I have a hard time fearing that the participants of Wikipedia or even the call-in voters of American Idol will be in a position to remake the social order anytime, soon. And I'm concerned that any argument against collaborative activity look fairly at the real reasons why some efforts turn out the way they do. Our fledgling collective intelligences are not emerging in a vacuum, but on media platforms with very specific biases.

First off, we can't go on pretending that even our favorite disintermediation efforts are revolutions in any real sense of the word. Projects like Wikipedia do not overthrow any elite at all, but merely replace one elite — in this case an academic one — with another: the interactive media elite...

While it may be true that a large number of current websites and group projects contain more content aggregation (links) than original works (stuff), that may as well be a critique of the entirety of Western culture since post-modernism. I'm as tired as anyone of art and thought that exists entirely in the realm of context and reference — but you can't blame Wikipedia for architecture based on winks to earlier eras or a music culture obsessed with sampling old recordings instead of playing new compositions.

Honestly, the loudest outcry over our Internet culture's inclination towards re-framing and the "meta" tend to come from those with the most to lose in a society where "credit" is no longer a paramount concern. Most of us who work in or around science and technology understand that our greatest achievements are not personal accomplishments but lucky articulations of collective realizations. Something in the air... Claiming authorship is really just a matter of ego and royalties.

Wikipedia isn't great because it's like the Britannica. The Britannica is great at being authoritative, edited, expensive, and monolithic. Wikipedia is great at being free, brawling, universal, and instantaneous.

"A core belief of the wiki world is that whatever problems exist in the wiki will be incrementally corrected as the process unfolds."

My response is quite simple: this alleged "core belief" is not one which is held by me, nor as far as I know, by any important or prominent Wikipedians. Nor do we have any particular faith in collectives or collectivism as a mode of writing. Authoring at Wikipedia, as everywhere, is done by individuals exercising the judgment of their own minds.

"The best guiding principle is to always cherish individuals first."

Indeed.

In the essay i criticized the desire (that has only recently become influential) to create an "oracle effect" out of anonymity on the internet - that's the thing i identified as being a new type of collectivism, but i did not make that accusation against the wikipedia - or against social cooperation on the net, which is something i was an early true believer in- if i remember those weird days well, i think i even made up some of the rhetoric and terminology that is still associated with net advocacy today- anyway, i specifically exempted many internet gatherings from my criticism, including the wikipedia, boingboing, google, cool tools... and also the substance of the essay was not accusatory but constructive- the three rules i proposed for creating effective feedback links to the "hive mind" being one example.

"Good news on that, by the way -- thanks to your calls and comments, the committee have slowed the pace of this fast-track bill, and are now working to fix the bill's language. Everyone from the Copyright Office to Radio Shack and BellSouth have now commented on the problems, so there's an excellent chance of a clear resolution." Link

I got this lot of slides about three years ago and I've never been able to figure out just what is going on. There are about 50 slides in all- all dating from between 1959 and 1969 and all of young women. Some, like the ones here have letters written on their foreheads, others have press type with their names on it affixed to either their temples or foreheads. Were the slides taken by a dermatologist or plastic surgeon or were these young women part of some now forgotten experiment.

The quality of the video is really nice. Don't you wish YouTube looked half as nice as this? Link

I wonder if Baker & McKenzie will send Wired News a letter complaining that Wired News is facilitating piracy for explaining a variety of ways in which FIFA World Cup fans can enjoy live video streams of the tournament on their computers without paying the rightsholder, Infront Sports & Media? Link

(Image courtesy groovehouse of The Grooveblog.)

Yoe was the creative director of Jim Henson's Muppets and a creative director at Nickeodeon and I doubt there's anyone who knows more about cool old comics and who has a better collection of comic book art.

Some of the artists and characters in this issue include Art Spiegelman, Picasso, Patrick McDonnell, Bettie Page, Charles Addams, Coop, Dan DeCarlo, Hugh Hefner, Rube Goldberg, King Kong, Ernie Bushmiller, and Chester Gould.

Like those early, giant-sized issues of RAW, Arf Museum is something I'm going to keep, treasure, and pull off the shelf to pore over for the rest of my life. Link

JPod is a novel about how the novelty-seeking, irony-soaked, instant-nostalgia, gross-out culture of the Internet can corrode your soul, so that when you crack wise, there's nothing underneath it but more wisecracks. The book made me uncomfortable and sometimes even angry, but I never wanted to put it down, and it made me think hard about my own life and values.

Coupland's earlier books, like 1995's Microserfs, tell the stories of smart, committed young people working their guts out because they believe in the transformative power of technology, because their pure passion for technology unites them. These young people are exploited and have personal problems, but they overcome them by supporting one another -- finding ways outside of "enterprise IT" to use technology to make their lives better. They become entrepreneurs, activists, or artists, finding ways to create change where none had existed before.

But JPod has none of that. In JPod, the little brothers and sisters of Generation X slave away at a thinly-disguised EA Games in Vancouver, where marketdroids reward their slavish labor by heaping menial tasks on them, and perverting the games they make so that they're not even cool. None of these people will be a software millionaire. They are people who work sweatshop hours for lousy wages, burn out young, and go nowhere. They use Google and eBay to scour the globe for anything to make their lives meaningful. They don't find it.

The storyline is all over the place. Much of it is cartoony -- sub-plots about Chinese gangsters, militant lesbians and dope-growers and so on -- and clearly not meant to be taken seriously. But there's a core story that trundles along as Coupland sings his doomsong, a story about characters as likable as Coupland characters always are, people struggling in ways that makes you want them to succeed.

JPod is the anti-Microserfs. Coupland has written himself as a character into the book, someone reviled by his other characters, presumably for having duped them into thinking that irony and a career in tech will make them happy and fulfilled. He's a villain, and he's pretty unflinching in criticizing his own work.

The prose is peppered with long pastebombs of Internet prose, from the banal to the sublime. eBay UI chrome. Penis enlargement spams. Acronym expansions, humorous and serious. All the valid three-letter Scrabble words. Where this kind of pastebomb appeared in earlier Coupland works, it was ironic, or cool, or funny. In JPod, it's a cross between reverent prose-poetry and a lament at how our brave revolution has become another bureaucracy.

Coupland's message is more than a counsel of despair there. First and foremost, he is indeed saying that working at EA in 2006 is no less miserable and soul-crushing than working for IBM in 1975 was, sure. But he's also reveling in how fast the revolution happened, how many peoples' lives it's touched, how fast it's become the new normal.

Which is right: there's no such thing as a permanent state of turmoil. Eventually, turmoil becomes normal.

But next year's turmoil is always lurking around the corner -- and every generation will get a chance to experience some kind of wrack and roll.

