posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:33:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, January 29, 2005

HOWTO become an Army cryptanalyst at home

This field manual is intended as a training text in basic cryptanalytics and as a reference for cryptanalysts in military occupational specialty (MOS) 98C and related MOSs. The proponent of this publication is Headquarters, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). Send comments and recommendations on DA Form 2028 (Recommended Changes to Publications and Blank Forms) directly to Commander, United States Army Intelligence School, Fort Devens (USAISD), ATTN: ATSI-ETD-PD, Fort Devens, MA 01433-6301.

Update: Frank sez, "I read with interest the discussion on Military Cryptanalysis. I was in the next to the last US Army class (1976) for Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) 98B which taught us to become military cryptanalysts. Just before I retired from the US Army Reserves in 2002, I was the last trained Army cryptanalyst in service. Our "bibles" of training and reference were written by William F. Friedman (Friedman's contributions thereafter are well known-- prolific author, teacher, and practitioner of cryptology. Perhaps his greatest achievements were introducing mathematical and scientific methods into cryptology and producing training materials used by several generations of pupils. His work affected for the better both signals intelligence and information systems security, and much of what is done today at NSA may be traced to William Friedman's pioneering efforts.)"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:29:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Back that Azz Up, Counselor

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:59:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Quicken disables the software you paid for to force paid upgrades

Make that two customers -- for life. This is the dirtiest of pool imaginable. Bait-and-switch. I wonder if it's even legal. You'd think that if Intuit had actually made a compelling new product that it could entice its customers to buy an upgrade; seems like they've decided that instead of improving their products, they'll just extort money from customers who were stupid enough to buy from them in the first place. That's a mistake I imagine very few of us will make again once word of this gets out. Link (Thanks, Norvy!)

Update mrquizzical sez, "Following up on the post about Quicken extorting money from customers by expriring Quicken 2002: Intuit is extorting money from financial institutions, big time, by eliminating support for their own QIF format,replacing it with OFX functionality but forcing financial institutions to pay them an exorbitant license fee. I work for a credit union, and we're being held up for $60,000; otherwise our members will lose the ability to import transaction history into Quicken 2005 or later"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:43:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How computers change writing

Johnson's piece is a thought-provoking look at how productivity software can really change the way that you work -- that you think! Writing in the era of these tools is truly a different undertaking than the writing of old.

Think of all the documents you have on your machine that are longer than a thousand words: business plans, articles, ebooks, pdfs of product manuals, research notes, etc. When you're making an exploratory search through that information, you're not looking for the files that include the keywords you've identified; you're looking for specific sections of text -- sometimes just a paragraph -- that relate to the general theme of the search query. If I do a Google Desktop search for "Richard Dawkins" I'll get dozens of documents back, but then I have to go through and find all the sections inside those documents that are relevant to Dawkins, which saves me almost no time.

So the proper unit for this kind of exploratory, semantic search is not the file, but rather something else, something I don't quite have a word for: a chunk or cluster of text, something close to those little quotes that I've assembled in DevonThink. If I have an eBook of Manual DeLanda's on my hard drive, and I search for "urban ecosystem" I don't want the software to tell me that an entire book is related to my query. I want the software to tell me that these five separate paragraphs from this book are relevant. Until the tools can break out those smaller units on their own, I'll still be assembling my research library by hand in DevonThink.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:13:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ed Emberly products

I can't find any information about him on Google. I don't even know if he's still alive. But I did find this Japanese site that sells products with Emberly's drawings on them. I wonder if these are available in the US? Leave it to the Japanese to recognize this American (?) artist's genius. Link
UPDATE: He lives! Here's his site: Link (Thanks, Robin the librarian!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:50:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Art/tech event in LA Sunday

Also of note: Gang photography by Robert Yager, whose work we've featured on BB before, will be on display in a Winnebago installation (!) at the artLA event -- which takes place today and Sunday.
Link to artLA details.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:24:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ETECH earlybird reg ends soon!

• Raffi "Tivo Hacks" Krikorian and NYU's Tom Igoe doing a double-header tutorial on hardware hacking called Net Objects
• Damian Stolarz explaining how to Hack Sci-Fi Features Into Your Car in a half-day session covering "the basic workings of the automotive electric, audio, and diagnostic systems" and "radio head-ends, touch screen input devices, remote controls, and in car x86-based hardware and software all in the context of a working automobile"
• My cow-orkers Wendy "Chilling Effect" Seltzer and Jason "Patent Busting" Schulz on Endangered Devices and How We Can Save Them -- a tour of all the cool crap you can buy today, which might be illegal tomorrow
• My pervy cow-orker Annalee "Techsploitation" Newitz's talk on How Sex Laws Incite Technological Change which covers "how sex laws have enlarged the demand for technologies that provide anonymous, instant, mobile gratification while also stoking content-providers' desires for soft/hardware that can control access and quickly identify users by age and geographical location."
• The wildest researchers at BBC Radio: Tom "Plasticbag" Coates, Matt "Brain Hacks" Webb, Matt "No Nickname" Biddulph and Paul "Also No Nickname" Hammond talking on Reinventing Radio: Enriching Broadcast with Social Software in which they explain some deeply cool, deeply weird shit they're doing with the BBC's radio service
• Matt "Metafilter" Haughey on Remixing Culture with RDF: Running a Semantic Web Search in the Wild in which the Creative Commons's secret search sauce will be unveiled and dissected
• Tom "The British Don't Really Have Nicknames" Loosemore explains TheyWorkForYou.com, the best political advocacy site I've ever seen, in Forgiveness, Not Permission: Retro-fitting the Semantic Web onto British Democracy
• Natalie "Feral Robots" Jermijenko -- my choice for real-world cyberpunk heroine -- takes us beyond her genius feral robot dogs with Social Robotics, Scmocial Robotics: Feral Robotics and Some Other Quacking, Shaking, Bubbling (what would the opposite of feral be?) Robots: "Feral robots are roving packs of adapted open source robots that are released to investigate contaminated urban sites. Feral robots begin as domestic commercially available robotic dog toys."
• Danny "NTK" O'Brien and Merlin "5ives" Mann will jointly present their Life Hacks Live work -- a book-length version of Danny's amazing hacker life-skills Life Hacks project, with "a whistle-stop tour through an amazing year in this exploding field: tracking apps that merge the geek's command-line power with GUI ease-of-use; the expansion of RSS and wiki techniques into frontline organizing apps; the spread of search and script automation onto the desktop; how plain text files are the new rock and roll."
• Finally, Lee "Jhai" Felsenstein, who pretty much invented the PC, will present on Tech That Helps the World, talking on the bicycle-charged ruggedized meshing WiFi networks he's sending to Laos. I mean, seriously: LAOS.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:08:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

13-storey building that's tagged to the roof

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:00:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WinXP SP2 still vulnerable to memory attacks

It was discovered by MaxPatrol team that it is possible to defeat Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP SP2 Heap protection and Data Execution Prevention mechanism. As a result it is possible to implement:

* Arbitrary memory region write access (smaller or equal to 1016 bytes) Arbitrary code execution

* DEP bypass.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:55:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Exeem without the adware

Exeemlite client is out. It removes the adware, but is a version behind the latest eXeem release. The latest release is out of private beta, but on the surface of it, the current version of exelite is not. Not to fear. Just close the popup asking for a serial, and off you go (ie. requiring the serial feature has been neutered, along with the adware.)

Note that you can manually unistall the adware from the latest oficial release, but when you restart eXeem, it _helpfuly_ reinstalls the adware (cydoor I think...)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:53:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Some have attempted to paint tooth-brushing as a victimless crime...

Original:

Some have attempted to paint copyright piracy as a victimless crime, arguing that "if I make a copy of a computer program, you still get to keep your copy, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case.

Reducing piracy offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the piracy rate, the larger the IT sector and the greater the benefits.

Some have attempted to paint printing as a victimless crime, arguing that "if I print a book, you can buy it from me, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case. "Reducing printing offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the printing rate, the larger the scribes and bards sector, and the greater the benefits."

Some have attempted to paint conjugal sexual intimacy as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you and I have intimate relations, we both derive pleasure and a sense of togetherness, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case. "Reducing sex among committed partners offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the intimacy rate among committed partners, the larger the prostitution sector, and the greater the benefits."

Some have attempted to paint ham radio as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you operate an amateur radio station, you and I can communicate across long distances, and we are both better off." This is hardly the case. "Reducing the prevalence of amateur radio operators offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of amateur radio communication, the larger the long distance telephone services sector, and the greater the benefits."

Some have attempted to paint tooth-brushing as a victimless crime, arguing that "if you brush your teeth regularly, you improve your dental hygiene, and we are all better off." This is hardly the case. "Reducing tooth-brushing offers direct benefits. The equation is a basic one: the lower the rate of tooth-brushing, the larger the dental prosthetic, dental filling, and dental surgical equipment sectors, and the greater the benefits."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:21:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO kick even more ass with an umbrella

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:04:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, January 28, 2005

Supper with the Stars

Fees for each celebrity are negotiated on a case-by-case basis, but costs range from £300 - £5,000 for a dinner, depending on the celebrity (assuming that a dinner sitting will last one and a half hours). The fee does not include travel expenses incurred by the guest (which need to be reimbursed separately).

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:35:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Punk fanzine scanned: Flipside #1

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:00:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Katamari Damacy made from paper

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:16:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cuban's HDNet to broadcast live from Baghdad during Iraq elections

"Since it's my network, and this is something I think is amazing and compelling, we are going to broadcast the feed continuously on HDNet during daylight and twilight hours in Baghdad. No talking heads. No interruptions for commentary. Just the sights and sounds of Baghdad, uninterrupted and unedited. What you see, and in High Definition you see and hear a lot, is what you get."

Link to Mark Cuban's blog post.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:13:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ready to Share copyright/fashion event in LA Saturday

On January 29, 2005, the Norman Lear Center will hold a landmark event on fashion and the ownership of creativity. Ready to Share will explore the fashion industry's enthusiastic embrace of sampling, appropriation and borrowed inspiration, core components of every creative process. Presented by the Lear Center's Creativity, Commerce & Culture project, and sponsored by The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising/FIDM, this groundbreaking conference will feature scholarly debate, fashion shows, multimedia presentations, the clash of perspectives and the cross-fertilization of ideas.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:49:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Geneva under a thick blanket of ice -- CORRECTED

Correction Eric sez, "Please note that the photos of ice in Geneva on boingboing are due to water spray from the lake, not because of an "ice storm". If you look at more of the photos you will see that everything covered with ice is right next to the lake shore. If you look closely at some of the photos there are houses in the background that are free of ice."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:31:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark interviews Cory

TheFeature: But the ability for people to easily make and distribute copies of music and movies is new. Entertainment content providers want to protect themselves with DRM.

Doctorow: Well, locomotives didn't require horseshoes. You know, the blacksmiths might not have liked the fact that locomotives didn't require horseshoes. But if you started a business to outfit locomotives with special horseshoes in order to keep the blacksmiths happy, you probably wouldn't have lasted very long. Likewise, if you're starting a business to outfit phones with special locks that make it hard to copy things in order to make the music industry happy, then you're probably not long for this world.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:02:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Xeni Tech" on NPR's Day to Day: Cameron's "Aliens of The Deep"

Link to archived audio for this story with expanded online coverage. Link to NPR Day to Day home. Previously on BoingBoing: Aliens of the Deep premiere.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:47:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Romantic and sex relation structure of high school students

"One component of the network linked 288 students – more than half of those who were romantically active at the school – in one long chain."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:07:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Erik Davis workshop in Big Sur

"Over the last one hundred and fifty years, California has developed one of the most innovative spiritual cultures on the planet. Many of our contemporary concerns with deep ecology, human transformation, body-positive spirituality, and the technoscience of mind are rooted in the state's maverick "culture of consciousness." California has been home to spiritual mavericks like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, to popular visionaries like Starhawk and Carlos Castaneda, to spiritual poets like Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder, and to visionary organizations like Esalen and the Ojai Institute. Why did all this happen here?

This seminar will explore and try to explain this rich legacy using poems, film clips, music, photographs, and slides drawn from Erik Davis's own exploration of California's hidden temples and sacred spots. The program will examine the idea that California's alternative spirituality forms a distinct religious tradition on its own—a kind of West Coast Hinduism, full of diverse and often contradictory sects, philosophies, and spiritual technologies, but sharing a a common cultural landscape."

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:07:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Quantum whistles

...A chorus of thousands of nano-whistles produced a wail loud enough to hear. This is the first demonstration of whistling in superfluid helium-4. According to Packard and Hoskinson, the purity of the tone may lead to the development of rotation sensors that are sufficiently sensitive to be used for Earth science, seismology and inertial navigation...

"For 40 years, people have been trying to see something like this, but it has always been with single apertures," Hoskinson said. "Maybe it's true that you don't get coherent oscillations with a single aperture, but somehow, with an array of apertures, the noise is suppressed and you hear a coherent whistle."

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:48:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cavalcade of shocked couples

First is this BBC story about a "devout Baptist couple" who purchased what they thought was a DVD of Doris Day's Pillow Talk at a supermarket and were SHOCKED to discover it was an Italian sex romp.

"My wife and I were very shocked but we watched it until the end because we couldn't believe what we were seeing.

"The film became progressively more graphic, there was no plot to it, it was just sex."

Alan and his wife Anne, 60, a retired teacher, complained to Safeway the next day and all copies of The Pajama Game were removed from the store.

And then there's this Macleans story about a couple in Canada who happened to see their neighbor masturbating in his house. The couple was so SHOCKED, they ran from window to window to get a better view.

The pair watched Clark for up to 15 minutes from the privacy of their darkened bedroom...they took care to avoid being seen by Clark, peering out from underneath their partially lowered blinds. Later, the woman's husband fetched a pair of binoculars and a telescope. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to videotape Clark in action, says the judgment.

Then they called the police, who arrested the hapless masturbator. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:48:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rock music

Canadian rock art interested us because of a traditional Algonkian Indian belief that manitous – spirits – lived inside rocks and cliff-faces, and that shamans in trance could enter the rock surfaces and meet with them in order to exchange tobacco offerings for supernatural power, usually referred to as “rock medicine”. (If the shaman failed to carry out this operation correctly, though, it was said he could become trapped in the cliff or rock he had spiritually entered and never return to his body outside. In our terms, he would die or go mad.) We wanted to test the hypothesis that such rock art marked venerated, magical places where the spirits could be heard; perhaps places where echoes were unusually strong. Had the Indians, like the ancient Greeks, believed echoes to be the sound of spirits calling, mimicking human-made noises to do so.

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:39:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hormel can ukelele

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:32:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1960s Brazilian pop treasure-trove

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:47:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gargantuan pile of manure has burned for three months

Apparently, the decomposing manure generated so much heat that it spontaneously combusted. And no one knows how to extinguish the fire. They don't want to quench it with water because the manure will run off into nearby rivers. Link (Thanks, Betsy!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:40:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Metal iPod case mod

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:39:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LA City council member organizes train crash aid via blog

In response to many suggestions, especially from bloggers, Eric has set up a fund for people to donate to help with relief for people who may have medical costs or, sadly, burial costs from yesterday's crash. The paypal link is at the top of the page. The following entry is a long account of what touring the site was like, including some pictures. It's on his campaign blog right now, but we'll put it on the city servers early tomorrow.

I toured the site -- it was horrifying. I have had the misfortune of being in war zones, I have seen cities like Sarajevo after the Balkans war, post-war Eritrea, Cambodia during the end of the years of the Khmer Rouge resistance, and in "liberated" areas of Burma. But seeing a tragedy like this, the immediacy of it, overwhelmed me. Tom said he had never seen anything so bad in his entire life.

The smell of fuel, which I first sensed on Los Feliz Boulevard at the 5 freeway, a good 2/3rds of a mile away, was omnipresent, and as I walked past the diesel, I realized that it had mixed with the pouring rain and blood and was a deep, bright, red. The trains were twisted in every direction, an overpass (which killed one of the passengers when a derailed car hit it) was crumpled, cars were overturned and steel twisted everywhere. I went through some of the cars and saw the personal effects--sunglasses here, a commuter's bicycle there, bloodstains everywhere.

The authorities had spraypainted the sides of the cars with the number of fatalities in each car to piece together what had happened. The fire department told me that they feared some people might still be under the train cars and were awaiting the heavy equipment to see for sure. Initial checks with x-ray equipment and dogs indicated no further survivors, but crews continued working.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:00:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars ep 3 text-crawl

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:50:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Alarm-clock changes modes with rotation, teddybear wireless snoozebar

Its functions depends on its position: orientating it on the side it's a radio, upright it becomes an alarm timer and placed horizontally it's a clock. As you come nearer to Quattro, it detects your presence and reveals illuminated touch-sensitive controls relevant to its current function....the radio alarm works in tandem with a teddy bear: squeezing the bear triggers various actions including a remote "snooze" operation.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:45:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day

Image: a bonus bubblewrap item from artist Jason Chase: Batter Whipped and Bubble Wrapped, 2003, 43" X 29", Oil on Canvas.

