[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Bush disassembles English language, again

When asked at today's press conference about Amnesty International's report criticizing America's treatment of detainees, President Bush called the claims "absurd." According to the White House transcript, he also said:

"It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth."

My brother Bob Pescovitz comments, "I always thought 'disassemble' meant 'to take apart,' but maybe that's 'dissemble.' But his wife is a librarian so I guess I'm wrong."

Even more ridiculous than Bush using the wrong word is the fact that the Chicago Tribune had the nerve to kindly correct his mistake when quoting him! Link to White House transcript, Link to Chicago Tribune article (republished at KansasCity.com, BugMeNot's login worked for me. Email: icantkick@mailinator.com, Password: oregon1)

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who pointed out that "dissemble" was yesterday's Dictionary.com "Word of the Day." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:14:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bob Baker Marionettes

Kim Cooper says: "Bob Baker's Marionette theater in downtown LA has a fantastic new Mexican-themed show called 'Allegre!' that the Bubblegum Queen and I caught this morning, along with a busload of Head Start kiddies from Pomona. 'Allegre!' is a little mature for this audience, but they seemed to dig it.

"The show's centerpiece is a black light extravaganza featuring an all-skeleton cast grooving to 'Hernando's Hideaway.' There are painted ladies, a terrifying bony clown who juggles a skull, monsters playing vibes on a dinosaur's ribs and, unbelievably, a pair of fleshless burlesque beauties with tassles where their tatas should be. One does a classic Sally Rand fan dance!

"'Allegre!' is $10, plus you get free ice cream in the party room after the show. Highly recommended.
Link (More from Boing Boing on Bob Baker Marionettes here)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:51:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creepy products from "Best Children's Products"

Here are my picks for the two creepiest products on this page of "best children's products." The O'Pair is a rope to attach a kid to an adult and was "designed to be a more socially acceptable and safe alternative to a child's leash or harness."

The Take-Out-Time-Out is a mat you are supposed to make your kids sit on when they've misbehaved. Bonus creepiness: "TAKE-OUT-TIME-OUT can be used anywhere anytime (home, store, restaurant, playground, etc.)." Imagine the psychological scars you'll inflict on your child by making him sit on this pad in a restaurant.
Link (Thanks, Peggy!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:47:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photobooth enthusiasm

Mark Pike, co-creator of the Duke Photobooth Project, sent in a link to the 7th International Photobooth Convention in St. Louis. Unfortunately, today is the last day of the convention, but some of the organizers also maintain an excellent clearinghouse for deep photobooth knowledge, including an active blog, list of locations around the country, and photobooth art. Seen here: Herman Costa's "Grid man (Small version)," 1986, 4 uncut black & white photobooth strips Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:31:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Deep Throat revealed?

W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat, claims Vanity Fair. In 2003, students at the University of Illinois presented a convincing case that Fred Fielding was Woodward and Bernstein's key source when they broke the Watergate story in the Washington Post. But Felt, formerly the #2 spook in the FBI, says he really was the guy. Link

UPDATE: The identity of Deep Throat has been confirmed as W. Mark Felt. From CNN:

"W. Mark Felt was 'Deep Throat' and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage," according to a statement issued by Woodward and Bernstein.

"However, as the record shows, many other sources and officials assisted us and other reporters for the hundreds of stories that were written in The Washington Post about Watergate."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:17:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

America's supersized asses demand supersized toilet seats

Boing Boing reader Caines says,

This is in response to Xeni's "Obesity in America leads to boom in sales of larger chairs" post -- The Great John Toilet Co. is cashing in on the obesity problem as well. Their "Size Friendly" toilet is wider and a bit taller than a normal toilet. They even have a nice flash comparison movie of the "Extra-Elongated Ergonomic Seat".

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:39:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of home-built bikes

Bikeforest has a nice photograph gallery of homemade bikes, scooters, and tricycles.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:44:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Uncle Neptune's old timey music

I just discovered the music of Uncle Neptune. You can download three CDs worth of pleasant 1920s and 1930a era ukulele ditties from his site.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:38:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video-casting for the PSP: pspdrive.com

Julian Bleecker says,

Some pals recently hacked together this vidcasting site designed for the PSP. Collectively, we knew this sort of thing would happen, and now it's happening. The content isn't there, but the framework is awfully compelling. Next, I suspect, will be direct to PSP downloads over WiFi or, even better, a video aggregator that lives right on the device, allowing one to browse indy channels of Vidcasts.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:05:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Profile of iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner

The Associated Press profiles Helen Greiner, the co-founder of robotics firm iRobot, maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner and the military PackBot (seen in this AP photo). From the article:

For the 37-year-old Greiner, the success of the Roomba and of iRobot's military machines validates the transformation of robots from the stuff of fantasy to practical tools.

"I think in the old days, robots had a perception of being kind of scary, and more science fiction than science fact," Greiner said in a recent interview. "These robots are on a mission, and so are we: to bring robots into the mainstream. ... We can make robots do a better job than humans in some cases...."

...For her part, Greiner has said she doesn't believe robots should be empowered to decide on their own whether to take a human life.

None of iRobot's current military robots have autonomous capabilities; all are directly controlled by humans. And while iRobot is developing the PackBot's abilities to carry payloads -- including the possibility of transporting weapons -- none of the company's current robots is armed.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:04:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars: The Science of Consistency

An interesting essay on (messy) fictional universes and the fans who rationalize them.

The fictional universes depicted in movies like the Star Wars or Star Trek series tend to get very complex (...) That complexity means that—inevitably—the occasional “continuity error” occurs. In normal movie parlance, a continuity error means one of those embarrassing moments when, say, the bandage on an actor moves from the right hand to the left hand between scenes due to a mistake by the makeup department. For science fiction fans, though, continuity refers to the overall logical and historical coherence of our beloved fictional universes.

If Scotty witnesses Captain Kirk’s death at the beginning of Star Trek VII, it is extremely troubling to some of us—those who care, those who have intellectual integrity and the discipline of logic!—if Scotty is awakened from suspended animation approximately seventy years later in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and asks whether Captain Kirk is still alive. Scotty should know that Kirk isn’t! Something is wrong! It doesn’t add up—yet it must! It must!

For you see, any story must have a certain amount of internal coherence if we are to achieve suspension of disbelief. And we must achieve suspension of disbelief.

Link to "Star Wars: The Science of Consistency" (Thanks, Jason Schultz)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:39:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Swallowable robot

A Carnegie Mellon engineer is in the early stages of adding legs to a camera-in-a-pill that doctors currently use to see inside the intestine. Metin Sitti, director of the NanoRobotics Lab, is putting a three-footed system through its paces in pig intestines. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

In the simplest scheme, the capsule could deploy three legs, creating a tripod that could stop the capsule's movement through the intestine, giving doctors a chance to take a closer look at something.

Polymer pads on the leg tips, mimicking the adhesive foot pads of the palmetto beetle, would stick to the intestinal walls. The adhesive foot pads require very little pressure, yet enable the beetle to withstand forces of more than 200 times its body weight.

A more elaborate, telescoping capsule, featuring a set of three legs on either end, would enable it to crawl as if it were inchworm. The capsule could thus go rapidly to a point of interest or, if sufficient power was available, move upstream to give doctors a second look at a suspicious lesion.

Link (via Howard Lovy's NanoBot)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:37:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

No Privacy in Your Cubicle? Try an Electronic Silencer

An article by John Markoff in this weekend's New York Times about an amazing creation from two of the world's most amazing minds -- Danny Hillis and Bran Ferren.

Maxwell Smart's "cone of silence" is finally a reality.

Two people in an office here were having a tête-à-tête, but it was impossible for a listener standing nearby to understand what they were saying. The conversation sounded like a waterfall of voices, both tantalizingly familiar and yet incomprehensible.

The cone of silence, called Babble, is actually a device composed of a sound processor and several speakers that multiply and scramble voices that come within its range. About the size of a clock radio, the first model is designed for a person using a phone, but other models will work in open office space.

The voice scrambling technology used in Babble was developed by Applied Minds, a research and consulting firm founded by Danny Hillis, a distinguished computer architect, and Bran Ferren, an industrial designer and Hollywood special effects wizard.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:17:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIP: Oscar Brown, Jr.

Music legend, writer, and revered civil rights activist Oscar Brown, Jr. has passed away at the age of 78. Link. This was one of his most popular compositions, and was recently remixed for a Verve collection.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:04:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Other Things Besides Downloading the RIAA Doesn't Care For

An online comic drawn by BoringBoring co-creator Francis (who is a dude).

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:46:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Last word (we hope) on odd Star Trek/pedo connection

Ernest Miller says, "Last week venerable Canadian publication Maclean's published a story that had as its hook the Star Trek/Pedophilia connection found by the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit (The Star Trek Connection). And what a connection it is."

The first thing detectives from the Toronto police sex crimes unit saw when they entered Roderick Cowan's apartment was an autographed picture of William Shatner. Along with the photos on the computer of Scott Faichnie, also busted for possessing child porn, they found a snapshot of the pediatric nurse and Boy Scout leader wearing a dress "Federation" uniform. Another suspect had a TV remote control shaped like a phaser. Yet another had a Star Trek credit card in his wallet. One was using "Picard" as his screen name. In the 3 1/2 years since police in Canada's biggest city established a special unit to tackle child pornography, investigators have been through so many dwellings packed with sci-fi books, DVDs, toys and collectibles like Klingon swords and sashes that it's become a dark squadroom joke. "We always say there are two types of pedophiles: Star Trek and Star Wars," says Det. Ian Lamond, the unit's second-in-command. "But it's mostly Star Trek."

It's the type of oddball coincidence that's difficult to ignore. Even more so when you realize there's virtually nothing else, beyond their shared perversion, that links the new generation of child sex offenders.

Link to complete post. Previously on Boing Boing: LA Times: Pedophilia Linked with Star Trek?, and James Spader says William Shatner smells like lamb sausage. Whoah, those two archive links really don't mix well, do they. Excuse me while my blog vomits.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:33:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ibrahim Ferrer on billboard in Cuba protesting US antiterror policies

Click thumbnail for larger image. Ned Sublette says:

"A friend forwarded me yesterday this photo of a billboard in Cuba. I don't know who took it or when. It says: "... and now they say that we're terrorists!" -- Ibrahim Ferrer, member of the Buena Vista Social Club.

The background is that Ibrahim Ferrer, when nominated for a Grammy, was refused admission to the US to attend the award ceremony on grounds of -- get this -- national security. This in spite of his having previously performed successful US concert tours, he, and all Cuban musicians across the board (except for those involved in the anomalous case of "Havana Night," which played at a casino in Las Vegas), have been denied entrance into the US for the last two years.

While the US did not actually apply the word "terrorist" to Mr. Ferrer as an individual, the perennial inclusion of Cuba on the United States' list of "state-sponsors of terrorism" (dating back to the Reagan administration) at present serves as the bottom-line justification for excluding all Cuban musicians from entering the US, effectively lumping Mr. Ferrer in with terrorists.

And here's a link to an amazing book Ned wrote called Cuba And Its Music: From The First Drums To The Mambo.

Reader comment: Laurent Haug says:

Just a quick note to let you know this: a friend of mine is a photographer currently working with Ibrahim Ferrer in Cuba. He told me on numerous occasions that the government is using M. Ferrer's image without his consent and for political purpose, just what you would expect from these people. So I think this display should be taken for what it is: government propaganda, not a personnal message from the jedi-old singer.

Adam Garcia says,

The picture used in that billboard was actually the photo of Ibrahim on the cover of his solo album. Link to image.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:18:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I searched for you on Friendster, and found herpes.

Boing Boing pal Macki says:

A while ago Friendster integrated a spectacularly useless search engine feature.

They also added a woefully ill-considered little widget to go with it, which occasionally displays a box on profiles that lists the top 10 searches in the user's network. Apparently they cast a pretty wide net in determining who is "in your network" and a lot of the same searches pop up on different people's profiles. Or at least that's what you should tell people when they ask why your search list is full of venereal diseases.

Tracking infection vectors via social networking is definitely not a new idea, but it's apparent now that Friendster is sufficiently mature to start tuning this feature. Maybe they can start keeping track of individual's risk factors and generate a score ranging from the coveted "Raping me cures AIDS" to the dreaded "Anna Nicole Smith's Vagina".

Possible meta-data may include; how many private messages you exchange with strangers, the frequency of changes in relationship status, and how well your friendsters all score.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:09:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Obesity in America leads to boom in sales of larger chairs

Boing Boing reader Tom says,

Furniture makers are selling bigger chairs and tables to U.S. restaurants, an apparent accommodation to growing customers. Chili's has begun testing more spacious eating spaces and was looking at installing tables up to 12 inches larger at future Chili's outlets. One chair manufacturer said his company is rethinking size -- as in making products bigger -- because customers are bigger. "Let's face it, America has an obesity problem," said Jerry Falk of Foldcraft Co. of Minnesota

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:00:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Save the children from pot-flavored lollypops

Boing Boing reader John Duffell says,

Michigan State Rep. Dudley Spade has announced that he'll soon be introducing legislation to outlaw candy made with hemp or designed to taste like marijuana. The candy is legal, since it contains none of marijuana's active ingredient, THC. Pot suckers have become big sellers in specialty candy shops, particularly with middle and high school aged kids. Because Spade is such a nice guy, he passed out several of the suckers to media at his press conference. "We don't want drug-flavored candy in Michigan," he said, "and we're going to shut you down." Spade and County Sheriff Larry Richardson are concerned that kids who try the suckers will become "hooked" on the flavor and may try to seek out the real deal. Personally, I think they've got it all wrong. If they want to keep kids off drugs, they should be passing out the damn suckers in schools. It might make the kids realize: Who wants a taste like that in their mouth? Here's the article from Lenawee County's Daily Telegram (Link). For my money, the best quote comes from one of the store owners, who quips, "I think anyone who pays $2 for a sucker is stupid anyway."

Link. I discovered "hemp seed tahini" in a health food store this weekend, and it was really yummy. Granted, I'm in California and not Michigan, but -- if some congresscritter tries to outlaw my newfound snack addiction... let's just say they can have my hemp butter when they pry it from my cold, well-moisturized hands.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:56:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pintlock: a lock for ice-cream pints

A Ben and Jerry's customer requested that the ice-cream come "in stainless steel, bulletproof containers with a little padlock." The company didn't go that far, but they did create this lockable pint-lid that fits over your ice-cream and deters casual munchers from helping themselves. Link (via Gizmodo)

Update: Gizmodo also links to the creator's page.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:16:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disneyland Memorial Day photo-gallery

Thomas sez, "I threw the kids in the Buick and headed down to Anaheim this Memorial Day Weekend to spend two days creating Photoblogging Disneyland, 99 Interpretations of the Happiest Place on Earth. On a positive note, Disneyland never hasseled me even once -- tripods, mulitple cameras, computers, hard drives and all. Refreshing, as I'm used to being hasseled with my gear most places I go." Link Mirror Link (Thanks, Thomas!)

Update: Poor Thomas's bandwidth allocation at his ISP has been blown. Here's a Flickr mirror of his photos.

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

Monday, May 30, 2005

Austrian artists' "Experience the Experience" tour coming to USA

My friends at Monochrom, the crazy Austrian net.artists, are doing an American tour this summer based around the uniquely American concept of "experiences" (dining experiences, Disney experience, the Ground Zero experience). Here's a sample Experience the Experience project that they'll be putting on:

Experience The Experience Of Being Buried Alive

The people present will have an opportunity to be buried alive in a coffin for fifteen minutes. As a framework program there will be lectures about the history of the science of determining death and the medical cultural history of "buried alive". People buried alive not only populate the horror stories of past centuries, but also countless reports in specialized medical literature. The theme of unintentional resurrection by grave robbers also runs through forensic protocols. Even in the 19th century it was said that every tenth person was buried alive. No wonder that the fear of this fate was immense and led - especially in the German-speaking region - to all kinds of precautions to avoid it. Various death test methods were developed, for instance. "Security coffins" with bell pulls and air hoses were patented; mortuaries were built, in which corpses were left for days to natural decay. (Vancouver, Los Angeles, San Francisco)

Link (Thanks, Johannes!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:56:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Papercraft Haunted Mansion to download, cut and glue

Las October, I blogged about Ray Keim's amazing, ambitious project to recreated the Disney World Hanuted Mansion facade as a 3D computer model. Ray has largely finished this project and now it is paying dividends in the form of new toys and diversions that can be fashioned from the model.

One such is this stupendous papercraft miniature Haunted Mansion that you can download, cut, paste and assemble. The level of detail is nothing less than obsessive, and the instructions are clear and straightforward. This may be the coolest free thing to appear on the Internet this year. Link (Thanks, Ray!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:52:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thoughtless Acts Flickr group

On Saturday, I posted about Thoughtless Acts, the brilliant new IDEO photo book illustrating how "we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking." The book has also spawned a Flickr group. It's just begun but should be an interesting one to watch. From Juliamae's photostream:

This cone seemed like the perfect hat for a former fence post, according to a passerby.

Link (Thanks, Jessica Hutchison!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:35:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Billboard Liberation Front vs. McDonald's

BB pal Scott Beale tells us that the Billboard Liberation Front have struck with this magnification modification to a billboard in San Francisco across from Golden Gate Park near Haight Street. At the Laughing Squid blog, Scott has posted a report from the scene of the crime, including a series of excellent photographs:

This billboard modification was above and beyond what is typical for the BLF and included an animatronic Ronald McDonald force feeding a hamburger to an obese child, with a backdrop covering the billboard which consisted of well-fed Ronald McDonald and alien figures.

This was a very bold billboard improvement, since it took place in broad daylight in The Haight near Golden Gate Park, with people and cops all over the place. Not to mention the fact that they covered the entire billboard and installed two sculptures, including one that was kinetic and required a power source.

Once the billboard improvement was completed, dozens of Ronald McDonalds and a couple Hamburglers converged on the scene to help celebrate this occasion. They then proceeded to invade the McDonald’s across the street.

Soon after, the SFPD with the help of the SFFD removed the animatronic Ronald McDonald and child sculpture. It’s reported that Ronald was not read his Miranda rights as he was escorted into the (hamburger) patty wagon. Last reports we received the actual billboard modification was still in place, so their still may be time for you to go down and see it in person.

Link

And from the BLF press release:

Mankind is ready to serve, and McDonalds’ is the corporation to do the serving. After 50 years of eating more and more Big Macs, French fries, and McNuggets designed to enhance our serve-ability, we are finally ready! Untold billions of meals consumed by billions of people throughout the world, have sufficiently enlarged the average girth and tenderness of McDonalds’ patrons (i.e. you) to reveal the True Meaning of life on Earth! Keep your eyes to the skies and watch for the big, shiny saucers with the gold-arched logos that are going to whisk us away to our inevitable and glorious destiny among the stars. Soon McDonalds will truly fulfill its mission To Serve Man.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:18:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beautiful metal math models

Bathsheba Grossman makes wonderful math-inspired sculptures. Shown here, The Gyroid, a 3-inch "triply periodic minimal surface that divides all of space into two congruent regions." It also performs arithmetic -- by subtracting $350 from your Paypal account.
Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:50:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

James Spader says William Shatner smells like lamb sausage

James Spader and William Shatner bedded down together during a taping of Boston Legal. Spader describes Shatner's body aroma like this: "He had a very sort of, a strangely very attractive sort of pungent sort of gamey, sort of a venison or a lamb sausage... and a little bit of rosemary with a touch of ranch dressing." Link (via Eye of the Goof)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:48:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funny Parents magazine cover

Unitentional placement of a woman's head and a green dot on magazine turn the title of "PARENTS" into "PENIS."
Link

Reader comment: 318 readers have emailed to inform me that this cover is fake and that I am a dupe. They're right. Here's the real cover, and here's a little more information about the fake cover, which was created by Andrew Hearst of the Panopticist. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:40:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clean your keyboard in the dishwasher

Scott Moschella of plasticbugs.com explains how to clean your computer keyboard in the dishwasher without destroying it.

I can report that not only will the keyboard come out clean, but it will probably work once it dries completely. Every key on the keyboard works and feels just right - the Caps Lock light even works! This ‘hack’ is not for the weakhearted, and I would probably avoid putting a $100+ keyboard in the dishwasher. But if you don’t have any other options, it’s a pretty good bet.

Link

Reader comment: Darren says: "I recently spilled some rootbeer on my keyboard and received a ton of good advice at the above URL. My friend Travis went above and beyond the call of duty, and made this pictorial on removing keys from your keyboard to clean underneath them. It features the super-fancy KeyPopper(tm) (patent pending)." Link

Reader comment: SuziJane says: "I mentioned this very thing in an email to Cory months ago, in response to the boingboing post about icky keyboards in med labs (he rightly responded that a run through the dishwasher wouldn't truly sanitize them). My husband and I have done this for years, and it works like a dream. Usually takes about 3 days of drying-turning-shaking, but they look and work like brand new afterward. Of particular note: We have never once popped off the keys to dry, and we haven't lost a keyboard yet. At least, not to the *dishwasher* ..."

Reader comment: Randy Rathbun says: "About 15 years ago I went to a local ham radio equipment manufacturer (http://www.kantronics.com/) and took a tour of their factory. The last step they did before they put the circuit board in the case was to run the boards through a dishwasher - no soap, no dry cycle. Just hot water.

"What this does is get rid of all the flux and other crap off the board.

"After they finished washing the boards (light duty cycle, boards on the top rack only!) they would hang the boards up and let them dry on a big drying rack they made. If it was a nice day here in the Kansas City area, they would roll the boards outside and let the sun beat down on them to help em dry faster.

"After the boards had dried for a few days they would then finish putting the last few parts on that were water sensitive such as transformers, audio jacks, or non sealed relays - mainly just any part that had a hollow cavity in it that could hold water.

"After I saw them do that I started to do the same with projects I built. I do it with any and all boards I etch or kit boards I get before I start stuffing parts, then do it again after most of the parts are on.

"It works great, is easy, and forces me to take a break from the project for a few days before and after construction while I let the thing air dry. At the end of it I end up with one snazzy looking board that is free from burned flux or those nasty short circuit inducing micro-solder splatter blobs that can cause problems."

Reader comment: Erik V. Olson says: "Quite a whoo-raw on the dishwashing keyboards posts. I've done it for some time. I've even washed entire Commodore 64s. What can't take washing -- motors of any kinds. So, leave the notebook out.

"The best way. If you have an older keyboard, like one of my beloved IBM Model Ms, you'll need to pull the keycaps off, or you'll have to collect them from the bottom of the dishwasher afterwards. Put those in the silverware basket. Wash normally with only a tiny bit of dishwasher soap, about a tenth of what you'd normally use. Don't use other soaps, which foam up way too much.

"Critical: If your dishwasher has a speed dry cycle, turn it off. If you get too warm, you can warp the plastic, or worse, crack the circuit board from thermal expansion. I saw one dishwasher actually melt part of a keyboard, but I suspect that wasn't normal operation. In short: Plain Wash, Plain Dry.

"Unknown: the effect of rinse agents. If you have such, leave it out if you can, but if you follow the rest of this, it isn't critical.

"Many keyboards will trap water, you'll have to shake that out, or (advanced course) drill a couple of drain holes.

"The final trick is to get some high-grade 100% Isopropyl Alcohol from an electronics supply store, and use that to rinse, which will pull the rest of the detergent residue out, and, as a bonus, dry the keyboard much faster. It is *incredibly* important not to use lower cuts of Isopropyl unless you know they're cut only with distilled water. The only test I know that I trust. Take a clean sheet of clear glass, rise with the test alcohol, and let dry. Anything left on the glass would end up on your keyboard. Anything that insulates or makes the key contacts conductive would ruin the keyboard."

Reader comment: Michael Hyatt says: "I wanted to comment on the keyboard in the dishwasher post and, though I've been reading BoinbBoing for a year now, I can't for the life of me find a way to send comments up.  In the Eighties I worked at Polaroid's floppy disk factory in Santa Rosa, where they made 5¼ floppys.  They had a product they called 'Data Rescue.'  The deal was, you paid extra for them, but if they got damaged or screwed up in any way (from spilled sodas to accidental erasure) you could send them in and we'd try to recover the data.  The marketing kit included a disc and some mustard and ketchup packets.  The idea was you put some data on the disk, then covered it in goo, ran over with your desk chair, spilled whatever you wanted on it, and sent it in.  We'd get the data back and you'd be so impressed you'd buy the damn things no matter what they cost.  The secret?  We cut the disk jacket open, slid the 'cookie' out and gently washed it in the sink.  After much expermentation, we determined that Dawn dish detergent was best.  We then hung them up to dry in the lunch room on a piece of twine with wood clothes pins.  When they were dry, we put them in a new jacket and ran the basic data recovery tools of the day, Norton et al.  The best of the unintended consequences?  We got disks written with just about every kind of hardware/OS in the world, so we ended up with a lab with just about every kind of computer in the world in it.  A great way to learn about computers and OSs...."  

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:29:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Heinlein centenary in a mere 25 months

July 7, 2007 is Robert A Heinlein's 100th birthday (weirdly, this birthday is shared by Ringo Starr, my paternal grandfather, my cousin and her daughter). There are plans underway already for a centenary celebration in Kansas City in his birth-state of Missouri.

Heinlein, of course, was the often-brilliant pioneering science fiction writer whose novel Stranger in a Strange Land gave us the word "Grok" and was partial inspiration for Charlie Manson. I'm most partial to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a gripping novel of revolutionary intrigue, and to his juvenile scouting novels, particularly Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. The less said about his later novels like Time Enough for Love and (shudder) The Cat Who Walks Through Walls the better (not to mention his embarrassing early "race" novels like Sixth Column and Farnham's Freehold). Link (via Out of Ambit)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:35:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clever sweets: Oral Fixation Mints

Oral Fixation mints are cleverly packaged mints with clever names (Sugar Free Tibet, Mojito Mint, etc). Never tried 'em and who knows but they may taste like hell, but they sure make a pretty picture. Link (Thanks, Chandrasutra!)

Update: M&J Catt sez, "I couldn't help noticing that, while the 'Sugar Free Tibet' variety sends 10% of its proceeds to 'finding a no-violent solution to the Chinese-Tibetan Conflict', the Tins themselves are made in China. Obviously not vying for the boycott audience then."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:27:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless through rubble

My latest article TheFeature.com is about how researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology are radio mapping doomed buildings to improve emergency wireless technology.

In the midst of a massive disaster, careful coordination is essential to the rescue effort. There's simply no room for communication problems. Unfortunately, on September 11, that's exactly what emergency response crews were dealing with. It wasn't a communication problem in the psychological sense, but rather a technological one. The building blocked radio signals, preventing commanders on the outside from reaching their teams inside. Later, emergency responders wielding wireless sniffers and mobile phones did their best to locate any survivors trapped in pockets within the collapsed buildings, but the radio signals were no match for the rubble.

Four years later, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are working to knock down communication barriers in disaster situations. To do it, they're littering large structures with wireless transmitters and listening carefully as the buildings topple.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:26:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cop seizes cam and erases pix of his car stuck in mud

Last February, cop in Hudson, Ohio got stuck in the mud after making a U-turn. A passer-by took a picture of the car getting towed away. The cop chased the photographer, shouted at him, took his camera, and erased the memory. Now the photog is suing the cop "and the city for more than $25,000 in punitive damages, claiming his civil rights were violated because he was stopped without probable cause, wrongfully detained, verbally abused and deprived of his property." Link (via Fark)

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

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Brain's metaphor-center identified

An experimenter at UCSD has determined at the brain's left angular gyrus is essential to identifying and parsing metaphors.

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran of the University of California at San Diego and his colleagues tested four patients who had experienced damage to the left angular gyrus region of their brains. All of the volunteers were fluent in English and otherwise intelligent, mentally lucid and able to engage in normal conversations. But when the researchers presented them with common proverbs and metaphors such as "the grass is always greener on the other side" and "reaching for the stars," the subjects interpreted the sayings literally almost all of the time. After being pressed by the interviewers to provide deeper meaning, "the patients often came up with elaborate, even ingenious interpretations, that were completely off the mark," Ramachandran remarks. For example, patient SJ expounded on "all that glitters is not gold" by noting that you should be careful when buying jewelry because the sellers could rob you of your money.

Link (via Joi Ito)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:31:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Platinum record sonograms compared

This site has turned the tracks off dozens of platinum albums into sonograms, then analyzed the sonogram similarities between different hits, trying to peg the mathematics of a hit.