Link

Free Beer 3.0 has a new recipe, a new label, and a new Flickr Pool

Master brewer Birthe Skands describes 3.0 as a "traditional, top fermented beer with a very high drinkability factor - defined as the desire to drink another glass or bottle. With heavier beer from Belgium, for example, you'll drink only one glass which you'll indulge in. With FREE BEER you'll want to drink another one - so it's actually thirst quenching. We also wanted a nice color, and ended up with a beautiful, light amber"

Add to that Apple's willingness to remove features from iTunes Store songs in the name of "updating," the absence of any way to give away, sell or loan your iTunes Store songs, and Apple's use of blacklists and legal threats to prevent people from adding functionality to the iPod and iTunes and buying an iTunes song starts to seem like a worse and worse deal (especially since many artists report that they're seeing $0.07 or less from the sale of their music on the iTunes Store, so all your money is doing is lining the pockets of the same recording companies that are busily suing grannies, little kids and everyone else they can get their hands on).

The demonstrations are being organized by the Free Software Foundation's "Defective by Design" group, the same cats who crashed Bill Gates's keynote at WinHEC dressed in toxic waste suits. I can't wait to get to one of their actions -- they sound like a hoot!

Let the fun begin! We will be on-site tomorrow from 10am (local time) getting suited-up and you can expect the action to start at 10:30am - remember to bring those cameras!

Apple Store - 1 Stockton St, San Francisco, CA 94108
Apple Store - 679 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
Apple Store - 4702 NE University Village Pl, Seattle, WA 98105
Apple Store - 100 Cambridge Side Place, Cambridge, MA 02141
Apple Store - 767 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10153
Apple Store - 160 Walt Whitman Rd. Huntington Station, NY 11746h
Apple Store - 6121 West Park Blvd. Plano, TX 75093

Update: Micah sez, "Please add the Apple Store at University Village in Seattle to the list!"

Update 2: Will of MaximumPC mag sez, " I'll be at the San Francisco Apple store tomorrow morning with some one-sheet printouts explaining why DRM sucks, and as many copies of our April issue as I can carry. The April issue tells people how they can strip DRM from all their media--CDs, DVDs, downloaded music, and more."

These are aging industries run by aging men, and they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices. And I don't have a question about who's going to win that one eventually.

There are a lot of kids out there copying and distributing movies not because they care about seeing the movies or sharing them with their friends but because they want to stick it to the movie business.

You might go to an IFTF presentation and see baskets of finessed fruit that promise cognitive enhancement. Or you might wake up in the hotel where the IFTF seminar was being held to find your newspaper dated 10 years hence.

Artifacts were intended to start conversations. They worked. Mark Schar, senior vice president of financial software company Intuit, an IFTF client, says, "When you present forecasts to a group of executives, you're standing there and waving your arms a lot. When you put an artifact in front of them, they go, 'Oh, I get it.'"

Roq la Rue is pleased to present a giant group show for its June exhibit, entitled "Fresh Meat" and featuring artists who have not exhibited at the gallery before (Ok, with the exception of a couple!). Some artists are newly emerging onto the gallery scene, others are more established and exhibit regularly all over the country. The show has no overarching theme, just lots of fresh talent ranging from contemporary figurative to retro illustration, true down and dirty rock n roll Lowbrow to sublime exquisitely rendered Surrealism. (Shown here: David Bowers).

As NBC News reported back in 2004, U.S. military planners drew up plans to take out Zarqawi three times in 2002 and 2003, but the Bush administration killed the plans each time. Why? Because, military officials told NBC, the Bush administration feared that destroying Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Iraq "could undercut its case for war against Saddam."

Looking at this next series of acetates (Which were used in "Horizons" pre-show area. So that WDW guests could then get a sense of the sorts of things that they'd soon be seeing as they made their way through the queue of this Future World attraction), I'm reminded of how hopeful "Horizons" used to be. The bright new future that was supposedly waiting for all of us. Whether we chose to continue to live on Earth ...

Now, I give a total offertory to joyful union.

I'll honor - joyously, endlessly, loyally, devotedly - you.

In the marriage that unites us, paired Yang and Yin, Benjamin and me, forever soulmates, shall complement as partners steadily.

With a doubtless promise, I pledge integrity and stability sincerely. Our rounded rings, a completely noble treasure; it represents continual respect, love, perpetual link with trust, limitless.

My vow: absolutely lasting devotion.

In the last Canadian elections, we kicked out Sam Bulte, a Liberal Party candidate favored for the spot of Heritage Minister. Bulte had been funding her campaigns by raising huge sums from the entertainment and pharma companies, whom she was meant to be guarding. Naturally, her policies when in office stole from the public interest to deliver windfall profits to those companies.

Now it seems that her successor, Conservative Party Heritage Minister Bev Oda, became the focus of the entertainment industry's funding efforts as it became clear that Bulte would not be re-elected (Bulte went crazy when her election prospects weakened, screaming in all-candidates meetings about not being "intimidated by user-rights zealots and EFF members").

Unlike the US, Canada does not have a tradition of corporate funding of Parliamentary campaigns. Indeed, Michael Geist got many of the candidates in the last election to sign onto a pledge not to take campaign funding from industries that they are likely to end up overseeing once in office. This only makes sense -- if you're taking a government paycheck to represent the public interest by overseeing an industry, that industry shouldn't be lining your pockets.

Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda did not take the pledge. According to data just released by Elections Canada, if she had, she would not hold her current position. During the campaign, Oda received contributions from many in the copyright lobby including Universal Music (tied for her third largest external contributor), the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, the Entertainment Software Alliance, the Canadian Music Publishers Association, and CRIA's own Graham Henderson. In addition, the broadcast lobby were also active supporters with Melinda Rogers (Ted's daughter), Gary Slaight, Phil Lind, Jay Switzer, and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.

In all, a significant portion of Oda's external funding during the campaign came from the very groups that now seek support from Minister Oda on key policy issues. Further, it is striking that all the corporate and association donations came late in the campaign as the polls showed the Conservatives in the lead and after the Bulte story was generating public interest.

A laser pulse melted a tiny piece of metal on a silicon chip, resulting in an unexpected shape that looks like a very, very small Easter bonnet. An unintended dust particle serves as a decorative flower on its top. The size of the bonnet in this photo, measured from left to right, is about 45 micrometers, half the diameter of a human hair.

* Computing Material Truths: How computers are used to simulate the mechanics of new nanomaterials

* Nuclear Detective: An ultra-high resolution radiation detector

* A Logical Approach to Computer Security: Computational logic to identify malware

There was no sign of foul play and the 45-year-old homeless man appeared to have died of natural causes, (Fort Lauderdale Police detective Kathy Collins) said...

