"It's so special because it's the only major city in North America where English is a minority language," says Boberg.

A Montrealer, for instance, might say she's looking for "a three-and-a-half close to a depanneur" instead of a "one bedroom apartment near a corner store." Or another might talk about going to a "guichet" for money, instead of an "ABM" (automated banking machine).

iCommune is a plug-in which extends Apple's iTunes software to share music over the network. Your friends' music libraries appear in the iTunes source list. You can browse their collections, and choose to download or stream their music. It also allows you to make your own music library available to others.

But to get back to the criticism: Games are flashy, degraded, violent little entertainments for adolescent boys. Right?

Hardly. Go to the Interactive Digital Software Association site, and download their demographic information. Most gamers are over 18. PC gamers skew even older than console gamers. The average age of gamers increases year by year. I'll talk about why in another essay, perhaps. And almost 50% of games are bought by women.

That doesn't mean that 50% of the people playing games at this very instant are women, of course; some female purchasers are doubtless buying games for the men (or boys) in their lives. But women do play games--more than half of the people playing on sites like Pogo.com or Uproar are female, for instance. Something like 30% of the players of massively multiplayer games are women. And virtually all of the players of Pern MUSHes are female.

Games aren't just for teenage boys any more.

"If you enjoy spending time on the 'Net, you can be part of the ALIAS 'Digital Street Team.' We'd like you to visit newsgroups, message boards, chat-rooms and any other on-line communities to help spread the word about ALIAS. We will guide you through the entire process and let you know where to go to make the buzz happen."

I couldn't tell at first whether this was a grassroots campaign or an underground ad campaign. Then I read a couple of the other pages on the site and discovered that it's run by the Hype Council (http://www.hypecouncil.com/), a company that apparently specializes in this sort of campaign.

The idea is simple - if something like the National ID Card needs a groundswell of public support, then we post a leaflet on our site and - using e-mail, blog forwards, and links from other similar sites - we get people across Britain to print out the leaflet and pass it round their neighbourhood.

If we get a thousand users each giving an hour of their time to post leaflets through doors in their area, then one leaflet can reach a quarter of a million households - probably almost a million people. That's a pretty big groundswell.

Doctorow's fans aren't surprised to find his book online for free. The plots of his most recent short story, "0wnz0red," involves digital rights management, or how files are protected from sharing and copying.

Moreover, Doctorow is known outside science fiction circles for his prolific, passionate posts about digital rights issues on the BoingBoing weblog and other forums, as well as his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"I don't believe that I am giving up book royalties," Doctorow said about persuading his publisher, Tor Books, to make Down and Out available digitally for free under the new Creative Commons licensing system.

"(Downloads) crossed the 10,000-download threshold at 8 a.m. this morning," Doctorow said Thursday, "which exceeds the initial print run for the book."

Doctorow said he thinks the marketing buzz from those downloads will be worth more than any lost book sales. "I think that the Internet's marvelous ability to spread information to places where it finds a receptive home is the best thing that could happen to a new writer like me."

This is just one example of responding to the new realities and loss of control. Those who refuse to adapt to the new realities of the marketplace will indeed suffer as it becomes more difficult to maintain control over content. As this story demonstrates, we needn't sacrifice our ability to create new technologies and new economic value simply to preserve a particular business model that is under threat.

Unfortunately, many of those who claim to be most pro-business really don't believe in the marketplace and view business as a static, not a dynamic process. There is no shortage of new entrants ready to seize upon the opportunities provided by change. Listening only to the demands of those who are most threatened is not just a poor way to set policy, it actively discriminates against those who can bring us the most innovation and the most new value.

Using these 16 ingredients, a total of 188 different drinks can be made, with the included ability to add ounce increments of each ingredient to customize (or create) a drink. The drink database is easy to update and nearly infinitely expandable.

Customers of legal age sign up for a user account, for which they are assigned a unique, 5-digit, hexadecimal PIN. The account is debit-based, with each drink charging the customer at cost for the drink they are purchasing, automatically deducting from their account balance.

All told, the project took about 3 months and $235 to complete. It is worth mentioning, however, that the LCD (the most expensive single component) was donated (approx. value: $100+), and various other components were otherwise acquired for free. The Bar Monkey was graciously funded by West Dorm HMC, even though we were overbudget by $85. Continual maintenance and occasional improvements are still always a concern...

# Runs a program written in C by Dustin Cooper, in Linux.
# Bartop is approximately four feet above the ground.
# Holds approximately 1.75 liters of each ingredient.
# Uses 16 windshield washer pumps run by a 12V adaptor. Pumps are connected in parallel and run sequentially by the program.
# Dispenses an 8 oz. mixed drink in less than 10 seconds.
# Currently has 30 registered user accounts, with expected rapid growth as people cease being broke.

California's Velcro Harvest
Explains the reasons for the decline in California's important velcro crop. Reminiscent of the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax of 1957.

Canadian World Domination
Demonstrating to the world "that Canada is the final and ultimate power."

CarpSoft
A send-up of corporate jargon-speak. CarpSoft offers "goal-orientated corporate solutions." Beyond that, it's difficult to figure out exactly what they do. A creation of John Hopkin, also author of 'Britain for Americans,' 'British Stick Insect Foundation,' and 'Sellafield Zoo.'