This one's as loud as some hypercompressed records! It's an interesting sidelight on how different sound densities are perceived- since Helter Skelter was made not to be 'loud and rocking', but to be pretty near unbearable, mind-melting overload. Everything is cranked up way past the limit- the Beatles were running around the studio wacked out on acid setting fire to things while this was being recorded, way out of control- and yet, the melodic elements and the rhythmic drive of the tune are STILL stronger than hypercompressed music of similar density. Background vocal harmonies are hard sharp little lines on the sonogram. Ringo's crazed, brutal pounding makes clearly defined lines behind everything, covering a range from around 3K down to nearly 30 hz on some hits, just from the sheer impact alone. If you're curious, Paul's famous ungodly shriek "LOOK OUT! Helter Skelter!" happens just after the slight gap to the right side of the sonogram- you can see it about a third of the way from the top, in a yellow-white color, and there are overtones above that, which also belong to that earsplitting shriek. Very few things can make a noise that loud at 5-10K- Sir Paul was one of them ;)

Link (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:27:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot Lego "ball-machines" to be daisy chained for world record

This August at BrickFest, the Lego hobbyist's convention in Arlington, VA, robot Lego hobbyists from around the world will attempt to daisychain a series of independently created "ball machines," to set the world's record for "Great Ball Machines."

A "ball machine" is a robotic Lego contraption that takes in miniature Lego soccer balls at the rate of one per second, rolls them around various tracks, coaster-loops, troughs, bounces, etc, and then outputs them again, at the rate of one per second.

Because all the ball machines have standard interfaces for accepting and outputting balls, it's possible to link them together, making a gigantic meta-ball-machine out of all the independently created machines. This all sounds incredibly cool -- I can't wait to see the video once it's all put together.

1. Each module should have an "in" basket, and will move balls to the next module's "in" basket, which must be directly in line.
2. The IN basket should be 10 studs by 10 studs (outside dimension) with an 8x8 opening, and should be 10 bricks (beams) tall.
3. The front of the basket should be 32 studs from the back of the module. This will allow all modules to be lined up against a wall. The back of the module CAN be closer to the basket, but not farther.
4. The In basket should be located on the left side of the module, and output should go to the right.
5. There are no size limits, beyond those listed
6. Each module should be able to accept balls at an average rate of 1 ball per second. Balls can be passed continueously, or in a batch. A batch should not exceed 30 balls.

Link (via MAKE Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:20:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Play Disneyland's Buzz Lightyear ride over the Internet (Windows only)

In the Buzz Lightyear ride at Disneyland's Tomorrowland, you pilot a ride vehicle down a track, spinning it around and shooting at targets while the system tallies up your score. Now there's a PC-based version that is networked to the actual ride, allowing people to play along from home, collaborating with the riders in California. Unfortunately, the app is Windows-only, so I couldn't play it, and have no idea if it's any good. What a pity. Link (Thanks, Kirby!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:48:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyright prevented transmission of Beatles music to aliens

Lucas sez, "I'm reading Murmurs of Earth, Carl Sagan's account of the how and why of the musical selections included on the golden phonograph records that went into space on the Voyager spacecraft. What really floored me was this little admission from page 19:"

We wanted to send "Here Comes The Sun" by the Beatles, and all four Beatles gave their approval. But the Beatles did not own the copyright, and the legal status of the piece seemed too murky to risk.

Link (Thanks, Lucas!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:43:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO add Half Life 2 elements to your photos

A reader sends this: "Forum post showing how someone has taken various photographs and done some light mapping techniques to create very realistic looking photos of Half Life 2 models in real life situations. Very cool looking stuff." The post includes copies of all the meshes you need to add Half Life 2 characters to your own photos. Link

Update: Tim sez that this is the origin of the photos.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:39:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

2005 Risks in Global Filmmaking Map

Apul Patel says: "Each year insurance broker Aon releases a map that highlights the potential risks of filming in every country on the planet. Filmmakers use it to avoid hotspots that could derail production, while reality television producers no doubt use it to locate trouble-ready hot-spots, where which to torture fame-hungry contestants."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:44:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Frightening Christian alien TV puppet sings

What do you get when you mix a creepy alien puppet with bad songs and production values that make cable access television look like an Imax movie? The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Show!
Link(Thanks, Jim!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:38:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Technorati Japan launches

And Joi Ito has all the details. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:53:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rocky statue on eBay

This famous ten foot tall bronze statue of Rocky is up for auction as a fundraiser for the International Institute for Sport and Olympic History. Starting bid is $1,000,000. From the listing:

Created for the movie ROCKY III the statue was erected on the top steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After the filming ended a furious debate arose in Philadelphia between the Art Museum and the City's Art Commission over the meaning of "art." Claiming the statue was not "art" but rather a "movie prop" the city considered various alternate locations and settled upon the front of the Spectrum sports complex in South Philadelphia. It was later returned to the Art Museum where it was used in the filming of ROCKY V, as well as MANNEQUIN (Andrew McCarthy) and PHILADELPHIA (Tom Hanks). Again it was removed to the front of the Spectrum where it stands today.

Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

UPDATE: According to a press release from 2003 on the seller's site, this statue is not the one at the Spectrum but another of the three that were constructed. I thought $1 million was, er, a little high, but they tried to sell it two years ago for $5 million. Wow! Now it seems like a great deal! Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:47:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Whales remix each others' songs

Joi Ito reports on a conversation with Dr. Roger Payne, a MacArthur-winning whale researcher who is the president of Ocean Alliance. It turns out that humpback whales riff off each other, remixing one another's songs, and developing trends and fashions in their singing over time.

He explained to me that Humpback Whales sang beautiful songs. They copy from each other, remixing the songs and add to the songs. These songs evolve over time and riffs get passed from whale to whale across the world. The songs have lots of interesting variations and even have rhymes. He made an interesting observation that the whale songs of the 60's were much more beautiful than the whale songs these days.

Link (via Futurismic)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:43:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney World costumed characters horsing around

This is a video that apppears to be castmembers from Walt Disney World horsing around in character costumes -- Belle performing a striptease, Tweedledee and Tweedledum administering a beatdown to Pooh, and so forth. Pretty mild stuff, and reasonably funny. Mostly notable for the fact that the characters, especially the "head" characters are pretty sacrosanct when they're onstage. 5MB Quicktime Link (via MeFi)

Update: Aaron sez, "I'd like to suggest linking to the article at Radar Magazine, 'Mouse Party', that includes and explains the video"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:06:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

London open technology conference call for proposals

OpenTech 2005 is the successor conference to last year's NotCon and 2003's Festival of Inappropriate Computing, put on by NTK and the UK Unix Users' Group. It's sponsored this year by backstage.bbc.co.uk, the BBC's project to expose its data as a series of web-services and APIs, and the thrust is "open source" development and methodologies. Like all the NTK conferences, this one is bound to be funny, irreverent, and rife with tipsy hilarity.

They've put out a Call for Proposals -- if you want to present your open technology, this is the place to do it:

Saturday July 23rd - The Reynolds Building, Hammersmith, London W6 8RP

If you're reverse-engineering proprietary protocols, making useful information available in a way people couldn't get at before, pioneering unexpected methods of knowledge sharing - or (equally likely) doing something so cool we haven't even thought of it yet, then please get in touch via the submissions form at:

Link (Thanks, Etienne!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:55:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

w00t! is a favored non-word in Merriam-Webster's books

Merriam-Webster has published a list of favorite non-words, w00t! Is number three. w00t!

1. ginormous (adj): bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous
2. confuzzled (adj): confused and puzzled at the same time
3. woot (interj): an exclamation of joy or excitement
4. chillax (v): chill out/relax, hang out with friends
5. cognitive displaysia (n): the feeling you have before you even leave the house that you are going to forget something and not remember it until you're on the highway
6. gription (n): the purchase gained by friction: "My car needs new tires because the old ones have lost their gription."
7. phonecrastinate (v): to put off answering the phone until caller ID displays the incoming name and number
8. slickery (adj): having a surface that is wet and icy
9. snirt (n): snow that is dirty, often seen by the side of roads and parking lots that have been plowed
10. lingweenie (n): a person incapable of producing neologisms

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:49:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, May 28, 2005

New IDEO book, Thoughtless Acts

Thoughtless Acts is an excellent little photo book from the brilliant minds at IDEO. Janet Fulton Suri, who directs human factors design at IDEO, compiled dozens of photographs illustrating how "we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking." From the introduction:

"Some actions, such as grabbing onto something for balance, are universal and instinctive. Others, such as warming hands on a hot mug or stroking velvet, draw on experiences so deeply embodied that they are almost unconscious. Sill more, such as hanging a jacket to claim a chair, have become spontaneous through habit or social learning. Observing such everyday interactions reveals subtle details about how we relate to the designed and natural world. This is key information and inspiration for design, and a good starting point for any creative initiative."

The (Flash) Web site has a nice preview of the book and invites you to submit your own thoughtless acts to the growing collection. Still, the hardcopy, published by Chronicle Books, is a beautifully-designed objet d'art that's well worth the cover price. And Suri's essay at the end of the book reveals some of the lessons we can learn by opening our eyes to this fun and often-unconscious form of reality hacking. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:29:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark Jenkins' Tape Babies

Mark Jenkins is a Washington, DC-based artist who also creates figures from transparent tape. (Previous Sellotape art post here.) For Jenkins's Storker Project, he dropped "tape babies" in surreal urban contexts. From his artist statement:

The Storker Project is a species propagation movement by STORKER seeking to incite select individuals from the public at large, perhaps you. If while passsing by one you feel strange sensations in your nipples or fingertips, adopt the infant, breast feed, and give it plenty of pTLC. It will gradually mature to a full size Tape Man or Woman to co-habitate with you and eventually take you to the Glazed Paradise (or possibly oust you from your home).

Link (Thanks to all who submitted this!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:02:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 27, 2005

Transparent tape sculpture

Multimediatrix Violet Blue points us to the alluring work of Helen, a 21-year-old artist in Surrey, England who is seeking "patrons" to buy her art and/or pay for her tuition at Leeds College of Art and Design this year.

The interesting feature of this model is in the material used - it is an entirely solid piece, made using nothing but Sellotape. As it stands at the moment I estimate about 100 rolls have been used in the production, with it weighing well over 5kg.

I have been lucky enough to have been supported by the company Sellotape, and most of my materials have been supplied by them. I have also been featured in numerous Surrey newspapers in a plea for more tape and coverage, which was successful in gaining me about 40 extra rolls.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:13:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Manhole Covers of Japan

Eli the Bearded says: "A large gallery of the surprisingly artistic manhole covers (no, not pr0n related at all) of Japan."
Link

Reader comment: Howard says: "I use manhole covers as backdrops for my shoes in various parts of the world. I have Stockholm, Rome, Tokyo, Barcelona, Paris, and New Orleans.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:49:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Richard Giles interviews Mark and Carla

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) Richard Giles of the Gadget Show interviewed Carla and me for his podcast. We talked about the treeware version of bOING bOING and our time in the South Pacific.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:44:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Easter Eggs in Episode III

My friend Bonnie Burton works at Lucas Films. She says: "We just posted a great "Easter Eggs in Episode III" article on starwars.com, if you want to check out all the cool stuff we point out that people may have missed when they saw the film:"

Did you spot the Millennium Falcon in Revenge of the Sith? What about the kitchen sink or the only noted the Wilhelm scream? Or perhaps you were too busy watching Hayden Christensen that you didn't notice George Lucas' rare cameo?  Here's an article that lists many of the hidden tidbits in the last Star Wars film - Revenge of the Sith.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:34:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scientist stamps

This month, the US Postal Service issued postage stamps honoring four American scientists. The group includes mathematician/computer pioneer John von Neumann, physical chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs, geneticist Barbara McClintock, and physicist Richard Feynman. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:57:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flickr's "knockoff" tag

"Knockoff" is my favorite new Flicker tag, featuring photos of low-cost lookalike products, probably from the 99-Cent Only Store. Shown here: "LA's Totally Awesome plumber." As Blazenhoff says: "Like Liquid-Plumr except that it is 'awesome' and 'burns severely on contact.'"
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:25:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blinged-out sex toys from Mi-Su

Discriminating orifices demand to be crammed with bespoke buttplugs. Why -- who wouldn't plunk down $6,000 for a diamond-encrusted titantium dildo? Shown here, a somewhat more affordable obsidian version sculpted from natural volcanic glass (a mere $1640-ish). Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Link to "Mi-Su Sexual Aesthetics," and here's a Fleshbot post with more intel inside. (Thanks, Fleshbot!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:41:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony PSP goes cellular via JunxionBox

Boing Boing pal Mike Outmesguine says:

Trying to force wireless connectivity out of the Sony PSP has resulted in some interesting tweaks and hacks by devoted fans of the new handheld gaming/multimedia platform. In this tradition, I worked at getting the PSP onto the internet using a cellular connection, which was happily provided by a JunxionBox Wi-Fi to cellular gateway appliance. The JBox provides a built-in Wi-Fi hotspot where cellular data service is available. As you know, hotspots are (usually) short range affairs, while cellular covers wide areas. The JunxionBox essentially "converts" 802.11b Wi-Fi device connections over to a 3G cell network either for multiple users with Wi-Fi devices or for devices that only support Wi-Fi, like the Sony PSP.

In this experiment, I tried two applications. One was connecting the PSP to play Twisted Metal. The PSP was able to download stats and server info, but I was unsuccesful in joining and playing an actual multiplayer game. It's unclear what the problem might have been. Verizon support said they play World of Warcraft over EVDO during breaks in the lunchroom, so it's unlikely an ISP filtering issue. In any case, I then tried out the Wipeout Pure web browser hack which was a total success! I connected to the internet and surfed a few different websites.

I am reaching for new ways to interconnect mainstream devices. The Sony PSP is one such device with a semi-locked down infrastructure, supporting only minor connectivity options. For example, you cannot connect to the PSP using Wi-Fi for file transfers. And, of course, it does not directly support cellular. By exploring integration options like this, we can expand the options for a connected highly mobile society.

Link. Video (10MB wmv): Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:35:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

To do in LA: Quantum Computing for Dummies -- er, Beginners

A delightfully geeky event on Saturday night in LA. Mark Allen of machineproject.com 'splains:

Have you been feeling down lately about your lack of knowledge of quantum computing? Confused about how quantum entanglement could reduce lag time for online gaming? Or curious how high speed integer factorization could make most encryption technologies the betamax of tomorrow?

Well, wonder no longer. Matt Shaw, enthusiast and graduate student has gracefully agreed to come to Machine Project Saturday for an entertaining talk on quantum computing for beginners. Mr Shaw is a first year graduate student in physics at the University of Southern California. He is doing his research in experimental quantum computation at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

Covering what quantum mechanics is, what makes it different from the physics of the everyday world, and why one might be motivated to use quantum systems for information processing. In particular, a brief discussion about quantum probabilities, entanglement, and some of the experimental challenges of trying to actually build a quantum computer, with a focus on the broad concepts and not assuming any background in math.

8pm, Saturday May 28th, 2005 at Machine Project downtown. Link to details.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:31:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi wars: How one Seattle cafe struggles to give it away.

Glenn Fleishman says,

A coffeeshop in Seattle is trying free Wi-Fi-free weekends: that is, turning off their free Wi-Fi for Saturday and Sunday to try to restore their culture of lively interaction. The owners were torn about the decision and regular staff meetings always produced discussion. Instead of trying to post and enforce rules or beef up the technical side (suggestions that many commenters on my story about Victrola Cafe and Art noted), they pull the plug for the weekend. Part of the motivation is that some people, unbelievably, spend 6 to 8 hours at a table for 2 or 4 using the free Wi-Fi without making a purchase of any kind. Then they get defensive if the staff approaches them. Victrola wants to engage in anarchy: very few rules to result in a milieu that they want to foster. I'm curious if, over the long term, this experiment works for them.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:30:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rubik's cube folk art

Link (Thanks, Andrew Plotkin)

Previously on Boing Boing, Space Invader: Rubikcubism

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:25:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Homoerotic Batman / Robin watercolor paintings

From Artist Mark Chamberlain.
Link to gallery; includes NSFW images. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Reader comment: Peter adds, "Just so you know: the shown painting in above link is inspired by a photograph taken by terry richardson, a very cool guy: Link."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:16:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Basketball for blind people

Three engineering students Johns Hopkins University devised a system that enables blind people to play hoops. A large sound emitter beacon is mounted behind the backboard. Another tiny emitter is embedded in an airtight void within a Spalding "Infusion" basketball. The void in that particular ball normally contains a tiny inflation pump. From Headlines@Hopkins:

(Mike) Bullis, representing the project's sponsor (Blind Industries and Services of Maryland), cautioned that this prototype system is not perfect. The basketball's sound pitch needs to be lowered for the comfort of players and to avoid echo problems, which would sometimes make it difficult for a blind player to identify the ball's location. Bullis plans to consult a sports equipment maker about modifying the pitch. He also hopes to persuade a company to install the system in other sports items, including soccer balls and volleyballs. "The process is ongoing," he said. "But I think we'll end up with an audible ball that's going to be a huge asset to the blind community."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:00:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Yahoo! sued over adult profiles posted without permission

A man posted fake profiles on Yahoo! containing nude photos of his ex-girlfriend, her email address, and work telephone number. Barnes demanded that Yahoo remove the "fauxfiles". Now she's suing the company because she says they ignored her requests. From the Associated Press:

The former boyfriend also engaged in online discussions in Yahoo chat rooms while posing as Barnes and directing men to the profiles, the lawsuit claims.

"Due to these profiles and online chats, unknown men would arrive without warning at plaintiff's work expecting to engage in sexual relations with her," the lawsuit claims.

Link

UPDATE: According to a lengthier version of this article, the lawsuit claims that Yahoo! promised to remove the profiles when they got word in March that the story was about to break on TV but then didn't follow through. From that version of the story:

Federal law broadly protects Internet service providers from being sued over information placed there by third parties. But once Yahoo! officials agreed to help Barnes, they had a legal duty under Oregon law to follow through, (Barnes's attorney Thomas R.) Rask said. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:50:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HP's new Microsoft .NET-based "National ID System" for governments

Snipped from the politech list:

Hewlett-Packard plans to launch a product on Friday that helps governments check the digital identity of citizens. The technology, called the HP National Identity System, is designed to be used in conjunction with a number of Microsoft products, including its .Net line of server, database and middleware programs. The companies plan to jointly develop, market and offer training for the authentication system.

Link to yesterday's CNET story. And as anticipated, here is today's H-P press release.

HP today announced the availability of the HP National Identity System (NIS) solution on the Microsoft(R) .NET platform. The HP NIS solution allows governments to build and quickly deploy at an affordable price a complete, standards-based and technologically agile infrastructure that meets their changing needs for security and identity management.

Going beyond simple secure identification and authentication functionality, the solution enables modern national identification systems to allow citizens to access e-government services and conduct secure transactions. The solution also provides citizens with improved secure and intelligent identity documents. For example, with heightened security awareness at national borders, the solution fulfills the new requirement to ensure traveler and citizen credentials across an entire country or region.

In addition, the modular nature of the solution enables national and regional governments to more easily plug in additional elements, such as biometrics, to customize and balance the level of security and privacy as defined by a government's policy and requirements (...) HP and Microsoft are investing in the solution through initiatives such as joint training programs and the establishment of specialist centers around the world to further develop, demonstrate and sell national identity system solutions.

Link to press release.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:37:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bulk of American calories comes from sweet drinks

Sugary drinks are the bulk of the American diet, calorically speaking. I once had a hand in an effort to reverse engineer the Coke formula and make an open source version (led by Amanda Foubister), and the thing that shocked me then was how much sugar goes in a can of soda. Lemme put it this way: if you spooned that much sugar into a comparable volume of coffee, you'd draw stares and laughs. Basically, fizzy drinks are a slurry of sugar (actually, in tinned soda, it's usually high-fructose corn syrup, which is to sugar as plutonium is to oat muffins) with enough liquid to slide out of the can.

Tufts researchers recently reported that while the leading source of calories in the average American diet used to be from white bread, that may have changed. Now, according to preliminary research conducted by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Americans are drinking these calories instead. The research was presented in abstract form at the Experimental Biology Conference in April of this year and a more comprehensive paper is being developed.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:28:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Store in Norway sells shit

My friend Wayne Correia is traveling through Norway this week, and sends Boing Boing this quickie snapshot of a store window display beckoning passers-by to come on in and buy some SHIT. "Actually, it is the SHIT skateboard company," Wayne explains. "It's coincidentally across the street from the Apple shop here in Stavanger, Norway." Insert punchline here. Link to full-size image.

Reader comment: Misty Quadrucci adds,

Stavanger, Norway has SHIT Sk8board Company while Chicago, USA has Shit Sandwich Records! Interesting T-Shirts and records. Nice logo: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:05:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Squirrel Zen

sugar bush squirrel
twiggy the squirrel
bob the squirrel
squirrel power
disco squirrels
musical squirrels
square up your squirrel
move your feet
nut flick
squirrel decanter
scary squirrel world
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:54:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO convert canned Guinness to popcicles

Here's a HOWTO for converting cans of Guinness to popcicles by freezing them, slicing the bottom of the can, inserting a stick, cutting the top off the can, and sliding the can off. The results look beautiful and delicious. Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:03:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sampling space sounds

NASA's Voyager 1 has crossed a boundary that's one of the last milestones before it departs our solar system. You can listen online to the weird plasma wave sounds of the boundary, called the "solar wind termination shock." It reminds me of glitchy minimalist electronica. University of Iowa physicist Don Gurnett designed the the plasma wave instrument that captured the sound. From a news release:

Kurth compares the termination shock to what happens when water is allowed to run from a kitchen faucet onto the center of a dinner plate. The water -- representing the solar wind, a stream of electrically charged particles flowing outward from the sun -- strikes the center of the plate and smoothly flows outward in all directions. Somewhere near the edge of the plate, the smooth stream becomes rippled as it runs into slower moving water. This rippled band of turbulence represents the termination shock and the region where it occurs, the heliosheath. Similarly, the solar wind slows from supersonic to subsonic speed as it approaches the gas generated by stars beyond our sun.

Link to news release, Link to "sounds of space" including the termination shock

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:51:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chicago's Bean sculpture is free to photograph, at last

Back in February, I blogged about the Bean, a mirrored statue in Chicago's Millennium Park. The $270 million park was built with public funds, and then the Bean was donated by SBC, which got an enormous tax break (while the Chicago taxpayer inherited the upkeep bill).

The park's management then set out to turn this prominent public sculpture into a moneymaker. They set out ruinous rates for professional photographers, wedding photos, and videographers, and then used the publicly funded security staff to enforce this ban. The security guards went around, kicking out anyone who looked like they may be a "professional" photographer, which meant anyone with a nice camera and/or a tripod.

The park tried to excuse its abominable betrayal of the public trust (imagine -- a public place that the public can't document!) by claiming that the copyright in the sculpture vested in the sculptor and they were required to police the unauthorized photographing of this copyrighted work on his behalf. Now, there is an exemption in copyright law for public sculpture, but even if there wasn't, the city should never have acquired a sculpture without acquiring the right for its residents to photograph themselves with it, and even if they failed to do so, it certainly isn't the park's responsibility to police the copyrights of the sculptures in it. I mean, there are lots of copyrighted works in the park, from the logos on the security guard's uniforms to the fast-food menus in the garbage cans -- should the park be in charge of providing free enforcement duties for all the rightsholders whose works are placed within its bounds?

Now the park has reversed its position and will no longer be requiring a permit for simply photographing the Bean (if you bring a big crew, they'll charge you for it, which is reasonable, given the public inconvenience such generates). They've also manufactured a new reason that they had been charging for permits to photograph the public's artwork: they needed to count how many photographers were around to ensure that the park wasn't clogged with unruly photographers. Now, Chicago has a lot of public art, like that big ole Picasso in front of the Daley Center (as mentioned in the Blues Brothers) and they haven't, to my knowledge, ever had a crowd-control problem arising from the thundering hordes of shutterbugs and paparazzi who throng the nearby thoroughfares in their eagerness to get a snap, clogging the public byways.

But let's give this moronic excuse the benefit of our doubt: can we imagine a better way of counting the photographers in the park than requiring a $350 permit? How about a free permit? How about a machine you punch if you're a photographer, which increments a counter? A web-form? A park employee with a little clicker that counts the public?

"We weren't trying to make money," she said. "But we needed to know how many people were going to be at elements of the park."

Link (Thanks, Lauren!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:43:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John and Yoko go to Canada

In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono took several well-documented trips to Canada. During their visits, accompanied by Ono's young daughter Kyoko, they climbed under the covers for a Bed In For Peace and hung out with folks like Marshall McLuhan and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. ONOWEB's Richard Joly recently posted an interview that Keith Samarillo conducted with Ono about her family's time in Canada.

Ono says:

I met a woman in a restaurant the other day. She was sitting next to my table with a man, and did not bother me at all. When I finished my meal, she just said quietly "I was there. At the Bed-In in Montreal." I automatically said. "you must have been a baby then," because she looked so young. She told me that she and her friends were told that John and I were doing a bed-in in Montreal. They got into a car, and drove up to Montreal. They were college students. Asked if they could go meet us. I remember we were told that there were some girls who came up all the way from New York, and wanted to meet us. We said that's fine. The girls came into the room, and we shook hands with them. They stayed quietly. They were there when we recorded Give Peace A Chance.

The woman said she was so deeply effected by the experience, she did not tell her experience to her husband for many years even after they got married. The man who was at the table with her in the restaurant was her husband. He was smiling and nodding about it.

My friend who went to the restaurant with me was also impressed that the woman looked so young. Then the friend told me that he was told by many people that he looked unusually young for his age. His theory was that anybody who touched the moment - our bed-in in Montreal - must have experienced the magic of it, and they could not grow old. Well, that's a nice thought, isn't it? John sat in Montreal for a whole week., intently wishing peace for the world. John was laughed at and had stone thrown at him for doing that. He laid his life on line to wish Peace for the world. I will not be surprised if there is a fountain of peace, good will and love in Canada, from which an invisible water is flowing out to the world. Link

My pal Teresa Moore had her own Canadian moment with the Lennon/Ono family:

My brother's best friend was a reporter for the Toronto Star. He was covering John and Yoko's visit to Toronto and their trying to get a visa into the US. (I recall that he had a drug conviction and couldn't get in.) I had just completed my first year at the University of Toronto and my brother's friend called me at my summer job. He asked if I could come down to the King Eddie hotel to babysit Kyoko for the afternoon while John and Yoko went off to see the lawyer and US immigration people.

I went to the hotel and the halls were filled with screaming girls. I walked through them all, knocked on the door, and Derek Taylor (their manager) answered. I introduced myself, walked in, and met John and Yoko, the lawyer's wife, and Yoko's daugher Kyoko. They left and I went to the park to play with the kids. John and Yoko came back later and they both dressed entirely in white linen. You could see through the linen that John was wearing red knickers. They kept playing their latest record over and over. Then Jacqueline Suzanne and a few other people came in with some reporters. They all talked about going to Montreal and Taylor asked if I would go along to look after Kyoko. I decided not to and left around dinnertime.

A week later, Taylor or someone sent me some money for my time. I think it was about 50 bucks, which seemed like a lot at the time. It was all quite thrilling as I was a huge Lennon fan and had seen the Beatles from the fourth row during their first North American tour.

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:32:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Strike Looms Against Game Makers

I filed this report for Wired News today on labor conflict between the game industry and two Hollywood unions representing voiceover talent.

The most contentious issue at hand: whether actors should be entitled to a share of the profits from video games that feature their voices.

"Nine of the top 10 selling games in 2004 were produced with union contracts, using union voice talent -- and because of that, the quality of those games becomes exponentially higher," said Seth Oster, a representative of SAG and AFTRA. Under one of several models proposed by the two unions, actors would receive additional compensation when a game in which their voice is used sells 400,000 units. When sales reach additional 100,000-unit thresholds, the actors would receive additional payments. "Every other sector of the entertainment industry provides some residual profit-sharing model to performers whose talents make the product come alive," Oster told Wired News. "The video-game business is the only exception, and that's unfair."

Bob Finlayson, of the game industry's Publishers Interactive Bargaining Group, disagrees."People buy games for gameplay, not to hear voices," counters Finlayson. "And technology creates gameplay, not actors. People who play these games understand that, and in fact, some gamers turn the volume down because (they) find those voices distracting. In film or television, the actor's performance makes the experience. In video games, it does not."

Link

Reader feedback: Many Wired News and Boing Boing readers wrote in with their thoughts on the story. Here are a few.

"Mark Long, Zombie" writes:

I'm an independent game developer in Seattle and I think SAG is nuts if they think they deserve residuals for a half day of VO work when the development team slaves away for 2 years to produce a title. I'll back SAG when game programmers and artists get residuals first.

