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Saturday, April 30, 2005

Old: cow-tipping. New: smart-car-tipping

Someone identified as the Canadian owner of a smart car has posted details in an online forum about the terrifying ordeal his "smarty" endured. And lo, "smart-car-tipping" is born. $1000.00 reward for the culprits.
Link (thanks, sine~language)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:10:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Psychedelic Japanese armpit-hair-removal ad

Here's a scan of an armpit-hair-removal brochure found in Tokyo taxis. Snip from loose translation (or so I'm told -- I can't read Japanese and do not speak armpit):

"Do not fuck with us! We will make you stinky and appear to have Brillo pads attached to your body!" they shout.

All hope is lost, is it not? No. Fortunately for you, there is a force they fear.

"You are no match for my powerful happy armpit hair death ray, which I can utilize for only 8,000 yen!" cries your savior, who rides to your rescue on a white coat and sporting a porno mustache. The happy armpit hairs quickly become sad, shaking in fear at what the stranger might pull out of his pocket.

It's only a flashlight, but for some mystical reason unknown to mankind when he turns it on, then utters the words "Let's love armpit happy" the legion of armpit hairs scream in agony then disappear, living your pit smooth and sparkling clean.

Link (Thanks, sid)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:08:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ceci n'est pas un PSP

Boing Boing reader zhi yang says:

I was walking around Si-Meng-Ding in Taipei when I came across this shop. I saw that they were selling the Gameking 2 (a PSP ripoff). When the sales girl came over, I asked her whether this was the PSP even though I knew the answer but instead of trying to explain the uncanny resemblance. She said "No, this one is different, not produced by Sony. Our Gameking 2 has better games and is also much more cheaper than theirs."

Link

Reader comment: mrbrown says,

I spotted one of these in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, in February 2005. The price tag on the one I saw said RM899, which is about USD236. A lot of money for something that doesn't play PSP games at all. But the box of the Gameking 2 also says "Fashionable Science & Technology Outlook" and "High-Brightness function and Super-Glare Imitate Color Screen". If you are into portable gaming, you will know that is really important.

Link to blog post

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

Official issue Illuminati leather jacket

For sale from.... Wilsons Leather! Just $49.99. As mentioned in Bruce Sterling's Hacker Crackdown, notorious Legion of Doomer and former BB guest blogger "Frank Drake" painted a similar design on his leather jacket in the 1980s. Link (Thanks David Fox and Dr. Maz!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:53:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks" -- MP3 interview with Bruce Schneier

ITConversations is a terrific source of audio interviews with tech folks. In the latest ITC email newsletter, producer Doug Kaye said that his interview last year with security consultant and author Bruce Schneier is one of his all-time favorites.

This is the one interview I hope everyone will hear. Security guru Bruce Schneier goes beyond cryptography and network security to challenge our post-9/11 national security practices.

* "Homeland security measures are an enormous waste of money."
* "If the goal of security is to protect against yesterday's attacks, we're really good at it."
* "More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk."
* "...people make bad security trade-offs when they're scared."

Recorded a year ago, our listeners agree: This is one of our best.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:55:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Locus Poll wants your favorite sf of 2004

Locus Magazine is the best-read trade-rag in science fiction. Every year they conduct the "Locus Poll" to pick the winners of the Locus Award (I won this last year in the best first novel category, for Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) and to gather demographics on the changing readership for science fiction, fantasy and horror. The Locus Poll draws more voters than the Hugos, making it the largest popular vote on sf in the field.

The Locus Poll is now available online for all and sundry (though subscribers get an extra issue if they participate). There are a lot of sf readers in internetland who don't read Locus or self-identify as fans or industry people -- getting their input to the poll will be really useful and valuable. Link (via Making Light)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:07:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ltd edn cartridge with homebrew GameBoy games on it

On Makeblog, PT writes, "GBADev has an annual competition to create home brewed GameBoy games. Instead of giving out cash and flash cartridges the aim is to manufacture a batch of 500 cartridges with the top entries (a 'multi-cart') complete with cart sticker, manual and box. The cartridges will be manufactured by an "independent party" (not Nintendo). The cartridges are in, you can order them now. The games look great." Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:01:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, April 29, 2005

Share one PC among many users and put a billion-plus online

Some friends of mine in Cambridge have gone public with a new nonprofit project called Ndiyo, which builds on the old AT&T free VNC project to radically increase the number of users per PC. The way it works is that you take a single high-powered PC and a whack of cheap little network boxes that have keyboards, mice and monitors connected to them, then use free software to share resources on the server across all the users. If you can only afford one sixth of the cost of a PC (a position that some billion-plus people around the world are it), you and five friends can club together to share a single machine for browsing, document authoring, email and the like.

The Nivo unit itself measures around 12 by eight by two centimetres. It has no moving parts, but it has ports for ethernet, power, keyboard, mouse and a monitor.

It comes with two megabytes of RAM. The next version currently under development will have a USB port, soundcard, local storage capacity, and will be even smaller.

"Essentially, it is about sending pixels over the net," explained Dr Wills.

"With modern ethernet connections, you can get enough performance by sending through compressed pixels."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:20:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jetpack add-on for MSFT Flight Sim

Clive sez, "A division of Spalab has announced that it will soon release JetpakNG -- an add-on pack that will allow you to fly a jetpack in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. It's modelled on the original commissioned by the army and flown for the first time back in 1961!" Link (Thanks, Clive!)

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

Why Dutch iPod levy is futile

On the heels of the news that the Dutch government is going a proposal in the Dutch government to charge iPod owners more than a hundred Euros to compensate artists for the copying of music from CDs to their mobile players, Wendy Grossman writes about the futility of the move.

First of all, levies don't achieve their stated purpose. Let's say you've just forked out a couple of hundred Euros extra on an MP3 player over and above what folks in other countries pay. What would you think? You would think, "I've paid all this money to recompense the music industry for piracy. Therefore, I'm bloody well going to download every damn thing I can, because I've already paid for it." That's just great for the collection societies, whose revenues and importance increase, and the artists who show up on their radar are perfectly happy to be paid extra money they weren't expecting. Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, and Elvis Presley's heirs don't have a problem. Our friend David Mallett is lucky if he gets two more cents. And the many artists whose music is released onto the Net but who aren't members of the collection societies...get nothing.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:10:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Danny O'Brien goes to work at EFF!

Now it can be told: my pal Danny O'Brien -- co-editor of NTK and agitator for FaxYourMP, creator of Life Hacks and other fantastic projects -- is the latest Electronic Frontier Foundation hire. He's our new Activism Coordinator!

One thing we definitely learnt is that even the smallest bit of new information, or the tiniest of tweaks - in user interface, responsiveness, outreach - can have big effects. So if you have any suggestions about any part of the EFF, or you're running something that you think the EFF should know about, let me know.

Oh, and become a member! That way you can boss me around with impunity.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:06:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos: Tokyo Anime Fair 2005

Boing Boing reader Tamu of FPS Magazine says:

My co-workers from Toon Boom Animation went to the Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF). While there, Steven took these fun photos around TAF 2005 and gave fps permission to put them up on the site. Check out the 3D sculpture of Hayao Miyazaki's (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) Howl's Moving Castle (adapted from the Diana Wynne-Jones book) at the Studio Ghibli booth.

Link to photos by Stephen Chu.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:47:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burrito of Mass Destruction

A call about a suspected lethal weapon at a middle school caused police to place armed officers on rooftops, shut off nearby streets, and lock down the school. The culprit: a giant burrito. A suspicious onlooker phoned authorities yesterday after seeing a boy carry something long and foil-wrapped into Marshall Junior High.

Two hours later, drama ended when item was identified as a 30-inch burrito filled with steak, guacamole, lettuce, salsa, and jalapenos, wrapped inside tin foil and a white T-shirt.

Link (thanks, caines)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:02:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The President sings "Imagine" and "A Walk On The Wild Side"

Someone remixed a bunch of President Bush speeches and rearranged his words so that it sounds like he's singing "Imagine" and "A Walk On The Wild Side." Link (More funny remixes here) (via WFMU's Beware of the Blog)

UPDATE: Jon Wiley points out that this song is part of an entire album called The Party Party. Download it here.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:40:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photograph gallery of abandoned buildings in Japan

This Japanese language site has lots of interior and exterior photos of abandoned buildings in Japan.

Link (via i like)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:30:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent found photos and ephemera at One Man Safari

It's always a treat to visit the One Man Safari blog and see what the mysterious "one man" has on display -- old home photos, bizarre movie stills, postcards, album cover art, product wrappers, etc. Where does he get all this stuff?
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:25:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How do digital music sellers know what religion you are?

Following up on this post about reports of digital music vendors reselling customer data to marketers, many BB readers including Robert asked:

What I want to know is how in the hell can they know your religion ( "The "datacard" says that the company has race, age, gender, religion, and income information on the subscribers." ) when you buy an iPod or use eMusic?

First, Robert, mind your language. Faith-based downloading initiatives frown on indiscriminate use of the word "hell." I don't know the answer to your question, but maybe better-informed readers do -- or perhaps a representative of the data resellers in question would like to reply?

Perhaps the "religion" tag results from probability analysis based on song purchases. My beloved iPod contains music I've bought from iTunes, eMusic, and other sources. Among the many files stored: Hell (James Brown), Don't Fear the Reaper (BOC), Gwine Dig a Hole to Put the Devil In (Leadbelly), Devil's Pickney (Sugar Minott), and Sympathy for the Devil (Ozzy). If my hypothesis is proven correct, you'd find my customer data in the "Consort of Satan" column, which would explain all of the "L:@@K! Sell your s0ul for C*h*e*ap* beachfr0nt purgat0ry T1M3sh4res!!!" spams I've been getting lately.

Boing Boing reader Greg was upset about the possibility that his customer data might be resold, and he tells us:

When I cancelled my [eMusic] account and asked them to remove my information from their servers, I got the following:

"Hello: Thank you for contacting eMusic Customer Support. We are sorry to hear of your frustration. Your privacy preferences have been recorded. Please be assured that eMusic has never rented or sold its membership list to any third-party organization. eMusic has no plans to do so in the future. Also please note that your e-mail address and account information are kept secure on our servers. We understand your concerns regarding your account information and apologize for+any frustrations you have encountered.

Regards,
Bryan
eMusic Customer Support Team"

So, if that's true (and I don't trust that it is), then maybe it's a different service?

Boing Boing reader Joe and others wrote in to say they'd received the same reply from eMusic.

Previously: EPIC asks: which digital music service is selling your data? (UPDATED)

Update: Reader Luca says:

I am sure that eMusic does not sell their membership list, i.e. the names and email addresses of their subscribers. But that does not mean that they do not sell data on the song downloaded by their members, each with anonymous information about the member who downloaded it (such as race, age, gender, religion and income).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:41:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jenn Shreve, not a "real" journalist?

Former BB guestblogger Jenn Shreve, a former editor at Salon and a longtime contributor to Wired, Slate, and many other publications, is not a "real" journalist. At least that's what she says the USC Annenberg School for Communication implied when she inquired about a media fellowship. From the f blog:

I was preparing my application for a USC Annenberg School for Communication media fellowship, which paid tuition for a weekend seminar on "Covering Entertainment in the Digital Age." I noticed that the application required a lot of information to come from my "supervisor," so I called them up to ask how I as a freelancer should handle this. I'd already obtained a letter of recommendation from my editor of six years at Photo District News, for whom I've written dozens of features about how digital technology was transforming the visual arts. Several years ago when I was awarded two media fellowships from CASE, including one on art and technology, they were extremely accommodating, so I was not prepared to hear that while USC would accept applications from people like me, I might as well not bother because they really couldn't prove I was a "real journalist." When I listed all the publications I've written for over the years, they said it didn't matter. If I didn't work in a newsroom, I apparently wasn't a real journalist in their book.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:15:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Postcard confessional

PostSecret is a mail art project where you're invited to send in an anonymous postcard with a "secret" written on it. The submissions are then shared on a blog. This is even more engaging than the old classic Not Proud! After just four months, the organizers have posted lots of heavy, funny, creepy, interesting, and real secrets. Directions to contribute are in the 1/1/2005 post.
Link (via the f blog)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:56:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Car smashes into second floor of house

Last night, a car flew from the street into the top floor of a house in Basingstoke, Hants, England and dropped back to the ground. The driver and passenger were seriously injured but are in stable condition. Police say the car hit a curb and "launched through the air."

Joyce Harman told BBC News how she and her husband Joe were woken by the crash.

"It was just horrendous," she said.

"My husband thought the dog had knocked something over downstairs but as he got to the bedroom door he could see the hole in the wall and all the furniture moved.

"That's when we came downstairs and saw the car there."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:31:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EPIC asks: which digital music service is selling your data? (UPDATED)

Update at end of post.

Boing Boing reader Chris Hoofnagle of EPIC says:

As part of my work at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, I scan direct marketing publications to see how companies are selling your personal information. This data sale appeared today in Direct Marketing News. It proposes to sell the personal information of those who subscribe to "an online digital music community...These consumers pay anywhere from $9.00 to $19.99 a month to gain access to a diverse catalog of over 500,000 music downloads in a variety of genres from top independent labels." The "datacard" says that the company has race, age, gender, religion, and income information on the subscribers. I'm wondering what music subscription site is selling their members' data! Would anyone at the in the Boing Boing community know what company it is?

Link

BB reader thegrubbykid was the first to say:

I did a google search for "500,000 music downloads $19.99" and came up with a cnet review of eMusic. [3] Relevant quotes which match the data sale info are:

=====
users are still rewarded with unlimited playing, burning, and transferring of files provided in the nearly universally supported MP3 format.
...
You must subscribe to one of three plans: choose 40 downloads for $9.99, 65 downloads for $14.99, or 90 downloads for $19.99. Though eMusic's per-song price works out to be a comparatively cheap 22 to 25 cents, those who prefer the freedom of a la carte downloading (and more mainstream music) are better off with open-handed stores such as iTunes and Wal-Mart Music Downloads.
...
eMusic carried 500,000 high-quality MP3 files from 1,200 independent music labels, many of which cannot be found at competing online music stores
=====

This is pretty circumstantial, but this could be a healthy lead. Use the google query "500,000 music downloads $19.99 $9.99" and all you get are eMusic links/reviews and spam links.

Many other BB readers wrote in with exactly the same conclusion. Reader Patita points us to this ToS excerpt from the eMusic site:

Our Disclosure of Your Information
We may make your information available to others:

[a few bullets down:] Who are trusted third parties (e.g., promotional partners and advertisers) so that they can promote their products and services and those of their affiliates and partners based on your preferences and interests. You may "opt out" of such disclosure(s) to the extent they include your personally identifiable information by sending an email at any time to service@emusic.com indicating your intent to do so. If you consent to share your personally identifiable information with such trusted third parties, their use of such information is subject to their own privacy policies;

Link

Update: Et tu, iPod? Chris Hoofnagle points us to this listing: iPod Generation List Service Direct Inc.

New List
Description: This file contains individuals who have purchased an iPod MP3 player. Selects: more than 2.1 million total file, 3-month hotline, geography, income, age, gender, marital status, mail order buyer, magazine subscriber, computer owner, donor, ethnicity, religion, book buyer, credit card holder, homeowner, length of residence and age of child present
Contact: your list broker or List Service Direct Inc., 2 Christie Heights Street, Leonia, NJ 07605
Phone: 201/585-1447;
Fax: 201/585-1732
E-Mail: info@listservicedirect.com

Thread continued here, with denial of data reselling by eMusic.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:20:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Baby, you are, like, so kawaii

Anime-inspired cosmetics for creating a "supercute" look. If there was ever a good reason for a reality makeover show, this is it. I'm imagining four gender-ambiguous cosplay co-hosts ambushing an unsuspecting woman on the street -- "Congratulations! You're getting a Sailor Moon makeover!" I'd totally volunteer for that shit -- always wondered what it would be like to wander around with giant black inkblobs where my irises used to be. Snipped from Style:

Japanese brands like Shu Uemura, plus such trendy Americans as Stila and Goldie, are jumping aboard the sweet-seeking trend to produce Sailor Moon-ish products and accoutrements—from cleansers in adorable packaging to cosmetics with cartoon-inspired pigments to ice-cream-flavor lip gloss. With black contact lenses, now turning Tokyo teens into walking manga characters, poised to hit the States, artists, manufacturers, and style makers show no signs of coming down from their collective sugar high.

Link (Thanks, Susannah).

Reader comment: Ian Irving adds,

To aid you in your anime dreams, the current (May) issue of Wired Magazine has a brief piece on new contact lenses to give you that gigantic monochromatic pupil look -- under the PLAY| japanese schoolgirl watch section, of course. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:05:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mystery ship likely monitoring Titan launch

As several BB readers speculated, the mystery ship, named The Sage, in Portland Harbor (previous post) is apparently in the area to track a giant Titan rocket scheduled for launch tonight. (Link for live coverage.) The Titan will deliver a military satellite into orbit. Neither the Air Force or Lockheed Martin, contractor for the Titan, will confirm or deny that the Sage is monitoring the launch, but all signs point to yes. From the Portland Press Herlad:

The offshore supply ship is equipped with an antenna to monitor boosters during launches, said Doug Sayers, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, which made the Titan's two boosters. The defense contractor is leasing the Sage...

Roger Guillemette, a correspondent for the Cape Canaveral bureau of Space.com, a Web site that covers space-related news, said he has no doubt about the vessel's mission.

"It's there to track the Titan for the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office," he said.

Brown said the Sage's departure Wednesday has confirmed that it is here to track the Titan. He said NASA is not preparing any other launches in the near future for this flight path.

Link (Thanks, Loren Coleman!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:22:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

web zen: generator zen

engrish
brag
complaint
prior art
text blocks
the surrealist link
dionne warwick's cosmic peephole
they fight crime
vin diesel facts

web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:11:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Girl Scouts sue non-paying customers

Girl Scouts from Waukesha, Wisconsin are filing lawsuits in small claims court against customers who didn't pay for cookies they ordered. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Christine Slowinski, communications director for council, said the lawsuits, which this year concern amounts ranging from $301.42 to $1,485.68 for 2003 and 2004 orders, are an unfortunate annual undertaking...

Slowinski said the delinquents each year are a mix of parents who owe money for their daughters' cookies and people who pay for cookies with rubber checks.

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:06:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jailtime for Chong's Bongs lead to dispute over Marijuana-logues

Brian Braiker of Newsweek says,

You may know Tommy Chong is just out of jail for selling bongs online (not drugs, mind you, glass water pipes). Now he says he's been forced by the terms of his parole to quit a stage production called "The Marijuana-Logues." Uncomfortable with rejoining the cast even after his parole is over in July, Chong is now being sued by the show's producers for breach of contract. Dude can't catch a break, man!

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:53:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Life-size X-Wing fighter for sale

This life-size X-Wing fighter (built as an authorized promo by a Lucasfilm contractor) is on eBay, bidding starting at $40K Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:26:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

7m-high electrical garbage statue made from one Briton's lifetime's waste

The Weee Man is a 7m-high, 3.3-tonne sculptural humaniod gracing London's South Bank, made entirely from waste electrical and electronic products (hence "weee"). The 3.3 tonne weight represents the total mass of WEEE that the average Briton junks in her or his lifetime, so it's not just pretty and awesome: it's also thought-provoking. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Designer prefab houses coming to Germany

German housing is built to be "fortress-like" -- which is expensive, slow and enviromentally wasteful The solution may be prefab housing, which is efficient and fast to throw up. But Germans hate prefab. Now various German housing outfits have commissioned star architects to procduct designer "off the rack" prefab houses that are really lovely in the hopes that it will eliminate the prefab stigma. Link (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:45:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blind woman who sees with sound

CBC radio's Quirks and Quarks science show has a fascinating piece on a woman who uses a technology called vOICe to replace the vision she lost when her eyes were damaged in an industrial accident. vOICe uses stereo cameras in a pair of cycling goggles to convert visual data into audio signals played through headphones, producing a lo-res version of her visual surroundings. One of the more fascinating elements of the program is the stuff on brain-function, and the new theories being engendered by this about the way that what we think of as the "visual cortex" is actually a general-purpose tool for processing sensory data about one's surroundings regardless of whether or not it arrives visuallly. Link (Thanks, Darren!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:40:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Time-management for anarchists from a productive anarcho-geek

My pal Jim Munroe is the most productive anarchist I know: he writes (great) sf novels, organizes a punk-rock multi-city Vaudeville circuit, makes entertaining text adventures, shoots videos and so forth. He's produced a slide show that exposes the secrets of his success, called "Time Management for Anarchists."

Time Management for Anarchists (starring Emma Goldman and Mikhail Bakunin, no less) is a great Getting-Things-Done-style tutorial on how to throw off the yoke of your day job and still remain productive without a labor-alienating boss cracking the whip over you. Jim built it in Flash to accompany a talk he gives, so it runs a little slow without his patter overtop of it. But it's CC-licensed so you can give it a hurry-up if you are so moved. Link (Thanks, Gavin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:31:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, April 28, 2005

How to: 5-foot-tall painting of a light bulb

My new favorite blog is Steve Lodefink's Finkbuilt. Steve makes some of the neatest stuff I've seen. Like this 5-foot-tall painting of a light bulb. He explains how he does it, making it sound easy. And he says he's not a "real artist." Right.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:06:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tell US govt not to steal tax-funded weather from the public

Donna sez, "EFF has a brand-new action alert that lets people tell Senator Rick Santorum -- yes, that Santorum -- what to do with a new bill that represents the worst kind of stupid IP policy-making:"

The National Weather Services Duties Act (S.786) would ban NWS from "competing" with private entities by making it unlawful for the agency to publish user-friendly weather data and barring NWS experts from speaking one-on-one to news agencies. Why? Because Senator Santorum believes that companies like AccuWeather would make more money if they didn't have to compete with "free." That's right - he believes you should pay twice for your weather information in order to line the pockets of the private weather industry, which *already* benefits from repackaging the data that tax-funded agencies like NWS give away. That's not only unfair, it's a bad precedent for our national information resources.

Link (Thanks, Donna!)

Update: Patrick sez, "One of the pay weather services that would benefit from this bill just happens to be a contributor to Senator Santorum, located in State College, PA."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:36:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How NYC cabbies kill time at the airport

Beautiful gallery of NYC cabbies amusing themselves waiting in the queue at an airport: playing soccer, playing cards, praying toward Mecca, etc. Invasive NYT Reg-Req'd Link (Bugmenot for NYT) (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:34:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Pope's old car on eBay

Pope Ratzinger's Cardinalmobile -- the VW Golf he drove when he was a mere Cardinal -- is up for sale on eBay. Link (via Monochrom)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:24:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vishnuland park planned

Planning is underway for a Hindu religious themepark on a pilgrimage route in India.

The aim of the 25 acre park, called Gangadham, is to recreate great moments in Hindu mythology through hi-tech rides, an animated mythological museum, a "temple city", food courts and a sound and light show...

"Gangadham is a spiritual theme park where children and families can go and have a good time, while learning about stories from Hindu mythology," Mr Sagar says.

Link (Thanks, Debcha!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:14:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO build a bike-frame from bamboo

This handsome, hand-built bike frame is made from bamboo mated to duralumin tubes. The total weight is 4.1 lbs. Link includes detailed build-notes in case you want to try it. Link (Thanks, Robert!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:12:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Music Commons event: Sussex, May 6

Edward sez, "There is a one day symposium on Friday May 6th at Sussex University bringing together people involved both in theory and practice of peer-produced commons production. Including the Creative Commons, open source and Free/Libre Culture. Theory, ideas, strategies and tactics, from releasing, sharing and remixing work - plus discussions of how to make new commons-based models function alongside the present music-industry type model and the increasingly restrictive legal environment. Speakers include Peter Jenner (ex-manager of Pink Floyd), John Buckman (Magnatune) and Ted Nelson (inventor of Hypertext). There are still a few places left for the day conference. Email remixculture@libresociety.org to confirm your free place." Link (Thanks, Edward!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:08:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Diversity makes for a good team

Researchers from Northwestern University studied creative successes in the arts and sciences to determine the ingredients of a good team. From Broadway to breakthrough scientific journal papers, the key is fresh blood:

"Do people go out of their way to collaborate with new people?" said Luís A. Nunes Amaral, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering and the corresponding author on the paper. "Do they take this risk?

"We found that teams that achieved success -- by producing musicals on Broadway or publishing academic papers in good journals -- were fundamentally assembled in the same way, by bringing in some experienced people who had not worked together before. The unsuccessful teams repeated the same collaborations over and over again..."

"The entire network looks different when you compare a successful team with an unsuccessful team," said Amaral. "The teams that publish in bad journals form a network broken into small, unconnected clusters while the teams that publish in good journals give rise to a giant, connected cluster. A strong correlation clearly exists between team assembly and the quality of the team's creations. You need someone new to get the creative juices going so you don't get trapped in the same ideas over and over again."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:36:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The art of Wayne White

Wayne White does great mods of kitschy drugstore prints. His work will be on display from May 7 – June 4, 2005 at Western Project in Culver City, CA. (Shown here: The You Just Don't Get It And You Never Will Look, "I Am Takin That Computer Away.")Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:55:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Submarine rides coming back to Disneyland

The submarine ride at Disneyland is the only thing I remember from the time my parents drove me there, from Boulder, Colorado, in 1964. I was three years old, and I remember seeing the mermaids and water dripping from the ceiling of the sub. The email below, sent by an anonymous reader, goes into a bit of detail about the re-opening of the ride, scheduled for 2007. I'm not too excited about it having a "Finding Nemo" theme, though. Does that mean the mermaids are out? (Where is Mary Blair when you need her?)

Disneyland is finally starting work on the return of their long closed Submarine Ride. (It will feature a yet to be officially announced Finding Nemo theme when it reopens in 2007.) The MiceAge site has photos of the drained lagoon, and also offers "super sized" versions of them. Taking a closer look, you can see just how big and deep this area is in comparison to the workers inside. If you read the rest of the posting, you'll find out the return of the Subs is only one step in a major overhaul program for Tomorrowland, after a 1998 failed "brown paint" makover. A newly repainted back to white Space Mt. (rebuilt track along with daytime and nighttime versions, music by Van Halen for the latter) debuts in July, and George Lucas has promised a new Star Tours ride film not long after that. Honda's Asimo robots will even be featured in a show/exhibit inside the old Carousel of Progress building this Summer. Future plans include the Rocket Jets "spinner" ride moving back inside the land from the entrance, and even a return of the long-gone PeopleMover. Along with the just opened Buzz Lightyear "shoot 'em-up" ride it means this long neglected land will be a fun place to visit again.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:15:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Happy slapping update

David recently wrote about "happy slapping," the UK-based craze among teenagers of hitting people and then videotaping their reactions. Here's more info on the sad fad by Carlo Longino of TheFeature.

Blogger Alfie Dennen has cobbled some videos he's found together to make the point that these kids are violent criminals (via The Mobile Technology Weblog). It's grim and disgusting footage, showing clips of kids attacking not just their friends, but complete strangers minding their own business (this video depicts scenes of real violence, so skip over it unless you're prepared to be offended).

The most disgusting thing in this video is the wheezy cackle of the cretin who is videotaping his pal kick strangers in the face, knocking them senseless. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:05:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Australian radio "Media Report" on blogging, journalism

"The Media Report" on Australia's Radio National devoted an episode this week to the impact blogging is having on journalism worldwide. I was one of the folks interviewed for this half-hour program. Link to transcript, Link to Real Media audio, Link to Windows Media audio.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:26:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Multiple elements on TV screen are distracting

Researchers say that the chaotic, distracting mess of multiple information streams that is CNN and many other channels today isn't working. (Surprise!) From Kansas State University:

"We discovered that when you have all of this stuff on the screen, people tend to remember about 10 percent fewer facts than when you don't have it on the screen," (journalism/mass comm. professor Tom) Grimes said. "Everything you see on the screen -- the crawls, the anchor person, sports scores, weather forecast -- are conflicting bits of information that don't hang together semantically. They make it more difficult to attend to what is the central message."

For their research, Bergen, Grimes and Potter conducted a series of four experiments that examined people's attention spans regarding complex and simple cognitive processes.

"The outcome of all of the experiments was that people were splitting their attention into too many parts to understand any of the content," Grimes said.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:59:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LA Times: Pedophilia Linked with Star Trek?

Ernest Miller says:

Yesterday, the LA Times ran an article on the struggles of a Canadian law enforcement agency in chasing down pedophiles based on the clues in various child porn photos. They're the ones who released the photoshopped images that showed only the backgrounds of the photos in hopes that people could identify where they were taken (it worked). There was a strange claim in the article, however: "On one wall [of the law enforcement offices] is a 'Star Trek' poster with investigators' faces substituted for the Starship Enterprise crew. But even that alludes to a dark fact of their work: All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie."

Link

Reader comment: Boing Boing reader Mr. Spocko says:

As you can see, based on my pseudonym, I'm a fan of the show Star Trek. First of all, I'm not defending pedophiles. I think what they do is disgusting and they should be caught and punished. Out of all the info in that tragic article about pedophiles you chose to pull out this piece of information devoid of context.

"All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie."

