BoingBoing reader Erik Johnson, of the Charles S. Anderson Design Co. says:

We saw your BoingBoing posting on the squid costume and thought we'd send this one along... a few years back Target hired us to design their Halloween campaign, including a some new low-cost costume ideas. This is one that got produced, we called it "lil' squirt." Of course, it was only produced that year. Thanks-- we love BoingBoing!

You should give props to BabyStyle.com for the blue octopus costume - It's not on their site any more (I guess they sold out, due to the awesomeness?), but that's who makes them. Our baby and one of her baby friends wore them last night as well. They were excellent little octopi.

Spring Maxfield says,

"Here's another squid costume! This one was made by my brilliant friend Anna Costa of SF. This is her son Atom: Link."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:44:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vomit Barrel -- Halloween prop

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:34:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Airport screeners at Newark fail to find 20 of 22 "weapons"

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:57:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

China official: What 'net censorship? What jailed journalists?

[Yang Xiaoqun]: I don't think we should be using different standards to judge China. In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem. I know that some colleagues listen to the BBC in their offices from the Webcast. And I've heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it's blocked. I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all.

Nick Gowing, BBC anchor and session moderator: Would you like to elaborate on that?

[Yang Xiaoqun]: How can I elaborate on it if we don't have any restrictions?

Some people say that there are journalists in China that have been arrested. We have hundreds of journalists in China, and some of them have legal problems. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression.

Reader comment: Dave says,

The Chinese official not named in the CNET article is Yang Xiaoqun. He is "First Secretary, Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva" according to ICANN wiki.

I live in Shanghai. I have never been able to access a BBC website in the 11 months I've been here. Until last month, wikipedia was completely blocked. One day in October/ late September it was suddenly available. I'm waiting for it to be nixed again. Blogspot was also momentarily freed up at the same time, but I noticed blogspot is blocked again -- even with mild censorware workarounds like the .nyud.net:8090 suggestions from Boingboing that used to work in the past. Technorati is and always has been similarly inaccessible. The official speaking at the conference should clearly be given a job in the Bush administration should things not work out for him in China. Ceci n'est pas un pipe, indeed.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:41:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Aronofsky's "The Fountain", and outer space sans CGI

Steve Silberman has an article in the November issue of Wired Magazine on the challenges faced by director Darren Aronofsky ("Pi," "Requiem for a Dream") in creating "The Fountain," his latest science fiction feature which opens in the US on November 22. Steve tells BoingBoing,

One of Aronofsky's primary ambitions was to create outer-space environments without using CGI, and he succeeded brilliantly with the help of a microphotographer in England named Peter Parks who lives in a 400-year-old cowshed and created luminous, Blake-like visions of exploding nebulae for "The Fountain" using curry powder, baby oil, shrimp larvae, and other wacky substances, magnifying them with a device called the microzoom optical bench that employs both Victorian prisms and state-of-the-art digital cameras. (The Parks stuff is near the end of my article).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:24:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Omakaseween: Cylons, pumpkins, phantoms of lost liberties.

* Link to Battlestar Galactica-themed greenhorncomic.com funny.

* The Mac-o-Lantern: Link.

* Scare the bejeezus out of people, and dress up as the Patriot Act: Link.

* This pumpkin carves itself: Link

* HOWTO cook a realistic, bloody brain: Link. No advice for HOWTO eat it.

* Marshmallow mummy and monster cupcakes: Link

* Suicide Girls comix-themed Halloween photoset (for adults only): Link

* For one day, today, this child has transformed into a fearsome samurai: Link.

* Zombie Clown Haikus:

Split them wide open
Entrails look like sausages
Go get the ShopVac

* Stop sending me links to goatse jackolanterns. Stop. All of you. Because I won't post them, I say, not one single link. No. So played out.

(Thanks, Sean Kennedy, Steve, Scott Fuller, Damon, Jesse Thorn, Alec Muffett, Matthew Harris, Helen @ SuicideGirls)

Previous Omakase linkdumps:
- Omakase linkdump: Trick or 1337
- Dem belly full
- I wanna tear you apart
- Sexy taco, space gun, deli flesh.
- Arabic smokes, Norway bimbo, Danish BB ringtone
- Post-holiday bluesnixer roundup

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:10:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MySpace will block uploads of copyrighted music

The move comes amid pressure from major studios and record labels against popular online sites like MySpace and YouTube, which they accuse of infringing the copyrights of their artists' music and videos.

MySpace, one of the most popular sites on the internet, licensed technology from privately-held Gracenote allowing it to review music recordings uploaded by community members to their profiles.

The technology compares those filed with Gracenote's database of copyrighted material and can block uploads without proper rights. Terms of the licensing agreement were not disclosed.

Reader comment: Aaron Newton says,

So, what if you're the owner of the copyrighted work? I built/launched Download.com Music which is host to thousands of mp3s from indie and labels alike. When we spot a file that looks like a pirated file, we contact the uploader and seek credentials, but we can't always spot everything. The DMCA protects us in the event that a user uploads something illegally (not that I'm stumping for that terrible piece of legislation). If Myspace blocked every upload based on the gracenote db, how would all the bands that happen to be in there upload their own music? It's moves like this, which aren't necessary due to the way the DMCA works, that makes sites like this less socially relevant. MySpace is a haven for bands because it gives them these tools and doesn't make them really work hard to get their stuff online.

Relatedly, there's got to be an irony that the gracenote db was contributed to by all the people who used it before it was walled off. I bet you an RIAA lawyer could come up with a way to sue them for using that metadata commercially, if they wanted to.

I recently came out of the studio having recorded 4 original songs that were entirely written by me and a friend. I created a new page (www.myspace.com/tinystar) to showcase our work and after downloading our songs one of the main pieces (Festival Of The Seagoat) I recieved a "copyright infringement" notice next to the song on the edit page and consequently all the songs on my page are frozen. Frustrating to say the least! I've emailed support numerous times with no response....I cannot fathom how Gracenote technology can at all be accurate, as evidenced by this caper, and in the meantime I'm stuck with a frozen page and a piece of software telling me that my hardfought creative output is not mine after all! Thanks for reading and in advance for any help!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:47:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

George "macaca" Allen's staff beats up blogger at campaign rally

Wonkette reports that blogger Mike Stark (of dailykos.com) was physically attacked by people presumed to be staffers for Sen. George Allen (R-VA) during a campaign rally today, after the blogger asked Allen, "why did you spit on your first wife." Link, includes video. Stark has written a letter about the incident, and why he asked that question, here. (Thanks, Craig)

Reader comment: Unholy Moses sez

Mike Stark may crosspost at DailyKos, but he is better known for running the Web site "Calling All Wingnuts" (callingallwingnuts.com), where he chronicles his attempts to call into right-wing radio shows and take the host(s) to task. Oh, and he'll be filing a lawsuit, per his letter to the Richmond Times Dispatch: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:38:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Diabetic flyer comatose after he's denied a scary liquid: insulin

Reader comment: Chris Town says,

As a Type 1 diabetic, I can assure you, a lack of insulin will not send you into a comatose.

Type 1 diabetes is a condition where your body no longer produces insulin, and it has to be injected several times a day. An overdose of insulin, which can happen if you don't get food to match the insulin you intake, or you don't balance food intake with exercise with insulin intake, can send you into a "coma" called hypoglycemia. Having experienced my fair share of these throughout my life, I can also assure you, 2 weeks in hospital would never be required. A day at most for older people, a few hours for people in the 20s like me.

Not taking insulin will not send you into a coma, you'll just be very uncomfortable as your blood sugar rises and rises, which will cause minor organ damage, but will not send you into a coma. Type 1 Diabetics denied insulin will live for months and months, but will eventually go blind, experience kidney and other organ failure and die a long and painful death.

Here's the wikipedia links for type 1 diabetes and hypoglycemia.

There's plenty of misconceptions about insulin-dependant diabetes around, so keeping people informed could save lives. After all, if I'm experiencing hypoglycemia the very last thing I need is for someone to give me insulin.

I'm writing in regards to your reader's comment on Type I diabetes. As a medical student I know that a lack of access to insulin for a long enough time can send a type I diabetic into a coma.

Chris is right in that too much insulin will cause hypoglycemia. What he doesn't mention is that without insulin the diabetic's body thinks that there isn't any glucose in the blood even when there is an excess. Without insulin the body can't take the glucose into the cells and since glucose is necessary for cells to generate energy the body attempts to correct the perceived lack of glucose. At a certain point the body enters starvation mode and starts to generate ketone bodies which can led to a life threatening condition known as diabetic ketoacidosis or DKA. DKA can led to coma, hospitalization and, if it persists long enough, death.

It worries me that a diabetic would be so misinformed about the consequences of type I diabetic without access to insulin and the DKA that can result.

Here are the wikipedia and eMedicine links for DKA.

I can see what reader Chris Town is saying about this not being a hypoglycemic episode, and that if you were hypoglycemic you wouldn't need a couple week stay at the Hotel Hospital. I'm sure what they meant was he went into Diabetic Ketoacidosis, otherwise known as DKA ( Link), a scary situation if a type I diabetic doesn't get any insulin.

As a physician, I can't count the number of times people have forgotten or otherwise been denied insulin and required an ICU stay for a week or two. Just to clear some things up.

p.s. - boingboing makes life worth living on call

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:34:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NPR "Xeni Tech": update on FBI raids fake boarding pass website

It was a dark and stormy night, when agents pounded on the door of Christopher Soghoian's apartment and shouted, "boo!"

OK, it's not a Halloween story at all. But for today's edition of the NPR News program "Day to Day," I spoke with host Alex Chadwick about the recent online controversy surrounding the "The Northwest Airlines Boarding Pass Generator" (cache link) website, and the late-night federal raid that followed. For the segment, I spoke with:

* the office of Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), who called for Soghoian to be apprehended, and the website killed -- then changed his mind
* Bruce Schneier, author of "Beyond Fear" and computer security researcher who first wrote about the airline security flaw in 2003
* Avi Rubin, author of "Brave New Ballot" and Johns Hopkins professor for whom Soghoian briefly served as teaching assistant
* FBI Special Agent Wendy Osborne, who explains where the investigation is now, and whether charges will be filed.

PREVIOUSLY:
* Ceci n'est pas un fake boarding pass (10-29-06)
* Congressman on Boarding Pass Generator guy: Uh... oops? (10-29-06)
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)
* 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)

ELSEWHERE TODAY: There's a good roundup of the latest on this story at Wired News here.

Reader comment: Anonymous flyer says,

Just an addendum to your "boarding pass" story as it relates to terrible airline security in the US. I've been telling this story to people since getting back to Australia from the USA. When I was travelling in the US in September, I experienced first hand how bad the system is.

I had one of the boarding passes with an "SSSS" on it, and unbeknownst to me, on my way through the x-ray section, the screeners flat out didn't even read my boarding pass - so I walked right through after being x-rayed.

At the time I didn't know anything about what the SSSS was but naturally, I later was told I could not board the plane, and a screener had to come down to the boarding gate and give me a "thorough" search (right in front of all the other passengers). He was a supervisor, extremely apologetic, very professional and polite, and I complied with all his instructions. Nonetheless, it was pretty confronting to be frisked in full 'vitruvian man' position in front of hundreds of nervous looking passengers.

The thing that stunned me at the time, was that earlier, before I went through the x-ray part while waiting in line with other passengers, we could see through the glass to the actual x-ray screens. Myself and one other passenger watched in horror as what was quite clearly a gun went right past her face on the screen and she didn't even flinch.

At the last second she kind of broke her trance and 'rewound' the screen and after a long hard look, pressed a big red button - presumably the offending item was examined and found to be a lighter or something, but to this day I remember the terrified glances all the people in the queue were giving eachother. The funny thing is as soon as I saw her I remember thinking "She must be about 16, and on minimum wage" - then literally seconds later I saw her nearly miss a gun.

On the whole the entire experience was most decidely NOT "secure" or "safe". It was a relief to get back on an international flight on my way home.

Oh by the way... This was on September 5th, in LAX flying out to Austin TX on American Airlines flight 1182.

Australian readers will know this happened a little while ago, but your recent post about boarding passes reminded me of a prank pulled off by Australian political satire "The Chaser War on Everything". They took advantage of discount airline Virgin Blue's Online ticket purchse and self check-in service which amazingly fails to check for ID at any point before boarding the plane. The prank ended when the Chaser crew elected to not turn up to the final boarding call forcing airline staff to make announcements asking for "Mr Al Kyder" and "Mr Terry Wrist" to immeadiately make thier way to the departure lounge.

(yes, the title is making fun of "war on terrorism" and this excellent show tends to focus on ridiculous attempts at making us all safer).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:47:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired acquires social news aggregator Reddit

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Reddit, which has four full-time employees, will move from Boston to Wired Digital's headquarters in San Francisco. It will operate under the Wired Digital umbrella along with Wired News, the daily technology news publication.

(...) "We're thrilled to become a home for this young company that has grown to more than 1 million unique users a month by building such an open and democratic community for the social filtering of news," said Kourosh Karimkhany, general manager of Wired Digital. "Our goal will be to build Reddit as an independent company by collaborating with Wired through the integration of its core technology, and by offering partnerships to allow others to do the same."

Reader comment: Frank Hicinbothem says,

I saw your entry on BoingBoing about Wired acquiring Reddit. While I'm happy for them and all, it's not all good. As of the news this morning, they've seen fit to pull the plug on their most excellent NSFW aggregator: nsfw.reddit.com. That's a bummer, because it was a nice, low key aggregator for adult topics, in a world where such things are hard to find. Oh well, c'est la vie.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:45:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fantagraphics bookstore in Seattle

The store will contain everything Fantagraphics has in print (as well as Eros Comix), and will also house our soon-to-be-legendary DAMAGED ROOM, featuring heavily discounted and often out-of-print books unavailable anywhere else.

The space also has room for art exhibitions, which we'll have more news about very soon.

Be sure to check out FLOG!: The Fantagraphics Blog for more information, including pictures. And then stay tuned for a lot of great shows and events to come in 2007. In other words, start making your Seattle vacation plans NOW, and if you have friends in Seattle that might be interested, please pass on the news. Here's the 911: FANTAGRAPHIC BOOKS 1201 South Vale Street Seattle, WA 98108 Mon. - Sat 11:30 - 8 Sun 11:30 - 5 206-658-0110

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:28:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Halloween cover from 1958 Saturday Evening Post

When I look at this illustration by John Falter, I'm reminded of the stripped-down environments Charles Schultz used to draw his Peanuts characters into during the early years of his strip: the shoebox houses, inconsequential trees and indoor/outdoor carpet lawns, devoid of landscaping, that represented 50's suburbia. Here Falter presents us with a more fully realized version of Charlie Brown's world.

John Falter(1910-1982) has never been one of the illustrators of the 50's that I really get worked up about. But here he has captured a quality of typical childhood experience that is so astute and understated that it is spectacular in its mundanity.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:04:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jack Black Tenacious D video directed by John K

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:28:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lights and Shadows of New York Life -- neat old book

And that would be a shame, because then fewer people would be able to read "Lights and Shadows of New York Life, or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City," by James D. McCabe, Jr.

Fortunately, books published in 1872 are in the public domain, so you can download this fantastic book about life in New York in the late 19th century for free from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.net.

This is the world of Scorsese's Gangs of New York, one of my favorite movies. The table of contents include intriguing chapters, such as:

IMPOSTORS, STREET MUSICIANS, MINOR AMUSEMENTS, BOARDING-HOUSE LIFE, THE CHEAP LODGING HOUSES, PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS, THE THIEVES, THE PICKPOCKETS, FEMALE THIEVES, THE RIVER THIEVES, THE FENCES, THE ROUGHS, THE PAWNBROKERS, THE SOCIAL EVIL, THE LOST SISTERHOOD, THE STREET WALKERS, CHILD MURDER, BLACK-MAILING, FEMALE SHARPERS, FORTUNE TELLERS AND CLAIRVOYANTS, THE BUMMERS, TENEMENT HOUSE LIFE, DRUNKENNESS, WHAT IT COSTS TO LIVE IN NEW YORK, GAMBLING, FARO BANKS, LOTTERIES, THE "HEATHEN CHINEE," STREET CHILDREN, SWINDLERS, THE POOR OF NEW YORK, THE DESERVING POOR, THE BEGGARS, QUACK DOCTORS, WORKING WOMEN, STREET VENDERS

From the section on Street Children:

In spite of the labors of the Missions and the Reformatory Institutions, there are ten thousand children living on the streets of New York, gaining their bread by blacking boots, by selling newspapers, watches, pins, etc., and by stealing. Some are thrust into the streets by dissolute parents, some are orphans, some are voluntary outcasts, and others drift here from the surrounding country. Wherever they may come from, or however they may get here, they are here, and they are nearly all leading a vagrant life which will ripen into crime or pauperism.