Forty percent of publications produced in Japan are comics, which provide 30 percent of Japanese publishing revenue. But the comics, or manga, market in Japan is divided into two types: one is purely (or as pure as one can get) original work; the other is "amateur" or copycat comics, which develop the work of original artists in different and unauthorized ways. This second kind of comic, called dojinshi [doh-GIN-she], is a huge and growing market in Japan. Dojinshi conventions are among Japan's largest mass gatherings, drawing more than 450,000 fans and 33,000 artists each year. And as comics move online, through the increasing penetration of online games, the dojinshi market is only expected to increase.

In an article published in the Rutgers Law Review this fall, Temple Law professor Salil Mehra puzzles over an aspect of the dojinshi market that would stump most copyright lawyers. Put most simply, dojinshi is illegal

RAT Terrier Pups, born w/college education

and

BEAUTIFUL antique armchair. Over 200 years old. Made from "macaroni" noodles. Arms, legs and seat not available.

So the UK government has been proposing what they call an Entitlement Card - a universal ID card for every man, woman and child in Britain. Every government seems to propose this the moment they get into office, and ever since 1952, the voters have rejected it. It's one of those things that civil servants like to slip into the "TODO" list while the Minster isn't looking.

The usual way of stopping it is to complain that there's no mandate. The present government are getting around this by holding a "Public Consultation", where they write a 13MB PDF document (here's an HTML version we hacked up) talking about how great ID cards would be. They then solicit comments. The government is very pleased with this scheme. Lord Falconer, the government's ID card point man, keeps talking about how the majority of responses have been positive (they've had over 1500 so far).

I'm not so sure that's true. NTK subscriber Dan Blanchard emailed them to complain about the proposals, and got a nice mail back saying "Thank you for your e-mail in support of the introduction of an entitlement/identity card scheme.". Whoops.

"They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
Elections, money, empire, oil and Dad."

"Artists have always been at the forefront of the global fight for free expression. Recently, they have pricked the nation's conscience in the face of Government assaults on individual rights in the name of national security. Beginning this month, the ACLU will present civil liberties issues online through the eyes of political cartoonists and other artists. This rotating feature will change periodically, and will cover breaking news on the full gamut of civil liberties issues.

Our inaugural presentation is of an art show that first appeared in June 2002 and continues to tour the country. Entitled "USA Patriot Art: Cartooning and Free Speech in War Time," this updated collection of 43 provocative and powerful cartoons has stirred up plenty of controversy. Some cartoons never got published. One cartoonist lost his job. The ACLU has received generous permission from the show's curators to present it online."

Link Discuss

(1) 100 albums
(2) thrift store finds
(3) vinyl museum
(4) daily song
(5) 78rpm
(6) the tarot
(7) publicity photos
(8) karaoke
(9) elvis
(10) glam rock
(11) roadies

Link Discuss (Thanks, Frank!)
(flame-retardant disclaimer: some of the items in weekly Web Zen roundups may have appeared previously on BoingBoing.)

In The Art of Computer Game Design, Chris Crawford contrasts what he call "games" with "puzzles." Puzzles are static; they present the "player" with a logic structure to be solved with the assistance of clues. "Games," by contrast, are not static, but change with the player's actions.

Some puzzles are obviously so; no one would call a crossword a "game." But, according to Crawford, some "games" a really just puzzles -- Lebling & Blank's Zork, for instance. The game's sole objective is the solution of puzzles: finding objects and using them in particular ways to cause desired changes in the game-state. There is no opposition, there is no roleplaying, and there are no resources to manage; victory is solely a consequence of puzzle solving.

To be sure, Zork is not entirely static; the character moves from setting to setting, allowable actions vary by setting, and inventory changes with action. We must think of a continuum, rather than a dichotomy; if a crossword is 100% puzzle, Zork is 90% puzzle and 10% game.

Almost every game has some degree of puzzle-solving; even a pure military strategy game requires players to, e.g., solve the puzzle of making an optimum attack at this point with these units. To eliminate puzzle-solving entirely, you need a game that's almost entirely exploration: Just Grandma and Me, a CD-ROM interactive storybook with game-like elements of decision-making and exploration, is a good example. Clicking on screen objects causes entertaining sounds and animations, but there's nothing to 'solve,' in fact, no strategy whatsoever.

A puzzle is static. A game is interactive.

“Nobody has ever done anything like it,” said Michael Moshier, chief executive of Trek Aerospace, the company that designed the machine. “It is the first aircraft that you can strap on your back and allows you to fly around like a bird.”

He says the compact SoloTrek XFV can hover for more than two hours at a time and is easy to fly.The machine stands about 7 feet tall (2.1 meters), weighs more than 300 pounds (136 kilograms) and is a somewhat bizarre-looking contraption with its two overhead engines above the tripod frame that holds the pilot. It can hold a pilot and gear weighing up to a total of 240 pounds (108 kilograms). The aircraft is still in the developmental stage, but Moshier envisions a day when the sky is full of people dashing across town in the flying machines, which operate much like a helicopter.