"I don't really think I could take finding any more dead bodies, especially if it was rotting," Juan Cantor, 15, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

The prohibition of psychoactive substances has evolved gradually in the United States and in Europe. The opium-containing preparation laudanum had been widely available since the 18th century. Morphine, cocaine, and even heroin were seen as miracle cures when they were first discovered. During the mid to late 19th century, many manufacturers proudly proclaimed that their products contained cocaine or opium. A few, like Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup for infants which contained morphine, were more guarded in divulging their principal ingredients. By the beginning of the 20th century, problems with habitual use of cocaine and opiates was becoming increasingly apparent. This led to the removal of these substances from some products (e.g., Coca Cola) and to the introduction of the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) in the United States which required the listing of ingredients on product labels. Nonetheless, standard narcotic remedies like paregoric remained readily available into the early 20th century, and Benzedrine inhalers were marketed without prescription until the early 1950s. Codeine wasn't removed from most over-the-counter cough suppressants until the early 1980s.

Three Pronged Claws:
This type of claw usually handles small stuffed animals and small collectable basketballs. This type of claw is somewhat similar to the four pronged claw, but instead of having two of the prongs positioned above the arms, you have a choice of the prongs going around the left or right arm. Have the claw at an angle so that it covers the whole chest area of a stuffed animal; this is the best way to get things out of three pronged machines. To get a small collectible basketball, try and make sure a ball is not being surrounded by any other basketballs. For this might rotate the claw on its way down and might miss your basketball target. If this is inevitable, try and make it straight down as much as possible. For best results, aim the center of the prongs in the radius center of the basketball. This technique draws a 60 to 70 percent chance of grabbing a basketball, but it is very difficult to center the claw in the middle of the basketball.

Amanda asked Soros about George Bush's rock-bottom approval ratings --

Amanda: What helped Americans get the picture?

Soros: Reality. Link

Impeach Bush yourself! This is much more than just a petition.

There's a little known and rarely used clause of the in the rules for the House of Representatives which sets forth the various ways in which a president can be impeached. Only the House Judiciary Committee puts together the Articles of Impeachment, but before that happens, someone has to initiate the process.

That's where we come in. In addition to the State-by-State method, one of the ways to get impeachment going is for individual citizens like you and me to submit a memorial. ImpeachforPeace.org has created a new memorial based on one which was successful in impeaching a federal official in the past. You can find it on their website as a PDF.

You can initiate the impeachment process yourself by downloading the memorial, filling in the relevant information in the blanks (your name, state, etc.), and sending it in.

More information on the precedent for submitting an impeachment memorial, and the House Rules on this procedure, can also be found at the above address.

If you have any doubts that Bush has committed crimes warranting impeachment, read this page.

If you're concerned that impeachment might not be the best strategy at this point, read the bottom of this page.

A strange man grabbed for Teresa's purse...they struggled. The man eventually got the purse and took off.

What followed had Teresa doing a double-take--In a flash, someone was giving chase to the robber.

"He had on a white tunic, a beige leotard, and tights and boots," Teresa explained. The man was also wearing a cape.

Update: David sends in this mirror of the video

Volume 7, Paper Dolls, picks up the story with Yorick on a sub docked in a heroin-wracked Australia. Yorick convinces his minders to let him slip into Sydney to try to track down his long-lost fiancee. About half the book is told in flashbook, filling in the fascinating life's stories of characters we've come to know and love. The artwork is expressive -- sometimes moody and sometimes comic, but always sharp. The dialogue is likewise sharp: the wisecracks in Y are some of the best reasons to pick this series up.

Y makes me wish I had a time machine so I could jump forward six or eight months and pick up the next collection. Every one of the Y books has left me wanting more. Lots more.

Book 7 Link, Book 6 Link Book 5 Link, Book 4 Link, Book 3 Link, Book 2 Link, Book 1 Link

See also:
The first Y collection
The fifth Y collection

Of course you have to pay the licensing fee of $15.000 and this will sure keep a lot of the Taiwanese companies out of this promising marchitecture.

Some of them want to use and have paid the licensing fees as the people in Japan really wants the graphic cards and the motherboards with HDMI on it. It is an easy way to drive audio and video via single cable, nothing more than that.

Commenters on the YouTube page add more details. The song is "Tumse Hai Dil Ko" from the film "Jaanwar" -- and this: "The camera work is exceptional, the singing great, and the fact that this was just 1 year after the Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan show makes this work of adaptive plagiarism all the more impressive." Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

The group devised three flavorful recipes--chocolate chip; raisin and fruit; and a coffee, fruit and nut concoction. To ensure high quality, the bakers have the pH levels and level of moisture in cans checked monthly. Currently, the bakery produces only 500 cans a day, but it hopes soon to double that output.

Bennett: Well I think if gay..gay people are already members of families...

Stewart: What? (almost spitting out his drink)

Bennett: They're sons and they're daughters..

Stewart: So that's where the buck stops, that's the gay ceiling.

Bennett Look, it's a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a women.

Stewart:I disagree, I think it's a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

Update: YouTube mirror, Comedy Central Mirror (Thanks, Matt and Jed!)

The next piece of (ma)bati I sighted in the kitchen was an old cookie box - for some ppl that's just rubbish but for me it equals a source of clean, thin sheet metal that I could use for the repair.

I cut out the desired size, double-layered it (to improve stability)....

...and used flat pliers to mold it around the remaining parts of the hinge.

After some small adjustments, the "new" hinge just fit in perfectly well:

Meanwhile, if you want to download non-DRM music for free or cheap, there's always eDonkey, ThePirateBay.org and AllOfMP3.com.

Amazing that the only folks who've managed to offer a usable, decent music service are the ones who are ripping off the music industry. If I was a musician hoping to earn a royalty or two, I'd be plenty pissed at how my label (through IFPI) keeps chasing off the paying customers.

It took the move after it was told to remove the service's search by artist...

"Consumers were allowed a high degree of interactivity that breached these rules in many ways - for example, streaming individual tracks on demand," it said.

The ingredients finally came together today. I started with a $29 PS2 joystick that had an embedded fold-out LCD. After some butchering, I removed the backlight and created the world's cheapest video projector. After rummaging through some old slide projector gear, I found a good lens to throw the image and (for testing) used my bike light as a projector bulb.

To feed the projector, I'm using an old Lyra video jukebox. It's amazing how gadgets age so quickly, iPod is just so much easier to convert video that the Lyra has obsolesced. The hard part was getting the Thurl Ravenscroft video from the mansion. 'Turns out if you ride a few times, you will sooner or later find the doombuggies in the ride stop so that people who need extra help can board. If one is quick with a camcorder, the whole performance can be captured in under minute. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Some Photoshop transformations were needed to orient the video for projection.

Earlier this year, Israeli scientists created plasma balls by using microwaves to vaporise various materials, but Gerd Fussmann and his colleagues (at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and the Humboldt University in Berlin) used a different approach that they believe comes closer to the natural phenomenon.