The newsboys constitute an important division of this army of homeless children. You see them everywhere, in all parts of the city, but they are most numerous in and about Printing House Square, near the offices of the great dailies. They rend the air and deafen you with their shrill cries. They surround you on the sidewalk, and almost force you to buy their papers. They climb up the steps of the stage, thrust their grim little faces into the windows, and bring nervous passengers to their feet with their shrill yells; or, scrambling into a street car, at the risk of being kicked into the street by a brutal conductor, they will offer you their papers in such an earnest, appealing way, that, nine times out of ten, you buy from sheer pity for the child.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:15:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Time-lapse drawing of a wasp

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:45:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moscow film from 1908

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:35:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-laptop-mist for $45

Apparently, electro magnetic radiation is now a real cause of skin ageing, or so say Clarins. But before you cower away into a technology-free cave, rest assured that lo and behold, Clarins will be releasing an anti-electro magnetic radiation mist to protect you. It'll be available in January at a cost of €39, but I think this is one risk I'm happy to live with.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:51:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Evolutionary basis for self-delusion?

The truth may set you free, but you might not be as carefree and happy. It will eat away at you — what hurts you does not necessarily make you stronger.

I would maintain that a healthy (i.e. substantial) amount of denial is therefore genetically heritable, that it allows us to blithely go on (despite reading Beckett) and to ignore the basic sadness and desperation of life. We can live in an illusion — in fact we are genetically predisposed to do so. These illusions can be small — I am just as good at catching game as Bob, my rival, for example — or they can be very large — that death is not the end and that I will be rewarded for my faith and Bob, the apostate, will rot in Hell.

Either way, they allow me to go on, to persevere in the face of unlikely odds or limited chance of success. We have evolved to be less rational that one might think, and to be slightly more delusional and even stupid.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:49:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Linux music player will sell DRM-free music from Magnatune

Amarok continues to blast ahead with release 1.4.4. We're thrilled to be able to take our long association with Magnatune to new heights with the addition of an integrated DRM-free music store with full-length mp3 previews. Magnatune's "we are not evil" attitude guarantees that you can purchase awesome tunes and the artist receives half of the purchase price.

With 1.4.4 comes basic support for the Rio Karma. Many bug fixes and additions for the other media device plugins have also been made. Now Amarok is truly your "one-stop-media-device" shop, supporting nearly all the major media device's on the market.

Amarok 1.4.4 may very well be our closest to being bug free release ever! Over 100 bugs have been closed for this release, thanks in no small part to the tireless effort of our development team. Martin Aumueller and Alexandre Oliveira in particular have been on a bug squashing craze for this release, and first-time contributor, Ovidiu Gheorghioiu, has submitted a large bundle of patches and fixes to improve Amarok's efficiency and response.

On another note, we still need artists! If YOU are interested in creating artwork for the Amarok project, please mail amarok@kde.org with your proposal, or for more information about what is required.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:10:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

eMusic bones subscribers with downgrade

I received an email from eMusic today saying that, after November 21, all new subscriptions will cost the same, BUT GIVE YOU LESS.

The Basic plan is currently 40 tracks per month, but will soon drop to 30. Similarly, the Plus and Premium plans are dropping from 65 and 90 to 50 and 75 downloads per month respectively.

By default, the plans of existing subscribers (i.e., me) will not change. Furthermore, if I act quickly, and upgrade my subscription RIGHT NOW, I'll be able to "lock in at the lowest price per download available" (!)

The email does not explain why they're reducing the value of new subscriptions, and I'm unable to find any mention of these inpending changes on the eMusic website.

To be honest, the whole thing is filling me with a growing sense of injustice. Logic (along with my limited understanding of economies-of-scale type stuff) would suggest that as eMusic gets bigger they'd be able to offer BETTER (not worse) deals. But this does not seem to be happening.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:21:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Prison built to house Pitcairn rapists

A British Foreign Office spokesman said seven New Zealand prison officers would be dispatched to establish a new prison, Her Majesty's Prison Pitcairn, on the remote South Pacific island. Britain will pay the bill, expected to total about £500,000 ($1.2 million) a year.

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said on Monday the six men had lost their appeal to the Privy Council, which rejected their argument that English law had not been promulgated on the island and it was not under British sovereignty.

See also:
Half the men on small island charged with rape
Pitcairn rapists convicted but not jailed

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:16:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Adopt a microbe - parasites personified

Hola. I'm C. jejuni.
I am a curved Gram Negative rod.

You can find me in lots of domestic animals.
I am part of the normal bacterial flora of poultry and cattle.
I get into people through dirty drinking water or undercooked meat, especialy chicken.
I cause food poisoning, with a self limiting bloody diarrhoea, abdominal cramps and fever.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:09:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Neil Gaiman's HOWTO create a literary will

Others make wills, but don't think to take into account what happens to our literary estate as a separate thing from the disposition of their second-best beds, which means unqualified or uninterested relatives can find themselves in control of everything the author's written. Some of us are just cheap.

All this bothered me, and still bothers me.

Shortly after Mike Ford's death, I spoke to Les Klinger about it. Les is a lawyer, and a very good one, and also an author. I met him through Michael Dirda, and the Baker Street Irregulars (here's Les's Sherlockian webpage).

Les immediately saw my point, understood my crusade and went off and made a document for authors. Especially the lazy sort of authors, or just the ones who haven't quite got around to seeing a lawyer, or who figure that one day it'll all sort itself out, or even the ones to whom it has never occurred that they need to think about this stuff.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:05:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Miami Zoo mounts giant shit exhibition

The Scoop on Poop is a traveling exhibition based on the popular book by Dr. Wayne Lynch. The exhibition leads visitors on an investigation of what poop is and how animals and humans use it. The Scoop on Poop treats the subject with a tactful blend of good science and fun.

The Scoop on Poop features large colorful graphic panels, three-dimensional models, and fun interactive components. Visitors are invited to listen in on an animal’s digestive system, learn the language of poop in countries around the world, examine fecal samples in a veterinarian’s lab, compete in dung beetle races, track wild animals by clues left in scat, see how long it takes an elephant to poop their body weight, improve their #2 IQ in stool school, and meet a dinosaur dung detective.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:48:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Last minute changes snuck into Aussie DMCA

A last minute change has been introduced into the new bill and it's so arcane that legal experts differ strongly on what the effect will be. But with the bill fast-tracking through Parliament, it's likely that this mystery clause will be passed unless the brakes are put on the process. EFF has information on the changes and how Australians can get involved:

While the new version’s TPM ban is broader, the Bill does contain two carve-outs: First, there’s no legal protection for region-coding access control technologies on video games and DVDs. That is likely to avoid some of the potentially anti-competitive impacts of geographic market segmentation via TPMs – a practice that involves no copyright right. The carve-out is presumably designed to preserve the 2005 Australian High Court ruling in the Sony v. Stevens PlayStation modchip case, but unfortunately, does so in the narrowest possible way. Second, there’s an attempt to exclude misuses of TPM provisions on embodied computer programs like the printer cartridge and garage door opener cases invoking the DMCA.

How bad is the last minute change in language? Even Australia's top legal minds are unsure of the precise impact. Unless the bill is delayed there will be no opportunity to assess that before the highly complex bill is pushed to a speedy vote.

But that’s not the only problem with the bill. It also creates new criminal penalties for copyright infringement. It introduces new summary and strict liability offences and criminal penalties for non-commercial infringement. These rules would apply to children as young as 14, and could make everyday Australians criminals for uploading lip-synched videos to YouTube and other commonplace activities.

Update: David Cake of Electronic Frontiers Australia sez, "Yes, the government is trying to push through this bill disgracefully fast - the senate committee has been allotted only 4 hours of public hearings for a 213 page bill, including major changes to the bill that have been introduced between public drafts and the introduction of legislation. Electronic Frontiers Australia has been able to lodge a submission to the senate committee objecting to these changes, but the time frame before the bill is due to be voted on is very short, and reversing these changes will be difficult."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:42:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Haunted Mansion tribute from a young filmmaker

This is a movie I made a long time ago. It's the same as the Haunted mansion ride at Disneyland. I made the sets out of construction paper and paper bags. I redid the audio because my high little kid voice doing the Ghost Host just sounded stupid.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:33:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rotting Soviet-era Ministry of Transportation building

The image for today is the Ministry of Transportation. Shot in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, the photography brings out the conflict between a symbol of progress and its current state of decay.

By Antwerp-based photographer Geert Joiris.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stanford panel on Whole Earth Catalog influence, 11/9

Count me among those who were heavily influenced by the Catalogs. I have a complete set in a storage locker in Toronto. I used to pore through them for hours on rainy days, marvelling at the flowering of the mission of "access to tools and ideas." And when a friend slipped me the "Is the Body Obsolete?" issue of the Whole Earth Review in the 80s, I knew I'd found something special, a publication about something that I had always hoped was out there, but had never found. Even now, I have a WELL account! Link (Thanks, Rick!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:19:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FairGame cracks iTunes using iMovie

The holy grail of Apple DRM for me is opening up the audiobooks. These files cost a fortune, can't be easily burned and re-ripped (and some even come flagged as "non-burnable" -- showing that there are crippleware modes in iTunes that aren't widely known). Cracking them through the analog hole using Audio Hijack is time-consuming (I spent six weeks this year running two PowerBooks 24/7 to convert all my iTunes audiobooks to MP3s using this method). Link (Thanks, Matthias!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creative Commons 3.0 license drafts published

# Clauses 4(a) & (b) (both licenses) - language has been introduced to clarify that the anti-TPM restriction does not apply to private copying, only when a work is being shared.

# Clause 4(a) (both licenses) - the ShareAlike condition has been clarified to confirm that the other jurisdiction licenses under which an SA-licensed work can be relicensed must be of the same license version or later (consistent with relicensing under the same jurisdiction/generic license).

# Clause 4(e) (new generic) - this clause has been substantially revised since the first draft was circulated on the list. The revisions reflect the ongoing work of the CC Working Group that has been set up to look at the issue of CC licenses and collecting societies and represents the agreed on policy for CC licenses going forward as regards the collection of collecting society royalties by CC licensors. It is designed to take into account the different systems that exist in different countries and will be reflected in the jurisdiction licenses that version to 3.0.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:06:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Henry Ford's Detroit suburb in the Brazilian jungle

Fenced in by jungle, Fordlandia was transformed into a modern suburb with rows of snug bungalows fed by power lines running to a diesel generator. The main street was paved and its residents collected well water from spigots in front of their homes—except for the U.S. staff and white-collar Brazilians, who had running water in their homes. The North Americans splashed in their outdoor swimming pool and the Brazilians escaped the sun by sliding into another pool designated for their use. “Villa Brasileira,” as one area of the town was known, boasted tailors, shops, restaurants and shoemakers to serve the local workers. The sweet smell of bread wafted from a bakery; the butcher shop offered beef, pork and chicken at subsidized prices. On paper, it sounded like a dream...

“I’m a worker, not a waiter!” a Fordlandia employee reportedly yelled in the food line one day, sparking the plantation’s most notorious riot. Workers armed with machetes joined the protest against the self-serve mid-western cuisine in a country where food traditionally was served at the table. The seringueiros demolished the cafeteria as North American officials scrambled to the dock, jumped into boats and waited in the middle of the river for Brazilian troops to quell the melee...

“A workman’s mess hall was set up but native workers did not like the wholesome Detroit-style cooking and complained bitterly of indigestion. North American fare in the jungle no more pleases the customers than a quick change to Amazon fare would please you or me,” Wilson wrote in a Harpers magazine article titled “Mr. Ford in the Jungle.” Furthermore, the natives did not choose to square dance on the village green or to sing the quaint folk songs of Merrie England or to treasure Longfellow.”

SoL sez, "Here's a Damn Interesting article about Ford's doomed Brazilian experiment with pictures."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:01:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Readers panning classic novels on Amazon

1984 by George Orwell:

Caitlyn from Atlanta, GA, wrote: "1984 is the worst book I have ever read. I would advise anyone who is thinking about reading this book to reconcider! George Orwell is not a bad writer, however, this book he does not do evry well on, as some of his others. Prehaps he was getting old and lost his touch. Animal Farm was okay, but 1984 was horrible. It took him forever, it seemed like, to get into the accual book. If someone were to take out all of the useless part of 1984, it would be half as long. Why would he wirte so much about nothing? I havent ever meet someone who could wirte such a boring book about the goverment. I have meet many people who have loved this book, but i dispised it. I am not at all intrested in the goverment. This may be part of the reason that I didnt like it. I would advise you not to read this book."

Update: Aaron sends in an earlier cut at this from Defective Yeti.

Update 2: Cody sez, "There's also the hilarious Amazon World blog, which sadly stopped updating in June of 2004."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:54:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snitch sticker in your phone reports water damage

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:46:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

London Underground maps that are free as in speech

A PHP script processes the line definitions to create list of stations on the line, calculates coordinates of the control points for bezier curves, and then outputs the graphic as an SVG file. The SVG files are then fine tuned in an SVG editor (text placement, mostly) and rendered as PNGs.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:37:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, October 30, 2006

Awesome, impractical, expensive watch

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:20:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NPR: Pentagon scans milblogs for security risks (audio report)

I filed a radio report today for the NPR News program "Day to Day" on news that Pentagon officials are cracking down on "mil-bloggers," military men and women who write blogs about their wartime experiences. The Pentagon is concerned about operational security. The increased scrutiny has quieted some blogs, while driving many to look for ways to follow the new rules.

Link to archived audio.

See also this related story I filed for Wired News: "Under Fire, Soldiers Kill Blogs" (BB post, WN link).

IMAGE: The author of milblog "Midnight Casket" is 25-year old Alabama native Jeff Barnett, shown here. He is a mechanical engineer with the US Marines most recently deployed in Fallujah, Iraq. Jeff is also a huge gamer, and particularly into XBOX360 and Halo. Check out this cool gaming forum he hosts: Link.

More on the milblog story in this Defensetech.org post Link (editor Noah Shachtman has been covering the story for weeks, and first pointed me to it).

My NPR News colleague Steve Proffitt reads an incredibly moving personal account from one soldier's blog in a segment which also aired in today's edition of "Day to Day": Link.

UPDATE: Some of the "milblogs" mentioned in the Wired News item and NPR report are organizing a fund drive to buy voice-operated laptops for Iraq war veterans and other servicemen/women recovering from amputations or injuries to arm or hands. They load these notebooks up with copies of Dragon Naturally Speaking (which I have not used, but heard great things about from reporters who swear by it for transcribing interviews). Snip:

Operating laptops by speaking into a microphone [allows them to] send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the 'Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field without having to press a key or move a mouse. The experience of CPT Charles "Chuck" Ziegenfuss, a partner in the project who suffered severe hand wounds while serving in Iraq, illustrates how important this voice-controlled software can be to a wounded servicemember's recovery.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:30:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Halloween goth-death sounds on SomaFM stream

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:27:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO ditch your landline but keep your DSL

Of course, it's not that easy -- the phone companies don't want you to ditch dino-phone service, so you need a good HOWTO before you embark on your dry-loop odyssey. The Eat Our Brains group-blog has a great post on how to game the system:

It took me almost an hour to reach a live Verizon rep who could talk to me about it. They make it as hard as possible to change over. They charge an extra $5 a month for your DSL connection if you don't have a land-line. You have to put your DSL service on a credit card, rather than pay for it on a phone bill. Tragically, they haven't figured out how to bill you for DSL, I suppose. You have to turn off both services, then start up your DSL service anew, with a two-week gap in between.

Here's how to game their system:

First, since it's technically a new DSL service if you do this, you qualify for promotions and rebates as a new customer. Dell, for instance, offers a $100 rebate if you order Verizon DSL through them. (Similar rebates with other DSL providers, incidentally, and you don't have to buy a computer to get the deal.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:20:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Halloween party pics from Industrial Light and Magic

Since MAKE, CRAFT and BoingBoing are linking to cool DIY costumes spotted at Halloween parties this year, I figured you would all get a kick out of the costumes spotted at the annual ILM-Lucasfilm-LucasArts Halloween Party this weekend. Plenty of cardboard robots and stormtroopers, but the lifesize (as in GIGANTIC) Trojan Rabbit complete with a gaggle of Monty Python Holy Grail knights won for best costume of the night… with Marie Antoinette (all her clothes and wig were handmade) and the gigantic digital camera that took real photos and the Wack-A-Mole with walking mallet, also came in as the night's winners.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:38:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool tools reviews the Cintq digital drawing tablet

Based on comics master Scott McCloud's recommendation (below), I bought a Cintiq. It does something I've always wanted to do since I first saw a computer. This thing is a pen-based tablet that doubles as a monitor. In other words you draw directly on the tablet, just like a paper-based drawing, but digitally. In fact the surface of the Cintq monitor/tablet feels like paper under a pen. Synchrony of image with your movements is almost exact, and the micro difference doesn't seem to matter. The result is weirdly like ink, or paint, but with all the control and magic of Photoshop. Of course, as a monitor, it will display whatever's on your computer, whether it's animation software or a spreadsheet. (You could hook it up to a $500 Mac Mini and have a fabulous digital art studio.) It's slowly being adopted by film animators and other high-end graphic professionals. A Cintq is expensive ($2,500), big, thick and bulky (it is too fat to sit on your lap like other tablets, but it can lay flat on a desk), but if you are producing digital images for a living, it speeds up your productivity and eases your hurt. It's fun to use.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:33:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Update on girl who pretends to eat her cat

Just wanted to give you an update about the post titles Photos of a girl pretending to eat her cat.