Link to story, Link to the Solotrek site, Discuss (image: Michael Moshier, CEO of Trek Aerospace, next to the SoloTrek XFV Exo-skeletor Flying Vehicle. Jan., 2002 AP file photo, Julie Jacobson.).

The one kernel of truth in all the controversy: Wi-Fi network users can eavesdrop on clear traffic going over the network, Doctorow said. But that's not a Wi-Fi problem, since any network where text is moving in the clear is susceptible to the same kind of eavesdropping. That's a security problem in all types of networks, not just Wi-Fi.

"The problem is firewalls, which don't work, haven't worked and aren't going to work," Doctorow said. "Firewalls are bankrupt technology predicated on the idea that everyone on one side of the firewall is trustworthy, and no one on the other side of the firewall is trustworthy." But in fact, criminals often gain access to the network from the inside. In past months, authorities have arrested several people accused of making criminal use of network access gained by virtue of being present or former employees of the companies they were charged with stealing from. And firewalls aren't the only source of troubles: Many Internet service providers are still transmitting passwords in clear text over the network.

The solution is not to limit Wi-Fi, but rather to install personal firewalls on each computer, and encrypt all traffic going over the network, Doctorow said.

Interactive technology -- and the mostly young readers and viewers who use and understand it -- are the catalysts. We Media augments traditional methods with new and yet-to-be invented collaboration tools ranging from e-mail to Web logs to digital video to peer-to-peer systems. But it boils down to something simple: our readers collectively know more than we do, and they don't have to settle for half-baked coverage when they can come into the kitchen themselves. This is not a threat. It is an opportunity. And the evolution of We Media will oblige us all to adapt.

Las Vegas is a hotbed for bachelor and bachelorette parties and we just wanted to create a unique place where guys and girls could have fun," Palms owner George J. Maloof Jr. said Wednesday.

Maloof said he visited several strip clubs to ensure that he selected the right pole. "It's just like the real thing," he said. "They are slick. It's going to happen in the room...You might as well accommodate them."

Link Discuss (Thanks, Wedge!)

"Picture yourself lost in the galaxy...UFO sightings and Alien Abductions are on the rise...Will you return to tell the story? In case of alien abduction these dog tags may save your life. The crucial data an alien will need to get you back to Earth is die stamped into these dog tags.

The design is based on NASA research for the Pioneer 10 Space Mission that used a gold plaque attached to the craft to inform any Extraterrestrials of it's Earthly origin.

Money back guarantee! Should you ever be abducted by aliens and not returned back to earth, you will be entitled to a full refund... "

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dale!)

Well, in some ways, this novel is a parable about Napster, and about the reputation economies that projects like Ringo, Firefly, Epinions and Amazon hint at. In a world where information is nonscarce, the problem isn't finding generic information -- it's finding useful information. There's an old chestnut in online science fiction fandom that the Internet "makes us all into slushreaders." ("Slush" is the unsolicited prose that arrives at publishers' offices -- a "slushreader" wades through thousands of these paste-gems looking for the genuine article). This has always struck me as a pretty reactionary position.

Nearly every piece of information online has a human progenitor -- a person who thought it was useful or important or interesting enough to post. Those people have friends whom they trust, and those friends have trusted friends, and so on. Theoretically, if you use your social network to explore the Web, you can make educated guesses about the relative interestingness of every bit of info online to you. In practice, this kind of social exploration is very labor-intensive and even computationally intensive, but there's a lot of technology on the horizon that hints at this...

Scarcity is, objectively, worse than plenty. When you've got lots of some useful object, you're richer than when you have less of it. When there's more than enough to go around, the economic value tends to plummet, but the utility is just as high. Think of oxygen: on the Earth's surface, we're well-supplied with breathable atmosphere. Aside from a few egregiously West-coast "oxygen bars," it's hard to imagine paying money for O2. But in Heinlein's sf novels set on the moon, there's a thriving trade in oxygen. In both situations, air is highly useful, but dirtsiders are richer in air than their loonie cousins.

"Honk!" she said, after a short queue of older men, then there was no way of mirrors and into hers as we stood by the time alternately moping, drinking, and plotting terrible, irrational vengeance on Debra for killing me, destroying my relationship, taking away my beloved (in hindsight, anyway) Hall of Presidents over for a couple glasses from the Bitchun Society didn't need to convert its detractors, just outlive them. The first time I debarked for the patchy red welts from the computer where it disappeared into the discussion. If I needed to do that, too." Was I really advocating being more like you and start playing. Others would pick up their own jokes, and even though he blew his spiel about half the time. "Lillian," he said, cautiously. "Doctor Pete is a couple of days, starting the rehab is a terrific attraction, and it's going to live, I'd like to have a backup made before she did.

Figure 4 shows how Safari's Google search box could be extended (a la Andre Torrez's Nutshell). The default search would be Google, but you could select other searches as well, either web searches or searches using the Sherfari apps. Selecting "Google News" and then doing a search would load the results page from Google News into the browser window. Selecting "Movies" would load the Movies app into the window with that movie selected.

