert in the environment, seeking out other buckyballs and forming clumps that are too big to do any real harm. Turns out they're not -- a Southern Methodist U researcher who released buckyballs into an aquatic testbed found that they were deadly to micro- and macro-organisms.

Oberdoerster kept young largemouth bass in ten-liter aquariums filled with fullerene-spiked water at concentrations of 0.5 parts per million -- similar to that encountered with more common pollutants in U.S. ports. After 48 hours, the fish were removed and their brains studied for evidence of lipid peroxidation, a tissue-burning chemical reaction that toxicologists use as a standard of biological damage.

The level of brain damage was "severe," Oberdoerster reported yesterday at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim -- some 17 times higher than seen in fish kept in clean water for comparison.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:06:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, March 28, 2004

RFIDs of the Beast

The Snopes.com Urban Legends Reference has a great new page detailing why radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are (for better or worse) not the "mark of the beast" as prophesized in this passage from the New Testament's Book of Revelations:

"[The beast] causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads. And that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:25:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Daily Show on Richard Clarke

Here's Lisa Rein's video-capture of The Daily's Show on Richard Clarke's damning testimony about the Bush administration's terrorism snark-hunt. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:31:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disneyland jacks up admission at 190% of inflation

The price of admission to Disneyland is going up to $49.75. Frank Boosman points out that Disney is raising its ticket-prices waaay ahead of inflation:

According to Yesterland, the price in 1972 for a 15-ride ticket book -- the highest-priced admission back then and so the most apt comparison to today's unlimited attractions ticket -- was $5.95.

Using this handy calculator (thanks, NASA!), we can tell that $5.95 in 1972 dollars equals $26.19 in 2003 dollars. That means that Disney's ticket prices are now 1.9 times higher than if they had risen at the underlying inflation rate. Put another way, if this trend holds, in the year 2035, it will cost $94.50 in 2004 dollars to visit Disneyland for the day.

Link (Thanks, Frank!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:27:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Europeans! Adjust your clocks and your circadians today

Reminder: Today is Leap Forward day in Europe. Adjust your clocks accordingly. Here's an excerpt from Eastern Standard Tribe on the subject:

The sleep-deprived are terrible, terrible drivers. Daylight savings time is a widowmaker: stay off the roads on Leap Forward day!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:20:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, March 27, 2004

iVillage creates a virtual women-only island in the There MMO

Terra Nova's Betsy Book takes note of a co-branding deal between the women's portal site iVillage and the massively multiplayer environment There, in which a women-only island called Paradise Island will be created for the enjoyment of women players, branded by iVillage. Book raises three excellent questions about this:

1 - It's a virtual space doubly marked by gender and commercial co-branding. (Is this the first of its kind? Anyone know of any precedents?)

2 - iVillage is a text-based community of women whose bonding often takes place specifically around members' relationships to their RL bodies in the form of pregnancy, dieting, health, and beauty tips. While there may be the rare case of role-playing and gender-bending in the iVillage web community (ie. men posing as women), most participants' online identities are extensions of their RL (female) selves. Will this direct tie between offline/online identity carry over into a virtual world? Or will iVillage women use There to role play, whether that means creating an avatar that looks radically different from their RL body, or even choose a male avatar?

3 - The branding of a virtual space as female automatically sexualizes it. Already some of the male community members in There are viewing the addition of iVillage island as a welcome opportunity to increase their chances for romance. How will the iVillage women respond to these romantic overtures? Is There prepared to deal with any Mr. Bungles that show up?

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:54:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hyenas and baboons for pets

These pets make pitbulls look like tweety bird. According to the headline of this page of three pictures, these guys are money collectors in Nigeria. Link (Via Sensible Erection)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:25:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Producing a blogger-read audio of Lessig's book

Lessig's new book, Free Culture is available online as a gratis, Creative-Commons-licensed file, under terms that allow for the creation of derivative works.

AKMA has proposed a hell of a derivative work: he's inviting any blogger who cares to to read a chapter aloud, recording it and posting it, so that a distributed audiobook of the book will be produced. I may take a crack at a chapter myself this week.

Heck, we could have duelling chapters; which version of chapter 5 do you like, Accordion Guy’s or Jenny the Shifted Librarian’s? (Disclaimer: I just typed their names in there. They haven’t offered or anything. Yet.) (Another disclaimer: When I went to Jenny’s just now to get her link, I saw that she had the same idea — and we didn’t even talk about it Wednesday night!)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:52:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, March 26, 2004

Congress moving to criminalize P2P

Congress appears to be preparing assaults against peer-to-peer technology on multiple fronts. Details in a story I just filed for Wired News.

A draft bill recently circulated among members of the House judiciary committee would make it much easier for the Justice Department to pursue criminal prosecutions against file sharers by lowering the burden of proof. The bill, obtained Thursday by Wired News, also would seek penalties of fines and prison time of up to ten years for file sharing.

In addition, on Thursday, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) introduced a bill that would allow the Justice Department to pursue civil cases against file sharers, again making it easier for law enforcement to punish people trading copyright music over peer-to-peer networks. They dubbed the bill "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004," or the Pirate Act.

The bills come at a time when the music and movie industries are exerting enormous pressure on all branches of government at the federal and state levels to crack down on P2P content piracy. The industries also are pushing to portray P2P networks as dens of terrorists, child pornographers and criminals -- a strategy that would make it more palatable for politicians to pass laws against products that are very popular with their constituents.

In defending the Pirate Act, Hatch said the operators of P2P networks are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography. With these "human shields," the P2P companies are trying to ransom the entertainment industries into accepting their networks as a distribution channel and source of revenue.

Link to Wired News story. Read the full text of Senator Hatch's remarks describing children as "human shields against copyright owners and law enforcement agencies," and the "piracy machine designed to tempt them to engage in copyright piracy or pornography distribution," here.

UPDATE: link to full text of the PIRATE Act here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:58:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toronto blogger gathering tomorrow night, 7PM

There's a gathering of bloggers this Saturday (tomorrow!) night in Toronto, at the C'est What restaurant, starting at 7PM. I'm going to head over after my signing that afternoon (alas, I'll likely only be staying for an hour or so, as I have a prior engagement that night). Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:36:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mind-bending space habitats

Bernal Spheres are theoretical space-habitats that curve in on themselves, making fantastical, topsy-turvy eschroid landscapes. Here's a page with some nice pix and details. Link (via Flickr)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:19:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DVD Jon on VLC and Apple's iTunes singles

Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen writes, in reference to VLC's support for iTunes's M4P DRM format:

In case you didn't know, I'm a VideoLAN developer. I reverse engineered FairPlay and wrote VLC's FairPlay support. It's been available in VideoLAN CVS since January, but the first release to include FairPlay support is VLC 0.7.1 (released March 2.).

Just wanted to let you know that once you have generated the user key file(s), you can copy them to as many computers you want and play your M4P files there using VLC.

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

Flying Gernsbackian vacuum cleaners from the 1950s

In the 1950s and 1960s, Hoover manufactured a line of flying-saucer-shaped "floating cannister vacuums" that rode on a cushion of their own exhaust, hovering over your carpet. This vacuum cleaner fansite has great photos, scanned ads and details for several of Hoover's most futuristic vacuum cleaners. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:29:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chris Null soaks a gummi

Chris Null soaks a gummi bear in water and gets a surprise. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:33:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nano, MEMS, and the wonders of nature

My new Small Times column is now online:

"Mother Nature has an impressive resume as an engineer. In nearly 4 billion years, she's perfected millions of innovative designs and manufacturing techniques in such diverse fields as biochemistry, materials science and mechanical engineering. It's no surprise, then, that small tech researchers are looking to nature's elegance for engineering aid."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:58:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steven Hawking's wife accused of physically abusing him

Steven Hawking's wife has been called in for questioning regarding injuries to her husband. She used to be one of his nurses, and the other nurses who tend him blame her for "numerous acts of cruelty." Both of them deny this.

Professor Hawking, author of A Brief History Of Time, has repeatedly been taken to hospital with unexplained injuries, such as a broken wrist, gashes to the face and a cut lip, that have left his family concerned for his safety.

Link (via Fark)

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

Aerogel

Juju has written an nice introductory piece about aerogel, a solid material that just a tiny bit denser than air. The pics are amazing. They look fake, but they come from the NASA web site. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:26:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Portable People Meter

Here's a piece I wrote for TheFeature about Arbitron's Portable People Meter, a pager-sized device that monitor's a wearer's media consumption. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:20:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Salon reports on FBI translator's revelations about Bush's 9-11 coverup

Yesterday I pointed to a couple of articles about FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Today Salon has a more in-depth article about Edmonds. She has a lot of shocking things to say about the tapes she translated, but since she's under a gag order issued by Ashcroft, she can't reveal everything.

Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."

This week Edmonds attended the commission hearings and plans to return in April when FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled to testify. "I'm hoping the commission asks him real questions -- like, in April 2001, did an FBI field office receive legitimate information indicating the use of airplanes for an attack on major cities? And is it true that through an FBI informant, who'd been used [by the Bureau] for 10 years, did you get information about specific terrorist plans and specific cells in this country? He couldn't say no," she insists.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:13:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing mailblog is back

We've finished setting up the new Boing Boing Mailblog (now! with actual working mail!) to which all future posts on Boing Boing will be posted. It's a Mailman list: sturdy and reliable, and less prone to weird unsubscribe errors than Yahoo Groups. If you were on the old Yahoo! list, you've been subscribed to the new list. If you want to subscribe to the new list, click the link. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:07:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Worst album covers gallery

Nice gallery of bad album covers, with funny commentary. Link (Thanks, Greg!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:23:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese rescue robot vids

A post on Dottocomu includes links to videos of the Enryu Japanese rescue-robot tearing the doors off of cars, moving steel girders and demonstrating humanity's hubristic attempt to supercede the Creator's unique right to create life. It's sacrelicious. Link (via Engadget)

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

Four-eared kitten finds home

Lilly, the cute German kitten born with an extra set of non-working ears, has been adopted. According to the animal shelter in the foothills of the Alps where Lilly has been living, there was no shortage of people wanting to take her in once word spread about her unique trait (visible in this CNN photo)."We wanted to make sure the people were looking for a normal cat and not a gag to make an exhibition out of her," a worker at the shelter told Reuters. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:07:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's last Toronto signing tomorrow

A reminder: I'm doing my final Toronto signing tomorrow afternoon at Bakka Books:

March 27, 3-5PM, Bakka Books, 598 Yonge St., at Wellesley, +1.416.963.9993

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:50:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Send your future self an email

FutureMe lets you address an email to yourself and set a date in the future to have it sent -- pass an email to yourself in ten years reminding yourself about your vow to never, ever drink peach schnapps again and see how well you're faring. Link (via Ambiguous)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:50:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

VLC will play iTunes Music Store tracks

My favorite media player is something called Video LAN Client, or VLC, which plays everything from Quicktime to Divx and RealVideo. It's free and open source, and improves steadily. Now, someone's hacked in support for M4Ps, the DRM format used by Apple for the iTunes Music Store singles. Alas, it requires that you be using a machine that's been authorized by Apple to play the tracks in question.

That's a pretty big problem for me. Let me tell you my iTunes horror story. I'm a great Apple customer. I buy a new Powerbook every ten months or so. I've convinced all my family members to buy Powerbooks. Wherever I go, I leave a wake of Apple customers behind me.

So last year, when the iTMS debuted, I was in Toronto, and I showed my Mom how to stream music off of my Powerbook. I even authorized her to play my iTMS tracks -- I spent about $50 in the first day that the store was online.

Then I got back to San Francisco, and everything was fine. Apple announced the Aluminum 15" Powerbook, and that day, I ordered one to replace my 10-month-old 12" Powerbook, which was dying and underpowered. The 15" machine died a week after it arrived. I sent it back to Apple as a lemon and it was broken up for parts and a new machine was sent to me. I restored my data to the new Powerbook's HDD and tried to authorize iTunes to play my music, but I was SOL: I'd already authorized my old 12", my mom's iBook, and the Powerbook that was now back in Apple's parts-stream. So I de-authorized the 12" and away we went.

The first run of Alumninum Powerbooks had a screen defect, the "white blobs" problem. I had it in spades: huge, distracting white blobs all over the screen. Once I had the time, I moved all my data over to the old 12" and send the new machine back to Apple a second time, this time to get a new screen. While the new machine was in Texas getting repaired, I was in San Francisco, and I attempted to use the iTunes on my 12" Powerbook, only to be prompted to authorize the machine to play my susbtantial, expensive library of iTMS tracks.

But I couldn't. Between my mom's iBook (3,000 miles away in another country), my original Powerbook (broken up for parts by Apple) and the replacement Powerbook (back in the shop due to a manufacturing defect), I'd done all the authorizations that Apple's "speed bump" DRM would allow me. The Help links on Apple's site went to pages with support forms that returned errors when I filled them in. So, the "FairPlay" system was punishing me for:

1. Buying so much iTMS music that burning it to CD and ripping it back as MP3 (and re-entering all the metadata) was too big a chore to contemplate
2. Buying a new Powerbook at full retail every 10 months
3. Buying new Powerbooks as soon as they are announced, before all the manufacturing bugs have been shaken out

Apple tells us that its DRM "keeps honest users honest." I'm a pretty honest user. Apple's DRM hasn't kept me honest, though: it's kept me angry with Apple. It's kept me feeling like a sucker for giving them my money. It's kept me in chains.

So I'm waiting for someone to hack support for unauthorized AACs into VLC, because I'm not confident in my ability to continue to authorize the machines I buy to play the music I pay for. Link (via Hack the Planet)

DVD Jon has written in with more info on this -- once you crack your music with VLC, you can play it on as many CPUs as you want

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:41:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mythtv PVRs for sale

An Aussie company is shipping prebuilt mythtv-based PVRs. These are souped-up TiVo-like boxen built out of commodity hardware with all the features that I want, not just the ones that make the Luddites who run the movie studios comfortable. This analysis of the features (including several features that the manufacturer lamely decided to "hide") makes this box pretty drool-worthy indeed. Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:12:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Don't think about pink elephants

According to a new Harvard University psychological study, the thoughts we push out of our brains during the day seep into our dreams at night. The reason may be because the prefontal cortex--the part of the brain we use to plan and organize complex cognitive processes--doesn't work as hard when we're asleep.

"Maybe this is why students dream of sleeping through an important exam, why actors dream of going blank on stage, and why truckers dream of driving off the road," one of the researchers told Scientific American. "Dreams are where our thoughts go when we try to put the thoughts out of mind." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:21:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney Ink Shop

Disney has launched a custom T-shirt shop with a seemingly infinite number of images to choose from. some of the art is awesome, owing to the fact that it was drawn by the good old Disney studio cartoonists. I've found several ukulele related images already. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:48:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WTF: a UK conference on "emerging memes"

Tav sez, "The very first WTF, an open space gathering/conference of various grassroots projects, people, and organisations, will be happening from 11am onwards this Saturday, 27th of March @ the 491 Gallery, 491 Grove Green Road, London E11, UK. It's a UK based conference of emerging memes (foafy-crypto-socio-semantic-typographic-activist-style) empowered with technology (wi-fi, wikis, audio feeds, irc, etc.)" Link (Thanks, Tav!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:47:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Removable Media For Our Minds

In my latest article for TheFeature.com, I report on the first baby steps toward "memory prosthetics," systems that could someday enable us to google our entire lives.

"Too often, our memories don't serve us well. We lose our keys. We forget names. As we age, the home movies that play in our heads begin to look like fifth generation VHS copies. But what if we could rewind to yesterday? Indeed, what if we could watch our entire lives flash before our eyes with the click of button? The possibility is not as far fetched as one might think."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:42:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Giant Shrimp

Long John Silver's comes through with free giant shrimp! Stefan Jones sez:

Arrr! Line up for your giant bottom-feeding sea bugs ye swabs! Although NASA's announcement of evidence of ancient seawater on Mars came a bit late, Long John Silver's is going to go ahead and give away a free giant shrimp to all comers on May 10th.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:59:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

STRANGEco reports on the New York Toy Fair 2004

Our favorite toy company STRANGEco reports on the NY Toy Fair, and has tons of pictures.

STRANGEco featured a combination of originally branded toys and specially distributed products. In addition to the previously announced Dorbel, MARS-1 and Tiger Baby vinyls, STRANGEco previewed The Neo Kaiju Project-- featuring reinterpretations of Japanese monsters by Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Seonna Hong, Kathy Schorr and Todd Schorr. The booth also showcased Scarygirl by Nathan Jurevicius (including the upcoming Mini Scarygirl series), Sony Japan’s Vanimal Zoo and Art Capsule mini figures, Presspop Gallery’s high-end vinyl figures and the new Punk Is Not Dead series by James Jarvis and AMOS Novelties.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:46:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tired of Silly Putty? Try Magnetoids

I like to play with a hunk of Silly Putty while I procrastinate in front of the computer. But these Magnetoids look (and sound) really neat. Link (Thanks, Kent W!)

Singe sez: "You can order ferromagnetic Silly Putty. I suspect that these Magnetoids you speak of would create an interesting gestalt with this ferromagnetic Silly Putty, seeing as they also speak of interesting effects using their product with a neodymium magnet which they sell."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:16:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FBI translator says she was bribed not to spill beans on 9-11 cover-up

During the 9-11 Hearing, the spotlight was on Richard Clarke's testimony, because they've been so devastating to the Bush administration. But there's hardly any media mention of Sibel Edmonds' tesimony. She's a Farsi and Turkish translator who worked for the FBI from Sept. 20, 2001 to March 2002. Here's what Govenment Executive magazine had to say about her testimony.

Edmonds said she was hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations that related to the plot. In her review, Edmonds said the documents clearly showed that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles. The documents also included information relating to their financial activities. Edmonds said she could not comment in detail because she has been under a Justice Department gag order since October 2002.

And here's what tomflocco.com reported:

FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds, was offered a substantial raise and a full time job in order to not go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA.

Edmonds, a ten year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph examination, speaks fluent Farsi and Turkish and had been working part time with the FBI for six months-- commencing in December, 2001.

In a 50 reporter frenzy in front of some 12 news cameras, Edmonds said "Attorney General John Ashcroft told me 'he was invoking State Secret Privilege and National Security' when I told the FBI I wanted to go public with what I had translated from the pre 9-11 intercepts."

"I appeared once on CBS 60 Minutes but I have been silenced by Mr. Ashcroft, the FBI follows me, and I was threatened with jail in 2002 if I went public," Edmonds told tomflocco.com.

When we asked her if it was really true that she had been bribed by the FBI and DOJ, Edmonds said "You can interpret it as that."

More information about Sibel Edmonds is available at The Memory Hole.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:00:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comcast buys TechTV, will merge it with gaming channel G4

Comcast announced today that it will purchase TechTV, the network creted by Zdnet and owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Programming Inc. When the deal closes, Comcast will merge TechTV with gamer lifestyle network G4. Link to press release. UPDATE: Wired News has a story here, with more details.

Either way, industry observers think that TechTV and G4 are a good fit, and that both Comcast and TechTV will benefit because of the merger. "There's very good programming on TechTV that deserves to survive," says Laura Behrens, a senior media analyst at Gartner/G2, "and with an owner on the scale of Comcast, it now probably has a chance to survive."

But TechTV had been struggling for some time and after multiple rounds of layoffs it had been seen as an attractive acquisition target. And because no one yet knows whether TechTV will suffer further layoffs, the mood at the company late Wednesday was grim, especially because the sale won't put to rest uncertainty over employees' futures. "After a while, I stopped paying attention," said one TechTV employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, about the acquisition rumors. "I stopped keeping track."

Link. (Thanks for the fact-check, Adam!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:39:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kuro5hin's new membership system

Rusty, the guy who runs Kuro5hin, has gotten fed up with abusive posters. He's going to implement a new system for new members.

The idea is this: someone creates a new account. They go through the normal email confirmation. At this point they cannot do anything. Before you have the privileges of a user, you must get an existing user to sponsor you. That just means that some user with the ability to sponsor others goes to a page and enters the new user's nickname. These two are now associated, and if a user gets kicked off the site, their sponsor does too.

This sounds like a good idea. People are already complaining on kuro5hin about the idea, but really, why should it be easy to gain membership into a club? It reminds me of the way private societies like the Masons work. New candidates can apply for membership, but need a couple of sponsors to be accepted into the club. Sponsors have to know the new member pretty well before sponsoring him, because they don't want their reps to be besmirched. And any latent jerk-tendencies in the new guy will be stifled, because he knows his sponsor will take the heat for whatever he does. Maybe Boing Boing should implement a similar system if we decide to allow comments again. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:33:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool new French group blog on cyberculture

Spanish blogger Jose Luis of ecuaderno.com sends word of a new French collaborative weblog AEIOU -- described as having been "inspired by Metafilter."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:24:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush thinks looking for weapons of mass destruction is a hoot

Bush had a good laugh at the expense of the planet last night at a media dinner:

Bush put on a slide show, calling it the "White House Election-Year Album" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses. There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.

As Reason's Hit and Run commented, "leading your country to war under false pretenses is hiiiiii-larious." Link

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

Passion of the Robo Christ -- NOT

One of the humans behind Robots.net reports of our metallic overlords:

The Online Sun and Ananova report that Mel Gibson used a robot Christ in his recent movie, Passion of the Christ. The £220,000 robot was used during the crucifixion scenes because the weather was too cold for actor Jim Caviezel. According to another site, the animatronic Christ was operated by Mel Gibson himself. The robot was created by Keith Vanderlaan's Captive Audience Productions. In addition to realistic head movements, the robot also bleeds and appears to breathe. This could give a whole new meaning to the phrase, "I'll be back".

Link, (thanks noah!)

UPDATE: False! Boingboing reader Nelson says, "As much as I wish it was true, IMDB debunks the robo-christ rumor here."

The figure of Christ during the crucifixion is actually James Caviezel, despite popular rumors - no animatronics were used. However, according to the movie's official website, the movie's make-up effects creator/producer Keith VanderLaan forged an articulated, rubber stand-in for Caviezel who could be suspended on the cross for certain wide shots to allow the actor some physical relief.

Yo, Snopes!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:57:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyright-banned music

The Downhill Battle people have started a site to catalog and distribute .torrents of music that can't be liegally distributed due to copyright restrictions, such as the Grey Album. Link (via Trubble)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:01:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lessig's Free Culture, free online, under a Creative Commons license

Larry Lessig's new book "Free Culture" -- which is about the value of freedom to cultural production -- is out in stores today, and, unlike his previous two books, Larry has foudn the leverage to convince his publisher to let him release the full text of the new book online under a Creative Commons license. He credits me with providing the ammunition he needed to convince Penguin to allow him to do this -- which is extraordinarily flattering -- but however he got there, I'm glad he did.