Her name is Nakagawa Shoko. She's a Japanese "Talent" who is regularly on TV on variety shows and advertising. I caught a link to those pictures last week and then ended up seeing her on TV just this weekend. Talent's are women (and sometimes men) who don't have any particular skill or talent, but are on TV because they are attractive. During the video segments on variety shows you see their reactions in an inset screen.

She's famous as a prolific blogger in Japan. She updates about 5 or 6 times daily, mostly from her phone I think, with pictures of her face with stuff written on her forehead and also with pictures of cats (hers and maybe other people's, I'm not really sure). You can check her blog out here:

Reader comment:

Kyle says:

There's an interesting video on YouTube (in Japanese) about Otaku culture, where Shoko Nakagawa discusses the reclamation of the word "otaku" ("nerd") by the nerdy crowd, similar to the way "geek" and "nerd" have been in the US (what with iPods, rich computer guys, Lord of the Rings, and nerdcore rap).

YouTube video 1 | YouTube video 2

One thing the otaku have done is change the way they write "otaku" -- the new form uses an older character for the first syllable of "otaku" which is no longer in common use. The goal is to create a new word with different connotations.

Seth dismissed Nakagawa as talentless, but she's sort of a cultural icon for nerds in Japan -- she hangs out on 2ch, a very, very famous Japanese BBS, and, from seeing her interviews, she's extremely knowledgeable about old animation and comics. The fact that she's not ugly is a reason she's become famous -- a geek with good looks.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:30:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool robot vehicle transports man around Tokyo

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement)

Just outside Harajuku station today I saw the craziest/funniest/most dumbfounding thing I've seen in Japan to date. The machine containing this man was fully mobile and powerful enough to get up and down the curbs with ease, not to mention immaculately put together. He rolled right past me in front of the station toward the park, accross the bridge of freaks and over to the crosswalk bridge stairs. Then he waited patiently for a break in traffic and took off down the street away from the crowds. He never once cracked a smile, stopped only when the crowd was too thick to let him by, and seemed at best to not notice all the people staring and trying to talk to him, at worst slightly annoyed that everyone was looking at him and blocking his way (Cripes! You act as thought you've never seen Buzz Lightyear Tetrapodal robot out for a Sunday roll before!).

I'd like to know if anyone knows anything about this...thing...if you've sighted it yourself, or if its been in the news at all (this has foreign media written all over it, a.k.a., stereotype reinforcement)

Update:

Here are a couple of other photos of the same robot, with a different passenger.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:26:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's new USC undergrad course: PWNED

It's an undergrad course offered as a COMM499 class, but it's open to any student on campus. I'll be podcasting it if I can figure out a good recording setup, too. The main class assignment is to work through Wikipedia entries on subjects we cover in the class, in groups, identifying weak areas in the Wikipedia sections and improving them, then defending those improvements in the message-boards for the Wikipedia entries.

The class runs Tuesday afternoons from 3:30-6:20PM. Lots of USC undergrads asked me about attending the grad seminar I'm teaching this semester -- here's your chance. Roll up, roll up!

Every garden has a snake: computers aren't just tools for empowering their owners. They're also tools for stripping users of agency, for controlling us individually and en masse.

It starts with "Digital Rights Management" -- the anti-copying measures that computers employ to frustrate their owners desires. These technologies literally attack their owners, treating them as menaces to be thwarted through force majeure, deceit, and cunning. Incredibly, DRM gets special protection under the law, a blanket prohibition on breaking DRM or helping others to do so, even if you have the right to access the work the DRM is walling off.

But DRM's just the tip of the iceberg. Every digital act includes an act of copying, and that means that copyright governs every relationship in the digital realm. Take a conversation to email and it's not just culture, it's copyright -- every volley is bound by the rules set out to govern the interactions between large publishing entities.

Playing a song for a buddy with your stereo is lawful. Stream that song to your buddy's PC and you could be facing expulsion and criminal prosecution.

Every interaction on the Web is now larded over with "agreements" -- terms of service, acceptable use policies, licenses -- that no one reads or negotiates. These non-negotiable terms strip you of your rights the minute you click your mouse. Transactions that would be a traditional purchase in meatspace are complex "license agreements" in cyberspace. As mere licensors, we are as feudal serfs to a lord -- ownership is conferred only on those who are lucky enough to be setting the terms. Our real property interests are secondary to their "intellectual property" claims.

When the computer, the network, publishing platforms, and property can all be magicked away with the Intellectual Property wand, we're all of us pwned, 0wnz0red, punkd. Our tools are turned against us, the law is tipped away from our favor.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:10:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Astounding Stories covers, 1930-present

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:07:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

By eating this food, you agree to the following:

Small Print's collecting the worst of 'em -- like, when you install Flash Player, you agree to let Adobe audit your PC at any time, and the scam artist who makes you promise you're not from the FTC as a condition of looking at his site. But this one takes the cake: edible paper with a EULA printed on it -- by eating it, you "agree":

Product: A chef in a Chicago restaurant recently perfected a line of edible paper. Customers receive an image of cotton candy printed on a sheet of paper that tastes like cotton candy. Customers who order the treat receive it with the following printed under it: Confidential Property of and © H. Cantu. Patent Pending. No further use or disclosure is permitted without prior approval of H. Cantu.

As seen in: November Food and Wine

Lowpoints: If the treat dissolves on your tongue, does that mean it’s a saliva-wrap license? You eat it, therefore you agree to its terms?

Highpoints: I’m sure the paper is delicious.

See also Small Print Project: collecting the "agreements" shoved down your throat

Update: Steve sez, "Any idea if any friendly lawyer-types have considered putting together a 'counter-EULA'? Ideally, it would be simple form letter that you can mail back to a company that you've recently done business with, that would read "By opening this envelope, you agree to release [name] from the EULA bundled with [product]", and go on from there with the proper legalese. After all, if they believe that opening a product box signals acceptance of a contract, then it's no different the other way around."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:02:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF's Fred von Lohmann free talk at USC next Tues, Nov 7

His free talk runs from 7-9 PM at the USC Annenberg School on the main campus in room 207. We'll have the podcast up a day or two later. Link

Note: THERE IS NO SPEAKER ON OCT 31. Jamie Love was previously erroneously listed as speaking on Hallowe'en, but he won't be here.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:01:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Haunted Mansion themed fireworks wins award - video

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:57:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

US Copyright Office delays DRM ruling

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

Kubrick tryout Brian Atene makes a video for YouTube

I have a follow-up on your post about Brian Atene's audition video for Stanley Kubrick

The actual Brian Atene, featured in the original video, came out of hiding and did a follow-up video.

In addition to that, the Ask A Ninja guys did a mashup of the original.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:56:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Under fire, soldiers kill blogs: Pentagon milblog crackdown

Some of the web's more popular "milblogs" -- blogs maintained by present or former active duty military personnel -- are going quiet following a renewed push by U.S. military officials to scan sites for security risks.

Ten members of a Virginia National Guard unit have been tasked with reviewing both official and unofficial Army websites for potential operational security, or OPSEC, violations. Under the direction of the Army's Web Risk Assessment Cell (AWRAC), the reviewers look for text, photos or videos that may give away sensitive information.

"Loose lips sink ships. That's been around since World War I, and hasn't changed in years," said Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, team leader and battalion commander of the Manassas-based unit that works with contractors from the tech company CA.

Milblogs offer one of the last direct witnesses to the Iraq war from the point of view of front line soldiers -- a sharp reversal from three years ago, when the U.S.-led invasion was among the most closely-watched military attacks in history. According to Editor and Publisher, the number of reporters embedded in military units has dropped from 770 at the height of the conflict to just nine today.

The recent U.S. pressure on milbloggers, reported by Wired contributing editor Noah Shachtman in his Defense Tech blog, highlights the security risks of blogging by active duty military personel -- including those in Iraq with access to e-mail and the internet.

IMAGE: Cav Tanker, shown here, and brother Mike Gulf are 19K M1A2 tankers in the US Army and contributors to the popular milblog Tanker Brothers (image courtesy tankerbrothers.com).

Noah Shachtman has been doing a yeoman's job covering the situation on Defensetech since it surfaced (1 | 2 | 3), and he first pointed me to the story. He, in turn, cited this Army News Service report as one of the earliest sources of news about the Pentagon's current crackdown on milblogs. (Thanks also to Leo Shane, a reporter with Stars and Stripes.)

In related news, Link to this AP item: "The U.S. military's indefinite detention of an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, without charges, is an outrage and should be seen as such by the journalistic community, AP editors said Friday." The story involves a shooter named Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi national, who has been held since April.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:53:20 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ceci n'est pas un fake boarding pass

Following on the rapidly-evolving saga of Christopher "Fake Boarding Pass Generator Website" Soghoian, BB reader Jason Eppink scrawls the legally dubious item you see above (full-size) and says:

Here's a fake boarding pass for Continental Airlines. Let me be clear in stating that I in no way endorse using the use of this boarding pass to attempt to bypass TSA security screening, or to commit fraud.

Now hey, if someone feels moved to whip up a PHP script to generate these babies on the fly, everything will be totally set.

Don't forget to put out the midnight welcome mat by the door when you're done.

PREVIOUSLY:
* Congressman on Boarding Pass Generator guy: Uh... oops? (10-29-06)
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)
* 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)

Reader comment: collapsibletank whipped up the image above and says, "You'll need a generator for Search Warrants, too. I only wish I was able to code a site for these things."

And voilá! BB reader Matt, a former U.S. Marine now working in Afghanistan as a civilian contractor -- and a True American Hero -- says:

I felt inspired by all the recent hullabaloo about the fake boarding passes to create this Fake Warrant Generator Website.

You can enter whatever specifics you want to tailor the warrant to your specific judicial needs. I feel really bad about it, but in the end I pussed-out and added "FAKE" in the background. Sorry :( I am, after all, only a few hundred feet away from the infamous Bagram Prison and I don't need to be disappeared!

All warrants generated are stored on the server with an index so everyone can see the warrants generated by everyone else. It does display your IP, so if you're afraid of that, don't generate any.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:18:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warren Ellis's Desolation Jones - Savage noir spy comic

Desolation Jones, the title character, is an ex-MI6 spook whose problem drinking led to him being usedin a series of searing, mind-destroying medical tests. Now he's disgraced and exiled, living in an underculture LA that is home to an entire village of ex-spies who are imprisoned there by their masters, faced with death should they leave the city limits.

Desolation Jones unfolds like a Hammett novel, like Red Harvest, with a private eye -- Jones -- being recruited by an evil old bastard to retreive some stolen property (in a fit of Ellis-esque genius, the missing prize is a rare reel of Adolph Hitler's homemade pornography).

The violence, anger, and sleaze are pure noir, but the spy-tech and setting are total Ellis. This was a great and savage ride, and its definitely not for the faint of heart. If you like your graphic novels both graphic and novel, Desolation Road is it. Link

Update: Gustavo sez, "your Hammett guess was good, but the plot of the first arc of Desolation Jones is pretty much a straight ripoff/hommage/remix of Chandler's "The Big Sleep" (heavily influenced visually by the 1945/6 movie based on it)."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:47:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Proposal for a Free Culture Scouting patch

# Appear at the door of a major studio, dressed in your full scout uniform, and try to talk them into allowing educational use of historical films commonly shown in public schools (Amistad, Schindler's List, etc.)

# Raise money with a bakesale to go across the country to CMG Worldwide in Indianapolis or Intellectual Properties Management (IPM) in Atlanta to convince these organizations to free images associated with Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King and release them into the public domain for use in school projects, such as web pages

# Paint a colorful mural on a graffiti covered wall across the street from the headquarters of the RIAA with the 9 Reasons Digital Media Products Are a Bad Deal for Consumers.

# Using your knot-disentangling skills, visit a hospital or nursing home and help the aged with their DRM-hobbled digital products

# Go to an orphanage, battered children's home, or juvenile detention facility and show kids how to use Creative Commons resources

# Put in 100 hours of community service at your local library and see the toll that new legislation against patron privacy and public connectivity takes on your local civil servants. Then imagine what it will be like if they have to deal with RIAA and MPAA lawsuits for circulating audio and video content.

See also:
Boy Scouts of America Concerned About Copyright
Boy Scouts shill for MPAA with copyright merit badge

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:34:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Congressman on Boarding Pass Generator guy: Uh... oops?

Last Friday, Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) called for the arrest of Christopher Soghoian, and the takedown of his "Boarding Pass Generator" website which illustrated an airline security hole documented on the web for several years. Hours after the congressman's statement, Soghoian says FBI agents visited his home, then returned a second time after he'd left -- in the middle of the night -- with a search warrant signed at 2AM, and seized Soghoian's computer(s) and other belongings.

Now, several days too late, Markey issues another pronouncement which backtracks on his earlier statement. It's 250 words, but they boil down to one: "oops." Snip:

“On Friday I urged the Bush Administration to ‘apprehend’ and shut down whoever had created a new website that enabled persons without a plane ticket to easily fake a boarding pass and use it to clear security, gain access to the boarding area and potentially to the cabin of a passenger plane. Subsequently I learned that the person responsible was a student at Indiana University, Christopher Soghoian, who intended no harm but, rather, intended to provide a public service by warning that this long-standing loophole could be easily exploited. The website has now apparently been shut down.

“Under the circumstances, any legal consequences for this student must take into account his intent to perform a public service, to publicize a problem as a way of getting it fixed. He picked a lousy way of doing it, but he should not go to jail for his bad judgment. Better yet, the Department of Homeland Security should put him to work showing public officials how easily our security can be compromised.

“It remains a fact that fake boarding passes can be easily created and the integration of terrorist watch lists with boarding security is still woefully inadequate. The best outcome of Mr. Soghoian’s ill-considered demonstration would be for the Department of Homeland Security to close these loopholes immediately."

Markey describes the website as "a lousy way" to point out the security vulnerability, and it would appear that he is not alone in this opinion.

On Friday, I spoke to Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins who previously exposed security vulnerabilities in RFID technology, and Diebold's electronic voting machines. Soghoian lists Rubin on his resume as a reference, and served as his teaching assistant for a semester in 2004 in a "Security and Privacy in Computing" class at Johns Hopkins University. Snip from interview with Rubin:

BOINGBOING: What's your take on the "Boarding Pass Generator" website?

RUBIN: Even if he has a legitimate point, it shows a real lapse in judgement.

BOINGBOING: How would your team at Johns Hopkins approach it? How do you believe something like this might be handled more responsibly?

RUBIN: When we find a security vulnerability, we think about how to publish that information responsibly, and what information we may need to omit. When we find an exploit, the first thing we do is have a meeting about who to tell and how. When we discovered the problems with RFID, we brought the company involved into our lab for several weeks before we released the information.

Markey said,

"He picked a lousy way of doing it, but he should not go to jail for his bad judgment. Better yet, the Department of Homeland Security should put him to work showing public officials how easily our security can be compromised."

I don't think there's room in the budget for hiring everyone who can point out how easily our security can be compromised.

I'd like to take exception with the idea that Soghoian's web site is a "lousy way of doing it". The fact that he was not the first person to bring the vulnerability to light means that this information--the mere concept that any goof with photoshop skillz and a color printer could waltz onto any flight in the country--was already well known. But no one was doing anything to remedy that. In situations like this, a civil disobedience (which is truly what his web site is) sometimes represents the only ethical way to bring about change. Rep. Markey's retraction is a step in the right direction, but the only thing "lousy" here is the transportation security theater itself.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:10:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Foxtrot's scary geek Hallowe'en costume, 2006 edition

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

Remixing the Archive event, USC, Nov 4/5

A jam-packed weekend of workshops, screenings, speakers, performances and more.

Remixing the Archive will examine the historical roots and cultural implications of the past decade's exceptionally vibrant remix culture and tap into a growing and dynamic counterculture devoted to creative reuse.

a few highlights:

* keynote by Rick Prelinger

* west coast premiere of Anne McGuire's Adventure Poseidon, The (The Unsinking of my Ship)

* performance by TV Sheriff

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:26:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-Daylight Savings drive-in ad from the 50s

It is indeed DST day today -- turn back your clocks, change the batteries in your smoke alarms, and don't crash your car from circadian disorientation.

