The Center for Responsibile Nanotechnology: otherwise, your neighborhood may dissolve into brightly colored machine-parts.

The technology is already on its way. But who will control it? If universal manufacturing is not administered properly, there is great risk of it being used badly—either by the entity that first develops it, or by groups that later gain access to it. Development or control of the technology by a special interest group would probably lead to military or economic oppression. Two competing programs could lead to an unstable arms race. Irresponsible release would make the full power of the technology available to terrorists, criminals, dictators, and teenagers. The safest course appears to be a single, rapid, worldwide development program by an organization that recognizes the necessity of wise administration.

Teenagers? My stars and garters. Link Discuss (Thanks, Mike!)

Dan Gillmor (who is sitting two seats to the left of me, blogging David Weinberger's SXSW keynote, which is delish) has written a blistering attack on the journalists charged with keeping tabs on George W. Bush.

But where the hell is the press when it comes to the current tenant in the White House? Bush has repeatedly failed to tell the truth, and his past is loaded with the kinds of behavior that have caused major news organizations to go into overdrive when Democrats were doing it. Here's one example. You probably don't know that Bush apparently went AWOL (Dallas Morning News) from his Air National Guard duty in the 1970s. It was covered by a few newspapers, but the story disappeared after he claimed he couldn't remember what happened. Right.

Link Discuss

A fascinating diary of one writer's trial of the narcolepsy drug modafinil (creepily marketed as Provigil), a drug that slows the release of GABA, a sleep promoter in the brain.

The seduction of modafinil is that you can feel as peppy after six hours sleep as you would after nine. (It may also have a more drastic effect.) Doctors see modafinil as an occasional pick-me-up. They doubt you could take the drug everyday without consequences: Most sleep researchers agree that the longer sleep is necessary for hormonal regulation, among other essential bodily functions. (Drugs aren't the only way we may steal less sleep. Click here to read about how we may enlist gene therapy to help us stay awake.)

Tired of merely writing about enhancement (and tired, period), I decided to conduct my own unscientific trial of modafinil. As the father of a 2-year-old, I live in a constant haze of sleep deprivation. I vowed to take modafinil for a week and see what happened. Could it transform a lazy, exhausted hack into a brilliant Jeffrey Goldberg? Or recast a grouchy father into Superdad? I persuaded my doctor—and no, you can't have his number—to prescribe me a week's supply of Provigil, seven 200-milligram pills.

Link Discuss

Glenn Fleishman has written a very cogent piece about the current reality of mesh wireless.

In pure mesh systems, each node routes traffic across the mesh and bridges it to backhaul or a local network. In FHP’s system, nodes route traffic but distribute it through an integral Wi-Fi station. If deployed densely, these systems create a “hot zone� with reduced wiring cost and great flexibility in increasing density or changing coverage.

One FHP product type, currently called SmartPoint, handles mesh routing and Wi-Fi distribution, while another, currently called RoutePoint, bridges backhaul into the system, allowing bandwidth to be added to a mesh in any location. (The company is in the process of rebranding both products.) FHP’s approach relies on existing Wi-Fi client infrastructure.

Link Discuss

Great gallery of mosaics made from Rubik's Cubeses -- the artist says he got his pixelart skills using draw programs on an Apple //e. Link Discuss (via Geisha Asobi)

David Pogue rounds up the new "legit" music services and concludes that they all cost too much, have confusing pricing plans, use dumbass DRM, and don't have the selection to compete with the free file-sharing networks. Link Discuss

A new Reservoir Dogs game will let you play any character, but I suspect that we'll all end up being Mr. Pink.

SCi promises that gamers will be able to play all the film's key characters, including Mr Blonde, infamous for torturing a policeman in one of the movie's most visceral scenes.

Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom)

Roogle: an RSS search-tool. Good idea. Stupid name and design (why go out of your way to actually be dilutive? Ha ha, you've wasted your time getting a lawyer-letter and wasted Google's time generating it). Link Discuss (via Joi Ito)

I missed Stallman's keynote last night at SXSW, but my pal Heath took great running notes through the talk.

The theory of this is that the public pays a price. The public trades away its natural right to copy things and in exchange gets the benefit of getting more things written. The thing we traded away wasn't a right we could use easily. Then printing press technology got more efficient. Printing presses around 1900 got cheaper. Even poor people stopped copying things by hand. People started forgetting that copies could be made by hand. Things went along more or less OK. But the age of the printing press is going away for the age of the computer. Not everybody wants this to be easy for you.

Digital information technology brings us back to a situation more like the ancient world. It's true that mass producing CD's is less expensive than making a one-off CD, but the difference isn't that great. Any computer user can make copies. There's no inherent reason for copies of things to be made centrally. Copyright law now affects every citizen. It no longer affects companies. It takes away freedoms from you and me. Copyright law is no longer painless, easy to enforce, or arguably beneficial. To stop you from sharing something with a friend, the police state needs to intrude into your house. We're no longer trading away something we don't have anyway. We need to renegotiate the deal.

Link Discuss

CNN correspondent Kevin Sites has been sharing what amounts to a blogless wartime blog with BoingBoing readers over the past few weeks. An excerpt from the latest in his ongoing series of e-mailed, first-person accounts from Kuwait follows (the rest is here):

For most of the journalists here in Kuwait, this is the fear and this is the joke; that for all our technology--our videophones and portable dishes, our Thurayas, and Iridiums and Neras, our digital cameras and laptop editing systems--we could end up covering this war with wind up film cameras.

It's on the grapevine that the U.S. Air Force has developed an electro magnetic pulse weapon at Kirtland Air Force that could be used in war against Iraq. The concept is devastating simple; flying over the target area, the military emits a microwave swath, which basically fries the electronics of any appliance or device in its path.

Like a giant switch, when the EMP weapon is flicked on, the lights go out. People, however, are supposedly spared--unless they happened to be wearing a pacemaker or are hooked up to other life sustaining machinery. The EMP weapon does not apparently differentiate between cell phones and hospital respirators.

Tactically, it could help to end the war more swiftly, by denying Iraq any military communications. The order to fire a chemical weapon may be eliminated along with the chain of command.

Link to the complete text; Discuss (Thanks, JP)

This is a fascinating tale about the recent auction of the last known 1933 Double Eagle gold coin (save for the one on echibit in the Smithsonian), a coin whose provenance includes shady Philly grifters, playboy Egyptian princes, and daring Secret Service stings. Link Discuss (Thanks, Kate!)