A landmark manifesto about the genuine closing of the American mind.

Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America's most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, Code and The Future of Ideas, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in Free Culture, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they're inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation.

All creative works-books, movies, records, software, and so on-are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible-technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the Constitution in 1787 was seventeen years. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we've forgotten?

Link (Thanks, Larry!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:00:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Another man drinking another entire gallon of milk

More on the milk-drinking-man-meme: this short film by Rich Lee of Jetpack Design.
Link, also see this previous BoingBoing entry.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:54:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Home Glow

Luminosity is the new black. Loop.ph is a design group "exploring reactive luminous surfaces in the built environment." Products that respond to the activities of the human beings using them. Things that emit light, things worn or lived in. Here are a few:

wallpaper that glows as more sound is in the room Link
responsive window blinds that glow Link
a light blanket Link
Link to Loop.ph home with show dates and locations (Thanks, Bev!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:37:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nun Urinals

Noted without comment. A follow-up to earlier BoingBoing posts on the Virgin Atlantic "kiss" urinal hoo-haa: nun-shaped urinals.
Found here (warning: hideous popunder ads abound in parent directory). (via Warren)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:22:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Speakerphone idiot

Dan Gillmor writes about an obnoxious moron in a crowded airport lounge using his cellphone in speakerphone mode.

"Well, I have to get on a plane soon," he tells his colleague. I feel sorry for her, because he'll probably be bothering her in person soon, but those of us who are being forced to listen to this drivel couldn't be happier.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:45:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Circular saw won't hurt finger

Amazing video of a circular saw that can tell the difference between wood and skin. Link (Thanks, David!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:36:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Carlo's Playmobil score

Carlo Longino went to Germany and picked up some cool Playmobil sets, including a hazmat cleanup crew and a portapotty. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:02:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dennis Miller's brain fries on air

Funny account of Dennis Miller's nutty behavior on his talk show. The guest was NSNBC liberal Eric Alterman.

"You look so pissed off," said Mr. Miller.

"What do you mean, I look pissed off?" asked Mr. Alterman.

"I don’t even know what to say. You’re looking at me like—you’re just sitting there." Mr. Miller did an impersonation of what looked like a drunken, mentally disabled guy passing out. "Give me a question and I’ll ask you a question. What do you want to talk about?"

Mr. Alterman laughed nervously.

"Well," he said, "we could talk a little bit more about the way he misled the country." (Meaning George W. Bush.)

Said Mr. Miller: "This is what I’m looking at, here, like this."

He pretended to be asleep.

When Mr. Alterman finished his spiel, Mr. Miller went bolt upright and snapped at the camera: "All right, you’ve been great. Come back anytime."

Link

Here's the video of the interview. Actually, Miller seems like his cranky old self to me. (Thanks, Francis!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:02:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SightLight: iSight lamp

The SightLight is a bus-powered, auto-sensing light designed for use with the Apple iSight camera.

SightLight's custom-designed Fresnel-based lens carefully adds a direct but diffused light to the subject directly in front of the camera (you). This added illumination improves skin tone coloration and evens out the shadows caused by inconsistent directional room lighting.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:48:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Haunted Mansion appears in Foxtrot strip

Monday's FoxTrot comic mentioned and depicted Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. Link (Thanks, Kronos!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:46:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Low-carb breakfast couture

From the pages of a 1979 issue of Jackie magazine, here's a HOWTO for knitting a matching bag-and-beret featuring a delicious, low-carb breakfast. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:48:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

KCRW responds to BB on Sandra Tsing Loh controversy

Responding to this post on BoingBoing from last week, radio station KCRW sends us a statement:

After much deliberation, KCRW has decided to release the letter that Ms. Loh faxed to General Manager Ruth Seymour on the day she was notified that her program "The Loh Life" was cancelled.

You can read the entire KCRW statement, and the text of the letter in question, here. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:31:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Recycled umbrella dress

This dress is made entirely from discarded umbrellas found in Berkeley and NYC. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:22:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photo series: A Gallon of Milk in an hour?

Former Nerve.com "I Did it for Science" extreme sex columnist and fast-talking limey Grant Stoddard is caught living out a dare: can he drink an entire gallon of milk in one hour? The photo series shot by Clayton James Cubitt reads a little like Fear Factor, but, ummm, in Brooklyn with fauxhawks. Just click it. And, sing "Milkshake" to yourself over and over again while you're scrolling through. Or not. Got Vomit?
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:21:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Download random numbers from quantum origin

Jean-Luc says:

The University of Geneva and the company id Quantique team has launched the first web site offering the possibility to download random numbers from quantum origin. The website offers the possibility to request a sequence of random numbers. The length and the bounds of the sequence can be specified by the user. A quantum random number generator connected to the server is used to produce the numbers on demand.

Link

Update: A cool site, but not the first to offer random quantum numbers, say BoingBoing readers. . Dave Polaschek and Charlie Reiman each wrote in to tell us that Hotbits, a site created by former Autodesk guy John Walker, has been offering quantum random numbers for years via web and through a java class. Link."

UPDATE 2: ethan fremen says, "Note that randomnumbers.info has greater claim on being "truly random" because it generates a single random number from a single quantum event while hot bits times the difference between two paired decay events in order to generate a single bit." Um, yeah! What he said!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:16:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Office plastered in eggs, live birds

Hit this link, scroll down to the bottom of the page. Snip:

"Brian still doesn't budge. 'There's something you have to see,' he says.

I walk over to my desk and see the following: Everyone in R&D is waiting to see my reaction. Unfortunately, I'm still in panic mode about being late. So, I run over to my desk. It is covered in eggs, complete with a live bird in a cage. After a beat, I say, 'Huh.'

Then I turn to Brian and say, 'Okay, we gotta go.'"
Link (Thanks, Marty Cortinas!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:13:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Valenti retires

Jack Valenti is retiring from the MPAA. He's a man who championed the First Amendment rights of filmmakers and derided the First Amendment rights of programmers, a person who loved free speech, but not enough to share it with the rest of us. Link (Thanks, Marc!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:13:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I just finished another novel!

It's 1:30 in the morning, and I've just completed the first draft of my next novel, which used to be called "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town," and now has a different, provisional title that I'm not so sure about. It is 125,000 words long -- longer than Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe combined. I started work on it in late December 2001 and finished it tonight. I'm exhausted and elated -- at one point, I actually fell asleep typing and woke up to discover that I'd kept on typing nonsense words from my dreams. Freaky. Here's an excerpt from an earlier draft: Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:36:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Low-carb Eastern Standard Tribe

Inspired by Fark photoshopping contest whose theme was unlikely places for low-carb diets, Eldon Brown produced this terrific parody of my latest novel's cover. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:39:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Night of the Living Dead on Archive.org

BoingBoing reader VonGuard says:

What with all the zombies here today, i figured it was a good idea to point out that the copyright on Night of the Living Dead has lapsed, and now the whole danged blasted movie is available for free on archive.org. Man, Archive rules.

Link

UPDATE: Travis, a member of the BoingBoing tribe on Tribe.net, says: " Before 1978, any copyrighted work had to have a copyright notice on every distribution, otherwise it wasn't considered copyrighted. George A. Romero mistakenly left out the copyright notice when he distributed his 1968 film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The copyright has not recently "lapsed," but was in fact never enforcable, which is why we have dozens of "pirate" distributions of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and innumerable knock-offs."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:36:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mikroman: 150-micron-thick slices of theater

My review of Sam Buxton's brilliant Mikroman desk-toys appears in this month's Wired. They really do kick ass.

Using a chemical milling process borrowed from the electronics industry, the Brit product designer acid-etches detailed scenes onto 150-micron-thick slices of stainless steel. Each of his eight MikroMan subjects - like this finely rendered astronaut with rover and landing craft -- is sold flat and can be teased into the third dimension with a fingernail

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:30:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Most surreal headline about a DOS attack ever

The Asociated Press reports on yet another derailing of RIAA.org: "Recording industry Web site downed, possibly by zombies." I guess we're having a kind of a Dawn of the Dead media moment. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:03:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scarlet letter license plates for drunk drivers

If you get busted driving drunk in Ohio, you get these rad-looking yellow license plates with red letters on them. Link (Thanks, Lisa!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:58:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John Shirley on the remake of Dawn of the Dead

The always interesting John Shirley has a posted an entry about immortality research and Dawn of the Dead, and why they are related.

I just saw the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD, which I thought worked well--though it lost touch with Romero's satirical metaphor about living/dead shoppers in the mall--and which reminded me that zombie movies are not really about corpses coming to get us, they're about death coming to get us. The hungry corpses in such films (28 Days Later, the Evil Dead etc) very simply stand for our own death. Our own corpses, seen in advance. Aggressive, because death is always stalking us, near or far; because it's inexorable, shuffling toward us slowly but never stopping, as the zombies do. In those movies, the humans never completely win out over the zombies. Can't beat death itself.

(John also has a new book out about the life of Gurdjieff.) Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:39:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese style: Elegant Gothic Lolita

Article about Japanese schoolgirl subculture.

An Elegant Gothic Lolita, EGL or Gothic Lolita for short, is a Japanese teen or young adult who dresses in amazingly elaborate Gothic looking babydoll costumes. On the weekends these women walk the streets of Tokyo and Osaka and fill Yoyogi Park and Harajuku neighborhood where they pose for tourist’s pictures and sit around looking pretty. They are beautiful, glamorous, doll-like manifestations of their favorite Visual Rock stars.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:36:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hobby: buying used hard drives on eBay and unerasing the data for fun

My friend Simson Garfinkel wrote a great piece on the foolishness of selling hard drives that haven't been sanitized:

"Since then, I have repeatedly indulged my habit for procuring and then analyzing secondhand hard drives. (...) Last summer, I started buying drives en masse on eBay.

"In all, I bought and analyzed the content of more than 150 drives(...) In fact, only 10 percent of the drives I purchased had been properly sanitized.

"Much of the data we found was truly shocking. One of the drives once lived in an ATM. It contained a year's worth of financial transactions—including account numbers and withdrawal amounts—from a organization that had a legal requirement to not divulge such information. Two other drives contained more than 5,000 credit card numbers—it looked as if one had been inside a cash register. Another had e-mail and personal financial records of a 45-year-old fellow in Georgia. The man is divorced, paying child support and dating a woman he met in Savannah. And, oh yeah, he's really into pornography."

Link (via Bruce Sterling)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:22:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

3D virtual beers to hover over bars

New heights in bar beer-ad-intrusiveness: 3D beer bottles that leap out of 52" flat panels and hover on the bar.

The system, from X3D Technologies in New York City, allows the virtual drinks to jump up to a metre in front of the screen. They can be viewed with the naked eye from anything up to a 120 degree angle.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:03:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nano Jobs

Our friends at the Foresight Institute collaborated with Working In Ltd. on Working-Nanotechnology.com, a job board and information clearinghouse specifically for careers in small tech. The Education & Training section is especially cool, listing programs and courses for students all the way down to middle school age. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:14:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired: Why RSS Is Everywhere

I wrote a brief piece about RSS, Atom, and the benefits of content syndication for the current issue of Wired Magazine.

Snip: "In the end, RSS may not save you time, but it'll help pack more info into the time you have, says Jonno d'Addario, editor of the sex blog Fleshbot, which (big surprise) offers an RSS feed. 'Since I've started using a news aggregator, I don't spend eight hours a day compulsively noodling through a dozen favorite blogs anymore,' he says. 'Instead I spend eight hours a day compulsively noodling through hundreds of RSS feeds.' Ah, progress."
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:42:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Office plastered in Marshmallow Peeps

BoingBoing reader Neil writes,

The BoingBoing entry about the Post-It notes prank reminded me of one we pulled at work several years ago around Easter. Instead of Post-It notes we used Marshmallow Peeps. Lots and lots of Marshallow Peeps.

[snip from website:]"We did mail Just Born, manufacturers of Peeps, but sadly they never got back to us. The peeps wound up staying in the office for about two years, through at least two occupant changes. Even six months after they were up we had people coming by and eating them off the ceiling. Ugh."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:59:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wicked RSS reader redesign

My RSS reader of choice, Shrook, went 2.0 this morning. After five or six hours of using it (couldn't sleep, friggin' jetlag), I am in love. This is the best UI overhaul I've ever seen (the old UI was pretty good too), a completely unexpected redesign that nevertheless managed to make this app that I use all day, every day, into something five times more useful and stable than it had been the day before. I like this punctuated equilibrium stuff.

Yesterday's iPhoto update is another example: all of a sudden, iPhoto's gone from being an app that was just useful enough to put up with its ultra-shitty performance to something I just keep running in the background all the time, with 10,000 photos on tap. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:31:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tote-bags made from Indonesian trash

Ann Wizer pays Jakarta's trash-dump pickers to find and wash plasticized packaging materials from the piles, then assemble them into tote bags. Link (via Joe Ganley)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:00:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Windows XP packaging as a Linux PC case

This is pretty perverse: a PC that runs Red Hat Linux, painstakingly constructed within the packaging for Windows XP. Link (Thanks, Alexander!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:40:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Office plastered in Post-it-notes

Documentation of an insane office prank involving 2,500 post-it notes and one mild-mannered victim.

"Damon has been playing tricks on me for a few days now. So I came in on the weekend and did some "re-decorating" in his office. He didn't see it until Monday morning when he came in and opened his office door.

His office blinds were closed, his door was shut and locked, and I left this post-it in the middle of his door. It says 'Can you pick up some more post-its, we're running low.' :) "

The pranksters notified Post-it manufacturers 3M, and received three cases of post-its "for future decorating." Hey, Daimler-Chrysler, did I tell you about my brilliant decorating prank involving multiple brand-new Mercedes convertibles? No, really!
Link (Thanks, Ivy )

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:25:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jay-Z meets Metallica: Black on Black

DJ Halfred has remixed Jay-Z's Balck Album with Metallica's Black Album, producign a full-length disc he calls "Black on Black." Come and download the .torrent file so that I can get some more peers in the mesh!

December 4th Was Sad But True
Unforgiven Clarity
Don't Tread On My Encore
The God That Caused 99 Problems
The Threat of Wolf and Man
The Struggle Within to Change Clothes
The Sandman's First Song
Nothing Else Matters Other than the Allure
Justify My Thug Through the Never
A Public Service Announcement About Being Holier than Thou
Lucifer? Never!
My Friend of Saying What More, Exactly
Wherever You May Roam, Get That Dirt Off Your Shoulder
Wadda Da (Bonus track)

Link, Updated Direct Link to .torrent (Thanks, DJ Halfred!)

Update: OK, I've got this now, and it is the bad-assest metal/hiphop crossover since Anthrax and Public Enemy's Bring the Noise

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:12:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chicken tikka masala: the silent, delicious, colorful killer

Britain's beloved chicken tikka masala contains dyes linked to "hyperactivity, asthma, and even cancer."

Tartrazine, a dye made from coal tar, is banned in Norway, Finland and Austria.

As well as being used in a variety of cakes, soft drinks and sauces, some egg manufacturers feed it to their chickens to make their yolks extra yellow. But scientists believe it can cause blurred vision and purple skin patches and is particularly hazardous for asthmatics and anyone allergic to aspirin.

Sunset Yellow is also banned in Norway and Finland but elsewhere is used in juices, sweets and sauces. Scientists have linked it with chromosome damage and kidney tumours as well as abdominal pain, hives, nausea and vomiting.

Ponceau 4R, which is illegal in the USA and Norway, is believed to cause cancer in animals.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:55:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moldy coffee cups: a celebration of penicillin

In commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin -- a happy accident in which rogue mold grew in a forgotten petri dish -- the Royal Society of Chemistry has asked its most unhygienic stakeholders to send in photos of their most disgusting, molded-over and crufted-up coffee cups. Stomach-turning goodness! Link (Thanks, Malcolm!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:50:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, March 22, 2004

Swedish wooden computer accessories

Check out these wooden ikeoid keyboards, mice and monitors. Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:30:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Banksy: London's stencil graffiti genius

London graffiti writer Banksy is a true stencil genius. His site -- frustrating to navigate -- is still a stunning walk through some of the finest art you'll see on the street or in a gallery. Link (Thanks, Sabrina!)

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

Son of Bride of Robolympics Photos, part umptybillion

callum prentice says, "Our team entered a combat robot in the robolympics this weekend. I'm in the process of collecting images - more will appear here over the next few days - the heavyweight & super heavyweight battles were simply the most awe inspiring, violent mechanical event i've ever seen - these shots don't even come close to describing the screech of titanium armour being ripped off, the crash of a 6" spike smashing into steel plating or the staccato vibration of shrapnel crashing into the bullet proof windows of the arena." Link

VonGuard says, "Robolympics pictures -- about 300 of them." Link

And Ashley Niblock says, "I know you've already posted a gazillion of these, but this is a highly edited list, and I think captures the range of events going on." Link

Link to previous BB Robolympics photos post. Thanks, robogeeks!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:42:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

That's not a mouth-shaped urinal, it's a *travesty*

Some people do not care for the big-fat-red-kiss-mouth-shaped pissoires recently installed in Virgin Atlantic's JFK clubhouse. Here is the National Organization of Women press release: Outrageous Interruptus / Sexist Urinals. I'm a pro-fempower woman, and I'm all for calling misogyny when we see it -- but I think NOW needs to unclench its collective sphincter.

UPDATE: BoingBoing reader Jonathan Guberman says, "My cousin sent me an article about the outrageous Virgin mouth-shaped urinals, and a link to complain to Virgin about it. Virgin has responded with the following, a very prompt and polite response. Good for them!"

(Begin forwarded message:) We are, of course very sorry to hear of your concerns with the design of the urinals that were to be fitted in our clubhouse at JFK airport. We can assure you that no offense was ever intended. The urinals were intended to be one of the more fun and quirky features of the new JFK Clubhouse, a project overseen by Virgin's in-house design team led by two female designers. The urinals themselves were the idea of a female designer, and we were surprised by the public reaction.

However, Virgin Atlantic always aims to listen to our passengers and the general public, and as a result of the feedback we have received we will not install the urinals in the bathroom at our new JFK clubhouse. We trust our swift action will help restore your confidence in our company and thank you for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate your direct approach.

Yours sincerely,
John Riordan
Vice President, Customer Services

(end forwarded message) Link to article on NOW's hissy fit, Previous BB post (Thanks, Eric)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:24:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shipping container houses

Dan Mushrush sez: "A company is selling homes made of shipping containers for $76k -the lot -the installation. Luxury appointments are available." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:33:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Underwood casemod

This is a hellasweet case-mod: an old Underwood Noiseless typewriter running Windows 2K. Link (Thanks, Manx)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:28:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

There's a party in my mouth.

Yoo-hooooo, burners -- blink tags for your chompers!

"Oral Disco is a multi-coloured light cleverly concealed inside a plastic mould. This easily and comfortably slides onto your upper or lower teeth. When you switch it on, it makes your whole mouth glow in an array of colourful light! The light moves from tooth to tooth as if dancing, hence the 'disco' name."
Link (via Warren)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:25:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BB reader attends "Wanna be a pyro?" workshop, blogs experience

Following up on this earlier BoingBoing post, reader nym writes:

I've always been a fan of fire, the mistress of the night. She dances in a way that captures my eyes, and tugs at my soul. In my young years, I was delighted to read the childhood stories entitled "Diary of a Pyro" by John DuBois. I read it, and loved it, but when something blew up something in my face from careless meddling, I pulled back at my experimentation, and just admired the work of others. Aside from a few fireworks, I haven't really spent time learning pyro since that day.

When Xeni blogged 'So you want to be a Pyro', I was all over it. A chance to actually learn safely the ropes with the people who know it the best. I couldn't go to the local seminar in LA, but knew it was going to be worth the five hours of driving to and back from San Diego.

Link to entire blog entry. Thanks, nym!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:59:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Li'l Abner comic strip reruns

Visit this site each day for a new Li'L Abner strip. It's currently running strips from 1948. Link (via Irregular orbit)

Eric Burns sez: Here is "a slightly more consistently updated Lil' Abner site than the one mentioned before. Comics.com has had Lil' Abner and also has easily tracked archives, so someone can get into the storyline (coincidentially another Sadies Hawkins Day race, this time from 1951). The additional archives makes it easier to get into the spirit of Dogpatch and get a broader sense of Al Capp's satire. Besides, where else can you learn about the Dogpatch ham (man's best friend)?

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:17:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The 213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army

I dunno if SPC Schwarz actually did all the things on the list of "The 213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army," but reading the list is amusing enough to have evoked several louder-than-approriate laughs from me.

# Must never ask anyone who outranks me if they've been smoking crack.

# Must not tell any officer that I am smarter than they are, especially if it's true.

# Never confuse a Dutch soldier for a French one.

# Never tell a German soldier that 'We kicked your ass in World War 2!'

# Don't tell Princess Di jokes in front of the paras (British Airborne).

# Don't take the batteries out of the other soldiers alarm clocks (Even if they do hit snooze about forty times).

# The Irish MPs are not after 'Me frosted lucky charms'.

Link (via AccordionGuy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:51:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyfight becomes an all-star group-blog

Donna Wentworth's excellent tech-and-copyright blog, Copyfight, is now an all-star Corante-hosted group-blog, with contributions from Elizabeth Rader, Ernest Miller, Jason Schultz, Aaron Swartz, and Wendy Seltzer. This is the Crooked Timber or Terra Nova or Many2Many of copyright blogs. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:50:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Awesome anime ferry

Kudos to the crafty operators of this Japanese ferry service, who commissioned manga legend Leiji Matsumoto to design it "to appeal to the younger generation." As Gizmodo's Joel Johnson put it, "It does this by being awesome." Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:46:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fark photoshoppers on low-carb products

Fark photoshop contest: odd places for "low-carb" labels. I swear, Fark is the new Mad Magazine. Link

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

NPR's Day to Day on the "no papers" cowboy

Straight from the BoingBoing headlines! Today on NPR's Day to Day, a segment on the Nevada cattle rancher whose tale was blogged here on BB not long ago.

NPR's Alex Chadwick has the story of Dudley Hiibel, a poor rancher in northern Nevada who continues to fight his arrest for refusing to show his identification to a sheriff's deputy. He's appealed his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the way the justices rule could have major implications. Learn more about the case -- and view videos -- on Hiibel's official Web site.

Audio here after 12PM PT today.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:45:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Still! More! Robolympics! Photos!