Link (Thanks, Mike!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:10:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bush legalizes martial law -- what Constitution?

For the current President, "enforcement of the laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.

The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens," "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That's right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

The elections are coming up in a matter of weeks. Vote America. Throw the traitors out. Install some leaders who love the Constitution more than the raging hard-on they get from settling political disagreements by imprisoning their opponents. Link (Thanks to everyone who suggested this link)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:36:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

No blogging allowed at "consumer generated media" conference

Of course, the use of the word "consumer" there is telling. The more commonly accepted neologism is "user-created content" -- "user" has more dignity that "consumer," which always reminds me of Gibson's description of "something the size of a baby hippo living in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka, covered with eyes...[with] no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

Maybe the organizers style themselves and their attendees as a cut above "consumer," and therefore not susceptible to creating "consumer generated media." But there's an interesting parallel to the standards meetings and UN treaty bodies I've attended on Internet gonvernance -- the less Internet access those meetings had, the more likely it was that the meeting had been called to destroy the Internet. Link (via Memex 1.1)

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

L'il Sparky: miniature 9V electric chair

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

New Starbucks stores to open across the street from each other

The coffee chain's aggressive growth also hinges on what the company calls "infill" — adding stores in cities where its mermaid logo is already commonplace. In some cases, that means putting a Starbucks within a block of an existing store, if not closer.

While Starbucks knows there's plenty to lure people into their stores, they also recognize that many people can't be bothered to walk very far — or wait very long — for an optional and pricey treat.

"Going to the other side of the street can be a barrier," said Launi Skinner, senior vice president in charge of Starbucks' store development.

Update: Ethan sez, "It looks like the Onion scooped you in its 1998 'news' article, New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks"

Update 2: Rafael sends in this Lewis Black rant about Starbucks proliferation.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:02:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Remove-the-people photoshopping contest

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:58:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Craft magazine launch party photos

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:59:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

US video journalist killed in Oaxaca by paramilitaries

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

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.

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.

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.

Reader comment: TourPro says,

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

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.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:45:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law?

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.

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.

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.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:53:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers

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.

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.

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

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:03:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

History of calculator watches

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.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:50:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hand-sewn felt killer robots

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:24:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, October 27, 2006

Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI - UPDATED

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.

"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."

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.

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)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:31:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

YouTube removes Comedy Central clips over DMCA claims

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.

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.

# 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).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:03:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Catapult maker William Gurstelle on History Channel

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

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:51:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Rogue elephants in NYT

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:29:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

three-legged tortoise gets a wheel

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:11:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos of a girl pretending to eat her cat

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:05:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese experimental film by Toshio Matsumoto: For the Damaged Right Eye

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:59:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WFMU luvs Hannah Montana: "She's The Monkees in a pleated mini."

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.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:37:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy 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."

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.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:24:16 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pluto Time Capsule: submit your stuff for space by Nov. 1

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.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:15:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MAKE video: spud gun tutorial

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:14:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Project Runway designers' Halloween costumes, some high-tech

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:04:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Katrina aid project: One House At A Time

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.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:01:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Big Cable's ridiculous Net Neutrality smear video

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!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:26:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UK maths geeks beat the lotto -- UPDATED

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.

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

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:12:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: spooky scary zen

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

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

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:07:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Trogdor comes to Guitar Hero 2

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:06:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Actor's entertaining screen test for Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket

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

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:05:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Music copyright extension event, London Nov 13

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

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:41:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

What's the best way to preserve a Jack O'Lantern?

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?

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:25:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage radio horror shows

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.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:13:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bulgarian foreign ministry goes Creative Commons

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.”

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:07:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cellphone charms that look like cellphones

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."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:05:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Unicorn Power T-shirts

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:45:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory's old EFF job in Europe is up for grabs

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.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:37:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Bittorrent admin sentenced to 5 months in prison

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:37:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Space tech in India: "Rockets Red Glare"

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.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:11:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

African tech billionaire offers $5 mil for best African prez

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.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:01:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Turing pumpkin

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.

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.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:47:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sudan gov. to foreign journos: you're subject to death penalty

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.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:38:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tagging DRM stuff on Amazon with DefectiveByDesign

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:53:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UK store's pole-dance kit "destroys children's innocence"

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."

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?

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.

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.

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.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:42:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Craft magazine launch party in LA

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

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:30:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Colin Berry reads his Soapbox Derby essay from Make

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.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:23:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weird crime confession or a prank on a USGS database?

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.

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."

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

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:13:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Website generates fake boarding passes

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:02:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hitching a ride in Pakistan

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:58:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mystery explosion in Devon/Cornwall, England

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:50:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:30:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Big Mac pumpkin

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

Data-center construction hobbled by generator shortage

"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."

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

Going Under: moving kids' novel

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

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:01:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Snow Crash comes to the Metaverse

"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.

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."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:47:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Malware kills competitors with anti-virus warez

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.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:43:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Sixapart launches Vox, new social media-stuff sharing service

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:00:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Firefox 2 config tweaks

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:04:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make a Viagra costume for Halloween

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:41:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Engineering prof teaches image processing with BB photo

BoingBoing reader Richard Alan Peters is Assistant Director of the Center for Intelligent Systems at Vanderbilt University School of Engineering. He teaches two courses there about image processing. Not long ago, he asked us for permission to use a group photo of the BoingBoing crew shot by Bart Nagel in a lecture slide about the mathematics of image manipulation. Nagel kindly obliged, and professor Peters in turn said,

I've decided that I'd like to make the .ppt lectures for "EECE-253, Image Processing" and "EECE-254 Computer Vision" freely available with a Creative Commons license that requires only that I get cited for their use. Do you know where a good place would be to make them available?

Here is a link to the slides from the intro lecture from my course, EECE/CS Image Processing (Vanderbilt University, Fall 2006).

I'm happy to make all of them available, but they are pretty large (e.g., this one is 16MB). I might be able to get enough webspace at Vanderbilt to put them up for public access, but I don't have it right now. Right now the whole set totals out at 340MB.

I used Bart Nagel's photo on pages 32 and 33 of this lecture. They are also in the lecture on the Fourier Transform. The slides look best and display best if viewed in full-screen mode with Adobe Acrobat (hit control-l that's little ell).

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

Happy birthday, Pablo Picasso

This photo [also] relates to a specific application of the [Spanish] word "nervio". Shortly after meeting my wife, she introduced me to the nuanced meaning that the Spanish word nervio had acquired in the lexicon of her family. As used in their Chilean home, the word could be defined as a feeling of such intense affection that one trembles or grits his teeth with restraint so as not to harm the object of his affection. I have heard others allude to the sensation in seemingly bizarre phrases such as, “It’s so cute [that] I want to squeeze it to death.”

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:47:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

L.A. hospitals dump patients on Skid Row

Over at blogging.la, Sean Bonner says,

On Monday LA Voice linked to this LA Times story stating that LAPD officials had photographed and videotaped ambulances from Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center allegedly dumping five people on skid row over the weekend and were calling it a major break. Since then both NPR and CNN have jumped on the story. What's worse is that of the 5 cases from this weekend, at least one of them was not even homeless and other reported they did not want to be taken to Skid Row. From CNN:

In one case, a man dropped off at Skid Row was in fact not homeless, said Smith, the LAPD captain. A police officer took him home and the man's family was "outraged," he said.

"Not only did they not know that he was discharged, but the fact that he had been brought to Skid Row instead of being brought home was what further outraged that family," Smith said at a news conference Tuesday.

Reader comment: Bob says,

From Christine Pelisek's article in the LAWEEKLY, The Scourge of Skid Row: "Skid Row staph, or, more technically, a strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus that is sickening dozens of police officers, firefighters, health-care workers and homeless people."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:35:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video the Vote

In 2000 and 2004, problems plagued the polls in different parts of the country: long lines, eligible voters turned away, voter intimidation, misallocation and malfunctioning of voting equipment. They were underreported on Election Day. Days and weeks later, a more complete picture of voter disenfranchisement emerged -- but it was too late. The elections were over and the media had moved on. Starting this election, citizen journalists -- people like you and I -- will document problems as they occur. We'll play them online, spread word through blogs and partner websites, doing our part to make sure the full story of our elections is told.

Previously:
Legal guide for bloggers covering US Election Day

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:17:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fleishman: Hacking the vote with absenteeism?

I don't think I've seen this mentioned on BoingBoing at all, but there's a very funny way to avoid the Diebold and related machines and have a paper trail. Vote absentee. In most states, there's no requirement to state that you will be physically incapable of reaching a polling place. More than 50 percent of King County (Seattle's county) voters now vote absentee. The county proposes eliminating all but a few polling places in about two to three years, which would also produce a relatively large savings.

There's two outcomes from this.

First, a paper trail is established for ballots. Ballots are still machine processed, but there's a paper, hand-marked backup. This defeats voting machines or tabulators that are programmed to cheat as long as a recount is required. In Washington State, a losing party may ask for a recount, and they are not required to pay if the recount changes the outcome or results in a change of more than certain percentage. This happened in our last gubernatorial election.

Secondly, it does establish one point of entry -- albeit heavily secured -- in which state-controlled malefactors could tamper with ballots. However, tampering with massive enough numbers of paper ballots over long periods of time involving sometimes hundreds of vote counters is a substantially more difficult problem than reprogramming weakly protected voting systems.

When I visited my polling place -- I haven't switched to absentee yet -- for the primaries several weeks ago, a poll worker said I could use a computer voting system, or a fill-in-the-bubble sheet. I opted for the latter. He said, "I don't blame you."

I don't know what every county does with absentee voting, but it's a very interesting analog response to a digital problem. Let's hack the vote by moving backwards to a more reliable paper trail, that has a long, long history of operation and thus is more transparent to abuse because of the many, many working parts involved. Absentee voting would also have solved the problems of disenfranchisement and intimidation in Ohio. I didn't hear any reports about absentee ballots being destroyed, stolen, or miscounted. (Perhaps that's the next strategy.)

Another benefit: the jurisdictions I’m familiar with typically don’t even open absentee ballots until after Election Day. If enough people vote absentee, it will let all the (insufferably hot) air out of the election night TV specials, which have become a bloated parody of kill-the-viewers-with-graphics sports coverage. There is something bizarrely attractive about the prospect of reverting to an electoral system not based on instant info-gratification.

Many people are turning to absentee voting as a way to skirt the issues with electronic voting but absentee voting eliminates many of the securities of the secret ballot and introduces a lot of room for fraud and coercion.

In nursing homes many people get "assistance" with absentee voting. An employer or controlling spouse could also easily interfere with the secrecy of an absentee vote.

I think since we already have a system with such limited secrecy we should eliminate the problems with electronic voting and give each voter a reciept or verification number so they can immediately go online and check to see that their vote was registered correctly?

Keep the curtains in place and make sure the law prohibits people from demanding your verification number and it will be the same level of secrecy as absentee voting with a much more reliable overall return. Link.

Just some more info on this matter: If you live in some counties in Utah you can register to have your ballot mailed to your house a week before the election whenever you are eligible to vote (this includes general and primary elections). It's not really absentee, but more of an early voting automation thing. More info at Link, and Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:09:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Borat = Mahir 2.0, but ees niiiice.

I am reluctantly, belatedly, but now utterly psyched about "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan". When I first saw the schtick, all I could think was: he's lifting this from Mahir "WELCOME TO MY HOME PAGE! I KISS YOU!" Çağrı, (shaking his hand at the 2000 Webbies remains one of the most awesome moments of my life) .

But all that's changed now. And between Borat's MySpace hijinks, the tons and tons of looks-like-homemade promo videos... this is the first big-studio movie that seems like it's nailing online viral promotion perfectly. How smart was Fox? MySpace, which Fox bought for $580 million, doing online street promotion for Borat, a Fox property... this is no "Snakes on a Plane" accident.

The first four minutes of the Borat movie are now online. I scour YouTube daily for new Borat junk, but I'm sure there's tons of other stuff I haven't seen yet: Link. Kazakhstan, I surrender.

Hollywood, four words: Borat/Mahir buddy flick.

(Thanks, Wayne Correia and Sean Bonner and Kathy Bakken)

Update: Defamer has an item today about Fox scaling back the number of US theaters screening Borat from 2000 to 800: Link. Contains the brilliant term, "neon-benutslinged." Points to this LA Times article, which reads in part:

Despite the slimmed-down release, "Borat" is almost certain to make money for Fox given that its production budget was a modest $17 million. Edward Douglas, who writes a box-office column for ComingSoon.net, said he expected "Borat" to open at $8 million to $9 million and ultimately gross $50 million.

WIRED: In the moc-doc, Borat is a globe trotting journalist, Are you also a man of letters?

Cagri: I do journalism as a freelancer sometimes. I go travel sometimes and take pictures video-write, meet people for documentary.

WIRED: Borat's signature is his mustache, didn't you rock it first?

Cagri: I start first grow mustache, 10 or 15 years ago. Sometimes I been no mustache. I am male and mustache shows a male mature.

We were invited [Ed. note: Dave, I believe you mean "invitated"] to the pre-screening of the movie.

I went to have a good time with my fellow bloggers, but I did not like the Borat role. I mistook it for making fun of Kazakhs, like so many other people do.

But the movie made me change my opinion 180 degrees. Borat confronts, and when you think he goes to far, he goes futher, trespassing social borders. And then futher. This is social horror. There were moments I was watching through my fingers, like I watched "The Blob" as a kid. And in the and it's very clear that the rednecks do think like Borat does. But they are real, Borat is a character.

This movie is a much more shocking portrait of the American society then Michael Moore's movie about Flint, MI. The Kazakhs need not worry. The joke is not on them.

To make matters "worse" all the Kazakh / gibberish spoken by Borat on the four minute preview is actually Hebrew. I wonder how that will go down...

Reader Kyle Goetz says,

I just thought it was interesting that on the map in the first 4 minutes of the movie that shows where Kazakhstan is has all proper Russian (you can easily see "MOCKBA" which is "MOSCOW" written in Russian Cyrillic), but the "Cyrillic" label for Kazakhstan is gibberish (says something like KFYFLYEFI). And then I noticed that Φ occurs many times in the "word." Someone used a Cyrillic font in Word or something and typed "kazakstan." In this font (some faux Cyrillic font), K=K, a=Φ, z=Я, k=л, s=ы, t=Е, and n=й.

Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Borat, is an observent jew whose mother was born and raised in Israel. While in character, he often keeps notes and interview questions in Hebrew for his reference, with the idea that it's extremely unlikely that his marks will recognize the language as anything other than Kazakh. Or whatever they speak in Kazakhstan.

Simon Baron-Cohen is Sacha's brother cousin and one of the leading authorities on Autism and also how the male brain differs from the female. I wonder does Sacha read his books :) Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:50:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Three-year-old gets stuck inside vending machine

Reader comment:

Max says:

Enjoyed your post about the kid stuck in the vending machine. It appears to be something of a trend, in fact. Check out the hilarious photos.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:34:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Audio CD of answering machine recordings picked up in thrift stores

It costs $10 for the CD.

Here are some samples:

Hamburger Hamlet Two LA socialites tell all regarding a restaurant chain called Hamburger Hamlet.

Trailer Couple An old man forces conversation while learning to use a tape deck. He has no idea the way his conversation interacts with the music he is recording over.

BETA Video An awkward conversation, with pleasant pop culture references.

Link (Thanks, Julian!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:25:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Midget-eating lion story is fake

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:31:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Legal guide for bloggers covering US Election Day

Lots of bloggers are planning to cover the 2006 general elections on November 7. But what are the legal issues that you need to understand?

Such as: Can you be in the voting area except to vote? (Not in Delaware) Can you ask people how they voted? (Not within 50 ft of polling place in Rhode Island). Can you take photos? (In CA it is illegal to photograph, videotape or otherwise record a voter entering or leaving a polling place). And so on.

Student Fellows at Stanford University Law School's Center for Internet and Society will be answering those kinds of questions and more in coming days. Do you have one? Ask it here. We'll compile and publish a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and post it before the election.

Please note that some election laws vary from state to state. We ask you to tell us your state so we can answer the questions based on the laws of your state. We will also try to answer the question for other states as time permits.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:01:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MPAA MyMovieMuse: sleazy push-polls on copyright

# If creative ideas are owned like physical objects, just like furniture, can I buy them at Ikea? And is it expensive for me to think of new ideas, because I have to pay for thought-materials and thought-warehouses and thought-customer-service?

# If people should be compensated for their creative works, and creative works are the same as ideas, why isn't anyone paying me for all the ideas that I have every day?

# If selling a painting on eBay makes an artist feel violated, does Sotheby's make them feel REALLY violated?

# If "good stories" are what brought up box office numbers this year, why is that movie list's mean RottenTomatoes score only 59.4%? (54%, 77%, 57%, 24%, 76%, 57%, 75%, 72%, 31%, and 71%, respectively.)