“It is likely that lightning flashes and water interact to produce ball lightning,” says Fussmann. “We therefore use a short, high-voltage discharge of 5000 volts to vaporise some of the water in a glass tank and create the plasma ball.”

The tank contains two electrodes, one of which is insulated from the surrounding water by a clay tube. The high voltage causes enormous currents of up to 60 amps – over 200 times those needed to cause death – to flow through the water for a fraction of a second. These enter the clay tube, causing the water there to evaporate and a luminous plasma ball - consisting of ionised water molecules - to rise from the surface.

Fitted with oxygen supply, stabilisation and navigation aides, troops wearing the wings will jump from a high-altitude transport aircraft which can stay far away from enemy territory - or on secret peacetime missions could avoid detection or suspicion by staying close to commercial airliner flight paths.

The manufacturers claim the ESG wing is '100 per cent silent' and 'extremely difficult' to track using radar.

Once close to their target landing zone, the troops pull their parachute rip cord to open their canopy and then land normally.

In the scene where Lara Croft and partner jump off a building with "flying suits" on, the stunt was performed by the two men who invented the suits. No CGI, wires, nets, or other SFX were involved. This suit was invented by Patrick de Gayardon who was killed in parachute accident in April 1998 during testing of a new parachute type in Hawaii. Link

Going into the main hall of the Bigfoot exhibition, one is immediately struck by how, well, “museum-quality” it appears. There are display cases filled with replica skulls of Gigantopithecus and gorilla, the famed British Columbian carved stone head and foot bowl of Sasquatch, a Chehalis First Nations Sasquatch mask from British Columbia, and descriptive panels all around discussing hairy hominoids.

Check out Feldstein's gallery of more photos, too!

Ryan: Is it true that one of those old ZAP guys wanted to beat you up?

Bagge: Spain Rodriguez gave Crumb some strips that he had done for Screw magazine that Crumb had passed on to me, suggesting I reprint them. I didn’t think they were all that great—they were these sexy female spy stories—so I didn’t. As a result he told some people he was going to beat me up over it, but when I met him years later he didn’t even mention it. I think he was annoyed because he knew Crumb would have reprinted them in a heartbeat.

Reader comment: Tian says: "Yet, Japan has a historical and cultural temple dedicated to 'fuck.' To continue the amusment, this is the best Engrish shirt ever."

Thank you to the many readers who told me that this flower is a lantana.

Something between male and female, they are shunned by Indian society as unclean. Many make a rough living through prostitution or by crashing weddings, birthday parties and other festive occasions, threatening to disrupt the celebrations with vulgar behavior and to bring bad luck unless they are paid off.

And now they were in my living room.

Reader comment: Joseph says:

They're not eunuchs— they're called Hirjas, and they're considered a 'third gender' in India. You'll often find references to them in books about transgender/transexual issues. Besides providing entertainment at weddings and births (yes, typically in a pretty vulgar manner), they're considered somewhat sacred— their function in Indian society is to bless newborns and newly-married couples.

For more about hirjas and their cultural niche, see Serena Nanda's book: Neither Man Nor Woman.

And you'll find some pictures on flickr.

PS— the reason they're not eunuchs: some have had their genitals removed (via a ceremonial rite of passage), and some have not. In a way, comparable to the pre-op / post-op / non-op branches of transexuals (See: TransAmerica).

Imagine going to the grocery store only once every 6 months. Imagine paying less than a dollar per meal. Imagine never washing dishes, chopping vegetables or setting the table ever again. It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

But can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? For the good of human kind, I’m about to find out. On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: "a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes."

Maybe I’ll lose weight. Maybe I’ll gain superhuman monkey strength. Maybe I’ll go crazy. Maybe it’s too late. Check back here every day to follow along with the Monkey Chow Diaries.

Reader comment: Edward says: "The monkey chow story reminds me of an old plan to create people chow (I think of it as a nutritious version of crackerjacks, eat it raw or with milk or cooked into some more complex dish) and have bins of it on every street corner (next to the mail box?). No more hunger, you can work and eat well or just eat out of the bins."

[A] cable subscriber in San Francisco who watches a Giants baseball game from his or her laptop during a visit to Chicago is stealing from the Chicago cable operator who paid to transmit MLB games in that city.

But we're not talking Napster here, argues Buchanan. The cable subscriber in such a scenario already purchased the content from a programmer back home and under the law can watch it wherever he or she chooses, he said.

"Your interpretation of the (cable and satellite user agreement) is wrong," Kliavkoff told Buchanan as the two spoke before some 200 conference attendees. Sling Media users "are violating the scope of their user agreements."

All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created.

The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today's copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead. No film studio or record company bases its investment decisions on the off-chance that the product would be of interest to anyone a hundred years in the future. The commercial life of cultural works is staggeringly short in today's world. If you haven't made your money back in the first one or two years, you never will. A five years copyright term for commercial use is more than enough. Non-commercial use should be free from day one.

We also want a complete ban on DRM technologies, and on contract clauses that aim to restrict the consumers' legal rights in this area. There is no point in restoring balance and reason to the legislation, if at the same time we continue to allow the big media companies to both write and enforce their own arbitrary laws.

Every time he tries to rip his CDs to put them on his MP3 player, that guy Captain Copyright in spandex pajamas, is in his face telling him it's wrong. Yesterday he downloaded a copy of DJ Dangermouse's Grey Album. When CC showed up to lecture him in his usual condescending way, Infringer tried explaining that DJ Dangermouse put it on the web for free himself. But Copyright said that didn't matter. Paul McCartney did not approve, and that is all that really did matter.

How was it, Infringer wondered, that a society which judges itself to be so enlightened could find it so easy to suppress art. He then thought about all the other lost art which he had either heard of, or in some cases, even seen parts of himself. "The Cat NOT in the Hat", "Eyes on the Prize", and another new book. What was it again? Oh yeah, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got in".

Update: David Lynch, who manages a fanfic archive, is offering free hosting to any and all Captain Copyright fanfic, even "slash" (gay erotica), "Just be sure to mark fics NC-17 when the Captain is showing how he'd *really* like to treat consumers!"

Update 2: This Captain Copyright parody comic is superb. (Thanks, Philipp!)

# Remember that the fork is not a shovel. I eat fast (I swear I can't help it). Even if I'm not hungry, I want to shovel everything into my mouth in less than a minute. But my brain doesn't know that my stomach is full until twenty minutes after it actually is. As such, I could stuff myself silly before realizing I didn't need to consume as much as I did. Try eating half of what's on your plate, wait ten minutes, then continue to eat if you're still hungry. You never want to feel full - ever. That's when you know you've eaten too much. If you want a real hunger-stopper, try an Omega 3 and Omega 6 supplement (EFAs) twenty minutes before a meal

. # Become your own snack fairy. It's okay to snack between meals, really. Small meals throughout the day are enough to keep you satisfied, as (much like the sensation of being full) you never want to feel hungry. Let your body know it's going to get a regular regimen of calories. Plus, if you starve yourself for the regular meals, you're probably going to eat more before your brain tells your mouth to stop. Think about it: breakfast, lunch, and dinner are social constructs at their very core.