The BBC reports that WiFi networks will be rolled out in 3,000 British pubs this year. Seems to me that American caffeine jitters will result in fewer coffee spills on laptops than British barfights will lead to beer-spill tragedies. Link Discuss (Thanks, Gary!)

Bigfoot researcher Loren Coleman has found a unique niche in Sasquatch research: He's looking into bigfoot's sex life. Link Discuss (Thanks, Gil!)

Easy Bizarre Crafts
Macrame Owls
Crocheted Thongs, Diamond Braid stitch
String Art
Origami Art
Pencil Art
Vintage videogame cross-stitch
Petit Point and pixel stitching, retro geek themes
MouseMod
Link Discuss (Thanks, Frank!)

Gotta get to the airport for SXSW now. I'm bringing three access-points and a signal amp, and I've arranged to borrow hubs and such from various Austinites, bring your wireless card! Here's where you can find me during the confernce:

• Doing Good Online: Innovative Ideas From Non-Profits on the Internet (Saturday, 5PM)
• Some Rights Reserved: The Creative Commons Project (Sunday, 11:30AM)
• Bloggies (Sunday, 3PM)
• Why I Dig Working in the Cultural Gutter (Monday, 3:30PM)
• Booksigning (Monday, 4:30PM)
• The Hollywood Agenda (Tuesday, 11:30AM)
• EFF-Austin party (Monday, 8PM)
• Bruce Sterling's party (Tuesday, 8PM)

Link Discuss

Adam sez, " Basically SmithKline is saying that [generic drug maker] Apotex can't make Paxil because at a crystalline level, contamination from them making another drug will cause minute amounts of *their* patented drug to be produced as a side effect. (the judge makes an observation that people will infringe upon the patent by ingesting it even if Apotex was not)" 2.3MB PDF Link Discuss (Thanks, Adam!)

Doc "Linux Journal" Searls and David "Small Pieces" Weinberger -- two of the Cluetrain authors -- have written a new manifesto, called "Word of Ends," which attempts to explain the Internet in terms that entertainment execs and bellheads can understand.

10. Some mistakes we can stop making already.

The companies whose value came from distributing content in ways the market no longer wants – can you hear us Recording Industry? – can stop thinking that bits are like really lightweight atoms. You are never going to prevent us from copying the bits we want. Instead, why not give us some reasons to prefer buying music from you? Hell, we might even help you sell your stuff if you asked us to.

The government types who have confused the value of the Internet with the value of its contents could realize that in tinkering with the Internet's core, they're actually driving down its value. In fact, they maybe could see that having a system that transports all bits equally, without government or industry censorship, is the single most powerful force for democracy and open markets in history.

Link Discuss (Thanks, David!)

Rob "Pringles Antenna" Flickenger of the Seattle Wireless project debunks the claims of "seattlewireless.com," a company that has taken on a confusingly similar domain name, then made of a bunch of claims that makes the relationship between the community group and the company even blurrier.

Up until today, seattlewireless.com has been little more than an annoyance to actual community networking projects. But several important lines have now been crossed:

* Various node lists and maps from projects including NYC Wireless, PersonalTelco, and of course, SeattleWireless.NET, are listed as seattlewireless.COM nodes.

* They are now taking money for the privilege of accessing these nodes, none of which are supported by their "organization". Interestingly enough, their credit card entry page doesn't even use SSL.

* The "company" is now making wild claims about what its technology can do. Here's a choice quote:

"Our telecommunications industry platforms, the Telecom Platform, the Village Telephony Platform and the Personal Telco Platform, allow roaming between different networks and across standards such as 802.11, Bluetooth, HiperLan, TDMA, CDMA, and 3G cellular networks. We partner with carriers, CLECs, ILECs, and telecom companies to license these Wi-Fi platform networks while supplying tools, content, services, branded bandwidth, and portals."

Link Discuss (Thanks, Rob!)

Big map of fetishes and sexuals obessions. I must admit that I'm almost completely lost even with the map. What are bug-seekers, magical freaks, mudlarking, and turkey men? Link Discuss

Q&A with Brad, continued. The recording industry will probably want to do one of two things: buy this company or nuke them. How is Xingtone different from other existing customizable ringtone services? Brad says they've developed technology that allows users to upload digital music onto mobile phones for the first time. Xingtone converts your MP3s to ringtones -- and could soon make today's robotic ringtones sound positively retro. Brad explains here:
audblog audio post, pics, Discuss

I cornered Brad Zutaut for the lowdown on his company's customized ringtone and display service. Xingtone converts any sort of sound you can cram into an MP3 -- music you write yourself, the sound of your baby talking, or a popular music clip like the one he demonstrated tonight -- and plays that audio as a ringtone, along with related images on your phone's screen.

audblog audio post, pics, Discuss

Tonight in Los Angeles, I co-hosted a get-together for [unwired], a listserv and community of people who work in (or cover news about) wireless technology. A couple dozen entrepreneurs, technologists, journalists, and others gathered for drinks, hot geeky gossip, and live demos of new wireless technologies at a little bar at the Omni Hotel downtown -- the only hotel in the entire L.A. metropolitan area that offers 100% free WiFi to guests, patrons, and anybody who just happens to be stopping through. The hotel's Director of Operations claims that occupancy rates have soared since the free wireless service was introduced, and told us, "Our guests who use WiFi would rather wait for an hour to have an overflowing toilet fixed than wait an hour for an out-of-service WiFi connection to be fixed." Four wireless points, installed in the maids' closets and in the elevator shafts, power the 802.11b network that permeates the building and surrounding grounds at killer speeds.

After a few rounds of mojitos and manhattans, everyone huddles around Brad Zutaut, founder of Xingtone, for a live demo of his company's technology. Read about it, and about the [unwired] gathering tonight, in this Reuters story published just a couple of hours ago. Join us at the event by listening to the audblog post phoned in from my mobile. Here, Brad is demoing Xingtones live and answering questions from the crowd.

audblog audio post, pics, Reuters news article, Discuss

This DOD glossary of milspec jargon is a writer's dream. Nightmare?

electromagnetic deception
(DOD) The deliberate radiation, re-radiation, alteration, suppression, absorption, denial, enhancement, or reflection of electromagnetic energy in a manner intended to convey misleading information to an enemy or to enemy electromagnetic-dependent weapons, thereby degrading or neutralizing the enemy's combat capability. Among the types of electromagnetic deception are: a. manipulative electromagnetic deception--Actions to eliminate revealing, or convey misleading, electromagnetic telltale indicators that may be used by hostile forces; b. simulative electromagnetic deception--Actions to simulate friendly, notional, or actual capabilities to mislead hostile forces; and c. imitative electromagnetic deception--The introduction of electromagnetic energy into enemy systems that imitates enemy emissions. See also electronic warfare.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Greg!)

