The CRAFT magazine launch party, held at Machine Project in Los Angeles, was a big success. Mark Allen of Machine Project was very kind of opening his great gallery to us, Jenny Ryan of Sew Darn Cute did a fabulous job producing the event, and I enjoyed meeting all the MAKE, CRAFT, and Boing Boing readers who stopped by to say hello. For those of you who couldn't make it, you missed out on some awesome cupcakes with toppers made by Cathy of California.
Mark's Flickr photos | Jenny Ryan's photos

UPDATE, 10-30-06: "Federal police backed by armored vehicles and water cannons tore down barricades and stormed embattled Oaxaca on Sunday, seizing control of the city center from protesters who had held it for five months. A 15-year-old boy manning one barricade was killed by a tear gas canister...Some demonstrators used syringes to pierce their arms and legs, then paint signs in their own blood decrying the police." Link (thanks Richie).

--------------------

BoingBoing reader Jenny Smith says,

My dear friend Brad Will was killed in Oaxaca yesterday. Brad was a journalist, and he was an activist. He was always, always giving everything he had to work for justice and make the world a better place. We are all so much poorer now that he is gone. I can only hope that his death can serve to bring some attention to what is happening in Oaxaca. I am sure that Brad would have wanted that.

Here is the last post Will filed from Oaxaca, at indymedia: "death in oaxaca: another murder in the months long struggle in oaxaca." More posts there related to his death: Link.

Snip from Houston Chronicle account of Will's death:

An American photojournalist and another man were killed and at least five other people were injured Friday as protesters and pro-government gunmen clashed in the southern state capital of Oaxaca.

The journalist, whom colleagues identified as documentary filmmaker and photographer Brad Will, was shot in a confrontation in a community on the edge of Oaxaca City, capital of the state of the same name. The city center has been besieged for nearly five months as activists press for the removal of the state's governor.

(photo: NYC Indymedia).

UPDATE: The Village Voice has a detailed item on Will's death, which includes photographs of the plainclothes gunmen who shot him (via the Mexican news daily El Universal): Link to Voice item. (WARNING: url includes graphic image of Will with exposed gunshot wound, before his death)

Eliot adds,

Brad Will was a videographer for Indymedia. He was a well-known and respected figure in the New York activist community and the US global justice movement. He had travelled and reported extensively throughout the Americas.

There is ongoing coverage as more information emerges from NYC Indymedia, global Indymedia. The most comprehensive source in Spanish is from the Centro de Medias Libres.

Brad's friends in New York are calling for emergency actions this weekend to demand that the US State Department press the Mexican government investigate Brad's murder and expressing solidarity for the social movement that Brad gave his life to document. In New York, a protest has been called for today, Saturday, October 28, at 3 p.m., outside the Mexican consulate general in New York at 27 East 39th Street.

Please come out if you can, and if you're in other cities please check your local Indymedia for information on local actions, or organize your own. The situation in Oaxaca is extremely urgent and while this awful tragedy hits very close to home for us, it is only one part of the ongoing repression against a vibrant and powerful grassroots movement for justice in Mexico.

Link to a Flickr photo search for "teacher" + "Oaxaca," which yields many photos documenting the ongoing teachers' strike. Image shown here: Teachers protesting, shot by "machoroboraza." (thanks, Michael, Margaret, Genie Ogden, and others)

Reader comment: TourPro says,

I've been following the story for a few months now on my blog: Link.

A friend of Brad says,

This is Brad Will's final footage from Oaxaca, Mexico: Link. It has been released under a Creative Commons liscense. Just over 16 minutes long it shows several interviews and ends with Brad's death. Also available as a torrent, here: Link.

Christopher Soghoian's stated intent with the "Boarding Pass Generator" website was to illustrate a well-documented airline security weakness that airlines and government failed to address -- not to commit fraud or help terrorists. IANAL, but people who are lawyers are no doubt examining the laws that may apply to his case, now that he has been visited by FBI agents bearing a search warrant, his computer and other belongings seized.

A number of legal areas may be at issue. Here's one. If I'm reading the current Homeland Security Code of Federal Regulations accurately, it would appear that even scrawling the words "boarding pass" on a cocktail napkin in lipstick and calling it a boarding pass could be cause for an unsolicited late-night visit, though intent is key. This section of federal law addresses the forging of airline tickets or boarding documents -- DHS Code Title 49, Volume 8; October 1, 2004 rev. [Page 302]:

TITLE 49--TRANSPORTATION

CHAPTER XII--TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

PART 1540_CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY: GENERAL RULES--Table of Contents

Subpart B_Responsibilities of Passengers and Other Individuals and Persons

Sec. 1540.103 Fraud and intentional falsification of records.

No person may make, or cause to be made, any of the following:
(a) Any fraudulent or intentionally false statement in any application for any security program, access medium, or identification medium, or any amendment thereto, under this subchapter.
(b) Any fraudulent or intentionally false entry in any record or report that is kept, made, or used to show compliance with this subchapter, or exercise any privileges under this subchapter.
(c) Any reproduction or alteration, for fraudulent purpose, of any report, record, security program, access medium, or identification medium issued under this subchapter.

Link.

BACKGROUND POSTS ON BOINGBOING:
* FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers (10-28-06)
* Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI (10-27-06)
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested (10-27-06)
* Website generates fake boarding passes (10-26-06)
* Slate's Andy Bowers on airline security loopholes (02-07-05)

(Thanks, 53(uri7y r3534r(|-|3r!)

Reader comments: Wil Wheaton says,

Doesn't it seem like the FBI is coming down on this guy with all the power of a fully-operational space station to make an example of him, and thereby silence anyone else who may get some crazy ideas like speaking freely about how ineffective the Department of Homeland Security is?

I wish the government spent 1/10 the effort tracking down really bad guys as they spend going after American citizens who use their constitutional rights.

This shit (and the martial law thing) are the scariest things I've read this Halloween season.

Nicholas Weaver says,

The boarding pass requirement at screening is primarily just to reduce the load on the security screeners: it keep others (such as friends/relatives waiting at the gate) from taking up the time of security screening.

The one problem is that the boarding passes are ALSO used to say "This person should have secondary screening". That the vulnerability, just reprint without the "SSSS", has been widely known since 2001, just suggests how little those in the TSA really believe secondary screening matters, especially since those who would get the secondary screening KNOW IN ADVANCE they will be screened.