Scott Beale says: "Here are my photos from ROBOlympics (Saturday, March 20). David, Simone and their crew produced a truly amazing event (I'm a proud sponsor). [Note from Xeni: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid is the incredibly generous host of xeni.net; he makes all of the images I post on BoingBoing possible and he is a total mensch.] Link

Chris Pederick Chris Pederick says: "I have posted a few photos from Sunday's ROBOlympics." Link

Jeremy says: "I took pictures and short video this afternoon at the robolympics in SF where the weather was a bit grey. It is hosted on my little pc behing my SBC DSL connection. So it can be a bit slow. I'll move the content later this week on a faster server. Aslo, I also didn't spend time to make the album look great, it is directly from ACDSEE tool (after some quicktime and Photoshop work still)." Link
Earlier BoingBoing posts with Robolympics photos: Link One, Link Two. Thanks, everyone!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:22:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Inventor of no-electricity refrigerator wins Rolex award

Mohammed Bah Abba of Nigeria won a Rolex award for his "pot-in-pot refrigerator. It consists of a smaller clay pot inside a larger clay pot. The gap is filled with damp sand. As the sand water evaporates, the inner pot cools. Food that used to spoil in a few days now stays fresh for weeks. Second-order effects are already being noticed -- for one thing, girls who had to skip school to sell food at markets can now attend classes. Link (Thanks, juju!)

Alex Steffen sez: I love the pot-within-a-pot concept. Really excellent design, exactly what the world needs more of. And a guy commented this on our worldchanging post about it a couple weeks ago:

"The town I live in was settled by Quakers, the museum has an example of a refrigerator that uses a similar technique but with a wood box. It claims to be the first such device in America although that could be local folklore. Certainly the Pot-in-Pot can't be the first such invention of that type, in fact the Amish currently use this one, in production since 1900. What makes Pot-in-Pot special is the use of local materials and skills so that it can be accepted by the local culture. I suspect Africa has a lot to learn from the Amish and other modern low-tech cultures, maybe there should be an Amish technology transfer to Africa."

Thought it kind of cool. Then there's this water filter.
Pottery will save the world! um, or something like that...

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:50:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Technorati beta

Technorati has launched a new public beta with a bunch of really exciting features, including:

# Lots of UI fixes and tweaks. We listened hard to all of you who told us that our UI needed a lot of work. I hope that this is a step in the right direction. We tried to do what we could to humanize the language as well - using words like "conversations" and "references" and "sources" to help better describe what Technorati does, for example. I'm sure there's a long way to go, and lots more improvements we can make. Help us.

# Keyword Search beyond just RSS. We improved our post detection capabilities, going beyond what pure RSS gives you - so that you can search the entire post, not just the summaries often found in RSS feeds.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:27:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aspiring writer's novel under Creative Commons license

Kevin Christley, an aspiring sf writer, has put his novel, "Rieger Mortis," online under a Creative Commons license. Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:25:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, March 21, 2004

More Robolympics photos

Boingboing reader matthew bennett says:

Here's some pictures on my photoblog from Robolympics yesterday and today! I competed with a mini sumo, that got taken out. I'm also a mentor on the Boilermakers robotics team ( link to earlier BoingBoing post). You know, the SF innercity school that still needs money to go to Atlanta for the finals! As of Sunday morning, our blog has raised over $2200 in donations! Thanks, Boing Boing!

Link to photos

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:14:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos of sex-themed museum/park in China

Daze Reader editor Evan Daze says: "Photos of the penis-like rock and vagina-like cave are here and here." Link to Daze Reader post, Link to earlier BoingBoing post

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:17:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Do we really use just 10 percent of our brains?

No. It's a myth. Psychologist and neuroscientist Barry L. Beyerstein puts the (gray) matter to rest at Scientific American.com:

"With the aid of instruments such as EEGs, magnetoencephalographs, PET scanners and functional MRI machines, researchers have succeeded in localizing a vast number of psychological functions to specific centers and systems in the brain. With nonhuman animals, and occasionally with human patients undergoing neurological treatment, recording probes can even be inserted into the brain itself. Despite this detailed reconnaissance, no quiet areas awaiting new assignments have emerged."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:54:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Proposed Bible-based marriage laws

Lawmakers who use the Bible to justify their opposition to gay marriage ought to be consistent. Here are some other Biblical rules to add to the Bill of Rights :

Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a
virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut
22:13-21)

In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your
town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with
him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men
young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of
course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:54:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Job of the week: Dept of Homeland Security Entertainment Liason

This has to be one of the more interesting "help wanted" ads to surface of late -- Entertainment Liaison for the US Department of Homeland Security. Up to $136K:

The Entertainment Liaison Office supports the Office of Public Affairs by influencing how the Department of Homeland Security is portrayed in mass entertainment media. It helps to ensure accurate portrayal of the department's mission, policies, and activities, while proactively working to help the American public better identify DHS functions.

Link (via pho list)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:45:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, March 20, 2004

Robolympics photos!

Simon Carless heeds the BoingBoing call for photos from today's Robolympics in San Francisco -- here's his gallery of snapshots. Thanks! Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:06:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

X-rated miniature railroad models

If I asked you to form a sentence using the words "train" "sex" and "fantasy," this would probably not be the result -- but for every oddity there is a fetish, and a website to prove it. This German manufacturer of model railroad components caters to adult hobbyists who like teeny-tiny sex with their teeny-tiny trains. And a visit to this online discussion forum reveals that other companies are creating similar "adult" scenes -- some even more explicit:

"At the Neuremburg Toy Fair, Viessmann announced an electronic drive that moves the lady figure on one of the 'Sexy Scenes'. The venerable company Faller took things even further. They announced a kit of a 'night club' that includes five Preiser-style figures of 'hostesses'. On the small picture one of them can be seen receiving a 'guest'."

These guys put the "ho" in "HO Gauge." Not safe for work or children, although the naughty bits are ZENSUR-ed.
Link (Thanks, Vann!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:24:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark Cuban blogs inside NBA referee stats

Those of you who are basketball fans will understand the considerable significance of this blog-post.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:17:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nerdy Bay Area dream-jobs

Claris sez, "A collection of cool geeky companies located in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, from anime/manga publishers to videogame companies to special effects shops. Best of all? Direct links to the job opening pages of each site, whenever I can find 'em. Might as well work somewhere cool, right?" Link (Thanks, Claris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:15:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Movie monster busts by Tom Savini

Another item to add to the first-trillion shopping list: $450 busts of famous movie monsters by special effects wizard Tom Savini (I have a concrete casting of a Vincent Price life-mask that Savini made in storage, awaiting the end of my gypsy wanderer days). Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:59:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

General Ursus bust

At $200, this resin bust of Planet of the Apes's General Ursus is impossible to justify as an acquisition, but it is going into the list of things to buy after I make my first trillion. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:54:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Accountant sues Google so that his license suspension won't show up in searches

Mark Maughan, an accountant, is suing Google to get it to change PageRank so that searching for his firm doesn't return the California Board of Accountancy's report of the time he had his license pulled for a month. Oh yeah, that's gonna work: because there's nothing I look for in accountant more than blinkered pig-ignorance of the workings of the Internet and a callous disregard for the neutrality of search engines. Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:37:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War

Uncovered is a documentary about the way the White House distorted the truth in an attempt sell the American public and the rest of the world on its pre-emptive war on Iraq. I already thought that Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the rest of that gang were being sneaky about it, but this DVD nailed it for for me. The reason Uncovered is so persuasive is that the director wisely chose to interview only "insiders" for the documentary -- CIA analysts, weapons investigators, Pentagon officials, and former White House counsels. Their comments on the administration's exaggerations and spin are devastating. According to the director, even people who support the war in Iraq become angry after watching Uncovered, because it exposes the Bush administration as a pack of thoroughly corrupt liars. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:31:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

40 drunkard milestones

This Modern Drunkard list of 40 Things That Every Drunkard Should Do is very good. I like "Sit in on an AA meeting" and "Extravagantly overtip a bartender," but this one is my fave:

7.) Buy a crowded bar a round.
For no reason at all. Jump up on a barstool and shout it loud: "A round for the house! On me!" Make sure you have a good toast ready, because, for once, they'll all be listening.

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:21:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

File-sharing kills crap record stores, promotes great ones

Good Wired News piece on the kinds of mom-and-pop record stores that benefit from file-sharing, treating it as promotions for their hand-sold, campus-cred merchandise.

"The file sharing, the Internet -- just makes them music junkies," Wiley said.

Paul Epstein, owner of Twist & Shout, a store in Denver, agreed that piracy has helped his bottom line. He said it's like radio, another form of promotion that spurs sales.

"File sharing is a danger, but it really turns a lot of kids on to music," he said.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:04:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Six years of kottke.org

Jason Kottke's blog turns six today!

Except for the basics (eating, sleeping, remaining alive), I've never stuck with anything for six years straight, so it's hard for me to believe I'm still here doing this. Six years!

Link

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

Cool comic art-strip "Piercing"

"Piercing," a dark, beautiful, wordless online comic by David Gaddis.
Link (Thanks, Susannah)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:26:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gigantic aquatic pill-bug

This is the biggest damned pill-bug I've ever seen.

Ever heard of a pill bug? They are more regionally known as doodlebugs and roly-polys. They're those little bugs that curl up into a perfect little ball when you mess with them. I had great fun with them as a kid. I thought it was so cool that a bug could turn into a ball.

Well, they're not actually bugs -- they're crustaceans. This guy up here is a very close relative of the roly-poly, only it lives in the deep sea along the ocean floor. It's just like the ones you found under rocks as a kid, only it's really fucking big. It even rolls up into a ball!

Link (Thanks, Juju!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:19:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SF inner-city robots team needs help to get to the USFIRST finals

Dana sez, "This is the blog of The Boilermakers, a team of high school roboticists from an inner-city San Francisco school. The team recently qualified for the USFIRST finals in Atlanta by beating more experienced and better funded teams at the Portland regional competition. The Cinderella story is in danger of ending prematurely, though, as the team doesn't have the funds to attend the event. They are currently attempting to gather enough funds to make it to Atlanta, but are running out of time. The blog has a Paypal link for donations." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:15:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robolympics: Send us your photos!

I'm hunched over a lonely laptop, drowning my sorrows in soymilk and anime DVDs, wishing I were in San Francisco right now -- watching mindbogglingly awesome robots strut their stuff at the Robolympics. Pathetic, I know. But if you are fortunate enough to be at the event with digital imaging gadgetry at hand, point me to your photos on the web! I'll post 'em here on BoingBoing. Please don't e-mail me photo attachments, though. Thanks!
Link to Robolympics website

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:28:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

QTVR pano: Ice Climbing

Photographer and QTVR enthusiast Hans Nyberg says:

"Ice Climbing in the Pyrenees was shot by Ignacio Ferrando Margeli. To make it, Ignacio hanged on for 2 hours in -8 C , 17 F."
Link to Quicktime panorama, Link to more great QTVRs in this month's issue of VRMag. (Thanks, also, Michelle!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:19:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Impossible Japanese pencil carvings

Website documenting the creation of some insanely implausible carvings -- made from common #2 pencils, in Japan.

"According to their forms,they are divided into 4 types - Double spiral, Chain, Ring and Kikko that may be called a honeycomb pencil. Others like Six-fold spiral, Extensible and Triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon are considered to be variations based on one of those 4 types. [...] We are required to be skilled enough for delicate woodwork in carving out a pattern like some kind of a tracery without making any miscut on the naked lead inside."

Link (Thanks, CJC)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:12:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sex theme park opens in China

China's largest "sexuality museum and theme park" just opened in Guangdong, promising attractions such as "penis-like" rocks and "vagina-like" caves. Link (Thanks, Caines)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:59:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Movable Type and NTT

The Movable Type folks have inked a deal with NTT -- mazeltov, goys!

Weblog software leader Six Apart announced that NTT Communications, Japan's largest telecommunication company, has licensed Six Apart's popular TypePad software to power NTT's forthcoming "Blogzine Weblogging Service."

Link (via Joi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:48:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Semi-ruggedized laptops for 10% more

Interesting war-porn piece on the Panasonic ruggedized Toughbook, a laptop that, in its most extreme configuration, can survive being run over by a truck. Those boxen cost $5000, but a "semi-ruggedized" version, which is specced with "spill-resistant keyboards, hard casings, and gel-encased disk drives" is only 10 percent more costly to build than a standard machine.

Analysts say 20% of mainstream laptops fail in the first year, usually because of accidental damage. That rises to 35% once a notebook leaves its docking station and to more than 50% for machines that are used outdoors or on shop floors. But the failure rate of rugged or semi-rugged machines is just 5%.

Link (Thanks, anonymous person!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:18:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dr Who gets grungy

Christopher Eccleston has been tapped to be the scruffiest Dr Who ever. Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:15:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dr Gray's libel-threats backfire

Gavin Sheridan has been threatened by "Dr." John "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, I am From Uranus" Gray for declaring that Gray was a fraud whose degrees came from a diploma mill. Gray's lawyers demanded a retraction and reserved the right to sue for libel anyway.

Well, in an act of increasingly common Internet judo, Sheridan posted the nastygram, and the collective outrage from other Web-writers has spread the news of Gray's bullying -- and the dirt behind his degrees. Threatening to sue in order to silence a critic has simply spread the criticism much, much farther.

For example, have a look at this post in the Washington Monthly, in which Gray's credentials are attacked further:

Gavin's post says none of his degrees are from accredited universities. The lawyer's letter says only that Columbia Pacific was an approved university.

This is a considerable difference, since until 1989 pretty much anyone who felt like it could call themselves a university in the state of California. A few years after this changed, Columbia Pacific was shut down when it was found to be what is colloquially referred to as a diploma mill.

So then, was Columbia Pacific ever accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the accrediting body for western universities? And what about the Maharishi European Research University in Switzerland, where Gray got his BA and MA?

Nope. As the producers of Inside Edition verified in a show aired last November, none of these are accredited universities.

You know, as the possessor of a bona-fide fake Doctor of Divinity from the Universal Life Church, this really steams me. I worked hard to get my fake degree, so that I could add that all-important Dr. to the front of my name, becoming Dr. Cory Doctorow. Reverend Dr. Cory Doctorow. People like Gray give people like me with fake degrees a bad name. We aren't all bullies, you know. Some of us are quite proud of our fake education. Proud of our fraud. We don't sue people who call us out on it. We take those people out for drinks and thank them. Because we're proud. Very, very proud.

I would be remiss if I failed to point out this exhaustive run-down on the standard of education that Gray's alma maters hold themselves to:

* One master's-degree student was given credit for "a learning contract describing how he would continue taking dance lessons and watch dance demonstrations in order to improve his skills as a Country Western dancer."

* A Ph.D. dissertation written in Spanish was approved by four faculty who cannot speak the language.

* One dissertation "had no hypothesis, no data collection, and no statistical analysis. A member of the visiting committee characterized the work as more like a project paper at the college freshman level." The dissertation, The Complete Guide to Glass Collecting, was 61 pages long.

Link (via Dan Gillmor)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:10:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, March 19, 2004

Hukilau: a 3-day tiki festival in Fort Lauderdale

Hukilau 2004 is the third annual 3-day tiki festival, to be held at Fort Lauderdale's Mai Kai tiki bar (where I celebrated my 30th birthday!) from September 23-25. Featured entertainment includes tiki carvers, live exotica, custom swizzlesticks and matchbooks, and gigantic, flaming novelty cocktails. Oh, and hula dancers, a tiki merch exhibition, a cruise, fishing, and did I mention novelty cocktails? I wonder if there's any grant money available to attend this... Link (Thanks, Swanky!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:43:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MP3 of SXSW Friendster keynote

Here's an MP3 of Jonathan "Friendster" Abrams's SXSW keynote on YASNSes. 42.6MB MP3 Link (via Apophenia)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hidden Goatse in Unreal Tournament 2004

Goatse is an infamous Internet gross-out image (google for it if you must, but be warned: this is a sight you can't un-see). It has become iconic in geek cycles, so it's hardly surprising to find its echo in this screenshot from Unreal Tournament 2004. Unsurprising or no, it still evoked a beavisoid huh-huh-huh reaction from this correspondant. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:14:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Whence three-letter airport codes?

Good essay explaining the origin of airport codes such as YYZ, LHR, ORD, and SFO.

Some special interest groups successfully lobbied the government to obtain their own special letters. The Navy saved all the new 'N' codes. Naval aviators learn to fly at NPA in Pensacola, Florida and then dream of going to "Top Gun" in Miramar, California (NKX). The Federal Communications Committee set aside the 'W' and 'K' codes for radio stations east and west of the Mississippi respectively. 'Q' was designated for international telecommunications. 'Z' was reserved for special uses. The Canadians made off with all the remaining 'Y codes which helps explain YUL for Montreal, YYC for Calgary, etc. One of the special uses for 'Z' is identifying locations in cyberspace. What am I talking about? Well, an example is ZCX the computer address of the FAA's air traffic control headquarters central flow control facility. ZCX is not an airport but a command center just outside Washington D.C., that controls the airline traffic into major terminals.

Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:11:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Using your friends' hashed addressbooks to fight spam

LOAF is a novel approach to spam-filtration. The idea is that you send a one-way-hashed version of your entire address book along with every message you send. This allows all your friends to create a privacy-complete list of all the people in their friends' trusted correspondants' lists. When mail comes in, it is flagged as originating with one of your known correspondants, or one of their known correspondants, or a total stranger, helping you prioritize your inbox. The authors of the paper have written a list of known attacks against this system:

Ex-Girlfriend attack
While a LOAF file is hard to reverse-engineer, it's designed to answer the question ``did this person ever send email to X?''. In some cases, that's a question you don't want people to be able to ask. To avoid exposing the fact that you are corresponding with certain people, you have three options:

- Don't use LOAF.

- Create a blacklist of addresses for LOAF to pass over when generating a filter.

- Set a false positive rate high enough to give you plausible deniability: ``Oh, honey, don't be ridiculous. I certainly never wrote to X, that must be a false positive'' will work, but you must be sure to read the caveat about keeping a constant filter size in Dictionary attack below.

Marc Canter attack
The technique is similar to getting a perfect score on the SAT by filling in every oval on the SAT exam sheet - you provide a Bloom filter consisting entirely of ones, and every email address checked against it will match.

Sending an overloaded filter does not help you get accepted by new correspondents, but once you are added to their list, it will make you appear to know everyone. One possible solution to this spoofing problem is to impose a maximum density.

Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:09:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Markdown: text-to-html system

Aaron Swartz and John Gruber have unveiled their seekrit project, "Markdown," a system for marking up ASCII to make it readily convertable to styled html text, without sacrificing the readability and expressiveness of the core text. There's already support for Blosxom, BBEdit and MT, and it looks pretty straightforward to implement in other environments.

Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML)... The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.

Link (via Aaronsw)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:53:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chart explaining solution to P2P wars

My cow-orker Ren has posted a Creative Commons-licensed flowchart showing the workflow of a Voluntary Collective License -- the blanket license that EFF advocates for solving the P2P wars. Link (via Legal Tags)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:45:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bway.net offers RIAA-proof anonymous DSL

Wendy sez, "In response to privacy concerns and RIAA lawsuits, Bway.net offers no-logging, dynamic IP DSL service, billed as AnonDSL. Pretty cool."

Bway.net believes it should be your choice to be as public or as private on the Internet as you want to be. To accomplish this, Bway introduces:

* AnonDSL - the ultimate tool for protecting your identity from tracking by the RIAA, MPAA or anyone else.

* AnonDSL makes your online activities untraceable - except, of course, for email and any other activities that require authentication.

Link (Thanks, Wendy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:42:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Oliver North sez we worry too much about conspiracies

Oliver "Conspiracist" North, who conspired with the highest levels of government to defraud Congress about his conspiracy to move guns, terrorists, cocaine and bayonetted nuns around the world for his conspiratorial ends has written an editorial about the tendency of "liberals" to worry too much about conspiracies. And he should know.

Liberals have always loved conspiracy theories because raising the specter of foul play and dirty tricks is an easy and convenient justification for ignoring their own political and policy failures.

Link (via Electrolite)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:40:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New shelter magazine for tract home owners: Atomic Ranch

I haven't seen a copy of Atomic Ranch yet myself, but my friend Marc has and he says it's great. The magazine is for ranch home and tract house owners who like mid-century modern style. We're about to move into a ranch home in the San Fernando Valley, so I'm excited to get this. Link (On a semi-related note: we're getting a miniature donkey, and I'm wondering if any Boing Boing readers own one and can tell me about them. Email me.)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:54:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MusicBrainz for iTunes -- automated metadata for your MP3s

IEatBrainz is a MusicBrainz plugin for OS X. You feed it tracks in your iTunes library with missing metadata -- artist, title, album, etc -- analyses the audio to generate a fingerprint of the song, then compares that fingerprint to a database of millions of songs, figures out what the unlabelled track is, and fills in the metadata. That's some sweet, sweet functionality. Link (via Ben Hammersley)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:48:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More on Peter Bagge in Reason

Nick Gillespie, editor or Reason, sez: "thanks for the plug re: bagge (however negative). take a look at peter's longer-form comics for us and i think you'll agree they are pretty damn swell. including:

Swingers of the World, Unite! A report from an alternative lifestyles conference (April 2004)

Everyone's a Winner! One state's--and one man's--love/hate relationship with legalized gambling (October 2003)

Observations from a Reluctant Anti-Warrior (March 2003)

and

(A secular humanist looks at the world of) Christian Rock (February 2002)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:45:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Peewee = Free

Child porn posession charges against Paul "Peewee Herman" Reubens have been dropped. Must have been the t-shirts. Link (thanks, Jonno!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:13:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Online vigilantes troll for pedophiles

Fascinating, disturbing two-part series by Julia Scheeres in Wired News about online anti-pedo vigilantes. Part One, Part Two.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:57:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fun Web button maker

Here's a neat site to make fun buttons like these. Link (via horkulated)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:37:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The great ugg boots war

Spencer sez: "Recently, a friend of mine from Australia was attempting to sell some ugg boots (note that's with a lowercase u) on eBay and received a note from them that she couldn't use the word "ugg" anywhere in their title or description because the trademark owner had threatened them. Knowing that "ugg" is a generic Australian term for sheepskin boots and has been used for years (to the point that it's in the dictionary), she was more than a little annoyed. We were inspired to do some research and discovered that the American company Deckers has been attempting to wrest control of the word "ugg" using legal threats for some time now." Link

Grant Barrett, Assistant Editor, Lexical Reference and Project Editor, Historical Dictionary of American Slang for Oxford University Press sez: "The Macquarie Dictionary ('Australia's National Dictionary') indicates that the Australian ug/ugh/ugg boots derive from a trademark. The OED concurs and defines them as 'a proprietary name for a type of soft, sheepskin boot' indicating that it is used in Australian and New Zealand. The original spelling appears to have been 'Ugh.'"