He was an interesting fellow. Kaden told me he was "the guy who postulated that the Old Testament 'tree of knowledge' was a veiled allusion to the psychogenic impact of flicker effects caused by the sun through palm leaves. Turns out that besides being a physiologist, ol' W Grey (the W. stands for William) was a pioneer in autonomous robotics with tube circuitry A.I.s."

Shown here is Elsie, a three-wheeled robot that had "a light sensor, touch sensor, propulsion motor, steering motor, and a two vacuum tube analog computer. Even with this simple design, Grey demonstrated that his turtles exhibited complex behaviors. He called his turtles Machina Speculatrix after their speculative tendency to explore their environment." Link

"I called Harvard to fact check this and found that, while technically true, that statement is sleazily misleading. Frei attended an executive education course called 'Advanced Management' that lasted a mere month and a half. Not the same as a two-year MBA program, which is what you'd assume reading Frei's bio. To get into the exec ed course, you don't need to take the GMAT, you don't even need to have attended undergrad school. The main admission requirement is whether your company will pony up the $55,000 program fee. But you do get to brag that you 'attended Harvard Business School.'

"I Googled the phrase 'attended Harvard Business School' and it looks like when people use that phrase it's clear they were in the MBA program. It also pulled up a few bios of people who went to the exec program, but they tended to be forthright about it.

"Here's a link to the admissions page of Frei's program."

(Image courtesy groovehouse of The Grooveblog.)

After thinking about why I always ate a bit too much, I finally realized it was a problem with my physiological empty/full gauge. If I eat until I feel "full" I've probably eaten too much. And, worse yet, I end up feeling sluggish for an hour or so after eating. You know, the "food coma."

Habit #3 is about resetting your notion of when to eat (or stop eating). The easiest way to say it is "eat when you're hungry, stop when you're not." Notice that this says nothing about feeling full.

This is the single most difficult thing to do. If you're like me, it means breaking 30 years worth of training your body. But after the first few weeks, you'll start to find that the "not hungry and not full" feeling starts to seem normal. If you keep a running tally of your food intake during the day (habit #1), that'll make it a lot easier to know when you should stop.

Thomas sez, "Ian Bogost has a thorough write-up at Water Cooler Games, as does Gamasutra. I filed a story with InformationWeek, which may not go live until Wednesday." (Thanks, Thomas and everyone else who submitted this!)

Link, Podcast feed

CHOAK PEAR. Figuratively, an unanswerable objection: also a machine formerly used in Holland by robbers; it was of iron, shaped like a pear; this they forced into the mouths of persons from whom they intended to extort money; and on turning a key, certain interior springs thrust forth a number of points, in all directions, which so enlarged it, that it could not be taken out of the mouth: and the iron, being case-hardened, could not be filed: the only methods of getting rid of it, were either by cutting the mouth, or advertizing a reward for the key, These pears were also called pears of agony.

Update: David reports that Smartfilter, the censorware jerks who block Boing Boing also target this ebook as "pornography."

"I am sure there are lots of other things that I've done that people have opinions about. But most successful executives I know have made controversial decisions and have been second-guessed and scrutinized both favorable and unfavorably. It comes with the priviledge [sic] of the work and that's ok. I can also assure you that I don't intend to start using this site as a review of the RIAA or my work there but I certainly can't stop others from doing so."

As well as sharing a concern about the usefulness, or otherwise, of the lawsuits, Risen thinks the labels, "need to work harder to implemnt [sic] a strategy that legitimizes more p2p sites and expands the download and subscription pool by working harder with the tech community to get devices and music services to work better together. That is how their business will expand most quickly.

"The iPod is still too small a part of the overall potential of the market and its propietary [sic] DRM just bugs me. Speaking of DRM, it is time to rethink that strategy as well......... At some point, I will write more comprehensively about those years and these issues....then again, maybe not."

"We are very satisfied with the decision. There is a general tendency for consumers to meet grossly unreasonable agreements when they download files with cultural content. It is therefore positive that the Ombudsman gets a grip on this so that consumer interests are also protected when such material is downloaded," senior advisor Torgeir Waterhouse says.

Among other things, the decision clearly states that the terms of agreement demanded by iTunes are unreasonable with respect to Section 9a of the Norwegian Marketing Control Act. Moreover, it is unreasonable that the agreement the consumer must give consent to is regulated by English law. That iTunes disclaims all liability for possible damage the software may cause and that it may alter the rights to the music, are also considered unreasonable. iTunes must now alter their terms and conditions to comply with Norwegian law by the 21.of June.

Quinn Norton of Wired News has had the operation and writes in detail about how it felt, what the problems were, and what she was able to do once it was in place. The most amazing part is that months after the magnet implant fragmented and Quinn lost her "sixth sense," it reassembled itself (magnets tend to draw towards one another) and the sense returned.

What if, seconds before your laptop began stalling, you could feel the hard drive spin up under the load? Or you could tell if an electrical cord was live before you touched it? For the few people who have rare earth magnets implanted in their fingers, these are among the reported effects -- a finger that feels electromagnetic fields along with the normal sense of touch...

According to Huffman, the magnet works by moving very slightly, or with a noticeable oscillation, in response to EM fields. This stimulates the somatosensory receptors in the fingertip, the same nerves that are responsible for perceiving pressure, temperature and pain. Huffman and other recipients found they could locate electric stovetops and motors, and pick out live electrical cables. Appliance cords in the United States give off a 60-Hz field, a sensation with which Huffman has become intimately familiar. "It is a light, rapid buzz," he says.

Arrived at Kure, Japan on the 11th of April 1946. Whilst in Japan was stationed at Kure, Okayama and Karuga and Hiroshima and Miyajima. Left Japan on the "TS Devonshire" on the 18th of October 1947.

On the voyage home, visited Hong Kong, Singapore, Colombo, Aden, Port Suez and Malta. Arrived back at Liverpool on the 3rd of December 1947.

These are the photographs my late grandfather, Desmond, took in this time.

People have been taking pictures of impressive buildings for as long as there have been cameras. Before that, they painted pictures of impressive buildings. And public transit. And street scenes. It's thanks to these images that we retain any sense of the history of our cities and ancestors. They're also some of the most striking art ever produced. "Security" is a bogus reason to discontinue this ages-old practice -- terrorists can readily take photos with hidden cameras, or rely on the existing stock of photos, or wait until no one is around, or memorize features of the buildings they plan on attacking. All that this sort of ad-hoc ban accomplishes is to punish non-hostile, private individuals doing something that's as old as buildings themselves: documenting the way we live. Link

What Farecast does is shift the power of information back into the consumer's hands, and that's why I like it. I remember when the web was young and the first car buying sites were up and running. Dealers scrambled for that early business, and I bought two cars off the web by forcing dealers in the Bay Area to compete for my business. It really felt like the web was going to change the dynamic of who was in charge in a car buying transaction - because I could force dealers to their best price, I was always going to get the best price. It felt like this would be the model in most large transactions, like travel, loans, etc. Price would stabilize, and folks would differentiate on service, relationship, and approach.