See also: MPAA's "MyMovieMuse" survey reveals interesting plot twist

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

Pica syndrome sufferers eat non-foods

In 2002, a 62-year-old French man with a history of mental illness went to hospital complaining of stomach pains. An x-ray showed he had swallowed five kilograms of coins, necklaces and needles; his stomach was so heavy it had been forced down between his hips. He died after an operation to remove the objects. In 2000, Edward Cope, a 33-year-old man with autism from Manchester, died from complications after swallowing 10 buttons, a drawing pin, pieces of chain and bone and a large amount of black foam rubber...

In one American study, 25% of patients in psychiatric care were found to have pica and it appeared in 60% of people with autism (pica tends to be a symptom of something else rather than a disorder in itself).

There are two main types of the condition, says O'Brien. "Food pica, where what a person eats is edible but is not prepared for eating - for instance, I have had patients who would eat a catering-sized tin of coffee powder or gorge on marmalade or potato peelings - and non-food pica, where people eat anything else. Once it starts, it can be difficult to control."

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:58:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Worst video game titles of all time

* All games must have been wide releases for legitimate, popular platforms.
* We tried to avoid games heavy on the Engrish. Translation errors are just too easy.
* So are educational games and porn.

Those limitations didn't stop them from hitting pure kitsch paydirt. Three of the best: "Booby Kids," "Nuts & Milk," and "Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt!" Link.
Heh, notice who made the game shown at left? (thanks, Liz Upton)

Reader comment: Alberto Gaitan says,

I can't believe they left out the 1982 Arcadia classic for the Atari 2600, "Communist Mutants from Space"! Okay, maybe cuz it's pretty awesome.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:40:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Spooky Hallowe'en mix-disc

Halloween is meant to be scary, right? Year after year we dust off the old, silly, novelty records. While they are fun, they not at all frightening. Oddio Overplay put the challenge to musical artists the world over to create Halloween music that is "frightening, damaging and disturbing." No "Monster Mash," instead creepy soundtracks to a fiendish Halloween. They succeeded with CALLING ALL FIENDS, two hours of original music. Some of these pieces will creep you right out of your skin!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:08:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Basic programming for artificial life experimenters

In the podcast, I asked Rudy why it's not as popular as it once was to do recreational programming. His answer was along the lines of "The Web sort of killed it." I think he's right.

But I got an encouraging note from a Boing Boing reader named Wendell, who says:

The mention of QuickBasic and the like toward the end caught my attention since I've enjoyed playing around with BASIC flavors since the 80s. There still exists a hobbyist scene for several modern flavors, including some with easy-to-use 3D graphics. Blitz3D and BlitzMax are my own choices, though DarkBasic also has a following. While the main emphasis is on making "mainstream" games with them, it's certainly easy to do weird (i.e. more-interesting) 2D & 3D things with them.

Here's some of Rudy's software: Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:08:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MSIE sends a cake to Firefox

Update: Ivan sez, ""but did they include the recipe?!""

Update 2: Fred sez, "The IE-team cake looked suspicious, what with the irregular white and black marks. The conspiracy theorist in me made me think about Morse code. I saw in the comments on the original blog that some people had looked at it and that there is no obvious morse code there. I couldn't be bothered to write a perl script to parse it depending on the starting place and direction of the message (cw or ccw), but it sure looks like some kind of message. I see, starting top left going cw, 'S E S / A T / (D:N:B) (U:V:A) / T N' I assume that someone else could properly decode this, so I suggest sending this as a challenge to all the would-be cryptographers and lovers of codes. What message has the IE-team hidden in the icing on the Firefox cake?"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:49:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Digital Freedom Project from EFF, CEA and others

Digital technology enables literally anyone and everyone to be a creator, an innovator or an artist -- to produce music, to create cutting-edge videos and photos, and to share their creative work. Digital technology empowers individuals to enjoy these new works when, where, and how they want, and to participate in the artistic process. These are basic freedoms that must be protected and nurtured.

The Digital Freedom campaign is dedicated to defending the rights of students, artists, innovators, and consumers to create and make lawful use of new technologies free of unreasonable government restrictions and without fear of costly and abusive lawsuits.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:11:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO make mechanized Dalek-o-lantern

Final touches: The "eye" and two "ears" are pieces of carrot. Instead of the toilet plunger and paint rollers that the originals had, I used a hand-mixer beater paddle and a candy thermometer. I think that they both work pretty well. Overall, however, the shape is almost too round to be recognized as a Dalek. But, we are somewhat constrained by the shape of the pumpkin. With a bit of work, you could make a pretty good R2D2 by the same method. I hope someone else does that because I'm not planning to. =)

Now: Pimp your Dalek! Add one of those blinky lights that indicates when its talking. Download some Dalek voices, and put them inside the pumpkin with a speaker. The possibilities are endless!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:07:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Origin myth of the Haunted Mansion read by Black Widow Bride

The mythic, haunting history of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion will finally be told by voice talent Kat Cressida, the artist whose performance as the gothic "Black Widow Bride" was added in early 2006 to the Disneyland version of the Haunted Mansion attraction as part of park-wide enhancements made to the attractions during Disneyland's 50th anniversary festivities.

Disney aficionados will be pleased to hear that this is the first time that a telling of the "backstory" from the Haunted Mansion is presented being based on the story as it was told by the WED Enterprises "Imagineers" themselves back in the earliest days of the attraction's existence. For decades, Haunted Mansion fans have told tales and myths of the Mansion's storied history, with little more than anecdotal evidence to back their claims. Cressida's telling of the story will be pulled directly from her childhood conversations with her father, who worked with Disneyland's PR Department, and also worked directly with the original Imagineers who created this famed attraction.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:39:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Burning Man 06 photos

See also Burning Man photos from 1998 on

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Firefly LED lid for nalgene lanterns

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:28:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

This Week in Law excellent cyberlaw podcast

# Before Universal Music Group announced a deal to give YouTube users the right to incorporate works from its catalog in the material they upload, its CEO Doug Morris accused YouTube, MySpace and others of owing tens of millions of dollars in copyright damages. (Though the Google acquisition has gotten YouTube off the hook, the same can't be said for defendants Grouper and Bolt.)

# Some who have sued YouTube for infringement have indicated they intend to challenge its eligibility for the DMCA's safe harbor on the ground YouTube is not a service provider within the meaning of the Act.

# EFF's Fred von Lohmann discusses the DMCA and YouTube.

# Lawyer "Ron from DC's" YouTube video looks at the Tur v. YouTube case.

# TechCrunch turned out to be right that Warner Music Group's deal with YouTube was a sign of things to come.

# Creative Commons: symptom or solution?

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:20:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brit boomers compaign against mandatory retirement

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:13:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Walking Dead: scary, engrossing zombie comic

The Walking Dead is a zombie adventure serial about the survivors of a plague of walking, flesh-eating dead. All the usual zombie movie stuff applies -- lots of gore, you get bit and you die and then come back, hordes of creepy shamblers are everywhere.

What distinguishes this series is its characters, who are likable and deeply flawed people who are being unmade along with the world. Each character is stretched to the breaking point, turned into a monster, and then just enough of them are brought back from moral ruin to give you hope for the rest.

The pacing is incredible. I read five volumes in a day -- I couldn't stop. This was one of those books that kept me up until three in the morning, and then left me all spooked out when I finally switched off the lights.

Scary, fun, and gripping -- who can ask for anything more. I'll be reading this one through all the way to the end. Link

(I picked up The Walking Dead on recommendation from badass comics store Secret Headquarters, which is definitely worth a visit if you live in LA)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:07:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scott Adams hacks his brain to restore his speech

But yesterday, Adams reported that he hacked his brain and can speak again!

The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme. Rhyme was a context I hadn’t considered. A poem isn’t singing and it isn’t regular talking. But for some reason the context is just different enough from normal speech that my brain handled it fine.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack jumped over the candlestick.

I repeated it dozens of times, partly because I could. It was effortless, even though it was similar to regular speech. I enjoyed repeating it, hearing the sound of my own voice working almost flawlessly. I longed for that sound, and the memory of normal speech. Perhaps the rhyme took me back to my own childhood too. Or maybe it’s just plain catchy. I enjoyed repeating it more than I should have. Then something happened.

My brain remapped.

My speech returned.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:05:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mountain looks like an Indian listening to an iPod

Reader comment:

The Indian's headphone cord is quite long, because Waifer X points out that the giant iPod is in Australia. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:58:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cowboy hats made from beer cases

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:57:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Firefox 2 kicks azz

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:53:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sean Hannity defends Limbaugh's attack on Michael J. Fox

"Michael J. Fox admits now that he stopped taking his medication prior to testifying before Congress," Hannity said. "You have a right to speak up, but he also has a right to be criticized."

Fox cut a highly emotional spot for several Democratic candidates, including Missouri's Senate candidate Claire McCaskill.

Limbaugh questioned whether Fox's very real physical tremors had been faked.

"In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it's purely an act," Limbaugh said.

Reader comment:

Barb says:

TNR covered the Limbaugh attack on Fox. Interestingly enough, they interviewed a doctor who says that the agitation is a side affect of the meds, not a symptom of the disease.

If so, admitting he stopped taking the meds means that his involuntary movements were LESS on the show than they would have been. Not more.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:53:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Accountants patent tax-dodges

Why would Congress pass a law allowing such a thing? The answer is that it did not. But a U.S. appeals court ruled in 1998 that business methods could be patented, and since then the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued 50 tax- strategy patents, with many more pending.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:50:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dog sucks psychedelic toads to get high

I was listening to NPR's All Things Considered yesterday and this segment had me so enraptured I nearly had to pull over my car for safety.

The story of a family's dog and her addiction to getting high on toads.

The link goes to the written article, but the audio version (linked on page) is produced with well-chosen background music and narrative that it is the best way to experience Lady the Toad-Sucking Dog.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:49:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Singularity documentary (theoretically) online

Update: Here's a torrent -- thanks, Christopher!

Update 2: Steve has extracted the URL for the stream, which you can paste into the free player VLC.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:48:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Automated video news program from RSS and game-graphics

Totally autonomous, it collects, parses, edits and organizes news stories and then passes the formatted content to an artificial anchor for presentation. Using the resources present on the web, the system goes beyond the straight text of the news stories to also retrieve relevant images and blogs with commentary on the topics to be presented.

Once it has assembled and edited its material, News At Seven presents it to the audience using a graphical game engine and text-to-speech (TTS) technology in a manner similar to the nightly news watched regularly by millions of Americans. The result is a cohesive, compelling performance that successfully combines techniques of modern news programming with features made by possible only by the fact that the system is, at its core, completely virtual.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:43:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO turn photos into Lichtensteins

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:54:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sf stories that are 6 words long

Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth. - Vernor Vinge

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer? - Eileen Gunn

It cost too much, staying human. - Bruce Sterling

We kissed. She melted. Mop please! - James Patrick Kelly

His penis snapped off; he’s pregnant! - Rudy Rucker

Internet “wakes up?” Ridicu - no carrier. - Charles Stross

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time - Alan Moore

Longed for him. Got him. Shit. - Margaret Atwood

Batman Sues Batsignal: Demands Trademark Royalties. - Cory Doctorow

Help! Trapped in a text adventure! - Marc Laidlaw

Bush told the truth. Hell froze. - William Gibson

Update: Mike sez, "There's a very active Flickr group that uses this philosophy in attaching six story-telling words to an accompanying photograph."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:48:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Laptops, please: US law permits search, seizure at the border

U.S. customs officials have the authority to scrutinize the contents of travelers' laptops and even confiscate them for a period of time, without giving a reason. Appeals are under way in some confiscation cases, but the law is clear.

"They don't need probable cause to perform these searches under the current law," said Tim Kane, a Washington lawyer who is researching the matter for corporate clients. "They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations."

Reader comment: anonymous border-crosser says,

What about encrypted drives and home folders (ie. TrueCrypt or FileVault on Mac). What happens to a citizen if they refuse to give up the password? Can they be arrested or legally barred from entering the U.S.?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:40:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Todd Lappin visits The Black Hole of Los Alamos

It's been on my must-visit list for years, but owing to my recent obsession with building Dr. Strangelove- style control panels, my need became more pressing. So at last, I made the pilgrimage to visit Ed Grothus at The Black Hole, a remarkable place in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Ed is a former Los Alamos National Laboratory employee, and The Black Hole is his masterpiece -- an improbable but effective combination military surplus outlet, pacifist shrine, and "museum of nuclear waste."

Ed was on hand when I stopped by, so I had the opportunity to talk with him, watch his presentation on the perils of atomic warfare, learn about his plans to erect a pair of "Rosetta Stones for the Nuclear Age" in Los Alamos, and, of course, wander the aisles.

Reader comment:

Paul Alvarado-Dykstra says:

Per your Boing Boing post about Todd Lappin's awesome Flickr tour of The Black Hole in Los Alamos, I must also highly recommend the 2002 documentary "Atomic Ed & The Black Hole" (directed by Ellen Spiro and produced by Karen Bernstein), which is as fascinating as it is amusing. It aired on HBO and PBS, and is now available on DVD. A QuickTime clip can be viewed here.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:36:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Noir style portraiture photography

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:48:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Music for Robots

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:01:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

35,000 in Bush's secret prisons -- 5% may be related to terrorism

Sid says that Wilkerson, Powell’s old chief of staff, believes that the correct number of victims in secret Bush prisons is 35,000, only 5% of which “may” have to do with terrorism. More than twice what I thought, and hardly any to do with the “war on terror.”

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 07:48:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ex-Disney animator's Haunted Mansion tribute spookhouse

One year, I decided to build the coffin-where the guy is trying to get saying, "lemmeouttahere!".So, I went to Home Depot, bought some MDF particle board, some molding, etc. and built it. It turned out great-but it was heavier than Hell!!!!

Every year it was a big ordeal-I constantly had to get a neighbor or a good friend to help me move it into place.

I sculpted the hands. The lid was made from styrofoam. I built a mechanism inside that would open and close the lid. I put it on a folding card table and put a skirt around it and whah-lah! A coffin.

Link (Thanks, Scott!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:06:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Human rights video-blog

It includes footage of the Zimbabwean police and security intelligence services breaking up a peaceful demonstration by members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions (ZCTU) on September 13th. The police repeatedly beat the demonstrators, who are calling for the provision of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for the treatment of HIV, a minimum wage, and stabilisation in the prices of certain basic commodities. The bulk of the video involves interviews with the ZCTU members describing the events of the day, and the actions of the police. Ethan and Rachel Rawlins have kindly provided a transcript.

When news of the beatings originally leaked out, trades unions in other countries strongly condemned Robert Mugabe’s hardline approach with legitimate and peaceful demonstrations. Last week a court dismissed the police report on the incident, and postponed the trial of the ZCTU protestors until October 17th, to give the Criminal Investigation Department time to conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations of police torture. When footage of the protests was smuggled out of Zimbabwe on DVD to South Africa this week, it prompted the head of one of South Africa’s labour unions to say that she would give President Thabo Mbeki a copy of the DVD of the beatings in a meeting with him on Friday.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:33:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony MovieStudio "anti-piracy" tech screws customers

The server contacted is for a company that no longer even services the product. The product activation people do not answer the phone, even after a 6 minute hold period that consists of really bad techno music and product pitches, probably for more things that do not work...

Anything you ever buy that has "product activation" may stop being something you can use at any time, for any reason. Consumers are being raped wholesale by these companies when they invade our privacy with this method of copy protection - and thats assuming it even works in the first place.

The software does install great on a microwave oven, however...

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:29:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video of genius dog

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:29:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Retro-drug-war-style filesharing short movie

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:21:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jordan Crane opening at Silver Lake's Secret Headquarters, Oct 27

Winner of numerous awards in the design and comic industries, Jordan Crane first emerged in the comic world in 1996 with the anthology NON. Crane edited, contributed to, and published Non, which has become known as that era's showcase for the most explosive young experimental cartoonists. The short lived series has been compared to Spiegelman and Mouly's Raw.