Zara Baxter sez: "The Macquarie dictionary only lists UGG boot as a proprietary name because Deckers threatened to sue them - see here. There's a big stink in Australia about it at the moment. Lots of media coverage. FWIW my (slightly older) macquarie lists it as a generic term.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:59:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fast Company on blogs

Heath Row of Fast Company sez: "We just went live with a wide-ranging package about blogs -- and their use in business. The package includes commentary from David Weinberger, guidelines from Robert Scoble, a look behind the scenes at VH-1's blog-driven show Best Week Ever, and a report on the state of Social Network Software -- as used in business." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:45:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Meet Lucy, The Orangutan Robot

BoingBoing pal Roland says:

Lucy is not an ordinary robot, driven by software. She's a pure product of artificial intelligence (AI). And after a three-year long training, she's now able to make a difference between an apple and a banana, which is quite handy for an orang-utan, even if she doesn't eat them. Her five microcontroller chips wouldn't like this... In "A Grand plan for brainy robots," BBC News Online tells us that Lucy is the brainchild of Steve Grand, an honorary research fellow at Cardiff University's School of Psychology. And why did he choose an orang-utan design? "I made Lucy as an orang-utan because, can you imagine how scary it would be if she looked like a human baby?," said Grand. More details and references are available in this overview which also includes the cover of Grand's last book, 'Growing Up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:42:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Device prevents airplane seat in front of you from reclining

The Knee Defender is a set of plastic clips that fit on the airplane seat in front of you, keeping the person sitting in that chair from reclining his or her seat. Some airlines have banned the device. but it looks like you could probably improvise with a folded-up inflight magazine. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:22:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pink Girl subculture photography from Tokyo

On Matthew Gilbert's PhotoMatt site, pictures of "Pink Girls" hanging around outside the Gap in Harajuku, Tokyo. Link (Thanks, Alice!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:20:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Journalists "suspend their disbelief whenever someone starts waving a paedophile on a string"

NTK this week savages the UK media for gullibly swallowing the story of the NannieBots, chatbots that entrap paedophiles:

The BBC, The Register, New Scientist and all fell over themselves this week to promote "NannieBots", a set of "self-replicating" bots to fight chatroom "grooming". These bots, relays their master Jim Wightman, guard kids' chatrooms from predators, and "behave like humans, sound like humans... but with one massive difference - they never sleep". The idea of handing over your kids' safety to Eliza the Psychiatrist may not be that reassuring. But don't worry - these bots use "neural networks" to become "the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world"! Looking through the transcript of a NannieBot/Human interaction in New Scientist, maybe he's right. Certainly this "IT consultant from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands" has either managed the greatest step forward in Artificial Intelligence since Marvin Minsky scraped a pass in the Turing Test - or this was a very carefully rigged demo. In the transcript given, NannieBot seems to be able to make logical deductions, parse colloquial English, correctly choose the correct moment to scan a database of UK national holidays, comment on the relative qualities of the Robocop series, and divine the nature of pancakes and pancake day. We look forward to the NannieBot sweeping the board at this year's Loebner Prize. Either that, or journalists to stop suspending their disbelief whenever someone starts waving a paedophile on a string.

Link

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

AccordionGuy's notes from Cory's reading

Joey "AccordionGuy" DeVilla attended my reading last night at the Merril Collection; he's posted great notes on the event:

I arrived about ten minutes into Cory's session, during a reading of what I later found out was Human Readable. Every seat in the Merril room was full; many were occupied by what The Onion might term "high-profile Area Nerds". Sci-fi authors Mike Skeet and Karl Schroeder took their places near the back of the audience, while closer to the front were Ian Goldberg (who has forgotten more about computer security than I will ever learn) and his wife Kat. As the reading went on, a guy sitting down in front of me drew an impressionistic sketch into a handmade blank book. Everyone's attention was focused on Cory, who sat at a desk beside a large bottle of water, looking trim (Atkins and a busy schedule will do that) in a two-tone Blogger T-shirt. You never forget your first blogging tool.

Link (Thanks to Luke Tymowski for the photo!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:57:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

OK, *I* am Belle de Jour

It doesn't matter who is really behind Belle de Jour -- we're all pseudonymous pretend prostitute webloggers, aren't we? For every meme, there is a Cafe Press shop, where you can buy t-shirts, mugs, and thongs. Link (Thanks, Hoff)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:41:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Profanity and broadcasting: New FCC actions, and the Loh-down

Last night in LA, I went to a big fucking party thrown by the fucking LA Press Club to show some fucking support for Sandra Fucking Tsing Loh, snarky host of "The Loh Life." The radio humorist was abruptly sacked from KCRW after her fucking engineer failed to bleep a certain fucking four letter word from a fucked-out taped comedic monologue. Fuck!

Her commentaries had previously included deliberately-bleeped words for comic effect, but the production goof came at a time of intense concern by broadcasters over new FCC scrutiny. Nipplegate, Howard Stern, now Loh. Station manager Ruth Seymour later apologized and offered to re-hire, but Loh declined. The whole story's here (and you can still hear Loh on NPR's Marketplace, here). LA Times update here.

There's good reason for concern, as evidenced by a recent decision by congress -- which passed 391-22-- to substantially increase fines, penalties and license reviews for 'indecent' or 'profane' material. BoingBoing pal Ernest Miller says:

"For years the FCC has been regulating 'indecent' speech. Recently, of course, this has become a big deal, what with Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction and Bono saying 'This is really, really f-ing great!' at the Golden Globes. Now, however, the FCC has really taking a big step forward in regulating speech. For the first time they have declared speech not only 'indecent' but 'profane' as well. If the FCC's argument about profane speech is upheld, any 'grossly offensive' speech, whether or not related to sex or excretion, could be banned from the airwaves."

Link to Corante post on the FCC's new moves to regulate profanity in broadcasting. Update: Stern fined, Bono's remark ruled profane, in FCC decision: Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:27:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Canonical List of Weird Band Names

Names of actual bands, past or present, including: A Cat Born In An Oven Isn't a Cake | Accidental Goat Sodomy | Anal Beard Barbers | The Archbishop's Enema Fetish | The Ass Baboons of Venus | Bertha Does Moosejaw | Biff Hitler and the Violent Mood Swings | Chewbacca Plaid Cock | Crappy the Clown and the Punch Drunk Monkies | Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death. Link (via warren).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:09:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Heatsink for your pillow

The Chillow is a non-electric heat-sink you put under your pillow to keep it cool at night.

The Chillow was designed to match your body’s cooling needs. At night after an active day, when your metabolism is high and you’re hot, the Chillow is cool and refreshing. But in the the early a.m. hours, when your metabolism is low due to inactivity, and air temperature is at it’s coolest, the Chillow is lightly cool to lightly tepid, which is exactly the temperature you will enjoy. After you get out of bed, the Chillow loses any accumulated heat and recharges so it’s ready to go again at naptime, or at bedtime. There is no maintenance required, save sweeping the air out once per month, which takes approx. 20 seconds.

Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:45:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Odd Timewasting Zen

(1) go?
(2) 6+=1
(3) boohbah zone
(4) grow
(5) larry carlson
(6) samorost
(7) and the classic zombo
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:34:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Doom: the board-game

id has licensed Doom 3 to a board-game company, which is planning a meatspace, miniature first-person-shooter.

The game itself is set to be largely modeled after id's upcoming entry in the franchise, Doom 3, and will feature sculpted plastic miniatures of the game's characters, board pieces for players to create their own custom maps, specialized oversized dice, and a number of different weapon types.

Link (via Futurismic)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:36:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Currency origami -- strange bodies and familiar faces

This Japanese site links to completed currency origami projects that focus on creating strange bodies for the faces found on notes. Link (Thanks, SE!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:45:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Send-up of "Respect Copyright" PSAs

The CBC's Rick Mercer has produced a screamingly funny, vicious parody of the copyright boo-hoo-poor-Hollywood ads that run in front of all the movies in Canada now.

WHO MAKES MOVIES?

You know, people go see a comedy or a fantasy or an action film and nine times out of ten they walk out of the theatre at they look at one another and they say "Wow, that was really bad."

CHARLIE NESMAN MAKES BAD MOVIES

I make a lot of sequels. I'm the guy who makes part four and part five of movies where you haven't heard of the first one. Someday I'd like to make a part two.

What kind of movie do I like? I like a movie about a monkey that gets special powers and then has to play a sport. That's the kind of movie I like.

THE PIRACY ISSUE

I don't know why anyone would ever steal a movie. Unless of course it's to avoid this commercial which we now play in front of every single movie you could possibly go to, telling you you're bad for stealing even though you just spent $11 to see some movie and instead you have to sit there and listen to me whine at you and accuse you of being a thief. Nevermind the $9 you just spent for $0.30 worth of popping corn.

MOVIES: THEY'RE NOT WORTH IT

You're very bad people.

WATCH TELEVISION

Real Stream Link (Thanks, Ted!)

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

Bambi as prog-rock epic

Spastic Ink's prog-rock epic, "A Wild Hare," is a Zappa-esque guitar interpretation of Walt Disney's Bambi; there's a video that maps the music onto cuts from the animated film. Part 1 5.3MB WMV Link, Part 2 4.3MB WMV Link, Part 3 5.3MB WMV Link, Part 4 3.3MB WMV Link, Part 5 6.5MB WMV Link, Part 6 6.1MB WMV Link (Thanks, Fnordo!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:21:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creative Commons music sharing license

Creative Commons has released a new, Music Sharing license, for bands who want to encourage sharing of their tunes. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:16:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fauxtoblog

A fellow named Jack posts a series of fake photoblogging documentaries on his website, fauxjob.com. Check out the hilarious fake Friendster UI on his home page. My favorite fauxtoblogs on Jack's site are "STAINS OF WEST HOLLYWOOD RAMADA INN" -- photos of stains on walls and carpet and furniture in an LA hotel -- and this series about (plastic) rats and roaches he discovered in a new Tenderloin district flat in San Francisco. Caption: " IT ALL BEGAN ONE MORNING -- SIMPLE ENOUGH -- WHEN I SAT DOWN TO ENJOY A BOWL OF CEREAL FOR BREAKFAST. HOWEVER, IT SEEMS, A GIANT RAT HAD BEATEN ME TO IT... I REALLY SHOULD HAVE MOVED TO THE CASTRO." (Thanks, J!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:23:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guess What? Vaginamabutt.

I have no idea WTF this is. Alright, I have *some* idea. It's -- like -- an X-rated pop art Farkistani Where's Waldo. Someone made this Keith Haring-esque Photoshop file of a vagina dentata assmonster. They invite you to download the file, print out, take photos of it in odd situations, then email in for inclusion on vaginamabutt.com.
Link (so not worksafe; thanks Susannah!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:59:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Peter Bagge's libertarian comics for Reason

I used to dislike Tom Tomorrow's comic strip, This Modern World. I'm not entirely sure why it didn't work for me, but I think it is because he would set up right-wing straw people to say exaggerated things to make them look bad. Lately, I've been enjoying his strip a lot more, and I think the reason is because the right-wing is now so outrageous, he doesn't need to exagerate to show how bad they are. The truth is funny without having to embellish it.To me, Peter Bagge is the opposite of Tom Tomorrow. I love the stuff he did for Weirdo, Neat Stuff, and Hate. Now he's doing a libertarian comic strip for Reason, and like a mirror-image Tom Tomorrow, he tries to make his point by exaggerating the kinds of things left-wingers say. And just as Tomorrow's early work wasn't funny, Bagge's recent Reason work doesn't make me laugh either. I did read Bagge's latest Hate Annual and thought he was in top form, so this criticism only applies to his Reason comics. Link

Brian Carnell sez: I thought it was unfair for you to pull that single strip out unqualified and claim that Bagge is just a right wing Tom Tomorrw.

Yes, that strip clearly exaggerates what the Left says for effect, but the difference between Bagge and Tom Tomorrow is that Bagge is an equal-opportunity exaggerator. For example, follow the link for a similar strip that is a caricature of the claims made by right wing supporters of the war on Iraq (I supported the war and I find it funny, but YMMV). He also lampooned libertarians.

The problem with Tom Tomorrow is that he's always caricaturing the Right, but never the Left (at least not that I can remember), unlike Bagge who skewers all sides.

(Mark sez: You're right, Brian!)

kellan sez: The other difference is that Tom Tomorrow often uses direct quotes, not caricature. When he exaggerates its clearly ridiculous (Bush in space fighting aliens), not a borderline, mean-spirited attack at common people.

Abelard sez: I'd love to point out the fallacy of Brian Carnell saying that Tom Tomorrow never skewers anyone on the Left, at least that he can remember. Apparently, his memory does not extend to 2000, and the running GoreBot gags [here and here] Or his occasional lampooning of granola guy. Just wanted to throw that at you - I was somewhat dismayed to see you agree with him on that rather ill-researched point.

Rick sez: I don't know why you and Brian have this idea of Tom Tomorrow of focusing only on the right for his skewerings. His politics aren't exactly secret and aren't meant to be, but he lets the left know when they've struck out. This even includes the Clinton years, the last of these three being an example. [here, here, and here]

(Mark sez: My argument is that Tom Tomorrow probably doesn't consider Clinton or Gore to be left wing. )

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:12:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video -- Rumsfeld eats his own words

Here's a video clip from MoveOn that shows Rumsfeld admonishing some TV show hosts for claiming he ever said Iraq was an "immediate threat." He challenges his "critics" to provide "citations" to back up their claims, and when they do -- on the spot -- hilarity ensues. Link (Thanks, rupa!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:46:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's book launch starts in two hours

I'm about to fold up my laptop and grab a bite before heading down to my Toronto book-launch at the Merril Collection (239 College, third floor, 416-393-7748.), tonight at 7PM. Hope you can make it!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:12:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monthly archives are back

We've got monthly archives again (I hope -- my Movable Type skillz are a little sub-1337) -- to those of you who have observed that the mailing list is b0rked, expect a fix soon. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:01:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saurian Sinclair software, encoded on vinyl records

In the old days, you could get bonus software for your Sinclair Spectrum PC encoded as audio on vinyl record albums. This exhaustive, loving report has links to the code and emulators for executing it.

In the case of these programs on vinyl, the user would have to play back the proper portion of the record, record the resultant chatter to tape, and load the tape into the spectrum. Some users have mentioned playing certain games so much that they could recognise the loading sounds.

Link (Thanks, Jed!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:53:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video of voting machine vendors and examiners admitting to the b0rkedness of voting machines

Douglas sez, "A group of us recently got our hands on unedited videos of the meetings where Texas's appointed voting system examiners meet with vendors. Very scary stuff. We've put together a downloadable 'greatest hits' version. My favorite moment: 'I just want to make sure this machine can add. Remember, we've had machines recently that didn't add.' 'We've certified other things that weren't tested' is a close second." Link (Thanks, Douglas)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:20:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bloggie victory photo

Well, I've just mailed off the Bloggie certificates and the gold star to my co-editors' places, but luckily I've got this photo, courtesy of Justin Hall, of me displaying all the Bloggie bounty that Boing Boing was fortunate to acquire this year. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:29:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

XPower Mobile Plug Inverter

Via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools:

You plug this solid-state inverter into your car's lighter socket and power whatever 110 volt AC appliance you want, 75 watts max. No need for special DC gadgets. It's made for recharging cell phones and other batteries, but I've used it for my scanner and my printer while on the road. Also, I've run a small B&W TV set (5'5), and more important, my baby's bottle heater (I admit is a small one). You can power almost anything that doesn't use large resistance like hair dryers, waffle makers, bread toasters, small ovens. I haven't tried a coffee maker yet. The same company offers an assorted line of automobile inverters with more output power (200 watts on up). This is the smallest one.
-- Juan J Gil

XPower MobilePlug 75, Manufactured by Xantrex.

Update: BoingBoing reader Ben Zanin disagrees with the review: "Admittedly, the convenience factor is nifty, but the efficiency is /terrible/. The cigarette-lighter-cum-power-socket puts out DC current, which is then passed into a DC-to-AC inverter, which in all of the given examples (recharging cell phones, running a scanner and a printer, heating a baby bottle) then passes the energy into a wall-wart adapter... that is, an AC-to-DC inverter.

"Derek Woolstar wrote about this much more clearly than myself. The numbers he came up with for such current inverters place their efficiency at less than 10%. Even if the efficiency were as high as double that, you'd lose more than 95% of your energy while transferring it from battery to device. See also this Harper's article."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:26:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crazy roadside signage from Oklahoma

Bill Dugan snapped these pictures of crazy, ranting, wordy signs on a farm in Oklahoma in 1992 -- they're a kind of anti-Burma-shave ad, with neither rhyme nor wit to distract us from their glorious tinfoil beanery. Link (Thanks, Bill!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:10:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flickr has blog support!

Originally uploaded by Stewart.

It's really, really, insanely easy to blog photos you receive in flickr, Ludicorp's sweet image-sharing-and-socializing app.

Also noteworthy, flickr's best-of-breed terms-of-service and a privacy control-panel (reg required) that lets your friends assert your friendship without exposing your presence on the system to their friends.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:37:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nature's artforms, with alpha channels, free for the remixing

Spot Draves has released a bunch of Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature) as Creative-Commons-licensed, high-resolution scans in PNG format, with painstaking alpha transparency channels that allow you to easily composite them onto other images. Haeckel was the naturist who stated that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" -- that foetuses step through their evolutionary history in the womb. It turned out that he was kind of making that up and faking his evidence, but he sure drew pretty pictures, and the meme's got legs. Well, first it had a tail, then it had legs. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:07:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Carbs crank up serotonin

An MIT study suggests that low-car/pro-protein diets like Atkins can chemically bum you out. Judith Wurtman, director of the Program in Women's Health at the MIT Clinical Research Center, found that when you kick the carb habit, your brain stops regulating serotonin. As people who take SSRI drugs like Prozac know, serotonin elevates mood and can also act as an appetite suppresant.

"According to Wurtman's clinical studies, if the carbohydrate craver eats protein instead, he or she will become grumpy, irritable or restless. Furthermore, filling up on fatty foods like bacon or cheese makes you tired, lethargic and apathetic. Eating a lot of fat, she said, will make you an emotional zombie."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:02:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open source, world-editable novel on a Wiki

Heath sez, "Rick Heller has put the full text of his novel Smart Genes up as a Wiki, encouraging people to contribute to it." Link (Thanks, Heath!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:33:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Electric Sheep artificial life DVD launch March 31, San Francisco

Spot Draves is the author of the brilliant Electric Sheep screensaver -- this is a distributed rendering application that grabs its users' computers' idle cycles to create computationally expensive, vivid and beautiful animated fractals. Users vote for the animations they like best while the screensaver is running, and those fractals are then given precedence within the computational gene pool, spawning variations that are rendered out again, dancing for their human masters who have the power of life and death over them.

The result is a breathtaking, psychedelic form of artificial life whose fitness factor is the ability to tickle the aesthetics of computer geeks.

Spot has assembled the best of these animations -- these "Electric Sheep" -- on a DVD, with DJ mixed background audio. The contents of the DVD are all online as small QuickTime movies, for for the high-rez, you'll have to order a copy or go to the launch on March 31, in San Francisco:

wednesday march 31st 7pm-2am StudioZ
314 11th st @ folsom san francisco 415.252.7666 www.studioz.tv 21+ w/ID
free admission

featuring the soundz of Spool, jhno, mbb, dj vordo, and Kenji Williams/ABA Structure

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:29:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Windows in Welsh

Microsoft has announced a Welsh-language version of Windows. Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:38:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kazaa Cleaner

BoingBoing pal JP points us to Kazaa Cleaner, which its makers describe as "a free and tiny Adware / Spyware remover utility especially designed for getting rid of all Spyware and Adware applications (i.e., Scumwares) that have been bundled, past and present, with all Kazaa Media Desktop clients." Folks, I'm not recommending it, just pointing to the fact that it's out there. Several BB readers have written in to alert us to the fact that a download and attempted install triggers warnings in virus detection software. I haven't had time to check it out, and it may in fact be toxic stuff, I don't know. Proceed with caution.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:12:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creem magazine archives: William S. Burroughs interview

Creem was the best Rock 'n' Roll magazine ever. It was one of the few mainstream magazines to embrace Punk in the 70s and 80s. Its website is really nice, with lots of old articles and a complete cover gallery. Here are a couple of interviews with William S. Burroughs.

MORGAN: For many contemporary rock critics and musicians, William Burroughs is rock ’n’ roll. Do you feel the same affinity for rock ’n’ roll that rock ’n’ roll obviously feels for you? BURROUGHS: Well, yeah. (laughs) I have given them a lot of titles: The Heavy Metal Kids, The Insect Trust, The Soft Machine. There are a couple of others. I enjoy rock ’n’ roll. It certainly is a unique and incredible phenomenon. Remember that 40 or 50 years ago, musicians didn’t make any money. They played to very small audiences in night clubs and road houses. Also, they had no protection on their records. I’m always asking rock ’n’ roll people if they know who Petrillo is, and none of them do. Well, they wouldn’t have a dime if it weren’t for Petrillo because he organized the Musicians’ Union way back at the end of the ‘30s. And that is why they make money on their records. There wouldn’t be any white Rolls Royces or anything like that.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:11:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DaisyLift porcelain toilet seat handles

An anonymous BB reader says:

This is a little odd thing for people who don't want to touch toilet seats. It's a porcelain handle to lift 'em! Apparently porcelain won't let bacteria grow like plastic might, so it makes a sort of odd sense. Of course if toilet seats were made out of porcelain still this wouldn't be a problem, but then think how cold the seat would be in the winter -- we'd need an electric tushy warmer (although I bet Toto and Kohler already have 'em). What I'd really like to see is a toilet seat ringed with dozens of these things, like some sort of toilet stegasaurus.

Update: BB reader Maya Stosskopf says, "I don't know if it is still there, but for at least 15 years there was a lone billboard for this product (or a similair one) near my hometown in rural northern Illinois and the text of the billboard read avoid fecal fingers!".

JayPee provides proof, via Kottke.

Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:56:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show

Douglas Repetto, organizer of the robotic performance extravaganza Artbots, says, "The 2004 ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show call for works has just gone live! The deadline for entries is May 1st. We invite all geek/artist BoingBoingers to send in their stuff! Info and entry form here."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:54:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robolympics this weekend in SF

David Calkins, President of the Robotics Society of America, says:

1,000 robots. . .well, 414, but that is more than enough at the first Annual Robolympics - this Saturday and Sunday at Ft. Mason in San Francisco. Robots from 11 countries will crawl, wrestle, screech, walk, roll and bash their way to victory. . .or limp pitifully to the recycling pile. Be there for all the action, from 25 gram nano-sumo matches to 340-pound behemoth combat monsters! Artbots, combat bots, huge bots, teeny bots, human competitors of all ages, sizes and shapes, from elementary school Lego League to professional combat masters, all vying for medals and glory at Robolympics! This event also introduces Robo-One to America, a little-known tournament all the way from Japan that features biped androids doing Kung Fu! See the videos at the Robolympics website, Robo-One defies description. Your ticket pays for the whole seat - but you won't need it. You'll be to excited to sit!

