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Monday, October 31, 2005

Citizen journalist documents giant propane explosion in San Fran

A Hertz heavy equipment rental depot near EFF's San Francisco offices has spectacularly exploded, as its giant propane tanks went up, one after another. My friend Quinn was on the scene and snapped a massive Flickr set of photos as it unfolded:

At a little past 2:45 explosions boomed out, audible from many blocks away inside the Hertz employees were running for the door with propane tanks exploding behind them. One mechanic had the presence of mind to hit the gasoline cutoff, but the propane kept exploding for nearly 20 minutes. One woman cried about losing her purse and her car, facing the burning building while about four firetrucks poured water in on the fire from all directions. None of the Hertz employees knew how the fire had started, but did say all of the employees were accounted for and unharmed.

Link (Thanks, Danny!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:26:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shag: The Art of Josh Agle

Just got my copy of Shag: The Art of Josh Agle, published by Chronicle Books. In addition to Shag's sly, swank, and surprisingly sweet arworkt, the intro was ably penned by my lifelong friend, Colin Berry. Colin and I met each other many years ago in Colorado when we were both playing in bands, and we lived together for a few years in Silicon Valley. (Make sure to read his blog about living in the wilds of Northern California.)
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:48:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

It's guava time at my house

Guavas are falling from our tree faster than Fortean toads. I've given away at least 50, and I still have over 100. I didn't even know guavas could grow in California. I'm scooping them up, removing the skin with a vegetable peeler, and devouring them. There are no hard seeds -- you can eat the entire fruit, one juicy chunk at a time. I've had five today, and just writing about them is making me hungry for more.

Update: A number of kind readers have informed me that these are feijoas, not guavas. After seeing pictures of feijoas, I agree with them.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:34:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Emi Guner's blog

I first came across the work of Swedish web artist and writer Emi Guner in 1995 (here's a remnant from a hideously laid-out page of Boing Boing, circa 1996). Her creations were way ahead of what most people were doing on the web at the time. She sort of disappeared for a while, but she's back, with a wonderful new blog called Letters to Marc Jacobs. It's great to find her again!
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:42:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Videos of how stuff is manufactured

There are a bunch of videos of cool stuff being made at coolstuffbeingmade.com, the blog of the National Association of Manufacturers. It's very satisfying watching machines crank out thousands of identical whatever-they-ares onto a conveyor belt.

This 12-minute video takes you form aluminum sheets all the way though the finished cans -- and ends -- being loaded by fork lift on the the trailer, to take 'em off to be filled with good stuff.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:08:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Indy cafe servers dressed as Starbucks employees

Ritual Roasters is one of my favorite cafes in San Francisco. (Here's a Wired News article about the joint.) BB pal Scott Beale stopped by Ritual today and snapped this photo. Apparently the Ritual espresso bartenders are celebrating Halloween dressed as zombie Starbucks employees!
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:47:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

2005 Illegal Soapbox Derby

Todd Lappin took a bunch of killer photos of the 2005 Illegal Soapbox Derby, held this weekend in San Francisco.

A proud Bernal Heights neighborhood tradition, the Illegal Soapbox Derby Society enforces only one rule: Every car must have a beer holder.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:24:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony DRM uses black-hat rootkits

Steve sez, "A technical dissection by the mighty Mark Russinovich of Sony's rootkit-based DRM. Sony uses genuine black-hat techniques to install a rootkit, even choosing a Windows-sounding name for a service just like your favourite backdoor, and about as easy to detect or remove. Basically, Sony puts the sort of malware on its customers' PCs that the rest of the world spends alot of money fighting."

Last week when I was testing the latest version of RootkitRevealer (RKR) I ran a scan on one of my systems and was shocked to see evidence of a rootkit. Rootkits are cloaking technologies that hide files, Registry keys, and other system objects from diagnostic and security software, and they are usually employed by malware attempting to keep their implementation hidden (see my "Unearthing Rootkits" article from the June issue of Windows IT Pro Magazine for more information on rootkits). The RKR results window reported a hidden directory, several hidden device drivers, and a hidden application...

Link (Thanks, Steve!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:33:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vader and Yoda carved from 1,000lb block of butter

Kevin sez, "Each year at the Tulsa State Fair, an artist is commissioned to make a sculpture out of butter. In past years, cows, farmers, and baseball players were created out of hundreds of pounds of butter. This year, in celebration of Star Wars's final episode, TSF is featuring Darth Vader and Yoda, all dairy-like." Link (Thanks, Kevin and Icky Bob!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:19:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Suncomm encourages people to break its DRM

Barry bought a CD by the band My Morning Jacket, only to discover that it was crippled with Suncomm DRM, apparently as a ploy by Sony to make keep its music from being played on iPods (which compete with Sony's own proprietary players). The band apparently loathes the DRM and wishes it wasn't there. When Barry wrote to Suncomm to complain, they sent him back an FAQ with instructions for breaking their DRM.

We at ATO Records are aware of the problems being experienced by certain fans due to the copy-protection of our distributor. Neither we nor our artists ever gave permission for the use of this technology, nor is it our distributor's opinion that they need our permission. Wherever it is our decision, we will forego use of copy-protection, just as we have in the past.

Link (Thanks, Barry!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:15:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chunky kids' keyboard

This "kids' keyboard" has big, chunky, colorful key ad looks somewhat ruggedized. I want a Powerbook with a build-in keyboard with this look and feel. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:11:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Public Enemy's Internet strategy

Great Wired News editorial on Public Enemy's Internet strategy -- releasing albums online, encouraging remixes, etc. Public Enemy was nearly wiped out by lawsuits arising from the band's use of samples, and now they're working to make sample-friendly music:

As a jab to PolyGram, Public Enemy's distributor at the time, the group released There's a Poison Goin' On over the internet and on zip drives, until the band was finally released from its contract. Emboldened by the success, they went on to form their own record label. They created Rapstation to showcase new hip-hop talent. And they built PublicEnemy.com into a highly trafficked website, where among other things, they make a cappella versions of their songs available and encourage fans to make remixes.

Even more remarkable is the way Public Enemy has structured its distribution deals. Whereas many bands sell publishing rights to their record labels in exchange for an advance, Public Enemy grants its distributors a limited license. After a specified period, the rights revert back to the group.

Add to the mix Chuck D's weekly talk show on the Air America radio network, his own channel on AOL Radio and the band's regular tours of Asia, Europe and the United States, and Public Enemy becomes a prime example of the success that follows from a properly executed do-it-yourself strategy.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:08:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disneyland's high-tech experiments

Wired runs down the latest high-tech projects underway at Disneyland -- most of it is old news, but this is pretty cool:

Vincent-Phoenix said she has also seen test products that allow guests to interact with existing attractions. Earlier this year, Disney tested handheld products that could help ambitious park-goers find Injun Joe's treasure on Tom Sawyer Island or capture ghosts at the Haunted Mansion, she said. "These are attractions that have existed for years but where they are trying new things," she said.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:06:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIAA/MPAA make appearance in Foxtrot

Today on Foxtrot: the kids dress up as RIAA and MPAA lawyers and try to cadge some door-to-door candy. Link (Thanks, Darren and Gary!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:04:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mirror therapy for pain

University of Bath researchers report that people with particular kinds of persistent hand pain could ease the ouch by looking at their healthy hand in the mirror. From a press release:

This ‘cortical’ model of pain suggests that the brain’s image of the body can become faulty, resulting in a mismatch between the brain’s movement control systems and its sensory systems, causing a person to experience pain when they move a particular hand, foot or limb.

Researchers believe that this kind of problem could be behind a host of pain-related disorders, such as complex regional pain syndrome and repetitive strain injury.

In an investigation of whether this system can be corrected using mirrors to trick the brain, researchers asked a number of patients with complex regional pain syndrome (a chronic debilitating condition affecting 10,000 – 20,000 patients in the UK at any one time) to carry out routine exercises in front of a mirror.

More than half experienced pain relief during and after the exercise and further investigations showed that even greater improvements can be achieved if the tasks are practiced beforehand.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:47:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Design like Barbara Kruger

Here's a fun tongue-in-cheek Graphic Standards Manual to help you design like collage artist/activist Barbara Kruger. From the introduction:

Welcome to the Barbara Kruger Graphic Standards Manual. This guide is intended to service students, artists, designers, and activists that have an interest in juxtaposing text with imagery in the fashion of Barbara Kruger. This has been developed to help you accurately position your own work amongst this famous artist, designer, an/or photographer. As Barbara herself stated, pictures and words have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren't. It is through this combination that we can establish an identity, and by impersonating Barbara's own unique style, you yourself can remain anonymous--in effect being while not being. As Barbara's work evolves using typefaces beyond the Future family and the color red, this guide must evolve as well.

Link (Thanks, Imaginary Foundation!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:27:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Worst Jobs In Science

Popular Science has published its annual list of "The Worst Jobs In Science." The NASA Ballerina I blogged on Saturday was nine out of ten. Here's number one:

1. Human Lab Rat
Warning: Pesticides are bad for you

Pharmaceutical companies have long relied on hard-up college students to act as guinea pigs. (Dudes, I was in a double-blind Viagra trial! And I got paid!) But did you know that the pesticide biz is hiring too?

Last year an industry-funded University of California at San Diego study paid students $15 an hour to have the root killer and World War I nerve agent chloropicrin shot into their eyes and noses. Chloropicrin is also a component of tear gas—that trusty suppressor of Big 10 sports riots—and at high doses can lead to nerve damage and death. Duuude. Because of its irritating qualities, small doses of the chemical are often added to other pesticides to act as a "warning agent," and it's the safety of those doses that the study looked at.

Coincidentally (or not), within a week of the UCSD study's completion, its industry funders submitted the results to the EPA to support chloropicrin's re-registration as an independent pesticide—not as a warning agent. Meanwhile, Congress is debating a moratorium on human testing.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:20:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pastor electrocuted during baptism

A Waco, Texas pastor was electrocuted yesterday while performing a baptism. Apparently the Rev. Kyle Lake, 33, was standing in the baptismal water when he grabbed a microphone. From the Associated Press:

Water in a baptistery usually reaches above the waist, said Byron Weathersbee, interim university chaplain at Baylor University.

Lake was pronounced dead at Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, nursing supervisor Pat Mahl said. The woman being baptized apparently had not stepped into the water and was not seriously injured.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:02:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

700 Hoboes drawings: 30 down, 670 to go

A lot of artists have been submitting drawings of the hoboes named in John Hodgman's song "700 Hobo Names." (Shown here: Number 357. Mariah Duckface the Beaked Woman, by Ape Lad)
Link (Previous BB post here.)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:47:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bat and Serpent lamp

I would like this Bat and Serpent lamp but $1266.00 is too steep for me. The bat's wingspan is two feet.

Inspired by Art Nouveau and the Victorian fondness for artistic design, our Sunset is hand cast using the "lost-wax" technique to capture all the stunning detail of a circa 1892 period original

Link (thanks, Gary!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:21:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

43 Folders podcast

The fantabulous productivity, life hacking, and time management blog, 43 Folders, has a podcast. Merlin Mann has a wonderful podcast voice and is very funny, to boot. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:32:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Cory's Themepunks part eight is live!

Salon has published part eight of my novel-in-progress, Themepunks. In today's installment, the shanty-town finds itself under siege, and shots are fired:

He pulled out the megaphone and went to his window.

"ATTENTION POLICE," he said. "THIS IS THE LEASEHOLDER FOR THIS PROPERTY. WHY ARE YOU RUNNING AROUND WITH YOUR GUNS DRAWN? WHAT IS GOING ON?"

The police at the cars looked toward the workshop, then back to the shantytown, then back to the workshop.

"SERIOUSLY. THIS IS NOT COOL. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

One of the cops grabbed the mic for his own loudhailer. "THIS IS THE MIAMI-DADE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT. WE HAVE RECEIVED INTELLIGENCE THAT AN ARMED FUGITIVE IS ON THESE PREMISES. WE HAVE COME TO RETRIEVE HIM."

"WELL, THAT'S WEIRD. NONE OF THE CHILDREN, CIVILIANS AND HARDWORKING PEOPLE HERE ARE FUGITIVES AS FAR AS I KNOW. CERTAINLY THERE'S NO ONE ARMED AROUND HERE. WHY DON'T YOU GET BACK IN YOUR CARS AND I'LL COME OUT AND WE'LL RESOLVE THIS LIKE CIVILIZED PEOPLE, OK?"

The cop shook his head and reached for his mic again, and then there were two gunshots, a scream, and a third.

Link Previous Installments

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:52:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bad Mags: compilation of really bad magazines

Bad Mags is a website companion to a forthcoming (?) book of the same name, which catalogs gross-out girly, drugsploitation, true-crime and biker mags from the golden age of such things:

The main reason I wrote Bad Mags was because I wished I had had something comparable when I started looking for and collecting these magazines--a guide if you will. Because Bad Mags attempts to cover such a large selection of subject matter any chapter included in it could have been its own book. Bad Mags is not a complete listing of the magazines and tabloids covering these particular subjects (if such a thing were possible), but is an attempt to give a more complete picture of what was published concerning them at the time.

Beyond that Bad Mags is a book devoted to strange, bizarre and peripheral magazines because the back alleys of the publishing industry have been little explored in print. In most cases there isn't any information readily available, limited only to the information given in the periodical itself.

NSFW Link, Previously on BB: "Interview with Badmags.com publisher" (via We Make Money Not Art)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:44:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google Print -- great debate on Farber's list

On Dave Farber's Interesting People list, a gang of luminaries like EFF's Cindy Cohn, Julian Dibell, Seth Finkelstein and Tim himself have been hashing out the debate over Google Print this weekend -- it's fascinating reading, and Tim has provided links to the best of the debate:

So what are the Authors Guild and the publishers complaining about? They're complaining that Google hasn't offered to share the profits that might accrue thanks to ads Google may someday display, or that are attributable to the marginal increase in general Google traffic. But on what basis do they claim entitlement to that brand new revenue stream? The money is not based on the public copying the book -- which is what copyright protects against -- it's based on the public FINDING the book in the first instance.

Now I suppose that the Authors Guild folks want to claim that they should get a share of any way of making money related to locating their works. That's an interesting argument, but it's not a copyright claim. If copyright owners approached libraries and demanded a share of library funds because of the existence of the card catalog it would be difficult to stifle the giggles. Yet isn't the same thing going on here? Stealing an analogy from law Prof Tim Wu, we have never given real property owners the right to "opt out" of any mechanism that helps people find their property -- maps. That's just not in the bundle of rights you get when you buy a home and preventing location tools is also not in the bundle of rights that come with copyright.

Link

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

240-acre underground UK bunker-city for sale

A subterranean bunker-city under a UK military base is for sale. The city is 240 acres in area and has 60 miles of underground roads. It was intended to house a Tory PM and 4,000 bureaucrats in the event of a nuclear attack:

Already two uses are being considered: a massive data store for City firms or the biggest wine cellar in Europe. More outlandish ideas put forward include a nightclub for rave parties, a 1950s theme park or a reception centre for asylum seekers. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has ruled out any suggestion of using it to store nuclear waste or providing open public access because of the dangers that still lurk below...

A system of underground power stations would have provided electricity to the 100,000 lamps that lit its streets and guided the way to a pub modelled on the Red Lion in Whitehall...

Hundreds of swivel chairs delivered in 1959 are still unpacked. There are boxes of government-issue glass ashtrays, lavatory brushes and civil service tea sets.

Pictures of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Grace Kelly are pinned to the walls. The canteen has murals of British sporting scenes painted by Olga Lehmann who went on to design costumes for films such as The Guns of Navarone and Kidnapped.

Link (Thanks, Jamal!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:48:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Baen Books to launch online sf mag edited by Eric Flint

Copyfighting SF writer Eric Flint will be editing a new online adventure sf magazine for his publisher, Baen Books. The magazine will be called Baen's Astounding Stories Universe.

The magazine will focus on publishing side-stories from the long-running serials that are Baen's stock-in-trade, and promises to pay enough that writers could make a substantial portion of their living from for them.

Eric's first book, 1632, was a cracking alternate-history/military sf novel about a small working-class mining town in contemporary Virginia that gets magicked back to Germany in the midst of the 30 Years War and where the local miner's union sets about using its technology advantage to bring democratic reforms to Europe, devoted to toppling monarchies in favor of technocentric constitutional democracies.

Eric convinced Baen to release its books as free, freely redistributable downloads, a move that has sold lots and lots more books, making it good karma and good business.

Baen's Astounding Stories Universe will sell for $6 an issue -- I'm guessing we're talking about a PDF here? -- and individual stories for a dollar. I'm not a huge believer in the market for pay-to-read electronic books, but it's really cool to see a publisher playing with it. Let's just hope they don't screw it up by adding DRM to it!

"Although the magazine is focused toward established popular writers, we also intend to make it a good place for new writers to emerge," Flint said. "To that end, we're setting aside a special 'Introducing ... ' section of the magazine, which will be reserved entirely for new writers. We will publish at least one such story per issue, and probably two or three." Readers can also expect to see some classic reprints from authors who are no longer living.

In addition to the fiction, the magazine will also feature several factual articles in each issue. "Some of these will be straight-forward factual pieces, of the sort that SF magazines have been publishing for decades," Flint said. "Others will be more personal, anecdotal accounts of the interface between writers, scientists and the rest of the world that we think readers will find interesting."

Link

Update: Eric Flint writes "In answer to your question, why in God's name would Baen started screwing around with DRM when we've never encrypted _anything_???? The magazine will come completely unencrypted, as do all Baen electronic products.

"PS.  It's not at all accurate to say that I "convinced" Jim Baen.  Jim started Webscriptions on an unencrypted basis before I knew anything about it.  And the Free Library got started when I put up MOTHER OF DEMONS -- at Jim's suggestion."

Update 2: John Joseph sez "Baen has changed the name of the mag to Jim Baen's UNIVERSE. Rumor has it they were contacted by the rightholders to the name ASTOUNDING (Dell Magazines, one would assume), and rather than fight it out, they just dumped the name in favor of a new one."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:43:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Majority of UK SciFi Channel viewers are women

The UK Sci-Fi channel reports that more than half its viewership is now female:

The digital television channel Sci Fi UK has seen a 10 per cent rise in the number of female viewers over the past eight years and 1.4 million women now tune in - 51 per cent of the audience. The channel, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, links the rise in "girl geeks" to the proliferation of heroines such as Buffy, Lara Croft and Xena.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:31:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creative Commons fundraising badges for your site

Today, Creative Commons launches a trio of fundraising badges for your blog or site -- choose from "$5 for the Commons," "Become a Commoner" and "Support the Commons." CC needs to raise small donations from a large number of donors to maintain its charitable status with the IRS. Link (Thanks, Larry!)

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

NYT on Gothic fashion

Today's New York Times has a feature on Goth style and its influence on mainstream fashion. Lest we forget though, for some "everyday is Halloween." From the article:

These days Goth is "an Upper East Side way of being edgy without actually drinking anybody's blood," said Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys. With a wink he added, "Who doesn't like a vaseful of ostrich feathers at the end of the day?"

The costumes and ornaments are a glamorous cover for the genre's somber themes. In the world of Goth, nature itself lurks as a malign protagonist, causing flesh to rot, rivers to flood, monuments to crumble and women to turn into slatterns, their hair streaming and lipstick askew.

Some scholars see the Gothic mood as especially resonant in periods of uncertainty. Allen Grove, an associate professor of English at Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y., theorizes that during war or in the aftermath of disaster, whether wrought by a hurricane or a terrorist cell, dark themes surface in part as a way to confront society's worst fears.

"We're somehow trying to deal with calamity and death," said Dr. Grove, who teaches a popular course on the literature of horror. "Revisiting Gothic themes might be one way to embrace those things and try to come to terms with them."

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:05:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Iran's liberal-democratic society

The Independent runs down ten liberal-democratic elements of Iranian society that you probably didn't know about (I sure didn't):

2 In the form of Shia Islam practised in Iran, Muslims are allowed to enter into temporary marriages with each other, sometimes lasting only a few hours. Critics say this in effect legalises prostitution, and women who enter into these sigheh contracts are often ostracised. But the practice is defended as a legal loophole to provide inheritance rights for children who would otherwise be born out of wedlock. Sigheh websites have been set up to offer advice to prospective brides and grooms...

6 While official dress codes are very strict, many young Iranians delight in pushing back the boundaries of what is acceptable. Teenage girls in Tehran wear the most vestigial of see-through headscarves and tight overcoats that barely cover the bottom. This season gypsy-style scarves are in, featuring traditional Turkmen floral designs. Cosmetic surgery is all the rage, with girls proudly displaying a plaster to show their nose has recently been "fixed".

Link (Thanks, Justin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:25:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toys posed in emotional still-life

This Flickr set features still lifes of toys posed in a way that suggests that they are caught in the midst of some intense emotion. What's more, the toy collection itself is specatular and drool-worthy. Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:02:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Pro-manufacturing posters, goofy & vintage

The Manufacturer's Blog posts a new pro-manufacturing poster every Wednesday, predominantly vintage Americana of the sort displayed here, which reads YOU PROSPER WHEN FACTORIES PROSPER (other gems: WHAT IS GOOD FOR INDUSTRY IS GOOD FOR YOUR FAMILY, GOOD TIMES FOR INDUSTRY MEAN GOOD TIMES FOR YOU, and TO OUR TRENTON MANUFACTURERS: IF YOU HAVE MEN OR WOMEN WORKING FOR YOU WHO ARE NOT AMERICAN CITIZENS WONT YOU HELP THEM TO BECOME CITIZENS? THE SAFETY OF OUR REPUBLIC DEPENDS ON THIS. THE LIONS CLUB OF TRENTON NEW JERSEY.) Link (Thanks, Candy Addict)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:46:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Elements of Style, the opera

Strunk and White's Elements of Style (full text, Amazon), a briliant, indispensible text for anyone who wants to write clearly and well, has been adapted as an operatic cycle of nine songs to be performed at the main reading room of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, beginning October 19th.

Although lyrics like "Revise and rewrite" and "Do not use a hyphen between two words that can better be written as one word" suggest the didactic thrust of "Schoolhouse Rock," Muhly's work is more in the minimalist-modernist mold of Philip Glass and Steve Reich but with an absurdist dash of Spike Jones. At just 33½ minutes long, the work was impressively executed by soprano Abigail Fischer, tenor Matthew Hensrud, violist Nadia Sirota and banjo player Sam Amidon, all under the direction of Muhly and augmented by the Omit Needless Words Orchestra, which included noise-making amateur performers such as fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi and cartoonist Rick Meyerowitz (Kalman's "Newyorkistan" collaborator), as well as Kalman herself. Their brief mandated the making of sounds incorporating duck calls, meat grinders, bells, Slinkys, mallets, pillows, eggbeaters, megaphones, "chattering" cups and saucers, a typewriter and the slamming closed of a large book.

Link (Thanks, Oboreruhito!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:42:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

American electric chairs through history

This pictorial history of American electric chairs from 1890 to 1951 shows you pictures and some supplementary info on each chair. I learned much, particularly that calling your chair "Old Sparky" appears to have occurred to practically everyone (though the chair shown here daringly broke with the trend with the monicker "Old Betsy.") Link (via Geisha Asobi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:36:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

World's tallest wrecking machine

Japan's Kobelco Construction Machinery Co. has shipped the world's talest wrecking machine, able to claw away at buildings from 65m up. Link (via Geisha Asobi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:32:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos of gigantic meat collaged into 1960s landscapes

Pictures of glistening meat matted into heavily saturated, 1960s-style photos are surprising cool, as this modest 12-entry gallery demonstrates. The meat is off-scale, so it appears to be part of the landscape. Link (via Geisha Asobi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:28:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vertical bookcase -- stable, ceiling-high stack of books

The Sapien bookcase allows you to stack books horiztally for a minimum-footprint bookcase that acts like a stabilized pile of books from floor to ceiling. I saw a similar bookcase in Barcelona once that was even cooler -- the books went right to the floor and each "shelf" on the case was slightly askew, giving the impression of an impossibly high, teetering stack of books reaching to the rafters, except that it was perfectly stable.  Link (via Crib Candy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:24:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Daylight saving ends today

Daylight Saving ends today -- you get an extra hour of sleep but you need to remember to roll your clocks back by an hour. It's cool how many more of my clocks do this automatically with each passing year.

Today's also a good day to change the batteries in your smoke detector, which you should do twice a year.

DST commonly begins in the Northern Hemisphere on either the first Sunday in April or the last Sunday in March, and ends on the last Sunday in October. In the Southern Hemisphere, the beginning and ending dates are switched (thus the time difference between, e.g., the United Kingdom and Chile may be three, four, or five hours).

Chile switches to DST at 24:00 on the second Saturday in October and reverts to LST at 24:00 on the second Sunday the following March. The current law which affects the entire country was enacted in 1970, but it had observed the practice as early as 1927 when the country had been divided into two distinct time zones. In specific years the starting and ending dates have been modified for political or climactic reasons.

North America generally follows the same procedure, going by local time in each zone, each time zone switching at 02:00 LST (local standard time) to 03:00 LDT (local daylight time) on the first Sunday in April, and again from 02:00 LDT to 01:00 LST on the last Sunday in October. The Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador is an exception in that the time changes take place at 00:01 local standard time and 00:01 local daylight time respectively. Also, in 1990, they experimented with Double Daylight Time, when the clocks went ahead by two hours, instead of the usual one hour. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, signed by President George W. Bush, will extend DST, which might prompt neighboring countries with integrated economies and schedules (especially Canada and Mexico) to adopt these changes as well. The Canadian province of Ontario has already pledged to change its daylight savings rules to match the new US rules.

All countries in Europe, except Iceland as already noted, observe daylight-saving time and change on the same date: moving clocks forward one hour on the last Sunday in March and back one hour on the last Sunday in October. In the West European (UTC), Central European (UTC+1), and East European (UTC+2) time zones the change is simultaneous: on both dates the clocks are changed everywhere at 01:00 UTC, i.e. from local times of 01:00/02:00/03:00 to 02:00/03:00/04:00 in March, and vice versa in October. (See also: European Summer Time). In Russia, however, although the changeover dates are the same, clocks are moved forward or back at 02:00 local time in all zones. Thus in Moscow (local time = UTC+3 in winter, UTC+4 in summer), daylight-saving time commences at 05:00 UTC on the last Sunday in March, and ends at 06:00 UTC on the last Sunday in October.

Link

Update: Oren sez,

At a recent meeting of the CalConnect calendaring consortium I was astounded to learn that there is no official body that tracks timezone data around the world. The best information is in the tz database which is maintained, as I understand it, on a completely voluntary basis by Arthur David Olson, a systems administrator at NIH, for whom this is not even his regular day job. This database is apparently the basis used by almost all operating systems and software around the world to keep track of timezone information. And there are some wacky things to keep track of - for instance, Myanmar is +6.5 hours from UTC, and Nepal is +5:45 hours!

Reading through the comments in the tz files is fascinating - for instance:

# From Paul Eggert (2005-07-26):
# We have wildly conflicting information about Mongolia's time zones.
# Bill Bonnet (2005-05-19) reports that the US Embassy in Ulaanbaatar says
# there is only one time zone and that DST is observed, citing Microsoft
# Windows XP as the source. Risto Nykanen (2005-05-16) reports that
# travelmongolia.org says there are two time zones (UTC+7, UTC+8) with no DST.
# Oscar van Vlijmen (2005-05-20) reports that the Mongolian Embassy in
# Washington, DC says there are two time zones, with DST observed.
# He also found
#
# which also says that there is DST, and which has a comment by "Toddius"
# (2005-03-31 06:05 +0700) saying "Mongolia actually has 3.5 time zones.
# The West (OLGII) is +7 GMT, most of the country is ULAT is +8 GMT
# and some Eastern provinces are +9 GMT but Sukhbaatar Aimag is SUHK +8.5 GMT.
# The SUKH timezone is new this year, it is one of the few things the
# parliament passed during the tumultuous winter session."
# For now, let's ignore this information, until we have more confirmation.