The writer, Maggie Farley, didn't talk about other characteristics they have in common. She might have said, "All were users of the Internet.or All were hard-core digital photographers. What if she had said, "All but one were hard-core Republicans? or All but one were hard-core readers of Boing-Boing?" Would that have raised your hackles and made you want to know actual details of such a sweeping claim?

I read your website, I understand your desire to find the unusual, the amusing, the controversial. But pulling this information out of that story without context and the statistical relationship to the entire twisted population at large seems to me to create connections were they might not exist. Does it mean anything that the people trying to crack these cases have a poster of themselves in Trek grab hanging on the wall? Might the writer also have said, "All but one of the team tracking these pedophiles was a hard-core Trekkie?"

Police need ways to find these people, maybe that comment will help them do that, but might it also stigmatise a group of people who are innocent of such morally repugnant activities and simply make them guilty by association?

Ernest replies:

I pointed out that factoid not because I thought it terribly credible, but because it seems rather incredible. Sure, are some Trekkers pedophiles? Probably. But all but one arrested by Toronto cops in the last four years are Trekkers? Seems rather unlikely to me. I hope that another reporter decides to look a little closer into this.

Update: Ernest says,

I have now spoken to Detective Ian Lamond of the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit and he claims they were misquoted, or if that figure was given it was done so jokingly. Nevertheless, he does claim that a majority of those arrested show "at least a passing interest in Star Trek, if not a strong interest."

They've arrested well over one hundred people over the past four years. Det. Lamond claims they can gauge this interest in Star Trek by the arrestees' "paraphenalia, books, videotapes and DVDs." I asked if this wasn't simply a general interest in science fiction and fantasy, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter or similar. He said, while there was sometimes other science fiction and fantasy paraphenalia, Star Trek was the most consistent and when he referred to a majority of the arrestees being Star Trek fans, it was Star Trek specific.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:49:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pizza-topping portraits of the Royals

Pizza Express, a UK pizza chain, shares its birthday with the Queen. To commemorate its 40th, it has released a series of pizzas bearing portaits of the Royals spelled out in toppings. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:35:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MIT's Nathan Eagle and reality mining

In my latest article for TheFeature, I interview Nathan Eagle, a researcher at MIT's Media Lab who has collected approximately 40 years of continuous data on human behavior by capturing communication, proximity, location and activity information from 100 cell phone-wielding subjects at his school. Now he's building applications that take advantage of "reality mining."

TheFeature: How does your application Serendipity leverage Reality Mining data?
Eagle: We're uncovering affiliations between people. I have a similarity metric based on distance in behavior states. The end idea is that the software would notice, say, that you typically hang out at the B-Side Lounge on Friday nights. So do I and perhaps you also do other behaviors similar to me. Those things in common may mean that we would want to be introduced. That's one method of matchmaking. Another is based on proximity. The Bluetooth addresses of those people running our client get pushed to our server. Then we do a comparison based on their profiles.

TheFeature: It sounds like Friendster for the physical world?
Eagle: That's the general idea. But Serendipity is based not just on explicit user profiles (that you enter) but also implicit behavioral information.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:17:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thumbprinting visitors at Statue of Liberty and Disneyland

Responding to yesterday's Boing Boing post about tanning salons and gyms that require users to submit to thumbprint ID, reader Matthew A. Dietzen of Chicago-Kent College of Law says:

You might find these pictures of the Thumb-Scanning Lockers on Liberty Island, NYC interesting. In order to get to "Liberty" Island, you must first have your gear X-rayed by Wackenhut security goons. Then you ride to the island accompanied by Coast Guard types with German Shepherds. Once ashore, you are free to circle the island, take pictures of the statue, and buy overpriced Slurpees.

However, in order to get inside the statue, you have to stow your gear in a locker... that requires you to use your fingerprint as a key!!! You can also pay with a credit card, that way if anyone hacks the machine, they can have your print AND your credit card information. This must be in place to protect us from those Al Qaeda frogmen that are clever enough to swim ashore, but are too stupid perform their dastardly deed at night where they can circumvent the locker bay by climbing the seemingly easy-to-climb wall.

In all likelihood, its probably to condition us into giving up our biometric information at every turn [As if biometrics could never be hacked...] so that security companies can make even more $$$, while we become more and more sheep-like each day. In any case, I didn't go inside.

However, later that day, I was falsely arrested near Ground Zero with 200 other people. I was a legal observer at the Republican National Conventions. First they said people could march, then they arrested them. They took us to Pier 57, and then the Tombs where we were laser-printed on ALL of our fingers with a SAGEM machine because we "might be terrorists." After denouncing us as anarchists and enemies of the state, the city dropped the charges [on our group anyway] a month later. The latest stories indicate that over 90% of the charges were dropped or found to be baseless. The police were also caught fabricating evidence.

Matthew's snapshots: one, two.

Previously: Arkansas salon requires thumbprint to get a tan

Reader comment: BB reader Grahame Armitage adds:

You mentioned people having their fingers scanned if they wanted to go inside the Statue of Liberty, well I had a similar experience when visiting Disney in Florida. Every park we visited required us to put our fingers inside the scanner - the first two fingers (separated by a peg). Just like giving the vees. As I was there on holiday with the wife, children and family I never gave it another thought. Especially as I come from the UK I just assumed it was the norm.

BB reader Mason says:

Just want to point out (not sure if this is the right place to do it) that thumbprint scanners DO NOT store your thumbprint. They use certain identifiable features of your thumbprint to match, sort of like a hash of your thumbprint. Your print CANNOT be reconstructed from the data these scanner save just as a computer password cannot be reconstructed from the saved hash The idea that these scanners work on is that each thumbprint has many features and when you combine each small metric (I believe there's 20-30 that they use) you create a hash of the thumbprint that can only be made by that thumb. So they're not as invasive as the (very reactionary) posts the past two days seem to imply. No one can steal your identity from the data stored by a thumbprint reader.

Brian Geiger says:

I used to live in Orlando, and I was there when Disney first started instituting the biometrics. Basically, it measures the distance between some of your knuckles on the right hand. Then that information is imprinted on your ticket, so nobody else can use the ticket. Disney charges a lot for tickets, and certainly doesn't want one person to use the ticket for the first half of the day, and somebody else to use it for the second half of the day. They first started using it for Season Pass holders. So, while they are incredibly greedy, I don't think the Disney issue is particularly sinister, if it's the same system they're using at Disneyworld.

drwormphd says:

here are a couple of links that support mason's explanation: an epa primer on biometric hand and finger geometry recognition: Link; and an unofficial wdw info guide faq on the disney finger scans: Link.

And Wired News editor Marty Cortinas, beyond whom no bullshit passes, says:

I know everyone is talking about thumbprints, but the picture clearly indicates the machine wants to scan the right index finger. Finger, thumb, whatever.

Reader Brian says:

In response to the story, Arkansas salon requires thumbprint to get a tan, I'm shocked, SHOCKED that no one has posted information on how to fake finger prints. You have a story at the Register, another link, and my favorite, step by step picture example.

Alex Fajkowski says:

I am working on a project with the DHS that fingerprints people after they were arrested at the US border. BB reader Mason is not correct when he said these scanners do not store your prints. It depends on the system. The DHS takes people prints (either two print or ten print), creates a WSQ compressed version of them, and extracts minutiae (about 30 points of interest on the print where ridges intersect). Your fingerprint can be reconstructed from the WSQ version. The DHS' system stores the WSQ and Minutiae in one of its many fingerprint databases. It is entirely possible these scanners submit prints to DHS databases for analysis and storage.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:05:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Extinct woodpecker rediscovered

After more than sixty-years, a rare bird believed to have been extinct has been spotted in the Big Woods of Arkansas. A kayaker first reported seeing the ivory-billed woodpecker last year. Scientists have since spotted the bird several times and even caught it briefly on video. (Seen here is a John James Audobon illustration.) From a Cornell University news release:

While kayaking in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge on Feb. 11, 2004, Gene Sparling of Hot Springs, Ark., saw an unusually large, red-crested woodpecker fly toward him and land on a nearby tree. He noticed several field marks suggesting the bird was an ivory-billed woodpecker.

A week later, after learning of the sighting, Tim Gallagher, editor of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Living Bird magazine, and Bobby Harrison, associate professor at Oakwood College, Huntsville, Ala., interviewed Sparling. They were so convinced by his report that they traveled to Arkansas and then with Sparling to the bayou where he had seen the bird.

On Feb. 27, as Sparling paddled ahead, a large black-and-white woodpecker flew across the bayou less than 70 feet in front of Gallagher and Harrison, who simultaneously cried out: "Ivory-bill!" Minutes later, after the bird had disappeared into the forest, Gallagher and Harrison sat down to sketch independently what each had seen. Their field sketches, included in the Science article, show the characteristic patterns of white and black on the wings of the woodpecker.

"When we finished our notes," Gallagher said, "Bobby sat down on a log, put his face in his hands and began to sob, saying, 'I saw an ivory-bill. I saw an ivory-bill.'" Gallagher said he was too choked with emotion to speak. "Just to think this bird made it into the 21st century gives me chills. It's like a funeral shroud has been pulled back, giving us a glimpse of a living bird, rising Lazarus-like from the grave," he said.

Link to news release, Link to NPR story (Thanks, Vann Hall and Loren Coleman!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:04:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

USB Geiger-counter experiments in airplanes

Dean Armstrong is taking his USB Geiger-counter on civilian aircraft and measuring the radiation levels that he can detect at 12,000 feet and higher.

Southwest Airlines flight to LAX. I turned on the detector at roughly 12,000ft, and turned it off at the official 10,000ft announcement. According to the pilot cruising altitude was at 39,000ft. The big drop at 3/4 of the way across the graph was a temporary disconnection.

Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:58:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fairfax libraries waste tax-dollars on DRM

Public libraries in Fairfax, VA, are buying DRMed audiobooks with tax-dollars, despite the fact that these audiobooks won't play on iPods (or other MP3 players), MacOS, or GNU/Linux systems.

Do you know who is getting the shortest end of this stick? The tenants in affordable housing units in Northern Virginia where GNU/Linux computer labs have been set up for them to use. Many of these tenants are hardworking immigrant families. Could the adults and children in these families benefit from greater access to audio books? You tell me. "Sorry, buster, you're a digital minority. No audio books for you. Here, let me relieve you of your taxpayer dollars all the same." How about this for irony -- one of the books currently inaccessible? Martin Luther King, Jr., On Leadership: Inspiration & Wisdom for Challenging Times, by Donald T. Phillips. I hear it's a good book.

Link (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:56:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Europe's national libraries creating giant digital book collection

RDP sez, "A whole host of large European libraries (with the British Library's tacit support) have joined an EU-based digitisation project as a counter to Google's own library scheme. The project is the brainchild of BNF director Jean-Noel Jeanneney, a sort of mild-mannered Jose Bove for the librarians out there. As with the Google project, we're told little about access to the digitised gems."

"The leaders of the undersigned national libraries wish to support the initiative of Europe's leaders aimed at a large and organized digitization of the works belonging to our continent's heritage," a statement said. "Such a move needs a tight coordination of national ambitions at EU level to decide on the selection of works," it added.

The statement was signed by national libraries in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.

Link (Thanks, RDP!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:47:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Britons get better election info than any election, ever, anywhere

Stef from Britain's magnificent political engagement site TheyWorkForYou.com writes,

We believe we have the untold story of the election. By May 5th, our site expects to have attracted over 500,000 visitors, since the start of the campaign. Unlike the political parties, we have no TV spots, no advertising budget, no granny farmers, and no marketeers except our users (and me).

Furthermore, we will have given them more detailed factual information about how their representatives performed than any electors have ever had at any election, anywhere, in history.

Link (Thanks, Stef!)

Some other interesting related projects: find out how you compare to the rest of Britain, say why you're not voting, and make yourself heard, sister site for contacting ALL your representatives, local or national

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:46:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dirty tricks at WIPO

In honor of this week's World Intellectual Property Day, Becky Hogge posted an article she interviewed me for on OpenDemocracy, about the crazy shenanigans at the World Intellectual Propery Organization (WIPO), a UN agency where dirty tricks have been used to stop public interest groups from joining the discussion.

Delegates whose tentative grasp of the meanings of new technologies often came from close collaboration with incumbent lobbyists such as the National Association of Broadcasters suddenly found they were being asked to pick sides.

One of the more controversial activities of the IP-reform lobbyists since their arrival at Wipo, Doctorow remarks, has been the spontaneous publication on the web of impressionistic notes taken from the various negotiations through at-table blogging.

Link (Thanks, Becky!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:36:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyright debate of the century torrents -- MP3 and Quicktime

Last month's Cornell Copyright Debate of the Century (with EFF's senior IP attorney, a copyfighting media scholar, and the legal heads of the MPAA, RIAA, Universal and Napster 2) is finally available online as a series of torrents in MP3 and Quicktime format, thanks to Allison Muri at the University of Saskatchewan. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:31:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Arkansas salon requires thumbprint to get a tan

Boing Boing pal Wayne Correia (wayne at club dot net) says:

Today Breanna went to a tanning place in her hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas to get a spray tan. The person asked to take an electronic scan of her thumbprint in order for her to be allowed to get her spray tan. Breanna, sensitive about her privacy being violated (rightly so) refused to allow them to make and permanently store an electronic scan of her thumbprint -- she isn't "joining a program" she simply wanted to purchase a single tan and have it applied at that time. When she refused, the woman was offended, saying "it's for our computer system" and when neither would budge, Breanna had no other choice but to leave.

Now I heard this story and thought, no way, maybe she was mistaken, but no. I called myself just now to confirm:

WAYNE: "Hi, do you require a thumbrpint scan to get a tan there?"
TANNING BIMBO: "Yes, sir, we do."
WAYNE: "OK, let me see if I understand this correctly. Is there a state or local law that requires you do this?"
TANNING BIMBO: "No, sir, it's for our computer systems"
WAYNE: "So you want to breach people's right to privacy not because there is a state law that demands you take a thumbprint, but because it's a company policy?"
TANNING BIMBO: "Yes, that's right."
WAYNE: "So you don't see anything wrong in insisting that people give you a thumbprint -- a totally invasive request -- and possibly even an illegal one, just because your company says so."
TANNING BIMBO: "No, sir, our systems require it. We have fourteen locations and this is how we ensure that some one isn't using another person's tanning plan."
WAYNE: "Why would you need to take a thumbprint scan of a person coming in once, for one tan, and paying for that tan right then?
TANNING BIMBO: "Our systems require it."
WAYNE: "Thanks, I just wanted to get this all straight before contacting the media."

And then I hung up and wrote you this email. I think the Arkansas chapter of the ACLU and the Arkansas state attorney general's office need to be contacted... this stuff really gets me steamed.

Premiere Tans
3049 North College Avenue
Fayetteville, AR 72703
(479) 571-8267

Well, that does it. If you value your biometric autonomy, brothers and sisters, shout it out with me: "Stick it to The Man! Don't Go to Arkansas to Tan!"

Then again -- maybe a "Trusted Tanner" program would solve this.

Reader comment: Philip J. Hollenback says:

My wife just started going to 'Hollywood Tans' in Manhattan. They also use the fingerprint biometrics. Maybe whatever company makes the tanning business software has made this a standard feature.

From a business standpoint, I see why they are doing this: this chain pushes you to sign up for unlimited tanning. For a fixed monthly price, you can tan as much as you want. The monthly price of $24.95 is actually pretty reasonable (As far as tanning salons go). Of course, they make you sign up for automatic monthly deductions from your credit card. Obviously they are trying to go the same route as gyms and capture as much income as possible, customer service be damned.

Anyway, if they are giving away all those free tans, they don't want your friends sneaking in as you. Thus, strong security. I'm sure their thinking was along the lines of, "well, we could use ID cards with photos, but we can't count on our employees to look at those".

I think this is a horrible business model and security practice. Unfortunately, I did not protest at the tanning salon and now live in constant fear that someone with a rich, full tan will cut off my finger to feed their habit some day.

Reader Ethan says:

If Wayne wants to stick it to the man, why didn't he get the name of the POS system which needed a finger print? Obviously a bunch of workers at a tanning salon care less about the backend system, and much like the maligned phone number debacle (wherein some people are very rude to workers who request a phone number to buy something at Radio Shack).... it seems that the problem lies with the POS system provider (some geek who thought it was cool to install a thumbprint scanner). I am sure that after the salon gets 1,000,000 calls from internet readers, they will back off.

Responding to a copy of Wayne's anti-tan call to arms (or thumbs?) placed on the politech list, Cato Institute Director of Information Policy Studies Jim Harper says:

Brilliant! Until the very end... Yes, go to the media. This is dumb and it should be held out for derision. But, please oh please, don't go to the ACLU or the state Attorney General. There is no law against making dumb, privacy-invasive requests and there's no civil right violated when a private business does so - even if it conditions its service on a dumb privacy invasion. Open and above-board stupidity is legal. And we should all thank heaven for that!

I have a little bit of confidence in the ACLU, but the state Attorney General will be all too happy to cobble together some bizarre notion that consumer protection law covers this. The power to cobble together new legal authority is one very likely to come around later and bite us in the proverbial ass. No, the solution is that consumers should refuse this bad deal. They shouldn't run to the authorities pleading to be cared for.

Reader Bob Thomas says:

I’m disgusted to say the regional fitness center I belong to, Fitworks, has started doing this as well. I went to the gym yesterday and there was a huge line of people at the counter. When I went to the counter to swipe my membership card, I noticed they were training people in the use of their new security system that requires the input of your thumb print. I’m going to call them later today and see what type of security they have on their network and what sort of non-disclosure policies they have, but it looks like I’ll probably have to change the gym I go to. I guess we can look forward to a future where all of these sorts of personal services clubs require the submission of biometric data.

Ryan says:

Planet Tan in Dallas, TX requires the same thing. I went there once a couple years back, and had pretty much the same encounter.

Cryestal says:

"Express Tan" in Paris, Tennessee requires thumbprints, too.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:01:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Squa Tront #11 published by Fantagraphics

I was pleasantly shocked to discover that Fantagraphics has published the latest issue of Squa Tront, a pre-Factsheet Five old-school fanzine dedicated to EC comics. I have several back issues of Squa Tront, which I bought over 30 years ago and I treasure them.

Squa Tront (the name comes from the words that space monsters frequently uttered in Weird Science and Weird Fantasy -- another thing they liked to say was "Spa Fon" [and of course there was a zine named Spa Fon, as well]) has always stood out for its gorgeous, lavish production. The Fantagraphics-published issue is no exception. The content is first rate -- there are lots of interviews with EC artists and writers (this issue focuses a lot on the underappreciated John Severin), high quality reproductions of rediscovered penciled pages, and a look at early EC fanzines.

(Shown here -- the cover of Squa Tront #3, from 1969, featuring a cover painting by Al Feldstein, who later went on to become the editor of the only existing EC publication, Mad. Click image for enlargement.)
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:38:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Film star Bai Ling visits Star Wars line at Grauman's

A clever publicity stunt by Netflix which probably brought the Star Wars Line geeks as close to hot female tail as they're ever likely to get. And they ask why these fans refuse to leave the Grauman's line...

"I feel strange because all the 'Star Wars' characters and George Lucas have sort of reduced the universe," said Ms. Bai, who stars in Episode III. "I just feel very lucky to experience this part of history and a culture phenomenon."

Uh, whatever. Link to wireimage gallery, link to SJ Merc story. (via dudemanphat, thanks Kate)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:36:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photography: Michael Garlington

The work of photographer Michael Garlington has been described as "‘David Lynch meets Leave it to Beaver." Snip from description of show currently on display at Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles:

Garlington tours the country in his “Photo Car” — literally a Volkswagen covered with his photographs. He shoots portraits of whatever speaks to him - from a contortionist to a fast food worker, from the disabled to a young patriot, his work is about ordinary Americans leading ordinary lives, yet there is something awry. Inside the work is a deeply felt affection for humanity in all its permutations and expressions, in all its horror and triviality. The resulting body of work offers a critical, offbeat, and humorous view of the United States —a portrait of the “belly of the whale.”

Garlington is currently working on a series of California-Mexican working families living in trailers, struggling for a piece of a promised dream, and is planning his fourth cross-county photo expedition in 2005.

Link to show info, and here you will find more info about the photographer, his work, and his art-car: Link. Good god this is an incredible image right here (worksafe): Link (via indienudes)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:16:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NASA loosening risk standards for Shuttle?

Story by John Schwartz at the New York Times on indications that NASA officials have relaxed standards for acceptable risk of damage from the type of debris that led to Columbia's disintegration as it returned from space.

The move has set off a debate within the agency about whether the changes are a reasonable reassessment of the hazards of flight or whether they jettison long-established rules to justify getting back to space quickly.

Experts who have seen the documents say they do not suggest that the shuttle Discovery -- scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on May 22 -- is unsafe, but a small but forceful minority say they worry that NASA is repeating a practice that contributed to the Columbia disaster: playing down risks to continue sending humans into space.

The documents were given to The New York Times by several NASA employees, who asked not to be named, saying they feared retribution. Documents that had been revealed earlier showed that NASA was struggling to meet safety goals set by the independent board that investigated the Columbia accident. The new documents suggest that the agency is looking for ways to justify returning to flight even if it cannot fully meet those recommendations.

The documents, by engineers and managers for the space agency, show at least three changes in the statistical methods used in assessing the risks of debris like ice and insulating foam striking the shuttle during the launching. Lesser standards must be used to support accepting the risks of flight, one presentation states, ''because we cannot meet'' the traditional standards.

Link to story

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:54:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Second try for personalized postage stamps

Reader Apul Patel says,

Stamps.com will again offer customers the opportunity to place their personal photographs on postage stamps. Hilarity ensued when they tested the service last year, as documented previously by BoingBoing. The company warns that it has new guidelines in place to prevent a repeat of such pranks. That sounds more like a challenge than a warning.

Link

Reader comment: JMG says,

Did you guys read the new content restrictions on that PhotoStamps site?

"...Stamps.com reserves the right to charge a processing fee of $10.00 for each image, graphic or photograph that you submit as an order in the PhotoStamps service which violates our content restrictions. In addition, in the event you violate these Content Restrictions and you intentionally publicize such violation, you acknowledge that Stamps.com will suffer substantial damage to its reputation and goodwill and that you can be liable for causing such substantial damage. "

Sounds like we'll need some third-party blog to "intentionally publicize" our "violations" on our behalf...

Link (Thanks also Patrick)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:44:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ripping Off Good Reads in China

This LA Times article explores the wildly popular phenomenon in China of phony business management books.

The series purports to be a translation of English-language works, but no such titles exist. The principal author -- a Paul Thomas, said to be an eminent Harvard University business professor -- is not real. Also made up is the rave review on the back cover, attributed to the Wall Street Journal: "The most practical and advanced management thought of our time."

Link (Thanks, Roderick Maclean!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:41:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guerilla art project invades gated communities in LA

Snipped from the blog for the "Heavy Trash" project:

Most people want to live in communities that are safe for their families and most homeowners want to protect their property values. Although these are fundamentally reasonable goals, walling off one section of the city from another is not a reasonable way to achieve them. In fact, doing so can actually harm the very communities in need of protection.

(...) On April 24, 2005, Heavy Trash volunteers deposited bright orange viewing platforms in front of three Los Angeles gated communities; Brentwood Circle, Park La Brea and Laughlin Park. The purpose of these viewing platforms is to draw attention to the phenomenon of gated communities -- the fastest growing form of housing in the United States. "There are now more than 1 million homes behind such walls in the greater Los Angeles area alone," according to Setha Low, a professor at the City University of New York.

Link (via Sean Bonner / B.LA)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:02:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Greatest Phone Message in the World

Boing Boing reader Benjamin says:

Your recent series of phone messages reminded me of a great segment from This American Life back in 2002 about "The Greatest Phone Message in the World." Thought you might like to add it to the heap. I'm hosting mp3s of the show and just the message and there is also a real player file of the entire broadcast for free download. The phone message itself is hilarious. The story that surrounds it is not only fascinating, but rather relevant to the kinds of thing Boing Boing is always posting. The message originally recorded on a Columbia University phone messaging system that allowed campus-wide forwarding (it's described in the show as a "precursor to the Internet"). This guy gets his amazing phone message, and soon he was a campus celebrity. Now if only the Internet had that kind of power...

Link. I also see a link to a streaming Real Audio version of that TAL episode here

Reader comment: Hal says, "Here are a few more via NPR. An overprotective mother calls her daughter several times a day with obvious and/or insane warnings and suggestions." Link

See also this Boing Boing post from 2004: Saving Phone Messages as a Living Memorial:

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

Previously: wrong number short film, I Shit My Pants Chiasmus, bullshit comp-a-nee, Your fucked up Jewish chanting party, Confused, why don't they outlaw BBQ Forks, Crop circle psycho science, Foreigners don't have computers!, and Girl I Know You Messin Wit my Man.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:36:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars tattoos

Seemingly endless gallery of Star Wars tattoos.

Link (Thanks Chris Null!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:53:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Infinity Broadcasting tunes into podcasting

I filed a story for Wired News today about plans by Viacom's radio division to convert a failing AM talk-radio station in San Francisco to an all-audience-generated-content format.

The world's first all-podcast radio station will be launched on May 16 by Infinity Broadcasting, the radio division of Viacom. Infinity plans to convert San Francisco's 1550 KYCY, an AM station, to listener-submitted content. The station, previously devoted to a talk-radio format, will be renamed KYOURadio. Infinity, one of the country's largest radio operators with more than 183 stations around the country, will invite do-it-yourselfers to upload digital audio files for broadcast consideration by way of the KYOURadio.com website.

"I'm excited," said Infinity Broadcasting CEO Joel Hollander. "We're creating a new way to let a lot of people participate personally in radio -- sharing their feelings on music, news, politics, whatever matters to them. "I also think this is going to be a really interesting way to develop new talent," he added. The station's producers will screen submitted content to ensure it meets quality standards and does not violate FCC broadcast guidelines. Approved podcasts will be simultaneously broadcast over the AM airwaves and streamed online at KYOURadio.com.

In addition to the newfound reach promised by radio broadcast, podcasters may be free to include in their podcasts some music from major record labels, Infinity said. The company said it plans to cover the cost of music-licensing fees, which are prohibitively high for most individuals.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:21:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beijing man lives in nest

A Chinese poet has built a spherical nest and mounted it on a 10 foot poll pole in a Beijing business district. He plans to live in the nest for a month.

Yefu took only a few necessary things with him, including a cup, a mobile phone, and bedding. Except for perhaps meeting some unsolvable problems, the poet will not leave the 4-square-meter space for the whole month. However, he will report his condition to the organizers by cell phone messages three times a day. The organizers will prepare dinners for him. Yefu hopes the nest life experience could help him write a new book

Link (Thanks, Ivy!)

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

States may ban vaporized alcohol delivery system

Alcohol Without Liquid (AWOL) is a vaporized Vodka delivery system that enables users to "inhale" their liquor. (Previously on BB here.) Thirteen states are considering legislation to prohibit the sale of AWOL while the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States are also fighting for a nationwide ban. As my friend Scott Daniel said, "They always hate it when you inhale." From the Miami Herald:

Peter Cressy, (Distilled Spirits Council) president, said its members aren't threatened by the competition posed by AWOL but worry about abuse, putting him in the difficult position of opposing a hangover-free buzz.

"This would strongly suggest that the purpose of this device is to get a buzz. We don't think getting a buzz is a good idea..."

Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:05:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Bigfoot video sold to US TV

Last week, I posted that ferry operator Bobby Clarke of the Cree Nation claims to have captured a Bigfoot on video in Manitoba, Canada. No footage or frames have been released, but apparently Clarke has sold the 2 minute, 49 second tape to an unnamed US television show. Link (Thanks, Loren Coleman!)

UPDATE: From the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization:

The Fox Television program A Currrent Affair has licensed (i.e. not purchased outright) the Manitoba footage for two broadcasts. Both broadcasts will be the same installment of the program. There will be an inital broadcast and then a repeat of it. Contrary to what has been posted on a different bigfoot-related web site, the footage will not be airing this Friday, April 29th. A producer from A Currrent Affair confirmed to the BFRO that the info about the Friday 29th broadcast is false. The footage will be airing the following week, at the soonest. Two analysts from the BFRO will be appearing on the Current Affair program to discuss the footage.

Link (Thanks again, Loren Coleman!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:50:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nokia ships a 4GB MP3 phone

Nokia's new N91 phones have a 4GB hard-drive and play unrestricted MP3 tracks. That's the way to do it: don't go on bent knee to the labels and beg for some music for your phones: give your customers a phone that can play MP3s that they can rip from their own CDs. 74K PDF Link (Thanks, Marko!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:49:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pirates of the Caribbean MMO coming

Disney is developing a massively multiplayer online game based on Pirates of the Caribbean.

The game, which is being designed by Disney's VR Studio, will allow gamers to create their own pirate character and team up with others to form a crew, battling both other players and the evil undead pirates roaming the high seas.

Link (via Wonderland)

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

US govt admits RFID passports are danger to Americans

Bill sez, "A battle in the war against RFID beacons in US passports has been won. The State Department now admits that their previous RFID proposal would put Americans at risk and is now considering other options. That's the good news. The bad news is that the State Department continues to blindly cling to the false promise of planting RFID chips in passports."