Link (thanks also to Roland !)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:49:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Political cartoon on SMS and Spain elections

Following up on the recent flashmob-like protests in Spain after the Madrid bombings, see this attached cartoon from today's El Periodico. Translation: The sign at left identifies the assembled group of suits as "experts in election strategies." The guy in the middle says, "Meetings, interviews, news articles, debates, banners, posters... nobody thought about SMS messages!"
(Thanks, Nick Boalch!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:42:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Teresa dissects a troll

Teresa Nielsen Hayden got trolled by someone who decided that because she is an editor, she isn't allowed to call out idiots who behave idiotically. The troll took the form of a series of accusations, guilt-trips and high-minded moralizing, and Teresa has, in her inimical style, pulled it apart and exposed it for the steaming pile of irredeemable bullshit that it is. I'm going to print this one out and stick it over my desk, once I have a desk again.

I hate crap like this. I’m just an editor. I work on books. Sometimes I buy them. That’s all.

When you see them cherishing this bizarre belief that you’re some hugely powerful figure who can’t be hurt (which in their minds invariably turns out to also mean that the jerk who in reality is going after your shins with steel-toed boots is actually a tiny fragile creature in danger of being horribly oppressed by you), you know the person you’re dealing with is operating in the Dream Time. This particular psychodrama is about him feeling like he doesn’t have enough power, which usually means he either thinks I’ve stolen his away, or that I simply have too much and will imminently squash him like the insect he is.

Cripes. Don’t I just wish.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:19:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coin-op WiFi

These guys are selling a coin-operated WiFi access point. Apparently, this isn't a joke.

He/She inserts coins to the specific amount and the unit will enable the network port of the wireless AP. He/She will be able to access the Internet for a specific time (controlled by the timer builtin the unit).

Link (via WiFiNetNews)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:32:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's on the cover of this week's Now Magazine!

Now Magazine, Toronto's free entertainment weekly, has a great cover story on me this week, with a review of Eastern Standard Tribe.

A reminder: I've got two signings coming up in Toronto this week. The first is tomorrow night, at the Merril Collection, 239 College, third floor, 7 pm, 416-393-7748.

The second is on March 27, at Bakka Books, 598 Yonge at Wellesley, 3 to 5 pm. 416-963-9993.

(Some minor errata: My thesis was about fringe culture and the Internet; I got a job programming, not advertising, CDROMs; and the entertainment industry is worth $60 billion, not million; I was considered the best writer in my school workshops, not my professional ones) Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:33:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NASA can hear unspoken thoughts

Sensors under the chin can "hear" the silent words conveyed from the brain to the voicebox, before they're uttered.

"A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal cords do receive speech signals from the brain," said developer Chuck Jorgensen, of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.

Jorgensen's team found that sensors under the chin and one each side of the Adam's apple pick up the brain's commands to the speech organs, allowing the subauditory, or "silent speech" to be captured.

Link (Thanks, Rob!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:21:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aftermath of Bruce Sterling's open-door SXSW party

As is traditional, Bruce Sterling finished out this year's SXSW interactive festival by throwing an open-door party, with 600 in attendance. He's posted photos of the (surprisingly tidy) aftermath.

The cops showed up. There was no dancing or loud music. Those were human beings *TALKING SO LOUDLY*that they could be heard as a steady dull roar two blocks away. We've had SXSW parties here, every year, but we never set off the cop-ometer before.I had to hustle all the guests inside and shut the doors, whereupon the party immediately became MUCH LOUDER.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:31:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vaporware rumors of s3xy new Apple gear

Here's some pretty teh s3xy new vaporware rumors about upcoming Apple products: first, a fourth-gen iPod with "max capacity of 50GB of storage, 2 inch color LCDs, video out, photo display capabilities, and revised (Mini-like) navigation wheel" and an Aluminium Display "with monitor feet resembling the PowerMac G5 handles."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:06:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

$54,000 shopping spree booty on display in London Museum

Every year for the past 11 years Sir Terence Conran "has sent a notable figure from the world of design on a 30,000 pound ($54,000) shopping spree." This year 33-year-old English designer, sculptor and architect Thomas Heatherwick was given US$54 thousand dollars to buy "things [he'd] like to live with." His purchases of offbeat objects are on display at London's Design Museum. I wonder if he gets to keep the stuff? (Shown here: a welders mask from Hoodlum Welding Gear)

Upstairs on a recent afternoon, people strolled past aisles of individually lighted boxes containing such items as a life-size glass "wine rifle" and a "rum sword" loaded with their namesakes. Christian chewing gum with a prayer on every wrapper. Edible peanut-shaped packing material. A urinal with a sink where the water tank usually is. A biodegradable papier mache coffin. Japanese eyelid glue. Oven mitts for Kosher Jews. A compass for pointing praying Muslims toward Mecca. Yorkshire tea made for London hard water. An organ donor T-shirt.

LinkNick Douglas sez: I found out where Heatherwick's items will go. A 2002 Independent article says this: "Every year, Sir Terence Conran chooses a guest curator to spend £30,000 on 'things you'd like to live with' to be exhibited at the Design Museum, London. These items become part of the Conran Foundation Collection, which conserves and records the cream of 20th and 21st-century design." 

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:40:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funky-cool pissoires

Bathroom Mania offers designer bathroom utilities -- flower pot toilet complete with singing birdie, hammock bath, beach cabin shower, and more. A recent Virgin Atlantic press release says their new clubhouse at JFK airport now includes the "Kisses" urinal. Update: BoingBoing reader Eric says, "The designer of the "kiss" (urinal in shape of a mouth) might have a problem: the mouth-shaped urinal has already been patented. This link takes you directly to the patent at the USPTO."
Link (Thanks, travis! Also seen on J-Walk)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:30:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pepper spray ring and mobile phone stun gun

After reading about Safety Technology's combination voice-changer/background-noise gadget that connects to your phone (reviewed in Wired's must-read Gadget Lab newsletter), I looked at some of the other things that Safety Technology sells. The Stunner, a pepper spray ring, looks like a great way to accidentally blast yourself or your friend in the face with a searing dose of capsaicin (the chemical that makes peppers hot). They also sell a stun gun designed to look like a cell phone (not the false-rumor Nokia stun gun that made the blog rounds a couple of weeks ago).

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:03:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired Rave Awards

Wired Magazine's anual Rave Awards took place on Monday night at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Robodominatrix and former BB guestblogger Karen Marcelo of SRL accompanied me. It was a terrific event. The Rapture played a tight set. The catering was awesome, particularly the organic greens as you can see from Karen's snapshot here (full size). USA Today has this article about who won what. Two of the awards that brought the biggest smile to my grass-grazing face: Scott Heiferman and Joe Trippi were honored for Meetup, as was Bram for Bittorrent. Here is the final list of winners. Maybe they'll give me something next year for my forthcoming adult bovine blog publishing venture, www.XXXRuminants.com (thanks, Jonno).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:45:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

World's smallest hard drive

Toshiba Corp. landed a Guinness World Record for their new .85-inch hard drive with a four gigabyte storage capacity. (Toshiba's 1.8 inch drives are inside the iPod.) "Toshiba's innovation means that I could soon hold more information in my watch than I could on my desktop computer just a few years ago," David Hawksett, science and technology editor at Guinness World Records, told Reuters. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:06:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SXSW Friendster keynote

Heath Row has posted his near-verbatim transcript extensive notes on Jonathan Abrams's Friendster keynote at SXSW:

It's an illusion to think that you can manage different personas for different people's access, but we are working on more privacy so different people can see different information. I talked our director of community for some interesting stories. We've had people accidentally delete a friend from their friend's list, and their friends apply peer pressure to add them back to their list. Then they email us and ask us to undo the deletion. If they added them again, they'd get an invitation, which would highlight the deletion in the first place. In the real world, people do get snubbed. We've tried to build Friendster so it mirrors real life, so it has some of the challenges of real life.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:13:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hello Kitty USB hub

This Hello Kitty USB hub "will talk with you along with the input motion of the keyboard (moves both arms and head)" -- English and Japanese versions available. Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:12:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bigfoot Defense Denied

Last summer, Vermont driver Mark Zielinski crossed his van into oncoming traffic and killed another motorist. In a hearing to dismiss the charge against Zielinski, his defense attorney attempted to argue that there was no way of knowing whether Zielenski swerved to avoid an obstacle in the road, a moose or possibly even a bigfoot. Apparently, several sasquatch had been sighted in the vicinity. The judge wasn't having it though. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:04:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony launches "personalized radio" to mobile phones

Allso at CeBit: Sony will announce what it describes as the world's first "personalized radio" service for mobile phones. Users can customize playlists to their own tastes, and listen via cellphone.

The Japanese electronics, film and music giant also unveiled the European version of its Internet music store Connect, aiming to beat Apple's iTunes Music Store to the European market, while relaxing restrictive usage rules of its SonicStage player which no longer limits the number of copies per song.

Link (Thanks, Hal)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:41:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Time Warner taps into fed wiretap law

Ben Charny at CNET reports that Time Warner is said to have begun complying with a federal law that requires telecom providers to help police conduct electronic surveillance:

Time Warner Cable is the first cable company to begin trying to adhere to the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, the source said. Cable companies are not yet required to comply with the 1994 wiretap law, but they see the writing on the wall.

Link to CNET story. More updates on federal wiretapping activity in a March 13 WaPo article here. (Thanks, Steve)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:58:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Swiss Army Knife with USB

The next edition of the classic Swiss Army Knife will feature a built-in USB key. The wired knife is one of many novelties scheduled to debut at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany from March 18-24.
Link (Thanks, Jean-luc, also spotted on Engadget)

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

h4w7 Naked chyxx0rs will teach U how 2 hack

Fleshbot says:

Given the venerable historical associations between computer hacking and porn (er, pr0n), this seems like a natural: "HaXXXor combines computer hacking with porn for the first time on one DVD ... Armed with real girls showing all of their hardware!"

HaXXXor - Naked Chicks Teach You To Hack

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:38:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Artist Paul Lucas interprets "Jack Spratt"

Paul Lucas creates his surrealistic images using a combination of sculpture, photography, drawing and collage. Link (via Cipango)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:45:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jack Chick's own Passion

Before Mel Gibson's Vanity Project, there was Jack Chick, the clown prince of loony religious nuttery, author of countless comic-book tracts advising on the danger of Catholicism, Freemasonry, Dungeons and Dragons and Hallowe'en. Now, Chick has released his own vanity project, an utlra-violent DVD celebrating his unique spin on matters Biblical.

Cut to present day when a narrator informs us that "the whole world is filled with liars, thieves and fornicators" with the forced-sounding awe of the voiceover for a Christmas-themed McDonald’s commercial. This section is called "This was your life" and is based on the Chick tract of the same name. It tells the story of a man who thought he lived a decent life, but finds himself condemned for eternity to hell.

But what a hell it is! It’s a feast of explosions of blood, cross-species monsters, huge dragon snakes and great, glowing orange eyes. Jack T. Chick LLC really gets off on gore, pain and blood. Later in the movie, Jesus’ face looks like a bloody stump when the Roman guard spits on him.

Link (via JWZ)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:57:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toy rollercoaster with inversion and electric lift-hill

Caines sez, "Coaster Dynamix is taking pre-orders ($499.00) for a kick-ass roller coaster model kit. The coaster kit has an electric lift-hill and an inverted train. They attached a camera to the train and included this footage in the video that is on the site." Link (Thanks, Caines!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:54:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

If Apple's founders were in a 70s cop-show

Streets of Cupertino: a t-shirt celebrating an imaginary cop show starring the founders of Apple with 1979 haircuts. Link (via Blackbeltjones)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Porn for Pandas

Chinese veterinarians are hoping "panda porn" movies will turn on American-born panda Hua Mei. According a Xinhua News Agency article, it's believed that because the panda was born in captivitiy, she was never clued in to the mating game. An Adult Video News report claims that "besides the videos, Hua Mei has also visited a few 'sets,' live viewing of other panda couples mating." Link to AVN article (Thanks, Vann!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:43:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photoblogging a trail of nutty signs from deranged neighbor

A participant in the Something Awful forums posts photos of Dr.-Bronner's-soap-like signs she claims were created by a disturbed neighbor nicknamed Crazy Tammy.

"She's been gone from the neighborhood for about nine months now, hopefully getting the treatment she so sorely needed. From what I understand, and from what others have told me, Crazy Tammy is a textbook case of paranoid schizophrenia. We would have never known about her terrible mental problem if she hadn't advertised her insane views on giant sheets of cloth hung from her fence."
Link (via Warren)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:01:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Choline boosts brains

Some Smart Drug enthusiasts I knew in the cyberdelic early 90s raved about the cognitive effects of the nutrient choline. A new study at Duke University Medical Center seems to support their claims. In the study, pregnant rats were given three to four times their normal intake of choline. Apparently, their offspring boasted bigger neurons that fired faster and for longer than the control group.

According to a New Scientist article, "behavioural studies have shown giving choline to pregnant rats improves learning and memory in their offspring." This latest study though "is the first time anyone has shown that prenatal choline supplementation actually changes the anatomy and physiology of single brain cells," one of the researchers said.

Still, another scientist adds, pregnant women should continue to avoid certain foods like liver, swordfish, and tuna that are rich in choline but may be bad news for other reasons.

Time to belly up to the Smart Bar? Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:33:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

VoIP company Skype raises $19MM

Internet telephony startup Skype today announced a $19 million investment through DFJ. The VoIP provider was founded by creators of P2P network Kazaa. Skype plans to use some of that cash to buy hundreds of thousands of minutes per month from major telcos, and provide them in turn to its own customers. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:27:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark Cuban, world's first Billionaire Blogger.

Aside from being an HDTV and digital cinema entrepreneur, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, and the star of a new "Apprentice"-like TV show on ABC in which he hands out $1M to strangers, Mark Cuban is now a blogger. Weblogsinc founder Jason Calacanis is on something of a roll -- rumor has it he's launching several additional celeblogs soon. Link to Mark Cuban's new blog. Link to more Cuban news from John Battelle's blog today.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:12:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Self-made superhero Angle Grinder Man is back

Joi Ito reports that Angle Grinder Man is back and in full effect. The British homegrown hero wanders the streets of London clad in gold lame caped crusader getup, freeing illegally parked cars of parking enforcement security boots.

Or, as AGM himself would put it, "Angle-Grinder Man [is] the world's first wheel-clamp and speed camera vigilante cum subversive superhero philanthropist entertainer type personage. A big welcome to all good, decent, law-unabiding citizens. Godspeed to you and your four-wheeled, petrol-driven chariots."
Link to Angle Grinder Man's website (Caution: Not worksafe for villains or parking enforcement officers. Contains strong superpowers)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:52:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shootin' pool with Hellboy

Actor Ron Perlman shoots pool and talks with the magazine FHM, while dressed as the comic world's favorite beast of the apocalypse. Hellboy the movie, directed by Guillermo del Toro, launches April 2. Link to interview, Link to the website for the comic that inspired it (thanks, J. Hurwitz!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:36:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Adult angling: "Fish F*cker" for sale on eBay

Fleshbot snickers,

Giggle if you will at this custom made, dildo-handled fishing rod (heh, "rod") currently on sale at eBay, but according to the item description it gets the job done just fine: "Not only did it perform well, it caught the most fish of any poles that day, AND I landed a 5 pound Whitefish with it!"

Link to eBay auction

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:30:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funky art fashion: Christian Joy

The website of fashion designer Christiane Hultquist, whose work is produced under the label Christian Joy. She's the one who does those wacky art-graffiti-dresses for that chick from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs okay, okay, okay, lead singer Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (there you go, Alex).

With no formal training in fashion design, Christiane started creating one of a kind hand painted and hand sewn t-shirts decorated with slogans like "FU I'm Not Your Waitress." As well, she began to re-design old prom dresses giving them names like the "Carried Dress" with a creepy "hahahaha" written across a bloody red bodice and the "Ex Dress" with the names of ex-boyfriends in gold glitter.

Link (Thanks, Susannah!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:23:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Controlled vocabulary for describing personal relationships

Clay Shirky's posted a fine rant on RELATIONSHIP, a controlled vocabulary of terms for describing personal relationships (i.e. friendOf, acquaintanceOf, parentOf, siblingOf, childOf, grandchildOf, spouseOf, enemyOf, antagonistOf, ambivalentOf, lostContactWith, knowsOf, wouldLikeToKnow, knowsInPassing, knowsByReputation, closeFriendOf, hasMet, worksWith, colleagueOf, collaboratesWith, employerOf, employedBy, mentorOf, apprenticeTo, livesWith, neighborOf, grandparentOf, lifePartnerOf, engagedTo, ancestorOf, descendantOf, participantIn, participant):

Take the relationship closePersonalFriendOf. The designers of this list somehow overlooked it, possibly on the grounds that it's tautological, and only of use on talk shows. ("Oh yes, Julia Roberts is a close personal friend of mine.") But it is nevertheless informative -- you would only use closePersonalFriendOf if the person in question was someone of relatively high fame or station.

In addition, anyone claiming to be a "close personal friend" of someone else is talking about a domain where a high degree of social interaction is the norm, e.g. show business. By extension, the seemingly oxymoronic friendYouDontLike is also a valid category, as anyone in highly social environments can tell you. (You often run into friendsYouDontLike at partiesYouHaveToGoTo.)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:15:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New camera from Philips works like human eye

A new camera lens from Philips designed for small, cheap imaging devices uses fluids to shape the lens for focusing. Just like your eye. Link (thanks, Bev!). Update: Grant says, "Engadget had a story earlier today about another company, Varioptic, which has already created a fluid, no moving parts lens. Engadget says, 'the two companies [Philips and Varioptic] are headed towards a legal showdown.'"

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:14:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Abbott and Costello Go To The Porn Shop

The Smoking Gun provides us with a 1958 FBI memo revealing that Bud Abbott was quite the porn aficionado, counting 1,500 movie reels in his collection. Of course, any films confiscated during a potential raid on a shady party Abbott was allegedly planning were to have been "submitted to the FBI Lab for examination and comparison purposes." I can hear the agents' conversation now: Who's on Top? No, Who is on the bottom! Link (Thanks, Vann!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:26:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Art of Electromagnetism

The MIT Physics Department held their first annual "Weird Fields" contest for students in an Electromagnetism I class to construct the "weirdest two-dimensional vector field from simple analytic functions." The students used a Field Mapping applet developed at the school to produce a mind-blowing variety of psychedelic visualizations. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:25:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Antiques roadshow for scientific curioddities

Wired News reports on the American Museum of Natural History's ID Day, sort of an antiques roadshow of biology and anthropology where the public can have scientific "treasures" appraised.

"Previous Identification Day examinations have yielded a fossilized whale's jawbone, a rare green beetle bracelet from Brazil and a 5,000-year-old stone spear point. But most often the items are identified as tourist trinkets or valueless bits and pieces of bone and stone."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:48:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bruce Sterling talk from SXSW

Here are my running notes from Bruce Sterling's rant at SXSW:

This is a genius adminsitration for inspiring angry rhetoric.It's got a nice, interesting consistency. I like Rumsfeld, I dighis poetry. Job one in the Bush Admin is to get it spun: they'rean info-war-centric outfit. If you get it spun, you don't need toget it done.

Controlling the message is more important to them thancontrolling the underlying reality. It's a blatant part of theirideology. Their global climate change policy is in defiance ofthe laws of physics, it's Lysenkoism. The Union of ConcernedScientists has a page documenting the Bushies' Lysenkoism fromclimate change to on.

The science stuff is starting to blow back. The UCS isnonpartisan. It's like Stalin and Lysenko's faith-basedagriculture: the reason Soviet wheat fields have weeds is becausewheat is evolving into weeds. You didn't have to get the peasantsto weed the fields, you could just allege this. Scientists wereamazed and horrified. Soviet scientists who went abroad to talkabout chemistry and physics were confronted with a credibilitygap arising from this -- they had to admit that back home,politicians made up the laws of physics. So scientists defectedto Cornell.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:33:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Foucault in Lego

Social theorist Lego kits.Link (Thanks, Stevie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:58:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Help a library win a copyfight

Jenny sez, "Would really appreciate help highlighting one public library's struggle against copyright law. All they want to do is show their staff in-service day video."

The presentation was a success and the audience seemed to really like the video! There were some whoops and hollars! Then we did questions and of course the discussion turned to copyright. Yes, we used ROL by Madonna with no clearance but it was as much fair use as it could be: not sold, distributed, or copied.

I told them we tried last year to reach out to Madonna's people and never got anywhere. I think this is a great idea for libraries to internally and externally market themselves -- hey Madonna... can you give me a minute of your time to chat about it?

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:37:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ClicktheVote filesharing petition

Click The Vote recently announced the launch of a petition in support of "an equitable, balanced and reasonable system for legal file sharing that promotes learning and rewards creators." The petition is now available online for people to sign at the ClickTheVote.org website.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:25:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Playstation 3 and Xbox 2 weblogs

Two new niche tech blogs launching from Jason Calacanis and crew: Playstation3 and XBox2.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:21:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Earbud headphones with built-in foam earplugs

Having just killed yet another pair of white iPod headphones, I'm in the market. This review of FutureSonic EARS headphones -- which integrate foam earplugs -- has me thinking.

It took me three or for uses to get used to inserting the EARS and fiddling with the EQ settings on my iPod and PowerBook. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, but gravitate towards rock, funk/groove, and electronica the most and like a fair amount of bass in the mix (though not at the expense of the middle and high-end of the spectrum). The EQ settings on my iTunes and home stereo system boost the low and high ends while cutting a bit of the mid-range, and I usually keep my iPod's EQ set to "Rock" or "R & B." So I was pretty stunned to find that I was getting too much bass using the EARS with these settings. Switching the iPod over to "Treble Booster" wound up yielding the best results: Clear mid- and high-end response with plenty of undistorted bass to keep my head noddin'. I'm a drummer, so I need the thump of the bass drum clear and strong underneath the rest of the music.

Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:18:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ninjas and Pirates, Dwarves and Elves: how to understand the world

Tom Coates has written an hilarious and insightful essay in which he attempts to rank his friends and their operating systems (!) on two axes: Elf/Dwarf and Ninja/Pirate. I'm digging the 2X2 graphs.

