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Monday, May 31, 2004

Celebrity monument photoshopping

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: future monuments to celebrities. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:42:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Airtexting: a heckler's dream-feature

Joi Ito has a good blog entry about Nokia's new "Airtexting" feature in the 3220 handsets: a string of LEDs down the side of the phone spell out user-defined words when the phone is waved back and forth. Joi ponders the heckling applications:

If they made an airtexting enabled BlackBerry, I wonder if they would allow them in Congress. With the massive penetration of BlackBerries, it would be like a chorus of Hecklebots. Anyway, I want one. Forget night clubs, imaging having one in the audience during talks.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:39:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Geek showerhead generates electricity for tiny lightbulb inside

Nifty showerhead has built-in electricity generator.

Water enters the shower head through the flow resrictor (1) then travels through the injector plate (2) which directs the water to the waterwheel (3). The water spins the magnetic waterwheel past the stator (4) of the field wincing (5). This hydroelectric generator develops the 2.5 volts at .31 amps which lights the PR-6 bulb.

The result? "The Showerstar will be sure to light up your evenings as the perfect addition to any romantic setting." I doubt it. The kind of person who would buy one of these would probably prefer taking a voltmeter into the shower than a partner. Link (Thanks, Simon!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:37:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The problem with contextual advertising

Great musings on contextual advertising by John Battelle. He says that they aren't all they're cracked up to be because the advertiser has no control on where the ads will show up, and so they can have a real relationship with the audience, or the publisher, for that matter.

It's this relationship which I find entirely missing in all these contextual, behavioral, paid search networks. Sure, they are "relevant" to either a search, or to the content they match. But they are driven by metadata and the actions of only one of the parties - the content of the publisher for example (AdSense), or the actions of the audience (Claria, Revenue Science, Tacoda, etc.). As far as I know, none are driven by an understanding of the give-and-take that occurs between all three parties in a consensual relationship mediated by the publication. A site which has only AdSense or behavioral advertising fails to value (or monetize) the community connection between audience, publisher, and advertiser. Advertisers in these networks are not intentionally supporting the publication, and by extension they are not supporting the community the publication has created. In essence, they are not being good citizens of the community where their advertising is being displayed.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:11:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese Uniforms Book

When I went to Japan a couple of weeks ago, I kind of became obsessed with the uniforms everybody wears there. My friend Todd let me know about a series of Japanese uniform books that J-List sells, like this "Office Lady Uniform Pictorial Book Part 1":

For fans of the sailor uniform books, here's a "Chinkame" format photobook (pocket-sized) photobook of the beautiful uniforms of Japan's OLs (office ladies) -- those dedicated to serving tea and working on copy machines across the country. A super full-color publication documenting the cutest blazers, skirts, outfits and different uniform styles as introduced to you by the hottest current race queens. Famous uniforms of famous companies (NTT Docomo, Seibu Bus Company, BMW, etc) from across the country, with information on the style of the uniform as well as the girl modeling it. This is volume 1 a perfect bound, soft cover book that will look great on your coffee table

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:30:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Notes from Tokyo Technorati Meetup

When I was in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, I exchanged email with Sid, a nice guy who recently moved from the US to Tokyo. Here's his report of a Technorati meetup in Tokyo, which has some interesting statistics:

I just moved to Tokyo and saw on Joi Ito's site that he and Dave Sifry, Technorati CEO, were putting on a "Technorati Meetup" on Thursday night at the Marinouchi Building, so I decided to go. It was a fun time, I learned a lot, and they had free Wi-Fi (a rarity in Tokyo), so I was able to update several programs real fast.

Here are some notes from Dave's talk (which Joi translated, although Dave speaks Japanese).

Technorati tracks 2.4 million blogs.

45% haven't posted in three months.

Around 200,000 new blogs are created daily.

About 7 minutes after someone posts a new entry it's indexed by Technorati and searchable

Sifry says blogs are striving for authority, as defined by how many people link to you when you write about things. You may not write the truth or even be correct, but if you're interesting people link to you.

He sees bloggers as commentators on the news and filters on the news, rather than replacing the news ... though blogs are giving big media sites a run for their money on hits and attention (as seen on a chart of hits).

Technorati has an active developers' site with several bindings and sample code of the program for people to use and mutate on their own. "Because if there's one thing I know, it's that you guys are all smarter than me," Sifry says.

An example is a program Joi wrote to send SMS to his phone when someone links to his site. It vibrates every time somebody links to him (and he encourages frequent linking).

Future directions for Technorati: Open reviews, subscribe to keywords and Cosmos filters, discovery & filtering of subscription lists, vote links and geographic search & filtering, which is hard because people have to put in GPS coordinates (applies more to phone blogging). There currently are 11,000 blogs in the geographic database.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:25:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John Shirley reports from BayCon

John Shirley wrote a good, funny report about going to BayCon.

...what's new (to me) is the presence of more goths and rave-types, and parties in dark rooms where the beds are pushed together and the walls are draped in black velvet under black-lights and electronica thumps...And DJs playing goth dance music...What would Poul Anderson have thought? He'd have liked those topless girls with their breasts painted up, though...

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:13:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

William Hung sings at a Jays game

William Hung is the nerdy Hong Kong-born engineering student who had a disastrous and very brave appearance on American Idol. The video of that audition made him into a net-celeb, and landed him a record deal, despite his off-key singing (his disc has sold over 100,000 copies!). His latest gig was singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at a Blue Jays game:

Hung's presence brought a gaggle of media usually indifferent to baseball to the game, including staff from Rolling Stone magazine. A team official said more media credentials were issued Sunday than on opening day.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:50:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I'm nominated for the Sunburst Award!

My short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More, has been shortlisted for the Sunburst Award, a juried prize that goes to the best Canadian science fiction book each year. I am pleased as PUNCH. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:45:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Adrian Mole: the text-adventure game

The Adrian Mole books are my all-time favorite English kids' books. When I was in junior high and high-school, they were practically Bibles to my friends and me -- we could quote whole long passages of them Imagine my delight when I found out this week that there was a text-adventure game based on them for the Commodore 64, and that the game is now downloadable froplay on your favorite C64 emulator. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:44:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gadget fits inside bugle, plays music for you.

Electronic bugle implant makes it so you don't have to learn the instrument in order "play" it.

The device ... slides snugly deep into the bugle's bell. The device plays a high-quality recorded version of “Taps,” taken from the 1999 Memorial Day service at Arlington National Cemetery. The resonating tones inside the bugle create a realistic horn quality.

And here's a related article:

"Facing critical shortage of musicians for military funerals, the Pentagon has approved the use of a push-button bugle that plays taps by itself as the player holds it to his lips"

..."With a small digital recording devise inserted into each bugle's bell, a member of the honor guard at the funeral simply presses a button on the devise. A five-second delay give the guards time to raise the instrument to their lips as if they are going to play it"

Link (Thanks, Simon!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:36:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark and Vaughn Bode in the NYT

The NY Times has a good piece about Mark Bode's plans to complete his father's comic epic, The Lizard of Oz. (I posted something about this on Thursday.) Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:01:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guestblogger Russ Kick interviewed on NPR

BoingBoing guestblogger Russ Kick (yep, that's him over in the right-hand column!) was recently interviewed for the NPR media analysis show 'On the Media" about freedom of information -- and your power to use it. Link to archived show in Real Audio. Transcript should be available on Tuesday. (Thanks, Jeremy)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:43:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bollywood ad takeover, part three: Peugot ad, and TV ad satire index

BoingBoing reader Manish Vij points us to his list of Bollywood-themed TV advertisements for western products, which includes a popular ad for Peugot.

Manish's website includes terrific liner notes -- for instance, pointers on where to download copies of songs you hear in the ads. And here's his capsule review for "Jabhi Khushi Tabhi Tennent's" (8.9 MB), shown at left: "Ad for Tennent's, a UK beer. A "Mulit" derivative. Boy meets girl, complications, climax (so to speak) and denouement in sixty neat seconds. Catchy music. Rajasthan. Pigeons. No elephants."
Link to Peugot ad, and alternate link; Link to "TV Satires on India"; Previous BoingBoing posts on Bollywood spoof ads: 1, 2

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:57:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Harry Potter cinemas outfitted with night-scopes

The new Harry Potter movie is out in the UK and the cinemas are filled with minimum-wage ushers with night-scopes to hunt-and-destroy people videotaping the flick. I'm seeing it this morning at Leicester Square, and I plan on taking a flash photo of the copyright warning, as is my wont. Wonder if they'll deport me?

Staff at the Vue will be "very discreet" with their potentially frightening cyclopean attachments, Mr Graham said, but action against offenders would be swift.

Much like the battered young wizards on screen, who are constantly being whirled about by baddies, pirates will be "hauled out of their seats and reported straight away to the police".

Link (Thanks, Diane!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:34:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DaVinci's notebooks, a page a day

Matt Webb is a real Renaissance geek, and as such he's too busy to actually read the great and defining works fo the Renaissance, such as DaVinci's imposing 1,565-page Notebooks. At least not all in one gulp. So Matt's poured all of the Notebooks (scarfed from the Project Gutenberg site) into a script that sends out one page a day as RSS. This is not unlike Phil Gyford's Page-a-Day-Pepys'-Diary thing. Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:29:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tokyo shop windows

Wonderful gallery of Tokyo shop-window displays. God I wanna go to Tokyo. Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:25:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Law-and-Order-inspired art

Law and Order: Artistic Intent is a collection of fine art pieces inspired by the Law and Order franchise. Which reminds me of the Law and Order song, as written by the WELL's inestimable tpy:

Law and Order's on
Time for Law and Order
Law and Order's on
Time for Law and Order
Lenny was a drunk
Now he beats up pu-unks
Law and Order's on
Time for Law and Order

Link (Thanks, Mitch)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, May 30, 2004

Bollywood spoof ads, continued: mullet pseudo-history

BoingBoing reader Chris points us to this blast from the online past:

"Another corporate '70s Bollywood spoof, this time by Absolut Vodka. ~10 minute film, made in 2002, filmed in India. It's a Bollywood pseudohistory of the mullet. Entertaining enough story (a little long...) - but really well-crafted, with awesome songs and dancing. Low-level product placement - no actual bottles or mention of vodka - but the familiar Absolut shape makes subtle appearances."

The film's hilarious, but -- OMGWTF! Do my own eyes betray me? Look closely at the faux promo poster screengrabbed at left. Is the male lead in Absolut Mulit not wearing a shirt with the exact same pink vomit print that Vivek Oberoi wears in the aforementioned Vanilla Coke Bollywood ad? Perhaps this is a secret, ironic reference to pink vomit couture featured in a real Bollywood film -- and I'm not enough of an Indian cinema buff to get the joke. If any intrepid BoingBoing readers know the answer, do tell.
Link to Absolut Mulit (Flash required), more background on the making of the 12-minute short in this 2003 issue of Fast Company magazine (scroll down to bottom of page).

Update: Reader Manish Vij says, "My brother and I found over 20 Absolut bottle shapes in the Absolut Bollywood parody! They cut the scenes at high speed so you can't tell unless you look carefully. Someone really had fun with this. Go frame by frame in the film. You can grab the play arrow in the QuickTime player and watch it at your own speed." Link to Manish's bottle deconstruction.

Update 2: Regarding the pink shirt enigma, Simon Fodden of Toronto replies, I can't tell you about the vomit pattern, but pink is no big deal in India, for men and for women. Diana Vreeland famously said (back in '62) that pink is "the navy blue of India." And "Pinky" is a name (more of a pet name, really) that both men and women choose or are given. Heck, one Pinky N. Patel got his name (along with a million others) put on the NASA Stardust spacecraft."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:49:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bollywood Vanilla Coke ad which kicks ass

BoingBoing reader Vishal points us to a spectacularly cheesy Indian TV ad starring yet another one of my future husbands (look, any fella who eschews SMS for pigeon as preferred love-note carrier is alright by me).

Vishal says, "This Ad is really popular in India, and I was surprised to find that the good people at Coke have it online too (RealPlayer). It features one of the hottest young actors in Bollywood, Vivek Oberoi, and features many in-jokes to '70s Bollywood films (note, especially, the lightbulb dress in the 3rd segment, a direct lift from a classic 70's movie)."

Footnote to menswear trendwatchers: take a tip from Vivek, at left -- pink vomit prints are the new black.

Update: BoingBoing reader Berklee totally harshes my mellow by saying, "Excellent choice for a future husband, but you'll have to wait until he's done with Aishwarya Rai, I'm afraid. Meanwhile, I recommend [a 2002 film starring Oberoi titled] Company. Go rent it (or download it) and enjoy this un-Bollywood-like gangster-movie!"
Link

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

NYT: E-Voting will only work if it's open source

A thought-provoking piece on cures for e-voting woes, from today's New York Times

Electronic voting has much to offer, but will we ever be able to trust these buggy machines? Yes, we will -- but only if we adopt the techniques of the ''open source'' geeks.

One reason it's difficult to trust the voting software of companies like Diebold is that the source code remains a trade secret. A few federally approved software experts are allowed to examine the code and verify that it works as intended, and in some cases, states are allowed to keep a copy in escrow. But the public has no access, and this is troublesome. When the Diebold source code was accidentally posted online last year, a computer-science professor looked at it and found it was dangerously hackable. Diebold may have fixed its bugs, but since the firm won't share the code publicly, there's no way of knowing. Just trust us, the company says.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:30:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, May 29, 2004

Porn art-remixes part deux: Safe For Work

Those French "pornotuning" remixes aren't the first time someone with a pinch of snark and a penchant for pr0n got jiggy with Photoshop. For instance, this somethingawful riff from a couple of years back: "Make Porn Work-Safe." Results included the bizarre goatse-esque mashup shown here, which suggests a rollicking three-way between Man Ray, Terry Richardson, and Betty Crocker. BoingBoing reader Phil points us to the archived gallery and says, "Basically, they hacked pornopix just enough to make them (at least theoretically) safe for work."
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:06:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spotcode

Along the lines of Semacode, another "use your phonecam as a meatspace remote control" project -- Spotcode. Developer Anil Madhavapeddy says:

I've been working on some software that lets you use your existing camera phone as a virtual mouse by locking onto tags and physically rotating it around and so on. It's most easily explained by checking out the videos. In particular, the volume control one (MPEG) is fun.

Link (Also spotted on Warren Ellis' blog)

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

French art-remixes of porn photos

From France (natch), "pornotuning" -- odd little visual remixes of hardcore porn images. Sexually explicit, not worksafe.
Link (merçi, Jean-Luc)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:06:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Audio tour of the MacPlus

Patrick sez, "Digging through his cassette tapes last weekend, this guy came across 'Macintosh Plus: A Guided Tour' and decided he should archive it onto CD for posterity (being a pack rat by nature). It's especially interesting in that it gives a good glimpse of the level of user education necessary at that point in Computer History: it patiently goes over how to interact with icons, how to use the mouse, etc..."

Put the floppy disk into the internal disk drive. Put it in with the metal end first...and the label up. Push it all the way in.

"For a real today-meets-yesterday experience, throw this on your iPod." 4.6MB MP3 Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:42:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ukioye Flash animations

Flash animations of Ukiyoe prints. This one, screengrabbed here, is my favorite.
Link (via Geisha)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:41:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NOTCON: cheap, fun tech conference in London on June 6

I'm speaking Sunday week (June 6) at NOTCON, an NTK-sponsored tech/politics/culture conference in London. Also on the bill: Brewster Kahle, Bill Thompson, Richard Jones, and many others. Four quid at the door, and if it's anything like the Festival of Inappropriate Technology, it's going to be a scream. Link

Update: Danny adds, "the full price is four quid, but there's a quid off if you're a blogger (and not already under 18, a student, unemployed, a journalist, an old age pensioner, or any combination of the above). what more reason do you need to finally kick up that livejournal account and start selected your 'mood'?"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:40:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Massively multiplayer thumbwrestling

Last week in Vienna, I attended Monochrom's first-ever massively multiplayer thumbwrestling competition. Now the Monochromers have posted detailed descriptions for running your won MMTW events.

By forming a star, it is also possible to play the game with three or four participants. The left hands are also free to hook up with even more players. Again a connection with up to 4 players is possible. By Massive Thumb-Wrestling according to the rules described above unlimited amounts of players can connect to join a Multiplayer Thumb-Wrestling Network. As the number of players is unlimited, global thumb-wrestling may emerge through self-sustaining peer-to-peer networks and ad-hoc socializing.

Link (Thanks, Johannes!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:37:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free copies from Canon copiers

On Kuro5hin, a good how-to for hacking Canon copiers at copy-shops to give you free copies -- and to get them to do fun stuff.

The copy machines you are using are configured in a certain way to use a coin operated slot, key card, or service key (such as those that Kinkos has). Through an interesting "feature" in the firmware, if the copy machine is configured to accept coins or keys, and no machine is hooked up for this, it will give copies for free. Unfortunately, this isn't as helpful as it sounds; anyone with a remedial amount of intelligence who wants to get free copies will try unplugging the instrument first and foremost. As such, it is often impossible without a service key to unplug the apparatus.

Fortunately, there is a work-around. Go into "Service Mode" (using star-2 and 8-star), and push the "Option" tab. Underneath it, push "Acc". A new menu will pop up. Hit the "Coin" button, and enter "0" on the keypad. Once you are done, hit "Enter" or "Apply" (you MUST do this after you change any field; otherwise it will reset the next button you push). Once you are done, hit reset until you are on the main screen. Voila - free copies!

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:33:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 28, 2004

Saving Phone Messages as a Living Memorial

The most sublime, beautiful radio segment just aired on the NPR show "Day to Day" (I'm a contributor to the show, but had nothing to do with this piece). You can replay the audio online (Real or WM). I laughed, I cried, I blogged. Synopsis:

The month of May marks the two-year anniversary of the death of Dmae Roberts' mother. Every 100 days, Dmae re-saves her phone messages from her voicemail as sort of a living memorial -- and she shares some of those messages with Day to Day.

Link to online audio from NPR's "Day to Day" (scroll down for direct audio link), and Link to transcript of Dmae Roberts' report, audio and discussion boards at stories1st.org

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:54:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dance Dance Resurrection

Jesus-themed variant of DDR (of *course* it's a hoax). Update: BoingBoing reader Ross Payton says, "It was actually created by a member of the somethingawful.com forums who goes by the name None More Negative. It's a few years old."
Link; other recent BoingBoing posts on DDR 1, 2, 3. (millegrazie, mi piccolo snoodilio, also on Geisha)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:44:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ukuleles for MassGeneral Hospital for Children Healing Arts Program

Over at my other blog, Ukulelia (which gets way more visitors than Boing Boing does, btw), my co-editor (Gary Peare) and I have set up a fund to donate Flea ukuleles to the MassGeneral Hospital for Children's Healing Arts Program (Here's an article about the program from The Boston Globe.) We've collected $518.95 so far, and our goal is to come up with $1100 (enough for 12 Flea ukuleles). If you want to donate, Gary and I would be grateful. All funds received will go towards the purchase and postage costs of ukes for the hospitalized kids. Link (Look for PayPal donate button in middle column).

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:17:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Old wireless tech wanted for cellphone museum

Sean Bonner, my co-curator in the SENT phonecam art project, says:

While watching a documentary from 93 last night where people were running around with giant brick cell phones I decided I need to start collecting these things and make some kind of archive of them. If you have one of these things sitting in the closet somewhere let me know. Actually, I'm expanding this to any kind of old school gadgetry - old pagers, original PDAs, but really old cell phones are going to be the focus.

link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:52:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NASA/DARPA "Robonaut" and Boba Fett -- separated at birth?

BoingBoing reader Noah says,

DARPA, the folks behind the creepy eye in the pyramid Total (now Terrorist) Information Awareness logo, and the short-lived terrorism futures market (FutureMAP), have been at work on a robot for NASA that looks suspiciously like Boba Fett from Star Wars! Could it be an Episode 3 tie-in?

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:39:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Art of being cold

Amateur digital photographer R. Todd King has posted a set of startlingly gorgeous photos of the snow and ice festival in Harbin, China.

"The temperature in Harbin reaches forty below zero, both farenheit and centigrade, and stays below freezing nearly half the year.  The city is actually further north than notoriously cold Vladivostok, Russia, just 300 miles away. So what does one do here every winter?  Hold an outdoor festival, of course! Rather than suffer the cold, the residents of Harbin celebrate it, with an annual festival of snow and ice sculptures and competitions. The festival officially runs from January 5 through February 15, but often opens a week early and runs into March, since it's usually still cold enough. This is the amazing sculpture made of snow greeting visitors to the snow festival in 2003." Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:29:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Red Mars: a very belated appreciation

I'm pretty well-read in the modern sf canon, but there are some gaps in there that are almost embarrassing in scope. Take Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. This doorstopper, clocking in at nearly 800 pages, is the first volume in a trilogy of comparably-sized companion volumes, each of which depicts a different vision of the [dis|u]topiian establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars. When Red Mars first came out, I was working at Bakka Books, the science fiction bookstore in Toronto, and there was something else in my queue that month, and one of my co-workers had already dived into it and was writing the shelf review, and it seemed like such a commitment that, well, I just never got around to it. With the publication of Green Mars and Blue Mars, it just got worse: if I couldn't clear enough schedule to read volume one, volumes two and three were impossible.

It wasn't that I didn't like Robinson's books. Quite the contrary, I adore them. Pacific Edge -- a gripping, rollicking utopian novel whose plot hinges on a zoning debate over the placement of a baseball diamond -- is one of my all-time favorite books. When Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom came out and the reviewers compared it to John Varley for the technology stuff, I was honoured, but the few reviews that compared it to Pacific Edge sent me over the moon: if Robinson could disrupt his utopia with a zoning fight and make it into a gripping tale, could I do the same with a fight over the politics of Disney ride fandom and design?

Like Red Mars, Pacific Edge is one volume in a trilogy that approaches utopia from three different angles. I haven't read the other two books in the trilogy, and that's a keen regret that I intend to do something about post-haste.

Because now I've finally read Red Mars, and I am agog at what may be the finest sf novel I've ever read. Red Mars has all the hard-sf window-dressing that many of us imagine when we think of sf: great and accessible tours through speculative cog sci, geology, astronomy, rocketry, physics, biology, genetics, and so on, until the head swims with the sheer scope of the research task Robinson set himself in this book.

But the hard science is just the skin, and the meat of this book -- as with Pacific Edge -- is the "soft" science: the complex play of the community of his vast cast of characters as they set out to advance their competing agendas, writing the future of Mars.

Robinson doesn't just shine here: he glows. There is this hard question at the core of every story of violent social upheaval, which is, how does collective action materialize? How is it steered? How does it go off the rails? How, in short, does stuff get done? Can a speech change the world? Can a bomb? Who gets to construct the consensus reality, and how do you disrupt it?

This is the stuff of Robinson's books: big, social questions answered through skilful point-of-view switches, fantastic characterization and fearless exposition.

In the beginning, a lot of sf was just technocrat fantasy: here's a cool new technology I've thought of, with a minimal narrative around it as a kind of turntable so that it can be rotated 360' and you, the reader, can appreciate its cleverness from all sides.

Later, sf writers took on the more ambitious challenge of predicting the social upheaval that tech could create, an approach embodied in the cliche that "the job of the sf writer is to consider the car and the movie-palace and invent the drive-in."

But Robinson goes many steps beyond this: he extrapolates the drive-in, then the sexual revolution, then the Boomers' nostalgia for the drive-in where they lost their virginity, and finally, their grown childrens' disdain for that nostalgia. There's an eerie prescience to these books that tells you that what's being written here is a deep and broad tale of social reconstruction on the micro, macro, nano and mezzoscales.

I just finished Red Mars on a BA flight from Vienna, and I was bitterly disappointed not to find Blue and Green Marses on sale at Heathrow, but I'll have them in my possession by dusk. I can't wait to read them. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:27:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Colorful Canadian holidays, part umptybillion: National Masturbation Month

BoingBoing pal in France Jean-Luc alerts us to the breaking news that May is National Masturbation Month in Canada.

G-Rap unit Stink Mitt will give a concert tomorrow: May 29 in Montreal at Le Swimming. StinkMitt will also participate in the Masturbate-A-Thon to encourage right-thinking Canadians everywhere to "Come for a Cause". Funds raised will be going to sex worker rights organizations Stella (Montreal) and Maggie's (Toronto). you can find a poster of his concert here.

Link

Update: BoingBoing reader Casey says, "We also celebrate in the USA! Check out www.goodvibes.com for more info."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:54:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Movie bits you didn't get to see photoshopping

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: "Movie scenes you didn't get to see." Lots of subtle funny stuff here. Link

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

Cory's Vienna photos

I had a killer day in Vienna today -- I am here to give a couple of talks at the LinuxWeek event in MuseumsQuartier. My hosts took me through Prater Park, a cool old amusement park, and then to a beer garden in the old Swiss World's Fair pavillion where I got an entire roast haunch of pig (!), then Monochrom staged a performance of the world's first "massively multiplayer thumbwrestling tournament." I shot a ton of pix -- here they are. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:13:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toronto-set Bollywood movie

Ouchless sez, "My mother found this Bollywood-esque film "poster" completely by accident. The movie is titled 'Coxwell and Gerrard', which is the main intersection in Toronto's Little India." Link (Thanks, Ouchless!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:07:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Airplane grounded by praying pentecostals

A pair of Pentecostal preachers grounded a plane when they panicked passengers and pilots, saying 9/11 was "a good reason to pray."

One preacher told fellow passengers as the Continental Airlines plane taxied down the runway, "Your last breath on earth is the first one in heaven as long as you are born again and have Jesus in your heart," according to FBI spokesman Paul Moskal. Passengers on the Wednesday flight to Newark, New Jersey told a flight attendant, who alerted the plane's captain, officials said. The captain turned the plane around. "They were sincere in their beliefs and were not malicious," Moskal said by telephone from Buffalo. "In the context of 9/11 it may not have been the best way to promote their religion."

Link (Thanks, Mike)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:46:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More RIAA lawsuits, more bizarre tales of unsuspecting defendants

I'm fresh out of snarky intros. Just too bizarre, and too wrong. As one reader on the pho mailing list quipped to this tale of a single mom defendant, "What's next -- breaking kneecaps?"

Tammy Lafky has a computer at home but said she doesn't use it. "I don't know how," the 41-year-old woman said, somewhat sheepishly. But her 15-year-old daughter, Cassandra, does. And what Cassandra may have done, like millions of other teenagers and adults around the world, landed Lafky in legal hot water this week that could cost her thousands of dollars.

Lafky, a sugar mill worker and single mother in Bird Island, a farming community 90 miles west of St. Paul, became the first Minnesotan sued by name by the recording industry this week for allegedly downloading copyrighted music illegally. The lawsuit has stunned Lafky, who earns $12 an hour and faces penalties that top $500,000. (...)

A record company attorney from Los Angeles contacted Lafky about a week ago, telling Lafky she could owe up to $540,000, but the companies would settle for $4,000. "I told her I don't have the money," Lafky said. "She told me to go talk to a lawyer and I told her I don't have no money to talk to a lawyer." Lafky said she clears $21,000 a year from her job and gets no child support.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:42:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Rance Who Wasn't There

OK, no one really believes he's Owen Wilson, George Clooney, or Mister Potatohead anymore -- but we still don't know who Rance is. The true identity of the much-hyped Hollywood blogger is the subject of a Reuters story today. WhatEVER. I mean, "Who's Rance" is like, so Friday April 9, 2004. "Who's Defamer" is what I want to know. Link to "Hollywood mystery man has Internet abuzz."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:17:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

OS X update has Bluetooth caller ID

Gadget Lab's Brian Lam sez: "I noticed that you covered bluephonemenu in the past, so figured I'd drop a line about the new os x panther update. I was just reading the update details and saw this :

"Dialog windows for incoming phone calls and SMS messages for a paired Bluetooth phone now appear in the foreground."

I just tested it. You have to pair your bluetooth phone in address book, and a little pop up comes up, like bluephonemenu. The dialog choices are: add card/log call, sms reply, hang up, answer.

Log call puts the time and date of the call in the address book entry

Unfortunately, the pop up box doesn't show an image of the person calling - that would be freakin' cool

For SMS, the pop-up box has the dialog choices: log sms, reply, and ok.