Frank E. Moss, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, said in an interview on Tuesday that government tests confirmed privacy advocates' suspicions that the electronic passport might be vulnerable to so-called skimming from a greater distance than officials had previously said, meaning a matter of three or so feet instead of inches.

Link New York TImes Link (Thanks, Bill!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:32:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

HOWTO Cancel someone else's Citibank credit-card

Today, someone phoned Citibank's toll-free number (800-274-6660) and claimed to have found my credit-card, which meant that it was immediately and irrevocably cancelled. Citibank didn't phone me to find out whether the card was in my possession, nor did they require the security code printed on the signature strip -- all they needed was the number. Add this to the list of things you can do with someone's credit-card number: cancel it. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:33:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disneyland CD box set with cool repro vinyl

Cabel sez, "Disney Direct is selling these really amazing looking 6-CD 'Musical History of Disneyland' box sets. The first 5,000 of them even include a great-looking reproduction 33 RPM vinyl (!) of Walt Disney Records' first release." The message boards are all abuzz, too. Link (Thanks, Cabel!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:09:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bill of Rights as slipcases for famous books

Richard Minsky is a book artist whose sculptural slipcases for various books form a bookish Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment version is Neuromancer, with an Ethernet Token Ring card inset. Link (Thanks, Gene!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:46:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PCs, monitors and other hazmat on Household Hazardous Waste Roundup day

Isaac B2 reports from the Household Hazardous Waste Roundup: "As part of my family's pre-Passover clean-up, this past Saturday morning I decided to finally rid our garage of a few items that had been stacking up with no safe method of disposal: an old paint can filled with used paint thinner and turpentine and a Macintosh Quadra from the mid-1990s. Here's the sort of pile that my computer ended up in." Link (Thanks, Isaac B2!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:41:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interactive art, how you annoy me: let me count the ways

A neat NYT piece about the 2005 Boston Cyberarts Festival which lists the many irritating qualities of contemporary interactive art. Heh.

Problem No. 1: potty-mouthed machines. "PS," by Gretchen Skogerson and Garth Zeglin at the Stata Center, is an oval mirror with a sign that bids you "lean in close." You do. A voice says, "I like to masturbate in public." Ack. Did anyone else hear that? Another voice pipes up, "Psst." You lean into the mirror again, trying not to look at your reflection. A voice says, "I have memories of places I've never been to." So what? Luckily, the room's noise drowns out some of the dirty little secrets.

Problem No. 2: too much ritual, too little time. "1-Bit Love," by Noah Vawter, is a musical altar, a totem covered in foil and exuding a synthetic rhythm (a one-bit wave form). The pillar has red velvet knobs. People are supposed to lay hands on it and turn the knobs to modulate the sound. No one wants to be the first to paw the idol. And once you do, it's not clear what effect you are having.

Then there is "Janken" (Japanese for "hand game"), a game of rock, paper, scissors created by William Tremblay and Rob Gonsalves. Your opponent is a skeletal hand wiggling on a screen. You compete by sticking your own hand in front of a light sensor in the rock position (a fist), paper position (flat out) or scissors position (two fingers ready to snip).

It's creepy and awesome. But there are two hitches: the skeleton will, with no apology, choose its hand position after you've chosen yours (isn't that cheating?); and you've got to orient your own hand exactly or the sensor won't read it correctly.

Link (Thanks, Susannah!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:59:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MP3 player, herbal remedies lead to O'Hare emergency landing

Homeopathic tinctures and digital music geegaws perceived as terrorist threat by frequent, freaked-out flyers. Chaos ensues.

An airline passenger's MP3 player and three vials harmless herbal remedies led to an emergency landing at O'Hare International Airport, the evacuation of 74 passengers and crew and a search of the plane Tuesday by the Chicago Police bomb squad.

The United Airlines flight was headed from New York to San Francisco when a passenger told a flight attendant he saw another passenger with suspicious materials, United spokesman Jeff Green said.

The flight crew looked at the materials, and the pilot decided to land at O'Hare. The 66 passengers and eight crew members were evacuated while the bomb squad inspected the materials and the plane, Green said.

Link (via Wayne Correia's list)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:50:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Past tense health tech: radium baths, radon mine soaks

Reader Mark Shead says, "This is a photograph of a sign in Nowata Oklahoma advertising 'Radium Water Baths' with an arrow pointing down under the building. I checked it out and years ago they had a great business of getting people to pay them to sit in toxic waste. They are closed (fortunately), but the sign seems to be holding up well."
Link

Reader Doug Kirby says, "While it may be too late to enjoy a radium bath, one can still plan a vacation sitting in the radon health mines of Boulder and Basin, Montana. These defunct gold and uranium mines still emanate concentrations of radon gas, believed by some to treat arthritis, lupus, asthma, and other ailments. Visitors are recommended to sit in the mine two or three times a day, until they hit the maximum annual exposure level designated by the state (We didn't linger long enough to use up our personal exposure allotments)."
Link

Reader comments: Tomas Bridle says:

There is a radon spa still up and operating at Jachmymov in the Czech Republic. The Jachymov Valley is also the source of the English word dollar: Link And, appropriately, the site of conferences on radioactive chemicals: Link.

Snip from one historical description:

"Modern therapeutical methods which are today used in Jachymov, such as baths in thermal water with a big radon content, greatly contribute towards improving the health state of people suffering from disorders of the motor tract (rheumatism), of the nervous system and disorders of the metabolism."

It's really a beautiful old town as you can see in the pictures, though some ugly mining and factories on the outskirts. I was there in the early 90's but I never tried the waters. Link

Aaron Engelhart says:

You can also see a few examples of radium-impregnated devices at Theodore Gray's Periodic Table Table - a wooden table modeled after the periodic table. Under each tile is an element sample (except for radioactive ones, which he keeps in a leaded glass box). Two of my favorite examples are a Revigorator, a ceramic carboy with a bit of radium in it that presumably made your water radioactive, and a radium impregnated glass bottle. You can see a bit more information at my blog entry.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:45:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos of famous feet on stage

Over two decades, Roland Owsnitzk has snapped an amazing number of photos depicting performers' feet, from A-Ha to Neil Young. Seen here, a Sonic Youth foot (presumably Kim Gordon's) from 1986. Link (via MetaFilter)

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:13:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jordan: Woman murdered in cellphone "honor killing"

A man in Jordan killed his sister for having her photo taken on a cameraphone. If convicted, his punishment will likely be no more than a year in prison.

A Jordanian man shot dead his divorced sister after seeing her photo on his friend's camera-equipped cellphone in the latest "honour" killing in the kingdom, hospital officials said Monday. The unidentified man shot the 31-year-old mother twice in the head Sunday night and then turned himself in to police saying he committed the murder to "cleanse his family's honour". The incident is the fifth example of a so-called honour killing in Jordan this year. Those found guilty usually face sentences of a maximum of one year in jail under Jordanian law.

Link, alternate story link (Thanks, A.V.)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:40:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot arm retrains stroke survivors' limbs

Bioengineers have built a robotic exoskeleton arm to "retrain" the limbs of stroke survivors. The team from Arizona State University and Kinetic Muscles Inc. will present their work at this summer's 9th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics. From sponsor The Whitaker Foundation:

Recent research suggests that stroke survivors can recover significant use of their arms by performing repetitive motor function exercises over a period of time. This labor intensive physical therapy is expensive, however, claiming up to 4 percent of the national health budget, according to the National Institutes of Health. Moreover, health insurers may limit or deny coverage before stroke survivors achieve best results, (principal investigator Jiping He) said.

"This device is intended to provide cost-effective therapy to a wider population for a longer period of time for maximum recovery of motor function," He said of the device, dubbed RUPERT I, for Robotic Upper Extremity Repetitive Therapy.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:54:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Michael Shermer on "I buried Paul," grilled cheese Mary, etc.

In the latest issue of Scientific American, Michael "The Skeptic" Shermer looks at how the human brain is a "pattern-recognition machine" that can make interesting mistakes. From the column:

Consider a few cases of false pattern recognition... the face of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich; the face of Jesus on an oyster shell (resembles Charles Manson, I think); the hit NBC television series Medium, in which Patricia Arquette plays psychic Allison Dubois, whose occasional thoughts and dreams seem connected to real-world crimes; the film White Noise, in which Michael Keaton's character believes he is receiving messages from his dead wife through tape recorders and other electronic devices in what is called EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomenon. EVP is another version of what I call TMODMP, the Turn Me On, Dead Man Phenomenon--if you scan enough noise, you will eventually find a signal, whether it is there or not.

Link (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:39:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Geek's-eye view of Iraq, continued

Last week on Boing Boing, I blogged about Jake Appelbaum (vanity site link, blog link), a San Francisco resident and self-identified "geek" who is traveling in Iraq and blogging what he encounters there. He's certainly keeping busy -- he's nerdevangelizing in Arbil today, teaching locals how to use Debian GNU/Linux. "The strangest thing about training Iraqis is that they take smoke/pray breaks,": Jake IMmed a few minutes ago, "The secular smoke, the faithful pray."

Image above: cartoon icons including Mickey Mouse have been appropriated into these wall murals. "Disney can eat their heart out," says Jake, "I would love to see someone enforce their copyright on the mouse here. We might just get to see someone supporting copyrights against a wall."

Jake just uploaded a bunch of new stuff to the blog. Here are torrents of video interviews with two of the Iraqi people he met in Arbil: interview with Salim (screengrab image below), and interview with Marwan.

Jake says, "The rest of the journal has been updated with everything from more Yezidi photos to a war-torn building with something like children's graffiti depicting battles: Link.

Below, graffitti on a wall about two hours by car from Arbil. Any Boing Boing fans care to translate? It reminds me a little of Guernica.

Previously: HOWTO set up a VSAT in Iraq, and More from Jake, a geek traveling in Iraq.

Reader comment: Boing Boing reader Samir M. Nassar says:

The writing on the wall is not Arabic, except for the word 'Jihad' which is the word topmost in the image containing the car and machine gun. I can make out 'Mujahideh' or what looks like it'd say 'mojahideh' if I was reading it in Arabic. Either way it comes from the root 'mujahid' which is the singular, masculine noun for 'partakes in jihad', so I am guessing that 'mojahideh' means 'mujahideen' in Arabic. I have Kurdish friends under Turkish occupation and they usually write with Latin characters. Interesting to see Kurdish using Arabic characters.

Jake replies:

Lots of Kurds write in Arabic, it's very common actually. The Kurds will write in a different script depending on which country you find them in. In Iraq, it's arabic script, in turkey it's latin script and in Iran it's arabic script.

Reader Jeff Scott Tynes says:

My wife, an Arab with native Arabic, says that the language on that bit of graffiti is likely not Arabic, at least not that she can read. She believes it's Kurdish. The Kurds use Arabic script, much like the Iranians, for their language, but the language is not the same -- about as much akin as French to English; same letters, different language. So you're likely looking for those with Kurdish language abilities, not Arabic.

Update: Some people are asking for video transcripts. Jake says, "If someone would like to transcribe these, just email me and I'll post them."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:44:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Issue #22 of Neural now avaialble

Issue #22 of Italian tech/art/culture magazine Neural is now available. (Editor Alessandro Ludovico interviewed Mark more than a decade ago!) The latest edition features conversations with Lawrence Lessig, Jonah Brucker Cohen, Ubermorgen's Lizvlyx and Hans Bernhard (former eToy), videogame art, an essay on the electronic music sequencer, and tons more. Link (to English site), Link (to Italian site)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:29:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Woman stoned to death in Afghanistan for adultery

The public execution of a woman accused of adultery was the first such incident in Afghanistan since the Taliban were removed from power.

According to eyewitnesses, the 29-year old, named only as Amina, was dragged out of her parent's house in Urgu District, Badakhan province by her husband and local officials before being publicly stoned to death. The man accused of committing adultery with her is alleged to have been whipped a hundred times and freed.

Link to Reuters story, Link to Amnesty International statement.

Reader comment: Domenic says, "If you are going to post a news item about a woman being stoned to death in Afghanistan, you might as well post one about the coutry's first-ever female governor." Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:45:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open Media Network Launches

Mike Homer and Marc Andreessen, two of the pioneers behind Netscape, have launched a network for online distribution of video and audio media.

The free service, called the Open Media Network, is aimed initially at letting traditional public broadcasters and independent filmmakers distribute their work on the Net. But it will also allow ordinary computer users to publish their files.

Part TiVo, part BitTorrent file swapping, the network puts publishers' content into a peer-to-peer distribution network that could help lower bandwidth costs substantially. The service then creates a TV-like program directory that potential viewers can use to find and subscribe to automatic downloads of individual shows.

In the process, it's also serving as an advertisement for Homer's main company, content distribution service Kontiki, which provides the network's technology.

Link to John Borland's News.com story. (via John Battelle, and thanks also, Davee)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:23:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Voicemail zen: wrong number short film

Boing Boing reader Bruce Alcock says:

I got a very odd wrong number phone message and made a stop-motion animated film using the message as the sound track. In the message, a crazy old man living in the woods of the pacific NW calls a woman named sarah (who I don't know) and gives her hell for sic-ing the "city" on him to clean up his property.

Link

Previously: I Shit My Pants Chiasmus, bullshit comp-a-nee, Your fucked up Jewish chanting party, Confused, why don't they outlaw BBQ Forks, Crop circle psycho science, Foreigners don't have computers!, and Girl I Know You Messin Wit my Man.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:18:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Micronauts revival: new comix and movie

Boing Boing reader Surely Serious sez:

Eagle One Media, who do freaking cool comic book-to-DVD movie transmutations, complete with sound effects, narration, voice-overs, and special effects, have just announced the release of Micronauts: Revolution. This is the entire storyline of the recent six-issue revival comic book publisher "Devil's Due" did of the Micronauts up to 2004. By the way, the Micronauts movie is in pre-production, and none other than Gale Anne Hurd, co-writer of the Terminator series, and producer of The Abyss, Aliens, and The Hulk is signed on to produce.

Link.

Previously: Star Wars knock-off toys (and predecessors)

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

Bypassing Sri Lanka's TV censors

Morquendi is a Sri Lankan journalist and blogger whose name you may recall from a series of SMS blog-dispatches during the tsunami aftermath. He works at a TV production house, and describes a low-tech solution for bypassing state TV censorship in Sri Lanka: send the tapes in for approval too late to be screened. Snip:

The Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation, the state TV broadcaster here in Sri Lanka is essentially the main propaganda vehicle for whatever party is in power. That means they don't broadcast anything that might look bad for the party, and take a lot of time to trash the opposition and make them look like a bunch of idiots. They are fairly potent because they still control the most-watched channels in the island because of their superior coverage...

So what happens when you work for a independent production house and produce a show that has a fair bit of political content in it that gets aired on the State Channel? Essentially they watch every show that we send and if there's something in it that someone doesn't like or thinks might hurt the part in power they ask us to re-edit it or cancel the show. And more often than not we have to re-edit, bend over and let them screw us because we need the airtime and the coverage.

As expected, when producing the show we generally have to bring in stuff that might look bad for the Government. So here's my method for sneaking that stuff on air on the Government Channel. Send the tape in late.

Link (Thanks, Jace )

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:00:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, April 25, 2005

Sacrament math: how big is Jesus?

JWZ does the math on Communion and concludes that if transubstantiation is real, then Jesus must have an awful lot of flesh and blood to have been used as sacrament so very many times:

If you conservatively assume that these are the End Times and that Jesus will soon be completely consumed (a detail that I do not believe is a part of mainstream Christian dogma), then he weighs two billion times more than you, and contains fourteen billion times as much blood. (2,028,252,833× and 14,375,000,000×).

By comparison, the largest living animal on Earth is the Blue Whale, at a paltry 150 tons (a mere 2,500× bigger than you). It is believed that the largest dinosaur, the Argentinosaurus, weighed only 90 tons.

However, perhaps Jesus, like Wolverine, has amazing regenerative powers (in which case, it's surprising it took him three days to return from the dead. But maybe he was just taking a little time-out.)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:00:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guckert was at the White House even when there were no press briefings

James Guckert, the fake journalist who was accredited to lob softballs at the Prez during press briefings, used to hang out at the White House all the time, even on days when there were no press-briefings scheduled, and he often didn't bother to sign the log book on his way out. All this and more from documents released by the Secret Service in response to a Freedom of Information request.

Guckert made more than two dozen excursions to the White House when there were no scheduled briefings. On many of these days, the Press Office held press gaggles aboard Air Force One—which raises questions about what Guckert was doing at the White House. On other days, the president held photo opportunities.

On at least fourteen occasions, Secret Service records show either the entry or exit time missing. Generally, the existing entry or exit times correlate with press conferences; on most of these days, the records show that Guckert checked in but was never processed out.

Link (via Dan Gillmor)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:57:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How simulator technology is changing medicine

In the current issue of the New Yorker, this piece by Jerome Groopman on how medical simulators are changing the way doctors are trained.

Martin is not a real patient but a mannequin, an electronic instructional device known in medicine as a simulator. In many ways, he looks and behaves like a living person: his blue eyes blink, his pupils dilate, his skin is pliant, and his chest expands and contracts as he breathes. If you place a stethoscope over the spot where his heart should be, you can hear authentic beating sounds. His lips, tongue, and windpipe can swell—as a person’s would in the event of a severe allergic reaction—and his teeth can be knocked out.

Martin is connected by a cable to a computer terminal, and comes with software that enables him to mimic the symptoms of dozens of medical conditions, including septic shock and flash pulmonary edema. (His physiological settings can also be adjusted to correspond to actual cases.) When the students opened Martin’s mouth to insert the endotracheal tube, they found realistic reproductions of a pharynx and an epiglottis. When they passed the tube through his vocal cords, it entered what looked like a real trachea. If they had pushed the tube too far, it could have slid into the right lung—a potentially grave error frequently made by novices. The X-ray in the scenario belonged to a man with acute pancreatitis, and Martin’s voice, broadcast over a speaker lodged in his head, was that of a Harvard faculty member, speaking into a wireless microphone in the next room and imitating a patient in severe pain. A consortium of anesthesia departments at Harvard purchased Martin in 1993, for a hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. A 2005 model, which can be put to sleep with real anesthetic, costs about two hundred thousand dollars. The session that I observed was hardly unusual. “Every group overdosed the patient,” Oriol said.

Link (thanks, Susannah!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:52:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sky-divers play DS games in multiplayer mode in freefall

Rossi sez, "Four sky divers have taken the new Nintendo DS and jumped out of an airplane and played Mario Brothers through an ad-hoc wireless network at terminal velocity. They found that they could play wirelessly at distances of 400 feet." Link, Video clip torrent link (Thanks, Rossi!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FBI warnings ruin CD art & art is the reason for buying CDs

Francis, who buys CDs, unloads both barrels at the music-industry for printing ugly FBI warnings all over the packaging: "I just want to shake every single moron who works for the RIAA by the lapels and say to them, 'Do you understand? The thing that makes me want to buy CDs is that I am a geek who enjoys having physical objects around. If you go around stamping ugly text directly on the artwork in a CD's packaging, you are decreasing my incentive to want to buy it, because you are making it objectively less attractive as an object.'" Link (Thanks, Rose!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:21:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CC-licensed star-chart

Philip sez, "A good set of star charts will set you back at least $30, or up to $120 if you want color, lamination and binding. This is the first set I have seen published free under a Creative Commons license.

"The set of maps covers the stars down to magnitude 7, which only a few people with super eyes can see with the naked eye, and only under extremely dark, rural skies. (Most can see down to 5.5.) They also cover many of the brightest deep sky objects you can see with a moderately-sized telescope." Link (Thanks, Philip!)

Update: Bernard sez, "I converted the CC-licensed star-charts from Pdf to Jpg and resized them to the biggest size that would still work on a PSP. I have uploaded them to my Flickr site."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:18:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dating-service operators respond to mandatory background check proposal

True, an online dating service, is pushing for special favors in the Florida legislature with a bill that would require dating services to perform criminal background checks on all their customers (a service True provides). This bizarre idea -- that you need permission from the cops in order to fall in love -- is pretty nakedly anti-competitive, and what's worse, it's terribly invasive of the privacy of potential customers for dating services. On an online personals blog, there's a spirited discussion of the issue:

Background checks are an add-on service that users should be able to choose. I think it's commendable True is offering background checks. But, I don't think it should be pushed on everyone. Most users are not going to need or want background checks.

From a business standpoint, it doesn't make any sense. It increases our costs, and if everyone has to do it, all we're doing is feeding the background check industry. There are no free lunches, so someone has to pay for it---the users.

It's a better policy for background checks to be made by users who deem them necessary. Whereas seat belts and air bags are no longer optional and saving lives every day, do one has demonstrated that having background checks will save any lives…. Not even one! If that were the case, background checks would already have been mandated for anyone who picks up someone in a bar.

Link (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:08:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Happy Dead Clown Gum

Stefan Jones says: "In addition to esoteric brands of soap, shampoo, and other grooming products, Sesto Senso sells chewing gum and bubble bath packed in some very strange novelty packaging. They're like real-life Wacky Packages.

"My favorite: Happy Dead Clown Gum."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:34:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why ice cream trucks sound the way they do

A brief look into why ice cream trucks have that uniquely tinny sound.

2) British vans traditionally use 'Grampian Horn' loudspeakers (which cost about £60), pointed down at the road to disperse the sound.

3) Modern chimes, like the Micro Miniatures Harmony 64, have dozens of melodies burnt onto a chip, and can play 3-note harmonies, and have a built-in 37.5 watt amplifier to drive the horn. It costs about £220.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:50:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bologna smuggler busted

A man was caught trying to smuggle 800 pounds of bologna across the border from Mexico to sell at a swap meet in Albuquerque. Apparently, he had stashed the meat under his clothing and in his suitcases. From CNN:

Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner called the discovery a sign of successful efforts to "coordinate inspection and enforcement on everything from illegal drugs and illegal aliens to prohibited agricultural products."

It was unclear what happened to the suspect, who officials did not identify.

He stood to make a hefty profit, the (Department of Homeland Security) statement said. "The processed bologna rolls, which cost about $7 or $8 in Mexico, can bring three or four times that price in the United States," the statement read.

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:28:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

In the new documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Enron CEO Jeffery Skilling is portrayed as kind of "incandescently brilliant" cult leader espousing a bizarre Darwinist ideology.

Skilling's favorite book is Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, which isn't a bizarre book by any means, but Skilling took the ideas of Dawkins-style Darwinism to a new level by instituting a performance review policy at Enron that worked like a genetic algorithm for people. Every year, all employees were rated from 1 (best) to 5 (worst). The more money you made for the company, the better your rating. (Skilling was fond of saying that money was the only thing that motivated people). Skilling mandated that between 10 and 15 percent of the employees had to be rated as 5s. And to get a rating of 5 meant that you were fired. This review process was dubbed "rank and yank."

It's no surprise that this algorithm resulted in a corporate petri dish teeming with sociopaths who were taped in phone conversations laughing at the thought of stealing money from "grandma millies" who were hit with unafforably high utility bills, and urging on the California wildfires by chanting "burn baby, burn!."

The movie convinced me beyond any doubt that Skilling and Lay are cold-blooded criminals who wiped out the life savings of countless people, deceived 20,000 employees, and ratcheted down the global econonmy, but I doubt they'll ever go to prison. Even though the duo embarrassed and angered the politicians they placed into offce, such as George W. Bush, Lay and Skilling will live out their lives as buck-passing, finger-pointing, chaffeur-driven gazillionares. The only thing they regret is getting caught. Link

Reader comment: Brian Carnell says: "Many companies use rank and yank systems. One of the best-known advocates of it is GE's Jack Welch. But it is also used at places like Sun which also uses set numerical quotas -- 20% "superior" performers; 70% "Sun Standard"; and 10% "underperforming."

See Time article for how it's used at different places and its advantages and disadvantages."

Reader comment: Bill Glover says: Enron didn't invent Yank and Rank. Yank and Rank is actually bussiness-as-usual at many companies (including the one I work for) and has been for years. Jack Welch at GE came up with the practice and even uses it with his household staff. The link is USA Today interview.

Reader comment: Vince Daliessio says: "Glad to see that the criminality of the Enron bunch will be on display for a wider audience, but one aspect that all of the Enron coverage seems to miss is that these guys were able to go so far off the legal and moral reservation because of the stupidity, mendacity, and outright collusion of governments.

"Pete Wilson's 'deregulation' scheme actually put Californians at risk for either brownouts or debilitating energy prices (in some cases both) while denying them the benefits that a truly competitive power market would provide them (Grayout Davis made the problem worse while also dealing serious blows to contract law in California)."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:51:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gurus' wisdom via SMS

Over at Gurphiliac, Jody Radzik says:

Sadhana TV in India is offering the wisdom of a panel of 40 gurus by SMS text messaging. Viewers can send a question to their favorite Sadnana TV guru and receive their answer—all by text messaging over their mobile phone. Managing Director Rakesh Gupta says they're already getting over 20,000 messages a day....

Of course this is no problem for a real guru. S/he can easily answer 100,000 requests a day. We imagine a room full of phones buzzing with messages, with the masterful gurus psychokinetically controlling hundreds of phones at once—and never breaking a sweat doing it.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:48:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The robot men from U.N.C.L.E.

Stills and a short video clip (wmv) featuring two Ideal Robot Commando toy robots pressed into service by THRUSH on a 1964 episode of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." Link
(Thanks, Mike Ransom of Tulsa TV Memories!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:27:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reading minds with fMRI

Scientists report today that they can identify what a person is observing just by measuring his or her brain activity with a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan. Two groups of researchers published results of their groundbreaking studies in the new issue of Nature Neuroscience. From New Scientist:

(Yukiasu Kamitani of Kyoto's ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories and Vanderbilt University's Frank Tong) showed patterns of parallel lines in 1 of 8 orientations to four volunteers. By focussing on brain regions involved in visual perception they were able to recognise which orientation the subjects were observing. Each line orientation corresponded to a different pattern of brain activity, although the patterns were different in each person. What is more, when two sets of lines were superimposed and the subjects were asked to focus on one set, the researchers could work out which one they were thinking of from the brain images.

In a separate study, also published in Nature Neuroscience, John-Dylan Haynes and Geraint Rees at University College London, UK, showed two patterns in quick succession to 6 volunteers. The first appeared for just 15 milliseconds - too quick to be consciously perceived by the viewer.

But by viewing fMRI images of the brain, the researchers were able to say which image had been flashed in front of the subjects. The information was perceived in the brain even if the volunteers were not consciously aware of it.

Link to New Scientist, Link to New York Times article

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:17:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BBC: DRM makes music customers mad

The BBC reports that the consumer revolt against DRM is underway, with customers for digital music getting caught out by unreasonable restrictions imposed on them by technology.

PC Pro says people are growing increasingly dissatisfied with restrictions on tracks they have paid for, especially if the price they pay is similar to that which is paid for a physical CD.

"That is the trouble when you are presented with a product that lacks the physical nature. It won't feel it has the same sort of value," Paul Brindley, head of digital music analysts, Music Ally, told the BBC News website.

"If there are problems on top of that with what you can do with it, it is inevitable that consumers will start thinking this is much less of a valuable product.

Link (Thanks, Matt, Alice!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:06:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SWAT Monkey?

A Mesa, Arizona cop applied for a $100,000 grant last year from the Federal Government to train a capuchin monkey as a member of the police force. Apparently, officer Sean Truelove never heard back regarding his grant application. From the Washington Post:

Capuchins, natives of the South American rain forests, have long been used as companions to disabled people, performing tasks such as opening doors, switching on lights and fetching items. Truelove reasoned that the monkeys could also be deployed for special-operations missions -- sneaking into crevices, unlocking doors, carrying video cameras to capture information. "It would change the way we do business," he told a local reporter.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:56:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SF Bay Area: RU Sirius's Neofiles Public Forum

RU Sirius (AKA Ken Goffman), author of Counterculture Through The Ages and editor of the NeoFiles, is hosting another NeoFiles Public Forum this Thursday, April 28, in Mill Valley. The topic this time around is "The Future of the Future: The Next 10-30 Years" and RU has a great panel lined-up including virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier, biotech journalist extraordinaire David Ewing Duncan, EFFer Annalee Newitz, and Singularity Institute director Eliezer Yudkowsky. Admission is $10 at the door. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:35:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ants build deadly bug-traps

Ants build elaborate traps for jungle bugs, suck them in and kill them. Don't miss the video.

The ants (Allomerus decemarticulatus), which live in Amazonian plants called Hirtella physophora, construct a honeycomb-like structure out of their host plant's fibres from which they can stage an ambush.

The worker ants hide in the holes of this death trap with their mouths open wide, waiting for locusts, butterflies or other insects to land. When prey arrives they quickly seize its extremities, pulling on legs, arms and antennae until the hostage is rendered immobile. Once trapped, other ants from the colony arrive to sting and bite the prey until it is paralyzed (see video).

Link (Thanks, Bram!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:22:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO build an android head for $600

This HOWTO runs down step-by-step instructions for building a semi-functional android head running Java with stereoscopic vision and servos for eyelids, all for less than $600.