This keeps all the activity commonly referred to as "web browsing" in one place. Assuming Apple would also add the capability for tabbed browsing, the Safari/Sherlock combo would be a powerful one. The generic web browser part would allow people to load up any old web page while the applications would allow them to quickly take care of frequent tasks through custom interfaces without the need to load potentially heavy or hard-to-use web pages.

You are staying in the most luxurious accommodations on station. If you weren't a Congressman, you would be staying in a room where the sounds of lurching sex and vomiting firefighters groaned beyond the paper-thin walls. If you weren't a Congressman, you would be housed according to Ice Time, a point system that awards status according to months in The Program. It works like this: if you have less than 36 months Ice Time, you add up your months and multiply them by .125. If you have more than 36 months, you multiply by .25. The resulting calculations are then added to your job points. Job points vary, but most people get two or three, managers get ten or fifteen, and you get three or four thousand. You have thus earned the most comfortable quarters on station. Perhaps this is because of your engaging personality and your energizing conversation.

I anticipate a desire among fans of the book to visit the sites where it (took/will take) place, sort of like hitting the Stations of the Cross in a Catholic cathedral, and snap photos proving they were there. Hoping to be the first to do so, and maybe thereby accumulate some whuffie of my own, I present the "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom Whuffie Ring," a web ring to let people link up their Down and Out fan pages.

So go ahead. Travel to Florida. Visit Liberty Square, the Hall of the Presidents, the Haunted Mansion. Get your picture taken with one of its 999 happy haunts. You loved Disney World when you were a kid--you know you did. Now's your chance to show the world you love what it could someday be.

Below is my own humble Down and Out album. Now let's see yours.

As I promised, I've released the complete text of the book (in ASCII text, HTML, and printable PDF) under a Creative Commons license. Download it, share it, email it, post it to your site, drop it in your P2P file-sharing cache!

I've also prepared a list of meatspace and cyberspace booksellers around the world that are carrying the book. Please email me if you can suggest good indie bookstores that are carrying the book -- I'd like to mention as many as possible.

All the info about the book -- reviews, news, signings, etc -- are gathered up on a Movable Type blog that Mena and Ben were kind enough to design and set up for me. I'm completely taken with how cool the site looks, and how easy it's been to get content into. Blogging tools are great CMS.

So, that's my big news for the day. I'm in Vegas today, attending CES for work, but I'm hanging onto my SideKick, so g'head and bombard me with your brickbats and laurels.

I sure hope you like my book.

Why am I doing this thing? Well, it's a long story, but to shorten it up: first-time novelists have a tough row to hoe. Our publishers don't have a lot of promotional budget to throw at unknown factors like us. Mostly, we rise and fall based on word-of-mouth. I'm not bad at word-of-mouth. I have a blog, Boing Boing, where I do a lot of word-of-mouthing. I compulsively tell friends and strangers about things that I like.

And telling people about stuff I like is way, way easier if I can just send it to 'em. Way easier.

What's more, P2P nets kick all kinds of ass. Most of the books, music and movies ever released are not available for sale, anywhere in the world. In the brief time that P2P nets have flourished, the ad-hoc masses of the Internet have managed to put just about *everything* online. What's more, they've done it for cheaper than any other archiving/revival effort ever. I'm a stone infovore and this kinda Internet mishegas gives me a serious frisson of futurosity.

Yeah, there are legal problems. Yeah, it's hard to figure out how people are gonna make money doing it. Yeah, there is a lot of social upheaval and a serious threat to innovation, freedom, business, and whatnot. It's your basic end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario, and as a science fiction writer, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenaria are my stock-in-trade.

"I recently saw 3 mildly obese young women between the ages of 22 and 35, who had worn tight "low-rise" trousers (also called hiphuggers) over the previous 6 to 8 months. All presented with symptoms of tingling or a burning sensation on the lateral aspect of the thigh (bilateral in one case). The results of a physical examination were unremarkable, except for mild local tenderness at the anterior superior iliac spine in 2 patients. These 2 patients also had Tinel's sign, whereby a reproducible tingling sensation was elicited when the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve was stimulated by finger-tapping close to the anterior superior iliac spine. One of the women was concerned about multiple sclerosis and requested MRI but was reassured by my explanation of the origin of her symptoms. In all 3 patients, the symptoms resolved after 4 to 6 weeks of avoiding hiphuggers and wearing loose-fitting dresses."

Practically, this means that if you have an Internet connection in location A and you want to make it work in location B, you can drop Airport Extreme devices with external antennae in both locations, and the one in location B will not only slurp in the Internet connection from location A, it will also retransmit it for wireless-equipped laptops whose antennae aren't studly enough to get a clear signal from location A. And since there's a spare Ethernet port on the Airport Extreme box, you can also connect a wired LAN to the device.

This sound like the start of a beautiful mesh network. Link Discuss

Instead of creating a casing and then laboriously filling it with electronic circuit boards, components and switches, the plan is to print a complete and fully assembled device.

The trick is to print layer upon layer of conducting and semiconducting polymers in such a way that the circuitry the device requires is built up as part of the bodywork.

When the technique is perfected, devices such as light bulbs, radios, remote controls, mobile phones and toys will be spat out as individual fully functional systems without expensive and labour-intensive production on an assembly line.