And my blog-mate Cory Doctorow points out that the master of all bubblewrap game sites is Joey "accordion guy" DeVilla, aka Joey "bubblewrap guy" deVilla. Link. He was hand-rolling it in Shockwave back in 1995, people. Old-school.
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:06:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monkey pay-per-view porn

In the new work, researchers Robert Deaner, Amit Khera and Michael Platt, all of Duke University Medical Center, tested this hypothesis by measuring how much fruit juice monkeys would accept or forgo to see photographs of familiar monkeys, permitting the researchers to compare monkeys' valuation of different types of social information. Male monkeys "paid" in juice to view female hindquarters or high-ranking monkeys' faces, but required "overpayment" to view low-ranking monkeys' faces.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:50:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LA train wreck: the copycat effect

Separately, a suicidal man who parked his SUV on railroad tracks in Orange County was arrested early Thursday, said Irvine police Cmdr. Dave Freedland, declining to say if it was a copycat situation. The man drove off when police spotted him and, after a chase, a dispatcher talked him out of suicide during a cell phone call.

[S]uch indeed are repeat occurrences that do follow the "Werther" or "copycat effect" pattern. More copycats from the LA incident are to be expected in a three-day, one-week, and one-month anniversary cycle.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:05:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snow Day

Update: Fleshbot has a few full-size sneak preview pics from the complete Nerve.com gallery. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:49:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gilberto Gil's extraordinary engagement with Brazilians

We arrived in the middle of a concert. Gil was asked to speak. As he went to the mic, the tent fell silent. Hundreds were packed into a tiny space. Gil began to describe the work of the Lula government to support free software, and free culture, when a debate broke out. I don't speak Portuguese, but a Brazilian who spoke English translated for Barlow and me. The kid was arguing with Gil about free radio. Two minutes into the exchange, about 8 masked protesters climbed onto chairs on one side of the tent, and held posters demanding free radio. A huge argument exploded, with the Minister (Gil) engaging many people directly, and others stepping in to add other perspectives. After about 20 minutes, the argument stopped. The band played again, and then Gil was asked to perform. For about another twenty minutes, this most extraordinary performer sang the music he's been writing since the 1960s, while the whole audience (save Barlow and I) sang along. When the concert was over, Barlow, Gil and I were led out of the tent. It was practically impossible to move, as hundreds begged Gil for autographs, or posed for pictures. At each step, someone had an argument. At each step, Gil stopped to engage. Even after Gil was in the car, some kid rapped on the window, yelling yet another abusive argument. Gil, with the patience of a saint, opened the window, and argued some more.

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

Buffy database with every character, episode, crewmember, etc

Giles
There's mention some two hundred years ago in Ireland of, of Angelus, the one with the angelic face.

Buffy
They got that right.

Xander
(clears his throat) I'm not saying anything, I have nothing to say.

Giles
Does this, uh, Angel have, um, a tattoo behind his right shoulder?

Buffy
Yeah, it's a, it's a bird or something.

Xander
Now I'm sayin' something. You saw him naked?

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:33:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Social Security "crisis" commentary that had me laughing aloud

Q: Is Social Security in crisis?
A: Yes it is! And if we don’t do something right now it is going to EXPLODE!
Q: Oh no!
A: In forty years.
Q: Then what happens?
A: Then Social Security runs out of money! That means either your benefits are reduced, or all Social Security everywhere explodes in a giant fireball and we will have to run away from the fireball and jump away from it in slow motion to escape!
Q: Tell me more about this crisis in gritty detail!
A: The fireball is huge and loud and expensive and there is grinding guitar music on the soundtrack informing everyone that we are bad, bad dudes! The radiation turns all old people into very poor mutants who must scavenge and eat each other for food. Eventually the robots come: they are unstoppable. What has science done!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:25:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Smoking Mickey tees

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:24:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Details on cracking Apple's iTunes DRM

FP: In a protected file, the "mp4a" atom -- part of a standard AAC file -- is replaced by a non-standard, proprietary "drms" atom. This contains the same basic information about a song as the "mp4a" atom, plus the identity of the purchaser and some of the cryptographic information needed to decrypt the music. The actual decryption key needed to decrypt the music is not stored here, however,but merely an indicator as to which key -- among many possible keys -- assigned to a particular user should be used.

Once you have found the needed key, you apply that key, using AES decryption, to the data in the "mdat" atom, which, in an unprotected file, contains all of the raw AAC audio sample data.

Apart from this, there are various atoms added beyond what you'd find in an unprotected AAC file, such as an "apID" atom, which marks music files with the iTunes Music Store ID of the purchaser.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Outstanding tips for community moderation

1. There can be no ongoing discourse without some degree of moderation, if only to kill off the hardcore trolls. It takes rather more moderation than that to create a complex, nuanced, civil discourse. If you want that to happen, you have to give of yourself. Providing the space but not tending the conversation is like expecting that your front yard will automatically turn itself into a garden.

2. Once you have a well-established online conversation space, with enough regulars to explain the local mores to newcomers, they’ll do a lot of the policing themselves.

3. You own the space. You host the conversation. You don’t own the community. Respect their needs. For instance, if you’re going away for a while, don’t shut down your comment area. Give them an open thread to play with, so they’ll still be there when you get back.

4. Message persistence rewards people who write good comments.

5. Over-specific rules are an invitation to people who get off on gaming the system.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:19:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Submarine hits underwater mountain

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:13:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Business 2.0's 101 dumbest moments in business

What's the problem? We love a guy who stands behind his product. James Joseph Minder, chairman of gunmaker Smith & Wesson, is forced to resign when newspaper reporters discover that, before becoming a corporate exec, he'd spent 15 years behind bars for a string of armed robberies and an attempted prison escape.

Do as I say, not as I...hey, get a load of those! After joining the Bank of Ireland as CEO, Michael Soden issues a dictate: No porn surfing on the job. His next dictate: The IT department is to be outsourced to Hewlett-Packard. Shortly after the outsourcing deal goes through, IT staffers, now employed by HP, discover porn on Soden's computer. Soden resigns, leaving the bank and HP scrapping over who should pay his severance, estimated at $5 million.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:01:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Living dead

Though state law outlines how people can be declared brain dead, no statute says who is authorized to declare a person dead, said Dr. John Butts, chief medical examiner for North Carolina.

"As a practical matter, people are regularly proclaimed dead by medical personnel who are not physicians," Butts said.

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:44:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese kustom kulture show at Roq La Rue

A small group of Japanese artists took note of this subculture and were instantly entranced. Rather than viewing it as a passing fad, these artists immersed themselves in the “Hot Rod” lifestyle - customizing cars, learning to pinstripe, traveling to car shows, and creating street art using the subculture’s outlaw symbolism such as skulls, cars, monsters, and tattoo images. A thriving subculture now exists in Japan devoted to the scene,?which has?incorporated elements of Japanese pop culture, while remaining loyal to the American hot rod tradition.

This show features the work of several of these Japanese artists, and ranges from Rockin’ Jellybean’s exquisitely rendered rock vixens, to Sugisack’s photo realistic paintings of street rods, to Mr. G’s meticulous pin striping, to Makoto’s exceptional blend of traditional Japanese iconography with old school Americana. This show is curated by Nash Yoshii of “Burnout” magazine and Detroit Junk in Tokyo.

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

iPod Tissues

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:46:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Top 100 Soundtracks

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:34:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Carnets de digestion

"Since the beginning of 2001, I draw in small notebooks 11 cm X 15 cm (approximately), always with a ball point pen, always on same paper, always in black. I contrained myself never to tear a page off, what is done... is done. I put the date at the beginning and the end of each notebook. Each day (or almost) I spend one hour or two drawing in these notebooks. At this day, I made approximately 450 pages distributed in 12 notebooks."

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:18:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Secrets of the Venus Flytrap

Mahadevan likened the Venus flytrap's hinged leaves to a plastic lid that is bowed in one direction and then suddenly pops the other way. While waiting for prey, the plant's leaves are bowed outward, opening the hinged trap. When an insect touches the hairy triggers located inside of the trap, the plant moves water in the leaves, changing their curvature and suddenly snapping them closed.

"It is a relatively simple mechanism, but the plant is actively controlling it," Mahadevan said.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:41:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Host a screening of Eyes on the Prize on Feb 8!

But they do more screeners -- people to host screening parties, even small-scale ones. Nicholas from Downhill Battle sez, "we want to emphasize that people can just have them in their living room if they want and don't need to post the address publicly (just a contact email is fine)."

On February 8th, during Black History Month, screenings of Eyes on the Prize, Part I: Awakenings 1954-1956 will be taking place across the country. Together, we'll bring this film back to a mass audience, but in a self-organized, grassroots way. If you don't see a screening in your city, please do everything you can to help organize one in your home or at a community center, library, or other space. If you can only host a screening on a different day, you can post that also, but we're hoping to connect people with the February 8th date as much as possible.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:08:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excerpt from Cory's next novel in Backwards City Review

Once upon a time, Alan's mother gave birth to three sons in three months. Birthing sons was hardly extraordinary -- before these three came along, she'd already had four others. But the interval, well, that was unusual.

As the eldest, Alan was the first to recognize the early signs of her pregnancy. The laundry loads of diapers and play clothes he fed into her belly unbalanced more often, and her spin cycle became almost lackadaisical, so the garments had to hang on the line for days before they stiffened and dried completely. Alan liked to sit with his back against his mother's hard enamel side while she rocked and gurgled and churned. It comforted him.

The details of her conception were always mysterious to Alan. He'd been walking down into town to attend day school for five years, and he'd learned all about the birds and the bees, and he thought that maybe his father -- the mountain -- impregnated his mother by means of some strange pollen carried on the gusts of winds from his deep and gloomy caves. There was a gnome, too, who made sure that the long hose that led from Alan's mother's back to the spring pool in his father's belly remained clear and unfouled, and sometimes Alan wondered if the gnome dove for his father's seed and fed it up his mother's intake. Alan's life was full of mysteries, and he'd long since learned to keep his mouth shut about his home life when he was at school.

He attended all three births, along with the smaller kids -- Bill and Donald (Charlie, the island, was still small enough to float in the middle of their father's heart-pool) -- waiting on tenterhooks for his mother's painful off-balance spin cycle to spend itself before reverently opening the round glass door and removing the infant within.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:42:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Train's configuration may have contributed to wreck

Also, some local bloggers are now talking about the possibility of doing fundraising for crash victims via blogs.

Link to LA Times story

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

Wired News on "Eyes On the Screen" campaign

Lawrence Guyot, former leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, plans to organize a screening in Washington, D.C. He said that Downhill Battle's reaction is "precisely what is needed."

"If people had stuck to the law, black people wouldn't have the right to use restaurants and hotels. If people had stuck to the law, women wouldn't have the right to vote. If people had stuck to the law, women wouldn't have the right to own property," Guyot said. "Our country has a history of laws that we are very proud we have moved away from."

Guyot said that the series is important because it shows "the power of ordinary people to get civically engaged and make policy changes." That's a crucial message for young people, in particular, to hear, he said.

"Now is the time to fight through the miasma of who owns Eyes on the Prize," Guyot said.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:28:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Journal of a camping Star Wars trufan

NO snow in seattle last night. It wasn't even that cold. Casey is just now done with a new update it should be up on the site in a day or two. Most likely two...I have a feeling that he is getting tanked tonight. As for me, I'm still out here in the cold playing on. To some, "just let it go" & to some I hope when you're at a bar tonight raise a glass for me & say "Play on jeff, play on."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:18:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bosch action-figures

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:15:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO kick someone's ass with an umbrella

You should aim a vicious blow at your assailant's head, holding your hand very high in order to force him to guard high. Simultaneously, you should jump forward from the attacking position, shown in the second photograph, to the position shown in the third photograph, and strike him with the open hand high up on the chest, pulling his foot away from beneath him at the same time -- in order to disturb his balance, and destroy his power to hit you. You could now strike your adversary such a blow with your fist on the face as to render him unconscious, or, of course, you could belabor him with your stick if it were suitable for the purpose.

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

Jailed for using a nonstandard browser

For donating to a Tsunami appeal using Lynx on Solaris 10. BT [British Telecom] who run the donation management system misread an access log and saw hmm thats a non standard browser not identifying it's type and it's doing strange things. Trace that IP. Arrest that hacker.

Armed police, a van, a police cell and national news later the police have gone in SWAT styley and arrested someone having their lunch.

Out on bail till next week and preparing to make a lot of very bad PR for BT and the Police....

So just goes to show if you use anything other than Firefox or IE and you rely on someone else to interogate access logs or IDS logs you too could be sitting in a paper suit in a cell :(

Update:: The source that told me about this has corroborated it with more detail in private email, but is leery of going public. I hope that more publicly available details appear soon, and will post them when I have them.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:08:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pirate of the Caribbean translated to hacker: 4rrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!111

Gibbs: d00d y0u w4nt teh bl4ck p34rl 4g4in????//
Cap'n Jack: y34h i g0t s0m3 l3v3r4g3
Gibbs: ok ill g3t s0m3 cr4zy d00ds t0g3th3r
The Good Pirates: 4rrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!111
Cap'n Jack: i m teh cr4zy
Will: d00d wtf wtf??
Gibbs: j4ckz 4 l1ttl3 w31rd
Will: y34h, t0tlly
Gibbs: b4rb0ss4 fuxx0r3d h1m
Will: suxx0r

Update: Phil Carter, who wrote the leet-speak PoTC script, sent in a note with the original location of the document

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:04:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Say it with sprouts

Update: Boing Boing reader Roy Berman says,

I saw the post you made on the Mamederumon magic beans from Japan, but after checking out the original site I realized that the BBC story doesn't capture but part of the magic. I translated it and put the text up on my blog.

Mamederumon!
The bean with a message in it is being born!
The egg of Mamederumon!
From an egg a plant is born!
Exciting and thrilling!
The introduction of the egg!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:08:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Apple's Groening-style fez

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:22:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bloggies site is back online

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:13:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO build an Apollo Guidance Computer

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:04:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pirate Pirates of the Caribbean script

Elizabeth : Wait! You have to take me to shore. According to the Code of the Order of the Brethren -

Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate’s code to apply and you’re not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl , Miss Turner .

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

LA train wreck

Update: Apparently the gas/smoke smell was caused by a big diesel fuel spill that occurred in the wreck, sparking small fires nearby. Link.

Update 2: LA City Councilman Eric Garcetti's office responded in the comments section of a post on Blogging.LA (yes, some of our lawmakers here actually read and participate on blogs). Here are the details on the spill, and the many dead and injured, from Garcetti's spokesperson:

More than 4000 gallons of diesel were spilled in the wreck. I've posted below a letter that Eric sent out to district residents -- the crash site was in the thirteenth district and Eric walked the crash site this morning:

Dear Friends, You will probably have heard by now about the calamitous train wreck that happened this morning on the border of Los Angeles and Glendale in Atwater Village.

At 6:04 this morning, two passenger trains and a freight train collided. A man attempting suicide had left his car on the track. He abandoned it before the first train hit it, but the ensuing wreck resulted in ten fatalities and more than one hundred people taken to the hospital. By the time you read this, more people may have died. Among the dead were a deputy sheriff and an employee of the Los Angeles Department of Aging.

This morning, I visited the scene of the wreck. It was horrible. The impact sheared one of the track rails in two. Emergency personnel were still searching for trapped victims.

The injured and the dead are in all of our prayers. Let us also give thanks for acts of bravery and compassion. LAPD Northeast Division patrol cars were first to arrive, and officers rescued commuters as the second train was tipping over. More than 4000 gallons of diesel fuel were spilled from a freight car; firefighters prevented a disastrous blaze from igniting. Other first responders treated the injured on the scene, and the men and women opening up the Costco adjacent to the wreck provided first aid supplies from their store and assisted emergency personnel.

The only happiness at a time like this is to see the limitless desire of human beings to help one another.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:17:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hello space, my old friend

Clad in nearly identical, Russian-built Orlan spacesuits with red stripes - [Leroy] Chiao's suit sported a U.S. flag for identification - the Expedition 10 crew opened the outer hatch of the station's Pirs docking compartment at 2:43 a.m. EST (0743 GMT).

"Hello space, my old friend," said Chiao, a spacewalk veteran, as stepped outside Pirs compartment. The extravehicular activity was the fifth spacewalk of Chiao's career while marking [Salizhan] Sharipov's first foray outside a spacecraft.