The secondary screening is security theater, not real security anyway, so an easy way to bypass it isn't a real security risk!

Chris Warth says,

Hmm, maybe the FBI will start playing whack-a-mole with all these sites. You can print a Delta boarding pass at this site: Link.

(Story background here). Christopher Soghoian today blogs that the FBI returned to his home last night in his absence with a search warrant, and seized computers and other belongings. The 24-year old computer science student is the creator of a website that generated fake airline boarding passes to illustrate a security flaw which has been documented on the 'net since (at least) 2003. I reached Soghoian by email today, and he declined comment on advice from attorneys.

Snip from his most recent blog entry:

I didn't sleep at home last night. It's fair to say I was rather shaken up.

I came back today, to find the glass on the front door smashed.

Inside, is a rather ransacked home, a search warrant taped to my kitchen table, a total absence of computers - and various other important things. I have no idea what time they actually performed the search, but the warrant was approved at 2AM.

Link to full text of post. Search warrant scans: page 1 (BB mirror), page 2 (BB mirror). (thanks, Jan Pederson, David Molnar, Craig, Catspaw, John Hudgens, and others.)

BACKGROUND POSTS ON BOINGBOING:
* Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested
* Website generates fake boarding passes
* Slate's Andy Bowers on airline security loopholes

PREVIOUSLY AROUND THE WEB:
A number of people before Soghoian have pointed out the airline security vulnerability his "Fake Boarding Pass Generator" website illustrated. Among them:
* Bruce Schneier (2003): Link
* Sen. Charles Schumer (2005): Link
* Andy Bowers, Slate.com (2005): Link
* Jacob Appelbaum (2005): Link

Reader comment: Kevin says,

I'm pretty sure that you can bank on the fact that the FBI will be going through the IP logs to see everyone that visited that site.

Steve Peterson says,

Here's an article from Twin Cities newspaper with reaction from NWA (Ed. note: this one, not the one from Compton) to the Northwest Airlines Fake Boarding Pass Generator story: Link

UPDATE:
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)

Watchismo, a stupendous vintage watch blog, has a drool-inducing feature on the history of calculator watches. (I would have blogged this post about the amazing, domed Rolex diving watch, but at $250,000 a throw, they're more heartbreaking than wonderful.)

Playboy magazine, June 1975...A gift-giving advertisement with ideas for dads & grads included this guy hidden in the back. The Calcron LED Wrist Calculator. Likely the first public offering of it's kind.

Link

Esty seller PlushBot crafts these amazing, hand-sewn felt monster robots that have the same eomotional affect of a sock monkey crossed with a Dalek. Link (via Wonderland)

UPDATED BELOW.

Christopher Soghoian, who created the Fake Boarding Pass Generator website, claims to have been visited by FBI agents this afternoon at his home in Bloomington, Indiana, according to a security researcher with whom he was instant-messaging at the time.

This news comes just hours after Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) called for Soghoian's arrest, and for the takedown of his website, which generates phony Northwest Airlines boarding passes to illustrate an airline security weakness documented on the 'net since 2003.

Calls and emails I made to the 24-year-old computer science student after learning of the reported FBI visit were not returned. An iChat transcript provided to BoingBoing shows Soghoian claimed the FBI was at his door between 345 and 350pm PST. He stopped responding to incoming IM messages at that time, and has not responded to other incoming messages since.

FBI special agent Wendy Osborne declined to confirm whether Soghoian had been visited or if an investigation was taking place, citing FBI policy, but said "We will confirm that he has not been arrested."

Soghoian's Fake Boarding Pass Generator website was taken offline today, but other content on the same domain is still accessible.

Soghoian's personal web page states that he is a PhD student at Indiana University's School of Informatics in Bloomington. According to an online copy of his resume, he has interned for Google since June, 2006, and in 2004 served for a semester as a teaching aide to Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins who exposed security vulnerabilities in Diebold's electronic voting machines. Reached by phone this evening, Avi Rubin confirmed to BB that Soghoian served as his teaching assistant for one Spring, 2004 semester in a "Security and Privacy in Computing" class at Johns Hopkins University.

UPDATE: Ryan Singel at Wired News has been following this story, also, and has a report here: FBI Says No Arrest of Boarding Pass Hacker. Snip:

While the boarding pass generator, which was intended to point out flaws in airport security, is gone, other portions of Soghoian's website, dubfire.net, are still live. Soghoian's computer still registers as being online according to Google chat, indicating that the feds have not probably not confiscated his computer.

See also this earlier Wired News story by Singel, Boarding Pass Hacker Under Fire. Snip:

"I want Congress to see how stupid the (Transportation Security Administration)'s watch lists are," he said. "Now even the most technically incompetent user can click and generate a boarding pass. By doing this, I'm hoping (Congress) will see how silly the security rules are. I don't want bad guys to board airplanes but I don't think the system we have right now works and I think it is giving us a false sense of security."

BACKGROUND -- Previous posts on BoingBoing:
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested
* Website generates fake boarding passes

UPDATE, 840pm PT: The "Slight Paranoia" blog credited to Chris Soghoian now contains two posts which reference an FBI visit:

3:54pm PT
FBI at the Door
The FBI are at the door. Off to chat.

7:12PM
Post FBI Visit
The FBI visited. They handed me with a written order to remove the boarding pass generator. By the time we were somewhere with internet access, the website had already been taken down. I am now safe (and no longer with the FBI). Still trying to find a lawyer.....

If you want to help, a good start would be to email Congressman Markey - who initially called for my arrest.

Soghoian's Blogger profile indicates that he is also credited as a co-author of this blog, where the Fake Boarding Pass Generator was announced in this post. Soghoian details the security vulnerabilities that inspired him to write the php Generator here on "Slight Paranoia:" Link.

He is hardly the first or only person to have pointed out this flaw. Over a year ago, in February 2005, my NPR "Day to Day" colleague Andy Bowers wrote a piece for Slate.com titled "A Dangerous Loophole in Airport Security," which was also blogged here on BoingBoing. In the Slate essay, Bowers described the same security loophole which Soghoian's "Generator" demonstrates in code.