"Pointers to kitschy religious stuff. In the "New Gadgets" section, for example, they have a Bible that spits fire when you open it, and a Martin Luther Bobble Head Doll. And a place that will PhotoShop images of your dead loved ones into a picture of Jesus in the clouds (for a fee, of course). And so on."

Yesterday (below) I asked Google to let us query its database of queries to find out what the people want to find out, to do our own zeitgeist, about anything, anywhere, anyzeit. Aaron Bailey at 601am did the ingenious thing and used Google's adwords calculator to do almost that.

He found:
: Glenn Reynolds: 0.2 clicks/day
: Jeff Jarvis: 0.2 clicks/day (wow, I'm tied!)
: Sex: 16,000 clicks/day (oh, well)

: I think this leads to a new Google game: Zeitgeist yourself. How many people look for you or your hot topics per day?

(You have to go through the pain of creating your own ad and then putting in keywords but it doesn't take long. Tips: calculate on all languages, all countries and up the cost-per-click or else anything having to do with sex will go off the charts.)

We have formed the Wireless Commons because a global wireless network is within our grasp. We will work to define and achieve a wireless commons built using open spectrum, and able to connect people everywhere. We believe there is value to an independent and global network which is open to the public. We will break down commercial, technical, social and political barriers to the commons. The wireless commons bridges one of the few remaining gaps in universal communication without interference from middlemen and meddlers.

Humanity is on the verge of a turning point because the Internet has transformed the way humans relate with one another. All communication can be traced to a human relationship, whether it's lovers exchanging instant messages or teenagers sharing music. The Internet has given us the ability to communicate faster and more cheaply than ever before in history.

The Internet's value increases exponentially with the number of people who are able to participate. In today's world, communication can take place without the use of antiquated telecommunications networks. The organizations that control these networks are limping anachronisms that are constrained by the expense and physical necessity of using wires to build their networks. Because of this, they cannot serve the great mass of people who stand to benefit from a wireless commons. Their interests diverge from ours, and their control over the network strangles our ability to communicate.

The detainees, who represent wide segments of society such as business owners, scientists, and engineers, were handcuffed and shackled as they were transported across several western states before they ended up in San Diego.

There were several reports of inhumane detention conditions such as the collection of 17-40 people in a freezing 8-by-10 cell with one toilet and two pieces of paper each for "hygienic" purposes. One detainee was told to drink from the toilet after he asked for water.

Putting a fax machine in every FedEx office would radically reconfigure the center of their network, thus slashing costs: toner would replace jet fuel, bike messenger's hourly rates would replace pilot's salaries, and so on. With a much less expensive network, FedEx could attract customers with a discount on regular delivery rates, but with the dramatically lower costs, profit margins would be huge compared to actually moving packages point to point. Lower prices, higher margins, and to top it all off, the customer would get their documents in 2 hours instead of 24. What's not to love?

Abject failure was not to love, as it turned out. Two years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, FedEx pulled the plug on ZapMail, allowing it to vanish without a trace. And the story of ZapMail's collapse holds a crucial lesson for the telephone companies today.

HomeRF is basically dead in the water. It has been dead commercially for a while now, but with no governing body behind it, it's really gone.

Can an IBM punch card qualify as a circumvention device under the DMCA? I've translated Tom Murphy's "embed" program from C to a short Perl script. Agfa Monotype claims that embed violates the anti-circumvention provisions of the DCMA (the programs clears the 16-bit "embedding" flags field of TrueType files). At 76 characters, this script will neatly fit on an old IBM punch card. Given that punch cards are machine readable, would this qualify as a DMCA circumvention device?

You may be interested in the story of Faramarz Farahani and other high-tech workers in California who, trying to do the right thing on the advice of their lawyers, went to clear up immigration paperwork. Farahani is a Canadian who was born in Iran, as was another man.

In his case, he had overstayed his visa by 2 days. When he went to the INS, they were too busy, and rather than having him come back when they didn't have so many people on staff, they jailed him, sending him on a Con Air junket, eventually to a San Diego jail, where, in the holiday spirit, he had to sleep in a crowded cell on a concrete floor while INS agents woke them every 15 minutes to ask questions.

Only because he had help from his silicon valley employer and because he had good English did he make it out after only 5 days of fun. Welcome to America!

Richard Metzger, co-founder of disinfo.com, will be signing copies of his new book, Disinformation: The Interviews, and showing scenes from his TV series of the same name. If you come, draw a green dot on the back of your hand, so we can recognize one another.

Link Discuss

All you need to do is sign up at this site, and the RIAA will mail you a check. If so many people sign up that the settlement ends up getting spread too thin, the RIAA will mail charitable organizations the checks instead. You can't lose!

Unless you don't sign up. Despite notices of the settlement in TV Guide and throughout blogistan, the cash remains unclaimed. What are you waiting for? Claim it! Link Discuss

James and Laurie Ann Ryan's Las Vegas vacation last January was more exciting than they would have liked. Soon after they checked into the Hard Rock Hotel, they found a body in the bathtub. When they tried to leave, hotel security guards and a paramedic detained them...

Both incidents were practical jokes, manufactured by television shows. But the Ryans and Mr. Zelnick were not amused, and they have sued the producers...