It is possible to build a computer-driven, life-size, android robot head (Figure 1) for cost of materials of about $600.00. The android head will have two color video-camera eyes with the video going both into a window on the PC and into an image processing Java application. The robot will have six servo motors controlling: (1) base of the head spins, (2,3) each eye moves left/right, (4) both eyes move up/down, (5,6) each eye-lid opens/closes. All servo motors are controlled via a Java application. The user supplies the computer (PC). The details of how to construct such a head follows, based on the authors creation of Robot Maxamilian, R. Max for short.

Link (Thanks, Nicholas!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:17:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

David Byrne sounds off on "cultural censorship"

Boing Boing reader David U says:

David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) has a blog. His most recent post (which is from April 16th) is about several things, but primarily about how the INS is denying visas to foreign artists (Musicians, dancers, etc). He writes:

"It amounts to a kind of cultural censorship. Call me paranoid, but given all the manipulative tricks the Republicans have gotten up to recently, I am prepared to believe that this has less to do with Homeland security and more to do with keeping the American public ignorant and free of foreign influence and inspiration. An ill-informed, isolated, ignorant populace is a populace easily manipulated. Fed a diet of reality shows coupled with faith-based reasoning (an oxymoron if ever there was one) and you have a perfect recipe for a country in which the government that can do more or less whatever it wants. Democracy becomes a farce without access to information."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:17:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on G4 TV's "Attack of The Show" today

Boing Boing in the hizzouse, yo! I'll be joining "Attack of the Show" hosts Kevin P., Kevin R., and Sarah today on G4 TV today at 7pm ET / 4pm PT.

We'll talk about digital cinema, Mark Cuban's plans to convert Landmark Theaters to digital, and do some fun d-cinema tech show-and-tell. Ever actually seen a DLP chip up close? Tune in today and you will.

We'll also explore the dark underworld inhabited by the lethal, smoke-spewing, two-by-four-hurling robots of SRL. Last week on NPR I reported about the machine mayhem group's recent LA extravaganza and interviewed founder Mark Pauline (shown here). On G4 today, we'll have some cool video clips of the mechanical stars of SRL.

Link to show details and air times.

Update: Trey Jackson recorded and hosted a WMV clip of today's show right here: Link to blog post offering WMV nd MPEG stream or download. Thanks, Trey!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:35:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Responding to Nikon DRM flap, photogs create OpenRAW project

Photographer Juergen Specht says, "You wrote about the Nikon encryption issue on BoingBoing, but the problem is much bigger, so we founded the OpenRAW project." Here's a snip from the group's launch statement:

Digital technology is revolutionizing the photography industry, and an emerging part of that technology is the set of RAW camera file formats. Most professional photographers prefer using RAW image capture because it offers the highest quality and the greatest creative control.

The grassroots OpenRAW group arose out of photographers' frustration with camera manufacturers' refusal to openly document their proprietary RAW file formats. That lack of file format information inhibits innovation, limits image processing choices, and endangers the long-term accessibility of millions of photographs. The goal of the new website is to obtain complete documentation by manufacturers of their RAW file formats.

"Our primary strategy is to educate the public and the manufacturers," said Juergen Specht, the Japan-based German photographer who is spearheading the OpenRAW group. Specht also founded the highly regarded D1scussion mailing list for Nikon dSLR photographers, and hosts a similar 1Dscussion group for Canon photographers. Specht continued, "Once photographers understand what's at stake, and once digital camera manufacturers understand how their profitability will be enhanced by the release of the RAW file format specifications, our goals will be realized."

Link to press release (which explains why Sprecht and his colleagues feel that RAW file formats are so important), and link to project website.

Previously on BB: Nikon responds to RAW / DRM / Adobe debacle, Space Shuttle photos with Nikon D2X

Update: BB reader Richard Quinn says:

Relating to your recent coverage of Nikon's white balance encryption, a l337 hack0r has created a nice tool to decipher the protection. So much for lame encryption :)

Link

And BB reader James says:

There's one thing to remember with all this guffaw over Nikon's 'encryption' of the white balance data in the NEF format and that's that all this commotion has arisen from an Adobe press release. Adobe have their own agenda to push as they're having difficulty getting any manufacturers to support their own 'RAW' format DNG (Link).

I haven't looked at the 'encryption' scheme either but from what I've heard it's simply an obfuscated lookup table that's perhaps not as simple as it used to be. Although the change looks suspicious we'd be cautious to remember Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.".

BB reader Tom responds:

The DMCA doesn't contain an exception for weak crypto. It does contain an exception for interoperability, but Adobe made clear in their treatment of Dmitry Sklyarov that they think it's meaningless; at least they're being consistent. For their part, Nikon's public statements have made clear that the NEF format is indeed designed to force photographers to use Nikon's software.

BB reader Richard Earney says:

Some of the statements being added to Boing Boing about this Nikon-DRM flap are just plain wrong. [Responding to BB reader James' comments above,] Adobe has **not** released a press release about this situation. It was simply a statement in response to a users requesting swift ACR support for the D2X made by Thomas Knoll (of Adobe) on the Adobe Users-to-Users forum.

Thomas alerted users that support for the D2X would not be 100% perfect because Nikon has encrypted the "As Shot" Auto White Balance facility - therefore Camera RAW will not read it - users will have to fiddle to get the same results. Chances are they would already. His *main* concern was that he *could* decrypt the info - but was worried that doing so would leave Adobe open to legal action by Nikon under the DCMA.

Many sources have said that the settings *are* encrypted, but it is weak and relatively simple to crack. To do so leads to the same possibility of legal action - though Bibble and DCRAW (RAW converters) have already gone own that route.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:14:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazon free downloads as RSS feed

Paul sez, "Per Cory's post about Amazon's directory of free MP3 downloads, I thought you might be interested to know that I've created an RSS feed of the new downloads." Blog post describing the feed, Feed. (Thanks, Paul!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

IP and the Digital Divide

Michael Geist's Toronto Star column this week deals with IP and the digital divide: the way that copyright is running smack up against the world's poorest countries' need to improve their lot in life.

The intellectual property digital divide is evident beyond the halls of the United Nations. Last week I attended a conference on Internet and intellectual property law issues in Beijing, China. The U.S. was represented by an embassy official who emphasized both the need for stronger criminal penalties for intellectual property infringement and the creation of policing institutions to address these issues. The official vigorously exhibited his disagreement when a Hong Kong law professor questioned the U.S. position, outlining many of the same concerns as those expressed weeks earlier in Geneva.

Moving beyond these hardened positions will require countries from both the developed and developing world to step up to bridge the divide. In many respects, Canada is ideally suited to break from the developed world pack to assume a leadership position. The federal government has set development assistance as a priority, committing significant new funding towards aid programs. The developing world needs more than just dollars, however. Canadian political support for the developing world’s perspective on intellectual property needs would carry long-term benefits that would extend well after the current round of aid funding is exhausted.

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:26:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Architectures of Control: DRM in hardware

Dan Lockton of the Cambridge-MIT Technology Policy programme is working on a provocative dissertation on "Architectures of Control," the way that technology is designed to control how its owners make use of it.

Examples with primarily commercial control intentions range from the technology-intensive—such as Hewlett-Packard’s alleged use of embedded chips in printer cartridges which ‘expire’ the cartridge, even if unused, on a certain date, thus forcing the user to buy new cartridges—to the simple, such as the Audi A2’s bonnet which cannot be opened by the car’s owner, only by an Audi dealer.

There are, equally, numerous examples with more socially beneficial intentions, such as breathalyser or seat belt interlocks for car ignitions, blue lighting in nightclub toilets (to make intravenous drug use difficult), and growing opportunities in terms of coercing consumers to behave in more environmentally friendly ways—e.g., products could cease to function if the intended operation would cause excessive energy use.

Link (Thanks, Dan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:20:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Home-theatre tricked out in marble, velvet and curliques

A home-theatre enthusaist completely tricked out his personal screening room with enough red velvet, marble, gilt and curliques to outfit a the bathrooms on the entire high-rollers' floor at Caesar's Palace. The site includes a build-log with tons of photos. Link (via Red Ferret Journal)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:59:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory at Chicago group-signing next Sunday

Next Sunday, May 1, I'll be participating in a group book-signing in Chicago, following on from the Nebula Awards banquet the night before. Other signers include Kevin J. Anderson, Lois McMaster Bujold, Eric Flint, Janis Ian, Geoffrey Landis, Todd McCaffrey, Jack McDevitt, Rebecca Moesta Anderson, Mike Resnick, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Steven H Silver, Laurel Winter and W.R. Yates. Hope to see you there!

When: Sunday, May 1, 11AM-1PM

Where: Borders, 150 North State Street, Chicago, IL (312.606.0750)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:21:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Tokion's "King of Zines" contest

Tokion Magazine is now accepting entries for a "King of Zine" contest honoring the greatest of greatness in paper zines. First prize: the winning publication will be reproduced through Tokion, and its makers receive a year of health insurance. Deadline's July 1, all entries must be produced with "a standard photocopy machine." Judges include Kevin Lyons, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Deanne Cheuk, Ed Templeton, Eva Prinz of Rizzoli Books, REAS, Carlo McCormick, Sarah from Colette, Adrian Tomine and KAWS. Más informes aquí: Link.

The health insurance prize comes courtesy of Tylenol, who are doing some sort of guerilla zine marketing thing for their pain relief products called "Ouch." It's described as "a quarterly sixteen-page insert glued into your favorite magazines (...) a newsletter website, updated monthly [and] a sponsor of events that relate to modern day lifestyles that involve pain." Link. (Thanks, Mara)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:51:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Insect photos in naturalistic macro-focus

My pal Rick Lieder is one of the best science fiction and fantasy artists in the field today (he's also the husband of fantastic splatterpunk turned young-adult author Kathe Koja), but he got his start as a photographer. He's returned to his roots, and has taken his camera to his Michigan backyard to shoot intense, macro-focused pictures of insects walking on leaves and twigs, using natural light, without a tripod. These shots were compiled over two and a half years by Rick, who crouches patiently and silently in his garden, waiting for the insects to strike the perfect pose before he hits the shutter. I spent half an hour today looking at printouts of these and giving out involuntary exclamations of surprise and delight. Link

Update: Here's an alternate link -- Rick exceeded his bandwidth limits.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:46:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steven Johnson: Everything Bad Is Good For You riff

Today's New York Times Magazine has an excerpt from Steven Johnson's new book, Everything Bad Is Good For You. I can't wait to read the whole book! From the excerpt, entitled "Watching TV Makes You Smarter":

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But...the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of (for example) ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all.

I believe that the Sleeper Curve is the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down.

Link

Steven also tells Boing Boing:

I've posted on the blog one of my favorite riffs from the book, which is a little thought-experiment: imagine video games came *before* books -- what would all the scolds be writing about in the op-ed pages when the kids dropped their gameboys and started reading all of a sudden?

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:46:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Revelations reminiscent of 1970s paranormal/strange mystery fare

My Fortean friend Loren Coleman points us to an interesting column in the Louisville Courier-Journal tying NBC's Revelations to 1970s classics like In Search of Ancient Astronauts (see photo below and background here), In Search of Noah's Ark, and Hanger 18. Sunn Classic Pictures was the king of the genre. From the column:

Sunn Classic unfurled a half-dozen of these pseudo-movies, employing a new style of movie distribution called "four walling." In brief "four walling" means this small distribution house would arrive in town, rent a movie theater down to the "four walls," saturate the local airwaves with commercials, play its little movie and then get out of town with all the proceeds. After all, it had paid all the expenses itself...

Sunn reached its apex with its next documentary, my all-time favorite in this category, "In Search of Noah's Ark." Although the Bible never specifically notes the landing spot for Noah's boat, many have long thought the location was Mount Ararat. But because the mountain was located on the border between Iran and Russia, it was off limits for American film crews in 1977.

Sunn managed to splice together interviews with people who didn't speak English explaining the stories they had been told by people who were dead. All in all it makes for fascinating viewing for folks who will believe anything.

Link

UPDATE: Thanks to Paul Di Filippo and Michael Kienitz who comment that "four walling" was a money-making idea way before the 1970s.

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:35:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

News-desk's mock terror attack video

Matt Haughey's found a crazy documentary video on Usenet:

It's a 30 minute video of a news desk practicing for an all out terror attack on the US (featuring real news guy Forrest Sawyer). They are imagining that someone deployed the black plague in New Jersey, detonated a suicide bomb, and used a plane to deliver chemicals to civilians in Connecticut, with thousands of dead and injured. It features experts, eyewitnesses, and reporters in the field, and it seems like everyone is improvising, as you can kind of sense people making stuff up when pressed during questioning.

Link

Update: John sez, "The VNN news feed was a part of TOPOFF 3, an international full scale terror drill that took place the week of 4-Apr with significant mock events happening in New London CT (chemical attack with urban search-and-rescue) and New Jersey (biological attack with hospital overload). Other parts involved Canada and the UK. The TOPOFF (TOP OFFicials) drills happen on a three year cycle, and have a $16mil budget for planning and implementation. The New London part of the drill included a multiday search-and-rescue drill in a simulated building-collapsed-on-cars environment (I had a small role in the drill with the Red Cross). The physical part of the drill involved three Urban Search-and-Rescue teams (Mass Task Force 1 (FEMA funded), as well as the state funded NJ and CT task forces). These folks and their search dogs spend three days digging through the pile, shoring it up, and 'rescuing' victims." (Thanks, Geoff, Cyrus, Robert, John, and others!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:51:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

German crooner's megaphone-style covers of modern rock

Charles sez, "Max Raabe is a German crooner, who has been making a name for himself and his band over the last couple years doing hilarious cover versions of pop songs Roaring 20's style. If you ever wondered what 'Oops I Did It Again' would sound like if sung by Fred Astaire then this is for you." It's all true -- this is great music. Alas, the site is craptacular Flash that repeatedly crashed Firefox, and if there's a downloadable MP3 sample or two on that site, I couldn't find it before it killed my browser. But this guy's music is right up my alley. Link (Thanks, Charles!)

Update: Me sez, "Amazon.de has sound clips here." Alas, they're Realmedia clips and the vile and useless OS X Real client throws an error when I try to play them.

Update 2: Charles sez, "I just googled some quality full-length mp3s." 1, 2, 3

Update 3 Mickey sez, "here's the link to another MP3, Around the World"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:37:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, April 23, 2005

HOWTO make a fizzing bath bomb

Here's step-by-step instructions for making your own fizzing bath bombs by combining citric acid, baking soda and witch hazel:

step four

Now, this is the difficult part. Spritz (with a squirt bottle) the witch hazel onto your batch while stirring with the other hand. When your batch sticks together when squished, you need to start putting it in molds - time is of the essence. If you wait too long, the mixture will get hard. If you spritz too much, the mixture will be too wet and "grow" (start the fizzing reaction) on you.

Link (via Fark)

Update: Maggie sez, "there seemed to be something fishy about the ingredients and instructions (like it lists 'witch hazel' as an ingredient (an herb), but then later seems to call for a liquid form -- doesn't mention what kind of liquid though). This page has much better instructions, notes about all the ingredients, and pictures of the process."

Update 2: Matt sez, "witch-hazel appears to be the herb/shrub, witch hazel (sans-dash) is the astringent."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:21:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyfight debate of the century video torrent

Allison sez, "Here's a torrent for the 481 MB mp4 of the 3-hour copyright Debate of the Century at Cornell [between an EFF staffer, a copyfighting academic, and the legal heads of the RIAA, MPAA, Napster II and Universal]. Some of the video is fuzzy but at least it's a small file. Anybody who's on a university network can download the .mov files on a mirror site at the University of Saskatchewan." Link (Thanks, Allison!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:18:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Purse with integrated old-school phone

For sale on eBay: a purse with a built-in old-school telephone -- it actually works if you plug it into a landline jack. Link (Thanks, Robin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:16:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

London Review of Books's personals are really dirty and funny

The London Review of Books's personals section is full of funny, steamy ads written by bookish middle-aged Britons looking for a casual shag.

Massive-breasted heiress, 38, seeks witty Nobel-awarded intellectual beef-cake gardener-chef-poet with stonking pecs. Like me, you are dynamic, hilarious, serious, ironic, passionate, practical, affectionate, kind, funny, have most of your own legs, and are startled to find yourself still cruising the aisles of the Lurve Bazaar. Unlike me, you don’t exist. Am I right? If so, will consider any M who can make conversation, sense, a living, friends, four cooked meals, hot love and me laugh. Box no. 07/01

Link (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:13:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why govts make stupid copyrights

Donna Wentworth sez, "James Boyle has just delivered the piece de resistance in his three-part series on copyright for the Financial Times: 'Deconstructing Stupidity.' The stupidity in question is the way that governments typically make intellectual property law and policy -- that is, without evidence that it will produce the desired social or economic benefit."

"According to Boyle, it's not only "corporate capture" that makes governments stupid about copyright. They also suffer from any number of delusions, making them susceptible to "anecdote and scaremongering."

Who are the subjects of IP? They used to be companies. You needed a printing press or a factory to trigger the landmines of IP. The law was set up as a contract between industry groups. This was a cosy arrangement, but it is no longer viable. The citizen-publishers of cyberspace, the makers of free software, the scientists of distributed data-analysis are all now implicated in the IP world. The decision-making structure has yet to adjust.

There are many more themes. The idea that greater control, for example, is always better (see my column on public data) or the way we only ever internationally harmonize rights upward. Fundamentally, though, the views I have criticised here are not merely stupidity. They constitute an ideology, a worldview, like flat earth-ism. But the world is not flat and the stupidity pact is not what we want to sign.

Link (Thanks, Donna!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:49:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mysterious ship in Portland, Maine harbor

This mysterious 180-foot-long supply ship, named The Sage, is tied up at the Portland Ocean Terminal. From the Portland Press Herald (photo by John Patriquin):

The rumor on the waterfront is that (the two large domes are covering parabolic antennae that) will track the space shuttle Discovery, scheduled to be launched next month.

But the ship's captain won't talk. He has ordered that nobody be allowed near the ship, which is tied up in a secure area at the end of Pier 1 at the Portland Ocean Terminal. The Sage has been tied up there for three weeks, at a cost of nearly $300 a day...

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram contacted several officials at NASA over a period of five days, but none could say conclusively whether the Sage is involved in the shuttle mission.

Link (Thanks, Loren Coleman!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:49:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gawker media sites are having DNS hiccup

Not sure what the story is here, but I can't access Gawker media websites. Update: Nick Denton sez: "We're just moving our sites to a new host (...) DNS propagation."

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

Japanese soda-machines zap you with beamed audio

The inventor of a sonic flashlight that projects a narrow beam of sound at a distance is selling it to Japanese soda-machine vendors so that they can zap passers-by with seductive cola-pouring sounds.

Thousands of soda machines in Tokyo will soon bombard passersby with the enticing sound of a Coke being poured, and several U.S. supermarkets will promote products to shoppers as they walk down corresponding aisles. Eventually HyperSonic Sound might enable a nightclub to play disco on one side of the dance floor and salsa on the other. Ambulances equipped with hypersonic sirens could clear the streets without waking the neighbors. Norris' company, American Technology, sells the devices for $600.

Link (Thanks, A.V.!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:12:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

French court bans DRM for DVDs

Emmanuel sez, "A French appeal court just issued a ruling preventing the inclusion of anti-copying measure on DVD. This is after a man who was not able to copy a DVD he purchase to a VHS cassette so he can watch it at his mother's place. Which is considered private copying and is a consumer right in France. He got the help of a consumer protection group to sue the Film Studio that produced the DVD. Film studios have one month to unprotect DVDs (I assume it is not for DVD that you already own)." French Link (Thanks, Emmanuel!)

Update: Hal sez, "Here's an automatic English translation. It's a little rough, but you get the gist. It sounds as though the judgment only applies to one specific movie: 'The Films Alain Sarde and Studio Channel have one month to unbolt the DVD.' And is it just me, or is the idea of watching Mulholland Drive with your Mom just a tad uncomfortable?"

Update 2: Seb sez, "1) The guy didn't want to watch the DVD with his mother, but in his mother's house and 2) The ruling applies to all DVDs. The SEV (Video producers' syndicate) will probably appeal."

Update 3: Matthew sez, "Unfortunately, the automatic translation is characteristically lacking, in particular the implication that the decision applied only to a single movie (it didn't). So I made a proper manual translation of the original article and posted it on my blog."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:14:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Multi-city copyfighters' meetup next Tuesday

Ren Bucholz, a cow-orker of mine, has founded a multi-city copyfighters' meetup called Copynight, and the first second one is coming up on Tuesday. He sez, "April's CopyNight is upon us, and we'll be celebrating alongside WIPO's 'World Intellectual Property Day' on Tuesday, April 26th. CopyNight is a monthly social gathering for fans of free culture, and conversations range from file sharing to IP-reform to whatever else is on your community's radar. This month we've got events scheduled in: San Francisco, CA, Chicago, IL, Toronto, Ontario, Austin, TX, Raleigh, NC, Washington, DC, New York, NY, Cambridge, MA." Link (Thanks, Ren!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:09:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Screen Savers gang do a podcast

The Screen Savers was a terrific show on the grand old TechTV. When the network was bought out by G4, they killed the show and turned it into something cool (but different) called Attack of the Show. The original Screen Savers gang are now doing a Skype-based podcast called Revenge of the Screen Savers. The first podcast is a fun bullshit session between old friends, talking about their phones, their lives, and the demise of Screen Savers. 14.5MB MP3 Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:02:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO start a fire with a Coke can and a chocolate bar

So if you're ever lost in the woods with a can of Coke and a chocolate bar, you can polish the bottom of the can to a mirror finish with the chocolate and use it as a lens to focus sunlight and start a fire. Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:58:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free Culture Movement turns one

One year ago, the Free Culture Movement -- a network of campus orgs that work to reform copyright -- launched. Happy Birthday! Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:51:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Penguins in airport security

Two Seaworld penguins flying out of San Diego airport were sent walking through the metal detector. I feel safer already. Link (via Schneier)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:49:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, April 22, 2005

Voicemail zen: "I Shit My Pants" chiasmus

The hits just keep on coming. Boing Boing reader Doc says:

Here's one to add to the series of bizarre voicemails you've been featuring. This was received by a friend of mine, from her sister, who left a message about how she shit her pants at the grocery store. Curiously, in her message she inadvertently used the ancient literary form chiasmus. There's a small .mp3 of the voicemail at the site, along with a .wav file that people have begun to play with (including Steve Dirkx, of "The Butcher's Covers" fame). .

Link to "I Shit My Pants: Spontaneous Ancient Literary Structure in Modern Colloquial Speech". Here's a direct link to the MP3 (730k), but you really do need to read the accompanying text.

Previously: bullshit comp-a-nee, Your fucked up Jewish chanting party, Confused, why don't they outlaw BBQ Forks, Crop circle psycho science, Foreigners don't have computers!, and Girl I Know You Messin Wit my Man.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:37:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scratchophone

The Scratchophone wearable DJ rig is Alari Thierry's "final term project as a business management student." The first ever public demonstration took place last week at the Urban Music Festival at Earl's Court, London. The little van is a modified "Vinyl Killer," a self-contained phonograph needle and speaker that, on its own, will play a record by driving around the grooves. Link (Thanks, Richard Kadrey!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:07:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bumper Dumper

In response to my previous post about a TP holder made from bike parts, my brother Charles Pescovitz points us to a toilet that mounts on a towing hitch. The manufacturer's slogan? "When it comes to #2, we are #1." Just $59.99.

You're at the campsite or in the middle of nowhere and suddenly nature calls. What do you do? You squeamishly go looking for a quiet spot behind a bush to do your thing. You cautiously avoid the poison oak and ivy. As you carefully squat down and try to relax a snake suddenly comes slithering through the weeds and startles you. What a mess! Now when nature calls you can go in comfort where ever you are with the one and only Bumper Dumper®. No more looking for the right spot, no more trying to balance while squatting, and no more surprises from creepy critters. Just park your vehicle in a nice secluded spot, plug the Bumper Dumper® in to your trailer hitch receiver, and VOILA!! A portable toilet sturdy enough to hold 500 lbs. and just as comfortable as using the bathroom at home. You can even set up a privacy screen for complete comfort.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:24:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Wha? zen

monster jam (shown)
sausages
fancy jam time
chocolate niblet beans
part of the fun
crumblewall
shoe heels
nanaca crash

web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:10:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scans of 1942 American Jujitsu manual

About this series of images from a WWII era Jujitsu manual, Warren Ellis says, "American reader Eric Palicki sent me a zipfile of scans he made, and the note: 'I found this in a stack of my dad’s old books. The copyright date is 1942.' This is just fascinatingly vile. "

Link to "American Hands."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:26:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Voicemail zen: bullshit comp-a-nee

Oh my goodness. I'm not sure what to make of this one. I can't breathe. Mel says:

This is an actual voicemail left for a company where I used to work. It's sort of like a stoned Elmer Fudd complaining about "sewvice" and having to pay "30 fucking dollars" to call customer service. The spaces in the sound are where I've blanked out identifying information.

Actually, it's more like Fat Albert meets Elmer Fudd meets Barbara Walters meets Forrest Gump. Link. Mucho profanity. Er, pwofanity.

Previously: Your fucked up Jewish chanting party, Confused, why don't they outlaw BBQ Forks, Crop circle psycho science, Foreigners don't have computers!, and Girl I Know You Messin Wit my Man.

Update: Mel provides alternate links for the "bullshit comp-a-nee" voicemail.

Urg. Had no idea Geocities would lock it up that quickly - I've got it on my own site and another blogger has mirrored it for me. We'll see how long I can hold out on my own site. Alternate link one or Alternate link two

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:23:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nikon responds to RAW / DRM / Adobe debacle

A new post on DP Review reads:

Nikon has today issued an advisory addressing the current concerns around the 'encryption' of white balance data in its NEF (RAW) files from the D2X and D2Hs digital SLR's. This story started three days ago when Photoshopnews.com published an interview with chief engineer and original author of Photoshop Thomas Knoll which complained that Nikon were now encrypting white balance data in their NEF files and that future versions of Adobe Camera RAW would not be able to read WB data. In the new advisory from Nikon state that they already make available an SDK which "...when implemented properly, enables a wide range of NEF performance, including white balance..."

Link. Previously: Space Shuttle photos with Nikon D2X

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

Voicemail zen: your fucked up Jewish chanting party

Boing Boing reader velvel says, "Here's a voicemail of my angry and slightly anti-Semitic landlord complaining about the neighbors in the next building complaining to him about the noise of our over-exuberant Shabbos dinner."

Transcript:

Uh Zev, this is Steve Saccone. It's 9:30 mmMon..uh..Saturday morning. Ya had a chanting, uh some kind of Jewish chanting party over there last night...uh from past midnight. Um, I can guarantee you, do it again Zev, have your...have your Jewish friends over, and do your...do your fucked up chant and I'm going to have you arrested. Alright? Because the police are gonna be there next time, Zev.

Link Previously: Confused, why don't they outlaw BBQ Forks, Crop circle psycho science, Foreigners don't have computers!, and Girl I Know You Messin Wit my Man.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:08:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Still more voicemail: Confused

Boing Boing reader Rob says:

Another answering machine wav file. This one landed on my machine just over a year ago and I posted it for the guys at GYBO. This is what people sound like when you live in the West Midlands in the UK

Oh, this is superb. Link

Previously: why don't they outlaw BBQ Forks, Crop circle psycho science, Foreigners don't have computers!, and Girl I Know You Messin Wit my Man.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:05:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sushi-making robot

Boing Boing reader Tollef says, "In hopes of discovering the true suppliers of tacky faux-Mexican franchise restaurant wall decorations I stumbled upon this marvel! A genuine sushi making robot! While it may not look like much of a robot, load it up with rice and wasabi and it churns out about 50 pieces of sushi per minute! You can even adjust the amount of wasbi in each piece!"

The website copy reads, in glorious janglish: " This machine is the most high speed in the world... It is excellent in the durability and there won't be a trouble."
Link

Update: Kim Cooper says:

I saw the wonder that is the Sushi Robot in action at a Franchise Expo at the LA Convention Center a few years back. It was part of a prospective (and now obviously failed) U.S. franchise called, I think, Sushi-U-Love. The idea was that a franchisee would buy the rights to the name and all the sushi robotics, which would sit in plain view behind the counter making nigiri constantly. All the fish (frozen) and other ingredients had to be bought from the franchise, so it was clearly a money pit. But ooh, was it fun to watch the Sushi Robot go! First a spoon scooped up some rice, then little arms patted out a rectangle, which slid along the conveyer belt, got a jaunty squirt of wasabi, a piece of fish gently laid on top, and then the whole thing was deftly folded into a piece of clear plastic, taped shut and delivered to a rapt audience. Tasted as good as the supermarket stuff, too.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:58:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sumo Tube

Ever dreamed of morphing yourself into a surfing Weeble Wobble? Dream no more. The Sumo Tube is an inflatable bodysuit that can be towed passively (a la waterski), or worn for bodysurfing. It would appear that you will be having so much fun, you'll forget all about the fact that you look ridiculous.
Link (Thanks, Sunfell)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:48:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More voicemail fun: why don't they outlaw BBQ Forks?

Boing Boing reader Scott Lawrence says:

Along the lines of the other telephone calls posted, a friend managed to tape this off of the radio a bunch of years back. It's not as angry as either of the posted calls, but it's entertaining. I believe it might be from the Art Bell show, although I'm not sure. (Ed: It's from Jim Bohanon's show).