Think of some of the humble bloggers on my blogroll. Where would they live? Ben Hammersley has something of the pirate about him. This is not a restrained man of quiet honour, but a proud warrior of the sea -- hair flowing in the breeze. But his skills are more evenly tempered between the conceptual and the practical -- as best evidenced by his work on the schema for various syndication formats. His position is clear. Matt Jones is far closer to elf than dwarf, but as swashbuckling as a man can come. Not so Dan Hill, elven once more but evidencing the self-mastery and discipline of a true ninja.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:14:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Michael Moore's publishers bully Soft Skull Press over Stupid White Men title

The idiot lawyers at the publisher of Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men" are going after the excellent Soft Skull Press for producing a book called "How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office" -- despite the fact the Moore himself is flattered by the reference. This is positively inexcusable in this era of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them."

In November, HarperCollins wrote to the Brooklyn publisher, Soft Skull Press, demanding that the title be changed and stating that the similarities would cause "irreparable damage" to Mr. Moore and his book.

The ironies compound rather quickly at this point, even ignoring that a company built on free and unfettered expression appears to be, by implication, objecting when someone else engages in that. In sending the letter, HarperCollins was protecting a book it refused to publish for a time, defending an author it fought bitterly with, and, according to Mr. Moore, doing so without his knowledge.

Link (via Copyfight)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:05:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tremendous Star Wars paper models

These Japanese paper Star Wars toys are really, really good -- I think these are my favorites in the genre. Link (Thanks, $SORRY_I_HAVE_LOST_TRACK_OF_WHO_SUGGESTED_THIS!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:57:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1:1 paper replica of rifle from Aliens

This foldable, futuristic paper macho-gun is pretty cool. It's a replica of the M41-A Pulse Rifle from Aliens. Link (Thanks, Ryan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:54:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iPod on offer in exchange for fake girlfriend with great butt

A Craigslister is willing to trade his iPod for an imaginary girlfriend to impress his visiting small-town parents. Too bad John Ritter is dead: this could be the plot for a Three's Company ironic Starsky-and-Hutch-style feature film.

I'm having my parents come visit me sometime in the next two weeks and have lied and told them I am dating someone I am in love with. You will only have to come to one dinner. In exchange for this I will buy you an IPOD - yes new - we walk into the store together and buy a new IPOD. Let me know if this interests you, and if you want to be in a loving relationship with all the benefits it brings ;-) I want to pretend we are totally in love. I am 24, swm, a grad student, italian-american, (not a guido), athletic build. Send pics and i will send you mine, note I check email basically every 3 hours. You should be in your 20's and athletic (great butt and legs are my main interest when I say athletic).

Link(via $MY_APOLOGIES_I_LOST_TRACK_OF_WHERE_I_FOUND_THIS)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:48:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Turn any 3D file into a paper model

Pepakura Desinger is an application that converts any 3D CAD model (Maya, Lightwave, DXF, etc) into a printable fold-and-glue paper model.Link(Thanks, Dan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:43:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NPR on Eastern Standard Tribe

NPR's Rick Kleffel broadcast a fantastic review of Eastern Standard Tribe yesterday, and he's posted the text on his site.

True to form, Doctorow peppers his novel with technology so palpable you want to order it up on the web. You'll probably get the chance. But technology is not the point here, merely a fascinating, convincing backdrop for the story. It's a really old story, actually -- boy meets girl. What follows is not unexpected, or even particularly new. What is unexpected, shocking even, is how smart Doctorow is when it comes to the human heart, and how well he's able to articulate it.

This novel feels whiz-bang modern, but Doctorow's prose uses the oldest trick in the book -- utterly direct simplicity. Even when he's explaining a sophisticated system of mobile music swapping, Doctorow comes off like a standup comedian. The insights he offers seem obvious, but only in retrospect. He seems smart because he makes the reader feel smart. When Doctorow talks, when Art argues, we just get it. There's nothing between the language and the meaning. The prose is funny, simple and straightforward. This is a no-bullshit book.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:30:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NASA's official fold-and-glue ties

NASA has its own line of paper model toys, including gingerbread templates for making your own edible Cassini rover.Link(Thanks, rcrain!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:29:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Positronic rap about the three laws

A LiveJournaller has written a rap for Will Smith to perform in his starring role in the upcoming I, Robot movie -- it's about someone wrote a rap about the positronic three-laws-havin' robot underclass.

The robots are in town, you better hear that
They got laws, so you understand that

They can't hurt us, they must obey us
But to protect themselves, could they betray us?

They say the metal man, follow a higher plan
But are they right, or should we fight?
What is our plight?

Link(Thanks, Nat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:18:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stewart Butterfield, the IM Question Answerer

Through a serindipitous google-accident, Stewart Butterfield has a lot of page-rank for the query, "IM Question Answerer," and as a result, people frequently IM him with random questions. He's started a new blog in which he posts transcripts of these Q&A sessions:

Colombiangel1213: do u think i could lokk in another site
sylloge: How old are you?
sylloge: Don't you get it?
sylloge: Google is a search engine ....
sylloge: You can find anything
sylloge: watch!
Colombiangel1213: ok
sylloge: http://www.google.com/search?q=hiking+and+mountains+and+stuff
sylloge: All about hiking and mountains and stuff
sylloge: See?
Colombiangel1213: ok clam down

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:01:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weezer/Jay-Z mashup: Jay-Zeezer

Inspired by the Gray Album and the Jay-Z Construction Kit, this guy has remixed Jay-Z's Black Album with Weezer's Blue Album, calling the result "Jay-Zeezer."

First I needed some sample material. Albums with colors in their names were definitely the way to go, so I started to make a list. How about REM's "Green?" Nah, not ironic enough. King Crimson's "Red?" No way! Everyone hates that prog rock shit. What about Weezer's "Blue Album?" It's really just named "Weezer", but everyone calls it by it's jacket color to distinguish it from the other one they released with the same name. With rap-esque lyrics like, "What's with these homies dissin' my girl?", it practically remixed itself. Paydirt. "Jay-Zeezer" was born.

Link(via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:57:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spraycan hiss detector narks out taggers

Taggertrap is an emergency-lighting box that has an audio sensor tuned to the sound of a spraypaint can in action. When it detects nearby graffiti writers, it activates a silent alarm, ratting the taggers out to the cops.

The mobile unit (Stinger) is battery powered, augmented by solar energy and may be linked with other surveillance or communication equipment, including cell phones, pagers, or, in remote locations like national parks, by GPS. The fixed unit (Surveyor) may be linked with existing alarm systems.

Link (via JWZ)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:55:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Three more chapters from Gillmor's "Making the News"

Dan Gillmor has posted three more draft chapters from Making the News, his upcoming book on the way that the Internet and journalism are changing one another. This is a very good draft, but he wants to make it better, so he's soliciting your input on ways to improve it.

In April, 2001, Apple Computer's public-relations agency got a request from a blogger, Joe Clark, who wanted to interview someone inside the company about the Macintosh operating system. Clark had written for tech magazines, and his now-dormant NUblog (www.content.nu) was an increasingly popular site, but the PR agency didn't know this. Frustrated by the negative response, Clark posted the e-mail exchange on his site, which in turn prompted a cease-and-desist letter from the agency's regional vice president. The entire episode showed how fundamentally clueless Apple and its PR people were about a medium that was growing in importance.

To be fair, this was 2001, before weblogs were well-known. Clark was a relatively early player in what Azeem Azhar, a principal in 20six, a European weblog tool company, calls the "eBay-ization of media -- everyone can be a buyer and a seller." Others call it "nanopublishing" -- small sites, run by one or a very few people, focusing on a relatively narrow niche topic. Niche bloggers may lack the influence of a major publication. Some are what Azhar calls "a teenage boy who drives the mobile-phone purchase decisions of his group of teenage friends; or the London yoga practitioner who has 60 or 80 fellow yogi readers on his blog, and who influences their yoga-related purchasing."

Chapter 2 Link, Chapter 3 Link, Chapter 4 Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:51:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Farkistani photoshop hall of fame

Fark has asked its photoshop army to post their all-time favorite photoshooping contest entries. The result is a jaw-dropping gallery of ninja-grade, potty-humor rasterbation that I'm still chuckling at. Link (Thanks, urlnotfound!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:47:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, March 15, 2004

New addition to the solar system

Is it a planet or isn't it? Today, CalTech astronomers announced the discovery of a "planetoid" eight billion miles from Earth, or more more than three times the distance of Pluto.

With a size approximately three-quarters that of Pluto, it is very likely the largest object found in the solar system since the discovery of Pluto in 1930.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:32:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese foldable robots

More foldable, glue-able PDFs -- this time, it's ultra-fab Japanese paper robots. Link (Thanks, Skye!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:04:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steampunk submarine free paper toy

Stefan sez, "John McEwan is a grand old man of military and role-playing miniatures. He also makes cut-and-fold paper models of buildings and vehicles. Some of these are really, really cool, like a line of alternate-history zeppelins and steam tanks. Once in a while he puts up files for free download. This month it's a cool Victorian submarine." Link (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:45:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush: flag law breaker?

Skippy sez: "I heard, years ago, about a rule prohibiting the use of the flag in advertising for any means. I committed this to memory, but never looked it up. No one ever believed me when I mentioned it, because I couldn’t cite a reference for it.

"I looked this up after seeing a link to this page, which compares the latest updates from Kerry's and Bush's blogs side-by-side (ingenious, if you ask me!). It ticked me off that Bush was using the flag, and I decided to find out whether my memory was correct.

"It turns out that George W. Bush's website is in violation of the United States Code, Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 3. He owes $100, or thirty days in jail." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:23:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing just won the Weblog of the Year Award at the Bloggies

Boing Boing just won the Weblog of the Year award at the Bloggies: here's my speech!

My shame. It is boundless. Seriously.

BOO YAH, IN YOUR FACE WOO HOO GOD DAMN!

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:27:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing just won the Bloggie for Best Group Blog

Boing Boing just won the Bloggie for Best Group Blog! Here's my speech:

You know, we got nominated a bunch of these last year and we didn't win any of them, so I thought that I was really optimistic just for writing ONE speech. Writing this one feels like monumental hubris. I cover myself in shame. Forgive me.

Thanks to everyone who voted for us! Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:22:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Talking Heads decision: the judicial system's David Byrne infatuation

The "Talking Heads decision," is a slighly notorious Fifth Circuit Appeals decision in which the court quoted dozens of Talking Heads songs and lyrics.

Raleigh Abner had a wild, wild life ofcorporate "alter egos" since he was not responsible to a viable boardof directors or supervisory corporate officers for any businesstransaction he consummated. For purposes of the present appeal,however, the only transaction of consequence is the sale of the Abnerfamily residence at 303 Lakeside Lane in Webster, Texas. This house waspurchased for approximately $ 240,000 by Raleigh Abner in hisindividual capacity in late 1979 and refurbished with thousands ofdollars "borrowed" from a few of Raleigh Abner's companies. In 1982 theAbners decided to pull up the roots, so the house wasconveyed to "303 Lakeside Group, Inc.," a corporation created byRaleigh Abner to hold the homestead and allow him to borrow against thecontract of sale with the purchaser of the property. n1 The 303Lakeside home eventually sold for approximately one milliondollars.

Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:12:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing just won a bloggie for Best American Blog!

Boing Boing has just won the Best American Weblog award at the 2004 Bloggies. Here's my acceptance speech:

It goes without saying that I'm accepting this not just on my own behalf, but on behalf of Mark -- who started it all, Xeni, Pesco, and the guestbloggers who slave away over there on the right-hand side. Oh, and Ken Snider, our tireless sysadmin, the Blogger team who stood us in good stead for all those years and the MT team who will stand us in good stead for all the years to come.

You know, now that I'm moving to the UK, people keep asking me this really bizarre goddamned question. They keep asking me, "Are you going to stop blogging?"

And I'm all like, whaaaaa? Dude, you'd have to break my fingers to get me to stop.

I mean, hasn't anyone noticed that I periodically post a kind of exhausted, cranky post to Boing Boing saying, "I'm really tired and busy and I'm taking a couple days off," and then one of two things happens:

1. I keep blogging

2. I come back two days later with like a hundred posts, demonstrating that I've spent a couple days blogging without publishing.

I love blogging. There are a lot of blogging cynics who'll tell us that because blogging hasn't lived up the hype -- which it didn't, of course it didn't, that's why they call it hype -- that it's nothing. Personal webpages with a CMS. Slashdot. Posts about cats.

Blogging is not nothing. Blogging is something. Anyone who says blogging is nothing isn't paying attention. A million of us are not doing nothing.

It's something, and I'm proud to be part of it.

Thank you.

Thanks to everyone who voted for us! Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:09:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush and Kerry's RSS, side by side

Vivek sez, "This page is simple: an RSS parser (CaRP) is used to create a single page that lists the last five entries of Bush's and Kerry's official blogs, side by side." Link (Thanks, Vivek!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:29:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free paper toys to print and assemble

Stunning, elaborate paper toys to print, fold and glue. I really like the Wrigley Field, too. Link (via Smartpatrol)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:00:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SXSW irc users: support freenode

Adina sez, "Lilo's letting SXSW use irc.freenode.net even though SXSW is a commercial project. People who are using freenode might want to contribute. In general, folks whose projects benefit from freenode might want to consider posting a "support freenode" link." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:27:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Secret knocking codes for firewalls

Port-knocking -- like a secret knock for firewalls. Schneier calls it "defensive system that would not accept any SSH connections (port 22) unless it detected connection attempts to closed ports 1026, 1027, 1029, 1034, 1026, 1044, and 1035 in that sequence within five seconds, then listened on port 22 for a connection within ten seconds. Otherwise, the system would completely ignore port 22." Link (via Crypto-Gram)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:29:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

State attorneys general preparing assault on P2P with MPAA guidance?

I filed a story for Wired News on Saturday about a draft document which is evidently being circulated by CA state Attorney General Bill Lockyer to fellow state attorneys general. Lockyer's office is planning to release a revised version of the document within the coming weeks, after obtaining additional signatories. The letter characterizes P2P software as a "dangerous product" and describes the failure of technology makers to warn consumers of those dangers as a deceptive trade practice. Metadata associated with the MS Word file indicates it was written or reviewed by a representative of the Motion Picture Association of America. Separation of Hollywood and state? Here's a snip from the leaked letter:

As a P2P software developer and distributor, we believe you have the ability and responsibility to better educate consumers about these known risks, and to design your software in a manner that minimizes the risks. We view with grave concern reports that at least some P2P software developers may be adding features deliberately designed to hinder law enforcement in its prosecution of crimes using P2P software. Companies that engage in such conduct, and fail to meet the important responsibilities referenced above, harm the interests of consumers in our States.

It is widely recognized that P2P file-sharing software currently is used almost exclusively to disseminate pornography, and to illegally trade copyrighted music, movies, software and video games. File-sharing software also is increasingly becoming a means to disseminate computer worms and viruses. Nevertheless, your company still does little to warn consumers about the legal and personal risks they face when they use your software to "share" copyrighted music, movies and computer software. A failure to prominently and adequately warn consumers, particularly when you advertise and sell paid versions of your software, could constitute, at the very least, a deceptive trade practice.

(...) We take seriously our responsibility to protect consumers and ensure that the laws of our States are respected. In the future, we will not hesitate to take whatever actions we deem necessary to ensure that you fulfill your duties as a responsible corporate citizen.

Link to full story.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:15:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warren Ellis -- Biological

A short dose of delicious new prose from Warren Ellis:

Lavinia sits on the bench outside the local Starbs and swallows her antifutureshock meds with a soy chai latte. After a few minutes, she feels able to switch her shades from obstacle-imaging to full vision. The world slowly fades up from green and black wireframe to three-dimensional colour. She gazes blankly over the rail station, at the full-motion billboard ad for the new Speculum Bar down on Main Street, where warm drinks are mixed in and served from the muscular rectums of young Algerian girls.

A flock of Fuckit Kids clatter past Lavinia, videoloop John Lydon tattoos on their scrawny arms snapping out the words "fuck it" over and over. Some of them slow down in front of her. People under twenty-five or so aren't used to seeing pregnant women. One of them stops dead, scratches his scabby upper arm, making his fresh new talking John Lydon face bend and ripple. Antishocked to the eyeballs, he still struggles to cope with Lavinia's alien curves.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:55:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, March 14, 2004

Cover art for ReVisions anthology

Last year, Charlie Stross and I wrote Unwirer in a public blog. The story was for ReVisions, an alternate history anthology edited by Isaac Szpindel and Julie Czerneda. Now, Kenn Brown has finished the cover art for the book, and it's very very nifty. Link (Thanks, Kenn!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:40:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Water-electrolysis toy cars

A Japanese toy-company is shipping a water-powered, 19cm-long car that "uses hydrogen created from the electrolysis of pure water" to run itself. Link (via Engadget)

Steve sez: "this thing undoubtedly uses electricity to _produce_ hydrogen from water (that's what an electrolyzer does).  The hydrogen is then converted back to electricity to run the car.  In other words, this thing is nothing but an inefficient _electric_ model car.  The coming 'hydrogen economy' has been oversold.  Don't believe the hype!"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:08:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lord of the Rings musical in the offing

There's a LotR musical underway, and a Crooked Timber contributor has come up with some very tight suggestions for the songs.

News today that a musical version of The Lord of the Rings is in the works. Suggest songs and plot-points here. Potential titles include: 'I'm gonna wash that orc right out of my hair' (Legolas), 'You're the One Ring that I want' (Sauron in Act I, then Gollum in Act II, and Frodo, Gollum and Sauron in Act III), 'People will say we're in love' (Frodo/Sam duet, Act II, theme echoed by Gimli and Legolas during Battle of Pelennor Fields), 'City with the Tree on Top' (Gandalf's arrival at Minas Tirith), 'How do I solve this problem, my dear Grima?' (Theoden introduction), and Gollum's Act III showstopper, 'Memorieses'.

Link (via Electrolite)

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

Exley and Pariser MoveOn keynote from SXSW

Zack Exley/Eli Pariser from MoveOn.org just gave a fantastic keynote at SXSW, describing the happy accident that gave rise to the best new toolsuite for organizing and sustaining Internet-based activism. Here are my running notes:

Before the war, we did a candlelight vigil in defiance of the war. You could come and punch in your ZIP and set up a location where the vigil would take place, then told our members to go and find your local vigil. We did 6500 vigils all over the world. 500k people showed up. When you signed up, it told you that there were others signed up to attend your local vigil, so you owouldn't be the only one.

Eli: This all came together in five days -- 500,000 people mobilized in five days. A vigil every 20 blocks for the whole length of Manhattan.

There are more political ways of doing this. We asked people to hold house parties and show a movie against the war, and people opened up their homes to have strangers come in and see this film. We heard from people in small midwestern towns who thought they were the lone anti-war people in their town, but the site showed them that there were dozens more who felt the same way.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:03:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

You can take photos at SXSW too!

Dan Gillmor reports that the SXSW organizers have changed their policy regarding photos at the conference: "The only restriction on pictures/videos/recording is that they must be for personal use." This is amazing -- the SXSW organizers are marvellously responsive to their attendees -- great to see. Link

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

Photos: Bruce Sterling in LA

When the VH1 documentary airs, they'll call it "I was Bruce Sterling's Chauffer for a Day." Snapshots of Mr. Sterling's visit to LA, during which I kidnapped him for a trip to see the nanotechnology science/art show at LACMA. There were questions, but deep reflection led to answers. Technical notes: (1) everything was shot with the nano-sized digital camera Canon Powershot SD10 Elph, which is a little smaller than a pack of cigarettes. (2) I'm trying out FOTKI for the photo hosting, and really liking it so far (thanks, CJC).
Link to snapshots.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:09:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

We can use the power outlets at SXSW now!

The Austin conference center has changed its tune about its policy forbidding attendees from using the AC outlets. Jon Lebkowsky says, "They changed the rule - people can plug in. They just told me to announce it on my 11am panel. Yay!"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:45:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Radical alien-style cube case

This is a sweet PC case -- "The bare-bones chassis includes three large acrylic windows, cut-outs for a mind-numbing 11 fans, chrome front-panel switches, and a set of medium-duty casters. You can remove the drive bays, the motherboard tray, and the backplane, and Xoxide plans to offer interchangeable drive bay modules for buyers who prefer different configurations. All three acrylic panes are fitted into the case's U-shaped wraparound cover, which removes them from harm's way whenever you work inside."Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:57:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nesting rock star dolls

Russian Legacy sells rock-star matrioshke dolls. Link(via Geisha Asobi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:49:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Updated AGAIN: Let's reform SXSW's no-photos, no-electricity policies

Update: Dan Gillmor reports that the SXSW organizers have changed their policy regarding photos at the conference: "The only restriction on pictures/videos/recording is that they must be for personal use."

Update: jonl says, "They changed the rule - people can plug in. They just told me to announce it on my 11am panel. Yay!"

At SXSW, every speakers' table has this sign on it: NO UNAUTHORIZED VIDEOTAPING OR PHOTOGRAPHY IS ALLOWED IN PANEL ROOMS AS A COURTESY TO SPEAKERS.

This is a really silly idea, one that violates the burgeoning norm of tech conferences, which is to aggressively capture and retransmit the happenings at conferences as they are underway, and I think that we should do something about it.

Every speaker should open her or his panel or talk with the following:

[First, pick up sign and place it face down on the table]

I am hereby authorizing you to take as many pictures and video of this presentation as you care to. I have travelled a great distance, at great expense, to say something and be heard. I would be deeply grateful to you for helping me to spread what I have to say.

I would be further grateful if your photos and videos of this presentaiton were distributed as widely as possible under a Creative Commons license.

Thank you.

If speakers forget to do this, someone in the audience should stand up at the start of the proceedings and say, "That sign says we're not allowed to take photos and videos without your permission. We'd like to share what you have to say with others -- may we have your permission to do so?"

There's another problem at SXSW, which is that the conference center charges an arm and a leg to conference organizers who want to use the AC outlets in the hallways. SXSW doesn't have an arm and a leg to spare, so they haven't paid the extortionate sum.

The result of this is that red-jacketed "security guards" spend all their time going around, ordering paying attendees -- again, people who have travelled to Austin at great personal expense -- to unplug their laptops from the wall or face a $90 fine. This is the mingiest, rottenest way to make conference attendees feel welcome, and again, we should do something about it.

The Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau's email address is visitorcenter@austintexas.org, and their phone number is (800)926-2282.

Is there anyone from the Austin papers reading this? It would be grand to put someone from the convention center management on the spot about this: "Did you really pay your staff to walk the corridors of the conference center and order working people who had plugged in their laptops so that they could keep up with their jobs while visiting Austin to unplug or face a fine? Do you always do this? Is this in keeping with your remit as an ambassador for Austin to our visitors?"

I have a great time at SXSW every year, and the conference organizers do a tremendous job of putting on a show. But someone needs to take the conference center management to task for this unacceptable policy. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:11:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Put obese kids on Atkins

A UK health expert is recommending that obese children be put on the Atkins diet, because the high fat protein content -- which makes it palatable to kids -- also suppresses appetite. The health risks of high fat and high sodium are outweighed by the health benefits of not being clinically obese.