But something funny happened on our way to internet mediated bliss: the big companies figured out how to game our demand. Dealers realized they can make more profit if they cooperate and withhold pricing information from the aggregators, and the aggregators got into bed with the supply side of the equation (if you think AutoByTel or Expedia is on your side, you're kidding yourself). Nowhere is this more true that in how an airline prices its tickets.

In the context of western literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, The Fantastic involves dread, fear and anxiety in the face of phenomena that escape rational explanation, or that reveal the notion of reality to be no more than a construct. A fantastic experience can therefore be likened to the breaking or shattering of a frame. While the literary fantastic is limited to the last 200 years, the Fantastic in art can be construed more broadly. This elasticity allowed us to choose images from works spanning a period from medieval manuscripts and printed incunabulae, to the early twentieth century.

Using the example of the 500gm-coffee jar-sized Leyden Jar, and assuming that this could store a charge of approximately 200 volts, the Ark would have held the equivalent of 125 such jars, giving it a comparable, if not greater, potential voltage, as well as, more importantly, allowing for a much longer discharge time. Such a level of voltage goes a long way to explaining the reasons for the Arks more evolved design.

The most obvious difference is the use of twin terminals on the Ark. There are no problems with this configuration, other than ensuring good connection and isolation of each terminal, but there are some very good reasons for it. Because of its size, and the relation of capacity to charge, it would not be possible to touch the Ark by hand or with any form of implement to discharge it. The Ark would have carried a charge of thousands of volts, and because the human body is a better conductor than air, it would have killed anyone who got too close to it. Sound familiar?

...If the Ark was placed inside the Temple (in effect a large conductive box) and discharged, the result would be disappointing. There would be no spectacular effects, just the barely discernible glow of a few sparks and a loud crack. Why go to all this trouble to create the Temple if this was the end result? There must be some other, less obvious factor involved. The natural assumption to make is that the entire interior structure, and everything in it, would become live if the Ark put several thousand volts into the walls. But the Ark is the only crucial part of the Temple that is earthed, so it would operate normally if it were charged – any discharge would occur between the two cherubim, not the walls or pillars.

The answer to this problem is in the opposite principle – the Ark is not the source of the charge, the Temple is.

Drawn with calcium carbonate, and using the bumps in the wall to give form to the face, it features two horizontal lines for the eyes, another for the mouth and a vertical line for the nose. “The portrait of this face is unique,” said Jean Airvaux, a researcher at the French Directorate of Cultural Affairs. “We have other drawings, but they are more recent. Here, it could be the oldest representation of a human face.”

On the RU Sirius Show this week, R.U. plays brain tennis with Greenfield about his very negative biography.

RU Sirius: “… so now they have two guns. Tim picks up the gun and he folds it up into a newspaper and he hands it back to the Sheriff. The plan is off. So he goes off to talk to Joanna, and his explanation is, ‘we couldn’t have pulled it off. If we shot these two guys, then we’d have to shoot two other guys.” And this is Joanna’s explanation. And you just leave that hanging as sort of the final…

Robert Greenfield: But that’s not my take. He…

RU: It still sits in the book as the judgment of Leary’s character that he would have shot these two people. That’s what she says, that he would have had no qualms about shooting them.

Greenfield: That’s what she says. But you have to separate the narrator. You have to look at the quality of the story that’s told in terms of the person who is telling you the story. Listen…

RU: …Yeah but Joanna is a major source here…

Greenfield: Sooner or later you’re gonna have to let me say something. The point of that story is that Tim was completely non-violent. He never would have used that gun!

RU: That doesn’t come across.

Greenfield: Well, I’m sorry.

See also:

Cory's "I, Robot" is up for a Hugo!
Free Hugo-nominated novel ebooks for Worldcon attendees
This year's Hugo-nominated short stories as free podcasts
Compendium of online reviews of this year's Hugo nominees

My first exposure to Kirby (other than the cruder Golden Age stuff in Feiffer's book) was in an issue of Kamandi. My first reaction to his art was something like "THIS IS WRONG!!" My tiny kid brain couldn't process the crazed concepts and gonzo unconscious pop-culture pilfering of Kirby's writing, and his art (at his peak then, just before the beginning of his "Baroque Era" return to Marvel) curdled my brain like cottage cheese. I don't know if I'm allowed to count him as an influence, but I definitely see him as a Picasso of comics, a Colossus who invented whole genres single handedly, moved through several significant stylistic periods, each influencing countless artists, and was such a unnatural creative force that it is almost impossible to find someone else as significant in the history of comics.

As you can likely imagine, there were many jokes and good times to be had with these numbers. And some weird lunatic prank calls, though not a lot. But what drove my boss crazy most of all about having that fateful number was the amazing number of “googoo gaagaa” calls he received. You know, those calls you get when an infant has gotten a phone off the hook and has inadvertently dialed you up and is cooing and babbling into the phone? Well, maybe you don’t, but trust me, if you ever get a phone number with all of the same digits, you will. Apparently pounding repeatedly on the 6 button is a fairly easy thing for a baby to do.

In the wild, the ants recognize enemies by their pheromones. The organizers of the game used this natural ability to make the ants "ant-agonize" each other, by feeding the Japanese team with Kagoshima pork and the Brazilian team with spare ribs in order to alter the ants' pheromones.

TRADES IN LONDON. The last population returns (1841) exhibit the following tradespeople, &c., residing in London

168,701 domestic servants.
29,780 dressmakers and milliners.
28,574 boot and shoemakers.
21,517 tailors and breechesmakers.
20,417 commercial clerks.
18,321 carpenters and joiners.
16,220 laundrykeepers, washers, and manglers.
13,103 private messengers and errand boys.
11,507 painters, plumbers, and glaziers.
9,110 bakers.
7,973 cabinetmakers and upholsterers.
7,151 silk manufacturers, (all branches).
7,002 seamen.
6,741 bricklayers.
6,716 blacksmiths.
6,618 printers.
6,450 butchers.
5,499 booksellers, bookbinders, and publishers.
4,980 grocers and teadealers.
4,861 tavernkeepers, publicans, and victuallers.
4,290 clock and watchmakers.

Companies like Apple and Real AOL and Yahoo have signed onto these changes as a way of clearing the licenses on the music they presently sell -- even though this proposal will hurt the ability of new companies to enter the digital music market in the future.