Update 2: Tarragon sez, "the changes you talk about only hold true for the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, we're actually the reverse: 30th October is the _beginning_ of daylight savings for many locations."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:03:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guns Table Vase

I really dig the 3Guns Table Vase from designers SUCK UK. It would go well with the Phillipe Stark Guns Collection lamps or, better, a vintage gun lamp. And the vase is just £35.00!
Link (via Nylon)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:01:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NASA's dancing penis

NASA has developed a "robot skin" embedded with sensors so robotic devices can react to their environment. To demonstrate the technology, NASA engineer Vladimir Lumelsky orchestrated a bizarre performance piece starring a ballerina and a robotic arm. The result is phallictastic.
Link to video, Link to NASA article (via Gizmodo, thanks Sean Ness!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:22:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

400 year old tea-serving robot kit

This spring-driven tea-serving robot is available as a kit or in pre-assembled form. Either way, it is ingenious as hell, particularly because its design is four hundred years old:

An example of Japan’s first robot is the fascinating Karakuri: Tea Server, designed almost four centuries ago and today remains a remarkable example of Japan’s keen sense of robotics. What does it do? This Kabuki-styled doll approaches surprised guests with a full teacup on a tray; it stops walking when the teacup is taken, waits quietly, bows, then slowly turns around, smoothly scooting away with the empty teacup on its tray...

This kit is made of computer designed precision modern materials, but is as close to the original design as possible. The driving force of the original tea-carrying doll came from a spring made of whale whiskers (actually whale teeth). All the other components, such as its gears, body and escapement for speed adjustments, were made of wood. How does it work? When a tea cup is placed on the tray, the stopper is released by the whale spring attached to the doll’s arms; the spring forces the stopper to engage again when the cup is lifted from the tray.

Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:25:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toothpaste for Dinner -- high-larious new book from Drew

Drew from Toothpaste for Dinner is one of my most favorite web-comics guys. The combination of violence, alienation, clumsy-but-expressive line-art and snappy captions is unbeatable. For the past week, I've had his new book, also called Toothpaste for Dinner, by the bedstand, and I've been getting through it in little pieces here and there. Spending three minutes reading Toothpaste for Dinner at work is guaranteed to yield at least three loud cackles and five chuckles, which makes these comedy gold. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:14:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos through a microscope contest winners

Nikon's Small World contest gives prizes for the best photos taken through light microscopes. The 2005 winners are online now, and they're stunning -- this first-prize entry of a fly's face at very high magnification is magnificently squicky. Link (Thanks, IZ Reloaded!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:37:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pix from FreeCulture NYU's anti-DRM protest

Here are some photos from last week's Free Culture NYU demonstration against DRM at the Virgin Megastore at 14th and Broadway. Link (Thanks, Torpid!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:43:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crib Candy for spooks

The Hallowe'en tag on Wist has a whole load of cool Hallowe'en junque -- it's like Crib Candy for spooks. Link (via Crib Candy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:38:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ISO 10,000 Britons to refuse to register for UK ID cards

You may remember that the NO2ID, a British group fighting the UK national ID card, has previously raised the promise of 10,000 Britons to refuse to register for the cards, and a further promise of £1,000,000 from 20,000 Britons to fund their legal defense, all using the Pledgebank service.

Now they're looking for prmises of another 10,000 Britons to refuse to register for the card, at a critical junction for the debate over national ID cards here in the UK:

Following the dramatic success of NO2ID's original pledge (we asked for 10,000 and got over 11,300 refuseniks), Simon Davies - Chairman of NO2ID and veteran of successful ID card campaigns across the globe - has just launched another 'refuse to comply' pledge to demonstrate the sustained and growing opposition to the UK ID card scheme. Recent events in Parliament revealed that, far from being 'voluntary', registration will be compulsory for 80% of UK citizens from the point the Bill becomes law, and - despite a transparent attempt to distract MPs from the spiralling cost of the scheme - the Government's majority was slashed to its lowest level since the election at the vote which sent the Bill to the House of Lords. The pledge can be signed online or by mobile phone, and it closes just after Christmas.

Link (Thanks, Phil!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:31:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monsters matted into classic art photoshopping contest

Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: matte monsters into classic works of art. I have blogged a lot of Worth 1000 photoshopping contests here, but this is hands-down the best, ever. I screeched aloud about ten times with delight while paging through the entries. Michaelangelo's David with a facehugger! American Gothic Hannibal Lector! Norman Rockwell, also with a facehugger! There were so many brilliant entries it was nearly impossible to pick one to accompany this post, but I settled on Hellraiser's Pinhead as the Mona Lisa as the perfect combination of excellent technique and a great concept. This one is cool enough to print and frame. Link

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

Science shouldn't use copyright to silence Creationists

Two science orgs that are fighting to preserve evolution instruction in Kansas are threatening a hostile school-board with copyright lawsuits to prevent the use of their scientific papers to discredit evolution.

As much as I support their cause, I deplore their tactics.

The heart of science is publication and refutation. The difference between an alchemist and a scientist is that alchemists don't publish their findings and so for 500 years, every alchemist had to discover for himself that drinking mercury was a bad idea. The publication and review of a scientist's findings -- especially the reviews of his sharpest critics -- is how science progresses. It's how we, as a species, progress.

That's the very heart over the fight for evolution. If scientists start arguing that their detractors are illegal infringers who should be silenced by the courts, they set themselves on a road to ruin.

Science will win this fight, but it can't win it at the expense of the scientific method and free speech.

Copyright is not about endorsement or agreement, and it's not a right to stop criticism, even ill-considered criticism. Quotation can be fair use even in a context the original author abhors -- that's precisely when we need fair use most, we on all sides of a political debate.

The organizations are free to broadcast their loud disapproval of the uses to which their publications are being put, and free to sue for misrepresentation if false statements or positions are put into their mouths, but asserting copyright rights seems a heavy-handed way to win a battle of ideas.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:16:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Indian parody of "Drop it Like it's Hot"

Anoop Dogg is a group of three Indian college students who've made a parody of Snoop Dogg's "Drop it Like it's Hot," called "Drop it Like a FOB" (Fresh Off the Boat). Like the Christian remix of Baby's Got Back, Anoop Dogg manage to get just the right mix of being true to the original while humorously and utterly repurposing it. Link (Thanks, Tian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:07:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, October 28, 2005

Plato's Republic meets Reservoir Dogs

Nathaniel Daw has mashed up Plato's Republic with Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (specifically the tied-to-a-chair-being-tortured scene). The outcome is so funny I got the hiccoughs:

[Thrasymachus is tied up in a chair. Socrates is brandishing a gun in his face]
Thrasymachus: Don't kill me, man!
Socrates: Are you finished, fucker?
Thrasymachus: Look, look, man, you can have my ten yoke of oxen. My virgin daughters? My pomegranite orchard?
Socrates: You like pomegranites? Shit, motherfucker, I hear they've got a fuckin' all-you-can-eat special going on on pomegranites where you're headed.
Thrasymachus: Don't do it, Socrates. Be fair.
Socrates: [Suddenly contemplative] Fair?
Thrasymachus: [Sees an opportunity for survival] Yeah, fair... think about my wife and children --
Socrates: Would you say that to be fair is the same thing as to be just?
Thrasymachus: What?
Socrates: Well, I'm just a dull, wandering street philosopher, so I don't understand quite where you're headed with this particular line of reasoning. Perhaps [motions with gun] you could further elucidate your theory of justice.

Link (via Making Light)

Update: Adam sez, "I went to school with Nat Daw, and he's certainly one of the wittiest folks I know, although gladly much of his writing time has been lost to the ravenous bitch goddess of scientific inquiry. Perhaps he'll get an ignobel someday. This got me thinking, so I dug around, found, and scanned the original poster I made for the theatrical presentation of Republic Dogs."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:59:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lyons's blog-sliming compared to complaints about Founding Fathers

Earlier this week, Xeni blogged about Daniel Lyons's hysterical, badly researched, badly argued Forbes article in which he compared bloggers to a lynch mob and suggests sending spurious copyright complaints to ISPs to have your critics censored.

Now Kurt Opsahl, an EFF attorney who worked on the amazing bloggers' rights document, has posted a bang-on parody, in which the pamphleteers of the American revolution are substituted for bloggers:

Printing presses are the prized platform of a public lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Ben Franklin and John Hancock.

Take the tea tax. Revenue was coming, providing much needed funding to help with his Majesty's benevolent aims in the colonies.

Then the pamphleteers attacked. A supposed crusading journalist launched a broadsheet long on invective and wobbly on facts, posting articles with his printing press calling your King "deceitful,""unethical,""incredibly stupid" and "a pathological liar" who had misled the colonists. The author claimed to be "Silence Dogood," a middle-aged widow who started a one-woman "watchdog" pamphlet, to expose alleged regal excess.

Soon your King was fielding correspondence from alarmed subjects and assuring them he hadn't been unethical. Eerily similar allegations began popping up in anonymous posts in the New England Courant, but the Courant refused His Majesty's demand to identify the attackers. "The lawyer for the Courant basically told me, 'Ha-ha-ha, you're screwed,'" the King's counselor says. Meanwhile, his tormentor sent letters about his Majesty to France, Prussia, Spain and the New York Stock Exchange.

Link (Thanks, Kurt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:54:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Telecommuting Video Blog

From Street Tech: "This guy, Ravi Jain, is shooting a weekly video blog from the driver's seat of his car during his daily commutes between Jamaica Plains and Allston, MA (or five hours of "studio time," as he puts it). He has guests on (who are bumming rides), and when his wife commutes with him, they do a "Regis and Kelly" type show (or at least that's how Ravi fancies it), with some "marital banter to start the show" (oh joy!)."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:37:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Musician releases songs in a $23 electronic gizmo

FM3's latest release, Buddha Machine, is not a CD or a download. It's a "a self contained FM3 loop player" -- a $23 white plastic box that looks a little like an iPod and it plays nine sound loops. Brian Eno is said to have purchased eight of them. You can buy one at Forced Exposure.
Link (article about FM3 and the Buddha Machine)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:37:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

TV commercial of 10,000 250,000 superballs let loose in San Francisco

In July, Cory wrote about 10,000 250,000 superballs being released at once down a hilly street in San Francisco. Here's the resulting TV commercial. Very soothing. Link (thanks, Aaron!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:27:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

No trademark on strawberry scent

French company Eden Sarl tried, and failed, to trademark the odor of fresh strawberries. From the BBC News:

The company argued that while strawberries may look and taste different, they all smell the same, and as a result could be trademarked.

The court took a different view, and smell experts found that instead of just one aroma, strawberries can in fact have up to five different, distinct scents.

"Strawberries do not have just one smell," the court said. "This means that the different varieties of strawberries produce significantly different smells..."

According to the Associated Press news agency, the only scent to win EU trademark protection so far is the smell of freshly cut grass.

The smell was registered by a Dutch perfume company that uses it to give tennis balls their aroma.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:22:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Richard Smalley, RIP

Pioneering nanoscientist Richard Smalley, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering buckyballs, died today of cancer. He was 62.
Link (Thanks, Howard Lovy)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:48:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

George Dyson's Google visit -- "Turing's Cathedral"

"Historian among futurists" George Dyson recently visited the headquarters of Google, and wrote:

Despite the whimsical furniture and other toys, I felt I was entering a 14th-century cathedral — not in the 14th century but in the 12th century, while it was being built. Everyone was busy carving one stone here and another stone there, with some invisible architect getting everything to fit. The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air. "We are not scanning all those books to be read by people," explained one of my hosts after my talk. "We are scanning them to be read by an AI."

When I returned to highway 101, I found myself recollecting the words of Alan Turing, in his seminal paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, a founding document in the quest for true AI. "In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children," Turing had advised. "Rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates."

Here's a snip from a magnificent essay George wrote on that visit.

Fifty years later, thanks to solid state micro-electronics, the von Neumann matrix is going strong. The problem has shifted from how to achieve reliable results using sloppy hardware, to how to achieve reliable results using sloppy code. The von Neumann architecture is here to stay. But new forms of architecture, built upon the underlying layers of Turing-von Neumann machines, are starting to grow. What's next? Where was von Neumann heading when his program came to a halt?

As organisms, we possess two outstanding repositories of information: the information conveyed by our genes, and the information stored in our brains. Both of these are based upon non-von-Neumann architectures, and it is no surprise that Von Neumann became fascinated with these examples as he left his chairmanship of the AEC (where he had succeeded Lewis Strauss) and began to lay out the research agenda that cancer prevented him from following up. He considered the second example in his posthumously-published The Computer and the Brain.

"The message-system used in the nervous system... is of an essentially statistical character," he explained. "In other words, what matters are not the precise positions of definite markers, digits, but the statistical characteristics of their occurrence... a radically different system of notation from the ones we are familiar with in ordinary arithmetics and mathematics... Clearly, other traits of the (statistical) message could also be used: indeed, the frequency referred to is a property of a single train of pulses whereas every one of the relevant nerves consists of a large number of fibers, each of which transmits numerous trains of pulses. It is, therefore, perfectly plausible that certain (statistical) relationships between such trains of pulses should also transmit information.... Whatever language the central nervous system is using, it is characterized by less logical and arithmetical depth than what we are normally used to [and] must structurally be essentially different from those languages to which our common experience refers."

Or, as his friend Stan Ulam put it," What makes you so sure that mathematical logic corresponds to the way we think?"

Link to "TURING'S CATHEDRAL, A visit to Google on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of John von Neumann's proposal for a digital computer," at John Brockman's edge.org.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:01:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Super Mario Bros played on an 9-string bass

Here's a great video of Jean Baudin, a virtuoso bass-player, playing the theme from Super Mario Brothers on a gigantic oversized nine-string electric bass. 5.3MB Quicktime Link, Mirror Link, Torrent Link (Thanks, Westfall, Gary and Chris!)

Update: Waldo sez, "It's not a 'nine-string bass' that he's is playing, it's a Chapman Stick. Well-known Stick performers include Tony Levin."

Update 2: Ray Brown sez, "BB reader Waldo claims the bass that Jean Baudin is using is actually a Chapman Stick. This is false. The bass Jean is using has its own page here."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:35:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Multi-colored-LED Jack O'Lantern

This Hallowe'en hacker wired together a Jack O'Lantern lit by a strobing, color-changing array of LEDs. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:19:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RU Sirius Show

The RU Sirius Show has posted two really fun shows on the MondoGlobo Network in the last week. The most recent features an interview with

Trademark G. from the always hilarious Evolution Control Committee. And the earlier one was with Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg. Some of you may remember Leyner as the author of "Et tu, Babe" and other psychotidelic, megalomaniacal, cyber-surrealist, hilarious novels that strafed our brains throughout the 1990s. Now he and Goldberg have a big number one hit book, "Why Do Men Have Nipples?"

Also, Lisa Rein's Creative Commons-oriented show, Songs from the Commons delves into the MGM vs, Grokster case. Says RU:

And we're excited by plans to make the RU Sirius Show into a massive, live video extravaganza, probably at the beginning of next year. We're looking for volunteers for both audio and video production.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:18:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers

paul says: "Last night around 11pm, as I exited the subway in Astoria, Queens, NYC, I couldn't help but notice the overwhelming aroma of pancake syrup. Apparently I wasn't alone. The smell was reported all over the city last night. It has yet to be explained."

There were conflicting accounts as to its nature. A police officer who had thrown out her French vanilla coffee earlier compared it to that. Two diplomats from the Netherlands disagreed, politely. Rieneke Buisman said it smelled like roasted peanuts. Her friend Joris Geeven said it reminded him of a Dutch cake called peperkoek, though he could not describe that smell.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:25:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Drug laced candy bars confiscated

Police in The Colony, TX, arrested two 19 year olds in possession of 22 "Nirvana" chocolate bars containing hashish, marijuana, and psychedelic mushrooms. "Investigators said the candy looked like normal candy bars."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:21:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Libby Indicted In CIA Leak Case

Documents here: five counts, 22 pages.

Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide was indicted today on perjury, false statement, and obstruction of justice charges in connection with a special counsel's probe into the leaking of a CIA officer's identity. A copy of the five-count felony indictment returned against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, can be found below. The 55-year-old Libby, a White House power and proponent of the Iraq war, allegedly committed the crimes when questioned by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald before a federal grand jury. During two appearances under oath, Libby was questioned extensively about his contact with several reporters prior to published disclosures about Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA operative. While not charged today, Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's chief political adviser, remains under scrutiny by Fitzgerald, who reportedly plans to continue his probe of the 2003 leak (the original grand jury panel's term expired today).

Link to scanned court documents at The Smoking Gun. (Thanks, Andrew Breitbart)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:12:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1952 radio prank in real Frankenstein castle

On Halloween night in 1952 a reporter from the Armed Forces Network was sent into the family crypt deep under the Frankestein castle in Darmstadt, Germany, where a naughty prank (set up by the show's producers) awaited him. It's a six minute-long RealAudio clip, and well worth listening to.
Link (thanks, Mike!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:48:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jim Leftwich's tribute to Rosa Parks

Jim Leftwich created this awesome tribute page to Rosa Parks, entitled iSitWhereIWantTo.

Jim says: "I've always been moved by Apple's ad series using people of her stature and courage, and it inspired me to do a tribute to both her and Apple, using their new iPod ad style." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:32:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Do forensic printer marks slow down printers?

Mike Outmesguine of Wi-Fi Toys learned that his color laser printer prints out those traceable forensic dots (which indicate the time, date, and serial number of the printer -- here's EFF's list of Orwellian printers) on the back of the pages, which makes the printing process much slower.

You see, I have a duplex color laser printer (HP 4600dn) which can print on both sides of the paper. One of the annoying things I discovered early on with this printer is how it prints single-sided jobs: it actually prints out (what I once believed was) a blank sheet, then sucks it back in the feeder and prints the content on the back of the page. (If you are doing letterhead, you have to put the paper in upside down.) That is annoying in itself.

However, I compared the forensic dots on both sides of a single-sided printed sheet with a blank sheet from the feed tray. The printed sheet has dots on front AND back. The printed side, and the non-printed side have the dots while the blank sheet is just that: blank.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:54:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jack O'Lantern photoshopping contest

Today on Worth 1000's photoshopping contest -- fantasy rasterbated Jack O'Lanterns. There were so many awesome entries in this one that I was hard-pressed to pick a favorite, but ultimately this MC Escher/squash mashup won out. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:19:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New story on Cory's podcast

I've started my next podcasting series of fiction-in-progress. This time I'm reading "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth," a new story about an apocalypse that arrives on the heels of a catastrophic Internet worm. When the trump sounds, the world's systems administrators are all in their sealed data-centers, and so they survive the carnage.

He piloted the car into the data-center lot, badging in and peeling up a bleary eyelid to let the retinal scanner get a good look at his sleep-depped eyeball.

He stopped at the machine to get himself a guarana/modafinil power-bar and a cup of lethal robot-coffee in a spill-proof clean-room sippy-cup. He wolfed down the bar and sipped the coffee, then let the inner door read his hand-geometry and size him up for a moment. It sighed open and gusted the airlock's load of positively pressurized air over him as he passed finally to the inner sanctum.

It was bedlam. The cages were designed to let two or three sysadmins maneuver around them at a time. Every other inch of cubic space was given over to humming racks of servers and routers and drives. Jammed among them were no fewer than twenty other sysadmins. It was a regular convention of black tee-shirts with inexplicable slogans, bellies overlapping belts with phones and multitools.

Normally it was practically freezing in the cage, but all those bodies were overheating the small, enclosed space. Five or six looked up and grimaced when he came through. Two greeted him by name. He threaded his belly through the press and the cages, toward the Ardent racks in the back of the room.

Part 1 MP3 Link, Podcast Page Link, Podcast Feed Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:51:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Photos and hand-drawn recreations side-by-side

Brian sez, "Eyehand is a Flickr group where people take a photo of themselves and then attempt to redraw the image by hand. The original and the drawing are displayed side by side. A fun exercise." Link (Thanks, Brian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:21:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Woven Mario

This crafty gaming weaver has produced a "threaded" version of Mario and his pals, woven directly into fabric. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:19:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant convertible beanbag chairs

I'm not a giant person, but I just don't fit into beanbag chairs -- my attempts have been known to prompt shouts of "Big dog, small basket!" These Sumo beanbag chairs might be the answer -- they convert to a sofa, bed or lounger. Link (via Crib Candy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:28:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hallowe'en tattoos

The BMEZine body-mod site is hosting a gallery of Hallowe'en-themed tattoos. Link (Thanks, Shannon!)

Update Many more wonderful horror-themed tatts here. (Thanks, Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:25:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Secrets of Disney's Haunted Mansion

Secrets of the Haunted Mansion: a web tribute to Disney's Haunted Mansion with history, concept art, audio loops, a bibliography, etc. Wow! Link (via The Disney Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:23:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Machinima Awards nominees online

Dead Mertz sez, "It's the time of the year for Machinima awards. Yesterday, the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences (there's an actual Academy!) announced the nominees to their annual Machinima Awards - with the Rooster Teeth guys (Red Vs. Blue) taking a good portion of the nods. Sounds like there's some interesting work rounding out the nominations - including some flight sim machinima, like The Adventures of Bill and John." Machinima is animation made by recording the actions of characters in video games and editing together the results with studio audio and effects. Link (Thanks, Dead Mertz!)

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

Math and equations on The Simpsons

Noah sez, "An episode-by-episode listing of references to math, equations, mathematicians... etc. on 'The Simpsons.'"

Bart: Only geeks sit in the front seat. From now on, you sit in the back row. And that's not just on the bus, it goes for school and church, too.

Martin: Why?

Bart [softly]: So no one can see what you're doing!

Martin: Ooh, I think I understand ... [takes a pencil and starts writing] the potential for mischief varies inversely with one's proximity to the authority figure! [Shows his equation to Bart:

M \propto 1/P]

Link (Thanks, Noah!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:19:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Knitted digestive tract

On Craftster, a knit replica of the human digestive system. Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:18:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Small press publisher on AAP's anti-Google suit

Richard Nash, the publisher of the excellent small press publisher Soft Skull Press, has published a fascinating correspondance he's had with the Association of American Publishers over their Google lawsuit, which he vehemently opposes:

The e-mail letter to the Small & Independent Publishers Committee [which apprised us of the suit, and of which I am a member, though I've flagged in my attendance in the last year] hints at how grateful SIP publishers should be that the AAP is spending its money on this case. I would like to register one important caveat. Soft Skull Press has been subject to three copyright and trademark cease-and-desist letters (one from an AAP member) in the past two years, letters that I could only defend against because my fiancee is an intellectual property lawyer. The biggest threat Soft Skull’s intellectual property faced in the past 2 years was from a claim from HarperCollins that was so overreaching it bordered on sanctionable. In sum, the largest members of the AAP are well able to defend themselves, and have used their resources in the past to attempt to legally strong-arm smaller members of the AAP. Thus while I accept that the AAP has to represent the expressed interest of a majority of its members, I do hope that it will not be represented to the public that the AAP is riding to the rescue of its smallest members—it would be just a little too over-the-top. (Your press release does not do this, I recognize, only the letter to us.) 4. Unlike in trademark law, where a failure to defend one’s trademark can result in a weakening of the mark, failure to sue for copyright infringement does not in any way diminish one’s right to sue in other cases. Again and again, one hears a domino-effect claim from parties opposed to Google Print. I have no idea what that claim means since it is not a legal observation. However, should other companies seek to do what Google is doing and remain within what many, include myself, consider to be the bounds of fair use, then a domino effect would be wonderful. If, on the other hand, they do not operate within the bound of fair use, let’s say they propose to sell entire chapters, or the book, then failing to stop Google would have no effect whatsoever on anyone’s ability to sue this other hypothetical company. In fact, should the courts rule against the AAP, that precedent could create an even more expansive approach to Fair Use than the one presently in effect.

Link (Thanks, Maud!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:15:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hanging Halloween dummy wasn't

A corpse hanging from a tree on the side of the road in Frederica, Delaware swung for hours because drivers assumed it was a gag. Turns out it was a 42-year-old woman who had committed suicide. From the Associated Press:

"They thought it was a Halloween decoration," Fay Glanden, wife of Mayor William Glanden, told The (Wilmington) News Journal.

"It looked like something somebody would have rigged up," she said.

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:33:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO punish bloggers, a tutorial for businesses from Forbes

Won't someone please think of the corporations? The teaser copy for Daniel Lyons' hyper-inflammatory, breathlessly trollbaitin' Forbes cover story "Attack of the Blogs" reads:

They destroy brands and wreck lives. Is there any way to fight back?

This piece of trash begins:

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

It's a global blogspiracy! Further on:

Some companies now use blogs as a weapon, unleashing swarms of critics on their rivals. "I'd say 50% to 60% of attacks are sponsored by competitors," says Bruce Fischman, a lawyer in Miami for targets of online abuse.

50-60%? That estimate is based on what factual data? None provided here. Here's another possibility: maybe most of your critics on blogs are your customers, and they think your product sucks.

A sidebar offers revenge tips for businesses "done wrong" by bloggers:

BUILD A BLOG SWARM. Reach out to key bloggers and get them on your side. Lavish them with attention. Or cash.Earlier this year Marqui, a tiny Portland, Ore. software shop, began paying 21 bloggers $800 per month to post items about Marqui, while requiring them to disclose the payments. Marqui's listings soared on Google from 2,000 to 250,000 results. Never mind that one blogger took the money and bashed a Marqui marketing strategy anyway.

BASH BACK. If you get attacked, dig up dirt on your assailant and feed it to sympathetic bloggers. Discredit him.

ATTACK THE HOST. Find some copyrighted text that a blogger has lifted from your Web site and threaten to sue his Internet service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That may prompt the ISP to shut him down.

Oooh, copyrighted text! Like the excerpts I've pasted here... that's fair use.

Or threaten to drag the host into a defamation suit against the blogger. The host isn't liable but may skip the hassle and cut off the blogger's access anyway. Also:Subpoena the host company, demanding the blogger's name or Internet address.

SUE THE BLOGGER. If all else fails, you can sue your attacker for defamation, at the risk of getting mocked. You will have to chase him for years to collect damages. Settle for a court order forcing him to take down his material.

Why they omitted "gouge their eyes out with forks," "clamp electrodes to testicles," or "ship them to Gitmo by the crateload," I don't know. C'mon, take the gloves off, you pussies!

Link, you'll need to register or use bugmenot.

Dan Gillmor has posted an analysis of the many flaws in Mr. Lyons' article here.

Reader comment: Justin J. Clark says,

Both your article on Boing Boing and Dan Gilmore's article on Bayosphere argue against the suggestion to "(f)ind some copyrighted text that a blogger has lifted from your Web site and threaten to sue his Internet service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." You both cry out, "Fair Use!" as if it matters. Need I remind you that under the DMCA, the mere threat or claim of copyright infringement is enough to have a site taken down by an ISP. The DMCA requires an ISP to immediately respond to any and all copyright infringement claims or be held liable for the infringement themselves. However, since there is no punishment for responding incorrectly, the standard policy has quickly evolved into one of taking down any page or site that receives any complaint without regard to fair use or any other legal defense. Thus, making a copyright infringement claim against a blogger's ISP is an immediately satisfying punishment.

I know this point has been made time and time again since the DMCA was enacted, but it bears repeating time and time again until this travesty of law is overturned or corrected.

Reader comment: Electronic Frontier Foundation Staff Attorney Jason M. Schultz says,

While I couldn't agree more with Justin J. Clark that the DMCA needs to be corrected to provide a better balance in online copyright enforcement, I wanted to point out that there is, in fact, a punishment for sending misleading and abusive DMCA take-down notices. Under Title 17, Section 512(f), a poster of non-infringing/fair use material or her ISP can sue anyone for knowingly misrepresenting claims in a DMCA take-down notice. This is exactly the provision we used in the OPG v. Diebold case to go after Diebold for attempting the squelch the free speech activities of voting rights advocates who tried to publicize the flaws in Diebold's electronic voting machines. As a result, Diebold ended up being penalized to the tune of $125,000. So while the DMCA can be abused, we should keep in mind that there are ways to fight back. People should feel free to contact us at EFF for more information or if someone has misused the DMCA against them in such a manner.