It's pretty good, and stable, but doesn't sit in the system tray like bluephonemenu. Link

Peter Orosz sez: "This feature was available in 10.3.0 and may have been available as far back as in 10.2.4. What actually makes it useful this time around is the caller-window-to-the-foreground feature. Previously, calls and sms's would still come in but remain lodged behind your other windows and you would find them hours after the call (since the address book is not usually your topmost window)."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:45:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jack Black to star in movie adaptation of Rudy Rucker novel

Variety reports that Rudy Rucker's fantastic 1984 novel, Master of Space and Time (you can buy it used on Amazon for $0.01), is going to adapted into a movie. It'll be directed by Michel Gondry, who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and will star Jack Black. Link (subscription required)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:08:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RFID: good or eeeeevil?

The online publication RFID News just published a fresh feature -- editor John Wehr interviewed representatives of several organizations about public perception of RFID technology, legislative efforts, and privacy best practices. Some thought-provoking stuff in here. Snip:

# "In most cases, asking how a company exploring item-level RFID tagging can protect their customers' privacy is like asking a fox how he can best ensure the safety of your chickens." -- Katherine Albrecht, CASPIAN
# "Businesses need to do more to educate the general public on the uses, benefits and issues about the use of RFID, fostering constructive solutions to their concerns." -- Dayna Fried, Hewlett-Packard
# "Much of the early work and publicity surrounding RFID was focused much too far into the future and on applications outside of the supply chain." -- Jack Grasso, EPCglobal US
# "[Auto-ID Center, now EPCglobal] documents detailed how such a campaign may unfold, citing the need for the development of a proactive plan that would 'neutralize opposition' and 'mitigate possible public backlash.'" -- Cedric Laurant, EPIC

Link (scroll down to bottom of page for "Interviews with the Experts)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:06:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wi-fi lifeline for Yak farmers in Nepal

BBC story about a WiFi project in Nepal that allows yak farmers in remote Himalayan locations to keep in touch with their families back home. File under pretty frickin' amazing. Snip:

"They are taking advantage of a wi-fi network set up in a remote region of the mountain kingdom where there are no phones or other means of communication.

It is the result of a campaign led by local teacher Mahabir Pun, and backed by volunteers and donations, to bring the internet to an isolated part of the world.

So far, the Nepal Wireless Networking project has hooked up five villages in the area using wireless technology."
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:57:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flight-capable B52 plane model

This impressive model of a B52 airplane really flies.
Link, (Thanks, Mister Todd Lappin of Telstar Logistics!).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:50:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New interactive art from Flying Puppet

French interactive artists Jean-Jacques Birgé and Nicolas Clauss recently won a slew of awards, and have loaded two new pieces on the Flying Puppet website: Art Cage, a self-portrait, and Nocturne, an interactive painting (screen-grabbed here). Shockwave plug-in required.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:43:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robodiscounts: sale on Evolution Robotics' ER1 parts

If you're a garage robot builder, this may be of interest: Evolution Robotics -- the guys who make the beer-totin' ER1 -- are having a Spring Sale on some ER1 accessories. The gripper and the IR Sensor Pack are half off right now, $125 and $100 respectively.

The gripper enables the ER1 to grab and carry objects, giving any ER1 project greater functionality. The IR Sensor Pack harnesses ER1's powerful obstacle avoidance capabilities, providing heightened navigation and awareness.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:31:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rodeohead

Bluegrass Radiohead cover band. People sometimes save actual Radiohead sound files on P2P networks under that faux band name to avoid detection, so this seems a particularly funny PoMo grass-chewin' homage. The MP3 file they posted is just one big tarball o' tribute, so there are no individual song titles. But if you can audialize what "Subterranean Homesick Critter" or "Thar, thar" might sound like -- you've pretty much got it. Link (Thanks, Sean)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:30:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cartoonist Mark Bode interview

Mark Bode is the son of 1970's cartoonist Vaughn Bode, best known for his Cheech Wizard comics that appeared in National Lampoon. Vaughn died in the '70s, and Mark has taken over his father's work. Mark can draw and write in a way that's almost indistinguishable from his father's work. In this interview he talks about his 30-years-in the-making book, The Lizard of Oz, to be released by Fantagraphics.

BB: I know that, given a cursory glance, your and Vaughn's styles are incredibly similar. I was wondering, though, if you tried to more closely mimic his style -- whether in the actual drawing or the storytelling and design aspects of the page -- consciously or not?

MB: Before I knew what was reality here on this planet, my father, when I was 4 or 5 years old, led me to believe his characters were real. He said Cheech lived up the hill by the Projects near where we lived in Syracuse, NY. And we used to visit his laboratory, which was an old sewer hole cover. But Cheech never came out. I said, "Dad, why doesn't he come out?" He replied, "He is busy balling broads or doin' important wizard stuff, son." Thus, as my imagination and drawing abilities developed, I found it easy to draw and live in that world he created. No effort, what so ever. Although I have many other styles at my disposal, I am most happy when I'm in his, or our, style ...

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:03:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kit Reed's new sf novel

Thinner Than Thou is Kit Reed's latest science fiction novel, reviewed on SciFi.com by sf great Pamela Sargent.

Kit Reed's satirical targets in Thinner Than Thou -- eating disorders, obsessions with physical perfection, televangelists, religions in which salvation is based on material success in this world, and hypocrites of all kinds -- are rich in possibilities for potshots and savage humor. But along with her penetrating wit, Reed also has a talent for seeing below the surface.

Annie's self-imposed starvation and Kelly's gluttony are quests for independence and signs of an oddly admirable discipline as much as they are psychological problems. Danny's motivation for competitive eating, his desire for glory, and the discipline he brings to what he thinks of as his "training" aren't unlike those of any world-class athlete. The pornography of this body-worshipping society has a lot more to do with strong taboos involving food and obesity than with sex:

"Inside every thin person there's a fat one screaming. Millions of brown cells lying in wait. At the right moment these dormant fat cells will expand and the whole huge, suppressed person will spring into shape.

"It makes them feel dirty just thinking about it."

Link (Thanks, Mack!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:39:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1940s telephone manual

"How to Make Friends By Telephone" is a 1940s instructional booklet on using the new telephonic device network. Here's a scanned version -- it's a hoot. Link (Thanks, Rich!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:35:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gore speech transcript

If you missed coverage of his NYU address yesterday, you can read the entire speech here. Link (Thanks, Patrick)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:59:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robotic wheelchairs

BoingBoing reader Roland Piquepaille says,

Traditional wheelchairs used by the elderly and people with severe disabilities have some limited functions and flexibility. Their users often need help from nurses or relatives. Several teams are currently at work to develop robotic wheelchairs to overcome these limitations. For example, researchers from the University of Essex and the Institute of Automation at Beijing are developing the RoboChair.

RoboChair will be equipped with a vision system and a 3G wireless communication system. It will be able to avoid collisions and to plan a path. Meanwhile, Professor Ray Jarvis of Monash University's Intelligent Robotics Centre in Australia, is building another robotic wheelchair which will help people to travel off the beaten track (PDF format, 1 page, 131 KB). His prototype system combines robotic navigation with a four-wheel drive. It automatically adapts itself to the user's capabilities and takes control when needed. You'll find more details and a picture in this overview. Keep in mind that there are still major issues to solve, such as security and costs, before these robotic wheelchairs become available.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:56:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weblog fest in Iran

Hossein Derakshan says, "There will be a big Weblog Festival held in Tehran from 8-10 June 2004. It is hosted by National Youth Organization of Iran and PersianBlog." Link

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

William Mitchell, an architect in the City of Bits

My latest article at TheFeature.com is an interview with architect William J. Mitchell, director of MIT's Media Lab and author of three essential books about the spaces we inhabit, online and off:

"Increasingly, we are living our lives at the points where electronic information flows, mobile bodies, and physical places intersect in particularly useful and engaging ways," he writes. "These points are becoming the occasions for a characteristic new architecture of the twenty-first century." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:18:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Window Seat

Gregory Dicum's book "Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air" sounds like a brilliant idea:

"Broken down by region, this unusual guide features 70 aerial photographs; a fold-out map of North America showing major flight paths; profiles of each region covering its landforms, waterways, and cities; tips on spotting major sights, such as the Northern Lights, the Grand Canyon, and Disney World; tips on spotting not-so-major sights such as prisons, mines, and Interstates; and straightforward, friendly text on cloud shapes, weather patterns, the continent's history, and more."

Did you know that the patterns of the streets in subdivisions lets you know when they were built? Or that the round ponds all over Florida are sinkholes? With Window Seat at your side, you'll learn these things. Keep it to yourself though--the person sitting next to you doesn't want to hear it. Link (Thanks, Eric!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:07:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SwissCom's WiFi is crap; its executives are thin-skinned

Esme Vos wrote a little blurb on her blog about the shitty experience she had with SwissCom's expensive, crappy WiFi service, and SwissCom's sales director wrote back to tell her she was biased and basically a Bad Person for being publicly dissatisfied with what is, undoubtably, the worst pay-for-WiFi service in Europe (though the WiFi provided by the incumbent Spanish telco gives it a run for its money).

I mean, SwissCom's service is so crap that I actually worked it into my next novel, "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town," as a fictionalized account of my own experience with last September at a WIPO meeting in Geneva. I'm headed back to Geneva on June 6 for more WIPO stuff, and I'm already dreading using the rotten, stupid, horrendously expensive SwissCom setup. Check the link below for the whole scene.

"I can tell this is not going to work out, but I need to go through the motions. I go to the counter and ask for a seven-day card. He opens his cash-drawer and paws through a pile of cards, then smiles and shakes his head and says, sorry, all sold out. My girlfriend is probably through her second cup of coffee and reading brochures for nature walks in the Alps at this point, so I say, fine, give me a one-day card. He takes a moment to snicker at my French, then says, so sorry, sold out those, too. Two hours? Nope. Half an hour? Oh, those we got.

"Think about this for a second. I am sitting there with my laptop in hand, at six in the morning, on a Swiss street, connected to SwissCom's network, a credit-card in my other hand, wishing to give them some money in exchange for the use of their network, and instead, I have to go chasing up and down every hotel in Geneva for a card, which is not to be found. So I go to the origin of these cards, the SwissCom store, and they're sold out, too. This is not a t-shirt or a loaf of bread: there's no inherent scarcity in two-hour or seven-day cards. The cards are just a convenient place to print some numbers, and all you need to do to make more numbers is pull them out of thin air. They're just numbers. We have as many of them as we could possibly need. There's no sane, rational universe in which all the 'two hour' numbers sell out, leaving nothing behind but '30 minute' numbers.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:37:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Historical origins of obesity

Long, interesting Harvard Magazine article about the historical shifts in diet and lifestyle that led to America's obesity epidemic.

"We are not adapted to handle fast-acting carbohydrates," Ludwig continues. "Glucose is the gold standard of energy metabolism. The brain is exquisitely dependent on having a continuous supply of glucose: too low a glucose level poses an immediate threat to survival. [But] too high a level causes damage to tissues, as with diabetes. The body is designed to keep blood glucose within a tight range, and it does this beautifully, even with extreme nutrient ratios: we can survive indefinitely on a diet of 60 percent carbohydrates and 20 percent fat, or 20 percent carbohydrates and 60 percent fat. But we never [before] had to assimilate a heavy dose of high-glycemic carbohydrates."

Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:36:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Superhero dayjobs photoshopping

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: day-jobs for superheros. Link

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

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

A million love songs

An MP3 blog devoted exclusively to sloppy, silly, sappy songs of romance. Evidences an emphasis on ironic postmodern '80s schlock: Abba, Dolly, ELO, Manilow. If you're in the throes of a crush (pobrecito), whatever you do don't click -- you may not make it out alive. Link (Thanks, Jean-Luc)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:32:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chinese company makes soy sauce from human hair

A resourceful Chinese company got in trouble for brewing soy sauce out of human hair.

China Central Television (CCTV), the state television station, first raised public worries over the quality of domestic soy sauce by uncovering a substandard workshop in central China's Hubei Province, where piles of waste human hair were found. The hairs were treated in special containers to distill amino acid, the most common substance contained in soybean sauce.

Human hair is rich in protein content, just like soybean, wheat and bran, the conventional and legally accepted raw ingredients for the production of soy sauce.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:15:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Russ Kick on Afghan food drop fiasco

Our current guestblogger Russ Kick wrote a great piece for Loompanics about the US food drop to Afghanistan.

You know those little packets in vitamin bottles and clothes that are supposed to keep them fresh? Well, many of the little meal packs dropped on Afghanistan contained one of those packets (called a desiccant) to keep the food fresh. Unfortunately, the Afghans aren't familiar with desiccants so they tore them open and ate the powder. Some thought it was medicine, so they noshed it straight. Others figured it was a funky American spice, so they sprinkled it on their beans, rice, or pasta. Lots of Afghans got sick, though we don't know if any deaths occurred. In fact, it's hard to say whether people got sick from chowing down on desiccant or because the food in the packets was usually spoiled.

Link (Via Reality Carnival)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:06:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Postmodern furniture for pets

Nifty scratching posts and other stuff for your pet available here. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:03:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

One-wheeled asphalt skiier

The Swiss-made EasyGlider will ship in October 2004 for US$1,000. Looks like fun, but where do you use it without getting busted in a world that hates all kinds of novel transportation? Link (Via Sensible Erection)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:01:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Extra pretty rocket paintings by Peter Thorpe

Artist Peter Thorpe (a well-known book cover illustrator) has a bunch of acrylic paintings of rockets for sale. I don't know how much they cost, but he says prices are available upon request. Link (via The Cartoonist)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:55:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Geeky doormat

Thinkgeek is selling these wicked-geeky doormats. Please direct pedantic remarks about the superiority of "There's no place like ~/" to /dev/peevish. Link (Thanks, eyelessloki!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:33:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BBC to use Creative Commons licenses

Digital Lifestyles is reporting that Larry Lessig has been named to a BBC advisory board and that the BBC's Creative Archive project (which aims to put the BBC's archives online for non-commercial re-use) will use Creative Commons licenses:

Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project was clearly excited: "The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity." He went to enthuse "If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for digital creativity, and will drive the many markets – in broadband deployment and technology – that digital creativity will support."

Link (Thanks, Simon!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:38:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SHREK@HOME: blue-sky proposal for the future of film production

There's an article on Download Aborted proposing that the producers of Shrek should use distributed rendering screensavers to save money on the renders of Shrek 3.

It's an interesting idea, but I suspect that it's suffering from a failure of imagination. On the one hand, cycles are cheap and getting cheaper -- yes, CGI is processor-hungry and that hunger is ballooning, but CPUs are ballooning faster still. I expect that in the medium-term, the rendering expense will be paltry as compared to custom code development, artists and especially marketing. If you're starting with a couple hundred mil in budget, dropping one, two or even five percent on a bunch of white-box PCs is just not that big a deal.

Now, indie filmmakers, students, and garage auteurs, OTOH, really can't afford the cycles to render a cinematic quality CGI film. These are the kinds of people a SHREK@HOME screensaver could really serve, and if you made it social, it could do double-duty.

Ultimately, the largest expense in an Internet marketplace where anything is available always anywhere is marketing: the more choice, the more expensive influencing choice becomes.

So a social SHREK@HOME could engage its audience not just for their cycles, but for their evangelism. We see glimmers of that in some machinima projects, like Red v Blue or in Flash-shorts like Homestar Runner, a clubbish sense of ownership by its fans that turn them into relentless marketers of the net-art.

The more engaged fans are with work, the purer the evangelism (hence the blogging bore and every other otaku who can run on about her hobby forever). It's hard to be really engaged in the creative process of "shooting" CGI -- I don't know enough about 3D animation or visual art to second-guess those who do. But there are ways that even the unskilled can contribute.

Imagine a distributed renderer that included along the bottom thumbnails of alternate test-renders of the current sequence: different lighting, camera, even new inverse-kinematics and chaining. These different sequences could be created by the filmmaker and/or by more knowledgeable fans. While I render out the authoritative version, I can click on any of these little animated thumbnails and devote an equal number of cycles to rendering it, producing, in effect, an "audience cut" of the movie that can be matched with the foley and ADR in post to allow for different views on the same flick.

On top of that, layer the useful bits MMOs: guilds, pledges, fan-sites, etc. Create affinity communities around different edits and renders. The more excitement you build for your movie, the more cycles end up being devoted to its production: the more cycles, the more variable renders and the more excitement.

The software is pretty do-able, it's the kind of thing Nelson and Marc were doing at Popular Power and Adam "distributed.net" Beberg was talking about with COSM years ago. The legal apparatus might be harder, but a CC-license could take care of that.

The result would be ten million times more exciting than the mundane process of donating some of your cycles to Shrek 3 -- it would be the basis for an entirely new way of financing and executing film production. Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:38:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Word Processing Equipment and airlines

British Airways announces before each flight that "word processing equipment" must be switched off. It's hilarious, I keep picturing someone up there in Posh Bastard Class who's booked an extra couple seats for his Xerox Word Processor and a long-suffering "word-processing-specialist" to operate it. Also, why the hell does Air Canada forbid the use of in-flight "modems and printers" (and how do they reconcile the ban on modems with the fact that they provide hideously expensive in-flight phone service, with modem jacks?)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:37:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More on digicams and Iraq: Wartime Wireless Worries Pentagon

Following up on this week's erroneous reports of a "Rumsfeld phonecam ban" in Iraq, I filed this story for Wired News today:

While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may not have signed a ban on new consumer digital-imaging technologies, he did express clear concern about the unforeseen impact of such technologies during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on May 7.

"People are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon," Rumsfeld said.

According to [DoD spokesperson Lt. Col. Ken] McClellan, some Defense Department lawyers may be reviewing how the spread of consumer digital-imaging technology among military contractors and enlisted personnel affects the military's obligation to abide by a Geneva Convention article against holding prisoners up to public ridicule. "Lawyers may have looked at that and said, 'It's probably a good idea to get these things out of the prisons.' There's no Pentagon-induced rule in the theater at this time ... but there may or may not be some discussion taking place as to how the [Pentagon's April 14 directive on commercial wireless technology] might be supplemented in Iraq to prevent things we saw at Abu Ghraib."

Link to Wired News story; Link to previous BoingBoing post

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:29:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cop, sheriff work a little too closely, produce online porn video

The SF Examiner reports that a San Francisco cop is under investigation for making a porn video with a colleague from the sherrif's department. Outraged officials say an internal probe (ahem) is forthcoming.

In the video, which was posted on a pay-per-view Web site, Tenderloin beat cop Darryl Watts played out a fantasy where he pretended to be a john and a sheriff's department employee acted the part of a prostitute referred to as "Myra." [Ed note: Actually, the PPV site we found spells the character's name as "Mira."] The video did not tap into any law enforcement themes common in the pornography industry. No badges, batons, uniforms or pistols were produced during the film, police said. (...)Police sources said that Watts, who has been on the force for three years, is a "good, productive street cop." Last year, he was hailed for capturing a man who was chasing another man with a butcher knife near Union Square.

Link to SF Examiner story (Thanks, Marc). An honorary link-fu degree will be awarded to the first BoingBoing reader who produces a link to a legitimate copy of the illicitly-produced video (or the location of the PPV site where it was first distributed) Update: "masked_superstar" and David both win. Link to free *.wmv clip on the originating PPV porn site, not worksafe, sexually explicit.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:28:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sexy Androids, Electric Sheep

Our friends at Fleshbot purr:

The question here isn't really "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" so much as "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep-Like Beings With Long, Dextrous Tongues That Make Them Moan In Ecstacy?" It's the short story Philip K. Dick never got around to writing.

Link (of course it's not worksafe, silly.)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:27:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Napoleon Dynamite

On June 11, Fox Searchlight releases this film, which looks very nerdworthy. I think this dude is my future husband. Jason Calacanis saw the pic at Sundance and blogged this review.
Link to "Napoleon Dynamite" home page and QuickTime trailer

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

Future-couture sunshades from Bless

The everfab Hint Magazine points to some sharp, sexy sunshades with which to protect your peepers in style this summer. Not sunglasses, they're shields. At $325 a pop, style ain't cheap. Available online from Bless.
Link to manufacturer website

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:02:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Girl Photoblogs Chernobyl on Motorcycle" thing a fraud?

Was this story just another web hoax? Yes, says subscriber Mary Mycio on the "e-POSHTA" Ukrainian mailing list, re-posted on Neil Gaiman's website.

I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv.

She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site.

Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading.

If so -- ah, well. C'est la web. The photos are still amazing. Link (Thanks, chupacabra)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:44:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Army reboots GI's tired fatigues

Story by my Wired News colleague Noah Shachtman about the Army's seven-year, $250 million uniform high-tech-ification and redesign project -- dubbed Future Force Warrior, or FFW.

One of the most obvious changes is that the new uniforms are unisex. The zipper has been extended, and the uniform's butt flap has been expanded, so GI Janes aren't literally caught with their pants down if they have to pee.

FFW's body armor is probably the biggest improvement, however. It sits on a series of foam pads around the rib cage, so there's a 2.5-inch gap between the harness and the body. It keeps the GI cool. And it's almost imperceptibly light -- unlike today's bulletproof vests, many of which are about as comfortable as that lead apron the dentist makes you wear during X-rays. But the scarab-like shell can take five to seven direct hits from a machine gun, and it doubles as a holster for ammunition and grenades.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:35:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool pre-WW2 Japanese Postcards

John Rambow -- editor of the kick-ass blog from travel guide publisher Fodor's -- says:

"Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has a big exhibit of some very beautiful Japanese postcards, many of which can be seen on the museum's Web site. If you want to see them in person, hurry -- the show closes 6 June. And who couldn't love this monkey-trainer New Year's card [thumbnail at left --XJ]?
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:25:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reading, Writing, and Robots: kids build bots at CeBIT

StreetTech has some great snapshots of the robot-building competition between local high-schoolers in NYC, called NYC FIRST, which exhibited at NY CeBIT. (Thanks, Nate!)
Link

Clarification: BoingBoing reader Jason correctly reminds us that "NYC First" is part of the national competition US First started by Dean "Segway" Kamen more than a decade ago.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:18:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tech question about results of Google image search for "Abu Ghraib"

Boingboing reader Greg asks,

I find it interesting to note that Google image search doesn't have any of the pics of the Abu Ghraib abuse that are floating everywhere else on the net. A search for "Abu Ghraib" does bring up photos, but none of the ones that we all saw on CNN and in the Wall Street Journal. I had searched there not long after the story broke and found none of them, but I figured it was just too new. Now, after weeks of spidering time, they still aren't there. Anyone have an idea why?

Link

UPDATE: Intrepid BoingBoing reader Andrew says, "I tried the image search at altavista.com (making sure to turn off "family filtering" or whatever) and some of the abuse photos turn up if you hit "next" enough. Strangely, searching for "Abu Ghraib abuse" turns up *nothing* and searching for "Abu Ghraib torture" turns up virtually nothing with images.google.com."

UPDATE 2: Tim Ireland says, "This happens because Google only updates its image database every 6-12 months. The last update was January 2004, before the publication of these images and their broadcast on the web."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:11:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cookie Monster Tribute Heavy Metal Band

BoingBoing reader Greg confesses, "I found this site at 2:30 in the morning, so it might be less funny in the light of day. It is a speed metal sesame street cover band. The singer actually sounds like cookie monster too."

This reminds me of browsing through the bins at my favorite punk rock record store when I was a teenager, and seeing that some snarky, pop-hating employee had creatively relabeled the bin for one famous hair-rock band as "Oreo Speedcookie." Snip from Cookie Mongoloid website:

Cookie Mongoloid is Sesame Speed Metal! See the Cookie Mongoloid in all his blue, furry, googly-eyed glory backed by the baddest of gender mixed metal bands as they decimate and regurgitate your childhood favorites in an abrasive metal wrath. See their harem of gothic gyrators, the Cookies, demonstrate such elemental concepts as up and down in a blaze of lights, smoke and pyrotechnic cookie shrapnel.

Link.

Update: Chronicle Books editor Alan Rapp says, "Part of the joke here (I think) is that "cookie monster" is a vocal style associated with black metal and grindcore, notable for its deep basso eeeevil rumble. "

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:07:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nanotrees

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden grew "nanotrees" out of semiconducting materials, Science News reports. Lars Saumelson and his colleagues spray gold nanoparticles onto nanowire "trunks," just a few microns in length. (In comparison, a human hair is around 100 microns thick.) Exposing the seeded trunk to a mixture of specific gasses causes branches to grow. The trunk and the branches can even be composed of different materials so that the parts have specific functions:

"For instance, in one experiment, the Lund team made trunks out of gallium phosphide and parts of the branches out of gallium arsenide phosphide. The researchers expect combinations of materials such as these to produce a light-emitting diode: The trunk would carry current to the branches, where the gallium arsenide phosphide would convert it into light. Alternatively, the branches could serve as light-harvesting structures, as in a solar cell, which would then shuttle excited electrons into the trunk." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:52:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

In defense of MP3 blogs

Check out this rant from an MP3 blog reader -- a blogger who posts tracks that he's digging to get his readers interested -- on the threatened medium:

We're all familiar with blogs (ummm, you're reading one now), but now, we have unashamed folks who are not afraid to provide you with a daily song that has been gracing their ears. Good stuff, big bands, and totally the definition of fair use. The average blog user has 12 readers... so... if I give one song to 12 people a day, that seems entirely fair, when compared to say, WOXY radio that had to shut down because it couldn't afford the licensing and bandwidth of its 50,000 listeners.

So, I love it! It's the best of fair use, with the peer spice. Now all we need, is about 3 kabillion more so that these brave souls aren't overloaded, or targetted otherwise.

Best of all is the long list of MP3 blogs, which are a sampler's paradise. Link (Thanks, Th0m!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fafblog on gay marriage

On Fafblog, a very funny fake interview with James Dobson, leader of the anti-gay-marriage nutbars "Focus on the Family":

FAFBLOG: So! How's the Family?

JAMES DOBSON: The Family is in deadly danger, Fafnir.

FB: Danger? Oh no! I like families!

JD: Yes, danger from the homosexual agenda which has been trying for decades to destroy it.

FB: I never knew homosexuals had an agenda! I just thought they were ordinary people who were easily stereotyped as lovers of musical theater.

JD: So they and the gay-controlled Hollywood elite would have you believe. But the Forces of Gay are now closer than ever to destroying the divine institution of the civil marriage certificate, and with it, the family itself.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:24:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Game Guilds are "distributed cognition"

Constance Steinkuehler, a Learning Sciences researcher from UWisc, gave a talk at the Comwork ("Managing Multiplayer Culture") seminar in Copenhagen last week called " "MMOG Guild Leaders as a Com/Dev Resource." Her slides are up as a gargantuan PDF, but they're well-worth the download, as they are a positively mind-blowing look at the failings of the Cognitive Science model, and the way in which MMO guilds can be thought of as distributed cognition. Yum. 50MB PDF Link (via Terra Nova)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:16:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My Canada includes AccordionGuy

Joey "AccordionGuy" DeVilla, a Filipino-born Canadian, has written a spirited editorial in response to a jackass racist blogger who asserts that the Canadians who died in the Boer War (!) and elsewhere certainly didn't intend for Toronto to be annexed by the "Third World," and says that the non-whites of Canada are less Canadian, with "no knowledge or affection for the old Canada, in either their hearts or minds."

Joey's response: "Fuck you, eh." And the banner, above. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:55:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

US troops kidnapping family members of Ba'athists and locking them in Abu Ghraib

This is a heart-rending account of an Iraqi woman whose father was a low-ranking Ba'athist. US troops came to bring him in for questioning, but he was out of the country, getting prostate surgery, so they kidnapped her husband, took him to Abu Ghraib, and declared him to have "intelligence value." The prison guards -- whom the Red Cross have documented as torturing others with "intelligence value" -- tell her that she can have her husband back if she produces her father. I read this and I ask myself: how can the US ever convince the Iraqi people of their goodwill sufficiently to abide under a US-declared "democratic ruler?" How will the US ever get out of Iraq and what kind of hollowed-out, failed state will it leave in its wake? Link (via Electrolite)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:42:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Donald Duck remixed with everything

Die Duckumenta is an exhibit of remixes of the iconographic phiz of Donald Duck with great works of visual art down through the ages. Wonderful. Link (Thanks, Johannes!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:24:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Digital Photography Hacks: geek out with your digital cam

I am no photographer, but ever since I bought my first Casio Exilim camera (I'm on my third now, and I can't recommend them enough -- small, light, easy and durable, I carry mine everywhere and always) I've found myself shooting nearly every day.