Here's the audio of Jack "Boston Strangler" Valenti's one-hour talk at Duke University, about the "moral imperative" of stamping out file-sharing. This is so ripe for remixing. 7.2MB MP3 Link Discuss (Thanks, Mike!)

Windows Update spies on your XP box and sends information about your installed software back to the MSFT Death Star. Best of all, this was discovered by sniffing the "secure" SSL protocol that MSFT uses to communicate. How? By exploiting an undocumented API in MSFT's own system.

Evidence obtained by German hardware site tecChannel suggests a list of software installed on an XP machine is sent to Microsoft when users run Windows Update. When patches are downloaded, a few kilobytes of data are sent in the opposite direction over a secure SSL channel. Because the data is encrypted a simple packet sniffer can't be used to see what this data contains. However tecChannel's tecDUMP utility takes advantage of an undocumented WinInet API, enabling an examination of the data before it becomes encrypted. According to tecChannel, the information sent to Microsoft includes details of all the software installed in a machine, not only Microsoft applications.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Pablos!)

Here's video and audio from last night's reading of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe at The Booksmith in San Francisco. Link Discuss (Thanks, Lisa!)

My wife, Carla, has a new book out called Braid Crazy, published by Chronicle, the same folks who published my Mad Professor book. It's a book of fun hair braids. You can see some pictures here (our daughter Sarina is modeling the Dorothy braids). And I did the how-to illustrations. Link Discuss

Ever wonder what kind of music they pipe into the subways in Pyongyang? Wonder no more! There is an unofficial website devoted to the North Korean metro system, complete with photos (like the patriotic underground mural shown at left) and downloadable music files. Don't miss North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's signature tune "No Motherland Without You," (the lyrics to which list his super-human powers), and "Reunification Rainbow," one of the songs performed by musicians with the Pyongyang Circus while visiting Seoul (with rare North Korean guitar solo).

"[The piped-in subway music] consists of North Korean anthems and patriotic songs, although the speaker system is also used for, shall we say, public service announcements, reportedly including messages exhorting people to be on the lookout for traitors and spies."

Link, Discuss, (Thanks, John!)

Ganguro are Japanese girls who try to look black have very deep tans. Here's a page of ganguro girl pics. Links Discuss

"Beards don't always get the respect and appreciation they deserve. These pages highlight many excellent beards that are worthy of recognition. Take a look at the numerous examples of quality beards. Learn more about beards. Maybe you'll even decide to grow your own beard or persuade someone else to grow one! " Link Discuss

Quicktime panorama of the mess hall at Camp Arifjan, a U.S. military base south of Kuwait City. Link via Washington Post, Link to more QTVRs from US military stations in Kuwait, Discuss (Thanks, JP)

A physics student in Leeds, UK, has developed an equation describing the optimal means of getting a pancake to flip around in the air and land back in the pan.

The angular velocity of the object equals the square root of Pi, times the gravity divided by the distance the pancake is from the elbow times four - that is how to get the pancake back in the pan...

His theoretical work laid the groundwork for students designing a pancake-tossing machine, which could one day become a feature in every home.

Link Discuss (via /.)

Seattle Wireless launched a national service yesterday, allowing Seattle Wireless customers to connect to WiFi hotspots in 12 cities. Link Discuss (via Werblog)

Update: An anonymous tipster tells me that this is not true

A dealer in Stuttgart is selling off a rebuilt WWII German Enigma code-machine. Bidding stands at $5100, and the reserve has not been met yet. Link Discuss (via Interesting People)

Red Herring founder Tony Perkins' new project, the AlwaysOn Network, launched with a conspicuously awkward domain name: alwayson-network.com. Web usability rule number one: hyphenated domains suck. So what was already occupying the simpler alwaysonnetwork.com? A hideous Goth-Flash-diarrhea website from self-described "Bay Area Hyper-Rock band NAKED APE" (screenshot at left). Our of "sheer frustration," 18-year-old BoingBoing reader Numair says he's created a website at aonw.com, which forwards visitors to Perkins' new venture -- with some observations on the value of a wisely-chosen url:

"Tony (the guy who started Red Herring and Upside, both now defunct) obviously didn't put much thought into the domain name he used for his project, as it is one of the longest and most annoying URLs I have to type each day. Plus you can't explain it very easily to other people when talking to them, as it comes out something like 'always on dash network' ... then you have to explain that the dash isn't a word, it's a dash ... NOBODY uses a dash in their domain names. (Even T-Mobile bought tmobile.com).

After searching WHOIS for all of about, oh, TWO minutes, I discovered a much-easier-to-remember-and-use domain name, AONW.com, was available. I registered it and created the site you see here. So now you and I and all others fed up with AlwaysOn Network's absurd URL can simply type 'aonw.com' to get to the website.

The message on the front page of this website is a take on the title of Tony's book from 1999 - The Internet Bubble: Inside the Overvalued World of High-Tech Stocks--And What You Need to Know to Avoid the Coming Shakeout (apparently he has been skilled at pathetically-long names for some time now). There was one lesson Tony obviously missed out on while doing research for that book, so I wrote it in big letters to help him remember for next time. I should note that I like AlwaysOn a lot, and that I have no real grudge against Tony... I just want a shorter domain name to type, dammit."

Link to the AlwaysOn Network site, Link to "The Orifice of Naked Ape," link to Numair's AONW.com site, Discuss

Clay Shirky says:

One of my students is building a collection of digital folk art, the non-commercial artifacts of re-mix culture, from Hamster Dance and the Dancing Baby to All Your Base, and wants recollections and suggestions.

The intro to her project says "I am cataloging early popular web culture, putting together a collection of non-commercial digital projects that were widely distributed, the funny or strange things your friends attached in emails or the interesting websites they told you about. I'm focusing on media that was made or distributed by individuals for fun or with political intent - sort of the folk art of the digital world. It's hard to know which projects were the most popular of the most groundbreaking during the early days of the web (roughly 1994 - 1998), so I'm looking for suggestions on what to include."

She's got a form for submitting pointers.

Link, Discuss

The Pope -- who's been lobbying against war in Iraq -- isn't gonna like this. National retailers including Kmart, Rite Aid and Walgreens are selling Easter baskets in which the traditional choco-bunny centerpiece is replaced with plastic gun-toting miltary action figures.