Doc Searls' take is up -- Link to The Blogosmear. One pull-quote:

Thus sensationalism, which attracts readers and sells magazines, wins a small victory over publisher Steve Forbes' own free-market politics. (...) Meanwhile, I'd like to ask Dan [Lyons, the author of the Forbes story] - and others who damn all bloggers for the sins of the few - how they'd like to read a report that calls supermarket tabloids "the newspapers" or hate sheets "the magazines." Because that's what happened to bloggers in this piece.

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

Photos: Internet Archive reception for Open Content Alliance

This Tuesday evening, Brewster Kahle blogged:

Tonight we launched our bookscanning initiative and presented a vision of an Open Library. At the event, Microsoft Network (MSN) joined the Open Content Alliance and committed to kick off their support by funding the digitization of 150,000 books in 2006! (...) Also, 14 libraries and library organizations joined in the last 3 weeks. Please see the Open Content Alliance site for more information. [C]heck out OpenLibrary.org for a cool bookviewer and the vision book-- it tells the story of what we envision.

Jake Appelbaum photographed the event -- humming servers, buzzing laptops, and lots of internetorati in the house: Link to photo set. Snapped attendees include Joi Ito, Donald Knuth, Jason Schultz and Cindy Cohn from the EFF, Brewster Kahle, and the NYT's John Markoff.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:44:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hurricane Wilma: snapshots of damage in Cuba

Via Ned Sublette, snapshots of Hurricane Wilma's impact on Havana, Cuba. Sorry I don't have better metadata, but some of the filenames describe location coordinates. Most appear to be from the city's malecón area.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:14:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New NASA app sorta like Google Earth, but for the Moon

Snip from NASA's press release about "World Wind," a NASA-built app for zoomable, virtual 3-D wanderings around the moon.

The newly expanded NASA 'World Wind' computer program can transport Web users to almost anyplace on the moon, when they zoom in from a global view to closer pictures of our natural satellite taken by the Clementine spacecraft in the 1990s. Computer programmers at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley originally designed the World Wind program to deliver satellite images and data of Earth to the Internet. Users can see detailed 3-D pictures of the Earth's land surface, including its elevation and climate.

"We have just digested the best of the Clementine images, so we can now deliver the moon at 66 feet (20 meters) of resolution," said Patrick Hogan, manager of the World Wind Project Office at NASA Ames. "This is a first. No one has ever explored our moon in the 3-D interactive environment that World Wind creates," noted Hogan.

Link. Boing Boing reader Mike Ransom is digging it, and says of the pic above, "This is an image I captured of the central promontory in the Tycho crater."

Reader comment: Oliver Delgado says,

World Wind predates Google Earth as a free world-viewing application by almost a year. NASA just lacked the marketing power to make it as well known. To call it “sort of like Google Earth” seems to imply Google Earth had been created earlier. It’s probably also worthwhile to mention Celestia which is a 3D space simulator which is sort of a planetarium, except you’re not confined to the surface of the earth. It’s available for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:03:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYPost: "Google to broker TV ads!" Google says: not so much.

The New York Post reported today that:

Google, the company that dominates online advertising, would like to try its hand at buying and selling television ad time. Google, already dabbling in print ads, recently confirmed that it's "mulling" ways to extend its ad-brokering system to television spots as well.

If Google succeeds, it would mark a major turning point for an industry that has rebuffed other attempts at creating new ways to buy and sell TV ad time. Traditional media companies have learned never to underestimate Google, but television and ad execs say the complicated, research-driven model of selling TV time will be tough — if not impossible — to crack.

"I've seen brokering ideas like this before and they end up fizzling," said Steven Saslow, a veteran media exec and the chief of ConfirMedia, which helps advertisers track ad placement.

Link to story (Thanks, David Ahrendts).

I asked Google spokesperson Barry Schnitt about the report, and he passed along this prepared statement:

We are always considering new ways to extend Google's advertising program to benefit our users, advertisers and publishers. Television offers one such possible extension among many others. We do not have any specific product plans in this area or additional details to share at this time.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:49:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

State of underground comix scene in Bay Area

BB reader The Moth says,

The SF Bay Guardian's Lit section has done a pretty nicely done piece about up-and-comers and already-made-its in the underground comic book scene. They include some comments from Eightball's Dan Clowes, Comic Relief's Rory Root, and Ted Mathot of E-Ville Press' "Rose and Isabel", among others.

Snip from story:

Laurenn McCubbin is a vivid reminder of the eclectic nature of art in the Bay Area. Her hair is red and streaked with platinum, her arms are covered with tattoos, and she is, as of this month, the new art director for traditionally superhero-dominated Image Comics. Her latest work, Rent Girl, written by Michelle Tea and lavishly illustrated by McCubbin, has also just been optioned for HBO by Tony Jonas, executive producer of Queer As Folk.

"We want it to be partially animated," McCubbin says. "The thing we had a hard time convincing people of is that hookers can be funny. I can't imagine why people don't understand. People are like, 'It's going to be such a sad show,' and I'm like, 'Have you read the book?' "

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:39:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web 2.0 Cracks Start to Show

Snip from a report I filed today for Wired News:

The cycle is so predictable, it's almost a natural law: Every new internet movement popular enough to generate buzz also generates a backlash. This time, the debate revolves around the cracks that are starting to appear in Web 2.0, a term coined by O'Reilly Media Vice President Dale Dougherty to describe a post-dot-com generation of sites and services that use the web as a platform -- things like Flickr, BitTorrent, tagging and RSS syndication.

While there's no strict agreement on exactly what Web 2.0 is, much of it involves public participation and contributions from the commons. Web 2.0 is very open, but all that openness has its downside: When you invite the whole world to your party, inevitably someone pees in the beer.

These days, peed-in beer is everywhere. Blogs begat splogs -- junk diaries filled with keyword-rich text to lure traffic for ad revenue.

Google's PageRank is unfairly skewed by profit-driven search engine optimizers. And experiments in participatory media attract goatses as quickly as they do legitimate entries, like the Los Angeles Times' experimental wiki, which was pulled after it was defaced. Earlier tech innovations -- Usenet, BBSes, free e-mail systems, even the open-source software movement -- have long faced similar challenges. And many have buckled under the pressure.

Link.

Among the reader responses received today:

I read [this] article and I found it a good read, except that your inclusion of Nick Carr's comment: "A lot of participatory media is mediocre" was too much to bear. This sort of message is shit, if you'll pardon the expression, and his argument that people are turning to the Web because it's free (and despite its mediocrity) is wrong. People turn to where the value is. Every time. Why else would someone pay $18.00 for a Make magazine?

And worse, the quote is elitist. Carr's elitism distracts from the main ideal of participatory media: to make everyone part of the conversation. As democracy is to politics participatory media is to the Web.

Will everyone who participates have a great, insightful point? No, of course not. Will there be spam? Yes, of course there will. But I'm sure Nick Carr's days aren't filled with miracle after miracle, either.

The "mediocre" argument really gets me going, though, because it's anti-people. People are messy, illogical, and mediocre, and that's beautiful. Damn beautiful.

Sincerely, Joshua Porter

Not long ago, Wired News began including a reader comment feature directly on the story pages. More discussion here.

Those in a hurry to cash in on Web 2.0 buzz may enjoy this "Web 2.0 business model" auto-generator: Link. (Thanks, Jim Basman)

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

Xeni and Mark at LA Futurists Salon on Friday

If you live in Los Angeles -- Xeni and Mark will be speaking at the LA Futurists Salon at UCLA

Where/When: Our usual digs at Room 133, Kerckhoff Hall, UCLA this Friday, October 28th, from 8-11pm. Visit http://ucla.accelerating.org for maps and parking options. Format: We'll start promptly at 8pm with artcle sharing on the amazing things that have happened this last month (bring your cool stuff, we've got ours!) and then proceed to either a new book review (still no takers, email us interested), more discussion, or to a second opening speaker. Xeni will begin her talk shortly after 8pm and Mark will begin his talk around 9 to 9:15pm.

Title: Maker 2.0: Global Do-it-Yourselfing, Bottom-Up Collaborating, a Maker's Bill of Rights, and World Lessons in Top-Down Catastrophes

Abstract: How hacking- or "maker" friendly can we make our world? How many of the products that you buy are designed to be tinkered, customized, and modded by you as a consumer? How important is it for you to live in a world where your tools and technologies can be molded collaboratively by users to their own needs? How important do you think this maker capability is in emerging nations who have access only to our earlier-generation, hand-me-down technologies?

"I'm going to talk about my experiences as a how-to magazine editor, a self publisher, blogger, and author of books on the importance of making things and the do it yourself culture. We'll discuss examples of maker-friendly technology, consider the arguments for a Maker's Bill of Rights (Google: Crafter Manifesto), and outline inspiring examples of DIY projects built literally from junkyard parts in Cuba and other capital-constrained nations. As Internet 2.0 (broadband, etc.) and Web 2.0 (rich web, social networks, bottom up communities, etc.) increasingly emerge around the planet in the coming decades, scores of clever, resource-limited kids all over the world will be able to demand a whole new level of maker culture. We can tentatively call this Maker 2.0. Let's begin the discussion on what that might look like and why it might be critical to a better future. To get an understanding of some of the challenges ahead we will also look at a few global lessons in top-down catastrophe from my new book, The World's Worst. That should give us a sense of how far we have to go in some places, and why it is important to keep working toward a more bottom up, creative, collaborative world."

Bio: Mark Frauenfelder is editor-in-chief of Make (http://makezine.com/), O'Reilly's new magazine on the collaborative do-it-yourself lifestyle. He is also co-editor of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things (http://boingboing.net/). Mark is a former Playboy columnist and editor at Wired magazine, author of Mad Professor: How to Concoct Extremely Weird Science Projects, 2002 and his newest, The World's Worst: A Guide To The Most Disgusting Hideous; Inept, And Dangerous People, Places, And Things On Earth, 2005.

As usual, a number of us will go to Westwood to nosh afterward. Hope you can join us!

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:13:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chris Ware and Charles Burns interviewed on radio program (MP3)

Open Source radio with Christopher Lydon had a one hour show with cartoonists Charles Burns (L) and Chris Ware (R). The MP3 file is 24MB.
Link (More recent Ware, Burns and Chip Kidd here)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:05:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Necronomicon as papercraft

This hellish, Lovecraftian tome is actually a print-and-fold papercraft project you can assemble at home. If you dare. Mwahhahah. Link (Thanks, Novysan!)
(Bonus Lovecraft link: "The Great Old Pumpkin": An hilarious short story that mashes up Linus and the Great Pumpkin with Lovecraft and the Great Old Ones -- MP3, text)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:13:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Counting Heads: exciting, major new sf novel

David Marusek is one of the best-kept secrets of science fiction, a wild talent with a Gibson-grade imagination and marvelous prose, and a keen sense of human drama that makes it all go. Science fiction editors nurture short story writers -- many sf insiders keep track of the short fiction markets and watch with keen interest the writers who are doing good work there, but until those writers manage to get a novel out, it's rare for the field at large to take note of them. Writers like Ben Rosenbaum and Ted Chiang do incredible, brilliant work in short lengths, and the field does yeoman duty recognizing them with awards and approbation, but ultimately, the audience for short fiction is regrettably small.

Marusek's amazing story "The Wedding Album" floored me when I read it in 1999, was a finalist on the Nebula ballot, won the Sturgeon and Asimov's Reader's Choice Awards, placed in the Locus, Seiun and HOMer awards, and left all who read it gob-smacked. It was the story of the AI avatars cast as a sort of wedding photo of a couple on their big day; the story traces the avatars' lives through thousands of years of technical evolution, through the Singularity, and out the other side. The story reels from heartbreaking to mind-bending like a poet on a magnificent drunk bouncing from lamp-post to lamp-post.

I have a gigantic backlog of reading that I've promised to do, but when the galleys for Marusek's first novel, Counting Heads, came to my mailbox, it went into my shoulder-bag and has stayed there ever since, while I read it in sips and draughts, stealing every possible moment to read more of it, wanting to see what happens next and not wanting it to end.

Counting Heads is the story of a humanity thrashing on the horns of the dilemma of too much of everything. In the Counting Heads world, the idea of being a single individual is obsolete. Some people are clones. Some are virtual. Some are avatars cast for some utility function and then discarded. Some are AI minders who babysit the others. Even families and households are fluid and multiplicitous: in a world as crowded as Marusek's, social institutions are necessarily larger and weirder than our contemporary nuclear families.

Yet all is not well, for too much can be as confounding as not enough. Counting Heads is the story of a vast intrigue, through which an emergent conspiracy rockets a remarkable woman to near-empress status, and then visits upon her indignity after indignity. Her husband, Sam, is the main protagonist of this story (which sports a gigantic cast of fascinating and likable characters), and it is through his eyes that we see every corner of this amazing world, from its highest heights to its lowest gutters.

It's hard to summarize this book because again and again, the plot hinges on wonderful, original inventions, and just describing the storyline would spoil too many of David's delightful surprises. I haven't felt as buffeted by a book since Gibson's Neuromancer -- haven't felt more like I was reading something truly radical, new and exciting.

When David was writing short stories, he was an exciting writer. Now that he's onto novels, he's practically a force of nature.

Phones came in a dizzying array of forms and substances--wearable, edible, and environmental--many of which were free to the consumer. But Bogdan wanted his own phone, a phone without location or ID transponders, polling or advertising agreements, subliminal motivational messaging, remote medication metering, or membership to a suicide prevention community. In other words, Bogdan wanted a phone with no agenda outside the simple function of connecting him to the public opticom. This ruled out phone crisps, phone tattoos and nail polish, phone house plants and air fresheners, and most other models within his narrow price range. After five minutes of searching, he was about to give up when he stumbled across the new crop of cap valet felt, and he felt another pang of misery for his stolen Lisa.

Magister Scholastic Valets had come a long way since Kodiak Charter had bought him Lisa's "Little Professor" model nineteen years before. For the same price that they had paid back then, he could purchase a "Rhodes Scholar" with seven million times the processing power and triple the Turing index. But the price! This small strip of nanofacture cost five hundred United Democracies credits! Was it possible that nineteen years ago, when he really was a ten-year-old boy, his charter had the wherewithal to invest five hundred yoodies in his education?

Bogdan sighed and scrolled to the next page where he found exactly what he was looking for--simple phone patches that you stuck to your throat and behind your ear. They were audio only, but at 00.0001 UDC, the price was right. Bogdan ordered a set and went to stand in line next to the extruder.

Link, Link to Marusek's book blog

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:04:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funny menu translation

The menu at this Slovenian joint has three dessert selections: "cake," "roll," and "different kind of cake."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:57:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mark Hurst's technology buying guide

Mark Hurst, the founder of the GEL conference and its associated website, Good Experience, has published a free PDF file called "Uncle Mark 2006 Gift Guide and Almanac." It is full of excellent advice. He says: "This is my set of answers to questions I get all the time - 'which digital camera should I by? which laptop? which gift for my high school-aged nephew? when should I go to the Met?'"

Here's what he has to say about which cell phone to buy.

For “techies” and early adopters who want all the latest features, I recommend the cell phone with it all: the palmOne Treo 650 (find it at palmone.com) combines a phone, e-mail, instant messag- ing, Web browsing, Palm Pilot software, and a digital camera, all in one device. I know from experience that the Treo is the best-designed of all the multi-function devices out there. (I have a hard time imagining who really needs all those features in one device, but it’s a great gift for a techie.)

For us mere mortals, who just want to make a phone calls that aren’t dropped abruptly, I would recommend finding the oldest, chunkiest, most boring Nokia model you can find in your neigh- borhood cell phone store. I recommend Nokia because they have consistently made the easiest-to- use cell phones. Some of their new models have silly designs that are hard to use; aim for an old one, shaped like a big chocolate bar. My phone is five years old and I love it.

Great advice. My wife uses an ancient Nokia (one that we had sitting in a desk drawer) after her new flip phone's hinge snapped. She never wants another phone. Link to PDF file

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:51:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Patricia Piccinini's incredibly strange sculptures

Patricia Piccinini, creator of the deeply disturbing Young Family sculpture of human-dog hybrids suckling their mother, is showing her latest work at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York City through November 26. The show is called "Nature's Little Helpers." When my wife Kelly saw a photo of this piece, titled "Surrogate (For the Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat)," she said, "It's so strange it takes my breath away." Exactly.
Link (warning: annoying Flash interface to click through)

UPDATE: Piccinini's "Young Family" can be seen currently in North Adams, Massachusetts at the Mass MoCA's "Becoming Animal" group show exploring "the closing gap between human and animal existence." Link and scroll down (Thanks, Larry!)

UPDATE: Xeni kindly pointed me to another intense Piccinini artwork, The Embrace, featured this week on artnet. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:57:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Critical Wal-Mart documentary to be shown in houses of worship

Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price, the new documentary from Robert "Outfoxed" Greenwald, will have its theatrical premier next week in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. After that, you can catch it in church or synagogue. On November 13, the film will be screened in around 1,000 houses-of-worship. From USA Today:

Producer Robert Greenwald hopes for the same success (Mel) Gibson had last year building grass-roots support through churches for his blockbuster, The Passion of the Christ.

Others, such as producers of Left Behind: World at War, also are seeking promotional help from churches. That film, starring Lou Gossett Jr., about those left on Earth after the biblical rapture, was shown last weekend in 3,200 churches.

The Wal-Mart film features interviews with company employees, small-business owners, teachers and others who sharply criticize it with charges of low wages, skimpy health benefits and a poor environmental record.

"Those are moral questions," Greenwald said Wednesday. "They're questions of who we are as people, who we are as a country."

Link (Thanks, Richard Metzger!)

UPDATE: The good people at AlterNet point us to their Wal-Mart coverage and invitation (PDF) to the West Coast premiere of Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price in San Francisco on November 2.

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:42:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jesus seen in tree

Jesus has been spotted napping in a tree trunk in Rochester, New York. The visage is visible in a silver maple on the front lawn of the Hickey-Freeman Co. factory. From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle:

Officials from Hickey-Freeman Co., who were unavailable Tuesday to discuss the tree, so far have tolerated the cars stopping in front of their building and the groups of gawkers on the sidewalk. They aren't sure what else to do because, as the facilities manager said, "there's no protocol for this sort of thing."

Mark Day, 30, a shipping clerk at Hickey-Freeman, took a picture of the tree after seeing others standing outside the factory looking at it.

Day said he believes the tree's design is a coincidence. "I don't think it's a message because God is everywhere," he said.

Link (via The Anomalist)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:33:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Archie comics discover goth subculture

A recent Archie comic contains a story called "She's Goth to Have It" in which Betty throws off her preppie look for a goth lifestyle of chai-sipping and black-wearing and book-reading. 436K JPEG Link (via AccordionGuy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:18:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Applaudably awful lip-syncing by the Box Tops

Watch The Box Tops sleep their way through their hit song, "The Letter," on Upbeat!
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:10:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush speechalist mockumentary

This mockumentary about GW Bush's "Presidential Speechalist" is a real hoot. From the video:

"You have to understand one thing about the American people. They are not interested in a politician that speaks smoothly or insists on using 'real words.'"

Link (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

UPDATE: Russell Bates, who directed "Harlan McCraney, Presidential Speechalist" for Comedy Central's Last Laugh 2004, points us to the proper homepage where you can watch a QuickTime of the film. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:08:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dada audio

The director of surrealist clothier Imaginary Foundation sent me this link to three Dada audio pieces. My favorite is "L'amiral Cherche Une Maison à Louer," written in 1916 by Tristan Tzara, Richard Hulsenbeck, and Marcel Janco for performance at the Caberet Voltaire. This recording was made by the Italian Trio Excoco. From UbuWeb:

"L'amiral Cherche Une Maison à Louer" is one of the best known examples of Dada tonal poetry, in which several voices speak, sing, whistle, etc. simultaneously in such a way that the resulting combinations account for the total effect of the work. The simultaneous poem demonstrates the value of the human voice and is a powerful illustration of the fact that an organic work of art has a will of its own...

Some verses of Tristan Tzara, for example "nfoünta mbaah mbaah nfoünta", inspired by African singsong, seem to be analogous to Hugo Ball's work, but in general Tzara's poems consisted of absurd encounters of meanings, and not of sounds, such as the famous "La première aventure céleste de M.Anitpryine" (1916) and the poem that he composed in collaboration with Marcel Janco and Richard Huelsenbeck "L'amiral cherche une maison à louer" (The admiral looks for a house to rent). Tzara's dadaism is not phonic but semantic.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:56:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bursty email responses are similar to letter writers of the last century

New Scientist reports that the common email-answering pattern of rapid responses to important correspondents and easy questions; long delays for complicated questions is consistent with the correspondence patterns of storied letter-writers of the bygone age, as can be determined by analyzing Einstein and Darwin's correspondence:

Both Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein relied on pen, paper, and the postal service to communicate with correspondents around the world. But researchers have now found the pattern of their replies is the same as that of computer users answering email today, with both following the same mathematical formula.

The pattern could reflect some basic biological encoding that shows up in everything from humans at work to birds foraging for food, according to Albert-László Barabási, a physicist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, US.

Link (via 43 Folders)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:50:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Music video produced on Apple ][+

Here's a fan-produced music video for Grandaddy's "Jed's Other Poem" -- the entire thing was produced using Applesoft II (a BASIC implementation) on a 1979 Apple ][+ with 48k of RAM. Link (Thanks, NiceGuyUK!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:40:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Build a gingerbread Phantom Manor from Disneyland Paris

This gingerbread house replica of Phantom Manor comes with a detailed photo-based build-log and pix of templates. The Phantom Manor is the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland Paris, and its external designs are closest to the original Haunted Mansion exterior concepts sketched by Imagineers like Marc Davis, but Walt vetoed them for being too scungy looking for his clean-cut park. Link (Thanks, Ray!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:03:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO build a backyard crypt

This detailed HOWTO runs down the instructions for building a backyard faux-stone crypt complete with a "Flying Crank Ghost" illusion. I think this would actually be much cooler as part of a Christmas manger scene than on Hallowe'en, but it would be pretty boss any time of the year. Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:47:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Custom food embossers

Gourmet Impression sells food embossers that let you squish arbitrary bitmaps into potatoes, pancakes, pizza and many other foodstuffs, including several that don't start with the letter "p." Link (via Make Blog)

Update: Aaron sez, "In case people are confused and missed the small print, this food is photoshopped, and badly: 'All food images are photographically enhanced for demonstration purposes only.' The actual devices (Link, Link) look like renderings too. I don't think there is a real photo of the product or its end result on that whole site.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:44:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Revver: "A Flickr for video"

Revver, a project that includes the awesome Ian Clarke, the hacker behind the Freenet freedom-of-speech network, has just launched. Ben describes it as "a Flickr for video, a site to allow uploading and viewing of video media. The site allows for tagging and ratings, but clicked banner ads also send small change to the creators themselves." Link (Thanks, Ben!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:35:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

No Broadcast Flag == more digital TV devices!

The Broadcast Flag -- a now-defunct proposal to force manufacturers to get Hollywood approval for the features of digital TV devices -- was supposed to encourage people to buy DTVs by reassuring the movie studios, which might have resulted in some movies finding their way onto TV. However, since the flag was killed last spring, digital TV devices have experienced a renaissance, as manufacturers have built devices without worrying about whether they would pass muster with some paranoid studio exec who believes that American TV viewers are all thieving scum.

"With the broadcast flag being struck down this past summer, a number of TV tuner card manufacturers are aggressively doing HDTV TV tuner card products for retail and I'm happy to say that all of them are bundling our software," Rakesh Agrawal, SnapStream president and CEO, told BetaNews.

Link (via EFF Minilinks)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:11:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Walking nanoscale molecule

UC Riverside nano-researchers have engineered a single molecule that walks a straight line on two feet:

The molecule - 9,10-dithioanthracene or "DTA" - has two linkers that act as feet. Obtaining its energy from heat supplied to it, the molecule moves such that only one of the linkers is lifted from the surface; the remaining linker guides the motion of the molecule and keeps it on course. Alternating the motions of its two "feet," DTA is able to walk in a straight line without the assistance of nano-rails or nano-grooves for guidance.

Link (Thanks, Ginohn!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:08:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

In-game machinima Ed Wood film festival

BuhBuhCuh Fairchild, a player in the Second Life virtual world, writes, "I'm hosting a machinima competition this halloween weekend in the virtual world of Second Life/ It's in the spirit of Ed Wood's film making career - make a film fast, and make it kitschy. You get 72 hours to use SL to make your movie (good or bad), and then, on Halloween, we are going to screen all of them IN Second Life, making it (I think) the first Virtual Film Festival of entirely Virtual Films in a Virtual World. It should be lots of fun." Not only that, there are game-cash prizes! Link (Thanks, BuhBuhCuh Fairchild!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:04:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plastic, solar-powered walls with OLED-based bitmaps

SmartWrap is a thin plastic film that can be used as a building-material for walls and other construction contexts. SmartWrap comes with embedded OLEDs and/or solar panels; the solar cells power the OLEDs, which can be made to generate light or arbitrary bitmaps. However, without Kevlar reinforcement, SmartWrap can be punctured with a knife. Link (via Crib Candy)

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

Star Wars paper masks to download and wear

StarWars.com is hosting a collection of official print-and-wear paper Star Wars masks with some lovely items. It'd be great if each of these masks had a message-board hanging off of it where photoshopping fans could post their remixes and interpretations! Link (Thanks, Bonnie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:55:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stanford launches iTunes service

Stanford has launched an iTunes-based service for downloading news, lectures, and related material. Idogcow sez, "So far everything from a LSJUMB tune ('Hail, Stanford, Hail') to Aurora Forum lectures by Lawrence Lessig and Julia "Butterfly" Hill is up and free."

* Download faculty lectures, interviews, music and sports.
* Play audio on your iPod, Mac or PC, or burn a CD.
* Stay Connected anytime anywhere.
* Experience Stanford on iTunes today and continue learning with Stanford.

Link (Thanks, idogcow!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:51:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cartoony papercraft robots

These whimsical papercraft robots are deeply cool -- great cartoony illustrations and easy-fold designs are a crowd-pleasing combination. Though these are designed for 8.5x11 sheets, I think they'd be even cooler if you ran them at half that size and got little cigarette-pack-sized robots for your desktop. Link (Thanks, Nathan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:49:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flickr adds photo-printing

Flickr has launched a new photo-printing service -- US only, but you get ten free prints as an introductory offer!

Over the last year, we've been asked 15,381 times, "How about printing? When are we going to get printing!?" Today we are happy to answer: "Today!" For now it is U.S. only (we know! we're working hard on rolling it out everywhere!). You can order prints to be delivered by mail, or pick them up at your local Target store for one hour printing, even. In both cases, you get 10 free 4x6" prints to get started.

Link (Thanks, Numlok!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:45:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gigantic eraser collection

An eraser collector with over 2,000 erasers in his collection lovingly documents his rubbery pals on this page:

To prevent the erasers from hardening, I soak them in warm water mixed with dish washing detergent (once a year). Then I towel dry them and soak them in Armor-All and towel dry them again. This product is normally used to keep tires and dashboards from dry rotting in the sun but it's excellent for erasers too!

Link (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:39:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage circus poster photoset

Wonderful Flickr set vintage circus posters, from "a pre-auction exhibition of Circus Posters from 100 years ago at the Swann Gallery in NYC." Link (Thanks, Børge!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:36:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Albino pumpkins are teh h4wt

CNN reports that albino "ghost" pumpkins have become a trendy, luminous alternative to boring-orange giant squash among the carving set this year. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:33:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Danah boyd's Friendster papers, all in one place

Hacker/social scientist danah boyd has published some amazing research on Friendster, work that is generalizable to most articulated social networking services. Danah's research has turned up all kinds of fascinating and useful truths about social networking services, and now she's grouped all her papers together with summaries in one place: great reading.

Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks by danah boyd - a 2004 short CHI paper staking out what Friendster is.

Abstract: This paper presents ethnographic fieldwork on Friendster, an online dating site utilizing social networks to encourage friend-of-friend connections. I discuss how Friendster applies social theory, how users react to the site, and the tensions that emerge between creator and users when the latter fails to conform to the expectations of the former. By offering this ethnographic piece as an example, I suggest how the HCI community should consider the co-evolution of the social community and the underlying technology.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:31:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Math proves you can stop table-wobble by rotating

At last, mathematical proof that you can make tables stop wobbling simply by rotating them until all feet are flat on the ground.

Anyone who drinks a cup of coffee on the terrace of the CERN cafeteria, says Martin, discovers that the tables usually have only three feet resting on the ground, so that the slightest touch spills your drink.

Time after time, Martin would find himself rotating the table to look for a stable position. "I've always been able to find one," he says. "People are sometimes amazed that it works."

More than ten years ago, Martin decided to see if he could find some proof that a stable state always exists. He believed that he'd found one, and even presented it at a summer school in 1998, but he never wrote it up and discovered that in any case it wasn't completely correct.

Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:29:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tex Avery strip-tease clips

Tex Avery, the master cartoonist/animator, was a huge fan of burlesque shows and included many scenes of burlesque dancers in his cartoons. Here's a fantastic collection of short clips of Tex Avery burlesque dancers, with the ubiquitous howling, stomping wolf going ga-ga in appreciation thereof. Link (Thanks, anonymous!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:27:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AT-AT homebrew Hallowe'en costume

This cardboard Star Wars AT-AT costume is magnificent, and well-documented on a Flickr build-log set. The best Hallowe'en costume I ever had was the cardboard C3PO outfit my kindergarten-teacher mom made out of rolled up tubes of cardboard spray-painted gold -- this, however, is miles ahead of what my mom was capable of hacking up. Don't worry Mom, I don't hold it against you. Link (Thanks, Gary!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:22:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

HOWTO knit DNA

Kimberly Chapman has posted a neat guide to knitting your own model of the Double Helix. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the instructions. From her guide:

This is a knitted model of DNA, complete with GC/TA base pairs represented by orange-green bars with a pointed join and blue-yellow bars with a stepped join (because there weren't enough stitches to make a wave or curve), replicating the standard simplified DNA model. As you can see from the pictures, it also makes a good toy insofar as it holds its shape while squished or stretched, because it is stuffed firmly with cotton balls.

Link (via MAKE: Blog)

UPDATE: Thanks to all the readers who pointed out that real DNA, unlike the yarn model, twists to the right like a regular screw. Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:28:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Hacker's Diet

AutoDesk founder and eccentric genius John Walker has a free ebook called The Hacker's Diet.

The Hacker's Diet ... is a serious book about how to lose weight and permanently maintain whatever weight you desire. It treats dieting and weight control from an engineering and management standpoint, and provides the tools and an understanding of why they work and how to use them that permit the reader to gain control of their own weight. The book is intended primarily for busy, successful engineers, programmers, and managers who have struggled unsuccessfully in the past to lose weight and avoid re-gaining it.

Link (via Cool Tools)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:54:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on CNN x 2: Extreme Cellphones, ICANN and internet governance

(1) Tonight (Wed), CNN Showbiz Tonight will air the third in a series of trend reports on mobile tech and entertainment. Guests tonight include Forrester veep Maribel Lopez, Leo Laporte (author of the 2006 Gadget Guide), and me. Program airs live on Headline News at 7 p.m. and replays at 11 p.m. Eastern (= 4PM and 8PM Pacific). Link

(2) I'll be Kristie LuStout's guest today on CNN International at 840ET / 540 PT for a Techwatch segment on the future of internet governance. More on that subject in this report I filed for NPR News "Day to Day", and here are two additional items worth reading on that subject: "Preserving the Web of the free," by Mark Shiffrin and Avi Silberschatz in the NYT, and this WSJ piece (paid subscribers only, alas), "Thinking Global," by Frederick Kempe.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:16:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Online animation archive project

Stephen Worth (Director of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive) says:

"I thought you might be interested in a project I'm working on for the International Animated Film Society: ASIFA- Hollywood. We are creating a 'virtual archive' in Burbank for the use of students, researchers and artists interested in animation.

"We are in the process of digitizing collections of animation art, illustration and films. Most animation books tell the story of the artform by studio or character, but we plan to tell the history of animation through the lives of the people who created the films. Ultimately, we plan to have a library and museum of animation as well."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:38:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

First cartoonist submits drawing of one the the 700 hoboes

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement.) A couple of days ago, I wrote about John Hodgman's terrific song with 700 hobo names. I mentioned that it would be great if 700 illustrators drew the hoboes, and Daniel Cardenas was the first to submit one. He drew hobo #26 -- Frederick Bannister "the tree surgeon." Thanks, Daniel! Let's keep them coming adding them to Flickr. Tag it with "700hoboes". Link

Reader comment: Levi says: "Frederick Bannister 'the tree surgeon' is number 19 (not 26) in the hobo names."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:34:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jim Woodring interview

Suicide Girls has an interview with amazing comix artist and painter Jim Woodring. In the piece, Jim talks about his newest book Seeing Things, published by our friends at Fantagraphics.

From the interview:

DRE: What do you see in frogs that others don’t?

JW: I’ve always been fascinated by frogs and I’ve always loved to look at them. They’re good food for thought. I guess in France they’re just good food. They have a lot of interesting attributes. If you have a spiritual event; they’re amazing because they’ll just sit still as if they’re meditating for a long period of time, but they’re never out of it. They always notice when a shadow approaches and then they move like greased lightning. They live on the land and in the water. That amphibious quality is something you can compare to the way people live in both the animal and the spiritual world. They’re strangely anthropomorphic. They almost seem to have hands. They have faces you can read expressions in more readily than you can read them on the faces of other animals. I don’t know what it is but they’re easier to figure out than people. I guess the reason why I don’t draw people very much is because I don’t understand them. I don’t understand us so I never quite know what to show. It’s easy for me to draw people in deplorable circumstances doing terrible things subject to abominable forces. But I don’t want to just do that all the time; I don’t want to heap another log onto the fire of “Here’s what’s wrong with the human race.” So I sidestep it by doing it with frogs.

DRE: Would you eat a frog or do you have too much respect for them?

JW: Oh I’ve eaten them. I’ll eat anything. I’ve even eaten whale meat.

Link (via Flog!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:23:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

O'Reilly's Retro Gaming Hacks

I rarely play computer games, but when I do, I like retro games the best. I find the steep learning curve of modern games to be discouraging. Retro games, on the other hand, remind me of ukuleles: They're very easy to start using and enjoying right off the bat, but remain interesting and enjoyable as you continue to use them. O'Reilly's new book, Retro Gaming Hacks, looks like a real winner.

-Find Original, Classic Gaming Systems --Who can resist the allure of a wood grain-paneled Atari 2600? The satisfying rubbery feel of the joystick and candy-like single button? There are hacks on buying classic systems, setting them up, fixing broken hardware, and even finding retro games from Japan and tricking American consoles into playing them.

-Adapt Today's Equipment to Run Retro Games --Many if not most retro gaming hackers are getting their classic console fix through emulation these days. Emulation techniques (MAME or Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) include hacking a classic joystick for use on new computers.

-Revive old PCs--For many of us, our first retro game experience wasn't in front of a console--it was hunched over the keyboard of a classic Apple II or Atari 800XL. Clever hacks bring back classic computers and explain how to set them up or emulate them so readers can, say, play a Commodore 64 just like they played it before--and then like they've never played it before.

-Design Custom Video Games--Innovative techniques and tools let gamers craft retro-style entertainment with instant results.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:46:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Middle management email catfight from Indian tech firm

With hope that phrases like "I will do needful" and "I have money and muscle power to FUCK you in your back side" will become as beloved as AllYourBase excerpts, I present to you the email thread known as "Indian Techie Flamewar." A few choice Engrish zingers:

* Yes my English is weak, that’s why I worked in Sentient under cheap person like you. But write now I have learned English especially for writing this mail. Mr. Rishi you are cheap person like Dog.

* Sentient has the money and muscle power to FUCK you in your back side so hard that your generations to come will be born defunct just the way you are mentally sick & defunct.

* This shows you are mad .because you always FUCK in back side. But if you want to learn How to fuck in front side contact me.

* as per me none are honest and I have every bludy right to complain

* I am WARNING you if you send another email to any Sentient personnel I will do needful.

* GOD WILL PUNISH YOU.

Link (thanks, Numair!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:31:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Optical illusion T-shirt design

Matt says: "Inspired by those illusions [you wrote about yesterday], the naughty part of me has decided to see if it's possible to do a similar thing with text -- the idea of a t-shirt with something offensive on it that turns into something innocuous if anyone comes to complain tickles my fancy -- and I've made some progress on reverse-engineering the technique.  It seems to work best if the two images are of a similar shape and have a few common features, which makes text somewhat problematic, but I've come up with a proof-of-concept.  It's not perfect, but for half an hour's fiddling I'm quite pleased with the effect.

"The test image can be found here." Link

Reader comment: Mike Cramer says: "This illusion is fairly easy to do in the Gimp (and presumably Photoshop). Take two headshots and crop them so they line up reasonably well. Blur one enough that the detail disappears, but the face is still recognizable. Use an 'Edge Detect' filter on the other. Overlay the two and viola! The edge-detected image will be visible up close, and the blurred image will be visible if you squint."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:49:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Igloo-making tool

This igloo-making tools scoops up snow and molds it into igloo bricks that you can easily stack to make wintertime igloos for play or shelter. Link (via Cribcandy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:52:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

US Passports to get RFID chip implants in 2006

Snip from News.com story by Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache :

All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely-readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.

Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans."

Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle carrying a passport. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns.

Link, and text of regulations is here: Link (via politech)

Reader comment: Jason says,

Passports will soon get RFID, but in 2008 your driver's license will get it. Or you won't fly an airplane, visit a federal building, drive... legally that is. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:42:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Great thinkers on communications

Forbes has an amazing collection of short interviews with great thinkers on the nature of communications -- perfect bite-sized nuggets of good, thought-provoking material.

Noam Chomsky On The Spontaneous Invention Of Language
Language abhors a vacuum. Also: On Why Kids Learn Languages Easily

Jane Goodall On Why Words Hurt
World's foremost expert on chimpanzees says language can make it harder to communicate. Also: On The Dangers Of E-Mail

Vint Cerf On How The Internet Changed Communication
Computer networking pioneer says the Internet is making our world a smaller place. Also: On Networking In Space

Kurt Vonnegut On Telling A Story
Legendary novelist warns that ink on paper is no way to communicate.

Desmond Morris On Symbolic Gestures
There's a lot of meaning in a raised finger. Also: On Close Encounters On Cross-Cultural Communication

Wil Wheaton On Blogging
An instant message conversation with one of the Internet's most popular bloggers.

Link (Thanks, Kestrell!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bruce Sterling's design future manifesto: viva spime!

Bruce Sterling has written a fantastic nonfiction book about the future of industrial design and society, and it's the most thought-provoking thing I've read all year.

Sterling is a brilliant science fiction writer. Virtuoso novels like Distraction have earned him an indelible place in the field.

But as good as his novels are, I like his essays and nonfiction even better. It was his address to the Computer Game Developers' conference that convinced me to drop out of university and write funny multimedia software. His Hacker Crackdown, which chronicles the events that led up to the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is one of the primary reasons I ended up working for the organization.

Bruce's latest nonfiction is a short book from MIT Press called Shaping Things, and it's grounded in a theory of design, technology and history that analyses how the tools that designers deliver change society, and how that changes us, and that changes design. Sterling traces the history of tools from artifacts (farmers' tools) to machines (customers' devices) to products (customers' purchases) to gizmos (end-users' platforms) and to the future, which is defined by what Sterling calls Spimes.

A Spime is a location-aware, environment-aware, self-logging, self-documenting, uniquely identified object that flings off data about itself and its environment in great quantities. A universe of Spimes is an informational universe, and it is the use of this information that informs the most exciting part of Sterling's argument.

In Freakanomics, we learn how accidental collections of fortuitously arranged information allows economists to measure and understand the impact of complex social interactions. A lottery to pick which students can go to what school in Chicago generates data that can be treated as the outcome of a random-selection experiment to investigate the impact of different environments on scholarly achievements, and so on.

A universe of Spimes is a universe of millions of these experiments in potentia. Hackers, activists, advocates, competitors, designers -- all of us -- can query the data-stream to find out what, for example, happens to the high-impact rubber on our sneakers' soles at the end of their life -- are they being recycled into schoolyard playgrounds or are they becoming aerosol carcinogens? Spimes, in Sterling's view, are the hactivist's ultimate tool -- an evidentiary rallying point for making the negative outcomes of industrial practices visible and obvious so that we can redress them.

There are some areas of the book's thesis that need fleshing out still. I think that Sterling glosses over the privacy concerns of location-aware, self-identifying, always-on devices. I also think that the solution of embedding legal restrictions in code is more harmful than beneficial, since so much of law hinges on intangibles, like intent. DRM can't model copyright because copyright gives great leeway to unauthorized users, provided that those users' intentions are good ones -- a critic can legally copy and transmit parts of a work in a way that a satirist can't. A computer can't tell the difference between critics and satirists. Embedding all kinds of laws in code is intractable because law hinges as much on the why of a deed as the what.

That said, this book had me scribbling all over the margins, underlining juicy passages (no one turns a provocative phrase like Sterling, e.g., "The future composts the past") and dog-earing the corners. I can tell that this is a book I'll return to again and again and get more out of it each time I do. It's a wonderful and timely work that is a must-read in an age of ubiquitous computation, universal information resources, and hacker-activist renaissance, there's no better primer for putting it all together.

You first encounter the Spime while searching on a Web site, as a virtual image. The image is likely a glamorous publicity photo, but it is also deep-linked to the genuine, three-dimensional computer-designed engineering specifications of the object -- engineering tolerances, material specifications and so forth.

Until you express your desire for this object, it does not exist. You buy a spime with a credit card, which is to say you legally guarantee that you want it. It therefore comes to be. Your account information is embedded in that transaction. The object is automatically integrated into your spime management inventory system. After the purchase, manufacture, and delivery of your spime, a link in established through customer relations management software, involving you in the future development of this object. This link, at a minimum, includes the full list of spime ingredients (basically, the object's material and energy flows), its unique ID code, its history of ownership, geographical tracking hardware and software to establish its position in space and time, various handy recipes for post-purchase customization, a public site for interaction and live views of the production change, and bluebook value. The spime is able to update itself in your database, and to inform you of required service calls, with appropriate links to service centers.

At the end of its lifespan, the spime is deactivated, removed from your presence by specialists, entirely disassembled, and folded back into the manufacturing stream. The data it generated remains available for historical analysis by a wide variety of interested parties.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:07:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hotel demands of celebrities

I like this collection of celebrities' hotel demands. From Hollywood Rag:

(Mariah Carey:) "Suites fitted out with gold faucets." Also, "new toilet seat must be installed before her arrival." Also, "her own bed linens are flown in advance." Also, "on the two obligatory DVD players, only her own videos may be played." Also, she and her dog both bathe "in expensive French mineral water."

Rod Stewart: "Cannot tolerate any light in the room for his afternoon nap." Sends "a special 'darkening team' to the hotel prior to his visit, whose job it is to seal all cracks of light."

Link

UPDATE: The Hollywood Rag site is down right now. MediaGab has an excerpt too that apparently came from a Cindy Adams column in the NY Post (free reg. required).

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:03:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos from undeveloped film in antique cameras

Here is a gallery of prints made from unprocessed film found in vintage cameras. Since the film was never developed, the photographer of these shots never saw them. This photo came from a bakelite Rolls camera, circa 1939, found in a Chicago junk shop.
Link (via Happy Palace)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:51:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Seed Magazine is back!

Last year, I blogged Seed Magazine, the best new science magazine I've ever read -- a sharp mix of great writing and great analysis of the policy and social implications for science. Seed wasn't about what science discovered -- it was about what those discoveries meant.

Unfortunately, Seed hit financial problems and stopped publishing for a year. The (very) good news is that the magazine is back and a new ish will be hitting the stands shortly. I'm really looking forward to getting my copy! Link (Thanks, Bryan!)

Update: Luke reports finding Seed on stands already!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:14:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Loren Coleman profile

My pal Loren Coleman, noted cryptozoologist and Fortean, is profiled in the Southern Illinoisan. The article recounts how at 12-years-old Loren embarked on his wonderfully strange cryptozoological quest into the myth and reality of hidden animals. From the article:

While Coleman said he does not have a reason to believe in all of the creatures about which he compiles evidence, he does expect Bigfoot to be confirmed as reality.

"I think it's pretty credible. I've talked to police officers in Alabama who found prints that matched those found by conservationists in Florida and game wardens in Illinois," he said of a type of footprint that indicates a large side-attached big toe. "Most people who put fake Bigfoot prints make it look like a giant human foot. All these people finding the same large footprint tells me there's something going on there that's beyond fakery."

For those skeptical of cryptozoology, Coleman points to the many animal discoveries once rumored to be myth. Among these are mountain gorillas, the megamouth shark, the coelacanth (a six-foot-long, walking fish), and most recently, the ivory-billed woodpecker.

"In Brazil, they've found a new monkey every year during the last decade," Coleman said.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:03:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

German WWI officer's photos from the Eastern front

A Flickr user has posted a collection of 127 photos taken by a German army officer on the Eastern Front during WWI. The photos are amazing, running the gamut from ruined buildings and legless corpses lolling in ditches to happy children shoveling snow and mustachioed officers hoisting steins and grinning. Pictured here: bearded POWs on a forced march. Link (Thanks, Brendan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:42:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Library of public domain books preview -- MSFT will add 150k titles in 06

The Open Content Alliance is scanning in hundreds of thousands of public-domain books. According to Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, "At an Internet Archive event in San Francisco tonight 14 libraries and MSN joined the Open Content Alliance. MSN kicked off their association by committing to scan 150k books in 2006! (this is a big deal, in my opinion). "

As if that's not cool enough, there's a preview of one of the ways that you'll be able to read the Alliance's output that's just gone live. It has a gorgeous in-browser book-viewer that combines the best elements of a physical book (tactility, the idiosyncracies of printed type) with an electronic book (zoomability, searchability, text-to-speech audio). It's gorgeous. Link (Thanks, Brewster and Beatrice!)

Update: Gord sez, "readings are done by volunteers.  For example 'International Episode' was read by the Librivox Project which you mentioned in BoingBoing previously. By the way, Librivox now has 7 books completed and available for download with 18 additional books in process. Here's the current Librivox catalog."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:30:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ROKR killed to protect incumbents

Wired has a depressing long feature on how the Motorola ROKR iTunes phone ended up flopping so hard. It comes down to this: Apple didn't want to cannibalize iPod sales, the carriers don't want to cannibalize mobile music sales, and the labels want to control everything.

It's so weird to watch the Stalinist maneuvers among these ostensible giants of the capitalist economy. Since when do innovators give a veto over their products to incumbents? This is like holding back the railroads because the blacksmiths threaten to boycott any steel mill that supplies rails.

My big hope is that a company with some real intestinal fortitude will launch a genuinely competitive device that responds to market demand. Maybe Song, the Chinese mobile phone titan, will take over the global mobile market by just shipping something that out-competes iTunes, the iPod and the stupid carriers, instead of kowtowing to them.

The Motorola team soon discovered that working with Apple means making compromises. A key part of the iTunes package, for example, is FairPlay, Apple's digital rights management software. Ostensibly, DRM exists to benefit the music companies, but it's an equally handy control mechanism for the tech outfits that develop it - companies like Microsoft, Sony, and Apple. FairPlay would set limits on the new phone: It couldn't play music from any major online store but iTunes. It couldn't hold more than 100 songs. "It's obvious why Apple is doing this," says Patrick Parodi, head of the Mobile Entertainment Forum, an industry trade group. "They don't want to cannibalize the iPod..."

The rumor is that one or more carriers told Motorola that if it went ahead with the ROKR, it could forget about selling other phones through their stores. Motorola denies that ever happened, but industry insiders find it awfully plausible. "That's the story, but nobody will cop to it," says Ted Cohen, who's in charge of digital distribution at EMI Music.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:23:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dream house photoshopping contest

Today on the Worth 1000 photoshopping contest: mash up your dream house. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:01:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni on NBC Today Show: weird viral video on the internets

I'll be among the guests on the Today Show Wednesday 10/27 for a breaking! news! alert! about online videos that spread faster than H5N1 virii in a chicken coop.

The centerpiece of Wednesday's segment is a fan-made music video for the Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way, performed by two kids wearing Yao Ming and TMac b-ball jerseys -- while their roommate frags his butt off in the background. It's all credited to "Two Chinese Students," according to Google Video, and was uploaded there in July, 2005, after having been spotted on the China portal Sina.com.cn. Like AYBABTU, Numa Numa, Star Wars Kid, and the rest of its predecessors, this video now inhabits gazillions of otherwise productive desktops worldwide.

Why we love these silly homebaked videos so, I do not know. But they're a great argument for sensible copyright reform -- after all, funny though it may be, what these two kids in China created could be considered a violation of intellectual property laws. Not to mention good taste.
Link to file.
TODAY airs 7-10am on NBC.

Reader comment: Tian says,

The duo are called "Back Dorm Boys" (parody of BackstreetBoys) and they are students at Guangdong Arts Institute. After their spoof music video "Radio in my head" was released in China's web portal, Motorola China has asked them to endorse their new mobile phones.

In the video (one is wearing yellow tee, and the other white ringer tee), the duo's song was interrupted by one girlfriend called to complain about being neglected. The boy hangs up on her and continue to jam. I have collected all their work on my site: Link. Radio21 China has a large website dedicated to this duo: Link. The site is in Chinese, but there are plenty of photos.

Sina China has all BDB's videos roster posted on their site: Link

Reader comment: James says,

I guess lipsyncing backstreet boys is pretty popular. Here's a few other videos of asian lip syncers. Link, (Same students), Link.

Reader comment: Pat says,

Here's another lypsync act -- In this one, they're lip-syncing to R. Kelly's "Ignition." Plenty of mirrors if you search by filename on Google. Link to mpeg.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:01:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Cosplayers in the workplace

Coswork: a modest but eerily compelling gallery of cosplayers in office settings. Link (Thanks, Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:54:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese hotel chain offers Hello Kitty weddings

The Daiichi Hanyu hotel chain in Japan will begin offering Hello Kitty themed weddings next week. Options include "Hello Kitty" and "Dear Daniel" character escorts for the ceremony, and more Hello Kitty merch than you can shake a plastic paw at: ring pillows, placecards, bouquets, ad nauseum. I hope they provide Hello Kitty themed vomit buckets for wedding guests who experience unexpected bouts of cutesickness. Link.
(Thanks, Spirit Fingers)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:26:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Napoleon Dynamite soundboard

A soundboard is a collection of dialog snippets from a movie that you can use to make prank calls. This Napoleon Dynamite soundboard is especially good. Check out the recordings of prank calls made with this sound board and other soundboards. Link (Thanks Robin)

Reader comment: Fred Benenson says: "Saw the Napolean Dynamite soundboard, and figured I'd post one that I made with Avery Brooks using clips of the David Brent character from the BBC's The Office. His blabbering makes for some very funy conversations. Enjoy!"

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:52:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jolly Green Giant, RIP

Elmer "Len" Dresslar, Jr., the voice of the Jolly Green Giant, has died. He was 80 years old. Dresslar was a jazz singer in the group Singers Unlimited but became best known for vocalizing "Ho, ho, Ho" on more than four decades of TV commercials. Link

UPDATE: Reader Steven Henry reminds me of this previous BB post about a vintage sticker collection, including one that says, "Jolly Green Giant, Rest In Peas" Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:59:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japan developing remote control for humans

Luminifer says: "Apparently [this device] can alter people's sense of balance to cause them to walk in a certain path."

A special headset was placed on my cranium by my hosts during a recent demonstration at an NTT research center. It sent a very low voltage electric current from the back of my ears through my head -- either from left to right or right to left, depending on which way the joystick on a remote-control was moved.

I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right. I was convinced -- mistakenly -- that this was the only way to maintain my balance.

The phenomenon is painless but dramatic. Your feet start to move before you know it. I could even remote-control myself by taking the switch into my own hands.

Link (Previous coverage on Boing Boing here)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:58:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mr Angry and Mrs Calm optical illusion

This is one of the neatest optical illusions I've ever seen. Viewed up close, Mr Angry is on the left and Mrs Calm is on the right. If you back up, they swap places. Even works if you print it out. Link (thanks, suckup!)

Reader comment: Hello, Just wanted to send a followup to the Mr. Angry and Mrs. Calm optical illusion post on Boing Boing.  My name is Michael Mack and I worked with Dr. Aude Oliva (she authored the paper about this illusion with Dr. Philippe Schyns) for a couple years at Michigan State University before she went to MIT (where she is now).  I didn't do any work directly related to this particular paper, but we worked quite a bit on using this type of illusion for other psychological experiments in perception and vision.  A slightly more famous example of this illusion deal with switching between Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair (http://cvcl.mit.edu/gallery.htm).  Dr. Oliva also has a with a couple more examples (http://cvcl.mit.edu/Papers/HybridFaces_AudeOliva.pdf). 

The illusion works by manipulating the spatial frequencies of the image.  The low spatial frequencies (the rough, fuzzy shape information of an image) from one image (e.g. Mr. Angy) are combined with the high spatial frequencies (the sharp edge information of an image) from a different image (e.g. Mrs. Calm).  When viewing this hybrid image at a close distance, our perceptual system is able to extract and process the high spatial frequencies and thus we see the image where the high spatial frequencies were taken from.  When viewing the hybrid image at a distance further away, our perceptual system can no longer extract the high spatial frequencies meaning we only see the low spatial frequency information, thus we see the other image.  You can also get a switch in the hybrid image by squinting."

Aude's website is: http://cvcl.mit.edu/
My website is: http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~michael.mack

Thanks,
Mike

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:52:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man drives miles with body in windshield

A 93-year-old driver in St. Petersburg, Florida hit and killed a pedestrian last week. Then, he drove three miles with the body hanging out of his windshield. After he was stopped by police, the driver apparently said that the body fell from the sky. From the St. Petersburg Times:

The driver, who lives in Pinellas Park, told police that he was headed home. Pinellas Park, however, is miles in the opposite direction.

"Obviously, he was confused," (police officer Mike) Jockers said. "Incredibly confused."

The driver was taken to Bayfront Medical Center for evaluation.

He will probably not face criminal charges, as he appeared unaware that he had been involved in an accident, Jockers said.

Link (via Fortean Times)

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:17:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kader Attia's Flying Rats

French artist Kader Attia's Flying Rats installation at the Biennale de Lyon is an urbanite's Hitchockian nightmare. From a description of the work posted to AEIOU Excuse My French:

Kader Attia presents, here, an installation whose title is taken from the English expression flying rats, which refers to pigeons : the visitors find themselves face to face with a birdcage containing 150 pigeons and 45 children made from mousse mixed with compacted bird grain. In what seems to be a recreation courtyard, girls and boys play with marbles or squabble while the pigeons are slowly devouring them. Throughout the exhibition, it will be the pigeons that appropriate the space provoking the evolution of the piece. With all the utilisation precautions connected with a volatile security and vigorous hygiene rules, the birdcage will therefore become a natural habitat, a microcosm in which the pigeons will make there nest and will devour the children. Beyond the cruelty of the scene, Kader Attia wishes to remind us that childhood is probably the period in the life that we see further and further behind us but still think of very nostalgically.