Not being a photog, I'm pretty pig-ignorant on subjects like focus, depth-of-field, ISO, and so forth.

I just scored O'Reilly's new Digital Photography Hacks, written by the inestimable Derrick Story, s geeek's geek and a photographer's photographer, whose work I've admired for years. Derrick's new book follows the form of all the O'Reilly Hacks books: 100 easy-to-digest tips and tricks for digital cams, aimed squarely at people like me, geeks who get computers but cameras not so much.

These hacks are just what I needed to start to get my head around more advanced phototaking. Passages like "The flow of traffic provides a great opportunity to add motion to your compositions. Automobiles are light-painting machines, and it's easy to put them to work for you" (emphasis mine) really did me in: automobiles are light-painting machines! Wow! Suddenly, the whole world looked different.

There are many many great hacks in this book, but my favorite is #47: Judge Image Sharpness From File Size. If you've taken a bunch of photos of the same subject and want to determine which one is sharpest, compare the file-size. Images that have more information will compress poorly, which means that the biggest files in your shoot are likely the sharpest. Keen. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:30:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creative Commons ships 2.0 licenses

The new Creative Commons licenses are out -- wahoo! The new licenses clarify and refine the initial terms of the 1.0 licenses, and CC has posted good, clear commentary explaining the changes.

Unlike the 1.0 licenses, the 2.0 licenses include language that makes clear that licensors' disclaim warranties of title, merchantibility, fitness, etc. As readers of this blog know by now, the decision to drop warranties as a standard feature of the licenses was a source of much organizational soul-searching and analytical thinking for us. Ultimately we were swayed by a two key factors: (1) Our peers, most notably, Karl Lenz, Dan Bricklin, and MIT. (2) The realization that licensors could sell warranties to risk-averse, high-exposure licensees interested in the due diligence paper trial, thereby creating nice CC business model. (See the Prelinger Archive for a great example of this free/fee, as-is/warranty approach.) You can find extensive discussion of this issue in previous posts on this blog. (See Section 5.)

Link (Thanks, A. S. Bradbury!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:21:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Japanese Broadcast Flag -- welcome to the crappy future of TV

The Japanese Broadcast Flag has gone into effect. Like its American cousin, this is a technology mandate that restricts how you can use the shows that show up on your own television, on the grounds that you might be some kinda eyepatch-wearing-pirate. 'Course, the broadcast flag doesn't really stop you from capturing analog signals and putting their programming online; no, this is a measure that is 100% ineffective at stopping "piracy" and 100% effective at stopping new tech like VCRs from being invented without the permission of the movie studios.

Because programs that have been copied once cannot be duplicated or edited digitally, editing the programs via a personal computer has become impossible.

In addition, the broadcasters' move has made it necessary for viewers to insert a special user identification card, known as a B-CAS card, into their digital TV sets to watch programs.

These duplication controls are being applied to digital TV programs aired by both digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasters.

In the week after the measure was implemented, NHK and the grouping of private broadcasters received more than 15,000 inquiries and complaints about the scheme.

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:44:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clothed nudes photoshopping

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: put clothes on famous nudes. It's positively aschroftian. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:40:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool ringtones, at what cost?

Today I thought about the fact that I can legally download the latest hit song for less than US$1 but a sample of the same tune used as a ringtone costs twice as much or more. Who's to blame? The record industry, of course.

According to this Reuters article, mono and poly ringtones bring the original artists and music publishers a 10 percent royalty while the record labels don't get squat. But "sample" ringtones are clipped from studio recordings, requiring a license from the record label. And they're happy to sell those rights to the tune of 25 to 55 percent of the total retail price of each ringtone. As a result, the resellers are jacking up their prices.

I think this will only drive more people to make their own "sample" ringtones and trade them. As a matter of fact, record labels themselves stand to benefit from giving away "sample" ringtones. Talk about infectious grooves! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:49:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Condoleezza Rice Pudding with Berries of Mass Destruction

From Amateur Gourmet -- the guy who brought you "Janet Jackson breast cupcakes" oh so many memes ago -- comes a recipe inspired by the U.S. National Security Advisor: Condoleezza Rice Pudding with Berries of Mass Destruction. Snipped from the comment boards: "I'm thinking this needs to be accompanied by a high-fiber dish to be known as Colon Pow!" Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:46:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Regarding the Torture of Others

If you haven't already: read Susan Sontag's piece on the images from Abu Ghraib, published in this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

There is more and more recording of what people do, by themselves. At least or especially in America, Andy Warhol's ideal of filming real events in real time -- life isn't edited, why should its record be edited? -- has become a norm for countless Webcasts, in which people record their day, each in his or her own reality show. Here I am -- waking and yawning and stretching, brushing my teeth, making breakfast, getting the kids off to school. People record all aspects of their lives, store them in computer files and send the files around. Family life goes with the recording of family life -- even when, or especially when, the family is in the throes of crisis and disgrace. Surely the dedicated, incessant home-videoing of one another, in conversation and monologue, over many years was the most astonishing material in ''Capturing the Friedmans,'' the recent documentary by Andrew Jarecki about a Long Island family embroiled in pedophilia charges.

An erotic life is, for more and more people, that which can be captured in digital photographs and on video. And perhaps the torture is more attractive, as something to record, when it has a sexual component. It is surely revealing, as more Abu Ghraib photographs enter public view, that torture photographs are interleaved with pornographic images of American soldiers having sex with one another. In fact, most of the torture photographs have a sexual theme, as in those showing the coercing of prisoners to perform, or simulate, sexual acts among themselves. One exception, already canonical, is the photograph of the man made to stand on a box, hooded and sprouting wires, reportedly told he would be electrocuted if he fell off. Yet pictures of prisoners bound in painful positions, or made to stand with outstretched arms, are infrequent. That they count as torture cannot be doubted. You have only to look at the terror on the victim's face, although such ''stress'' fell within the Pentagon's limits of the acceptable. But most of the pictures seem part of a larger confluence of torture and pornography: a young woman leading a naked man around on a leash is classic dominatrix imagery. And you wonder how much of the sexual tortures inflicted on the inmates of Abu Ghraib was inspired by the vast repertory of pornographic imagery available on the Internet -- and which ordinary people, by sending out Webcasts of themselves, try to emulate.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:27:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fox News -- I just SMSed to say ILU.

I was interviewed for this Fox News story about text-messaging and romance. Bottom line in my book of digital dating manners for well-bred nerds: hot-n-heavy haiku, fone-flirting, and pickup lines by text are all hot. Breaking up by SMS is not -- but it's also not entirely uncommon, particularly among late teens and twentysomethings.

Link to "Language of Love for the High-Tech Set."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:17:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NanoKabbalah

Howard Lovy's NanoBot blog brings us some particularly surreal text by Rabbi Yehuda Berg (er, Madonna's rabbi):

"...... The genius of nanotechnology is the reduction of space. Smaller is infinitely more powerful...It seems that scientists on the cutting edge of nanotechnology are reaching the same conclusions about space as did the kabbalists thousands of years ago." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:31:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Arsonist Pin-up poster art

New York artist Richie Fahey creates hand-colored black-and-white photographs inspired by pulp paperback covers from the 1930s-1960s. Right now on eBay, there are Giclee limited edition Fahey prints of a girl gone to town to burn it down. Link to Fahey's site. Link to eBay item. (Thanks, Michael-Anne!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:02:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

History of cartoon rabbit meat spokesman

Gary sez: Thought you'd appreciate this: a Lileks-esque saga about Petey, Gerald McBoingboing-esque spokeskid for Pel-Freez Rabbit Meat. Truly. The saga goes on and on. Fans start drawing Petey, hare-larity ensues. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:16:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on NPR -- digicams and Iraq

Today on the National Public Radio program "Day to Day," I talk with host Alex Chadwick about discredited news reports that US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld issued an edict banning phonecams in Iraq -- as well as the confirmed release of a new Pentagon directive (PDF) outlining new restrictions on consumer wireless tech at DoD installations worldwide. While there may not be a Pentagon-issued ban on phonecams or connected digital cameras per se, there do appear to be new efforts under way to address the proliferation of those technologies in the military theater and throughout the DoD's "information grid." Alex says,

The images of abuse at Abu Ghraib, the photos of returning soldiers' coffins -- we see them because of this technology. And it's caught defense officials off-guard.

Link to Day to Day "Xeni Tech: Phonecams and the Front Lines" (online audio available after 12PM PT, station search here)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:57:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Slideshow of prefabricated houses

Time magazine has a short slideshow of kit-built and pre-fab houses. (Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion house shown here.) Link

(When I was in New Zealand, I looked at a great prefab house on Waiheke Island.)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:39:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mobile phones get voice-over-Internet capability

I wrote a piece for TheFeature.com about i2 Internet's new device , the InternetTalker MG-3, which allows mobile phones to make VoIP calls.

Here’s how the MG-3 works: first, you have to sign up for VoIP service with a company that resells i2 Telecom’s hardware and network access. You’ll get the MG-3, a little plastic box stuffed with microchips, which you plug into your broadband connection and existing phone line. Then, when you want to make a long distance call with your mobile, you just call your home number. The MG-3 will recognize the mobile’s number using Caller ID, and connect you to i2 Telecom’s VoIP network. You get a second dial tone, and you can make your overseas call. Want to talk to somebody in China? You’ll get charged 5 cents a minute. Cingular has been having a great time charging you $3.49 a minute for making the same call.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:22:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot Origami

New Scientist reports on the graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University we've linked to previously who built a robot that can make simple origami constructions. The work is aimed at developing robotic systems that can manipulate various materials encountered in daily life. From researcher Devin Balkcom's site:

"Why origami?  Origami is a fresh challenge for the field of robotic manipulation.  Paper is flexible; robots are best at manipulating rigid things.  Even if we model origami as an articulated rigid body (by building our origami out of really stiff cardboard with hinges along creases), it still has a complicated mechanical structure."  Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:16:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Relief fund for burned-out blogger

Joey DeVilla has a blog entry on a Boston blogger whose house burned down this weekend: there's a PayPal donation box to help the poor guy out.

About 5 or 10 minutes later I started smelling smoke and heard my dad looking in the attic outside my room. It was now he started screaming, "The house is REALLY on fire. Get anything you can and get out!" He said this as he walked down the stairs and when he came back in after putting something outside.

I was a bit panicked and shaken but I grabbed my backpack and threw my computers in it and put on some pants. I should have probably put on the pants with my wallet in them, but for some reason I didn't. And I should have probably got a jacket as well seeing as it is so cold now.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:37:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scorching critique of some arguments for copyright

Mark Lemley, a UC Berkeley law prof, has just published a paper on copyright called "Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Justifications for Intellectual Property," that's a good, fast read. Lemley says that in copyright's early days, the justificaiton for the auhtor's monopoly was to give authors the incentive to crete new works, but that today, we have the "ex ante" arguments that copyright also gives authors the incentive to exploit their creations -- to make more of them once they are created -- and to "steward" them by ensuring that only good, quality derivative works enter the market.

Without saying much about the idea that copyright can be a good incentive to create, Lemley tears these other arguments for copyright to shreds, in a highly entertaining fashion:

The argument that a single company is better positioned than the market to make efficient use of an idea should strike us as jarringly counterintuitive in a market economy. Our normal supposition is that the invisible hand of the market will work by permitting different companies to compete with each other. It is competition, not the skill or incentives of any given firm, that drives the market to efficiency. Nothing about the fact that a work was once subject to copyright or patent protection should change our intuition here. It is hard to imagine Senators, lobbyists, and scholars arguing with a straight face that the government should grant one company the perpetual right to control the sale of all paper clips in the country, on the theory that otherwise no one will have an incentive to make and distribute paper clips.24 We know from long experience that companies will make and distribute paper clips if they can sell them for more than it costs to supply them. The market for paper clips functions just fine without this type of government intervention. We can also predict with some confidence that if we did grant one company the exclusive right to make paper clips, the likely result would be an increase in the price and a decrease in the supply of paper clips. Yet supporters of the CTEA confidently predict exactly the opposite in the case of copyrighted works from the 1920s.

164k PDF Link (via Freedom to Tinker)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dope enters an MMO

The game Achnea has introduced a virtual narcotic called gleam:

Achaea characters who take gleam get hooked quickly -- suffering typical addiction symptoms: violent vomiting, shivering, irrational sobbing, begging for the drug and even overdoses resulting in death. Some of the game's players are angry about gleam's introduction into their world.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:47:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Should Kerry draft Nader?

John Gilmore sez, "If Kerry had the sense to pick Nader as his VP, they'd unify the anti-Bush ranks and eliminate the chance of a significant protest vote. Nader polls at 4%, which would put Kerry over the top. Independent voters have noticed the remarkably similar platforms of Bush and Kerry re the Iraq war (they're for it), Guantanamo (they're for indefinite imprisonment without judicial review), the Patriot Act (they're for it), and many other issues like the drug war (they're for it). If independents could vote at least one honest person into one party's administration, known for blowing the whistle when needed, they would be a lot more inclined to do so."

The Washington Post did a poll and said ... It found Bush in a dead heat with Democratic candidate Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in the presidential race.

Forty-six percent of registered voters said they would vote for Bush if the election were held today; 46 percent said they would support Kerry and 4 percent said they would back independent Ralph Nader, the poll said.

Link (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:41:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DDR is not eeeevil! Game enthusiasts respond

A member of the Kansas City Dance Dance Revolution club -- which was profiled in this rather dark tale of a guy who steals to support his DDR habit -- responds:

I am the site admin of DDRKC.com. The author of this article approached us a few months ago claiming to want to write a positive publicity piece about the Kansas City local area Dance Dance Revolution scene. They interviewed a number of us, who all spoke about the comraderie and positive aspects of having a virtual community based around DDR. If you read the article, you will note that NONE of this information was used. Instead, they decided to focus on the personal exploits of a single person who was doing stupid and illegal activities. What that has to do with DDR, I have no idea. It's like creating an expose on how bloggers are evil and engaged in illegal activities just because one of them decided to go shoplift something. It completely misrepresents for only DDR as a whole, but DDRKC and the local players as well. Here is a link to the community reaction to the article.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:39:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HalfLife casemod

This HalfLife-inspired casemod is jaw-droppingly cool. Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:17:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Christian P2P: is it a sin?

Fascinating Salon piece about the moral debate among Christian teens over whether P2P file-sharing for gospel music is a sin.

"Being faithful to your friends, giving them something for free, is more important than any kind of moral allegiance to a record company. Whether a teenager is a committed Christian, of a different faith or just has no religious affiliation, some of the patterns of how they make decisions transcend religious input," Kinnaman says. He believes that to change those kids' attitudes, you'd have to somehow influence those networks of friends, not just tell the kids that what they're doing is wrong.

Another complication: For some Christian kids Barna studied, sharing the religious hits that express their faith is their way of spreading the word. "They wanted it to be part of their ministry. They wanted to share some of the positive messages from their music with non-believers. It's an evangelistic impulse." He compared it to the old saw about the stolen Bible: "If someone came and stole my Bible, I'd be happy that they stole it, because they needed it."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:10:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hack your own ringtones

This week on Engadget's HOWTO section: how to hack your own ringtones for the P900:

I bought a CD and use it in my alarm clock (a lot of alarm clocks have that as a feature)- Should I pay $3 for that? Perhaps, seems weird to me. Sometimes when the phone rings I whistle a popular tune from a CD I bought, do I need to pay for that? America is a great place, we have fair use- it’s why we’re great innovators and heck- making stuff for our phones for our own personal use goes beyond fair use. In this week’s how to we show you how to make your own ring tones, for just your phone, for just personal use, from the CD you just bought.

Link (Thanks, pt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:05:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NES wristband

Piers sez, "A couple of Christmases ago, my friend Harry made me this wristband out of an orignal NES controller. He stripped the PCB, wiring and buttons out of it, and baked it in the oven over half a tin can, bent to form-fit his wrist. It melted over the can, then he took it out, put the buttons back in, glued it and sealed it with silicone or something. He even shortened the cord and had it coming out the end so the plug could join on to a loop of elastic to hold it on." Link (Thanks, Piers!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:04:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 24, 2004

Doctors' neckties harbour disease

Doctors who wear neckties may look more competent and reassuring, but their cravattes are actually disease-harbouring pest-farms of neck-grease, sweat, and plague germs.

Researchers found that nearly half of the ties worn by medical workers harboured bacteria which could cause disease.

Clinicians were eight times more likely to wear a tie carrying bacteria than by hospital security staff.

Link (via Stross)

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

AT&T: the hollow phone company

Kevin Werbach has a cool perspective on the fact that AT&T has divested itself of its physical and cellular networks: it has become a "virtual" phone company. (Remember the spectrum docket where AT&T was all about the open spectrum? Maybe this virtual telco thing makes phone companies less evil?)

AT&T is hollowing itself out -- and that's a good thing. Under Dave Dorman, AT&T has invested heavily in building a true all-IP backbone and deploying VOIP offerings. Following the sale of AT&T Wireless to Cingular and AT&T's subsequent deal with Sprint PCS, AT&T is poised to offer a full suite of wireless offerings without the cost of owning a cellular network. And it is still the biggest player in the lucrative business services market, with a national brand second to none.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:47:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Iliad as IMs

Microsoft has commissioned an IM-speak translation of The Iliad to promote its new IM client; book two is compressed to a mere 24 "words":

Agamemnon hd a dream: Troy not defended. Ordered attack! But Trojans knew they were coming n were prepared. Achilles sat sulking in his tent.

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:42:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fake-magazine cover photoshopping contest

There are some great entries in this Something Awful fake-mag-cover photoshopping contest, but Internet Tough Guy is hands-down the funniest. Link (Thanks, Soren!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:40:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

300 images from 1800 sites

This lovely little website is the result of a sort of online pixel scavenger hunt:

I started gathering little, iconesque web images for myself so that I could compare, contrast, and study the techniques used by other graphic artists on the web. My initial pool of images looked so interesting that I decided to continue methodically hunting and capturing the icons for a public display piece. The purpose of this document is not to copy the intellectual property of others, but rather as a jumping-off point for your own unique web graphic projects. It's for Brainstorming, if you will.

I roughly estimate that for every six web sites I scoured, I was able to acquire one graphic image. I visited only Fortune 1000 company sites, major online retailers, well known blogs, top advertising, publishing, and design agencies, technology and software industry leaders, and the very largest online news publishers. Approximately 1800 web sites later, I have this collection of 300 of the most interesting, unique, and beautiful formations of pixels to display.

Link (Thanks, Sean!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:28:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A darker tale of DDR -- theft, hot chicks, destruction

Dance Dance Revolution, the legendary electronic game cited in a CNN piece today, is apparently capable of inspiring both good and eeeeevil. Here's the sordid tale of a midwestern fanatic who became a thief to support his DDR habit.

Giles thought of himself as old school; he'd learned to play on early versions of DDR with dimly lit arrows, poor graphics and no speed modifiers, circa 2001. He called new players who sucked "nubs." He was certain he had groupies. "In every arcade, we have what's called a fan club," he says. "A group of girls, normally underage, that are just desperately, madly obsessed with us."

Before things turned bad, Giles would dance against anyone willing to do battle: the stud-wearing punk, the overweight high school kid, the middle-aged Sprint worker, the preteen with the overprotective mother. "It's not just some little stompy-stompy crap," he says. "It can go crazy on you."

When he danced, he moved so fast his sneakers began to blur. Sweat beaded and fell from his brow like raindrops. Following the arrows, his feet accelerated in time, playing the commands like a musical score.

Link (Thanks, Joel Johnson!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:09:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jim Woodring handpressed prints

Art doesn't get any better than this. Look at this gorgeous portfolio of four prints by cartoonist Jim Woodring, using a special embossed printing process. The packaging is a beautiful Woodring-designed wonder, too. $300 and limited to 80 portfolios. According to an email I got from Woodring; they're going fast. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:47:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dance Dance Revolution as teen weightloss aid

This CNN piece follows the tales of formerly supersized boy and girl geeks who shed *lots* of unwanted weight playing the wacky Japanese electronic game "Dance Dance Revolution." In DDR, players stomp around on a grid of brightly lit squares while hyperfast techno music blares at them from a video display unit. There's also a home version, which sells for under US$50.

As she cooled herself in front of a fan at a video arcade, two teenage boys danced on a machine nearby. Their sneakers pounded out a staccato rhythm at a pace so fast that "Lord of the Dance"'s Michael Flatley would be envious.

Not everyone sees dramatic results. Seventeen-year-old Justin Meeks says his body is more toned, but his weight hasn't changed. He's pleased to point out, though, that his dancing skills have helped him get girls. "Two. I'm guilty of that," Justin said with a grin as he watched friends play DDR.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:09:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pescovitz interviews RU Sirius May 25 in San Francisco

Dawn 2004 is an all-night music/performance event tomorrow (Tuesday) night in San Francisco in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. It's $15 for the entire night of eclectic programming: Russel Simins from Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Broun Fellinis, Heather Gold, DJ Polywog, and a host of other artists. At 10pm, I'm conducting a live interview with RU Sirius about his forthcoming book, Counterculture Through the Ages. Please stop by if you can!

"RU Sirius (aka Ken Goffman) and David Pescovitz take a mind-expanding trip though history to uncover the common threads of counterculture that link biblical Abraham to the Socratics, the revolutionaries of the Enlightenment, the Yippies of the 1960s, and the hacktivists of today. Sirius will reveal how countercultures-- anti-authoritarian, changeable, antic movements that revolutionize mainstream culture--are a powerful and necessary catalyst for the continued evolution of the human species."

Link (Thanks, Birdman!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:40:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How *do* you say "mullet" in Portuguese?

Following up on an earlier BoingBoing post about a Brazilian heavy metal band that plays covers of video game theme songs, BoingBoing reader Carlos says:

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is probably not as fun as it might seem... we still say 'mullet', there's just no translation of that word... but then, fortunately, mullets were not as popular here as they were in the US of A...

Link to previous post

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:23:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How weak copyright helps authors

Suw Charman has written a great article on book-authors who release their work on CC, focusing on the amazing story of the collaborative audiobook project for Lessig's Free Culture.

Most people are very aware of worth these days. eBay gives value to junk that might previously have been given away. Amazon sells second-hand books that might otherwise have been taken to a charity shop. The Antiques Roadshow raises the possibility that the horrendously ugly teapot you inherited from your Aunt Bessie might actually be worth hundreds, if not thousands of pounds.

Worth. Everything has a worth. Things. Words. Music. Everything. And everyone who owns anything worth something is not only entitled to benefit from the full extent of that worth, but should also do their utmost to protect it. Only a fool gives away something for nothing. That's right, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Link (Thanks, Suw!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:10:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Picture of a guy duct-taped to the ceiling

I know as much about this picture as you do. Link (Cory blogged the source two years ago.)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:53:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Leaked docs show the CEA standing up (finally) to the RIAA

The RIAA is arm-twisting the FCC over a "broadcast flag" for digital radio, to keep you from recording and saving digital radio broadcasts. They're trying to get the Consumer Electronics people -- who sold us all out in the digital TV Broadcast Flag fight -- to play along, but this time around, the CEA has grown a spine and is pushing back. JD Lasica wrote a piece for Mindjack on this, but more interesting is the leaked correspondance between the RIAA and the CEA, in which the CEA tears the RIAA a new one over the unbelievable, suicidal stupidity of restricting the ability of end-users to record digital radio signals.

You state that you do not wish to limit the ability of consumers to record over-the-air radio broadcasts. Instead, you apparently want to force them to buy what they have received for free since Fleming and Marconi first made it possible for consumers to hear news and music over the public airwaves. As you know, we have long been concerned about content owners seeking to change the 'play' button on our devices to a 'pay' button.

(Thanks, JD and Donald!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:45:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Solid gold chewing gum package to be given in contest

Japanese gum company Lotte is having a contest to give away a life-size replica of its gum package, made of pure gold. The package opens so you can take out the 9 solid gold sticks of gum, each weighing 100 grams. Total intrinsic value: $90,000. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:25:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cheap missile launcher kills US troops

Kevin sez: "This is a great piece about the 'most valuable weapon, worldwide' the Russian shoulder launched missle, RPG -- the one hurting the US in Iraq."

This cheap little dealie, nothing but a launcher tube and a few rockets shaped like two ice-cream cones glued together, has kicked our ass (and Russia's too) all over the world since back when the Beatles were still together. In fact, more and more guerrilla armies are making the RPG their basic infantry weapon, with the AK used to protect the RPG gunners, who provide the offensive punch. The Chechens fighting the Russian Army are so high on it that they've switched their three-man combat teams from two riflemen and an RPG gunner to two RPG gunners with a rifleman to protect them.

There's another stat that's even more important right now: the RPG has inflicted more than half--half!--of US casualties in Iraq. This is the weapon that's hurting us. And it's been doing that for one hell of a long time.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:57:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Prankster puts toy dinosaur in front of volcano-cam

Scientists have set up a webcam overlooking an active volcano crater in New Zealand. Someone has put a little toy Dino (from the Flintstones) in front of the camera. Click on thumbnail for enlargement. Article Link, Webcam Link. (Thanks, Marc!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:43:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rushkoff's new graphic novel

Boing Boing pal Douglas Rushkoff's neuron-annihilating comic Club Zero-G, first serialized in BPM magazine, has finally been compiled and expanded into a full-length graphic novel. Published by the demented souls at Disinformation, the book features art by Canadian cartoonist Steph Dumais.

"The story follows Zeke, a gangly, unpopular, 19-year-old college student - a townie who also happens to attend the elite college in his community - who has discovered a terrific new club where he is accepted and popular. There's only one catch: everyone at the club is dreaming. It only exists in the shared dream consciousness of its participants. If at all.

For there's the rub: Zeke's friends think he is simply going crazy. His girlfriend in the club won't even acknowledge his existence in real life.

As Zeke descends further into the Club Zero-G reality, he learns that this shared dream space is actually a psychic field created by four mutant children from the future - the last of their kind, conceived by human space travelers in zero gravity and exhibiting strange deformities and abilities. Living in a future where independent thinking is considered a threat to "consensus," they are hunted by the authorities, and seek the help of teens from the 21st century who, they hope, can still alter the course of reality.

But Zeke eventually learns this is all a set-up, and he is being used by the militaries of the present and the future as a portal into the psychic field of the Zero-G kids, so they can be destroyed. Unless, of course, he is just going mad." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:23:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chicago replaces cows with celebrity-designed Mickey Mice

Jim sez, "The new online magazine Chicagoist has an article on 15 giant Mickey Mouse statues that will be on display on State Street in downtown Chicago until the middle of July." Link (Thanks, Jim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:39:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ozarks commune turns 30

Tri sez, "I know some of these guys myself. They come into my library regularly and max out the two or three cards that the members share."

They may have been dreamers, but this month, East Wind's 75 members celebrated the 30th anniversary of their enduring -- and thriving -- community. East Wind recently paid off a loan on an additional 883 acres, its business ventures are worth more than $2.5 million, and it is building a new machine shop and bathhouse.

Link (Thanks, Tri!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:36:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sweet-looking Rollerball-chic speakers

These new Afterlab speakers look hella cool. Link (Thanks, Adnan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:29:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to unlock your phone

On Popular Science, an article on getting your mobile phone unlocked. Here in London, there're shops that advertise phone unlocking on practically every block, but it's almost unheard-of in the USA:

While number portability may have freed your cell digits, your phone is still a ball and chain, locked into one carrier's service. These subsidy locks keep you from walking away before the provider can recover that big discount you got when you bought the phone.

But it doesn't have to be so. If you have a GSM phone, you can unlock it and switch to any GSM network carrier (the big three are AT&T, Cingular and T-Mobile). You can also take an unlocked phone overseas (most of the world uses GSM) and use it on a local network to avoid paying for international roaming, or even buy a European phone (they tend to be ahead of us in cell tech) and use it here. Have an old phone lying around? Unlock it and keep it as a spare.

Link

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

Silly season googlebombing

Some GOPers are googlebombing John Kerry's site with the word "waffles," and Kerry's supporters are fighting back with a Google AdWord buy for "waffles" that goes to a page on Bush's waffling.