Crane's first self published comic novella, The Last Lonely Saturday (now published by Fantagraphics), is noted for well observed narratives that focus on the vulnerability and mystery of the human experience. Crane's work simultaneously has the feel of humble handcrafted objects made in the garage of a lonely teenager, and the sophisticated work of an artist at the height of his form.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:07:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Montreal street-name change met with Internet groundswell

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

David Moldawer's Morning Brew podcast

A couple of times a week, David calls a friend and they'll talk about three items in the news, focusing on pop culture, technology, and politics. The discussions quickly spin off into delightful absurdity. I listened to all ten episodes (each one runs about 15-minutes) and frequently laughed out loud. Link| Subscribe via iTunes | RSS feed

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:25:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory at OryCon in Portland, Nov 17-19

While in Portland, I'm also giving a talk on copyright at Portland State University on November 16 at 5PM -- it's free and open to the public. Link to OryCon, Link to PSU talk

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:44:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WorldChanging: User's guide for the 21st Century

The book features a foreword by Al Gore and an introduction by Bruce Sterling, and begs to be taken out of its handsome slipcase and browsed. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:32:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sex-in-Russia article on This Old House site

Last December at an erotic-art exposition in Moscow, a woman was covered in whipped cream and men in the audience were invited to lick it off; the scene was later shown on late-night TV. The capital even boasts its first touch of Times Square raunch, at the Tramway Workers' House of Culture, which last month began playing host three nights a week to a nude revue featuring a striptease and a simulated sex act.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:48:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Iraq's "Daily Show" fake news TV: "Hurry Up, He's Dead!"

Nearly every night here for the past month, Iraqis weary of the tumult around them have been turning on the television to watch a wacky-looking man with a giant Afro wig and star-shaped glasses deliver the grim news of the day.

In a recent episode, the host, Saad Khalifa, reported that Iraq’s Ministry of Water and Sewage had decided to change its name to simply the Ministry of Sewage — because it had given up on the water part.

In another episode, he jubilantly declared that “Rums bin Feld” had announced American troops were leaving the country on 1/1, in other words, on Jan. 1. His face crumpled when he realized he had made a mistake. The troops were not actually departing on any specific date, he clarified, but instead leaving one by one. At that rate, it would take more than 600 years for them to be gone.

(...) The show’s title appears initially as “The Government,” but the Arabic words split in half to reveal the actual name, another crack at the country’s plight.

Reader comment: Bob Lee says,

He looks like Bootsy Collins! This clip from the Mighty Boosh brought it to my attention.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:33:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Living at the brink of starvation for longevity

“Michael, could you hand Don the arugula?” April calls over her shoulder, looking up from the laptop that’s always near to hand as she cooks, loaded with an interactive diet-planning program that helps not only count calories but track the twenty other nutrients without which CR would just be a glorified form of anorexia. “Don, I need you to put 24 grams on each plate, please.” And so Don Dowden, attorney at law, commences weighing arugula on an electronic postage scale, carefully adding a leaf here, removing one there, like a drug dealer parsing out dime bags. Tall, dark-haired, craggy, Don gets by on a ration of about 2,000 calories a day and swears by its rejuvenating effects. “I used to wear glasses, but I don’t wear glasses anymore,” he says. “I don’t have 20/20 vision, but I can drive, and I can read the paper, and I’m 74.”

“You’re 74 years old?” I blurt, not so much astonished as simply confused. It’s not that I can’t see Don’s age in his face and skin, now that I know to look for it. But there’s something in the way his body moves, the way he holds it—an ease and an assuredness—that doesn’t quite square with the fact that he was born before FDR took office.

“He gets that a lot,” says Michael, a trace of glee in his otherwise quiet, clipped, north-of-the-border tone. April has him chopping asparagus now, while she continues crunching numbers. Tonight’s calculations are based on Michael’s caloric requirements, and those requirements are as strict as they come. Unlike April’s daily average of about 1,300 calories, which really is an average (she likes to go out drinking and dining with friends on weekends, and doesn’t mind enduring a few 1,000-calorie weekdays to save up for the splurge), Michael’s regimen of 1,913 calories a day is exactly that: 1,913 calories every single day, 30 percent of them derived from fat, 30 percent from protein, and 40 percent from carbohydrates. Cooking for him is the same elaborate exercise in dietary Sudoku it is for all CR die-hards, only more so.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:19:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Steven Johnson launches outside.in

1. The natives know best. Part of our inspiration at outside.in was the amazing rise of hyperlocal bloggers -- sometimes called placebloggers -- writing about their own communities. (Brooklyn, where we all happen to live, may well be the placeblogger capital of the world.) And so we've seeded outside.in with a list of about 500 placebloggers from the top 25 metro areas in the US.

2. The post's location is more important than the blogger's location. People have been creating maps of blogger locations for years now. (The NYC subway blogger map is one of our favorites.) But from our perspective, we're less interested in the location of the blogger than we are the location of what the blogger is writing about. So in our system, each item (a blogger post, or a link submitted by a user) can be associated with its own specific point in space.

3. Neighborhoods are more important that maps. We love the neo-geo movement as much as anyone, and continue to marvel at the amazing work being done with Google map mash-ups. But maps can often overwhelm with too much specificity. Most of the time when you're thinking about local issues, you don't actually need specific geo-coordinates or street addresses. You just want to know roughly what's happening around you. That's why we've made the navigational unit for outside.in the neighborhood. And if the neighborhood is too specific, you can always zoom out on the navigational map and see a broader view.

4. Geo-tags are only the beginning. Neighborhood content needs to be location-aware for it to be useful, but that can't be the whole story. It's just as important to know when something is happening, as it is to know where it's happening. So we've creating a simple tagging architecture for all our posts: what/where/when. This lets you create powerful filters for viewing all of outside.in's data: you can see recent crime reports within two miles of your neighborhood, real estate openings in your zip code coming up this weekend, poetry readings city-wide.

5. Local news often has a long-shelf life. One thing both blogs and traditional newspapers share is that they are organized around time, with the latest news given priority. But a lot of neighborhood information is news that stays news: a parent's comment about the science program at a local school is just as relevant six months after it was posted; a guide to gay-friendly bars could be useful for years. That's why outside.in is designed not just as a "latest headlines" service; it's also an evolving neighborhood encyclopedia, capturing all the things that have been said about specific places.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:14:44 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Funny Hallowe'en safety tips

1 For large groups of trick-or-treaters, always set at least one child ablaze, ensuring enough light that other children won’t trip over uneven pavement.

2 Only separate shards of X-Acto blades from rodent poison once you get home; doing so in the dark will lead to inevitable mixups and tummyaches for youngsters with allergies...

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:01:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Enron Explorer mines Enron's emails

To celebrate Mr Skilling's sentencing, the "Enron Explorer" offers access access to the whole corpus of 200,000 enron emails released during the fraud investigation.

The system generates a visualisation of each executive's social network and analyses the thematic signature of their communications. you can access each person's mailbox, read individual messages, or take a thematic slice through the archive. clicking on someone in the visualiser zooms them to the centre and loads their information.

My personal favourite from Mr Skilling is:

"Fuck you, you piece of shit. I can't wait to see you go down with the ship like all the other vermin. Smug, paranoid, unhappy mother fucker. Eat shit."

Update: Ben sez,

Further to that Enron Explorer story, a close look through the archives suggests that the "Fuck you, you piece of shit" email was sent by a troublemaker pretending to be Skilling, not Skilling himself.

Skilling had resigned as CEO when that email was sent from the Yahoo! address jeffreyskilling@yahoo.com, so it's something that he plausibly might have said, given that he isn't a very nice person.

However, Skilling was having his Enron mail forwarded to markskilling@hotmail.com and it doesn't look like the Yahoo address is his.

This message shows that whoever sent the "Fuck you" had entered the name "jeff lawson" when setting up the Yahoo! account.

Andy Zipper, the recipient, asks HR to deal with the problem:

And this message *may* represent the offender being found and punished (by his employer, an energy trading company):

"We pulled the log ... found the guy ... and told him to knock it off. Please let me know if there is a repeat performance."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:59:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sony assassinates amazing etailer Lik-Sang

This is part of Sony's ongoing, suicidal war against its own customers -- from installing rootkits on CD-buyers' PCs to threatening hackers with lawsuits over teaching new dances to their Aibos to re-crippling the PSP to lock out homebrew software. Great companies like Lik-Sang that exist to serve an early-adopter, passionate user niche are collateral damage in the war.

Thanks, Sony. I hope you lose a shitload of money on Blu-Ray.

Lik-Sang.com, the popular gaming retailer from Hong Kong, has today announced that it is forced to close down due to multiple legal actions brought against it by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Sony claimed that Lik-Sang infringed its trade marks, copyright and registered design rights by selling Sony PSP consoles from Asia to European customers, and have recently obtained a judgment in the High Court of London (England) rendering Lik-Sang's sales of PSP consoles unlawful...

A Sony spokesperson declined to comment directly on the lawsuit against Lik-Sang, but recently went on to tell Gamesindustry.biz that "ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera; is not - in PS3's case - backwards compatible with either PS1 or PS2 software; will not play European Blu-Ray movies or DVDs; and will not be covered by warranty".

Lik Sang strongly disagrees with Sony's opinion that their customers need this kind of protection and pointed out that PSP consoles shipped from Lik-Sang contained genuine Sony 100V-240V AC Adapters that carry CE and other safety marks and are compatible world wide. All PSP consoles were in conformity with all EU and UK consumer safety regulations.

Link (Thanks, Stewart!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:54:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Microwaved CDs on Tesla coils

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Investigative journal: "Fair use is not applicable"

Harvard law-blogger David Giacalone wrote to the Gazette's editor about this, and got a scorching response:

My own attempt, by email, to suggest to the offending editor the error of her ways (by quoting the statute and referring her to two resources), resulted in an angry rebuff, in which I was accused of practicing law without a license, told that my email would therefore be forwarded to the Attorney General and the paper’s lawyer (who it was implied had okayed their statement denying Fair Use rights), and threatened with hearing from said lawyer, should I take any of their materials.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:55:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Overpimped Honda Civic

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:47:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

USC FreeCulture Hallowe'en remix contest: Night of the Living Dead

Free Culture USC is hosting a remix competition where you get your hands dirty remixing George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead into a 5 minute short in any style of your liking. The winner (or winning team) will receive a Neuros OSD open-source media player. Oh man, too cool!

We will be holding a screening/pizza party for all the shorts on Sunday, October 29th. This is where your short will first be screened - after the screening we will post them on our website for the world to see and vote upon! The winner will be announced the following Sunday (Nov. 5th) at the ‘Remixing the Archive’ Visions and Voices event at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, where hundreds of people will have the opportunity to see your work.

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

Audio of UN Declaration of Human Rights in 21 languages

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly. It defines the fundamental rights of individuals, and exhorts all governments to protect these rights. The UN has translated the document into over three hundred languages and dialects. This audiobook includes readings in 21 languages, by LibriVox volunteers.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:35:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Desperate Mousewives: Desperate Housewives mashed with Mickey Mouse

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

HOWTO repair Steve Wynn's Picasso

The torn ends of the canvas can probably be lined up, and conservators can identify matching fibers on either side of the rip by inspecting them under a microscope. In general, you can expect the wefts in the fabric—that is, the crosswise yarns of the weave—to split at the site of the impact. The lengthwise warps tend to get stretched out, but they may not break.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:21:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photoshopped cross-sections of everyday objects

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:19:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, October 23, 2006

Turkmen dictator's book-shaped building: $17M of irony.

Reader comment: Rich says,

The City Hochhaus/MDR tower in Leipzig is also designed to look like an open book. Of course it was designed and built in DDR/pre-unification East Germany, a country not known for its free and open exchange of ideas. Link.

Love the new book shaped building in Turkmenistan. But I thought I'd point you towards to wikipedia page for the truly freaky president of the country 'Turkmenbashi', who's not just your regular dictator, but an oddball of almost Bushian proportions. In addition to suggesting people chew bones to strengthen their teeth, he has a gold statue of himself which revolves to face the sun and has decreed that anyone reading his book/s of poetry will automatically go to heaven. The country/government's own website can be found here.

As an Update to the Turkmenbashi book building story you might want to show readers how much this glorious building resembles the Derek Zoolander School For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Want To Be Able To Read.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:48:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence trike drag (queen) race, SF

Spotted in San Francisco's Castro district last Saturday while slurping coffee with friends: the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, preparing for the Tour De Castro. This tricycle drag (queen) race benefits the AIDS Lifecycle charity, and it's part of a longstanding tradition. The air was warm, the outfits fabulous, the cause a noble one.

Above, a friendly guy named Chris, who very kindly obliged when I asked if I might snap a photo of this fierce tattoo that stretched from shoulder to shoulder. "Your back looks amazing," I stutter, "I mean, you look great from the front, too, but --" He stops me. "Honey, don't worry," he sighs, "Everybody always wants it from behind."

The scene along the sidewalk was Fellini meets Almodovar meet Monty Python. Contestants only sprinted for 10 or 20 feet at a time on their tricycles, then ducked in to air-conditioned bars for pomegranate martinis. Hey, the better to keep your false diamond eyelashes fresh.

Scenes like this make me proud to be American. I snapped some video (Link, 00:00:27) and stills (Link to photo set) with a new, palm-sized Canon Powershot SD360 I bought last week (which I'd marry if it had a pulse and a steady job -- I really love this sweet little ultracompact). I'm going to embed the video via Revver's Flash player below, and see if that works okay for BB readers. Forget it -- Revver's embedded player causes problems for too many of our readers. Here's a direct link. And here's a related post on SF metblog. (Thanks, Violet Blue!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:48:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UN Envoy in Sudan booted after blogging about Darfur

The UN's head of mission in Sudan, Jan Pronk [Ed.: that's him in the photo at left], has been expelled after writing in his personal blog that Sudan's army was experiencing low morale after suffering setbacks in the Darfur region.

So who wins here? Probably nobody. Pronk reportedly was warned many times to not post his personal views in a public forum (that's not good diplomacy, right?) and now the UN has to reassess its team and its stance in Sudan. The government in that country, meanwhile, looks foolish and has drawn severe criticism from around the world.

This may be the most extreme case yet of someone losing their position because of a blog.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:12:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Binh Danh's chlorophyll prints

Danh has invented a technique for printing found photographs (digitally rendered into negatives) onto the surface of leaves by exploiting the natural process of photosynthesis. The leaves, still living, are pressed between glass plates with the negative and exposed to sunlight from a week to several months. Coined "chlorophyll prints" by the artist, the fragile works are encapsulated and made permanent through casting them in solid blocks of resin. By conjoining his process into his conceptual ideas so completely, Danh is also able to reference the history and technical developments of photography.

He says of his work, "Throughout my education, I have always been very attracted to Art, History, and Science. The histories I search for are the hidden stories embedded in the landscape around me. The processes used in my work represent my interest in the sciences and photographic techniques."

posted by David Pescovitz at 03:05:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dawkins: Why There Almost Certainly Is No God

America, founded in secularism as a beacon of eighteenth century enlightenment, is becoming the victim of religious politics, a circumstance that would have horrified the Founding Fathers. The political ascendancy today values embryonic cells over adult people. It obsesses about gay marriage, ahead of genuinely important issues that actually make a difference to the world. It gains crucial electoral support from a religious constituency whose grip on reality is so tenuous that they expect to be 'raptured' up to heaven, leaving their clothes as empty as their minds. More extreme specimens actually long for a world war, which they identify as the 'Armageddon' that is to presage the Second Coming. Sam Harris, in his new short book, Letter to a Christian Nation, hits the bull's-eye as usual:

"It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver-lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ... Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."

Does Bush check the Rapture Index daily, as Reagan did his stars? We don't know, but would anyone be surprised? My scientific colleagues have additional reasons to declare emergency. Ignorant and absolutist attacks on stem cell research are just the tip of an iceberg. What we have here is nothing less than a global assault on rationality, and the Enlightenment values that inspired the founding of this first and greatest of secular republics. Science education - and hence the whole future of science in this country - is under threat. Temporarily beaten back in a Pennsylvania court, the 'breathtaking inanity' (Judge John Jones's immortal phrase) of 'intelligent design' continually flares up in local bush-fires. Dowsing them is a time-consuming but important responsibility, and scientists are finally being jolted out of their complacency. For years they quietly got on with their science, lamentably underestimating the creationists who, being neither competent nor interested in science, attended to the serious political business of subverting local school boards. Scientists, and intellectuals generally, are now waking up to the threat from the American Taliban.

Background:

Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the author of nine books, including The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and The Ancestor's Tale. His new book, The God Delusion, published last week by Houghton Mifflin, is already a NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, and his Foundation for Reason and Science launched at the same time (see RichardDawkins.net).

Reader comment: Andrew Tonkin says,

Richard Dawkins was on Stephen Colbert last night, and namedropped the FSM: Link. Long Salon interview: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:03:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Get Illuminated podcast #3 with Rudy Rucker

MP3 link (64 kbps) | Subscribe via iTunes | Internet Archive page | Get Illuminated 001 | Get Illuminated 002

powered by ODEO

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:21:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

YouTube gave user data to Paramount lawyers

On May 24, lawyers for Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures convinced a federal judge in San Francisco to issue a subpoena requiring YouTube to turn over details about a user who uploaded dialog from the movie studio's "Twin Towers," according to a copy of the document.

YouTube promptly handed over the data to Paramount, which on June 16 sued the creator of the 12-minute clip, New York City-based filmmaker Chris Moukarbel, for copyright infringement, in federal court in Washington.