Link (Thanks, Alex Boucherot!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:56:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coop builds a miniature stonermobile

Artist Coop has been procrastinating allowing his creative juices to ferment by making a miniature stonermobile out of model car kit parts.

Back when I was a tot, most of the stonermobiles achieved that bitchin' rake by installing spring shackles in the back. Probably not the most stable rear end setup, but nothing else says "I dropped out of high school" like some old deathtrap teetering high in the air on those spring shackles.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:17:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Katamari Damacy: the text adventure

This is insanely awesome: a walk-through for a theoretical text-adventure game based on Katamari Damacy, a mind-altering video game that plays like a cross between the Eames's Powers of Ten and Tetris.

You are standing on the floor of a bedroom.
Your Katamari is 10cm.

> N

There is a PAPER CLIP here.

> ROLL CLIP

I do not know what a CLIP is.

> ROLL PAPER CLIP

You roll up the PAPER CLIP.

You are standing on the floor of a bedroom.

> LOOK KATAMARI

Your Katamari is 10.2cm.

> N You are standing on the floor of a bedroom.
There is a bottle of WHITE OUT here.

> ROLL WHITE OUT

You attempt to roll the WHITE OUT. You bounce back with a jarring force!

You are standing on the floor of a bedroom.
There is a bottle of WHITE OUT here.

> INVENTORY

Your Katamari contains the following items:
PAPER CLIP

Link (Thanks, Ruxxell!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:17:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO backup your DVDs

Mark Pilgrim says,

Following up on the wildly popular guides on converting DVDs and other video files for your video iPod, I've put together a short video tutorial on how to use MacTheRipper and DVD2OneX to backup your DVDs on Mac OS X.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:51:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tricks with poker chip

Pokerchiptricks.com has instructions on fun ways to fiddle with poker chips.

Twirl Flick by Anders Lundkvist - A variation of the twirl where only half of a twirl is done. The chip is tossed or “flicked” over the hand, across the body, and caught with the opposite hand.

Bounce Back by Anders Lundkvist - Throw a chip up into the air with backspin. Once the poker chip bounces on a soft surface it should bounce back and you can catch it next to the other poker chips.

Drifter by Anders Lundkvist - Slam a chip onto the surface so that it runs forward and the backspin created will bring the chip back to you.

Link (thanks, Nick!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:00:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CNN Showbiz Tonight: Extreme Cellphones, part 2 (Xeni and other guests)

Tonight (Tuesday), CNN Showbiz Tonight will air the second in a series of trend reports on mobile tech and entertainment. Guests tonight include Forrester veep Maribel Lopez, Leo Laporte (author of the 2006 Gadget Guide), and me. Program airs live on Headline News at 7 p.m. and replays at 11 p.m. Eastern (= 4PM and 8PM Pacific). Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:42:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pix of gigantic heaps of discarded objects

Chris Jordan photographs unbelievably gigantic heaps of discarded, mass produced objects (see the adjascent photo of a mountain of mobile phone chargers). The effect is ghastly and gorgeous at once -- we make a lot of stuff and it goes obsolete goddamned fast, by golly. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:36:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pet cemetery dug up to clear way for Hampton Inn

Kim sez, "In Raleigh, NC, Jerry Rogers has accepted $750,000 and promised to clear the land along Brier Creek of thirty-plus years of pet burials, so American Asset Corp. can build a Hampton Inn. Or should we say a haunted Hampton Inn? Staff are digging up lovingly inscribed monuments, dogtags, collars, favorite blankies and the kinds of bones puppies aren't supposed to gnaw on, contacting owners when they know where to find them, and hoping the nightmares don't start." Link (Thanks, Kim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:31:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google's upcoming database service

From John Battelle's Searchblog:

Word is ripping around the web that Google is testing a new subdomain called base.google.com. A screen shot - the site has been up and down - shows a Google database of sorts where you can "Post your items on Google." It's a tagged database of stuff that heads directly into the world of Paul Ford's classic "Google Takes All" essay. Apparently this will be debuted at Google's invite only Zeitgeist conference today. Philipp has more.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:23:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The story of Polio told in comic book form

This clever graphic novelette stars an anthropomorphic polio virus telling its story in a group therapy session. What a fun way to teach people about viral epidemics. It reminds me of Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe series.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:58:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Q: What does a sumo wrestler post on his blog?

A: Anything he damn well wants to. ROFL!

Link.
(Thanks, Jeshii, who offers a rough translation of some of the sumo champ's posts here)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:39:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO build a working Dalek

Dalek City is the home of the Dalek Builders' Guild, a group of Dr Who enthusiasts who build lavish, elaborate replica Daleks with astonishingly complete mechanisization and styling. The build-diaries here are comprehensive enough that you could probably kick-start your own Dalek homebrewing hobby off of them. Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:38:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

'70s pinups from Spain

Chicas de calendario de los años 70s. Link.
(gracias, karramarro) Lo siento mucho, pero este sitio sexy-fetich ya no trabaja. Que lastima, dude.

Update: This photoset (and, it appears, the user account associated with it) is no longer available on Flickr. Some Boing Boing readers wrote in asking whether the Flickr took the images down because they violated content guidelines or some such cause, and Flickr replied: "We did not remove them or request that the user remove them because of their adult nature, IP status or any similar reason."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:33:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Greenpeace tee-design contest: FUKC

Gillo sez, "At Greenpeace we are running a t-shirt design competition for our Kleercut campaign, the winner will have his/her design printed on Greenpeace t-shirts. Kleercut is a campaign against Kimberly Clark, Kleenex tissues (and toilet paper) manufacturers. Have a look at the site for more details. The idea is to have a contest for the best t-shirt design with the acronym 'FUKC' that needs to be accompanied somewhere on the t-shirt by the saying explicitly 'Forget Using Kimberly-Clark'" Link (Thanks, Gillo!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:27:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Casio: cool cameras, terrible service -- buy something else

Casio has just announced yet another of their Exilim cameras, this one in six megapixels, with a cool new preset for taking pictures of your existing paper pictures in your photo albums.

Normally I'd be drooling for the chance to buy one of these. The Exilims have a great UI, they're a great size, and they take great pictures.

But I have had a string of unimaginably crappy experiences with the company and after owning and giving away eight or nine of these things, I've come to the end of my love-affair with Casio.

Here's the problem in a nutshell. The cameras are very failure prone, and the repair service is terrible, and the company doesn't honor its warranties.

I had one of these cameras go south last October, the lens frozen halfway out of the camera. The thing was only a few weeks old, so I took it in for service. Months later, they still hadn't fixed it. The UK depot was "awaiting parts" but they couldn't tell me when they expected to get them in. It's one thing when a third party repair place can't get parts, but when the manufacturer is doing the repairs, there's no one to blame for these delays except the manufacturer -- in other words, if Casio can't ship Casio parts to Casio, it is Casio's fault, not the fault of an unfair universe.

Then I upgraded to the S100, which had a big, gorgeous screen. Unfortunately, the big, gorgeous screen is designed to stick out from the camera so that if there's any compression at all on the device while it's in your pocket (these are marketed as "pocket cameras") it's the ultra-fragile screen that bears the brunt of it. This is just stupid design, and competing cameras don't make this mistake.

Within a month, the screen had cracked. I brought it in for warranty service, but was told that the warranty wouldn't cover it. It was "damaged," not defective. The repairs would cost 90 pounds, nearly the price of a new camera. What's more, Casio once again couldn't get parts for the camera, so it took more than a month to get a simple -- but wildly overpriced -- repair on a brand new, badly designed camera. To make matters worse, they charged my credit card days after they returned the camera, and unfortunately, I had cancelled that card after it was stolen. Instead of calling me to get a new credit card number, Casio sent the bill to a collection agency, so when I got home from my latest round of travel, there was a note threatening to have me arrested for nonpayment of the bill (!).

I'm an idiot. I bought another of these cameras, the S500, which is currently the top of Casio's line. It, too, has a screen that protrudes from the camera's body, and it, too, cracked within a month. The company is charging me another 90 pounds to fix this thing, and they've had it since October 4. No parts, you see.

So that's it for me and Casio -- it's a shame. The cameras are small, pretty and work well. But they suffer from flawed designs and a flawed manufacturer that treats repair customers like crap, and I can't think of a single good reason to go on giving them my business, no matter how cool this new six megapixel camera sounds. Link (via Shiny Shiny)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:15:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shaft lyrics in Chaucerian English

Translating the lyrics from the Shaft theme into Chaucerian English isn't just cool -- it's practically what the Internet was invented for.

Wha be tha blake prevy lawe
That bene wantoun too alle tha feres?
SHAFT!
Ya damne righte!

Wha be tha carl tha riske is hals wolt
Fro is allye leve?
SHAFT!
Konne ye?

Link (via MeFi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:36:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ultra hi-rez monkey-brain section scans

BrainMaps.org provides endlessly fascinating ultra-hi-rez scans of sectioned monkey brains as interactive Flash apps and as layered Photoshop files.

We are providing for free use a high resolution histological atlas of the rhesus monkey brain. The first generation atlas has been prepared from three, celloidin-embedded rhesus (Macaca mulatta) brains, serially sectioned at a thickness of 40 microns in the frontal (coronal), sagittal or horizontal planes and stained by the Nissl stain.

For the first iteration of the atlas, we have uploaded images of the series of frontal sections, scanned at 2,666 D.P.I., and presented at approximately 800 micron intervals through the brain. The sections contain fiduciary marks obtained by inserting electrodes into the brain at defined stereotaxic coordinates before perfusing the animal. Two horizontal tracks were made at Horsley-Clarke coordinates: horizontal 0.0 and +10.0 mm, both at lateral 5.0mm; two vertical tracks made at AP +25.0mm and AP 0.0mm, both at lateral 10.0mm.

The images are best opened in Photoshop® in order to preserve the capacity to turn the layers on or off. Each consists of four layers: a layer containing the image of the histological section, registered to its neighbors on the basis of the fiduciary marks; a layer consisting of one vertical line at lateral 5mm, and two horizontal lines at horizontal 0mm and +10mm; a layer of type showing the AP position of the section and labeling of key structures using a standard abbreviation system; a template layer giving the outlines of the section and of the larger grey and white matter components.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:29:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hunting for fake words in the dictionary

This piece from last August's New Yorker documents the fascinating hunt for the fake word inserted into the New Oxford American Dictionary. These fake words are inserted by dictionary editors as a kind of watermark to catch competitors who copy their dictionaries wholesale. The process of figuring out which of the words in the NOAD was the fake was quite involved, with six candidates sent around to a panel of distinguished language-scholars who had a vigorous debate about whether each word was a fake:

The six words and their definitions were e-mailed to nine lexicographical authorities. Anne Soukhanov, the U.S. General Editor of Encarta Webster's, was the first to weigh in. "Ess-kwa-val-ee-ohnce--I want to pronounce it in the French manner--is your culprit," she said. Six other experts also fingered "esquivalience," citing various rationales. "It's just trying a little too hard," said Wendalyn Nichols, the editor-in-chief of the newsletter "Copy Editor" and a onetime editorial director of Random House Reference. "If it's derived from esquiver, it wouldn't have that ending. Nothing linguistically would give rise to the 'l.' " The Times' crossword-puzzle editor, Will Shortz, explained, "I simply can't believe such a thing goes back to the nineteenth century." Steve Kleinedler, a senior editor of the American Heritage Dictionary, said, "The stress pattern is strange." The most personal of the rationales belonged to Eli Horowitz, an editor of the literary anthology "The Future Dictionary of America," who complained, "I had to read it a few times, and I resent that."

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:23:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Empire Strikes Back remade as 211k animated pixelart GIF

Last week, I blogged an hilarious little animated GIF that acted out all the high points of Star Wars Episode IV as pixelart animations. Now there's a sequel that does the same thing to Empire Strikes Back, in a 211k animated GIF. Link (Thanks, Collapsibletank!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:37:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Set: geeky card-game that rewires your brain

Last week on a rainy afternoon in Amsterdam, I ended up playing a few hands of Set on a friend's houseboat. I'd watched the game played once before at a nerdy event, and the fiendish intensity of the players was a gigantic warning-sign -- this was a game with an event-horizon, something that would suck me in and never let me out again.

It's true: Set is amazingly addictive, a nerdy game of great fascination, one that makes your brain reel and reconfigure itself, so the whole world starts to appear Set-like after a few hours' play.

The dealer puts down twelve cards, and players hunch over them, trying to find three-card sets. For three cards to form a set, each of their attributes must either match or diverge. There are four attributes with three possible configurations each: shading (solid, outline, grey); color (blue, red, green); number (one, two, three) and shape (rectangle, oval, squiggle). It's a little like Boggle in that the winning strategy is a combination of directed searching and general unfocusing of the eyes and trusting to intuition to make the sets pop out of the well. Players are penalized for calling out false sets, which happens all the time, since once you engage the pattern-matching centers of your brain, they can't help but see phantom sets in the cards.

Play this long enough and every bit of the world around you turns into Set -- the three chairs are matched as rectangles, unmatched in color, but, darn it, shaded the same. No set. Link

Update: Here's a PalmOS version -- thanks, Kostia!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:31:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Girl-game damned by boy reviewer, redeemed with hilarious 1-liner

Alice from Wonderland happened upon a game-reviewer on IGN who damned the girl-targeted Bratz video game for teaching girls that there's money to be had just by picking it up off the ground. Alice's one-line rebuttal is a laugh-out-loud beaut:

Just look at how the Bratz earn money. After completing arbitrary assignments players are rewarded with the equivalent of cash. Okay. But, most of the time just walking around yields coin. Money appears on the ground! This is what we're teaching our girls?

Dude ... Sonic. Mario. Zelda.

Zing! Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:22:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory speaking in Chapel Hill, NC next week

I'm speaking at a conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina next week on Nov 1/2. The event is sponsored by iBiblio, the Long Now Foundation and Red Hat, and I'll be speaking about copy restriction technologies and the risk that they present to the future of technology. There's a podcast and a telecast in case you can't make it to UNC:

The Information Revolution has brought into question the wisdom of intellectual property regimes and their relationship to society, culture, jurisprudence, commerce, and government. Intellectual property law is built upon historical notions of tangible property ownership—with the basic premise of restricting access by others. By contrast, the Information Revolution is grounded in concepts of enhanced access and a more universal sense of ownership. Cultural, social, intellectual, and economic growth must be driven by creativity and innovation, and successful growth increasingly depends upon the dissemination of information and application of knowledge. The University Of North Carolina Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity, and the Innovation Process will invite 100 participants to question whether creativity and innovation can fully flourish under the current intellectual property regimes. By making the inquiry intellectual property regimes, rather than just intellectual property law, the Symposium can examine business, political, and cultural practices as well as jurisprudence.

Through support from Red Hat, and in cooperation with the Long Now Foundation and Ibiblio, the Symposium will be held November 1 & 2, 2005 in Chapel Hill and will draw participants from diverse disciplines -- from lawyers to chefs -- to take a hard look at all of the languages of creativity and innovation; in order to determine how current intellectual property regimes affect creative incentives. The Symposium will address key areas of concern, including Copyright, Patents, Open Source Code, Digital Rights Management, Downloading & Peer to Peer Revolution, Public Domain, Government Involvement and Regulation, and University/Industry Collaboration. The approach will be participatory and collaborative, and the focus of the Symposium will be to understand the creative incentives necessary for cultural, social, intellectual, and economic innovation and growth. An open public session will also provide the opportunity to take the dialog to a broader audience.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:17:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Skype's security reviewed

One of the most exciting things about Skype is its encryption -- when you use AIM or other IM and VoIP applications, chances are that your communications are in the clear and therefore easily eavesdropped-upon (especially on public WiFi networks).

Skype offers encryption by default, but the scrambling system has been a secret until now. It's a truism in security that a security system that is kept secret is a not secure. As Bruce Schneier says, "Anyone can design a security system so clever that he can't think of a way of breaking it," so public review of security (through which other skilled practitioners investigate the system for flaws and vulnerabilities) is critical to achieving robust security.

Now Skype has done a limited review of its crypto, paying an independent lab to review the security measures in place. The lab has given it a clean bill of health, which is encouraging news. Still, this seems to me to be only one step in the right direction.

After all, what if there is a flaw in the security that eludes both Skype and its sole evaluator? Previously, this has meant that attackers have been able to evade the crypto with impunity, without users or developers even knowing that there is a bug that needs fixing -- a true fool's paradise.

A much better answer would be for Skype to disclose its code -- either under a free software license or simply for peer-review. That way every interested party could review and verify Skype's security claims.

We're happy to report that the work is now complete and you can download the full report from Skype security center (PGP signature). There's also an executive summary available. Note that while the full report was compiled by Dr. Tom Berson from Anagram Laboratories, the summary is written in-house by Skype based on the full report.

In short, the conclusion of the report is that Skype uses standards-based methods and a sound design to secure its users, software and system, and does what it says -- is secure. Of course, security is never "done", so security continues to be an important track in all Skype developments and operations.

Link (via Hack the Planet)

Update: OpenSSL maintainer Ben Laurie points out the thread that starts here in which cryptographers are reading the tea-leaves on the analysis very closely and suggesting that there's lots to worry about it you're relying on Skype crypto to keep your conversations private.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:15:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MAD Magazine cover explorer -- guaranteed clicktrance

Last week, I blogged Jim Bumgardner's amazing science fiction cover explorer, a Flash app displaying tiny thumbnails of thousands of covers of old pulp sf mags. Mouse over them and they zoom up to full size, and become links to a bibliographic page.

Now Jim's done it again, with a collection of pictures of drums and -- swoon! -- a collection of MAD Magazine covers. Hovering over those old MAD covers and watching them zoom up put me in a nostalgic clicktrance. MAD Magazine Cover Explorer Link, Drum Explorer Link (Thanks, Jim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:00:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Toronto ISP encourages connection sharing

Wireless Nomad is a bandwidth co-op in Toronto that encourages you to share your connection over wired and wireless links. Damien Fox sez:

Basically, we are an ISP co-op that runs DSL lines where we have to, uses mesh networking where we can, gets homes and businesses online cheap, and provides free wireless Internet access to the community around our subscribers.

High-speed Internet for homes is $30 a month, and businesses are $50 a month.  Because we are a co-op, people actually own their own Internet connection - and since freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, this is another step towards putting people in control of their communications and their community.  The medium is the message, as we've been told, and we think community-owned Internet with free wireless for everyone says a lot.

Link (Thanks, Damien!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:51:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYU DRM protest rain-check

Fred sez, "Just wanted to post an update about the DRM Protest that we're organizing at Free Culture @ NYU. Since the weather for NYC is looking like torrential rain tomorrow night (something that doesn't mix with flyers and sandwich boards), we've rescheduled our DRM protest at the Virgin Megastore for Thursday October 27th at the same time. So, See you at 7pm at 14th Street and Broadway! Thanks!" Link (Thanks, Fred!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:28:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO set an alarm for light sleep periods

Waking up to a buzzer alarm or loud music is traumatic -- doubly so if you get woken up in the middle of a dream, when your sleep is deepest. Ideally, your alarm clock would only go off while you were in light sleep. You can wear EEGs or special watches that do this, but wearing an EEG to bed is a little, you know, impractical. Here's a method for using a music/buzzer alarm-clock to wake yourself up during light sleep, without disturbing a dream.

* Set an alarm to go off before you want to wake up.
* Make the alarm really quiet radio or music.
* Set a second alarm to go off at the latest time you want to wake up.
* Make the alarm the usual loudness.

The whole point is that the first alarm should be so quiet that it will only wake you up if you're in "light" sleep. Waking up in "light" sleep should leave you feeling more refreshed than waking up in "deep" sleep. The second alarm is the back up to make sure that you wake up in time :).

Link (Thanks, Vincent!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:25:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, October 24, 2005

In Memoriam: Rosa Parks, civil rights icon, at age 92

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:26:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unveiling of second Long Now clock in Bay Area: photos

The Long Now Foundation held a first-ever public unveiling of the Orrery clock last night in Marin County. Snip from project documentation:

The Orrery is a ten foot tall planet tracking display. The lower half is a mechanical binary calculation engine. Each layer is calculating the orbit if one of the six human eye visible planets (Mercury through Saturn) to 28 bits of accuracy. The Orrery is primarily made of monel (a nickel copper alloy), and stainless steel. The planet spheres are ground from natural stones that resemble each planet they represent.

Boing Boing pal Jake Appelbaum was present, and shot many fine photos. Look, Neal Stephenson was there! So was Mike Lynn -- the fellow who got into all that trouble last year over the Cisco security weaknesses. And also present, of course, was the man behind it all: Danny Hillis (also shown in image above).

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:11:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eco-friendly erotic spanking paddles

Be sure to take off your Birkenstocks before beginning a disciplinary session with "BadAss Paddles," the ecologically sound spank accessory made of recycled tire tread and street sign aluminum. Leaves distinctive tread marks on skin, even with mild slap action. Your ass may not be sustainable, but the product design is.
Link (thanks, john t unger)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:32:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pakistani blogger documents quake relief efforts

Sajjad Zaidi has taken a leave from his job at an ISP in Islamabad to join the aid relief distribution in remote areas. He is documenting what he sees on his blog in photos and text.

The first village in the Neelum valley that isn't yet accessible by road is Kamsar. It is where refugees from Occupied Kashmir (Indian Administered Kashmir) have lived since the 1990s. As we later realized, the contrast between this group of amazing people and the thugs we encountered elsewhere was astonishing. Kamsar camp Kamsar camp

We got news that no medical teams had reached this village yet and that was what made us choose to go there. After a hike of about 45 minutes, Asif and I got there, while the other three lagged a long way behind, somewhere out of sight. Imtiaz, a young man in his 20s, greeted us and offered all the help he could muster. When no suitable place to setup camp could be found, he emptied his own tent. We learned that the village elder was his brother and used to teach in the local school, but was crushed to death when it collapsed during the earthquake. He left behind this cute child who Imtiaz now looks after.

Link (Thanks, Stuart)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:12:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Principal says students can't keep blogs or MySpace profiles

A blog isn't just fun, says a Catholic school principal in New Jersey --

It's an open invitation to predators and an activity that Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, the Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.

(Because if there's one thing Catholic Church officials know about first-hand, it's the behavior patterns of sexual predators.)

Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told. While public and private schools routinely block access to noneducational Web sites on school computers, Pope John's order reaches into students' homes.

The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said.

(...) "The idea of a private school regulating student activity outside of school is not unheard of and there is a long tradition in it," said Kevin Bankston, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San-Francisco-based defender of online civil liberties.

Link (Thanks, peter caputa)

Reader comment: Lance says,

According to this bit of trivia, the Pope whose name is above the door of the "no student blogging allowed" school died during sex. The information isn't cited on that page, but a quick Google search turned up the same data on other pages, so it's at least a widely held belief.

Link to "Popes who died during sex," not to be confused with "Popes who died while updating their blogs."

Reader comment: de facto papal factchecker Conor says,

Your original source mangled the school's and therefore the Pope's name by dropping an 'X'. It should have read John XXIII, a well-regarded, recent pontiff and not one a thousand years dead. Pope John XXIII died of stomach cancer on June 3 1963, Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:01:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

20% of your genes are belong to them

A report in this week's issue of Science says 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States:

The study (...) is the first time that a detailed map has been created to match patents to specific physical locations on the human genome. Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs.

"It might come as a surprise to many people that in the U.S. patent system human DNA is treated like other natural chemical products," said Fiona Murray, a business and science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and a co-author of the study.

Link (via medicalinformaticsinsider, thanks, Zed)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:57:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Superb old poster designs, still in use

Vidiot says,

"I saw this poster while wandering around NYC's Lower East Side. I loved the retro design, so I went to the URL on the bottom and found a whole slew of wonderful old-school poster designs. I'm not sure you can get much better than #506, #561, or #562."
Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:51:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Podcast of spooky Star Wars sounds for haunting houses

Boing Boing pal Bonnie Burton says,

This Halloween, have General Grievous from "Revenge of the Sith" greet youngsters as they come to your door looking for treats. The new AudioCast is filled with terrifying sounds from the Star Wars galaxy and features all NEW dialogue by Matthew Wood as General Grievous. There is a free preview of the special Halloween soundtrack on the site complete with General Grievous saying "Trick or Treat." However, for the full downloadable 18-minute audio file you have to be a Hyperspace fan club member.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:47:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Condom patent lawsuit story on Salon

Salon's Andrew Leonard has written a terrific story about a condom patent lawsuit.

A company called Portfolio Technologies (PTI) is suing the conglomerate that owns the makers of Trojan condoms, who recently brought to market a popular condom called the Twisted Pleasure.

PTI owns the rights to two patents embodied in the legendary Pleasure Plus condom, a "male prophylactic device" that sent a thrill through the industry and condom aficionados with its P-shaped "pouch on pouch" design some 15 years ago. Inside a baggy pouch at the end of the condom, the Pleasure Plus included an extra dab of latex that stimulated the man at just the point where other condoms let him down.

PTI believes that the Twisted Pleasure infringes on its patents and claims that its successful entry into the condom marketplace has caused PTI severe economic pain. An estimated 6 to 9 billion condoms are used worldwide each year -- so getting an edge on the competition can mean serious profits.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:54:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How much is your blog worth?

Here's a snippet of code you can add to your blog to show the world how much it is worth, based on Tristan Louis's analysis of the AOL-WeblogsInc deal using Technorati's data.
Link (thanks, AxiomShell!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:48:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CNN Showbiz Tonight: "Extreme Cellphones" (Xeni + other guests)

Tonight (Monday) and tomorrow (Tuesday), CNN Showbiz Tonight will air a series of reports about mobile technology and entertainment. I'll be among the guests in each. The program airs live on Headline News at 7 p.m. and replays at 11 p.m. Eastern, and 4PM and 8PM Pacific. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:02:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BoB award noms for world "freedom of expression" blogs

German radio station Deutsche Welle has just published the list of nominees for its weblog contest -- the BoBs -- including a "freedom of expression" category. Bloggers nominated for that honor by Reporters Without Borders include Mokhtar Yahyaoui of Tunisia, who is currently on a hunger strike to protest his government's repressive policies regarding free speech. Contest results will be announced on 21 November, (drum roll) and the nominees are:

- China Digital Times. A news blog about China that published by expats.

- Chronique déplaisante d'une dictature ordinaire: A French resident in Addis Ababa blogs about repression in Ethiopia, interviews Ethiopian dissidents.

- Manal and Alaa Bit Bucket. Egyptian blog with discussion forum and HOWTO resour, but also a resources for Arabic-speakers who wish set up blogs of their own.

- Wang Yi's microphone. Political and social critique from a China-based writer.

- Hanif Mazrooie. Tha Iranian journalist who writes this blog spent a month in prison because of it last year.

- Parastood. Long-running Iranian blog known for frank criticism.

- Colombian realities. Maintained by an independent Colombian journalist.

- Yahyaoui. Blog penned by former judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, one of Tunisia's leading political dissidents and uncle of cyber-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui. His domain was recently rendered unavailable through a hostile "pirate takeover", but is still reachable via wayback machine or google cache.

The RSF announcement states:

Mr. Yahyaoui is one of seven Tunisian civil society figures who are currently on hunger strike in protest against the lack of freedom in Tunisia, where his blog is censored, along with dozens of others. Nonetheless, Tunis is to host the World Summit on the Information Society on 16-18 November, which is being organised under the aegis of the United Nations.

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

Help Norway build an open streaming video platform!

Last week, I blogged about how Norway's public service broadcaster had launched a downloadable video service that would only be usable through Microsoft's media player, delivering what amounted to a gigantic subsidy to an American technology company by giving it sole control over who could make a device that capitalized on the publicly funded video in the broadcaster's archive. (A Microsoft "evangelist" posted an angry response, and I replied)

The public service broadcaster and the Norwegian people have been having a vigorous discussion online about this and the upshot is that the broadcaster is seeking advice on building an open streaming platform to deliver Norway's video to Norwegians without delivering an advantage to any technology company or platform. They're seeking your input on building this system.