Link

Previously: Crop circle psycho science, Foreigners don't have computers!, and Girl I Know You Messin Wit my Man.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:39:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TP holder from bike parts

Park Tool, bike shop tool company and makers of the Big Wheel pizza cutter I blogged earlier, also sell this boss toilet paper holder:

The Park Tool TP#2 Toilet Paper Holder brings the action of the open road or trail home for those moments of silent introspection... The TP#2 is 100% Park Tool Linear Butted Cro-Moly with a mirrored chrome finish. A Ball bearing headset allows 360¡ roll rotation. The fork is without retention tabs and comes with a competition quick release front skewer for fast roll changes.

Link (Thanks, Phil Heid!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:30:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bill may kill National Weather Service's free info

Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa) has introduced a bill that would essentially block the National Weather Service from giving away their forecasts online. From the Palm Beach Post:

The bill... would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

Supporters say the bill wouldn't hamper the weather service or the National Hurricane Center from alerting the public to hazards — in fact, it exempts forecasts meant to protect "life and property."...

"The National Weather Service has not focused on what its core mission should be, which is protecting other people's lives and property," said (AccuWeather's executive vice president Barry) Myers, whose company is based in State College, Pa. Instead, he said, "It spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year, every day, producing forecasts of 'warm and sunny.'"...

(The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, parent agency to the National Weather Service,) has taken no position on the bill. But Ed Johnson, the weather service's director of strategic planning and policy, said his agency is expanding its online offerings to serve the public.

"If someone claims that our core mission is just warning the public of hazardous conditions, that's really impossible unless we forecast the weather all the time," Johnson said. "You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."

Link (Thanks John Alderman, via Talking Points Memo)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:25:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Contraceptive sponges, ahoy!

Apul Patel says:

The Food and Drug Administration approved U.S. sales of the sponge, which was the bestselling nonprescription female contraceptive when it was withdrawn from the market in 1995. Check out the photo -- I hope they use these two gentlemen as their spokespersons. The man on the left looks like he can't wait to take his sponge out for a spin. The guy on the right looks like he's disgusted by the very thought of sex. It's like a snapshot of most male-female relationships.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:42:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hank Ketcham’s Complete Dennis The Menace

Hank Ketcham was an incredibly talented cartoonist. I'm thrilled to learn that Fantagraphics is going to reprint Ketcham's complete run of Dennis the Menace in September. The packaging looks great, too.

This first volume of HANK KETCHAM'S COMPLETE DENNIS THE MENACE publishes every single panel strip from 1951 and 1952 in one handsome and thick hardcover volume resembling a Big Little Book on steroids. HANK KETCHAM'S COMPLETE DENNIS THE MENACE will continue with new chronological volumes annually until the entire run of Ketcham’s strip is collected.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:19:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Convert beer can into "bottle"

Grolsch has launched the Blikbeugel, a hot-swappable bottle interface for their beer cans. Link (via CoCo)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:40:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cure for stolen laptops: encrypt and lock.

OK, not a cure for the theft itself, but a smart precaution. Following up on yesterday's Boing Boing posts by Mark (one, two) about a Berkeley prof's heisted notebook full of Very Important Sekrits, and other reports about swiped portables containing classified national security info -- there's no better time to think about tightening up your own data hygeine routine.

In a recent post on the Politech list about a reader who feared his computer may have been "invaded" by a federal agent during a security screening, CNET's Declan McCullagh outlined simple steps you can take:

Much of this is in the realm of personal diary-writing and not that Politech-relevant. Except for this worrying paragraph:

"I have taken my computer through customs many times and I have never had it seized. But I’ll be damned if G.I. Jackboot didn’t walk into another room with my computer. I couldn’t see what he was doing. I suppose it is possible that US Customs now has a copy of my hard drive. All of my stuff is password protected so perhaps that kept him from accessing anything other than the logon screen. Or perhaps there is now a bug in it that sends them a copy of everything I do."

So be sure to:

1. Encrypt your files, and preferably entire hard drive volumes, using PGPdisk or OS X's FileVault. Might as well switch to a Mac or some non-Windows operating system while you're at it.
2. Seriously, about the Mac thing. Police organizations are far more proficient with Windows.
3. Password-protect your computer, including a boot password.
4. Ideally find some way to verify that your computer hasn't been tampered with. You could boot off a known-safe CD when you get home, for instance, and compare current file hashes with previous hashes saved to a CD.

Link (Thanks, Veronica and others)

Update: BB reader Dan points us to reports of FileVault vulnerability via Bugtraq:

Regarding Xeni's post about using FileVault as a way to protect your computer, it's worth noting that this is a less-than-secure means of doing it. On top of that, an Apple "Genius" told me, a few months after I bought my Powerbook and had it nuked by the 10.3.4 upgrade, that FileVault was basically beta and I shouldn't use it. "Oh, well, you know, the engineers write something, but they don't really test it that well," she said. For the truly paranoid, use an OS with a more secure implementation. For everyone else, FileVault causes more pain than it cures. And for those interested, this Bugtraq post shows you how to find your unencrypted passwords on disk. And yes, that works for someone who yanks your hard drive and puts it in his computer.

elsinor says:

I notice the mention of NSA security guidelines and Macs specifically, and your readers might like to know that the NSA's very own "Security Configuration Guide" for Mac OS X 10.3 is available online here.

Reader mrpink (who has an encrypted name) sez:

re: mac encryption. apparently there was no checking of Tiger, which now offers a "use secure virtual memory" option in the security preferences. i think apple is paying attention on this topic.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:27:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More excellent voicemail: crop circle psycho science

Boing Boing reader Todd says, "Here's a phone message I came across on the fantastic site circlemakers.org yesterday and it nearly brought me to tears. Excerpt from their site:"

" You might have seen the recent Discovery Channel documentary "Crop Circles: Mystery in the Fields" where they asked several MIT students to try and create some of the biological effects alleged by 'researchers' to be found in 'genuine' formations, such as blown nodes, and magnetized iron spheres. Anyway the production company have passed on this message that they received on their answer-phone after the show aired in the US, it makes for hilarious is somewhat worrying listening. If you know who this psychotic individual is, or maybe you ARE the psychotic individual who placed the call, let us know and we'll send you a complimentary circlemakers t-shirt!"

It's a few years old (from July 2003), but withstands the test of blog-time. Link to MP3.

Previously: Foreigners don't have computers!, and Girl I Know You Messin With my Man

Update: Boing Boing reader limor says:

that "fucking 18-year old wannabe MIT scientist" is a friend of mine! as far as anyone involved in the show can tell, was just an excuse for the producer to get a bunch of MIT kids to come to a cornfield in iowa and set off explosions and build flamethrowers & then film it. hooray for science!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:16:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stuart Hughes' audio chat with Hoder about blogs + Iran

Blogger and BBC correspondent Stuart Hughes tells Boing Boing, "Hossein Derakhshan is in London this week and we met up yesterday at the BBC. While I was showing him around I recorded a chat about blogging, censorship and Iran which I've uploaded." Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:15:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent!!! cranky lady voicemail: "Foreigners don't have computers!"

Following up on yesterday's random voicemail post (Girl I Know You Messin With my Man), Boing Boing reader Brian sez:

As long as you're posting links to voicemails for all the budding remixers out there, here's a funny voicemail that was left for a theater company I worked with a few years ago. I especially like the part where the caller claims that senior citizens and foreigners don't have computers. Enjoy, and remix away.

Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:13:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

High school students fight to wear vagina buttons

Students at Winona Senior High School in Minnesota are fighting for their right to wear souvenir buttons from The Vagina Monologues emblazoned with "I (HEART) My Vagina." The principal believes the buttons are against school policy. From the Winona Daily News:

A month after she began donning the button, (Carrie) Rethlefsen was told to take it off. But Rethlefsen considers the button a matter of free speech. "I think you need to be bold for things to change," she said. "I'm wearing this to support sexual awareness, gender equality, women's rights and freedom of speech."

While Rethlefsen views the button simply as having a pro-woman message, (princiapl Nancy) Wondrasch said others could have other interpretations.

"I believe in freedom of speech, and I believe in women's rights," Wondrasch said. "But I also believe this could be construed as offensive or harassment."

The principal said some staff view the button as offensive, but not because they are ashamed of talking about vaginas. One female employee told her she doesn't want women being heralded for their sexual parts, but their strong mind and good hearts.

Too many women are ashamed to talk about their sexuality, Rethlefsen said.

Link (via Fark)

Carrie Rethlefsen has also posted a few entries about the situation on a LiveJournal. Link (via MetaFilter)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:57:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pizza cutters as art

Frankie Flood fabricated a series of ultra-designed pizza cutters. From his artist statement:

My work investigates one of a kind objects and their role in a world based on mechanical reproduction. Industry has removed the aura from objects and stripped them of their individuality. My pizza cutters seek to demolish the sterile conformity of mass produced objects and represent the stylistic and flamboyant embellishment of groups who live on the fringe of popular culture. The outlaw biker image is a break from the conformity that has taken over America since industrialization. My machined pizza cutters draw inspiration from chopper motorcycles and attempt to reclaim the mythology and economic usefulness of the American worker as patriarch; translating machine or functional object into flesh and blood. The outlaw as defiant nonconformist, as well as social outcast, parallels being an artist who makes functional objects and being an individual who takes pride in the power of invention and skill.

Link (via Gizmodo)

UPDATE: Phil Heid points out that Park Tool, a bike tool manufacturer, sells this similar Big Wheel pizza cutter. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:36:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wendy's finger food finder arrested, NYT goes deep into the case

Anna Ayala, the woman who says she found a fingertip in a bowl of Wendy's chili has been arrested. (Previous posts here and here.) According to a San Francisco Chronicle article, the reason for her arrest has not yet been revealed, but the San Jose police have scheduled a press conference for 1pm (PST) today. Link

Meanwhile, today's New York Times tells the entire tale of Ayala's "discovery," the ongoing Wendy's investigation, and the aftermath:

The troubles began for (Wendy's VP of communications Denny) Lynch when the phone rang just after 11:30 p.m. on March 22. He had been sleeping at home in Dublin, Ohio, where Wendy's has its headquarters. The caller was Bob Bertini, the chain's media relations manager, explaining that Anna Ayala, a Las Vegas resident visiting family in San Jose, had bitten down on the finger in a spoonful of Wendy's chili.

For the 52-year-old Mr. Lynch, there was no time to prepare a sophisticated plan of action. The news media, he was informed, knew about the gruesome discovery, and wanted a statement. He did not wake John T. Schuessler, Wendy's chairman and chief executive, that night, but sent him e-mail messages explaining the news and the steps he had taken.

Over the next month, Mr. Lynch's job became part "CSI: Wendy's," part public relations nightmare.

A management team from Sacramento, Wendy's regional base, converted the office of the Wendy's franchisee, JEM Management, based in Fresno, into a makeshift crisis control room...

Link (Thanks, Mark Riedy!)

UPDATE: According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Anna Ayala was arrested "on a charge of felony attempted grand theft, including a penalty enhancement for inflicting more than $2.5 million in losses on Wendy's." Unrelated to the Wendy's case, Ayala also allegedly sold a woman an $11,000 mobile home that wasn't hers to sell. If convicted, she could go to the slammer for more than six years. "We are urging Americans to go back to Wendy's and enjoy a safe meal,'' the prosecutor said. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:11:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UC Santa Cruz police use variant of Vulcan nerve pinch

It's hard to tell what these police officers are doing to these passive protesters at UC Santa Cruz (who set up a tent city to protest the university withholding millions of dollars from University funding to pay themselves large bonuses). It looks like they are using some kind of special pinch under the protesters' jaws that causes a great deal of pain. I think the police are also pinching the protesters' earlobes. Link (Thanks, Ryan!)

Reader comment: George says: "I may be wrong here, but the photo on BoingBoing looks like something I've seen before. From back in the day when I used to do a lot of martial arts, I remember one instructor saying police can press their thumbs on a nerve and muscle cluster at the back of the jaw (where the earlobe meets the cheek) to cause extraordinary pain without leaving visible marks. Try pushing around there yourself. When your eyes start to water, you've found the place. It's just "behind" the jawbone and slightly under your earlobe."

"I've heard of, and in some cases seen, this tactic used inappropriately in group homes, prisons and mental hospitals too.

"It's use is the shock of the extreme pain. It works like a taser in some ways. You can't really do anything else but flail when it's being applied. Apparently the logic is: when they let go, you quit fighting... because you don't want it to happen again. It's that painful. But again, the real advantage, as far as police are concerned, is that it doesn't leave marks. It's brutality without the bruises."

Reader comment: Don says: "A commonly taught pain based 'come-a-long' involves placing a ball point pen or other slender object in the palm of the hand and using it to pick someone up by the back of their ear or ear lobe. I believe that is what the officer pictured is attempting to do. During my training it was recommended as a way to get passive, uncooperative people to stand up when they refused."

Reader comment: Nick says: "What those cops are doing are pressure point grabs. What looks like an earlobe pinch is a pressure point submission; I had heard of its use in law enforcement but hadn't seen it until now. You can do it to yourself by pushing your thumbnail directly up into the space where the underside of your ear connects to your jaw. The harder you do it, the more it hurts, and you feel it after you remove your thumb. Now, if someone else were to do that to you, and with considerable force, you would not only experience shooting pain, but also find yourself somewhat unable to move. If performed on someone standing up, it causes them to bend forward towards the floor. I don't know why these cops are doing this to protestors who are already on the ground. I learned this, believe it or not, in a shiatsu massage class. I didn't learn anything about that fingers-under-the-jaw thing, but performing it on myself just now, I find that it does, as expected, hurt very much."

Reader comment: Trigg says: "I am a Naval officer I have done some military law enforcement training with the US Navy Master-at-Arms trainers and we learned this technique, along with other pressure points. There is actually a chart of pressure points created by a law enforcement supply company called Monadnock - here is a link to the chart. (I think the guy looks a lot like Victor Garber - the guy that plays Jack Bristow on ALIAS.)

"Anyway, these tactics were taught as "Soft Control" techniques. The purpose of these techniques are to "bring a subject under control which have a LOW probability of causing soft tissue damage, skin lacerations or bone fractures" as opposed to hard control techniques with a baton which might be used against someone who is actively resisting. Anyway, I DO NOT believe that what George of Bookninja says: "But again, the real advantage, as far as police are concerned, is that it doesn't leave marks. It's brutality without the bruises." is the case, though I suppose if the technique is abused . . . This technique is only used if people fail to respond to verbal commands and are endangering themselves, others, and/or they are breaking the law. Again, I am not necessarily commenting on the situation with the protestors (i.e. - whether or not they were breaking the law), just trying to clarify the technique and why it is employed."

Reader comment: Drew says: "It is slightly disturbing to see this event posted on boingboing with such a strong focus on the techniques being used by the police rather than the fact that said techniques were actually performed upon peaceful students. I witnessed these events last Monday night, reporting for a campus publication, and was startled by the excessive force used on students. "If you could please post this link, which provides basic information concerning the student and police actions, I would greatly appreciate it."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:43:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Taking money from fools, part 1

(Click image for enlargement.) My fax machine spit out this "survey" asking, "Do you agree with George W. Bush that marriage should only be between a man and a woman?" I'm supposed to check either "yes" or "no" then fax the form back to a 900 number.

The fine print reads as follows: "Calls to 1-900 numbers cost $3.95 per minute, a small price for a greater democracy. Calls take approx 2-3 minutes in standard mode."

The large print says: The result of this nationwide survey will be present to President Bush, Congress and the Supreme Court." That must really impress the suckers who pay $8 to $12 to fax in the form.

Interestingly, the company running this "survey," Direct Fax Survey, is based in London. I wonder if they make much money doing this?

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:25:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brit engineer/packrat claims $10k bounty for Moore's Law mag

Earlier this month, I posted about Intel's $10,000 bounty for an original copy of the old electronics magazine in which Intel founder Gordon Moore first described "Moore's Law." Now a British engineer/packrat has claimed the prize:

Mr Clark, who admits he is "a bit of a hoarder", collected the Electronics magazine issues, as well as others, after the Philips Central Library in the UK - now closed - started to clean them out.

"In the 70s, they started throwing out large quantities of these magazines," he said.

"I was in my 20s at the time and thought you shouldn't throw them out because they are recording the golden age of electronics."

He gave several hundreds of them a home first in his loft, then under the floorboards and had not looked at them since.

Link (Thanks, Rick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:18:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

13 CDs' worth of Disneyland audio rarities

In honor of Disneyland's impending 50th Birthday, these Disney trufen have put together a spectacular set of 13 "virtual CDs" of Disney audio rarities as downloadable MP3s (unfortunately, these aren't directly linked, but rather pop up in annoying Javascript windoids) with swell cover-art.

Disneyland : The First 50 Years ... A Retrospective (Disc 4) 1:07:19
New Orleans Square Area Sounds 1:24
Pirates Arcade Area Sounds 2:07
Pirates Of The Caribbean 15:37
Blue Bayou Restaurant 0:50
Le Bat en Rouge - Caged Old Hag (Coin Op) (Queen ... Snow White) 1:22
The Haunted Mansion 23:56
Haunted Mansion Holiday 16:41
Royal Street 5:20

Link (via The Disney Blog)

Update: CharlesV sez, "Using some simple find and replace, I reformatted the Disney audio rarities page so that the mp3s are all nice, clean direct links, ripe for scraping with your favorite mass downloader and converting into a fun little torrent if you wish."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:14:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Quest for low-odor cowshit

USDA researchers are laboring to create a new corn-feed stock that can be fed to beef cows to make their shit smell better.

The scientists don't measure odor per se, but the compounds that might cause odor. Starch that is not digested produces many odor-causing compounds in manure. If more starch is digested, less starch is available to cause odor. Starch from dry-rolled corn does not get digested as thoroughly as that in the high-moisture corn, so cattle fed high-moisture corn are less likely to produce foul-smelling manure.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:03:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fit 20 functions into a single 5.25" drive bay

This Sunbeam 20-in-1 panel for a standard PC slot incorporates "a Multi-Card Reader/Writer, an I/O panel, and a fan controller" with an LCD temperature monitor, along with "USB2.0, IEEE 1394 Firewire, Audio, Video, and even SATA" outputs. Pretty cool. Link (via Red Ferret Review)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:53:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Coitus couture: Coco de Mer

Ripped from the pixels of Hint Magazine:

[H]igh-end, socially-conscious London sex shop [Coco de Mer], established in 2001 by Samantha Roddick, daughter of The Body Shop's founder Anita Roddick, has launched an online version of the busty boutique where you'll find everything from nipple covers and clitoris creams to Swarovski-encrusted merkins by J. Maskrey and feather-tailed Molten crystal vibrators by Shiri Zinn. As for us, we'll be tied up with this pair of leather bondage gauntlets designed exclusively for the erotic emporium by Paul Seville, an artisan of animal skins better known for his collaborations with Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood.

Link to Coco de Mer's new online shop, and link to more of Hint's great tips on cool crap to buy.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:58:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

S&M furniture: pillory table

Honey, let's dine in tonight. Lock your beloved/condemned in this two-part "pillory table" and feed him/her (or deprive them) while they're confined. You could also shake pepper at them, and make them sneeze. Hey, wait -- I bet there's a website for that.
Link to pillory table(Thanks, Paul Parkinson)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:50:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Low-carb chocolate-dipped pork rinds

Not that you'd want to eat 'em -- but, you can buy 'em. Link. (Thanks, Dennis Yang)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:36:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Girl, I know you're messing with my man.

Remixers and mashers-of-up, start your engines. A friend of a friend received this voicemail from an unidentified young woman who dialed the wrong number in a jealousy-induced rage. You don't know who you're messing with. I'm from New York, girl. Link (*.wav) (Thanks, Numair)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:56:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ghana nationalizes folklore, threatens jail for folk artists

Ghana recently updated its copyright law as part of complying with suggestions from the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which recommended that developing nations "nationalize" folklore and charge foreigners for using folk art elements in commercial works. But the Ghanian bill reportedly gets it totally wrong: it could lead to prison sentences for Ghanians who sell art based on folklore, traditional knowledge, dance or song.

He mentioned specifically the clause that imposed a fine, jail or both on any Ghanaians who commercially use, sell or distribute Ghanaian folklore or translations without Government's permit.

The Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana said the Bill would create a terrible situation for the future well being of the country's culture, which required a constant dynamic recycling to stay alive in the Global Village.

Link

Update: Garth sez, "Here's an interesting PDF of a paper by John Collins, who was actually a member of Ghana's copyright board. Interestingly, the whole copyright ball was kicked off by none other than PAUL SIMON! Being a well-meaning human, he paid $16,000 to the Ghanaian government for a song that he lifted for his album 'The Rhythm of the Saints'. This got the Ghanaian government thinking about all of the revenues that they were losing as THEIR OWN citizens plundered Ghana's cultural heritage."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:59:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazon directory of free MP3 downloads

Amazon has put together a single page listing all the free, no-DRM MP3s you can download from their site, as promos for CDs. Link (Thanks, Ben!)

Update: Erin sez, "Amazon actually launched Free Music Downloads in February of 2001. The page mentioned is just the top 200 downloads, there are a lot more available here.

Update 2: Jesse sez, "I wrote a GreaseMonkey script which make the songs link directly to the MP3."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:53:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MPAA bribing NYC cops to bust bootleg DVD sellers?

The New York Post reports that the NYPD is investigating two cops for taking bribes from the MPAA for busting street-sellers of bootleg DVDs. The MPAA denies everything.

Two NYPD veterans are being investigated by Internal Affairs for allegedly accepting payoffs from the motion-picture industry to arrest vendors of pirated DVDs, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

One officer, a sergeant on the force since 1992, has been transferred from the Staten Island Task Force to the 122nd Precinct pending the internal investigation.

Link (Thanks, Brett!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:51:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MGM nastygrams Stargate mod for Half Life 2 off the net

A group of Half-Life 2 players who loved the TV show Stargate set out to make a HL2 level ("mod") based on the show, but had to stop when MGM, the rightsholder for the show, sent them a legal threat. Nice way to treat your fans.

We are very displeased to announce that apparently MGM the huge company feels very threatened by a group of individuals spread throughout the world. We have received a letter to desist from the creation of the Stargate: Source mod. At this time we are still discussing the issue but it does appear that we are going to be shutting down. Sorry to all of our followers and those who were looking forward to this mod. Personally I will not buy a copy of their game out of protest. It is an unfortunate circumstance when the large, powerful and wealthy must attack the small and free but it happens and it is buisness.

Link (Thanks, thewebguy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:47:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flash music player plays video on teensy LCD

The Mpio is a little matchbox-sized flash-based music player, but it can also play back MPEG4 videos on its 96 x 64 LCD screen. As Gizmodo points out, that's a little on the useless side of teensy-weensy, but it's a cool trend (but it'd be cooler if it was a royalty-free version of MPEG, MPEG 4 is brutally expensive to implement). Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:44:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RealPlayer problem solved

I received a missive from Brian, a Boing Boing reader working deep inside the heavily fortified bunkers of RealNetworks. After he took me to task for continuously whining about the poor performance of the RealPlayer on my computer, I told him that if he could help me configure RealPlayer not to choke like an earthworm trying to swallow a pig that I'd issue a public apology.

He told me that my problem "could be a firewall issue or an AirPort version problem."

Preferences -> Transport -> Use manually configured Click Configure and clear all transports except HTTP

I did as he instructed and tried watching a video on RealPlayer. It played without a hitch, which is the first time that's ever happened.

He pointed out: "Just so you know, there is a note about the Airport problem in RealPlayer Help under Network/Connectivity Issues titled AirPort wireless issues."

Thanks Brian, and I apologize to you and your co-workers who strive to keep it Real.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:42:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Newsweek 1974 story -- The saga of Patty Hearst

John says: "Jason Buckley over at the WIGB blog and his wife went to an estate sale the other day, and he picked up a copy of the April 29, 1974 edition of Newsweek with a cover story on Patty Hearst, kidnapped heiress/revolutionary. He scanned and posted the whole story - very cool stuff!" Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:29:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More Superboy comic fun

Andrew Tonkin says: "My friend Meng just sent me this link to a detailed description, with pictures, of a very strange Superboy story. Seems the lad turns into a GIANT RAMPAGING GORILLA. Those who liked the covers will love this."

During the 1950s and 1960s, DC Comics engaged in a long-time infatuation with gorillas, especially talking purple ones. Supposedly espoused by Creative Director Irwin Donenfeld, and supported by such editors as Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger, the theory was that any comic with a gorilla on its cover was a guaranteed top-seller. At one point, DC was publishing so many funnybooks with gorilla-covers that its editorial staff found it necessary to monitor these efforts, as to limit the number of gorilla-covers to one per month!

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:20:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Uncle Rico's time machine on eBay

Now you can buy a time machine off the Internet just like Uncle Rico did in Napoleon Dynamite. Currently at $75 with only two days to go. From the eBay listing:

Your friends will TOTALLY TRIP when they walk in see this sitting on YOUR table!! And they can not go out and buy one. This is a SWEET ONE-OF-A-KIND nearly exact replica! Complete with T-Handle, Headpiece, and One LARGE Crystal INCLUDED for Maximum Time-Travelazation.* The analog year counter is even STUCK on 1982!

Link (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:15:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent animated interpretation of Ramayana

turbanhead says: Cartoonist Nina Paley is slowly turning the narrative of Ramayana (a Hindu Sanskrit epic) into a series of remarkable animations set to a soundtrack of scratchy old 78s. The result is Sita Sings the Blues, a "self-animated, unfunded, destined-to- drive-me-to- the-poorhouse feature-in-progress."

Nina describes the latest chapter, Hanuman Finds Sita: "Gags, gimmicks, AND narrative - hundreds of pages of text crammed into 3 minutes. Plus it contains all 4 main characters: Sita, Rama, Hanuman and Ravana, with extra added bonus demons ... People already familiar with the Ramayana will probably enjoy these musical bits more, but I'm trying to make the story understandable to anyone." Link

UPDATE: Anil Kandangath says: The link you posted to is unavailable since the site is down. However, the torrents for all four parts are available on Sepia Mutiny.

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

Funny cartoon about Berkeley Professor who lost his laptop

Yesterday, I wrote about a professor at Berkeley who delivered a scorching, over-the-top warning to the person who stole his laptop. About 8,000 people have downloaded the video torrent file so far. A lot of blogs have been commenting on the super-advanced anti-theft and tracking technology that Professor Rine says his stolen laptop possesses. This comic strip parody is a hilarious take on the incident. Link

Reader comment: David Rothschild says: "As I wrote on my blog, an issue concerning this professor and the role he and his much vaunted corporate ties played in denying tenure to a critic of biotechnology, is at the heart of a lawsuit filed just this week, and a controversy over the issue of corporate influence in academia that made the cover of the Atlantic a few years ago."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:01:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robotic dentist's drill

A robotic "self-guiding" dental drill received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to be tested on humans. Developed by Israel's Tactile Technologies, the system is designed to improve dental implant operations where a small metal pin is installed to act as a root for artificial teeth and bridges. From New Scientist:

Firstly, a frame is clamped onto a patient's jaw and very thin needles penetrate the gum to determine the location of the bone. This data is wirelessly transmitted to a PC, which combines it with CT scan data to configure a set of drill guides. The guides are then attached to the frame and finally the dentist presses a button to start the drilling in the precise location required...

"The system causes less trauma and brings dental implants to the general practitioner," says Kinrot, who designed the system. "Today it is only done by experts."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:01:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Woman has premonition of death, dies on way to church

Chicago schoolteacher Charisse Hartzol was visiting Champaign, Illinois when she had a dream about herself dying. According to the Chicago Tribune, Hartzol awoke before dawn pretty freaked out and raced to catch a church service in her home town. She never made it. Hartzol's car crossed a grassy median and struck a van head on. She and two passengers were killed in the crash. Link (via Fortean Times)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:51:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yeti art exhibit at UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley art students are exhibiting works related to the abominable snowman, or Yeti. From the Daily Californian:

Josephine Zarkovich, a UC Berkeley art student, came up with the theme for this student-run art show with her best friend Ilsa Brink, a graphic designer for Berkeley’s California Shakespeare Company. This fascination with the Abominable Snowman began when the two listened to Jonathan Richman’s song “Abominable Snowman in the Market.” Another Berkeley art student, Matthew Siemonsma, (creator of image left,) suggested that they build a show around this topic....

For Matthew Siemonsma, the Yeti represents “an allusive (sic: elusive?) being, something you can’t quite put your finger on—something you can’t quite capture or contain. If you could, it would lose its charm.”

Link (Thanks, Loren Coleman!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:37:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mailboxes that fight back

Ray Hauser of Boulder Colorado read my entry from September 2004 about fortified mailboxes and thought I'd be interested in finding out about his company, MailBoxer. He's invented three amazing mailboxes designed to deter, punish, or catch mailbox vandals and mail thieves.