At the Astor Place Kmart, the encampment is on display just inside the main entrance. A camouflaged sandy-haired soldier with an American-flag arm patch stands alert in a teal, pink, and yellow basket beneath a pretty green-and-purple bow. Within a doll-arm's reach are a machine gun, rifle, hand grenade, large knife, pistol, and round of ammunition. In the next basket a buzz-cut blond with a snazzy dress uniform hawks over homeland security, an American eagle shield on his arm, and a machine gun, pistol, Bowie knife, two grenades, truncheon, and handcuffs at the ready.

One must hunt a little harder to find the Easter sniper at Walgreens, but what lies in wait among the bunnies and chicks there is perhaps even more surreal. The Super Wrriors (sic) Battle Set and Placekeepers (sic) Military Men Play Set bristle with toy assault rifles and machine guns, tanks, troop transports, bomber planes, commanded by armored men with shaved heads and sunglasses. The assortment also includes a space-age ray gun and other imaginary hardware for orbital combat. Packets of jellybeans are tossed in as if an afterthought, nestled in the cellophane underbrush like anti-personnel mines.

Not surprisingly, the merger of religious observance and jingoistic lust sparked the ire of Christian leaders. Bishop George Packard, who oversees spiritual care for Episcopalian members of the armed services, worries about practical issues. He's concerned about creating a backlash against the military, and questions the message sent to Muslims by the melding of a Christian holiday with images of war.

Link to Village Voice story, Discuss (Thanks Higgins!)

A reminder! I am going to be reading from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom tonight at 7PM at the Booksmith in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury. I'll read from D&O, and maybe from something else -- either the novel that's coming next year or one of the novels that I'm working on at the moment. Booksmith gives out free author trading-cards, and is a very swell bookstore in general. Link Discuss

Sandia Labs have patented a MEMS-based nanoscale padlock as a new anti-hacker measure. The security benefits sound pretty dubious, but boy, the tech is awfully cool!

The Recodable Locking Device consists of two sides -- the user side and the secure side. To unlock the device, a user must enter a code that identically matches the code stored mechanically in the six code wheels. If the user makes even one wrong entry -- and close doesn't count -- the device mechanically "locks up" and does not allow any further tries until the owner resets it from the secure side.

The six gears and the comb drives would be put on a small chip that could be incorporated into any computer, computer network, or security system. Because the chip is built using integrated circuit fabricating techniques, hundreds can be constructed on a single six-inch silicon wafer. The end result is that the device will be very inexpensive to produce. Plummer says Sandia is the only place where development of such a mechanism could have occurred.

Link Discuss (via Interesting People)

GoogleHacks -- the new O'Reilly book written by Tara "ResearchBuzz" Calashain and Rael "Blosxom" Dornfest -- is out!

Google Hacks contains 100 tips, tricks and scripts that you can use to become instantly more effective in your research. Each hack can be read in just a few minutes, but can save hours of searching for the right answers.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dave!)

A survey commissioned by Intel ranks America's most unwired cities. Six of the top 10 are on the West Coast (BoingBoing readers, I beg of you: no eastside/westside playa-hata flame wars in the QuickTopic discussion zones).

The Portland, Ore.-Vancouver, Wash. area was the most unwired area, according to the survey. There are more than 3,700 hot spots in the United States spread out in cafes, airports, public parks and hotels... The survey was conducted to demonstrate that Wi-Fi technology and hot spots are not confined to labs or businesses.

"Some cities have a lot of them now," [survey conductor Bert] Sperling said. "Strong communities are bringing the technology to the people, and it demonstrates that Wi-Fi is easy enough to implement that grass roots efforts can go ahead to bring the power and freedom to the community."

The survey is based on the number of each city's public and commercially available hot spots, such as those found in hotels, airports and Starbucks, as well as cell phone coverage and Internet penetration.

Link to Intel survey results, Link to CNET story via MSNBC, Discuss

In today's New York Times:

The justice ministers of the European Union have agreed on laws intended to deter computer hacking and the spreading of computer viruses. But legal experts say the new measures could pose problems because the language could also outlaw people who organize protests online, as happened recently, en masse, with protests against a war in Iraq.

The agreement, reached last week, obliges all 15 member states to adopt a new criminal offense: illegal access to, and illegal interference with an information system. It calls on national courts to impose jail terms of at least two years in serious cases.

Critics from the legal profession say the agreement makes no legal distinction between an online protester and terrorists, hackers and spreaders of computer viruses that the new laws are intended to trap.

Link to NYT story, Discuss

Two scientists at Spain's Polytechnic University of Cartagena have created a robotic finger with a sense of touch, using electrosensitive "smart materials" .

It is made of a polymer that can feel the weight of what it's pushing and adjust the energy it uses accordingly. This is similar to the way we use our sense of touch. If we pick up a delicate object such as a flower, our fingertips sense its fragility and so grasp it lightly. We instinctively exert more force when holding or moving a heavier, more robust item because there is feedback between our sensations and muscles. One way to make an artificial touch-sensitive limb, therefore, would be to equip it with delicate pressure sensors to provide this sort of feedback.

Link to Nature story, Discuss

Yesterday, Toshiba debuted the world's first-ever prototype of a fuel cell for notebook computers. The device powers a laptop for five hours, and uses concentrated methanol as fuel. Toshiba says they'll further reduce size before consumer release. Link to Agence-France Presse item via SpaceDaily, Discuss Update: Link to Toshiba press release with photos of the laptop fuel cell prototype, including the one at left. (Thanks, Jeremy!)

Bored of dressing up like the same old Rocky Horror characters week in and week out? Why not try it in Muppet drag? Link Discuss (Thanks, Chris!)

How to make a firestarting ice-lens -- why didn't anyone tell me about this when I was between the age when snow-forts sucked and the age when I didn't want to venture into the cold, period? Starting fires, man, wow. Link Discuss (via JWZ's Livejournal)

Twentieth Century Fox and the MPAA have teamed up to produce an anti-piracy trailer intended to educate American filmgoers about the evils of movie piracy via digital file-swapping services like Kazaa.

Initially, the two-minute trailer that puts a human face on the victims of piracy will be shown at most Regal Cinemas, the nation's largest theater chain. It will be unveiled Wednesday at [the entertainment industry convention] ShoWest, which runs today through Thursday. (...)