I think that this googlebombing stuff is highly overrated. For starters, who googles the word "waffles?" What should be the canonical link for "waffles?" It's really self-reflexive: the nominal point of a googlebomb is to hijack a common search-term to misdirect searchers (i.e., the neo-Nazis who bombed the string "jew"), but in fact, a single-word query for "jew" is a pretty weird thing to punch into Google: "Hmm, I wonder why my neighbor takes every Friday night off and lights a candle. Wonder if it's cos he's Jewish? I know, I'll type 'jew' into Google and see if there's anything about Friday nights and candles in the top ten results."

In fact, the point of a googlebomb is to acheive the googlebomb and then publicize it: "Look, if you search for 'more evil than satan,' you get the Microsoft home-page, hardy-har-har." But those who argue that they've scored some kind of victory here are nuts: no one searches for "more evil than satan" -- unless someone tells them that there's a funny googlebomb on the other end.

When I was a kid, we had all these "calculator games" -- addition, subtraction and multiplication routines that would yield a string on the LCD, that, when inverted, would spell out a word. I remember one "dirty" one that spelled out "BOOBLESS" (55378008). At the time, it felt like we'd really gotten one in against The Man, by somehow convincing a pocket-calculator to kinda-sorta spit out a word we weren't allowed to say in polite company, but the joke got old fast. For starters, "BOOBLESS" isn't a (very) dirty word, and more importantly, it just didn't make the calculator dirty to get it to spit this out.

By the same token, "WAFFLES" isn't that common a naked query, and convincing Google to spit out John Kerry's homepage (or an AdWord for an anti-Bush page) isn't gonna score you any points with the people looking for info on waffles -- the most it can acheive is the (very) faintly humorous spectacle of the Kerry homepage coming up on this improbable query.

Hardy har har.

The campaign has purchased Google AdWords, sponsored links that come up beside results when certain words are searched. The short links also refer to Kerry's website, but suggest users "read about President Bush's Waffles."

"When we heard people were linking the word 'waffles' with John Kerry, our thought was, 'This is ridiculous,'" said Morra Aarons, Internet grass-roots coordinator for John Kerry for President. "But our solution was to fight fire with fire."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:25:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WTF-2 in London this Saturday

The next WTFCon is in London this Saturday: it's a one-day convention devoted to hackery subjects.

* An open space gathering and conference of various groups, projects, people, and organisations active and interested in creating a better world.

* Action and not just talk. Too many social forums and gatherings result with little or no outcome. Come and propose and gain support for actions during Soho Summit, ESF, G8, GDR etc.

* An assembly of gifts and needs: tell everyone what your projects are all about, what they have to offer, and what they need. Together we have everything. Let's self-organise and share!

* About working together, many of us have shared principles despite our diverse goals. No more either or!

Link (Thanks, Tav!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:34:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Design critique of Jakob Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen is a legendary usability crank who writes great little columns called "AlertBoxes" wherein he runs down his best practices for one or another element of usability (I always forget to read these because I can't find any RSS or Atom for Jakob's site and it updates too infrequently to put it in my regular Moz tab-group bookmark; nevertheless, some of Nielsen's pieces, like the Microcontent thing from 1998 have been very influential in my blogging style)

Last week's AlertBox was about link-style, and it's pretty good and sensible. But, like all of the AlertBoxen, it is ugly as hell.

Enter "Design Eye for the Usability Guy." Five designers, who have clearly been scorched by Nielsen's legendary rants about the primacy of usability over design, take on Nielsen's AlertBox house-style in a kind of overblown, gushy tone, and undertake to remodel Jakob's image so that his site is both usable and beautiful. It's funny, subversive and in the words of the Cos, "you may learn something before it's done. Hey! Hey! Hey!"

Last time I checked it wasn't illegal to use illustrations to spice up your web site. Now, before we go wild let us remember that Nielsen's not exactly the nothing-but-prada-shoes type of guy. So, I settled with a clean, icon-like style that will reinforce each guideline visually. The colours used are basic: red for links, blue for hover and shades of gray and black for other text. Again, let's try to stick with a style that somehow matches his current branding.

To translate the general concept of links into something simple I've chosen to use an underlined letter "a," applied to an assortment of situations that exemplify each guideline. The font used is Georgia, which happens to work nicely and is very much ubiquitous.

Link (Thanks, Danny!)

Update: here are a couple of scraped RSS feeds off of AlertBox: one from Bootleg RSS (Scraped Feeds For A Better World); one from NewsIsFree. (Thanks, Carlo and Simon!).

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:30:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Future of Palladium

Here are Peter "Palladium Pete" Biddle's slides on the latest plans for Microsoft's "Next-Generation Secure Computing Base," the trusted computing technology that used to be called Palladium. 1.9MB PowerPoint Link (Thanks, Wes!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:14:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Quincy punk-rock clips

Here's a collection of video-clips from the notorious Quincy "punk rock" episode, where Quincy asks the musical question: "Can punk rock kill?" (Personally, I prefer the CHiPS punk episode -- "I diiig paaaaain!") Link (Thanks, roboto!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:08:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Futurama panoramas stitched from frame-grabs

These Futurama panoramas are created by taking screengrabs from successive frames of long panning shots in Futurama, then stitching them together. Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:04:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giants among us photoshopping

Today on a very special Worth1000 photoshopping contest: "Giants Among Us" -- off-scale people matted into everyday scenes. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:02:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, May 23, 2004

Camera phones in Iraq; digicams and truth in wartime

SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF POST

London's "The Business" newspaper (aka the Sunday Business) reported this weekend that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered a ban on camera phones and other mobile imaging devices in US army installations in Iraq. The story was subsequently cited in numerous online news reports, including UPI and AFP, and blogged abundantly.

Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones. "Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works.

This morning, I asked a Defense Department spokesperson whether or not the reports of a phonecam ban were true. This spokesperson said that these reports were technically inaccurate -- that the Pentagon is not issuing a new ban on camera phones per se, but that a Directive 8100.2 was issued on April 14 establishing new restrictions on wireless telecommunications equipment in general. The text of this directive is available online here in PDF format: Link. The intent of this April 14 directive, and how commanders in the field will be expected to enforce it, are matters I'll be reporting on in more detail for the NPR program "Day to Day," later this week.

Link to cameraphone ban report, Link to full Rumsfeld "running around with digital cameras" quote. See also this Chicago Tribune editorial by Clarence Page, "Weapons of Mass Photography." (thanks also to Joi's blog and Smartmobs)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:21:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi surveillance cams in London

From the BBC News today, a story about the unwiring of (overabundant) surveillance cams.

In the UK there is one CCTV camera for every 14 people. If you are in London, you could be caught on camera up to 300 times a day. But the cameras are expensive, and once you have installed one, and laid all the wires back to base, it is fixed and cannot move. This means if a crime hotspot moves round the corner, you cannot see it. Westminster City Council in London have come up with a solution - CCTV cameras without wires, which broadcast their pictures back to base using the council's new wireless network.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:33:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brazilian heavy metal video game theme cover band

What's that you say? You came to BoingBoing to find a link to a Brazilian heavy metal band that performs covers of videogame music? Well, that is good. Because "nino" from the Brazilian band MegaDriver tells us

"We have released two albums. "Metal Beast: Rise From Your Grave!" A tribute to the game Altered Beast, launched by Sega in 1988. The album contains the complete soundtrack from the game recreated in Heavy-Metal style. And "Metal Axe," A tribute to the game Golden Axe, launched by Sega in 1989. The band have also released an emulator project called "Metal Mame", based on the most popular Arcade emulator, MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). With "Metal Mame" the fans now can play the original Arcade game with their entire soundtrack remixed by the MegaDriver band. At the band's website there is also available their first "Demo CD", "PUSH START BUTTON", with classic songs from "Castlevania", "Streets Of Rage", "Top Gear", "Street Fighter", etc.

What I really want to know is -- como você diz o "mullet" no Português? Link to band website, and UPDATE: Link to "mullet-in-Portuguese" answer.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:49:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blog-checking a congresscritter

My pal Pat Berry has decided to keep a close watch on Wally Herger, the rep from California's Second Congressional District, who is Pat's congresscritter. So Pat's sending him letters, asking him to answer for the government's mess in Iraq -- and other messes -- and blogging the congresscritter's form responses, with detailed, hyperlinked critiques. Pat doesn't expect Herge to stop talking bullshit as a result of being fact-checked, but he has high hopes for being a prominent search-engine result for the query "Wally Herger".

While there are no obvious points of contention here, it is meant to misdirect us from the fact that prisoner torture is wrong by pointing out that people want to hurt us. There will never be a time in history when somebody, somewhere will not want to hurt the United States or see us fail. In no way does this condone the torture of prisoners. It never has and it never will. Trying to associate the investigation with American weakness is a dirty trick. Compassion and a show of humanity is not weakness, nor is showing concern for a group of people other than ourselves. Also we must not let the fact that good things happen shield us from the horrors that happen in Iraq, they must be dealt with. For those honestly curious about the progress being made in Iraq, USAID has a site with extensive records and archives.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:53:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hardening an httpd for the rapture

RaptureReady is a site devoted to getting ready for the end-times: this is from the FAQ:

How do you plan to maintain this site after the rapture?

I have no master plan for maintaining Rapture Ready all the way through the seven-year tribulation. After the big event takes place, I expect RR to last several months. After all, the internet was designed to survive a nuclear war. It should be able to survive the great catching up of all believers.

Link (Thanks, Harley!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:27:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiny, wicked Disneyland uniform pieces on eBay

This Disneyland Parking Attendant coat and shirt on eBay look great, but they're way too small for me. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:51:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MP3-ringtone converter

There's a new app that will convert your MP3 to ringtones and the music industry is freaking out (despite the fact that phones like the P800, which can play an MP3 without any conversion as a ringtone, have been around for at least a year)

``It's problematic, because it has the potential to eviscerate the business model early in its development,'' said Ted Cohen, EMI Music's senior vice president of digital development and distribution.

Link (Thanks, Tom!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:18:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Recursive documentary

"The Making Of: The Documentary With This Tagline" is a recursive documentary -- a documentary about the making of itself. The trailer is a scream. Link (Thanks, Nick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:11:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nude coaster record

A group in Surrey have set the world's record for largest group of naked people on a rollercoaster. Hope they sterilized the seats afterwards! Link (Thanks, Patrick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:19:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Info-page on arrested Japanese P2P developer

Here's a page with public information and a fundraising appeal to help Isamu Kaneko, the developer of the Japanese anonymizing P2P app Winny -- who was arrested for what amounts to "abetting infringement."

Isamu Kaneko, a very well-known software engineer and a research associate of Tokyo university, was arrested for creating a P2P software called 'Winny' which supports anonymous bulletin board and file-sharing.

Creating file-sharing software is completely legal in Japan. Therefore, police is justifying his arrest as for 'assisted two persons who illegally uploaded copyrighted materials using Winny'. This kind of stretch of the rules is a very serious threat to our freedom and rights.

Isamu was arrested May 10, 2004 in Tokyo, by Kyoto prefectural police. And still under detention without accusation.

Link (Thanks, Goshuke!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:15:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EST at Infinity Plus

The wonderful online sf mag Infinity Plus has just published an excerpt from my novel Eastern Standard Tribe. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:48:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Deserted Japanese island photo gallery

"Off the westernmost coast of Japan, is an island called "Gunkanjima" that is hardly known even to the Japanese. Long ago, the island was nothing more than a small reef. Then in 1810, the chance discovery of coal drastically changed the fate of this reef. As reclamation began, people came to live here, and through coal mining the reef started to expand continuously. Before long, the reef had grown into an artificial island of one kilometer (three quarters of a mile) in perimeter, with a population of 5300. Eventually, the mines faced an end, and in 1974 the world's once most densely populated island become totally deserted. The island, after all its inhabitants departed leaving behind their belongings, became an empty shell of a city where all its people disappeared overnight, as if by some mysterious act of God.”" Link (Thanks, Philip!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:12:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hold the McBuggets, please! Man ill after gorging on fried cicadas

Not so fast, cicada-snackers! An Indiana resident who fried then snarfed about 30 "Brood X" specimens had to seek medical treatment when the bug grub experiment caused a powerful allergic reaction. Apparently, some people with shellfish allergies can become very sick from eating the exoskeletous but Akins-friendly critters.

The man showed up at a Bloomington clinic Thursday covered from head-to-toe in hives, and sheepishly told a doctor he'd caught and ate the cicadas after sauteing them in butter with crushed garlic and basil. "He said they didn't taste too bad, but his wife didn't care for the aroma," said Dr. Al Ripani, the doctor who treated the man at Promptcare East.

Link to news article, and link to previous BoingBoing post (Thanks, Pete!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:56:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cicadas, the new no-carb/hi-protein snackin' sensation

This National Geographic story by John Roach [hehe, Roach] points out that those gazillions of "Brood X" cicadas unearthing themselves this month also double as an Atkins-compliant meal-on-the-go. Cicada McBuggets, anyone? Pass the dipping sauce.

"They're high in protein, low in fat, no carbs," said Gene Kritsky, a biologist and cicada expert at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. "They're quite nutritious, a good set of vitamins." The largest group of periodical cicadas, known as Brood X, have been crawling out of the ground and carpeting trees along the eastern United States for the past week or so. By July, Brood X will be gone--not to be heard from again for 17 years.

Link (Thanks, Mara!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:43:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chalabi used disinfo to point the US at Saddam

The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that Ahmed Chalabi -- who's been getting millions of US tax-dollars to act as a kind of field-snitch for the US military/intelligence complex -- has been basically making it all up, feeding disinfo to the US in order to provoke war on Saddam.

"Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.

Link (via Making Light)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sterling's Microsoft Research talk

Bruce Sterling gave a screamingly funny talk at Microsoft Research last night, and Al Billings transcribed it on his blog.

This year I had a problem because there were 200 people in my audience and I say "Ok, everybody is going over to my house for beer!" and they say "Yay!" and 600 people show up at my party. They weren't the people in the audience. Half the people in the audience normally attend because it's on the last day and a lot of people leave anyway. They showed up and some kind of flash mob thing occurred. There was some kind of electronically assisted gathering happening at my house. Because people were showing up and they were showing up in buddy lists. It wasn't just the usual foot traffic of one and two people. There would be at half-past one...there were sudden clusters or armadas of taxis coming in from two or three directions and people would get out of the taxis and are name-checking each other and sort of clustering together and coming into the party in a mass. Guys are phone-camming the party. It's like "He's not kidding, look there's a keg here!" <snicka> <z.z.z.z.z> and off they come. Actresses are showing up, which is sort of interesting because there is never much cross-over into the film thing. Guys are coming up and saying "Bruce! Your party's full of hot chicks!" There are girls in lingerie tops with stiletto heels. They aren't actually partying. They're not eating. They're there to display themselves so they kind of swan anorexically through this crowd of unix sysadmins and they're, like... <Bruce makes really goofy surprised face> They're awe-struck. Somebody had told them that it was sort of necessary to go make the scene at the novelist's house and they sort of arrived in a bloc, united by phones, I assume, and then departed.

Link (Thanks, Al!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:14:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Penis-englargement blog

This guy wanted to see if penis enlargement pills worked, so he ordered some. Personal account augmented by a chart showing the size of his unit over time, in millimetres! Link (via EvHead)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:04:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Minority != brown

Great NYT correction. This is why I like the term "world majority":

An article last Wednesday about South Africa's wine industry referred incorrectly to Thabani Cellars, a winery there. It is not minority-owned. (As a black man, the owner, Jabulani Ntshangase, belongs to the country's majority.)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:02:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Embracing Asperger's

There's a great article on Kuro5hin today about living with Asperger's -- the "Geek Syndrome" that imbues us with obsessive attention to (some) detail, a poor grasp of social cues, and a weird sense of humour.

Aspies tend to take an obsessive interest in detailed things. It is typical for an aspie to take an all-encompassing interest in something for a few months and later become interested in something else after having already learned enough about the first subject. In other words, we aspies have "weird," nerdy interests and hobbies.

This is a chicken-and-egg problem, of course. Do we aspies take up these perseverations because we are unable to occupy ourselves with more neurotypical (NT) (that is, something relating to nonautistics) socializing, or do our perseverations prevent us from socializing? Maybe it's a little bit of both.

Nevertheless, perseveration for me has meant spending my early teenage years learning how to program and becoming especially adept at using Windows. A little later it meant focusing on perfecting my French accent and reading French newspapers like Le Monde. Because of my perseverations, I have a more thorough understanding of history, politics, language, computers, psychology, geography, and numerous other subjects than the average person. In contrast, I have a deficit of knowledge about today's pop stars, actors, and social gossip. This sometimes makes it hard for people to have interesting conversations with me.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:01:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 21, 2004

Hilarious police encounter in Warsaw

Side-splittingly funny account of a Polish expat who returned to Warsaw and got (very incompetently) mugged, then flagged down a vanload of completely bonkers cops who ran around the city, stopping trams and pointing at nuns, businessmen and other improbables and saying, "are these the kids who mugged you?"

Not surprisingly, most people's reaction at seeing a huge police van swerving wildly behind them was to hunker down and gradually go slower and slower. The papers were full of stories about an incident the week before in Poznan, where police had followed a car and then shot the driver dead without warning, only later figuring out that they had staked out the wrong apartment block. Just two days before my adventure, riot police in Lodz had mixed up live ammunition with rubber bullets used for crowd control; they had opened fire into a crowd of students, killing three people. 'Lie low , and hope to God they don't open fire' seemed a prudent strategy, so gradually the traffic around us started to crawl slower and slower.

Fortunately the van was not equipped with any kind of forward-mounted cannon, or Elmer would have surely started blowing little Skodas and Fiats out of the road in frustration. Instead he had to content himself with higher and higher flights of profanity, while the other cops and I held on for dear life. I hoped fervently none of the shotguns were loaded.

Link (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:58:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Harry Potter postage

The Australian post office has issued a line of Harry Potter stamps. Link (Thanks, Scott!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:54:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Collecting copyright horror stories to restore the public domain

An important piece of copyright litigation is in the offing: Golan v Ashcroft challenges Congress's "restoration of copyright" to thousands of works that were in the public domain as of 1994. The Golan legal team is collecting your horror stories about being denied access to works that were snatched from the public domain; they're publishing the stories as they come in:

To win the lawsuit we need your help: we need examples of how people have been harmed by this removal of works from the public domain. You can help us if you have ever wanted to use:

* a foreign sound recording made before February 15, 1972; or
* a foreign work published in or after 1923 that was in the public domain in the U.S. (due to lack of copyright notice, renewal, or national eligilibility of the author), including:

* works of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Khachaturian, and other foreign composers (search for restored works)
* numerous classic British, French, German, and other foreign films (including several Hitchcock films, Faust, Metropolis, and The Red Balloon, Kurosawa's Ikiru, The Third Man, and Intermezzo)
* or any other foreign book, photograph, song, or work subject to a "restored" copyright
* although registration is optional, you can search the U.S. Copyright Office for restored works

Link (Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:52:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Matt Jones: refactor the UI

My pal Matt "Blackbelt" Jones, a user-experience wonk at Nokia, has written a guest-rant on new UIs for the pervasive age over at Warren Ellis's Die Puny Humans.

Drill the digital ground and you'll see that the surface strata of interface has not moved as quickly as what lies beneath.

The shape has changed. We've moved from the discrete, fixed computing of the mainframe, mini and pc to the fluid, agile, grid.

The stuff has changed. We send emotional bits and digital pheremones as much as we send practical packets.

The scale has changed. The corpus has swollen while the skin stayed the same. We stored data the equivalent of 37,000 times the library of congress on our hard drives in 2002, and shunted 3 times that much around the net[1].

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:48:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark's Japan Journal: Day 3

8am in Tokyo (4pm LA time). I got about six hours of sleep last night, and I'm feeling pretty good right now. (Of course, I just downed an excellent double espresso, so the caffeine is talking right now.)

Despite the typhoon warnings, Yesterday's weather couldn't have been better. The sky was blue, the temperature was mild. I guess the typhoon ran out of juice really fast.

I woke up spaced-out and stupid. I looked in the mirror and was surprised at how glassy my eyes looked. But I wanted to travel around the city, to do some research on the article I'm writing. First, though, I wanted to go to Harajuku and Yoyogi park to take pictures of those crazy kids in the their Elegant Gothic Lolita and Trappist Monk - Rocket Scientist Hybrid getups. I didn't see too many, but I took some pictures of a few kids, who studiously ignored me, the big dopey gawking gaijin with a camera.

But my heart wasn't in it. I was much more interested in checking out the official uniforms almost everyone in Japan wears. Of course the schoolkids all wear uniforms. The girls have the traditional sailor uniforms, and a lot of the boys have these dark blue Chinese-looking jackets with the cylindrical collars and big round buttons. (Why are so many schoolkids always walking around in the middle of the day here? Don't they have classes to attend? Do they get breaks from school at odd hours that allow them to roam the streets?)

I saw a large crowd of "Beauty College" students pouring out of a building. They looked about 17 years old. About half were boys. They had nifty two-tone smock-like uniforms. They raced each other into a 7-Eleven and filled the place up. I took some great pictures of them packed in there.

I went the the big park near Harajuku (Meji something) and saw a worker in a smart gray uniform and pith helmet raking up leaves from the wide, tiny-pebbled, path leading to the Shinto temple. His rake was hand-made bamboo, and the business end of it fanned out about three feet. He had a large woven basket filled with other wooden park-cleaning implements, that looked like the came from the 17th century. I love the way Japan mixes ancient stuff with the brand new.

Back in the shopping area of Harajuku, another uniformed guy was on his knees, wiping one of the ubiquitous outdoor vending machines. He was making the surface *squeak*. After that, I noticed all the vending machines were spotless. The Japanese love to keep things clean. (The day before, two people in yellow raincoat uniforms were walking down a narrow shopping street, picking up wet cigarette butts with poles that have pincers on the end, and depositing the butts in a plastic bag. They were obsessive about it. They didn't even have Walkmans on. -- they were focusing solely on getting every last cigarette butt picked up.)

I spent the rest of the day taking pictures of people in different uniforms. It seems like they have at least four varieties of cops here, judging by the color and style of their caps and jackets.

I was looking forward to getting back to my hotel room so I could upload a "Uniforms of Japan" photo gallery. I am using some new software to deal with digital images, and when I extracted the images from the camera, the application zapped all 45 photos from the camera's memory stick. A full day of photo taking, gone in an electrostatic femtosecond. (I'm not going to say which application it is until I get an explanation from the guy who wrote it.)

I'm headed back to the US today, so unless something bizarre happens on the train to Narita, this will be my last Japan Journal dispatch.

Your faithful scribe -- Mark

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:58:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Busted MP3 player wrapped around soda can causes airplane bomb scare

Wireless guru Mike Outmesguine says:

A bomb scare occured on an America West passenger plane in Phoenix Arizona this week. Fox 11 News covered the story with people on the ground and a chopper in the air. The Fox11AZ website has 3 videos (about 8 minutes total) online... Re-live the tension! What caused the bomb scare? "An MP3 player wrapped around a soda can." So, next time you de-plane a plane, don't forgot to take your Coke and iPod with you. Check those seat pockets!

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:39:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mother of all vintage robot toy websites

Robot1968 is a kickass vintage robot toy website offering info on...

the history of robots and cinematic mechanised figures, inventory with over 2000 photos of all the robot toys from 1940 till now, info on all robot companies from japan-germany-usa and hong kong, vintage arcade games to play, links to all the robot world, forum to talk to other collectors and artists, music and fun!

Link (Thanks, theo)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:12:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Implantable RFIDs for nightclub VIPs

Club kids who want VIP status at the popular Baja Beach Club in Barcelona can now get implanted with a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. For 25 125 euro, customers can have an Applied Digital Solutions VeriChip, the size of a grain of rice, injected into his or her upper arm. Makes it easier to run a tab. Link (via my journal at TheFeature.com)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:08:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jungle Boat movie from Disney

Disney is making a new ride-based movie, this time from The Jungle Boat Cruise. Let's hope it's more like the Pirates of the Caribbean than the Haunted Mansion movie (shudder). Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:03:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iPod/torture mashups in NYC

These Iraqi torture/iPod ad mashups are appearing around NYC. Link (Thanks, Rich!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Holy Vandals, Holy Grail

An historic monument in central England that may hold the key to the location of the Holy Grail was damaged by vandals on Tuesday. The BBC reports that "a gang of youths climbed on top of The Shepherd's Monument at Shugborough Hall" and started smashing away.

"The Shepherd's Monument is of international importance, both as a work of art and because of the legend that a baffling inscription on the monument provides clues to the true location of the Holy Grail," said the home's general manager Richard Kemp.

Interestingly, the vandalism came on the heels of a visit by former code-breakers from War II intent on cracking the 10-letter puzzle. The Shepherd's Monument is discussed in depth in the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, inspiration for The Da Vinci Code. Link to a National Public Radio piece about the code-breakers. Link to the BBC story on the vandalism. (Thanks, Kev!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:25:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Erik Davis consults on A Scanner Darkly!

Boing Boing pal Erik Davis sends us this exclusive bit of insider insight into the Hollywood adaptation of Philip K. Dick's surreal SF novel "A Scanner Darkly":

"This spring, I had the opportunity to read and consult on Richard Linklater’s screenplay for Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, which is set to start filming this July. As I love many of Linklater’s films, this was a great honor, although much less funny than the New Yorker’s description of me as a “Dick expert.” Expert or no, I can tell you that I have every reason to believe that Linklater’s film will be what Dickheads everywhere have been waiting for: the first “real” “authentic” PKD movie. While the film updates the historical vibe from paranoid 70s to paranoid 00s, the script is dark and tart, funny and faithful. Nearly all the dialogue is drawn from the novel, and the few changes sharpen Dick’s themes rather than squelch them. Linklater has kept the story dark, and haunted by rumors of God.

As has been reported, Keanu Reaves will play Bob Arctor, the Orange County narc who goes schizo after being assigned to spy on himself. Linklater has been planning this project for years; it was Reaves’ interest in the story that finally got the ball rolling. As has been already noted, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Rory Cochrane round out the cast, though it also needs to be mentioned that these are some of the most famous druggies in Hollywood. Actually, I don’t know anything about Rory’s personal habits, but he sure spouted convincing cannabinoid bon mots in Dazed & Confused.

During my time at Linklater’s pine-forested getaway pad outside of Austin, which features a pagoda, a huge stone tower, and many pinball machines, I got to meet the genius team whose digital rotoscoping helped make Waking Life one of the few masterpieces of the new millennium. These are definitely the guys you want to bring Bob Arctor’s scramble suit to life."

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:55:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report from UK ID Cards meeting at LSE

Phil sez, "My personal take on the Mistaken Identity public meeting re. UK ID cards at the London School of Economics yesterday."

Lord (Andrew) Philips of Sudbury, Liberal Democrat peer, was particularly good - especially in his detailed grasp of the system, e.g. regarding the nonsensical restriction of the powers of the Interception of Communications Commissioner, and his realistic take on the task ahead in persuading the 80-ish% that ID cards backed by a National Identity Register are a BAD IDEA.

He referred specifically to tackling the all-too-common "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" argument and, although he didn't explicitly say the phrase, his comment "We're on no-one's list now" led me to think that "If you're not on their list, you won't exist" might imply/initiate a relevant counter-argument. [Wait for the T-shirt - I'm all for slogans!]

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:31:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lessig lecture in London, May 27

Larry Lessig is speaking on London on the 27th of May at the Royal Geographical Society, SW7.

Lawrence Lessig will put forward in this lecture the hypothesis that innovation and experimentation thrive when ideas and culture can be freely exchanged and circulated. These freedoms are under threat. He proposes that the erosion of constitutional and  civil rights carries with it profound consequences for all those involved in  the arts and the business of ideas.

Flash Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:28:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fox News lies with statistics

My cow-orker Jason Schultz identifies a nice bit of Fox statistical chicanery:

Among today's top stories, a new "Fox News Poll" that says 33% of those surveyed think the media is too easy on Kerry and 42% think the media is too tough on Bush. [Of course, if it were limited to FoxNews coverage, you'd probably see dramatically different numbers in the opposite direction.]

But let's just look at the numbers they've given us. 33% think the media is too easy on Kerry. That means 66% (or 2/3rds) think the media is fair or too tough on Kerry, right? Isn't that the real story?