"It's so cold, and so beautiful," said Salizhan as he followed Chiao out the hatch.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:17:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Matt Groening Apple poster from olden days

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:16:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Sites blog: Black Plastic

The men split into teams and slowly, reverently, work at freeing the two from nature's reckless grip -- bodies, like baby sparrows, crushed by a clumsy, eager child. The man, stripped of clothes, is floating near a patch of reeds. Five wade in to get him. One pulls a large plank from the water and uses it like a lever to loose the suction of mud attached to the body. He slips it under the chest and poles it carefully, feet first into the end of a large black plastic bag the others hold open.

Meanwhile another group is deconstructing the debris pile from around the woman. Only her arm is visible, but with each piece they remove more of her is revealed until twenty minutes later, the body is fully exposed. They slide a rectangle of plywood under the corpse. As they drag it out on the homemade stretcher I can finally see her face. I look away…but my eyes are drawn to it again. Her top and bottom lips are pulled back in a frozen grimace. It's clear to me that her death was neither quick nor painless.

Now the man's body is being carried from the water to firm ground. His feet are exposed and the white, flesh is beginning to fall away after so many days of being immersed.

Once on shore, the men begin trussing it up in more black plastic. I watch their uncalloused hands, hands not used to such tasks, skillfully wrapping the shape with twine, transforming what had been a violent an chaotic death into something more orderly, peaceful – something that the living could make sense of and that the dead may have ultimately wished for.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:12:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Viktor Yuschenko is blogging -- not

Newly-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko is blogging! Unfortunately, I don't know Ukranian (Russian?) so I have no idea what is written here, but none the less, it's pretty impressive that such a political figure is blogging. He's even got an RSS feed!

Update: ...not exactly. Boing Boing reader Denis Perelyubskiy says:

This is not entirely correct. The site appears to be akin to whitehouse.gov, in that these are just the site that follows the president. press releases, opinions, news, etc. The site also summarizes and rewords the things he says at various events and press-conferences.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:06:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars opening day camper evicted from Seattle streets

Tweiten and his tiny blue couch were made to move by Seattle Police just hours after a police spokesman told me Tweiten had not been booted because there had been no complaints. Not one since the 27-year-old began a 139-day squat in anticipation of the May 19 opening of "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith."

Suddenly, according to SPD spokesman Sean Whitcomb, an anonymous caller did complain. "So the individual (Tweiten) was provided with a copy of the (no sit/no lay) ordinance, the individual was given a verbal admonition and told that, if he did not move, the individual would be cited the next day," Whitcomb said.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:05:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bluetooth virus infecting Lexus firmware?

It's not clear whether or not this has ever actually happened, but apparently someone asked Kaspersky Lab if they knew "how to cure a virus, which 'infected the onboard computers of automobiles Lexus LX470, LS430, Landcruiser 100 via a cell phone,'" and they conjecture that a virus could potentially use Bluetooth to jump from a Symbian-powered cellphone to the navigation system of certain Lexus models.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:40:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tell US Copyright Office to let you use orphan works!

SUMMARY: The Copyright Office seeks to examine the issues raised by ``orphan works,'' i.e., copyrighted works whose owners are difficult or even impossible to locate. Concerns have been raised that the uncertainty surrounding ownership of such works might needlessly discourage subsequent creators and users from incorporating such works in new creative efforts or making such works available to the public. This notice requests written comments from all interested parties. Specifically, the Office is seeking comments on whether there are compelling concerns raised by orphan works that merit a legislative, regulatory or other solution, and what type of solution could effectively address these concerns without conflicting with the legitimate interests of authors and right holders.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:34:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant old WB cartoon filmography and title card archive

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:30:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eyes on the Screen: Direct action to save Eyes on the Prize

Downhill Battle has decided to stage some direct action around this. They're running a site called Eyes on the Screen, which is distributing copies of Eyes on the Prize via Bittorrent, and they're organizing a national network of screenings on February 8th -- have your friends over to watch your downloaded copy of the documentary.

At 8pm on February 8th we will celebrate the struggle and triumph of the civil rights movement with screenings of Eyes on the Prize Part 1: Awakenings. Eyes on the Prize is the most renowned civil rights documentary of all time; for many people, it is how they first learned about the Civil Rights Movement (more about the film). But this film has not been available on video or television for the past 10 years simply because of expired copyright licenses. We cannot allow copyright red tape to keep this film from the public any longer. So today we are making digital versions of the film available for download. Join us in building a new mass audience for this film: organize or attend a screening in your city, town, school or home on February 8th.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:26:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

White House covert ops teams sarcasm

There are times when America needs to defend itself, and it cannot wait for the doddering approval of our vaunted "allies": the United Nations, Europe, the CIA, Congress. In times like these, when facing down an imminent threat to Freedom - or a grave and gathering threat, or a distant and someday possible threat, or threat-related program activities - it is imperative that the United States be able to go to war to defend itself without waiting for the sanction of bureaucrats in our own legislative branch.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:15:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mac Mini Media Center challenge

I can't find a way to have multiple computers fully share a single iTunes library. I first ran into this when Alex got her new PC, and I wanted both of our computers to be able to access the same library. I'm not talking the shared music function, I mean full access -- being able to create playlists and sync iPods -- from a single library.

I think this is possible, given that the library never changes. But if new songs are added, the changes will only be reflected on the computer on which they were made -- I think (ie if I add a song from my computer to the library via iTunes, the change won't be reflected on Alex's computer). So the ideal situation would be to have all our music in one place, preferably the Mac mini or an external drive attached to it, then have the three instances of iTunes (the mini, my PowerBook and Alex's PC) all use the files from that one location, and for changes made to the library on any computer show up across all three.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:12:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What if Bill Gates hired Linus Torvalds?

When you hired me three years ago, you had to realize that I was going to speak my mind, no matter what the consequences. You told me that if I ever hit a wall with Steve or his people, I should let you know. Well, here goes. (Yes, again.)

After all our technical and strategic conflicts, I bet you never guessed we'd be at each other's throats over a matter of pronunciation. But the fact is, when Steve goes to a marketing meeting, as he did yesterday, and pronounces our desktop system "Winux," he jeopardizes not only my personal reputation, but, more important, the very foundation of our business and software approach for the next decade. The desktop system is not "Winux," as in Linux. As he knows very well. WinX is pronounced like "winks."

Why is this important? Because the name WinX was not random. It was deliberately chosen to express the strategy behind a 24-month engineering marathon inside Microsoft. We've built a Windows desktop and application framework around a Linux operating system, and both sides of this equation - open source and proprietary - are needed for our plan to continue to work. By talking about "Winux," Steve blurs the distinction between Linux and WinX. Worse, he implies that we have taken over Linux for our own selfish ends. This makes the development community nervous, slows contributions from coders, and creates a huge amount of unnecessary noise.

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

Self-destruct button for PCs

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:05:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Whales and hippos related

"If you look at the general shape of the [hippo] it could be related to horses, as the ancient Greeks thought, or pigs, as modern scientists thought, while molecular phylogeny shows a close relationship with whales," Dr. (Jean-Renaud) Boisserie explained. "But cetaceans - whales, porpoises and dolphins - don't look anything like hippos. There is a 40 million-year gap between fossils of early cetaceans and early hippos."

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:49:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Strange Thai TV commercials

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:40:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pad charger

Inside the pad, an array of coils spread a low-power magnetic field low and wide over the pad's flat surface so that devices anywhere on the surface can intercept charging flux (see Graphic). The pad has numerous flat primary coils embedded under the surface. The coils can be of different sizes and shapes: rectangular, circular or ellipsoid.

Splashpower-compatible cellphones, digital cameras or camcorders will have a thin, flat receiver attached to them or inside their casing. The receiver is a sheet of magnetic alloy, the size of a stick of chewing gum, with a coil wound round it. Current induced in the coil when it is on the charging pad is then fed to the device's charging circuit.

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:30:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

On orgasms, epilepsy, and the lack of sexual neuroscience

The O'Reilly Mind Hacks blog frequently posts cool neuroscience links, but this one describing research on the neuroscience of the orgasm was especially interesting. They discuss, among other things, a Dutch study on the male orgasm using PET scans: "[T]hey asked couples to practice at home. The participant's partner (who had the more difficult task by far) needed to be be able to make her partner ejaculate - while he was standing, being injected by radiation, watched by neuroscientists and, most importantly, during a precise 50 second time-slot. With all credit to the women involved, 8 ejaculations were recorded from the eleven men who volunteered."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:19:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More on gender-bending cartoon icons

The great majority of animated cartoons produced by the commercial Hollywood film studios, from Disney's Steamboat Willie in 1928 through the shift to television cartoons in the 1960s, have a decidedly straight sensibility. Mickey Mouse is straight; Popeye is straight; Woody Woodpecker is straight. This fact is hardly surprising; these films are intended to have a wide appeal for a popular audience, and so play into that audience's social expectations. A select few of these studio cartoons, however, abandon the straight world view for the wilder realm of camp. The camp mode in cartoons appears consistently only in the short features of the Warner Brothers studio, and even here almost exclusively in the work of director Chuck Jones. Yet over time, these are the cartoons that have held the public imagination, just as much as (if not more than) the full-length works of Disney. They are the ones known intimately by cartoon cognoscenti, often memorized line-for-line and take-for-take, recited in unison by gleeful aficionados. Jones, more than any other single figure, is lauded as the master of the cartoon directorial art.

Link to paper.

Also: BB pal Jonno points us to a film called Was Bugs Bunny Gay? that ran on the GLBT film festival circuit a few years ago. Here is the only web reference we found, but if any sleuthers out there can find a copy, do let us know.

Reader Adri adds:

Continuing with the cross-dressing aspect of bugs bunny.. the library of congress has a subject just for this topic "Gender identity--cross dressing". And has a few vaudeville plays online which involve the topic. And better yet if you search their main site and enter "cross dressing," it brings up a couple hundred cross dressing artifacts in the LoC online collection. I guess J Edgar Hoover wasn't the only librarian interested in the topic. ;-)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:02:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

YACSS (yet another chocolate sushi site)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:53:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chimp envy

"In the new work, the researchers tested the reactions of pairs of chimpanzees to exchanges of food that varied in quality. The animals received either a grape, which they coveted, or a less appealing cucumber and they could see what their partner obtained. In pairs of chimps that had lived together since birth, the individual given the cucumber was less likely to react negatively to the situation than was the short-changed member of a pair that did not know each other as well. Indeed, chimps in the short-term social groups refused to work after their partner received a better reward for the same job."

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:51:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scan, then blog each week's pick from the farmer's market

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:30:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Times they are a-changin'

Lisa Dallos, a spokeswoman for Rolling Stone publisher Wenner Media LLC, said Tuesday that the company had "addressed the internal miscommunications that led to the previous misstatement of company policy and apologize for any confusion it may have caused."

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:24:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photoblogging aging Vegas signage

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:17:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chinese govt bans Sims 2 and 49 other games -- UPDATED

Liu Binjie, deputy director of the administration and director of the state anti-porn office said here Wednesday that the Chinesegovernment in 2005 will focus on combating illegal publications. This especially concerns pirated textbooks, electronic publications and illegal journals that will have negative influence on the youth.

Among the 50 illegal games, 26 are pirated game software including Age of Mythology: the Titans, The Sims 2, Manhunt, FIFA 2005, Battlefield Vietnam and Painkiller: Battle out of Hell. The remaining are illegally distributed foreign games including Conflict Vietnam, Vietcong: Fist Alpha and Devastation.

Update: Matt sez, "I think this has become a huge area of misunderstanding.  The Chinese govenrment is not per se banning Sims 2, they're cracking down on piracy and illegal imports of the listed titles.  Presumably some of the more popular recent titles are more prone to being pirated, so instead of having to check every copy of everything they find they've settled on a subset that are more often than not going to be pirated when they stumble across a copy.  (Why some of them may be classed as 'illegally imported' is probably more interesting -- possibly they're not available legally in China -- but this is an entirely seperate issue, and is not limited to a list of 50 things.)"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:44:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's copyright speech video

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:42:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PBS launches NOVA scienceNOW, video segments online

The PBS series Nova has a new series called Nova Science NOW that they describe as "[a] lens on the timeliest developments and most intriguing personalities in science and technology." I found the premiere easy to watch without feeling that my intelligence was suspect. The really great part, though, is each segment from the show is viewable online and the entire episode will be viewable online a few weeks after airing. The segments are available as Quicktime, RealVideo and Windows Media.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:37:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Liveblogging Davos World Economic Forum

Let it also be known that Boing Boing's own "band manager" John Battelle is in the Davos hizzouse (Davizzouse?) and anything he may blog on the event can be found here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:32:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Matt Groening's Macintosh brochure

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:35:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Downhill Battle sending coal to RIAA, documented

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

RC car with controller on watch

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:25:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tetris TV game with great controllers

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:23:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1970s Homebrew Computer Club newsletter scans

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:21:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Supreme Court P2P case briefs available, deconstructed

Groups on both sides of the fence are filing their briefs now for what will be the defining moment for Internet freedom. It's exhilarating reading, and Ed Felten has already begun to critique the other side's filings.

This history could hardly be more wrong. The ability to share files between any two computers on the network was an explicit goal of the Internet, from day one. The web is not a traditional aspect of the Internet, but a relatively recent development. And the web does not require or allow only large, centralized servers. Anybody can have a website -- I have at least three. Searching for files and retrieving copies of files is a pretty good description of what the web does today.

What the Solitor General seems to want, really, is a net that is easier to regulate, a net that is more like broadcast, where content is dispensed from central servers.

The anti-porn amici come right out and say that that is what they want. Their brief uses some odd constructions ("Like any non-sentient, non-judgmental technology, peer-to-peer technology can be misused...") and frequent recourse to the network fallacy.

Their main criticism of Grokster is for its "engineered ignorance of use and content" (p. 9; note that the quoted phrase is a reasonable definition of the end-to-end principle, which underlies much of the Internet's design), for failing to register its users and monitor their activities (e.g., p. 13), for failing to limit itself to sharing only MP3 files as Napster did (really! p. 17), and for "engineer[ing] anonymous, decentralized, unsupervised, and unfiltered networks" (p. 18).

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:17:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiki Truck, a pickup with a waterfall and hot-tub

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:11:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO get photographed with Disney characters in Disneyland

Even if you aren't trying very hard when you walk in the gates of Disneyland there are often one or two characters hanging out by the mickey mouse topiary in front of the train station. In my experience this is often Alice and the Mad Hatter or sometimes Goofy or Pluto. Its a great feeling to arrive at Disneyland and be able to walk 5 feet before you see a character.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:09:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monitored calls catch rants on hold

It is at these times that monitors hear husbands arguing with their wives, mothers yelling at their children, and dog owners throwing fits at disobedient pets, all when they think no one is listening. Most times, the only way a customer can avoid being recorded is to hang up.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:04:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

YAIW (Yet another insane weatherman)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:55:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ringo Star becomes comic superhero via Stan Lee

The former Beatles drummer has undertaken a joint venture with Stan Lee's POW! Entertainment to develop a multimedia franchise in which Starr will play a superpowered animated version of himself.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:51:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

In memoriam: Parveen Babi, Bollywood Diva

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:48:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rapper free to 'Back That Ass Up'

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:48:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hello, Kitty

I was sitting at my desk in New York on Wednesday night, writing a BarlowSpam, when Skype started to emit the old-fashioned bell tone that signals a request for a voice chat. I looked at the window associated with the request and saw a bunch of Chinese pictograms where the name should be. Some kind of Asian chatspam, I figured, and I ignored it. A few minutes later, it rang again. The name of the caller was "Kitty11_3". There was also a text chat box on the screen, also from kitty11_3 which read, "I need a friend." I was skeptical. I figured that whoever it was probably looking for "friends" to come see her "relax" in her web-cam equipped "bedroom." But I took the call. A delicate Asian-sounding voice came from someplace in Cyberspace. "Will you talk to me?" she said.

"Why?"

"I want to practice my English."

"Why me?"

"Because your name is John. I think that anybody named John speaks English."

I remained skeptical, but further conversation convinced me that she was telling the truth. She really had no idea who or where I was and had plucked me at random from all the Skype users named John. Kitty11_3 turned out to be a 22 year old girl from Hanoi, who, like her father, works for the state-owned oil company. She had managed to get five of her neighbors in the Hanoi suburb where she lives to go in on a DSL line and WiFi which she had set up herself. Her boyfriend is off in Korea getting a master's degree in telecommunications. She has three sisters, and her real name is Vu My Dung.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:37:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Another rotten weatherman

UPDATE:Matt Snider sez: "As a long time BoingBoing reader, I was pleasantly surprised to find one of the site's stories featuring my school, Ohio University. I would like to point out one thing in the defense of this hapless weatherman: the news program he is forecasting for is a university station. WOUB is all university programming, and therefore he isn't a fully licensed and bonded weather person. Rather, he's a weatherman-in-training, and so perhaps it isn't fair to judge him on quite the same scale as an individual who has completed his training.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:26:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chocolate Solar System

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:20:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New York Times weblog-safe link generator

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:16:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wiki wiki wiki

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:05:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bubble treehouse

The original 9’ sphere, Eve, has closets on either side of the door.  These function as partial bulkheads and reinforce the door opening.  There is a double bed on the left centered under the 4’ window.  A settee with table is placed in front of the 4’ window on the right.  The back wall opposite the door provides a galley area with counter and cupboards.  A circular shelf, with an opening at the door, rings the ceiling.  It makes a keyhole out of the ceiling.  The shelf reinforces the attachment points and provides easy access storage.