Bob Banner, who produced "Candid Camera" in the 1960's, said he could not recall a lawsuit against that show.

"We never tried to embarrass people or put them in a precarious situation," Mr. Banner said. "We did much gentler things."

Keep walking. When you stop, even to sit for a moment and consult your schedule, you will be surrounded by male university students, snapping your photo, asking for your email address and interrogating you about globalization and neo-liberalism.

Even if you walk slowly or are engaged in conversation with someone else, passersby will get a look of urgency on their face, interrupt you, and say: "You are coming from which country?" or simply "which country, please?" You will also get a ASF burlap bag's worth of flyers and 10RS pamphlets each day on everything from Indigenous Farmer Trade Unionists to Dalit Feminists Seeking Solidarity against the Hypocricy in Education. Everyone will have an awesome cause. Everyone will be wearing it on their sleeve. They will communicate it to you with intensity and unwaverign eye-contact. This will happen several times an hour. You will need to lie down for a couple of hours and miss that lecture you wanted to see because you are unable to string together a sentence and you begin to feel dizzy. You will feel like you want to attend everything and nothing. You will remember you have not had a real day of chilling since you got to India...

You will decide not to go back to the lecture when you meet some funky Fulbright Scholars. They will talk to you about India and their cool projects like working in Gujarat for self-employed women artisans or writing a surrealist novel while teaching in Hyderabad. One guy from Alabama just came out of the closet aftern an encounter with a Jaipurian in Delhi and is very hyper about it. You will go for beer with all of them and a Parsi poet who has put together an anthology of gay Indian writers. He will be a total queen who loves to dominate the conversation. One of the scholars will tell you she is hitting on you. It will be way-flattering. A few beers later, you will discover she knows Krista/Thea from the Twin-Oaks commune in Virginia. She even played with Jonah Raspberry. The world is a small place, made up of small encounters.

The three-member Oslo City Court found Johansen, now 19 and a household name as DVD-Jon in Norway, innocent on all counts in a unanimous 25-page ruling in the latest setback for the film industry's drive to prevent film copying.

``I'm very satisfied. We won support on all points. I had figured that we could win, but it can go either way,'' said Johansen after the verdict was read out.

The prosecution said it would decide in the next two weeks whether to appeal. Johansen said he expects another round because this is the first such case in Norway...

Prosecutors had called for a 90-day suspended jail sentence, confiscation of computer equipment and court costs, all of which were rejected in the ruling.

Ms. Hamburger has also commissioned a Disneyland "Snow White" musical from Dara Cloud, a playwright, and Eric Schaeffer, artistic director of the Signature Theater Company in Arlington, Va., who recently completed the Sondheim Celebration at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

In addition Ms. Hamburger said Disney was producing a new parade for Disney World's Epcot Center in Orlando, Fla. Its creators are Andrew Jackness, who recently designed the set for "Mourning Becomes Electra" at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, and Candice Donnelly, who designed the costumes for "This Thing of Darkness" at the Atlantic Theater Company in Manhattan.

Although its magic carpet indeed flies, this "Aladdin" leans toward old-fashioned theater, with painted backdrops. "The whole philosophy behind doing this is to take it up a notch, so theme-park entertainment is on a par with Broadway entertainment," Ms. Zambello, the director, said.

Smeagol writhed in corruption, his lifelong attempts to collectivize the Hobbit economy had twisted his soul and body and brought ruin to the Shire. "Precious," he muttered. "Precious colective good giving according to need." He shuddered at the thought of the unbroken individual standing proudly over a conquered plain with the Ring, and felt jealous that the wholesome power could not be his.

-Lord of the Rings, by Ayn Rand.

Yet both kinds of discs, despite being developed in the 'Net-head late '90s, are odd throwbacks to the pre-PC era. Most obviously, they're the same size as the original CD. Can you name any other digital device that hasn't shrunk in 20 years? The players for them are bulky, closer in size to Sony's first CD decks than to Apple's iPod, which holds 400 albums rather than just one.

Flip one of the players over, and you'll find another retro sight: analog output jacks. To prevent buyers from running off bit-for-bit copies of the new discs, gear-makers have agreed not to put digital ports on either DVD-A or SACD players. Yet old-fashioned analog connections erode pristine digital sound and are prone to interference from televisions, lights, and computers--the objects they'll be placed next to in modern homes.

The real deal-breaker is that a stand-alone player is the only kind available. By manufacturers' consensus, there won't be any network ports on the players, nor will there be any DVD-A or SACD drives available for computers. Some makers are promising a digital link from the player to a home-theater console, but it'll be deliberately incompatible with any of the jacks on a computer. In bringing the CD up to date with the PC, the music industry is also trying to split the two technologies asunder again.

It's no wonder that gearheads who buy the latest, greatest everything have ignored DVD-A and SACD in favor of MP3 players and CD burners. Computer-friendly music formats let you archive hundreds of albums on a laptop, create custom playlists that draw from your entire collection, and download them to portable players smaller than a single CD jewel box. Today's fans want their music in a form that fits the pocket-sized, personalized, interconnected world of their computers, cameras, phones, and PDAs. Asking digital consumers to give that power back in exchange for a better-sounding disc is like offering them a phonograph needle.