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:22:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dumb tech-support explanations

Great open-mic question on Ask Slashdot: what's the worst bullishit "explanation" you've ever gotten from tech support?

My cable modem connection had stopped work. Given my ISPs track record, this was unremarkable, but after it continued for 2 days, I decided to call the tech support number. After supplying my ID number, the support person told me that my connection was intentionally shut off because I was broadcasting a widely-circulated Windows virus. I promptly informed the tech support person that I did not use the Windows operating system on any of my computers, and that I could not possibly have the virus I was accused of having.

The support rep immediately told me that I had the virus, and that they would not turn my connection back on until I jumped through their anti-virus hoops. I argued for almost 10 minutes with this neophyte that I could not use their Windows anti-virus on my Linux systems, and that even if I could, it would not do a damn bit of good. Did it matter? Of course not.

Finally, in order to get my connection back on, I agreed to perform their anti-virus tricks "to the best of my ability", and install Windows just so I could "remove the virus" from my system. The rep actually thought this was an excellent resolution to the problem, but for some reason didn't believe I would actually do it (could have been my vehement renouncements against the entirety of Microsoft's products). After another 5 minutes of cajoling, I convinced her to turn my connection back on so I could get the anti-virus tools, and access Windows Update.

Link

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

Hybrid fruit photoshopping

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: hybrid fruit. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:13:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John Shirley book signing in San Jose May 29

My friend John Shirley, author of Crawlers and Black Butterflies and screenwriter of The Crow, etc, will be reading from a new novella and signing at BAYCON 2004 - San Jose, California, the Doubletree hotel, May 29. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:46:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steve Silberman's reading list for Allen Ginsberg's Beat Generation course

Boing Boing buddy Steve Silberman sez: "In 1977, poet Allen Ginsberg taught a course called "The Literary History of the Beat Generation" at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. I was in the course, and a couple of friends of mine and I just turned the suggested reading list into a gateway to the texts themselves. If you ever wished that your English-lit teacher had been the author of "Howl"..." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:37:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Reviews of pens

Illustrator Danny Gregory has reviewed a bunch of pens, accompanied by his drawings of the pens.

"Rotring Rapidoliner: I am really in love with this pen these days and I never would of thunk it. I first tried Rapidographs when I was a teenager but they always clogged and leaked and were a pain to fill. I was forever dismantling the nibs and washing them in the sink and finding ink blots on my shirts. This pen is perfect. My nib is the finest they make and the pen just won’t clog or skip. The guts are disposable, for $4 you get a fresh new nib and supply of Indian ink. I have been drawing with this pen every day for two months and am still on my original cartridge. The pen’s feeling is ultra smooth, a little creamy and a little brittle, like icing on a cupcake. The best $10 I ever spent."

Link (Thanks, Beleg!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:53:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robots revolt in Madison, WI

Photos of "robots" carrying signs written in binary code. They're marching to support underpaid and overworked teaching assistants in Madison, Wisconsin. Such thoughtful 'bots. Update: BoingBoing reader Ryan Whaley says, "They weren't supporting the teachers' union, it just happened to be going on at the same time. They planned it weeks ahead of time. They're all members of the somethingawful forums."

But BoingBoing reader Stef says, "I think your correction might be wrong. Do you have a link to a particular thread on somethingawful that discusses their reasons? I got sent this link by a friend because those bastards ripped off my costume from haloween 1990. No I don't have any photographic evidence and yes, I do live in another country but damnit I sweltered all night and couldn't slow dance with anyone or eat or drink and I want credit! Oh, and there's a press release on that page that says the Robot & Automation Association (RAA) "decided through an internal vote, to join the [TAA] in their strike on the 28th of April". If that ain't a clear message of solidarity, sister..."
Link (Thanks, Noah)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:42:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark's Japan Journal: Day 2

6am in Tokyo (2pm LA time). I'm even sleepier today than I was yesterday. I can't sleep here, even though I've been downing Benadryl, which usually knocks me out. I got about 4 hours sleep last night. I was awakened after an hour by someone in the hall outside my door. He was drunk and angry. I'm not sure if he was talking to himself or to someone on his mobile phone, but I didn't want to open my door to take a peek. (The last time I opened a hotel door to investigate a noisy person in a hallway, years ago in Copenhagen, I was greeted by a young guy out of his mind on drugs who made a beeline to my door and tried to force his way in, spitting and screaming. His eyes were rolled back in his head. After I finally got the door shut and locked, he pounded on the door and howled.) Anyway, this Japanese guy just kept going on and on about something. He'd start mumbling, then build up to loud ferocious staccatto bursts. Then he'd start over. I heard some other guy, maybe another hotel guest, speak to him in a low reproachful voice. It took a while, but he shut the jerk up. Thank you, whoever you are.

I was awakened a second time by the sound of power machinery. It took me a minute or two that it was actually someone in the next room snoring. So now I'm in the cafe, drinking a $6 not-very-good espresso in an attempt to reset my circadian clock. I don't know if it'll help or hurt, but I need to try something.

It's been raining steadily since I got here. From what I've been told, a typhoon is headed this way. I'm upset, because today is my day to go exploring around the city. I'll try to keep a good attitude about it. Tokyo is such a wonderful place, I can't let lack of sleep and lousy weather ruin it.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:30:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Back-to-Iraq" blogger is back in Iraq

Clive sez: "Chris Allbritton has begun blogging from Iraq. He's the writer who raised $13,000 last year from his blog readers to fund an indie-reporting trip to Iraq during the war. His readers have asked him to go back, and he raised another $11,000 in the last few months. He just arrived in Baghdad, and has begun writing more of his excellent stuff -- slices of everyday life in one of the most fraught places on earth. The first post describes the crazily harrowing landing you have to endure when you fly into Baghdad, as the plane corkscrews down to avoid shoulder-mounted missiles:"

After a normal flight, we went into a tight, corkscrew dive that sent your stomach up into your throat — and in the case of two passengers, out their mouths and into their laps. It’s a vomit-comet experience. But if you like roller coasters in a sealed container where you can’t really see anything, it’s a lot of fun. Just don’t think about the very real threat of shoulder-mounted SAMs.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:21:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless vs. Rush Hour

My latest article for TheFeature.com is online:

"Each year, Los Angeles drivers spend a combined total of 9,000 years stuck in traffic. Cell phones make it much easier to suffer through the brutal traffic jams that are the bane of city life around the world. Fortunately, wireless technology can also shorten the waiting game of freeway commuting.

From Los Angeles and Seattle to Berlin and Tokyo, city planners and researchers are deploying a slew of wireless sensors, smart street signs, and real-time data services for mobile devices to help manage traffic flow and inform drivers about what they'll face on the road ahead." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:08:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Holy Bestseller, Holy Sequel

The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown says he considered including another theory in the book that would have inflamed Christians even more than the notion that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and made babies. What if Jesus survived the crucifixion? According to this AP Article, "Brown said the theory is backed by a number of 'very credible sources,' but that he ultimately decided it was too flimsy." I'm burned out on the whole Holy Blood, Holy Grail trip though. Brown's next book, set in Washington, revolves around the Masons! Apparently, the dust jacket of The Da Vinci Code contains a clue about the sequel. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:29:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New issue of NeoFiles

The latest issue of RU Sirius's NeoFiles is online. This time, RU mindmelds with net.culture theoretician Clay Shirky, Brainwaves blogger Zack Lynch, and Will Block, the CEO of Life Enhancements Products. Block's company sponsors the NeoFiles, a fact RU honorably discloses at the top of the interview with his boss:

"If this is an infomercial site, it’s a pretty fucking outrageous (and informative) one. I’ve sat for many hours with my friend Will Block and one thing is certain: his knowledge, enthusiasm, and integrity (not to mention expansiveness) around these topics are impeccable. My readers also, by-and-large, are not idiots, and they can make up their own minds about whether to buy products or simply steal the precursors from Auntie Grizelda’s garden."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:56:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New law would let parents sue funnybook sellers for mentally scarring kiddees

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund raises the flag about this profoundly stupid new proposed law:

H.B. 4239, also called the "Parents' Empowerment Act," would allow the parent or guardian of a minor to sue in federal court anyone who knowingly disseminates any media containing "material that is harmful to minors" if the material is distributed in a way that "a reasonable person can expect a substantial number of minors to be exposed to the material and the minor, as a result to exposure to the material, is likely to suffer personal or emotional injury or injury to mental or moral welfare." The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Link (Thanks, Mike!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:43:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Universities banning servers, harming education

My cow-orker Jason Schulz is at the DC EDUCAUSE conference, talking about the ways that universities can use computer networks to improve or detract form the educational experience. Some of the current higher-ed thinking is abysmal:

Penn State now has an absolute ban on any student running a server in a residential dorm. Period. The only possible exception is if you swear to only use it for "educational" purposes and get written permission from a faculty member and get approval from the Vice Provost.

So this is part of Penn State's solution to copyright infringement: Take away computing tools from students. As Ed Felten pointed out in our later panel discussion, this is a very dangerous approach for educational institutions to take. Computer science students often learn best through hands-on experimentation and tinkering with technology, and as Jamie Boyle noted in his plenary talk, unplanned experimentation often bears the biggest educational fruit. To paraphrase: "How many times do we learn more from the book next to the book we originally went to find on the shelf, or from the article after the article we looked up in the journal?" Hence, restricting access to content and technology out of fear for infringment can have a very real and direct impact on the ability of students to learn. [Note: Both Yahoo! and Google began as "unauthorized" Stanford student experiments with servers -- should those had been banned as well?]

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:54:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Celebrity uglification photoshopping

Today on Worth1000's daily photoshopping contest: "detouched" celebrities with all the blemishes taken out by glossy-mag photo-editors put back in. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:51:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Troy in 15 (very funny) minutes

After the sixth hour of Troy, the new Arm Pitt Men in Skirts epic, I started to remember just how friggin' big that copy of the Iliad I had was. Big. Big, big book. Loooong movie.

So it's a good thing that this blogger has produced a Troy-in-fifteen-minutes abridgement. You know, I like it as much as the original!

AGAMEMNON: Look, there's no reason for me to slaughter thousands of your men. You pick out your best soldier, and I pick out mine.

KING OF THESSALY: Deal. [turns to his army] SOME GUYYYYY!

THESSALIAN ARMY: SOME! GUY! SOME! GUY! SOME! GUY!

Some Guy breaks through the crowd. His neck resembles an Easter ham and his spear is the size of a telephone pole.

SOME GUY: RAAAAAAAAA!

AGAMEMNON [turning to his army]: ACHILLEEEEEES!

GREEK ARMY: . . .

AGAMEMNON: . . .

Hut of Wanton Nudity, Some Village

BOY: OMG Achilles you're late you gotta get up Achilles OMG!

ACHILLES: Dude, I just nailed twins. Call me in the morning.

Link (via Electrolite)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:47:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video games make the Baby Buddha cry

The new Pratimoksha (Buddhist Monastic Code) is out, and it has lots to say about spending too much time with the Interweb and not enough with your Buddha nature:

44. A bhikshu who has his private e-mail account with the result that he spends an inordinate amount of time in making unnecessary communications or communications which foster attachment commits an offence for which he must express regret...

46. A bhikshu who plays electronic games including those on the computer, commits an offence for which he must express regret.

Link (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:10:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tongue-controlled Game-Boy

The Tongue-Boy SP is a tongue-based controller for use with the GameBoy targetted at people with quadroplegia.

The NewAbilities Systems TTK or Tongue Touch Wireless Keyboard Transmitter looks like an orthodontic retainer with nine membrane buttons

We add a new jack for the Tongue Boy SP TTK receiver input. We also add a second micro-controller computer chip inside the case to decode the TTK signals from the receiver and activate the Game Boy SP buttons.

Link (via /.)

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

Mark's Japan Journal

(I went to Tokyo for a couple of days. I'l be posting excerpts from my journal here.) It's 4am in Tokyo (noon LA time). I just went downstairs to call my wife. First, I had to get change for my 5000 Yen bill. I like the way the desk clerk spread the 1000 notes in a pretty fan shape and offered them to me on a tray. What other country gives you that kind of service?

The flight from LAX to Tokyo was 11.5 hours and uncomfortable. I can never sleep on planes. I tried to nap, but I just fidgeted.

The good news about being stuck in an aluminum tube for hours on end is that I managed to write four pieces for my upcoming book. I used a Moleskine notebook (thanks, David!) and a Pilot Gel pen, which works well with the Moleskine. I'd be interested in hearing about other pens that are good on Moleskine's paper.

I had a window seat on the plane. The 20-year-old guy next to me was really tall for a Japanese and gangly. He was a nice guy, but his elbows and knees frequently crossed the line into my side and bumped me, especially when he was playing Grand Theft Auto on his IBM ThinkPad. He slept a lot, the lucky son of a bitch. The Japanese girl sitting next to him in the aisle seat cried silently and drank cans of Miller beer. She kept her eyes closed and I saw tears falling down her cheeks.

Once we landed in Tokyo, it was smooth sailing. I hadn't checked any luggage, so I breezed through customs. Fortunately, the day before, I went on the Web to find the best way to get to the Shinagawa station from Narita airport. I used the Narita Express. You have to buy a reserved seat from a stall on the main floor before taking the escalator down to the train station under Narita. The girl working at the Narita Express counter was wearing a neat little uniform with a matching cap. She, like all the counter workers I've seen so far, was impeccably groomed, polite, and professional. It's fun to make transactions here!

At the train station, I asked a guy in a uniform to look at my ticket and tell me where to go. He said "Car two." I walked to car two sat down in my assigned seat. The train left the station. At the next stop, a guy walked on and said I was in his seat. I showed him my ticket, and he said "you are supposed to be on car seven." I looked at my ticket, and he was right. I blame it on sleep deprivation.

I got my bag from the storage area and carried it through all the cars. The smoking car was pretty rowdy, and smoke was hanging thick in the air. A middle-aged salaryman, drunk, was standing in the aisle, laughing with a seated friend. His eyeglasses were enormous, and his comb-over was a work of art. Another guy had his shoes and socks off and his feet were dangling in the aisle. I manuevered around them and got to the first class car, number six. It didn't seem much different from the other cars. Less crowded. Slightly nicer seats. You pay to keep other people away from you.

When I got to the end of the car, I couldn't open the door to car seven. I looked through the window and discovered that there wasn't any way to get to the car. I stood there for a moment, wondering what to do. I finally went back through the first class car and the smoking car and sat in an unoccupied 2nd class non-smoking seat. When the conductor came through the car and checked my ticket, he didn't say anything about me being in the wrong seat.

My hotel was right across the street from the station, a nice surprise. The room is tiny. Six feet wide and about 15 feet long. The bathroom is molded from one piece of plastic. There's a tiny desk, a chair, a bed, and a TV. I like it, but it smells like stale cigarettes.

I went to sleep close to 4am Pacific time (8 pm in Tokyo), and woke up at around 10:30 am Pacific (2:30 am in Tokyo). I think I'll try to sleep a little more.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:53:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PlaNetwork Conference, June 5-6 in San Francisco

Axil Comras of Green Home points us to PlaNetwork, a conference June 5-6 in San Francisco on technology and social change. Presenters from MoveOn, the Dean Campaign, LinkedIn, and dozens of other outfits will discuss timely topics like e-voting, social networking, and grassroots digital activism. At $100 per day, it's not cheap. However, if you get three other people to list you as the referral when they pay, you get in free. So do a bit of pre-planning with three friends and all four of you can cut 25 percent off the admission cost! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:27:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DMCA on (public) trial May 21 in LA

On Copyfight, Donna writes,

This just in: the California Institute of Technology and Loyola Law School are presenting a mock trial this Friday, May 21st, to play out a scenario in which a student creates a distributed computing application to crack DRM systems, leading to the criminal prosecution of everyone involved under the DMCA.

The trial will have many realistic touches: a real federal judge will hear the case, the prosecution will be advised by real federal prosecutors, and the defense by EFF 's Fred von Lohmann. Brad Hunt of the MPAA will provide expert testimony for the prosecution, while EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen will provide testimony for the defense.

Even cooler: the event is free and open to the public. If you're in the Los Angeles area and can get away from work or study mid-day, stop by and check it out.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:24:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fantastico 1920s Spanish stapler and pencil-sharpener

El Casco is a Spanish company that has been supplying desk-accessories and office products to the Spanish rail company since the 1920s. They have a line of premium reproductions of 1920s-era office tools, including a heart-stoppingly lovely stapler and pencil-sharpener (the pencil sharpener has a little window so you can peer into its guts and watch your pencil transformed). Link

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

Children of etoy

etoy, the infamous tech-prankster art collective, is after our kids!

"etoy.CORPORATION's education & training services are preparing for a major upgrade of its social division. 8 etoy.AGENTS in close collaboration with local experts will convert 500 individuals (max.age: 10 years), providing them with an entry point into art production, identity design and electronic authorship.

The etoy.DAY-CARE education program equips etoy.JUNIOR-AGENTS with the tools necessary to out-produce today's most relevant social and technological problems. etoy researches identity issues, group behavior patterns and the creativity potential of children in digital environments.

Each little test pilot will be outfitted with a protection suit, various etoy.TOOLS, its own identity tag (an individual encrypted 2D-barcode) and a customized etoy.DATA-TANK online to grow a subversive identity-extension and a long term relationship with etoy.CORPORATION.

Care personnel and in-house software agents will actively monitor the condition of each child and will stay in close contact with parents and human rights organizations.

etoy.SHAREHOLDERS and an international audience can follow the operations. Invest in the code of tomorrow!" Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:56:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giving the finger to an animal

A man got too close to a jaguar at the Rio Grande Zoo and lost a finger. Before zoo employees realized what had happened, the guy fled the scene. Apparently, it's illegal to pet the predator. After the finger was found outside the jaguar's cage, police took a print from the detached digit and tracked the guy down through his zoo pass. Sadly, the frequent visitor who came to the zoo almost daily is now banned. I bet the jaguar will miss him. "They're not your friends, they're not your pets," the zoo director said. "They're wild animals." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:59:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guatemala -- Xeni's snapshots

I've uploaded some of the snapshots I took during a recent trip through indigenous communities in Guatemala. Here they are, come have a look.
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:39:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unwiring an apartment complex

Fun online piece about setting up free wireless broadband access for a small apartment complex -- and how the unwiring paid for itself by helping fill empty units. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:24:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Heisenberg's waterfowl: tagged penguins breed less

Tagging a penguin's wing with a research tag changes their drag coefficient, resulting in altered social behaviour, most notably less success in breeding.

As well as hindering conservation efforts, the penguins' poor breeding success may also mean that birds tagged in previous experiments have yielded misleading scientific data.

"We may have to reconsider our present knowledge on the life-history traits of penguins, such as breeding success and chick survival, which over the years has been drawn almost entirely from flipper-banded birds," warn Gauthier-Clerc and his colleagues in their paper in Biology Letters.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:36:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Low-carb blog

CarbWire is a great new low-carb blog. Link (via Dan Gillmor)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:51:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unitarianism: good enough for two presidents, not good enough for Texas

The state of Texas has denied Unitarians tax-exempt religious status because the church "does not have one system of belief." As Julia notes, Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams were sufficiently convinced of the Unitarians' religiosity that they actually were Unitarians.

Never before -- not in this state or any other -- has a government agency denied Unitarians tax-exempt status because of the group's religious philosophy, church officials say. Strayhorn's ruling clearly infringes upon religious liberties, said Dan Althoff, board president for the Denison congregation that was rejected for tax exemption by the comptroller's office.

Link (via Electrolite)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:50:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO: strip access-control from iTunes music

Today on Engadget: a HOWTO for using the open-source hymn utility to strip the access-controls out of iTunes Music Store tracks so that you can play them on devices that Apple hasn't approved. Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:46:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fix for critical MacOS X vulnerability

If you use an OS 10.3 Mac with Safari or MSIE, you absolutely must follow the instructions in this post to block a really serious attack that Apple hasn't patched (though they've reportedly known about this since February). Alternatively, you could always run Mozilla or one of its variants -- a free, open source browser in which vulnerabilities are corrected as soon as they're discovered (not when Apple decides to get around to it). I stand corrected -- this effects Mozilla, too. Link (via Electrolite)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:39:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spoony photoshoppery

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: creative use of spoons. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:35:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Please Don't Go Topless, Mother" singer Troy Hess found!

The mystery of the boy voice behind cult antiporn anthem "Please Don't go Topless, Mother" has been solved. Troy Hess has a web page. Link, and link to previous BoingBoing post which includes MP3 file link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:28:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SMSes recovered from SIM in murder trial

A Swedish cult-leader implicated in serial murders is in trouble because of the damning, deleted SMSes recovered off his mobile-phone's SIM.

The case has been creating headlines for months in the Scandinavian media and the latest thrilling development is that computer forensic company Ibas has been able to recover 13 of the messages from the SIM card in the nanny's mobile. Here's a quick translation of some of the messages from the minister (just like the Bible they can be interpreted in any old way):

* 5 December 2003 04:53. You need to make a decision and not wither. Find a safe solution. You prove your love by liberating him. His limit is soon reached.

* New Years Eve 2003 15:21. It's not your fault, there is still time. For his sake and because of his message to you it will not be too late. Finish it now!

Link (Thanks, Halvard!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:24:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi provider Cometa is kaput, but the sky is not falling

Glenn Fleishman says, "Cometa shuts down. This doesn't show the model of for-fee Wi-Fi is broken, but rather that a company with hype and high expectations can fail to execute and then shut down." Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:21:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hands-free panda

This hands-free panda is only $19 -- Jed sez, "It's a stuffed panda; when you attach your cell phone to it, it moves its mouth and head in sync with the voice of the person you're talking to." Link (Thanks, Jed!) UPDATE: The Panda and other "Talking Toonies" are now exclusively available here.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:20:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jack in the Box yuppified is JBX

San Diego-based blogger Joe Crawford brings news of "JBX," a new experiment by San Diego-based fast food giant Jack in the Box.

[N]ot exactly fast food. The look of the stores is quite different -- Chipotle meets Starbucks, but they still have the classic tacos. There are two of these stores in San Diego - pilot stores. They're like concept cars, but restaurants.

Non sequitur: One of my first geek jobs was working in a sweatshop full of nerds an Internet Professional Services Firm in San Diego. One of my first big client meetings there was a bid for a redesign of the Jack in the Box website, which had only just launched the year prior. This was, like, the paleolithic era of the Interweb. Anyway, in the pitch meeting, one of my co-workers -- a webmonkey who really wanted to be an ad man -- said to the Jack in the Box execs, "Come on, nobody actually comes to your restaurant because the food tastes any good -- we're selling IMMERSIVE USER EXPERIENCE here, not flavor." We lost the bid.
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:19:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google's spyware best-principles proposal

Google has posted a list of proposed best-practices for Internet software, such as toolbars, which aims at separating spyware from other apps. One of the big problems with the spyware fight is that the legal theories employed (as in the lawsuits against Gator) often have the potential to break the Internet in important ways. For example, the plaintiffs in Gator say that Gator violates their copyright in their webpages by putting new windows onscreen when they're loaded with competitors' info (i.e., you load up www.deliveryservice1.com and a window pops up for deliveryservice2.com). If a court agrees with this theory, it means that the org responsible for the contents of the foremost window in your browser get to control all the other windows on your screen -- that you violate their copyright if you install, say, a price-comparator that loads Amazon's comparable sell-pages when you bring up a bn.com page so that you can check who's cheapest.

Google's principles seem, to me, to be much more thoughtful and respectful of the Internet and its users. They revolve around key notions in consumer protection: clarity, honesty, and easy opt-out. Not committing fraud, IOW.

Applications that affect or change your user experience should make clear they are the reason for those changes. For example, if an application opens a window, that window should identify the application responsible for it. Applications should not intentionally obscure themselves under multiple or confusing names. You should be given means to control the application in a straightforward manner, such as by clicking on visible elements generated by the application. If an application shows you ads, it should clearly mark them as advertising and inform you that they originate from that application. If an application makes a change designed to affect the user experience of other applications (such as setting your home page) then those changes should be made clear to you.

Link (Thanks, David!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:18:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Duct-tape messenger bag II

Gregr sends us this pointer to his deluxe, two-tone duct-tape messenger bag, with a cellphone pocket and everything -- wish he'd posted build-notes! Link (Thanks, Gregr!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:09:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

78s as CDs

72s2CD.com is an online retailer that sells public-domain 78RPM albums (lots of Gilbert and Sullivan and Alma Gluck!) that have been converted to audio CDs. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:45:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bad writerly advice

Teresa Nielsen Hayden -- a swell writer and respected editor -- may not have invented the genre in which clueless advice to new writers is mercilessly dissected, but she certainly perfected it. Today. Teresa shreds a really stunningly gormless "cover-letter advice" page:

Tip Eight: Call. That's right, Call. Introduce yourself. Be confident. Let them know your work is coming. It's the surest way to get out of that slush pile and on to a desk. Too afraid to call? Write out what you want to say, call AFTER HOURS, leave a voice message. It's not as good talking to a real person, but hey, it's better than nothing.

The surest way? Say what? Calling in advance is an irritating waste of the editorial department's time, and will do nothing to get you out of a trade publishing slushpile. Leaving a message after hours is even more clueless. I can't imagine where he got this idea, unless he's been taking advice from someone who's secretly out to get him.

There is one significant effect this might have. Because you've phoned to say something about a submission, someone may write down your name and the title of your book, and pass the note on to the slush readers. They'll be puzzled--why did you say you were phoning again?--and will stick the note up on their bulletin board. When your manuscript crosses their desk, they may remember that there was something-or-other they were supposed to remember or do about it, and will set your manuscript on the "inscrutable problems" stack for later diagnosis. Some slow afternoon--of which there aren't many--they'll have a go at the "inscrutable problems" stack, and will look at your manuscript again. They won't be able to tell what the problem was. They'll set the manuscript aside for later. After several cycles, they'll either figure that any manuscript that's been around this long should be returned to its author on general principles, or they'll move on to another job and the new slush reader will run your manuscript through several more "inscrutable problems" cycles before returning it to you on general principles.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:36:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anarchist in the Library: deliberation should shape the future

I've just finished reading Siva Vaidhyanathan's excellent new book The Anarchist in the Library, a discourse on the real culture war: the fight between open systems for exchanging knowledge and closed systems that see knowledge as a marketable commodity. The best part of this book is that it repudiates technology as a tool for making policy, calling for deliberation instead: in other words, copyright strictures should be created by courts and lawmakers, not DRM.

Both visions of the perfect library -- utopian [all knowledge available for free, organized by volunteers] and dystopian [child-porn, spoilers and amateurish information supplanting high-quality research] -- are overstated. We are not close to constructing the perfect library, but we can imagine how it might look and act. Many of our communal efforts since the early 1990s seem to be moving our information ecosystem toward that vision. Yet long before we ge there, many are sounding alarms about the ways people might abuse their freedoms to use and move information. Even though the perfect library is not imminent, many are acting as if it is. The strong reactions of those who would squelch these freedoms might render our information systems unable to perform the positive functions of the perfect library because of the unexamined -- often merely assumed -- threats to the status quo. The closer we get to the perfect library the more the oligarchs undermine it.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:09:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LotR movies remixed as trenchant Russian political satire

Dmitri Puchkov is a Russian ex-cop who goes by the alias Goblin. "Goblin" is his nom-de-edit when he's remixing Lord of the Rings, dubbing in Russian dialogue to lampoon cops, oligarchs, and gangsters. He's working on a re-cut of Star Wars now. (This is old news, but I only just read about it)

Frodo Baggins is renamed Frodo Sumkin (a derivative from the Russian word sumka, or bag). The Ranger, Aragorn, is called Agronom (Russian for farm worker). Legolas is renamed Logovaz, after a Russian car company famed for its Ladas. Boromir becomes Baralgin, after a Russian type of paracetemol.

Gandalf spends much of the film trying to impress others with his in-depth knowledge of Karl Marx, and Frodo is cursed with the filthy tongue of a Russian criminal.