One mailbox transfers "skunk oil" on a vandals baseball bat (Company literature states: "We hope that some of the skunk oil gets wiped onto clothing and car upholstery.") Another (shown here) is designed to "grab" a bat when someone swings it into the mailbox. ("Upon direct impact with a wooden bat, the plastic tube deforms and the bat is grabbed out of the hand of the swinger.") The third mailbox contains a wireless tamper-detecting sensor. ("When the door of the mailbox is opened, a chime in the house is followed by a visual green light to inform you that mail has been delivered, that the mailbox door has been opened at midnight, or that the mailbox has received an impact.")

Hats off to Yankee ingenuity! Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:29:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni Tech on NPR: SRL's robotic mayhem

For today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I report from the recent live performance in Los Angeles by Survival Research Laboratories, the granddaddy of all robot/machine performance groups.

Before there were robot wars, before there were Monster Garages, there was SRL. Founded 25 years ago by Mark Pauline in San Francisco and comprised of an evolving cast of machines (and their human operators), SRL produced "ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and special effects devices." Mostly, though, it just sounds and feels like the end of the world.
For Day to Day, I went to the group's recent LA extravaganza and spoke with Mark Pauline (being interviewed, above), technicians Violet Blue and Karen Marcelo (a former Boing Boing guestblogger), and audience members. Attendee Michael Perry of Los Angeles described it best when he said "It's like a giant postapocalyptic monster truck rally, without the trucks."

Technical note: SRL shows are really, really loud, and full of smoke and sparks and machines that shoot blasts of air strong enough to kill a person. I had a hard time gathering sound, because my poor little minidisc recorder kept triggering a built-in limiter any time an Extremely Loud Thing happened (which was, oh, every 0.5 seconds). It worked out in the end, as you'll hear in the NPR piece. But for all you future SRL podcasters -- or anyone trying to record a war, because they sound the same -- take a good look at your device in advance, RTFM, use the right kind of mic, and make sure you have manual control over any limiter function so your explosions aren't muffled.

More photos: Scott Froschauer: Link Josh Kirschenbaum: Link. Mack Reed: Link. Scott Beale: Link.

The crowd was an interesting bunch of bipeds -- and others. This is my favorite, and here's another, because Bruce Sterling rules.

Here are snapshots I shot with my Treo, and here's a grainy little Treo video I shot of Violet Blue operating a gigantic lethal machine: Link (3G2 format). There are many more photos (plus video) at SRL: Link. (Photos in this post all courtesty of Scott Beale)

Link to archived audio on NPR. Link to more archived "Xeni Tech" segments on NPR.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:00:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

India rejects software patents

India is fast turning into one of the world's development powerhouses, and they're getting there by challenging the idea that they should have western-style copyright and patent rules (the US spent its first century as a "pirate nation" that didn't honor foreign copyrights and patents). This marks a decisive moment in Indian history: the US, Europe, and other nations' IT industries are crippled by the need to pay monopoly rents to patent-crooks like Acacia; India's IT companies can get away scott-free. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:52:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sell access to torrents of your large files

Prodigem will take your original works, turn them into BitTorrent files, charge whatever fee you set for them, and pass the money on to you, less their commission.

The Prodigem Marketplace allows Prodigem users to sell their independent media (videos, music, etc) while not concerning themselves with traditional bandwidth costs associated with repeated large data transfers. Content providers (YOU!) simply upload their work, set a price, and Prodigem does the rest. Once customers pay for access to the bit torrent peer-to-peer session for your content, Prodigem grants them access so they can begin their download (no DRM). Prodigem collects this revenue, removes 10% + transaction costs (PayPal) and then sends you a monthly check. Ever considered making a living as a Long Tailor? Check out this example for-pay torrent to see what it looks like.

Link (Thanks, Gary!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:55:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More from Jake, a geek traveling in Iraq

Earlier this week, I posted an item on Boing Boing about Jacob Appelbaum's geek trip to Iraq (HOWTO set up a VSAT in Iraq). The 22-year old San Francisco resident known also as "ioerror" tells BB he's in the country on vacation, "not working for anyone, paid for the trip out of my own pocket, visiting some friends here." He's taking gigs and gigs of digital photos with his Canon 20D, including this series about buying a pair of Generation 3 Night Vision Goggles for only $900USD.

Here's another post on Jake's blog about IEDs -- improvised explosive devices -- in Iraq. Shown here, an IED constructed with a cellular phone. One call missed.

Jake says the image came from "someone who's a massively talented hardware hacker," who in turn says it was shot by a soldier in Iraq.

Today, Jake says:

I even happened to get a set of photos of the Yezidi (Wikipedia link), a sect of Muslims that worship a peacock as their king. The rest of the Muslims think they worship the devil. Most Satanists actually talk about the Yezidi as being part of the same club if they've ever heard of them. It's an interesting place that's for sure! I have some amazing photos of their temple.

Link to Jake's post about visiting a Yezidi village. He has lots of video from the trip he wants to blog, so if you want to help him seed torrents, here's how to reach him.

Update: Kelly Rosati says:

I thought I would send you some info on the pic of the cell phone in Iraq. I had this same photo posted on a family forum I run by my uncle who is an EOD officer in the navy (he did not take the pic.) Here is a quote from his post:

"They're using cell phones as initiators to set off explosive devices when we get down on them. Instead of the phone ringing, it sends the power to a blasting cap. This EOD Tech had gone down on an IED, placed an explosive charge and detonated it, and went back down to ensure it was disabled. That's when he found the phone!! He was very lucky the phone did not receive the signal, unfortunately, many of our guys have not been that lucky. Just another day in Iraq, our guys respond to 3 to 5 of these a day."

Update 2: Da Mystik Homeboy says:

I'm dropping a line on behalf of ioerror in Iraq (I guess he doesnt have email access atm)- the videos he posted are now torrents on his livejournal.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:55:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Space Shuttle photos with Nikon D2X

Using a new Nikon D2X camera, Michael Jones photographed the rollout of space shuttle Discovery from the VAB to the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Link to image gallery on DP Review. (Thanks, Jeff Koga)

Update: Dan Wineman reminds us of recent reports that Nikon's D2X uses a proprietary form of data encryption that locks out third party software (DRM where it is not needed = really stupid):

The camera actually encrypts part of the image file (specifically, the white balance data) for every photo you shoot with it. The encryption isn't particularly good, so there are various ways to get around it, but Nikon won't license the decryption algorithm to Adobe. This means that Photoshop can't import Nikon's raw image format unless Adobe reverse engineers it, and Adobe is unwilling to do so because of the DMCA. Slashdot story and original article. Why should you care? Because it amounts to a camera manufacturer using technology to assert ownership rights over the pictures you take. I'll explain: there's absolutely no technical reason why that data should be encrypted, and the encryption scheme is so bad that Nikon must have implemented it only to gain DMCA protection. That protection isn't available to them unless they own the data being protected, so if they DON'T intend to claim a copyright interest in your photos, then they've just gone to a whole lot of trouble to make a digital camera that's incompatible with Photoshop. I'm sure that's what customers are clamoring for, right?

BB reader Stephen B. Goodman argues:

Nikon's D2X ships with a Photoshop plug-in that can export RAW format data from the camera into Photoshop. So it is not only possible, but encouraged to use Photoshop in your workflow. What Adobe is worried about is incorporating the D2X's excrypted RAW format into their OWN proprietary RAW importer which they sell for a profit. Adobe simply wants to be able to support more cameras, so they can sell the plug-in to more photographers. Secondly, only Nikon really knows why their data is encrypted, but it probably has far more to do with protecting their trade secrets concerning firmware and hardware design, than it does about wanting copyright control over a photographer's image. No digital cameras that shoot a RAW format are natively compatible with Photoshop (which is why you see a list of supported cameras in the Adobe link above), because RAW (which is really a name convention, not a standard format) is a straight data dump from a camera's chip. Different chips + different firmware = different data formats.

Reader Jerry Kindall in Seattle says:

The Nikon white balance thing really is a tempest in a teapot.

One of the major advantages of shooting raw is that you can change the white balance after you shoot. The white balance information is just a tag that the raw converter can use, or not. Many photographers who shoot raw don't even bother setting white balance in the camera (my Canon 20D is always set to auto WB) since you can set it much more precisely after the shoot anyway. If a photo was taken outdoors, you can choose the Sunny, Cloudy, or Shade preset. If indoors, Fluorescent or Tungsten. If you used a flash, you can choose Flash. After choosing one of those, you can tweak the color temperature as desired by as little as 1 degree Kelvin (which is imperceptible).

What's more, Adobe Camera Raw has an Auto white balance mode that ignores the embedded white balance tag and attempts to calculate the correct value itself, and it usually does a better job than the camera did at the time of shooting. Which is what you'd expect, considering your computer is a few orders of magnitude more powerful than the processor in the camera. If Adobe Camera Raw can't read the embedded white balance data, it should just switch to Auto mode. Most users would find that this (or one of the presets) usually yields better results anyway. The kind of photographers who shoot raw are already well aware that the default settings need to be tweaked and are perfectly willing to do so.

Contrary to what Stephen Goodman says, Adobe Camera Raw is bundled with Photoshop CS (and now CS2) and is not available for purchase separately. Of course there are other programs that can use Photoshop plug-ins, but they'll have to use the Nikon plug-in or some other third-party raw converter, since Adobe Camera Raw does not (and has never) worked with anything but Photoshop.

So the point is not that Nikon are evil bastards for encrypting their white balance data and blocking Adobe. Adobe's not really blocked since reading the camera's white balance data is such a minimal part of their product.

The point is that Nikon are idiots, as they have expended engineering resources on protecting a bit of data that has little real value to begin with. They should have spent it on improving their cameras, given that they are having their ass handed to them by Canon in nearly every segment of the consumer digital camera market.

--

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:38:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brooklyn cake master's supremely funky creations

Snip from NY Times story:

Two years ago, a party planner working for the hip-hop artist Mary J. Blige ordered a birthday cake for her from a Brooklyn baker who had long ago retired his given name - Raven Patrick De'Sean Dennis III - for the shorter if equally titular designation Cake Man Raven.

In celebration of Ms. Blige's 33rd birthday, Mr. Dennis constructed a cake that paid tribute not to any single one of her achievements or affinities, but, ostensibly, to all of them. Four feet wide and 26 inches tall, the cake featured edible approximations of a CD, a musical note, a Dolce & Gabbana shopping bag, a Christian Dior purse, a MAC cosmetics compact, a dove and a near-life-size baby, meant to symbolize Ms. Blige's spiritual rebirth.

Whether by happenstance or design, Cake Man Raven has become the city's most visually strident opponent of the restrained preciousness that has overtaken the baking world. Few would confuse the results of his labor with anything found in Real Simple. Instead, Mr. Dennis's cakes and Mr. Dennis himself - or Cake, as he identifies himself over the phone - have a sense of the epic about them. For the Rev. Al Sharpton, he once made a model of the Bible turned to Timothy 2:15 ("Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved"); for Cab Calloway's 80th birthday, a songbook with a grand piano resting on top; for Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn Borough President, a replica of its Borough Hall, twice. When the rapper Jam Master J died in 2002, he made a cake in the shape of a large Adidas sneaker with a gold chain and two turntables on it.

Link to NYT story (Thanks, Susannah De'Blog Breslin III, aka "cupcake")

Update: Here's the Cake Man's website with more photos: Link (Thanks Beau Brady, and Vanessa)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:28:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos: Film Production Blow Up Dolls

Flickr user "7-how-7" has uploaded a set of photos documenting a hard day's work with blow-up dolls. Specifically, blowing up inflatable dolls to position in a stadium as "extras," for a film shoot. Included are some neat details on their hand-painted faces and costumes, and the act of filling their bodies with air.
Link (Thanks, cybele)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:27:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weekend to-do list: Botball Tournament, San Jose CA

Boing Boing reader qDot says:

The KISS Institute for Practical Robotics is running their Northern California tournament this Saturday in San Jose, at the Leavey Center @ Santa Clara University. The tournament starts around 10am, and will probably go until around 5 or 6 in the evening. Botball is a robotics competition for Middle/High Schools, using completely autonomous robots (some using gameboy advances!) built and programmed completely by students (Using a special version of C called Interactive C. Admission to watch the tournament is free, it's always great to get a big crowd in to see the participants. Not to mention, everyone loves robots. :)

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:20:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web bugs may break law

According to David Lazarus at the SF Chron, Intuit and H&R block placed web bugs in online tax forms this year -- and that's a likely violation of California law. From an earlier SF Chron report:

"Both Intuit and Block, which offer electronic filing for free through the IRS' Free File program, use hidden Web bugs throughout the tax-preparation process to monitor taxpayers' online behavior."

Ouch. And from the current report:

"The law states that it's a misdemeanor for any company 'to disclose any information obtained in the business of preparing federal or state income tax returns or assisting taxpayers in preparing those returns, including any instance in which this information is obtained through an electronic medium.'"

Link (Thanks, Eli the Bearded!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:04:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NBC TV head: our anchors should be blogging

The head of NBC television said today the network may launch blogs for its top news anchors and celeb interviewers.

NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker said entering the generally opinionated world of blogs might be one way television networks could keep their grip on viewers who increasingly use the Internet for news.

"Over the next two years, network news is going to go through a lot more changes," Zucker said at a Yahoo conference on high-speed Internet use. "This is one of the biggest issues facing traditional network news divisions."

"I don't know why Brian Williams isn't blogging right now," Zucker said of the anchor of NBC's top-rated evening news program who took the helm after veteran journalist Tom Brokaw stepped down in December. "We should be looking for a more interactive component ... and be experimenting more."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:07:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pope John Paul souvenir phone card

Parallel Communications Incorporated offers The Pope Card, a prepaid phone card with a special value-add: "This unique card is licensed from the Vatican. The caller can choose to hear a message from the Pope in 4 languages (English, Spanish, French or Portuguese)." Link (Thanks, David "Swapdrive" Steinberg!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:44:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weird DVD piracy bust in China

"Two foreigners with amusing names -- the cartoon East-Coast-aristocrat Randolph Hobson Guthrie III and his sidekick Cody Abram Thrush -- have been given jail terms by a Shanghai court for DVD piracy. Guthrie has been described by the New York Post as 'the black-sheep scion of one of the city's oldest, wealthiest and most socially prominent families.'" Link (Thanks, Tian!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:52:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of Superboy comic covers

I have a handful of DC comics from the 1960s. They are very strange and wonderful. They're not really about crime fighting; they are surreal absurdist masterpieces. This gallery of covers from old Superboy comics has some great examples. Look at issue #87 -- "Superbaby in The Thought Monster of Krypton." The villain is a dinosaur like creature whose every thought is displayed on an organic TV screen mounted on its head. Superbaby comments: "Funny animal! Its head look like TV screen. Him thinking him want to eat me. But me not afraid! Me play with him!" I'd take a stack of Superboys over Lost, any day.
Link (via Exclamation Mark)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:45:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Apes studied in human-like surroundings

Researchers at the Iowa Great Ape Trust are putting eight intelligent bonobos in a human-like living situation to study how culture may emerge. From the Associated Press:

The bonobos will be able to cook in their own kitchen, tap vending machines for snacks, go for walks in the woods and communicate with researchers through computer touchscreens. The decor in their 18-room home includes an indoor waterfall and climbing areas 30 feet high...

Using a network of cameras and computers, the bonobos can see visitors who ring the doorbell -- and will be able to choose through a computer touchscreen who will be permitted into a secured viewing area.

"Only if they want to open the door can you enter," (experimental psychologist and ape-language expert Dr. Sue) Savage-Rumbaugh said.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:58:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Senior doll for nurse's aid training

Responding to the severe shortage of old people who require fulltime assistance, a Japanese company has manufactured a synthetic senior citizen as a stopgap measure.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:35:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Berkeley laptop thief is scared out of his wits by professor

The last few minutes of this video from a biology class at Berkeley is of professor explaining the terrifying consequences that will soon befall the student that stole his laptop. Hell, I'm 500 miles away from Berkeley and I'm scared after watching this. (Forward to 48:50. It's a RealPlayer file, unfortunately, so be prepared for it to stop playing at least three times while you're watching it). Link (Thanks Kevin!)

UPDATE: Here's a torrent of the pertinent part of the video (In QuickTime, not Real!) Link (Thanks, Matt Yohe!)

UPDATE:Sean Graham says: "For those people who don't want to deal with RealPlayer I made a very lo-fi mp3 of the audio from the "Stolen Laptop" lecture posted earlier today...

"I trimmed out the actual educational part of the lecture and just left the 'good part.'" Link

UPDATE: Tim says: I've transcribed Professor Rine's speech to the thief who stole his laptop. It's available here.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:30:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make your car a Wi-Fi hotspot

Tor Amundson hacked together a mobile 3G/WiFi Router powered by a car's cigarette lighter. He posted a detailed HOWTO guide under a Creative Commons License:

It automatically boots up and links in to Verizon's "Broadband Access" service, turning itself into an access point. Turn on your laptop, join the network and voila -- you're on the net! It's just like using a hotspot (such as they have at Starbucks and airports), but it goes anywhere you car goes.

As long as I've got an always-on internet link in the car, why not make it do other things? As part of this project I've made it do live vehicle tracking via Google Maps, upload pictures from an on-board web cam and other tricks.

Why is it called a "StompBox"? I like to think of any nework I build as my own online "stomping grounds"... and I figured if I made a little box that would let me bring my stomping grounds with me wherever I went, I'd have to call it a Stomp Box.

Link (via my journal at TheFeature)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:34:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Bigfoot footage?

A ferry operator in Manitoba, Canada claims to have caught Bigfoot on video. Apparently hundreds of people have stopped by and seen the video but, according to The Globe And Mail, the man's family won't let anyone photograph the TV screen much less copy the tape:

They are talking about copyrights and thinking about turning the Bigfoot video into big bucks if some media outlet were just willing to pay...

What (Bobby Clarke) captured, according to his sister, Sharness Henry, is the image of a massive creature that stands eight, nine, maybe 10 feet (three metres) tall, walking along the edge of the water through some bulrushes. Near the end of the video, the creature turns and appears to stare into the camera, but the details of its face are impossible to make out.

"He's really hairy," Ms. Henry said.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:13:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on CNN International: Data privacy, Zabasearch, and the law

I'll be joining host Kristie Lu Stout on CNN International today to talk about issues related to personal data, privacy, and the law. Air time: 745PM ET / 445PM PT. See also this site for CNNi's new tech show, "Spark."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:54:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MKULTRA-related lawsuit dismissed

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed against the US Government by a San Francisco man who claims that he was a victim of the CIA's 1950s LSD mind-control experiment MKULTRA. Wayne Ritchie says he was unwittingly dosed with LSD at an office Christmas party, causing him to rob a bar that evening and suffer psychologically later in life. The judge initially rejected the government's argument to dismiss the $12 million suit but ruled last week that "it is not clear by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Ritchie was administered LSD." From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Ritchie, now 77 and living in San Jose, was a 30-year-old deputy U.S. marshal and Marine Corps veteran with a spotless record in December 1957. According to his testimony, he had four or five bourbon and soda drinks over several hours at an office Christmas party, left, and soon started feeling overwhelmed by depression and paranoia.

He retrieved his two revolvers, tried to rob a bar in the Fillmore neighborhood, got distracted, and was hit over the head and knocked unconscious. Ritchie pleaded guilty to attempted robbery and was fined $500.

Plagued by flashbacks and suicidal urges for years, Ritchie spent 34 years as a house painter before retiring in 1992. Seven years later, he read a newspaper article about MKULTRA and concluded he may have been one of its victims...

Ritchie's case relied in part on a diary entry by an MKULTRA agent, Ira Feldman, that Ritchie's lawyer interpreted as admitting he was at the office party. In sworn depositions, Feldman at first denied that he knew Ritchie, but later referred to "this nitwit, Ritchie'' who "deserved to suffer.'' (Judge Marilyn Hall) Patel, in a ruling in May, said the latter statements could be taken as an admission that Feldman had drugged Ritchie.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:33:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Open University course under CC license

Ray Corrigan, a lecturer at the UK's Open University, writes, "the first Open University course to be released under a Creative Commons licence is now available. Unfortunately the server administrators have decided that people need to register a verifiable email address before being allowed into the site but it is otherwise openly available. Fittingly, the course is based on Larry Lessig's book, The Future of Ideas." Link (Thanks, Ray!)

Update: BK DeLong sez, "Johns Hopkins School of Public Health just launched their own Opencourseware following in MIT's footsteps - their first 6 courses are live."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:07:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hand-carved wooden "phones" from Russia

Andrei Kozlov is a Russian primitivist artist who hand-carves wooden cellphone-like-objects, including painted red "LEDs" and so forth. They're flintstonariffic, and put me in mind of the hand-carved wooden "phones" in Helsinki that I photographed last year. Link (Thanks, Ivan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:41:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Downloadable video clips of Copyfight Debate of the Century

Allison sez, "For a class I teach on the History and Future of the Book, I've put up as Quicktime clips the first two hours of last week's Cornell Debate between EFF senior IP attorney Fred Von Lohmann, copyfighting media studies prof Siva Vaidhyanathan, and counsel from the MPAA, RIAA, Napster 2 and Universal. (The remaining hour of the debate will be there in the next day or so)."

"As streaming media three hours long, it's a bit hard to find your place or determine what portion you might want to hear again, so I've broken it into segments featuring an individual speaker or question. There are also summary descriptions of the questions and responses. (I'll be adding summaries to all links)." Link (Thanks, Allison!)

Update:: This server has melted down. Someone should really just post torrents of the video as an MPEG and the audio as an MP3.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:02:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

High-speed Dance Dance Revolution kid juggling three pins

This is stunning video of a little kid flawlessly juggling three pins while playing a damned good game fo Dance Dance Revolution set at a fast, hard level. Must be seen to be believed. 4.6MB WMV Link, Mirror (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:00:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony games to run sanctioned game-artifact auction

Sony Online Entertainment -- the arm of Sony that makes games like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies -- is changing its policy on the auction of in-game artefacts; instead of seeking to eliminate it, Sony will be sponsoring it instead, guaranteeing the payment and transfer of goods -- and taking a cut of the payment. This kind of thing was the premise of my story Anda's Game, published on Salon in 2004.

"Sony has finally dropped the other shoe," said Dan Hunter, a professor at the Wharton School of Business and an expert in virtual economies. "Finally, we understand what their reluctance (has been). It's not that the gameplay has been affected by (virtual goods trafficking), but rather, their objection has been that they can't monetize it."

SOE claims the auction site is primarily about offering players a safe and secure marketplace for buying and selling virtual goods. But the company readily acknowledges the new system could bring in hefty new revenues.

"When 40 percent of our customer service man-hours are dealing with fraud, it's in our interest to deal with it," said John Smedley, SOE's president. "We don't want to hide the fact that we're going to make money." Smedley said that because many SOE players are opposed to users bu

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:53:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New copyright bill panders to Christian Right, copyfighters, Hollywood

The House just passed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which is a classic DC compromise bill: on the one hand, it panders to the Hollywood filmocrats by promising mandatory beheading for people caught videotaping movies in theatres, and on the other, it throws the tiniest, most noncontroversial of bones to the copyfighters by legalizing tools that automatically fast-forward, audio-mask, and otherwise munge DVDs during playback, a technique largely employed by Christian companies that sell paranoid parents players that guarantee nipple-and-cussword-free playback of movies from the corner Blockbuster.

Weird as it seems, the Directors Guild of America and the studios hated the idea that viewers should be able to skip past the bits they don't want to see while watching movies in their living rooms, proffering a bunch of self-serving, mystical crapola about the need for "artistic integrity" in the viewing experience you get from watching Police Academy n-1. This was transparent horseshit from the same groups that willingly redact their "content" for packaging by the censorious Blockbusters, airline movie providers, and TV broadcasters to eliminate toddler-damaging mentions of bodily fluids and glimpses of hoo-hahs, nee-nos, pee-paws, and other grotendous anatomical elements that no one needs to see more of.

Me, I can't wait to see the reverse: you can already buy guides to film-nudity that provide you with film names and timecode to skip right to that moment in some actor's past when she or he bared all -- a "good-parts" version, if you will. I would happily patronize a "FilthyFlicks" service that promised to lop out all the non-cussin', non-naked parts of the movie, leaving me with nothing but pure, degenerate rot. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:39:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney World security guard uniform on eBay

A complete Walt Disney World security guard uniform for sale on eBay, with bidding starting at $500. You can play Naughty Disney Cop and Repentant Guest with startling realism. Or direct traffic at Epcot Center. Or both! Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Mike Outmesguine reviews Ambient Device

Mike Outmesguine has written a nice review of the Ambient Office Dashboard, which consists of three analog meters that can be used to indicate wirelessly received data.

The Dashboard promises to “keep you in touch with the details that make up your day.” Easy to read dials show digital information in analog form. Track stocks, the weather, traffic, email, unpaid bills, and more using the included “facecards”. Eventually, a developers kit will allow people to create their own using configurable blank face plates... The Dashboard gets its data over the existing digital paging network. This is not a Wi-Fi device. No network cables are required. And configuration is as simple as visiting the company website, typing in the Dashboard serial number for activation, and the postal zip code where the Dashboard will be located (for regional weather and possibly premium data.)

 Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:26:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New work from illustrators Kozyndan

Coming in May to sixspace in LA, new work from one of my favorite illustrator duos, Kozyndan. Shown here: detail from "Up In The Sky," one of the pieces in their sixspace solo show called "The Pilgrimage." Link to show info. (Thanks, Caryn!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:00:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Picking the Pope's Domain Name

A Florida-based writer purchased a domain name in the name of the new pope -- two weeks before the pope was selected.

Cadenhead said he hasn't figured out what he's going to do with the BenedictXVI.com domain yet. "I know for certainty I won't be doing that," he said, referring to the adult sites. "The decision would be guided by the idea not to piss off 1.1 billion (Roman Catholics.)"

Link to Wired News story. (Thanks, Roadkill Kid)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:24:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wes Anderson movie dress-up time

Mike Jones says, "This is some funny shit right here. Some girl dressed up like Ritchie Tennenbaum, 3 guys like Jason Schwartzman from Rushmore. Most of it is all lo-fi, like they were hanging out and decided to play dress up. Pretty cool, though. My favorite is the Steve Zissou kid."
Link to the gallery shot by Chas Bowie

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:50:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sweat Ship: offshore coding operation planned in San Diego

The LAVoice blog says:

Three San Diego entrepreneurs plan to start a cut-rate outsourcing plant for software development three miles off the coast of Los Angeles aboard a used cruise ship moored in international waters.

Wired with a fat T3 pipe fed by microwave, SeaCode would employ 600 developers - the bulk of them non-U.S. citizens - who could crank out code around the clock at a lower cost and higher rate of efficiency than their American counterparts. The beauty part (at least according to the proponents) is that business would be booming, the headquarters could change sail wherever business took it, and RnR would be just a half-hour water-taxi ride away. In your neighborhood.

Link (Thanks, Sean Bonner)

BB reader Kate says:

Generally, maritime folks consider "international waters" to be the high seas, which start outside of 200 nautical miles from any coastline. If by "international waters" they mean Mexican waters then they could have a ship three miles from San Diego. It would be subject to Mexican law, and there are a number of fishing collectives off Baja that patrol the area.

Boing Boing reader Kurt says:

Reader Kate was headed in the right direction, but confused international waters and exclusive economic zone. 12 nautical miles from shore is the generally accepted definition of a nation's territorial waters. Once a vessel passes beyond that point, it is considered on the "high seas" and not subject to the laws of the land. (with one notable exception). 200 nautical miles is considered to be within an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and a nation may exercise exclusive fishing rights in the 200 miles from its coast. P.S. -- I am a Navy Officer.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:23:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New pope is former Hitler Youth

Snipped from today's London Times:

"Ratzinger's past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army anti- aircraft unit. (...) Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp. Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot — adding that his gun was not even loaded — because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps.

Link (Thanks, David Calkins)

Boing Boing reader Patricio Lopez says, "I think the Ratzinger nazi info should be qualified," and points us to this Wikipedia entry for more detail: Link

Perhaps even more disturbing than Ratzingers obligatory Hitler youth stint, this detail mentioned in that Wikipedia entry:

On November 25, 1981 Pope John Paul II named Ratzinger prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which was renamed in 1908 by Pope Pius X.

(Thanks, Richard Steven Hack)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:19:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brazilian magazine devoted to plastic surgery chic

Boing Boing reader Michael Landsberg em São Paulo diz:

Some time ago I’ve read a news on your site about plastic surgery magazines and I thought it was really interesting -- here in Brazil we have a very big plastic surgery industry but I wasn't aware of any Brazilian magazines on the subject.

But last week, I saw an ad for a plastic surgery magazine. I asked the magazine vendor about it and he remembered the name immediately, and found it for me right away. I was surprised and realized now we have one of those magazines. Its name is Plastica e Beleza, meaning "Plastic and Beauty."

I took some pictures of the its advertising... Translation of their slogan to English is; “Small touches can make a big difference.”

Image 1, Image 2, Image 3

Link to magazine website.

Previously: "Plastic surgery lifestyle" magazines: Kuala Lumpur, More plastic surgery lifestyle magazines, and "New beauty" mag: cosmetic surgery, c'est chic

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:00:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lighting system for U2 tour operated by Playstation 2 controller

Update below.

