By Cory Doctorow at 8:54 am Saturday, Dec 13
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MAME is a project to allow for the emulation of every video-game ever minted, but what if you're more the pinball type? No fear: a group of MAME hackers are building virtual pinball machines that lovingly emulate every jot and tittle of every pinball table under the sun.
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via Smartpatrol)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:44 am Saturday, Dec 13
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Screw lollipops screened with detailed edible artwork: these guys are selling giant lollipops with edible
holograms embedded in them.
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via Making Light)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:43 am Saturday, Dec 13
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An interesting view of the Dean campaign: a borging of the Democratic party in order to rescue the brand for an Internet-centric political party:
Other candidates -- Joseph Lieberman , John Kerry, John Edwards -- are competing to take control of the party's fundraising, organizational and media assets. But Dean is not interested in taking control of those depreciating assets. He is creating his own party, his own lists, his own money, his own organization. What he wants is the Democratic brand name and legacy, its last remaining asset of value, as part of his marketing strategy.
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via Many 2 Many)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:40 am Saturday, Dec 13
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Lessig's just got back form the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, where he ran into the Swiss version of WiFi, a craptacular extravaganza of telecom stupidity compounded by the irony of hosting a summit on the "Information Society" where it's easier to get a gift bag of conference schwag than an Internet connection. Lessig's
rant on the subject is entertaining, and it put me in mind of a section I wrote for my novel-in-progress, "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town," which is about community wireless hackers (among other things) and this chunk was inspired by my trip to Geneva a couple months ago to attend the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. I've uploaded the relevant section.
"No problem -- outside every hotel and most of the cafes, I can
find a signal for a network called 'SwissCom.' I log on to the
network and I fire up a browser and I get a screen asking me for
my password. Well, I don't have one, but after poking around, I
find out that I can buy a card with a temporary password on it.
So I wait until some of the little smoke-shops open and start
asking them if they sell SwissCom Internet Cards, in my terrible,
miserable French, and after chuckling at my accent, they look at
me and say, 'I have no clue what you're talking about,' shrug,
and go back to work.
"Then I get the idea to go and ask at the hotels. The first one,
the guy tells me that they only sell cards to guests, since
they're in short supply. The cards are in short supply! Three
hotels later, they allow as how they'll sell me a 30-minute card.
Oh, that's fine. 30 whole minutes of connectivity. Whoopee. And
how much will that be? Only about a zillion Swiss pesos. Don't
they sell cards of larger denominations? Oh sure, two hours, 24
hours, seven days -- and each one costs about double the last, so
if you want, you can get a seven day card for about as much as
you'd spend on a day's worth of connectivity in 30-minute
increments -- about $300 Canadian for a week, just FYI.
"Well, paying 300 bucks for a week's Internet is ghastly, but
very Swiss, where they charge you if you have more than two bits
of cheese at breakfast, and hell, I could afford it. But Three
hundred bucks for a day's worth of 30-minute cards? Fuck that. I
was going to have to find a seven-day card or bust. So I ask at a
couple more hotels and finally find someone who'll explain to me
that SwissCom is the Swiss telco, and that they have a retail
storefront a couple blocks away where they'd sell me all the
cards I wanted, in whatever denominations I require.
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