Ron Gilbert writes:

It would have been interesting to mention in you article about SAG actors in video games that very few people working the games industry get royalties. Why should we pay actors royalties when programmers and arts don't? Hollywood is driven by the "points" everyone gets, the games industry is not. It is a very different economic model. I think that fact that the actors are asking for back-end when very few people in this industry get any is worth mentioning. I hardly ever see this in the mainstream press.

Kevin Greenstein writes:

Given the reviews that Revenge of the Sith [the video game] has received, particularly with regard to the stand-in voice talent (no Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, etc.), I think it's clear that high-quality voice talent adds a great deal to the gaming experience. Otherwise, game manufacturers wouldn't be seeking out that talent in the first place. As games get more advanced, the presence of quality talent will become more and more crucial... until game manufacturers can adequately simulate the voice talent electronically, thus no longer needing any voice talent at all.

Craig writes:

I honestly don't care whether they strike or not and I don't think it will make a difference to the industry. I do wonder though if the people that actually create the games are union and will they back the "actors" up in their idiotic battle.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:00:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Addictive SFCave game as a first-person Java applet

SFCave was the most addictive PalmOS game I ever played. In SFCave, you piloted a spacecraft through a cave with many upthrusting stalagmites and downhanging stalactites. Pressing the sole control button made you rise, and taking your finger off made you fall. Like all great timewasters, the simplicity was the key to the addictiveness.

Now there's a 3D version of it implemented in Java, which can be played in your browser. You see the cave from the PoV of the ship, with hills and dips looking ahead of you, and use the mouse-button to rise. This first-person version of the game is, if anything, even more addictive. Consider yourself warned. Link (Thanks, Yoz!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:31:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Soda drinker will win a trip to space

A winning bottle of 7UP or affiliated beverage contains a prize good for a trip to space on a private suborbital vehicle.

The grand prize is a suborbital trip to the fringe of space, on a yet-to-be-flown craft that's based on SpaceShipOne technology. Why SpaceShipOne? Because the giveaway deal is being put together through the auspices of the X Prize Foundation.

"One of the rules that the [X Prize] teams signed onto in their master team agreement was that the X Prize Foundation would have access to some of the early seats at the going ticket price," Peter Diamandis, the foundation's chairman, explained.

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:20:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese WWII soldiers still living in Filipino jungle

Two WWII-era Japanese soldiers have been discovered living in a Filipino jungle. They knew the war was over, but they still saw no reason to come out of hiding for all these years.

According to Japanese media reports, the pair had been living with Muslim rebel groups and at least one of them has married a local woman and had a family.

The BBC's Tokyo correspondent says the likelihood is that they are well aware the war is over but have chosen to stay in the Philippines for their own reasons...

The Sankei Shimbun daily said the men would most likely be members of the Panther division, 80% of whom were killed or went missing during the final months of the war.

It speculated there could be as many as 40 Japanese soldiers living in similar conditions in the Philippines.

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:15:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Schwarzenegger creates, then fills Potemkin pothole

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger dispatched a road crew to a residential street in San Jose to create a pothole, which he later turned up and filled, grinning for news-cameras and declaring his willingness to increase funding for transportation projects. The Potemkin pothole was later sealed by a roadcrew with a gigantic roller truck,

Porrovecchio and his business partner, Joe Greco, said that at about 7 a.m. they became fascinated watching "10 city workers standing around for a few hours putting on new vests,'' all in preparation for the big moment with Schwarzenegger.

But their street, he noted, didn't even have a hole to pave over until Thursday morning.

"They just dug it out,'' Porrovecchio said, shrugging. "There was a crack. But they dug out the whole road this morning.''

"It's a lot of money spent on a staged event,'' said Matt Vujevich, 74, a retiree whose home faced the crew-made trench that straddled nearly the whole street. "We still have the same problems. Everything's a press conference.''

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:09:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iPod Shuffle hacks collected

Shufflehacks is a blog chock full o' interesting ways of modding and hacking the iPod Shuffle, from cases made out of gum-wrappers to chargers hacked into Xboxen. Link (Thanks, Mothman!)

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

FreeCulture.org, now a real non-profit, needs advice

Congrats to the copyfighting student movement Free Culture on having successfully incorporated as a nonprofit! Gavin Baker sez, "FreeCulture.org, that rabble of a student movement, is now a legit non-profit. We need opinions, advice, or cranky comments. We need help finding board members, mulling tax-exempt status, and much, much more."

Here are just some of the questions we have to consider:

* How big should the board of directors be?
* What should the makeup of the board be? For instance, should be it all students? Students and alumni? Others? What ratios/percentages? Should we have a student majority? A student-or-alumni majority?
* Who should we ask to serve on the board?
* Should we have an advisory board? Who should we ask to sit on that?
* Should board members be volunteers, or should we try to remunerate them?
* Officers: what are the roles/titles? (e.g. “treasurer”) What do we need? Who are they?
* Funding: what do we need it for? Where do we get it?

Link (Thanks, Gavin!)

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

Remixes and mashups of video-game songs

The VGMix online community is dedicated to remixing and mashing up music from video games, with extensive reviews, commentary and, of course, downloads. One cool element of this is the degree to which the most prolific remixers improve from mix to mix, and how the mixers help each other. Link (via MeFi)

Update: Drew points out that OCRemix does the same thing.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:19:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crazy animated Japanese snackfood ads

This collection of animated TV ads for Japan's Kabaya snacks are hilarious and crazy. Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:15:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MIT Tech Review pre-publishing draft articles on a blog

Wade sez,

I'm a senior editor at MIT's Technology Review. Right now we're trying something a little unusual (for a mainstream media outlet). For details, see this post on a new blog we created a few weeks ago.

It’s Part 1 of an article about "continuous computing" that will appear in the print magazine in August. Continuous computing is a term we've coined to describe the new, much more personal, social, and natural way of using computers that's taking hold as mobile devices, ubiquitous wireless access, and "Web 2.0" services converge.

We've decided to pre-publish the article on the Web in order to gather comments, suggestions, and corrections from readers. We're folding the comments back into the online version of the story in the form of pop-up notes, and we'll include as many of these comments as we can in the actual print article.

We've never tried anything like this, but it seemed appropriate to experiment with online participatory journalism with this particular story, since it’s all about social computing. All four parts of the story have now been posted on the blog, and they’re generating a good amount of discussion and commentary. But we'd like to invite more people into the discussion.

Link (Thanks, Wade!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:06:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Krishnas vs Mac cultists toon

This Joy of Tech strip made me chuckle -- Hare Krishnas telling of iPod-bearing Mac cultists for singing and dancing on their pitch. Link (Thanks, Robert!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:03:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Oysters and other sea-boogers carry disease

It turns out that sea-boogers (clams, oysters and mussels) have a weird-ass immune system that makes them into excellent hosts for human-toxic pathogens, even if they're well-cleaned.

Clams, mussels and oysters are important vehicles for the transmission of enteric diseases when consumed raw or undercooked. Vibrio species, including human pathogens, are particularly abundant in bivalve tissues, where they can persist even after cleaning procedures, thus representing a potential risk for human health. Although different environmental factors are well known to affect the persistence of vibrios in these organisms, the key role of the interactions between vibrios and the immune system of bivalves has been recently highlighted by scientists from the Universities of Genova and Urbino (Italy) in Environmental Microbiology.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:59:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mattel: kids will mistake BBQ joint for a Barbie doll

Mattel is suing to shut down a BBQ joint in Quebec called "Barbie's," on the grounds that very stupid children might wander alone into the bar/restaurant and order ribs under the mistaken impression that they have something to do with the Barbie dolls. Mattel: "we think our customers are morons(TM)".

"My client's position is that there's no confusion when you have an adult restaurant with a bar that has nothing in it to have someone think about toys or children," she said.

"It's no decorated in pink colours or in any way that could have someone think about dolls or children."

But documents filed with the Supreme Court show Mattel thinks there's plenty of room for confusion and that the company deserves exclusive rights to the brand.

"Barbie and Barbie's are among the most famous marks in North America, having been widely used and promoted for more than 40 years," the company maintains.

Link (via Lawgeek)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:56:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Euro-TV tuner-peripheral does everything and will shortly be illegal

Check out the FusionHDTV USB TV peripheral. Plug this into your PC's USB and receive standard and high-def DVB television (DVB is the standard used in Europe, Australia and parts of Asia and Latinamerica). Use your computer for a PVR, burn your favorite shows to DVD, and so on. I wonder if the manufacturer knows that DVB has a working group (PDF Link) that is aimed at making this product illegal? I think I'll tell them.

* Supports any notebook PCs as well as desktop
* Bus-powered (No power adapter required)
* Small form-factor and fancy design which can fit even your pocket
* High resolution, crystal clear picture quality
* Provides ultimate picture quality experience on PC
* Crisp, clear picture quality even on LCD and low resolution monitor
* Record digital HDTV directly to your hard drive like a VCR
* Supports native mode .MPG capturing as well as “AS IS” transport stream format.
* Cut streaming files "on-the-fly" with the APP software
* Record one channel while watch another with FusionHDTV PCI
* USB application can run side by side with PCI
* Supports recording one channel while watch another if you already have FusionHDTV PCI.
* Supports fastest DVD/Divx conversion for burning and archiving
* Supports ultra fast native mode .MPG conversion
* Bundles DVD authoring and burning software

Link (via Red Ferret Journal)

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

Anthropomorphic iPod stand

The iGuy is an anthropomorphic iPod stand that -- as Gizmodo point out -- makes the iPod pretty useless for pocket-borne use. Still and all, it's a cool and friendly enough looking desk-mount that I'd consider using one, if I had a desk. Link (via Gizmodo)

Update: Of course, there's always the (sold out) Podbuddies for your iPod Shuffle.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:45:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chernobyl-damaged kids supposedly smarter, healthier

Chernobyl-area doctors claim that local "radiation-damaged" children are smarter and healthier than their counterparts. Now, this is reported in the UK Sun, which isn't much of a newspaper, and who knows where they got these Russian doctors from, but still: interesting.

Kids growing up in areas damaged by radiation from the plant have a higher IQ and faster reaction times, say Russian doctors.

They are also growing faster and have stronger immune systems.

Link (via JWZ)

Update: Ben sez, "This documentary on HBO sharply contrasts the article. I could barely sit through the whole thing. It shows the damage done by a combination of the Chernobyl accident and poor Russian health care.

"Do these kids look like a bunch of super humans?

"The Chernobyl Children's Project works to help take care of these kids."

To be clear -- the interesting thing about this story isn't the possibility that it's true. It clearly isn't. It's that there are doctors participating in a Big Lie regarding the ongoing tragedy of Chernobyl.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:37:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Darth Tater puns written by schoolchildren

Bre Pettis says, "Mr. Miller, a fellow teacher, asked his students to come up with puns around the concept of 'Darth Tater.' The results have had me chuckling all day."

# "Luke, I am your farmer"
# "Trust your peelings"
# "Luke Frywalker"
# "If only you knew the power of the deep fried"
# "Luke, I have drained you well"

Link
More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:27:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plastinated bodies decomposing

The Universe Within is an exhibit of plastinated corpses currently on display at San Francisco's Masonic Center. It's basically a knock-off of plastination pioneer Gunther von Hagens' Bodyworlds show. Apparently though, the people who plastinated these bodies didn't have von Hagens's chops. The bodies are leaking. City officials are investigating and may shut down the exhibit. From ABC7 News:

The I-Team spotted moisture beading up across faces, dripping inside chest cavities, and pooling beneath feet. Plastination experts tell us, it's evidence of a rush job.

Bob Henry, Int'l Society for Plastination: "It appears to be a classic example of someone not understanding the process and not realizing that it literally takes months to prepare a nice specimen."

The I-Team took samples from the bodies and sent them to a lab. It's silicone from the plastination process and liquefied human fat. The bodies were not degreased properly before they were filled with plastic. Link

There's also question about how the organizers acquired the bodies:

The Masonic's executive director and the show's promoter claim they were able to bring the bodies from China with the help of Peking University and Professor EnHua Yu. The promoter, Gerhard Perner, says he pays rent to the Masonic, keeps 15-percent of the show's profits for himself, and sends the rest back to China.

ABC7's Dan Noyes: "Do the profits go to Dr. Yu personally or to the university?"

Gerhard Perner: "To the university."

But university officials say all that's not true. They had no role in acquiring the bodies, they're receiving no money. In fact, they never heard of this body show until contacted by the I-Team. We've learned that Perner was able to get bodies meant for medical research and teaching from a factory in Nanjing, China. It worries San Francisco supervisors that these bodies are now on display on Nob Hill. Link (Thanks, April!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:33:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eleven steps to a better brain

New Scientist provides a list of eleven ways to boost your brainpower--from smart drugs to more sleep to training your "working memory"--and surveys the research behind the claims. From the article:

Until recently, a person's IQ - a measure of all kinds of mental problem-solving abilities, including spatial skills, memory and verbal reasoning - was thought to be a fixed commodity largely determined by genetics. But recent hints suggest that a very basic brain function called working memory might underlie our general intelligence, opening up the intriguing possibility that if you improve your working memory, you could boost your IQ too.

Working memory is the brain's short-term information storage system. It's a workbench for solving mental problems. For example if you calculate 73 - 6 + 7, your working memory will store the intermediate steps necessary to work out the answer. And the amount of information that the working memory can hold is strongly related to general intelligence.

A team led by Torkel Klingberg at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has found signs that the neural systems that underlie working memory may grow in response to training. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, they measured the brain activity of adults before and after a working-memory training programme, which involved tasks such as memorising the positions of a series of dots on a grid. After five weeks of training, their brain activity had increased in the regions associated with this type of memory (Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 75).

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:34:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Overheard in Hollywood last night

"What does the American media have to be proud of with regard to covering Iraq? The press have functioned as little more than stenographers for the war."
-- Flavia Colgan, political analyst for NBC and Fox News, at a private screening/fundraiser for a documentary film about the personal, psychological effects of war on the soldiers who do make it home alive.

Here's the film project -- it's powerful stuff. The Ground Truth, directed by Patricia Foulkrod. More on that soon.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:40:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crapper for your car

The Indipod is a new in-vehicle toilet designed for people with medical conditions or families on long road trips. An inflatable bubble around the throne gives the user privacy. Manufactured by DayCar, the Indipod sells for £199.00. From the BBC News:

"For people with bowel disease, incontinence or bladder problems, this product is not a luxury, it's a necessity," said (DayCar managing director Barbara) May. "It's giving them back their social lives and their freedom."

The company says that the chemicals break down waste into a "sweet smelling, inoffensive liquid", which can be disposed of at the end of a journey.

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:29:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cat and Girl comic on modern art

Cat and Girl saddle up to the bar for a comic send-up of contemporary/avant-garde art called "Where is the Little Andres Serranos Room?" Link (Thanks, Professor Cupcake!)

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

Xeni Tech on NPR: Next gen consoles from "The Big Three"

For today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day:

Console video game heavyweights Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have all announced their own next-generation game systems. Each system moves beyond eye-popping graphics to focus on creating a larger media experience for gamers -- and in the case of the Microsoft XBox, becoming a central home entertainment platform. Alex Chadwick talks with Day to Day technology contributor Xeni Jardin.

Included: comment from game biz experts Joel Johnson (Gizmodo), Brad King (author, Dungeons and Dreamers), and Alice Taylor -- BBC producer, and fragger nonpareil (do not question her Quake authoritaaah).

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

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:32:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flickr pool tracks Space Invader spottings

Reader Pete Barr-Watson says,

I saw your Boing Boing post on the RubikCubism exhibition and thought you might want to take a look at the Flickr group I started for the invaders... I've been into finding the various installations for a number of years and started the group so people could upload their own pix of them.

Shown here, two snapshots contributed by users "Meteorry" and "Keees" to that pool: "The red light district in Amsterdam is invaded too! This is the Arm bridge (Armbrug)." Left, detail; right; the scene from a distance.

Link

Previously on BB: Space Invader, Rubikcubism.

Reader comment: Boing Boing reader Alan says, "As well as the photo pool, there's a commonly-used tag on Flickr that will show many more." Link to tag.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:48:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sixfinger toy from the 1960s

I remember the TV commercial for Sixfinger, a plastic toy finger from the '60s that shot darts and had a built-in pen. I really wanted one but I think my mother thought they were dangerous. It's one of the most phallic looking toys I've ever seen.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:25:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BitTorrent crackdown by FBI, Customs: readers respond

Following up on yesterday's Boing Boing post on the first-ever BitTorrent criminal bust by the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, reader Breon Halling says:

I just took a peek at the site, elitetorrents.org . It's a just a frame for a page sitting here. A couple of things about that page:

1) The feds use MS Word for their page designs. Silly.
2) This one is kind of interesting. Right at the bottom of that page, in red text on a red background -- making it effectively invisible (but if you view the source or select everything on the page, you can see it) -- are the following characters: RTJKJA

I'd be interested in knowing what those letters signify. Maybe with Boing Boing power, we can figure it out!

Regarding that MS Office "code stamp," reader mediamelt asks, "Any way to check whether it was made with legally purchased software?"

Tim Bennett says,

WHOIS.NET says that the EliteTorrents registration expires on the 7th of July 2005. Given that the feds say it's been "permanently shut down", I wonder if they'll take an interest in anybody who subsequently re-registers it?

And over on the politech discussion list, CNET's Declan McCullagh writes about the DHS' seizure of elitetorrents.org:

This isn't the first time domain names have been seized. See this [article], from 2003:

WASHINGTON--Federal police have adopted a novel crime-fighting tactic: seizing control of domain names for Web sites that allegedly violate the law. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Monday that the domain names for several Web sites allegedly set up to sell illegal "drug paraphernalia" would be pointed at servers located at the Drug Enforcement Administration. A federal judge in Pittsburgh granted the U.S. Department of Justice permission to do so until a trial can take place, the government said.

The domain name at issue there, iSoNews.com, now redirects to freecellphones.com. Guess DOJ wasn't paying the domain name renewal fees.

Link, and see also this related Politech message.

Previously on Boing Boing: First criminal BitTorrent bust in USA: Elite Torrents

Update: Not sure if this is true, but it's certainly funny. Reader Andreas says,

"RT" (as in "RTFM") means "Read The". "JKJA", as we are reminded these days, means "Jedi Knight Jedi Academy"; there's also a Raven Software / LucasArts game of the same title and commonly referred to by the same acronym. While "Read The Jedi Knight Jedi Academy" doesn't make much sense to me, "Raid The Jedi Knight Jedi Academy" sounds more plausible, especially since the elitetorrents.org site has been blamed for spreading Episode 3 to an interested public.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:55:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spraypaint stencils of great science fiction writers

AstoundMe Media is featuring 12 downloadable spray-stencil templates based on famous SF writers (shown here: Robert A Heinlein, Hugo Gernsback, John W Campbell, Isaac Asimov, EE Doc Smith, and HG Wells). Print 'em, mount 'em on cardboard, cut 'em out and spray 'em on. Remember, though, "It is not appropriate behavior to damage private property." (for a bonus, check out the creator's collection of blues-artist stencils) Link (Thanks, Keith!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:52:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John Lennon's jacket on eBay

A technicolor dreamcoat reportedly owned by John Lennon is up for live auction on eBay. Bidding starts at US$15,000 and is estimated to hit up to US$120,000. From the listing:

THE ULTIMATE ROCK N ROLL COLLECTIBLE. ORIGINAL JACKET MADE BY CHRIS JAGGER. THIS LOT IS ACCOMPANIED BY A COLOR PHOTO OF THE JACKET SIGNED ON THE BACK " I CERTIFY THIS IS THE JACKET MADE AND SOLD TO JOHN LENNON IN 1967 AND IS AN ORIGINAL, ONE OFF HAND MADE GARMENT. CHRIS JAGGER. A SPECTACULAR DISPLAY PIECE AND A REAL PIECE OF ROCK HISTORY. THE JACKETS DESIGN GIVES A REAL TASTE OF THE STYLE OF THE ERA.

Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:25:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DRMed ebooks cost lots and break when you upgrade Acrobat

My friend Espen, in Oslo, writes in with the story of a friend of his who bought an ebook for $172 (yes, a hundred and seventy two DOLLARS), then upgraded his version of Acrobat and lost the ability to read it. No one answers his tech support emails and his $172 ebook is just a jumble of encrypted bits on his harddrive. This is the outcome of DRM: it only punishes the people who are willing to shell out money for digital works, and it drives them to seek either infringing editions or comepeting, free information.

In January I bought my first ebook (ISBN: B0000E68Z2), which is published by Wiley. I have one copy on my laptop and a backup on my external harddrive. Last week, I downloaded and installed Adobe Professional (writer 6.0) from our company network (Norwegian School of Management, BI) - during the installation some files from the Adobe version that I downloaded and installed when I bought the ebook (from Amazon.com UK) were deleted. Since then, I have not been able to access my ebook - I have tried to get help from our computer staff but they have not been able to help me.

Adobe thinks that I'm using another computer, while I'm not - and it didn't help to activate the computer through some Adobe DRM Activator stuff. Now I have spent at least 10 hours trying to access my ebook - hope you can help

Link (Thanks, Espen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:19:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cockroaches kill Macedonian court's laser printers by eating toner

From Metamorphosis, a Macedonian IT watchdog group's blog, Metamorphasis, this amazing account of the infrastructure problems in Macedonia's biggest courthouse.

He added that they were finding cockroaches in the printers, but the heat and the laser were killing them so there were no bigger defects.

Yet, some of the judges said that cockroaches have eaten the toners of the printers on several occasions.

"This is big shame for the country. This court, as the biggest court in the country, should have the best equipment instead of fighting cockroaches," one of the judges reacted.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:39:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's Broadcast Flag talk as streaming video

On Wednesday, I gave a talk at the London campus of Florida State University on the American Broadcast Flag and the coming European Broadcast Flag. A friend of Alfie's brought down a couple of camcorders and filmed the whole thing and now it's up as a pair of streaming Quicktimes. Part 1, Part 2 (Thanks, Alfie!)

Update: MP3 torrent here

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:26:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unexpurgated radio interview with Chuck Pahlaniuk

NPR's Rick Kleffel did a long interview with Chuck "Fight Club" Palahniuk which he ended up getting cut down prior to airing, due to Pahlaniuk's hilarious, R-rated side-remarks about his fans and their odd habits and confessions, as well as his fiction. The interview is up in an unexpurgated MP3 and definitely worth a listen.

I've already uploaded MP3 and RealAudio files of this interview, but please don’t listen if you are easily offended. I guarantee that you WILL BE offended. And if you aren't offended, I guarantee that you'll be amused. Moreover, this interview allows Chuck to get to the heart of something that really interests him, a theme that crops up in a number of his novels, including his latest, 'Haunted'. Palahniuk is fascinated with the process of narration, both in literature and in culture, and the relationship between the two. You see, it's his contention -- and I would agree -- that whoever the final narrator of our times, our culture, may prove to be, that person or entity wields a power that is central but hidden. It is the power to define our times and our culture, the power to define our lives. This interview will help listeners get to the camera behind the camera. It may make you angry, it may make you pass out, but this time around, Palahniuk tells the story. He's the camera behind the camera.

Link (Thanks, Rick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:19:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Singularity enthusiasts interviewed

WorldChanging has an enormous, sprawling interview with three Singularity theorists: James Hughes (whose Citizen Cyborg I've reviewed here), Ramez Naam (author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement) and Joel Garreau (Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- And What It Means To Be Human). They cover a lot of ground here and much of it is very interesting.

When you teach people to read are you making the illiterate less well off? Yes, in fact, in a generally literate society employers will generally want to hire literate people. But we don't then argue that we shouldn't teach people to read because we're making the illiterates worse off. We argue that we should teach everyone to read. So if there is a substantial population of Amish in the future who feel disenfranchised because they've decided not to take the cognitive enhancement drugs, and aren't able to work at what's considered the then normative level of work productivity and cognitive performance, I don't really think that the answer is to have a regulatory approach. I'm not suggesting that that's Joel's answer, but that is a lot of people's answer.

I also don't think that there's any useful distinction between therapy and enhancement although many people will persist in making it. My favorite example is that anti-aging medicine will stop an awful lot of diseases. I don't see how you can distinguish in that case between saying well this is also a prophylactic against cancer, and saying that it will extend my life a couple tens of decades. In terms of the psychopharmaceuticals I'm generally in favor of deregulation. As I said I think that there are gonna be some psychopharmaceuticals and neuro-nano technologies which will have very profound dangers attached to them, much more dangerous than heroin and cocaine are today. But we see with the Drug War today the tremendous social costs associated with restricting people's cognitive liberty.

Link (Thanks, Andrew!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:16:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ClearChannel sets up fake anti-ClearChannel pirate radio stn

Carrie sez, "Clear Channel has set up a fake pirate radio station in Akron, Ohio, which it's using to hurl insults at other Clear Channel stations. Radio Free Ohio has feigned overthrowing Ohio's media monopoly by bleeding its broadcasts into local Clear Channel stations... presumably, it's all part of a marketing campaign for a new CC 'alternative.'" Link (Thanks, Carrie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:10:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What Canada's doing about copyright (and what it should do)

Michael Geist, the Canadian copyfightin' law prof, has an excellent article in this month's Literary Review of Canada about Canada's current plans for copyright reform (generally sucky) and how they could be massively improved (by concentrating on solving problems of public access and new opportunities for artists).

Canada need not choose copyright reforms that benefit a select few rights holders, while providing little for Canadian creators and users. As Charlie Angus, an NDP member of Parliament and a musician on the Canadian Heritage Standing Committee, recently noted, "placing handcuffs on students will not resolve the inability of Canadian artists to earn a decent living."

The federal government should instead embrace a positive vision of copyright reform that increases access to Canadian culture and opens new opportunities for Canadian artists. Two such possibilities include the creation of a national digital library and the granting of new public rights to use CBC content. The Internet and emerging technologies provide millions of Canadians with the ability both to create and to consume culture, political speech and entertain-ment. New copyright legislation should therefore help provide Canadians with the raw materials needed to express themselves.

640K PDF Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:08:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spider crabs 10 deep across a football-field-sized area

50,000 spider crabs have swarmed the ocean floor near Australia's Port Phillip Bay, crowding 10 deep over an area the size of a football field. Link (Thanks, Adrian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:00:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

vi command reference mug

This CafePress mug has a set of reference tables for the classic geeky text-editor vi. Unlike CafePress t-shirts, their mugs actually last for more than one washing, so this won't subject you to the heartbreak of buying cool interweb folk art that self-destructs after a couple uses. Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:27:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Music as anesthetic

According to a new study, listening to music when you go under the surgical knife can significantly reduce your need for sedation. Anesthesiologists at the Yale School of Medicine ran a study that included 90 patients undergoing "urological procedures with spinal anesthesia and patient-controlled IV propofol sadation." From a press release about the paper, published in the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia:

The subjects wore headphones and were randomly assigned to hear music they liked, white noise or to wear no headphones and be exposed to operating room noise. Dropping a surgical instrument into a bowl in the operating room can produce noise levels of up to 80 decibels, which is considered very loud to uncomfortably loud.

What they found is that blocking the sounds of the operating room with white noise did not decrease sedative requirements of listening to operating room sounds. Playing music did reduce the need for sedatives during surgery.

Link and Link to scientific paper abstract

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:13:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

White bison born in Canada

A rare white bison calf was born on a buffalo ranch in northeastern British Columbia. White bison are considered sacred by some First Nations and Native Americans. A white buffalo named Miracle, born in 1994 in Wisconsin, died last September. From CBC News:

Aboriginal legend holds that the white bison is a harbinger of peace and unity. And in that spirit, (rancher Karen) Blatz says she has named the male calf Spirit of Peace...

"To them a white buffalo is a symbol of hope, rebirth or unity and also peace. And because he was born north of Peace River, we thought Peace would be a good name."

She says the bison won't suffer the same fate as the others on her ranch. "This guy is a little different. He won't be going into bison burgers."

Blatz said the calf will remain under her care for several more months, but she is considering selling him.

"It could be to the native Americans, or even if a circus or a zoo wants something rare to put in there – to draw the crowds. That would be good too, but he definitely needs more exposure than where we live."

Link (via Fortean Times)

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:43:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Praying monkey in India

A monkey reportedly participated in a Hindu ritual at a temple in the Balasore district of Orissa, India. The monkey allegedly folded its hands, took prasad (sanctified food), and marked its forehead with vermillion. After the villagers adorned it with a garland, the monkey took off into the forest. From the Indo-Asian News Service:

"When we saw the monkey joining us we were surprised. We did not try to drive it out and it continued praying for nearly an hour amid hundreds of devotees," (Junia village resident Aniruddha) Behera told IANS... "We have not seen any monkey around for the last two years. This is a miracle for us," Behera said.