Future improvements include a washroom/shower/sauna sphere complete with its own effluent treatment system.  It will produce only clean water and compost with luck.  Something that could serve a whole colony of spheres on a remote setting.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:42:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with Badmags.com publisher

La Spirale: You emphasize that some of those magazines from the past are strangely not outdated. Can you give us some examples and explain why these magazines are not outdated?

Thomas Brinkman: The Rebel Breed #1 published by Press Arts is the best example of what I was talking about, as it had, in 1968, articles on body decoration and tattooing, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and a couple of articles on outlaw bike clubs. I suppose you could make the argument that these mags are all outdated, but what I meant by that was that a lot of the topics covered in them back then are still with us today, i.e., tattooing, biker lifestyle mags, Ed Roth has, since the eighties, become a modern icon and not just a footnote on the sixties. Many of the bizarre fetish mags that were really strange and underground for 1963 now have their modern counterparts sold on newsstands openly.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:39:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Madrid conference on Terrorism and the Internet, March 10

Workshop: Terrorism, Democracy and the Open Internet
Despite their anti-modern ideology, some of the most violent terrorist groups have also been the most skilled in exploiting the advantages of the Internet. How can we stop them from abusing the opportunities of modern communications technology whilst preserving the advantages and freedoms it offers? The workshop will also show how the Internet and new technologies can be used to promote the spirit and practice of democracy. We believe that while unarguably new information technologies have the potential to cause serious damage there is much more on the Internet that promotes and shows democracy at work. Democracy thrives on the net and we want to debate how to use it more productively to fight global terrorism.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:52:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DVD licensing cartel sued under anti-trust

Patent fees of around US$20 per unit are currently levied on manufacturers of Chinese DVD players, accounting for some 20 to 30 per cent of their production costs.

However, US manufacturers' patent fees are much lower, only 3 to 5 per cent of their production costs.

The high patent fees have hit Chinese DVD manufacturers hard, with exports of Chinese DVD players falling sharply last year.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:09:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Real-snow versions of Calvin and Hobbes's gory snowmen

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:04:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why do newspapers charge for yesterday's news?

The thing is that while there is certainly a small commercial audience for newspaper archives -- corporate researchers, the occassional grad student with a grant -- the noncommercial audience for archives is much larger: people who want to read the news from their birthdays, researchers amateur and pro looking up historic dates, Bloggers writing about seminal moments.

Conversely, there is a large commercial audience for new news, that is, people who'll pay to see today's news while it's still news and before it becomes history. That's why the news business is so much larger than the history business.

The problem with the NYT's system is that it ensures that the Times can't be the paper of record any longer, because even if a thousand bloggers point to a great article on the day it comes out, thirty days later it will be invisible to the 99.999 percent of the Web who won't pay for access to fishwrap, no matter how interesting.

News is increasingly a substitutable good: there are so many ways to get the basic facts on an article, from Yahoo's AP wire to the Sydney Morning Herald to pastebombed articles in the archives of mailing lists like Interesting People and Politech that a savvy searcher or blogger has no good reason to pick the NYT to get a set of basic facts on any subject. The NYT often does an extraordinary job of covering the facts, but it doesn't matter a whit to posterity if a link to that job will staledate in a month.

If the NYT can't make it on advertising alone, it might just be dead in the long run, since these substitutable goods that require no subscription will crowd it out of the market eventually. But if it wants to try a subscription-based system, then for heaven's sake, why not charge money for the news (which lots of people want to pay for!) and give away the history (which relatively few people want to buy)?

There was a Wired News article a couple months back that suggested that the paywalls on newspaper archives were being driven by their agreements with Lexis-Nexis, a company that provides expensive search services to newsrooms, lawyers and other specialized entities. I think that protecting the Lexis-Nexis deal at the expense of relevance is the wrong move: if the NYT's need to lock up its archive makes it irrelevant, then Lexis-Nexis will drop its contract with the Times anyway. Meanwhile, if the NYT puts takes its archives out from behind the paywall, it won't need Lexis-Nexis to market them for it any longer -- hell, maybe it can start charging Lexis for access to its database!

One of these days, a newspaper currently charging a premium for access to its article archives will do something bold: It will open the archives to the public -- free of charge but with keyword-based advertising at the margins.

I predict that the result will pleasantly surprise the bean-counters. There'll be a huge increase in traffic at first, once people realize they can read their local history without paying a fee. Eventually, though not instantly, the revenues will greatly exceed what the paper had been earning under the old system. Meanwhile, the expenses to run it will drop.

And, perhaps most important, the newspaper will have boosted its long-term place in the community. It will be seen, more than ever, as the authoritative place to go for some kinds of news and information -- because it will have become an information bedrock in this too-transient culture.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:00:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, January 24, 2005

Disguise your vacuum cleaner as a giant rat in gingham

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:32:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stick your phone to your fridge with your shades, pen and keys

Update: Tony Hardin points out that you can buy these at CompUSA too.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:04:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

You're a sucker if you believe no-DRM, no-release threats from Hollywood

If you doubt this, see this quote, from Viacom's December 2002 filing on the Broadcast Flag, where they lied to the FCC about their intention to do the vault-and-huff thing.

Specifically, if the broadcast flag is not implemented and enforced by next summer [of 2003], CBS will cease providing any programming in high definition for the 2003-2004 television season.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:53:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hugo nominating ballots are out

• Best Novel: Eastern Standard Tribe, Tor, 2004
• Best Novelette: Anda's Game, Salon.com, 2004
• Best Novelette: Appeals Court, with Charles Stross, Argosy 2004
• Best Novelette: Unwirer, with Charles Stross, ReVisions, DAW 2004

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

Kevin Kelly's True Films documentary guide available as a PDF

What it is: True Films contains the best 100 documenatries I've reviewed in True Films as of December, 2004. (There may be additional films reviewed in 2005 posted here but they will not be included until version 2.0.) I winnowed some from this list, and came up with an alphabetical collection of 100 documentaries I feel are worth your time. Most people will enjoy the majority listed. There's been one private film club launched around this booklet.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:51:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chocolate Sushi

By the way, if any of you chocolate sushi companies would like to send me complimentary stuff to -- um, *analyze*, a la Silicon Valley 100 (an elite schwag club for which I didn't make the cut), by all means feel free. Consider me your chocolate sushi whore.
(Thanks, Katie Dean!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:03:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Quien es mas queer: Buggs or Spongebob?

See also this Keith Olbermann segment from MSNBC: Will Spongebob Make You Gay? Link.

Update: And they ask me why I love Boing Boing readers so much. Reader J. Buck says,

Back when he was a grad student, my brother-in-law, Bob McEachern, got an academic paper published that had the title

Gender Twouble: Bugs Bunny, Cross-Dressing, and Patriarchy.

I can't find the text, but the abstract says:

Is Bugs Bunny gay? This article discusses the cross-dressing tendencies of Bugs Bunny, and the importance of this trait in Bugs as one of the most recognized cartoon characters of all time. In many cases, there are confrontations and competition between Bugs and rival Elmer Fudd concerning masculinity. The author raises many heretofore un-asked questions concerning Bugs' actions.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:32:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Save the Endangered Gizmos

FCC Chairman Michael Powell calls TiVo 'God's machine,' and its devotees have been known to declare, 'You can take my TiVo when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!' But suppose none of us had ever been given the opportunity to use or own a TiVo -- or, for that matter, an iPod? Suppose instead that Hollywood and the record companies hunted down, hobbled, or killed these innovative gizmos in infancy or adolescence, to ensure that they wouldn't grow up to threaten the status quo? That's the strategy the entertainment industry is using to control the next generation of TiVos and iPods. Its arsenal includes government-backed technology mandates, lawsuits, international treaties, and behind-the-scenes negotiations in seemingly obscure technology standards groups. The result is a world in which, increasingly, only industry-approved devices and technologies are 'allowed' to survive in the marketplace. ... Rather than sit back and watch as promising new technologies are picked off one-by-one, EFF has created the Endangered Gizmos List to help you defend fair use and preserve the environment for innovation.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:21:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Twinkie Sushi too low-carb for you, huh?

Just looking at this stuff is making me want to do one of those little hyperactive zinging kid dances behind my laptop.
Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:07:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The mother of all tiki bar databases

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:46:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Some interesting videos

1. This Fox News weatherman is incredibly obnoxious. (He was fired last year for substance abuse)

2. Actor Crispin Glover, who seems to enjoy being weird for for weirdness' sake, has a trailer of his movie that'll screen at Sundance. He's been working on it for about ten years, I think. I have a feeling the trailer is going to be better than the movie. (Not safe for work.) (Thanks, mister skye!)

3. After I wrote about Claude Shannon's juggling puppets, someone pointed me to the promo video for the World Juggling Federation competition, taking place January 27 and 28. It'll be on EPSN 2. Remarkable stuff. I also have a feeling though, that you can get 90% of the enjoyment from the show by watching this two-minute clip.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:30:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The horrible grunt of the Tasmanian devil

Jim Mitchell sez: "There's an unbelievably good audio file of a howling Tasmanian Devil in the travel section Sunday's SFGate.com. This may be the worst sound ever emitted by a carbon-based life form." Link

UPDATE: Boing Boing reader Mike has requested that someone make a ringtone out of this. Great idea. I just uploaded it to freeloader.com. Link

UPDATE:Lesley Miller sez: "The photo you used to accompany today's post on the Tasmanian Devil doesn't do them justice. I visited the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in Queensland last year, and took the attached photo of one their Devils. I used to say that all animals with snouts are cute, but I've had to adjust that view in light of seeing the Tasmanian Devil in person. "The zookeeper said that when they find road kill on the way to work, they pick it up, freeze it for 6 months to kill any bacteria, then feed it to the Devils. While they didn't have any to feed them the day I was there, I did witness a regular feeding: a chicken carcass in a cardboard box, securely taped shut. They tossed the box in the Devil's habitat, and he attacked it, shredding bits of cardboard with his teeth and claws. It only took about 15 seconds before his head was in the box, crunching on the chicken bones. It was absolutely horrific watching this little mammal go into such a feeding frenzy."

(Photograph CC by Lesley Miller)

UPDATE: Charming video of Tasmanian devils devouring a roadkill wallaby. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:53:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Twinkie Sushi Party, Yay

Update: Reader Henry Tero says, "The Twinkie sushi was created by Clare Crespo, (yummyfun.com, bad Flash warning) a CalArts grad food artist who has written two whimsical books on cupcakes and other food art. She deserves the credit for such beautiful work! She's created such wonders as: The Jello aquarium, a roast turkey with three legs, and here's an interview with Clare which features more sushi cupcakes."

Holy crap, that Jello-aquarium is lovely.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:35:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

No sleep 'til Lagos

No American entity has flown to any sub-Saharan point since Pan Am's routes (to Monrovia, Dakar, Nairobi and elsewhere) were abandoned prior to that airline's collapse in 1991. Continental also will become the only U.S. airline operating to six continents, a distinction it will share with numerous foreign counterparts.

New York-Lagos, which would not have garnered my wager as a likely candidate for such a premiere, is considered a highly lucrative market. "Our Lagos service will be highly attractive to Nigerian and American transatlantic travelers," said Continental CEO Larry Kellner in a statement. "Particularly executives in energy-related industries." The route was previously covered by the long-embattled Nigeria Airways, which finally closed its doors in 2003.

Nigeria, by the way, was ranked the world's third most corrupt nation by a watchdog organization called Transparency International. The group says 40 percent of the country's petroleum income is stolen or squandered by government corruption and mismanagement. Allegedly -- though I can't confirm this -- one of the reasons British Airways ceased its London-Lagos flights was because its airplanes were routinely stripped of equipment, including galley supplies, furnishings and even cockpit electronics, during layovers. Rumors say armed guards will accompany crew and passengers on Continental's flights from Newark.

Update: BoingBoing reader Robbie Honerkamp says,

A slight correction on your post. Ritetime Aviation, an Atlanta travel agency, had direct scheduled flights between Atlanta, New York and Lagos in 2003 and 2004 using aircraft operated by World Airways. Internal problems at Ritetime caused them to miss payments to World Airways, who promptly ceased flying the route. Ritetime's website is still online, but they're now out of business. World Airways' website is here.

The Salon article's mention of British Airways no longer flying to Lagos is also not true- a quick check of British Airways' web page shows regular BA flights from Heathrow (though it looks like they've stopped flying from Gatwick to Lagos). BA makes money hand over fist with the London-Lagos route and it'd take a lot for them to stop flying the route. As for "layovers" in Lagos, the airplanes are on the ground in LOS for only three or four hours before they're off on the night flight to London. I haven't heard of any airplanes being looted at the international airport. Over the past few years I've been extremely impressed with what the Nigerian aviation ministry has done to clean up the airport. I humbly suggest the author of the Salon article is smoking crack.

FYI, Richard Branson of Virgin is launching a new airline just for Nigeria. It's called "Virgin Nigeria" and will fly the Lagos-London route as well as routes from Lagos to other Nigerian and African destinations. Link to BBC News article.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:31:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Core77 photos of CES

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:43:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

We missed National Pie Day

A Baker's Dozen Ways to Celebrate National Pie Day on January 23

Register for the 2005 APC Crisco National Pie Championships being held on April 22-24 in Celebration, Florida. Entry forms will be available after Labor Day.

Eat pie. Whether you make it yourself, buy it at a supermarket or bakery or order it at a restaurant, eat some pie on National Pie Day. Pie is great with lunch or dinner or as a late-night snack.

Make pie. Bake your favorite homemade pie on National Pie Day.

Share pie. If you make or buy a pie, share it. By its very nature, pie is meant to be eaten with others. Have a pie potluck get-together.

Teach pie making. Stage classes and demonstrations and samplings at stores and schools. Invite seniors who KNOW pie to teach a class. If you don't know how to make pie, ask a pie maker to show you or attend a pie-making class.

Hold a pie night. Gather family and friends for a pie celebration. Everyone must bring one homemade pie for the pie buffet. We have heard of events where more than 100 folks come with 100 pies.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:47:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Boing Boing is up for two Bloggies!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:31:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Two-thirds of net users could walk away from search-engines

Nearly half of searchers use a search engines no more than a few times a week, and two-thirds say they could walk away from search engines without upsetting their lives very much....

Only 38% of users are aware of the distinction between paid or "sponsored" results and unpaid results.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:27:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO: Mod a microwave to melt iron

Domestic microwave appliances are based on the magnatron; an electronic device which converts electrical energy to microwave energy, which is fed via a waveguide to the cooking chamber. Since the conversion is somewhat less than perfectly efficient, the magnatron has to be cooled by a stream of air from a fan. This air is then led to the oven to help remove steam produced during cooking. Once in the chamber, the microwaves are reflected by the metal walls until they are absorbed, (usually by water-containing food), their energy being converted to heat. Should absorption not take place - if, for example, the oven is activated when empty, some energy will re-enter the waveguide and cause over-heating of the magnetron. Usually a safety switch turns the machine off when this happens. Note that the reflecting walls and the constant frequency of the microwaves set up standing waves in the chamber. This results in some areas being much more active than others and is the reason why food must be rotated through the varying field to cook evenly.

To be of use for metal casting, a domestic microwave oven rated D or E (850W or 1000W) needs two slight modifications: the rotating glass plate must be removed and the holes which admit air to the cooking chamber must be taped over (masking tape works reasonably well). The air from the magnetron cooling will then be re-directed to the exterior. No other modifications should be made. Microwaves are potentially dangerous and the uninitiated should treat the oven with respect.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:17:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Remix Reading: CC-licensed works in Berkshire!

The more we can create and remix, the more enriching those communities become. When you can set-up a band with your mates, or run a music night in a local club, or make some video clips - be they funny or serious - you're doing something profoundly social and human.

This creative ability is far more important than the ability to simply access cultural items cheaply. If we just want to be a nation of consumers, a culture based around buying goods and becoming couch potatoes, then the ability to consume really matters a lot. But if we want to be vibrant, interesting people, sharing culture in communities, we need to think more about the ability to create, which implies access.

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

Mystery novel delivered in email installments

Journalist Samantha Dempsey never imagined her life would turn out like this. Her 19 year-old son has fallen in love with an older woman. Her mother is a basket case, still haunted by the death of Samantha's brother in a car accident years ago. Her once-promising career as a journalist has ground to a halt. And the cracks in her marriage are wide and getting wider.