The films - which Puchkov says were originally made for his close friends but have now gone out on the internet - have found cult appeal in Russia's crowded pirate market, where a pirated, high-quality DVD in both Russian and English costs £5. That is all ordinary Russians, who earn only $300 a month in Moscow, can afford. The Russian pirate industry is worth $311 million, and has grown by 25 per cent since last year, pirates making more than 40 million disks a year.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:00:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Schwarzenegger tosses dignity, sues dollie maker

Governor Schwarzenegger has made good on his threat to sue a bobble-head-doll maker for putting his pardoical likeness on a bobble-head doll. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:55:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Duct-tape messenger bag

This duct-tape messenger bag is totally rad. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:54:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lego-like cosmetics packaging

Jouer is a new line of cosmetics that comes in Lego-like stacking containers:

The products -- lip glosses, blushes and concealers -- come in trim compacts ($18 each at Sephora stores) that can be attached to one another, Lego-style, in any configuration.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:52:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

First-person account of Mass. gay marriage

Here's a first-person account of Brian's marriage under Massachusetts's new gay-marriage law.

Suddenly a roar erupted all around us. Things began to move more slowly. I grabbed Aaron's hand tighter and started running forward up the steps. Everything was a blur. I lost his grip briefly as he stopped close to the entrance to accept a rose from someone in the crowd. I paused at the top of the steps, and turned to wait for him.

I've been in front of some large, happy, and cheering crowds before, but only on a stage -- never with a throng pressing in from all sides, with clapping hands outstretched, cameras flashing, and a deafening roar.

I stood there facing the crowd as Aaron walked towards me with a sparkle-encrusted yellow rose and a huge grin on his face. As he reached me, I put my hand around his waist and waved to the crowd. I tried to look at all the people, but my eyes couldn't focus.

We turned and walked into City Hall. My head spun. The lights seemed blinding after coming in from the street. A man in a tuxedo sat at a table and said something like "What are your intentions", through it was probably more like "Are you here to declare your intentions?" A reporter stood behind him pointing a microphone connected to a minidisc recorder at us. People and press thronged around.

I looked at Aaron. He shrugged.

"Um, we're here for a marriage license...?" I said.

Link (Thanks, Brian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:51:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open WiFi for plausible deniability

Micah Joel is running an open WiFi network in order to give himself plausible deniability for bad acts that can be traced to his IP address:

I've already composed my reply in case I receive one of these letters someday. "Dear Comcast, I am so sorry. I had no idea that copyrighted works were being downloaded via my IP address; I have a wireless router at home and it's possible that someone may have been using my connection at the time. I will do my best to secure this notoriously vulnerable technology, but I can make no guarantee that hackers will not exploit my network in the future."

If it ever comes down to a lawsuit, who can be certain that I was the offender? And can the victim of hacking be held responsible for the hacker's crimes? If that were the case, we'd all be liable for the Blaster worm's denial of service attacks against Microsoft last year.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:48:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PayPal disgraces itself, cuts off FreeNet

PayPal has frozen the account used to collection donation for FreeNet (a censorship-busting technology used by world dissidents to anonymously publish without risking government retribution). Shame on them.

Paypal has frozen the account we use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than "use of an anonymous proxy", which suggests that someone at Paypal took a dislike to the goals of our project, since I have never used an anonymous proxy to access Paypal (this being the activity I assume they sought to prevent). It is fortunate that Johann Gutenberg did not rely on Paypal to fund his work on the printing press, which also allowed anonymous publication of information, since his account would probably have been frozen too.

If you are concerned about whether your account might be at risk due to your political opinions you may wish to speak to their PR contact Hani Durzy at (408) 376 7458. If you are an investor and you would like to see what other political opinions Paypal doesn't like, you may want to speak to their Investor contact Tracey Ford at (408) 376 7205.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:46:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photoshopped chimeras

On today's Worth1000 photoshopping contest: create a chimera consiting of the combined body-parts of three or four animals. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:09:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NextFest snapshot gallery

Here are some snapshots I took at Wired Magazine's NextFest this weekend. At left, a young man named Cameron Clapp who became a triple amputee at age 15 in a train accident. He now uses "smart" prosthetic limbs that have to be charged up at night like a cell phone. The computer-aided devices give him greater mobility and independence than conventional prosthetics -- he's a champion amputee athlete.

Other memorable moments -- Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson asks NASA Space Architect Gary Martin about the search for life "out there;" Martin says, "It would be even more frightening if we never find life out there -- it would mean that we are entirely alone, in a very big universe."

Andrew Stanton from Pixar pulled aside the curtain to give us a glimpse into the creative process behind Toy Story and other blockbuster CGI features. Wired entertainment editor Jennifer Hillner hosted exclusive previews of mindblowingly cool footage from the forthcoming Fox/Blue Sky Studios animated feature Robots (due out Spring 2005), and from the CGI/bluescreen project Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (opening this September). Sunday ended in an incredible roundtable discussion with space entrepreneurs including ID/Quake/Doom software wizard John Carmack; Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson, Xcor CEO Jeff Greason, and Xprize founder Peter Diamandis. News there included never-before-seen footage of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, and of a new R+D effort from Carmack.
Link to Xeni's gallery of NextFest snapshots.

Update: Looks like John Dvorak had a good time, too: Link to PC Magazine article, and Dvorak's snapshot gallery. Extreme Tech also covered the event; story and two photo galleries are online here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:11:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Databases a cure for porn biz HIV crisis?

Dan Gillmor blogs today:

You've probably read about the HIV scare in the porn business. The San Francisco Chronicle suggests that the adult-entertainment industry look to lessons learned in San Francisco during the 1980s. And an industry-news site (note: this site may not be work-safe) takes an even sterner approach, urging a massive database tracking just about everything an individual actor may have done.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:11:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dunny toy-art show in NYC gallery

"Dunny" is a 20-inch tall vinyl action figure designed to be customized by diverse artists working in different mediums. A show of "Dunny"-derivative art opens this week in NYC.

Among the artists and designers who will personalize a Dunny for the exhibition are world-famous graffiti artists Doze Green,Tilt and Fafi, and Seen; renowned toy designers Jason Siu and Pete Fowler; illustrators including Disney's "Teacher's Pet" creator Gary Baseman; graphic artists including The Designers Republic; fashion designers Diane von Furstenberg,and Heatherette, and a number of fine artists, including Alexis Rockman and Jessica Stockholder. Design studio participants include artists from PDI/Dreamworks Animation Studios and Steuben Crystal. And many more."

Link (Thanks, CC)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:10:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New TiVo jargon

Boingboing pal sean bonner points us to some emerging words to describe PVR-related activities.

# Passkilling is when someone cancels a Tivo request to change channels and record a Season Pass show.
# A Passkiller is someone who cancels an in-progress Season Pass recording or cancels a channel change request.

link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:09:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lift off!

Congratulations to the Civilian Space eXploratiion Team, whose amateur rocket was the first of its kind to make it into space! The seven meter tall rocket, GoFast, reached an altitude of 100 kilometers yesterday, the "official edge of space," according to New Scientist magazine. GoFast transmitted its position and altitude data from high above the Nevada desert back to Earth via ham radio.

"The Civilian Space eXploration Team (CSXT) is an all-civilian team comprised of about 30 amateur rocketeers from all walks of life -- from a retired Hollywood stunt man, to teachers, scientists, inventors, television engineers, ham radio enthusiasts, students, and -- yes -- even honest-to-goodness rocket scientists. Their common bonds: a love of rocketry and an unyielding desire to succeed even against the toughest odds and the greatest skeptics."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:03:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How's the air up there?

According to this Reuters report, the travel industry is beginning to ease the trials of traveling when you're tall. For instance, the Hotel Monaco Group offers "tall guestrooms" with higher ceilings, longer beds, and raised showerheads. The "NBA Suites" in the Palms Casino in Las Vegas were also designed with verticality in mind. At 6'2", I don't bang my head on doorframes, but I am cramped as hell in most airlines' coach cabins. Of course, I'm certainly not the only one, or the tallest one for that matter. Apparently, there are now 8.8 million men over 6'2" and 5.5 million women over 5'9" in the US. Now, those rising numbers have their own magazine: TALL, "a lifestyle magazine for a heightened culture." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:35:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 17, 2004

I, T-shirt: wearable movie trailers at NextFest

In The Hollywood Reporter today, an item about t-shirts that display movie trailers -- as seen at both E3 and NextFest last week.

Coming soon to a T-shirt near you: trailers for "I, Robot," starring Will Smith. In the never-ending search to capture the attention of consumers bombarded by commercials, billboards and a massive array of other advertisements, 20th Century Fox debuted an innovative new guerilla marketing tactic at E3 last week -- T-shirts embedded with video screens that played "I, Robot" trailers.

The two women who wore the video T-shirts as they walked around E3 drew crowds and TV news crews on hand to cover the gaming conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center. 20th Century Fox is the first studio -- or business of any kind -- to use the video T-shirt marketing tactic developed by San Francisco-based Brand Marketers.

Link (Thanks, Jeff; photo by Kurt Rogers of the SF Chronicle, Link to SF Chron story)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:50:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to Promote a Game With Flare

I filed this story/photos for Wired News about an unusual publicity stunt staged by the US Army at last week's E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles.

On a sweltering afternoon, the line between video games and reality was temporarily erased at the Los Angeles Convention Center. For about 45 minutes, one downtown street was transformed into a scene from a military first-person shooter game -- complete with helicopters, machine guns and face-painted soldiers leaping off tall buildings, while the jaws of shocked onlookers dropped.

To promote America's Army: Overmatch, a free game created by the Army as a recruitment tool, a group of Army Special Forces personnel staged an urban tactical assault exercise outside the L.A. convention center where the E3 gaming expo was taking place. It may have been a staged promotional event, but judging from the panicked expressions on pedestrian faces, some may have thought it was the real thing.

In Hollywood terms, the effect was Black Hawk Down, directed by Fellini. Unsuspecting local workers clutched lunches and scurried off for cover. Bullhorns blared the voice of an America's Army spokesman who delivered a play-by-play, encouraging attendees to download the free online game for more hot combat excitement. A charging soldier affixed a mobile camera to his helmet to record home videos of the stunt for his family. One trade show attendee who appeared to be of Arab descent walked toward the convention center doors, halted at the spectacle, and said to no one in particular, "It's all brainwashing."

Link to story, and links to more E3 snapshots from Xeni: one, two

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:55:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Build your own X-Prize Rocket!

BoingBoing reader Stefan Jones says,

Model rocket supplier Estes Industries got hammered by the failure of a line of licensed "The Phantom Menace" models. They're starting to appeal to those of us who geek out on real-life rockets again, with eight models based on entries in the X-Prize suborbital rocket competition. The variety of approaches is astonishing. The second page has a mystery model that's obviously Rutan's Spaceship One. I guess some people charge more for licensing than others . . . And -- whoo! -- they're selling a video camera rocket to replace the 8mm Cineroc movie camera that was last offered thirty years ago.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:44:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Retired Congresscritter on home-taping

Retired Congressman Al Smith testified on the DMCRA, Rep Boucher's bill to reform copyright. Smith's been home-taping for 54 years, and he knows what's what:

When I buy a CD or a DVD, that content should be wholly mine to do with as I please as long as I am in no way selling its contents or profiting from it. ... Present law is predicated on the assumption that consumers will rip-off copyright holders. The vast majority are innocent of that assumption, but all are treated as guilty.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:26:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired NextFest: decompression

So, I spent a fair amount of my waking hours in recent months programming the Main Stage portion of NextFest, the Wired Magazine event sponsored by GE that took place at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center this weekend. I took lots of snapshots, and I'm eager to share them -- along with some of what I observed at the event. But right now, I'm still peeling my brain off the floor. I'm exhausted. More soon, but for now this quick snapshot that kind of sums it all up for me. Seeing so many families and children experiencing technology first-hand with this look of sheer amazement and delight on their faces made all the work feel worthwhile.
Link to some news clips on NextFest.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:18:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lenny, Squiggy of "Laverne and Shirley" face off as penguins in Nickelodeon cartoon "Oswald"

BoingBoing pal Mike Outmesguine (who you may have spotted on CNN this weekend talking about why it would be A Bad Thing for the federal government to have the power to jam your cellphone in the name of counter-terrorism) says:

David Landers plays the voice of Henry the penguin on the kid show "Oswald" (Oswald the octopus is voiced by Fred Savage) playing on Nickelodeon. I sometimes watch it with my 3 year-old. One episode had Henry's cousin come in from out of town. His cousin was voiced by Michael McKean (who played Lenny.) I can't tell you how funny it was to hear Lenny and Squiggy pestering eachother in a children's show - while appearing as penguins!

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:04:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Snack Zen

ice cream | bento | biscuit of the week | biscuithenge | mango biscuits | donuts | marshmallows | bad candy | name that candy bar | rude food | pork faggots | cooking with crisps | cheese doodles | and the classic: twinkies project
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:56:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WIRED NextFest -- EFF's Jason Schultz photoblog coverage

Jason Schultz of the EFF attended NextFest this weekend, and photoblogged these observations.
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:49:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hourly shots of coffee beat a cup

Tossing back two shots of coffee each hour may provide more sustainable stimulation than gulping down a large cup in the morning, scientists from Rush University Medical Center report in the journal Sleep. In the study, sixteen men stayed in windowless rooms for nearly a month while the researchers screwed with their circadian rhythms. From a Scientific American article about the findings:

"In the new study, the scientists... tested the effects of administering an hourly, low dose of caffeine equivalent to about two ounces of coffee to one group, while the second group received a placebo. The caffeinated men performed better on cognitive tests than the control individuals did, and dozed off less often. And though they received the same cumulative dose as subjects in previous, single-dose studies, taking many small doses minimized some of the negative side effects that caffeine can have, such as tremors." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:30:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Design evolution of the vice-card

Vice-cards are the glossy cards advertising prostitutes' services that are placed in phone booths all over London. The tradition goes back decades, and a Graphic Communications conference recently heard this paper on the design evolution of the vice-card.

As more girls advertised their services the cards became larger - A7 or less frequently one third of A5 - and more distinctive. Girls developed their own recognisable style. Specialised services were offered and a visual and written vocabulary began to evolve to reflect each specialism. Cards offering schoolgirl services or Le Vice Anglais had a Victorian feel and accordingly used nineteenth-century typefaces; domination cards used stern words set in Gothic letters; cards proffering massage needed a luxurious and whimsical script.

These mid-period cards were predominantly typographic and were supported by roughly drawn, but often delightful, line illustrations. They managed to maintain both a sense of mystery and a sense of humour. Eventually the ISO standards made themselves felt even in the vice industry, and by January 1994 nearly all the cards had been enlarged to A6 postcard size. Four-colour started to be seen on the cards during the summer of 1997, and by the summer of 1998, four-colour, and ‘proper' typesetting was the norm.

Today's cards depend upon full-page, sometimes explicit, glossy, photographic images to put across their sales pitch. The images are downloaded from the Internet and are never of the person offering the services, although they are often advertised as ‘genuine'! The charm and allure apparent in the early cards has gone from the modern cards, individuality and originality has been lost...

The cards are placed in the boxes on behalf of the girls by people known as ‘carders' who are frequently students or unemployed. It is a highly lucrative trade and the carders can earn an average of £30 for 100 or £200 per day for between 600 and 700 cards placed. The girls pay for the carders out of their own wages, and with thirteen million of them placed annually, the wages of sin are in the region of £4 million.

Link (via Foe Romeo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:07:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sleeping through bad smells

Humans have an incredibly acute sense of smell, but a new study shows that our perception of odors is dramatically reduced when we're snoozing. Researchers at Brown University published a paper in the journal Sleep showing that individuals slept right through the introduction of intense scents indicative of fires. A moderately loud sound woke people right away though.

“As the saying goes,” said the paper’s co-author Mary A. Carskadon, “we ‘wake up and smell the coffee,’ not the other way around.”

Still, I wonder if this is because we're trained from a young age to respond to buzzing, radio-blaring alarms. It would be fun to have an alarm clock that at a pre-set hour spewed a refreshing blast of peppermint! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:05:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Decapitation video discrepancies

I don't know what to make of this. It's a very well-researched, non-hysterical collection of 50 seeming contradictions in the Berg decapitation video. The author states that a number of these will likely be explained away, but taken as a whole, this very convincingly implies that Berg was not killed by the terrorists that the CIA fingered, and may, in fact, have been killed by westerners.

34) "Terrorists" were fat
Several of the men in the film were fat by Iraqi standards. If they were Feyadeen or Mujahadeen, they probably have been living underground since the first days of the occupation. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been shown on news stories as they have marched and demonstrated. One would be hard pressed to point out a single fat man among these thousands.

35) White hands of "terrorists"
Some of the "Arab terrorists" have pasty-white hands and (other exposed) skin. One would be hard pressed to find Arab men with pasty-white hands. (See: Nick Berg Conspiracy Theories Abound.)

36) Wrong accent
Al-Zarqawi is/was Jordinian. Arab linguists have said the man posing as Al-Zarqawi did not speak with a Jordanian dialect. Others have suggested the man reading the written statement may not have been a native speaker of Arabic....

39) Al-Zarqawi's missing leg
Al-Zarqawi was missing one leg. Al-Zarqawi allegedly wears a prosthetic device, according to previous CIA reports. (See: IHT Protrait of Al-Zarqawi.) There is no evidence that the killer wore a prosthetic device. Further, Al-Zarqawi had been outfitted with an artificial leg that did not fit or function properly. He was unable to walk or stand normally. No man in the group showed evidence of such infirmity.

40) Missing tattoos?
Large green tattooed "dots" are known to be on the back of Abu Musab Zarqawi's left hand. These tattoos cannot be seen in the close up video of the execution, though the back of his hand is fairly visible. (See: IHT Protrait of Al-Zarqawi.)

Link (via Nelson)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:00:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Absolutely Pre-Fabulous

My friend Guy is considering the purchase of a stylish prefab home. He pointed me to FabPreFab, a mind-blowing clearinghouse of prefab dwelling design.

"Predominant mass-market housing programs such as project homes or tract housing largely fail to meet the desires of people who appreciate a modernist design aesthetic. Custom-designed modernist architecture is beyond the financial reach of many people and so prefab is viewed as a design and production ideology that has the potential to deliver affordable modernism."

Some of these abodes can be ordered online and delivered on several trucks. Others are airlifted onto rooftops. Don't miss the transformed shipping containers either! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:39:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Powell forces press aide to let him answer Meet the Press question

Colin Powell appeared on Meet the Press this weekend, and his appearance was marred by his press secretary moving the camera and attempting to end the interview early when Russert, the interviewer, started to ask a hardball question about the fictional Nigerien yellow-cake uranium that Powell used as an excuse to go to war in Iraq.

Most noteworthy about this event was that Powell, rebuked the press-secretary on air, demanded that the camera be trained on him again, and then answered the question, describing the intelligence he'd received as "deliberately misleading."

Lisa Rein's got the video up -- highly recommended.

EMILY MILLER, STATE DEPARTMENT PRESS AIDE: You're off.

SECRETARY POWELL: I am not off.

EMILY MILLER, PRESS AIDE: No. They can't use it, they're editing it.

SECRETARY POWELL: He's still asking the questions.

EMILY MILLER, PRESS AIDE: He was not ...

SECRETARY POWELL: Tim, I am sorry I lost you.

MR. RUSSERT: I am right here Mr. Secretary. I would hope they would put you back on camera. I don't know who did that.

EMILY MILLER, PRESS AIDE: He was going to go for another five minutes.

SECRETARY POWELL: We've really scre...

MR. RUSSERT: I think that was one of your staff Mr. Secretary. I don't think that's appropriate.

SECRETARY POWELL: Emily, get out of the way. Bring the camera back please. (Camera returns to the interview subject) I think we're back on Tim, go ahead with your last question.

Link Mirrors here

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:04:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Celebrity faces as used-gum targets

Gum-posters featuring celebrity faces are appearing in London, and locals are encouraged to dispose of their wads by sticking them up, rather than dropping them underfoot.

Londoners are being urged to stick their chewing gum on celebrity posters rather than dropping it on the streets.

Ealing Council hopes posters featuring Shane Richie, Jordan and Peter Andre among others will prove a more tempting target in Acton, west London.

Posters have removable sheets which will be changed six days a week to stop the gum building up...

It is estimated that UK local authorities spend £150m a year tackling the problem.

Link (via Ben Hammersley)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:57:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, May 16, 2004

Advice to newlyweds

John Scalzi, a very talented humour writer and novelist (I like to think of him as the "edgy Dave Barry"), has written a bunch of notes for the newly married gays and lesbians of Massachusetts:

It's your best man's (or the equivalent's) job to remind people that at a wedding reception, as at the Academy Awards, speeches are best very short. You didn't spend an obscene amount on the catering just to have it grow cold as Uncle Jim blathers on.

Remind the DJ or band that they work for you, and they'll damn well play anything you want. For some reason I think this may be less of a problem at gay weddings. Thank God.

There will be drama of some sort at the reception. If the wedding party lets any of it reach the newlyweds, they haven't done their job.

Don't fill up on bread. You'll have to dance later.

Link (via Electrolite)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:43:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eye-contact-sensing goggles

Connor Dickie, a student at Queen's University's Human Media Lab, has developed these video-shooting glasses with an eye-contact sensor, and a companion app called eyeBlog that allows the wearer to videoblog her/his PoV. Link (Thanks, Connor!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Squiggy is now a Mariners scout

David Lander, who played Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley, is now a talent-scout for the Seattle Mariners. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:04:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Social engineering a shop out of $4K worth of computers

Excellent first-person account of a security consultant who entered a store (at management's request) and conned the staff into helping him boost nearly $4,000 worth of computers and walk out the front door with it all.

I was trying to find some paperwork that I could carry into the warehouse to use as 'official company documents'. I hit the jackpot when I opened the breakroom door when I noticed that the store had a seperate room for smokers as well, so I decided that I had worked hard enough so far and I deserved a break. After a refreshing dose of a nicotine inhaler I was back on the job. A quick survey of the non-smoking break room turned up a printout of employees who were scheduled to work that day.

Link (via /.)

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

Klingon language workshop at Cannes

"Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water," is a documentary on Klingon-speakers debuting in Cannes. In conjunction with the release, the Klingon Language Institute is holding a workshop/confernece at Cannes for interested parties.

KLI members featured in the film include Dr d'Armond Speers, a linguist who spoke only in Klingon to his son until age three and a half, and Rich Yampbell, composer of Klingon national anthem taHaj wo.

Link (via Ambiguous)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:49:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PATRIOT in bite-sized chunks

I'm giving a talk in Barcelona on Wednesday about the USA PATRIOT Act, and so I've been boning up on EFF's analysis of this sweeping, unconstitutional law. Of particular help has been the clause-by-clause analyses that our staff attorney Kevin Bankston's been writing for EFFector, EFF's weekly newsletter. If you ever wondered what the big deal was about PATRIOT, Kevin's blurbs will explain it all -- in bite-sized, layperson-friendly chunks.

Apologists justified the broad, civil-liberties corroding powers granted to the government under the USA PATRIOT Act by arguing that they would be used to put terrorists behind bars. Yet several provisions can be used against Americans in a wide range of investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism. Others are too vague, jeopardizing legitimate activities protected under the First Amendment. Worse, the Department of Justice has worked to expand and/or make permanent a number of these provisions -- despite the fact that they were sold to the public as "temporary" measures and are scheduled to expire, or "sunset," in December of 2005.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:45:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tornado sucks up entire house

This is a stormchaser video that shows a Kansas tornado sucking up an entire house, smashing it to flinders as it goes. 26.6MB MPG Link (Thanks, Retank!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:52:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Mayor dispatches cops to bust blogger-critic

Loic sez,

Christophe does not like the way the city mayor manages the city, spends the public money and says it on his blog, every day. He has been very successful doing that, with hundreds of inhabitants of Puteaux reading and commenting his blog everyday and many national newspapers that talked about his blog.

Christophe criticizes the city management so much that they have tried to stop him for months, the city mayor has even sent him threats over the phone that he recorded and blogged, of course.

Today, he has been stopped in the street by the Police Municipale (the local French Police) who tried to arrest him for his blogging. Fortunately for Christophe, the National Police arrived immediately as they found what was happening weird, and let him go.

Link (Thanks, Loic!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:26:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sinner, you better get ready

Rolling Stone magazine called the Goodbye, Babylon box set, "the greatest anthology of antique Southern sacred song and oratory ever assembled. Packaged like a pioneer-family heirloom -- in a cedar case with a nineteenth-century etching of the Tower of Babel on the lid -- Goodbye, Babylon is six CDs of blues hymns, hillbilly hosannas, choral thunder and hellfire sermons from the 78-rpm era." Boing Boing reader Marc Garrett points us to a short interview he conducted with Lance Ledbetter, compiler of this holy treasure. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:44:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Read this and understand the P2P wars

Timothy Wu is a law prof at the University of Virginia, and a very clever copyright reformer to boot. When Timothy and I last met, he was called Timmy, and we were both students at ALP, the hippie alternative school in Toronto that we both attended until grade eight. One of the weirdest coincidences in my life to date is that two alumni of a tiny school in Toronto would both end up moving to the US to pursue something as obscure as copyright reform.

Back to Tim(my)! His latest paper, "Copyright's Communications Policy," has me absolutely floored. Tim traces the history of copyright law, the way that we've spent a century undergoing a once-a-decade copyfight, in which representatives of inventors faced down representatives of artists and duked it out in the courts and Congress.

The parallels to today's fights are downright spooky. For example, the first music pirates (the recording industry, who ripped off sheet music) got this proper dressing-down from John Phillip Sousa, who told Congress:

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left. The vocal chord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

I mean, I though Jack Valenti's Boston Strangler testimony was over the top, but clearly, Jack took his cues from Sousa et al.

Thirty-odd years later, the another group of pirates -- radio broadcasters, who refused to pay royalties for the music they file-shared over the airwaves -- violated Godwin's Law decades before it was formulated, comparing the entrenched rights societies that served the recording industry (the pirates of their boyhoods) to Adolf Hitler.

Tim runs down the history of cable versus broadcasters, and other copyfights down through the ages. He does so clearly and engagingly, in ways that non-lawyers and non-historians can readily grasp. And when it's done, the most amazing thing is the certainty that copryight-disrupting technologies every bit as wooly as file-sharing have been invented over and over again, and that the P2P fight is not a new one -- that piracy is the norm, not the exception.

If you want to understand the P2P fight, read this -- it is the most concise, thorough and engaging text on the subject to date. 560k PDF Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:40:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TV show mashup photoshopping contest

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: mash up two or more TV shows. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:14:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hello Kitty accessories for PS2

For sale: Hello Kitty memory cards for the PlayStation 2. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:12:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Booth boyz of E3

All over the net, we're getting treated to galleries of the booth-babes at E3, the big gaming conference in LA. Alice Taylor, the Quake player who posted the devastating report on a panel of four men saying unbelievably stupid things about why women don't play games, decided to prove her point by going around E3, shooting the Booth Boyz on offer. It's a pretty sad lot. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:09:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UK cinema copyright warnings: a call to action

I went and saw Troy, Brad Pitt's new men-in-skirts movie last night, at the big Odeon in Leicester Square, paying £10.50 for the privilege. Not that I begrudge it: apparently, acquiring the rights to the Iliad was very expensive, and they have to charge a small fortune to viewers if they hope to recoup.

I don't even begrudge them the 30 minutes' worth of commercials they subjected their captive audience to. Well, I did. But I didn't let it get to me.

What did get to me was this warning, shown before nearly every film in the UK:

"You are not permitted to use any camera or recording equipment in this cinema. This will be treated as an attempt to breach copyright. Any person doing so can be ejected and such articles may be confiscated by the police. We ask the audience to be vigilant against any such activity and report any matters arousing suspicion to cinema staff. Thank you."

Every time I see this, my blood boils. I just paid a fortune to see this movie, I've been subjected to 500 percent concession stand markup and half an hour of commercials and now you're going to give me a little lecture about how badly I'll get beaten up if I turn out to be a pirate, and ask me to snitch on my fellow moviegoers?

It's adding insult to injury, if you ask me. It's unforgivably rude.