Link (Thanks, Casey/Monkeys In The News!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:18:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Falling dominoes" in Half-Life

Cool demonstration of the physics engine in Half-Life. This guy set up a bunch of steel doors and other objects to create a Rube Goldberg-esque way to crush a character.
Link

Reader comment:Callum says: "Love the Half Life dominio video and figured something similar would work in our client - Second Life - sure enough, it worked perfectly - plus, since you can create object in-world yourself, making the dominos look like, well, dominos, was a cinch."
Link

Reader comment: Shanjaq says: "Those 'Falling Dominoes' in Half-Life 2 were great! That video was made with Garry's Mod, you'll find some incredible contraptions and outragious comics being constructed by the community. I'm glued to it, watching machines you build with random objects perform as you would expect in reality, a great sandbox to explore the realm of cause and effect! There's so much to it even with its simplistic interface, hopping servers you'll see people building forts, cars, fight scenes, giant robots, combustion engines, boats, podracers, catapults, zombie crushers, or giant mobile mass-sculptures that really serve no purpose other than spazztastic hilarity."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:44:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Good Graffiti

Howard Rheingold says: "I know these folks. Frank Foreman was involved in spreading Anne Herbert's original 'Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty' meme.

"This is how they describe it on the site:"

Welcome to SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY the FREE "good graffiti" picture site! Whether you just want to browse our large image gallery or want to share your personal "good graffiti" photos with others, this is the site for you!

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:33:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Register of copyrights: a national embarrassment

Ernest sez, "The Register of Copyrights, Marybeth Peters, who previously has testified before Congress that the Betamax decision should be overturned testified today before the Senate IP subcommitee that: 1) Int'l copyright infringement was funding terrorism, although she had only rumors and sketchy evidence; 2) Some 'like-minded' countries seek to undermine existing int'l copyright and couch their arguments in terms of 'cultural diversity' and 'encouraging development'; 3) claming that unnamed American commentators on copyright law provide rationalizations for commercial copyright infringement by criminal organizations; and, 4) that we need the INDUCE Act domestically otherwise other nations won't take our arguments about copyright enforcement seriously." Link (Thanks Ernest!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:28:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lori Earley art show at Roq La Rue Opening Friday June 3rd

Roq La Rue gallery in Seattle is hosting artist Lori Earley's first solo show. (Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

Lori’s seamless paintings of darkly beautiful and enigmatic women painted with a masterly hand and an unbelievable eye for lighting have burst onto the Pop Surrealism scene and quickly garnered her an impressive collector and fan base. This is her first solo show.

Lori Earley grew up down the street from an amusement park in Rye, New York. She began drawing at a very young age, and was always intrigued by the unusual- a fascination that would become a trait in her art later on.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:34:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

First criminal BitTorrent bust in USA: Elite Torrents

Snipped from the Department of Homeland Security press release:

Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Michael J. Garcia, and Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel of the FBI's Cyber Division announced today the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on peerto- peer (P2P) networks using cutting edge file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent.

This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the United States against leading members of a technologically sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents. Employing technology known as BitTorrent, the Elite Torrents network attracted more than 133,000 members and, in the last four months, allegedly facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 titles - including movies and software - which were downloaded 2.1 million times.

In addition to executing 10 warrants, federal agents also took control of the main server that coordinated all file-sharing activity on the Elite Torrents network. Anyone attempting to log on to Elitetorrents.org today will receive the following message: "This Site Has Been Permanently Shut Down By The Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

Link to copy of DHS press release (PDF).

More information in the public affairs section of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website (DHS):

News Release (PDF Version)
Elite Torrents Video (AVI) Video Transcript
IPR Fact Sheet

(Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:24:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Update from yesterday's item: eBay drops removed the MI5 bugging device from auction

irritant says: "eBay have removed the MI5 bugging device from auction soon after a verified bid of $3000.00 was made. Sinn Fein are now selling it on thier online bookshop."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:56:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with Flaming Carrot comic book creator

Dirk Deppey says: "I interviewed the creator of Flaming Carrot Comics and the mind behind the Mystery Men movie, Bob Burden, for The Comics Journal a few months back, and the issue in which it appears hits the comics-shop shelves today. The link is an excerpt from said interview, in which Mr. Burden holds forth on a subject very near and dear to his heart: the nature of surrealism.

DEPPEY: I think if I had to pinpoint the most surreal thing I've ever seen it would have to be a PBS special I saw as an early teenager on Japanese Noh theater, which is sort of the grotesque version of Kabuki. The special opened up with what seemed like this eight-minute shot of a woman who was bare from the middle of her breasts on up. It was a very tight angle, close-up shot of that, with her head tilted way back, looking over her shoulder at the camera with this utterly maniacal gleam in her eyes -- like she was about to devour a kitten or something. After about a minute of this, a little patch of saliva began slowly sliding out of the side of her mouth, slowly running down her chin, slowly running down her neck. Everything else was absolutely still...

BURDEN: You were hypnotized.

DEPPEY: Absolutely. [Burden laughs.] It was just, you know, up until that point one of the strangest things I'd ever seen. And yet, it was composed of such simple and obvious things. It wasn't like her head was popping off and cuckoo birds were flying out or anything else. It was a very still, static, composed shot of a familiar thing in completely unfamiliar circumstances.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:16:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moment of pirated Shanghai DVD zen

From McSweeney's, "REVIEWS OF DVDS THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE PIRATED BUT WERE DEFINITELY BOUGHT ON THE STREET IN SHANGHAI FOR ABOUT A DOLLAR."

Sin City

Obtained: Guy standing on Maoming Road, next to guy selling puppies
Price: 8 RMB

In several climactic scenes, including the Jessica Alba dancing segments, the anvil-headed guy in front of the cameraman gets up to go to the bathroom. His big flat head blots out a good 10 percent of the screen. Damn you and your excitement-sensitive bladder, anvil-headed guy. We're looking for you. We'd recognize that jug anywhere.

Ten minutes in, the DVD starts skipping. Repeated cleanings with bottom of T-shirt fail to improve performance. It plays normally again at the 21-minute mark, leaving us confused about where the Bruce Willis character went. After the movie is over, we're still not sure.

Link (Thanks, Jim Ruland!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:54:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Space Invader: Rubikcubism

In June, LA's sixspace gallery will host an extensive show of installations and multimedia works be invaded by the French artist Space Invader. Shown here, an exclusive sneak peek at one of the pieces in "RUBIKCUBISM - A logical exhibition."

For the past five years, Invader has conducted worldwide "invasions" with custom site-specific mosaic pieces based on the 1978 video game "Space Invaders" created by Toshiro Nishikado; the streets of Paris, Tokyo, New York, London, and Los Angeles (among many others) have become components in his public art planetary invasion. (...)

With his new body of work in RUBIKCUBISM, Invader has taken himself from the landscape of the street and transplanted himself into the white cube environment of the gallery as he continues to explore his interest in the iconography of 1980s games, including Super Mario but, in particular, Rubik cubes. As a medium, the Rubik cube is consistent with Invader's interest in pixilation, aesthetics, and colors. By moving from two-dimensional works into the three-dimensional sculptural pieces of the Rubik cube, the process of learning about this particular "game" occurred; Invader associates with learning the "rules" of painting. At sixspace, these sculptures, who often times depict his infamous "space invaders," will include hanging and static sculptures as well as a twelve-foot installation created from boxes to resemble large-scale Rubik cubes.

Link to show info (sixspace, LA, June 11 - July 9, 2005)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:19:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Internet features in modern paranoid delusions

A reader writes, "A report in the medical journal Psychopathology notes that psychotic delusions increasingly concern the internet, suggesting high-technology can fulfill the role of malign 'magical' forces often experienced in psychosis."

In one case, a patient began to have paranoid thoughts and used an internet search engine to investigate suspicions about an ingredient on a chewing gum packet.

Her searches led her to believe she had discovered a secret terrorist network, and was therefore being personally targeted by the authorities using phone taps and hidden cameras...

The authors also consider that a person's understanding of technology may be a limiting factor in their ability to incorporate it into a delusional system. People with a poor understanding for example, may be more likely to attribute seemingly supernatural abilities to technology.

I have some delusional correspondence from people who are worried about having been implanted with RFIDs or tracked by spammers. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:05:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Romance novel cover remixes redux

Back in February, I blogged about this project to remix romance novel covers, adding funny new titles suggested by the cover art. There's a new batch of covers up, with lots of titles suggested by readers of the site, some of which (e.g., WHEN COUSINS MARRY, THE CLEAVAGE OF MARY-ANN PUSHUP, THE SMUG VIKING WHO SHAVED HIS NIPPLES, HE WAS SO PRETTY I FELT LIKE A LESIBAN, etc) are blisteringly funny. Link (Thanks, Tom!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:00:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chinese posted-ad for would-be mafiosi

Found on Flickr, this Chinese poster advertising for people to form a crime-syndicate:

Searching for Someone that Would be Interested [To Whom It May Concern]

I have been recently released from prison after doing over 10 years of time. I wanted to reform [reject the way of crime] and join the society, but the government is not what it used to be [I have done my time, but the government still treats me as a criminal].

I tried to start my own business, but lost everything. Thus I am broke and lack of money [financial resource].

Today, I have decided to join a terrorist organization or the underground crime syndicate. If anyone has connections, I am willing to join.

Or, if others have the similar idea, we could join forces and start our own "mafia".

Good looking female members are encouraged and welcome.

Contact telephone number: 027-61297229

Law enforcements please do not bother me, I have yet broken any law.

Link (Thanks, Tian!)

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

Lightsaber umbrella

This umbrella has a lightsaber handle and silkscreened vaderoid artwork on the sides. Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:34:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Morse coders faster than SMSers

In a competition on the Leno show, a pair of Morse coders kicked the asses of two SMSers for speed. MAKE blog has links to the video and comments from the competitors. Link

Update: JVC sez, "A museum in Sydney did something similar last month, pitting 93-year-old Gordon Hill against several teenagers."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hong Kong Disney will feature shark fin soup despite environmental devastation

Bish sez, "Despite the fact that millions of sharks are killed every year, by cutting off their fins and dropping the still-alive body back in the sea, leading to their inevitable extinction, Disney will have sharkfin soup on its menu in its new Hong Kong theme park."

Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature asked Hong Kong Disneyland to take shark fin soup off the menu after the theme park announced last week the delicacy would be served at wedding banquets and other special events...

But Disney says that while it takes the environment very seriously, the company is equally sensitive to local cultures and the dish is a key part of Chinese banquets.

Link (Thanks, Bish!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:18:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bladder doesn't shrink with age

Women's increased urinary urgency with age does not appear to be the result of a shrinking bladder, but rather reflects a treatable muscular disorder.

Women with normally aging bladders had weaker bladder sensation; while women who experienced increased bladder sensation actually had an underlying condition called detrusor overactivity (DO). DO is a common condition, often referred to as overactive bladder, where the detrusor muscle that controls the emptying of the bladder contracts involuntarily, creating a strong, sometimes uncontrollable urge to empty the bladder.

"Now, when a woman comes to her doctor and says that she thinks her bladder is shrinking, we realize that it is more likely she suffers from DO than from a smaller bladder," said Dr. Resnick. "The good news is that DO is treatable, so that any woman experiencing urgency or incontinence should see her doctor."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:15:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blackbeard's flagship found

A ship believed to be the wreck of Blackbeard's flagship, The Queen Anne's Revenge, has been found off the coast of North Carolina:

"We knew it the first day and we still have absolutely no doubt that she's the Queen Anne's Revenge," said Phil Masters, whose Florida-based research firm located the wreckage in 1996. "There is no other ship lost at Beaufort Inlet with anything more than 10 cannon, nor more than 110 tons that we know of."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:13:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

BBS: The Documentary is shipping

Jason Scott is the maintainer of Textfiles.com, a collection of all the textfiles ever posted to a BBS during the golden age of dial-up modems. He's also a former Boing Boing guestblogger.

For several years now, Jason has been pursuing his labor of love: a five and a half hour documentary on the history of Bulletin Board Systems, called BBS: The Documentary. Now BBS: THe Documentary is finally shipping. Congrats, Jason! Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:16:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Future of TV: Piracy will save production

The transcript of part one of Mark Pesce's speech, "Piracy is Good?" went live on Mindjack a couple weeks ago. It was a thought-provoking piece, but mostly covered old ground, talking about how the Battlestar Galactica had benefitted from SciFi's visionary online free distribution of the video and supplementary material in advance of the broadcast.

But now that part two is up, it's a lot more exciting. Part two is a roadmap of the future of television broadcasting and the economics of TV production. It's got some genuinely visionary material, and it makes it clear that for every loser who gets disintermediated by TV-over-the-Internet, there's a concomitant winner.

The producer has a better chance to reach an audience than ever before, but has no control over how productions reach that audience. If control over distribution could be maintained, if the oligarchy of commercial television broadcasting could consolidate its hold on program distribution, none of this would need to change. But it has already begun to change; the horse has already fled the barn.

The audience is asserting their control over television programming; this is actually a good thing, because the moments for television viewing are expanding in direct proportion to the exercise of this new power. Until very recently, television was an experience which was confined to the lounge room, shackled to a big, heavy box. But now we can watch full-length television programs on our mobile phones (a new capability of the latest generation of mobiles), or on the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), a high-resolution, widescreen, portable game and media machine, two of the new "must have" items for the younger set.

Part 1, Part 2, Postscript, Torrented video of speech (via Copyfight)

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

HOWTO put Amazon's cover-image engine through its paces

This person has reverse-engineered Amazon's cover-image-generating technology and can get it to do all kinds of tricks, like cough up arbitrarily sized covers, covers with discount bubbles on them, and even original covers sent by the publisher and later supplanted by new designs -- all by manipulating the base image URL. He can get half-CDs to stick out of it, rotate it at arbitrary angles, and add a ton of chrome to the image. All a testament to how freaking clever AMZN's image-generating engine is. Link (Thanks, Shahin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:05:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kittenwar: HotOrNot for kittens

Kittenwar is a HotOrNot site for kittens, in which you are encouraged to choose between kittens on the basis of which is cutest. It is every bit as clicktrance-inducing as RateMyPoo or HotOrNot or ThisOrThat or any of the other human-mediated bubblesorts. Link (Thanks, Yoz!)

Update: Renee sez, "Rate My Kitten has been a long a lot longer than Kittenwar. Unlike Kittenwar, it doesn't have kitten-on-kitten battles but allows users to rate kittens from 1 to 10 and see top and low rated kittens.

"They also have Rate My Bunny and Rate My Puppy."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:38:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory speaking in London next Wednesday

I'm giving a talk at London's Ecademy next Wednesday night. I'll be talking about America's Broadcast Flag, an unsavory piece of work that would have given Hollywood's would-be device czars a veto over the design of PCs and digital TVs. We had a crushing victory over the forces of darkness, but the evil Flag isn't dead yet -- and what's worse, it's going to come to Europe soon, in the guise of the DVB CPCM system for restricting television at home.

When: Wednesday, 1 June - 6:00pm to 10:00pm
Where: Marriott Hotel Marble Arch, 134 George Street, London,
Agenda: 6.00 - 7.30 Ecademist Networking (in the bar)
7.30 - 7.45 Ecademy Announcements
7.45 - 8.30 Talks
8.30 - 10.00 Ecademist Networking (in the bar)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:31:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stross's Singularity wiki

The Singularity is the moment in human history when things go non-linear because of the ability to upload consciousness to computers. Hitching human intelligence to PC industry's growth curve will make incomprehensible transhumans out of us, rupturing history. It's a lot of fun for science fiction writers to write about.

Charlie Stross -- who is all over this year's Hugo Ballot for a ton of fiction about the Singularity and other topics -- has created a Wiki for mapping out the contours of the Singularity.

If you live through the SIngularity and you do not try UpLoading and are not rendered PostHumous by feral calculators or get eaten by GreyGoo, you may be one of the PostHumans. PostHumans are humans who are not human any more. Some of them work for the Post Office, which keeps track of the PostHumans and sees that they do not cause outbreaks of GreyGoo, but the rest of them live a leisured life, pampered and cosseted by their UtilityFog and BushRobot an' other frightful servitors. Bein' PostHumans looks wonderful from here, much like being a late 20th century Accounts Clerk or Call Center Worker would have looked for a Hungarian peasant in 1420 with the nobility trying to kill them, i.e. grey, boring, and extremely well-fed. Only it'll be more exciting than that because we'll have World of Warcraft 21.499! Or something even better to play!

PostHumans are all inhumanly handsome or pretty, live infinitely long, get free unlimited resurrections if they're killed by dire boars or feral calculators or eated by Buick-eating aliens, and they get to have magic PixieDust NanoTechnology skillz. Being PostHumans is the bizniss.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:26:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crazy "lenticular mammatus" clouds over Joplin, MO

Curtis sez, "My mom lives in Joplin, MO and while out doing some work on the house in the morning saw these crazy clouds in the sky. Unfortunately, she didn't have a camera. Fortunately, the local news did. According to the weatherman on TV, they are called 'lenticular mammatus' and occur infrequently. The last reported sighting in the area was about 30 years ago." Link (Thanks, Curtis!)

Update: Scim sez, "In the post the clouds were called 'lenticular mammatus', which I don't think it a real term, though each term by itself is a real cloud name. Lenticular clouds, meaning lens shaped, are rounded and have been mistaken for UFOs before. Mammatus clouds are called such because the hanging pouches of the clouds resemble mammary glands (like a cow's udders)."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:22:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fight PATRIOT III -- write your Senator today!

Donna sez, "Now you can actually do something about the new PATRIOT Act expansion bill that's being marked up behind closed doors this Thursday (previous BoingBoing post here.)

"If this bill passes, the FBI could use special new 'administrative' subpoenas to get anything from anyone -- Internet logs and emails from your Internet service provider, health records from your doctor, financial information from your bank -- *without* having to go to a judge first. That's a power so vast, Congress refused to include in the original PATRIOT Act in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack.

If you are a resident of Kansas, Utah, Ohio, Missouri, Maine, Nebraska, Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Michigan, California, Oregon, Indiana, Maryland, or New Jersey, your senator is on the committee reviewing this bill in a closed session on Thursday. Don't let it get out committee. Write your senator to oppose the bill today!" Link (Thanks, Donna!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:16:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Music critic to labels: Give me CDs/MP3s/vinyl or don't bother

Matt sez, "New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones is pushing back on labels that mess around with critics in an attempt to curtail filesharing,"

I will not write about any piece of music unless I have unlimited access to a portable version of it, renderered in either the CD, MP3 or vinyl format.

"He's responding to the practice of holding "listening sessions" where a group of critics are invited to the label's offices to hear an album once or twice - rather than the standard practice of offering an advance CD weeks or months ahead of commercial release and giving the writer time to absorb and reflect." Link (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:14:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Duct tape festival in Ohio

The Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival takes place June 17-19 in Avon, Ohio, home to Duck brand duct tape manufacturer Henkel Consumer Adhesives. This duct tape fly was on display during last year's inaugural festival.

"From sculptures and fashion to games and a parade, everything at the festival will revolve around duct tape. Festival attendees will be able to make duct tape crafts, like roses and wallets, with professional duct tape sculptor, Todd Scott and duct tape crafter and author, Ellie Schiedermayer. Henkel Consumer Adhesives, marketer of Duck brand duct tape, will celebrate the sticky stuff with the display of numerous of larger-than-life duct tape sculptures created by local artists. In addition, The Duct Tape Guys, nationally known duct tape evangelists and authors of six books, will have several scheduled performances during the festival’s duration.

As the perfect celebration for Father’s Day weekend, the Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival not only features dad’s favorite fix-all, but also includes an antique car and truck show, a "Duct Tape Dad of the Year" contest, and all the classic fair food and rides which make festivals such a great time."

Link (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:49:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FOX issuing takedown notices to Sith downloaders

Jason Striegel of p2p.weblogsinc.com says,

I recently was forwarded a message from a concerned reader who was just served a copyright infringement notice for downloading Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith. FOX is going after small-time downloaders. The letter was sent by BayTSP (on behalf of 20th Century FOX), who appear to be making good on their claim that they can effectively track BitTorrent users. I've posted the full contents of the notice (minus any identifying information) and included contact information for BayTSP in case readers have any questions or comments.

Link

Reader comment: Neil Marshall says,

I noticed that you said that BayTSP was bothering people using bit torrent. If you want to stop them from looking at your machine then using this program called ProtoWall is helpful. Protowall blocks addresses from looking at the files in your shared folder. A secondary program on the same site called Blocklist Manager has a useful list of all those those companies that like to look at what you're downloading (BayTSP is on the list). Put the two together and you have an effective privacy tool.

Ernest Miller says,

If you're using BitTorrent, you're not just a DOWNloader, you are also an UPloader: Link.

Thep2pweblog reports that the 20th Century FOX film studio is issuing notice and takedown letters targeted at those using BitTorrent to acquire copies of Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (FOX Issuing Takedown Notices to Sith Downloaders). The notices aren't coming from FOX directly, but from the P2P monitoring company BayTSP, which is apparently authorized to send such notices on behalf of FOX.

Jason Striegel comments on BoingBoing (FOX Issuing Takedown Notices to Sith Downloaders):

I recently was forwarded a message from a concerned reader who was just served a copyright infringement notice for downloading Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith. FOX is going after small-time downloaders.

Well, if they're using BitTorrent, then they're not just downloaders are they? They are uploaders as well. That is how BitTorrent works and why it is so efficient. You might have had a centralized tracker, but even that isn't necessary anymore (Publication via BitTorrent Just Got Easier). How the heck is BayTSP supposed to figure out who is a small-time "downloader" and who isn't?

This may be essentially be for principle only (and the press it will get), but those who use BitTorrent to infringe copyright need to realize that they're not hard-to-track downloaders anymore.

Mike Schramm replies,

It's a good thing Fox and the MPAA are going after all those Revenge of the Sith downloaders. With the movie available for free on the internet, how will it ever make any money in theaters?!?!??!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:57:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-evolution stickers on schoolbooks removed

In 2002, officials in Georgia's Cobb County school district placed more than 30,000 stickers on textbooks stating: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." Six parents sued the school district and won. In January, a federal judge in Atlanta ruled that the stickers are unconstitutional because they violate the separation between church and state. (Background here.) This week, the stickers are finally being scraped off the books, but the school system has appealed. From the Associated Press:

“It’s a sad day in Cobb County,” said Larry Taylor, a parent who favors including alternatives to evolution in science classes. “I hate to see the stickers go. I thought they were a fair compromise.”

But Jeffrey Selman, who was the lead parent among a group who sued to remove the stickers, said he was glad they were being removed. “I’m optimistic, but it ain’t over till it’s over,” Selman said.

Link, Link to Skeptic's Dictionary entry on Intelligent Design

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:54:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Norah Jones vs. Schroeder?

Mark Ebner at Hollywood Interrupted asks, "Was a Norah Jones hit ripped from Charlie Brown theme music? You decide... This video file offers a side-by-side comparison of Don't Know Why and Christmas Time is Here."
Link

Reader comment: mnb says,

The comparison is absurd. They're both slow jazzy lounge tunes, but other than that, there's little similarity at all. The key element that drives the Norah Jones tune is a descending line (with suspension, a classic trick used well in this) that doesn't exist at all in the other tune.

Ray Parker Jr. won the suit that Huey Lewis and the News filed against him for the Ghostbusters tune. It was proposed that it sounded too much like I Want A New Drug. If you listen to the key rhythm part in the Ghostbusters tune and then listen to the guitar line in I Want A New Drug, you can quickly see a rather strong similarity. There is no such similarity between the Norah Jones song and the other one.

I'm not a professor of music or a professional critic, but I did take 2 years of Music Theory in college and have been a casual musician for 30 years. It doesn't take schooling to determine this, though, just a good ear.

The website says that when the songs are layered over each other simultaneously they should cancel each other out. They obviously have no clue what they're talking about. The only case where this would occur is if an identical sound track was phase reversed and played with the in phase version simultaneously. What would result then would be total silence. But they state that since it DOESN'T cancel out it's a copy. They might want to pick up a book on rudimentary physics of sound. Their position is so utterly preposterous it could be construed as libel.

Dan Ray says,

The fact is that the first four notes of the main melodic phrase of each song is identical, though, granted, in different keys. The first time I heard "Don't Know Why", I heard strong echoes of the classic Vince Guaraldi tune. In fact, my wife had to slug me to keep me from singing "Christmas time is here" over Norah's vocals on every verse. Is it a deliberate rip-off? I doubt it. Though it is a fairly unique melodic construction, they go in quite opposite directions after those first four notes. You can't copyright four notes of a melody. And Vince was a cool enough guy, I'm sure his estate will lay off the lawyers.

Christopher Null says,

Ray Parker Jr. did not "beat" Huey Lewis re: the Ghostbusters theme. It was settled out of court -- and since Lewis was suing Parker, that almost certainly means Parker paid him off. In other words, he pretty much lost.

Lance McCord says:

That's not quite right. People settle suits that they might win if it looks like a good deal, considering the likely cost of litigation (which ain't cheap), the cost of settlement, the chance of winning, and other considerations (like reputation, ego, whatnot). The "pretty much" is carrying a lot of weight in Null's third sentence.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:30:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Long Island commuter train boasts of "passive electrocution feature"

David Spector says: "Here's an interesting notice found in the bathrooms of certain Long Island Rail Road trains..

"Once you see it, you'll wonder exactly what on earth the LIRR has in store (besides ever-increasing fares, late trains, and generally poor service) for its riders...."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:43:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Patty Hearst podcast

Benjamen Walker, host of The Theory of Everything, produced a podcast for a WGBH airing of an American Experience about Patty Hearst. (It aired last night). The podcast is mostly tape recordings of Patty when she was with the SLA, calling the Hearst family "pigs" and complaining about "the fascist insect" and so on. Good stuff. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:28:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fortune article on DIYers

(I've been meaning to blog this for a while, but it slipped through the cracks.) Dan Roth says: "I'm a writer at Fortune magazine. I thought you and your readers would like this article that's in the latest edition of Fortune. The piece is entitled "The Amazing Rise of the Do-It-Yourself Economy" and talks about all the trend of consumers discovering that they can produce the goods that they want to consume. I spend some time talking about the work of Saul Griffith and the Bible of the movement, Make magazine. Here's an excerpt:

It used to be that a tinkerer like [Pez MP3 creator Pat] Misterovich could, at best, hope to sell his idea to a big company. More likely, he'd entertain friends with his Pez-sized visions. But a number of factors are coming together to empower amateurs in a way never before possible, blurring the lines between those who make and those who take. Unlike the dot-com fortune hunters of the late 1990s, these do-it-yourselfers aren't deluding themselves with oversized visions of what they might achieve. Instead, they're simply finding a way-in this mass-produced, Wal-Mart world-to take power back, prove that they can make the products that they want to consume, have fun doing so, and, just maybe, make a few dollars. "What's happened is a tremendous change in awareness," says Eric von Hippel, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of the recent Democratizing Innovation. "Conventional wisdom is so strong [in business] about find-a-need-and-fill-it: 'We're the manufacturers; we design products; we ask users what they need; we do it.' That has begun to crack."

Numerous currents have converged to produce this reaction. Bloggers, those do-it-yourself journalists, showed big media that the barriers to entry (like owning a printing press, say) didn't much matter. Podcasters took radio into their own hands, creating audio shows and putting them online. Amateur music producers, using software that was once the province only of major labels, invented mash-ups: combining songs into totally new ones, then giving them away or selling them. And with the advent of services like Google AdSense, which let people easily put advertising on their sites, these tinkerers could-while not vaulting themselves into Bill Gates territory-at least break even.

"Before, only the rich had access to tools and so only the rich were professionals, and the rest were amateurs," says Noah Glass, the co-founder of Odeo, which offers a free service for making, hosting, and distributing podcasts. "But now, as the creation tools have become easier to use and more freely distributed through open source, through the Internet, through awareness, more people have more access to more tools, so the whole amateur-professional dichotomy is dissolving."

Citizen engineers are taking this even further, trying their hand not just in the digital world but in the physical world too. Much as eBay transformed distribution, they're redefining design and manufacture.

Dan also says: "While Fortune articles are usually locked up behind a curtain, I've persuaded the dot-com side to open this one up to everyone." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:53:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cybernetic parrot sausage

Here's a move of a guy who gutted an electronic talking toy parrot and stuffed the circuitry and motor into a sausage.
Link (Thanks, polymorf!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:38:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Women and videogames: Xeni on KUOW's "The Works"

Today on "The Works," a newsmagazine produced by KUOW radio in Seattle, I'll join host John Moe and author / blogger / fragger Brad King for a discussion on women and gaming. "Videogames are a huge industry even though one gender is only minimally represented." If you're in Seattle, tune in at 94.9 FM between 8-9pm tonight (Tuesday 24 May). Otherwise, listen to the show's podcast -- which will be available online later this evening. Link.