In the midst of all this turmoil, Samantha gets an email from a desperate friend whose 21 year-old daughter has joined The Daughters of Freya, a California cult that believes sex is the solution to the world's problems. He wants Samantha to write a story that will expose the cult as a fraud.

Samantha pitches the story to Jane Sperry, the editor of a San Francisco magazine and an old college friend. Sperry sends Samantha to Marin County to write a piece on the cult but she soon finds out that there is more to the cult than meets the eye.

She discovers that the cult's 'spiritual guide' has a secret and insidious agenda, and wealthy and powerful partners who will stop at nothing to prevent her from revealing the truth.

As Samantha risks her life in an attempt to penetrate the inner workings of the cult, she must deal with a personal life that is threatening to fall apart and a past she thought she had left far behind.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:01:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cracking Kryptos

The CIA required Sanborn to write the solution down and present it to (former CIA director William) Webster so the agency wouldn't be embarrassed if the sculpture turned out to contain a message that was pornographic or critical of the agency. Sanborn gave officials an envelope with a wax seal. But Sanborn said he didn't give Webster the whole story.

"Well, you know, I wasn't completely truthful with the man," Sanborn said, laughing. "And I'm sure he realizes that. I mean that's part of trade craft, isn't it? Deception is everywhere....

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:31:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Planting flags in dog poop

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:27:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Windows error-message generator

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:06:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Another RPG publisher who uses DRM-free PDFs

Update: Keeton sez, "Our website, 1KM1KT, accepts and distributes RPG's in .pdf format as well. The big difference between our site and Steve's is that our downloads are available free of charge."

Update 2: Joshua sez, "If you're interested in RPGs that are on the cutting edge, check out Anvilwerks, my friend Clinton R. Nixon's (yes, that's his real name) role-playing game site. Not only is his game The Shadows of Yesterday a great game, it was published entirely with open source software, as he documents. And all of his games are published under a Creative Commons license"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:29:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LA hacker con call for papers

The second LayerOne conference is now officially accepting papers and presentations for speaker selection. We are looking for people to speak on a broad range of topics; however, we encourage all submissions. To give you an idea of the sorts of things that were covered last year:

- CryptoMail: mail encryption for all.
- Life Hacks and Hacked Lives
- How the DMCA is Threatening to Strangle Reverse Engineering and the Future of Interoperability
- Visual Deep Packet Inspection
- A User-Centric Distributed Social Software Architecture

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:23:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shirky: Net is a kayak, driven by its environment

But this is where the 'acceptance' half comes in. It doesn't matter whether we "accept" folksonomies, because we're not going to be given that choice. The mass amateurization of publishing means the mass amateurization of cataloging is a forced move. I think Liz's examination of the ways that folksonomies are inferior to other cataloging methods is vital, not because we'll get to choose whether folksonomies spread, but because we might be able to affect how they spread, by identifying ways of improving them as we go.

To put this metaphorically, we are not driving a car, with gas, brakes, reverse and a lot of choice as to route. We are steering a kayak, pushed rapidily and monotonically down a route determined by the enviroment. We have a (very small) degree of control over our course in this particular stretch of river, and that control does not extend to being able to reverse, stop, or even significantly alter the direction we're moving in.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:18:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Whistler's Delight mashup mixes 22 whistling songs

Update: Spike provides this torrent for Whistler's Delight -- thanks, Spike!

Update 2: DJ Riko himself provides this alternate direct download link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:51:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bellster: happiness is a warm dialtone

Back in the Fall of 1995, with the help of some friends, Free World Dialup (FWD) version 1.0 happened. The original concept was to setup a computer, modem and let a friend (or a stranger) place a call over the internet via your computer. This was done on an experimental, non-commercial, voluntary basis and we had quite a number of people who contributed their own time, effort and energy to make it work. FWD was the world's first internet telephony network and was a pioneer in the field of PC to Phone communication services.

Back in November 2000 I once again looked at re-creating the spirit of the original FWD project but this time we tried to do it using the broadband internet. After several months of work we were able to get the underlying software to work pretty good, but our project became challenged once the hardware devices we optimized the software for, the Cisco ATA-182 were discontinued. We were live in beta in April 2001 when CNET ran the story: Can a peer-to-peer phone network fly?.

[...]With the beta launch of Bellster.net we are finally able to offer a peer-to-peer network where members of the network can share their PSTN access with each other. This "network" will only become a network once there is a critical mass number of people who are contributing to the success of Bellster. Bellster is based on a couple of underlying philosophies:

(1) "If you Build it They will Come" -- Field of Dreams (2) "The Love you Take is equal to the Love you Make" -- Beatles, "The End"

The Bellster challenge for 2005 is to find out whether or not there are still people in the world who would let total strangers place non-commercial phone calls for free in exchange for the ability to do the same thing themselves. At the moment we have a handful of active nodes around the world, and as the word of Bellster spreads, my hope is that our network will be able to deliver calls to the PSTN all around the world.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:22:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Obscenity case against "horror porn" auteurs dropped

Because people have a right to view such material in the privacy of their own home, there's a right to market it, U.S. District Court Judge Gary L. Lancaster said in dismissing the case against Robert Zicari and Janet Romano, both of Northridge, Calif., and their company, Extreme Associates. Lancaster said prosecutors overstepped their bounds while trying to block the material from children and from adults who didn't want to see such material inadvertently.

The judge also found that the state cannot ban material simply because it finds it objectionable, based on the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2003 ruling that struck down a state ban on gay sex. The Supreme Court's ruled that the ban was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

Link to related coverage by Xeni: Wired News, NPR (partial transcript published on AVN). (Thanks, Susannnah). See also this related coverage on Fleshbot: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:56:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bedtime reading

Robert Forward - son of the late great science fiction writer Robert L. Forward - wrote a (now out-of-print) book "The Owl" featuring a private detective in Los Angeles who had a medical condition that allowed him to never sleep. This meant he didn't have to have a living space - just a small office for his secretary and phone. He spent nights by riding around the LA metro bus system musing about his cases. According to the author (who is a friend) this is a known medical condition, though rare. Link

(It's) a fun British mystery set in an old-fashioned law firm not long after World War II investigated by Henry Bohun, a solicitor who suffers from "para-insomnia." He sleeps for about an hour and a half a night so he isn't quite in Nesterchuk's league. In a more understatedly English way than Tanner, Bohun uses his spare time for reading and training to become a solicitor, statistician, actuary, and "almost a doctor" and also holds down another job as a night watchman to give him an excuse to indulge his passion for walking the streets of London at night. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:33:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SF Bay Area: NeoFiles Public Forum

NeoFiles Public Forum: Twenty First Century Brains
Mill Valley Community Center
180 Camino Alto
Mill Valley, CA
7:30 PM. Thursday, January 27
$10 at the door

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:09:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO convert TiVo-to-go files to MPEG files

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:27:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Daily Show on Bush inauguration audio and video

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:25:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mailing list for Supreme Court campout at Grokster case

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:18:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, January 21, 2005

Debunking a DRM press-release

Not one of these systems has ever prevented piracy or illegal copying. When pressed, these entities will surely admit that this technology is not meant to be proof against a skilled attacker, but rather it is meant as a "speed bump" that works on "average users" to "keep honest users honest." If they are particularly disrespectful of 52 percent of the world's population, they might even tell you that this is the kind of thing that their mothers can't defeat.

But counterfeiting gangs who engage in "illegal copying" and "piracy" -- that is, the sophisticated criminal enterprises that operate in the former USSR and elsewhere to stamp out billions of fake CDs and DVDs -- are unfazed by these systems, because they are, in fact, sophisticated attackers. They are, in fact, not average users. This commercial piracy is the only activity that clearly displaces sales to the studios and the labels, and it is precisely this kind of piracy that DRM cannot prevent.

As to average users engaged in file-sharing, they, too, won't be foiled by this. Rather, they will be able to avail themselves of songs, movies and other media that have had their DRM removed by sophisticated users. They need not know how to hack the DRM wrappers off their music, they merely need to know how to search Google for copies where this has already happened.

And that is exactly what they will do: they will bring home lawfully purchased CDs and DVDs and try to do something normal, like watch it on their laptop, or move the music to their iPod, and they will discover that the media that they have bought has DRM systems in place to prevent exactly this sort of activity, because the studios and labels perceive an opportunity to sell you your media again and again -- the iPod version, the auto version, the American and UK version, the ringtone version, und zo weiter. Customers who try to buy legitimate media rather than downloading the unfettered DRM-free versions will be punished for their commitment to enriching the entertainment companies. That commitment will falter as a consequence.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:58:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

American Airlines invents reasons to ask me for a dossier on my friends' home addresses

Mr. Doctorow exhibited specific behaviors and cues before and during our initial security screening that caused our screener to initiate a secondary screening process...

That said, our contracted screener veered from standard procedure when she asked for Mr. Doctorow to write the addresses of his destinations in the United States. She did clearly state that once the interview was completed, the address list would be destroyed in front of Mr. Doctorow or that he could have the list to keep. American Airlines absolutely does not register or record that type of personal data.

1. The supposed TSA policy requiring me to write out my friends' addresses wasn't just talked about by the screener, but also by her supervisor, who came by to lecture me about how this was for my own safety -- if this was one rogue screener overstepping her authority, then why didn't her supervisor overrule her instead of sticking to the story that "the TSA requires this of us"
2. At no time did the screener or her supervisor ever state that the list would be destroyed in front of me, nor that I could keep the list. In fact, all three AA security people I dealt with -- the screener, her supervisor and the terminal manager -- told me that they didn't know what would be done with the list after the interview, that they had no idea what AA's document-retention and data-privacy policies were

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:45:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bon Anniversaire!

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:34:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Claude Shannon, master juggler and juggling robot builder

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:54:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nice photos of Johnny Ramone's gravestone

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:24:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Compare your height to famous people

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:19:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scary looking home-theater receiver

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:12:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark Dery on the "Not One More Damn Dime" boycott

[T]he whole business reeks of bobo sanctimony and cultural elitism. Any member of the Adbusters-reading, Supersize Me-watching leisure class who honestly believes she can Stick It to the Man by keeping her dimes firmly in her hand-knitted Guatemalan rucksack, right beside her manically underlined copy of Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, is unlikely to be seen rolling a 55-gallon drum of Miracle Whip out of Wal-Mart or rejoicing in fried offal at the local McDonald's.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:33:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fyodor, meet Evan

Your post reminded me of a fun series of books by Lawrence Block called the Evan Tanner books. They're about a guy who gets injured and loses the ability to sleep when he's shot in the head in the Korean War. He makes his living writing term papers and dissertations before he gets recruited by a spy agency and sent all over the world by them. The gag of the books is that he belongs to a million differerent political groups and knows a million languages, so for instance, in one book I remember that he gets out of trouble by tapping into an underground PLO cell and a Mossad underground support group in the space of a few days.

In a weird bit of BoingBoing synchronicity, in one of the books there is an extended description of chewing betel nut, which was my first exposure to betel, when I was about 12 years old.

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:09:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Real and fake betelnut girls

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:22:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Five years' worth of Boing Boing posts in one file!

Waxy took advantage of his zero-day-warez crack at Boing Boing's postfile and created this amazing analysis of Boing Boing's busiest-ever days, keyword searchable. It's mindblowing. 4KB Torrent Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:52:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Happy Slapping is sad

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:31:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Difference between male and female brains

Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of – or connections between – these processing centers.

This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests.

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:50:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Isn't he the new exchange student?

The principal said Serrano was not a danger to students or staff. But he also said: "Obviously this raises the issue of security in the school. We're reviewing all of our systems to ensure it doesn't happen again."

Alyssa Luftman, 18, a senior, said she saw Serrano several times in study hall.

"We came back from Christmas break and there was this new kid sitting at our table," she said. "We just assumed he was a new student. ... He never said anything to anyone."

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:27:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Slippery pipes

"A chemical reaction takes place with the cocaine that causes it to congeal and become a mess so it's unusable," a police spokesman said.

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:08:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nine, ten, never sleep again

"I used to read boring scientific periodicals in the hope they would send me to sleep. But as soon as I felt my eyes getting droopy and put the magazine down, I would find myself wide awake again. I thought it would just be a phase but its gone on for over 20 years now and I've simply had to get used to it.

"Now when everyone else sleeps I get stuck into a good book," said Nesterchuk.

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:04:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

James Cameron's new 3D film: Aliens of the Deep

Anyone who read the recent Wired Magazine "Exploration" issue guest-edited by Mr. Cameron will find a familiar thread here... he is enamored with exploration, and with the alien realms in space and sea to which technology brings us closer.

The film was an overwhelming sensory experience, in part because of the stereoscopic technique employed (shot in HD with specially-constructed 3D cameras), but also because of the dizzyingly beautiful life forms they found thousands of feet below the ocean surface. I still can't get one of these deep, deep, deep-sea creatures out of my head -- shown here. Looked like a giant diaphanous curtain of glass, rippling through the water. Amazing. And amazing because it is real, and alive, and not a product of CGI.

Link to movie website, and Link to more on "the making of" in Wired's recent Exploration issue. Should find an enthusiastic audience with young people (think: school groups), but there was plenty to keep adults glued to the 15/70 IMAX film frame, too. Yes, you have to wear the funny 3D glasses, but it's very much worth it.

(A personal footnote: Space Generation Foundation president Loretta Hidalgo -- a lovely and insanely smart scientist who guided me and a bunch of other nauseated journalists through our first zero-gravity flight experience earlier this year -- has a starring role in this film. This time, she's floating under the sea instead of 40,000 above the earth. What a rock star. Link to her first-person account, Link to her trip log, Link to previous Boing Boing post, and here's a snapshot I took of Loretta on the Zero-G plane.)

Update: Boing Boing reader and Rome-based astronomer Amara Graps says, "Here's a view on some of the scientific advice for the film by Kevin Hand, who traveled in the submersables to the hydrothermal vents with the film crew." Link.

And by "hydrothermal vents," Amara is referring to ginormous magma chimneys that belch smoke from the bowels of the earth, forming lead-melting plumes of boiling black firewater at the ocean floor, which hordes of see-thru shrimp teem around, fearlessly basking in chemical-rich spew. You know, no big deal.

Update 2: Here's a radio report I filed for NPR's "Day to Day" about the film: Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:10:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Torrent site-owner running circles around MPAA lawyers

You repeatedly mention the "representative" list of works, which serves only to intimidate us as a search service. If you look at the Betamax vs. Universal case, the VCR was not deemed illegal since it is capable of legal use. isohunt.com is a content agnostic search service on indexing torrent links over the net, which is very much capable of legal use. While as a service we can filter content, and that is exactly how we cooperate by filtering identified copyrighted titles, we do not have the man power to manually verify the tens of thousands of torrent links, nor is it even technically possible without a complete list of copyrighted works to filter against. Since you seem to have trouble producing a complete list, a technical difficulty I can understand, you should also understand the same difficulty we have in making your copyrighted works magically disappear... somehow. So instead of calling it a complete list, which seems unfeasible, it should be referred to as a sufficient list. Without it, we cannot help you in filtering your works in our search results.

> Although you have suggested that you would like us to provide an index
> of copyrighted works to which you can refer regarding the torrents on
> your website, we simply do not find it credible that you are unable to
> identify as copyrighted material the many popular motion picture titles
> currently referenced on your website. To the extent you need further
> guidance, the United States Copyright Office maintains records of every
> motion picture and television program in the United States that has a
> copyright registration. Additionally, on-line databases provide
> information regarding who distributes motion pictures and television
> programs. You are already aware of at least one such source, the
> website imdb.com, to which you provide your users deep-links for motion
> pictures.

Read above. According to normal procedures of DMCA takedown, it is your responsibility to identify what maybe infringing your copyright, and then we will comply. Your notion that we should know every title MPAA owns, while you have difficulty producing such yourself, is absurd. Links to websites such as imdb.com is user submitted, while torrent links may be user submitted or indexed from other sources on the internet. We do not moderate this process, we don't have the resource to do so and it is not our policy.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:45:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How do you say "frag" in Cantonese?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:44:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The madness of King George

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:37:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More on big dead SoCal squids

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:33:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Do these toilet paper rolls make my ass look big?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:25:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO: Get a "free" iTunes lockware song with every Pepsi

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

Do these tourniquets make my ass look big?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:22:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

March 29: Supremes hear the Grokster case

Washington, DC - The US Supreme Court set the date for the oral argument in MGM v. Grokster for March 29, 2005, in Washington, DC. EFF is defending StreamCast Networks, the company behind the Morpheus peer-to-peer (P2P) software, against 28 of the world's largest entertainment companies.