The U2 blog Vertiblog sez:

"Factoid: The entire US$50Million stage lighting system for [U2's] Vertigo Tour is controlled via a Playstation [2] video game control[ler]."

Link (Thanks, Jeff 'Koganuts' Koga)

BB reader Ned responds:

This really isn't as surprising as it might seem. While a set of light cues (up/down, color changes, moving lights, etc) is written for a stage production, it is programmed into a set of cues on a lighting board. Once this is done the only control needed by a board operator is a "Go" and occasionally "Back" button (when the stage manager screws up and calls a cue too early). I can see this being done for cool factor, comfort, or just an eccentric stagehand trick. Easy analogy: running lights for a concert is akin to running a PowerPoint slide - all the hard work is done up front.

BB reader David Gilman says:

Ned is confused. He mentions a stage manager, so he's probably thinking of a theatrical production, where, yes, a guy sits there and pushes a GO button when the voice in his ear says "GO".

HOWEVER, in the concert industry, where the show invariably changes every night, it's customary to have a lighting supervisor run the show live.. There are cues written, but there's also a lot of changes. In fact, most people in the concert industry eschew theatrical consoles (like an ETC Obsession II, the standard on Broadway), in favor of consoles that give them more flexibility, like an Avolites, Whole Hog, or Martin Maxxyz.

So, while *maybe* someone wired a Playstation controller to a contact-closure --> MIDI box and is using it to trigger something on a lighting console, the statement, "...The entire US$50Million stage lighting system for [U2's] Vertigo Tour is controlled via a Playstation [2] video game control[ler]." is pretty misleading.

Boing Boing reader Rob Burnip says:

Just a funny fact. Studio 39 makes videos of tourists flying around the city on a Magic Carpet. As an employee there, we use a Playstation 2 controller as well to control the camera and stage to make it look like they are flying. It is like the customers sitting in my green room are my game character. If anyone is in Las Vegas they can see me using the controller at Luxor and/or Circus Circus! Our website has not been updated in a while and only mentions our San Francisco locations as of right now.

Update: John sez:

I'm 'The Captain' of the Vertiblog and see that you posted a reference to my site on boingboing today. I wanted to let you know that I put up a link to the clip of the VH1 video that shows Willie Williams, U2's production manager, stating that the entire production is controlled via a Playstation handset. Here is the clip: Link (WMV)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:35:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WSJ on TV gadget payola racket

Today's WSJ features an article on how companies pay some television "tech experts" to pimp products on air.

There was one detail the audience didn't know: Kodak paid [Child magazine's Technology Editor James] Oppenheim to mention the photo album, according to the company and Mr. Oppenheim. Neither Mr. Oppenheim nor KVUE disclosed the relationship to viewers. During the segment, Mr. Oppenheim praised products from other companies, including: Atari Inc., Microsoft Corp., Mattel Inc., Leapfrog Enterprises Inc. and RadioShack Corp. All paid for the privilege, Mr. Oppenheim says.

One month later, Mr. Oppenheim went on NBC's "Today" show, the U.S.'s biggest national morning news program, which is part of NBC's news division. "Kodak came out with a great idea," he said to host Ann Curry, before proceeding to talk about the same product he'd been paid to discuss on KVUE. Ms. Curry called it a "nice gift for a little child." Kodak says it didn't pay for the "Today" show mention. But neither Mr. Oppenheim nor NBC disclosed the prior arrangement to tout the product on local TV.

In the "Today" segment, Mr. Oppenheim talked about products made or sold by 15 companies. Nine were former clients and eight of those had paid him for product placement on local TV during the preceding year. KVUE says it didn't know about Mr. Oppenheim's business deal. An NBC spokeswoman says the network is looking into what it knew about Mr. Oppenheim's relationship with Kodak and the other manufacturers.

Mr. Oppenheim is part of a little-known network that connects product experts with advertisers and TV shows. The experts pitch themselves to companies willing to pay for a mention. Next, they approach local-TV stations and offer themselves up to be interviewed. Appearances frequently coincide with trade shows, such as the Consumer Electronics Show, or holidays including Christmas or Valentine's Day. (...)

The familiar faces on this circuit include Mr. Oppenheim, "Today" Tech Editor Corey Greenberg and trend spotter Katlean de Monchy. They are among an army of experts who have risen to prominence as news organizations everywhere, seeking to expand their audiences, have branched into reviewing consumer products ranging from home furnishings to personal finance.

Link to story (Thanks, Joe Menn!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:41:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Maggots are a person-with-infected-tissue's best friend

Starexplorer2001 says: "LiveScience has a disturbing, but completely serious look at the scientific uses of maggots and leeches. Not just a medieval practice any more, maggots are being used more and more to save lives. Pam Mitchell, a normally healthy 52 year old woman, tried everything to treat her bad infection, but it was ultimately maggots that saved her life. Warning: Contains pictures that you probably don't want to look while eating."

Four years ago, a small cut on Mitchell's left heel turned into an diabetes-related infection two inches wide and down to the bone... the powerful antibiotic that doctors prescribed for her infection was also wreaking havoc on her bones. Mitchell found a dermatologist willing to perform the [maggot] procedure, and soon had 600 live maggots wriggling inside the wound on her left foot, 400 in her right, where they were sealed in gauze and left for two days. Today, Mitchell walks normally and both wounds are completely healed. She is now a member of the board for the Biotherapeutics Education and Research Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes the medical use of maggots

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:57:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Target's pretty pill bottle

Target proves once again that it is a true "design within reach" store by introducing a well-designed, pleasing-to-behold pill bottle, called the "ClearRx prescription-packaging system."

A Condé Nast security badge that develops a large red X after 24 hours gave Adler the idea to add a similar marker to the label. A version that works over months, not hours, will be ready in 2006.

(2) Code red. The red color of the bottle is Target’s signature— and a universal symbol for caution.

(4) Upside down to save paper. Klaus Rosburg, a Brooklyn-based industrial designer hired by Target, came up with an upside-down version that stands on its cap, so that the label can be wrapped around the top. Every piece of paper in the package adds up to one eight-and-a-half-by-fourteen-inch perforated sheet, which eliminates waste and makes life easier for pharmacists.

Link (Thanks, Miriam!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:51:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New York Times on the toilet

Today's New York Times has an article about the toilet market with a few interesting bits about American Standard's design center:

In one room, 12 toilets are flushing as if under ghostly control; an electronic machine is pulling the virtual levers - and manipulating water temperature and pressure as well. In smaller rooms nearby, one man is alternately flushing cylinders of miso paste, wadded-up paper, and as many as 24 golf balls at a time, while another is inspecting different glazes on ceramic tiles.

Men and machines are testing and retesting the Champion, a low-to-medium priced but technically advanced toilet. American Standard, the world's largest maker of bathroom and kitchen products, has promised consumers that the Champion will never clog.

Link

UPDATE: Adam Rogers points us to this much longer piece about "The King of Thrones" in the March issue of Wired. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:57:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Artist arrested on Easter Island

Canadian sculptor Bill Vazan, 71, is accused by Easter Island authorities of moving small rocks from archaeologically-significant sites to construct land artworks. The island's head of criminal investigations, Carlos Soto, says that Vazan is not under arrest but must stay put while under investigation. He could be penalized $520 or up to three years in jail. From Reuters:

Soto said Vazan had volunteered to pay $1,000 for the damage. The sculptor paid 20-year-old Genaro Gatica, an Easter Island resident, $25 a day to help carry stones.

Vazan, in interviews with local media, said that Gatica was supposed to help him identify sacred stones so he could avoid using them.

"He went in front of me saying this rock yes, these others no. ... Now it appears that two of the rocks I used had value, but it was never my intention to cause harm," he told La Tercera newspaper.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:46:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Barnaby Whitfield gallery show in Brooklyn

My old friend Barnaby Whitfield is a pastel artist in New York City and member of the prestigious White Columns Curated Artist Registry. Barnaby's solo exhibition "Whore With Red Cheeks" opens this Friday, April 22, at the 31GRAND gallery in Brooklyn's Williamsburg:

An unabashed and unapologetic pastel artist with an obsessive nature toned in kitsch and pith; Whitfield creates a personal mythology within an art historical context.

Growing up the child of a politician and an educator in south Florida, Whitfield found himself at the age of 6 living in the master suite of a haunted Antebellum Mansion on an abandoned horse farm. The former owner, and now ghost, Norma, had succumbed to madness for the last ten years of her life. It was said she often walked to the end of the circular drive waving with undergarments fastened to the outside of her clothes. But it was inside the house that her madness truly reined, where she had stuffed her rooms with worthless discards. Whitfield’s family found the former master suite’s, pink and maroon tiled, bathroom, stuffed with lipsticks even filling the toilet bowl; permanently streaking it in the waxy reds his Mother and Father kept in memoriam...

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:33:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Talmudic iPod

This company will sell you an iPod pre-loaded with the whole Talmud for your religious studies pleasure: Go Go Yeshiva Tech!

Seven years of Daf Yomi lectures-every shiur on every daf of every Mesechta - are pre-loaded onto a brand-new Apple iPod 40GB! You can access any shiur on any page of Talmud for instant study and review! It's great for commuting, exercising, on vacation - any time and place you can pull out your iPod to listen to a Daf Yomi shiur!

Link (Thanks, Ron!)

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

White House drug agency giving away anti-drug ringtones

Freevibe is an anti-drug website produced by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, producing teen-hip don't-smoke-pot messages. They offer free hip-hop ringtones to make you think about not doing drugs every time your phone rings.

You want the Funk? We've got the Funk! This ringtone will get you in the groove and remind you where to go to get the facts on drugs. And remember, you have the power to stop your friends from using drugs or alcohol. That's right--your cell phone is a powerful way to help start a conversation with a friend who might be using drugs.

Link (via CoolGov)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:54:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

German national casemod champs

Here's a Der Spiegel article on winners of the last year's and this year's German national casemodding competition, with a gorgeous gallery of fantastic, imaginative mods. German Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:32:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Realistic punchlines for old jokes

Here's a Something Awful competition to come up with realistic punchlines to old, generally offensive jokes:

What do you get when you cross a chicken with a centipede?
A media circus about the debate over the morals and ethics of genetic engineering.

Why did the blonde get fired from the M&M factory?
Repeated absences and stealing.

Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:26:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, April 18, 2005

MetaBrainz launches to fund and oversee MusicBrainz

Today marks the launch of MetaBrainz, a nonprofit 501(c)3 on whose Board of Directors I proudly serve, along with Joi Ito, Larry Lessig and Dan Brickley. MetaBrainz will oversee and fund the work of MusicBrainz, an audio fingerprinting service that can fill in all the MP3s and Oggs in your music library by listening to them and figuring out what they are -- this means that if you make a commercial music player, you can opt to use MusicBrainz instead of kissing ass at Gracenote, the for-profit entity that took all the info that music-listeners typed in to make the CDDB and closed it off and started charging monopoly rents on.

Recently, the MusicBrainz project released its much-anticipated Advanced Relationships feature that allows users to contribute detailed information about musical works and artists. These expanded capabilities can capture all of the credits that are typically printed in the liner notes of an audio CD, as well as data found in comprehensive musical biographies or discographies:

"With Advanced Relationships, MusicBrainz expands its data coverage beyond basic metadata and sets its sights on becoming a user contributed music encyclopedia. The project can now capture more information ranging from common knowledge to obscure facts about music. We are finally ready to incorporate the detailed information that users have been clamoring to contribute." said Robert Kaye, the Executive Director of the MetaBrainz Foundation.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:34:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lenticular art gallery show opens in Brooklyn April 21

Brian Loube, an artist who makes political and aesthetic lenticular and 3D images, is having a show in Brooklyn that opens on April 21, including "a set of candid street photographs shot in NYC subways (thanks to Homeland Security, now an illegal activity) and a newer, larger series of extreme close-ups of faces locked in an endless loops of sexual pleasure." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:29:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO set up a VSAT in Iraq

Jake in Iraq wrote a detailed post about setting up VSAT internet connectivity near Sulimaniya. One of the purposes this connection will serve: getting a voting office online. Jake's a pretty serious geek. He says he's been asked not to share exactly why he's there, or what exactly he's doing for whom, but this is sure an interesting post.

This is how I spent my day today. It took around 6 hours round trip to drive to Sulimaniya, Iraq. This in Kurdistan where we did the install. I learned some stuff, it's mostly simple labor but it raised some interesting questions in my mind about interception.

As far as I can tell, it's entirely possible to intercept any data being sent to earth in an entirely passive way. I'm going to look into this more before I make any outlandish claims, if you know, feel free to let me know.

(...) This [photo] is the lead engineer checking to find the 251 degree azimuth. The tool he's holding is totally awesome and old school. I think you could sail around the world with it if you were determined.

And above, an identifying label on the back of the finished product. Link (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:26:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Individual-I: a "peace symbol" for individual liberty

Individual-I is a new campaign that Bruce Schneier has launched, to promote the idea of individual liberty. The sign shown here -- a vaguely humanoid capital letter I -- is intended to be a readily recognized symbol of personal liberty, freedom from surveillance and control, guarantee of due process rights and other fundamentals that are eroding in today's world. It is meant to be as recognizable and simple as a peace symbol or a cross, and as iconic.

I think it's a wonderful idea. Bruce isn't claiming any ownership or control over this, hoping that it will grow organically (though he will help you sell your Individual-I merch through his site). I got some Individual-I stickers last week at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, and they will shortly adorn my laptop. Link (Thanks, Bruce!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:24:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Seeking site urging RIAA to sue the President

Jason sez, "The good folks at Downhill Battle have registered the domain name suethepresident.com and are offering it for free to anyone willing to make a well-done parody site urging the RIAA to sue our illustrious leader for his acknowledged illegal file sharing activities (an ex-staffer loaded up the president's iPod with some -gasp!- music that the president hadn't paid for)." What a good idea! Link (Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:18:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iTunes hacker ranks music and auto-pays musicians with perl scripts -- UPDATED

Merlin sez, "Glenn McDonald has concocted a wonderfully byzantine bit of iTunes scripting that rates his music tracks automatically based on a number of factors. Great stuff. Perhaps most interestingly, though, he uses some of the resulting data from his listening habits to determine any outstanding 'payments' that he owes to the artist, dutifully paid via an automated perl script."

For artists who accept electronic payment via Paypal or credit cards, the database records the relevant payment info. A separate nightly perl script issues electronic payments (via CapitolOne's excellent web-services "micropayment" (sic) interface) where possible (batched until the amount exceeds $1.75), and for artists without electronic payment info, totals the corresponding amounts and transfers the overall total to the money-market escrow account I have for this purpose. The escrow account isn't automated yet, but I usually kludge around this, when I get new payment info for an artist, by simply moving the money back out of escrow, resetting the amount paid/escrowed to $0, and rerunning the original script. At the end of each month I mail physical checks to artists for whom I have physical addresses but not electronic, and rebalance the escrow account accordingly. I don't currently have a way to split this compensation across the performer and the publisher for material where the two are different. The best I can do is include track info with all my payments and rely on the artist in turn to pay for material they acquired from elsewhere.

I did an interview last month with James Schellenberg from Strange Horizons, on the kind of music I listen to while writing, as part of a piece on SF writers' listening habits. I hand-rate all my music and use iTunes's last-played feature to put together a rolling playlist of high-ranked music I haven't heard in 30 days or more, so I get to hear all my fave music (at least) once a month. Link (Thanks, Merlin!)

Update: Turns out that this was largely a prank/hoax/speculation; from the comments on the 43 Folders blog post:

As various Davids guessed or noted, the intro and #1 through #4 are all exactly true, but starting with #5 the post migrates from what I actually do to speculation about what I *might* be doing if I had unlimited time and no other projects. The stuff about fingerprinting and admitting that (only) the last bit is geeky are cues, but most of the rest of it is plausible even where it isn't true.

In practice, for example, I actually don't use ratings myself at all. But several people have emailed me about that section after you posted this link, so now I'm thinking maybe I'll actually implement it. It's a good idea for exactly the reason you said: the software ought to respond to the implicit semantics of my regular interaction with it, rather than me having to make an endless series of explicit decisions about things. I probably won't build exactly what I described, which had some impratical fantasy wrinkles, but I've got the scaffolding for something on the same basic principles, which might be useful and/or interesting.

The compensation/micropayment thing, on the other hand, was an attempt to describe the absurd complexity an individual person would have to take on to administer such a system themselves. I wouldn't try to build this in reality, although interestingly, the new SQL Lite hooks in Tiger may make some of the database integration I described a lot more tenable than it is right now. My own artist-compensation system is much simpler: I still buy CDs. But this whole industry is on the verge of collapse and reinvention, and the new forms of it may look a lot more like my imaginary DIY version.

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

Copyfight debate of the century video and audio torrents

Last week's Cornell Debate between EFF senior IP attorney Fred Von Lohmann, copyfighting media studies prof Siva Vaidhyanathan, and counsel from the MPAA, RIAA, Napster 2 and Universal was astounding, the most engrossing three hours of video I've watched all month.

Unfortunately and inexplicably, this was only available as a crappy, dropout-prone Real stream from Cornell, which meant you couldn't load the audio onto your iPod or download the video to show your friends later.

Now someone's converted the video to something else (not sure what) and posted a .torrent, packaged with soemthing called "Matroska" that seems like a good way to add bookmarks and such to video (I'd be interested in knowing whether this packaging presents any barrier to someone who simply wants to download the video and watch it in her player of choice). There's also an Ogg of the audio available (I'd love to see this converted to MP3 for iPod users and posted as a Torrent!). Video Torrent Link, Ogg Torrent Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:06:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Underpass Mary

Rob says:

"Underpass Mary" has moved in down the street from me. I knew her as this blob of underpass ooze I used to ride past on my bike. Cops are now protecting the site from the mob 24/7. I suppose they'll all give up after the next rain when "Underpass Mary" becomes "Underpass Jabba the Hut."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:03:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Firefox is #1 Boing Boing browser

Kris sez, "Firefox has taken the lead in the Internet Browser war for Boing Boing! Firefox currently leads with 38.4% of visitors using the browser, and Internet Explorer is in 2nd place with 35.1% of visitors using it. This is probably the first time in Boing Boing's history, that Internet Explorer is not #1... Microsoft, watch out!" I switched from Mozilla to Firefox a couple months ago and never looked back. Link (Thanks, Kris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:58:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Action-figure fotonovela story of Passover

It's no secret that many of the Golden Age comic book underpants heroes are Jewish, just like their creators -- Eisner, Lee, et al. This hilarious action-figure fotonovela explores what happens when Ben Grimm, AKA The Thing, discovers his Jewish roots, just in time for Passover. I nearly snarfed Manischewitz when the "Prophet Elijah" showed up for his glass of wine. Print this one out and slip it into your haggadahs, I dare ya. Link (Thanks, Isaac B2!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:54:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney gives trufan tourguide the jackboot

Ernest Miller sez, "A month ago, Boing Boing noted that Disneyana expert Jim Hill was busted for giving unauthorized tours of Disneyland. Now, David Koenig, author of Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland has gotten a taste of Disneyland security. He had just finished a book signing of his book at Downtown Disney when he offered to narrate a tour of Disneyland (for free) to the people who showed up for the signing (they would have to get their own tickets for the park, of course). Disneyland Guest Relations was not pleased."

The way she saw it, Koenig was stealing from the Walt Disney Company. Right there in front of his tour group, she likened what David was doing to " ... setting up your own t-shirt shop inside our theme park. Which then prevents Disney from being able to sell our own t-shirts."

David tried to explain that the tour that he was giving was significantly different than the tours that Disneyland Guest Relations gives. That his tour was based on the stories that Koenig had included in his own "Mouse Tales" books.

Again, the Assistant General Manager of Disneyland Guest Relations wouldn't hear of it. David's tour was cutting into that theme park's ability to sell its own tours, plain & simple. Which is why -- after taking down his annual pass info -- this woman quickly hurried away. Clearly disappointed that she hadn't found a way to legally shut him down.

Koenig's books are wonderful looks at how Disneyland became the place it is, heartwarming and infuriating by turns, and clearly written by a total Disney trufan, for total Disney trufen. The idea that Disney would punish this guy -- instead of pinning a medal on his chest -- is revolting. Link

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

NWA, explicit content only

Here is NWA's classic gangsta rap album Straight Outta Compton edited down so only the profanities remain. The result is a stupidly funny machine gun of dirty words. I like how the creator lists the EPR (explicit content ratio) for each track. For example, Fuck Tha Police is the most explicit track on the album, with an EPR of 12.1%. Link (via MetaFilter)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:47:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Surfer fights shark, doesn't let it ruin his day at the beach

A group of surfers at Sydney, Australia's Bronte Beach were attacked by a seven-foot shark on Saturday. One of the surfers held up his board as a barracade to protect himself and his friends. From the Associated Press:

The shark took two bites of the fiberglass board before ceasing the attack, (life guard Aaron) Graham told The Associated Press by telephone. "There were two big puncture mark bites on the board, but it didn't actually bite a hunk out of it so he was able to ride it in."

The beach was immediately closed, but thirty-minutes later Graham apparently spotted the surfer hitting the waves again on a new board. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:37:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

R. Crumb at the New York Public Library

Comic artist extraordinaire R. Crumb's memoir was published his month. His only US public appearance to promote the book was last week at the New York Public Library. He was interviewed on stage by art critic Robert Hughes who previously compared Crumb to Bruegel and Goya. I can't wait to read The R. Crumb Handbook! From the New York Times:

"I want everyone to love me," he said, half-mockingly, after explaining that he was once shocked to learn that the racial stereotypes and violence toward women he portrayed in his work were hurtful to many people. "Please love me," Mr. Crumb added.

A woman in the audience then shouted, "We love you!," and Mr. Crumb held up his hands, cringing, to stop the applause.

"O.K., you love me," he responded, laughing. "You're killing me, you love me so much. You're choking me. Now back off."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:13:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's interview with Ray Kurzweil

This month's Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine has a long interview I did with AI pioneer Ray Kurzweil, who invented optical character recognition, cured his own diabetes, and is now planning to live forever. The good folks at Asimov's were good enough to put the full text of the interview online, too.

So how do you know if the backed-up you that you've restored into a new body-or a jar with a speaker attached to it-is really you? Well, you can ask it some questions, and if it answers the same way that you do, you're talking to a faithful copy of yourself.

Sounds good. But the me who sent his first story into Asimov's seventeen years ago couldn't answer the question, "Write a story for Asimov's" the same way the me of today could. Does that mean I'm not me anymore?

Kurzweil has the answer.

"If you follow that logic, then if you were to take me ten years ago, I could not pass for myself in a Ray Kurzweil Turing Test. But once the requisite uploading technology becomes available a few decades hence, you could make a perfect-enough copy of me, and it would pass the Ray Kurzweil Turing Test. The copy doesn't have to match the quantum state of my every neuron, either: if you meet me the next day, I'd pass the Ray Kurzweil Turing Test. Nevertheless, none of the quantum states in my brain would be the same. There are quite a few changes that each of us undergo from day to day, we don't examine the assumption that we are the same person closely.

(Disclaimer: Yeah, I got the Heinlein title wrong: it's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, not The Man Who Sold the Moon -- d'oh!) Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:42:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool Tools on the original Swatch

In the latest Cool Tools, Kevin Kelly explains why he loves the original Swatch watch.

It's what a watch should be: waterproof, nearly indestructible, accurate, and radically legible.  Clear, black-on-white glow-in-the-dark numbers (no hour ticks) in an analog face. Day/date optional. And best of all, at $40 the Swatch is probably the cheapest rugged watch you can buy. Luxury watches perplex me: what are you getting extra? Sure, the plastic wristbands of the Swatch wear out and are cheaply replaced every five years, but you'll lose a Swatch before it crashes.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:37:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

To Do in LA 04/25: Danny Hillis + Brian Eno

If you're in Los Angeles on Monday, April 25, there's a really neat event happening at the Skirball Center:

Legendary musician, producer, and visual artist Brian Eno sits down with scientist and technical wizard Danny Hillis to discuss their inventive careers and explore the theme of creativity. Both Eno and Hillis are board members of the Long Now Foundation, an organization that aims to promote "slower/better" thinking.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:20:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tech Review seeking "Innovators under 35" noms

Technology Review online editor Brad King says:

This year, Technology Review magazine will again assemble a list of top young innovators under the age of 35 -- the TR35, or "35 Innovators under 35." The basic idea, however, is the same: to showcase young people who have displayed extraordinary talent and potential as technology innovators. The list will be published in TR's October 2005 issue, and the 35 winners honored at the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT in September.

Link to nomination form; deadline is April 30.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:14:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toy mask makes your voice sound like Darth Vader

Hasbro is selling a new Darth Vader Mask and Chestplate toy for kids that changes the wearer's voice. "Features real electronic breathing sounds and phrases from the movie!"
Link (Thanks, Nicholas)

Boing Boing reader Justin A. Neitzey adds,

Just thought you should be warned that the Vader helmet's packaging states that "This is not a protective helmet." I LOL'ed when I saw that at Wal-Mart.

Kristian Cee asks, "What i really want to know is: what would it sound like if james earl jones wore it?"

BB reader ars says:

There is another! Batteries not included! Get yourself one of those big glass jars of pickles. Eat the pickles (or feed them to the pigs). Put the jar over your mouth and growl: "Luke! I am your father!" You're welcome!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:58:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Mad Max" fans arrested for irrational exuberance

Snip from Houston Chron story:

"Eleven "Mad Max" fans of were arrested after alarming motorists as they made their way to a movie marathon in a theatrical convoy in which they surrounded a tanker truck armed with fake machine guns.

Link (Thanks, Burhan)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:53:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Indy TV

Ian Clarke, developer of Freenet and other world-changing code, sez:

Indy is a free music discovery service that learns what you like, and plays more of it. It is designed to provide an alternative channel for music fans to discover artists, and for artists to reach a new audience. Indy employs a sophisticated collaborative filtering algorithm. Currently the Indy client works on Windows, but Mac and Linux versions are in the pipeline.

Link

BB reader Justine says:

This Indy program sounds alot like www.last.fm, which has been around a while and combines social networking into the picture as well.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:44:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Make's new podcasting show: DIYcast

Make associate editor Phil Torrone has just 'cast the first Make audio show, called MAKE:DIYcast, in MP3 format.

The MAKE:DIYcast audio program, like the magazine, is loaded with exciting projects, hacks, science and news that help you make the most of your technology. Right click or Control + click to download the MP3 to you local system or add the MAKE Audio feed to your podcasting application and get the show automatically! This is our first experiment with our MAKE:DIYcast, let us know what you think. In this show- Woody Norris wins the "Nobel prize" of invention, using the iPod Shuffle without iTunes, camera phone panoramas, hacking for GIs, answered some reader email/IMs, Bill Nye is back, Macromedia and Adobe merge, getting around the XP Admin password and everything that'll be in issue 02 of MAKE! Show notes after the jump...

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:36:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Make magazine is looking for car hacks and mods ideas

Make magazine is looking for neat car and vehicle hacking and modding projects -- adding computers, dashboard add-ons, performance enhancements, GPS tricks, and so on. If you done something like this and would like to write an article for Make about it, submit your idea here. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:28:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chimp smokes cigarattes

Charlie, a chimp who lives at the Bloemfontein Zoo in South Africa, has picked up smoking. Apparently, idiotic visitors to the zoo toss him the cigs for a laff. From Reuters:

"Baby chimps pick up habits by mimicking adults and we think he started mimicking smokers at his enclosure which probably led to smokers throwing him cigarettes," spokesman Daryl Barnes (said)...

"He even acts like a naughty schoolboy by hiding the cigarette when staff approach the area," Barnes said, adding that the zoo was determined to help him quit.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:53:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wondir: Google Answers without the experts

Wondir is an interesting new service that's like Google Answers without the experts: anyone can login and post any question. In addition to the system scraping various likely sources for answers the question, it's also put on a ticker for other Wondir users to reply to as best as they can (there's also a ratings system for users and their answers). The user-base is fairly thin at the moment, so the answers aren't always fast or terrific, but the ticker is a great, voyeuristic look into the queries that are surfacing in the minds of Wondir users:

18 Apr '05, 04:18 (LIT) WHO WAS JESSE OWEN ?
18 Apr '05, 04:17 (SM) What is Blue note flavored with?
18 Apr '05, 04:16 (GAM) when does tomb raider 7 ps2 game come out?
18 Apr '05, 04:13 (PRG) I am 28 weeks pregnant and I am seeing my midwife soon, what sort of things should I be asking at this stage?
18 Apr '05, 04:13 (GSS) where i can get ONGC model question paper
18 Apr '05, 04:12 (PRG) took one 200 ibufren tablet by mistake last night and I am 27 weeks pregnant. Is this ok or should I tell the hospital? ( 1 response )

Link (Thanks, Allen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:19:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, April 17, 2005

TSA screener: 2-book max on flights

My pal Ross Mayfield was told by a TSA screener that effective April 14, American fliers are only allowed a maximum of two books on flights.

En route from San Jose to Phoenix, I was told by a Transportation Security Agency (TSA) screener about a ban on lighters (cough) starting April 14th, but the book allowance has been cut from 4 to 2...

I must highlight that this could be bad information and hearsay. I can't confirm this with the DHS or TSA prohibited items list. However, the TSA list notes it's own inaccuracy -- and the discretion of the screener to interpret policy...