And two years before that, security expert Bruce Schneier outlined the problem in an issue of Crypto-Gram Newsletter item titled "Flying on Someone Else's Airplane Ticket," dated August 15, 2003.

Assuming that Schneier was the first to publish an outline of the security vulnerability -- that's more than three years during which the problem has been publicly known, but not resolved by either the airlines or government.

"The only way for these kind of problems to get fixed, are through through public full disclosure," Soghoian wrote when releasing the Fake Boarding Pass Generator. "TSA/DHS cannot be expected to fix anything unless they are publicly shamed into doing so."

MORE BB UPDATES:
* FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers (10-28-06)
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)

BoingBoing reader Jeff says,

I received a couple of emails from YouTube this afternoon notifying me that a third party (probably attorneys for Comedy Central) had made a DMCA request to take down Colbert Report and Daily Show clips. If you visit YouTube, all Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park clips now show “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”

For a long time, Comedy Central has passively allowed the sharing of online clips of its shows—because let’s face it, it’s helped them generate the kind of water cooler talk that has made them a ton of money. In this Wired Interview , Jon Stewart and Daily Show Executive Producer even encouraged viewers to watch the show on the Internet:

Karlin: If people want to take the show in various forms, I’d say go. But when you’re a part of something successful and meaningful, the rule book says don’t try to analyze it too much or dissect it. You shouldn’t say: “I really want to know what fans think. I really want to understand how people are digesting our show.” Because that is one of those things that you truly have no control over. The one thing that you have control over is the content of the show. But how people are reacting to it, how it’s being shared, how it’s being discussed, all that other stuff, is absolutely beyond your ability to control.

Stewart: I’m surprised people don’t have cables coming out of their asses, because that’s going to be a new thing. You’re just going to get it directly fed into you. I look at systems like the Internet as a convenience. I look at it as the same as cable or anything else. Everything is geared toward more individualized consumption. Getting it off the Internet is no different than getting it off TV.

But apparently, all good things come to an end when there is money and attorneys involved. I assume the only online clips that will remain will have to qualify under fair use – probably short clips, with social or political importance.

Link.

Reader comment: skott says,

This post (on a fairly well-known comedy message board occasionally frequented by comedians some of whom have even had shows on Comedy Central) indicates that the network's YouTube nastiness doesn't just stop with clips they "own," but clips involving their big stars.

[Another BB reader named] Jeff came up with a funny and spot-on list of practical reasons why comedycentral.com's video-viewing UI sucks way more ass than YouTube. "Comedy Central, you’re on notice!," he says, "they are stupid to ask YouTube to remove their videos." Link. Here are the top five reasons Comedy Central should laissez the hell faire:

# You have tiny pathetic little videos that can’t be resized. It’s like watching the TV in the next room through the keyhole of a closed door.

# You use javascript to launch a popup window. Therefore, I can’t send a link to my friends or put a link on my blog to direct someone to the video I want them to see.

# Your popup window can’t be opened in a tab or resized. Give me control of my browser back.

# Your popup window has an obnoxious background that I’m afraid is going to give me a seizure.

# Next to your video, there’s an ad that’s bigger than the video (Firefox blocks it, but I’m still annoyed by the gaping hole that remains).

MAKE contributing editor William Gurstelle, author of the fantastic DIY book Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices, will be on the History Channel's "Man, Moment, Machine" show on October 31.

Shown here: William's catapult, which he calls "Ludgar, the Warwolf," hurling two gasoline soaked softballs across a parking lot.

The show is about Alexander the Great and his pioneering use of catapults in warfare. Link

Jeff Diehl says: "I found this amazing article in the NY Times on new developments with rogue elephants — they rape and kill rhinoceroses; attack villages with intelligent measures like blocking escape routes and pinning down humans before goring them to death; and display psychological traits previously only observed in people." Link

Tina the three-legged tortoise has been retrofitted with an air-filled tire and shock absorber to help her get around. Link

It seems that if you want to be photographed pretending to eat your cat's head, one rule is that you have to open your eyes very wide and look up. Link (Via Eye of the Goof)

Trippy 12-minute 1960s film by Toshio Matsumoto, whose work influenced Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Link

My 9-year-old daughter's favorite TV show is Hannah Montana (starring Miley Cyrus). Sometimes I sit on the couch with her and half-watch it while I read a comic book. From what I've picked up, it's about a middle-school girl who is a rock star, but nobody at the school knows. A Clark Kent / Superman deal. This is fertile agar for all sorts of screwball plots. My guilty pleasure is that I enjoy the infectious bubblegum music she performs.

But I don't feel as guilty now that I've learned that one of my cultural heroes, Irwin Chusid, also likes her music, and approves of the Hannah Montana Soundtrack.

As a 55-year-old AARP card-carrying male with a Seussian distance from kids ("You have 'em, I'll entertain 'em") and 30+ years airtime here at the hotbed of broadcast anarchy, I'm not Radio Disney's target demo. (On my 49th birthday, I sighed, "Advertisers no longer care about me"—then realized: When did they?) Hannah's lyrics evoke the hopes, dreams, and rockstar fantasies of prepubescent girls, but the music is captivating to these admittedly jaded ears. It's everything catchy pop should be: frothy, harmonic, propulsive, memorable—that is, it's formulaic. And irresistible. She's The Monkees in a pleated mini.

Link

Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) is alarmed by the Northwest Airline Boarding Pass Generator mentioned yesterday. He issued a statement demanding that security researcher Christopher Soghoian be arrested.

"The Bush Administration must immediately act to investigate, apprehend those responsible, shut down the website, and warn airlines and aviation security officials to be on the look-out for fraudsters or terrorists trying to use fake boarding passes in an attempt to cheat their way through security and onto a plane," Markey said in a statement. "There are enough loopholes at the backdoor of our passenger airplanes from not scanning cargo for bombs; we should not tolerate any new loopholes making it easier for terrorists to get into the front door of a plane."

Instead of calling for his head, Rep. Markey should be thanking Soghoian for pointing out just how easy it is to fake a boarding pass. How lame.

On his blog, Soghoain writes:

In addition to calling for my arrest, the congressman may want to call for the arrest of Senator Schumer (D-NY). In April of this year, he posted rather detailed instructions for the exact same attack. See: here. Sure, he didn't produce a php script that'd do it for you, but he provided detailed enough instructions that a terrorist or evil-doer with basic computer skills could do it.