Among some students, the notion that a trailer could persuade anyone to stop downloading movies seems naive, like the "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign. "It's become so acceptable to download movies and music off the Internet that people don't think it's wrong," said USC sophomore Jacqui Deelstra, 19. Added sophomore Art Priromprintr: "Nobody's going to think 'Oh, I'm hurting the movie industry right now' -- they don't care."

Link to LA Times story (free site registration required), Discuss

USA Today has a list of tips for American tourists who don't want to get hassled by Europeans disgusted with the Bush administrations push for war.

Avoid American fast-food restaurants and chains.

Keep discussions of politics to private places, not rowdy bars.

Take a rain check on wearing clothes featuring American flags or sports team logos.

Keep your passport out of sight.

Keep cameras, video equipment and maps tucked away.

Soften your speech; Americans typically overshadow their hosts in the volume department.

Link Discuss

My friend Doug Rushkoff posted this email on his blog:

Dear Douglas,

I am wondering if you are the Douglas Rushkoff who was in my second grade class with Miss Brownell in 1968-1969 (Chatworth Elementary, Larchmont, NY)??

If so, I owe you an apology. I stole the 1802 penny that you brought to class for Show and Tell. Ever since, I find myself saying "this is the worst thing I've done since I stole Douglas Rushkoff's 1802 penny".

Link Discuss

Reuters: "A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall." Link Discuss (Thanks, Thomas!)

In Dave Winer's blog today: instructions on how to get audblog to work with Radio Userland. update: Clarification for BoingBoing from Dave: "FYI, that's 'in progress' -- the download link isn't hot. I want to talk with the Audblog people before releasing it, because I think we have to take another look at how it works. I don't want to support this way of doing it, and I doubt if they do either." Link, Discuss, (Thanks, Grant)!

Next to Robert Crumb, the late Jack Kirby is my all time favorite cartoonist. (My last spoken word will probably be "Kamandi.") Here are some of his mind bending designs for a never-built theme park. Wow! Link Discuss (Thanks, Zed!)

Listen up. Former BoingBoing guestblogger Susannah "Reverse Cowgirl" Breslin is in New York City this week, meeting with TV producers about a television version of Reverse Cowgirl's blog. She's audio-blogging the trip, and her posts so far are fantastic. Audblog doesn't officially support Radio Userland just yet (only Blogger, though other editions are reportedly on the way), so she's set up a temporary blogspot site where you can listen to her daily spoken reports. How ironic that the sound of a human voice should seem such a novelty... Link to Susannah's audio-blogging site, Link to RCB post about the audio-blogging experiment, Discuss

Last night, I wrote about my frustrations with NewsMonster. Today, I realize I shouldn't have written it. It was late at night and I was in a bad mood about it. I've been corresponding with Kevin Burton, the creator of NewsMonster, and he seems like a nice, terrifically earnest guy. He makes it very easy to contact him regarding bugs, and I should have emailed or called him before posting my complaints here. The idea behind NewsMonster is wonderful, and I hope it is a big success. Please forgive me, Kevin. Discuss

Article in today's Wall Street Journal about a little-known federal agency known as the TSWG:

Americans worried about terrorism on their home turf will soon be able to buy a $3 sensor the size of a credit card that will show whether they have been exposed to a dirty radioactive bomb. Behind the development of the tiny dosimeter, which features a baby blue or pink stripe that blushes deeper the greater the radiation exposure, is a tiny government agency that labored in obscurity -- until now.

The 70 employees of the Technical Support Working Group are the nation's talent scouts for antiterrorism gadgets. Their job is not to build the stuff but to fund it and ensure that gizmos find their way out of the laboratory, onto the market and into the hands of those who may need them. That, of course, became all the more pressing after Sept. 11. Since then, some 16,000 proposals have landed on the desks of the group's staffers. Only 120 made the cut. But now the agency is preparing for a new onslaught of proposals. It expects this week to issue its first public call for antiterrorism gadgets on behalf of the new Department of Homeland Security, which has promised to kick $30 million into the group's budget.

Link to WSJ article (subscription required), link to agency website, Discuss

Cuban music researcher Ned Sublette (of "Afropop Worldwide" radio show and Qbadisc records fame) sends BoingBoing these snapshots he took on a recent trip to Cuba. Ned leads escorted tours of Cuba with other experts on the music, culture, and history of the island; listen to sounds from their latest trip here. Next month, he'll be participating in the EMP pop music conference in Seattle (admission for non-members is $55). This annual event is put on by the Experience Music Project, a museum founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen that combines "interactive and interpretive exhibits to tell the story of the creative, innovative and rebellious expression that defines American popular music." From the event website:

EMP's annual Pop Music Studies Conference celebrates the diversity of ways one can talk about music, bringing together leading academics and writers, thoughtful musicians, and dedicated listeners for a jampacked long weekend of panels. This year's conference theme, "Skip a Beat: Rewriting the Story of Popular Music," has produced work on a range of topics, including politics and pop; rock’s avant-garde; Bob Dylan; African music; riot grrl; jazz fusion; and the Ego Trip collective spinning a wheel of topics that includes "Will the Real 'New Tupac' Please Stand Up?" About 100 papers or other presentations will be given at the conference, which begins with a welcome reception and keynote by Greil Marcus the evening of Thursday, April 10; continues all day Friday, April 11 and Saturday, April 12; and concludes with early panels and a wrap-up session the morning of Sunday, April 13.

Link to EMP conference details, More of Ned's Cuba snapshots: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Discuss

The LA Times reports that Apple has signed up several of the major labels to create a music downloading service for iPod owners. Details are slim.

"This is exactly what the music industry has been waiting for," said one person familiar with the negotiations between the Cupertino computer maker and the labels. "It's hip. It's quick. It's easy. If people on the Internet are actually interested in buying music, not just stealing it, this is the answer.''

Link Discuss

I'm really sick. Some kind of feverish flu. Hurts to do much of anything. Here are some links:

Dead housefly with a webserver

Disney's ancestor hanged for a witch in Salem

San Francisco Chronicle available as audio files

Fix your dead 5GB iPod (voids warranty)

Harvard b-school quantitative research on the value of eBay reputation

Videos from Doors of Perception conference Discuss

I recently became a convert to the joys of RSS. NetNewsWire is a fantastic way to keep on top of my favorite blogs. So I heard about NewsMonster and downloaded it, thinking it might be even better. It is super slow and keeps popping up when it isn't supposed to. When I went to uninstall it, I found out that you can't uninstall it. So I tried to disable it according to the instructions given by the creator of NewsMonster (who I am sure is a swell person), and that doesn't work either. Every time I load a page, NewsMonster appears.