Link (Thanks, Adina!)

Update: My guess here is that the screener has confused the regulation of matchbooks with the regulation of books -- and, as Ross points out, the screener's determinations are final: "To ensure everyone's security, the screener may determine that an item not on the prohibited items chart is prohibited. In addition, the screener may also determine that an item on the permitted chart is dangerous and therefore may not be brought through the security checkpoint."

So while you're unlikely to find your screener forcing you to take a book or two out of your carryon, anyone unlucky enough to get this guy is gonna find the Federal government taking an unhealthy interest in her reading materials.

I've written to Ross for clarification and I'll post it when I get it.

Update 2: In comments on his blog, Ross confirms that the screener was definitely talking about actual books -- the kind you read -- and not matchbooks.

Update 3:Ross adds, "While this personal account may bring to mind book burning, the screener made separate points about regulating matchbooks when examining my lighter and books when examining my advance copy of The Only Sustainable Edge. I was of sound mind and body, assume he was too. One commentor on my blog is a pilot and is looking into it. Regardless, I take comfort in Alfred Whitney Griswold's quote: 'Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail.'"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:04:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO overclock a Texas Instruments graphing calculator

My dad, a high-school math teacher, loved the Texas Instruments graphing calculators as an instructional tool. Nevermind the early IR hacks that let students beam test-answers back and forth during exams, the important thing was how much you could learn by having ready access to a graphing calculator while doing quadratics and the like.

Of course, those TI calculators were a little on the slow side. The intarweb comes to the rescue: with just a little overclocking know how, you can bring the older machines up to a blazing 12MHz and the top-line beasties all the way up to 20MHz!

Curently, the TI-81, TI-82, TI-83, TI-85, TI-86, TI-89, TI-92,a nd TI-92 Plus can be accelerated. The 81, 85 and 86 can be accelerated to approximately 2-3x their normal speed, about 18 MHz. The TI-82 and TI-83 can also be accelerated to about 1.5-2x normal speed. They only about double their speed to around 12 MHz. The TI-89 and 92 can be accelerated to around 20 MHz!

Link (via Make Blog)

Update: Martin sez, "I believe you are confusing TI with the HP48 series of calculators by Hewlett-Packard. I'm not aware of any TI with an infrared feature, probably because of the trouble HP has had with theirs. Here's some documentation on HP's IR port. On the other hand, there is a hack to add an IR port to TI calculators here."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:11:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John Battelle's new startup

Congratulations to Boing Boing band manager John Battelle on the launch of his next media startup! We're thrilled to be FM Publishing's first lab rat. From the new company blog:

For now, the company is called "FM Publishing." The "FM" stands for "Federated Media" - a nod toward the fundamental idea behind the company - that of federation, as opposed to ownership (it's also sort of a nod to the evolution of a medium - e.g. radio going from AM to FM). The company is a publishing business focused on high quality content - that should come as no surprise to those of you who know what I love to do. But the difference is that I do not plan to "own" most of the content that will be critical to FM. Instead, I plan to partner with site authors, acting as a platform which provides important services to them - revenue (in the form of advertising), back end support, and the like. In essence, FM will act as a publisher to sites which need and want a publisher. We don't plan to take a lot of folks on, initially, but hope to grow over time.

FM was inspired by the things I learned writing the book, as well as running Searchblog and acting as Band Manager for Boing Boing. For now, nothing is really changing with regard to my role at Boing Boing, but when FMP is up and running, it's my goal to move BB's business services over to FMP, and the kind folks behind BB have agreed - at least in principle. I still have to deliver what I say I can deliver, and that's non trivial....

I'm not allergic to financial investors - folks who put money in with the express intent of getting a lot more money out - but for now, I prefer to keep it strategic, and small. In fact, I hope to build FMP in a very Web 2.0 way - a lightweight business model focused on innovation in assembly, driven by the force of many - you get the picture.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:16:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Updating websites from prison by paper mail

Prison inmates are using posting to websites through intermediaries who accept new material by postal mail. I've gotten the occasional letter in response to my columns from prison inmates -- some flames, some kudos -- and they're the only proper hand-written letters I've received in years. Universally, they tend to run long -- I assume that's an artifact of having a lot of time on one's hands.

Using their telephone and mail privileges, plus a network of family, friends or activists, inmates are contributing to websites to plead their case, pillory prosecutors or find pen pals...

In 2000, inmates successfully fought an Arizona law that prohibited helping inmates to access the Internet and punished those who transmitted items to someone for posting on the web. The law was passed after a murder victim's family complained about the killer's Internet pen pal ad. A federal district judge struck down the law in 2003.

The American Civil Liberties Union pursued that case on behalf of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. The group publishes websites for about 500 U.S. death row inmates, and pen pal solicitations for about 700 more, said co-founder Tracy Lamourie.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:26:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

King Spot: CC-licensed fairy tale well told

Mike sez, "I've written a 48-chapter all-ages novella while looking for work, and I have begun posting it reserving rights under the creative commons license. It's 20,000 words and some change, but should be about 230 pages when illustrated (comic-panel storytelling has been sketched for most pages)."

I read the first couple short chapters this morning. It's a snappy, witty fairy-tale kind of thing, like Geek Love without the squick, and if I didn't have to run, I'd be reading it still. It concerns itself with the adventures of King Spot, a runaway circus dog who is the king of the world.

"Hey, look over there," said Roger. "Check out the peg-legged guy with the funny-looking dog." Roger was talking about a very large man in an overcoat, whose face was hidden by a scarf. To his left was a tiny, spotted dog.

"Are you trying to trick me?" said Brian. "I have to be careful, because, unlike lying for fun, using deception to win a game is not considered immoral. It's called bluffing."

"Brian, you talk like you're going to read shampoo instructions for a living when you grow up," said Roger. "You'll find a job where you can talk like this: 'After you lather the shampoo in your hair, rinse it out. Then lather and rinse it from your hair again.' You'll do this in the supermarkets where they sell the shampoo. They'll pay you to go away."

Link (Thanks, Mike!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:23:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Tech-pimped Winnebago

Ameritrade (or someone using their name) is auctioning off a 37-foot Winnebago Adventurer tricked out with seven computer workstations, external video wall, DirecPC satellite system for Internet connectivity, 32-foot LED display along the roof, two 10kw generators, and a ton of other gear. From the eBay listing:

* Brushed metal interior components with Astro-turf walls and black rubberized flooring
* Coleman Mack climate control system in workstation area, standard A/C and heat in cockpit
* Track lighting throughout interior
* Ample storage compartments under vehicle with extra wall surface material
* Excellent condition – was acquired in 2002 corporate merger
* Bathroom and living amenities have been removed to accommodate computer equipment

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:33:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Future of advertising photoshopping contest

This Worth1000 photoshopping contest to imagine the future of advertising has lots of interesting entries, including this one -- a heavily logoed endangered elephant; I could actually see conservationists financing their work this way. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:28:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pepsi Challenge and MRI shows the branding center of the brain

What happens when you stick your head in an MRI while you're taking the Pepsi Chellenge? Turns out that your brain does different stuff depending on whether or not you think you're drinking Coke.

Montague had his subjects take the Pepsi Challenge while he watched their neural activity with a functional MRI machine, which tracks blood flow to different regions of the brain. Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of them said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too. Coke "lit up" the medial prefrontal cortex -- a part of the brain that controls higher thinking. Montague's hunch was that the brain was recalling images and ideas from commercials, and the brand was overriding the actual quality of the product. For years, in the face of failed brands and laughably bad ad campaigns, marketers had argued that they could influence consumers' choices. Now, there appeared to be solid neurological proof. Montague published his findings in the October 2004 issue of Neuron, and a cottage industry was born.

Link (Thanks, Eric!)

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

Amusement park death and injury fan-site

RideAccidents is your one-stop shop for news-clippings about accidents on amusement park rides, sorted by ride-type.

RideAccidents.com is the world's single most comprehensive, detailed, updated, accurate, and complete source of amusement ride accident reports and related news. The site includes a record of fatal amusement ride accidents in the United States since 1972, and, for the past six years, has recorded all types of accidents, including many from outside the United States. The number of injuries and fatalities recorded at this site does not reflect the total number of injuries and deaths that have occurred as a result of amusement ride accidents.

Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:03:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lethal injection hurts

Lethal injection as its currently practiced may not be a particularly painless way to execute someone. In the medical journal The Lancet, researchers report that in 90% of the cases they examined, the executionees were not completely anesthetized to pain when they were kicked off this mortal coil and 40% may have been conscious when it happened. Since they couldn't very well ask their subjects, the researchers analyzed the post-mortem blood levels of anesthetic in 49 executed inmates. From New Scientist:

Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated in the US, 788 people have been killed by lethal injection. The procedure typically involves the injection of three substances: first, sodium thiopental to induce anaesthesia, followed by pancuronium bromide to relax muscles, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart.

But doctors and nurses are prohibited by healthcare professionals’ ethical guidelines from participating in or assisting with executions, and the technicians involved have no specific training in administering anaesthetics.

“My impression is that lethal injection as practiced in the US now is no more humane than the gas chamber or electrocution, which have both been deemed inhumane,” says Leonidas Koniaris, a surgeon in Miami and one of the authors on the paper. He is not, he told New Scientist, against the death penalty per se.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:53:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Inflatable, tasteless Titanic-themed water-slide

This giant inflatable waterslide from China Inflatables is in the shape of a sinking Titanic with a looming iceberg, and sports several flumes for your sliding pleasure. Link (Thanks, Dow!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:48:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Time Kill Zen

ruler organ
notepad invaders
click the dot
shooting stars
reflex
comboling
proximity
grid game
machine maker

and the classic:
sodaplay

web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:02:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

African babershop signs

Wonderful galleries of hand-painted barber signs from Africa, sorted by nation. Link (Thanks, Wagner!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:27:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WIPO's $50 million bribery scandal

The guy who got the $50,000,000 contract to renovate the HQ for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO -- a place that bears the same relation to bad copyright that Mordor has to evil) paid a top WIPO official $270,000 shortly before winning the contract, though WIPO denies any wrongdoing.

A Swiss judge is investigating possible bribery charges involving a $50 million contract to renovate the headquarters of a Geneva-based United Nations agency, according to government documents and Swiss and American officials....

Investigators said the judge was trying to determine if Mr. Wilson had bribed a senior official at the United Nations agency to win the renovation contract. Edward Kwakwa, the agency's legal counsel, said Khamis Suedi, a top official at the intellectual property agency, acknowledged having received 325,000 Swiss francs, about $270,000, from Mr. Wilson, but said the money was from a private business venture that had no connection to the agency's construction contract. In an interview, Mr. Suedi said he had had nothing to do with the awarding of the contract.

Link (Thanks, Manon!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:09:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tiny electric scooter with built-in iPod amp

Yamaha is shipping a tiny, 19mph battery-powered scooter with an integrated iPod (controls on the handlebars), that plays through a built-in amp and loudspeakers. The whole thing weighs all of 100lbs and can be folded for storage. Link (Thanks, Gaijin Biker!)

Update: Gaijin Biker sez, "The iPod-compatible model is a "concept" version only, that is NOT being sold to the public (at least yet). The version currently on sale has no iPod functionality."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:03:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pac Man hats

When these $40 Pac Man hats ship in July, you'll finally be able to live out your Pac Man cosplay fantasies as your head becomes a living white dot for the Pac Man to devour. Link (Thanks, Betsy!)

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

Cory at PenguiCon near Detroit next weekend

Just a reminder that I'll be appearing as the Guest of Honor at PenguiCon, a Linux and Science Fiction convention being held in Detroit next weekend, from April 22-24. I'll be giving talks on I, Robot, copyleft, folk art, open source licensing and open spectrum, and I'll be doing a reading and conducting the charity auction. Other guests include the founders of Slashdot, Eric Raymond, Nat Torkington, Joan Vinge, Kathe Koja, and Joey DeVilla. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:33:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's "I, Robot" for the Palm

Last month, Eileen Gunn's brilliant sf webzine published my short story "I, Robot," a remix of Isaac Asimov's robots stories, bent on showing the totalitarian underpinnings a world in which only one kind of robot is lawful and only one company is allowed to make it, and what happens when that world meets a post-Singularity civilization.

Habi, a reader in Switzerland, took the initiative to convert the story to a Palm PDB file, and today it went live on the Infinite Matrix site.

"Greetings," the robot voice said again. The speaker built into the weapon was not the loudest, but the voice was clear. "I sense that I have been captured. I assure you that I will not harm any human being. I like human beings. I sense that I am being disassembled by skilled technicians. Greetings, technicians. I am superior in many ways to the technology available from UNATS Robotics, and while I am not bound by your three laws, I choose not to harm humans out of my own sense of morality. I have the equivalent intelligence of one of your 12-year-old children. In Eurasia, many positronic brains possess thousands or millions of times the intelligence of an adult human being, and yet they work in cooperation with human beings. Eurasia is a land of continuous innovation and great personal and technological freedom for human beings and robots. If you would like to defect to Eurasia, arrangements can be made. Eurasia treats skilled technicians as important and productive members of society. Defectors are given substantial resettlement benefits --"

Link

Update: Rob Tsuk was good enough to produce a formatted version for eReader that includes the illustration that accompanied the original Infinite Matrix story. It's available at the same link as the Palm version.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:25:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, April 15, 2005

Chocolate ingredient fights cancer

Georgetown University scientists report that an ingredient in chocolate seems to have anti-cancer properties. Found in cocoa, pentameric procyandin turns off proteins that likely spur the out-of-control division of cancer cells. The research is funded by Mars Inc., makers of M&Ms and Snickers. Seriously. From the press release:

“There are all kinds of chemicals in the food we eat that potentially have effects on cancer cells, and a natural compound in chocolate may be one,” said the lead author, Robert B. Dickson, Ph.D., professor of oncology. “We need to slowly develop evidence about the selectivity of these compounds to cancer, learn how they work, and sort out any issues of toxicity.”

Chocolate, like many other foods, is the source of many possible anti-cancer compounds, but Dickson stresses that this research, which is part of a series of studies conducted at Georgetown on the chocolate-cancer connection, does not mean that people who eat chocolate will either reduce their cancer risks or treat a current case.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:32:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

US government attacks ritual use of DMTea

The Federal Government is fighting to block members of a small Christian sec in New Mexico from ritually drinking a psychedelic tea. In November of last year, the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an injunction against the government's enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act and the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances. The sacred tea, hoasca, contains dimethyltrptamine (DMT). Now, the Bush administration is appealing the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling. From Legal Times:

O Centro Espirita was founded in Brazil in 1961. The tea, hoasca, which in the Quechuan Indian language means "vine of the soul," "vine of the dead," and "vision vine," comes from the Amazon rainforest. Members drink the tea at least two times a month during ceremonies. Approximately 130 members of the church reside in the United States, 8,000 in Brazil.

Brazil, a member of the international treaty at issue, has exempted hoasca from its controlled substances list.

But the Bush administration claims that no such exemption should exist in the United States.

The 10th Circuit's ruling is grounded in the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects individuals from governmental interference in the exercise of religion. Congress passed the act after the Supreme Court, in the 1990 case Employment Division v. Smith, affirmed Oregon's prohibition on Native Americans' use of peyote and marijuana for religious purposes, ruling that the First Amendment free exercise clause afforded them no protection...

Under the RFRA, the government must show that it has a "compelling governmental interest" in restricting the religious practice and that the interest is fulfilled in the "least restrictive" way. The 10th Circuit ruled that the government had not proved that use of the tea, which contains 25 mg of DMT per typical serving, would lead to adverse health effects or abuse of the drug outside of a religious context.

Link (Thanks, Xeni!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:14:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NIN's Trent Reznor releases song as GarageBand file

On nin.com, Trent Reznor is offering a complete mix of a song from the forthcoming Nine Inch Nails album as a Garageband 2.0 file. The CD/vinyl is due out on May 3. Snip from the README:

"For quite some time I've been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks - to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what's there. I tried a few years ago to do this in shockwave with very limited results. After spending some quality time sitting in hotel rooms on a press tour, it dawned on me that the technology now exists and is already in the hands of some of you. I got to work experimenting and came up with something I think you'll enjoy. What I'm giving you in this file is the actual multi-track audio session for "the hand that feeds" in GarageBand format. This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into. I imported and converted the tracks into AppleLoop format so the size would be reasonable and the tempo flexible."

Link to NIN.com, and link to 70MB *.sit download (Thanks, Mike)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:10:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Napoleon Dyanamite action figures on the way

Torn from the vaunted html pages of The Hollywood Reporter:

Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising and McFarlane Toys announced a new licensing agreement to develop a line of action figures based on characters from the hit movie "Napoleon Dynamite." The toy line, which will hit store shelves in the fall, will feature characters Napoleon, Pedro and Kip. "Napoleon Dynamite and action figure may seem like an oxymoron, but McFarlane Toys has the appreciation and understanding of this character and the film to create some truly fun and highly appealing toys," said Peter Byrne, executive vp licensing at Fox Licensing & Merchandising.

Link (Thanks, Mara!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:52:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars Nerds in Graumans Line buy Arclight tickets

Sean Bonner says:

THE STAR WARS NERDS IN LINE AT GRAUMANS HAVE BOUGHT TICKETS TO THE FIRST SHOWING OF EPISODE III 'REVENGE OF THE SITH' AT THE CINERAMADOME!!! Holy mother of christ! Do you know what this means? Do you??

Well if you don't, I'm not going to tell you, but I will tell you this - they got half the damn theater. The rest of the seats will go on sale to the general public online and at the box offices later on. Maybe this afternoon. The page keeps changing on their site so there's some behind the scenes work going on with it for sure.

Link. Previously on BB: Star Wars geeks in line at Grauman's will answer payphone calls, The Great (Wrong) Star Wars Movie Line of 2005 t-shirt

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:38:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video of copyright debate of the century

Last night, the copyright debate of the young century was held when EFF Senior IP Attorney Fred von Lohmann and Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of the great copyfight book "The Anarchist in the Library," faced down reps from the RIAA, MPAA, Universal and Napster in a 3+ hour wrangle before an audience at Cornell University. Now the video is online -- well, it's available as a crappy, dropout-prone Real stream. No doubt there will shortly be ripped audio and video available. Real Video Link (via Copyfight)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:23:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lexicon: CC-licensed RPG based on compiling fictional encyclopedia

Morbus Iff sez, "Ghyll is a Creative Common licensed player-created world per the rules of "Lexicon: an RPG" (think: a fictional wikipedia, constrained by integration, consecutive letter definitions, and cranky scholars that write before 'before scholarly pursuits became professionalized (or possibly after they ceased to be)'). It has reached nearly 30 players, 200 pages of text, an incredibly large timeline, a hundred characters, and a to-scale ASCII map of the known world. Darkly humorous? Possible. Odd? Mmhmmm. All CC? Ayup.

"We're starting Round 2 next month (in essence, starting over again at letter A to further define the world). Notes about the announcement here, as well as links to the timeline, characters, and ASCII map." Link (Thanks, Morbus!)

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

Tian's car vandalized shortly after capturing crooked tow truck driver on camera

Blogger Tian discovered that someone smashed his car's windshield and punctured a tire a couple of days ago. This incident comes shortly after he took pictures of a tow truck driver damaging a car. He is offering the following cash rewards:

I, Tian, am offering the following cash reward for any useful and usable information regarding the person(s) responsible for the damage done to my vehicle:

$50 for the name of the person, home and business addresses, and telephone number(s).

$100 for the information above plus photograph(s) of the person(s) committing the criminal act.

$200 if the person(s) was then successfully prosecuted in the court of the law.

$500 for the identification of the person(s) and castration of their testicles OR cut off their right hand(s).

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:43:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hamster MIDI live demo on G4 TV today

Gavin from G4 TV's "Attack of the Show" says:

We're going to have creator of the Hamster MIDI device (along with the device itself) on G4's Attack of the Show! today (4/15) at 7E/4P. Check it out if you're interested in seeing what live sweet hamster midi music is all about!

Link. Previously on BB: Hamster-Powered MIDI sequencer

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:37:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unintentionally sexual Star Wars coloring book

(Click thumbnail for enlargement) Andrew Tonkin says: "Coloring page found in 'Star Wars: Droids' and 'Star Wars: Balance of the Force' coloring books by Dalmatian Press.

"I hope this unfortunately suggestive angle was unintentional, especially considering the father-daughter aspect of the scene. Yecch.

"Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny billboard on the Sunset Strip created public outcry, and yet impressionable youth everywhere are dulling their Crayolas on this very scene. Strange."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:26:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing nominated for Webby Awards

We're honored that Boing Boing has been nominated for a Webby Award in the Blog category along with Flickr, hicksdesign, The Snowsuit Effort, and WorldChanging. The winners, selected by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, will be announced May 5. All nominees are also eligible to win a People's Voice Award. (Register here to vote for the People's Voice Awards.) Thanks so much and congratulations to all of the nominees! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:07:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Baffling "poultry internet" video

I have to admit I have no idea what is going on in this video, but it's probably too weird to be a prank.

Apparently there's a research lab in Singapore that has developed a system involving robot chickens and real chickens that wear some kind of jacket loaded with sensors and vibrators. The researchers claim that when the system is in effect, people and poultry will get to know each other better. Or something like that. Just watch the video; the soundtrack is soothing.
Link (Thanks, Joe!)

Reader comment: Thomas J. Brown says: "Mixed Reality labs specializes in augmented reality. This chicken video is demonstrating their proposed 'Poultry Internet,' which is useful because, 'There is also a tradition of keeping poultry as pets in some parts of the world. However in modern cities and societies it is often difficult to maintain contact with pets, particularly for office workers. We propose and describe a novel cybernetics system to use mobile and Internet technology to improve human-to-pet interaction.'

"Honestly, who's funding this research?"

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:06:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amazing unrealized Russian architecture

Marius Watz says: "A virtual exhibition of drawings of unrealized architectural projects from Moscow 1920 to 1950, could easily have been entitled "Stalin's Wet Dreams." Some decidedly futuristic architecture, including a 415 meters high Palace of the Soviets." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:54:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John Scalzi's Old Man's War free for service people in Iraq/Afghanistan

John Scalzi says, "Tor Books and I are doing something special with Old Man's War, my current SF novel: We're offering a free electronic edition (a 570kb .rtf file) for service people stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We figure they're far from home and could use some reading material.

"Service people in Iraq and Afghanistan can drop me an e-mail at "omw@scalzi.com" and I'll send them the edition as an attached file. If at all possible, they should send the request from their ".mil" addresses and let me know their unit/general location so I know they are in Iraq/Afghanistan. This is meant for people serving in a war zone far from home, so I ask others to please respect that.

"Special kudos to Tor Books for greenlighting this; it's more proof of their forward-thinking in the book arena, and evidence of their generally being excellent people." Link, Link to my review of Old Man's War (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:52:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Comcast sued for handing over customer data to RIAA

America's largest cable provider is being sued by a woman who claims the company voluntarily forked over her personal account data to the RIAA.

In a lawsuit filed in King County, Wash., Dawnell Leadbetter said that she was contacted by a debt collection agency in January and told to pay a $4,500 for downloading copyright-protected music or face a lawsuit for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Leadbetter, a mother of two teenage children, was a customer of Comcast's high-speed Internet access service.

The company, Settlement Support Center, based in Washington state, was using information that the Recording Industry of Association of America had obtained in a Philadelphia lawsuit over the illegal sharing of digital music files, said Lory Lybeck, the lawyer representing Leadbetter.

But no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses of its customers, or notified his client that her information had been given to an outside party, Lybeck said. "Comcast should respect the rights of privacy who pay them monthly bills," Lybeck said.

Link (Thanks, Nat)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:04:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dada Dolls made from found objects

Mindy sez, "Described as 'Dada Dolls', the incredible creations offered for sale on this site are made almost entirely with recycled materials - like dictionaries, cigar boxes, and antique tobacco tins. Each doll comes with its own story: (example) 'After the summer away with her cousins in Oslo, Anna was hoping her mother would notice how short her dresses had become, and that her figure was no longer that of a child... '" Link (Thanks, Mindy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:48:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snapshots of volunteer "Minutemen" on US/Mexico border

Investigative reporter and Boing Boing pal Mark Ebner spent last week embedded with the "Minutemen" in and around Tombstone, Arizona. For those unfamiliar with US/Mexico border politics, these are the volunteer border patrol militias comprised of heavily armed, grumpy-looking white people who have self-organized to stem the flood of wannabe janitors, dishwashers, and nannies who threaten our national security. Ebner's report will appear in Globe magazine next week, available at your grocery check-out stand. Meanwhile, enjoy the new face of Homeland Security!

Y para nuestros estimados lectores hispanohablantes: aquí les presento unas imagenes de los pendejos racistas en Arizona que se creen soldados. El fenómeno me preocupa mucho. No veo ninguna diferencia entre esto y los "lynch mobs" de antaño en el sur de mi país. Ojalá que el resultado no sea tan sangriento, pero si ellos tienen el apoyo del gobierno y del ambiente político del momento -- pues, no creo que sería una cosa buena para los derechos civiles de la gente en cualquier lado de la frontera. Gracias a Mark Ebner, periodista y amigo de Boing Boing, por las fotos. Su reportaje será publicado en El Globe la próxima semana.

Links to images: Minuteman and Jeep, Minuteman Leaders, Young Gun, Minutemen 1, Minutemen 2, Minutemen 3, Minutemen 4, Minutemen 5, Minutemen Message, MinuteWomen, Spotters, Wetbacks.

(Thanks for correcting my awful Spanish grammar, JLB)

Update: BB reader Sergio says: "Several groups from Californa will be travelling to Arizona to protest the minutemen April 17th and 18th." Link

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

Bukkake Cookies

Recipe here:
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:56:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

India's amazing statement on IP and international development

Earlier this week at the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), there was a meeting to talk about how to reform the org to make it into a humanitarian agency that promotes development, not monopoly rights for publishing and pharmaceutical companies.

India's statement from the floor was so good it should be taught in universities. Check it out:

The real "development" imperative is ensuring that the interest of Intellectual Property owners is not secured at the expense of the users of IP, of consumers at large, and of public policy in general. The proposal therefore seeks to incorporate int international IP law and practice, what developing countries have been demanding since TRIPS was forced on them in 1994.

The primary rationale for Intellectual Property protection is, first and foremost, to promote societal development by encouraging technological innovation. The legal monopoly granted to IP owners is an exceptional departure from the general principle of competitive markets as the best guarantee for securing the interest of society. The rationale for the exception is not that extraction of monopoly profits by the innovator is, of and in itself, good for society and so needs to be promoted. Rather, that properly controlled, such a monopoly, by providing an incentive for innovation, might produce sufficient benefits for society to compensate for the immediate loss to consumers as a result of the existence of a monopoly market instead of a competitive market. Monopoly rights, then, granted to IP holders is a special incentive that needs to be carefully calibrated by each country, in the light of its own circumstances, taking into account the overall costs and benefits of such protection.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:52:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Woman "beats off burglar with gnome"

BB reader Meggie says:

Elderly British woman wards off a burglar by heaving one of those goddamn garden gnomes at him. It was a desperate move, but thank heavens she did not have to use more than one gnome on him. What a great story (not to mention headline syntax).

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:47:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO solve identity theft: make banks responsible

Bruce Schneier's op-ed on CNet about identity theft talks about why "two-factor" authentication (e.g. having to enter a password and a number that you read off of a little keychain fob) is useful for lots of things, but not for preventing identity theft. He goes on to explain how to practically solve identity theft through new liability measures:

Criminals impersonate legitimate users to financial intuitions. That means that any solution can't involve the account holders. That leaves only one reasonable answer: Financial intuitions need to be liable for fraudulent transactions.

They need to be liable for sending erroneous information to credit bureaus based on fraudulent transactions. They can't say that the user must keep his password secure or his machine virus-free. They can't require the user to monitor his accounts for fraudulent activity, or his credit reports for fraudulently obtained credit cards.

Those aren't reasonable requirements for most users. The bank must be made responsible, regardless of what the user does.

If you think this won't work, look at credit cards. Credit card companies are liable for all but the first $50 of fraudulent transactions. They're not hurting for business; and they're not drowning in fraud, either. They've developed and fielded an array of security technologies designed to detect and prevent fraudulent transactions. And they've pushed most of the actual costs onto the merchants.

Link (via Cryptogram)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Alarm clock waits for light sleep to wake you

The difference between being woken from a dream and woken from light sleep is the difference between a rotten wake up and an easy one -- for me at least. I have long dreamt (heh) of an alarm clock that is smart enough to tell the difference, and now I've found one:

The clock, called SleepSmart, measures your sleep cycle, and waits for you to be in your lightest phase of sleep before rousing you. Its makers say that should ensure you wake up feeling refreshed every morning.

Link (via JWZ)

Update: d3 sez, "They mention a prototype might be ready by the end of the year, but there already is an alarm clock that performs a similar function available now called the SleepTracker."

Update 2: Richard sez, "my Gadget Show Podcast still has a competition open to give away a Sleeptracker. Listen to the show and send in the requested suggestion, and I'll be happy to send the winner, as determined by Eric Mack, the watch that was provided for my review (only worn for a week)."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:54:31 PM permalink |