Perhaps he'll be my cell-mate.

Link

Snip from a Planetary Society announcement:

When New Horizons arrives at Pluto in nine years, Earth will be a different place than the world the spacecraft left behind.

To mark that passage of time, The Planetary Society, in conjunction with the New Horizons mission, sponsored a contest for children and adults to send a message to future Earth - a New Horizons Digital Time Capsule of photographs of the world today to the inhabitants of 2015, who will witness the spacecraft's arrival at Pluto. Time is almost up to submit a photo, however, since November 1, 2006 is the deadline.

Participants whose photos are selected for the time capsule will be eligible to win a grand prize trip to New Horizons mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland to witness the Jupiter flyby in February 2007.

What will Earth be like in 2015? How will life on our planet have changed in those intervening years? More than a billion people will be born, and a billion die; new technologies could revolutionize daily life; the rapid pace of change will have transformed not only our own lives but also that of cities and entire countries. The New Horizons Digital Time Capsule will consist of photographs of things in 2006 that people expect will be transformed by 2015.

Link

Make magazine's Bre Pettis has a marvelous video about making and using spud guns (aka potato cannons). If you've never seen a spud gun in action, you are in for a treat. (This spud gun, which uses a stun gun as the igniter, was featured in Make Vol 3) Link

My NPR News colleague Melody Joy Kramer points to this online feature and explains, "We asked all of the Project Runway designers for DIY Halloween costume ideas and they all created original sketches and instructions. Some of the costumes are high-tech." At left, my favorite -- not high-tech, and not from the TV stars, but Melody herself as a child. She and her brother are bags of jellybeans. The photo's so cute, it's givin' me cavities. (thanks, David Banks)

Photographer and Louisiana native Clayton James Cubitt tells BoingBoing,

Winter is bearing down on the Gulf Coast, and volunteers for relief are increasingly scarce, while vast need remains. There's a tiny little village called Pearlington, Mississippi, that's now all but forgotten, especially relative to New Orleans.

Pearlington rests eight miles inland. It's nine feet above sea level, but that didn't protect it from the 20-30 foot storm surge that roared up the Pearl River and washed almost every home away.

I've been documenting the residents and volunteers in Pearlington as they struggle with survival. The volunteer housing efforts there could really use some much-needed attention right now, as it looks like the (in)famous FEMA trailer program will be ending for most citizens as soon as February. What then?

One House At A Time is one of the organizations working in Pearlington to answer that question.

Link to a post on Clayton's blog with more about the aid project.

The neutricidal maniacs at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association have fielded this embarrassing anti-Net-Neutrality advertisement. Net Neutrality is the idea that your ISP should just send you the data you ask for, instead of charging each Internet service for "guaranteed delivery" to your computer.

As Craig "craigslist" Newmark put it, imagine if you tried to order a pizza and the phone company said, "AT&T's preferred pizza vendor is Domino's. Press one to connect to Domino's now. If you would still like to order from your neighborhood pizzeria, please hold for three minutes while Domino's guaranteed orders are placed."

The cable operators' PSA is a dishonest, steaming pile of FUD about neutrality, calling it corporate welfare for dot-com billionaires who want you to pay more for their services. There's no rebutting this, it's just a lie.

Net neutrality is about whether telcos get to charge you for your DSL, Internet services for their DSL, and then each carrier gets to shake down each of those already-paying services for even more money for "guaranteed delivery." Talk about corporate welfare! These greedheads already get the priceless government-granted rights-of-way into our homes (imagine if every time a wire crossed a property line, the telco had to negotiate with the owner). If they can't make enough profits with that enormous gift from the public coffers, let someone else take over their wires.

Link (Thanks, Daniel!)

A group of British mathematicians have hit on some kind of secret formula for playing the lotto and are raking in millions: See update, below.

Syndicate leader Barry Waterhouse, 41, who works at the design and printing section of the university, explained that the syndicate had been doing the National Lottery for eight years without conspicuous success after it started in 1994 with each member picking his or her own line.

"We just weren't winning with the numbers being picked that way, so we thought of a different method which would mean all 49 numbers would be used,' Mr Waterhouse said.

The syndicate then set up a computer program to check the numbers every week.

It took four years and a total outlay of $8700, but on Saturday, the formula succeeded.

Matching the winning numbers and the bonus ball, they hit the jackpot.

"We just thought that if all the numbers are in use, we must have a good chance of winning and it has proved so, though you never really think it will happen to you, "Mr Waterhouse said.

Link (via Futurismic)

Update: These guys aren't math geeks, just some guys who came up with a "system" and got lucky. Thanks, Joel!

m&m's dark chocolate
halloween safety tips
devil's tramping ground
camp blood
unsettling house
pepperoni food art
cannibal dinner
pumpkin stencils
spooky stuff
spelling with zombies
kiss meets the phantom of the park

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Image above: Link, by Vera Brosgol, via DieselSweeties. (Thanks, R. Stevens!)

Trogdor, an awesome heavy-metal song from the net-toon Homestar Runner, has been included in the video game Guitar Hero II, where you score points for thrashing a guitar-shaped controller in time with the music. Link (Thanks, Dan!)

This 1984 video of an actor trying out for a part in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is a hoot. He's so arrogant that he's almost endearing.

His name is Brian Atene and he does not appear on the Internet Movie Database, so I guess he decided the movie industry didn't deserve his talents. He hardly shows up on Google either. This 7th grade class photo does look like him, though. Link

The UK Open Rights Group is throwing an all-evening symposium-with-DJs night on November 13th to explore the question of copyright term extensions in the UK. This is the white-hot copyright issue of the day in Britain, since this year marks the year that a ton of still-popular music (early Elvis recordings, for one) will enter the British public domain. The British record companies are urging the UK government to add another 45 years to all the old music copyrights, even though practically every 50-year-old recording is out of print, languishing in obscurity because its "owners" don't care enough about it to bring it back.

The US has led the world is brainless copyright extensions that doom nearly all creativity to be forgotten by history in order to preserve a few marginally profitable works. Will the UK let the US drag it along in another folly, or will it stand up for the right to learn from America's mistakes and go a better way?