Below you'll find a link to a site where you can join the discussion: if you have expertise to offer in this field, here's the place to go:

But - to speed up the work, could we use the power of the internet to gather forces and draft a solution? Something that we could point broadcasters to when they say that there is no alternative? Because, I am afraid that this discussion is quite ineffective as long as the general opinion is that no alternative exist. If I could reach out to the BoingBoing and Slashdot crowd, the brains, geeks, programmers and utterly talented people out there. Maybe we could find the solution that is as real as Firefox is for replacing IE?

The internet is an excellent tool for doing more than pointing out what’s wrong. It’s absolutely capable of helping find a solution as well.

I will be more than happy if this results in the broadcasters realizing that they are simply not informed, and that a complete and working alternative is right there in front of them.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:13:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Action figure sculptor

BB pal Gil Kaufman wrote a great piece for MTV.com today about Paul Brooke, a sculptor of action figures who lives in my old hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. (Note: I recognized Paul from the 1980s and early 1990s when he played around town in excellent No Wave bands Roundhead and Red Math.) From MTV.com:

After college, Brooke got work as a "doll-eye specialist" at Kenner Toys working on Barbie and Baby Alive, when he discovered his real passion. "Pretty soon after that I started building models, and they bumped me up to a full-time model maker, which is when I got into sculpting," said Brooke, who used to play bass in local bands Red Math and Roundhead.

"I was a girl's-toy sculptor for a while then I got on boy's toys and toward the end of my time there I got on the G.I. Joe line and that's when I killed the kung-fu grip." Brooke had the unheard of idea of dropping the signature move for the macho doll and replacing it with the "gung-ho" grip, which featured added points of articulation and made Joe even more of a badass.

Brooke, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, is soft-spoken and moves slowly around his small basement studio, where a fat cat makes himself comfortable on a stool and trays of heads, feet and silver and flesh-colored hands are lying about. His work area is littered with soldering guns, crock pots for cooking his special molding wax, casts of various figures and, for no apparent reason, a "Beverly Hills, 90210" miniature hair dryer signed by Tori Spelling. He uses dental tools and homemade implements made out of looped guitar strings to do his sculpting, which involves hours and sometimes days of painstaking detail work to get something like the folds in Napoleon Dynamite's jeans or the clumps of Johnny Depp's dreadlocked hair just right.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:00:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iPod Shuffle cross cap

iBelieve is a replacement cap and lanyard to convert the iPod Shuffle into a cross. Celebrate the cult of Mac for just $12.95. From the iBelieve site:

Inspired by the world's obsession and devotion to the iPod, iBelieve... is a social commentary on the fastest growing religion in the world.

The iBelieve is constructed using the same materials and precision ball bearing snap fit as your existing Shuffle cap so you can relax knowing your precious soundtrack is safe.

Just toss your old cap habit, pop on the divine iBelieve and rejoice!

Amen (via MoCo Loco)

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:27:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

700 imaginary hobo names

John Hodgman reads 700 wonderfully evocative fantasy hobo names in this very long spoken word song poem. Here's an idea -- 700 cartoonists volunteer to draw one of the 700 hoboes listed here. I'll do #134: "Yum Yum Sinclair Snowball Eater."Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:16:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aubrey de Grey's seven-step plan to cure aging

The Chronicle has a longish profile of British longevity researcher Aubrey de Grey, outlining his seven-step plan to cure aging. He claims to have already saved hundreds of thousands of people from dying of old age.

His approach, which he has dubbed Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, draws from different branches of science and medicine and is enough to spin the heads of specialists and nonspecialists alike. It has also caused a stir, something Mr. de Grey certainly knows how to do. "One hundred and fifty thousand people die every day, and two-thirds of those die of aging in one way or the other," he says, while nursing a pint of fine English ale. "If I speed up the cure for aging by one day, then I've saved 100,000 people." He pauses thoughtfully for a moment. "Actually, I probably do that every week."

Link (Previous de Gray coverage on Boing Boing)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:03:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paul Revere and the Raiders TV commercial for Pontiac

Bedazzled is hosting an old commercial for the awesome Pontiac GTO Judge, with a song and appearance by garage punks Paul Revere and the Raiders. The logo is straight out of House Industries.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:46:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Miyazaki film festival on TCM

Cartoon Brew says there will be a Miyazaki film festival on TCM in January. Nine of Miyazaki's animated movies will air.

This is the package of Studio Ghibli features that Disney acquired, which includes Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso and Whisper of the Heart. No word if TCM is going to run them subtitled or dubbed. This is probably timed to remind Academy voters to consider Howl's Moving Castle for Best Animated Feature. While I'm not crazy about TCM showing anything after 1970, I do admit Miyazaki's works are true modern classics.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:37:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flying Spaghetti Monster tagging on metro seat

I don't like it when people deface subways by tagging seats, walls, windows, and so on, but it's interesting that the Flying Spaghetti Monster logo that was first seen on Boing Boing has started showing up like this.
Link (thanks, Patrick!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:31:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Laser-etched Powerbook cases

Etchamac.com custom laser etches PowerBooks and iPods. A full PowerBook case (top or bottom) runs $200 while iPods are around $40. Pretty slick.
Link (via Macworld)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:11:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Alfred E. Neuman's grandpa

I love this portrait of an Alfred E. Neuman ancestor from 1908. From Fantagraphics Books' Flog!:

Comics historian Craig Yoe will present a multimedia presentation on the history of "The What Me Worry Kid" at the Yorktown Museum 1974 Commerce St. Yorktown Heights, NY on TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25 at 7:00 pm. This talk will take a fun look at the history of America's favorite grinning idiot without a care (not to be confused with America's *least* favorite grinning idiot without a care, George W. Bush). Yoe recently authored the book MODERN ARF, where the origin of Mad's mascot was one of those revelations covered in graphic detail.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:21:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cthulhu DVD said to be totally coolh

Regarding an earlier BB post on a silent film about the Elder God who has more noodly appendages than the Flying Spaghetti Monster himself, Boing Boing pal Craig Engler of SciFi network says:

After seeing this on BB I ordered a copy on a lark and my girlfriend and I watched it tonight at midnight with the lights out. This is one of those genius, word-of-mouth, Hollywood-will-never-understand-it kind of films. Made mostly with love and hard work, plus a bit of money. It's both silent and black-and-white, which gives it a great Lovecraftian feel but guarantees it will never go mainstream. And considering they tried to use only materials that would have been available in the 1920s, they did an awesome job of bringing Cthulhu and R'Lyeh and all that other gooey Lovecraft goodness to life. The non-Euclidean geometry is built with cardboard. The ocean is really a sea of waving canvas. And the Elder God himself is a wacky stop-motion/clay-mation deal that still manages to be menacing. Best $20 I ever spent on a DVD.

Link to The HP Lovecraft Historical Society website, where you can purchase the DVD if you are so inclined.

Previously:

Call of Cthulhu silent film nearly done

Creativhe Cohmmons Cthulhu Comhic

Update: For those of you who are in LA, Flash Film Works' Dan Novy (who supervised VFX on the film, appeared in several small roles, and is also the co-organizer of DorkbotSoCal) says the film's LA premiere takes place tonight at 7 at the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax. But the bad news: it's a small venue and the event is already booked to capacity.

Reader Comment: "It's Raining Florence Henderson" says, "The Seattle Times is reporting that a new indie version is being filmed in Astoria: Link."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:06:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

web zen: zen wha?

iiiiiiii
globe salesman
expressionless girl
otter game
hippo noodles
nigella bites
ptikobj
ytmnd

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

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:01:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NASA's Kennedy Space Center closes for Wilma

Snip from NASA media advisory:

The Kennedy Space Center is closed today due to Hurricane Wilma. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is also closed. Facilities and launch pads have been secured; the payload bay doors of NASA's three space shuttles were closed; and the New Horizons spacecraft was placed inside its protective transportation canister.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:55:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Retrofabulous photos of many cassette tapes

Link (via coolhunting, thanks, Ryan Robinson!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:54:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dead baby found in alley isn't

Police in Liverpool, England were called to a back alley when a man thought he had discovered a dead baby in an alley. Word spread and mourning citizens left flowers, cards, and teddy bears at the scene. TUrns out though that it was a chicken fetus. From the BBC News:

"The flowers and cards are obviously the result of local gossip, but we can assure people that the remains were not human," (said a police spokesman.)

Conservative MP and editor of The Spectator Boris Johnson was criticised last year after commenting in the magazine that Liverpudlians were "hooked on grief".

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:38:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scary evolution survey

According to a CBS News public survey, 51 percent of Americans don't accept evolution. Note that the nationwide sample size was just 808 adults and that the error rate could be plus or minus four percentage points. But still... From the CBS News report:

Fifty-one percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved.

These views are similar to what they were in November 2004 shortly after the presidential election...

Americans most likely to believe in only evolution are liberals (36 percent), those who rarely or never attend religious services (25 percent), and those with a college degree or higher (24 percent).

White evangelicals (77 percent), weekly churchgoers (74 percent) and conservatives (64 percent), are mostly likely to say God created humans in their present form.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:28:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Kabbalah of Nanotechnology

Last year, Howard Lovy wrote an excellent essay in Salon about how nanotechnology and Kabbalah are both "testament to the incomprehensible infinite." (Previous post here.) Now, Philip "Madge's Rabbi" Berg has published an entire book on the meme, Kabbalistic Nanotechnology. From the book description on Amazon:

Two emerging technologies promise to transform the world in ways that will make the breakthroughs of the 20th century seem pedestrian. One has existed for less than 50 years and is called nanotechnology. The other has existed for 4,000 years and is called Kabbalah. On the surface, they seem to be divergent, even contradictory technologies. But in fact, they are complementary in the most profound ways possible. One promises to deliver a practical technology and a transformed world in the distant future. The other promises practical tools and remarkable changes now. In this book, Kabbalist Rav Berg isolates the common points of science and spirit to reveal the elusive path toward achieving humanity's noblest and most challenging aspiration - the manipulation of the physical world. The potential uses are staggering: pollution reversal, elimination of disease and genetic defects, eradication of poverty, microscopic computers faster than today's best supercomputers, and the indefinite extension of the human lifespan.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:21:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's podcast concludes "After the Siege"

Since the end of September, I've been podcasting a story-in-progress called "After the Siege," reading it in installments as I wrote it. Last week, I finished writing the story and today I've uploaded the final piece. You can get the whole thing through my podcast page. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:46:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Technorati indexes 20 millionth blog

Kevin sez, "Technorati passed 20 million blogs today. The 20 millionth was Les CE2/CM2 Anquetil, a blog from an elementary school in Reims, France, in the heart of Champagne country. They started the blog to celebrate running 2 miles in a Relay Marathon." Link (Thanks, Kevin!) (NB: I am a proud advisor to Technorati)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:02:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crazy woodcuts diagrams of Biblical wisdom

Matt sez, "A collection of public domain early-20th Century charts by Clarence Larkin describing aspects of the Bible, including little arrows showing the direction of flow between the various heavens/hells and &c." Link Updated Link (Thanks, Matt!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:00:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Themepunks part 7 is live

Part seven of Themepunks is live today. That's the novel-in-progress whose first third Salon has been serializing every Monday -- three more installments to go! Today we learn about how Perry and Lester's crazy school of invention can be applied to urban squatting:

The new shantytown went up fast -- faster than she'd dreamed possible. The boys helped. Lester downloaded all the information he could find on temporary shelters -- building out of mud, out of sandbags, out of corrugated cardboard and sheets of plastic -- and they tried them all. Some of the houses had two or more rickety-seeming stories, but they all felt solid enough as she toured them, snapping photos of proud homesteaders standing next to their handiwork.

Little things went missing from the workshops -- tools, easily pawned books and keepsakes, Perry's wallet -- and they started locking their desk-drawers. There were junkies in amongst the squatters, and desperate people, and immoral people, them too. One day she found that her cute little gold earrings weren't beside her desk-lamp, where she'd left them the night before, and she practically burst into tears, feeling set-upon on all sides.

She found the earrings later that day, in the bottom of her purse, and that only made things worse. Even though she hadn't voiced a single accusation, she'd accused every one of the squatters in her mind that day. She found herself unable to meet their eyes for the rest of the week.

"I have to write about this," she said to Perry. "This is part of the story." She'd stayed clear of it for a month, but she couldn't go on writing about the successes of the Home Aware without writing about the workforce that was turning out the devices and add-ons by the thousands, all around her, in impromptu factories with impromptu workers.

"Why?" Perry said. He'd been a dervish, filling orders, training people, fighting fires. By nightfall, he was hollow-eyed and snappish. Lester didn't join them on the roof anymore. He liked to hang out with Francis and some of the young bucks and pitch horseshoes down in the shantytown, or tinker with the composting toilets he'd been installing at strategic crossroads through the town. "Can't you just concentrate on the business?"

Link, Previous Installments

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:26:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos taken by Minutemen Militia and undocumented Mex border crossers

Rudy sez, "We distributed over 400 disposable cameras to undocumented migrants crossing through the desert into the U.S. to document their journey. We also gave cameras to members of the Minutemen Militia sitting in the AZ desert waiting to catch them. Their cameras are currently being sent back to us in prepaid, self-addressed envelopes. We've posted a few of the photos already in the 'returned photos' link on the website. Both sets of photos will be developed, juried by a panel of politicians, community leaders, and artists, and shown at major art galleries across the country. Link (Thanks, Rudy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:21:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Abusive "license agreements" dissected

TG Daily has a great piece collecting and mocking abusive clauses in end user license agreements (EULAs). The Slashdot discussion of the piece is also really good -- lots of humorous examples of egregious offenders, salted with a good discussion of what a contract is and isn't.

Some EULA clauses allow software manufacturers to monitor your machine at will - DRM being a good example - and send data back and forth at will. They can even download new content onto your machine without having to notify you - anything from an innocuous patch to full blown spyware.

For example take Section 6 of the Pinnacle Studio 9 movie-making EULA:

You acknowledge and agree that in order to protect the integrity of certain third party content, Pinnacle and/or its licensors may provide for Software security related updates that will be automatically downloaded and installed on your computer. Such security related updates may impair the Software (and any other software on your computer which specifically depends on the Software) including disabling your ability to copy and/or play 'secure' content, i.e. content protected by digital rights management.

Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:14:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hallowe'en art from Goopymart

Goopymart, the fine blogger/cartoonist, has been posting his fun, cool Hallowe'en art as a Flickr set. Some lovely stuff is there now and he promises more to come. Link (Thanks, Goopy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:08:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Guinness evolution ad

Here's an excellent evolution-themed UK TV ad from Guinness. (Apparently it airs elsewhere too.) Link (via Farber's Interesting People, thanks Paul Saffo!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:59:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage Hallowe'en blog

The Old Haunts blog catalogs vintage Hallowe'en memoribilia of all sorts:

Cool vintage Frankenstein Ball Toss game. I remember having lots of games like this when I was a kid. I used to love the heck out of 'em! If it had some kind of monster on it, or looked weird and creepy, I was all for it, man! Some things never change. :)

Link (Thanks, Keith!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:58:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory reading/signing Monday night in London

A reminder: I'm doing a reading and signing tomorrow (Monday) night at London's Stanhope Centre, near Marble Arch, at 6:30PM. Books will be on sale and light refreshments provided. Hope to see you there! Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:53:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Europe's ancient, gorgeous sewers

These galleries of urban explorers' photos of Europe's gorgeous, ancient sewers are thrilling and eerie. Some of these are ancient, some are modern, all are the secret world under the streets that we can hear gurgling when there's no one else around. Link (via BLDG Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:22:20 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

iPod Nano costs $103 to make, Game Boy Micro is worth $44

In this video segment from Attack of the Show, Eric Pratt from iSuppli guts several consumer electronics/IT devices and analyzes the cost of their components, calculating the profit margin on each:

The Mac mini which retails for $499 is actually worth $283 in parts and labor.

The 2 Gig iPod Nano retails for $199, but is actually worth $103 in parts and labor. The most expensive component is actually the iPod Nano's 2 Gigs of memory.

Eric finished up with a G4 exclusive teardown of the Game Boy Micro which retails for $100. The actual cost of the Micro is only $44. The screen on the GB Micro is actually the most expensive component.

Link (via Make Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:31:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

All Your Base mashed up with Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody

This is ridiculously amazing: the terrible Engrish subtitles from Zero Wing that inspired the cult video All Your Base Are Belong to Us, sung to the tune of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. The video of the space-emporer doing Wayne and Garth-style headbanging at the bridge, wow, I nearly wet myself. Link Official site (Thanks, Roy!)

Update: William sez, "it's actually the Zero Wing Rhapsody and the creator's site is here. Also, there is a hidden 'director's cut' version. If you save the animation and stretch the window to a certain dimension while playing, some commentary appears at the bottom."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:48:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Sofa made from stuffed toy gators

These incredibly expensive ($11,350!) sofas are ingeniously made from stuffed toy aligators and sofa parts. At that price, we need some Make-style HOWTOs fo those of us who want to try making this kind of thing from scratch. Link (via Crib Candy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:50:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Giant, baroque factory photo-series

These Naoya Hatakeyama of a lime factory are incredibly striking -- they look like something out of Quake or Star Wars, huge, inmpossibly baroque and gorgeous. Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

Update: Edward Burtynsky's photos are also a remarkable celebration of the beauty in giant quarries, dams, scrapheaps, and refineries. (Thanks, Kevin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:38:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

In-game pixel art made by shoving together crates

Shanjaq sez, "There's a ton of 8-bit art going on in the Garry's Mod community. Players are building huge replicas of classic game characters out of painted in-game wooden crates!" Mario Link, Samus Link, Sonic Link, Spongebob Link (Thanks, Shanjaq!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:03:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jello scale model of San Francisco

Elizabeth Hickock has created a gigantic jello sculpture of the city of San Francisco, including the Bay Bridge. The photos are just amazing -- especially the video of the whole city shaking like a bowl full of jello. Link (Thanks, Patti and Trelana!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:56:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UK proposal to turn derelict buildings into gov't housing

Britain's Deputy PM has proposed a law that would allow local councils to move families into any building that had sat empty for a year or more, and to keep the buildings in use as council housing for seven years. Some depressed UK cities have tens of thousands of buildings sitting empty, used as shooting galleries or flophouses:

An ODPM spokesman said: "The objective is to persuade owners in these circumstances to pass the responsibility for bringing the property back into housing use to the local authority.

"Of course, we want this to be with their consent, but where that consent is not forthcoming we do not apologise for granting local authorities powers to secure occupation without the need to obtain consent."

Link (via Squatter City)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:23:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How Disneyland's Mark Twain riverboat sank

It's well known that Disneyland's Mark Twain paddle-wheeler sank on its opening day, but it wasn't until Friday's first-hand report of the sinking of the Mark Twain that the facts were in the public record. Terry O'Brien, a former Disneyland employee, has admitted to sinking the Mark Twain by overloading it:

Pretty soon, we heard the toot-toot signal that meant disaster. And everyone wondered what had happened." What had happened was that the boat, which actually made its way around the lagoon on a rail, had sunk off the track and into the mud. There were too many people on board.

"It took about 20 to 30 minutes to get it fixed and back on the rail and it came chugging in. As soon as it pulled up to the landing, all the people rushed to the side to get off, and the boat tipped into the water again, so they all had to wade off through the water, and some of them were pretty mad."

His boss came to ask O'Brien how many people he'd put on the boat. "And I said about 250. And he said, 'Well, better keep it at about 200.' Then I remembered I had the clicker in my pocket. I looked and was shocked to see I'd put 508 people on the boat. I never told anyone until now." But he did make sure it never happened again.

Link (via The Disney Blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:20:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hello Kitty airplane

Taiwanese airline EVA has repainted one of its jets with giant Hello Kittys. According to Popgadget, "the plane's interior features Hello Kitty-related items as well, ranging from boarding passes, baggage tags, dining utensils, and lavatory papers to flight attendant uniforms." Link

Update: Dan sez, "After reading your Boing Boing post on the Hello Kitty-themed airplane I dug into some old photos I took of a Pokémon plane I flew on in Japan. If I remember correctly the Pokémon theme also extended to ticket design, seat covers and a Pokémon goody bag was given out to every kid on the ANA flight.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:09:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

All of Star Wars (ish) as a 168 animated pixelart gif

This is a 168k animated gif that manages to render in pixelart animation nearly every important scene in Star Wars Episode Four. This is jaw-droppingly great. 168k GIF Link (Thanks, Digitaler Lumpensammler!)

Update: and here's an animated GIF of Luke firing the kill-shot down the Death Star's chute, which is goatse'ed open by two giant, floating hands. (Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:06:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Message board as an MMORPG

Kuro5hin is an excellent, brawling community discussion site, run on a customized version of slash, the moderation system that underpins Slashdot run on scoop, a message-board platform with many features similar to Slashdot's. A user has fielded a (tongue-in-cheek?) proposal to re-make K5 as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, through which "characters" would advance by posting messages consistent with their guild affiliations (e.g., "The American Government Sucks", "Intelligent Design is a Fraud upon Science") and undertake other traditional MMORPG tasks in the course of being active K5ers:

The ultimate goal of any player is left up to them but I decided that having a few unique goals is the best way to encourage play. Since all content creating players are "trolls" how does one distinguish which players are better than the others? This is where the "Meta Troll" comes in, a player transcends trolldom to become a "Meta Troll" when their content creation cease to look like attempts at trolling. You might say I'm not a "troll" but frankly we all are, just get used to the fact. The other goals are to leave the game. This involves creating content in the diary section about how much the game sucks and you want to leave. This must be repeated over several weeks until you decide to either leave for greener pastures (Husi is just astroturf anyway) or stay on.

Whining is not a goal but rather a subgame. It can be played both ways, causing a player to whine or whining yourself. The most common whines are

* I got modbombed by [insert name]
* My story got voted down you bastards
* [insert name] crap flooded my diary/story/conversation
* Why do people zero my comment then reply to it? It's stupid.

While standard whines are ok, repeating them is boring. I believe we need more creative ways to whine.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:21:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pixel-art Mario made from stacked Rubik's Cubes

This pixel-art Super Mario is made from cunningly twisted Rubik's Cubes, arranged and stacked by Invader, the legendary public artist. Link (via Wonderland)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:16:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animatronic chimp head from Robosapien makers

This $150 screeching animatronic chimp head is called the Live Chimpanzee, and it's made by WowWee, the people who brought you the Robosapien; it's sold by The Sharper Image. There's a video demoing the Live Chimpanzee, but it's encoded with a proprietary Microsoft WMV codec that neither VLC nor Mplayer can make sense of, so I can't tell you if it's any good. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:13:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

R2D2 casemod

This R2D2 casemod stands desk-high, and is eerily lifelike. The exhaustive build-log and message board for the project has lots of tips if you want to try something like this at home:

Several months ago while at a local gas station, I saw that the owners were throwing away one of those R2-D2 Pepsi coolers. It had been badly abused and was split down one end. Right then and there I knew I wanted to have one just like it, but this one was far too beat up. I knew if I wanted it done right I'd have to make my own, but fabricating the legs would be far too difficult, so I asked if I could have the legs from the cooler. Next I looked high and low until I found a white plastic barrel for R2's body and a weber grill for R2's head. The body's pin striping work was long and tedious. I went through 18 rolls of black pinstriping and used pics of the R2-D2 cooler to make it look just right. There were some things I couldn't match, like R2-D2's front vents, where I opted for a metallic blue. The head had come with long horizontal holes for where the grill was mounted. I patched up with sheet metal and JB Weld, then bondo'ed and sanded it down smoothly.

Link (via Make blog)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:25:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spanish ISP wants its customers to share WiFi

Riad sez,

Fon, a new Spanish company, is offering to build a service based on P2P principles for people to be able to access the Internet through other people connection using wireless networking.

The system is based on 2 categories of users;

-- Bill who resell their connection to other members of the service

-- Linus who offer to share for free and in exchange can benefit from roaming on the whole network.

the whole transaction is managed by the company (Fon)

Given that I'm paying 30 Euros a day for slow, buggy Swisscom WiFi at a hotel right now, I'd jump at this. Especially since the Swisscom service is so goddamned awful that they cut you off after 250MB of file-transfer, which means that I've already had to pay again today. If I were a WiFi operator looking to make a gigantic bundle, I'd just set up hot-spots next to hotels that use Swisscom/Eurospot. No WiFi operator in the world offers worse value for money, viciously screwing customers who are locked into paying by sleazy or ignorant hoteliers. Link (Thanks, Riad!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:29:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ham operator corrects Morse code on the Disneyland Railroad

The telegraph hut at the Disneyland Railroad Station in New Orleans Square plays a continuous loop of morse code that I've always understood to be Walt's inaugural message at Disneyland's opening.

A keen-eared ham operator who heard the message realized that something was awry and resolved to decode it himself. He taped it, played the recording back at half speed, and determined that the message had become garbled through a remastering process. Working with Disney Imagineers, he helped have the message restored.

"TO ALL WHO COME TO DISNEYLAND, WELCOME. HERE AGE RELIVES FOND MEMORIES OF THE PAST, AND HERE YOUTH MAY SAVOR THE CHALLENGE AND PROMISE OF THE FUTURE." in Morse code is: - --- / .- .-.. .-.. / .-- .... --- / -.-. --- -- . / - --- / -.. .. ... -. . -.-- .-.. .- -. -.. --..-- / .-- . .-.. -.-. --- -- . .-.-.- / .... . .-. . / .- --. . / .-. . .-.. .. ...- . ... / ..-. --- -. -.. / -- . -- --- .-. .. . ... / --- ..-. / - .... . / .--. .- ... - --..-- / .- -. -.. / .... . .-. . / -.-- --- ..- - .... / -- .- -.-- / ... .- ...- --- .-. / - .... . / -.-. .... .- .-.. .-.. . -. --. . / .- -. -.. / .--. .-. --- -- .. ... . / --- ..-. / - .... . / ..-. ..- - ..- .-. . .-.-.-

Link (Thanks, Kirby!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:26:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Auto-convert RSS enclosures to torrents

Gary sez, "Prodigem now allows you to tell us your external RSS feed and from then on, we automatically scan your feed once an hour and create a BitTorrent for any enclosure found." What an awesome idea -- now you can post gigantic files in your RSS feeds (e.g. podcasts, video) without getting nuked on bandwidth. Link (Thanks, Gary!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:21:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Geeky postage stamp photoshopping contest

Today on Worth1000, the photoshopping contest theme is to make fantasy postage stamps. The thing that makes this contest so great is that nerdy stamps imply a backstory, a better, more geekier world than this one. Link

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

Friday, October 21, 2005

Mathematical Photography

My friend Justin Mullins of New Scientist creates artwork consisting entirely of mathematical equations. He calls it "mathematical photography." Justin says, "In the same way that an ordinary photograph is a snapshot of an area of outstanding natural beauty, a mathematical photograph is a snapshot of mathematical beauty." (He's having his first UK gallery exhibition next February in London.) Seen here is "Entanglement, For Sandra," 80 x 50cm, 2000.

From the description of the piece:

The connections between ordinary objects are fleeting and superficial. Two atoms may collide and separate, never to meet again. Others can stick together by virtue of the chemical bonds they form, until the day that bond is broken.

But there is another type of connection that is far more powerful and romantic. Certain objects can become linked by a mysterious process called entanglement. Particles that become entangled are deeply connected regardless of the distance between them. If they become separated by the width of the Universe, the bond between them remains intact. These particles are so deeply linked that it’s as if they somehow share the same existence.

Physicists do not yet fully understand the nature of entanglement but there is growing evidence that it is a fundamental property of the universe. Unfettered by the restrictions of space, entanglement may be the ghostly bedrock upon which reality is built.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:22:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Firefox variant with reputation system

Matt sez, "Firefox is starting to spin off some new stuff like Flock, but also like Outfoxed. It's a reputation based browser that lets you see what opinion people you trust have of web pages, corporations, even possible malware on your computer." Link (Thanks, Matt!)