So here's what I've started doing: whenever this warning is screened, I take a very obvious flash photo of it. I've done it twice now, and both times, I got a round of applause. You can do it too. If we all do it, if we all laugh and boo when this warning comes on, maybe the movie companies will get the picture.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:06:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 14, 2004

Half-Life facial expressions used in autistic life-skills classes

Here's a novel use for a First-Person Shooter:

An autism institute apparently is interested in using Half-Life 2's facial animation capabilities to help teach autistic children how to recognize expressions, according to PC Gamer magazine.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:24:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1978 Star Wars playset HOWTO

This is a HOWTO from a 1978 issue of Women's Day magazine, describing how to build an elaborate Star Wars playset (with moving conveyor belt!) out of laminate, cardboard, plywood and the like. Link (Thanks, Thom!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:09:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyright reform conference in Vienna this June

Free Bitflows is another upcoming free software/copyright reform conference (along the lines of the Berlin conference I blogged this morning) that's taking place in Vienna this June. Link (Thanks, Janko!)

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

All Hugo-nominated short fiction now online

I noted earlier that all of this year's Hugo-nominated short fiction is online, the sole exception being Neil Gaiman's Study in Emerald -- well, now it's online too! Link (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:02:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Doctored soldier picture making the email rounds

This photo was emailed to me along with a ton of forwarding headers and a bunch of people in the CC: field. (click on the photo to see a full-sized version). Here's the text that came with it:

"Nothing like the US soldier's sense of  humor...and well aimed!
Hooray for our troops.
READ THE BLACK PATCH UNDER THE US FLAG;
This SHOULD be on the front cover of Time, Newsweek, etc.
But it won't.
Let's you and I 'put it there' by forwarding this all around the world (so
to speak)!
(The flags are France, Germany, and Russia)-- in case you don't know.." 

It's easy to tell that the black patch and the three flags below it have been added after the photo was taken. They are almost hovering off the fabric of the uniform. But the big giveaway is the US flag. Isn't it facing the wrong way? The stars are usually on the left. This is a mirror image. I'm guessing this picture was horizontally flipped before someone added the black patch and the other country's flags. I should have checked snopes before posting this. The photo is fake. I was wrong about the flag, though. The patch really looks like that. According to snopes, it's to give the appearing that the flag is flying in a breeze blowing towards the front of the soldier. (Thanks Cody!)

David Calkins emailed me another version of the photo, with these badges.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:11:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FCC Chairman at Circuit City -- I don't believe it

A USA Today article reports that FCC Chairman Michael Powell recently went to Circuit City to switch his phone number to a new carrier:

FCC Chairman Michael Powell said he switched carriers for his work wireless phone as well as for his wife and son at a Circuit City outlet and the moves were done in an hour.

"I was shocked at how well it worked," Powell said. He declined to identify the carriers but said his name was not on the accounts so he did not receive favorable treatment.

What kind of stunt is this? Doesn't Powell have an army of factotums to do this kind of thing for him? And how was he able to change a phone account that didn't have his name on it? Furthermore, didn't the Circuit City people ask to see an ID to see if his name matched the name on the phone account? How did he pay for the account -- using a credit card with a fake name on it? Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:58:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

T-shirt origami

Video clip lets you marvel at this perfect way to fold a T-Shirt. It looks so good I almost think they videotaped someone unfolding a shirt and played it backwards. Link (Thanks, Ric!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:43:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beetle Ghraib

In the tradition of Dysfunctional Family Circus, here are three installments of Beetle Ghraib, which reassigns Beetle and company from Camp Swampy to Abu Ghraib for some good old fashioned Geneva Convention violating fun. I want more! Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:35:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Injectable DNA medibots

It's not quite Fantastic Voyage, but researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have demonstrated an injectable DNA-based biocomputer that can diagnose and treat certain kinds of cancer. If the computer detects the genetic signature of cancer, it releases a bit of DNA "known to interfere with the cancer cell’s activities, causing it to self-destruct," according to a press release issued by the Institute.

"One day in the future, they hope to create a 'doctor in a cell,' which will be able to operate inside a living body, spot disease and apply the necessary treatment before external symptoms even appear."

Previously, the researchers earned a spot in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records by constructing the world's smallest biological computing device. One microliter of salt solution can hold 3 trillion of the devices, capable of performing 66 billion operations per second. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:45:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

England's love affair with the utility bill

Simon, a Swede living in London, was inspired by my tale of woe at Orange Mobile's idiocy yesterday, and has posted a damned funny essay about the English National Love Affair With the Gas Bill.

"I consume gas, therefore I am" kind of sums up the British notion of identity. The world is a vague and fleeting place, changing from day to day like a flowing river. The vast networks of gas pipes, electrical wires and water pipes, however, are firmly in place somewhere underground. They are the arteries of our modern society, weaving their way through the soil from which we harvest our food, and in which we bury our dead. The utility bill is thus our connection to the very fabric of society - our proto-identity as social beings.

Hence, it should come as no surprise that new connections in this network, or connections to completely different networks, can not be made by mere "individuals". How preposterous would it not be if a "person", i.e. the moisty fungus that grows around an utility bill, for instance tried to open a bank account? Where would that account go? Where would it be? Flowing freely in the imaginary world of light and air, fluttering unconnected to the networks of society, that's where.

LinK

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:56:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Terry Zwigoff on old-time music

I stumbled on this amazing interview from 1995 with Terry Zwigoff, the director of Crumb and Ghost World. Zwigoff is a member of Robert Crumb's band, the Cheap Suit Serenaders, and an obsessive collector of 78 RPM records released before 1933. The focus of this interview is Zwigoff's passion for old-time tunes.

"(Pre-1933) music is more backwoods and I think of it as representing real isolated pockets of eccentricity... I see radio, or mass communications in general, as ruining that isolation, which to me is what’s most interesting about it. People started imitating. People could hear Bing Crosby on the radio, so they’d all try to sound like him instead of having enough faith in their own weirdness to keep it going."

Link to Internet Archive of interview page

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:48:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Watch the skies!

Earlier this week, a video of eleven UFOs caught on tape by Mexican Air Force pilots was released by the country's Defense Department.

According to the Associated Press report, "the lights were filmed on March 5 by pilots using infrared equipment. They appeared to be flying at an altitude of about 3,500 meters (11,480 feet), and allegedly surrounded the Air Force jet as it conducted routine anti-drug trafficking vigilance in Campeche. Only three of the objects showed up on the plane's radar."

Yesterday, a follow-up AP report quoted a nuclear scientist from the National Autonomous University who believes "the bright blurs could have been caused by electrical flashes emitted spontaneously by the atmosphere." Meanwhile, the Mexican Defense Secretary says the jury is still out on what appears on the tape.

I want to believe. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:28:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIAA's funny bookkeeping turns gains into losses

This very good, short article shows the way that the RIAA cooks its books to create losses due to file-sharing when there's no indication that file-sharing is costing them money. Peter sez, "I'm an economist researching the issue too, and I've found the figures frankly unbelievable for a long while. Now I know why."

There is only one logical integration of all these statistics with the recent Soundscan data: even though actual point-of-purchase sales are up by about 9% in the US - and the industry sold over 13,000,000 more units in 2004 (1st quarter) than in 2003 (1st quarter) - the Industry is still claiming a loss of 7% because RIAA members shipped 7% fewer records than in 2003.

Forget the confusing percentages, here's an oversimplified example: I shipped 1000 units last year and sold 700 of them. This year I sold 770 units but shipped only 930 units. I shipped 10% less units this year. And this is what the RIAA wants the public to accept as "a loss."

I'll go a step further. This fact, that Sherman seems to confirm, should logically mean a smaller percentage of returns. But, shouldn't fewer returns mean higher profit margins and faster turnaround; and shouldn't that be good for both the retail and wholesale side of the industry? "Sure," admits Sherman today, "but I have no idea what US shipments looked like in the first quarter." Then how can he claim world-wide "losses" in his March speech to Financial Times New Media?

Link (Thanks, Peter!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fast Fiction Friday on Warren Ellis's blog

Warren Ellis is doing a stunt on his blog today called "Fast Fiction Friday" -- he asked a bunch of people (including me) to bang out a very short story on Wednesday, and today, he's publishing them. Here's a bit of mine:

The other super-heroes put Spidey up to it, going to Geneva to wheedle the WIPO delegates about their trademark rights. "Send Batman," he'd begged. "Bruce Wayne is a fucking billionaire. He can talk to these people." But Supe had sadly shook his head and said, "You know that's the wrong answer, Peter. Bruce is a sociopath. We need a diplomat."

The Swiss thought his official underoos were ridiculous. In a diplomatic town like Geneva, no one would bat an eye at a djelleba, or full-dress purdah, or a kilt, but a superhero in fancy underwear drew stares all the way from the Gare Central to his stunningly overpriced and for all that gamey and run-down hotel. He passed one of the youth gangs on the way, muttering into their phones and thumbing at their keyboards, coordinating their crimefighting activities. They had Wonder Womanoid costumes, and he was glad that the Amazon Princess wasn't present to witness this blatant trademark infringement. She'd go bonkers, and it would be the Golden Lasso Massacre of Geneva.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:53:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on NPR -- Death, Sex, and E3

Today on the National Public Radio program "Day to Day," I report back from the E3 gaming convention taking place in Los Angeles. Porn-themed video games, first-person combat shooters with real-life resonance, and a live tactical urban assault demonstration by the US Army -- complete with copters, guns, and terrified pedestrians -- to promote the latest edition of its online computer game/recruiting tool, "America's Army: OVERMATCH."

And on Wired News, these photos I shot at the convention this week, including the one at left of a young woman overwhelmed by blinking, bleeping things inside Microsoft's Xbox pavilion.
Link to Day to Day home, Link to archived audio for this segment.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:38:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wizards of OS copyright conference in Berlin, June 13

The Wizards of OS conference coming on June 13 in Berlin will feature some very good speakers on copyright and copywrong, including my co-worker Wendy Seltzer.

Copyright law has become one of the most important and controversial drivers of the Information Society. The Internet has made every user a publisher, but copyright rules governing their activities are often determined by opaque international bodies that decide rules with little public input.

Join us in Berlin to debate where copyright should be going to ensure that authors, musicians, film-makers and the public will all benefit. Engage wih leading international thinkers from across Europe and the United States. Meet colleagues who are working to make sure all members of society benefit from copyright.

Attendance is free.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:56:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Maximize the number of living cells on Earth

The crazy Monochrom techno-artsies in Vienna are starting a new org to promote maximum terrestrial occupancy:

MOBUTOBE refers to the calculations of Isaac Asimov. The biologist and author published in 1971 that there are 20 trillion (20 x 10^12) tons of live cells on earth. 10 percent of these (that is two trillion tons) are animal cells. This number has to be regarded as the maximum level, for vegetable life cannot increase in quantitiy without an increase of sunlight or a refinement of its capability to process sunlight...

The building complex shall be constructed like this: The roof is reserved fo plant cultivation. Edible algae as well as higher plants that are manipulated so that they are esculent as a whole are cultivated there. Regular supply is easily provided.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:52:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flat-pack infographic utopia

Fark's photoshopping contest: "Ikea-like instructions for saving the world." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:30:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

McDonald's adult Happy Meal

McDonald's -- whose new CEO replaced the old one when he died of a heart attack, and who is, himself, going in for colorectal cancer surgery -- has introduced an adult Happy Meal with "water, salad and a booklet of exercise tips." Link (via JWZ)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:20:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi antennae made from cheap Chinese cookware

These Kiwi WiFi hackers are building cheap, incredibly powerful WiFi antennae out of Chinese cookware (like this $2 parabolic "dumpling scoop") and USB WiFi dongles. They've got extensive build and testing notes: I wonder where I can get a dumpling scoop of my own? Link (Thanks, Stan. Swan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:47:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open source games from 1978

The entire contents of Basic Computer Games, published in 1978, have been posted online as a series of scans. Danny O'Brien notes "I carried this around like a grimoire when I was eight." I especially like that this is scanned-in and not OCRed, which means that if you want to run any of these programs, you still have to re-key them! Link (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:39:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Phone display magnifier

The Phone Monocle is a snap-on magnifying lens for your cellphone -- handy for super-sizing the eye-strain-o-rama typefaces used on the little LCDs. Link (via Engadget)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:35:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Best scam-artist Internet revenge EVAR

This is a lovely tale of revenge on a scam-artist: a Powerbook seller on eBay realized that he was being ripped off by an overseas buyer, who had even set up a fake escrow service to handle his phony payment. Instead of blowing it off, the seller sent the crook on a wild goose chase that culminated with him taking delivery of a "P-P-P-Powerbook" made out of keyboard bits glued to an old binder, after paying £350 in customs fees and friends of the seller who'd staked out his mail-drop photographed the whole thing for posterity. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:32:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Greenpeace charged with "sailor mongering"

The Bush administration continues to cover itself with glory: it has charged some Greenpeace activists who hung a banner on a ship with an obscure crime called "Sailor mongering," and has launched the first nautical protest prosecution in the US since the Boston Tea Party.

Sailor mongering was rife in the 19th century when brothels sent prostitutes laden with booze onto ships as they made their way to harbor. The idea was to get the sailors so drunk they could be whisked to shore and held in bondage, and a law was passed against it in 1872. It has only been used in a court of law twice, the last time in 1890.

Greenpeace says the decision by the U.S. Attorney's Office to prosecute the organization rather than just the activists who boarded the APL Jade freighter is a sea change in policy, and a conviction would throttle free speech everywhere...

Not once since the Boston Tea Party have U.S. authorities criminally prosecuted a group for political expression.

Link (via JWZ)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:13:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cyborg celebrities photoshopping

More science-fictional photoshopping on Worth1000's daily contest: "Cyborg Celebs." Nice robot Tyra Banks. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:10:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Non-hypothetic ideas about women in gaming

Alice Taylor, a truly world-class Quake player, is attending the E3 games conference in LA, and is blogging the panels she attends. They seem to be pretty weak, but this one takes the cake: it's four men discussing how to involve women in gaming. Between the sexist canards, received wisdom, and wild-assed guessing this panel appears to have been one of the lamest discussions of women in gaming in the history of the field, and that's saying something.

What's delicious about this blog entry is that it ends with Alice, an actual woman who actually plays games, running down her view on the issue. Note to E3: asking women to talk about women in gaming would get you genuine insight instead of steaming bullshit:

I have a few things to say now, speaking as a female player and game-buyer (from the shops!):

1. 25 years of gaming history has sent out the marketing message that games are for boys and men. If you change that message, women will buy more games.

2. I think that it's not a lack of games that will appeal to women that's the problem - there are LOTS - it's women even knowing they exist, and that they're fun, and worth the purchase.

3. In *my* 25 years of gaming history, I have never once seen a game explicitly marketed to me, in "female media" or ordinary media like newspapers. Online, in neutral environments (say, Yahoo) a game banner ad tells me a game is available, but the message that that advert is for boys and men is still subconscious. I'll click because clearly I'm a freak, but will a non-gaming female click if that message isn't changed? Will her eye even notice the banner?

4. I want Playstation teeshirts that aren't in XXL and man-shaped.

5. Daytime TV ad slots are cheap as chips. If you advertise a game there like, say, SSX 3, and women (or men) can see how pretty it is, and fun it could be, you may find the message changing slowly. Surely this is worth an experiment. My dear previously-non-gamer flatmate is now an SSX addict after seeing it play.

6. Making games for women at home who have kids will be tricky because they are time-poor - start with the teenage females and "Sugar" magazine or Habbo Hotel, but don't discount the mothers: they'll be bored during certain hours of the day and eager for entertainment. Oh and can we all stop calling them 'they' with that curious aftertaste?

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:07:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 13, 2004

More photos from video game launch party, Playboy mansion

Here are the rest of the images I shot at the Playboy video game launch party on Tuesday evening, at the Playboy mansion.
Link to photo gallery, Link to previous BoingBoing post.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:06:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Engadget does E3

Pete Rojas says, "Engadget has been going overboard with our coverage of E3, and we've got a roundup with all of the news, reports from the showfloor, and tons of photos." Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:59:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese poop-and-scoop reminders

This is a gallery of Japanese poop-and-scoop nagware signs. They rawk. Link (Thanks, Tim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:58:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

This weekend in SF, join Xeni at Wired NextFest

If you're anywhere near San Francisco this weekend, join me at the inaugural edition of Wired Magazine's NextFest.

I worked with Wired Magazine to produce a series of panels, presentations, and "fireside chats" at the event -- guests include Andrew Stanton from Pixar, "Doom" creator John Carmack, Space Adventures CEO Eric Anderson, X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis, James Luyten of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Xcor CEO Jeff Greason, NASA Space Architect Gary Martin, robotics guru Rodney Brooks, and creators of the film "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow."

The event is presented by General Electric, and takes places Friday through Sunday at Fort Mason center in SF. Tickets are affordable and available. It's a family-friendly event aimed at consumers and deep geeks alike... think Epcot Center meets 1904 World's Fair. Robots, rocket ships, and an abundance of geektastic eye candy. Going to be great. See you there!
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:33:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Usenet as Atom feed

Google is beta-testing Google Groups2, a service that publishes Usenet newsgroups as Atom feeds, which ban be read in your favorite Atom/RSS reader (I use Shrook). Link (via Dan Gillmor)

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

Orange Mobile's robotic adherence to idiotic rules

Yesterday was a momentous occasion: it was the day I received my first UK bank statement, and was therefore able to do my bit to consummate England's national love affair with the utility bill. I mean, seriously: this is a country where you can walk into a shop to get a mobile phone or an ID card and say, "I have in this hand a fistful of credit cards and in this hand, a pristine Canadian passport," and have the clerk sniff and say, "I'm sorry sir, but without a gas bill, we simply won't be able to help you" (when I went to Citibank with the details of my Citibank US and Citibank Canada accounts, I was told to come back with a FedExed note from my boss attesting to my address, because of the "know your customer" rules -- apparently, an original signature on letterhead confers a depth of knowledge that mere years-long in-house financial records can't convey).

Yesterday was the day I hied myself off to the Tottenham Court Road to go shopping for a mobile phone. I knew exactly what I wanted: a Sony-Ericsson P900 with the O2 75 plan, which gets me 1000 minutes and several texts for only two or three times what comparable service would cost in the US (English mobile phones are very feature-rich, come with lovely high-speed data service, and cost so much to use that it's hard to believe that there's really anyone using the advanced features -- not at £4 a megabyte!).

The man in the Carphone Warehouse gave me the hookup, set up my account, called their credit department, and told me I'd have to pay a £150 deposit to go a-roaming in Europe. This is steep, but I can hack it. I gave him the nod, and then he passed me the contract to sign and went off to get my new phone. That's when he discovered that he'd run right out of P900s. I walked the length of the Tottenham Court Road strip and couldn't locate a P900 (or, indeed any phone with more than 12 buttons) for love or money.

But eventually, my luck changed. An Orange store staffed with friendly and knowledgeable clerks had P900s in stock and they were happy to take my money. We went through the signup rigamarole again -- took hours -- and then they called it in.

No dice. All of Orange's account sign-up computers were down. I went away and came back, but the computers were still down. The clerk confided that this happened a lot to Orange's overtaxed billing computers. I thought that it was a little weird that I was about to trust this company with my telephony when they couldn't even manage the IT necessary to reliably sign up a new customer, but shrug, they had the phone and I needed it, and besides, they'd match O2's rates for me. They sent me away and asked me to return the next day.

It was a waste of time.

I came back today, and after an hour more of hemming and hawing, this is what transpired: Orange would give me a phone with e £75 deposit, but I would have to wait 90 days before I'd be allowed to roam with the phone. I pointed out that I travelled two or three weeks out of every month, and this would render this (very expensive) phone very useless to me. I asked to speak to a supervisor. No dice. I offered to leave the same deposit I'd been asked for at O2. Even fewer than no dice -- "We don't know who you are, we can't give you roaming." I offered a bigger deposit. I offered to show the (enormous, promptly paid) cellular bills from my last year with Nextel. The deed to my condo in Toronto. The letter of reference from Yale. The Wired masthead. My US credit-report.

A waste of time.

It's the rules, they said. And please stop asking to speak to the credit department: they're not "customer-facing" and they're getting annoyed. You're annoying them.

Right, I thought, I'll call the press-relations department. I spoke to them at length -- flatteringly enough, they'd heard of me. So, what's the problem, I asked. Well, we can't do this because it's too risky to extend roaming to someone with no credit. I have credit. And it's what everyone does. Not O2. But you could ring up big bills with our roaming partners and stick us with them. I could call Tokyo and leave the phone off the hook for 24h without leaving England's shores and rack up just as big a liability for you..

At the end of the day, it came to this: These are our rules. We will stick to them. We will not make exceptions to them. We will hug them to our bosom beyond any kind of rationality or reason.

I am such a goddamned telephone junkie. I'm no Joi Ito with his $3,500 GPRS bills, but I've been spending $200 or $300 on cellular telephone damned near every month since 1992. I am every mobile carrier's dream. Any rational carrier would jump at my business.

But Orange isn't rational. It doesn't have a business plan, it has a bunch of superstitions to which it rigidly hews regardless of circumstance -- the media person I was speaking to reported that she'd spoken to their head of customer care, who wouldn't budge; this intransigence goes right to the top.

So Orange has lost my business, and to hell with them. As soon as O2 gets some P900s in stock, I'll gladly give them the 150 quid and get signed up and running.

And I think I've figured out why the Orange shop is the only place in town with any phones in stock: they make life so miserable for anyone who tries to buy one that you'd have to be flat-out desperate to take one off their hands.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:57:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Put on Your PJs and Run Playboy

Wired News just published a story about the Playboy game launch, written by my colleague Daniel Terdiman. Photos include some that I shot at the Playboy Mansion the other night, including the image below: Hef and companions testing out the game, and liking it.

[T]his November, anyone with a PC, PlayStation 2 or Xbox will have the opportunity to put on Hef's smoking jacket and lord over his mansion. Game publishers Arush Entertainment and Groove Games will release Playboy: The Mansion, a video game that puts players in the virtual footwear of the publishing tycoon. "You can create your own Playboy magazine and throw your own parties," Hefner said.

Given that it's E3 week in Los Angeles, the game was the center attraction at a party at the real-life Playboy mansion Tuesday night -- that is, if it were possible to ignore a bevy of Playboy playmates, bunnies and naked models adorned with body paint designed to look like bikinis.

Think of the game as SimHef. Players take the reins of the Playboy empire, initially concentrating on getting the first issue of a faux Playboy on newsstands. They have to play Hef as a businessman, making financial decisions, developing fame and creating the kinds of personal, professional and romantic relationships Hefner did on his way to the top.

Link, and Link to previous BoingBoing post on the launch event.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:56:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Doing it like rabbits

Swatch installed a Times Square billboard advertising their new Bunnysutra watch emblazoned with cartoon illustrations of "happy bunny positions." Predictably, plenty of people are offended. Here's a link to a an article with a slideshow of the billboard images. And a Flash demo of the watch, featuring Swatch's new "Touch" technology. ("Touch The dial. Pick A Position.") And, a New York Post article filled with quotes from the aforementioned angry Americans. Link (Thanks, Vann!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:06:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Indian voting machines compared with Diebold's

On the eve of the first Indian election run with electronic-voting machines, a technologist called "smz" has posted an in-depth comparison between Diebold's voting machines and the ones in use in India.

The System is a set of two devices running on 6V batteries. One device, the Voting Unit is used by the Voter, and another device called the Control Unit is operated by the Electoral Officer. Both units are connected by a 5 meter cable. The Voting unit has a Blue Button for every candidate, the unit can hold 16 candidates, but up to 4 units can be chained, to accommodate 64 candidates. The Control Units has Three buttons on the surface, namely, one button to release a single vote, one button to see the total umber of vote casted till now, and one button to close the election process. The result button is hidden and sealed, It cannot be pressed unless the Close button is already pressed.

The voting unit has a list of candidate's names and their Party Symbols pasted on the surface, and a Blue button to cast a vote faces ever candidate's name. The Party Symbols (like a Lotus, an elephant, a horse etc.) are approved by the election commission to be unique, All political parties use these symbols while campaigning, and illiterate people can identify their candidates by looking at his symbol, and pressing the blue button in front of his symbol.

Link (Thanks, smz!)

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

Beauty and the Breast

Manuel Schmettau says:

"An artwork (video) by my friend Amy Jenkins, featuring her daughter breastfeeding and falling asleep, has been called "distasteful" and removed from an exhibition at Salvatore Ferragamo's 5th Avenue store. (Ferragamo originally invited Amy to create the piece for their store's art gallery on the second floor.)

When asked to "create an artwork using inspiration from objects in their store," Amy was promised complete artistic freedom. Hesitant at first, she explored the store and fell in love with a little pair of red shoes, which turned out to be called the "Audrey" shoes (they were originally designed for Audrey Hepburn.) As her daughter is also named Audrey, she felt it was fate to accept the invitation. It was not a commercial commission, and she financed the production of the video herself.

Amy would love to show this piece elsewhere, unfortunately it was made specially for their 42" widescreen monitor (a costly item that she doesn't own!) Her hope is that "The Audrey Samsara" will soon be shown at a more open-minded venue."

The New York Daily News ran an item about the controversy. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:34:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disaster-play at home

Former guest blogger Todd Lappin points us to a professional moulage kit, perfect for simulating your own brutal wounds and accident scenarios in the privacy of your own home. For $549, you get a convenient carrying case filled with such essentials as:

* 1 foreign body protrusion

* 1 eyeball

* 1 eviscerated intestines

* 2 crushed feet

* 1 plexiglass pk for simulated "glass in wound"

* 1 roll tape

* and lots more!

What a great gift! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:23:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Library of Alexandria dug up

The ruins of the Library of Alexandria have been discovered:

Announcing their discovery at a conference being held at the University of California, Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the 13 lecture halls uncovered could house as many as 5,000 students in total.

A conspicuous feature of the rooms, he said, was a central elevated podium for the lecturer to stand on.

"It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area," he added.

"It is perhaps the oldest university in the world."

Link (Thanks, Patrick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:06:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SETI@Vatican

The Vatican's official astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno, has given an interview in which he discusses the Vatican's thinking on what to do if alien intelligence is discovered.

We find an intelligent civilization and there's no way in creation we can communicate with them because they're so alien to us. We can't talk to dolphins now. In which case, we'll never know.

Second scenario: We find the intelligent civilization. We can communicate. We discover that they have the two essentials that theologians talk about for the human soul, intelligence and free will. They know who they are, they're self-aware, and they're able to do something about it. I think dogs are self-aware, but they don't have a whole lot of free will. Maybe computers are the same sort of thing. Human beings have to have both...

A third scenario: We find a dozen civilizations out there, and a bunch of Jehovah's witnesses go up and convert them all. At the end of the day, every civilization is Christian, except the human race is still not too sure about this. I mean, anything's possible.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:54:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos from Clarke Award ceremony

Last night, the Arthur C Clarke Award for best sf novel published in the UK in 2003 -- Neal Stephenson won. Here are some photos from the event. Link (Thanks, Tony!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:21:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Phobic photoshopping contest

Today's Worth1000 photoshopping contest is phobias, illustrated. Link

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

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

New Nintendo product is progeny of Donkey Kong watch?

Nintendo's new double-screen handheld is curiously similar to its vintage (and misbegotten) Donkey Kong "Game and Watch." Link (Thanks, Allen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:27:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sofa of mousepads

Pretty much as advertised: a sofa made from mousepads. Comfortable, practical and thrifty. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:22:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Playboy game launch party at Playboy Mansion, LA

Most of the time, the life of a wayward freelance geek journalist is fraught with stress, challenges, unpaid invoices. Well, last night wasn't one of those times. I went to the Playboy Mansion to interview Hugh Hefner, and cover the launch of a new Playboy-themed electronic game for Wired News and National Public Radio. In the game, you get to be Hef, doing hefsterly things like -- oh, nailing 18 year old hotties, and managing a booming porn publication empire.