The evening features a presentation from copyright scholar Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University; a panel moderated by John Howkins of the RSA and Adelphi Charter, and a DJ set mixed from public domain, pre-1955 music.

Should the term of copyright protection on sound recordings stay at 50 years or be extended?

This question has been hanging in the air for the last couple of years, with the music industry lobbying government for an extension on the grounds that the royalties they earn from old recordings are essential to bringing new acts to the stage and supporting ageing musicians. They believe that copyright term on sound recordings should be the same length as the copyright in the composition, which currently stands at life plus 70 years.

On the other hand, copyright reformers argue that term should remain the same in order to protect the public domain and to free the huge number of old recordings which are no longer commercially viable and therefore not being released by the record labels. They also argue that there is a greater economic benefit to allowing works to pass into the public domain after 50 years so that new works can be made from them and new businesses that specialise in niche markets can flourish.

Date Nov 13, 2006

Time 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Location
Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
London, WC1
United Kingdom

Link (Disclosure: I am a co-founder and proud advisory-board member for the Open Rights Group)

The MyScienceProject people carved a bunch of Jack O'Lanterns and tried to preserve them by various means, from vaseline to a commercial pumpkin-preserving spray ("Pumpkin Fresh!") to bleach solution.

The next day, however, we could no longer deny that the bleach pumpkin had a serious problem. It was listing to the side and fluid was oozing from underneath, and the bottom of the interior was slime covered. We tossed it and turned our attention to the last two survivors. The control pumpkin had several moldy areas inside that didn’t seem to be spreading very fast. The Pumpkin Fresh pumpkin, while it had little mold growing on the interior, had developed a soft slimy spot on the bottom, similar to the one that had just eaten its way through the bleach pumpkin. This was going to be interesting. Who would hold out the longest?

Link

The Monster Club has posted 100 amazing horror radio-plays from the golden age of radio drama, including "The Phantom of the Opera," "Sorry, Wrong Number," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "The Dummy," "Buried Alive," "Donovan's Brain," "Frankenstein," and "Jack Benny Throws a Hallowe'en Party" (!).

Here, we present 100 of our favorite horror theme stories, from shows like Witch's Tale, Lights Out, Innersanctum, Quiet Please, The Haunted Hour and others. These are the very stories that inspired favorite Horror Comics and shows like Twilight Zone and Thriller! In fact, old time radio horror show, "Witch's Tale" is reported to have served as direct inspiration for EC Comics.

Link (Thanks, IZ Reloaded!)

Veni sez, "The Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin started a blog after meeting with Joi Ito (iCommons chairman) and Paul Twomey (ICANN's President). But he did something more - opened the content of the www.mfa.government.bg site under Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5."

ICANN’s President gave high remarks on the policy Bulgaria has for Internet access and usage. He informed Minister Kalfin about the multiple business-oriented applications, and the effect of using IT in different branches of the economy.

Joichi Ito, one of the Internet pioneers in the development of blogs, spoke about the new culture and new opportunities, noting that the blogs are one of the most democratic tools for access to information.

Another topic covered was the improvement of the services about registration of domains in the .bg top level domain.

Minister Kalfin started his own blog, to be found at www.kalfin.eu, where he will be discussion issues about Bulgarian foreign policy, EU membership, etc. The blog is based on open source software - Wordpress, and is the first such an initiative by a Bulgarian minister. Mr. Kalfin invited Joichi Ito to become an author at his blog - an invitation that was accepted by the famous Japanese IT-investor and blogger.”

Link (Thanks, Veni!)

This Japanese store sells $3 miniature cellphone charms that look...just like cellphones! Now you can hang a miniature, detailed copy of your phone from your phone! Link (via Tokyo Mango)

Update: Cat sez, "If the readers want to get a few of those Japanese cell phone-cell phone charms from an English site, here ya go."

We love unicorns here at Boing Boing. In fact, we have seven of them living in the forest surrounding our corporate headquarters. That's why I was delighted to discover the Unicorn Power T-Shirt from The Perry Bible Fellowship (home of brilliantly funny cartoonist Nicholas Gurewitch). Link (Via beachlevel)

My old job, European Affairs Coordinator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is up for grabs! It's hard and rewarding work, with a lot of travel and the chance to make a real difference. If you or someone you know is the kind of person who'd fit in as a copyright and digital liberties wonk in Brussels, see the job posting for application details.

The position is jointly funded by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth and George Soros's Open Society Initiative.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking for a European staffer to head up our new Brussels office and round out our international team. This is a new position focused on European Community level intellectual property and civil liberties policy initiatives that impact the digital environment. The position will be part policy analyst, part activist and part educator.

We are looking for a motivated and dynamic European with:

* excellent written and spoken English language skills, and fluency in another relevant language (preferably French or German or another major European language);

* well-developed public speaking and social skills, who can talk with a wide range of audiences including European MEPs and Commission staff, consumer rights and public interest groups, computer programmers and media;

* familiarity with current European Community IP and civil liberties legislative and policy developments;

* a solid understanding of the European Community's structure, main fora, decision-making processes and key personnel and committees that work in the IP and civil liberties arenas;

* strong policy analysis skills;

* a good strategic sense;

* maturity of judgment;

* demonstrated ability to meet deadlines and work with others remotely; and

* the ability to travel throughout Europe, and to the United States.

Link (Thanks, Gwen!)

Torrentfreak reports that "23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for the work he put in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents." Link (Thanks, Tony)

Chennai-based tech journalist Scott Carney has a piece in Wired Magazine this month about an Indian space program satellite launch last July. The rocket launch vehicle exploded a couple seconds after it left the pad. Whups.

Denied access to the inner sanctum, I take an 8-mile detour to the nearest village, Ataganathippa, and claim a spot along the road with a clear view of the launchpad, amid an audience of ordinary people – farmers, fishermen, day laborers, and my rocket-engineer acquaintance, who has brought along his family. Jeans-clad engineering students from the local community college chat excitedly about how the new satellite could reduce the price of cable television. Suddenly a bright flash erupts in the distance. Huge plumes of smoke boil up from the ground, and a loud rumble rolls across the water. In a matter of seconds the rocket rises above the horizon and a group of young boys shouts, "Jai Hind! Jai Hind!" (Victory to India!) Climbing steadily, the rocket disappears behind a bank of clouds. The crowd is motionless, anticipating the engine's fading rumble.