You can stop it by contacting your Congresscritter. EFF's Action Center has information on which lawmakers are on the relevant committee, as well as some suggested things to say to your representative's office when you speak to them.

The entertainment industry has sneaked language into an obscure copyright bill that could smash Internet fair use. The law implies that licenses from copyright holders are needed for every digital copy made in the transmission of digital media -- including cached copies on servers or on your hard drive, and even temporary copies in RAM. The wording is being debated in a House Judiciary subcommittee on Wednesday. Don't let the music industry turn your cache into their cash. Check below to see if your representative is on the right committee, and call them now!

Update: Danny from EFF sez, "Hey, our action center is down for 'scheduled maintenance'." Here's the IPAction link instead. -- It's back now!

THE DEMON FISH OF SOUTH ATLANTA
By Paul J. Camp

So we bought this 105 year old Victorian in Grant Park, and moved in December 2.5 years ago. It is a pretty awesome house, and the guys that owned it before were inveterate gardeners so the back yard is full of flowers. It also has two ponds, connected by a recirculating pump and a short creek-like thingy.

When we moved in, the pump had been broken for years and the owners had let the upper pond silt up to make a bog garden. To me, bog = mosquitos, and mosquitos can piss off so one of the first things I did was drain the upper pond, scoop out all the gross awful smelly nasty crap, scrub and patch the liner, refill, and repair the pump.

Waterfalls are cool. Even stumpy ones.

The upper pond was a bog. The lower pond is a fish pond. It came with about a half dozen koi, some orange, some white, some half orange and half white. Fish used to be cool, but here's where they start to get spooky.

Last year, about this same time of year, I discovered two NEW fish . . . in the UPPER POND!

OK, let's review. We know that there were no living things at all in the upper pond as of January of that year because I scrubbed it down to bare rubber. WTF? Where did those damn fish come from?

There are a number of possibilities, and being a scientist I have methodically considered them all until I have landed on the most likely explanation. Were they pumped up from the lower pond? Not bloody likely (or to be more precise, not likely without blood). After all, there are still the same half dozen fish in the lower pond, and in any case, leaving aside the fact that the pump impellor would have turned them into fish giblets, they are just too broad of beam to fit through the hose pipe between the ponds. Were they transported in on the feet of birds from a land far, far away? Unlikely, since they were about 3-4 inches long when I discovered them, and I haven't seen any flamingos or similar sized fowl strolling through the yard. It is unlikely they were carried in by house finches.

Perhaps the lower pond fish laid eggs and the eggs were pumped up to the upper pond where they hatched. They WERE smaller, by a couple of inches, therefore younger, than the lower pond fish. But this seems to me to violate the rules of genetics since the LP fish have only orange and white coloration, whereas the upper pond fish are orange and black. Unless there was some funny business with a traveling fisherman, this just doesn't scan. Besides, why didn't I see them before? OK, I am oblivious, but I am not a lobotomy patient. I was working pretty diligently on that pond to cure its many leaks, and I think I would have seen something bright orange. I'm not a Republican. And in any case, the first time they ever got an official feeding was when they were three inches long, last year, and the upper pond, having been denuded of all life, just doesn't have an awful lot of land to live off of, let alone grow from egg to three inch long fish.

I did buy some plants for the upper pond, a couple cattails, some star sedge, some floating clover -- maybe eggs came in on that stuff. But then again, what have they been eating while they grew up? And anyway, I went back to Home Depot to observe the scene of the plants, and there were no fish there.

So what about evolution? We did have a fierce drought for a number of years. Maybe some of our local fish evolved the ability to locomote between pools in search of better pickins, like a Chinese lungfish. I've been known to do that when the beer runs out. Anybody seen any goldfish waiting at a crosswalk?

Maybe they really are demon fish, come up from hell to suck our eyeballs. But it seems like demon fish would have red eyes and sulfurous emanations bubbling from their tailpipes. That sometimes is an adequate description of the dogs, but not the fish. I don't think that's very likely.

Applying Sherlock's razor, the only theory I am left with is that they are Space Fish, crossed over from an alternate universe. I'm having a little trouble working out why they aren't made out of angles and speak pidgin English like Bizarro Superman, but I think this is a soluble problem.

Anyway, given their evident powers, I'm betting they are responsible for the number spam. Did you ever get 30312? If it wasn't them, I'm blaming it on El Nino.

Reader comment: Amit says: "The most likely explanation is that the fish in the upper pond are from eggs that went through the water pump. The colors of the fish are not hereditary, but environmental. Young koi can be darker than their parents, and the biology of the upper pond may be different, leading to different coloration. See also here."

Reader comment: Joe says: "To bring out the colour in koi.... Strong red and yellow pigments develop well in waters rich in green phytoplankton. ... it helps to feed a diet that will enhance the red pigmentation. Black pigment is enriched in hard water with a pH level of 7.5-8.5." Link

Jenny and Hazel, the co-producers of Felt Club say:

Just wanted y’all to know that FELT CLUB, Hollywood’s new monthly mini-craft fair, is returning to Meltdown Comics for our second show on JUNE 10.

We’ve got a new bunch of vendors who will knock your socks off (or knit you some new ones). Meltdown will be providing ATM service inside the store, and BUST magazine will be distributing free magazines at the event. The details:

FELT CLUB: Crafts That Kick Ass!
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 11am-6pm
@ Meltdown Comics
7522 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90046
ph: 323-851-7223

Hope to see you at one of our events soon! FELT CLUB happens the second Sat of each month. Future show dates are:

JULY 8
AUGUST 12
SEPTEMBER 9
OCTOBER 14
NOVEMBER 11

We discuss credit card data centers getting hacked; why banks getting hacked doesn’t make mainstream media; reissuing bank cards; how much he makes cashing out bank cards; how banks cover money stolen from credit cards; why companies are not cracking down on credit card crimes; how to prevent credit card theft; ATM scams; being “legit” in the criminal world; how he gets cash out gigs; getting PINs and encoding blank credit cards; how much money he can pull in a day; e-gold; his chances of getting caught; the best day to hit the ATMs; encrypting ICQ messages.

The Dark Group called his bluff. "Hello u website is under us attack," they emailed, with a demand for $50,000. "if u pay we do not ddos u site even again! and u hava a nice life :)" Given his promise to advertisers, an outage could get him sued. That's when Tew's entrepreneurial instinct kicked in. He struck a deal with a Web security company, which agreed to protect his site in exchange for a plug in Tew's blog. The page went live again. The FBI started an investigation.

"Perhaps the attackers have inadvertently done me a favour!" Tew later blogged. Word of the hit had increased his site's traffic, proving one of the great axioms of business: There's no such thing as bad PR. The pixelpreneur is now doing speaking engagements, writing an ebook, and developing a TV show about his experience.