That YouTube chose to turn over the data, rather than simply remove the offending video from its site -- as it did Friday when it agreed to take down 30,000 videos at the request of a group of Japanese media companies -- came as a surprise to copyright experts.

"YouTube seems to have given up too easily," said Laurence P. Colton, an intellectual-property lawyer at the firm of Powell & Goldstein LLP in Atlanta. Its prompt legal capitulation suggests that YouTube users who post copyrighted material should not expect the company to protect them from media-business lawsuits[.]

Update: Fred Von Lohmann from the EFF says,

The problem here is with the DMCA, not with YouTube's privacy practices. In that law, Congress gave copyright owners the power to get subpoenas that force online hosting service providers (like YouTube) to identify users who are accused of infringement. (In the RIAA v. Verizon case, Verizon successfully argued that these subpoenas can't be used against traditional "conduit" ISPs that simply carry bits for users, but the law clearly authorizes these subpoenas against hosting providers like YouTube.)

Furthermore, the underlying dispute referenced in the MarketWatch story, involving a 12-minute video short based on the script for Oliver Stone's film, World Trade Center, was apparently settled some time ago.

So, all in all, a pretty poor piece of reporting by Market Watch, I'm afraid. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of issues here -- just not the ones MarketWatch is going on about.

Reading the story about Chris Moukarbel, who YouTube narked out to Paramount, I was curious what "uploaded dialogue" from another film meant.

Here is a WaPo story from June. What Moukarbel did was take a leaked early script of "Twin Towers" and make a version of a segment of it:

"But as a 28-year-old filmmaker, Moukarbel wanted to do more than simply watch Stone's "World Trade Center." He decided to create his own version -- using a bootleg copy of the screenplay and Yale University student actors -- and offer it free on the Internet.

Although his film is only 12 minutes long and doesn't have a cast to rival Nicolas Cage and Maria Bello, it has brought the power of Hollywood down on him."

So someone makes a fan film before the movie is released, and Paramount has a fit? They actually claim in the WaPo story that people would have confused Moukarbel's no-budget film with Oliver Stone's $40 million version. *Gag*

This post is timely: Chris Moukarbel has some other work in a show, opening this Thursday (the 26th) at Marianne Boesky Gallery. 509 west 24th, NYC.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:17:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Death couture: X-ray bondage tees from Helmut Newton Fndtn.

Link (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:04:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Heather Cantrell: "Century's End" photo show

Link to more images, here's more info, and sixspace is selling $10 print catalogs for the show (thanks, Sean and Caryn).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:45:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warners stiffs African amputee film extras on prosthetics promise

Young Nkululo Mnisi - whose arms and legs were cut off by machete-wielding rebels - used to be taunted by cruel classmates as "baboon" because of the way he ran on his stumps and crutches. Mnisi told a South African newspaper that the dream that kept him going was the promise of getting artificial limbs so he'd be able to play soccer like a normal child.

But months after filming ended, Mnisi and his fellow amputees were still waiting. When they asked Warner Bros. about the promised prosthetics, they were allegedly told, "You will have to wait for December, when the movie comes out, so we can get some publicity out of it."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:40:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Child Online Protection Act trial: Rufus of Nerve liveblogs it

June 26, 1997, was a big day for me, and a big day for Nerve, for two reasons: (1) it was the day the Supreme Court made its decision on Reno vs. ACLU, which effectively overturned the Communications Decency Act, and (2) it was the day that we launched Nerve (then nervemag.com).

This was not a complete coincidence — we delayed our launch for a week to coincide with the ruling, and consider ourselves in some ways a creature of that decision. Don't get me wrong — we would have published Nerve irrespective of that ruling. We were young and fearless, and we also understood that the government would be relatively foolish to go after some idealistic bespectacled kids publishing "literate smut," were the act to be passed. However, we also understood that this was an important decision supporting critical First Amendment rights, and that laws criminalizing what we do every day are not a good thing. Every day since, we have taken great pleasure bringing you lewd and salacious content, baked fresh daily and inappropriate for minors.

Now, nine years later, I am sitting in a hotel room about to go on the stand as the first plaintiff in ACLU vs. Gonzales, Civil Action No. 98-CV-5591, better known as the Child Online Protection Act case. Despite repeated drubbings by the ACLU over the years, the Department of Justice is continuing its efforts to criminalize the publication of content "inappropriate for minors" online — they are, in my view, attempting to put the entire nation back in nursery school.

An AP item about the trial is here. And here's a related item from CIO.com (IDG News Service). (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:38:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America

Now that habeas corpus and other basic rights, including the right not to be tortured while interrogated, have now been deemed unnecessary, more Americans than ever have been thinking of getting out the door while they still can. Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America (Process Books, January 2007) provides an informed consideration for all potential expats: where to go, how to get there, and how to live best outside the U.S.

An emigrant to Berlin himself, author Mark Ehrman breaks down the top 50 expat countries and offers true-life tales from American expatriates worldwide, documenting their experiences and compiling all the best tricks to help the process go as smoothly as possible.

Getting Out is the second volume in Process’ Self-Reliance Series, a new series aimed at helping urbanites make smart choices to live sustainably and self-sufficiently in the 21st century.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:21:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Report: "contactless" credit cards with RFID are easily hacked

They call it the “Johnny Carson attack,” for his comic pose as a psychic divining the contents of an envelope. Tom Heydt-Benjamin tapped an envelope against a black plastic box connected to his computer. Within moments, the screen showed a garbled string of characters that included this: fu/kevine, along with some numbers.

Mr. Heydt-Benjamin then ripped open the envelope. Inside was a credit card, fresh from the issuing bank. The card bore the name of Kevin E. Fu, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was standing nearby. The card number and expiration date matched those numbers on the screen.

The demonstration revealed potential security and privacy holes in a new generation of credit cards — cards whose data is relayed by radio waves without need of a signature or physical swiping through a machine. Tens of millions of the cards have been issued, and equipment for their use is showing up at a growing number of locations, including CVS pharmacies, McDonald’s restaurants and many movie theaters.

The card companies have implied through their marketing that the data is encrypted to make sure that a digital eavesdropper cannot get any intelligible information. American Express has said its cards incorporate “128-bit encryption,” and J. P. Morgan Chase has said that its cards, which it calls Blink, use “the highest level of encryption allowed by the U.S. government.”

But in tests on 20 cards from Visa, MasterCard and American Express, the researchers here found that the cardholder’s name and other data was being transmitted without encryption and in plain text. They could skim and store the information from a card with a device the size of a couple of paperback books, which they cobbled together from readily available computer and radio components for $150.

And here is a related post from the guys who did the hack on RFID-cusp blog. (Thanks, Tom Heydt-Benjamin).

Consumerist has a post worth reading here.

Anti-RFID activist group CASPIAN has a response here (see also these previous BB posts about the group's founder, Katherine Albrecht).

Image: "Tom Heydt-Benjamin, left, and Kevin Fu, a University of Massachusetts professor, cull information from a credit card with a card reader." Shot by Nancy Palmieri for The New York Times.

Reader comment: Aaron says,

Since I have a Chase RFID enabled card, I've read about things like this before. One bit of useful info to pass along to other readers who have these cards is that the radio signal can be easily blocked with as little as a sheat of tinfoil or the anti-static material (like what an EZ-Pass ships in.) Putting a bit of foil or anti-static material between your card and the outside of your wallet will block potential ID thieves.

Although I don't have one of these new RFID credit cards, I have been using an Altoids tin as a wallet for almost three years now. Guess I was just planning ahead.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:10:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

John K on the "Death of Form"

Here is a toy of Simon the chipmunk from the 1960s cartoon series [Top]. It is a well made toy. It has a solid recognizable form and the details are fairly cute and tasteful. It is a nice happy thing to give a kid (or a grown up nerd like me). Whoever made the toy liked kids and was kind to them by making something cute and fun. The sculptor did what was once obvious to people -- make things well and make them with a purpose in mind -- in this case -- make a cute toy because kids like cute toys. Logic and common sense -- foreign concepts today.

Here's a version of supposedly the same character from the 1980s [Bottom]. What's the difference? No form. No taste. Ugly, sloppy and wrinkly. Whoever makes modern toys for kids doesn't understand the concept of toys and cartoon characters. They are supposed to be made to make kids happy. That means cute and appealing and with a distinct shape and form. In order to be appealing, you have to have form and design. It doesn't seem to exist anymore.

The bastards that make shit like this must hate kids. Either that or they are just plain retarded.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:13:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Photos of bad and dangerous home improvement hacks

I found this rain gutter capped on both ends. I wasn't surprised to find decayed material inside.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:40:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Ugly, costly handbags resemble hollywood monsters

Dale Hrabi of Radar Online just posted this lineup of purses only a (fashion zombie) mother could love and the classic horror movie monsters that inspired them. I have a brown fur handbag that looks like Chewbacca. At least it doesn't look like a "charmless alien man-hunter."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:33:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tibetan anatomical illustration

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:07:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scientific American Mind on Paul Ekman and microexpressions

Ekman, 72, lives in Oakland, Calif., in a bright and airy house near the bay. As I talked with him there, he studied me, his eyes peering out from under bushy brows as if they were registering each brief facial tic I unknowingly exhibited. Does his talent make him a mind reader? "No," he says candidly. "The most I can do is tell how you are feeling at the moment but not what you are thinking." He is not being modest or coy; he is simply addressing the psychological bottom line behind facial expressions: "Anxiety always looks like anxiety," he explains, "regardless of whether a person fears that I'm seeing through their lie or that I don't believe them when they're telling the truth."

The professor calls the ever present risk we all take of misreading a person's visage "Othello's error." In Shakespeare's drama, Othello misinterprets the fear in his wife Desdemona's face as a sign of her supposed infidelity. In truth, the poor woman is genuinely alarmed at her husband's unjust, jealous rage. Othello's subsequent decision to kill Desdemona is a fatal error, and Ekman wants to make sure that police, security personnel and secret service agents do not make the same mistake. "Arresting the guilty is a good thing," he acknowledges, "but decreasing the number of innocent people who are falsely accused is just as important." His system for understanding the emotions that faces portray, and his expertise in applying it, could help all kinds of law-enforcement and legal personnel in their work. It could also help the rest of us better negotiate how our family members, friends and colleagues really feel.

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:27:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Uri Geller seeks protege

Geller, 59, declined to elaborate on what supernatural skills the contestants claim to have, and whether clairvoyants -- who might be assumed to have an edge in predicting judges' votes -- are taking part. He described the prize, simply, as "huge"...

"This is not a show where people have to prove to me that they are for real," Geller said, adding that he has no plans to retire. "I just want to be amazed."

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:02:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory speaking at Utopiales sf con in Nantes, France

Du rouge au vert des petits hommes, Mars en aura vu de toutes les couleurs et demeure à ce jour le sanctuaire de tous les fantasmes en science-fiction. Dernier correspondant, K. S. Robinson aura poussé plus que nul autre avant lui l’identification à la planète rouge. Invité d’honneur du festival, il emmène avec lui cette année une cohorte d’écrivains pour des tables rondes passionnantes. Adeptes des magies noires de l’ère technologique, tels C. Priest, M. Wells ou K. J. Bishop ou rebelles, à l’image de R.C. Wagner ou N. Spinrad, ils rêvent tous de Marx depuis leur enfance. Les Libraires Complices proposent une nouvelle fois, dans le cadre du salon du Livre et de la Bande Dessinée, plus de 25000 ouvrages représentant toutes les maisons d’édition.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:50:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Computer Gaming World old archives now free

The issue that started it all featuring reviews of MUSE's Robotwar, SSI's Torpedo Fire, and Epyx's Crush Crumble and Chomp!, as well as an article on the future of computer gaming by Chris Crawford.

posted by David Pescovitz at 06:49:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jack Black's "anti-piracy" PSA

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:44:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Former FCC Chairman shills against Net Neutrality

Even if America’s broadband strategy doesn’t make sense for America, it makes lots of sense for certain companies. Kennard knows this well, because he sits on the board of many of those who benefit most from this deregulation. His op-ed acknowledges his work with the Carlyle Group. He is also on the board of Sprint Nextel Corporation, Hawaiian Telcom and Insight Communications (a cable provider). These companies will benefit directly if Kennard succeeds in getting Congress to forget Network Neutrality. They will become “merely richer” at the expense, I believe, not of Google or eBay, but of the next gang of kids with the next great idea that Google, and eBay (and Comcast and at&t) just don’t get.

I don’t know Kennard personally. People who do tell me he’s an extremely bright, ethical man. I’m sure that’s right. But there’s something unseemly to me when an FCC Chairman moves to the boards of the companies he used to regulate, and then uses the op-ed page of a paper on whose board he now sits, to argue for the poor by pushing the agenda of the “merely rich.” (How can a paper that obsesses to pretend its most brilliant writers have no opinion of their own not wonder about the weirdness here?)

They say Washington has to be like this. You could never get great people into government if they couldn’t cash-out once they left. But I bet if the next President demanded of nominees to the FCC that they promise not to take jobs in the industries they regulated for some “limited time” (let’s say, the life of a copyright), the President would find lots of qualified nominees. Maybe then it would be easier to hear the pleas for the poor, without the echo of the interests of the “merely rich” confusing the message.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:41:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

UK Open Rights Group is hiring!

ORG now needs a full time Executive Director (ED) to build our supporter numbers and expand our activities. The ED reports to the ORG Board, and has the support of an Advisory Council of digital rights experts.

The ED will be a passionate, professional and decisive self-starter who can prioritise a substantial work load, manage staff, lead volunteers and talk eloquently to the media. She/he will be responsible for:

* Maintaining a sustainable organisation in terms of numbers of members and staff, participation, income, public profile and reputation.

* Preparing and executing ORG’s strategy based on a balance of media work and policy influence.

* Increasing the public’s understanding of, and engagement with, a range of digital rights issues.

(Disclosure: I co-founded ORG and am a proud member of its advisory board)

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

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Pot grown in a PC

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:29:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wikipedia founder: what copyrights should we buy with $100MM?

I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be purchased and freed.

Dream big. Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you like to see purchased and released under a free license?

Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific, be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.

I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:21:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WSJ: JetBlue did secret pilot fatigue tests without your consent

Last year, JetBlue conducted experiments on some pilots by bending the rules (with local FAA consent, later recanted). They had their pilots hooked up to monitoring devices and then had them fly 10 to 11 hours a day, more than the legal 8 hours. Passengers were never informed that they were guinea pigs or co-test-pilots.

Update: Ben Popken at Consumerist says,

Whole WSJ article reprinted in this post: Link. Too important for people to know about to have it locked behind a paywall.

Reader comment: Steve Simitzis says,

This is why choosing an airline with a strong union backing the pilots is so important. This kind of thing just can't happen on Southwest or United, while JetBlue is always trying to push pilots harder and cut corners on maintenance. Pilot unions back up pilots on all safety decisions, for example, if a pilot is too fatigued to fly or if a pilot judges a plane to be poorly maintained. At a non-union airline, a pilot must fly or deal with management.

Here's a list of airlines backed by unions: Link.

American Airlines and Southwest have their own unions, not part of ALPA: Allied Pilots, SWAPA.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:03:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Orleans will unplug WiFi community network

New Orleans will give up its hard-fought battle for a free city-provided wireless Internet network once EarthLink Inc. finishes building out its initial wireless system, according to the city and EarthLink Inc. The wireless network that is run by the city for citizens will be taken down to avoid overlap between the two systems, said Mark Kurt, the city's director of information technology.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:03:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wife's phonecam pics 'smoking gun' in sex-with-dog case

Reader comment: Charles says,

There was a recent story like this in Brownsville, Texas. Apparently, however, in this case -- the girlfriend was also charged. And it was not a pit bull, as in the Washington incident. It was a POMERANIAN. Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:32:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tracking solution for E. Coli produce outbreaks?

San Diego-based tech firm Futurelogic teamed up with Hurst Labeling to create a new fruit label printer, which they're showing off at the Produce Marketing Show in San Diego this week. The labeler prints little stickies with lot number, date, bar code, and time of day, at a speed of up to 12 fruits per second (that's 720 label rounds per minute, and that's a lot of fruit). Link to more info on "Versaprint." (Thanks, David Spargur)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:17:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Omakase linkdump: Trick or 1337

* Above: Brain mold and icky finger cookies by egullet.com forum member Tejon: Link.

* Left: Ohnoez! Robots return to to recruit more earth-children for dastardly Halloween fun and destruction. Link (via Make), and here is evidence of previous visitations.

* For Make Benefit Glorious Costume of Your Crotch: Wear Borat's thong for Halloween, if you dare. Link.

* Soylent green is people wearing a lovely chrysoprase pendant: Link

* Crafty li'l hobgoblins made out of unused tampons. Cute bats and ghosts, but beware: icky tampon puns (tam-puns?) on this page. Link.