Reader comment: Aaron says,

Regarding "The Works" radio host who says, "Videogames are a huge industry even though one gender is only minimally represented."... Make sure you point out that older women are actually the largest demographic of online gamers, outnumbering young men. Link to data (granted, the survey's a year old.) From the article's lede: "AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., released a study on Tuesday showing that U.S. women over the age of 40 spend nearly 50 percent more time each week playing online games than men and are more likely to play online games daily than men or teens."

Will Humphries says,

AOL's survey was taken from active gamers (all participants played games within three months of the survey). Its only finding regarding the over-40 female demographic was that members of that demographic *who play games* play them more regularly and frequently. They did not find that women over 40 in general are playing games a lot (probably because they aren't).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:33:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lightsaber video effects for Windows, too

Last weekend I blogged a MacOS tool for adding lightsaber effects to your videos. Here's a Windows version that also adds lightsaber sound effects and replicates the Star Wars text-crawl as well.

LSMaker is a program developed by me and you can create lights saber/laser sword effects with this program. LSSound is an other program, it can be used to put sound effects easily and fast to videos. LSText lets you create flying text, images just like in the movies."

LSText will create the famous rolling texts just like every star wars beggining movie.

Works perfectly under WINE (linux).

Link (Thanks, Fabio!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:20:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Publish video channels from your site with Broadcast Machine

Holmes Wilson, one of the Downhill Battle agitators, sez, "We've released the first half of our internet video software platform: Broadcast Machine. It's a php tool for your website for publishing / posting video 'channels' (rich metadata rss feeds). It's the easiest way to post torrent files and it's also a really good way to make collections of videos from around the web (or to make channels out of stuff that you've posted elsewhere, eg archive.org or ourmedia.org). The goal of the software is to help people make channels of video that will be browsable, downloadable, and watchable in our video player-- which is coming out in June.

"P.S. We're also looking to hire a developer." Link (Thanks, Holmes!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:02:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plane Crazy musical goes to NY Musical Theater Fest

My friend Suzy Conn's musical, Plane Crazy, about swinging-sixties flight attendants going through the sexual revolution, has made a real milestone. Her play is going to the Big Apple, for the New York Musical Theater Festival, having landed one of 19 musical slots out of 325 applicants. This is a Big Deal in musical theatre, as many of these shows go on to bigger and better things.

Suzy's seeking a New York area director and casting director -- her contact info is on the site.

I haven't been this excited about news since I found out I was pregnant (both times). But this time my baby is Plane Crazy: A true work of love if there ever was one.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:51:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Phil Spector's spectacular hairdo

Miki says: "Caution: graphic & disturbing photo of Phil Spector's current hairstyle! The headline should have included a reference to one person's bad hair decade kicking into previously unforeseen overdrive."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:48:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Book publishing stats: more titles, fewer sales, higher prices

Some interesting new stats about book publishing. Number of books sold is way down. Number of titles published is up. Cover prices are up, and so are revenues (slightly). Higher cover prices are driving students and poorer people to used books (the article doesn't say so, but I betcha that Amazon and ABE and other low-friction used-book dealers have a lot to do with this). Religious books are selling like hotcakes. There's a long tail thing visible here: lots more books to much smaller audiences. Used books are easier to get than ever, which makes new books more valuable (just like the market in used cars makes new cars more valuable). New media like DVDs and games are eating into readers' leisure time-budgets.

I tell you what: writers who worry about piracy are missing the point. Piracy isn't what's going to amateurize science fiction. We're gonna get amateurized by the same thing that turned writing poetry into a hobby instead of a business: competition from more robust forms of media; our bastard progeny (games, comics, movies) are going to eat our lunch like fast mammals moving into a bronto's ecological niche.

If there's any hope for sf, it's that it appears to be the only genre (apart from technical books) that anyone in internetland thinks highly enough of to bother pirating. Save for that shining fact, I'd be willing to just call the industry a walking zombie and start looking for some other form of semi-skilled labor, like dentistry or writing advertising copy.

The number of books sold dropped by nearly 44 million from 2003 to 2004, even as the annual number of books published approaches 175,000.

''People are reading less, so what you're seeing is the same phenomenon that has hit magazines and newspapers, a massive shift toward home video, DVD, internet and cable,'' said Albert N. Greco, an industry consultant and a professor of business at the graduate school of Fordham University.

The Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit research organization, reported estimated sales of 2.295 billion books in 2004, compared to an estimated 2.339 billion the previous year. Higher prices enabled net revenues to increase 2.8 percent, to $28.6 billion, but also drove many readers, especially students, to buy used books, Greco said

Link (via O'Reilly Radar)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:40:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iPod coffee table

Design student Ashley Burrows built the iTable for a Design Technology course. The screen glows with light from LEDs. From iPodlounge:

"I would also have added the wheel and made the other two legs USB connectors if I had more time. Also I would have loved to implement some (iPodlounge) forum users ideas of ‘adding a Mac mini and flat screen’ to make it function as a giant iPod."

Link (via MetaFilter)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:31:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

One-year review of Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum

A terrific piece in today's New York Times about the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, which was created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Shown here, "A display of robots from various science-fiction movies and television shows, including Lost in Space and Battlestar Galactica." I have not yet been to this place, but my goodness, I'm dying to. Snip:

In the museum, the influence of those epics is unmistakable, with sound effects and lighting shaping each exhibit's environment. A "Stardock" window even seems to look out into cinematic space, where ships from "E. T." and "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" (along with antiques like H. G. Wells's moon capsule), glide past one another as observers at touch-screens learn about their origins and powers. Other displays mix genres and media with almost gleeful abandon. A vest worn by Michael York in "Logan's Run" (1976) is not far from a first edition of an Ursula K. Le Guin novel and a copy of Mad magazine. Hauntingly delicate drawings by a little-known Brazilian artist, Alvim Corrêa, illustrating a 1906 Belgian edition of H. G. Wells's "War of the Worlds," are around the corner from models of extraterrestrials assembled in a mock intergalactic saloon similar to the one in "Star Wars."

It is as if a molecular manipulator out of "The Fly" had scrambled a century of objects, grafting together disparate media and creatures.

Link (Thanks, Michael Nank!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:20:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beer as medicine

In the early 1920s during prohibition, a vocal group of brewers and doctors fought for the right to prescribe and drink "medical beer." For just a few months in 1921, a pint could be prescribed to cure whatever ailed ya. From Smithsonian:

On March 3, 1921, shortly before his last day as attorney general, (A. Mitchell) Palmer issued an opinion declaring that the "beverage" clause of the 18th Amendment entitled doctors to prescribe beer at any time, under any circumstances and in any amount they saw fit. Wholesale druggists could take charge of selling beer. He also suggested that commercial drugstores could sell it from their soda fountains—though "never again beer over the saloon bar or in the hotel dining room."

But rather than settling the debate, Palmer's opinion set off a new round of court challenges, squabbles and questions. "Will the druggists become bartenders and the drug store a saloon?" the New York Times asked that November. "Will the doctors become beer dictators and be overwhelmed by those who are thirsty because they are sick, or merely sick with thirst?"

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:18:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

When slang changes, bad things happen to good comix

As "BoingBoing's queen of all matters related to rumpy-pumpy," it is my obligation to alert you to this breaking news.

Link (via Joey "Accordion Guy" deVilla!)

Previously on Boing Boing: Old comic book panels taken out of context = lotsa laffs

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:37:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Why we lie

The new issue of Scientific American Mind has an interesting article about why we lie to each other, and to ourselves:

We lie by omission and through the subtleties of spin. We engage in myriad forms of nonverbal deception, too: we use makeup, hairpieces, cosmetic surgery, clothing and other forms of adornment to disguise our true appearance, and we apply artificial fragrances to misrepresent our body odors. We cry crocodile tears, fake orgasms and flash phony "have a nice day" smiles. Out-and-out verbal lies are just a small part of the vast tapestry of human deceit.

The obvious question raised by all of this accounting is: Why do we lie so readily? The answer: because it works. The Homo sapiens who are best able to lie have an edge over their counterparts in a relentless struggle for the reproductive success that drives the engine of evolution. As humans, we must fit into a close-knit social system to succeed, yet our primary aim is still to look out for ourselves above all others. Lying helps. And lying to ourselves--a talent built into our brains--helps us accept our fraudulent behavior.

If this bald truth makes any one of us feel uncomfortable, we can take some solace in knowing we are not the only species to exploit the lie. Plants and animals communicate with one another by sounds, ritualistic displays, colors, airborne chemicals and other methods, and biologists once naively assumed that the sole function of these communication systems was to transmit accurate information. But the more we have learned, the more obvious it has become that nonhuman species put a lot of effort into sending inaccurate messages.

Link (via Mind Hacks)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:20:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lessig and Hardwicke fight child sexual abuse at American Boychoir School

An amazing story. Snipped from the article by John Heilemann in New York mag:

As head boy at a legendary choir school, Lawrence Lessig was repeatedly molested by the charismatic choir director, part of a horrific pattern of child abuse there. Now, as one of America’s most famous lawyers, he’s put his own past on trial to make sure such a thing never happens again.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:14:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Government crackdown on tinfoil beanie house

"The D'Souza family lives in the home on Timberwood Court, and claims the aluminium pieces are necessary to protect them from unknown neighbors who have been bombarding them with radio waves and making them sick. '(It's) a shield to protect against radiation, because microwave radiation is reflected off of aluminium, so it's a protective measure,' resident Sarah D'Souza said." Link (via /.)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:04:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Police project image of dead prostitute on building

Snipped from a BBC story:

A 60ft high picture of a murdered prostitute has been projected onto a derelict block of flats in Glasgow. Detectives hope it will help to turn up clues about the death of Emma Caldwell, whose body was found in woods in South Lanarkshire on 8 May. The image was displayed for four hours on the multi-storey flats in Cumberland Street, Hutchesontown on Monday night. Police said the site had been chosen as it was visible across areas frequented by Emma and other prostitutes…

Link (via Warren Ellis)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:54:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nurturing digital cinema

An interesting piece by Doreen Carvajal in the International Herald Tribune on the state of digital cinema.

When Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader battled last week in dark theaters around the world, the force was not with digital cinema. George Lucas, the director, filmed the latest "Star Wars" adventure, "Revenge of the Sith," expecting that the science-fiction epic would open in thousands of theaters equipped with digital projectors. As it turns out, there are fewer than 350 such screens, about 100 of them in the United States.

But even so, this could be the rollout year for digital cinema. Some European countries are pressing forward with almost intergalactic ardor, subsidizing digital projector giveaway programs with the aim of nurturing home-grown movies that can flourish alongside Hollywood blockbusters. (...)

In 2002, Lucas offered his first digital "Star Wars" movie, "Episode II - Attack of the Clones," and predicted that by the next installment, most theaters would be using digital projectors. But by the time of the gala screening of "Revenge of the Sith" in Cannes, the movie's producer, Rick McCallum, was fuming about the resistance of theater owners. He appeared at a small gathering of digital cinema companies like XDC, Barco and Texas Instruments and bluntly attacked Jean Labé, head of the National Federation of French Cinemas, a trade group. "Once Jean Labé loses his job, hopefully there will more digital theaters in France," McCallum said in an account reported in the Hollywood Reporter, a trade journal.

Link

Predictably, the release of Revenge of The Sith in digital is inspiring other d-cinema coverage. See also this USA Today roundup: Link

Previously on Boing Boing: The Cuban Revolution, Ireland's movie theaters to convert within a year, South African villages to get digital cinema network

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:39:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mock light saber duel critically injures two clue-impaired fans

"Two Star Wars fans are in a critical condition in hospital after apparently trying to make light sabres by filling fluorescent light tubes with petrol [gasoline]. A man, aged 20, and a girl of 17 are believed to have been filming a mock duel when they poured fuel into two glass tubes and lit it." Link (Thanks, Nick)

Reader comment: John Horner says,

Despite the fact that it's the BBC saying so, I find it hard to believe that anyone poured gasoline into a fluouro tube then *lit* the damn thing, not expecting to get hurt. This story from british tabloid the Mirror says the things accidentally exploded. They're still astonishingly short of a clue but perhaps not as insane as made out by the BBC story. Short answer, nobody knows exactly what happened.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:34:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney Magic Kingdom massively multiplayer is free and live(ish)

Lance sez, "Disney's free online multiplayer game has gone into live beta. I am presently installing the (massive) Flash to have a go." I've got to go give a speech now, but I'm gonna play with this later, for sure. The site is only open during certain hours, anyway, and is "shut" now. Which is a weird idea, if you ask me. Link (Thanks, Lance!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:55:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copyright hysteria from Vaudeville era

Found in Bob Hope's collection of Vaudeville memoribilia, now on display at the Library of Congress: this olde tyme 1906 ad for Washington DC's Columbia Copyright and Patent Co. Bob Hope/LoC Link, Link to ad (Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:39:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Technorati tracking more than 10^6 blog-tags

In the five months since Technorati introduced the idea of tagging and indexing blog posts, more than a 14 million blog-posts have been tagged, with more than one million distinct tags in use.

This weekend, Technorati reached another milestone, our millionth indexed tag. It amazes me that since we launched our service to track tags on blog posts on January 17th of this year, there has been an explosion in the use and understanding of tags. Here's a recent AP article on tags, if you're new to the phenomenon.

Beyond a million distinct tags, there's also a lot of bloggers tagging posts. At the moment of the 1 millionth blog, we had tracked 14.2 Million tagged blog posts. 14.2 Million tagged posts in just over 4 months, that's a lot of posts.

Link (Disclosure: I am a proud advisor to Technorati)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:05:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Daily Show torrents

Jeff sez, "CommonBits has a number of recent politically-oriented Daily Show clip up as torrents."

GayWatch: Spokane Mayor Jim West
D.C. Evacuation and Korean Nuclear Threat
Avian Ressurection of the Arkansas Woodpecker
Great Moments in Punditry as read by Children: Scarborough Country on Religion
Bush's Attack on the Clinton Roadless Rule
Great Moments in Punditry as read by Children: Rev. Jerry Falwell & Chris Matthews
An Interview with Tom Ridge
Coverage of the recent U.K. Election of Tony Blair

Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:20:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guide to where the exits are in Toronto's subway system

The TTC Subway Rider Efficiency Guide is a wallet-sized guide to which car you should board on Toronto's subway system in order to be nearest to the exit when you reach your destination. I used to obsess over lining this up when I lived in Toronto, mentally recalling that York Mills' bus exit was at the south end of the platform while the Sheppard exit was at the north (looking at the guide now, this appears no longer to be true, so either my recollection is flawed or they moved the buses at York Mills during the major renovations there a decade ago). I once had a near-screaming-match with a good friend over which end of the platform we should stand at if we intended on debarking at Summerhill.

The Guide will settle these arguments once and for all. You can either order a very handy printed edition, or print, cut and fold your own from a PDF. I wish there was one of these for the London Underground, Docklands Light Rail and British Rail, but I suspect that such a guide would have the thickness of a phone-book. Link (Thanks, Sean!)

Update: Alistair points out that The Way Out Tube Map (which can be had for two quid) does in fact show the location of every exit on every tube station platform.

Update 2: Adam sez, "The Tokyo Metro subway system has fanatically detailed maps showing exactly which car to ride in order to be closest to an exit or a transfer for another line. The linked page shows the transfers and exits at Otemachi Station (one of the most complex); every train platform has similar guides for each stop on a given line. It's in Japanese, but if you know the system at all, you can work things out by color."

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

HOWTO perform strongman stunts like tearing phone books in half

Here's a scanned-in copy of 1952's "HOW TO PERFORM STRONG MAN STUNTS." In addition to illustration that is so badly executed it practically qualifies for an exhibition of "outsider art" executed by chimpanzees, It includes such gems as:

How to Tear a Telephone Book in Halves
How to Tear a Deck of Cards in Halves
How to Drive a Spike Through a Board or Sheet of Metal
How to Bend a Heavy Steel Spike with the Hands
How to Lift a Man Overhead with One Hand
How to Smash a Rock with the Blow of a Fist
How to Support 1000 Lbs. of Living Weight with Ease
How to Lift More with One Finger than Others with Two Hands
How to Lift and Swing a Man with Your Teeth
How to Resist the Pull of Four Men
How to Break a Spike with the Teeth
Muscle Building Course & Abdominal Exercises

Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:56:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Alan Moore tells DC Comics to get bent

James sez, "Comic writer supreme Alan Moore tells DC Comics to piss off and takes the next installments of the multi-award winning 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; to indy publisher Top Shelf."

Speaking to me on Friday, Moore added to this sentiment, telling me "after the films came out, I began to feel increasingly uneasy, I have a dwindling respect for cinema as it is currently expressed." This came to a head when Alan Moore was sued as part of a suit against 20th Century Fox for plagiarism of the screenplay "Cast Of Characters" which bore heavy resemblance to the movie version of "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" starring Sean Connery...

"They seemed to believe that the head of 20th Century Fox called me up and persuaded me to steal this screenplay, turning it into a comic book which they could then adapt back into a movie, to camouflage petty larceny." This led to Moore giving a ten-hour deposition - he believes he'd have suffered less if he'd "sodomised and murdered a busload of children after giving them heroin."

Link (Thanks, James!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:50:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thurl Ravenscroft, RIP: voice of Haunted Mansion and Grinch song, Tony the Tiger

Thurl Ravenscroft has died at 91. Ravenscroft sang lead on the "Grim Grinning Ghosts" theme for the Haunted Mansion, as well as "You're a Mean One, Mr Grinch." He was also known as the voice of Frosted Flakes's Tony the Tiger. Ravenscroft died from causes related to colon cancer.

Thurl was, in a way, the oldest working cartoon voice actor in the business. During the thirties, he was heard on radio as part of several different singing groups that eventually came to be known as The Sportsmen and later, he was in The Mellomen. One of his groups recorded voice tracks for a couple of Warner Brothers cartoons, such as the 1939 Sioux Me. Soon after, he began appearing in shorts for Mr. Disney, such as The Nifty Nineties (1941) and Springtime for Pluto (1944). Walt evidently liked the Ravenscroft sound because not only was he heard throughout the theme parks but he was also a voice in Dumbo, Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins and many more.

All of this was in addition to Thurl's many, many credits as a studio singer. His most famous hit may have been backing up Rosemary Clooney on "This Old House," but he was also heard in many records for Spike Jones (like "Wyatt Earp Makes Me Burp," a Dr. Demento fave) and The Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby and even Elvis. He was also called upon often to dub singing voices for other actors. All throughout the 1958 movie of South Pacific, there's a handsome sailor with a rich, deep singing voice. The voice is that of Thurl Ravenscroft. In the seventies, he did a lot of work for arranger Johnny Mann and was featured often as "Pappy" on the TV show, Stand Up and Cheer.

Link (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:28:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 23, 2005

To do in LA Tue 24: Chris Cunningham premiere at RES

RES hosts another edition of their periodic digital screenings Tuesday night in LA. Included: the West Coast premiere of Chris Cunningham's new short film Rubber Johnny, as well as new music videos for Basement Jaxx, Quasimoto, Aesop Rock, Amon Tobin and more. Cunningham is a brilliant filmmaker. He directed my absolute favorite music video of all time -- All is Full of Love, for Björk. The video featured a milk-white tableau of dreamy android love; some believe it was ripped off wholesale to create the look and feel of robots in the movie I, Robot. Here's a synopsis of the film debuting tomorrow.

Johnny is a hyperactive, shape-shifting mutant child, kept locked away in a basement. With only his feverish imagination and his terrified dog for company, he finds ways to amuse himself in the dark. Rubber Johnny is the latest creation from the UK’s most imaginative filmmaker, Chris Cunningham. Featuring music by legendary electronic composer, Aphex Twin, this nightmarish and hallucinatory experimental short film is accompanied by 40 pages of drawings and photographs - Cunningham’s first published book of original artwork.

Link to more info. Link to tickets. Large screenshots from Rubber Johnny: one, two.

Readers comment: Sean M. Graham says:

As if Chris Cunningham isn't cool enough, Warp Films (sister to Warp Records) is going to be releasing Rubber Johnny on DVD and also on their bleep.com digital download site... Apparently it will be "archive quality XVID" video.

Link, scroll down a bit to find the info.

Boing Boing's esteemed patron Yoda Kevin Kelly says,

This DVD is worth getting. Amazon link.

Clayton James Cubitt says,

Did you know that Cunningham began as a special effects artist, and that he worked with Stanley Kubrick on making robotic children for the film AI?

See item #15 in this Kubrick FAQ for more on that.

Paul says:

Cunningham started as a special effects/concept illustration artist and then went to work for British comic company 2000AD. This led him back to film as he worked on the disappointing Judge Dredd flick. However he's responsible for the only two good bits of that film - Hammerstein / The ABC Warrior and Mean Machine. More info is available here.

Boing Boing reader Greg adds,

There is an official site for Rubber Johnny. Not much is notable for it except for a somewhat creepy trailer. Also, you might be interested to know that the DVD release was pushed back because the original printers in Italy deemed the material "too offensive": Link.

And Boing Boing Reader Justin says:

I thought non-Brit readers might like to know that "rubber johnny" is a playground/school yard slang for a condom. Hee hee.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:20:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Francesca Berrini's Unusual Cards

Pop Surrealism editor Kirsten Anderson turned me on to the hysterically-surreal collages of Seattle aritst Francesca Berrini. Her work is available as hand-cut originals and excellent blank greeting cards. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:54:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Data (in)security: 670,000 accounts breached at BofA, Wachovia, etc.

News of what may be the largest-ever bank security breach to date:

Bank of America Corp. and Wachovia Corp. are among the big banks notifying more than 670,000 customers that account information was stolen in what may the biggest security breach to hit the banking industry. Account information on the customers was illegally sold by bank employees to a man identified as Orazio Lembo, whom police said was doing business by illegally posing as a collection agency.

Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:18:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rare comic strip by Charles Schulz shows adults (including Linus' teacher?)

Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" never showed grown ups. A few of the very early ones had word balloons from unseen adults but Schulz soon eliminated that as well. That's what makes Benjamen Walker's discovery so interesting.

Even at such a small image size any fan of Peanuts knows something is amiss 'cause there are no BIG people in the world of Charlie Brown, so I went online to the auction house page and found this: Lot# 180 Description: CHARLES SCHULZ. HAGEMEYER DAILY. THIS IS ONLY THE 2ND KNOWN EXAMPLE OF THIS EXPERIMENTAL STRIP DONE BY SCHULZ TO SURFACE. CREATED ON A BLANK "PEANUTS" CARTOON PANEL. HAGEMEYER; THE OVERBEARING WIFE OF "MR. AVERAGE" DISRUPTS HER HUSBANDS CARD GAME. IMAGE SIZE 27" X 5". RARE PIECE OF ARTWORK.

Unbelievable, mind blowing, I know that Ms. Hagemeyer was the name of one of Linus' teachers, but what the...? Very confusing... and if this is only the second known example... then why is it estimated to sell for 5,000??? (most peanuts pages can fetch up to 12,000) Will someone PLEASE buy this for me???

Link

Reader comment: Jim Winstead says: "you're not right that they were never shown -- there were several strips from may 1954 that showed adults. they're mostly chest-down, but one sunday strip has full figures with mostly featureless faces.

"in the first 'complete peanuts' book, the interview with schultz talks about it a little, and he says it is something he never should have done."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:30:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aaron messes with a boiler room idiot

Aaron wastes nine minutes of a boiler room telemarketer's time. It's amazing how long the telemarketer stays on the line to take Aaron's abuse. (NSFW) Link

Reader comment: Dan says "I met one of these characters--live, in person. I was in New York with a coworker, and we hung out with this guy for dinner. I grilled him about how this works, and at least in his case, it's not particularly sinister.

"The cold caller is a wannabe stock broker. He works with a relatively legitimate investment bank. They come up with a few stock picks, then send the legion of wannabes to coldcall potential investors. The guy told me his standard pitch, all the variations, etc. Here's the interesting part. He also told me how to spot a 'legit' guy peddling lousy stocks legally from a true scammer out to commit outright fraud.

"The way you can tell is the Magic 3 Questions. In order for a broker to legitimately acquire a customer, they have to ask: 1) Net worth 2) How long have they been investing 3) Do they have a broker (they must have a broker) If they got someone who was good to go but didn't answer properly, they had to hang up on him. A frustrating business indeed. Judging by the call, this guy was asking the questions, so he's relatively legit.

"If you really feel like ruining these poor sop's day, here's what my FOAF was most afraid of: The guy can tell you to buy the stock. They'll purchase the stock for him immediately and bill him. Say the stock drops 3 days later. The guy says f--- you, I'm not paying. Guess what? They write off the loss. Not worth it to collect (according to him). Oh, and there's another thing he hates. Once he tells you the stock, you're not obligated to buy it from him. You can go buy it from etrade or whatever and dodge his extortionist fees.

"All this assumes, of course, that you have some interest in buying a randomly chosen stock espoused by a telemarketer.

"Anyway, the guy wasn't a saint, but like any telemarketer, he was just a cog in a machine of misery, hawking a product of dubious value. Have pity, and hang up."

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

Gary Baseman show at Billy Shire Fine Arts gallery in Los Angeles

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) Conor from Critterbox Toys says: I saw that David P. posted the Roq La Rue show with a pix of Baseman's Dumb Luck. We've been collaborating with Gary Baseman for about three years now -- in fact, that Pink Dumb Luck character from David's post was made into an art toy that recently sold for $730.00 on ebay (we sold it for $50.00).

But I'm writing to let you know about an all-Baseman show in Culver City at the Billy Shire Fine Arts Gallery, which runs from now until Jun 18. It's called For The Love Of Toby.

For this art show, we made special plush toy TOBY (16 inch tall) -- we made 200 and they're all sold out I believe. We also made 4ft tall versions just for the show at gallery.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:02:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool Tools: Red Dragon torch kit

The latest edition of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools has a review of a $60 propane-powered torch called the Red Dragon. The reviewer says it's great for killing weeds.

You can just wave it across a weed and it discolors almost instantly (usually enough to kill it). However, that's not much fun. A few more seconds of flame will incinerate the weed completely. Yeah, the extra heat makes a huge difference. When lit, the torch produces a 2 foot long, 5 inch wide column of blue flame that sounds like a (quiet) jet engine. That said, the flame doesn't spread much, so it's fairly easy to control. Every pyro needs one.

Link

Reader comment: Jakon says: "I’ve used a torch like that to burn the hair off a pig in Romania.  Just before Christmas, every family that has been fattening up a pig over the past year slaughters it on “the day of the pig”.  Of course, this is done in the countryside, not in the larger cities.  I lived in a town of 6,000, and the slaughter was not uncommon.  After you kill the pig, the hair has to be singed off.  Some people will build a fire with straw, and throw the pig in for a few minutes, others have a torch pre! tty similar to the red dragon.  It’s hooked up to a propane tank which is usually sitting in a bucket of warm water…to keep the propane flowing.  After all the hair is burned off, you kinda shave off the singed hair and skin, and scrub it down with some course salt.  The smell is...well...incredible.  You have to pay particular attention to the feet, so you can pull the pigs nails off…the torch does a good job, and it is a good sanitation tool.  Also, the heat from the torch cooks the skin a bit and produces a treat that kids love over there.  Similar to a undercooked pork rind.    

"Here is a link to a Romanian pig slaughter using the straw method.  Pretty graphic." Link  

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:32:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Music Thing's Tiny Music Makers series

Tom Whitwell of Music Thing writes in:

Who made the Intel Chimes, the THX noise, the Channel 4 music? All this week, I'm running a Tiny Music Special on Music Thing - devoted to the people who write tiny bits of music that we've all heard thousands of times. Highlights include the guy who wrote 20,000 lines of code into a primitive, custom-built, digital synth to make the THX sound, and the aristocratic glam rock singer who was being paid £1,000 a week when Channel 4 used a snippet of one of his songs as their station ID. First up - the KLF fan who wrote the Intel Chimes, using lots of xylophone, because it 'sounds corporate'... (And yes, Jim Reekes is there, too...)

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:30:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dutch mayor wants to ban hacker con

Kiu sez, "Dutch mayor wants to ban 'what the hack' conference/gathering because of 'grave fear that the organisation of this event will endanger law and order as well as public safety'." What The Hack is a computer security con -- like DefCon meets Burning Man.

I have received word that you intend to organize an event "What The Hack" from July 28th 2005 through July 31st 2005 on Landgoed Velder in Liempde.

In order to organize such an event, you will need to obtain a permit ex art. 2.2.2. of Boxtel local ordinance 2004.

In light of the fact that there is grave fear that this event will endanger law and order as well as public safety, I, in my capacity as an authorized official, am herewith informing you that I will not issue such a permit.