But it doesn't fade. There's a thunderlike crack. Then chunks of flaming debris begin a slow, tumbling descent, tracing red trails back to Earth.

"That's not supposed to happen," says the engineer, his voice tense with disbelief.

Link. Previous BoingBoing posts about Scott's work: Link.

It's like an Ansari X Prize for developing democracies, sort of. Boingboing reader Pienso explains:

Dr. Mo Ibrahim, the African billionaire who founded Celtel -- the cellular company that has connected the continent -- has launched a 5 million dollar prize to be given to the most-effective African head of state. The hope is that cash incentives for good governance might serve as a counter-balance and change the ways of those presidents that are instead ilegally making millions from oil, diamonds, illegal contracts and corruption. This approach got us private space travel, so here is to hoping.

Link

Immortalized in luminous squash: Alan Turing, one of our most esteemed nerd ancestors (and, incidentally, a gay man who lived in a time even more hostile to that identity than now). He died after biting into a poison apple; the chunks taken out of this pumpkin form his likeness, in light. Link. (Thanks, PC)

Reader comment: Alberto Gaitan says,

In Janna Levin's (fiction) book, "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines," (Link) about Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, I learned that both those big domes had an obsession with Snow White which provided for what Levin has called "bleakly complimentary" suicides. Gödel died of starvation because he thought his food was poisoned.

Ted Kinsman says,

this site has a few years worth of pumpkins carved by physics students - from Newton to Einstein with a few Star trek ones for good measure.

Travel tips for happy-fun Sudan! The government has banned all "journalistic functions" not managed by state officials within its borders, and the penalty for disobeying can be death. Snip from the US State Department's travel advisory website:

The Sudanese Government requires that anyone seeking to enter the Darfur area, or to take photographs or perform other journalistic functions anywhere in Sudan, must obtain a special permit. This includes journalists, photographers, and other press/media employees (...)

Failure to possess the appropriate travel documents and permits can result in the traveler’s arrest and detention for multiple crimes, including illegal entry, publication of false information, and espionage. If convicted, sentences range from deportation to life in prison or the death penalty.

Link, and more background here. (Thanks, Rob Williams)

Gregory sez, "An anti-DRM activist group has initiated an effort to tag products on Amazon.com as DefectiveByDesign to warn Amazon's shoppers of the dangers of DRM. So far a few dozen Amazon users have tagged over 150 products containing DRM (Blu-ray, HD DVD, FairPlay, and more) as DefectiveByDesign using the e-retailer's own 'tagging' system." Link (Thanks, Gregory!)

Tesco has been forced to remove a pole-dancing kit from the toys and games section of its website after it was accused of "destroying children's innocence". Be sure to catch the photo of the shell-shocked family who happened on the kit.

Dr Adrian Rogers, of family campaigning group Family Focus said yesterday that the kit would "destroy children's lives".

He said: "Tesco is Britain's number one chain, this is extremely dangerous. It is an open invitation to turn the youngest children on to sexual behaviour.

"This will be sold to four, five and six-year olds. This is a most dangerous toy that will contribute towards destroying children's innocence."

He added: "Children are being encouraged to dance round a pole which is interpreted in the adult world as a phallic symbol.

"It ought to be stopped, it really requires the intervention of members of Parliament. This should only be available to the most depraved people who want to corrupt their children."

Link

Reader comments:

Adam says:

I particularly liked the comment from "Family Focus" spokesman Adrian Rogers about "Children are being encouraged to dance round a pole which is interpreted in the adult world as a phallic symbol. It ought to be stopped". I wonder if he is so adamant about insisting that Children shouldn't be allowed to dance around the equally phallic Maypole?

Alazka says:

Being an elementary teacher, I was pretty prepared to get uppity about the poledancing kit y'all just boinged...but on a deeper reading I found that, in the "panic the populace first, ask questions later" style typical of Brit journalism, the article completely overlooked the fact that the kit was in no way marketed toward children. The other allegations they make (like the push-up bra for nine year-old girls) are creepy (and unsubstantiated; there may well be very petite women out there with every right and reason to buy a push-up bra), but Walmart's been selling faux-whore couture for very young girls for years (while removing products like the girl's t-shirt saying "someday I'll be president" as "not family-friendly") and somehow America's evangelical overlords seem to think it's cute.

The essential problem seems to be a category error...the outraged parents automatically categorize all toys & games as "for children," and so assumed a clearly adult toy was "going to be sold to four, five and six year-olds." And who, one might ask, is going to buy it for them? Is someone giving a toddler a credit card and teaching her to shop online?

For the retailer's part, obviously they need an "adult toys and games" category. But mainly I think it's the "journalists" who need to grow up.

Alexander says:

A couple things come to mind. The first is that 4, 5, and 6-year-olds don't buy things. They have things bought for them by older people who can make informed choices about the appropriateness of products.

The second is that (as far as my understanding goes) strippers' poles were invented for the pragmatic purpose of giving the dancers something to hold on to to precent them from bein pulled off the stage by over-eager customers. Phallic associations are a secondary artifact.

Andrew says:

A quick Google search for “peekaboo pole” led me to their official website.

I thought someone ought to clarify that this product is NOT aimed for children. Rather, their products seem to be aimed at adults; "With your own dance pole the possibilities are endless!! You can boogie on down in the living room, spice things up in the bedroom or even liven up a friend's party!!" A customer's comment reads, “The most fun I have ever had at a Bachelorette Party, thanks to the Peekaboo Pole!”

I think this was merely a case of an extreme mistake in stocking, which the press turned into a sensationalized "Society is sexualizing our youngsters!" story. Of course the kit would be harmful for children, but that’s not who the product is intended for.

"This will be sold to four, five and six-year olds. This is a most dangerous toy that will contribute towards destroying children's innocence."

I think this is a terrible overreaction on the doctor's part. If a book on drinking games was accidentally shelved in the children's section of a bookstore, would this doctor say the same thing? That this "children's book"--although it is NOT a book for children, merely a book placed among children's books--will be sold to "four, five, and six-year olds" and "destroy children's lives?" No. It was an error. The Peekaboo Pole is not a “toy”. It was placed among toys. It was created with the idea in mind that it would be used by children. Sensationalizing at its best.

