A 1-800-LAWYER has set up a site where people can pre-emptively sign up to sue Dean Kamen for the inevitable Segway-related accidents.

The USAILC is a successful corporate law firm preparing to specialize in another area. We expect to be at the forefront of suits featuring the invention widely known as "It."

For those unfamiliar with the subject, "It" is for all purposes an extremely expensive high-tech scooter. However, this contraption has been foolishly hyped as an all- purpose vehicle that will revolutionize global transportation.

"It" is officially named the Segway HT and is being released by a privately-held company named DEKA.

Get ready to Sue-It!

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Rael's written a paeon to his Amazon Gold Box. For some reason, I don't get a Gold Box anymore when I visit Amazon.

"Rael's Gold Box" it glinted and beckoned and yelled,
"Click me, please click me, I've oodles to sell."
My mouse it did waver, it's memory still sharp
of previous offers -- the curling iron, the harp.
And flashlights and car tools and fondue and hoses,
Carvers and things that trim hairs from one's noses.

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As Toronto's rents skyrocket and subsidized housing budgets are slashed, the streets of my favorite city are increasingly filled with shell-shocked homeless people. And yet, there are millions of dollars available to subsidize a visit from the Pope (a visit that the Archdiocese turned a healthy profit on, no less). To call attention to these bizarre priorities, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty has occupied an abandoned building, christening it (heh) the "Pope Squat," garnering financial support and endorsements from the Catholic Network for Womens' Equality, the Candian Union of Public Employees and the Canadian Auto Workers. Link Discuss (Thanks, Dad!)

Mitch Wagner has posted some thought-provoking ruminations on living in webcam-land, the exhibitionist impulse to stream every room in your house online.

Webcam houses are part of the way surveillance and recording have become commonplace in society. I'm not old at all but I remember the first time I heard my own recorded voice. My Dad brought home a tape-recorder from work - a big reel-to-reel thing the size of a briefcase - and we all got to play with it. It was a special occasion. I expect that a few years later, tape-recording was already pretty commonplace. I remember when I was a kid, on special occasions, departments stores would set up television cameras and you could see yourself on TV - there was always a crowd of people - a SMALL crowd, but still a crowd - doing goofy things in front of the camera and watching themselves.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Mitch!)

Cigalicious gallery of vintage cancer-stick packaging. Link Discuss (Thanks, Patrick!)

Nice NYT article about the Bulova Accutron, the world's first transistorized watch. It debuted in 1961 and used a tuning fork to stay accurate. Link Discuss

The ever-cheezy SkyMall catalog is now selling "The Sword of the Archangel Michael," from "The Vatican Collection."

He is known as the "Sword of God". Wielding his mighty blade, he is the redeemer of souls and the vanquisher of Satan. For the first time, the Sword of the Archangel Michael is created from the artwork of the Vatican. In splendid bas relief, his legendary deeds are portrayed. The casting out of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. His fight of the Angels against the legions of Satan. The compassionate rescue of tormented souls. And the dramatic victory over "The Serpent". Each scene is meticulously detailed. And every part of this distinctive sword is enriched with design motifs which exist as part of the Vatican itself.

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The Shop Steward is a deeply swanky cocktail accessory. If I still had a bar, I would be all over this thing. Four or six bottles clamp in between cunning brass grips and jigger-measuring speed-pours. Spin the wheel of intoxication, hit the nozzle, and get exactly one shot of your favorite sauce. Link Discuss

Erik sez: "The guy who wrote the deal that the webcasting royalty fee model was made from (a deal that Yahoo repuidated after one year, since they were getting creamed) was specifically designed to kill small webcasters trying to work a percentage of revenue royalty deal."

Now, no one asked me any of these things prior, during, or after the first or second pricing. I'm not sure that this matters. But if it does, here it is: The Yahoo! deal I worked on, if it resembles the deal the CARP ruling was built on, was designed so that there would be less competition, and so that small webcasters who needed to live off of a "percentage-of-revenue" to survive, couldn't.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Erik!)

Peter David's posted a great column detailing the many depredations suffered by comics writers, who get no respect.

When artwork is returned from a comic book, the penciller gets two thirds of the pages, the inker the remaining third. This can be a valuable money-generator because of the value on the art market.

The writer? The one who created the story that the penciller drew and the inker inked? We get to sit at conventions and watch stories taken from our heads sold piecemeal at $50 and up a page. One artist once said, "Hey, if writers are upset about it, I'll remove the word balloons and give them back."

Link Discuss (Thanks, Glenn!)

The Cult of the Dead Cow hacker-clan has a funny, trash-talkin' hax0r blog. Many of the cDc folks can be found this weekend in Vegas, at DefCon, the hacker conference where Dmitry Skylarov was arrested last year for telling the world that Adobe eBook "protection" blows chunks. Link Discuss

Nice satire from Glenn Fleishman touches on all my favorite memes: wireless, organic modelling, and mesh networks.

Houndstooth is a dramatic new mesh network technology that utilizes algorithms derived from canine-pack clustering. With Houndstooth, random aggregations of data are transferred at a variety of speeds based on pack dynamics and distances. A special front-to-end pack discovery protocol allows each node to discover and authenticate new nodes. Best of all, you can redeploy existing logistics to take advantage of pack-based mesh networking by using actual dogs that you may already own or have access to.

Each dog wears a small Houndstooth transceiver, powered by a pedometer attached to a dog's strong back legs. As dogs enter and leave packs, both store-and-forward (known as fetch-and-retrieve in the Houndstooth terminology) and live routed (off-leash protocol) data handling are possible. Parasitic networking by non-pack Houndstooth transceivers are avoided through regular deworming of the connection.

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