So then I searched on Google to find out if anyone stupid enough to have installed NewsMonster (like me) was smart enough to have discovered out a way to uninstall it (unlike me). I found these instructions, but I couldn't get them to work for me. I couldn't even find most of the files he listed.

Finally, I deleted every NewMonster-related file and folder I could find, and every Mozilla file and folder and reinstallled Mozilla. But when I started up Mozilla, I was greeted by the sickening sight of the NewMonster configuration wizard. I hate NewsMonster. At this point my only hope is that Safari will soon offer tabbed browsing so I can switch over and never use Mozilla again. Bad monster!After I deleted the old version of Mozilla from the trash, NewsMonster went away. (I hope!) Discuss

Under the unwatchful eyes of 24-hour prison guards, a Dali original painting was stolen from the lobby of Riker's prison. The art was replaced with a copy by the thieves.

According to the New York Post, one of the prison's officers noticed that the image in the locked display case where the picture was housed "didn't look right".

Several more officers examined the picture and, having drawn the conclusion that something was amiss, called the police.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Matt!)

If you live in the Bay area, it might be worth your while to check out "Out of Time: 20th Century Designs for the Future," a traveling Smithsonian exhibition featuring "sixty works of compelling beauty and often remarkable foresight document America's fascination with the future." It'll open March 16 at St. Mary's College of California (about eight miles east of Berkeley). Link Discuss(Thanks, idogcow!)

Gary sez: Tom Glazer died. Who is Tom Glazer, you ask? He was a silly folk singer who wrote and recorded the classic song "On Top of Spaghetti".

But he was so much more than that. He also performed on a series of (sadly out of print) science records in the late 50s/early 60s that included wonderful songs like "What Is The Milky Way", "What Is Gravity", "Kinetic And Potential Energy", "How Clouds Are Formed", "Thumbnail Sketch Of Atomic Energy" (my personal favorite) and the classic (popularized by They Might Be Giants) "Why Does the Sun Shine?". These songs are probably the best, and kitschiest, example of edutainment ever.

You can find MP3s of his work (written by Lou Singer and Hy Zaret) at http://www.acme.com/jef/science_songs/.

Who can beat the simple beauty of:

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where Hydrogen is built into Helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

My kids can sing it.

Mourn Tom Glazer. He sang us through the nuclear age! Link Discuss

My friend Michie Iwatsuki in Tokyo is attempting to raise media awareness about the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Koreans under order of Kim Jong-Il. This week, the family members of abductees are in the US meeting with Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House, to ask for help with the problem. Michie says: "Abduction is brutal terrorism invading Japan's sovereignty." She suggests visiting THINK (Their Home Isn't North Korea) for more information. Link Discuss

Dr. Pepper is flying "key influence" bloggers to a seekrit hide-away this weekend to help launch the site for their new beverage. Apparently, bloggers on the Atkins plan (ahem) aren't invited. OTOH, I'm spending this weekend eating BBQ in Austin at SXSW, so Dr Pepper can kiss my disappearing ass. Link Discuss (Thanks, Gavin!)

A dose of audio zen for your Monday listening pleasure: Lester Chambers of the Chambers Brothers performs the gospel-soul-rock anthems Time Has Come Today and People Get Ready at the 2003 Future of Music Conference. Apart from being a powerful creative force in rock 'n' roll history, Mr. Chambers has been an advocate for artists rights since his days with the Chambers Brothers on Columbia Records in the mid 60s. He documented some of these struggles in a June, 2000 open letter to Courtney Love. Attorney Lawrence Feldman, who represented Chambers in lawsuits against the recording industry, tells BoingBoing:

"He grew up in Mississippi, and he and his brothers were very sensitive to racial issues. They started as gospel singers, and ultimately morphed into one of the premier bands of the Psychodelic era, although they were a truly multitalented, multi-genre band. Lester was the lead singer and harmonica player, and is one of the Blues greats. The Chambers Brothers were the first black group to break the Motown/soul mold and just play great music."

Currently, Chambers is involved in two suits against the recording industry. One is in Atlanta Federal Court against all major labels for pension abuse (court rulings from earlier phases of this case are here and here in PDF format). The other case, Chambers v. Sony, et al, is pending in New York state court. This case was filed along with Tony Silvester of the Main Ingredient, Bill Pinkney of the original Drifters, and Carl Gardner of the Coasters, and addresses an array of key digital rights issues: did the 40-year-old contracts grant all rights now and in the future, without compensation to artists? Did the recording industry lose rights when it published unprotected compact disks for 20 years, and now complains when songs available online as MP3s? (copy of appeal, copy of case docket ).

Link to streaming MP3 files, Discuss (Thanks to Lisa Rein for the hook-up to archive.org, who are generously hosting these audio files, streamed with Andromeda). Lester Chambers' music is available for online purchase here.

John Gilmore writes about a consumer campaign to fight CAPPS 2 -- a mini-TIA that will data-mine every air passenger's travel history, living arrangements, and other personal and demographic information.

Delta Air Lines was stupid enough to break ranks and announce that they are the first airline to test CAPPS 2 (at three airports they refuse to identify). DELTA cares what we think of CAPPS 2 -- particularly if we refuse to fly on Delta. And if Delta goes bankrupt, or backs out of CAPPS 2, due to losing customers, then it's unlikely that any other airline will follow them into oblivion. (If another airline is stupid enough to, then we the public will boycott *them* as well.)

Any airline that publicly repudiates CAPPS 2 and declares that they will NOT participate, will start picking up business. And if they lie about whether they'll participate, that will constitute fraud upon both their customers and their stockholders.

Link Discuss (Thanks, John!)

A British student is arguing that her essay, written in SMS shorthand, should receive a passing grade:

"My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 : kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc."

Link Discuss (via Die Puny Humans)

Dav sez, "I love a good consipracy. Especially when it involves secret tunnels underneath and already exciting and mysterious sprawling urban landscape. Shun Akiba, a former war-time correspondant has potentially uncovered just such a scenario in Tokyo and thinks that there might be a conspiracy to keep the information hidden. Or maybe he's just drumming up book sales, but I still dig it."

What changed his life was finding an old map in a secondhand bookstore. Comparing it to a contemporary map, he found significant variations. "Close to the Diet in Nagata-cho, current maps show two subways crossing. In the old map, they are parallel..."