A copy of this letter will be sent to the owners of the Landgoed Velder estate.

I assume that I have sufficiently informed you.

Yours truly,

MAYOR OF BOXTEL,
J.A.M. van Homelen

Link (Thanks, Kiu!)

Update: Sam sez, "I think it's worth mentioning that the mayor of Boxtel is probably just misinformed, and not "out to get" the community, and that the What The Hack organizing team does not seem to be worried at all -- They believe the conference will still go on as planned."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:23:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Polymer words written on human hairs

Scientists can lay down extremely accurate blobs of polymer on organic matter, like human hairs, at resolutions high enough to, for example, spell out words in block-caps as pictured here.

Researchers in the laboratory of Boston College Chemistry Professor John T. Fourkas have demonstrated the fabrication of microscopic polymeric structures on top of a human hair, without harming it...

One could imagine, for instance, building devices directly on skin, blood vessels, and eventually even a living cell. While this idea is currently in the realm of science fiction, our results represent an important step in that direction.

Link (Thanks, JeremyT!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:18:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars: Satan's Tool

"Christians REJOICE! Jesus will lead us in a real star war - between the armies of Heaven and Satan. Believers will 'beam' up to the Starship in the sky, and Captain Jesus shall lead a thousand year Federation of Planets before Judgment Day!" Link. It's not old -- it's an evergreen meme. Background here. Yesiknowitsaspoof. (Thanks, Dr. Spanglestein!)

Reader comment: Boing Boing reader Russell Smith, who is pastor at Covenant-First Presbyterian church in Ohio, says:

Our church is coming at this from another angle -- the Gospel According to Star Wars. If you'd like to see the Christian Equal time for Star Wars, check out the article on the class, Or view the material yourself here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:07:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Draft PATRIOT Bill: new civil liberty-shredding powers

Snipped from the EFF website:

On Thursday, May 26, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will consider in closed session a draft bill that would both renew and expand various USA PATRIOT Act powers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has obtained a copy of the draft bill, along with the committee's summary of it, and has made them available to journalists and interested citizens on its website.

"Even though Congress is still debating whether to renew the broad surveillance authorities granted by the original USA PATRIOT Act, the Justice Department is already lobbying for even more unchecked authority to demand the private records of citizens who are not suspected of any crime," said Kevin Bankston, EFF attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "The Senate's intelligence committee should focus on adding checks and balances to protect against abuse of already-existing PATRIOT powers, or repealing them altogether, rather than working to expand them behind closed doors."

Link (via politech)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:01:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Philippine group protests e-surveillance plans

On Declan McCullagh's Politech list, Robert Guerra writes:

Bantay ICT, a group of Philippine advocates doing analysis and policy interventions on ICT issues, especially those related to communication rights, is waging a campaign against the enactment of an anti-terrorism law. Fifteen bills are currently pending in both Houses of Congress. The House and Senate committees have set hearings next week to discuss the proposed bills.

A provision in at least one of the bills (authored by Rep. Robert Ace Barbers) authorizes the government to conduct electronic surveillance allowing it to tap, monitor or intercept email, voice mail, even text messages of any person suspected of being a member of a terrorist organization. Bantay ICT feels that: "this encroaches on the people's right to privacy, freedom of expression, and communication. Under the pretext of combating 'terrorism', this bill threatens our personal freedom to communicate as we fear that the government will abuse this measure to conduct surveillance to minimize dissent and silence activists."

Link

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

IranScan launches; CPB protests Mijtaba Saminejad's arrest

Hossein Derakhshan tells Boing Boing,

"Iran Scan is a collective blog to observe the Iranian presidential elections from Iran and beyond, recently lunched with the help of Uk-based openDemocracy."

Link.

In related news, Curt Hopkins of the Committee to Protect Bloggers says,

The CPB is asking bloggers and other concerned people to observe next Thursday, May 26 as a Media Fast for Mojtaba Saminejad, a blogger from Iran, [who] has declared a hunger strike. He is being held at Tehran’s Gohar Dashat prison, which has a reputation for mistreatment of detainees. He is being held in the general population, the overwhelming majority of which are common criminals. Mojtaba was arrested for reporting the earlier arrest of three of his fellow Iranian bloggers. (Iran has arrested over 20 bloggers over the last year.) Iranian bloggers who have been released have reported being the victims of torture.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:53:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Artbots robot talent show participants announced

Boing Boing reader Douglas Repetto says,

We're very happy to announce the participants in this year's ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show (our fourth year!) The show is in Dublin, Ireland this year, and features 22 works from over 30 artists from 10 countries. It'll take place in a wonderful space that's half gallery, half old church, and half failed viking theme park with real viking bones in the basement! Info on all of the participating works is now online. Of course it's a lot more fun if you can come to the show in person, but hopefully the website gives some indictation of why we're so excited about the strange and diverse works in this year's show.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:49:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wonkette on Jobs' D-con comments re: "blogger case."

Ana Marie Cox writes, "The Apple confounder strayed from his well-tuned 'we're all very proud of our four percent market share' patter and edged toward politics. Sith-style politics. Here are our hastily scribbled notes mostly paraphrasing his response to Walter Mossberg's and Kara Swisher's on-stage interview questions about the 'Apple blogger case.'"

The law is very clear... You aren't protected by the First Amendment if you are breaking the law... and these bloggers posted documents that were Apple trade secrets. They had 'Confidential' and 'Apple' stamped on them....There are times when the court has ruled that the public good is served, that you can break the law in the service of the public good but we don't feel publishing our trade secrets rises to that.

More here on Wonkette.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:46:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copacetic comics gallery

Here's an excellent gallery of unusual comic book stories and covers from the 1940s and 1950s. My favorite is the Robert Williams-esque "Tumbles" story, which stars an anti-social clown and violently unpredictable talking dog. Weirdness and inappropriateness for kids abound in this story, especially the gag at the bottom of page three.
Link (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:33:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Neuroscience of sarcasm

Israeli psychologists are dissecting the cognitive processes behind our recognition of sarcasm. In a new study, the Rambam Medical Center scientists determined that "getting" sarcasm is a complex series of neural events involving several regions of the brain. In order to identify those regions, the researchers tested people with damage to various parts of their brains. From the press release about the research results, published in the new issue of the journal Neuropsychology:

All participants listened to brief recorded stories, some sarcastic, some neutral, that had been taped by actors reading in a corresponding manner. Here is an example of sarcasm: “Joe came to work, and instead of beginning to work, he sat down to rest. His boss noticed his behavior and said, “Joe, don’t work too hard.” Meaning: “You’re a real slacker!” Here is a neutral example: “Joe came to work and immediately began to work. His boss noticed his behavior and said, “Joe, don’t work too hard!” Meaning: “You’re a hard worker!”

Following each story, researchers asked a factual question to check story comprehension and an attitude question to check comprehension of the speaker’s true meaning: Did the manager believe Joe was working hard? When participants answered got the fact right but the attitude wrong, they got an “error” score in identifying sarcasm....

Shamay-Tsoory says, “A lesion in each region in the network can impair sarcasm, because if someone has a problem understanding a social situation, he or she may fail to understand the literal language. Thus this study contributes to our understanding of the relation between language and social cognition.”

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:33:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Museum of Counterculture

Filmmaker and pizza parlor owner Phil Hartman is planning to open a Museum of the Counterculture in New York's East Village. From the New York Times:

Mr. Hartman said he wanted the museum to contain archives, exhibition galleries and theater spaces. The idea is to celebrate not just luminaries who crossed over to the mainstream, like Warhol, Basquiat and Blue Man Group, but the poets, filmmakers, musicians and artists for whom life in the East Village has been part of the performance. He will not yet reveal the locations he has scouted for the museum but said a temporary exhibition space will be open within two years.

Mr. Hartman, an entrepreneur whose main form of transportation is his bicycle, is not oblivious to the paradox of his ambition. "The idea of institutionalizing downtown culture obviously has inherent contradictions in it," he acknowledged. "The counterculture isn't dead but it needs some institutions to keep it alive."

Avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas--founder of Anthology Film Archives, the Filmmakers' Cooperative, and Film Culture magazine--was invited to be one of the first inductees into the proposed Museum's Hall of Fame.

"I object!" said Mr. Mekas, looking both dapper and frail at 82, but sounding fiery. "We are not counterculture. We in the East Village are the culture and everything around us is the opposite of culture. Counter is the mass that is called culture, but it is really the shopping-counter culture. I'm very much opposed to this term counterculture."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:31:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Black market organs in Baghdad

The black market organ trade is apparently taking off in Baghdad. The Daily Telegraph reports that wealthy "tourists" from Arab countries are now visiting Iraq to score inexpensive kidneys and other organs for transplant. For example, a kidney can be had in Baghdad for thousands of dollars less than than the market price in Turkey or India. From the article:

Would-be buyers with an eye for a bargain can now pick up a new kidney for as little as $700, given the desperation of fit and healthy Iraqis for money.

Young men like Mr Hameed can be seen loitering around many big hospitals in Baghdad these days, open to bids passed on via networks of shadowy middlemen who lurk in nearby cafés.

With unemployment in Iraq at about 60 per cent, the chance to earn money by touting body parts is a more calculated risk than, say, becoming a $150-a-month rookie policeman at the mercy of suicide attackers.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:19:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Estar Guars t-shirt, old German ad sheet

Now seems as good a time as any to revisit this tongue-in-cheek t-shirt designed for Spanish-speaking Star Wars enthusiasts.
Link

My friend Felix Mack says, "Hey, in Germany, starwars had this crazy long logo: Krieg der Sterne, which, of course, basically means the same thing." Update: Felix sends us this link to a scanned Germen advertisement for merch from the original Star Wars, including robot faves "Ce Dreipeo" and "Erzwo Dezwo."
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:26:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moment of absurd Star Wars ad zen

Even SITH families need mobile phone bargains. No roaming on the lava planet, Anakin! Phonecam snap of an ad I saw in Cingular wireless store near site of the WSJ tech conference in Carlsbad, CA. (Sent from my Treo handheld).
Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:18:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kevin Rose ankles G4, plans new tech production company

Television personality Kevin Rose, best known from The Screensavers and G4's Attack of the Show, announces a departure from the G4 network to pursue "in-depth tech content." His first new project launches today: Systm. Rose says he plans to add more programming from other ex-TechTV and Screensavers personalities. Link (Thanks, Casey Moore )

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:12:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Next iTunes edition to support podcast subscriptions

Yesterday at the the WSJ tech confab in Carlsbad, Steve Jobs announced that the next version of iTunes will support podcasting. Engadget says, "With one click you’ll be able to subscribe to different feeds and have them automatically delivered to your iPod without using a third-party app like iPodder." Via Dave Winer, who rounds up blog coverage here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:02:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pat York: dear friend, writer, Boing Boing guestblogger, RIP

My dear friend Pat York died in a car-crash this weekend. Her daughter, Nora, was driving her home from a friendly gathering in Ohio, and failed to spot an oncoming bus on a left turn. Pat was pronounced dead at the scene and Nora is in hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The bus-driver was also injured. Police say that the bus was probably in Nora's blind-spot and that the driver had no chance to see Nora's car.

Pat was one of my dearest and most valued friends. When some spot of good news befell me, she was often the first person I called. We shared hotel rooms together at WorldCons, not just to save money but because she was such a great person to chat with about the day's events. She was endlessly generous and visibly proud of her friends. She could always be counted upon to chime in on any discussion with just the right supportive words. Despite the fact that she was a generation older than me, she and I had an amazing rapport, sharing the same slightly raunchy sense of humor and a love of popular culture.

Pat was a brilliant writer, whose story Wishes was nominated for a Nebula Award. She was working on a fantastic, feminist Heinleinesque novel about a speakeasy on the moon when she died, and I'd workshopped pieces of it. It was pure York, sassy and human and funny. She was a keen workshopper and critic. My novels were all carefully vetted by Pat and revised to her spec.

Pat's contributions to the field went beyond her writing, though. As a career teacher, Pat was instrumental in several projects to create curriculum grounded in science fiction literature. She had a keen understanding of the greying of science fiction and resolved to do something to bring children back into the genre.

Pat was Boing Boing's first Guestblogger. I created the Guestblog specifically because I wanted to read what Pat would blog about and thought that giving her a pulpit on Boing Boing would spur her into it. She did an amazing job. Over the years, she suggested much of Boing Boing's best material, and her contributions to the old message boards were never less than stellar. Her private comments in email about Boing Boing were consistently the most encouraging and engaging I received.

Pat doted on her husband Jim and her two children, Ben and Nora. If her friends made her proud, her family made her glow. She doted not only on their worldly accomplishments, but on their emotional maturity and kindness, valuing them for how much light they shone on the world. Her love for Jim was so achingly strong and pure that she made them seem more like newlyweds at times than lifelong partners. Pat never took the people in her life for granted.

Pat was my rock and my anchor, and I wasn't the only one. We all leaned on Pat and we all loved her. I'm reeling from the shock of losing her. I don't know what I'll do without her. I miss her already.

I spoke with Ben yesterday. He was very shook up, but managing well -- I would have expected no less from Pat's son. He and Jim were preparing to go to Ohio to take care of Nora. I offered to start a mailing list to help them get in touch with Pat's friends regarding funeral and memorial arrangements, which I've linked to below. I've also uploaded some of my pictures of Pat to Flickr (Pat watched my Flickr stream like a hawk and commented on it frequently), and tagged them with "patyork". You can add your own pictures if you have a Flickr account, or email them to me (thanks to Steve Samenski for sending some already) and I'll post them.

Goodbye Pat. You went too soon and too suddenly and I miss you terribly already. Not a day went by that I didn't think of you, and nothing in my life will be the same without you. I love you. Mailing List Link Patyork Flickr Tag Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:05:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sf giant Robert Sheckley in Ukrainian hospital

Eileen Gunn sez, "there is now a PayPal donation page (courtesy of Michael Moorcock) for Bob Sheckley, who's been critically ill in Kiev. Sheckley's wit and humor was one of the big influences on my own style when I was younger, and probably on that of every genuinely funny writer in science fiction."

Although the Ukrainian net newspaper ForUm says he's practically ready to go home, Pravda claims that he can't owing to vast medical bills. There has been a language/communication problem here: SFWA reported that a company had guaranteed to cover the cost of treatment, little knowing that 'company' here meant only the local fan group/convention committee which hosted Sheckley's visit. According to our contact man Boris Sidyuk, these fans barely managed to pay the clinic's first bill and have been frantically raising funds to meet further expenses quoted at $1,000 daily.

Link (Thanks, Eileen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:06:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MS Paint masterpiece

Henning sez, "This guy spent 500 hours painting a picture of Venice in MS Paint! Afterwards he added some effects with Photoshop." Link (Thanks, Henning!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:01:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Official French translation for "weblog"

Loic sez, "The very official French 'Journal Officiel' has just decided what we, French should say when we say 'weblog'. We should say 'bloc notes' which would translate back in english to 'note pad'. The short version should be 'bloc' instead of 'blog'." Link (Thanks, Loic!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:57:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vampirism presentation from a pharma company's PoV

Laurie sez, "This is a reproduction of a very funny slide/talk by biologist/SF author Peter Watts (actually delivered at a Toronto SF convention this spring) with audio track and PowerPoint type slides. It brilliantly satirizes talks at Big Pharma conferences as it describes (from a Big Pharma standpoint) the evolutionary explanation for the existence of vampire, and the argument for genetic tweaking to create more vampires, backed up with real biology. Runs approximately 30 mins. Take special note of the various "company" slogans in the bottom corners of the slides."

Peter is a real wild talent: his novel Behemoth (Book 1, Book 2) contains a plausible explanation for the co-evolution of a computer virus and a human virus. I described the mechanics of this to an epidemiologist at the World Health Summit in Geneva last week and, as always, got a satifyingly mind-blown reaction. This presentation evinces just the same kind of reaction. Link (Thanks, Laurie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:54:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"The Cartoonist's" ultra short story collection

Ralf Zeigermann runs one of my favorite blogs, The Cartoonist. Occasionally, he runs one of his great ultrashort science fiction stories about a spacefaring guy known as The Roper on the blog. Now he has collected the Roper stories as an illustrated ebook, and it's available at his weblog as a free download. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:56:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on NBC News + Today Show: Star Wars and P2P

Sunday night on NBC Nightly News, and Monday on the Today Show, NBC correspondent George Lewis reports on the brouhaha over Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith appearing on Grokster and other P2P networks. I will be one of his guests.

Links to video:
Online clip "Piracy worries Hollywood studios" (IE only, craptaculosa WMV) on the NBC Nightly News website -- and, Boing Boing reader Trey Jackson kindly placed an MPEG version mit screengrabs here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:50:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Joys of RoadWired and Zip-Linq

I recently decided to put my mobile gear bag on a diet. My messenger bag had become so heavy with gear, tangled with wires, and jammed with assorted random cases filled with stuff I "needed" that I almost didn't want to bother carrying anything at all. Finally, I took some advice from Cory and tried out a few items from RoadWired and Zip-Linq.

RoadWired makes a slew of ultra-durable gear bags and cases of all sizes. I'm a big fan of their R.A.P.S. advanced protection system. Think of them as diapers for electronic gear. Cory uses one as a laptop envelope, but I was interested in them to wrap and protect other tech like my digital camera and annoying-yet-required dock, noise-cancelling headphones, mobile mouse, international power adapters, and a slew of other odds-and-sods. The RAPS are lined with a material called Corrosion Intercept. Developed by Bell Labs to "protect missile and space components," it's supposed to also save consumer gear from corrosion and tarnishing. It definitely has a gold foil space-age look to it anyway. Three R.A.P.S. of various sizes keeps me organized. And they also make it easier to grab just the bundles I need for each journey. For shorter jaunts though, I just carry one of RoadWired's Skooba Sleeves with my Powerbook inside. Unlike most sleeves I've seen, I'm confident that if (when) I drop the bag, the Skooba will save my machine thanks to the Air Squares, a lining of shock-absorbing pouches of air that looks like soundproofing foam. Link

I'm now also addicted to Zip-Linq's supercool retractable cables. Instead of carrying a wall-wart charger and separate sync cable for my Treo 600, the Zip-Linq Sync-N-Charge charges my handheld right from my laptop. It also saves me the need to bring an international adapter for the Treo charger. (Caveat: some other phone brands require a string of adapters and attachments, almost defeating the Zip-Linq's purpose. For example, my wife's Nokia Zip-Linq charger kit consists of a retractable USB cable, a 5V to 9V Booster, and the modular tip that enables the Zip-Linq cable to plug into her particular model phone.) I also toss in a Zip-Linq ethernet cable for WiFi-challenged hotel rooms and a stereo 3.5mm to RCA so I can listen to my iPod through hotel stereos or TVs. Zip-Linq lists iPod Charge and Sync Cables on their Web site, but they've been "coming soon" for quite some time now. I'll wait patiently though because substituting even a few Zip-Linq cables has really tidied up my bag. Link

I should have trusted Cory's nomad knowledge sooner.

UPDATE: BB reader Oscar Bartos points to a retractable charge-and-sync cable for iPods already available through the good people at Geeks.com and elsewhere. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:03:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Profile of Creation Museum founder

We've posted before about the $25 million Creation Museum set to open near Cincinnati, Ohio. Today's Cincinnati Enquirer has a long profile of founder Ken Ham. In the article, Jerry Falwell says that Ham is "the most informed creationist in American" and that the museum is "going to be a mini-Disney World." From the Enquirer article, here are a few of Ham's beliefs:

Earth is about 6,000 years old, a figure arrived at by tracing the biblical genealogies, and not 4.5 billion years, as mainstream scientists say.

The Grand Canyon was formed not by erosion over millions of years, but by floodwaters in a matter of days or weeks.

Dinosaurs and man once co-existed (see accompanying Enquirer photo), and dozens of the creatures - including T-rex - were passengers on the ark built by Noah, who was a real man, not a myth.

Link to Enquirer article, and Link to Scientific American's "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense" (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:18:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Pop Surrealism show in Pueblo, Colorado

As Mark posted in March, BB pal Kirsten Anderson, proprietor of the pioneering Roq la Rue gallery in Seattle and editor of the mindbending book "Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art," was busy curating a show with same title for the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center in Pueblo, Colorado. The show opened a few days ago and received a great review in the Colorado Springs Independent. So many of my favorite contemporary artists have pieces in the exhibit, like Tim Biskup, Joe Coleman, Don Ed Hardy, Mark Ryden, Isabel Samaras, and Gary Baseman. (Seen here, Baseman's "Dumb Luck V.") I wish I could see the show! From the review:

Kirsten Anderson, owner and curator of Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery and exhibit partner, succinctly if simply wraps words around the basics of the genre in her statement: "This art, while giving a nod of respect to the Great Masters, surrealism, dada, the Pre-Raphaelites, futurism and vintage graphic design, turned around and gave them a hefty kick in the ass..."

Pop Surrealism's honest, sometimes brutal criticisms might leave some exurbanites dumbfounded. How does a tripped-out painting of a communist child saddling Barbie's horse reflect American culture? Search your commercialized soul inside this exhibit, where the Sangre boldly and very commendably gives credence to what artist Robert Williams calls "one of the most aggressive, vital and overlooked art movements since Pop Art."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:36:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Standing meerkats

Responding to my post yesterday about a lesser panda that can stand like a human, my Fortean friend Loren Coleman points to this lovely photo of a "meeting of meerkats." (Link to bigger image.) Link to more about meerkats

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:20:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: animation zen

mind control
creep
bellyfull
sock monkey
foreign exchange student
not my type
bangcubes
ah pook is here
niiiiiccce
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:29:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fingerprint scanners coming to Illinois library

Library officials in a Chicago suburb plan to scan and record visitor fingerprints, purportedly to prevent unauthorized persons from using library computers. Way to make libraries a more happyfun haven of knowledge, guys!

The scanners _ to be installed on 130 library computers this summer _ will verify the identity of computer users. Library officials said they wanted to tighten computer access because many people borrow library cards and pass codes from friends or family to log on. The technology also will help the library implement a new policy that allows parents to put filters on their children's' accounts, officials said.

But privacy advocates have criticized the plan, which would make Naperville only the second library system in the nation to use fingerprint-scanning technology, according to the American Library Association. "We take people's fingerprints because we think they might be guilty of something, not because they want to use the library," said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union in Illinois.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:12:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Automatically add lightsabers to your video

Jeff sez, "A few months back, Cory blogged about a tutorial that showed how to do rotoscoped light saber effects in digital video. Very cool, but the techniques used a bunch of expensive, fairly complex software. So, I figured I'd hack out a simple, easy-to-use one to let any George Lucas fanboy (or fangirl, for that matter) create their own effects. The result is available at the URL above, which has a short description of the project as well as links to the application and source code." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:35:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vienna streetcars haul in-city freight

The Vienna streetcar system (which is excellent, efficient and clean as a whistle) has created an in-city freight service that hauls all kinds of weighty loads around town. Link (Thannks, Alex!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:29:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Melted Bart Simpson toy commemorates sweatshop fire

Ron sez, "On May 10, 1993 a fire broke out in the Kader Toy Factory in Thailand and 189 workers died. It was the height of the Simpsons craze and the factory was producing Simpsons toys. After the fire, labor activists collected discarded toys and a melted Bart became a symbol of the tragedy. Photo from this year's commemoration of the tragedy here." Link (Thanks, Ron!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese toilet ad

This Japanese toilet commercial has a catchy jingle, great Aardman-style animation live actors who look for all the world like Aardman-style animation, and made me laugh aloud. 2.5MB MPEG Link, Manufacturer's site (via We Make Money Not Art)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:08:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tell Congress to reject the Broadcast Flag

Earlier this month, we completely creamed the motion picture studios over the Broadcast Flag, an effort to criminalize open source and win a veto over the design of electronics and PCs. Now they're floating draft legal language on the Hill that would put the entire technology industry under their thumb, turning their friends at the FCC into device-czars with jurisdiction over any technology that could be used to facilitate "indiscriminate redistribution" of movies over the Internet (monitors, PVRs, analog-to-digital converters, hard drives, etc).

EFF has an action-alert you can use to tell your elected law-maker how you feel about this. Just enter your ZIP code and click submit, or better yet, rewrite our form letter to express your outrage in your own words.

A lawmaker who breaks America's televisions and PCs has no business expecting to be re-elected. In fact, such a Congresscritter would be lucky to get away with a mere tarring and feathering.

As a constituent and a proponent of innovation, I am writing to voice my opposition to legislation that revives the FCC's proposed "Broadcast Flag" regulation (47 CFR 73.9002(b)), which was unanimously struck down on May 6th 2005 by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Broadcast Flag cripples any device capable of receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts. It makes digital TV hardware more expensive and less capable, impeding rather than accelerating the digital TV transition. Worse, it gives Hollywood movie studios a permanent veto over how members of the American public use our televisions and and forces American innovators to beg the FCC for permission before adding new features to TV.

The big media companies are threatening an HDTV boycott unless a Broadcast Flag law is passed and implemented this year. This is an empty threat. Viacom made that same threat back in 2002, yet CBS (owned by Viacom), still transmits nearly all of its prime-time shows in HDTV, even without the Broadcast Flag. For that matter, even if broadcasters like CBS aren't willing to provide programming for digital television, there are plenty of innovative new content creators who will.

Link

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

Dissected lies of a Canadian recording industry shill

This week, the Canadian Recording Industry Association had its bid to indiscriminately force ISPs to reveal their subscribers' personal information on the mere say-so of a rightsholder. Seeking to contain the crushing defeat of justice, the head of the CRIA gave a press interview where he attempted to spin this as some kind of victory for his side. Michael Geist has fact-checked his ass, revealing the lies and delusions that this shill told the press:

"The judge has determined that uploading, downloading, it's illegal."

Actually, the court did no such thing. Concluding its copyright discussion at paragraph 54, the court says:

"I make no such findings here and wish to make it clear that if this case proceeds further, it should be done on the basis that no findings to date on the issue of infringement have been made."

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:38:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Docs for thousands of video-games as PDFs

Replacementdoc.com is a site that hosts the documentation for thousands of video games. An anonymous reader writes, "The goal of replacementdocs is to preserve and archive game documentation for years to come. They are a community of gamers who appreciate the importance of game documentation and know the frustration that comes when this documentation is not available.

"They have been around for several years now and currently offer Acrobat PDF downloads of over 2000 different game manauals for various platforms. I know they have secured explicit permission to host these manuals from some game publishers and are working on getting permission from others. Some game publishers, like Atari, actually link to replacementdocs from their technical support website." Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:34:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, May 20, 2005

Lessons Learned from Revenge of the Sith

Excerpt:

# When the leader says “Everything’s fine, go wait on the LAVA PLANET", be suspicious.
# Coruscant OB/GYN technology leaves something to be desired.
# Don’t forget what happened to your mother in the last movie, or there will be extra exposition.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:31:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Raiding the lost ark

Eccentric Texan archaeologist Vendyl Jones--often incorrectly named as the inspiration for Indiana Jones--claims that this summer he will finally excavate the real Ark of the Covenant from its hiding place in the Judean Desert. From Arutz Sheva:

Throughout the many years of his quest, Jones has been in close contact and under the tutelage of numerous Rabbis and Kabbalists. Extremely knowledgeable in Torah, Talmud and Kabbalah sources dealing with Holy Temple issues, Jones has now received permission from both known and secret Kabbalists to finally uncover the lost ark...

He believes the ark will be discovered by Tisha B'Av (Aug. 14), a day of repeated tragedy in Jewish history. Most notably, it is the anniversary of the destruction of both the First and Second Holy Temples.

Link (via MetaFilter)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:42:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni Tech on NPR: Gaming Goes to Hollywood

For today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I visit the annual E3 electronic game convention to report on the movie industry's increasingly tight link with the gaming biz, and current tension between game makers and Hollywood talent unions. I wandered the LA Convention Center halls with geek pals Sean, Macki, Jake -- and Wil Wheaton, the blogger and actor (film, TV, and stage) who is also a celebrity in the world of video game voice-overs.

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

Shown here: after a long day of booth babes and nerd herds, Wil and I collapsed on the floor to play video games on our phones. (image: Jacob Appelbaum)

Previously: E3 Snapshots for NPR by Jake Appelbaum, E3 snapshots by Sean Bonner

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:24:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Piñata syndrome

This LA Times piece points to the the truth behind Dave Chappelle's much-misreported disappearance, and introduces a new piece of media-meme jargon.

In just two weeks, Chappelle's ordeal went from celebrity train wreck to run-of-the-mill exhaustion, a sure sign that today's entertainment news cycle moves faster than the news itself. The hunger for celebrity gossip, particularly scandal, has become more insatiable than ever with the viral proliferation of media covering it, from "60 Minutes" to Internet bloggers to every cellphone camera owner on the street.