* What horrible Edward Gorey death will you suffer? Link.

* Someone out there thinks it's cute to dress a child as a suicide bomber for Halloween: Link.

* Someone out there thinks it's cute to dress an adult as a flaming carrot for Halloween: Link.

* Imperial Klingon pumpkin, with cat: Link.

* Zombie pumpkins: neat stencils for jack-o-lanterns. Link.

* October 28 in Los Angeles: Day of the Dead in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where Johnny Ramone and many great icons of music, TV, and film are buried. Link to event info.

* Web Zen: candy zen, with links to many nifty candy websites: Link.

(thanks, Scott Beale, Joseph Francis, Jessica, Miss Cellania, Cliff, matt mangum, mapletree7, Steve O, Jennifer , Magnus, anonymous, )

Previous Omakase linkdumps:
- Dem belly full
- I wanna tear you apart
- Sexy taco, space gun, deli flesh.
- Arabic smokes, Norway bimbo, Danish BB ringtone
- Post-holiday bluesnixer roundup

Reader comment: mrdeadworry says,

This jack-o-lantern looks like a Cylon complete with sweeping red light with all the directions for you to do yourself. Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:58:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Orthodox Jewish prayer Barbie

Update: Ben sez, "Strictly speaking, Orthodox Jewish women don't wear teffilin or tallit during prayer; in fact, many Orthodox Jews object strongly to the trend in the more liberal branches of Judaism permitting/encouraging women to do so. Since laying tefillin and wearing tallit is much more common with Conservative than Reform Jews, the post should probably be titled 'Progressive Conservative Jewish Prayer Barbie'."

Update 2: Jen sez, "s the creator of Tefillin Barbie, I'd like to point out to your correspondent Ben that enough Orthodox Jewish women wear tallit and tefillin that your description of her as Orthodox is entirely accurate. I intended her as Modern Orthodox Barbie, and Modern Orthodox Barbie she is."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:30:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

US govt bans Vegemite -HOAX!

Update: It's a hoax!

The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite contains folate, which in the US can be added only to breads and cereals.

Expatriates say that enforcement of the ban has been stepped up recently and is ruining lifelong traditions of having Vegemite on toast for breakfast.

Former Geelong man Daniel Fogarty, who now lives in Calgary, Canada, said he was stunned when searched while crossing the US border recently.

"The border guard asked us if we were carrying any Vegemite," Mr Fogarty said.

(Vegemite label photo via AZAdam's Flickr stream)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:10:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LiveJournal's link with Russian 'net co sparks KGB data-share fears

These badges were created by Russian LiveJournal users who are very suspicious (to put it mildly) of a new partnership between SixApart's LiveJournal and the Russian Internet company SUP. I learned about this controversy by reading Veronica Khokholva's latest post over at Global Voices Online. She writes:

The Russian-language blogosphere (commonly known as ZheZhe) is on fire: some users are shutting down their blogs, others are emigrating to the virtual Trinidad & Tobago - all because LiveJournal.com's owner Six Apart has decided to team up with the Russian internet company Sup, founded this year by Aleksandr Mamut, a Russian "oligarch," and Andrew Paulson, an American entrepreneur.
...
Assurances from managers of Six Apart and Sup have left many unconvinced and still concerned over whether the Russian security services would gain access to their personal information and whether the new Abuse Team would carry out ruthless purges.

[read the whole thing here]

Apparently there is a certain element of anti-Semitisim coming from some of the ethnic Russian LJ users which is of course very bad.   But there is another issue at play here which I think really needs to be taken seriously: local users don't trust local internet companies not to sell them out to Russian security forces.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:07:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cory and Roboexotica speakers interviewed

Last year, I spoke at the Roboexotica cocktail robotics conference in Vienna and a bunch of the speakers did a little TV interview for an Austrian indie TV producer. The video's online now, featuring me, Jake Appelbaum, Francesca Birks, Kal Spelletich and Johannes Grenzfurthner. Link (Thanks, Magnus!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:59:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pat Robertson coloring book

Now, further evidence that the creators of the series intended Tinky Winky to be a gay role model have surfaced. He is purple -- the gay pride color -- and his antenna is shaped like a triangle.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:54:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pumpkin PCs

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:47:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coin balancing photos

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

Lego flamethrower

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:39:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Everyday objects reimagined

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:36:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Invisibility cloak is one step closer after science demo

Invisibility has long been the stuff of fantasy, from Plato’s story of the ring of Gyges to Harry Potter’s mischief-enabling cloak. But scientists led by a team at Duke University have demonstrated a technology that could be a small step in the right misdirection.

The system, a set of concentric copper circles on fiberglass board, deflects electromagnetic waves of a specific frequency that strike it, without much of the scattering and absorption that make reflections and shadows.

A result is that the microwaves slide around the structure like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream, said David R. Smith, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke and an author of the paper published today in the journal Science.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:45:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FBI teams up with website violating online child protection law

Link (Thanks, Ryan Singel)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:37:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

To do in LA: BarCamp, Nov 11-12

BarCamp continues to be a fantastic space for local geeks to gather, in cities around the world. Because Los Angeles is such a media-centric city (three BBers live there), BarCampLA #2 is bound to collect all sorts of media-tech geeks. Come join us November 11th and 12th at Little Radio. Sign up here.

Reader comment: Stan James says,

Regarding your post about LA BarCamp... Don't forget Boulder BarCamp is Nov 10-11. (Signup here).

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:12:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Sacred Game Boy

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:33:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

More on publishing and "okaysellers"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:54:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anatomically correct avatar

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:18:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Slice of life episodic comic stories

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:33:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copy-friendly business-models talk video

See also Audio from Revver founder's talk on copy-friendly business models

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:23:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Walking tour of LA shows "hidden Disneyland"

Charles Phoenix, known for his retro-postcard slide show events, has started offering 'walking tours' of Los Angeles. If you've ever seen or heard Phoenix's talk, you know that alone would be worth the price of admission. But Phoenix tops it off by drawing a multitude of parallels between Walt Disney's crown jewel themepark of Disneyland, and the icons of Southern California that played such a major part in the development of Walt Disney the man.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:10:37 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Vintage kids' LPs with built-in animations

These were cardboard children's records with the animation printed right onto the disc itself (later versions like the one above had the animation on the label of regular colored vinyl). The Red Raven included a little mirrored device that you pop onto the turntable's spindle that reflected the animation in such a way that while the record plays you get to see a little cartoon.

The effect is rather hypnotic (the mirrored device is an ersatz praxinoscope for all of you optics junkies), and a neat addition to the typical children's fare on the record itself. Sixteen Magic Mirror Movie records were released by Red Raven (making for 32 animations of course).

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:03:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tour operator for virtual worlds

Synthravels is the first organization to offer a complete guide service to all the people who want to make a tour in virtual worlds without knowing these new realities, even if they have never put their feet in these strange, synthetic grounds.

The tours and the destinations are chosen by the staff of Synthravels, composed by programmers, architects, experienced video gamers.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:54:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Respect Copyright activity patch from LA Scouts design

See also:
Boy Scouts shill for MPAA with copyright merit badge
Boy Scouts of America Concerned About Copyright

Update: There's some dispute as to what this is called. Clark sez, "The MPAA monstrosity is an activity patch or temporary insignia- these denote that a scout has participated in a special event or activity; a couple of common examples of activity patches are those issued to scouts who have attended a weekend camporee or a week at summer camp. Activity patches are simple tokens of recognition that are not vetted or controlled on a national level. Unlike merit Badges activity patches do not apply to a scout's advancement in rank."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, October 20, 2006

Toy designers create cars for charity auction

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:38:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Full-cast audiobook of Cory's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

This is the second audio adaptation of Down and Out -- the podcaster Mark Forman read the book aloud on his podcast in August 2005.

I love the different adaptations of the book -- it's amazing to hear my words read by so many different people, with so many different choices about how to dramatize it. Often, the reading isn't how I heard it in my own head when I wrote it, which is cool -- it's wild to hear how your own words sound to someone else. Link to part 1 as MP3, Link to part 1 as streaming Quicktime, Podcast feed

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:25:32 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boy Scouts of America Concerned About Copyright

"If you could update the post on Boing Boing with this e-mail address(BSACAC@gmail.com - Boy Scouts of America Concerned About Copyright), or pass it along to any other scouts that might contact you, I'd very much appreciate it. Not all scouts are religious bigots or industry shills. A lot changes between the time when you're a kid joining a group for fun, comraderie, and self-improvement, and when you're grown up and able to form your own views. I'd like to see the scouts improve where they can, and while some changes may be too big to hope for, I'll do everything I can to make sure they don't change for the worse. Help us out."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:09:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boy Scouts shill for MPAA with copyright merit badge

Bravo, Scouts -- letting an industry group brainwash the children in your charge is the only way you could sink lower than being mere religious bigots -- now you're religious bigots who shill for a cartel of Fortune 100 companies.

Boy Scouts in the Los Angeles area will now be able to earn a merit patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies and music.

The patch shows a film reel, a music CD and the international copyright symbol, a "C" enclosed in a circle.

The movie industry has developed the curriculum.

"Working with the Boy Scouts of Los Angeles, we have a real opportunity to educate a new generation about how movies are made, why they are valuable, and hopefully change attitudes about intellectual property theft," Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, said Friday.

See also Boy Scout badge in Intellectual Property

Update: Liz sez, "Mel Horan of Garbage Island made up Photoshop versions of possible copyright merit badges several months ago, and I posted them on Sivacracy in connection with a story about the Hong Kong scouting program already policing piracy on the government's behalf. Check them out!"

Update 2: Ed sez, "The copyright merit badge is *not* sanctioned by the Boy Scouts of America. It's a local initiative by one group in LA. That's why they called it a "merit patch" instead of a "merit badge". The real list of BSA merit badges here here. The newest one is "Composite Materials"."

Update 3 Jay is disturbed to hear about the Los Angeles Boy Scouts offering a Merit Patch in copyright. He sez, "As a frequent reader of Boing Boing, a supporter of the EFF, and someone who plans on making a living as a future online communication technology consultant, I feel fairly informed about copyright issues. So myself and my roommate, another Eagle Scout, are in the process of acquiring the Merit Badge Handbook for this badge to review the requirements and information it presents. If it's as one-sided or erroneous as your post worries it will be, I'd like to get other current or former scouts to take part in a concerted effort to write the Los Angeles Area Council with our concerns.

"If you could update the post on Boing Boing with this e-mail address(BSACAC@gmail.com - Boy Scouts of America Concerned About Copyright), or pass it along to any other scouts that might contact you, I'd very much appreciate it. Not all scouts are religious bigots or industry shills. A lot changes between the time when you're a kid joining a group for fun, comraderie, and self-improvement, and when you're grown up and able to form your own views. I'd like to see the scouts improve where they can, and while some changes may be too big to hope for, I'll do everything I can to make sure they don't change for the worse. Help us out."

Update 4 This tacky monstrosity is the "Respecting Copyrights merit patch." (Thanks Pawel!)

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

Coop's painting process in time-lapse

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:56:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Haunted hot sauce in wooden coffin

I'm a total hot sauce junkie. Remember those Tabasco ads where they asked celebs what they put Tabasco on, and Dan Ackroyd said, "Anything humanly possible?" That's me, too. I'd brush my teeth with hot-sauce if I could.

Combine sweaty pepper juice with gruesome packaging and you've got an unbeatable combination. I just ordered some. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:55:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Compulsive shopping study

Compulsive buying, as defined by a high score on a tally of the cardinal signs, occurred in 6 percent of women and 5.5 percent of men, regardless of racial or ethnic background, Koran's group says. Compulsive buyers averaged 40 years of age, compared with 49 years for the other participants. A majority of compulsive buyers reported annual incomes under $50,000, whereas only 39 percent of the others reported incomes in that category.

Compulsive buyers reported having the same number of credit cards as other participants did. However, compulsive buyers tended to stretch credit card limits thin, often to within $100 of the maximum. Compulsive buyers also preferred to make minimum payments on credit card balances, regardless of their annual incomes.

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:38:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Complete Works of Charles Darwin now online for free

'It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working'

'When the views entertained in this volume on the origin of species, or when analogous views are generally admitted, we can dimly forsee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history.'

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:54:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pulp Italian sf magazine covers

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:22:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Copynight comes to Hollywood: Belly of the beast

# Fourth Tuesday of every month, 8 PM
# Barney's Beanery, 8447 Santa Monica Blvd (map)
# Hosted by Andy McPherson, hollywood (at) copynight.org

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:18:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Online world based on Shakespeare

"It's a historical Shakespeare play, so that means it's really easy for us to take all the sort of fantasy stuff like knights in shining armor and peasants and woodworkers...and we can just really fit right into 'Richard III' right away."

But "Arden" has a more serious goal than just letting gamers cavort around in an Elizabethan playground.

Castronova likens "Arden" to a "petri dish" where he and other researchers can conduct ongoing social-science experiments. He said the idea is similar to a biologist running multiple versions of an experiment, each with slight variations in conditions, to see how those conditions affect the outcome.

"Now we have this technology for making little pocket societies and we can do different governments, different economies, different social norms in the different environments," he said, "and see how it affects the things we care about, like equality and justice and growth and efficiency."...

He said one of the more unique elements of "Arden" is that the game will be seeded with Shakespearean texts, many of which will be the most valuable treasure players can find.

"If you collect the 'To be or not be' speech and then take it to a lore master or to a skilled bard, he can then apply the magic to your broad sword or you (could) utilize the magic in a battle situation to give you this massive (advantage)," Castronova explained. "So there (will be) this intensive competition to get the best speeches of Shakespeare in your play book.

"You've got to know your Shakespeare, but...if you do, collect these texts and you can just playfully kick butt the way wizards do."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:14:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chemo-luminescent hair gel

Just like Voltage, iGlow does not rely on UV, neon or black lights to create glow. Instead, it produces its own light! Tiny, microscopic particles in the gel come together in the mixing process to produce a bright colorful glow that can be seen in partial light and in the dark for several hours.

While iGlow is classified as a "temporary hair color" it does not actually color the hair cuticle. It "coats" the hair with color. The gel is the delivery medium for the luminescence (glow). As such it is safe for color-treated or bleached hair when used as directed.

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

Source code for MySpace pedophile-hunter bot

Finding sex offenders on MySpace is a three-step process. First, you need the list of offenders. I put together the first script, scraperps.pl, in late April. From a list of ZIP codes, the program simply fills out the query form on the DOJ's registry, maxing out the query by running five ZIPs at a time. Then it stores the results -- name, ZIP, city, county, state -- in a database, within a table called `perps`.

My first run quickly got me temporarily blocked from the site. It turns out the DOJ server doesn't like you running a lot of queries back-to-back. When the ban was lifted (never let it be said that the Justice Department is unforgiving), I incorporated a 30-second pause between queries, which seemed to satisfy the server. That raised the run time to over 71 hours.

While that was under way, I went to work on screen-scraping MySpace. When you register for MySpace, you're prompted to provide your full name and your ZIP code. That information doesn't appear in your MySpace profile, which may help explain why so many offenders felt comfortable providing it. But MySpace's search engine lets you search by name, and restrict the results to within five miles of a particular ZIP code. That made it a natural match for the sex offender registry.

The MySpace scraper, myspacebot.pl, performs this search for every entry in `perps`, and loads the result into a table called `myspace`.

See also: Wired News editor catches MySpace pedophile

Update: EPIC's Guilherme Roschke sez, "The code 'caught' lots of people, and it took human work to sort out who was a predator and who was not. "

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:58:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Star Wars mashup photoshopping contest

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:34:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scrabble-tile benches

Update: Jeremy sez, "I saw your Scrabble Furniture, and wanted to show you the work of my friend Josh Cyr, who has created his own Scrabble Coffee Table."

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

Antique devil inkwell

19th Century devil inkwell of handcarved wooden construction by a master craftsman. I believe this to be of European origin - Black Forest or Swiss. Quality of carving and fit of the lid are exceptional. Not a nick or chip or scratch. Original paint. Original well looks to be porcelain. Ink still on inner rim around well and lid shows honest wear. Total height is 4". Satisfaction guaranteed.

posted by David Pescovitz at 09:30:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pink flamingos, RIP?

"They think the pink flamingos could be extinct, and they think I will be extinct soon, too," (Featherstone) said. "It is sad that it is happening, but it may not be dead yet."

Featherstone and (Union Products president Dennis) Plante are hoping for a resurrection. Plante has been seeking another company to buy the molds. So far, two companies in the U.S. and one in Canada have expressed interest.

"I am hoping that someone will come forward and save the plastic pink flamingo from extinction," Plante said.

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

Nancy and Sluggo comic book scan

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:41:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MondoGlobo podcasts: Violet Blue, Eddie Codel, Ryan Junell