Craft Vol. 1, the new magazine launched by O'Reilly Media, is on the stands and we are throwing a launch party for it at Machine Project in Los Angeles this Saturday. My wife, Carla Sinclair, is the editor-in-chief, and she and I will be there to celebrate. I hope you can join us!

Join us as we celebrate the release of CRAFT magazine, the first project-based magazine dedicated to the renaissance happening within the world of crafts. We’ll be offering magazine giveaways along with D.I.Y. demonstrations, door prizes from Felt Club and Chronicle Books, plus snacks and drinks.

FREE.

CRAFT Launch Party
11am - 3pm
Machine Project
1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA 90026
213 483 8761

Link

Phil says:

Here's a special edition of the "Maker File" - Colin Berry reads Spinout, the story he wrote for Make Volume 07 about his brother's efforts to build and race a car in the soap box derby in Longmont, Colorado. Unfortunately, he was up against more than just his own bad luck. Introduction by MAKE & CRAFT publisher, Dale Dougherty.
Colin is an old friend of mine, and I was really excited that he wrote this piece for Make. Here's a sample of the text version:

All his life, my brother, Kevin, was plagued with terrible luck. It began when he was a teenager, in the early 70s, in Longmont, Colorado -- our hometown -- and soon became something of a family legend. IThis was in the early 1970’s, in Longmont, Colorado our hometown and if the Trojan theater was giving away free tickets to Planet of the Apes tickets, the kid in front of Kevinhim in line would geot the last one. If Kevin sold enough newspaper subscriptions to win a clock radio, it was broken when he opened the box. If one of hisa friends shoplifted a pack of Odd Rods bubblegum cards on the way home from school, Kevin got collared for it. It was a pattern. He weathered it well, half-joking about his luck with his shy, gap-toothed grin, but over time it took a terrible toll.

In shop class, however, Kevin seemed to step out from its shadow. He was adept with tools and proved himself a skilled carpenter at an early age. I was seven years younger, and remember marveling at the first projects he brought home from junior high school: a varnished gun rack; a Newton’s Cradle, with its five suspended steel balls; a sturdy set of bedroom shelves for his Revell models. Looking back, it follows that the noisy, meditative setting of the woodshop would appealed to Kevin. It was, a place where no one was shouteding at him, and where no electronic parts could mysteriously fail.

Link

Marcelo Calbucci is working on a geo-database project and came across a weird line of text in a database. He hopes a reader can solve the mystery:

I found a bizarre data on an official USGS database. It points to a place on Minnesota and the text says:

'Tell Him I Blame Him for the Children We Have Lost...' Aish-Ke-Vo-Go-Zhe

It would be interesting to figure out this puzzle.

Link

Reader comments:

Jay has solved the mystery. The coordinates indicate where Aish-Ke-Vo-Go-Zhe (AKA, Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay or "Flat Mouth" ca.1774–ca.1860) perished.

A powerful Ojibwa, or Chippewa, chief in the Leech Lake area of present-day Minnesota, Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay, or Flat Mouth, visited the nation's capital in 1855 as a member of the Indian delegation from the Midwest. The tribal leaders were brought to Washington to negotiate land treaties. Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay spoke on behalf of his people in negotiating the cession of more than ten million acres in north-central Minnesota—a land package that included the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The Native Americans received more than one million dollars in funds and services, but aspects of this cession and others in the region continued to figure in government discussions with Native Americans for the next hundred years.

Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay (other English spellings are also known) means "bird with the green bill" in the Ojibwa language. "Flat Mouth" did not derive from this native name but was instead an English translation of the nickname "Gueule Platte," applied by early French traders. In 1911 Smithsonian Institution ethnologist James Moody characterized the great leader as "probably the most prominent Ojibwa chief of the upper Mississippi region from at least 1806, when he held council with Lieutenant [Zebulon] Pike...probably to his death, which seems to have occurred about 1860."

Link

Jane McG says: "This mystery was just solved in the comments of the original blog post- woo hoo! The strange database entry apparently refers to an annual commemorative event remembering a tragic native american relocation effort.

Here is the full text found on the Web"

Mikwendaagoziwag— They are remembered
Sandy Lake ceremonies set for July 28

To remember those who perished at Sandy Lake during a failed attempt to remove Ojibwe bands from Wisconsin and Michigan in 1850, GLIFWC sponsors annual ceremonies at the Sandy Lake site near McGregor, Minnesota.

Ceremonies are slated for noon at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) site on Sandy Lake. Ceremonies will be preceded by a paddle across Sandy Lake to the ACOE site. The paddle will begin at 9:00 a.m. Following the noon ceremonies, all will join in a feast.

Everyone is welcome to attend and to participate in the paddle across the lake. For more information, please contact GLIFWC at (715) 682-6619 or GLIFWC’s website at www.glifwc.org.

“Tell him I blame him for the children we have lost, for the sickness we have suffered, and for the hunger we have endured. The fault rests on his shoulders.” —Flat Mouth, Leech Lake Ojibwe speaking of Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey

Fancy a long stay in one of Bush's secret prisons? Easy -- just use this site to generate a fake Northwest Airlines boarding pass and try using it to get past security. Link (Via 27B Stroke 6)

This photo of a handicapped fellow in a cart grabbing a ride on the streets of a city in Pakistan reminds me of skateboarder Y.T. in Snow Crash. Link

Jason says:

In Bude (Cornwall, England) today there was the sound of a huge explosion that caused huge cracks in at least one person's house. The thing is no one knows what caused it -- there is no obvious explosion site, and the MOD and RAF deny any supersonic planes were flying over that area. Although the Ministry of Defence have been known to lie sometimes, surely a sonic boom that could crack houses would have smashed everyone's windows too. It's a fascinating mystery.

Link

Reader comments:

Brad says:

This has happened in the US as well. In April, I experienced it in San Diego and it was reported in the newspaper. Every agency or entity that could conceivably be responsible says it had nothing to do with it and though it shook my four story office building, there is still no explanation for it.