"The children who come here are not just overweight, they are ill, and in danger of dying. Some of them can't breathe and some of them can't lie down.

"I do think the basis of Atkins - low carbohydrate and high protein - is a good diet for children and the priority is for these children to get weight off."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:54:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Grand Challenge finish: not so grand?

Looks like our autonomously war-waging robotic overlords won't be taking over any time soon. A little over two hours and about seven miles into the DARPA Grand Challenge race in the California desert, all vehicles were either withdrawn or disabled. But oragnizers say just because no competitor finished the race -- leaving the $1MM prize unclaimed -- doesn't mean the event was a flop. Link to status board, Link to CNN story.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:11:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, March 13, 2004

Flashmobs with a purpose: Protests in Madrid organized by SMS, chatrooms

In Spain today, thousands gathered in the streets demanding answers from their government about this week's deadly terrorist attacks in Madrid. Bloggers in Spain tell BoingBoing the gatherings were decentralized "flash mobs", organized primarily by short text messages sent via Internet-capable mobile devices, and online in chatrooms and weblog forums.

Around 6PM local time in Madrid, an estimated 3,000-5,000 protesters gathered spontaneously in front of the headquarters of Spain's ruling Popular Party (Partido Popular, or PP), located on calle Genova. Participants shouted slogans against media manipulation, and carried signs asking, "Who did it?". Flashmobs spread by SMS throughout the country, with parallel gatherings quickly emerging in other cities.

The protests occurred one day before general elections take place in Spain. Government representatives denounced today's gatherings, describing them as illegal assemblies -- but because they were organized in a decentralized manner using mobile technology, there was no single responsible party against whom punitive action could be taken.

Protesters accused Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of covering up information about the attacks for political advantage. Aznar is not seeking a third term in office, and has appointed ex-Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy as his successor. Aznar's center-right administration first blamed the 3/11 massacre -- which killed more than 200 people -- on the Basque separatist group ETA, designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. Their position has since been revised to acknowledge that Islamic fundamentalist groups, perhaps al Qaeda, may have been involved. Critics of Aznar allege that his strong support of the U.S. war in Iraq has transformed Spain into a leading target for such groups.

The events of 9/11 and 3/11 share a number of unsettling connections: the Madrid attacks took place exactly two and a half years after those in NYC, and there were precisely 911 days between the two. For these and other reasons, including this taped message, a growing number of observers in Spain and elsewhere are questioning whether or not the ETA is to blame.

Some Aznar supporters accused Cultura Contra la Guerra of initiating the text-messages calling for protests. The well-known art-protest group is a collective of artists and performers, and was originally founded to protest Spain's support for the Iraq war. "Whether or not that's true, I don't know -- today was a long day filled with intense emotion for people throughout the country," says Cadiz-based blogger Antonio Delgado of caspa.tv. "Right now -- at 3AM -- it's hard to think clearly. The only thing that matters now is that everyone needs to get out and vote tomorrow."

Blog coverage at Caspa.TV, Barrapunto, MiniD, commentary and live on-the-scene observations by popular Spanish web pundit Nacho Escolar here. Some photos are here, including the one above. A moblog/photoblog dedicated to the event is here. More news: NYT (eng), El Mundo (SP), and Corriere (Italian). Leander Kahney's report "'Net Cries Out for Madrid" in Wired News, here. Earlier BoingBoing posts about 3/11 news from Spain are here and here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:50:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Potty mouth and lab-reports: an unbeatably funny combination

Now this is a funny lab report, from a very frustrated solderer of germanium to wire.

Check this shit out (Fig. 1). That's bonafide, 100%-real data, my friends. I took it myself over the course of two weeks. And this was not a leisurely two weeks, either; I busted my ass day and night in order to provide you with nothing but the best data possible. Now, let's look a bit more closely at this data, remembering that it is absolutely first-rate. Do you see the exponential dependence? I sure don't. I see a bunch of crap.

Christ, this was such a waste of my time.

Banking on my hopes that whoever grades this will just look at the pictures, I drew an exponential through my noise. I believe the apparent legitimacy is enhanced by the fact that I used a complicated computer program to make the fit. I understand this is the same process by which the top quark was discovered.

Link(via Chewy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:29:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kim Stanley Robinson on what Martian water means for science fiction

Kim Stanley Robinson, who is, on the one hand, the author of a brilliant, seminal series of novels about terraforming Mars has written a grand, overarching survey of the speculative literature of the Red Planet for the NYT, in the wake of the discovery of Mars's aquaeous history.

Meanwhile, the feedback loop between science and science fiction continues to flow. It is, as we have seen, an elliptical loop, like the orbit of a comet. Science-fiction writers seize on new scientific findings and immediately leap to conclusions, in the form of stories. Then these stories dive into young minds and percolate there, shaping future scientists and giving them dreams, visions, plans.

Leap and percolate. These days I sometimes hear from young people who tell me they are studying some kind of science because of my Mars books. ("But you forgot to mention the math.") I feel like part of the science-fiction loop. I still follow the latest Mars news, and sometimes I wonder what the next wave of Mars stories will be like.

It seems awkward. I suppose the thing to do would be to tell the story of the robot rovers, because that's what we're going to have for a while. Maybe rovers much more powerful than Spirit and Opportunity -- artificial intelligences, in fact, and happy to be on Mars, because it's the world they were designed for, and they're protecting an indigenous cryptoendolithic, or hidden in rock, bacterial culture they have discovered. So that when humans finally arrive in person, it's a disaster in the making for all concerned, and the rover artificial intelligences and little red people have to play dumb and play ghost and change humanity for the good of all, and . . .

Link (via Nelson)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:01:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Signing EST Monday at SXSW, loving from Entertainment Weekly

A reminder: I'm signing copies of Eastern Standard Tribe tomorrow Monday at SXSW at 1:30, immediately following the Bloggie Award Ceremony on the trade-floor.

If you're not a registered attendee at SXSW, you can get a free trade-floor pass here.

And on that note, check out the sweet lovin' I got in this week's Entertainment Weekly: "Clerks meets Startup.com... Tribe is packed with big ideas."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:13:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NARC video game encourages players to get high as power-ups

The remake of the NARC video-game encourages players to bust dealers, steal their stashes, and use the confiscata as performance-enhancing power-ups.

You're still a cop and you're still looking to take out the dealers and suppliers. And, odds are you'll pick up the cash and drugs scattered about once again. The hook is: In the new "N.A.R.C.", your character can -- and is, in fact, encouraged to -- ingest those drugs.

Looking to slow time around you -- a la "The Matrix" or "Max Payne"? Take a toke. Marijuana puts you into "weed time." Not sure who the bad guys are? Drop some LSD and enemies will appear to have giant devil heads. Moving too slow? A little speed will take care of that, letting you zip around and fight at an incredibly fast pace.

Link (via Costikyan)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:45:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ian McDonald's Hearts, Hands and Voices

Just a quick plug for The Broken Land (originally published in the UK with the much better title Hearts, Hands and Voices), by Ian McDonald. McDonald is one of the great underappreciated science fiction writers of the twentieth century and this is one of his great, underappreciated novels. It's a biotech parable for the Irish Catholic/Protestant conflict, and the bones of that conflict are fleshed with one of the saddest, funniest, strangest stories I've ever read. Start with the Ancestor Tree, on which the heads of the recently dead are spiked, where their brains are kept alive and linked into an (ahem) neural net that makes an oracle out of the combined wisdom of all the dear departed. When the ancestors grow old, the bark grows over their eyes and they go into a dreamtime of bio-computational fantasy. There's an adventure story in here, and a coming of age story, and a lot of deeply kinky biotech thinking, and some of the most poetic prose I've ever read.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:29:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sims Online presidential elections

Alphavilla, the capital city of The Sims Online, is having a presidential election. At issue is the appropriate means of warning newbiess off of scam artists, and threcruitment and training of virtual intelligence agents and cops.

Indeed, differing approaches to protecting newbies from scams have evolved as the central issue in the presidential campaign. And while Mr-President seems highly popular and likely to fend off his opponent next month, he could lose to a candidate seen as tougher on scammers.

If she survives Saturday's primary, that candidate could be Ashley Richardson -- the avatar name of a 16-year-old girl named Laura. Of four candidates running in the previous round, she got the most votes out of 213 cast by trumpeting her platform of confronting scammers and giving newbies as much help and welcome as possible.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:39:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Digital Preservation panel at SXSW this Monday

Somehow, I missed reporting on this panel when I listed my SXSW stuff: I'm on a panel on Digital Preservation on Monday, 15 March, at 3:30 in room 15:

We take for granted that our cultural artifacts will last. It offends and horrifies us when we learn of decaying archaeological sites, looted museums and burning libraries. However, our digital heritage does not afford the durability that we enjoy with cave paintings, cuneiform tablets or even paper. How will digital content preserve its legacy? (Aaron Choate; Tanya Rabourn, Information Architect - MetLife; Barbara Taranto; Cory Doctorow , Outreach Coord - Electronic Frontier Foundation; Adam Greenfield , v-2 Organisation)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:35:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Korn's new video damns the music industry

Korn's new video for "Y'all Want a Single? Fuck That," consists of the band trashing a record store, screaming the chorous, while a suprisingly eloquent rant against the recording industry's treatment of artists and the radio oligopolies' top-40 mentalitity scrolls past. The band reveals that they released the video against its label's wishes and urges you to "steal" it. Streaming WMV Link (via MeFi)

Update: Caines sez, "Korn has a MP3 remix of 'Y'all Want A Single' with words from Howard Stern regarding the FCC & Clear Channel available for free on their site."

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

Binary LED watch from TokyoFlash

New from TokyoFlash, purveyors of fine and impractical Japanese hipster novelty watches: the LED by Binary. It's a watch with a naked printed circuit board, on which are situated 10 LEDs, which glow to display the time in binary notation. ¥8900.00 -- about $80. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:18:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free and unencumbered exotica

Dave sez, "Hello and welcome to Comfort Stand Recordings, a not-for-profit community driven label where all releases are free for download with artwork and liner notes. Having no business model or profit motive we strive to bring you recordings that we find interesting, compelling and downright enjoyable. Everybody needs free music." This is pretty good exotica/tiki tuneage right here. Link (Thanks, Dave!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:11:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, March 12, 2004

Mobile fiction micropublishing

Interesting Japanese publishing model: send 1.6k of serialized new fiction to subscribers' phones every day.

The bestselling novel Deep Love was self-published in installments by the author on a website that offers content packaged for users of mobile phones. The story is about a 17-year-old girl named Ayu, who finds love through a chance encounter.

The author, who calls himself Yoshi, created a website providing content for mobile phones in May 2000 with an investment of just ¥100,000 ($909.09 at ¥110 to the dollar). Using a promotional campaign that consisted of passing out business cards to about 2,000 high-school girls in front of Tokyo's Shibuya Station (the center of Tokyo youth culture), Yoshi released The Story of Ayu, the first installment in the longer novel. News of the novel spread by word of mouth, and within three years the site had received a total of 20 million hits.

Mobile phones can receive e-mail of up to 1,600 characters. While this is more than adequate for most personal use, the limit presents unique challenges to the author of a novel. Yoshi, however, not only managed to overcome this challenge but even turned it to his advantage by keeping the prose concise and fast-paced. The novel maintains a straightforward, conversational style and avoids the use of difficult words. Thanks to this quality, the story has found favor even among people who do not typically read novels.

Link(via Engadget)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:07:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Everquest widows tell all

Everquest Daily Grind is a place where video-game widow(er)s post their personal stories of life with MMO-addicts who ignore spouse, kids, jobs and life for the game.

Last spring my grandmother passed away, and he was so involved in the game that he wasn't there for me. I would go to his house when I only had an hour, and the hour would go by and he would play, and I would sit there, and then I'd have to leave without so much as a kiss. There would be nights when I'd go to sleep there, and wake up at 5 or 6am and he'd still be playing because his guild needed him, or he was retrieving his corpse - which as I'm reading is a popular line!

Link (via evHead)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:18:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Howard Stern calls fair game on Bush

Howard Stern is calling on his 8 million listeners (and their friends andfamily) to vote anti-Bush in the next election.

Stern had strongly backed Bush's war on Iraq, but in the past two weeks, he has derided the president as a "Jesus freak," a "maniac" and "an arrogant bastard," while ranting against "the Christian right minority that has taken over the White House." Specifically, Stern has assailed Bush's use of 9/11 images in his campaign ads, questioned his National Guard service, condemned his decision to curb stem cell research and labeled him an enemy of civil liberties, abortion rights and gay rights.

Link

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

Free Nintendo DS in exchange for photo of same

Gizmodo is offering to buy a Nintendo DS system for the first person to submit a pre-release photo of the gadget. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:31:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cheat-code for new BMW gearbox

The new BMW has a cheat-code built into the shifter, which disables a road-safety feeature intended to prevent 5000RPM jackrabbit starts.

There's a cheat code in the software running the BMW M3's sequential manual gearbox (SMG): Press the right buttons in the right order and the car will launch you from a stop after revving the engine to 5,000 rpm. But don't look for a how-to in the owners' manual--this feature is undocumented, an inside joke of sorts...

But there is a catch. In Europe, where the feature isn't so hush-hush, doing more than 15 launches voids the car's warranty. Federal laws prohibit such stipulations here, so BMW has turned down the wick. U.S.-spec cars are programmed to wind to only 2,500 rpm--and our test car topped off at 1,800. That's why you have to ask your dealer to install the European software. Most will happily oblige.

Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:30:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Correction: Cory's SXSW is Tuesday, March 16

Correction: here is the correct date for my second talk at SXSW:

Tuesday, March 16, 3:30-4:30PM. Wireless and Grassroots Innovation: WiFi is a grassroots phenomenon where innovation is driven by the DIY gestalt that is so much a part of Internet and Open Source development. What are the latest grassroots developments, and how do they relate to the future of wireless? (Brad King (moderator); Cory Doctorow, EFF; David Weinberger, Author; Joi Ito, Neoteny; Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News; John Quarterman, Quarterman Creations)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:25:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Picture of orangutan hand and human hand

Juju sez: This is a great picture comparing a human and an orangutan hand. There's also an analysis of the various differences between the two, and why those differences allow humans to have a precision grip, thus allowing us domination over the planet. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:04:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Howard Lovy's nanotechnology essay on H2O purification

Another essay from the always interesting Howard Lovy:

Carlo Montemagno makes molecular devices that contain “embedded intelligence,” each molecule working in tandem with another to produce a desired action. His first application? Yes. Water purification. “We use membranes incorporated with some molecules that selectively only transport water molecules through, and with very, very high efficiencies,” Montemagno said. “The end result is that projected performance is at least 100 times better, maybe 1,000 times better than the best … filters.”

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:36:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Roll your own pr0n

A rollicking three-way of ironic, porn-themed fun. A site full of both Flash and flesh. Here is a DIY centerfold construction kit -- kind of like Mister Potatohead, but hotter. Link. And here is an ant's eye, interactive, nano-tastic view of a gigantic naked babe. Link. Finally, construct your very own soundtrack to shag by. Link. Nothing is worksafe. (Thanks, Susannah!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:06:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Transparent briefcase PC case

ClearPC's "Secret Agent" PC-case is a transparent acrylic PC case shaped like a briefcase. Great for LAN parties and airport security. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:37:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TV and games b0rk your circadians

More sleepdep notes fo rmembers of the Eastern Standard Tribe -- computers and TVs b0rk your circadians. I was up at 4:30 this morning and I'm crossing two timezones this aft.

Dr. John Herman, a sleep expert at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas states that the flashing lights of kids' television shows, video games and computer programs seem to be resetting the body's internal clock, stimulating kids' brains and making them want to stay up later and get up later.

Link(Thanks, Ian!)

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

Stories from an FCC lobbyist

Tales of the Sausage Factory is a series of essays by Harold Feld of the Media Access Project. Harold's a Hill insider who lobbies the FCC for greater public access to the airwaves and less media concentration, and these are his running notes from the fights at the Commission. Link (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:01:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New mobile number used to be Chris Rock's

Funny personal account of a woman who was assigned Chris Rock's old cell-number.

CALLER: It's Adam.
LAURA: Adam?
CALLER: [In a jovial manner] It's Adam Sandler!
LAURA: [Realizes instantly it was indeed Adam Sandler -- there's no mistaking that distinctive voice of his] Oh, hi!
ADAM: Hi!
LAURA: Hi!
ADAM: Hi!
LAURA: [Overcome with sudden punchiness, from the craziness of one minute quietly winding down for bedtime, and then talking to Adam Sandler the next] So, are you calling Chris for business or pleasure?
ADAM: [Laughs, slightly taken off guard by this question, but still retaining his happy-go-lucky attitude] I'm calling Chris to say hello and chat. So... is he there?
LAURA: [Knows it's confession time, but tries her best to retain formerly buoyant personality] No, well... he's not. You see, I'm actually just this random New York City girl who happened to get Chris' old cell phone number....
ADAM: [Lets out a big laugh] Wow, that's really funny! That's great! You must be having a fun time with this!
LAURA: As a matter of fact, yes, I am! And what also makes it fun for me is that coincidentally, I write true stories about my life in New York City, and this will be another funny, true story to write about... Oh, I have number you can call to reach Chris....

Link (via Engadget)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:59:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, March 11, 2004

Bloggers express 3/11 condolences at Spanish Embassies

BoingBoing pal JP points us to this post on Evan K's blog:

Further to this suggestion by Glenn Reynolds regarding the Spanish Embassy in Washington: there are also Spanish consulates in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, New Orleans, Boston, New York, Houston and San Juan (addresses below, via this page). Presumably the same goes for Toronto, Montreal, and of course there's a full embassy in Ottawa. I went over to San Francisco's Spanish consulate this afternoon, and they had posted signs indicating that there was a book of condolences available for signing by the public.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:18:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's SXSW schedule

CorrectedI'm leaving for SXSW in Austin tomorrow morning, where I'll be speaking at a couple items at the Wireless Future conference:

• Sunday, March 14, 5-6 PM. The Wireless Commons: Is the commons model (where spectrum is treated like a stream that belongs to all of us, and current technological innovations allow multiple signals over shared frequencies) truly applicable to wireless telecommunications? If so, what does that mean for society... culture... business? (Robert Heath, University of Texas (Moderator); Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation; David Weinberger, Author/Consultant; Kevin Werbach; Jim Snider, New America Foundation)
• Monday, March 15Tuesday, March 16, 3:30-4:30PM. Wireless and Grassroots Innovation: WiFi is a grassroots phenomenon where innovation is driven by the DIY gestalt that is so much a part of Internet and Open Source development. What are the latest grassroots developments, and how do they relate to the future of wireless? (Brad King (moderator); Cory Doctorow, EFF; David Weinberger, Author; Joi Ito, Neoteny; Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News; John Quarterman, Quarterman Creations)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hugo nominations close in two weeks

The Hugo Nomination ballot closes two weeks today, on March 25. You're eligible to nominate if you're registered for the next or the last WorldCon. For the record, here are the things I published in 2003 that are eligible for the ballot:

Best Novel: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Tor

Best Novelette: Liberation Spectrum, Salon.com

Best short story: Nimby and the Dimension Hoppers, Asimov's
Best short story: Flowers from Alice, New Faces in Science Fiction (DAW)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:32:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More blogosphere reaction to 03/11 Madrid attacks

A handful of updates on blogosphere reaction to today's terrorist attacks in Madrid, which killed more than 190 and injured over 1,000. Informally-constructed "condolence walls" are apppearing online; here is an example of a previously existing page on which the comments section has been transformed into a series of homenajes to the 03/11 dead. (Note: my Wired News colleague Leander Kahney points out that this page seems to have started out as a memorial wall for Miguel Angel Blanco, a Basque politician who was kidnapped and murdered by ETA a coupe of years ago).

This 03/11 site, launched earlier today by popular Spanish weblog Bitacoras, is dedicated to blogosphere coverage of the attacks. This page offers another comprehensive list of blog coverage links (nearly all are Spanish language sites). ALT1040's offering coverage. Victor Ruiz has assembled a good page in English with background. Much activity on blogs in France, as well. Countless homenajes throughout the web, including little graphics like the bandera at left from Patricio Lopez' site.

Massive demonstrations are planned for tomorrow at 7:00 pm local time in cities all over Spain. Expect live blog coverage. Numerous BB readers in Spain and elsewhere write in to remind us that there is much debate over whether or not ETA is in fact responsible, completely or in part, for the attacks.

And finally, this from the weblog called "Lost in Madrid," -- a "Post of Silence." Please excuse my hasty, clumsy translation from the original Spanish.

May they hear our silence in every corner of the Internet, from all of our weblogs. May they hear our condemnation of this massacre. We denounce the ETA; we denounce all forms of violence and terrorism. All we want is to live in peace. Unity and democracy are the most powerful weapons we have against terrorism... Tomorrow [through the demonstrations that will take place] at 7:00PM, Madrid will be inundated with silence. And on Sunday, we will all go to vote, and we will tell those assasins that our votes are the "arms" that we use. We will tell them that peace is the language we understand.

Hoy todos somos madrileños. (thanks, JL, AD, Joi, and others)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:44:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TV cliches catalogued

Here's a Wiki cataloguing, with cited examples, all the eye-rolling idiot plots from sitcomdom.

Gilligan Cut
The Gilligan Cut is a classic staple of comedy. A character protests vehemently, "What, you expect me to wear a grass skirt, stand up on top of Empire State Building and belt out the chorus of 'New York, New York'? Well, I'm not gonna... I'm just not gonna..." And then you cut, and see the character doing just that. The Gilligan Cut. Comedy ain't pretty.

Link (Thanks, Gnat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:26:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing has an Atom feed

Another salutory effect of transitioning to MT: we now have an Atom feed for the latest in syndication goodness. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:25:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

We're a Movable Type blog now!

After over four years with Blogger, Boing Boing is now a Movable Type blog! Blogger is an excellent tool, but we'd outgrown it and it was time for a change -- we're immensely grateful to Ev, Steve, Jason, Biz and the gang for all the support over the years.

So now we're an MT blog, which is great news. It means that we've got access to some of the fastest-evolving tools in the business, with all the third-party plugins that talk to MT's API. Expect some cool new features on the blog soon (we're gonna add search right away, and CSS layouts, and other neato crap to follow!).

Enormous, undying gratitude is hereby flung in the direction of Ben Trott, for all the work he did on making the transition smooth and painless. Ben, you are a prince.