I was tinkering with Asterisk and the Festival text-to-speech engine, and wrote some short Asterisk::AGI scripts to read back live weather reports. After that, I thought I needed something more interactive to work with...

Then I had a flashback to 1996, first year university, standing in the C & O club at the University of Waterloo, where someone had just pulled out their US Robotics Palm Pilot and started up Zork. A couple of hours later, after a quick trip to the campus computer store, I was playing Zork in the palm of my hand!

Now Zork is back! Listen as the eerie voice of Festival takes you into the Underground Empire, and marvel as you explore this world with your dial pad, unlocking the secrets within! What will Asterisk bring us next? The future is open!

You Want Some Dead People?

Yes. For the war sequences in the Shriek movie, we could use a few stiffs. Literally, headshots of dead people. But not real dead people--of live people acting dead. Which doesn't take much. Casualties pulled from the rubble.

Wanting something unique that would truly showcase Pascal's talents, I asked for a design featuring Baphomet, the goat-headed deity supposedly worshipped by the Knights Templar. I dug around until I found a nice copy of the famous engraving of Baphomet created by Eliphas Levi, and we were off.

The Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler has been a lightning bolt for me when I read it in the late 80s, and it is great to see it freed for all to enjoy. Nanotechnology has come alive lately in lame textiles or cosmetics products, but the vision of Drexler of nanoscale manufacturing lives on, and is unsurpassed in its bold predictions.

Specifically, the group recommended:

* Mandatory DRM labeling, explaining what you lose when you buy DRM technology

* Further, labeling should include information on how you'd be hurt if the DRM vendor goes out of business or if you buy new technology

* A promise of criminal prosecution the next time a Sony Rootkit DRM-style scandal crops up

* A call for investigation into the ways that DRM is used for illegal price-discrimination within the EU (e.g., charging different amounts for the same iTunes song depending on which European country you live in)

* A ban on future DRM mandates

* Action to ensure that DRM doesn't interfere with use by visually disabled people

* A promise that future DRM rules include activists and public interest groups, not just entertainment companies and DRM arms-merchants

* A rule allowing academics and security researchers to crack DRM and publish the details of their work

* Investigation into depositing non-DRM media with the nation's libraries

These reccos certainly could have gone farther, but hoo boy, would you look at that? Talk about a country bent on learning from America's dumb DRM mistakes.

Link

(Disclosure: I'm a proud co-founder and adivsory board member for the UK Open Rights Group)

"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery," and killed him, said a zoo official. Link

Reader comment: M Otis Beard says: "Wow, this is oddly similar to something that happened in Taipei, Taiwan back in late 2004."

"We're all about having fun here. I don't think we're going to get the cult crowd, the devil worshippers or anything like that," said Hickey, whose bar's signature concoction is the Bloody Devil, a variant of the Bloody Mary.

The 666 revelry is just the latest chapter in the town's storied history of publicity stunts, said Jason LeTeff, one of its 72 year-round residents - or, as the mayor calls them, Hellions or Hell-billies. But LeTeff wasn't particularly enthused.

"Now, here I am living in Hell, taking my kids to church and trying to teach them the right things and the town where we live is having a 6-6-6 party," he said.

"If you don't like attention, don't buy the new Hip Hugger with Flair! Not only can you wear it in sexy style on your hips or across your body, you can change the look according to your mood or outfit with the four interchangeable Flairs."

And when you enter the workforce, you will find competition from those crossing our all-too-porous borders. Now I know you're all going to say, "Stephen, Stephen, immigrants built America." Yes, but here's the thing--it's built now. I think it was finished in the mid-70s sometime. At this point it's a touch-up and repair job. But thankfully Congress is acting and soon English will be the official language of America. Because if we surrender the national anthem to Spansih, the next thing you know, they'll be translating the Bible. God wrote it in English for a reason! So it could be taught in our public schools.

So we must build walls. A wall obviously across the entire southern border. That's the answer. That may not be enough--maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles. And we should probably wall off the northern border as well. Keep those Canadians with their socialized medicine and their skunky beer out. And because immigrants can swim, we'll probably want to wall off the coasts as well. And while we're at it, we need to put up a dome, in case they have catapults. And we'll punch some holes in it so we can breathe. Breathe free. It's time for illegal immigrants to go--right after they finish building those walls. Yes, yes, I agree with me.

Update: Luke points out "classic commencement speeches by Jon Stewart, Ali G, Conan O'Brien, Will Ferrel, Alan Alda, Al Franken, Bob Newhart."

GNU Radio can do cool and scary stuff that old special-purpose radios can't do, like tune in and record every FM radio show, or all the cellular traffic on a certain street corner. The GNU Radio software is free software, licensed under the GPL, so you can improve on it, tweak it, start a business based on it, and torque it, all without paying anyone or asking anyone's permission.

After few minutes of normal Linux messing around ("Takes forever to boot.... Haven't got the sound driver working yet....") he turns the laptop around to reveal a set of vibrating lines in humps and dips across the screen, like a wildly shaking wireframe mountain range. "Here," he explains, "I'm grabbing FM."

"All of it?" I ask.

"All of it," he says. I'm suddenly glad the soundcard isn't working.

Radio is that bit of the electromagnetic spectrum that sits between brain waves and daylight. It's made of the same stuff that composes light, color, electrical hums, gamma radiation from atom bombs, the microwaves that reheat your pizza.

From our perspective, radio devices behave very differently -- a global positioning system gadget doesn't look like a TV doesn't look like a CB set, even if they are all radios. They are single-purpose machines that use small bits of radio spectrum to do very specific tasks -- about as far from the general-purpose personal computer as you can get. But there's no reason they have to be.

Upon delivery of your pet to our facilities in Salt Lake City, our Thanatogeneticists will immediately begin the Mummification and Transference. Individuals who have lovingly mummified their own pets will care for your friend with the affection and attention of a mother. The Summum science of Mummification revives the ancient art of wrapping the body and treating it with oil, while Transference aids the journey of your pet's essence to its next destination. When the Mummification and Transference are complete, we place your pet within a bronze Mummiform and rejoin you with your beloved companion. Your cherished friend has been transformed, as the caterpillar to a butterfly, in the promise of another tomorrow.

Each of the d-dimensional cubies could be considered to have its faces covered by stickers of one smaller (d-1) dimension. But each cubie also only exposes a subset of its stickers to the "outside", meaning these are the stickers you could see if you lived and operated in d dimensions. We can use the number of exposed stickers as a classification of cubie types. For the 3D case, the 27 cubies are broken into 4 types, those that expose 0 stickers, 1 sticker ("centers"), 2 stickers ("edges"), or 3 stickers ("corners"). Each sticker on a given cubie has its own color, so we could also call these 1-colored, 2-colored, etc. pieces.

Reader comment: Here's another exciting video, created by Daniel Stone. Link