Link

Leah says:

Writing in from Toronto to say that the same phenomena was reported to have happened here about a week ago, some time around 4am. I didn't personally hear it, but woke to the radio personality I listen to discussing it with his co-host. It was described as sounding like a sonic boom, and none of the city's emergency personnel could provide any information as to what caused the sound. Later reports during the day claim that people as far as Mississauga heard the same noise.

manuel says:

the exact same weird thing happend 2 years ago on the island of sylt, where i live, as well (july or august). i was sitting at the beach, where i work, in my hut and waited for customers/tourists.

suddenly the whole hut was shaking like crazy. coffeepots and mugs were falling down and all that stuff you see on the telly when there is an earthquake. it lasted 3 to 5 seconds. tourists.

i immediatly thought there is some freak/buddy below my hut (it sits on poles because of hightide) who is doing some hoax fun crap with the poles to wake me up or scare me, but there was noone. but a lot of people who looked very distrurbed. tourists.

everybody on the island felt this "earthquake" that day. but there was no officially recorded seismic activity, no highspeed mach planes faster than sound, no military testing or whatsoever. there was no mini-tsunami kinda wave as well from a possible sea-quake either. i grew up on the beach (33 now), i know how that looks. tourists.

everybody on the island of sylt who i know remembers that earthquake, but noone knows what it was.

Rob says:

regarding your post about the mysterious booms that have been happening around the world.

my mother used to tell a story of when she was a teenager -it must have been the early 70's- growing up on Bell Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. she was down in her parents creepy cellar getting something, when she heard and felt what she told us sounded like a sonic boom, followed by someone dropping a bag of marbles on the floor above.

thinking it a joke, she angrily ran back upstairs only to find everyone freaking out about themselves.

Apparently a lot of chickens just keeled over that day, as well as all the the glass covers on the electricity meters on the sides of houses were smashed.

Popular Science magazine investigates the physics of pole-dancing:

Consider the body of the body in question. After a quick shake of the head right and left, she leans backward to begin her rotation around the pole. Her pivot points include her right hand, held fast to the pole, and her left foot (disastrously clad, we will soon learn, in three-inch heels). She now has a sizeable amount of angular momentum moving counterclockwise around the pole, and this can be halted only by an external force.

Unfortunately for our young dancer, the outcropping of wall her rear end soon encounters does not provide that force. Instead it simply serves as a new fulcrum, shifting the center of rotation from her hand to her hip. This does two things: Like a figure skater pulling her arms in, shifting the center of rotation closer to her center of mass acts to speed the rotation up. More important, it also means that her right hand must begin to rotate around the wall as well.

Link

Check out this wild-ass pumpkin-mod -- a "Big Mac" pumpkin. Link (via Make)

A global shortage of backup generators is causing massive delays in the construction of new data-centers:

"Generator lead time for a nice 2 megawatt diesel engine is now up to a year for one generator," Josh Snowhorn of Terremark said in a panel at the NANOG conference earlier this year. "So we can build all the raised floor we want, and then sit around and wait six months for a generator."

Link (via Hack the Planet)

I've just finished Kathe Koja's moving new young adult novel Going Under, and I continue to be deeply moved by Koja's work.

Going Under is the story of a bright, home-schooled brother-sister pair who struggle with their love and resentment for one another, under the hapless gaze of their clueless parents. Hilly, the sister, got involved in the local high-school's paper and made her first outside-world friends, one of whom has recently committed suicide, shattering Hilly's life. Now her family struggles to bring her back from the dark pit she's fallen into.

I first started reading Koja with her ground-breaking, lush and literary horror novels like The Cipher. These baroque, grisly novels shocked and engrossed me, impressing me with their verbal pyrotechnics. I thought of Koja as a prose stylist first and foremost.

Then Koja started to publish slim, moving young adult novels, books that were written in a simple, bare-bones style that was more Hemingway than Marquez. It was then that I realized that beneath the prose-tricks, Koja wrote amazing characters, badly flawed people whom you loved and hated, who destroyed each other with their best intentions.

Going Under has that in spades. In spare brushstrokes, Koja sketches out several people, monsters, angels, devils and bystanders, each of them climbing out of the pages and telling you their stories. After a scant 120 pages (read all in one gulp of an afternoon), I felt like I'd spent a month living with her people, getting to know and love (or hate) them.

If you are or you know a smart young reader who's ready for something different, Koja's YA books like Going Under are like nothing you've ever read before. And if you're an adult, Koja's YA novels are a visit to the horrors and wonders of adolescence, a ticket to a world where young people aren't mere literary devices, but their own species, separate and whole; vulnerable and strong. Link

Penguin Books has launched an in-game publishing venture in the online world Second Life, leading with Neal Stephenson's seminal Snow Crash -- naturally, since Snow Crash's Metaverse inspired Second Life!

"It was the obvious entry point," says Penguin's Ettinghausen (avatar name Jeremy Neumann) as he shows me around the virtual sampler of Snow Crash. "We are always looking for new ways to connect with online communities and Second Life is undergoing a huge amount of growth. However, it is still a small community when compared with MySpace or iTunes and we wouldn't want to bring authors in who didn't have a connection with that world yet."

Penguin worked with the London-based virtual world design agency Rivers Run Red to create an in-world version of the book - this offers readers excerpts of the text, an audio clip and a link which clicks through to a dedicated Second Life page on the Penguin website, complete with the opportunity to buy the book at a discount. They are now developing a virtual bookshelf of other Penguin titles for the Second Life resident.

Link (via Futurismic)

Update: Wagner James Au sez, "I wrote about that *Snowcrash* excerpt a couple months ago, with a pic of it in action. Also includes a recollection by a former Linden Lab staffer who met Stephenson, and told him about Second Life as his metaverse made manifest-- but got a rather bland response."

SpamThru, a horribly ingenious new piece of malware, downloads and installs its own anti-virus software, which it then uses to detect and remove competing malicious software installed by other hackers on the same system:

At start-up, the Trojan requests and loads a DLL from the author's command-and-control server.

This then downloads a pirated copy of Kaspersky AntiVirus for WinGate into a concealed directory on the infected system.

It patches the license signature check in-memory in the Kaspersky DLL to avoid having Kaspersky refuse to run due to an invalid or expired license, Stewart said.

Ten minutes after the download of the DLL, it begins to scan the system for malware, skipping files which it detects are part of its own installation.

"Any other malware found on the system is then set up to be deleted by Windows at the next reboot," he added.

Link (via Deep Links)