The companies first brought this lawsuit against the makers of the Morpheus, Grokster, and KaZaA software products in 2001, hoping to obtain a legal precedent that would hold all technology makers responsible for the infringements committed by the users of their products. The entertainment companies lost in District Court, then lost again on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:18:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steve Jackson Games' electronic publishing venture is brilliant

Q. Are the files in e23 copy protected?

A. No. That would interfere with your use of them. We just have to hope that we can sell enough to honest people to make up for what gets stolen by the kiddies and cheapskates.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:15:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

2005: the year of P2P

1. The Supreme Court rules on P2P For better or worse, the biggest legal fight over file sharing will be finished by next Christmas. The Supreme Court is scheduled to decide whether makers of P2P software – and by extension other technology makers – are responsible for the sins of their customers. When its opinion comes down next fall, it will tell us what Napster's demise never did: whether or not it's legal to make and distribute file-sharing software. This won't stop the record labels from continuing to sue anything with a heartbeat and a DSL line, but that news will look silly next to the fact that ...

2. File sharing continues to soar The Recording Industry Association of America has sued more than 7,000 alleged file sharers since 2003, but P2P traffic has actually increased. By some counts, 60 million Americans have tried file sharing. New P2P programs are released faster than J.Lo can get engaged. There's no reason to think these trends won't continue or increase. The year 2005 will be the "best year ever" for P2P, and the medium's continued popularity means ...

3. Artists look for plan B When it becomes clear that the RIAA's slash-and-burn campaign hasn't stopped file sharing, musicians will start to wonder if there's a better way to move forward. Would it be possible to create a system in which P2P joins CD sales, concert revenues, and radio licenses as another way to pay the bills? The answer is yes, and the technology is finally available to make it happen. The trick is to make it feel free to the public while collecting money for creators.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:09:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Good habit charts from India

Designed for the classroom, they cover every subject imaginable, from science and technology to guides on proper manners. Educational charts can be found posted across India in post offices and railway stations, among other public spaces. Although didactic in nature, many of them are riddled with errors that defy all logic. People and objects are often bizarrely rendered; the names of places and things are routinely misspelled. For example, a chart on insect life includes panels on the life cycles of frogs and chickens.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:03:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nightmarish aquatic clown postcard

UPDATE: Charles sez: "Aquarena Springs. the clown was minor. Ralph the Diving Pig was the main attraction. No, Seriously, they had a pig trained to dive, usually with pretty girls called 'Aqua Maids.' Also a fleet of glass bottom boats. In the '90s, the Southwest Texas State University bought the Springs, and in a fit of political correctness, turned it into a wetlands and museum. You can still ride the glass bottom boats, but Ralph is retired, and no Aqua Maids." Link

UPDATE: (I love it when I post something to BB and I get email from readers who tell me about the deeper levels of weirdness. Here's a great example -- Mark) Tim sez: "One more bit of Aquarena Springs trivia. A picture of "Ralph the Diving Pig" and the woman he performed with was published in Chic magazine. The woman successfully sued Larry Flynt for presenting her in a 'false light' because the story appeared 'amid stories of bizarre sexual exploits.' Braun v. Flynt, 726 F.2d 245, 10 Media L.Rptr. 1487 (5th Cir. 1984)" Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:34:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

VersaLaser -- Cool $10,000 toy

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:32:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thank you, Dave Mee

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

Sony: DRM cost us the Walkman

Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., said he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because the Tokyo company had music and movie units that were worried about content rights...

High-ranking Sony officials have rarely publicly said their proprietary views were a mistake. Kutaragi, who has long been viewed as a candidate to lead Sony, was unusually direct in acknowledging Sony had made an error and blaming proprietary concerns from its entertainment division.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:18:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

European Software Patents return

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:14:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Taiwan betel nut girl movies

Here's a guy who has taken some videos of the girls who sell betelnut in Taiwan.

I have long been interested in the the scantily clad girls that you see on the side of many roads in Taiwan selling betelnut. Interested not just because of their obvious physical charm but also because this is a phenomenon that seems so uniquely Taiwan. Betel nut girls are a modern rendition of the drive inn restaurant girls that you used to see many years ago in Canada and the US - minus the french fries and a few inches of clothing. Betelnut is "enjoyed" throughout Asia and is best enjoyed when you don't want to sleep as they function as a mild (or not so mild) stimulant.

It can be difficult to photograph or interview these girls, which is something I have wanted to do, as for numerous reasons they do not trust your intentions. Their bosses need to be treated with care as well as it is rumoured that many are in colusion with the local mafia. We did manage one Friday morning at 2 AM to talk with one friendly and probably bored girl in Hsinchu.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:07:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Taschen's upcoming Kubrick book. Yum.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:50:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Jenna hearts Satan" T-shirts

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

Fitness infomercial star John Basedow: undead!

Tom sez, "According to the front page of his web site, John Basedow is not only still alive but has never even been to Thailand. Looks like another one for Snopes." Link

Mike Harris adds, "Interestingly enough, according to a Google search, the phone number given belongs to the Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI)." Link.

¡Que viva los fat burning workouts!

Reader Brad Topliff says, "I googled Manta Communications and it looks like the result is some other fitness program product. Competitive conspiracy?" Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:19:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dreaming Arnold Schwarzenegger

Karen and I are driving to “Inter-Zone” apparently where some obscure family members of hers live. She has a terrible headache so I can’t play the radio. Soon a voice comes through the speakers, much to her irritation. It says, “When I wrote Raw Deal, I meant to say, Raw Meal but the censors changed it.” Karen was annoyed because she thought I had secretly put a cassette tape in the player but I reminded her our van has no cassette player. She wouldn’t believe it was Arnold because he had been using this nasal falsetto bit I KNEW it was him.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:17:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why FBI's Carnivore was "retired"

The Fake Carnivore Debate, RIP: The Associated Press reports that the FBI has retired its "Carnivore" Internet surveillance tool. (It actually happened about two years ago, but no one knew about it until now.) The Carnivore debate was premised on a profound misunderstanding of Internet surveillance practices. With the Carnivore era over, it's a good time to look back at how the press was able to get the story so wrong.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:05:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free porn magic for you!

My editor, Lance Ulanoff, was shaking his head the other day over the column I had written called "Free Porn." The column, written nearly two years ago, was an exercise in propaganda, done to prove that the use of the word "porn" in a headline would jack up the readership of any column. This was an assertion promoted by my previous online editor, Don Willmott, who revealed the trick to me after looking at years of online stats. He'd used it himself when he needed to pump up his own numbers.

Ulanoff told me that I had to do a follow-up to the "Free Porn" column since it has consistently been in the top readership list since it was published. "It's unbelievable," he said. "Every month it shows up in the list of top page views. It's never at the top, but it keeps showing up." Perhaps it's never at the top because it has nothing to do with porn. Just the use of the word is enough to pump up the numbers. Are online readers so drawn to porn that they aggressively seek it out? No wonder the amount of pornographic e-mail come-ons has been slipping. Why bother with spam? Just set up a porn site and the readers will seek you out.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:28:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NC Soft fights Marvel Comics over character-creation suit

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:09:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jenna Bush, Spawn of Satan

Update: BB reader Charles Bestal says, "As a University of Texas student, we hear a good bit about the party animal around campus -- but it should be noted that she is most likely invoking the school's hand-sign (Hook 'em Horns, they say), rather than the devil, or her father."

Reader David Czarnecki says, "Just as quick as the horns were thrown up, they've been thrown down from the MSNBC slideshow. Slide 7 is now a picture of showing the 'Celebration of Freedom' fireworks behind the White House. That's unfortunate. But, since you've got the picture, maybe someone should start a CafePress site called "BUSH is Fucking METAL!" and sell t-shirts and other schwag with that picture, a la this. Proceeds could be donated to some charitable cause ... maybe the Church of Satan!"

Patrick says, "Isabella Rosallini was on the Daily Show a couple weeks back and noted that that particular hand symbol in Italy meant that a man was a cuckold. Maybe Jenna is trying to state something about the fidelity of her mother?"

John says, "This site has photos of many famous people throwing the devil's salute, aka the manu cornuta." Link

BB reader Dr. Wayne R. Husted sez: "Gentle lady: This harkens back to those famous devil worshippers and one of their more interesting albums. Oh, then again, maybe the sign is this."

Looks like the first lady and the president himself are also in allegiance with the lord of darkness (images via Wonkette and Google Image search, thanks to many BB readers who submitted updates including Conor, John, and Evan Bray).

Update: Less than 2 hours after the initial post, we now have t-shirts. The internets are fast. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:02:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open-source sexware

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:53:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spinsanity: buh-bye

We want to let you, our readers, know that we have decided to stop updating Spinsanity. Since March 2001, we've poured vast amounts of our time into this site, writing more than 400 articles as well as a book. It has been a rewarding but exhausting process, and after much reflection, we have decided not to continue the website. We will make sure our complete archive remains online as a resource for citizens and journalists, and have completed a final update of our topical index that presents an annotated guide to our body of work. It is available here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:46:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"OC" meets "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"

The bug-eyed sea creatures, believed to be Humboldt squid, normally reside in deep water and only come to the surface at night. Why approximately 500 of them began washing up on the sands of Laguna Beach and Newport Beach on Tuesday isn't clear.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:40:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rolling Stone won't advertise hip youth-Bible

On Tuesday, USA Today quoted Kent Brownridge, general manager of Wenner Media, as saying his staff first saw the ad copy last week, and "we are not in the business of publishing advertising for religious messages."

Lockhart said the ad features the face of a contemplative-looking young man and includes this copy:

"In a world of almost endless media noise and political spin, you wonder where you can find real truth. Well, now there's a source that's accurate, clear and reliable. It's the TNIV -- Today's New International Version of the Bible. It's written in today's language, for today's times -- and it makes more sense than ever."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:21:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Relocation of Futuro-House

UPDATE: Here's the story in English. Link (Thanks, Ben!)

UPDATE: jay savage sez: "I saw your post today on the futro house, and the link to the earlier article on the house. While the statements from http://home.wanadoo.nl/imagineer/mags/mag10.htm that "Finnish architect Matti Suuronen designed this UFO shaped dwelling in 1968" and "The idea behind the design reflects the optimism of the sixties. At the time people believed technology could solve all problems for the human race," may be true, your readers might be interested to know that Suuronen seems to have lifted both the design concept and the idealized vision of technology from R. Buckminster Fuller. Bucky designed the Dymaxion House (http://www.hfmgv.org/dymaxion) in the late 20's and built the first prototypes in 1945."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:18:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shag's house profiled in LA Times

Josh AGLE, the artist popularly known as Shag, doesn't just draw from life. He paints from his living room. Using the architecture and interior design of his own home, he creates the candy-colored, acrylic-on-Masonite works that have made him an art world double threat — gallery star and hip commercial brand. Populated with groovy ingenues, Rat Pack roués, cute animals, tiki gods and the occasional mythical creature, Shag's art, which also pops up on stationery and housewares, is an inventory of the furnishings in the 1960 Modernist ranch that Agle decorated for his wife, theater director Glendele Way-Agle and their two children.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:04:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chair sells you a license to sit, deploys spikes on expiry

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Help track down versions of King Solomon's Ring

"Here's Lincoln's version of the tale: "'It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! -- how consoling in the depths of affliction!' -An Address by Abraham Lincoln Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, September 30, 1859

"Have already found Jewish and Sufi versions of the Tale and would like to use the collective intelligence of Boing Boing readers to find versions from other cultures-I know that a Hindu version exists somewhere)

Send any leads on the tale to avisolo@yahoo.com

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:40:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Big baby

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:26:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snowflake photomicrography

It is indeed a delicate task to “catch” one’s snowflake and get it in position to be photographed. Mr. Bentley has a tray consisting of a board painted black with wire handles on either end, on which he collects the flakes: this he carries carefully by the handles with mittened hands, in order to keep off all animal heat: and to keep his hands warm too, no doubt: into his cold, unheated workroom. With a splint of wood, he painstakingly picks up the snowflake and places it on the slide of his microscope, being particularly careful that it is unbroken and perfectly flat so that all parts reflect the light equally.

“It takes me quite awhile sometimes,” Mr. Bentley explained, “and I have to breathe occasionally, but I turn my face away, take a quick breath and get to work again before the flake melts,” illustrating with a quick birdlike movement of the head.

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:36:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

X-Ray vision

Hurtubise said (reps from the French Government) were so impressed with the eight-foot long device they paid him $40,000 in cash to put the finishing touches on it. The French, Hurtubise adds, have also agreed to pay him a “substantial” amount of money for the technology if it passes rigorous tests in France.

“They couldn’t believe what they saw,” Hurtubise told BayToday.ca.

“One of them told me it was as if I’d discovered a new universe.”

Gary Dryfoos, a consultant and former long-time instructor at MIT, said "there's a Nobel Prize" for Hurtubise if the Angel Light really performs as described.

"There are laws of physics waiting to be written for what he's talking about," Dryfoos said.

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:03:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jack Boulware's new site

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:00:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Machine dreams

"Mr. Gysin and Mr. Sommerville built the first Dreamachine after learning of research by John Smythies and W. Grey Walter, scientists who had noted in experiments that light flickering at 8 to 12 flashes a second against a subject's closed eyelids seemed to slow the electrical pulse rate of the subject's brain to a state of semiconsciousness known as the alpha state and produce rich dreamlike imagery.

Although his fellow Beats were excited about using the device, Mr. Gysin had broader ambitions for it and tried to distance himself from their enthusiasm, says John Geiger, the author of "Chapel of Extreme Experience: a Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine" (Soft Skull Press, 2004).

"He was focused on its commercial potential," Mr. Geiger said. "He imagined a Dreamachine in every suburban home, in the spot formerly occupied by the television set, but broadcasting inner programming."

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:26:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Gareth Branwyn on WPRK Thursday at 1pm

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:13:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Child appears unhappy after parents slain in Iraq

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:13:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Does the world need wireless robots

Later this year, the Korean government will put wireless broadband robots into 200 post offices around the country. Instead giving the robots on-board cognitive capabilities, the researchers are outsourcing the sensing and processing work to central computers via a wireless link. They'll come in "male" and "female" models: the male will serve as a guard and will be armed with a projectile net that it can deploy to immobilize troublemakers, and the female will help customers and display entertaining video clips to people waiting in line. The project, which is part of a larger "Ubiquitous Robot Companion" initiative, is being spearheaded by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which also plans to put 100 domestic robots into houses in the next couple of years.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:15:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jenna's Moantones

"Everyone needs a moantone," says Ms. Jameson. "And we'll provide them in the universal language of sexy sighs recognized around the world but with our own personal touch. The technology is way beyond most of us, but the bottom line is that you'll able to hear the other Jenna's Web Girls moan and me when your phone starts to ring. We'll also provide audio content in Spanish plus photos and text features."

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:17:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Survey for a book on kids and science fiction

The purpose of this questionnaire is to provide material for a book called (provisionally), The Inter-Galactic Playground of Children's Science Fiction to be published by McFarland Press. The research is supported by the Eileen Wallace Children's Library (University of New Brunswick), Middlesex University (London) and the British Academy.

Who am I? I am a science fiction fan and a critic. I'm co-organizing a British Eastercon, Concussion, and I edit the academic journal Foundation. The original article behind this research can be found at “Is There Any Such Thing as Children’s SF: A Position Piece” in The Lion and the Unicorn, A Critical Journal of Children’s Literature Vol. 28, no 2, April 2004, pp. 284-313

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:09:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ben Rosenbaum story under remixable CC license

The real estate agent for Pirateland was old. Nasty old. It's harder to tell with Geezers, but she looked to be somewhere in her Thirties. They don't have our suppleness of skin, but with the right oils and powders they can avoid most of the wrinkles. This one hadn't taken much care. There were furrows around her eyes and eyebrows.

She had that Mommystyle thing going on: blue housedress, frilly apron, Betty Crocker white gloves. If you're going to be running around this part of Montana sporting those gigantic, wobbly breasts and hips, I guess it's a necessary form of obeisance.

She said something to someone in the back of her van, then hurried up the walk toward us. "It's a lovely place," she called. "And a very nice area."

"Look, Suze, it's your mom," Tommy whispered in my ear. His breath tickled. I pushed him.

It was deluxe, I'll give her that. We were standing under the fity-foot prow of the galleon we'd come to see. All around us a flotilla of men-of-war, sloops, frigates, and cutters rode the manicured lawns and steel-gray streets. Most of the properties were closed up, the lawns pristine. Only a few looked inhabited -- lawns bestrewn with gadgets, excavations begun with small bulldozers and abandoned, Pack or Swarm or Family flags flying from the mainmasts. Water cannons menacing passerby.

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

CBC web-documentary about teen depression

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:11:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why is American Airlines gathering written dossiers on fliers' friends?

The security officer then handed me a blank piece of paper and said, "Please write down the names and addresses of everyone you're staying with in the USA."