Just before the Chappelle story hit, the media had been doggedly covering two lukewarm scandals: Pat O'Brien's rehab for alcoholism and Paula Abdul's alleged affair with an "American Idol" contestant. And as Chappelle's scandal dissipates, the media is poised to move on to more fertile ground, such as Britney Spears' pregnancy and the latest rumored indiscretions of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. "Nowadays, there is no privacy," says Allan Mayer, managing director of the crisis communication firm Sitrick and Co. "Everything is played out in public view ... the more you feed it, the bigger it gets."

As a result, every story has an abbreviated life span, accelerating the demand for more news. Ultimately, this adds up to exaggerated expectations of celebrities. If they can't maintain their public persona, they're devoured for our entertainment instead. "I call it the piñata syndrome," says publicist Howard Bragman, founder of the Hollywood PR firm Bragman Nyman Cafarelli. "It's really about the media. They're only lifting you up so that they can take sticks and beat you and see what comes out."

Link (Thanks, Mark Ebner!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:10:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

E3 snapshots by Sean Bonner

More E3 snaps -- this batch from Sean Bonner. Shown here, a nifty gizmo called "TV-BE-GONE," which Lazlow (another member of our roaming nerd posse) was using to turn off all the display monitors inside the Convention Center. ROFL.
Link to photo set.

Previously: E3 Snapshots for NPR by Jake Appelbaum, and here's Mark's post about TV-B-Gone (Thanks, Pesco!).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:53:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on ABC World News: Star Wars and filesharing

Last night's edition of ABC World News opened with a segment about news that Star Wars: Episode III has become available on filesharing networks. I was interviewed for the piece, about whether Hollywood claims that such leaks hurt profits are well-founded.

Studio executives say the counterfeits and free downloads off the Internet threaten to undercut their industry, as it did with the music industry. But not everyone agrees.

"George Lucas and Fox are still going to make a ton of money off this film," said Jardin. "People who love this film, people who love what 'Star Wars' means are still going to go see it in the theaters."

Link to video (paid subscribers only -- teh suck!) and transcript (free, no reg required).

Previously on Boing Boing: Star Wars III online, all studio countermeasures futile, Lucas still rich

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:38:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

E3 Snapshots for NPR by Jake Appelbaum

I went to the E3 Gaming expo here in Los Angeles yesterday, to file a report for NPR's "Day to Day" -- I was joined by a roaming posse of uber-nerds: Wil Wheaton, Jacob Appelbaum, Macki, and Sean Bonner. Jacob (website, blog) shot these terrific snapshots. In the image shown here, Macki laments at the "Law Enforcement Sign-In" anti-piracy booth hosted by the ESA.

Link to photo set.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:25:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cat comparison

At the "f blog," BB pal Jenn Shreve put together a handy comparison guide to interesting and unusual feline pets like Savannah cats (covered in a NYT article last week), cloned kitties, and robot cats that Mark posted about yesterday. Jenn's chart lists variables like cuteness, size, diet, behavioral quirks, trendiness, and persecution prospects. Link

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

IP Justice League!

"Can the IP Justice League save Wil Wheaton from super-villain Jack Valenti? Will they defeat his evil army of psycho culture pirates!? Whose side is Avril Lavigne REALLY on?? STAY TUNED!!!"
Link (Yeah, yeah, I know! psych!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:35:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Standing panda

Futa, a lesser panda at a zoo near Tokyo, stands upright for about 10 seconds at a time. From AFP:

The two-year-old male panda stands up several times a day when "it sees something interesting", said Hiroyuki Asano, an official of Chiba Zoological Park, southeast of the capital.

"We have kept lesser pandas for nearly 20 years at this zoo, but I have not seen one like Futa, which can stand for such a long time," Asano said.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:08:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Popemobile on display before auction

Pope John Paul II's personal car--a 1975 Ford Escort GL--will be on display at the Kruse Automotive and Carriage Museum and then the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas before Kruse International auctions it off. From the Associated Press:

Kruse also sold the car for John Paul in 1996 to Illinois businessman Jim Rich during the firm's annual Labor Day weekend sale in the town about 20 miles north of Fort Wayne. Rich traveled to Rome to give his check for $102,000 to the pope.

Rich has said he's selling the car due to financial troubles at his restaurant, bar and entertainment complex in Sugar Grove, Ill.

The pope used the car when he was a cardinal in Poland and stored it after he became pope in 1978.

Link (Thanks, David "Swapdrive" Steinberg!)

UPDATE: BB reader Christopher Borresen says: "I just moved into Sugar Grove (pop. 6000) with the hope that there would be at least one decent watering hole. The only place *at all* is this "restaurant, bar and entertainment complex" which is currently shuttered. Apparently, there's a father/son battle over the club and the car may not make it to auction on time as a result. It's payday - all I wanted was a beer." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:54:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wooden iPod cases

Peter Kinne makes wooden cases for iPods and Powerbooks, made from recycled wood from hot tubs and tables. Link (Thanks, Peter!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:51:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Italian phone carriers have phone-unlockers arrested

It looks like the Italian mobile phone cartels are using their muscle to bust people who unlock mobile phones. You can buy this service on practically every corner in Europe. My own phone, which came from Orange, is unlocked so that I can use it with my T-Mobile SIM while I'm in the USA.

There are dimwitted apologists for this who say that you agree not to unlock your phone when you get it at a discount from the carriers: I've never made any such agreement, nor would I. I read my service contract pretty carefully and it breathes not a word of this alleged agreement.

Closely related is the even dimmer argument that mobile carriers who didn't use locks would have to charge more for their phones -- an argument in pure defiance of the actual facts on the ground: everyone who wants to unlock a phone can, and yet the mobile carriers still turn a profit while giving out discounted phones in connections with set plans.

Set plans with high cancellation fees are what make the carriers their fortune, not chickenshit SIM-locks that can be broken with a little judicious googling or by paying the corner shop a fiver.

Marco, reporting from Italy, sez, "30 people were charged in 11 regions by H3G company for unlocking handsets. Search warrants were issued, criminal charges: unlawful access to informatic systems, detention and transmission of illegal codes. In March the company prosecuted Vodafone Omnitel on unfair competition charges: Vodafone shops were actually unlocking 3G phones and encouraging operator sitch. In January three people were charged, under the same circumstances, for copyright infringement and 'evasione fiscale'. At present it's still not clear if phone unlocking is unlawful." Link (Thanks, Marco!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:02:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pet costume: slave girl Princess Leia

Remember when Jabba the Hut caught Princess Leia and made a slave of her and dressed her in a gold bikini with a chain around her neck? Well, the Star Wars site is selling a version of that costume for your pet. This costume is recommended for dogs only. Don't miss the matching pet Darth Vader outfit.

Now, I've seen some disturbing, badly-thought-out Star Wars tchotchkes in my day, but man oh man. I am speechless. Link (Thanks, Jess!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:38:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spanish copyright society hounds Uni teacher out of job

I just got an email from my friend Jorge Cortell, a copyfighter and academic in Spain, whom I met at the Creative Commons España launch this year.

Jorge teaches "Intellectual Property" in the Masters program at the Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV. He proposed to give a talk on the benefits of P2P and talk about the law relating to P2P and copyright in Spain. He proposed to demo what sort of legal uses one could make of copyrighted works from P2P networks, and informed the Spanish collecting society, the national police and the attorney general to let them know what he was up to.

They responded by leaning on the Dean, who cancelled Jorge's venue. Jorge booked another venue, and the Dean cancelled it. So Jorge moved his talk to the cafeteria, and delivered a five hour session to a packed house.

On May 4, the Dean ordered the director of Jorge's program to demand his resignation, which he tendered. The Vice-Dean then added insult to injury by issuing a statement saying that Jorge had never taught at the university (!), in a surreal, Stalinist purge (Jorge has taught at the University for five years).

This is a shameful act of censorship and a betrayal of the principles of academic freedom. It's a national shame that Spain's powerful collecting societies can simply order the termination of any university teacher who teaches things that displease them. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:46:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Whistler's Delight DJ seeks photos of fans whistling

IZ Reloaded sez, "DJ Riko, the man behind the addictive mash-up 'Whistler's Delight' is asking fans to submit photos of them whistling. The photos will be used for the cover art of his new record."

The good people at Prank Monkey Records are planning to release a 12-inch with my "Whistler's Delight" on one side and "P-Funk is Playing at my House" on the other.

I'm putting together the cover art, and that's where you come in. I'm planning to make a collage of photos depicting people whistling, and I want you to take some and send them to me. They can be pictures of you, your friends, members of your family, your priest, your dealer, basically anyone who will play along.

Link (Thanks, IZ!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:54:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Videos of people eating and crying

This is an inexplicable and compelling collection of videos of people crying while they eat (pictured here: Erin, eating a soft Taleggio; a semi-firm Garrotxa, crying about a pen pal is in the hospital). Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:14:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Academic science fiction con in Toronto, June 4

The next Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy is coming up at Toronto's Merril Collection, the largest public science fiction reference library in the world. The conference is academic but never dry, and always includes lively and thought-provoking discussions on the field.

When: Saturday, June 4, 2005, 9:00-5:30
Where: The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, 239 College Street (at Spadina), 3rd Floor, Toronto
How much: $25 CAD ($15 CAD Students and Friends of the Merril Collection)

Guest Author: Robert Charles Wilson (The Harvest, Blind Lake, and Spin)
Guest Scholar: Veronica Hollinger (Editor, Science-Fiction Studies)

The Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy is a quasi-annual conference featuring academic papers, guest speakers, and panel discussions on all aspects of the field. The conference has been in existence in one form or another since 1995, and has hosted speakers ranging from Guy Gavriel Kay to Margaret Atwood.

Link (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:50:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Homebrew Grand Theft Auto for the 8-bit Nintendo

Grand Theftendo is a port of Grand Theft Auto, a modern, graphics-intensive video game, to the Nintedo Entertainment System, an 8-bit game-system of relative antiquity. It's quite an amazing undertaking, funny and fun and kind of perverse. Here's a site with extensive details on the project as well as links to a Sourceforge repository of the code, so that you can modify it and create your own sequels. Link (Thanks, Nervous Pilot!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:45:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hand-painted ped-symbols of Staines

The wonderfully named British town of Staines (there was a Siemens office there where they answered the phone "Hello, Siemans Staines!") has hand-painted road-signs indicating its pedestrian crossings. Each of the crossing peds is a little different, and a Flickr user has compiled a lovely mosaic showing all the different peds around his neighborhood. Link (Thanks, Martin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:41:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Finkbuilt giving away painting to person who wants it the most

Steve Lodefink owns an incredible painting by Steve Keene, and he's giving it away to the reader of his blog "who seems to want it the most."

If you want it, you have until June 13 to try.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:23:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Discovery Channel show tonight: "I Am My Own Twin"

Buddy says: "There's a program on Discovery Health TV Channel tonight about when (human) embryos fuse together during pregnancy. The title is I Am My Own Twin."

Babies are being born split right down the middle, half black and half white, a testicle on one side and a vagina on the other. Explore the extraordinary medical phenomena that causes two different babies to fuse together in the womb.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:48:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Download This American Life as audio files, not streams

A round of applause for Matt Katz, who has written a greasemonkey script that changes all the stream links for This American Life to download links.

If you don't use Firefox, you can still download any episode by pointing to http://www.wbez.org/ta/[EPISODENUMBER].rm Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:36:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make an easy Jedi robe

Here's a great HOWTO on making your own Jedi robes, even if you've never sewn or worked from a pattern. Link (via Make)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:26:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Backpack "safe" can be locked to a lamppost

This hardshell backpack is billed as a "personal safe." Though soft on the inside, it can be sealed shut and locked to a lamppost. Don't know how safe this is -- I don't think I'd leave my laptop in one. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:18:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amdahl mainframe processor

Lovely appreciation of a vintage Amdahl mainframe processor acquired via eBay. The coolest part is the back of the board, wherein all the chips are joined by hand-soldered wires. Link (Thanks, Deadprogrammer!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:11:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dalek cake

OK, this homemade Dalek cake is pretty damn bad-ass. Link (Thanks, Feren!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:44:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rotating electrical outlet for big plugs

360electrical makes electrical outlets that swivel in your wall to accommodate bulky plugs and transformers -- if your plug blocks the other outlet, just rotate it until it doesn't. Link (Thanks, Aaron!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:42:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blog reviews 4,035 eggs cups, one per day.

Una huevera al día [An egg cup a day] is a blog about eggs cups. "Each day we introduce to the world a different strange egg cup," says Gloria. "You're not obliged to read spanish to follow, just enjoy the pictures."
Link (English translation here)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:41:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hot dogs and buns to be packaged in like quantities

Edd sez, "Another classic comedy bit may come under the axe, as a major hot dog maker and a big bun baker agree to sell their products in packages of eight each. The news article startlingly states that more than 2 million buns a year are wasted." Link (Thanks, Edd!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:38:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Canadian court's file-sharing ruling is mixed blessing

Today, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeals brought down a ruling on the much-watched BMG vs Doe case, in which the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA, CRIA, was demanding that ISPs release the names and personal information of a number of people whom they accused of file-sharing.

The good news is that the court threw out CRIA's claims, saying that they'd been so sloppy in gathering their "evidence" that they had no business invading Canadians' privacy.

The bad news is that this implies that if CRIA is more careful, they'll be able to compel ISPs to disclose customer info, paving the way to thousands of US-style lawsuits in Canada.

Canadian copyfightin' professor Michael Geist has an excellent analysis of this, explaining why it means that Canada needs to fix its copyright laws ASAP.

The court focused much of its discussion on the privacy concerns associated with disclosing the identities of the file sharers. Although it noted the importance of intellectual property protection, it emphasized that in the Internet age "the potential for unwarranted intrusion into personal lives is now unparalleled." The court was clearly sympathetic to the privacy issues raised by the case and sought to map out some significant privacy protections. For example, it concluded that data associating users with an IP addresses goes stale very quickly and therefore evidence that is not current may be sufficient reason to dismiss a motion to disclose user identities. The court also noted that there must be care taken to ensure that personal information beyond the copyright allegations are not disclosed and that the identities of the individuals may be protected through confidentiality orders or by using initials.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:31:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with creators of Oregon Trail

College Humor interviews the creators of Oregon Trail, the old computer game famous for the "YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY" screen.

Brandon Berkenstein, age 9, writes: "What are the dirtiest words you've ever used for your team names?"


Paul: How about the mud-hens or something like that?


Bill: They have team names now in Oregon Trail? We didn’t do that back then... we just typed in our own names and I think I recall that if you died the next person on the trail would pass a gravestone with the name of the previous person that was on the trail.


Don: In the Apple version, if somebody died, you were asked to type in what you would like on the tombstone, and that was an opportunity for kids to practice all the bad words that they knew.


intern jeff: but you guys must have done it too, right?


Bill: It was too long ago.


Don: Otherwise we would have screened them out.


Paul: We put some silly things in.


Bill: We have probably expressed obscenities over the fact that at the time the game was invented, nobody knew about software royalties. If we had, we’d each own an island today.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:15:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Artwork of Eric Doeringer

About six years ago, artist Eric Doeringer made a set of toys with outlaw/lowlife/modern problem themes. They look just like the kinds of cheap toys that grocery stores sell.

These toys are designed to imitate the look of the toy accessory sets commonly sold in grocery or 99-cent stores. Instead of the usual fantasies (Cowboy, Princess, Doctor) I have substituted more realistic urban futures. Most of the toys included in the sets are "ready-mades". They are actual toys, but when reassembled and repackaged they take on more sinister overtones.    I designed the packaging and custom vacuum-formed the clear plastic blisters, so the toys are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

Link (Thanks, Courtney!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:08:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creepy cat robot from Japan

The creators of the NeCord Necoro cat robot should be fined and jailed for ignoring the the Uncanny Valley study, which found that robots that are almost-but-not-quite-completely lifelike are scary.
Link (Thanks, Tim!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:52:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Pizza Hot" in Baghdad

This Pizza Hut ripoff in Baghdad reminds me of the 6-Elevens we saw in Rarotonga.
Link (Thanks, Brian!)

Reader comment: Jonathan says: "Along the lines of 6-Eleven and Pizza Hot is a soft drink from Laos called "Cosco Cola." The logo, pictured on an umbrella in the linked photo I took, may look somewhat familiar."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:06:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Citroen Penthouse

The Citroen Penthouse was a 1980 concept car. It's a prototype for a six-wheeled futuristic camper, boasting two doors on the right-hand side and one on the left. Most impressive though is the electric "bellows" roof. Link (via We Make Money Not Art and Jalopnik)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:39:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New monkey species discovered

For the first time in Africa in more than 20 years, scientists have discovered a new species of monkey. The species, Lophocebus kipunji, calls Tanzania's southern highlands home. The researchers report in tomorrow's issue of Science that there are fewer than 1,000 of the monkeys living in the forest's trees at elevations up to 8,000 feet. From Reuters:

"This exciting discovery demonstrates once again how little we know about our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates," said Russell Mittermeier, chairman of the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN-The World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission.

"A large, striking monkey in a country of considerable wildlife research over the last century has been hidden right under our noses."

Link (Thanks, Loren Coleman!)

UPDATE: BB reader Mechum points out an error in the Reuters article that I paraphrased above. The Highland Mangabey was the first species of monkey discovered in more than twenty years in Africa, not the entire world. Link to press release from the Wildlife Conservation Society

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:26:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Live webcast of transgenitalization surgery today

Soupface sez,

A sex-change operation will be broadcast live on the web (through a Java applet) this afternoon (14:00, UTC -3:00). A 25 year-old man will undergo transgenitalization surgery at Hospital de Base in São José do Rio Preto (roughly 400 km north of São Paulo), Brazil. He, who calls himself Patrícia, hopes that the broadcast will help others who want to know more about the procedure. The surgical team will be led by Dr. Carlos Abib Cury (medical urologist) and Prof. Dr. Sérgio J. A. Almeida (described as doctor, psychologist, and sexologist). It will the the 50th such procedure carried out at the hospital since 1998.

The site is in Brazilian Portuguese, but Babel Fish may be capable of a passable translation (the link-text for the Java applet is "A CIRURGIA"--"the surgery"). There's a short article about it (also in Portuguese) at the website of the Folha de São Paulo.

Link (Thanks, Soupface!)

Update: Ruby takes issue with the pronouns in this post and suggests "A 25 year-old WOMAN will undergo transgenitalization surgery at Hospital de Base in São José do Rio Preto (roughly 400 km north of São Paulo), Brazil. PATRICIA, hopes that the broadcast will help others who want to know more about the procedure."

Update 2:: Philip sez, "There is now a message that says roughly this:"

Because of the stance of the Regional Council of Medicine of Brazil, we are not transmitting today the transgenitalization surgery, as had been previously announced.

As soon as we have a new understanding with the council, we will transmit the recording of the surgery, with the participation of the team, which will be at that time available to respond by e-mail to any doubts about the subject.

Dr. Carlos Cury and team

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

Flying, flocking ultralight Linux boxes

A flock of flying Linux servers powered by Gumstix computers (tiny embedded computers the size of a stick of gum) is being developed by researchers at the University of Essex. It will fly in automated flocking formations.

PhD candidate Renzo de Nardi recently completed a prototype UltraSwarm device, a craft the project believes to be the smallest flying web server in the world. Once the whole flock has been completed, the onboard computers will be configured as a Piconet (a network of devices connected in an ad hoc manner via Bluetooth), "with the master on the arena-based computer system," Hollands says.

Link (via Futurismic)

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

Recycled TV video: scratching, funny video with Creative Commons punchline

This video, entitled "Recycled TV, " scratches together llittle snips of audio from various TV shows, timed with TV footage from various sources. A mysterious hand reaches in and turns knobs labelled BALANCE, COPYRIGHT and CREATIVE COMMONS, changing the video. The song's catchy, the visuals range from funny to thought-provoking. All in all, a hell of a clip. Lessig Mirror, 11.4MB Quicktime Link, Link to artist's site

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:12:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gutted Commodore with glowing rotating wire teapot on motors in the monitor

Man, this is perverse and cool. They've gutted an old Commodore, soldered together a green, UV-lit wireframe teapot, and stuck it in the monitor on a set of rotating motors that can roll it on three axes. Use the numeric keypad and the teapot rotates, as though someone had written an "advanced" Commodore BASIC program to draw a rotating 3D teapot on the screen (back in the old days, making virtual rotating 3D teapots was a kind of fetish for computer graphics wonks).

Graphics Demo is a modified Commodore CBM 3032 computer. Its inner life was replaced by a mechanics. A wireframe model of a teapot, soldered out of silvered copper wire, is gimballed inside the monitor cabinet. The model is varnished with green uv-active paint and lighted by four blacklight tubes, which are installed invisible inside the cabinet. The teapot can be rotated in any direction by using the numeric keypad. During the rotation, you can hear the electric motors and feel their vibrations.

1.5MB Quicktime Link, Link to artist's site (via JWZ)

Update: Dan sez, "You may not know it, but that's exactly how the 'wireframe animations' were done for 2001: A Space Odyssey."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:08:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Words affect our enjoyment of smells

Words can dramatically affect how we perceive smells. In a new scientific study, researchers presented people with the smell of cheddar cheese but labeled the smell with either the words "cheddar cheese" or "body odor." The subjects enjoyed the smell much more when it was referred to as the former. Brain scans showed that pleasant words activated a certain part of the brain region that processes smells. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:07:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cuba switching to GNU/Linux

Cuba is switching away from Windows to GNU/Linux. I have to say that I was a little surprised when I was last in Cuba and saw many of the PCs running Windows.

Cuba's director of information technology, Roberto del Puerto, says that Cuba already has approximately 1500 computers running on Linux, and is working towards replacing Windows on all state owned computers.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:02:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Classic novel PDFs redux

Earlier this week, I posted about Scotland's Sunday Herald giving away free PDFs of classic books. Richard from Planet PDF writes in to say "I like to think we've done a much better job too. We spent quite a bit of time getting a decent layout (for on-screen and print), adding navigation and doing reasonable typography so they are a lot more like the print version (uses proper dashes, quotes, italics, etc.). We researched what the most popular ebooks online were and did the top 60-70." These are very nice indeed. Link (Thanks, Richard!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:39:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Russian villagers scavenge fallen Soyuz junk to survive

In Russia's spacebelt, impoverished villages scavenge debris from discarded Soyuz stages and other fallen spacejunk to make ends meet:

Since the Plesetsk Space Center began operations in northern Russia forty years ago, tons of man-made debris - first stages of rockets mainly - have fallen to earth, generating both a cash opportunity for local villagers, and a source of danger, RIA Novosti recently reported.

Some villages survive only on this cosmic garbage, unable to find other ways to make ends meet...

Lesser-damaged parts are used in households: electric batteries are connected to lamps, metal sheets made of stainless alloys are used to build basements, garages, fences, water tracks and long, slim boats, much like canoes.

Link (via Futurismic)

Update: Brendan sez, "I'd like to point you towards a photo essay by Jonas Bendiksen with some magnificant pictures taken of some fallen space debris in Kazakhstan."

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

Star Wars III online, all studio countermeasures futile, Lucas still rich

There's a workprint of Star Wars Episode III on the Internet already. It's got some timecode and watermarks, but judging from the 19 second XVID sample that Waxy has posted, it seems like it's eminently watchable.

Workprints leak from studios. The studios are trying to lock down what customers do with DVDs and cable TV and PCs, but they can't even keep their own house in order. They've got laws that allow them to get your name from your ISP and to sue you into bankruptcy for file-sharing. They've got laws to criminalize the math to defeat DRM. They're after laws to let them design TVs and camcorders.

None of those laws, measures or policies will stop files like this from circulating on the Internet. Don't take my word for it, read what Microsoft's leading DRM engineers have to say about it.

But that's OK, because Star Wars III will make a metric crapload of money, no matter how many copies are downloaded from the Internet. Hell, the licensing deals alone have already recouped the cost of production, before the first ticket was sold.

The studios don't have a problem with downloading. There's plenty of downloading, but there's no problem. But even if there is a problem, none of the costly measures the studios have asked for will solve it.

Putting the shouting, petulant babies from the studios in charge of technology is plain nuts. They are too blinded by greed and hubris to be trusted. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:06:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tell American anti-Internet wonk why Europe doesn't need software patents

Bruce Lehman is an American IP maximalist (he's best known for advocating shutting down the Internet and replacing it with something more like AOL during 1995's National Information Infrastructure hearings). He's written an open letter asking for people to come and comment on the European Software Patent initiative, through which "inventions" like streaming media and XML can end up the exclusive property of one company.

From Lessig's blog:

As Bruce writes, "It is important to remember that the patentability of computer implemented inventions, or lack there of, will have a profound effect on European industry and competitiveness." Absolutely right, which is why is it so good that the IIPI has opened a discussion forum on their site so people can contribute to the "discussion" about IIPI's strong support for this software patent initiative.

Link (Thanks, Larry!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:52:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nintendo promises a console that will run anyone's code?

Hidden in a fluffy press release for Nintendo's new Revolution console device is this notice:

Freedom of design: A dynamic development architecture equally accommodates both big-budget, high-profile game "masterpieces" as well as indie games conceived by individual developers equipped with only a big idea.

Not much detail, but if Nintendo makes good on that promise, they're poised to kick the competition's ass: a world of consoles that only ran signed code was a nice racket while it lasted, but at the end of the day, needing to get permission to run software on your own device sucks and devices that let anyone write software for them get more valuable as more people write more code for them. Link (Thanks, Tom!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:43:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Italian R2D2oid bot recognizes and flees from lightsaberoid objects

This 50,000 Euro, R2D2oid robot from the University of Pisa perambulates on two or three wheels and flees from humanoid shapes bearing lightsaberoid shapes. It is also Bluetooth and USB-enabled. Link (Thanks, Bru!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:44:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars fan films screened at Cannes

A selection of Lucasfilm-sanctioned short Star Wars fan-films have gone to Cannes today for screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

The fan films are very short, from two to five minutes long, and range in tone from the sweet longing of Christmas Tauntauns to the satire of Pink Five. ("I'm getting the worst case of helmet hair.") The films will also appear online.

Greene said that each of the Star Wars fan films have been viewed more than 10 million times. Trey Stokes, writer/director of Pink Five, said that he won't attend the film festival because he is currently making a sequel, The Return of Pink Five. "I won the 'George Lucas Selects' award of 2003," he said. "It isn't as lucrative as a Palm D'or, but it's personally more satisfying.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:41:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars photoshopping contest

There's loads of great stuff to love in this Worth1000 photoshopping competition to remix Star Wars cliches, but the Beverly Hillbillies mashup, "Return of the Jed," (pictured here) made me laugh aloud. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:37:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Upskirt subway camera causes bomb scare

"A small digital camera apparently planted by an unidentified voyeur to shoot up passing skirts caused a brief bomb scare near a Manhattan subway station, police said Wednesday." Link (Thanks, JKelly)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:37:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chicago crime data meets Google maps

If you want to know where to buy street drugs or hire the services of a prostitute in Chicago, this web site, which pinpoints the location of crimes using Google maps, would certainly be helpful.
Link (Thanks, kev!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:28:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Make #2 now on sale at Amazon.com

The second issue of Make magazine is on sale at Amazon. People have told me that they like this issue even more than the first. The major projects include stuffing a Windows PC into an Atari 2600 console so you can play hundreds of retro games using emulators, building a light-seeking BEAM robot out of an old computer mouse, a guide to producing podcasts, and rebuilding an old transistor guitar amp. We've also got a feature article about people who make extremely realistic Star Wars robots in their spare time.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:24:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Personal data for the taking

From the NYT:

Senator Ted Stevens wanted to know just how much the Internet had turned private lives into open books. So the senator, a Republican from Alaska and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, instructed his staff to steal his identity.

"I regret to say they were successful," the senator reported at a hearing he held last week on data theft.

His staff, Mr. Stevens reported, had come back not just with digital breadcrumbs on the senator, but also with insights on his daughter's rental property and some of the comings and goings of his son, a student in California. "For $65 they were told they could get my Social Security number," he said. That would not surprise 41 graduate students in a computer security course at Johns Hopkins University. With less money than that, they became mini-data-brokers themselves over the last semester.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:10:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chili finger provided to settle debt

Last week, the owner of the disembodied finger that Anna Ayala claimed she found in a bowl of Wendy's chili was identified as a co-worker of Ayala's husband, James Plascencia. Brian Paul Rossiter lost it in an accident with a mechanical truck lift. Now it has been revealed that Rossiter gave the finger to Ayala's husband to settle a $50 debt. From the Associated Press:

(Rossiter's mother, Brenda) Shouey said her son had showed the severed finger to co-workers in a macho display of humor and was desperate for cash when he gave it away "to this character, James."