This inconsistency is just the first of seven riddles that he investigates in his book. The second reveals a secret underground complex between Kokkai-gijidomae and the prime minister's residence. A prewar map (riddle No. 3) shows the Diet in a huge empty space surrounded by paddy fields: "What was the military covering up?" New maps (No. 4) are full of inconsistencies: "People are still trying to hide things.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Dav!)

The world's first corneal-transplant recipient is still seeing out of her donor's corneas, which are 130 years old now. Link Discuss (via FARK)

Heartfelt tribute to Mr. Rogers in this week's Get Your War On. Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom)

Steven "Emergence" Johnson has some fascinating highlights from the TED conference (which wasn't blogged, hardly at all, probably because they didn't invite many bloggers).

On a lighter note, Marvin Minsky walked through a couple of half-serious ideas for combating the population explosion -- ideas that he seemed a little surprised that no one was yet exploring. My favorite: make people smaller! If we're going to be able to genetically engineer ourselves, maybe we should work on shrinking ourselves down so the planet can fit more of us. As Minsky pointed out, a 6-inch person is a thousand times smaller, volume-wise, than a normal-sized one. Of course, he didn't get into the crucial corollary problem we'd have to solve if we pulled this off -- namely, Giant Killer Squirrels -- but I'm sure with time we could solve that one too.

The first day ended with a one-two punch that you probably won't see again. DJ Spooky as an opening act for Freeman Dyson. I loved Dyson's idea that if the universe doesn't turn out to be teeming with life, perhaps then it should be up to us to plant the seeds, by sending out extremophile sunflowers capable of thriving in the cold vacuum of space.

Link Discuss

China's announced an ambitious project to explore and exploit the moon.

Ziyuan said exploring the Moon "probably holds the key to humanity's future subsistence and development". Chinese officials have previously said that some sort of permanent, most likely unmanned, base could be established on the Moon's surface by 2010...

"The prospect for the development and utilisation of the lunar potential mineral and energy resources provide resource reserves for the sustainable development of human society," he told the newspaper.

Link Discuss

R.U. Sirius was the founding editor of Mondo 2000. He's one of the most interesting people I know, and he has a book coming out on the history of the counterculture. Here's an interview with him from New World Disorder.

NWD: What do you think about the WTO riot crowd? All and anger and ideology, no libido, drugs, and rock and roll?

RUS: Well, anybody in their late teens or early 20s who doesn't want to riot is either dead or too enlightened. And corporate globalism is worthy of militant opposition. On the other hand, a lot of these young "anarchists" are sort of like Moslem fundamentalists ... extremely purist and moralistic. Opposing technology is idiotic. In a world of 6 billion the only way out is by overwhelming scarcity with self-replicating production technologies like bio and nanotechnology. Besides, one would have to kill 99.9% of the American people to get them to agree to live the meat and technology and entertainment free lifestyle that the Unabomber anarchists would like to impose on us. Including me. But they're young, and they did what needed to be done in Seattle.

Link Discuss

Jumeau Bar is an charming, interactive "rural short" by Nicolas Clauss + Jean-Jacques Birge of flyingpuppet.com. Clauss, the site's founder, is a Paris-based painter who says he "gave up 'traditional' painting to use the Internet as a canvas." Link to Shockwave file, 5 Mb; Discuss

A spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines said yesterday that confessions submitted by mobile text messaging, e-mail, or similar electronic means are "unacceptable." The pace of SMS and mobile communications adoption in the Philippines is among the highest worldwide. Confessing sins via text messaging and wireless e-mail has become a growing trend among younger Catholics in the country, but the Church does not approve.

Catholic priests, [CBCP secretary general Hernando Coronel] added, are prohibited from granting absolution for a confessant's sins using text messaging, e-mail or by faxing the absolutions to the confessant. The Catholic Church cannot allow confession using these means because confidentiality is very important to the sacrament of penance and reconciliation.

"We have to protect that confidentiality and we insist on personal confession of the penitent to the priests."

Thankfully for the rest of us, sinning by way of SMS or e-mail is as easy as ever. And as BoingBoing reader Joey points out, perhaps it's understandable that priests wouldn't want to be bombarded with messages like, "OMFG!!! 4GV M3 F4TH3R, 4 1 H4V3 S1NN3D. L8R!!!" Link to Philippine Star story, Discuss

Does the "unlicensed" spectrum band need etiquette rules at this time? Or should the FCC leave the space alone? This panel will address this general question, as well as specific etiquette proposals. Speakers from MSFT and Motorola, plus assorted commentators.

Pierre De Vries, MSFT: Imagine that you've spent a fortune on WiFi gear, and you and your neighbors are doing wonderful things with it, like allowing distributed encrypted backup and other community applications. Then, one day, your neighbor buys a perfectly legal, Part-15 certified analog TV retransmitter, and the whole network goes down.

Or imagine a wireless dormnet with wonderful streaming material -- music, video, etc -- that you normally love but tonight, it's so full up that you can't get online to do basic Internet connectivity.

(Ed: I forgot my power supply, Aaron forgot to get his WiFi card registered for the Stanford network's whitelist. We're sitting side by side, sharing an AC adapter, our machines tethered with an Ethernet cable, and I'm receiving WiFi from Stanford, republishing it on the Ethernet, and Aaron's republishing it on his wireless card so that everyone else who forgot to get authenticated can get online. SSID: "aaronsw")

Is there any spectrum etiquette that we can agree upon? Can we ask regulators to enshrine it?

A year ago, I dreamed of a future where we could get online no matter where we are, handing off from WiFi to GPRS. Today, I want a world where every device has wireless built in -- a future where people expect to have data over unlicensed bands everywhere. This will require regulation to make wireless bands robust.

(Ed: Hmmmm, De Vries is a Trusted Computing shill -- what's his agenda?)

Victor Bahl, MSFT: (They're showing slides that half the room can't see -- hard to follow now)

How do you propose an etiquette that accomodates WiFi and other users of unlicensed spectrum? It might be best to exclude non-data services from the band. Also, let's not regulate receivers, only transmitters. The etiquette will not speak to bits, bytes and frames: rather, kind, frequency and power.

We can't come up with a great mechanism for transmit power-control without regulating receivers -- you can't ensure that you don't shout when you can whisper, though this would be useful.

We propose dynamic frequency selection: to avoid interference with radar -- you sense traffic in a channel and back off if it's there. We want listen-before-talk for devices entering a new space. It's well understood and it actually works.