I actually began to write this out when I was brought up short. "Wait a second -- since when does AA compile a written dossier on the names and addresses of my friends? Why are you asking me this? Do you have a privacy policy and a data-retention policy I can inspect prior to this?"

The security officer told me that this was a Transport Security Agency (TSA) regulation. I asked for the name or number of the regulation, its text, and the details of the data-retention and privacy practices in place at AA UK. The security officer wasn't able to answer my questions, and she went to get her supervisor.

After several minutes, her supervisor appeared and said, after introducing himself, "Sir, this is for your own protection."

I think it's pretty hard to argue that making passengers produce written dossiers on their friends' home addresses makes planes in the sky secure. I asked again if this was really a TSA regulation and what AA's privacy and data-retention policies are.

The officer said, "This is a TSA regulation."

I said, "Why didn't I have to provide this information when I flew out of Gatwick on US Air in December then?"

He said, "Well, you know that American Airlines has had some terrible things happen to it in the past."

I asked "So the TSA wrote a special regulation for AA? What is the name of this regulation, and what is your data-retention and privacy policy?"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:02:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Punk-folk music under CC license

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:31:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

German libraries can circumvent DRM

Update: Martin sez, "Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to the German libraries as a whole, but only to the Deutsche Bibliothek, the German analog to the US Library of Congress."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:23:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Will Fuck For Shoes

"Perverts , degenerates, and nasty bitches can finally rejoice because now you can parade your hidden thoughts right out in the open."

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:48:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Live from Death Row

Prison spokesman Nathee Chitsawang told the Associated Press news agency that the internet "will show how we treat convicts in their last minutes, including the preparation process". But, he said, viewers will only see snippets of the final moments leading up to an execution.

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:33:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funhaler

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:07:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Desperately Seeking Lily

Link to DiVX movie. (2.4MB). I have a larger (13MB), higher-quality AVI original if anyone feels like converting it more artfully and torrenting it or whatever.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:33:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hallucinogenic toad fiction

As if on cue, the daily procession began. From each pen emerged half a dozen or so Colorado River Toads, of varying sizes. Hesitantly at first, as if still half asleep, they hopped out into the dimly lit hallway, pausing before turning and following Farmer Bob down to the feed trough at the far end of the barn. With the last of the thirty pens opened, there formed a surging river of toads streaming down to take up their places in the little stanchions arrayed along the long galvanized metal feed trough. As they were bellying up, Farmer Bob busied himself filling two five-gallon buckets with feed pellets from a small chute protruding out of a storage bin. Walking along the backside of the trough, he poured out the contents of the first bucket, stopping when it was empty to retrieve the second bucket and finish filling the remaining length. He walked back to peer up the hallway, making sure there were no stragglers. Seeing that all the toads were now enthusiastically enjoying their morning repast, he reached up and threw the first switch on a grimy control panel mounted on the wall behind him. A creaking mechanical noise accompanied the slow, gentle closing of the little stanchions around each toad, holding them firmly and comfortably in their places as they continued their unabashed munching.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:53:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on G4TechTV's "The Screensavers" Wednesday

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:23:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

California's state-level INDUCE act unveiled

A bill introduced in the California Legislature last Friday seeks to do what U.S. federal courts have so far refused to do: criminalize selling, advertising, and distributing peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software. Written by state Senator Kevin Murray (D), a longtime lawmaker from Los Angeles with close ties to the entertainment industry, the legislation is aimed straight at the business plans of file-sharing companies such as Grokster, Morpheus, and Kazaa. The bill would make it a crime to sell file-sharing software without taking “reasonable care” to prevent copyright infringement and pornography swapping.

Update: The EFF's Jason Schultz weighs in:

Goodbye innovation; hello regulation. "Reasonable care" could mean anything from the forced design and/or redesign of software to mandated filtering and digital rights management (DRM) -- even the forced installation of spyware to monitor user behavior. Moreover, SB 96 would effectively overrule the Betamax protections that the Supreme Court has provided technology companies for more than 20 years. That kind of seismic shift would destabilize some of California's most successful companies.

From the birth of the Xerox machine to the modern web server, every technology that enables people to copy or disseminate content has had the capacity to be used for some illegal activity. Under Murray's logic, we should have stopped the manufacture and sale of VCRs, dual tape decks, postal services, carbon paper, and any other service or device that could potentially be used in a crime.

Also, Cal-INDUCE could put Ed Felten in Jail for writing 15 lines of code as an academic experiment: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:02:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why HP's region coding excuse is bogus

I thought you might perhaps want to throw up a more detailed business analysis of why HP's region coding defense is completely bogus. So I figured I'd write one out to try and save some time...

Sure it's true that a global multi-national company like HP has to worry about currency fluctuations, but their region-coding strategy is exactly opposite to a true objective currency fluctuation defense.

If a company is doing business in two major regions of the world and the currency is sinking in one region (the U.S.) and rising in another (Europe) then the company has to worry about the fact that it might be buying things in the more expensive currency while being paid in the sinking currency. In simple terms, HP has to worry about being paid $1US today, then try and buy $1EU of stuff next week, when that US dollar is only worth 80 cents in Europe - they just lost 20% on that transaction.

However, there's a simple defense for global companies in this situation - price in a larger profit margin on goods sold in the sinking currency, as a buffer against the value being lost in that currency. HP's printer cartridges should be more expensive (comparatively) in the U.S., to make up for the fact the the $40US (!!) you pay for a cartridge might be only worth $38 in global purchasing by next week. That's not what's happening here though.

(Some people might complain at this point that HP raising prices in the US would not be a good thing, because it's promoting US inflation. Duh!! Why do you think all the economists are so upset about the sinking US dollar and America's huge debt?!)

Instead, HP is charging more in Europe where the currency is rising and becoming more valuable. In effect, HP is double gouging here, because they're getting a bonus from the rising value of the EU currency. Every EU dollar they get paid this week might be worth $1.20 by next week in global purchasing, in which case HP just made extra profit! If HP was a fair dealer then print cartridges might be LESS expensive in Europe, not only because of the price premium people in the US would pay as a hedge against the sinking US dollar, but also because HP should prefer to be paid in Euros which they know are going to rise in value.

Another example in simple terms - if you were selling a car and someone offered you $1000, or $900 in gold bullion, and gold was rising in value so that gold bullion would be worth $1100 next week, you'd take the gold bullion. You offer a slight discount now because you know you'll benefit in the near future. Instead, HP's making people in Europe pay $1100 in gold for the 'car' - both gouging them extra, and profiting on the fact that the gold will be worth $1200 by next week.

HP's other stated defense for their region-coding is that this somehow protects them against Grey Marketers. This is also bogus.

Grey Marketers can be a problem with some products. These are importers who bring product across border into markets where it wasn't meant to be sold. This can be a problem, particularly with support costs.

For example, if HP Canada is selling Deskjet printers, and estimates they'll sell 10,000 printers, then HP Canada will budget the warranty support costs for 10,000 printers (let's say $5000). If some Grey Marketer then imports an extra 20,000 printers from the US, where they were on sale, and sells them in Canada then all of a sudden HP Canada is looking at an extra $10,000 in warranty costs on printers that HP Canada didn't even get paid for, since they were originally bought in the US!

One problem with that scenario in this case - there are no real support costs for an ink cartridge! They're practically a commodity product. There's no difference between an ink cartridge sold in Europe and one in the US. They all come out of the same factory. Ink cartridges WOULD be a commodity product if the printer manufacturers didn't silently collude on price. There is no way a print cartridge imported into Europe from North America costs HP Europe any extra support costs.

HP shouldn't care where their print cartridges are bought and sold, assuming HP has priced the cartridges appropriately. If HP prices the US ink cartridges properly with a premium to take into account the sinking US dollar, then they shouldn't care if some Grey Marketer buys a bunch and imports them into Europe. HP already got paid for the ink cartridge at that point. They have their money and their profit. HP should be happy to have sold the cartridges, period, and they didn't even have to pay for the shipping to Europe! Grey Marketers for printer cartridges ONLY 'hurt' the global manufacturer IF the manufacturer is price-gouging in the more expensive market.

In the end, there's two explanations for the current situation. Either HP is determined to gouge it's European customers, using the region coding to enforce the price gouge, or HP is so badly managed that their current US products are underpriced and they're losing money on them because of the sinking US currency. Possibly both are true.
More...

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:41:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comparing a dollar then to a dollar now

In 2003, $100.00 from 1960 is worth:

$621.65 using the Consumer Price Index

$502.09 using the GDP deflator

$761.26 using the unskilled wage

$1,297.73 using the GDP per capita

$2,086.61 using the relative share of GDP

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:47:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zelda tattoo of all time

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:43:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory NPR interview audio

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:38:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Explanation for region coded printer cartridges?

Re: "Region Coding Electronics and Ink Cartridges", consider that this is truly about the effect of currency fluctuations on an international business. A company incurs expenses (R&D, manufacturing, etc.) in one currency, and sells in another. When the exchange rates change significantly between when the expenses are incurred and when the sale is made, the financial results of the company will also be significantly affected (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively). This creates instability in the stock price because fickle Wall St. analysts can't handle surprises (and may also lead to gray-market activities like re-importing product from a cheaper region of the world to sell in a more expensive one, but I don't know for sure about that).

You may have a valid issue with respect to how the company should try to manage the effects of currency fluctuations, but I think the conspiracy theory about a one-time gouging of Europe to make a fast buck is a red herring. The only real solution to this might be truly dynamic, global pricing -- which might work if HP only sold direct over the web, but real world sales channels consist of a web of retailers and resellers who cannot support it (a customer wants to know that a pen costs 1.49 whether he walks into 7-11 on Monday or Friday...).

One thing is for sure, the average customer will not understand, or care to understand, the issue of currency fluctuations! The HP bean counters should be smacked for that short sightedness and the bad press it will bring. Sigh.

Update:: Cory notes: "Yeah, and by that reasoning, we need region-coded cement, tee-shirts, baby-powder and oatmeal. Currency fluctuations, riiiight."

UPDATE: The HP employee who emailed me earlier would like to point out that his original email contained the following sentence: "Not speaking for my employer in any official capacity!" I forgot to add that to the post. It's an important thing to remember when you read this. -- Mark

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:12:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clarion workshop silent auction for rare science fiction treasures

AMERICAN GODS: The Author’s Preferred Limited Edition
By Neil Gaiman
A beautifully bound signed limited edition of the novel, with 12,000 additional words included in the text.
Retail Value: $200
Generously donated by Neil Gaiman and Hill House Publishers.

NIGHT OF THE COOTERS
By Howard Waldrop
A rare, out of print, limited numbered edition featuring nine thought-provoking tales. Hardbound in leather slipcase. Signed by Howard Waldrop. Ursus, 1990. New. Approx. Retail Value: $79 Generously donated by Leslie What.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:06:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Larry Flynt's daughter calls for DoJ porn crackdown, *yawn*

I'm not sure what exactly is news here, if anything -- it seems that the specific variety of rogue sites she's complaining about are already defined as illegal under existing law, and already the target of ongoing Justice enforcement efforts. Perhaps her publicist was just having a slow day.

Tonya Flynt-Vega, whose recent autobiography called porn the greatest menace in America today, was reported by the Agape Press as saying that - with Adult Internet purveyors “always look(ing) for new ways to stretch norms and push the cultural envelope” - she believed a Justice crackdown would not come until citizens become outraged enough, especially over adult-child and incest sex sites she thinks proliferate far more than the general public realizes.

“For me and my family, there is no turning back. Larry Flynt is my father, and his empire is the enemy. I am fighting what may be the greatest menace in America today, one that threatens women, children, and ultimately, the soul of our society. My journey has been long, and it has not been easy. I have been threatened. My faith has been challenged. But I have persevered…”

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:27:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hallucinogenic toads sold in breeding pairs

Anonymous sez: "I was interested after reading your post on the Betel Nut essay and since I'm always in the mood to try something mind altering, went in search of sources. It turns out that there's a very interesting purveyor of botanical products called Bouncing Bear Botanicals. Not only do they sell betel nuts but they've also got everything from mildly hallucinogenic mushrooms to wildly hallucinogenic live toads (sold in breeding pairs no less!). I've never ordered from them but I think I will!" Link

UPDATE: Ron sez: I've got a few red flags off the toad story.

I've been a very active member of the Entheogenic community for over the past decade having worked for different magazines and forums over the years as admin and mod. There's somethings that I've got to point out:

Firstly, bouncing bear doesn't list the animal on their products page nor, could I locate it anywhere on their site. (Yes -- it's on this site, but listed as out of stock. Here's the link -- Mark.)

Secondly, although, the animals do contain 5 MEO DMT ( a dubious "psychedelic"), but they also contain a few other "toxins" in their poison glands that if "licked" injected or "whatever" can cause serious problems -- including rapid heart failure. These and related toads kill many wild and domesticated animals yearly that are either too inquisitive or aggressive with them.

In general there has to be at least some mention of safety IMHO, they're not a item that is "safe" for the general public Use of these animals coupled with a nonchalant attitude will only "cause problems".

Lastly, there are some ethical and legal issues as the animal is endangered in the wild with laws in effect regarding trade.

I did locate a site that does offer the animals for a very high price. The bouncing bear may be a front for the second site. (very common) as the provided images are the same.

If you could please place a red text notice with the entry saying something to the effect of :

"Bufo Alvarius: are a endangered species that may be illegal to buy and sell. These animals can be very dangerous as they do have poison glands that secrete a highly reactive poison -- do not lick or consume."

UPDATE: Anonymous sez: "The 'Update' post on Sonran desert Toads is not particualrly accurate. The writer calls 5-MEO-DMT a 'Dubious Psychedelic.' If being strapped to the front of a rocket and propelled across several dimensions constitutes a dubious psychedelic, what is this person taking, and where can we get some?

He is accurate in saying that Bouncing Bear is 'Out of stock' on these toads. They have been out of stock on thier website for over a year now. I doubt that they will ever be for sale on thier site again. The poster is highly inaccurate when he says that the Sonoran Desert Toad is an endangered animal. While anyone should take the proper care and consideration into the ownership of any pet, the Sonoran desert toad is not endangered. Certain desert areas are hopping with them at the right time of year. For more information click here.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:21:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing e-book payment system working again

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:55:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animation director improves Polar Express characters

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:31:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TSA's list of items you can and can't take on a plane

On two occasions, TSA employees at the airport security screening area have taken my nail clippers away. They were ordinary nail clippers, no knives or scissors attached.

So I was surprised to see that nail clippers and nail files are not forbidden items, according to the TSA's own published list. You can also bring metal butter knives, knitting needles, blunt-tipped scissors, and toy weapons ("if not realistic replicas") in your unchecked baggage.

Maybe I'l bring a copy of this list with me the next time I travel. It might come in handy. Link

UPDATE: Bill Ballantyne sez:

"1. Corkscrews are allowed?! I noticed this when I was checking the list for a trip last summer (wanted to make sure my 13 year old daughter didn't get mistaken as a terrorist!). I think a corkscrew could inflict way more damage than nail clippers or other prohibited items. It turned out she made it through the checkpoint with her folding embroidery scissors (which did not have rounded tips!)

"2. TSA employees can determine specific articles may be prohibited, even if allowed according to the list. Even though you and I and most intelligent people wouldn't waste the time or mental effort to determine the dangerous potential of nail clippers, most TSA employees probably consider (or have been told that) nail clippers (and hopefully corkscrews) are dangerous enough to prohibit them.

"3. Furthermore, you can be prosecuted for bringing prohibited items to a checkpoint, even accidentally. Horrific conclusion: Any passenger can be subject to prosecution for almost any reason, since the TSA employee can make call prohibiting any specific item."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:14:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Office supplies cum deadly weapons

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:54:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Keychain-sized plants are big in Japan

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:51:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Costco offering Picasso originals online for $40K

Don't know if the explanation for this is similar to those Target items from a few weeks back, but check out this entry at the CostCo website. "Original Crayon Drawing by Pablo Picasso -- $39,999.99 -- Item # 872759 Shipping & Handling included" And strangely enough, it still has the box to set quantity. I'll take three!

Reader Daniel Geduld adds,

I just thought you might like to know that despite their reputation as a place to find deals, the Costco's Picasso drawing is ludicrously overpriced. In his later life, Picasso became the most obnoxious sort of celebrity- one who uses his fame to never have to pay for anything. He used to make these little sketches, 10 to 12 a day, and tried to pass them off to pay for his luxurious lifestyle. More than one very expensive restaurant was conned into receiving one of these in exchange for a banquet for Picasso and his friends.

Currently, you can get a much larger and, in my opinion, more interesting Picasso on eBay for 250 British pounds. Link. There are also endlessly available hand-signed picasso lithographs which can be bought on eBay for a few hundred dollars. Now if Costco had something from the blue period, I'd be impressed.