"My son is a happy-go-lucky guy. He thought it was cute to show" the severed finger, Shouey said. "It's like a man thing."

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:02:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on CNN International: E3 hardware highlights

I'll be joining host Kristie Lu Stout on CNN International today to talk about all the hot gadgety gaming goodness going down at the E3 gaming convention here in Hollywood this week. Air time: 745PM ET / 445PM PT.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:35:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: feline zen 2005

kitty cat dance
caution: cat vomit
animal reviews: cat
my cat's football picks
cat helmet
screen cleaning kitten
give your cat a pill
cat yoga
cat buckaroo
miyahi
stack the cats
kitten bounce
kitten attack
pinky the cat
aroma of brains
cat drummer
steptoe kittens
i've snorted a kitten
piruleta
badly drawn cats
kitten war
web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:13:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Afghan Music Project blog

Devin Poolman says:

Adam Gouttierre and Chris Becherer, both MBA students at UC Berkeley, blogging about their trip to Afghanistan as a part of the Afghan Music Project (AMP). "The Afghan Music Project (AMP) is a social venture with the goal of raising the awareness of the beauty of traditional Afghan music and the tragic, but uplifting, story of Afghan women through a professionally recorded album. Proceeds from the AMP album will go towards funding educational scholarships for Afghan women." Their blog entries have been extremely interesting so far (Link) - particularly as they talk about the impact of the Newsweek article (Link) and the rumored kidnapping of another westerner (Link).

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:52:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pirate mariachis in Mexico City: truth or myth?

A Reuters item reports that in crime-saturated Mexico City, thieves are dressing in mariachi drag (elaborately embroidered suits, wide-brimmed somberos, humongo guitars) to rob music-lovers.

Mingling among the roughly 1,700 licensed mariachi who serenade people with raucous folk songs in a central city square are hundreds of "pirate" mariachi more adept at picking pockets than strumming guitars, city officials say. In a city where organized crime gangs make an easy living from armed assault and kidnapping, police fear the bogus musicians could trick people into taking them home to play at family parties, where mariachi are a popular treat. "Since the end of last year we have been seeing mariachi who are not mariachi," said Jose Luis Tamayo, the government official in charge of a crackdown to weed them out.

Link

Update: Boing Boing reader Chris Goodwin says this is total FUD -- fear, uncertainty, and elaborately embroidered doubt -- on the part of the mariachi union (Ed.: there's a mariachi union?). He says:

I’m in Mexico City at the moment and am amused and bemused by this story: I think it’s a Mariachi Union-created urban myth that feeds off the fear and paranoia that Mexico City is a dangerous place. Which it is and is not. I’ve seen a few similar stories in the Mexican and foreign papers about this in the last couple of weeks. What the stories lack are convincing evidence that this is really happening.

“We have reports of muggings,” says the cop. “They are pinching wallets.” “They are crooks,” says a mariachi. “People who let them into their homes will be robbed.” But no arrests or statements from people who have been robbed are included in these stories. Robbed to the sound of sweet, romantic rancheros. Ah, Mexico City.

In fact what is happening is a turf war. Poverty is forcing many mariachis out of rural and small-town Mexico into the city.The complacent mariachis who have controlled the business at the Plaza Garibaldi for decades are suddenly being forced to really sing for their suppers, and the influx of rural mariachis has cut prices.

So the complacent mariachis have spread the fear of pirate mariachis who will rob unsuspecting clients as they play their violins and croon of impossible love. And the idiotic thing is that they have cut their own throats because potential clients are now worried about hiring any mariachis.

Believe me, just imagine the expense, for a poor Mexican who is thinking of becoming a thief, of getting five guys kitted up in elaborate mariachi costumes, supplying them with costly musical instruments, making sure they can play, and then dividing the proceeds of an occasional purse snatch to pay for their dastardly life of musical crime.

Pirate mariachis: urban myth.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:48:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pakistan's first female fighter pilots "doing rather well"

Women fighter pilots and aerospace engineers are now joining the formerly all-male Pakistan Air Force academy.

Until recently, most women in this conservative Muslim society would more likely have imagined marrying a dashing fighter pilot than being encouraged to become one. But this was not true for Saba Khan, one of four female cadets to make it through the gruelling first stages of training. Coming from an enlightened Pathan family in Quetta, capital of otherwise conservative Balochistan Province, Saba was initially inspired by one of her uncles who had been in the air force.

And she says the first newspaper advertisement seeking female cadets was like a dream come true.

"I always wanted to be a fighter pilot, and eventually with Allah's wish and the full support of my parents, I made it this far," she said.

Link (thanks, Abbas Raza)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:41:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO fake a fingerprint

This HOWTO contains step-by-step instructions for turning a latent fingerprint on the side of a glass or similar into a latex fingerprint you can wear on your fingertip in order to fool biometric sensors.

The goal is to get an exact image of the fingerprint, for further use as mold, out of which the dummy is made. The easiest way is to print the image on a transparency slide (the ones normally used for an overhead projector) with a laser printer. The toner forms a relief, which is later used similar to letter press printing. Wood glue is suitable for producing the dummy

Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:34:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Trailer suspended 50' in the air with stilts and wires

Roboshobo sez, "Hey, look at this amazing pic I found while doing an image search for skyscrapers. It looks to be a mobile home suspended 50 feet in the air with tension lines and stilts. Reminded me of AT-ATs from Star Wars or the walking city that Ron Herron of Archigram concieved." JPEG Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:32:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Porn Valley Goes Blogging

Susannah Breslin files this insightful feature for Wired News about blogs penned by adult film industry insiders.

Porn stars, porn gossip scribes and porn production workers are turning to blogs to expose what it's really like to live and work in the San Fernando Valley-based sex industry. "There's this image that being a male porn star is glamorous, that you get to have sex with all the women you ever wanted," said Luc Parry, a 32-year-old law school dropout from Boston who has been chronicling his recent career turn as a male porn star on Diary of a Porn Star. (Editor's note: Some web pages linked in this story may contain nudity and sexual situations.)

As Parry (a stage name) writes on his blog, the reality can be different. From female co-stars who give him the cold shoulder and fall asleep on-set, to Herculean struggles to maintain an erection for hours at a time while being denied lunch, Parry's portrayal of the porn star life is anything but glamorous. "Still want to do porn?" he asks in one post.

Link

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

Buffalo death porn is a bad thing

Snipped from the sticky pages of AVN:

Sexy Outdoor Sports had Georgia-based adult performer Daisy Duxxx kill a buffalo with a hunting rifle, then videotaped her having hardcore sex with a man next to the slain animal. Stung by the controversy the story generated, Duxxx and Miami-based Alternative Modeling, which had supplied her to Sexy Outdoor Sports, have now promised to sever all ties to the hunting outfit, a stance we commend. AVN has always been a staunch defender of First Amendment guarantees of free expression, notably when the material involves consenting adults, but in the case of Sexy Outdoor Sports, we draw the line. Animals cannot consent.

Link (via Warren)

Naturally, Fleshbot has been tracking other reports of "unsexy outdoor sports," and those links are compiled here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:07:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO open laptop lock with toilet paper tube

In the vein of "Bic as picklock," a gentleman in a 2600 t-shirt explains how to pop a Kensington laptop lock with a piece of cardboard cut from a toilet paper roll. Link to 7.5 MB wmv file (via Gizmodo and what tian has learned)


UPDATE: Chris Vogel says: "That 'gentleman in a 2600 t-shirt' is Barry Wels, you can find videos of talks given by him (where he also opens various locks) here."

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:47:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory lecturing in London next Tuesday

I'm giving a lecture next Tuesday at Florida State University's London program. I'll be talking about the Broadcast Flag and the coming European Broadcast Flag and what we can do to make sure that the former stays dead and the latter never comes to life. Seating is limited, so you need to email to get your spot:

When: Tuesday, May 24, 2005, 3PM

Where: Lecture Theatre, Florida State University, London Center, 99 Great Russell St., Bloomsbury, London, UK

RSVP: keith@art.fsu.edu

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:33:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Telerobots separated at birth

Separated at birth? At left, Sister Mary, a telerobot offered by InTouch Health that enables physicians to conduct their rounds remotely. Sister Mary is now being tested at St. Mary's Hospital in London. Link and Link

At right, Eric Paulos and John Canny's Personal Roving Presence (PRoP), a telerobot that "provides video and audio links to the remote space as well as providing a visible, mobile entity with which other people can interact." PRoP was developed at UC Berkeley in 2001 1997. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:31:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Words not in the dictionary

Merriam-Webster asked online users to submit words that aren't in the dictionary but perhaps should be. The editors then came up with a Top 10 list of frequently submitted words. From the Associated Press:

First place went to "ginormous" -- bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous -- followed by "confuzzled" for confused and puzzled simultaneously, and "whoot," an exclamation of joy. A "lingweenie" -- a person incapable of making up new words -- placed 10th.

Link

UPDATE: Grant Barrett, editor of the excellent Double-Tongued Word Wrester site and a lexicographer for Oxford University Press, writes:

As everyone who as Mac OS X 10.4 can find out, "ginormous" is indeed in the dictionary, or rather, in "a" dictionary, the second edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary that is included with the new operating system. If my good colleagues at Merriam-Webster want headwords they need to add to the 12th edition of their college dictionary (the current 11th edition is already a fine book), I can send them a list. ; )

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:21:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's PopSci piece on radio's Broadcast Flag

My column in the May issue of Popular Science magazine is online: this month, I talk about how the RIAA is trying to create a Broadcast Flag for digital radio:

Today you can buy similar devices for radio—sometimes called RiVos—including Griffin's Radio Shark and Neuros's MP3 Computer, that connect to your computer and record programs to your hard drive. The next generation of these gadgets will go those one better, recording all of the radio stations in a frequency band simultaneously, then picking out individual songs and arranging them into playlists. Goodbye channels, chatter, idiot DJs and throwaway music. Who needs live radio when you've got a RiVo?

The problem is that tomorrow RiVo may be illegal. A new generation of radio called Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB, a.k.a. digital radio) is coming, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is dedicated to making sure no RiVo-like device for digital radio ever reaches the marketplace. DAB is just beginning to show up in the U.S., but it will eventually replace analog FM and AM broadcasts. What worries the RIAA is that a DAB signal sounds better than analog, and it can carry information such as names of tracks and artists and be easily recorded to a hard drive. RiVo functionality could be in every DAB tuner.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:14:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's Wired News op-ed about the BBC

Wired News has just published an op-ed I wrote about the BBC's amazing new open services and products, through which it embraces audience participation:

America's entertainment industry is committing slow, spectacular suicide, while one of Europe's biggest broadcasters -- the BBC -- is rushing headlong to the future, embracing innovation rather than fighting it.

Unlike Hollywood, the BBC is eager and willing to work with a burgeoning group of content providers whose interests are aligned with its own: its audience.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:07:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's Eastern Standard Tribe is finalist for Locus Award

Hee-YAW! My second novel Eastern Standard Tribe, is a finalist for this year's Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Last year, my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel.

Locus Magazine is the leading trade mag for science fiction, and the Locus Poll -- from which the Locus Award nominees and winners are drawn -- is the field's popular award with the widest participation (wider even than the Hugos).

The Locus Award winners will be announced this July 4th weekend, at Calgary's Westercon. Here's the whole list of this year's nominees (shockingly good company to be in, by the way):

Best Science Fiction Novel

The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow (Tor)
Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperCollins UK; Bantam)
The Baroque Cycle: The Confusion; The System of the World, Neal Stephenson (Morrow)
Iron Sunrise, Charles Stross (Ace)

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:57:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bubble House in France for sale

This rare Bubble House in southwest France, inspired by Finnish architect Antti Lovag is on the market for $3 million. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:26:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mobile version of Katamari Damacy by year's end

A rep from Namco, the company behind the extraordinary video game Katamari Damacy has promised a mobile version of it soon.

I had the opportunity to chat with Scott Rubin, Namco's North American GM recently, and he promised a mobile version of KD was in the works. "It's one of our favorite titles internally, and we've already sent versions of the PS2 game to all of our carrier partners," said Rubin. "And they loved it." As for timing, Rubin expects a 3D version of the game to show up in Asia towards the end of the year, with North America and Europe following shortly... Rubin: "We can't wait for it to happen, it's just a matter of timing."

Link (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

HOWTO filter water with coffee grounds, clay and cowshit

Here's a recipe for making an effective water purifier using coffee grounds, cowshit, and clay. Clean water is hard to source in the developing world, and charcoal/iodine filters aren't cheap when you're living on a dollar a day. This, on the other hand, makes use of materials that can be had for free or close-to.

A handful of clay, yesterday’s coffee grounds and some cow manure: the ingredients that could bring clean, safe drinking water to much of the third world. The simple new technology, developed by [Australia National University] materials scientist Mr. Tony Flynn, allows water filters to be made from commonly available materials and fired on the ground using cow manure as the source of heat, without the need for kiln. The filters have been tested and shown to remove common pathogens including E-coli.

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:12:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Real world Katamari ball at E3

As I mentioned, the organizers of this year's E3 gaming conference issued a call for attendees to bring treasured junk to stick onto a real world Katamari Damacy ball (Katamari Damacy being a stupendous game in which you roll a ball over objects, which stick to it, making it grow larger).

Here's a sneak cameraphone pic of the ball, which goes on public display shortly. Link (Thanks, KHY!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:09:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Top 100 movie voices

Filmcritic.com has a great rundown of the 100 best movie voices of all time.

3. Christopher Walken - Cinema's most unique voice, Walken reportedly taught himself his halting manner of speech by deleting all the punctuation out of his scripts when learning his lines. You can. Understand. What that could do to your. Speech. Right? Anyway, we could use a little more cowbell.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:47:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

High speed video of man shaving his beard

It is strangely satisfying to watch this 15-second high-speed video of Richard shaving off his beard and most of his hair.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:29:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Using magnets to treat depression

Kris says: ABC News details a new technology called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation that may offer hope to people with the most difficult-to-treat depression. By applying an alternating magnetic field over the surface of the scalp, the treatment restores and resets the electrical activity of the brain. It's apparently safe, completely non-invasive, and extremely effective. It also appears to last for a long time -- making it possibly a much safer alternative to electroshock therapy (ECT.) Link

(On the same day today, the Melbourne Daily Telegraph published this story about how the same technology was proving to be effective in treating Alzheimer's.)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:23:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BDSM dolls

BB pal Violet Blue point us to this Fleshbot post:

Considering the Japanese genius for miniaturization (not to mention a proclivity for hot sex doll action), these tableaus starring two figurines in some incredibly detailed bondage fetish attire shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Let’s hope some enterprising domestic toy company picks up on the idea soon—we’d totally love to see Barbie in one of those black enamel catsuit and matching gas mask combinations.

Link (via Fleshbot)

UPDATE: BB reader Stephanie Chan says: "I'm an avid doll collector and i thought I should point out that the figure in the background without the gas mask is not wearing a custom sewn outfit, but a commercially made one which comes with XIXOX: Bloody Rose, a Cool Girl made by Takara and distributed internationally by bbi as a part of their Cy Girls line (which means she's available domestically). And the site that Fleshbot linked to is owned by a very well known customizer named Gamisan. He frequently puts his wares on Yahoo Japan Auctions, sometimes hauling in over ¥20,000 for a full attire."

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:54:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Childlike wonder good for memory

The more you know, the harder it may be to remember some things. In a study conducted by Ohio University Ohio State University researchers, adults had better recall of pictures of imaginary bugs than familiar animals like cats. Why? When we categorize people and objects, it lowers our ability to remember individual differences between them. In the first experiment, adults and children were shown pictures of animals such as cats, bears, and birds, and later asked to identify which pictures they had seen before. The younger the child, the better he or she did. In a second experiment, the real animals were swapped for imaginary creatures. From OSU Research News:

...In this new experiment, adults were shown three different types of imaginary, insect-like creatures that (cognitive science professor Vladimir) Sloutsky calls "ziblets." In this experiment, adults performed as well as children did in the first study in remembering which ziblets they had seen before without having many "false positives."

The difference here was that the adults had no previous knowledge that allowed them to easily categorize the ziblets without paying close attention to each picture.

"They remembered them because they had to pay close attention," Sloutsky said. "They remembered the details."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:33:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

May the Sporks be with you: Lucas ranch "home video" remixed

Some enterprising soul has remixed the video shot by Jeff Kleiser after a private screening of Episode III at George Lucas' ranch. Now with genuine light saber action!

Link to Quicktime clip (Thanks, Ray Keim). Previously: Star Wars screening home video: light saber fork action

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:10:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars Last Supper painting

This is lovely: the Last Supper, starring Star Wars characters, from Giant Mag Link (via Waxy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:41:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Secret purpose of the female orgasm

A philosopher and professor of biology at Indiana University argues in a new book that the female orgasm has no evolutionary function. In her book "The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution," Elizabeth A. Lloyd analyzed how often women climax during intercourse without clitoral stimulation. Since so few women do, she argues, it's unlikely that female orgasm is linked to fertility or reproduction and therefore can't be an evolutionary adaptation. From the New York Times:

In boys, the penis develops, along with the potential to have orgasms and ejaculate, while "females get the nerve pathways for orgasm by initially having the same body plan."

Nipples in men are similarly vestigial, Dr. Lloyd pointed out.

While nipples in woman serve a purpose, male nipples appear to be simply left over from the initial stage of embryonic development.

The female orgasm, she said, "is for fun."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:15:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni Tech on NPR: Zabasearch and digital privacy

For today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I report on ZabaSearch, a new "people data" search engine that makes it easy -- some say too easy -- to find personal information about virtually anyone.

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

Previously on Boing Boing: Wired News report -- Your Identity, Open to All

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:22:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Star Wars screening home video: light saber fork action

Boing Boing pal (and esteemed CG FX guru) Jeff Kleiser shot some fantastically crap-o digital home video at George Lucas' ranch, after the first screening of Episode III for 40 of Mr. Lucas' friends. Kleiser was seated at a dinner table with John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton of Pixar, among others. We can't share the entire video (or guest list), but we do have permission to share a little snippet that shows these dudes playing light saber with forks at the table.

As for that other movie, (cough, cough) Kleiser says: "The new film is killer…unbelievably rich and stunningly beautiful matte paintings. The segue into Episode IV is well done and it should be a huge success."

Links to Quicktime clips: low-res, medium-res, higher-res. (Thanks for the edit, Jeff Koga!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:00:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi crypto can be broken in 3 mins

WEP, the access-control system for WiFi, is notoriously shit. Now Fed computer scientists have shown an attack that can break a WEP key in three minutes. Gabe sez, "Brilliant approach, using a second computer to re-send the same packet back to the router, thus generating more traffic, thus catching more weak packets, etc."

The FBI team used the deauth feature of void11 to repeatedly disassociate the laptop from the access point. Desired additional traffic was then generated as Windows XP tried to re-associate back to the AP. Note that this is not a particularly stealthy attack, as the laptop user will notice a series of "Wireless Network unavailable" notifications in the taskbar of their desktop screen.

Another attack method the FBI team used is a replay attack. The basic premise of this attack is to capture at least one packet traveling from the victim laptop to victim access point. This packet can then be replayed into the network, causing the target AP to respond and provide more traffic to capture.

Link (Thanks, Gabe!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:04:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Revenge of the Tithe: Lament over Lame Star Wars Gift Bag

Hell hath no fury like a Star Wars: Episode III charity premiere gift bag recipient scorned. Eric Perez attended the same screening I napkinblogged for Boing Boing last week. I attended the Los Angeles fundraiser as press, and did not pay (or take a gift bag). Mr. Perez paid $500, for which he was promised an "incredible gift bag containing Star Wars merchandise" and an "Intergalactic After-Party." He was less than impressed with both.

"Did you know in San Francisco they had a death star pinata and wookie cookies?," Mr. Perez exclaims to me via email. "How hard is it to ask a caterer to make wookie cookies? For godsakes, we paid $500!!!! The real reason I'm pissed is cause I saw this guy while I was leaving. He had his 10 yr old son, and his 15-17 yr old sons with him. The dad looked mad, and the kids looked bored. The 10 yr old looked sad. The only thing I could think of was how much it sucked for them, the guy paid at least $2000 to take them. That is definitely not right."

With Mr. Perez' permission, I am publishing the entire text of the protest email he sent to event organizers. Who knows how big this thing could grow? Online petitions. Million-stormtrooper-marches. Damn you, George Lucas, where are the wookie cookies?

Dear Sir or Madam:

On May 12th I attended the Los Angeles Star Wars Episode III premiere. What should have been an exciting and memorable night, turned out to be a great disappointment. I am writing this letter on behalf of all Star Wars fans who attended this event and who paid the minimum $500 a person donation. We were promised "incredible gift bags containing Star Wars merchandise" and an "Intergalactic After-Party," but all we got was disappointment.

The screening itself was the only part of the night that barely lived up to expectations. We only received a video taped interview of Samuel L. Jackson from the New York set of his new movie. Not once before were we told that he would not be attending the event. Considering he was the main chair of the fundraiser, you would think he would be gracious enough to present the movie himself, or atleast ask one of the Star Wars castmembers in attendance too.

After the movie was over we were shuttled to the "Intergalactic After-Party." The only thing that made it even close to being intergallactic was the cardboard cut outs and the members of a local fan club who dressed in costumes. The cut outs were positioned above the buffet tables far out of reach of any fan who may have wanted to pose with them. The food consisted of a variety of sandwiches, mini pizzas, sushi, and other dishes along with cookies and coffee. How hard would it have been to include Star Wars themed food? All this was positioned around an open bar. Considering many drove in alone or with children, an open bar was useless to many. By the first hour close to half the guests left.

The gift bag was the most insulting part of the evening. A gift bag that was described in a press release as containing "Star Wars merchandise and other special gifts" only contained the following:

1. A bag from reebok to hold the gifts
2. A light up lightsaber spoon that is found in Kellogs Cereal boxes
3. A Burger King Star Wars kid's toy
4. A single package of Star Wars fruit snacks
5. A small bag of Starbucks Coffee
6. A small tin of Starbucks mints
7. A coupon for a free whopper at Burger King
8. A discount card for 20% off at Kenneth Cole
9. A cd from an undiscovered singer
10. A bottle of marinara Sauce
11. A lipstick
12. A box of tea

Out of all the items only 3 were even Star Wars related and all were items that cost a dollar or less. Considering most fans are male, why would we need a lipstick? What is so special about a bag of Starbucks Coffee? Who ever made these gift bags did not make them for the Star Wars fans who attended this event. What is worse is that a member of the Lucas Film LTD promotions department was in attendance. How could they not have obtained better Star Wars merchandise?

There are only a few films that would have people be willing to pay $500 dollars a person for., Star Wars is one of them. The Executive Director and Board President Sharon Gelman stated that "Any charity would jump at the chance to be involved in a major Star Wars event! We at ANSA consider it a great honor to be the beneficiary of the Los Angeles premiere of this film, which will actually be an historic occasion, as the grand finale of a true cultural phenomenon." I can not understand how they could do such a dishonor to the Fans who attended this event. An event they themselves called historical. Many things could have been done to make this a more memorable event. Having a star of the film pose for $10 a photo would have made a hugely memorable evening, along with providing more donations to ANSA

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to see the "incredible gift bag," which I still have in its entirety. I hope that you will help me right this wrong.

Sincerely,
Eric Perez (email: jiltedfan at yahoo.com)

Previusly: Liveblogging LA Star Wars III Premiere with napkincam

Reader Comment: Shannon Larratt says,

I was at the Toronto charity advance premiere of the first of the recent Star Wars films. Paid $750 I think for the tickets. We were promised a similar gift bag, but all we got was a tube of Star Wars TOOTHPASTE if I remember right. However, I think these people are forgetting that it's A CHARITY EVENT and not a way to get something you can sell on eBay at a profit. Big fucking deal if you didn't get $500 worth of swag.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:32:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Color version of "Walt Disney Memorial Orgy"

"Turtle" kindly sent us a large (1568x971 pixels) color version of Wally Wood's "Walt Disney Memorial Orgy," which Paul Krassner published in The Realist and later sold as a poster. NSFW. (Previous entry here)
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:19:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Portraits: The Choice.

Clayton Cubitt tells Boing Boing about a series of photographs he took of a friend who'd made a decision to have an abortion the next day.

A friend of mine recently had to make The Choice. It was obviously torturously hard on her. What's amazing and inspiring and touching to me is that she let me make a series of portraits of her the night before, bare before the camera in body and spirit.

Link (contains frontal nudity; site requires registration.)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:49:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Abandoned, rusting coaster park

I don't read the Asian script that this page is authored in, but the incredible, lush photos of a mist-shrouded, rusting, decaying coaster park speak for themselves. Link (Thanks, Foist!)

Update: Tetsuya sez,

It's in Japanese, and is apparently a amusement park that closed in Heisei 11 - 1999 - after being "renewed" in 1982. Exact location is unknown - it's simply listed as "Abandoned Amusement Park T" in the Touhoku region - but it appears to be in the boonies.

The sixth picture down on the first page is particularly poignant - it compares the rusting coaster tracks to a "wounded white dragon resting on the grass".

It also seems to have had a sled ramp of sorts with numbered sleds - makes sense, as the touhoku (NE) region of honshuu (the main, largest island - basically the upper tip of it on a map) tends to get plenty of snow in the winter.

That's all. At the end, the photographer notes that it was sentimental...

Update 2: Mdana points out more photos of this place here

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:32:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gallery of photos of tourists

Tourist Photos is a gallery of photos of tourists, mostly in DC: tourists eating, riding the subway, taking pictures, resting, reading guidebooks, and blocking the subway turnstiles. Link (Thanks, Steve!)

Update: Jim has a gallery of photos of people taking photos of the Chrysler Building called Shiny, Pointy and Tall.

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

NES emulator for PSP

Got a Sony Playstation PSP game console? Now you can run Nintendo Entertainment System ROMs on it -- just download this free NES emulator.

Although sound isn't included yet, future releases are due to include it soon the author states as well as operability optimization. For usage, copy the EBOOT.PBP to /PSP/GAME and ensure the uncompressed ROMs 64k rank are made the upper limit. Operation method: B- X Button, A- O button.

Link (via Waxy)

Update: Alex sez, "all current PSP homebrew only works on 1.0 firmware, which means first wave Japanese PSP's that haven't been patched to the current firmware release, 1.51. ALL US PSP's are currently running 1.5, which requires some sort of digital signature to run executable code, and hasn't been broken yet. In fact, Sony's most recent game releases (in Japan) require you to update to 1.51 either via an update on the game UMD itself or by downloading the update to the PSP unit via WiFi or USB."

Update 2: Breon points out this Super Nintendo emulator for the PSP, too.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:35:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, May 16, 2005

Join ICANN, run the Internet, see the world

ICANN is the nonprofit org that more-or-less runs the Internet. They're the ones who figure out top-level domains (like .COM and .NET) and they're all that stand between us and another Verisign unilateral decision to break the whole goddamned net with a scheme to sell advertising on 404s.

ICANN's members are chosen from lots of different places, but some are volunteers from Internetland, and that means that you could take a turn in the barrel if you dare. Here's the latest ICANN call for participation: your Internet needs you!

Those individuals selected by the Nominating Committee will have a unique opportunity to work with accomplished colleagues from around the globe, address intriguing technical coordination problems and related policy development challenges with diverse functional, cultural, and geographic dimensions, and gain valuable insights and experience from working across these boundaries of knowledge, responsibility and perspective.

Additionally, those selected will gain the satisfaction of making a valuable public service contribution. Placing the broad public interest ahead of any particular interests, they will help ensure the stability and security of the Internet for critically important societal functions.

These voluntary positions are not remunerated, although direct expenses incurred in the course of duty may be reimbursed. These positions may involve significant international travel, including personal presence at periodic ICANN meetings, as well as regular telephone and Internet communications.

Did I mention that ICANN meetings are held all over the world, in Africa and on tropical islands, and odd poky corners of Asia? Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:17:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Turn household garbage into building materials

Fluff is a composting material made from recycled household garbage that can also be extruded into posts, timbers, and other construction materials. It uses undifferentiated household waste and processes it into "pathogen free" Fluff in a mere 30 mintes. Forget "it's a floorwax and it's a dessert topping" -- this is garbage, dirt, and construction material!

Composite Products of America extrudes the Fluff into 8" x 8" tongue and groove posts or landscaping timbers for the building of retaining wall or small one room structures. There is even a bench made of extruded fluff currently located in the Tennessee State Capital Building - talk about adding waste to the government.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:12:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Zanzibar's Popo Bawa monster

Popo Bawa is the name of a nasty, raping, bat-like monster fea