Update: Matt sez, "It's actually not a FireFox variant, it's an extension."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:02:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Colbert report first week torrents

Jeff sez, "If you missed the first week of the Colbert Report, CommonBits has episodes up as torrents. Help get Stephen get this game on..." Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:01:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Astronomy Picture of the Day widget

Paul Saffo, my colleague at the Institute For The Future, pointed me to this excellent "Astronomy Picture of the Day" Mac OS X Dashboard Widget. From the free download page:

Wake up each morning to a beautiful picture of space provided by NASA. Click on the link below the picture to view a higher resolution photo and an explanation of the picture, written by a professional astronomer.

Link (via Stewart Brand)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:52:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crocheted infant Yoda ears

If you're looking for a way to turn a baby into a major unlicensed cuton emitter (well beyond the threshold set by the Federal Cuteness Commission) this Hallowe'en, then you could do worse than to whip up a set of these crocheted Yoda ears, as one crafty parent did. Link (Thanks, Melissa!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:36:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Homemade "fallen rapper" Pez heads

An artist sculpted a series of prototype fallen-rapper Pez heads and tried to get the Pez company to give him permission to manufacture them (they turned him down). He mounted a show of his Pez heads at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco instead. Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:53:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Accused DUIs demand access to breathalyzer software source-code

A group of accused drunk drivers in Florida are demanding to see the source code for the breathalyzer software that fingered them for being over the limit. The prosecutors say that the software is a trade secret belonging to the company that sells the breathalyzer. It's a fascinating problem: what's more important, the trade secrets of a vendor or the constitutional right to due process, which surely includes the right to examine a machine used to determine one's guilt? Does selling breathalyzer software for use in evidence in a court of law mean that you waive your right to keep the software's workings a secret?

Ed Felten's got a great editorial on this on Freedom-to-Tinker:

So this issue is not about open source, but about ensuring fairness for the accused. If they're going to be accused based on what some machine says, then they ought to be allowed to challenge the accuracy of the machine. And they can't do that unless they're allowed to know how the machine works.

You might argue that the machine's technical manuals convey enough information. Having read many manuals and examine the innards of many software systems, I'm skeptical of such claims. Often, knowing how the maker says a machine works is a poor substitute for knowing how it actually works. If a machine is flawed, it's likely the maker will either (a) not know about the flaw or (b) be unwilling to admit it exists.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:49:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

4D sculpture with a 3D shadow

Alex sez, "Adrian Ocneau, math prof at Penn State, designed this mathematical sculture that revealed a 3-d shadow of a 4-d object."

In the three-dimensional world, there are five regular solids -- tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron -- whose faces are composed of triangles, squares or pentagons. In four dimensions, there are six regular solids, which can be built based on the symmetries of the three-dimensional solids. Unfortunately, humans cannot process information in four dimensions directly because we don't see the universe that way. Although mathematicians can work with a fourth dimension abstractly by adding a fourth coordinate to the three that we use to describe a point in space, a fourth spatial dimension is difficult to visualize. For that, models are needed.

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

Update: Here's a Flash animation of the sculpture (Thanks, Bonthon!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:45:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PC case made from cardboard

This beautiful die-cut cardboard PC case is now commercially available in Japan. What a great idea -- the modding possibilities are endless. Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:41:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lego robot winds yarn

Machine built from lego winds up hanks of yarn into wonderful balls.
Link (Thanks, Mel!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:31:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gorgeous Kees van der Westen-designed espresso machines

Jacob says: "This is the site of Dutch espresso machine designer Kees van der Westen. His machines have a wonderfully modern aesthetic. View the earlier work for his portfolio."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:04:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wonderfully weird rosewood dragon telephone on Ebay

Mister Jalopy says: "This phone puts me in the mood for some good old fashion Chinatown extortion! As he says, 'let's cherish the charming sonny together!'"
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:00:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fantastic model train settings

Peter Feigenbaum designs hyperrealistic urban settings for model trains.
Link (thanks, Clifton!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:53:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nanocar

Rice University scientists have constructed a "nanocar," consisting of a chassis, axles, and four Buckyballs as wheels. From a press release:

"The synthesis and testing of nanocars and other molecular machines is providing critical insight in our investigations of bottom-up molecular manufacturing," said one of the two lead researchers, James M. Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and professor of computer science. "We'd eventually like to move objects and do work in a controlled fashion on the molecular scale, and these vehicles are great test beds for that. They're helping us learn the ground rules."

The nanocar consists of a chassis and axles made of well-defined organic groups with pivoting suspension and freely rotating axles. The wheels are buckyballs, spheres of pure carbon containing 60 atoms apiece. The entire car measures just 3-4 nanometers across, making it slightly wider than a strand of DNA. A human hair, by comparison, is about 80,000 nanometers in diameter.

Link (Thanks, Howard Lovy!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:51:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Improbable in-game physics experiments

This machinima video of fun physics experiments in Halo is hilarious -- players stash huge caches of grenades under gigantic jeeps called "warthogs" and then shoot them from a distance, causing the warthogs to go sailing hundreds of meters into the sky. Link (Thanks, Gnat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:28:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Two tier-one ISPs are scr0d today

Have you noticed that the Internet is a little slow and weird today? Check out this scoreboard from the Internet Health Report. Two gigantic backbones, Level3 and Verio, are both in the red, failing to route traffic at nominal levels. Level3 recently screwed up huge swathes of the Internet by pitching a tantrum over a contract negotiation with Cogent (another tier-one ISP). No word on what's causing the whackiness today, though. Link (Thanks, mattyohe!)

Update: Lots more on the Slashdot story

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:47:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Vote anti-software-patent types in as Europeans of the Year

It's time to vote for the European of the Year contest. Several of the categories include people who worked hard to kill the loathsome, ridiculous software patent directive. NoSoftwarePatents.com has a ticket of anti-software-patent Euros you can vote for, sending another message to the world that Europe is too sensible to let companies own math.

Commissioner of the Year: Dalia Grybauskaite
(we had big problems with Charlie McCreevy, and we are uncomfortable with all others except Dalia Grybauskaite, who seems a safe choice)

MEP of the Year: Michel Rocard
(he was the so-called "rapporteur" of the European Parliament on the software patent directive and did a very good job)

Statesman of the Year: José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
(his government was the only one to vote with a clear No against the software patent proposal of the EU Council, and the other candidates were either in favor of software patents like Juncker, Schröder and Blair, or they didn't help)

Link (Thanks, Menneke!)

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

Liquid-nitro-dipped rose being shot, captured in high speed photos

Here is a Flickr set of high-speed photos of various objects being shot. The highlight is this picture of a rose dipped in liquid nitrogen and captured in the act of shattering. As Checkov wrote, "If there is a gun, a vat of liquid nitrogen, and a rose on the mantelpiece in the first act, it will be used in connection with high-speed photography by the third act." Link (Thanks, Amy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:08:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Skull hoodies from Blue Blood

Blue Blood, the old-school goth/alternative/punk pinup zine, has launched a cool clothing line with these big, skull-emblazoned hoodies. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:02:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CARDIAC: Bell Labs's old cardboard computer

Make Magazine's Arwen O'Reilly recently wrote asking if I could provide a brief reminisce about a kit that I'd especially loved as a kid. I wrote her this:

In between getting a Selectric in 1976 and a TTY in 1977, we had a brief period in my household where my dad was transitioning from being a programmer to going to teacher's college. He brought home a "cardboard computer" that you assembled by punching out parts, inserting tabs into slots. It assembled to something about three-card-thicknesses deep and about 10" by 6". It had little tokens that represented bits, and a table of operations. You could write a program to calculate, say, 2 + 2, then move the tokens around from one part of the computer to another, simulating the shunting of bits through logic-gates, until you got the total. I was completely enchanted with this thing -- I spent days and days making it add up very small numbers, fascinated by this look into the universe of a Von Neumann machine. Years later I saw Tron and was unimpressed -- sure they had speeder-bikes, but they weren't a patch on my cardboard tokens. I wish I could remember what that thing was called!

Based on my sketchy description, Arwen managed to turn up the long-lost cardboard computer: it was a Bell Labs CARDIAC: A Cardboard Illustrative Guide to Computers. There's a lot of CARDIAC fans out there, and there may even be a vendor still selling original, left-over CARDIACs! CARDIAC Photos Link, Answers About CARDIAC (Thanks, Arwen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:57:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Top 100 toys of the 70s and 80s

This catalog of the top 100 toys of the 70s and 80s is an amazing, comprehensive, whimisical trip. Practically every toy I ever loved is here, with an accompanying lyrical description:

Dreamed up by some genius marketeer (and we’d put our last dollar on that being one of those American dreams we hear about) presumably after watching too many ‘50s B-movies, this viscous mixture of latex, wallpaper paste and food colouring (the actual ingredients may have differed slightly, but that’s what we’re guessing) hit the shops at roughly the same time the TISWAS gang were chucking buckets of water and foam flans at each other and basically making a right old mess on telly every week. And whilst no parent would normally leave his or her offspring unsupervised with just any old gunge, the restrained anarchy of Slime (water-based, non-staining on wipe-clean surfaces such as the kitchen lino) was perfectly suited to out-of-the-way play. Once the contents were emptied from the Oscar the Grouch type green “trash can” container, however (Slime came in different colours, some with plastic eyeballs, some with rubber worms), there was precious little play to be had. Sure, it could slowly ooze and bubble (a satisfying trick was to trap air in a glop of the stuff and slowly force it out with a farty sound) but any toy primarily exploited purely for its tactile qualities was always destined to hold only a transitory allure for us. Nothing, however, could match the disappointment of finding an accidentally-left-open pot of the stuff, dried to a husk and rendered useless to either man or beast. Slime was but a fleeting pleasure, and therefore all the better for it.

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:55:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NOLA survivors lining up to get tattoo memorials

New Orleans's tattoo artists are seeing a surge in business as hurricaine survivors come in to get their ordeal memorialized in ink:

Tattoo artists report a surge in demand for designs that celebrate New Orleans: fleur-de-lis patterns, "NOLA," after the city's widely known abbreviation, and even a symbol modeled after the weather-map depiction of hurricanes.

Link (via Fark)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:50:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flock: Firefox for social software

Flock, a new Firefox variant with a ton of built in social software stuff, launched a public beta today. Just got mine and so far, so very, very good:

Flock includes a built-in RSS reader, which allows a user to read all of their favourite blogs in one place, without the need to separately navigate to each one. Various Web sites and software programs already provide this functionality, but Flock is one of the first to integrate it into a Web browser.

The browser also facilitates blogging by the user with a "Create a blog post" button located in the main navigation bar. The button launches a sophisticated blogging tool which integrates on a drag and drop level with Flickr, a popular online photo management and sharing service which was recently acquired by Yahoo.

Flock integrates with a number of popular blogging services, for example, Wordpress, Six Apart and Blogger, according to Decrem's own blog.

Link, iBiblio BitTorrent Link (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:48:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blizzard's lame-o spyware excuses shredded

When Blizzard, the games company that makes World of Warcraft, got caught sneaking invasive spyware, it responded with a bunch of PR spin about how it's spyware wasn't so bad as all that (my favorite was sliming the whistle-blower who caught them doing it because he writes bot software; either it's spyware or it isn't, the occupation of the guy who caught you is beside the point). Now on EFF Deep Links, a great post deconstructing Blizzard's lame excuses:

According to Greg Hoglund, co-author of "Exploiting Software, How to Break Code," this hidden program opens every process on a gamer's computer, from email programs to privacy managers, and sniffs email addresses, website URLs open at the time of the scan, and the names of all running programs--whether or not those programs, emails, or websites could conceivably have anything to do with hacking...

Response 1: Warden doesn't collect personal information, so what's the problem?

Well, problem one is that gamers have no choice but to accept Blizzard's word on that. More importantly, if Hoglund is right, Blizzard has a pretty skewed idea of privacy--we can look at your personal info, but if we don't collect it there's no invasion? Hardly. We also wonder how Blizzard's executives would feel if we searched their homes, wallets, and bank accounts and read their letters and emails but didn't write down anything we found.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:47:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney launches Alice in Wonderland couture line

Disney has licensed graphics from its gorgeous psychedelic classic animated adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for a line of couture houseware and clothing:

This year, Disney positioned itself for the first time as a fashion player, hosting previews of its "Alice In Wonderland" inspired lines of clothing, home decor and accessories at two star-studded events during Fashion Week in Los Angeles...

Disney has licensed Alice and other Wonderland characters from studio art done by Mary Blair and David Hall for lines of fabric, tableware, carpet tiles, decorative pillows and throws, jewelry and clothing.

It has hired Kidada Jones, daughter of music legend Quincy Jones to design a line of jewelry, cashmere throws and pillows, and to dress her celebrity friends in the posh items.

The Alice line will appear in high-end stores such as Fred Segal, Drexel Heritage, Zelen, and specialty retailers starting next spring.

Link (Thanks, Alice!)

Update: here's a preview of the fashion line. (Thanks, Kimothy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:13:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Writer begs publisher to give her book to Google Print

One of Kottke's readers is a writer named Meghann Marco whose publisher is joined to the suit against Google over the excellent, writer-friendly Google Print service. She has written an amazing open letter to her publisher:

I asked my publisher, Simon and Schuster, for my book to be included in Google Print. I was told they did not do that.

Lack of exposure is the primary reason that a book like mine would fail in the marketplace. I spend most of my day trying to get attention for my book. Not for the money, but because I believe that it is well written and funny. Very few authors will become rich writing books. We do it because we have something to say. If we wanted to be rich, we'd have invented a search engine!

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help. After all, it's perfectly free to check out a book from the library. I have no problem with my book being indexed by your site. In fact, I wish it was!

Someone asked me recently, "Meghann, how can you say you don't mind people reading parts of your book for free? What if someone xeroxed your book and was handing it out for free on street corners?"

I replied, "Well, it seems to be working for Jesus."

Link (Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:07:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Four gigapixel cameras: peek into hotel rooms 3km away

"Ethan Zuckerman has a post about the Really Big Pictures being made by Graham Flint. The photos are being taken with a 4 gigapixel camera and have enough resolution to see inside a hotel room window 3km away. Not only are the results amazing, but the tech to pull it off is really cool too."

So Flint has build a film camera. (Indeed, it’s a really, really big camera.) It uses film magazines salvaged from U2 spy planes (Flint used to run one of Lockheed Martin’s laser labs, which gave him access to some interesting technologyy.) It shoots 460mm x 230mm film stock using lenses that are anywhere from 200mm to 500mm in length. Those lengths would usually be telephoto lenses - but with film this big, these lenses act like wide angles, letting Flint photograph landscapes from 10-20km away. No commercial lenses are sufficient for this work - he and his team grind their own lenses, made of six different types of glass, and custom fit them to 30 kilogram cameras. The sheer geekery required to build these cameras is astounding - and the geekery to take a shot (laser rangefinders, adjustment screws that are tuneable to a thousandth of a centimeter…) is profound as well. And then scanning and digitizing the picture involves hours, terabytes of storage, and lots and lots of touchups in Photoshop.

Link (Thanks, Grant!)

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

WSJ tech writer damns DRM

The Wall Street Journal's influential Walt Mossberg is starting to get a grip on the dangers of DRM technology. In a generally excellent editorial, Walt argues that DRM treats ordinary customers like criminals and takes away the freedoms that make digital media worth owning Unfortunately, he also gets suckered into believing that DRM can somehow be used to stop commercial piracy -- ha! -- and that some DRM can respect copyright instead of trumping it, but it's a start.

On the other hand, I believe that consumers should have broad leeway to use legally purchased music and video for personal, noncommercial purposes in any way they want -- as long as they don't engage in mass distribution. They should be able to copy it to as many personal digital devices as they own, convert it to any format those devices require, and play it in whatever locations, at whatever times, they choose.

The beauty of digital media is the flexibility, and that flexibility shouldn't be destroyed for honest consumers just because the companies that sell them have a theft problem caused by a minority of people.

Link (Thanks, Glennf!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:02:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Trailer for machinima feature film is up

Machinima impressario Hugh "Nomad" Hancock sez, "BloodSpell, a huge Machinima feature film project that has been in development for the last two years, has just released a two-minute trailer of the film. In addition to the general interest value of this being the biggest Machinima project ever, from the guys who created www.machinima.com, the trailer's Creative Commons licensed (with a nifty 'approved by the MPAA' parody at the start) and we're promising that the entire film will be too." Link (Thanks, Hugh!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:58:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Artist sews full-size replica of childhood home out of nylon

Do Ho Suh is a Korean artist who recreated his entire childhood home, including fixtures and furniture, out of fabric. The whole thing can be packed away in large suitcase. Link (Thanks, Alex!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:55:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Finnish copyright minister carries fake Prada bag on official business

The Finnish culture minister who enacted a copyright act that bans importing personal knockoff goods into Finland, she's attended an intergovernmental meeting in Slovenia carrying a counterfeit Prada bag. When confronted about this, she complained that the bag had cost too much ("If the bag really is a copy, I paid way too much for it").

This woman is an embarrassment to the nation of Finland and to the Finns. She needs to be removed from office and banished to the scrapheap of history in a hurry. Link (Thanks, Herkko and Matias!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:51:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Putting-milk-in-cereal patent-application: kill business-method patents now!

A restaurant has applied for a bunch of patents on putting boxes of cereal on display and putting some in a bowl and then putting milk in the bowl. This is the final straw for the good folks at FreeCulture, and they've launched a campaign to use this ridiculous affair to show why business-method patents are unbelievably stupid:

However, recently cereal bar chain Cereality (which has no locations in Florida) threatened Bowls with lawsuits should Bowls tread on Cereality's turf. Cereality has patents pending to give them an exclusive right to six business methods, including "displaying and mixing competitively branded food products" and adding "a third portion of liquid." If these patents are approved by the U.S. Patent Office, Cereality would have a complete monopoly on cereal bar business--just for being the first to put together the legalese necessary to describe mixing breakfast cereal.

Link (Thanks, Gavin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:42:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Banks that don't use craptacular ChexSystems checking

Steve, "Close to 90% of all banks use Chex Systems to verify new consumer bank accounts. To help the millions of people caught in the ChexSystems database, we've compiled a free list of banks that avoid the ChexSystems verification process. This means that people can locate a bank within their state, and open up a new bank account without being red-flagged by ChexSystems." Link (Thanks, Steve!)

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

Fundraiser: donate $500 to shut up loudmouth message-board poster

Two controversial Metafilter users have agreed to serve as bait for a Creative Commons fundraiser: their fellow MeFi users donate money in their names and the first one with $500 in his "account" gets banned for a week:

dios and rothko are some of the most prolific posters to MetaFilter, and they've grown into big personalities on the site. Simultaneously loved and hated by all, both members have been at the center of many controversial threads. For one reason or another both have been relieved of their posting rights in the past and both have turned over new leaves, but this time you're in charge.

They've both been great sports about this fundraiser idea and consented to taking part. It's for a good cause first and foremost -- every dollar goes to the Creative Commons 2005 Fundraiser so for the next seven days, the campaigns will be open and you can vote with your dollars. First one to $500 will be sitting on the sidelines for a week, and in the end, everything goes to Creative Commons.

Link (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:35:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chinese activist to Jerry Yang: You are helping to maintain an evil system

Yahoo Hong Kong ratted out a Chinese dissident journalist to the Chinese government, sending the journalist to prison for ten years. Yahoo founder Jerry Yang shrugged off the public outcry over this by saying that helping to send Yahoo customers to jail was just the price of doing business in China. Now Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo has responded with an open letter to Yang, and it's a scorcher:

International companies are ignoring basic human rights in return for business opportunity, while the Communist party is offering profits in return for continued control of the internet and the ability to intimidate dissidents, Mr Liu writes.

"The collusion of these two kinds of ugliness means that there is no way for western investment to promote freedom of speech in China, and that in fact it greatly increases the ability of the Communist party to blockade and control the internet."

"You are helping the Communist party maintain an evil system of control over freedom of information and speech," he writes.

Link (via EFF Minilinks)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:30:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Suicide figurine floating bathtub plug decorations

These "suicide bath plugs" are shaped like litte men, chained to your bath-plug and float upside-down with the plug chain around their necks. Link (via Crib Candy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:26:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Modernist doll house

Don't force your children to play with retrograde/reactionary Victorian gingerbread doll houses. Buy them a proper modernist doll house and get them prepared for the Barberella future. Link (via Crib Candy)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:23:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Revenge against life's little annoyances

NYT writer Ian Urbina has written a new book about people fighting back against life's little annoyances, called Life's Little Annoyances. He's also got a blog to go along with it. Do people who get in your way in grocery aisles frustrate you? Sneak some super expensive, tiny product into their shopping cart, like vitamins. Been hit with a bill that you don't feel you should have to pay? Pay it in pennies.

It is a compendium of human inventiveness, by turns juvenile and petty, but in other ways inspired and deeply satisfying. We meet the junk-mail recipient who sends back unwanted “business reply” envelopes weighted down with sheet metal, so the mailers will have to pay the postage. We commiserate with the woman who was fed up with the colleague who kept helping himself to her lunch cookies, so she replaced them with dog biscuits that looked like biscotti. And we revel in the seemingly endless number of tactics people use to vent their anger at telemarketers, loud cellphone talkers, spammers, and others who impose themselves on us.



A celebration of the endless variety of passive aggressive behavior, Life’s Little Annoyances will provide comfort and inspiration to everyone who has ever gritted his teeth and dreamed of sweet retribution against the slings and arrows of outrageous people.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:10:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mask kills influenza viruses?

From Street Tech, Gareth Branwyn says: "NanoMask [is a] nanoparticle-coated filter mask designed to 'arrest and eradicate...undesirable agents.' Send before midnight tonight, and they'll also toss in a free ebook ("H5N1 Virus: How to Protect Your Family Against the Coming Pandemic"), AND if you buy the family pack of 5-color-coded masks, they'll throw in a free bottle of snake oi...er... ImmunAssure, the 'amazing virus-fighting tablet.' Wait, I thought the mask had already killed the virus dead on contact. Oh well, best not to think too hard here."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:14:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Choking chicken" toy coming under fire

Kevin, M.D. says: "A product description on the Web site of Jaycar Electronics, a major Australian importer of toy, says: 'Grab him by the neck and he will squawk and cluck like mad, flapping his wings and feet wildly as if he is really being choked.'

But Michael Beatty, a spokesman for the Queensland state branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said the toy was 'grossly irresponsible' and sent the wrong message to young children.

'What's next? Burn a cat? Shoot a dog? . . . Children of that age are likely to turn around and try the same thing on their pet bird or even the cat or dog. Then they're going to wonder why the animal fights back."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:43:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturn's moon is a giant loofah sponge

Longtime BB pal Jim Leftwich says:

Have you seen the latest high-resolution photos of the Saturnian moon, Hyperion, sent back by the Cassini spacecraft? (Higher-res versions available here.)

Hyperion resembles a gigantic loofah sponge! The high-resolution photo of Hyperion was taken on September 26, 2005 when the Cassini was 62,000 km (38,500 miles) from Hyperion.

Scientists are now studying these new photos to determine why so many of these craters are filled with a dark material, and why Hyperion has such different surface features than the other 49 known moons of Saturn.

Hyperion is one Saturn's smaller moons. It is also irregularly shaped, with dimensions of 360 km (224 miles) x 280 km (174 miles) x 225 km (140 miles). It's rotational period varies from one orbit to the next, and tumbles in an irregular, chaotic motion.

Link

UPDATE: BB reader Ryan Freebern writes in, "A loofah looks more like a large, semi-hollow corncob, as seen here. IMO, Hyperion actually much more closely resembles a regular old sea sponge, like this one."

Jim Leftwich responds, "By crackey you are right sir! Much thanks! In my zeal to use the excellent word, 'loofah,' I got all discombobulated."

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:30:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man extends prison term to match Larry Bird's jersey number

Eric James Torpy of Oklahoma City received 30 years behind bars for shooting someone with intent to kill and robbery. But Torpy requested that his time in the joint be extended 3 years to match basketball legend Larry Bird's uniform number. From the Associated Press:

"He said if he was going to go down, he was going to go down in Larry Bird's jersey," Oklahoma County District Judge Ray Elliott said Wednesday. "We accommodated his request and he was just as happy as he could be.

"I've never seen anything like this in 26 years in the courthouse. But, I know the DA is happy about it."

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:15:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Xeni Tech on NPR: Filk Music -- Odd Voices for a Digital Generation

In today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I filed a report from a filk music convention. What is filk? Scifi-themed folk music performed by science fiction / fantasy fans and tech-heads.

OK, so, that was already interesting enough, but then -- Rolling Stone writer and The Game (book on the science of picking up chicks) author Neil Strauss showed up with his ladyfriend, Lisa Leveridge, who is the guitarist for Courtney Love's band. During a talent show at the filkfest, the duo performed a cover of the Hole song "Doll Parts" reimagined as... wait for it... "Jabba Parts," about the Star Wars character Lisa calls her "favorite guy in sci-fi." How did the fillk folk react? Listen to the NPR segment and hear all.

Link to "Filk Music: Odd Voices for a Digital Generation". Airs nationwide at 9am and 2pm depending on station. Archived story audio, downloadable Filk songs, and photos shot by Steve Diet Goedde will be online after 12pm PT.

See also this related Wired News story: Link.

Bonus: I have about 3 dozen music CDs that the kind filk musicians and promoters provided for the purpose of this radio story. I'd love to give them to someone who digs what they hear in the NPR story, to seed a future filk music collection... email me if you're into it. First response gets the goods. We have a winner, thanks!

And if this stuff floats your boat, other big filkfests are scheduled around the country in coming months, including one at a Los Angeles scifi con in just a few weeks: Link.

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

From Air Raid Sirens site: Truck equipped with a lot of loud horns

After BB reader Mark perused the sounds and movies from the fun-loving folks at the delightful www.airraidsirens.com website, he came across a picture of a truck loaded with many loud horns installed in the bed. Wouldn't it be wonderful to drive up alongside a pimplyfaced kid slouched in the seat of one of those cars that make thumpa thumpa sounds from its powerful bass speakers and give him a blast from these monsters?
Link (thanks, Mark!)

Reader comment: Jeff Hirsch says: "Sure, the horn truck is cool, but you can't talk about horn/siren laden cars without discussing Hyler Bracey's 'The Big Horn.' An amazing art car covered in historical bells and whistles. http://www.big-horn.com/ has pictures, details, and a fascinating history of not only the vehicle, but the different bells, pipes, etc that have gone into it.

Be sure to check out http://www.big-horn.com/diagram.html for a good overview of the vehicle."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:55:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-alien device found in home

A bomb squad was called in to a Davenport, Iowa home on Monday after new tenants found a strange gizmo in the basement. Former resident Jessica Harper said the device was given to her by her mother's astrologer friend who said it would keep aliens living underground at bay. From the Associated Press:

(Harper) said she didn't want to throw it away because it wasn't hers...

Authorities would not confirm the device's purpose, but they said it looks dangerous.

Link (via The Anomalist)

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:46:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Starbucks to print God quote on cups

Starbucks is printing cups emblazoned with quotes from writers, scientists, musicians, athletes, politicians, and others as part of a new marketing campaign. Best-selling Christian writer Rev. Rick Warren spotted a cup printed with brilliant paleoanthropologist Louise Leakey's words on evolution so he sent the company his own message about God. An article in USA Today doesn't mention the exact content of the quote, but reports that Starbucks has decided to print it on cups next year. The article also refers to the use of Christian messaging by In-N-Out Burger, Forever 21 (previous post here), and other companies. Link

UPDATED: BB reader Jason Coleman points the original USAToday.com article that includes Warren's quote:

"You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose. Focusing on yourself will never reveal your real purpose. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Only in God do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny." - The Rev. Rick Warren for Starbucks

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:32:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bees battle "hornets from hell"

Scott says: "The film footage on this is REALLY good, and it's hard not to feel bad for the bees in the first half's carnage, and to cheer for them in the second half of the video."