In regard to the comment made by the reader about Picasso making sketches to use as currency: John Lovitz played the part of Picasso in a Saturday Night Live sketch where he tries to pay for everything by sketching on napkins. I saw the sketch a while back and thought it was funny, but didn't realize how true it was.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:19:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jenna Hawks Korean Gadgets

Chosun Ilbo reports that Korean OEM manufacturer Reigncom (manufacturer of the iriver device) has enlisted Jenna Jameson to snare the testosterone set. Pornography can be an effective fuel in the uptake and advance of new technology (still photography, VCR, the Intarweb) and can represent the shortest path to profitablity - this is no news. I find it interesting that they make the connection so explicit with their Personal Media Player (PMP) ads. But the ad is a bit icky. The portability of the PMP has allowed this loser the freedom to watch porn at a really well lit bar or cafe when, really, he should go back to his mom's closet from whence he came? And is that a total look of disdain on Jenna's face?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:43:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Victorian film

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:01:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Two heads not better than one

The sad story of the ‘Two-Headed Baby’ (born in the Dominican Republic in 2003) was a five-day wonder all over the world. From Maine to Mexico and from Stockholm to Sydney, newspapers gave their views on this singular event. Some papers tried their best to present a factual account, although struggling hard to understand the medical facts, while others painted a gory and sensational picture of the brave little girl and the horrific operation she was to undergo. Without exception, the press coverage was ill-informed, indicative of the failure of modern ‘medical journalism’ in which the reporters appear to understand very little of what they are writing about. In this unfortunate situation, they have a tendency to rely on dubious authorities, like a local ‘expert’ on conjoined twins who held a press conference after what must have been a very brief session reading up on his subject.

Following this dubious authority, the world’s press unanimously regurgitated the false information that although there had been some previous instances of this malformation, none of them had been live-born.

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:10:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Grafedia

Grafedia is a new form of multimedia graffiti developed by John Geraci, a student at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, that transforms graffiti tags into hyperlinked tags for the real world. Grafedia is a word written on any physical surface that is linked to rich media content online. If you see a grafedia tag, you send an email message to that word "@grafedia.net" and the related content is emailed to your mobile device, or anywhere else you receive mail.

Anyone can become a "Grafedia artist" by sending a word and the media file to the Grafedia server. For example, I created a Grafedia tag for the word "mahole." Just email manhole@grafedia.net and see what comes back!

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:55:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why die?

"As he surveyed the literature, de Grey reached the conclusion that there are seven distinct ingredients in the aging process, and that emerging understanding of molecular biology shows promise of one day providing appropriate technologies by which each of them might be manipulated—“perturbed,” in the jargon of biologists. He bases his certainty that there are only seven such factors on the fact that no new factor has been discovered in some twenty years, despite the flourishing state of research in the field known as biogeron­tology, the science of aging; his certainty that he is the man to lead the crusade for endless life is based on his conception that the qualification needed to accomplish it is the mindset he brings to the problem: the goal-driven orientation of an engineer rather than the curiosity-driven orientation of the basic scientists who have made and will continue to make the laboratory discoveries that he intends to employ. He sees himself as the applied scientist who will bring the benisons of molecular bi­ology to practical use. In the analogous terminology often used by historians of medicine, he is the clinician who will bring the laboratory to the bedside."

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:28:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toronto subway station badges

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:56:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PC used to exhaust problem-space of Grand Theft Auto

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:24:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1850s-era account of London's working classes

In the early 1850s, "Punch" journalist Henry Mayhew began visiting London's poverty-stricken East End and documenting the lives and careers of folks eking out their livings on starvation's edge.

These in-their-own-words descriptions of daily toil are all the more fascinating for the ingenius services provided. Want an exotic bird? A clever con-artist will hand paint a drab domestic peeper, which will sing in your window until overwhelmed by its toxic coat. Or perhaps you require chemicals with which to tan leather? Just hire an old lady to come by every few hours with a can full of dog crap, the #1 substance for the job. (This was one of the better paying occupations of the lower classes.)

The University of Virginia has digitized Mayhew's rare and fascinating work, illuminating the secret histories and practices of costermongers, ginger beer men, love song sellers, lucifer match dealers and all their colorful, forgotten peers.

Update: Phil sez, "Further to your post about the University of Virginia digitising Henry Mayhew's excellent 1850s accounts of London's poor... They only appear to have the first volume. Tufts have had the full four volumes available online for at least a couple of years. They also include scans of images from the books -- example.

"In case the full volumes are a bit daunting, I blogged a couple of my favourite extracts a while back, one about a man fighting rats for money (with his mouth!) and one about the hilarious tricks early photographic shops used to get up to with customers who weren't accustomed to seeing photos."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:21:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, January 17, 2005

Mississippi State Tax Commission phone message

The offices of the State of Mississippi Tax Comission were closed Monday, and they left a helpful message for any telephone callers curious as to why they were closed. I recorded this (short, 100k mp3) myself, my mouth hanging open. (The number for the office is 601-923-7000)

This reminds me of a joke that a white, southern-born, high school pal used to say over and over again, in an effort to ridicule the ubiquitous racist idiocy that makes the aforementioned voicemail possible.

person A (in heavy drawl): "The South's gonna do it agin!"
person B: What, lose?

And reader AJ Johnson says,

A correction: Lee-Jackson Day and King Day have only been *split* since a law was passed in 2000. Lee's holiday dates back to 1889, and Jackson was added in 1904, because both of them were born around that time of January. Martin Luther King Day happened to be created on the same day (another birthdate coincidence), so he was simply added on to the holiday Virginia had been celebrating for years. To reiterate, it was King who was lumped in with the Confederates (and Virginians) rather than the other way around.

As of 2001, however, to prevent misunderstandings, Lee-Jackson Day was moved back to the previous Friday, upsetting many who felt that it moved the holiday further from the Confederates' birthdays, and were afraid that with two holidays in the space of a week, the Friday, non-national holiday would be overlooked, particularly since adding a new holiday apparently costs the state $900,000.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:11:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Freedom to Connect, March 30-31 in DC

[F]or all who care about -- and are affected by -- network connectivity, economics, applications and policy. F2C is where communications policy meets networking technology, network economics, networked applications, and network construction and operation. F2C is dedicated to the proposition that strong networks build strong democracies, and vice versa.

The future of telecommunications starts now; there's a new U.S. Telecom Act in the works, there's unbundling in Europe, fast fiber in Asia, wireless across Africa and networks a-building in cities and villages around the world. Lead the discussion. Shape the debate. Assert your Freedom to Connect.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:09:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google launches Picasa 2

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:59:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blog kitsch t-shirt

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:19:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TV networks fiddle schedules to break PVRs

The padding also discourages viewers from clicking their remotes, under the theory they'll be less likely to switch channels if they've already missed the start of a competing program.

ABC is unapologetic. "It's not my job to make it easy for people to leave our network," says ABC scheduling chief Jeff Bader. "Our whole goal is to get people to stay with us from 8 to 11."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:09:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How copyright is killing culture

The makers of the series no longer have permission for the archival footage they previously used of such key events as the historic protest marches or the confrontations with Southern police. Given Eyes on the Prize's tight budget, typical of any documentary, its filmmakers could barely afford the minimum five-year rights for use of the clips. That permission has long since expired, and the $250,000 to $500,000 needed to clear the numerous copyrights involved is proving too expensive.

This is particularly dire now, because VHS copies of the series used in countless school curriculums are deteriorating beyond rehabilitation. With no new copies allowed to go on sale, "the whole thing, for all practical purposes, no longer exists," says Jon Else, a California-based filmmaker who helped produce and shoot the series and who also teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California, Berkeley.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:02:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Committee to Protect Bloggers

The Committee has four primary spheres of activity.

* CPB will serve as a clearinghouse for information on incarcerated members of our community, as well as those whose lives have been taken from them because of their enthusiasm for the free exchange of information that blogging allows.

* CPB will serve as a pressure group to force unrecalcitrant governments to free imprisoned bloggers, and make restitution for tortured and murdered ones.

* CPB will bring to bear the formidable communicative power of the blogosphere to keep pressure on governments to stop

CPB will act as direct agents in negotiations to free imprisoned bloggers.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:59:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Experiment with the post office

We sent a variety of unpackaged items to U.S. destinations, appropriately stamped for weight and size, as well as a few items packaged as noted. We sent items that loosely fit into the following general categories: valuable, sentimental, unwieldy, pointless, potentially suspicious, and disgusting. We discovered that although some items were never delivered, most of the objects of even highly unusual form did get delivered, as long as the items had a definitely ample value of stamps attached. The Postal Service appears to be amazingly tolerant of the foibles of its public and seems occasionally willing to relax specific postal regulations.

Better link with photos here. (Thanks, Andrew!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:27:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Betel nut essay

What is it like to chew betel? Enthusiasts recognize three delightful aspects of the experience: the exhilarating lift; the mysterious flavor; and the cleansing, compelling salivation.

In the rare instances where scholarly literature mentions its subjective effects, the news about betel is uniformly good: "It imparts the... repeatedly described sensation of well-being, good humor, excitation, and comfort...The consciousness, of course, remains unimpaired, and the chewer's capacity for work is in no respect affected." (Hesse). "It creates a feeling of energy, appeases hunger and assuages pain." (Henry Brownrigg, Betel Cutters from the Samuel Eilenberg Collection).

These authors don't lie: betel makes you feel strong. Your chest feels broader, your inhalations deeper, your back straighter; and an almost electric invigoration seems to run through your bones. This is a good, healthful, and positive sensation.

More Boing Boing betel coverage here:

Taiwanese betel nut vendor girls told to put clothes back on

History of betel chewing

Interesting Indian delicacy: paan

Betel is bad news

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:07:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Collection agency scam

I had an experience close to yours. I received a letter from ATT Wireless (with whom I have NEVER had an account) saying I owed around $45 . I called and was told it had been passed to a collection agency. Never mind I hadn't had an account with TT&T Wireless.If I had I still never would have received a bill because during the time I was supposedly billed I WORKED for AT&T and got free AT&T calls!) I called the collection agency and I told them the story-they didn't care. They wanted their money. I ended up checking my credit report and they had reported it on my report! I was livid. So I researched the BBB (http://www.atlanta.bbb.org/) and found that the collection agency was a scam outfit that was doing this to everyone they contacted (they had over 350 bad entries in the database). I demanded the credit reporting agency remove the entry (after telling them the story ).I then contacted the Attorney General for Georgia and told an legal aid what had happened. The credit reporting agency removed the entry and the Attorney General is investigating the collection agency.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:58:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Region Coding Electronics and Ink Cartridges

...H-P ink cartridges sold in Europe are becoming much more expensive than equivalent ones in the U.S. "We are not trying to make money on this," Mr. Holm says...

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:58:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Psychedelic gurus MP3 torrent

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:36:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Time cover from 1952 shows Titan space probe landing

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:34:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plastics from orange peels

"Almost every plastic out there, from the polyester in clothing to the plastics used for food packaging and electronics, goes back to the use of petroleum as a building block," (professor Geoffrey) Coates observes. "If you can get away from using oil and instead use readily abundant, renewable and cheap resources, then that's something we need to investigate. What's exciting about this work is that from completely renewable resources, we were able to make a plastic with very nice qualities."

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:07:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ghost busted

An unexplained grievance had provoked her campaign of ghostly disquiet. Police said she was motivated by "a personal rancour" against the manager of the cultural centre in the estate.

She was convicted on Friday of harassment and damage to the castle, Italian newspapers reported.

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:58:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Did Renaissance painters use projectors?

(Stork) also says that given the type of lenses or concave mirrors available at the time, the brightness in the scene would have been reduced around 1000-fold at the canvas, making any projected image all but impossible to see and trace, unless several dozen oil lamps or hundreds of candles lit the scene.

As well as showing that the shadows cast can be plotted back to the candle, Stork's software indicates that the way light rays are reflected off Joseph's head are consistent with the candle being de la Tour's only light source.

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:53:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Betel is bad news

"Aggressive advertising, targeted at the middle class and adolescents since the early 1980s, has largely enhanced the sales," notes Beatrice Secretan, a health researcher who contributed to the 300-page Monograph on Betel-quid and Areca-nut Chewing published in October 2004 by WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer, based in Lyon, France.

"The situation," she says, "is similar to the real start of the tobacco epidemic, with industrially manufactured cigarettes, at the beginning of the 20th century."

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:33:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

All your phonecam pics are belong to Verizon

Verizon Wireless is being sued because they disabled access to Bluetooth file transfers on their version of the Motorola v710. Mind you, I'm not sure they ever promised that Bluetooth file transfer would be enabled; seems a little obvious, but Motorola doesn't think so. Essentially, Verizon has said, "Those photos you took? Ours. Unless you pay for a data plan or photo plan or some kind of plan to get your photos off your phone. Ta-ta!" Subscribers may be disgruntled, but unless Verizon Wireless misled, this may be a perfectly reasonable stance. As it would be for subscribers to only purchase cell phones with Bluetooth that's unlocked from other cell providers...

Update: An anonymous reader says, "Here's a workaround. Mobile PhoneTools version 3.0 software CD plus USB Cable - 98653H. It's compatible with the V710 (according to the page) It's a data cable and the software to link your phone to a PC. I use it to back up my phone book, keep my calendar up-to-date, pull photos off my phone and put in MP3 files for ringtones." Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:59:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Roll-your-own RSS for movie junkies

I'm a subscriber to the Hollywood Video MVP program. This is something similar to NetFlix, but is limited to movies that are 4-6 weeks past DVD release. I'm tired of going into the store not knowing what has been recently added to the MVP list. Which means that at times it can be a waste of time to stop in. One thing that is nice, is that they provide a list of new items to the MVP on their front site. So, I thought I'd whip up a quick RSS generator for what they are adding to the MVP. I also decided that it'd be easy enough to do the rest of their sections as well. The list is below, parsed from the main Hollywood video website. Hollywood video, you'd be very cool if you would do this yourself. Since the lists off of Hollywood Video won't be changing too often, I will only be re-generating these files once per day (noon PST).

And reader mediamelt says,

On the subject of custom RSS feeds, I'm a huge movie news nut (as noted by my film-geek centric blog) that grew tired of scouring tens of movie-news websites a day for the latest tidbits. Unfortunately, most movie news sites are extremely behind the times in terms of web technology and don't provide RSS feeds, so I wrote myself a little link ripper to be fed onto my blog for all to read and enjoy. The result? Headlines from over 70+ movie news websites, updated hourly, displayed on one page, most from sites that don't provide RSS feeds themselves. Version 3 is already in development and will feature independent RSS feeds for each site, as well as "keyworded" RSS feeds, "genre" feeds, and one massive feed containing every headline from every site. If that's not information overload made easy, I don't know what is. PHP/MySQL programmers with free time who want to pad their portfolio needed :)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:56:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiny, self-assembling rat robots

They described a new method for attaching living cells to silicon chips. They then and got the combined entities to move like tiny, primitive legs. Writing in the journal Nature Materials, Jianzhong Xi, Jacob Schmidt and Carlo Montemagno of the University of California Los Angeles said it is possible to make such devices, starting with a single cell "seeded" on a specially treated silicon chip. They used rat heart cells in one experiment and created a tiny device that moved on its own as the cells contracted. A second device looked like a minuscule pair of frog legs. "A microdevice had two 'legs' extending from the body at 45-degree angles; each leg had a 'foot' extending at a 45-degree angle," the researchers wrote. It may eventually be possible to grow self-assembling machines using the method, they said.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:54:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

U Can't Graph This

I am the last person to be suggesting anyone try to improve their math skills... but this just reminds me of a couple of really fantastic teachers I had when I was a kid. My Latin teacher played Latin Jeopardy with us! At the time I thought she was batty but she's the reason I never forget my Latin prepositions.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:49:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mr. Bill, teen idol

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:33:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Nailing the cause of a headache

"This is the second one we've seen in this hospital where the person was injured by the nail gun and didn't actually realize the nail had been imbedded in their skull," neurosurgeon Sean Markey told KUSA-TV in Denver.

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:00:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory speaking at Spanish CC launch in Madrid Monday-week

On Monday the 24th there will be a double presentation of Creative Commons Spain in Madrid: a press conference and a conference-panel. As the "real" presentation took place in Barcelona last October the 1st, the Madrid events will be a party and an accounting of the first 100 days of the CC-es licenses. In the morning we wll have a press conference, at 12,30 at the Residencia de Estudiantes (Calle Pinar, 23). The speakers will be collaborators in the licenses and users, and our special guest Cory Doctorow (applause). In the evening, at 19.30 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Cory Doctorow will give a speech with a very long title about the copyright techology wars, and we will have a animated debate with a not so long title about "what will artists live on?". The list of participants follows below.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:20:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star-Wars-y sand-tank with giant stereo for $20k

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:04:08 AM permalink | Other b