This is simple and minimal. The rules we propose are straightforward and have been in the industry for a long time, and they are easy to implement. There's existence-proof, some of this has been mandated in Europe.

Because you can't transmit when you see unknown traffic in the band, it creates an incentive to understand other users of the band.

De Vries: This will make it uneconomic to build devices as cheaply as possible that blast across the band -- in these new bands. Legacy devices can talk in the old band.

FCC CTO: So it's not a commons -- only people who adhere to your etiquette may use it.

De Vries: Every Commons has rules. We're proposing additional, minimal rules that will allow more robust operation and acknowledges that devices can be built to be intelligent and respond to the environment.

FCC CTO: So this new band will be for WiFi and devices than can peacefully coexist with WiFi.

Lessig: But if I have a device that's completely stupid built in 1930 that would be interfered with by the latest data-network, under your definition data devices would have to back off.

Bahl: No, that device would be excluded from this band.

Bahl: This solves the hidden-receiver problem. You need a receiver to tell you if he's there. (Ed: I'm not really following this -- there's a lot of interjection from the panel and Bahl's presentation style is pretty meandering).

Reed: You're seeing that recievers don't need transmitters, but transmitters must have receivers.

Bahl: Yes.

Dewayne Hendricks: Is this for LANs or WANs or both?

Bahl: LAN and multihop. Short-range.

Tom Freeburg, Motorola: Canopy and 802.11a coexist very well even though they disagree about etiquette. Interference is a function of peak power, not average. Interference takes place in the receivers. Poor receivers suffer from interference much worse than good receivers.

Directional antennas are going to be more and more widely used, which magnifies the hidden terminal system.

Radios are not wires. Just because something works very well on a wire, doesn't mean it will work in the air.

You can get more radio spectrum -- that's what cellular systems do. They get more spectrum out of the same MHz. You can build a radio system where you get more throughput by getting more cells. It's not easy, but Canopy is a living, breathing example of this.

We can't make a perfect etiquette because we can't see the future perfectly. Our rules have to be subject to evolution and need to be very lightweight. We should not be writing rules to apply to situations that haven't occurred, because 99% of them won't and the one that turns out to be a real problem will be the one we've never thought of.

The biggest problem is insufficient resource -- if there's more demand than supply, then you have a problem. You need to allocate enough spectrum.

If you avoid the Tragedy of the Commons problem, you'll need a lot less spectrum, though.

You have to expect that your users will be robust -- you can't protect the weak at the expense of the average. You need to protect everyone from bullies, but not defend the most fragile case.

I propose a simple set of rules that will allow a common set of users to share a resource. These rules need to be simple and allow for innovation. It's not enough to have your etiquette accommodate two kinds of sensing mechanisms, because there are six more we haven't thought of.

We need to make sure that no user takes more from the resource-pool than he actually uses (Ed: "from each according to his ability...")

De Vries: How do you test whether your rules accommodate any use in the future?

Freeburg: You don't -- you change the rules.

Lessig: If your rules would impose a heavy burden on person x or a light burden on person y, then your rules should ensure that y solves the problem.

If the burden on me is extremely simple to solve, then it should be my responsibility to solve it. The ambiguity about who is responsible for solving the interference is the most important piece of the problem.

(Ed: All of the FCC people at this event are wearing RIM Blackberries -- hill-rat multitools. Most of them have good suits and bizdev-guy blue sailcloth shirts. A sizable number are wearing snappy suspenders.)

Freeburg: I'm afraid that the etiquette will become so numerous and detailed that the good sense behind them disappears -- we could end up with our throughput cut by 80% and not know how to fix it.

Complying with the system may not get the best result -- we'll lose the ability to go outside of it. We can't kill good neighborliness with rules.

De Vries: MSFT's proposal is as minimal as we can make it (Ed: Minimal is not the same as mutable).

Freeburg: I hate listen-before-talk even though I helped design it. Once we had it implemented and understood, it turned out hat when you really implement a listen-before-talk system, you throw away 85% of the real channel capability, through deferring to exchanging pairs whom you would not have bothered. It's like being at a cocktail party where you're not allowed to talk so long as anyone in the room is talking. Let's make everyone robust so they can withstand a little interference.

Tim Shepard:

* Whether or not a communication is successful depends on signal:noise at the receiver. Depends on the antenna and the receiver. You can still communicate at 1000:1 SNR -- when the signal is buried in the noise. It sets aside the notion that we have to decide who can speak and when. This reduces the number of bits/second, but you can always go wider (if you don't have a regulatory constraint).

* Listen before talks rarely works. Reed is right. low-powered conversations between high-powered conversations don't harmfully interfere.

* 100,000 people at a football stadium can communicate with their neighbors in just a few KHz -- the din of the crowd never gets that bad. You can still even have an effective Public Address system. EM is even less susceptible to interference that acoustics -- we can upgrade our antenna, we can switch polarity, etc.

* Etiquette should allow for simultaneous communication (i.e., like a football stadium).

* The MSFT proposal puts the burden in the wrong place -- the receiver is where the interference takes place, so that's where you should regulate.

* Motorola paper is better: it's etiquette without listen-before-transmit. But this doesn't need to be law, Darwinian winnowing away of devices that don't work will solve this.

Reed: You can detect interference on a round-trip -- when the receiver acknowledges receipt, you can tell if there's degradation. This is more of a burden than the MSFT proposal (because it requires a closed loop), but it's still preferable to listen-before-talk.

(Ed: Just noticed that Aaron has a folder in his mailer called "Need to read" that shows 15,000+ unread messages)

Bahl: Listen-before-talk gets a bum rap. You can improve the backoff that dramatically improves it. It does work. Discuss

The headline really says it all: "Statue of Lenin with Mickey Mouse's head to be unveiled in Moscow." Hey, your peanut-butter got in my caviar!

The artist, who has lived in New York for 20 years, previously won a landmark court battle with Coca Cola after the company objected to his use of their logo in a poster which also featured Lenin.

He said his work celebrates the "heritage of socialist realism".

Someone, please send me a nice, high-rez photo of this -- I want to make a wall-sized mural. Link Discuss (via The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century!)

Rainer sez, "Munster University got an automated cease-and-desist letter from the BSA, regarding their distribution of "unlicensed copies of copyrighted material" through their FTP server. As it happens, the offending material was Open Office, not MS Office... The BSA subsequently apologized, blaming an automated script for reacting to the word 'office' (not yet a Microsoft trademark)." Link Discuss (Thanks, Rainer!)