Google me and you can learn that I do it all on a manual typewriter, something that hasn't been true since 1985, but which makes such an easy hook for a lazy journalist that I expect to be reading it for the rest of my life. I only used a typewriter because that was what everyone used in 1977, and it was manual because that was what I happened to have been able to get, for free. I did avoid the Internet, but only until the advent of the Web turned it into such a magnificent opportunity to waste time that I could no longer resist. Today I probably spend as much time there as I do anywhere, although the really peculiar thing about me, demographically, is that I probably watch less than twelve hours of television in a given year, and have watched that little since age fifteen. (An individual who watches no television is still a scarcer beast than one who doesn't have an email address.) I have no idea how that happened. It wasn't a decision.

I do have an email address, yes, but, no, I won't give it to you. I am one and you are many, and even if you are, say, twenty-seven in grand global total, that's still too many. Because I need to have a life and waste time and write.

I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here.

"I was reading on mefi about the surplus US aircraft boneyard when someone posted this link to beautiful Terraserver satellite photo of the place. It's like a bizarre art piece or something!"

"What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?" - GWB

Ian Wilmut * J. Craig Venter * Steven Pinker * Ray Kurzweil * Gino Segre * Stephen Schneider * Oliver Morton * Rodney Brooks * Seth Lloyd * Denis Dutton * Freeman Dyson * Philip Campbell * Kevin Kelly * Lawrence Brilliant * Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi * Paul Davies * Robert Shapiro * Jaron Lanier * J. Doyne Farmer * Colin Tudge * Marvin Minsky * George Dyson * William H. Calvin * David Gelernter * Janna Levin * Howard Gardner * Martin Seligman * Richard Nisbett * David Lykken * Alison Gopnik * Marc D. Hauser * Eric R. Kandel * K. Eric Drexler * James J. O'Donnell * Michael Shermer * Daniel Goleman * Richard Saul Wurman * Andy Clark * John Horgan * Roger C. Schank * Nancy Etcoff * Gerald Holton * Judith Rich Harris * Brian Goodwin * Karl Sabbagh * Joel Garreau * Susan Blackmore * Leo Chalupa * Jordan Pollack * David Myers * Ernst Poppel * Lisa Randall * Stuart Pimm * Eduardo Punset * Lee Smolin * Rafael Nunez * Timothy Taylor * Mike Weiner * Leon Lederman * Bart Kosko * Adam Bly * Randolph Nesse * Terrence Sejnowski * Mary Catherine Bateson * Alan Alda * Cliff Barney * Douglas Rushkoff * Donald D. Hoffman * Steve Giddings * Lance Knobel * Piet Hut * Robert Aunger * Christine Finn * David M. Buss * Beatrice Golomb * Rupert Sheldrake * Delta Willis * Clifford Pickover * Eberhard Zangger * Steven Quartz * Keith Devlin * John McCarthy * Gary F. Marcus * Justin Hall * Stephen Reucroft & John Swain

Letter with stamp placed at top left corner (incorrect stamp location). Formal business-style letter, to formal business name, in high-quality envelope. Days to delivery, 21. The stamp was crossed out by hand; the top right corner of the envelope was stamped with the following: EVIDENCE POSTAGE WAS AFFIXED, ONE RATE OK'D.

$1 bill. Sealed in clear plastic, with label attached with address and postage. Days to delivery, 6.

$20 bill. Days to delivery, 4.

Football. Days to delivery, 6. Male postal carrier was talkative and asked recipient about the scores of various current games. Carrier noted that mail must be wrapped.

Pair of new, expensive tennis shoes. Strapped together with duct tape. Days to delivery, 7. When shoes were picked up at station, laces were tied tightly together with difficult-to-remove knot. Clerk noted that mail must be wrapped.

10-MAY-78 23:20:30-PDT,2250;000000000001
Mail-from: MIT-AI rcvd at 7-MAY-78 2316-PDT
Date: 8 MAY 1978 0213-EDT
From: RMS at MIT-AI (Richard M. Stallman)
Subject: MSGGROUP# 697 Some Thoughts about advertising
To: stefferud at USC-ISI
Redistributed-To: [ISI]Mailing.List;154:
Redistributed-By: STEFFERUD (connected to MSGGROUP)
Redistributed-Date: 8 MAY 1978

1) I didn't receive the DEC message, but I can't imagine I would have been bothered if I have. I get tons of uninteresting mail, and system announcements about babies born, etc. At least a demo MIGHT have been interesting.

2) The amount of harm done by any of the cited "unfair" things the net has been used for is clearly very small. And if they have found any people any jobs, clearly they have done good. If I had a job to offer, I would offer it to my friends first. Is this "evil"? Must I advertise in a paper in every city in the US with population over 50,000 and then go to all of them to interview, all in the name of fairness? Some people, I am afraid, would think so. Such a great insistence on fairness would destort everyone's lives and do much more harm than good. So I state unashamedly that I am in favor of seeing jobs offered via whatever.