A small but highly efficient killing machine lurks in the mountains of Japan—the Japanese giant hornet. The voracious predator pumps out a dose of venom with an enzyme so strong it can dissolve human tissue. Just a handful of these hornets can kill 30,000 European honeybees within hours. Watch an attack of giant hornets on a beehive, and learn the surprising secret that Japanese honeybees use in their defense.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:32:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Using Excel as a music synthesizer

Erich Neuwirth made an Excel spreadsheet that lets you synthesize sounds and play them by moving sliders around.
Link (via Music Thing)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:23:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Make vol 4 available on Amazon

The fourth volume of Make magazine, which I edit, is now available on Amazon.

The major projects include an electric cigar box guitar, a kit to take high speed strobe photos (so you can capture a balloon or light bulb in mid-pop), and how to turn kids' electronic toys into musical instruments. There's also a guide to a bunch of different kinds of kits (electronic, beer making, robots, etc) and a how-to by Mr. Jalopy on converting a vintage hi-fi cabinet into an LP and CD ripper, burner, and player.

David Pescovitz started a new column for the magazine called Proto, which profiles cool makers in corporate labs around the world, and Cory Doctorow weighs in on the Supreme Court's unfortunate Grokster decision.

I'm especially excited about the do-it-yourself section with ways to hack your coffee and espresso makers.
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:15:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Psychology of candy jars

Obesity researchers report the results of a new study suggesting that when candy is out of sight, it's also out of mind. The scientists at the Weill Cornell Medical College gave university admins a Secretary's Week gift of 30 Hershey's Kisses in either clear or opaque jars. Apparently, the secretaries were twice as likely to forget about the candy if it wasn't visible or within arm's reach. From the Associated Press:

Secretaries ate an average of 7.7 kisses each day when the candies were in clear containers on their desks; 4.6 when in opaque jars on the desk; 5.6 when in clear jars 6 feet away; and 3.1 when in opaque jars 6 feet away.

In interviews afterward, secretaries overestimated how many chocolates they ate when they had to walk a few feet to get some, and underestimated how many they consumed when the treats were in easy reach.

"The less effortful it is to eat, the easier it was to forget how much they ate," the study found.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:08:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Retinal scans for cattle

New Mexico State University researchers are testing a retinal scanner and radio frequency identification (RFID) tag system for cattle. Part of the USDA's planned National Animal Identification System, the technology could help identify and keep tabs on animals that may have been in contact with diseased livestock. From a press release:

(Livestock specialist Manny) Encinias used a $3,000 retinal scanner not much bigger than a small video camera to record the IDs at three locations over a six-month period. To make the digital record, the cow is held in what's known as a squeeze chute and the scanner's eye-cup, specially molded for a cow's face, is held to each animal's eye.

The scanner senses when the eye is open, automatically makes an image, and downloads the data to a computer database. In addition to the retinal image, the device records the date, time and a global positioning satellite coordinate of the location.

"It's as simple as taking a picture," Encinias said. "Plus, we can do everything at chute side."

Link

UPDATE: BB reader Jason Rist says, "A company called Optibrand, in Fort Collins, CO was started by several professors that had discovered a way of retinal scanning animals several years ago... Their tools are slightly more sophisticated, and have things like bluetooth built into the handset." Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:57:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jason Scott's new documentary is about text adventures

A reader writes, "Readers of his blog will know that Jason Scott (creator of the BBS Documentary) has just announced his plans for a new documentary. On the Text Adventure world!"

The next documentary I am working on is about Text Adventures, or Interactive Fiction. It is called "Get Lamp". It has a introductory website (GETLAMP.COM) and I've been noodling with it for about 3 years. I got serious about it in June and have been spending significant time on it since September. This is, of course, in addition to my other duties and projects.

Now why, after finishing a massive film project, would I set off on a new one? Well, it's fun, for one thing. It's honestly a great time travelling around, meeting people, and getting down for posterity the thoughts and statements of what I consider to be some important folks. After a decade of wanting to make movies and then not actually doing it, it's great to accomplish what I used to dream of doing when I was a teenager. So there's that.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:16:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

London map posters for OpenStreetMap

Tom sez, "Steve Coast and I have made some big, funky, limited edition posters to raise funds for OpenStreetMap, the collaboratively-edited wiki map of the world. The posters are A0 (45x32in/32.7, 83x115cm) and show all the GPS data OpenStreetMap has gathered for London up to October 2005. The River Thames and its major bridges, and both Regent's and Hyde Park are clearly visible. On the one hand this is the raw foodstuff of the bottom-up/emergent mapping world - it's thought-provoking and needs serious analysis - on the other hand it's just sweet eye candy, and it's £10 to a great cause!" Link (Thanks, Tom!)

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

Humorous slipcovers for books

Flapart sells funny book-covers to wrap around your reading material to impress strangers on the subway. Covers include "Coroner by Correspondence" and "Fast Track to Prison - Exploring the Many Benefits of Life Behind Bars." Link (Thanks, Micronosphere!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:54:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's latest novel as an RSS feed

This is such a cool remix of my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town -- an RSS feed that gives you a couple pages every day. No matter when you subscribe to it, it sends you the book starting from the beginning. Subscribe via Winksite and it'll come to your phone in daily bite-sized pieces. Link (Thanks, Charles!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:39:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney characters auto-stitched by sewing machines

Brother has shipped an automated sewing machine that comes pre-loaded with 78 DIsney characters that it can stitch on demand, with new character patterns available for download. Link (Thanks, Alice!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:35:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Church of Reality is an official religion

The IRS has recognized the Church of Reality as an official religion!

The Church of Reality is a religion based on believing in everything that is real. What makes it a religion is that what a person believes in is a personal choice. Most people choose to believe in some sort of fictional based religion. A Realist who practices Realism is someone who has dedicated himself to the pursuit of reality the way it really is and is committed to evangelizing reality to move society in a reality based direction. Realism is a doubt based rather than a faith based religion where truth is purified through scrutiny.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:31:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fox shuts down Buffy Hallowe'en musical despite Whedon's protests

Fox has shuit down a plan to perform a fan version of the Buffy musical episode, Once More with Feeling, even though creator Joss Whedon has asked them not to. Jason Schultz has written a great analysis of this here.

Is this the kind of copyright policy we want? Those are tougher questions. Just as artists are an engine for creativity in our culture, so are fans. An artist on their own can make a work of art, but only fans can make it mean something in our society. Fans take art and translate it into culture. They invest in it, obsess over it, share it, and spread it to others. They turn it from an isolated item into a means of communication. (For more on this, see danah's posts here and here where she breaks it down more eloquently).

But where is the recognition of this reality in copyright? Well, before the digital age, it was often in the idea that copyright was a public right and fandom was a private series of acts. Copyright would control public distribution of works and fans would collect them and share them and discuss them in private. More importantly, they would do so without making "copies" of them; instead, they would trade physical goods and have verbal conversations. Some would make costumes or their own art based on the subject matter, but those were generally kept private or only exhibited at limited forums like Comic Cons.

Link (Thanks, Ryan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:29:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Super Mario World level-editor

If, after all these decades, playing Super Mario has started to lose its fun, you can always hack your own levels using this Super Mario World level-editor:

Lunar Magic is a level editor I created for Super Mario World (SNES). It's the first and, as far as I know, the only level editor available for this game. I began looking into making an editor for it shortly after releasing the SoM VWF patch, mostly on a whim to see how hard it would be. It wasn't intended to be a long term project, but things would turn out otherwise...

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:26:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Homer Simpson Da Vinci-esque limited edition fountain pens

While I'd never shell out the dough for these pricey, limited edition Homer Simpson/Leonardo Da Vinci mashup fountain pens and rollerballs, it warms my heart to know that they exist. Link (Thanks, Bren!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:23:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Unintentionally macabre sign at KFC

Lisa Winn says: "Image I photographed in Wisconsin -- sign with excellent wording. Worth a look."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:02:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google sued by Association of American Publishers

Snip from AAP press release issued today:

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced the filing of a lawsuit against Google over its plans to digitally copy and distribute copyrighted works without permission of the copyright owners. The lawsuit was filed only after lengthy discussions broke down between AAP and Google’s top management regarding the copyright infringement implications of the Google Print Library Project.

The suit, which seeks a declaration by the court that Google commits infringement when it scans entire books covered by copyright and a court order preventing it from doing so without permission of the copyright owner, was filed on behalf of five major publisher members of AAP: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group (USA), Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons.

Link

Update: Here's a copy of the complaint: PDF Link (Thanks, Jason M. Schultz)

Previously:

Authors Guild sues Google over print program

Xeni op-ed on Authors Guild lawsuit against Google Print

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:11:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

KUOW radio on iPod brouhaha: Xeni + host John Moe

I joined KUOW radio host John Moe yesterday for a segment asking "What's the big deal with the new iPod?" Link to archived episide of "The Works" on KUOW-FM, Seattle.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:00:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weapon Engrish: "Emulational High-Powered Nicety"

A Boing Boing reader says,

I snapped this great piece of engrish at a Kentucky flea market. The Emulational High-Powered Nicety is an electric rifle that, according to the manufacturer "...simulates the real gun and reappears the excellent mechanical assembly."

Link

Reader comment: Jake McMahon says,

This empty box has been hanging around my house for while. On the side of the box are the words "Do not shoot at any human animal!" written on the side. 'Spose that puts werewolf hunting out the question, then.

Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:53:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Transparent armor

The US Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is testing a new kind of transparent armor, clear aluminum aluminum oxynitride, that can stop hardcore .30 and .50 caliber armor-piercing bullets. From a press release:

ALONtm is a ceramic compound with a high compressive strength and durability. When polished, it is the premier transparent armor for use in armored vehicles, said. 1st Lt. Joseph La Monica, transparent armor sub-direction lead

"The substance itself is light years ahead of glass," he said, adding that it offers "higher performance and lighter weight."

Traditional transparent armor is thick layers of bonded glass. The new armor combines the transparent ALONtm piece as a strike plate, a middle section of glass and a polymer backing. Each layer is visibly thinner than the traditional layers.

ALONtm is virtually scratch resistant, offers substantial impact resistance, and provides better durability and protection against armor piercing threats, at roughly half the weight and half the thickness of traditional glass transparent armor, said the lieutenant.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:26:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Man able to read book with street band playing loudly right next to him

MasaManiA is a Japanese photographer who takes fantastic pictures of daily life on the streets of Tokyo. Here, he has taken a photo of a homeless man who is able to read a book without being bothered by the musicians playing right next to him.

Why can he concentrate? you who know the knowledge about concentration will be confuse in many knowledges and actual facts.

But western scientist give you the genius answer for it.

If western scientist sees this picture, they conclude that the best way of concentration is to become homeless.

This is new knowledge. What a fucking useful knowledge is.

Link (More Masamania goodness on Boing Boing here and here)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:19:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Freeze-dried funeral

Promession is a process where corpses are freeze-dried, shaken into a powder, and then put in a biodegradable coffin. Developed in Sweden, the process was apparently created as a response to limited burial space and to reduce the pollution emitted from burning dental fillings during traditional cremation. (More background on Promession here.) It may make its way to parts of the UK in the near future. From The Scotsman:

It involves freezing the coffin and body to -18C before lowering them into liquid nitrogen at -196C, which leaves them extremely brittle.

A vibrating pad is used to reduce the remains to a powder and a magnetic field then removes all traces of mercury and other metal residues from fillings or hip replacements.

The remains are then put into a biodegradable coffin made from vegetable matter and buried in a shallow grave, where they will be absorbed into the earth within six to 12 months.

Loved ones could plant a tree or shrub on top of the grave, to absorb nutrients from the remains, supporters of the promession system suggest.

The cost of the process is expected to be similar to that for a cremation - around one-third of the price of a grave plot and traditional burial.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:17:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video of a video of mind-blowing hair removal technique

A week ago, the blogger behind Random Good Stuff stood in front of store that specializes in hair removal (eyebrow hair, ear hair, etc), and shot a video of a TV screen that showed how the process works. The speed and skill of the person plucking the hairs with a little piece of string (looks like dental floss) is stunning.

The blogger also said someone from the store caught him taping the demo and ran out to chide him.

From the comments section of the blog entry: "Those are not rubber bands, they are just cotton strings. What you saw is a very old Chinese technique called 絞臉 (Jiao Lien) and it is still used today."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:03:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a boombox laptop case

Here's an excellent DIY transformation of an eighties boombox into a laptop case and bookbag that plays music from the computer stored inside. From the HOWTO:

I added a small amplifier that I found on some toy speakers to increase the sound volume and quality. Don't worry, I respect others when I play music. It's my school backpack first and foremost.

Everything shown is from a thrift store except for the eyelets/hinges/clasps, which came from a local hardware store. The strap is a modified women's belt, and the boombox had a damaged speaker cover that I replaced with that rabbit.

I was picking up food from a fast food restaurant one day, and an old man told me that he is happy that I'm "taking the music to the streets." That practically brought a tear to my eye.

Link (via MAKE: Blog)

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:03:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Junebug's softy scupltures

We mentioned the work of Jess Hutch (aka Junebug) before. Here's a Flickr gallery of Jess's deeply appealing softy dolls and pillows. She knows every trick in the book for exploiting your parental instincts when you look at one of her creations. According to her bio, "she is inspired by Mary Blair, Japanese toys, world's fairs, and her sister Kate."
Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:47:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Honda's concept car for dog owners

Business Week Online has lots of neat concept car photos from the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show. I liked the Honda's Wow minivan, loaded with canine-comfort features.

Intended to be 'enjoyable and dog-friendly for a mobile lifestyle', the interior is dominated by novel ways for owners to pamper their pets and prevent them becoming lethal projectiles in accidents.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:37:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Annie Leibovitz's Burroughs photo on eBay

A print of Annie Leibovitz's beautiful William S. Burroughs photo is up for auction on eBay. Starting bid at US$1000. From the ad:

Silver print, 12x15 1/2 inches (30.5x39.4 cm.), with Leibovitz's signature, title, date, inscription and notations "A.P. 12," in ink, on recto. 1995

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:25:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Board-game based on C/C++/Java

When I was a boy, my dad brought home games and books that introduced young people to soon-to-be-obsolete programming environments like assembler and Lisp. Clearly this needs updating, and C-Jump is just the game to do it: a game that lets young people and their parents engage in friendly competition to grounded in C, C++ and Java code. Seriously, this looks like awesome, geeky fun.

The child calculates number of steps in the move, including addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication of small numbers. The game helps to develop understanding of a complete computer program, formed by logical sequences of commands.

Link (via Wonderland)

Update: Jim sez, "there is this interesting thread over at Boardgame Geek discussing the quality of the game (low) and being angered by the fact that the game maker applied for a patent for the game mechanics (not just copyright as most other games are protected)."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:32:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Escape Pod -- great sf story podcast

For the past couple days, I've been listening to the back-catalog on Escape Pod, a podcast of science fiction stories read aloud. Most of the readers are podcasters with their own shows, and they've got good mic skills that makes the delivery of the material really sweet.

The stories vary from good to excellent, including a World Fantasy Award winner. Listening to this is like getting a great issue of Asimov's or the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction delivered to your ear-holes. The whole thing is Creative Commons licensed, too.

I liked it so much, I sent the editor -- Stephen Eley, whose introductions to the stories are utterly charming -- my story Craphound for adaptation to audio (look for it soon!). Link, Podcast feed (Thanks, Sal!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:31:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

HOWTO make a quill pen

Here's a great, in-depth set of instructions for making your own quill pen, from acquiring the feather to tempering the tube and cutting the nib.

Find pen orientation -- Hold the feather is you would a pen. I've found that the best thing is to follow the curve so that the point curves down instead of up. When it curves up and there's a bead of ink under the nib, if the angle is too low, the bead can touch the paper and spread everywhere. Also, the shape of the quill under the plume may affect how easy it is to hold. So figure out where the top of the pen should be.

It will actually work with the opposite curve, it's just a bit more awkward to get it to work easily, sometimes, though some folks like the way the tube curves through their grip the other way, so it's worth trying.

Link (Thanks, waffle_kid!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:59:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gamer films: short, rude and funny

Pure Pwnage is a series of funny, ~20-minute homemade videos chronicling the adventures of a group of gamers who trash-talk, join tournaments, and have hijinks-y adventures. I just watched the latest one and chuckled all the way through. Nice stuff! Link (Thanks, Greg!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:56:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

My PowerBook G4 trackpad keeps freezing

I'm hoping a Boing Boing reader might have an answer to a problem I'm having with my 1.5Ghz 12-inch PowerBook. I bought it last week from Apple's online store as a rebuilt machine. It operated without a problem for a few days, but now the trackpad and button becomes unresponsive after 3-15 minutes of use.

The Keyboard & Mouse preference pane doesn't even show the trackpad tab after it freezes. (I am using a USB mouse right now, which works just fine).

Sometimes, but not always, after a shut down the computer, the trackpad will work for a few minutes, but it always freezes up again after a couple of minutes.

I've tried resetting the PRAM and the the power management system (but shutting the machine down, taking the battery out, pressing down the power key for five seconds, and rebooting), but this doesn't solve the problem. I've changed the Energy Saver preferences to "Better Performance."

I've checked off the "ignore accidental input" checkbox on the trackpad. I've tried Apple's official recommended trackpad reset method of covering the entire trackpad with my palm for five seconds and lifting my hand off in a smooth motion. This does not reset my trackpad.

I'm at a loss, here. Do you have any ideas? If you do, please email me.

Reader comment: Bill Scannell says:

I don't know whether you've solved your problem or not, but having just solved mine, I thought you might be interested. It turned out to be the Airport card. Simply take out the battery, remove the Airport card and then reinstall the card. My card turned out to be loose. The card sits underneath the trackpad, which is why I think a loose Airport card causes the trackpad to go wonky. As always, YMMV.

More...

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:12:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Outdoor warning siren movies and sounds

I love the look of giant warning sirens. The sounds they make are even better -- here's a website of movies of air raid sirens in action, including scenes from movies featuring air raid sirens. Why are they so much fun to watch?
Link (via Martin Klasch)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:57:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video, photos from North Korea "Arirang" state culturefest

For the first time in years, American visitors are being permitted to attend the uber-nationalistic Arirang Festival in North Korea. The "Mass Games" event retells the tale of NoKo history. Boing Boing has a few pals there, and we look forward to their first-hand reports. Blogger Dan Schorr went, and posts an account:

This flight attendant wore a pin with the face of Kim Il-sung, the "Great Leader" of North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea). Dying in 1994 has not prevented him from guiding the nation - he has been declared the nation's "eternal President" and almost everyone we interacted with who was in any any sort of official capacity (and we were hardly ever able to see other people up close) wore such a pin. Those that didn't had a different pin - one showing the face of Kim Il-sung's son Kim Jong-il, the country's "Dear Leader" who currently has the reigns of power and is often referred to as "the General".

(...) The [Arirang festival] performance runs this year for about two months - we were told that 100,000 performers took part in opening night, with a lower number of people after that. It lasted about ninety minutes. "Arirang" was also the theme of the 2002 Mass Games and we were told that performers practiced for a year - this time they took six months to rehearse for the performance.

After this incredibly impressive display, I learned first-hand that the North Koreans didn't want us to freely take photos. When I pointed my camera at the large picture of Kim Il-sung that hung over the stadium, a woman in uniform swatted my camera down, resulting in a blurry shot of the chairs. I noted the stern, disapproving stares from at least a couple of them and I hoped they weren't about to take my camera - fortunately they didn't.

(...) We got back to the hotel around 10pm and were told we were allowed to walk within 100 meters of the front door but no further. I had never experienced such a situation in my life - a very weird feeling to be told that you are locked down at home for the night like a child. But I knew this was part of the deal in traveling to North Korea.

Link, and here's video.

Previously:
North Korea promotes vacations with wacky Flash Movie

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:09:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

David Copperfield's immaculate conception

Details are scarce, but apparently stage magician David Copperfield told the German magazine Galore that he's going to impregnate a woman on stage. Without touching her. He must have good aim. From Ananova:

"Naturally it will be without sex. Everyone will be happy about it, but I'm not telling you any more."

Link (Thanks, Jenn Shreve and Eric Salmon!)

UPDATE: Thanks to all the readers who commented that this isn't a new trick for Coppperfield. Anil Kandangath says:

I saw Copperfield at the MGM in Vegas last fall, and he did the immaculate conception trick. Basically he picks a girl at random from the audience, and proceeds to play out a romantic tale, which includes a very funny way of serenading her. He then shows a sonogram of her tummy which reveals a baby inside. (BB reader Roger Braun adds that the baby in the womb "holds a card that another person from the audience has drawn on a paper and hidden.") I'm not so sure about the touching part since the girl grabbed his ass while being escorted to the stage, and David wryly commented that his name was Copperfield, not Cop-a-feel. I thought that it was quick-witted humor, but a search on Google revealed this page where the exact same scene is described. It would be too much of a coincidence if I saw the show on the same day as the lady who reviewed it (He performs quite regularly at the MGM).

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:32:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Liar's mind

Researchers from the University of Southern California report that pathological liars and cheats actually have differently-structured brains than people who don't. Adrian Raine and Yaling Yang report in the British Journal of Psychiatry that liars they studied seemed to have 22 percent more white matter in their prefontal cortex than "normal" people. From Reuters:

The new study suggests that because grey matter consists of brain cells, while white matter forms the "wiring" or connections between these cells, pathological liars may have more capacity to lie and fewer moral restraints.

"They've got the equipment to lie and they don't have the disinhibition that the rest of us have in telling the big whoppers," Dr Raine said...

While the findings have no practical implications at present, if confirmed they could be useful in clinical diagnoses of whether a person is pretending to be sick.

They could also help in criminal justice settings by helping police determine if a suspect is lying, and in pre-employment screening.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:20:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

$1 million cryptid bounty withdrawn

It turns out that the $1 million bounty for a photo leading to the live capture of a bigfoot, yeti, or Nessie has been yanked. Hasbro-owned Wizards Of The Coast (makers of the card games Magic The Gathering) was planning to sponsor the bounty as part of promotion for their game Duel Masters. From Cryptomundo.com:

Prior to the start of the promotion, Duel Masters reconsidered based on safety concerns for both the public and for creatures-at-large. Specifically, Duel Masters feared that untrained cryptozoologists would engage in unsafe behaviors in their attempt to capture these legendary creatures and that innocent creatures may be harmed in the process.

Instead, Duel Masters is sponsoring a photo contest that provides a guaranteed first prize of $5,000 for the photo that best perpetuates the mystique surrounding the hunt for the legendary creatures Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster and/or Yeti. A second place prize winner will receive $2,500, and three third place winners will receive $500.

The contest will be launched on October 24, 2005, which is the beginning of Creature Appreciation Week. A full set of contest rules may be viewed beginning Oct. 24, 2005 at the official website for Creature Appreciation Week, which is www.caw2005.com.

BB cryptozoologist pal Loren Coleman commented on the announcement:

Okay, I’ve seen it all in 45 years, so this doesn’t really surprise me. Sure, I’m disappointed in Duel Master’s withdrawal of the bounty offer. But I understand. My phone has been ringing off the hook (since getting back from Texas). I’m hearing from people from around the world, from Scotland to Australia. The media story on this bounty has caused an unprecedented worldwide frenzy in which, apparently, Duel Masters felt a monster hunter could have gotten badly hurt in the race for the million dollar bounty. No one wants that. The company seems to have discovered all kinds of legal considerations too. Duel Masters may have discovered, for example, that the Loch Ness Monsters are protected under British law, specifically The Protection of Animals (Scotland) Act of 1912 and The Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966. And a few American counties have laws with heavy fines and imprisonment for harming Bigfoot, which could have accidentally occurred. Glad to hear there are guaranteed prizes of $9000 for photographs now.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 05:11:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Joi "007" Ito's feature film debut

OK, not exactly. But still, ROFL! Link to faux movie poster, here's the real story -- Joi's speaking in LA tomorrow, at USC. Fembots get in for free. (Thanks, Sean Bonner)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:32:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sears Tower scale model made from Jenga blocks

Dabdiputs sez, "This guy built a 300lb model of the Sears Tower out of 15,000 Jenga blocks." Link (Thanks, Dabdiputs!)

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

NYC street-demonstration against DRM Oct 25/7PM, 14th and B'way

NYU students are staging a street-demonstration against DRM! w00t! If I were there I'd bring a pitchfork!

On Oct. 25 at 7 p.m., the Free Culture Club is holding a protest in front of the Virgin Records store at 14th Street and Broadway. The purpose of this protest is to educate customers about the use of digital rights management technology that might be be placed on CDs unbeknownst to the customer and to encourage Virgin to use a label that clearly indicates and explains DRM technology on CDs that have DRM technology blocks.

Link (Thanks, Bookslibretti!)

Update: Fred sez, "Thanks for posting about our protest. We're very excited and appreciate the exposure. I'm submitting a link to our wiki page, which we're updating with more information, flyers for people to use, and so on."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:22:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dear ASCAP: May I sing Happy Birthday for my dad's 75th?

Carrie sez, "Partly inspired by the site UnhappyBirthday.com, I thought it'd be fun to encourage people to write ASCAP and ask for permission in advance any time they expect to sing 'Happy Birthday.' The post is focused on my own letter - written on behalf of my father, who turned 75 this month."

The copyright status of "Happy Birthday To You" and the law related to public performances of copyrighted works have recently been brought to my attention. I would therefore like to request permission in advance to sing "Happy Birthday" to my father at Frenchy's Original Cafe in Clearwater, Florida, on October 8, at approximately 1 pm.

My father will be turning 75 on this day and will probably be ordering the Seafood Gumbo and Fried Grouper. The rest of the party will include Charles Star, my brothers Peter and Paul, their spouses Karla and Cindee, and my mother Lynn. Five of us will be singing while my brothers merely mouth the words and smile. We expect there to be approximately 50 disinterested witnesses.

I realize this is short notice but we only recently settled the details. If there is a charge for the privilege of singing in this instance, please let me know. And, if there is, please specify whether or not the cost can be reduced by moving to another location.

Link (Thanks, Carrie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:18:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scans of punk and new wave LP and single covers

This site, chock full of scans of punk and new wave record sleeves, was a trip down memory lane for me. I had a lot of these, which have since disappeared thanks to rain damage and permanent borrowing.
Link (thanks, Sebastian!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:18:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The art of Rex Hackelberg

Excellent sketches and paintings by animator Rex Hackelberg.
Link (via Cartoon Brew)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:05:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Quake aid hampered by Pakistan's ban on web photos

Snip from Nature:

Open-access satellite images are revolutionizing responses to disasters. Yet the government of Pakistan has forced aid agencies to remove pictures of earthquake devastation from the Internet.

Link (Thanks, Kathryn Cramer)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:59:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

100 oldest .COM names in the registry

This list of the 100 oldest .COM domains currently registered a is fascinating look at the history of the Internet. Who was visionary enough to register a .COM domain, and when?

1.  	15-Mar-1985	SYMBOLICS.COM
2.  	24-Apr-1985	BBN.COM
3.  	24-May-1985	THINK.COM
4.  	11-Jul-1985	MCC.COM
5.  	30-Sep-1985	DEC.COM
6.  	07-Nov-1985	NORTHROP.COM
7.  	09-Jan-1986	XEROX.COM
8.  	17-Jan-1986	SRI.COM
9.  	03-Mar-1986	HP.COM
10.  	05-Mar-1986	BELLCORE.COM
11=  	19-Mar-1986	IBM.COM
11=  	19-Mar-1986	SUN.COM
13=  	25-Mar-1986	INTEL.COM
13=  	25-Mar-1986	TI.COM
15.  	25-Apr-1986	ATT.COM

Link (Thanks, Christopher!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:49:18 AM permal