I sat down with Mr. Hefner and his gorgeous companions, and asked him if he felt the game designers had created an accurate virtual depiction of the world in which he lives. "It's pretty good, other than the fact that they gave me this giant Jay Leno chin," he said. There was much butt cleavage in effect. Beautiful women with tromp l'oeil lingerie painted on their perfectly engineered breasts served little snacks off flawlessly polished silver platters (see image at left). Oh, and in case you're wondering -- there is no WiFi inside the grotto, although there is one very heavily used mattress. NPR and Wired News stories coming up.
Link to another mildly unsafe for work picture snapped during the event.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:19:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

H2G2 movie production blog

Disney has launched the official site for its forthcoming film adaptation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a running production blog. Link (Thanks, Nick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:50:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Minimalist flashlight

This may be the world's most minimalist flashlight: two high-intensity LEDs that snap over the end of a 9V battery! At $25, it seems a little steep, but the idea is very cool. Link (via Cool Tools)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:49:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sneaky Paypal fraud page rewrites URL

Until now, it's been easy to spot a paypal fraud site by the telltale URL. But here's a Paypal fraud page that uses a Microsoft feature/bug (take your pick) to overwrite the scammer's URL with a legitimate-looking URL. If you make the page small, you'll be able to see the fraudster's URL. (Since I have a Mac, I can't try this out myself to see what actually happens.) Link (Warning: do NOT enter your paypal information here -- unless you want to be swindled) (Thanks, Joe!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:26:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jabberwocky: Intel's "Familiar Stranger" Bluetooth application

I wrote an article for TheFeature about Intel's "Jabberwocky," a bluetooth phone application that lets you track your "familiar strangers," (a term coined by late psychologist Stanley Milgram). Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:56:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cute Japanese food

Hello bento box! And other smiley-face food from Japan. Link (Thanks, JeremyT!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:47:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Webby Award Winners

The Webby Awards 2004 winners have been announced. Congratulations to the, er, anomalous CarStuckGirls.com that rose to the top in the Weird category! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:34:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Making people look bad

Wired News has a great story by Mark Baard about the skilled make-up artists who create moulage, incredibly realistic injuries on people for emergency response training and exercises.

"The wounds' realism (deep, bleeding gashes and amputations, oozing blisters and burns) help get the rescuers' adrenaline going, by fostering empathy with the actors who portray disaster victims."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:28:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lab Notes from UC Berkeley Engineering

In this issue of Lab Notes, my research digest from UC Berkeley's College of Engineering:

* A.I. systems that uncover the needles in haystacks of data, from software bugs to hidden genes.
* Using x-ray microscopes to design concrete Band-Aids for decaying buildings and bridges.
* Medical imaging via modem that will enable remote village doctors to perform minimally-invasive cancer surgery.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:16:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Leon Kagarise's basement tapes

JT says:

"Your Joe Bussard entry reminded me of another, similar story that was pretty big news in DC last summer: Leon Kagarise of Baltimore, who recorded around 4,000 hours of artists like Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Ernest Tubb, etc. during the late 50s through early 70s on a reel-to-reel tape deck at the outdoor music festivals prevalent in the vast rural area that previously surrounded Washington."

NPR's Morning Edition did a piece on Kagarise last summer. He's working with Joe Lee, a friend and local record store owner, to sell the recordings. Not surprisingly, the Library of Congress, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and others are apparently interested.

"You know, these [performers] were people from the mountains and from the rural South," Lee told NPR. "And once they were put in a studio, and they had a producer looking down at their snoot at the guy. And an engineer telling them, 'Well, if you make one mistake, we have to stop and start all over again.' It lost the atmosphere. It's like trying to play guitar in a straightjacket on... It's sort of like being in the zone. When you're really at ease, when there's no intimidation factor, then it really soars. And the proof is in these tapes here."

I hope someone releases a "best of" box set! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:15:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Wet Magazine scans from 1978

Wet was a graphically innovative magazine that predated zines. I remember seeing some copies in the early 80s and liking the design a lot. The guys who made Wet later went on to write the Graphic Design Cookbook, which I used as inspiration for the print edition of bOING bOING. Designer Jennifer Sharpe (daughter of famed street prankster Mal Sharpe) has uploaded two complete issues to her site. Link (Thanks, Sean!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:33:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Best Ghostbusters prop replica EVAR

This guy spent six months building this elaborate replica Ghostbusters pack, with powered blinkenlights and a multicolored flashlight cannon and lots of other swell features, and now he's selling it on eBay. Don't miss the video and build-diary! Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:57:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Feebs' security advisory about kingpin who turns out to be a video-game character

The FBI issued a terrorist warning after receiving a tip on an evil millionaire -- who turned out to be a character in a video game.

It was the lead item on the government's daily threat matrix one day last April. Don Emilio Fulci described by an FBI tipster as a reclusive but evil millionaire, had formed a terrorist group that was planning chemical attacks against London and Washington, D.C. That day even FBI director Robert Mueller was briefed on the Fulci matter. But as the day went on without incident, a White House staffer had a brainstorm: He Googled Fulci. His findings: Fulci is the crime boss in the popular video game Headhunter. "Stand down," came the order from embarrassed national security types.

Link (via Lawmeme)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:06:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

OS X Spir-o-graph painting app

Cosmic Painter is a GPLed MacOSX application that allows you to paint on a "spinning" canvas, screating a Spir-O-Graph-like effect, which is then animated. The results are, well, trippy. I just fell down a rabbit hole looking at and playing with the samples. Link (Thanks, FunWithStuff!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:40:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hugo nominated fiction online

Here's a list of this year's Hugo Award nominees, with links to the full text of the nominated works for those that are online (all the short works but one are on the Web! None of the novels, though). Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:32:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tarantino endorses Chinese Internet piracy of Kill Bill

Quentin Tarantino thinks that Internet movie piracy isn't all bad:

In the case of China, I'm glad they're pirating [Kill Bill]. In a closed Communist country I'd rather be seen than not seen.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:29:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New deck for digital DJs

Finally, Technics has caught up with (and passed?) Pioneer in the CD-DJ arena. The SL-DZ1200 has the look-and-feel of Technics 1200s, the vinyl workhorse for DJs, but also includes digital features like looping and an SD card slot for MP3 playback. I'll take two please. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:27:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sonic fabric dress -- wearable music instrument

BoingBoing reader Michael Corrado points us to a website featuring...

Fabric made from woven audiotape, readable by gloves containing tape heads. Dress made for Jim Jon Fishman of Phish, which composed song about dress's debut. Fishman used dress to create music next night. Vegas, May 2004

Link

Update: BoingBoing reader Gary writes, "If you want to hear the results yourself (nothing too impressive ... yet), you can go here and download the concert (during the performance of "Love You"). You might also be pleasantly suprised that Phish is happy to transmit full soundboard quality with no DRM."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:17:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony PSP shots from E3 via Gizmodo

Joel Johnson says the first Sony PSP shots from E3 are now up on Gizmodo, and promises much more soon. Such a tease. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:12:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lieberman's lunatic comments

Fake democrat Joe Lieberman sucked up to his true allies during Rumsfeld's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.

LIEBERMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Secretary, the behavior by Americans at the prison in Iraq is, as we all acknowledge, immoral, intolerable and un-American. It deserves the apology that you have given today and that have been given by others in high positions in our government and our military.

I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized.

Here's what Atrios says about it: "Lieberman is making one of two points. Either he's just saying 'USA! Not quite as bad as the worst people on the planet!' Or, he's saying 'I just want to point out that some brown people unconnected to this event did some bad things!'" Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:55:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Joe Bussard's basement tapes

Joe Bussard has 20,000 vintage 78 rpm records from the 1920s and 1930s in his basement. For $15, Joe will put together a custom cassette compilation for you of 20 tunes from his collection, perhaps the largest of its kind in the world. I wish Joe and his friends would rip all of his 78s so he could sell MP3 CDs of these ultra-rare recordings. Here's a great NPR All Things Considered piece on Joe Bussard from last year.

"'The truest form you'll ever hear in American music is on these records,' Joe says. 'It was put there, and it's remained there for seventy years. It hasn't changed.'"

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:49:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bill O'Reilly trying to bury his Fresh Air interview

Terry Gross conducted an extraordinary interview with notorious demagogue Bill O'Reilly on her Fresh Air last October (listen here). Now, O'Reilly is withholding permission for NPR to relicence portions of the program. Please tell all your friends about this interview and get them to listen to it, so that O'Reilly's plan to bury the interview backfires and this becomes the definitive O'Reilly interview of all time. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Internet Archive's Petabox: a 1,000 terabyte array

The Internet Archive has just installed its first Petabox, "a machine designed to safely store and process one petabyte of information (a petabyte is a million gigabytes)." Bookmark this entry and come back to it in five years, when you get a Petabox's worth of storage (with, say, high-resolution scans of the contents of the entire Library of Congress) free under the lid of your lucky Super Big Gulp. Link (via Hack the Planet)
Update: Kevin Fox notes: "It appears that, while the design goal is a petabyte, they're only at one rack, or 100 terabytes. They plan to have a second rack online by the end of the month, but they don't seem to speculate on when the 8 other racks needed to create a 'petabox' are coming in."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:30:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shirky: Cameraphones are today's Gutenberg press

Clay Shirky has written an excellent entry on the appearance of unmediated photos from the Iraqi front on a Friendster-like service called YAFRO. He likens this -- and other instances of undmediated communication -- to the Protestant Reformation.

The spread of images from Iraq, both relatively plain ones like most of what's on the YAFRO blogs to the horrifying images of torture and abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison are all part of the removal of bottlenecks that will change the political structure in ways we can't predict.

And it isn't just military affairs, its politics and business and everything else, from attempts to coordinate evidence of Apple's manufacturing errors (previously handled case-by-case, but now becoming a kind of grass-rooots class action protest, to Apple's horror) to the distributed amicus brief on the SCO case conducted by the Linux community to the recent right of Americans to get their medical records on request and within 30 days to the publication of spoilers for popular TV shows. (Read this last link now — its from the Times and goes away in 5 days, and although on the surface its about TV, its really a musing on life in a fully disclosed culture.)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:27:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New issue of Neural

The new issue of Italian tech/art/culture magazine Neural is out. It looks to be another dense collection of articles about edgy hacktivism, electronic music, and digital art, including pieces on musician Ryoji Ikeda and anti-corporate activist Brian Holmes. Neural interviewed Mark way back in 1994! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:36:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A Scanner Darkly casting continues

Richard Linklater has lined up quite a list of stars for his Hollywood adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly. So far, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Rory Cochran have signed on to join (gulp) Keanu Reeves in the lead as an undercover cop with drug-induced schizophrenia. Link (Thanks, Dave!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:25:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Godzilla vs. Camp

Last night, I watched the original, unedited Godzilla from 1954 that's finally being shown for the first time on the big screen in the US. No absurdist dubbing. No Raymond Burr. This subtitled print restores 40 minutes of director Ishiro Honda's vision that was chopped out of the first US release. Of course, some of the melodrama and special effects are still worth a chuckle, but this is not our childhood's Godzilla. Honda's film is a post-Nagasaki cautionary tale. And Godzilla is no joke. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:17:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

McDonalds trademarks phrase "I am Asian"

McDonalds recently launched a bizarre new marketing campaign to attract Asian and Pacific Islander Americans "living on the rim." [Ed note: ahem] BoingBoing reader Modesty Verve, who points us to the campaign's website, says "Even stranger is the company's assertion of a trademark right on the phrase "I am Asian"!" Link

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

Playfair is back!

Playfair is the iTunes music player that removed the restrictions from the music you bought from Apple. It was hounded off Sourceforge by Apple's lawyers, and then it relocated to a server in India, only to be removed again at Apple's behest. Now it's back a third time, still hosted in India, with a new name: "hymn" (Hear Your Music aNywhere).

playfair has been renamed to hymn (hear your music anywhere) and is back online with the legal backing of FSF India. It has been updated with the latest FairPlay code from VideoLAN.

Link (Thanks, Jon!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:14:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 10, 2004

Haunted Mansion costume for sale

An eBay auction for a size 14 (shirt)/18 (skirt) female Haunted Mansion ride-attendant costume from Walt Disney World. Oh, to be a woman. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:49:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photoshop contest: images depicting motion

Today's Worth1000 photoshopping contest: "Images depicting motion." There's some very nice stuff here. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:47:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony's entertainment business is killing its electronics business

Derek Slater takes Sony to task over its new music-download service and iPod-like player.

Sony's acquisition of a couple of minor entertainment companies has had untold consequences. It's a poison pill that is killing Sony, one piece at a time.

Back from 1976-1984, Sony was the company that spent hundreds of millions on the defense of its VCR, bringing it all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the entertainment industry didn't have any right to its business-model; that if new technology could make the old business irrelevant, that was tough shit, and the movie companies needed to stop pewling and get with the program (they did, and made lots of money, besides).

But ever since Sony "acquired" Columbia, it's been acting like its electronics business was a minor business unit that couldn't afford to disrupt its precious entertainment arm (despite the fact that the entertainment arm's contributions to Sony's bottom line are minimal when compared to the gadget biz). When the first MP3 players appeared in the market, from little companies like Creative Labs, Sony brought out proprietary devices that played stupid formats like RealAudio and OpenAG, which no one wanted to hear. On the other hand, these formats did come with use-restrictions that kept Sony's music execs from getting too anxious and sad.

The result was that Creative Labs, a little outfit in Singapore, ate Sony's lunch, followed by a bunch of late diners to the table, including a bunch of no-name Korean companies, and most recently, Apple. Sony, who invented the walkman and made billions off of it, has now become an irrelevant player in the personal stereo market, with a market share that's barely a blip on the chart.

And Sony -- a company legendary for tis ability to refine its designs to capitalize on lessons learned in the market -- keeps on repeating the same mistakes, as Derek points out:

Apparently, Sony's hard drive player cannot play MP3s, WMA and (of course) Apple FairPlay-locked AAC. It only plays the Sony's proprietary ATRAC3 format; if it's like Sony's MiniDisc players, forcing consumers to convert to ATRAC3 also forces them to accept certain DRM restrictions. In related news, the Washington Post and New York Times both deemed Connect embarassing, noting its poor interface, proprietary DRM format and codec, copying restrictions ... too many to count.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:45:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flickr adds image annotation

Flickr -- the fantastic social image-sharing Web app from Ludicorp -- has added image annotation; you can draw boxes around bits of the photos you post and mark up the contents of each box. When a viewer mouses over the box, a tooltip pops up with the annotation. Super cool. Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:35:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why Blogger redirects some URLs

The new Blogger redirects a lot of its links through another server. Ev explains why: it's to keep down comment-spam, to avoid apportioning unwarranted PageRank, and to protect Google's intranet.

Since blogger.com is linked from google.com, any sites we link to could pass on a fairly high PageRank value. (PageRank is one of the factors that determines what results show up in what order for searches.) In order to remove any possibility of unequal ranking of Blogger-powered blogs in the Google main search index, we send links through a URL from which Google knows to ignore PageRank. This way, Blogger blogs earn PageRank only on the basis of their content and other people linking to them, not because they're powered by a tool owned by Google.

Link (via EvHead)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:31:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LotR furniture

These guys sell (very, very, very expensive) hand-made oak furniture themed on the Lord of the RIngs movie. Link (Thanks, Dominic!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:03:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MTV's new mashup bootleg TV show "MTV Mash"

French DJ/producer duo Loo & Placido tell BoingBoing:

We've been doing bootlegs / mash-ups for a few years now. For the last several months, we've been working with MTV on exclusive bootlegs for a new show called ""MTV MASH" which is broadcast all around Europe 3 times a week. We already made12 tracks for the show so far. If you want to listen to our bootlegs, check out our website, it's still under construction, but there's already a lot of tracks to listen to.

Link to the L&P site. The MTV out-takes you can listen to here are terrific, and if this is what ended up on the cutting room floor -- the show should be amazing. I'm particularly fond of the Missy Elliot meets Green day track "get your green on," as well as the Goldbug meets ODB number "Golden Bastard."

Update: The mashups are smokin', but (sorry guys) the Loo & Placido website's obtuse, flash-based UI sucks ass. BoingBoing reader Eric reminds us that you can also link directly to the MP3s themselves. This way you can save locally and enjoy ad infinitum: Bigger than Love,, Complicated Man, Get Your Green On, Golden Bastard, Gomez Soul, Pound for Pound, Stereo Kelly.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:01:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jon Stewart on US torturers

Lisa Rein has posted two amazing clips from the Daily Show on the Iraq torture scandal. 4.8MB QuickTime Link to Rob Courddry On The US Torture Of Iraqi Prisoners, 9.8MB QuickTime Link to Jon Stewart on Giant Messopotamia

Update: These clips have moved.4.8MB QuickTime Link to Rob Courddry On The US Torture Of Iraqi Prisoners, 9.8MB QuickTime Link to Jon Stewart on Giant Messopotamia

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:01:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pixel-counting can un-redact government docs

A Luxembourgian/Irish security research team have presented a paper on a technique for identifying words that have been blacked out of documents, as when government docs are published with big strikethroughs over the bits that are sensitive to national security. The technique doesn't work on monospace fonts like Courier, but the State Department's recent font guidelines require that all docs be published in Times New Roman, which decodes like a charm.

hey found the number of pixels that had been blacked out in the sentence: "An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an xxxxxxxx service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike." They then used a computer to determine the pixel length of words in the dictionary when written in the Arial font.

The program rejected all of the words that were not within three pixels of the length of the word that was probably under the blacked-out area in the document.

The software then reduced the number of possible words to just seven from 1,530 by using semantic guidelines, including the grammatical context. The researchers selected the word "Egyptian" from the seven possible words...

Link (Thanks, Wendy!)

Update: This page at Cryptome has more detail and illustrations (Thanks, Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:00:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Sites Iraq blog: "Paying Back in Blood"

Blogger and MSNBC combat correspondent Kevin Sites is in Iraq, and has posted a new entry to his blog today.

When he was nine years old Carlos Gomez crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico to the U.S. with his father, mother and two sisters. They had heard stories about the opportunities in America, dreamed about them, wanted them so badly they ran through oncoming traffic on the 805 freeway to get to them. They didn't stop until they reached San Diego. Fear, fatigue and La Migra slowly fading into the southern horizon like their homeland.

They stayed. Dealt with the slurs--beaners, greasers, wetbacks. Overcame them. Paid back America's opportunities with hard, menial labor. Made a fraction of what citizens and legal immigrants made--but never complained.

And 12 years later, in Falluja, Iraq, Marine Lance Corporal Gomez would pay it back again--but this time with his blood.

Link, Discussion Forum

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:46:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Persian photoblog: Those Sexy Iranians

Hossein Derakshan says, "I've launched my photoblog, titled "vagrantly." Here's the latest image post, about the Islamic dress code and Nicholas Kristof's New York Times column this weekend about 'sexy Iranians.'"

No one has challenged the cleric's rule more effectively than these young Iranian girls. They have totally changed the Islamic dress code during the past five years. The half-sliced heads of the mannequins are results of Islamic laws that prohibit making identical statues to humans.

Link to Hoder's photoblog post. And coincidentally, BoingBoing's own Cory says from the U.K., "Spotted at the Brick Lane Bengali new year's festivities in London: a little girl in a couture Calvin Klein headscarf."Link to 80K jpeg image.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:44:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MPAA's Bizarro-world logic

Fritz Attaway, the MPAA's vice president who shows up at all the DRM meetings, explains to the press how the world works in Bizarroland, where being able to make a backup of your DVDs is bad for you.

"There is no right in the copyright law to make backup copies of motion pictures, so the whole argument that people should have the right to make backup copies of DVDs has no legal support whatsoever," said Fritz Attaway, executive vice president of the MPAA.

"It's against consumers' interests to permit devices that make backup copies," he added, "because there is no way that a device can distinguish between a backup copy for personal use and making a copy for friends, family acquaintances or even selling on the street corner."

Link (Thanks, Brian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:29:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stanislaw Lem is cranky!

Stanislaw Lew, the king of Polish Science Fiction, is alive, cranky and well, and this interview with him makes me want to go re-read Solaris.

Bush is seeking reelection. His advisers remembered the effect of the first landing on the Moon, and proposed a repeat, but on a grander scale. So Mars came in handy. It will take at least 20 years to prepare a flight to Mars. Bush, however, is only concerned with the next four years. But the attempt to portray him as a forward-looking pragmatist has produced an impression...

There is nothing up there. And what about the money for these space adventures? Do you think U.S. Congress will come up with hundreds of billions on a silver platter? Besides, what is the dollar really worth now? In Communist-era Poland it could buy 100 zlotys: That was some money. But now it is worth a mere 3.5 zlotys. Today I am getting more dollars for new editions of my books from Russia than from the United States. We should deal with earthly problems, not with space chimeras.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:24:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Biting the bullet

A woman in Irvine, California claimed she bit into a hot dog and ended up chomping down on a live 9 mm bullet. Police opened the rest of the hot dog packages at the Costco store that sold the woman the wiener but didn't find any more bullets. Meanwhile, the woman, suffering from a tummy ache, visited a hospital where x-rays revealed another round inside her stomach. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:43:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warrants are security measures

Bruce Schneier's latest op-ed asks us to consider the warrant process -- where a cop has to show evidence and follow procedure before invading your privacy -- is itself a security measure.

What we need are corresponding mechanisms to prevent abuse. This is the proper question: "Should we allow law enforcement to use new technology without any judicial oversight, or should we demand that they be overseen and accountable?" And the Fourth Amendment already provides for this in its requirement of a warrant.

The search warrant - a technologically neutral legal requirement - basically says that before the police open the mail, listen in on the phone call or search the bit stream for key words, a "neutral and detached magistrate" reviews the basis for the search and takes responsibility for the outcome. The key is independent judicial oversight; the warrant process is itself a security measure protecting us from abuse and making us more secure.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:07:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Noise Pop mix tapes

Noise Pop, San Francisco's gem of an indy music festival, and KQED are streaming various underground musicians' playlists-du-jour. The latest selections come from Greg Ashley, a Bay Area psych-folk artist whose exquisite taste ranges from Leonard Cohen to Os Mutantes. Link (Thanks, Birdman!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:02:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fat-destroying pill?

One way to treat obesity may be to starve the fat cells. University of Texas researchers have designed a drug that selectively kils the blood vessels that supply white fat cells. Massively fat mice given the drug lost 30 percent of their weight in one month. Eventually, the researchers told New Scientist, a similar approach could be used to help obese humans. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:40:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japan jails academic for writing P2P app

A Japanese academic who wrote an anonymous P2P app has been arrested for "abetting infringement." This is the kind of perversion of justice we're accustomed to seeing in the US and Norway -- disappointing that the Japanese have so thoroughly bridged the copyright hysteria gap. The programmer faces three years in prison for writing code that allows for anonymous file-transfers. We can only hope that the team that led Microsoft's operating-system effort will be next, followed by the AppleShare team and the pesky authors of ftp.

Mr Isamu Kaneko, a 33-year-old assistant professor at the prestigious University of Tokyo, was arrested on suspicion of developing and offering free downloads on his Web site file-sharing software called Winny, Kyoto Prefectural (state) police said on condition of anonymity.

He is also accused of helping two Japanese men arrested in November on charges of disseminating movies and games on the Internet with Winny, police said.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:22:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blogger redesign notes

Blogger has relaunched today, with standards-compliant templates, comments with spamblocking, streamlined blog creation, and page-per-post -- the kind of things that we've come to expect from a modern blogging tool. The redesign was executed by the arch-geniuses of Stopdesign and Adaptive Path, and it shows. This is a beautiful redesign, both in terms of look-and-feel and approachability for novices. Here're project leader Doug Bowman's notes on the redesign:

The rounded corners seen throughout the Blogger redesign (and in several of the user templates) make use of an expansion of the Sliding Doors technique written for A List Apart last year. The Blogger design is a fixed width, which means most of the modules of the site exist at pre-defined widths. Since the width of each module is known, one image is used for the top-left and top-right corners of a module, and another image is used for the bottom-left and bottom-right corners. The images are called in as background images for two nested elements. Since these two elements contain all the text of the module, they expand infinitely as the module grows in height. Think of it as Sliding Doors turned on their sides.

For modules requiring a border, the two images are modified to include top and bottom borders connecting the two corners. A third element gets nested in the HTML that uses left and right borders which connect top and bottom corners.

This design posed many other challenges when building it out, specifically because we wanted to allow the text and each of the design elements (header, modules) to be as flexible and scalable as possible. The markup construction was tricky and required compromises in several places. As is evident with the rounded corner modules, extra divs were necessary for each background image called in. In CSS3, border images will certainly help eliminate the need for extra elements. And I’ve been pressuring Tantek to get the CSS Working Group to consider allowing us to set multiple background images on one HTML element.

Link (via EvHead)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:18:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TheyRule: applying information design to corporate directorships

TheyRule is a brilliant Flash app that allows you to interactively explore and map the interlocking directorships of the most powerful corporations in the world. They've just relaunched a 2004 edition with currect data.

They Rule allows you to create maps of the interlocking directories of the top companies in the US in 2004.

The data was collected from their websites and SEC filings in early 2004, so it may not be completely accurate - companies merge and disappear and directors shift boards.

Link (via Oblomovka)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:12:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to be a poet

Jim Henley writes some damned sensible advice on how to become a poet -- advice that applies just as readily to becoming any kind of writer.

Start by slavishly imitating poets you admire. This is the opposite of the standard advice that you need to concentrate on "finding your own voice." Don't take this wrong, _____, but fuck your own voice. Your own voice will take care of itself as your craft matures. Your own voice will, if you're going to have one, insist on emerging. In the meantime, learn the craft. Learn the vocabulary and practice of meter. Learn rhyme schemes. Learn the ways that free verse gets written that yet contains music. Reread poets you admire, read about them and then read the poets they get compared to.

Link (via Electrolite)

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

Sunday, May 9, 2004

Music Plasma -- visual music search is pretty amazing

This visual music search engine lets you type in the name of an artist and it displays related artists. I thought I'd stump it by entering "Robert Crumb" (the cartoonist, who used to play tenor banjo in one of my favorite bands, The Cheap Suit Serenaders). I'll be damned if Music Plasma didn't display my very favorite musicians right next to his name. Link (Thanks, Anthony!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:47:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiny theater in a box showcases the Bush administration doing the thing it does best

Artist Mars Tokyo has created a 3" x 4" peep box entitled "The Theater of the Liars" featuring George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell. Link (Thanks, s. mericle!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:38:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Don't just protect the unconceived: protect the inanimate!

Fafnir of Fafblog has written a good think-piece explaining the logical next step in the Bush administration's campaign to protect the rights of the unconceived: protecting the rights of the inanimate.

This is yknow a huge step backwards for women's health and for contraception and the prevention of abortions. But it is a huge step forward for what we at Fafblog like to call the "rights of the unconceived," which is just a few short steps from what we are really lookin forward to which is the rights of the inanimate.

I have personally spent hours an hours talkin to cans, waffle irons, boxes, printer cartridges and forks and they all dream of one thing: no longer bein treated as second-class citizens in the United States.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:57:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

German newspaper iPod/torture mashup

The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung ran this editorial illustration that remixes the Iraqi torture photos with the iPod ads. 12k JPEG Link (Thanks, Thorsten!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:42:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Horror story submission cliches

Strange Horizons has a list of Horror Stories They See Too Much Of to complement their list of science fiction slushpile cliches.

1 Serial killer or vampire stalks and slays victim(s).

i. The tables are turned at the end. (For example, the intended victim turns out to be a vampire or other powerful supernatural creature.)
ii. The serial killer is insane.
iii. The serial killer is under supernatural influence.
iv. The serial killer was abused as a child.

2 Person is insane, and kills a lot of people because of it.

i. The insanity is due to supernatural influence.
ii. The insane person does property damage instead of killing people.

Link (via Ober Dicta)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:46:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Congress needs to hear support for the DMCRA!

Slashdot has a story about various big copyright-holder groups contacting their members, urging them to write to Congress to get the DMCRA locked up in committee. The DMCRA is a bill introduced by Rick Boucher to take the modest steps of requiring the labelling of CDs, DVDs and other products with DRM in them, and to allow Americans to circumvent DRM when for a lawful purpose (i.e., watching foreign DVDs on a domestic DVD player). The FUD from rightsholder groups needs countering, as Slashdot points out, and you can help by writing to Congress in support of the bill. EFF's Action Center has a one-click letter you can send to your Congresscritter asking for her/his support on the bill.

I am writing today to ask you to co-sponsor Rep. Boucher & Doolittle's Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, H.R. 107). I believe that our copyright law has become unbalanced and fails to address the interests of the public.

The DMCRA would protect consumers from buying "copy protected" audio compact discs that may not work in personal computers, cars, and other consumer devices. It would also codify a citizen's right to make fair uses of copyrighted material. I think that this is an absolutely fundamental step towards redressing the imbalances that have plagued copyright law in recent years.

I hope you will co-sponsor the DMCRA and sh