Another change that you'll notice straight off: our permalinks are now post-per-page; that is, in order to load an individual post, you needn't load the entire month associated with it. We'll be using some mod_rewrite mojo to make this true of all the backlinks as well -- the bandwidth bills for loading monthly archives were really starting to add up (the reason we did monthly archives was the lack of a good search tool -- at very least, if you could remember what month you saw a post, you could load that month's archive and dig through it).

We still need to convert the guestbar to MT, which will come soon enough.

So, life is good. Beware falling rocks. Welcome to the MT era of Boing Boing. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:24:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The horror of "musical hallucinosis"

Carl Zimmer has written a great article for the Sunday Telegraph about a brain disorder called musical hallucinosis. The victims hear loud music in their head, and the songs play over and over again.

When Dilbeck tried a new antibiotic for her Lyme disease the songs stopped, but the side effects of the drug were too much for her. Since she went off the antibiotic, the hallucinations have returned. For some reason they are milder now than before -- often just a few notes over and over again -- but they're still a burden. "I'm resigned to them," Dilbeck says. "But I'd give $100,000 -- if I had it -- to make them go away."

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:18:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MyStack: syndicated sidebars fillled with realtime search-results

Jim sez, "MyStack.com lets you build Stacks - self-updating link lists that you can paste into your blog or web page. You can build a Stack that lists all the posts which link to your site, or a Stack that lists every message talking about a particular topic. MyStack.com uses PubSub's matching engine to match blog entries and newsgroup posts against your request in real time. That means that any time you look at a Stack, you're looking at the most recent set of links - we rebuild the Stack and rewrite the HTML for you, automatically." Link (Thanks, Jim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:00:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Madrid, te queremos.

173 dead today More than 185 people lost their lives today in Madrid. This graphic homage at left from an illustrator named Forges at El Pais, by way of Spanish blog caspa.tv. As it was here in New York, in Spain everything will now be spoken of in terms of "before March 11," and after.

El Internet fue formado de seres humanos, como nosotros. Un montón de amor y respeto para todos los amigos de BoingBoing que viven en Madrid, y en España. Queremos paz tambien, igual como ustedes.

Madrid-based blogger Ignacio Escolar has this to say: "ETA ha matado hoy a más personas que en los últimos ocho años....Decir que "no hay palabras" es un tópico tan usado que ha perdido su significado. Pero es que, literalmente, hoy no encuentro en el diccionario nada con lo que nombrar a esta masacre." (The ETA killed more people today than in the last eight years in Spain... to say that 'there are no words' is a phrase so overused that it has lost its significance. But the thing is, literally, today I can't find anything in the dictionary with which to describe this massacre.")

Here is a growing list of Spanish-language blogs, many based in Madrid, covering the terrorist attack and its aftermath. Link. Many other blogs appear to be posting this image on their home pages, as an expression of solidarity. BoingBoing buddy in Spain Antonio Delgado, of caspa.tv, says that the online edition of Spanish newspaper El Pais is a paid-access-only site -- but today, all contents are free, including this PDF version of today's edition. Link. Antonio also says traffic to Spanish news websites is up eight times normal, according to this article and this one -- that's more traffic than they received on 9/11. And Jean-Luc says that Spanish professor Jose Luis Orihuela has built a newsfeed about today's events in this post on his weblog.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:20:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Automated font-identification

Nishad sez, "Ever wanted to have a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or ad campaigns? Well now you can, using the WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned image of the font and we'll show you the closest matches in our database!" Link (Thanks, Nishad!)

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

Plush plagues for Passover fun

The Jewish.com store sells a bag of 10 plush plagues, one for each plague called down by Charleton Heston on the Pharoah.

A fun and educational way to involve children in the Passover experience. Symbols for each of the 10 plagues are included.

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:30:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Random synonyms for masturbation

Funny Javascript mad-libs toy generates random synonyms for masturbation:

Charming the mink
Violating your goalie
Using the Force on the witness
Punishing the gator
Tenderizing the unicorn's horn
Loving Isaiah
Assaulting the possum
Twanging the antenna

Link (via Fleshbot)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:26:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steve Martin's script notes from The Passion

Jason Schultz has reproduced a bunch of Steve Martin's high-larious script notes for "The Passion" from this month's New Yorker.

* Love the Jesus character. So likeable. He can't seem to catch a break! We identify with him because of it. One thing: I think we need to clearly state "the rules." Why doesn't he use his superpowers to save himself?

* Does it matter which garden? Gethsemane is hard to say, and Eden is a much more recognizable garden. Just thinking outloud.

* Our creative people suggest a clock visual fading in and out in certain scenes, like the Last Supper bit: "Thursday, 7:43 P.M.," or "Good Friday, 5:14 P.M."

* Also, could he change water into wine in Last Supper scene? Would be a great moment, and it's legit. History compression is a movie tradition and could really brighten up the scene. Great trailer moment, too.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:23:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Depp digs Edward Penishands

E! Online asked Johnny Depp how he felt about his doppelganger in Edward Penishands, the pr0n parody of Edward Scissorhands. Depp is surprisingly cool about it!

I think it was either Tim [Burton] or John Waters who sent it to me. It might have been both. Tim and I were both quite proud they decided to do that. It was low budget and cheesy, but it was hilarious to watch. Those hands...they served him well.

Link (via Fleshbot)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:22:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Remixing "Construction Kits" are the future of the music industry?

Inspired by the Jay-Z Construction Set (a CDROM and .torrent full of Jay-Z vocal tracks, samples and art, intended for remixture), Ernest Miller has written a shrewd editorial about a potential path for musicians to engage their fans with their work through the release of similar kits -- he likens this to videogames that encourage players to invest in making or seeking out custom mods.

Many videogames permit players to create new content for the game engine, such as levels, maps and mods. This new content is freely distributable (at least for noncommercial purposes) and frequently incorporates content created by the original game designer along with new user-created content. This has been incredibly successful for videogame companies. The more content there is, the more popular the game becomes. The ability to create and add content creates feverish and committed communities of fans for a game. Imagine if musicians had such communities working for them.

Link (via A Copyfighter's Musings)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:20:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

O'Franken Factor liberal radio show begs Bill O'Reilly to sue

Al Franken is hosting a new lefty radio show called "The O'Franken Factor." Franken has gone on record as begging Bill O'Reilly to sue him. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:15:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

GOP shifts priorities, advocates Cheeseburger Bill while Rome burns

Republican lawmakers are trying to enact the "Cheeseburger Bill," which will sheild restaurant chains from lawsuits fo inducing super-sized obesity in their customers.

Opponents said the legislation was unnecessary and irresponsible in light of this week's government report identifying obesity as a condition fast catching up to tobacco as the No. 1 preventable cause of death in the United States. Democrats said the fact that the House was devoting almost a full day to the proposal illustrated the misplaced priorities of the Republican majority.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:13:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Black, magnetic silly putty

Puttyworld sells a $9 magnetic silly putty substance -- and it's goth black to boot.

Black Thinking Putty noticably responds to a magnet. Try pulling out a thin strand with your fingers and holding the magnet nearby. Or roll it into a ball and watch it roll right to the magnet, even uphill. The stronger the magnet the better the result, Neodymium Iron Boron works best. You can purchase some from our accessories category.

Link (via FARK)

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

Disney builds a Green Line at Disneyland

Disneyland is adding a Green Line -- a security gate to "stop terrorists."

Reality is coming to Disneyland's fantasy world, in the form of permanent security gates. Bowing to terrorism fears, the Walt Disney Co. plans to build the gates at the Disneyland Resort next fall. The company had resisted security gates around Disneyland and the California Adventure theme park next door, believing the sense of fantasy would be spoiled.

Link (Thanks, Ian!)

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

Morrissey gets a job coloring book

Morrissey Gets a Job is a clip-art-chic coloring book about Morrissey's post-rockstar career as a salaryman. Link (Thanks, Francis!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:06:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

New DARPA Grand Challenge live action website

Just launched: a website promising live virtual coverage of this weekend's Grand Challenge race, in which robotic vehicles will race accross the California desert.

Live Tracking will show relative positions of the Challenge entrants, and requires a 7 MB download each time you use your browser to view the tracking. The Status Board provides a 30 second update of the status of each Challenge team. The Image Gallery will contain the most recent images from the Challenge, updated nightly through March 14.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:34:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Three hilarious remixes of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Yoz Grahame has remixed my novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom with a bunch of really whacky and wildly imaginative perl scripts:

* Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom (CAPIPA Remix) - in which the original has its words reordered alphabetically, using PIPA's new cousin, CAPIPA, which retains capitalisation.
"Beautiful," BEAUTY beauty, became. BECAME because because because because because because -- because because because because because because because because because because because because because because become become become become become become become bed bed bed. bed bed bed bed bed bed bed bed bed bed bed, bed bed bedroom bedroom bedroom-bedroom beds bedside bedside bedside.

* Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom (Sausages & Mash Remix) - in which the original has all words beginning with the letters S and M replaced with "Sausage" and "Mash" respectively, in accordance with the classic children's game.
He chuckled. "No sausage, not mash. I'm into the kind of mash sausage that you only come across on-world."

* Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom (More And Bloodier Wars Remix) - in which the original is run through Babelfish several times, from English to French to German and back to English again.
I never thought that I would live, in order to arise, where the maintenance would decide A-Movin ' Dan at the person in possession of a favour light up to the death of the heat of the universe.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:37:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mashup up of Flaming Lips, MLK and Public Enemy

This Kleptones (now, that's a band-name) have released a mash-up of the Flaming Lips's "Are You a Hypnotist", Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" and Public Enemy's "By the Time I Get to Arizona" kicks ass. 4.7 MP3 Link (via Scott Bateman, thanks Dan!)

More Kleptones mashups here -- thanks, Boogah!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:26:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Army blows up surplus med-school cadavers

Surplus corpses donated to Tulane Med School were sold to the Army to be blown up in land-mine tests. Guess it's a less ignoble end than being the cadaver at the alumni dinner or the arm left hanging from the toll-booth. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:17:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snoopy people offended at the pr0n on others' in-car DVDs

CNN reports on the growing "problem" of people catching glimpses of dirty DVDs screening in other people's cars, and then getting angry because their snoopy peeking through someone else's car-window has exposed them to pr0n. So now, a bunch of lawmakers are trying to figure out if it should be illegal to watch skin movies in your car. Of course. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:26:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Urgent: Anyone high-placed at Yahoo Groups reading this?

If there are any Boing Boing readers who know anyone highly placed at Yahoo Groups, could you please ask her or him to email me? My YGroups account is royally screwed up and there appears to be no way to un-screw it. Pretty please?

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:11:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disneyland's hand-drawn type

Beautiful gallery of hand-drawn typography at Disneyland. Link (via Pirotcar)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:02:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Working drafts of Gillmor's new book online

Dan Gillmor has posted the Preface and Chapter One from Making the News, his forthcoming book about journalism in the Internet age. Gillmor is the best writer and thinker on this subject that I know, and his willingness to open source not just the book, but also his writing of it, is extraordinarily brave and visionary.

If Tom Paine showed the power of personal journalism, so did the muckrakers at the end of the 19th Century. They, more than most newspapers of the era, performed the public service function of journalism: exposing the anticompetitive predations of the robber barons and cruel conditions in workplaces, among a variety of outrages. Lincoln Steffens ("The Shame of the Cities"), Ida Tarbell ("History of the Standard Oil Company"), Jacob Ris ("How the Other Half Lives") and Upton Sinclair ("The Jungle") were among the daring journalists and novelists who shone daylight into some dark corners of society, and set a standard for the investigative journalists of the new century.

Personal journalism didn't die with the muckrakers. Throughout the 20th Century, the world has been blessed with individuals who found ways to work outside the mainstream of the moment. One of my journalistic heroes is I.F. Stone, whose weekly, and later bi-weekly, newsletter was required reading for a generation of Washington insiders.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:00:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Linux-based managed access-point from Sputnik

Sputnik has shipped the next generation of its Linux-based, open source managed WiFi AP. At $185, it's the cheapest managed AP on the market, with some of the coolest features (though in most contexts I think I'd just advise shopping for el-cheapo no-name APs for $30 per and connecting them to a $50 a month DSL and making your money back in extra lattes, rather than paying for a managed solution).

The Sputnik AP 160 utilizes a customizeable captive portal that requires end-users to authenticate with their username and password before they can access the wireless network.

Additional wireless and wired devices connected through the AP 160’s built-in four-port router are also authenticated and managed by Sputnik Control Center. Simply plug third-party APs into the back of the Sputnik AP 160; end-users who associate with those APs are authenticated and tracked. The same principle applies to end-users who connect directly to the LAN ports.

Link (via Sifry)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:58:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warren Ellis's Mek and Reload omnibus edition

It's Wednesday, which means the new funnybooks are out. I'm using The Beguiling as my interim comix shop while working on the next novel in Toronto, and tonight, they had a very nice surprise for me: a perfect bound omnibus edition of two of Warren Ellis's short-series stories: Mek and Reload.

Reload's a great action story, a lot of fun, but it's Mek that's the real standout here. Mek is like Asimov's Robots stories told by Hunter S Thompson after overdosing on Ralph Ellison: a caustic and corrosive story about body-modders who get the machinery the fetishize implanted in their flesh, and the discrimination they face as a result. (Also noteworthy: this is, as far as I know, the only comic to mention the EFF in dialogue). Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:54:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lessig speaks at Wired event in NYC @ 92nd St. Y

As part of an ongoing series presented by Wired Magazine, Lawrence Lessig will speak at the 92nd street Y in Manhattan on March 23rd. The talk is titled "Free Culture: Creativity and Its Enemies." .
Link (thanks, Lauren!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:42:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Suicide attack on Turkish Masonic lodge

The Masons have had a tough couple of days.

The bombers yesterday blew themselves up at the entrance of the lodge after opening fire on some 40 people in the private dining hall. One person was killed and five others were hurt

Link (Thanks, Gary!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:48:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Harvard comps tuition for low-income students

Harvard is waiving tuition for students from families with less than $40,000 in income.

"Too often, outstanding students from families of modest means do not believe that college is an option for them, much less an Ivy League university," Summers said at the recent meeting of the American Council on Education in Miami, according to a transcript published by Harvard. "Our doors have long been open to talented students regardless of financial need, but many students simply do not know or believe this. We are determined to change both the perception and the reality."

Link (Thanks, Nick!)

Update: Princeton's been at this for ages. (Thanks, Drew!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:39:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crimefighting Hong Kong robot

BoingBoing reader Roland Piquepaille says:

There is a new cop patrolling the streets of Hong Kong and teaching children how to prevent crime. But it's a robot, named Robotcop III, designed and built in Hong Kong, tells us Channel Newsasia. Robotcop III can walk, dance, move in any direction, display videos and answer questions asked in Cantonese and English. The previous versions of Robotcops, introduced in 1988 and 1995, were imported from the U.S. and taught 800,000 school children how to fight crime. The promoters of Robotcop III hope it will do even better. More details and references are available in this overview including a photo of Robotcop III patrolling on Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) campus.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:19:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush flip-flops

The Bush campaign is running ads attacking Kerry for being a flip-flopper. Here's a few Bush flip-flops from dailykos.com.

Bush is against campaign finance reform; then he's for it.

Bush is against a Homeland Security Department; then he's for it.

Bush is against a 9/11 commission; then he's for it.

Bush is against an Iraq WMD investigation; then he's for it.

Bush is against nation building; then he's for it.

Bush is against deficits; then he's for them.

Bush is for free trade; then he's for tariffs on steel; then he's against them again.

Bush is against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli Palestinian conflict; then he pushes for a "road map" and a Palestinian State.

Bush is for states right to decide on gay marriage, then he is for changing the constitution.

Bush first says he'll provide money for first responders (fire, police, emergency), then he doesn't.

Bush first says that 'help is on the way' to the military ... then he cuts benefits

Bush-"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. Bush-"I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care.

Bush claims to be in favor of the environment and then secretly starts drilling on Padre Island.

Bush talks about helping education and increases mandates while cutting funding.

Bush first says the U.S. won't negotiate with North Korea. Now he will

Bush goes to Bob Jones University. Then say's he shouldn't have.

Bush said he would demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq. Later Bush announced he would not call for a vote

Bush said the "mission accomplished" banner was put up by the sailors.  Bush later admits it was his advance team.

Bush was for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the US. Bush after meeting with Pres. Fox, he's against it.

<Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:42:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Idiotic revengeware security software to ship

An infosec company is launching an idiotic revenge tool that launches DDoS attacks and blackholes hosts that are believed to be involved in DDoSing their customers, justifying it with a bunch of high-flown hooie about "rules of engagement for information warfare." Nevermind the likelihood that the "attackers" in these situations are almost certainly compromised PCs, hijacked into participating, and the necessity of collateral damage to nearby machines when DDoSing or blacklisting a host. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:12:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fonts used in Disney parks

This is a wonderful list of faces employed in incidental typography in the Disney parks, including links to freeware versions of many of the fonts.

# Albertus - Animal Kingdom (entrance area signage), Norway
# Algerian - MK monorail station, Main Street, Haunted Mansion Fastpass, etc.
# Americana - Main Street, Liberty Square
# Anna - Tomorrowland logo/signage, Studios, etc.
# Antique Olive - Soarin'

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:36:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Masonic Mishap

The New York Times reports that on Monday night, a ritual inside Patchogue, NY's Southside Masonic Lodge No. 493 ended with the accidental killing of a new initiate. Another member shot him in the face. The shooter was carrying two guns, one with blanks and one with live ammo, and grabbed the wrong one during the ritual. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:22:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Variety's "Porning Report" blog shuts down

Fleshbot notes that the pr0n-themed weblog penned by AVN's Frank Meyer and launched by Variety is closing down with far less fanfare than surrounded its launch. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:00:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Print houses from CAD drawings using an adobe-extruding robot

A USC roboticist has built a robot for "printing" houses that can extrude cement or adobe and shape it using trowel-manipulators to a CAD-represented spec.

The key to the technology is a computer-guided nozzle that deposits a line of wet concrete, like toothpaste being squeezed onto a table. Two trowels attached to the nozzle then move to shape the deposit. The robot repeats its journey many times to raise the height and builds hollow walls before returning to fill them.

Engineer Behrokh Khoshnevis, at the University of Southern California, has been perfecting his "contour crafter" for more than a year. "The goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home on site, in one day and without using human hands," he says.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:59:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kenwood's Gernsbacksploitation retro-futuristic ads

Kenwood's new retro-future ads (for personal jetpacks, trips to the moon and home robots) are very clever Gernsbacksploitation media, tapping straight into the future-scarcastic receptors in my brain. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:51:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web usability design book "Don't Make Me Think"

Snipped from the latest edition of Kevin Kelly's newsletter "Cool Tools:"

Here, a cure for badly designed web pages. (This is major news since everything is now on the web.) Follow Krug's key heuristic: "Don't make me think." It works. His manual is a model of what it preaches. It is the best, clearest, succinct hands-on guide for amateurs and pros engaged in making the web a useable public space. You don't need a consultant; you need this book. I pray everyone reads and obey. Excerpts:
* When you're creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks.
*We don't read pages. We scan them.
*Create a clear visual hierarchy. One of the best ways to make a page easy to grasp in a hurry is to make sure that the appearance of the things on the page -- all of the visual cues -- clearly and accurately portray the relationships between the things on the page.
*Jakob Nielsen and Tom Landauer have shown that testing five users will tend to uncover 85 percent of a site's usability problems, and that there is a serious case of diminishing returns for additional users.

Link to amazon.com listing for Steve Krug's "Dont Make Me Think". For more Krugian wisdom, check out this recent interview: Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:45:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dating site for activists

Actforlove is a dating site for activists, complete with a write-your-Congresscritter tool for sending in letters to support Emergency Contraception. I always suspected that one reason for the popularity of the Dean MeetUps was that they were a way of coming out as a liberal in a political climate where lefty love dare not speak its name: with Actforlove, you can be sure that your date won't have a copy of The Fountainhead sitting on the toilet-tank. Link (via Electrolite)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:45:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Evoting perils summed up neatly

Dan Gillmor has posted a very good, concise analysis of the perils of electric voting in the wake of an Orange County vote where the loss of thousands of ballots was discounted because the race was won by a wide enough margin that the lost votes don't matter -- even though no one knows how many votes were lost.

Look. I'm a fan of installing modern equipment to make elections better. If the machines work right they'll be better than what we had. But these are computers, and computers are flawed devices. Software behaves in unpredictable ways, and rogue programmers or hackers can create havoc.

Meanwhile, as we've seen, the hardworking poll workers can make mistakes. They're human.

What we need is a backup and verification system that combines the best of computers and people but doesn't absolutely rely on programmers and people to get everything right every time. Such as system exists: It's called paper.

A paper printout could be used to recount in close elections, instead of trusting the "garbage in, garbage out" system that invites us not to trust it. It could be used for random checks, as a precaution.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:40:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vincent Gallo's Ebay Listing

Vincent Gallo is evidently selling the film production package he used to shoot the "outstandingly bad" movie Brown Bunny on eBay. The listing is a characteristically Gallic stream-of-consciousness screed. Current bidding stands at $86,800 for a kit that includes Stanley Kubrick's legendary Barry Lyndon lens. And what Vincent Gallo eBay listing would be complete without gratuitous third-person references to Vincent Gallo, and abundant ad hominem attacks on the likes of filmmakers Spike Jonze, Darren Aronofsky and Wes Anderson? Ambiguous cinematic sex act not included. Link (update: I'll need to start waking up a hell of a lot earlier to scoop Choire Sicha, who covered this on Gawker last Friday -- that's, like, a whole lifetime in blog-years. I'm losing my edge.) Update 2: Boingboing reader and admitted "film dork" chandler says, "i just wanted to point out that the lens in the gallo kits isn't THE famous barry lyndon lens. by THE i mean the Zeiss f0.7 lens used to shoot the candlelight scenes. it's the other lens, the super long zoom lens used for some of the wonderful super-flat shots."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:25:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Show iPod battery-status as numeric value

Toggle iPod Battery Status is an AppleScript that switches your iPod battery display to a numeric value between zero and 500. Link (Thanks, Hamish!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:11:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ICANN's tongue slithers further up Verisign's foetid backside

The lickspittles of ICANN have granted a Verisign proposal to allow people to place standing orders for domains, in order to snarf them up the minute they expire.

During ICANN's weeklong meetings in Rome last week, the VeriSign-proposed back-ordering service drew criticism during periods of public comment, according to registrars who attended. To Ric Chambers, managing principal of registrar R. Lee Chambers Co. LLC of Ooltewah, Tenn., a plaintiff in the ICANN lawsuit, the board seemed determined to approve the service regardless of the objections raised in Rome.

"It is hard to reconcile the level of disagreement on the WLS and a vote of the board," Chambers said in a statement. "It suggests that there was more going on here this week than was seen and heard in the public meetings."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at