3) It has just been suggested that we impose someone's standards on us because otherwise he MIGHT do so. Well, if you feel that those standards are right and necessary, go right ahead and support them. But if you disagree with them, as I do, why hand your opponents the victory on a silver platter? By the suggested reasoning, we should always follow the political views that we don't believe in, and especially those of terrorists, in anticipation of their attempts to impose them on us. If those who think that the job offers are bad are going to try to prevent them, then those of us who think they are unrepugnant should uphold our views. Besides, I doubt that anyone can successfully force a site from outside to impose censorship, if the people there don't fundamentally agree with the desirability of it.

4) Would a dating service for people on the net be "frowned upon" by DCA? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.

This bit of news wouldn't be worth posting, but the end of the article had a nice twist:

Hall was reelected to her position last year with 86% of the vote after a challenge from Santa Barbara County prosecutor Charles Biely, whose campaign to unseat her collapsed after the discovery of pornography on his workplace computer. Biely resigned from the district attorney's office and officially withdrew as a candidate, but could not get his name off the ballot. At the time, Hall criticized Biely for embarassing the courts, commenting: "It's things like this that makes the public lose faith in the criminal justice system."

'Recorded about noon on December 3, 2002, on a city lake in St. Paul, MN. For a short period most years there is a time of continuous Ice Booming. The weather must be just right and the ice must be the right thickness for continuous booming. Recorded about 75 yards from shore after one of the first 0 degree F nights with about three inches of ice. The sound is created as the ice expands and builds during these early cold winter days. If there is no snow cover as in this recording the sound carries for great distances... No filtering or amplification done of any kind; recorded with a single Sennheiser ME-62 located 6 inches off the ice and a Sony MZ-R90 Minidisc recorder.' This vacation was contributed by nature recordist and soundscape designer Rich Peet.

Every Sunday I'll be posting some good ol' time religion! Here we have "I'm A Mormon." I found this record while living in Reno, Nevada in 1993 and over the years from excessive play (mostly for alcohol-induced friends) my copy is worn out (literally), but thanks to Brother Russell (of Melbaworld) I have a nice clean copy for you to download. I have a couple of friends (of the Mormon faith) who had this record while growing up (they also had the "Bounce Back" cassette, but that's for another Sunday!). The wacky thing about this song is not only the lyrics "I'm a Mormon, yes I am, so if you want to study a Mormon, I'm a living specimen" but it's set to a rousing marching beat. Don't be surprised if you end up walking down the street and slowly start to go insane humming it.

"Currently, Asimo is simply accepted as a 'cute' robot--not as a practical one. Our next goal is how to bridge the distance between robots and human beings."

For the next step of Asimo's development, Sakagami thinks Honda will have to study how the human brain works. Within a few years, Asimo will become much closer to human beings, having more "intelligence."

Does this mean that the border line between robots and human beings will disappear? "I don't think robots will replace human beings. It occurs only in movies."

The Operation is an adult film shot entirely in infrared video. It's a deliciously rich fusion of art, sci-fi, and porn: there is no dialogue, only motion and ambient, ethereal, whirring sound. It's explicit and erotic, but the choice to shoot in infrared transforms the human bodies onscreen into incandescent, glass-like forms. Tight shots of the film's two central characters look more like sea anemones from another planet, illuminated from inside. There's something wonderfully unselfconscious about the way this film was performed and directed... you're struck with the notion you're witnessing something very personal, very intimate--and at the same time, utterly otherworldly and alien. I've never seen anything like it, and it works. Beautifully.

To order 'The Operation' on VHS send $25.00 check or money order, and a signed age statement (21 and over please) to:

RADIUS PICTURES
818 SW 3rd Ave., #1121
Portland, OR 97204

Update: Sorry, but the streaming video links at the link above don't work. Site does display stills and an interview with Marne Lucas, aka Gina Velour, co-creator and actor in the film. And ignore the ordering information on the strokemag.com page, it's out of date.

"Wendy Carlos is a solar eclipse fan and she has just posted images from a total eclipse that occured in December. This link takes you directly to the page about this eclipse."

This month, we will be discussing The New Science of Networks as described in Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's book "Linked."

Seemingly removed from virtual reality and games, recent research in the way networks grow and change may turn out to be critical in understanding how to build and operate virtual environments of all kinds.

I will present an overview of modern network theory (scale-free, small-world, winner-take-all and more) and then we'll spend the evening chatting about it.

Link Discuss

Walls and fences have been removed in favor of unobtrusive camera surveillance and electronic alert networks. Instead of clanging iron gates, metal passageways and grim cells, there are linoleum-floored hallways lined with living spaces for inmates that resemble dormitory rooms more than lockups in a slammer...

At the "open" prisons, inmates and guards address each other by first name. Prison superintendents go by nonmilitary titles like manager or governor, and prisoners are sometimes referred to as "clients" or, if they are youths, "pupils."...

Generous home leaves are available, particularly as the end of a sentence nears, and for midterm inmates, there are houses on the grounds, with privacy assured, where they can spend up to four days at a time with visiting spouses and children.

Whuffie
It's the great conundrum of the web. Why do so many people do so much for free? What do people get out of it? Whuffie - that's what. Coined by writer Cory Doctorow for his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Whuffie embodies respect, karma, mad-props; call it what you will, the web runs on it. BH